Tiny, insignificant details in games that really bother you

Casual Shinji

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I don't know if I'd call it insignificant, but I've been playing Nier Replicant and the transparant letterbox during cutscenes bothers the shit out of me. Why even have it there when you can see through it? Now I'm just constantly looking back and forth between the transparant part of the screen and the clear part. Either have black borders there or not, don't make the black borders see-through, it makes the whole action pointless and distracting.

The same shit was in Automata. Can anyone explain to me what the fuck the point of this is?
 
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BrawlMan

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The same shit was in Automata. Can anyone explain to me what the fuck the point of this is?
Other than to be artsy and distinct, I have no other ideas.

Vanquish's upgrade system. Every time you die, whatever upgraded weapons you have (damage, ammo capacity) get de-ranked when you die. What's worse is that in order to get an upgrade you have to collect the same weapon you have equipped and have to have full ammo in order for the upgrade to take place. The good news is that there is an exploit where if you quit to the title menu, you can keep your upgrade or collect the same weapons you have at certain checkpoints to fully upgrade your weapons. Rinse and repeat.

When playing on God Hard mode, there is no upgrade system. I don't know what Shinji Mikami was thinking with that one. Also, there should not be so many invisible walls in my 3rd person shooter from 2010.
 

happyninja42

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Melee combat games, that give you long combo sequences, but the enemies just shrug them off half way through and then curbstomp your face. Seriously why give me a 6 move sequences if NO enemy will ever stay stunned long enough for me to get further than 3?!? ESPECIALLY if that combo can't be interrupted when you see they are about to suplex your face.
 

Drathnoxis

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Yeah, thats something that everyone seems to forget. For a modern military aircraft you need something like 4 hours of maintenance for each hour of flight time. There is a show called Gohdannar which is a pretty awesome giant robot show and doesn't try to take itself seriously but one of the antagonists in it has has his own giant robot and its just him and a little girl and they hid their robot in a cave while the main team has a big ass base with a full maintenance crew who have great shenanigans. But the thought of that guy just letting his giant robot sit in a cave without maintenance always bugged me.
You could probably get away with way less maintenance on aircraft if you were desperate, it's just bad PR when one crashes killing a bunch of people so they try to avoid that at all costs. Nobody would actually fly if it really needed 4 hours of maintenance to stay airborne for an hour. It's similar to the way that safety equipment and rigging all needs to be able to withstand 4 or 5 times the rated limit. You might buy a sling that's rated for a ton, but they actually test them at 4 tons.

On that note, can any of you think of any games, where the day night cycle is either reality accurate, or at least longer than the time it takes a fruit fly to sneeze? I remember many years ago when I was playing MMO's (Everquest I think at the time), that it would be neat if the game day/night, was actually linked to the real world, and so it would transition with you as you played.
Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and WoW to name a few.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
You could probably get away with way less maintenance on aircraft if you were desperate, it's just bad PR when one crashes killing a bunch of people so they try to avoid that at all costs. Nobody would actually fly if it really needed 4 hours of maintenance to stay airborne for an hour. It's similar to the way that safety equipment and rigging all needs to be able to withstand 4 or 5 times the rated limit. You might buy a sling that's rated for a ton, but they actually test them at 4 tons.
Staying airborn is one thing. Planes are good at staying airborn, but you want to be functional and be able to get back safely. There are a lot of parts to an aircraft that will wear out and need replacing or regular maintenance to be reliable.
 
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The Rogue Wolf

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A lot of first-person shooter weapons eject casings that are the wrong type, and usually WAY too big, for the weapon they're coming from. The Glock and MP5 in Half-Life were prime offenders, since the spent brass looked more like it should have been coming from a GAU-8 Avenger rather than being 9mm Parabellum.
 
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Meximagician

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The later Tales of... games allow you to customize characters with little objects that attach to the character model's skeleton. Dagger & sheath, plush toys, hats, etc. I try to make sure these custom objects are put on in a way that doesn't get in the way of character expressions, doesn't clash with the base character design, and doesn't clip horribly in combat and cutscene animations.

Which just makes it all the more noticeable when the official models clip during cutscene animations.
 

Drathnoxis

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Staying airborn is one thing. Planes are good at staying airborn, but you want to be functional and be able to get back safely. There are a lot of parts to an aircraft that will wear out and need replacing or regular maintenance to be reliable.
I said if you were desperate. Being completely reliable is a different story. How long can you drive a modern car doing no maintenance before it breaks down? A long time. A modern aircraft is going to be well engineered and should be able to last for thousands of hours, it's just that a failure in an aircraft is so critical that you have to be constantly checking for potential failures and catching them before they happen. If you were just a villain in a cave you could probably get by quite a while before it starts catching up with you.

I played a LOT of WoW for years, and I don't recall the day/night cycle being reality accurate.
Accurate to server time, anyway.

 

BrawlMan

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Melee combat games, that give you long combo sequences, but the enemies just shrug them off half way through and then curbstomp your face. Seriously why give me a 6 move sequences if NO enemy will ever stay stunned long enough for me to get further than 3?!? ESPECIALLY if that combo can't be interrupted when you see they are about to suplex your face.
Which ones, if you can remember any of them? I agree with you, but just want to help narrow it down.
 

BrawlMan

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The most recent ones I can personally think of are Nioh 2, and the two Surge games.
That explains that. I haven't played those games so I won't be able to help you out much unfortunately. Let me know if it's Devil May Cry or God of War related/style games. I might be able to give you some advice on that. Whenever in the future.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
I said if you were desperate. Being completely reliable is a different story. How long can you drive a modern car doing no maintenance before it breaks down? A long time. A modern aircraft is going to be well engineered and should be able to last for thousands of hours, it's just that a failure in an aircraft is so critical that you have to be constantly checking for potential failures and catching them before they happen. If you were just a villain in a cave you could probably get by quite a while before it starts catching up with you.
Its not comparable to a modern car. If you insist on making a car analogy, you would have to compare it to a high performance race car, not a normal car. If you have ever watched nascar you know how even in the middle of a race the pit team needs to do things to the vehicle to ensure it is operating in peak performance. An aircraft doesn't have the ability to just pull over to the side of a road if something goes wrong, a military aircraft probably won't be able to even land like a normal civilian aircraft if something bad does happen.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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The most recent ones I can personally think of are Nioh 2, and the two Surge games.
Nioh doesn't have an uninterruptible combo sequence. What it has is button presses that queue up.

If you mash the attack button it's going to queue those attacks. If you just press the attack button after the previous attack ended then it doesn't do that.

The souls games all do that as well. I had to completely unlearn that habit when I played Demon's Souls back when it first came out.
 

Drathnoxis

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An aircraft doesn't have the ability to just pull over to the side of a road if something goes wrong, a military aircraft probably won't be able to even land like a normal civilian aircraft if something bad does happen.
That's exactly what I said...

Look, the point I'm trying to make is that most of your 4 hours is going to be spent doing inspections, predictive, and preventative maintenance. They do it to avoid failures at all costs, not because the plane will definitely crash if they don't. They still flew jets back in the 60s before stuff like Reliability Centered Maintenance was invented and they didn't all crash, just more did.

It's feasible that your villain in the cave can get away with not putting in quite as much maintenance as the US military if he's willing to take the risk.
 
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Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
That's exactly what I said...

Look, the point I'm trying to make is that most of your 4 hours is going to be spent doing inspections, predictive, and preventative maintenance. They do it to avoid failures at all costs, not because the plane will definitely crash if they don't. They still flew jets back in the 60s before stuff like Reliability Centered Maintenance was invented and they didn't all crash, just more did.

It's feasible that your villain in the cave can get away with not putting in quite as much maintenance as the US military if he's willing to take the risk.
You still don't want to do it since these are very complex machines and you can't be sure if a component failure will result in less power going to the engine or the engine catching fire.

You are just proving my point.

No its not, with how complex jets are, a giant robot would require so much more to keep it running. They would be stupidly complex to keep going. It would require constant adjustment just to be able to stand in place and look around, each part having to work 100% or the whole thing comes crashing down, that isn't even mentioning how they always have 5 fingers, 5 fingers that would all need to be inspected and repaired/replaced regularly. My point is giant robots are awesome, but stupid and having them just standing in a cave with no maintenance crew is even stupider.
 
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Drathnoxis

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You still don't want to do it since these are very complex machines and you can't be sure if a component failure will result in less power going to the engine or the engine catching fire.

You are just proving my point.

No its not, with how complex jets are, a giant robot would require so much more to keep it running. They would be stupidly complex to keep going. It would require constant adjustment just to be able to stand in place and look around, each part having to work 100% or the whole thing comes crashing down, that isn't even mentioning how they always have 5 fingers, 5 fingers that would all need to be inspected and repaired/replaced regularly. My point is giant robots are awesome, but stupid and having them just standing in a cave with no maintenance crew is even stupider.
I keep starting to write this post, but the scope of this argument is far too broad and to communicate my point to you I'd basically have to write a book on engineering and maintenance, and do a huge amount of speculation on the construction of giant robots. Not worth it.

I wonder why of all the components on a robot you single out the fingers, though. Far from a critical system, you aren't going lose balance or crash just because the pinky stops functioning correctly. They are also likely going to be powered by hydraulic cylinders, barring some fictional technology, and those are self lubricating and can still operate even with quite a bit of internal wear. Your valving will probably be the first issue, but even so you should be expecting to get hundreds of thousands or millions of cycles before a failure occurs.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
I wonder why of all the components on a robot you single out the fingers, though. Far from a critical system, you aren't going lose balance or crash just because the pinky stops functioning correctly. They are also likely going to be powered by hydraulic cylinders, barring some fictional technology, and those are self lubricating and can still operate even with quite a bit of internal wear. Your valving will probably be the first issue, but even so you should be expecting to get hundreds of thousands or millions of cycles before a failure occurs.
Because they are a perfect example of something that would be extremely complex needing to be both powerful and delicate and it seems like almost all giant robot outside of battle tech (for the most part) have them. They would need to have a range of motion similar to a human and be able to grip a gun without destroying it, be able to both move quickly and powerfully for grapples, and take a huge amount of force from punching something. And all of that would have to work, all the time, grips too hard and the guns handle breaks, grips too light and the monster gets away, structural integrity of the fist breaks down and the first just gets smashed when it tries to punch.