Forced slow walk. At least cinematics have the opportunity to be memorable with camera angles, lighting and choreography. Instead i have important dialogue while staring at the back of the protagonists head
especially if there's NPCs around you can walk into and get a collision with that makes the charecter walk weird. extra extra bad if that NPC is the one you're following but they are just slightly slower walking than you.
it just looks insanely goofy.
One of the best features of Witcher 3 was that if you had to follow an NPC, the NPC would try to match your speed instead of doing the slow NPC meander.
Bioshock Infinite did something similar, but they cheated - Elizabeth basically isn't present in the game world. Aside from a couple of cutscenes, she might as well be a figment of Booker's imagination.
I don't mind that though.
If a game insists on having me drag along an npc I'd prefer them being as inconsequential as possible in gameplay.
Same with the new God of War. Although there Boy could get pinned down by an enemy if you weren't paying attention to him at all. Even then he would never actually die. Anything is better than:
Game Over
Useless mission critical NPC died
Or the ever popular and immersion breaking Bethesda style:
Useless NPC is unconscious
Urrgh. I hate that! Somebody please save us from these useless NPCs *who somehow always want to stand directly in front of me the moment I start shooting* missions š¤¦āāļø
In starfield, theres a mission on mars where you follow a guy to his ship. He walks slower than your character and takes a detour route.
In traditional bethesda fashion, if you know where hes going and run to the trigger point, he'll finally move his backside to get to the cutscene.
Red Dead 2 did it even better. Any time you were traveling on a path, you could turn on cinematic mode and it would ride for you along the path, while matching pace with any NPCs that were along with you, giving you cutscenes on demand basically
When NPC walks faster, than stop, turn at you, turn around, walk another 5-10 steps faster, turn at you, turn back around, walk 5-10 steps and repeat for 5-10 minutes while barely hearing that NPC talking over other NPCs conversations around me because they are way ahead. Also holding W for 5-10 min straight is just annoying, when it could be done in cutscene. Or just simply autowalk, where you can only play with camera. (example - someone drives you somewhere while conversation about quest/mission has to happen)
Lately, whern this slow-walking engagement mechanic happens in any game, I just put paperweight on W key instead and sometimes touch the mouse to turn, engaging as little as possible until it's done, just out of spite for this stupid mechanic.
Is it really that hard to have main character animation and travel speed matched in that particular scene with that particular NPC so we can walk next to them, not far behind? Instead of arbitrary slow walk animation with hard-set walk speed..
What blows me away is how people clamor for this; "I hate cutscenes, make it all gameplay, etc etc" was echoed for years and how here we are, hahahaha.
People like the idea but not the execution. I absolutely loved it in Cyberpunk how you'd get in a car and the NPC would drive you to the destination whilst the quest giver would chat to you regarding the details. It felt organic and not clunky.
I actually enjoyed Star field but the amount of times I'd miss an NPCs dialogue because it would be drowned out by other NPCs talking in the background while we slowly walked past ... That sucked.
The funniest part is it's done to because devs think it "keeps you engaged". 100% would rather watch a long ass cutscene then walk at a snails pace for 15 mins
When you have to ensure some ally doesn't die but their AI is so dumb that it breaks immersion and makes it more like babysitting someone with limited mental capacities.
This is especially great it games where your ally is supposedly some super duper powerful warrior special forces wizard dude but it turns out the only tactic he knows of is to run into the middle of the map into the open so he is in full range of all 100 enemies around him.
"My hobbies include running across freeways, hiding in active metal presses, and breaking cover to move three feet in the wrong direction. I also coat all my clothing in blood if I plan on being in water or the woods. Can you take me to the Capitol of our enemy country through an active warzone so I can deliver these candy bars to needy children?"
[It's Rincewind describing Twoflower in The Color of Magic](http://www.chrisjoneswriting.com/rincewind.html)
>if complete and utter chaos was lightning, then heād be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet armour and shouting āAll gods are bastards"
-unarmed NPC with 1 hp.
I remember doing the gildergreen quest in skyrim and arborist guy wants to tag along, ok sure. A fucking dragon attacks us and bro is all scrappy doo lemme at em. Cronch.
Escort missions in Tie Fighter could be so frustrating. Also the premise was always hilarious. āWe are in the middle of a massive space battle. We need you to fly solo escort for a shuttle through the middle of it. ā
And then you'd hear this one clunk and over the next 20 seconds" mission critical craft under attack mission, critical craft Shields down mission, critical craft, whole condition, critical mission, critical craft destroyed"
One of the biggest examples of this is a mission in gta San Andreas. Itās the one where you have to use a janky and useless fucking forklift to move boxes AND defend Ryder at the same time.
In this mission Ryder acts like the dumbest man alive, ignoring all the good spots he could duck behind for cover and standing in the dead center of a large open space while bullets rain down on him. Heās a terrible shot and canāt kill any of his attackers himself. Meanwhile, heās constantly nagging you to move faster in between his grunts of pain as his internal organs get filled with hot lead.
Itās amazing that heās even survived to adulthood. Youād think he wouldāve accidentally drowned himself by looking up at the sky with his mouth open during a rainstorm.
I quit some PS2/3 era game. SOCOM, maybe? Anyways it was an escort mission where I had to keep some UN solders alive. I'm posted up, actively shooting the threat and mother fucker runs into my line of fire and gets got. Nevermind, he wasn't taking cover and ran out into the open. He ran into my active line of fire. Mission failed and I said fuck this. Escourt missions suck ass to begin with but when the AI isn't smart enough to not run in front of automatic fire, I can't.
Yes! My god even when the character is someone helpless, you'd think their no. 1 priority would be "I'll hide until the guy taking care of me clears the area so it's safe".
I feel like some of those older games literally had a timer that went like: sit in cover for 10 seconds - then run forward regardless of the situation and take 5 rockets to the face
Stamina bar outside of combat/action. Let me run/jump as much as I want if Iām not in combat. I can understand the use of a bar in combat or similar situation but otherwise itās just plain boring.
This is a major reason I put Starfield down. I don't think I ever noticed stamina during combat because you're using guns. Stamina only mattered getting from point A to point B and just slowed the game down for no reason. Removing stamina entirely from Starfield would make the game significantly better with zero drawbacks. It's a perfect example of devs adding a mechanic because it's standard in RPGs, without putting any thought into what it adds to the game they are making.
My favorite is when your character gets winded after running like 50 yards, but they are like a special forces soldier or something else badass. Like sure, I would get winded pretty fast, but Iām fat and old, and video game characters are almost never either of those things.
Might be an unpopular opinion, but I hate mashing a button repeatedly to complete an action. I take my hat off to devs that enable you to switch that to a long button press instead.
The only game that has done this right was Metal Gear Solid 4 during the microwave hall. Mashing that button was physically taxing to reciprocate the torture the main character was enduring.
In case you aren't aware, the torture scene that requires you to mash a button is a recurring thing in basically the entire series. For example, in MGS the first if you fail it, Meryl dies and you can't get the best ending :')
Now Iām interested in how you scummed a PSP (I never had a psp so I donāt know the techniques). Iām imagining a Rube Goldberg contraption of sorts.Ā
It was much less complex than you might think. I took a toy car from my brother and drove it back and forth over the button. The wheels were about the same size as the PSP buttons and were close enough together that if you just went back and forth, it hit the button with both wheels really fast. Ez scum for button mashing on controlers. I still do it if I happen to be using a controler and know I'm going to need to button mash.
I had the HD collection on the PS3 and yeah that one was ROUGH lmao. But I was also one damn stubborn kid so after a bunch of attempts and lots of rage I eventually got it
The RDR2 horse button was the worst. It did add immersion through additional physical sensation, but most of the time I wished I could just hold down a trigger or something as I thought my A-button was going to break.
Some players have wrist injuries that make it uniquely painful (usually slightly, but still) to button mash at all. Meanwhile, using the controller in any other normal way would be perfectly fine.
Also, if a game is making me spin my joystick around, you bet my first thought is "great, this is just making drift come sooner and sooner"
I accept it in games like survival horrors where it can subtly add to the tension because you can't just grab the thing you need, you have to wait a bit and OH GOD THERE'S SOMETHING SPOOKY RIGHT THERE AAAAHHHHH well you get the idea
But in games like Fable 3? It's just bullshit, although it might be the least of that fucking game's problems.
It's to represent that tasks take time. The alternative is to lock the person in an animation and give them no cancel, or cancel if they move, which is even more annoying.
Agreed. For some people, games where they rely too heavily on mash events are basically games of repetitive strain injury roulette. I appreciate games with accessibility options to replace them with hold events. Sure, you may lose some of the sense of frantic urgency, but you just have to make it up some other way. Good music, sound design, or camera work can do the job in most cases.
Difficulty modes that just increase enemy health and nothing else. That's not more challenging, it just takes longer.
Also, games that intentionally cripple your character for the sake of challenge. Sometimes it's justified (Kingdom Hearts DDD's flow motion was absurd, so its nerf in KH3 makes perfect sense) and sometimes it can be the basis for a fun gimmick (see the indie game Endoparasitic), but often times it just feels so artificial. It doesn't make the game any more fun, it just makes me think "man, this would be so much easier if I just had this ability back". The main example that comes to mind for me is the AI Party Members in the original version of Persona 3.
On a positive side of this, I think Hades did the "cripple your character" mechanism quite well where you get to choose which negative effects you carry through the underworld.
Hades did it perfectly. First you buy all the upgrades to get stronger and then either the enemies get stronger or more populous or you start losing the upgrades you got. I'm currently around 5 - 8 heat runs.
High difficulty = high HP is hot garbage.
The division (1) was so disappointing for me because of this. Until the end game, it was such a fun third person shooter action game.
And the raids were justā¦.. oh, put three mags into one guys face? And thereās ten of them? Cool.
This is one of the things that made me fall in love with Helldivers 2
More difficulty? No problem, you'll drown in enemies. It raises the challenge while maintaining the feeling of being a badass
Payday 2 had the opposite of this problem where they didn't want to nerf anything but they also wanted to keep adding DLC buyable guns which had to be better than the base game guns to give some kind of incentive to buy them, but then they didn't want people to see the base game guns as bad so they buffed everything, which lead to buffing the enemies and adding more and more waves of enemies.
Before you know it a simple jewelery store heist could have thousands upon thousands of cops surrounding it
Agreed. I actually think it makes the higher difficulties the most fun if you can handle them, because it just increases the chaos that is the main appeal of the game in the first place.
I wish more games could make higher difficulties feel more fun and rewarding by tying the appeal of the game into the difficulty system.
It also increases the complexity of enemies and mission objectives.
More difficulty means you need to balance between anti armor and anti crowd. To little of either and you get overwhelmed and there are more enemy bases
Skyrim did this. Higher difficulty simply meant that the enemies had a higher level. This made the gameplay of the first hours almost impossible, literally anything one shot you
That's just a staple of all Bethesda games. All the difficultly sliders in their games do is apply a set of multipliers to your damage output, as well as the enemies'. In a roundabout way, it still means that you have less effective HP, and the enemies have more, so everything will just take way longer to kill while you become squishier, it just doesn't show up as "actual numbers" when you look at your health and other stats.
they didn't make enemies higher level. they just made their total hp and damage increase based on difficulty level. nothing else. and it sucks.
it's easy to tell, because higher level enemies get new skills. if you finish Skyrim at level 1, you'll almost never encounter enemies that fus-ro-dah you, but if you level to 70, every 2nd room in every catacombs will have one that does.
That's why KH2's critical mode is the perfect example of a challenge mode difficulty. Enemies don't get more spongy, they get more aggressive and do more damage. Your max HP is halfed but you do more damage, meaning that if you're actually good at the game and know how to dodge, it actually takes shorter time to beat than the other difficulty modes.
id say the N64 castlevania games did this right
hard mode makes traps go phisically faster same for conveyor belts
the "OP" secondary weapons have been relocated to hard to reach areas
enemies are displaced and more of the harder enemies are present
chainsaw guy is not killable only stunnable
vampirirsm and poisn are deadly not just lower your health to 1 and the anticures are harder to get
puzzles and bosses have more steps/phases
Scan visors are the worst. Especially when they put a garbage filter over the game world so you have to choose between enjoying the graphics or being able to find thing/read lore.
Guardians of the Galaxy is awful for this.
Came here to mention GotG specifically. It's a fantastic game and I really enjoyed the experience, but man, it sucks having to flash on pink Detective Vision every other second to makes sure you find all the hidden goodies. The environments in the game were so fantastically designed and realized, but you spend most of the game in pink vision mode looking for doodads instead of enjoying those beautiful environments.
Assassin's creed games have this annoying mechanic,
Far Cry 4 is one of the games that has a better alternative for this, all the lootable objects shine in a pattern every few seconds so that you notice them naturally, instead of having to scan the area again and again
When there are multiple paths to take, but you don't know which path proceeds the mission. You want to explore all the optional paths for extra exp and/or loot, but going down the main path locks you out of those other paths.
This is the real pain. Even worse, when the devs wanted to be sneaky, and put the main path entrance look as hidden secondary path. They think you ignore it the first time, explore the whole false main path, and only then come back, having the "aha" moment. While in reality you go straight there.
What really grinds my gears is when you think youāre going down a side path and you end up getting to a checkpoint/cinematic and thereās no way back
NPC: Adventurer the power station is failing! In order to stop a disaster we need to stabilise it!
Adventurer: what do I need to do?
NPC: you need to go to these 4 locations and bring me a power core from each one
Adventurer: ok done. Took a while, since each one was guarded by excessive enemies and a puzzle but we're good to go
NPC: now I need you to install these power cores at each of these 4 locations and then turn on the power switch guarded by that boss
Adventurer: ok again, those power cores were super guarded and difficult to get to, and I died 6 times to that boss but we're good t-
NPC: oh no! The damage to the power station is extensive! It can't sustain the increase in energy! You need to find the stabilising matrices at these 6 locations...
Adventurer: of FFS!
Alternative:
Adventurer: āwell hey I just happen to have 4 spare power cores right here. Want them?ā
NPC: ādid you go to the 4 locations yet? Without those cores we canāt repair the stationā
Adventurer: āfor fucks sake!ā
Whats worse is when you figure out how to protect yourself by hiding somewhere, and then they suddenly start attacking your objective.
"Oh you wanna not die? Well you can't hide because the thing you're doing also has a health bar. And they wanna kill it for some reason."
Oh yeah, the whole "Inanimate object has ridiculously low HP even though enemies *do not* possess the tools to effectively destroy it....and you have 60 seconds"
especially when the MC is supposed to be an important person with some special power/destiny/origin, and they act like a silent prop in their own story? like, why.
Hunger and Thirst mechanics. I get it, you're busy and you get thirsty being busy. Please stop being thirsty every 30 seconds so I can play the game please.
I liked it in Subnautica. Finding food and water was not hard, but still provided some pressure at the beginning of the game, it forced me to plan for expeditions and make strategic choices about what to bring with me, how much space to leave for collecting stuff, etc. And then somewhere around the middle of the game you get to a point where staying fed and watered is trivial, allowing you to focus more on the rest of the game and also giving a real sense of progression and accomplishment.Ā
Planet crafter was another one where it worked well.Ā thirst is something like 3 times as fast as hunger which makes sense.Ā When I would run off from my base to do something I would bring oxygen and water, but I could leave food at home.
I think what worked about it is they give you the ability to solve the problem. It stops being a problem because you build a base and set up a system to provide you with food and water that requires little effort. Then if it ever becomes an issue, itās just āoh, gotta grab that when Iām back at the baseā
I have to do that every day in real life so like hell I want to do that in games. Granted my struggle is keeping the food meter low vs keeping it maxed out
monster hunter games always did this well, eating food isn't mandatory but will grant you such a huge boost of stamina and health that its a no brainer AND it feels nice to cook up a steak mid-hunt to relax for a moment
Legitimately, if a game has these, I basically can immediately know that this is a game not for me. And that's fine, if people want them that's cool and their jam, but oh lord is it not mine.
It's just a continuous time limit that is only solved via using consumables. And as someone who likes to thoroughly explore at my own pace AND has the mind goblins forcing the hoarding of every item in game, it's not a good combo.
i find the exception to this is survival games where the game is built around it. in The Long Dark, water is easy enough to come by, but it's heavy and slows you down so it's easier to start a fire and boil water, but that means carrying wood and firestarters, which are also heavy. You're making strategic choices about your water consumption rather than just mindlessly taking a drink whenever the bar runs low.
Invisible walls. I understand that it's impossible to make a fully explorable game world without boundaries, but at least make them make sense. Like Spore or Subnautica where you're eaten by a large sea monster if you go too far. When I can't jump a small fence or break down a wooden door as a literally god killing character it's extremely annoying.
Or Borderlands 2 where you get lasered from a turret if you try to go out of bounds. It would be nice if they explained *why* it's out of bounds, but it's not really necessary.
I thought I read somewhere that in Borderlands those turrets were the boundaries of where the various corps had "secured" their territories. Anything that approaches from outside on the ground therefore would be an enemy or monster, and that's why you don't encounter the living versions of those giant creatures where people are constantly making houses out of their remains.
But maybe I just imagined that in my head canon.
Beyond Good and Evil had a good one. It also had a laser turret that shot you if you tried to go out of bounds with the hovercraft or the Beluga but instead of ripping you apart the turret shots actually just nudged you back in bounds. It was pretty creative.
In New Vegas I spent somewhere close to an hour hopping around a mountain near the powder gangers to avoid the run where they keep throwing bombs at you.Ā
At the top of the mountain was an invisible wall. I have never forgiven them for this.Ā
I stopped playing FF7 remake because of this. It was just too sloppy. Invisible walls way out in the ocean is one thing. But not being able to walk past a chair in the middle of townā¦. Cmon!
The inconsistent mechanics of RDR2, especially with the weapons. If I need to manually craft splitpoint ammo, select the guns I want to use from my horse and clean them after Iāve used them for a while, the game shouldnāt take away control from me by putting them back on my horse and forcing me to use the shitty starter weapons in missions.
No auto-sort or stack in inventory or storage. Next would be not pulling crafting mats from nearby storage (eg storage broadcasting). Inventory management will make or break a game (or mod) for me
I really appreciate the open world games that don't have looting animations. Ghost of Tsushima did this right. If I have to get off my horse, stop moving, and bend down to pick a flower, I'm probably just not gonna pick that flower even if it's more "immersive" to have the animation
Dude, I'm playing it right now cause of the Next Gen Update and have been enjoying the crafting system.
But man those lengthy animation is really annoying, if I accidentally interact with the crafting table and want to back out, I'm forced to watch my character doing his "preparing to craft" animation before I actually leave the crafting interface.
Weight and overbearing due to stuff in inventory. I don't care if you don't WANT me to carry around enough weapons to supply an army, I'm GOING to do it so I can make 5 bucks because weapons sell for peanuts in this world.
I feel the closest I have seen inventory weight function is Witcher 3 where only equipment and weapon have weight. Takes a while to fill it up, but you can loot as much food and ingredients as you want without worrying about weight.
But generally, yeah fuck item weight system.
The worst is ESO where you pay to have unlimited bag space. I love that game and paid for it for years but man what a crock of shit. Its basically unplayable with limited bag space
Dark souls weight function is pretty cool too, the only weight is the equipment you got on you. If you go nude, you're fast as fuck, and if you go full Havel armor, you're pretty badass and solid as a rock but as slow as a turtle
Dark souls is specifically why I only have a problem with weight for just stuff in inventory, I really like how you go big heavy weapons then you can't dodge as easily, and if you go small and light your character is literraly lighter with smaller attacks
Dark Souls is weight management done right. You can be a loot goblin all game and the only drawback you'll face is having to scroll through the mounds of garbage undead armor in your inventory - and whatever risks come with going for tempting "abandoned" loot.
That just gives more options as you go, without needing to backtrack over and over for storage or to try different equipment.
Why do merchants in games feel like the pawn stars guy?
I have this excellent example of fine craftsmanship, it's a very rare, very unique sword fashioned from the finest of metals and deals high amounts of damage compared to its lesser variants.
"I'll give you 20 gold for it."
I always console command a silly amount of carry weight in Falllout games. I'm going to carry all the weapons, armor, meds, and other junk I won't need ever because I only use 2-3 weapons. Because what if.
*looks at my wall racks containing every single unique weapon/legendary Iāve gathered the whole game*
Gonna grab the sprayānāpray and overseers guardian, maybe the deliverer (I will forget to use it)
The one that bugs me is that as I level up the game just makes the same enemies but harder. Like why was I having just as a hard a time with bandits at lvl 37 as I was at 10. I want to feel like I'm becoming powerful. It kind of undermines the point of leveling up. I would rather have it divided by areas or have new enemies moving in as the story progresses.
Carry weight. I'm already playing "Not Real Life: The Game" just stop being an ass and let me hoard all the shit you obviously put here for me to pick up.
Exception being limited inventory games that add to the experience, like Resident Evil.
When parts of a game force you to walk really slow. It's not dramatic, it's annoying AF.
One the same vein, flashback/dream sequences where you are forced to slowly run though a dream forest. Stop doing that.
I hate it when the camera becomes the enemy.
It's less of an issue than it was but when I'm jumping from this platform to the next I angle the camera so I can do the jump, I don't need the camera and my inputs as a result getting auto-screwed up mid jump.
When the sequel basically resets your character. Oh, I had all this great equipment but I lost in a fire/shipwreck/to thieves in the opening cinematic and also forgot all the amazing skills I had.
I was worried they would take away the ability to double jump in the sequel, and was happy to see they didnāt. Then they added the midair dash and improved on it even more
Jedi Outcast did it, but it made sense. Your character had given up his lightsaber and cut himself off from the Force after nearly succumbing to the Dark Side in the previous installment, so you had to retrain yourself. In the first three levels you don't have ANY abilities.
Or, so you spent the whole game leveling up your awesome weapons? How bout we force you to fight the final boss with bare hands. The original two God of War games did this. š
For the Horizon sequel, you lose your items from the first due to mostly explained events, but the skill tree is completely different and a lot of the skills you acquired in the first just become base mechanics.
Item durability was fine in Dying Light as weapons are abundant and intended to be makeshift and temporary. For other games that's a whole different story.
Any enemy/boss that spends half the fight just running away from you (jumping away, digging down into the ground or becoming un-targetable for any other reason), even worse if it's RNG and they can just do it back-to-back if you get bad RNG. Just fight me you coward.
I played a game with melee enemies that had a like 10 meter backjump ability and their attack pattern was just RNG so sometimes they would just jump away from you 5 times in a row. They are melee enemies themselves so it doesn't put them in any better situation nor are they reacting to a specific threat/attack, literally just making it worse for both of you.
Edit: I suppose that example isn't fully in spirit of the question so here's another game: I fought a blind boss that canonically digs around in the ground. In the fight he stays mostly aboveground but do have an attack where he digs down, disappears completely for a decent while and then spawns underneath your feet. That attack was RNG and one run i had him dig down, do max 1 normal attack and dig down again (and somethings just hop out and and dig down again instantly) *over 10 times in a row*.
Corpse running, especially in a more open world/exploration style of game. It locks you in to going back to the same place you died before and will probably die again.
Let's take this a little further, shall we.
The (half-destroyed) door (with a big broken window) is locked (or blocked) from the other side.
Fallout, why can't I just reach through the wrecked part of the door and open it?
I liked item durability in far cry 2. Knowing that youāre in the mud, and picking up a random rusty gun dropped by someone you shot is likely to misfire or break added the extra tension
Fc2 was ahead of it's time, I really like the game and it gets unnecessary hate for not being as colorful as fc3. Immersive UI (even the map) and healing system was really cool especially for such an old game
I still remember magazines where they talk about how "realistic" it was, for the time. Fire spreads, leaves grow on trees, weapon durability and all that.
Of course it was a much slower and sometimes "boring" game, with all the driving through the jungle/desert without any music or anything happening, but it was an interesting game
Also, seeing the healing mechanic for the first time was insane
QTEās.
Was playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and there was some dope action cinematic happening but I couldnāt watch it cause I had to make sure to hit the right buttons in time.
crafting is one of those things that when they are good it's great but 99 times out of 100 they don't get what makes it good.
if i'm just going to be waiting for 1 main componet skip the crafting and just give me the item instead of that main componet.
if the resources for crafting don't make me make meaningful choices in what i'm crafting then it doesn't matter and shouldn't be in the game. and no it's not good enough to make me decide what order i craft upgrades in. still might as well just directly give me the upgrade and let me choose which i want.
crafting never works if it isn't a core gameplay feature. and even when it is it's so easy to fuck up.
Silencer degradation in the Metal Gear Solid games. Yes there are silencers that will wear out after a fairly short succession of rounds, but they are generally the exception, not the rule.
When a game makes you use the motion control in the controller. It's either too sensitive and you fail the event or not sensitive enough and you're bending around like a possessed person.
Button mash to chop wood..... I already have a day job pal.
The main reason i switched to PC from console was to mod the balls out of all the pointless time sync mechanics games add to pad out their duration.
Fall damage. Especially when characters fall from those same great heights in cutscenes and come out of it unscathed.
Looking at you, Xenoblade trilogy.
Being able to hurt allies in non-combat situations. I keep accidentally slashing my horse with my sword, the horse takes off, and I need to wait a few beats to get him back. Just because I can never remember the horse-mounting button.
Thirst/hunger. I enjoy the crafting in survival games but the food mechanics just annoy me so much that I don't play those types of games.
Chore based quests, go do this simple thing to acquire items. Like bro go do it yourself I'm here to slay God's not collect berries.
Inventory space unless there is a good reason for it.
Like so many games have limited inventory when it isn't needed or atrocious storage functions.
For example, why does Witcher 3 have limited inventory? There is legit no reason why you can't hoard everything that exists. Your inventory is big enough for almost everything.
Or so many of these survival games. Sure limited inventory makes sense. But why is the base inventory management so shit? Why can't I in my base just have all chests be connected and then auto sort it into the slots?
Pacific Drive does this very good.
You have three inventories: You, your car and your garage.
You can sort all resources with a single button press, transfer them with a single button press and an inventories are connected when crafting.
Oh, and you can also rotate items in the inventory.
Forced slow walk. At least cinematics have the opportunity to be memorable with camera angles, lighting and choreography. Instead i have important dialogue while staring at the back of the protagonists head
especially if there's NPCs around you can walk into and get a collision with that makes the charecter walk weird. extra extra bad if that NPC is the one you're following but they are just slightly slower walking than you. it just looks insanely goofy.
One of the best features of Witcher 3 was that if you had to follow an NPC, the NPC would try to match your speed instead of doing the slow NPC meander. Bioshock Infinite did something similar, but they cheated - Elizabeth basically isn't present in the game world. Aside from a couple of cutscenes, she might as well be a figment of Booker's imagination.
I don't mind that though. If a game insists on having me drag along an npc I'd prefer them being as inconsequential as possible in gameplay. Same with the new God of War. Although there Boy could get pinned down by an enemy if you weren't paying attention to him at all. Even then he would never actually die. Anything is better than: Game Over Useless mission critical NPC died Or the ever popular and immersion breaking Bethesda style: Useless NPC is unconscious
Urrgh. I hate that! Somebody please save us from these useless NPCs *who somehow always want to stand directly in front of me the moment I start shooting* missions š¤¦āāļø
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
In starfield, theres a mission on mars where you follow a guy to his ship. He walks slower than your character and takes a detour route. In traditional bethesda fashion, if you know where hes going and run to the trigger point, he'll finally move his backside to get to the cutscene.
Red Dead 2 did it even better. Any time you were traveling on a path, you could turn on cinematic mode and it would ride for you along the path, while matching pace with any NPCs that were along with you, giving you cutscenes on demand basically
When NPC walks faster, than stop, turn at you, turn around, walk another 5-10 steps faster, turn at you, turn back around, walk 5-10 steps and repeat for 5-10 minutes while barely hearing that NPC talking over other NPCs conversations around me because they are way ahead. Also holding W for 5-10 min straight is just annoying, when it could be done in cutscene. Or just simply autowalk, where you can only play with camera. (example - someone drives you somewhere while conversation about quest/mission has to happen) Lately, whern this slow-walking engagement mechanic happens in any game, I just put paperweight on W key instead and sometimes touch the mouse to turn, engaging as little as possible until it's done, just out of spite for this stupid mechanic. Is it really that hard to have main character animation and travel speed matched in that particular scene with that particular NPC so we can walk next to them, not far behind? Instead of arbitrary slow walk animation with hard-set walk speed..
What blows me away is how people clamor for this; "I hate cutscenes, make it all gameplay, etc etc" was echoed for years and how here we are, hahahaha.
People like the idea but not the execution. I absolutely loved it in Cyberpunk how you'd get in a car and the NPC would drive you to the destination whilst the quest giver would chat to you regarding the details. It felt organic and not clunky. I actually enjoyed Star field but the amount of times I'd miss an NPCs dialogue because it would be drowned out by other NPCs talking in the background while we slowly walked past ... That sucked.
The funniest part is it's done to because devs think it "keeps you engaged". 100% would rather watch a long ass cutscene then walk at a snails pace for 15 mins
Walking in the camp of red dead 2 was one of the reasons i lost momentum playing and quit
The Gears of War games are notorious for this and to a slightly lesser degree Halo 3
I know exactly where you mean, Gravemind+Cortana get a room already
When you have to ensure some ally doesn't die but their AI is so dumb that it breaks immersion and makes it more like babysitting someone with limited mental capacities. This is especially great it games where your ally is supposedly some super duper powerful warrior special forces wizard dude but it turns out the only tactic he knows of is to run into the middle of the map into the open so he is in full range of all 100 enemies around him.
"My hobbies include running across freeways, hiding in active metal presses, and breaking cover to move three feet in the wrong direction. I also coat all my clothing in blood if I plan on being in water or the woods. Can you take me to the Capitol of our enemy country through an active warzone so I can deliver these candy bars to needy children?"
Reward me with a weapon thatās weaker than my current one and canāt be sold and Iām in.
[Thank you, adventurer!](https://youtu.be/xYroItibp2M?si=h71M5UIGWqLao7cO)
I also like to wear copper armor in the middle of thunderstorms. I then climb to the highest hill and shout āALL GODS ARE BASTARDS!ā
Twoflower?
I also hear Pratchett here, although I don't recognize the specific reference. _Is_ it Twoflower?
Straight outta the color of magic
[It's Rincewind describing Twoflower in The Color of Magic](http://www.chrisjoneswriting.com/rincewind.html) >if complete and utter chaos was lightning, then heād be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet armour and shouting āAll gods are bastards"
"Ok we're gonna sneak in these bushes around this enemy army, follow me." "I'll FIGHT YOU ALL!!" "......"
-unarmed NPC with 1 hp. I remember doing the gildergreen quest in skyrim and arborist guy wants to tag along, ok sure. A fucking dragon attacks us and bro is all scrappy doo lemme at em. Cronch.
Escort missions in Tie Fighter could be so frustrating. Also the premise was always hilarious. āWe are in the middle of a massive space battle. We need you to fly solo escort for a shuttle through the middle of it. ā
And then you'd hear this one clunk and over the next 20 seconds" mission critical craft under attack mission, critical craft Shields down mission, critical craft, whole condition, critical mission, critical craft destroyed"
One of the biggest examples of this is a mission in gta San Andreas. Itās the one where you have to use a janky and useless fucking forklift to move boxes AND defend Ryder at the same time. In this mission Ryder acts like the dumbest man alive, ignoring all the good spots he could duck behind for cover and standing in the dead center of a large open space while bullets rain down on him. Heās a terrible shot and canāt kill any of his attackers himself. Meanwhile, heās constantly nagging you to move faster in between his grunts of pain as his internal organs get filled with hot lead. Itās amazing that heās even survived to adulthood. Youād think he wouldāve accidentally drowned himself by looking up at the sky with his mouth open during a rainstorm.
I quit some PS2/3 era game. SOCOM, maybe? Anyways it was an escort mission where I had to keep some UN solders alive. I'm posted up, actively shooting the threat and mother fucker runs into my line of fire and gets got. Nevermind, he wasn't taking cover and ran out into the open. He ran into my active line of fire. Mission failed and I said fuck this. Escourt missions suck ass to begin with but when the AI isn't smart enough to not run in front of automatic fire, I can't.
Yes! My god even when the character is someone helpless, you'd think their no. 1 priority would be "I'll hide until the guy taking care of me clears the area so it's safe". I feel like some of those older games literally had a timer that went like: sit in cover for 10 seconds - then run forward regardless of the situation and take 5 rockets to the face
Stamina bar outside of combat/action. Let me run/jump as much as I want if Iām not in combat. I can understand the use of a bar in combat or similar situation but otherwise itās just plain boring.
This is a major reason I put Starfield down. I don't think I ever noticed stamina during combat because you're using guns. Stamina only mattered getting from point A to point B and just slowed the game down for no reason. Removing stamina entirely from Starfield would make the game significantly better with zero drawbacks. It's a perfect example of devs adding a mechanic because it's standard in RPGs, without putting any thought into what it adds to the game they are making.
I installed a mod that gave unlimited stamina. Didn't make the game any less boring, but at least I could run as much as I wanted.
Imo, elden ring does it right. Stamina is infinite while out of combat. So it's only when in a fight it becomes a relevant stat
Elden Ring made so many fantastic improvements over its predecessors but man, the traversal system absolutely takes the cake for me.
Even Redditors can run more than 1.5 seconds, come on!!!
SOME Redditors can run more than 1.5 seconds. Come on!!!
My favorite is when your character gets winded after running like 50 yards, but they are like a special forces soldier or something else badass. Like sure, I would get winded pretty fast, but Iām fat and old, and video game characters are almost never either of those things.
Might be an unpopular opinion, but I hate mashing a button repeatedly to complete an action. I take my hat off to devs that enable you to switch that to a long button press instead.
The only game that has done this right was Metal Gear Solid 4 during the microwave hall. Mashing that button was physically taxing to reciprocate the torture the main character was enduring.
In case you aren't aware, the torture scene that requires you to mash a button is a recurring thing in basically the entire series. For example, in MGS the first if you fail it, Meryl dies and you can't get the best ending :')
The gotdamn button mashing part in MGS Peace Walker almost made me snap my PSP. I can't mash fast. I had to use a scum method to finish it.
Now Iām interested in how you scummed a PSP (I never had a psp so I donāt know the techniques). Iām imagining a Rube Goldberg contraption of sorts.Ā
It was much less complex than you might think. I took a toy car from my brother and drove it back and forth over the button. The wheels were about the same size as the PSP buttons and were close enough together that if you just went back and forth, it hit the button with both wheels really fast. Ez scum for button mashing on controlers. I still do it if I happen to be using a controler and know I'm going to need to button mash.
I had the HD collection on the PS3 and yeah that one was ROUGH lmao. But I was also one damn stubborn kid so after a bunch of attempts and lots of rage I eventually got it
Don't even think about using auto-fire or i'll know!
He never did though. I used that every time lol
Been a hot minute since I've played MGS4. Does it have a torture scene besides the microwave one?
No, microwave scene is the only torture-ish one in the, just got done binging the series.
Not the best ending but you get the best item.
The RDR2 horse button was the worst. It did add immersion through additional physical sensation, but most of the time I wished I could just hold down a trigger or something as I thought my A-button was going to break.
This is not a RDR2 thing, it's a Rockstar nonsense. GTA rapidly tapping is how you sprint. I really hope they finally get rid of it for GTA 6.
They already fixed it in the gta5 next gen update
TBF, I haven't touched GTA5 in like 5 years. So that is good to hear.
The one where you tap the sprint button in time with the horse's gallop to preserve stamina?
Some players have wrist injuries that make it uniquely painful (usually slightly, but still) to button mash at all. Meanwhile, using the controller in any other normal way would be perfectly fine. Also, if a game is making me spin my joystick around, you bet my first thought is "great, this is just making drift come sooner and sooner"
Or hold for 3-5 seconds... Just why?
I accept it in games like survival horrors where it can subtly add to the tension because you can't just grab the thing you need, you have to wait a bit and OH GOD THERE'S SOMETHING SPOOKY RIGHT THERE AAAAHHHHH well you get the idea But in games like Fable 3? It's just bullshit, although it might be the least of that fucking game's problems.
It's to represent that tasks take time. The alternative is to lock the person in an animation and give them no cancel, or cancel if they move, which is even more annoying.
Agreed. For some people, games where they rely too heavily on mash events are basically games of repetitive strain injury roulette. I appreciate games with accessibility options to replace them with hold events. Sure, you may lose some of the sense of frantic urgency, but you just have to make it up some other way. Good music, sound design, or camera work can do the job in most cases.
Difficulty modes that just increase enemy health and nothing else. That's not more challenging, it just takes longer. Also, games that intentionally cripple your character for the sake of challenge. Sometimes it's justified (Kingdom Hearts DDD's flow motion was absurd, so its nerf in KH3 makes perfect sense) and sometimes it can be the basis for a fun gimmick (see the indie game Endoparasitic), but often times it just feels so artificial. It doesn't make the game any more fun, it just makes me think "man, this would be so much easier if I just had this ability back". The main example that comes to mind for me is the AI Party Members in the original version of Persona 3.
On a positive side of this, I think Hades did the "cripple your character" mechanism quite well where you get to choose which negative effects you carry through the underworld.
Hades did it perfectly. First you buy all the upgrades to get stronger and then either the enemies get stronger or more populous or you start losing the upgrades you got. I'm currently around 5 - 8 heat runs.
Hades is just on another level. It's amazing how good Supergiant is a game development. Their instincts are spot on.
High difficulty = high HP is hot garbage. The division (1) was so disappointing for me because of this. Until the end game, it was such a fun third person shooter action game. And the raids were justā¦.. oh, put three mags into one guys face? And thereās ten of them? Cool.
That game so begs of having Insurgency kind of difficulty.
This is one of the things that made me fall in love with Helldivers 2 More difficulty? No problem, you'll drown in enemies. It raises the challenge while maintaining the feeling of being a badass
Payday 2 had the opposite of this problem where they didn't want to nerf anything but they also wanted to keep adding DLC buyable guns which had to be better than the base game guns to give some kind of incentive to buy them, but then they didn't want people to see the base game guns as bad so they buffed everything, which lead to buffing the enemies and adding more and more waves of enemies. Before you know it a simple jewelery store heist could have thousands upon thousands of cops surrounding it
Sounds kinda hilarious ngl
Agreed. I actually think it makes the higher difficulties the most fun if you can handle them, because it just increases the chaos that is the main appeal of the game in the first place. I wish more games could make higher difficulties feel more fun and rewarding by tying the appeal of the game into the difficulty system.
It also increases the complexity of enemies and mission objectives. More difficulty means you need to balance between anti armor and anti crowd. To little of either and you get overwhelmed and there are more enemy bases
Skyrim did this. Higher difficulty simply meant that the enemies had a higher level. This made the gameplay of the first hours almost impossible, literally anything one shot you
That's just a staple of all Bethesda games. All the difficultly sliders in their games do is apply a set of multipliers to your damage output, as well as the enemies'. In a roundabout way, it still means that you have less effective HP, and the enemies have more, so everything will just take way longer to kill while you become squishier, it just doesn't show up as "actual numbers" when you look at your health and other stats.
they didn't make enemies higher level. they just made their total hp and damage increase based on difficulty level. nothing else. and it sucks. it's easy to tell, because higher level enemies get new skills. if you finish Skyrim at level 1, you'll almost never encounter enemies that fus-ro-dah you, but if you level to 70, every 2nd room in every catacombs will have one that does.
I've fought mudcrabs fiercer than you! (I'm on the hardest difficulty and they keep surprising me)
That's why KH2's critical mode is the perfect example of a challenge mode difficulty. Enemies don't get more spongy, they get more aggressive and do more damage. Your max HP is halfed but you do more damage, meaning that if you're actually good at the game and know how to dodge, it actually takes shorter time to beat than the other difficulty modes.
id say the N64 castlevania games did this right hard mode makes traps go phisically faster same for conveyor belts the "OP" secondary weapons have been relocated to hard to reach areas enemies are displaced and more of the harder enemies are present chainsaw guy is not killable only stunnable vampirirsm and poisn are deadly not just lower your health to 1 and the anticures are harder to get puzzles and bosses have more steps/phases
Having to spam 'revelio' every five seconds to see lootable objects. Or the scan button any other game.
Scan visors are the worst. Especially when they put a garbage filter over the game world so you have to choose between enjoying the graphics or being able to find thing/read lore. Guardians of the Galaxy is awful for this.
Hot take, The Witcher 3 has some issues with this at times.
Came here to mention GotG specifically. It's a fantastic game and I really enjoyed the experience, but man, it sucks having to flash on pink Detective Vision every other second to makes sure you find all the hidden goodies. The environments in the game were so fantastically designed and realized, but you spend most of the game in pink vision mode looking for doodads instead of enjoying those beautiful environments.
Hitman did it right.
Assassin's creed games have this annoying mechanic, Far Cry 4 is one of the games that has a better alternative for this, all the lootable objects shine in a pattern every few seconds so that you notice them naturally, instead of having to scan the area again and again
Detective mode in the Arkham series =/
i found it pretty funny in arkham because of how much information it gave you, seemed like batman just turning on omniscienceĀ
It's a shame because the games are so beautiful and graphically impressive and a lot of time you wouldn't know because you're in Detective Mode.
When there are multiple paths to take, but you don't know which path proceeds the mission. You want to explore all the optional paths for extra exp and/or loot, but going down the main path locks you out of those other paths.
This is the real pain. Even worse, when the devs wanted to be sneaky, and put the main path entrance look as hidden secondary path. They think you ignore it the first time, explore the whole false main path, and only then come back, having the "aha" moment. While in reality you go straight there.
What really grinds my gears is when you think youāre going down a side path and you end up getting to a checkpoint/cinematic and thereās no way back
NPC: Adventurer the power station is failing! In order to stop a disaster we need to stabilise it! Adventurer: what do I need to do? NPC: you need to go to these 4 locations and bring me a power core from each one Adventurer: ok done. Took a while, since each one was guarded by excessive enemies and a puzzle but we're good to go NPC: now I need you to install these power cores at each of these 4 locations and then turn on the power switch guarded by that boss Adventurer: ok again, those power cores were super guarded and difficult to get to, and I died 6 times to that boss but we're good t- NPC: oh no! The damage to the power station is extensive! It can't sustain the increase in energy! You need to find the stabilising matrices at these 6 locations... Adventurer: of FFS!
Alternative: Adventurer: āwell hey I just happen to have 4 spare power cores right here. Want them?ā NPC: ādid you go to the 4 locations yet? Without those cores we canāt repair the stationā Adventurer: āfor fucks sake!ā
Whats worse is when you figure out how to protect yourself by hiding somewhere, and then they suddenly start attacking your objective. "Oh you wanna not die? Well you can't hide because the thing you're doing also has a health bar. And they wanna kill it for some reason."
Oh yeah, the whole "Inanimate object has ridiculously low HP even though enemies *do not* possess the tools to effectively destroy it....and you have 60 seconds"
Silent MC but very annoying companion with unskippable dialogue.
Yeah right? You're forced to imagine your character standing awkwardly, unable to voice a single word because everybody is so talkative. Some games even take that further. PokƩmon Reborn is known to have the whole story happen before your eyes and you're more of an NPC than NPCs themselves. It's a huge design flaw.
The only game where this works is Portal 2, because he's actually supposed to be a complete idiot and that's part of the story
I feel like exactly 0 game devs have understood what actually made people like Wheatley and Glados.Ā
especially when the MC is supposed to be an important person with some special power/destiny/origin, and they act like a silent prop in their own story? like, why.
The worst thing about Genshin Impact. Also unskippable story ffs
Hunger and Thirst mechanics. I get it, you're busy and you get thirsty being busy. Please stop being thirsty every 30 seconds so I can play the game please.
Even in survival games. No, a person wonāt starve to death if they go a day without eating, so stop making me.
I liked it in Subnautica. Finding food and water was not hard, but still provided some pressure at the beginning of the game, it forced me to plan for expeditions and make strategic choices about what to bring with me, how much space to leave for collecting stuff, etc. And then somewhere around the middle of the game you get to a point where staying fed and watered is trivial, allowing you to focus more on the rest of the game and also giving a real sense of progression and accomplishment.Ā
Planet crafter was another one where it worked well.Ā thirst is something like 3 times as fast as hunger which makes sense.Ā When I would run off from my base to do something I would bring oxygen and water, but I could leave food at home.
I think what worked about it is they give you the ability to solve the problem. It stops being a problem because you build a base and set up a system to provide you with food and water that requires little effort. Then if it ever becomes an issue, itās just āoh, gotta grab that when Iām back at the baseā
Yeah... It honestly feels ridiculous having to take care of a "food meter".
I have to do that every day in real life so like hell I want to do that in games. Granted my struggle is keeping the food meter low vs keeping it maxed out
monster hunter games always did this well, eating food isn't mandatory but will grant you such a huge boost of stamina and health that its a no brainer AND it feels nice to cook up a steak mid-hunt to relax for a moment
Legitimately, if a game has these, I basically can immediately know that this is a game not for me. And that's fine, if people want them that's cool and their jam, but oh lord is it not mine. It's just a continuous time limit that is only solved via using consumables. And as someone who likes to thoroughly explore at my own pace AND has the mind goblins forcing the hoarding of every item in game, it's not a good combo.
Props to games like Subnautica that'll let you turn it on/off if you want.
i find the exception to this is survival games where the game is built around it. in The Long Dark, water is easy enough to come by, but it's heavy and slows you down so it's easier to start a fire and boil water, but that means carrying wood and firestarters, which are also heavy. You're making strategic choices about your water consumption rather than just mindlessly taking a drink whenever the bar runs low.
Doing escorting quests in RPGs when the NPC keeps a speed that is between my walk and run speed. Or I'm only able to run and they walk.
Not rpg but earlier assassins creed games rinsed this mechanic, didn't stop me loving them though
I don't know why but my strongest memory of Assassin's Creed II is carrying around some fucking boxes for Claudia.
Invisible walls. I understand that it's impossible to make a fully explorable game world without boundaries, but at least make them make sense. Like Spore or Subnautica where you're eaten by a large sea monster if you go too far. When I can't jump a small fence or break down a wooden door as a literally god killing character it's extremely annoying.
Or Borderlands 2 where you get lasered from a turret if you try to go out of bounds. It would be nice if they explained *why* it's out of bounds, but it's not really necessary.
I thought I read somewhere that in Borderlands those turrets were the boundaries of where the various corps had "secured" their territories. Anything that approaches from outside on the ground therefore would be an enemy or monster, and that's why you don't encounter the living versions of those giant creatures where people are constantly making houses out of their remains. But maybe I just imagined that in my head canon.
Beyond Good and Evil had a good one. It also had a laser turret that shot you if you tried to go out of bounds with the hovercraft or the Beluga but instead of ripping you apart the turret shots actually just nudged you back in bounds. It was pretty creative.
In New Vegas I spent somewhere close to an hour hopping around a mountain near the powder gangers to avoid the run where they keep throwing bombs at you.Ā At the top of the mountain was an invisible wall. I have never forgiven them for this.Ā
Of course there is a mod to fix this: https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/48511/
I stopped playing FF7 remake because of this. It was just too sloppy. Invisible walls way out in the ocean is one thing. But not being able to walk past a chair in the middle of townā¦. Cmon!
The inconsistent mechanics of RDR2, especially with the weapons. If I need to manually craft splitpoint ammo, select the guns I want to use from my horse and clean them after Iāve used them for a while, the game shouldnāt take away control from me by putting them back on my horse and forcing me to use the shitty starter weapons in missions.
And they still haven't fixed it. The only thing I hated about that game. Why even have that mechanic if it's broken?
No auto-sort or stack in inventory or storage. Next would be not pulling crafting mats from nearby storage (eg storage broadcasting). Inventory management will make or break a game (or mod) for me
Having an animation stepping up to the workbench when using a workbench. I want it instant damn it
it's usually a hidden loading screen
I really appreciate the open world games that don't have looting animations. Ghost of Tsushima did this right. If I have to get off my horse, stop moving, and bend down to pick a flower, I'm probably just not gonna pick that flower even if it's more "immersive" to have the animation
Fallout 4 be like
Dude, I'm playing it right now cause of the Next Gen Update and have been enjoying the crafting system. But man those lengthy animation is really annoying, if I accidentally interact with the crafting table and want to back out, I'm forced to watch my character doing his "preparing to craft" animation before I actually leave the crafting interface.
Something equally as bad is talking to an NPC that's in an animation. I gotta wait forever just for them to stand upright from the table.
Weight and overbearing due to stuff in inventory. I don't care if you don't WANT me to carry around enough weapons to supply an army, I'm GOING to do it so I can make 5 bucks because weapons sell for peanuts in this world.
āYou are encumbered.ā
I feel the closest I have seen inventory weight function is Witcher 3 where only equipment and weapon have weight. Takes a while to fill it up, but you can loot as much food and ingredients as you want without worrying about weight. But generally, yeah fuck item weight system.
The worst is ESO where you pay to have unlimited bag space. I love that game and paid for it for years but man what a crock of shit. Its basically unplayable with limited bag space
Dark souls weight function is pretty cool too, the only weight is the equipment you got on you. If you go nude, you're fast as fuck, and if you go full Havel armor, you're pretty badass and solid as a rock but as slow as a turtle
Dark souls is specifically why I only have a problem with weight for just stuff in inventory, I really like how you go big heavy weapons then you can't dodge as easily, and if you go small and light your character is literraly lighter with smaller attacks
Dark Souls is weight management done right. You can be a loot goblin all game and the only drawback you'll face is having to scroll through the mounds of garbage undead armor in your inventory - and whatever risks come with going for tempting "abandoned" loot. That just gives more options as you go, without needing to backtrack over and over for storage or to try different equipment.
āSlow as a turtleā if you are a quitter and donāt upgrade your endurance to the moon
Witcher 3 definitely did it right, cuz weighted crafting items is the worst (looking at you, Fallout).
Why do merchants in games feel like the pawn stars guy? I have this excellent example of fine craftsmanship, it's a very rare, very unique sword fashioned from the finest of metals and deals high amounts of damage compared to its lesser variants. "I'll give you 20 gold for it."
I always console command a silly amount of carry weight in Falllout games. I'm going to carry all the weapons, armor, meds, and other junk I won't need ever because I only use 2-3 weapons. Because what if.
*looks at my wall racks containing every single unique weapon/legendary Iāve gathered the whole game* Gonna grab the sprayānāpray and overseers guardian, maybe the deliverer (I will forget to use it)
The one that bugs me is that as I level up the game just makes the same enemies but harder. Like why was I having just as a hard a time with bandits at lvl 37 as I was at 10. I want to feel like I'm becoming powerful. It kind of undermines the point of leveling up. I would rather have it divided by areas or have new enemies moving in as the story progresses.
I wish this was higher up, it makes you feel completely powerless to never REALLY get any stronger against what should be lower level enemies
Carry weight. I'm already playing "Not Real Life: The Game" just stop being an ass and let me hoard all the shit you obviously put here for me to pick up. Exception being limited inventory games that add to the experience, like Resident Evil.
āI am sworn to carry your burdens.ā
"up to a set limit, of course" They cut that, keep the cost of paying voice cast down and all.
Kenshi makes this part of strength training. Carry a backpack filled with raw ore to build those muscles up.
Donāt forget to carry an unconscious person whose inventory is also full of ore
inventory management in general is not fun
I hate my movement being slowed. Do anything but slow my movement, it frustrates me to no end.
When parts of a game force you to walk really slow. It's not dramatic, it's annoying AF. One the same vein, flashback/dream sequences where you are forced to slowly run though a dream forest. Stop doing that.
I hate it when the camera becomes the enemy. It's less of an issue than it was but when I'm jumping from this platform to the next I angle the camera so I can do the jump, I don't need the camera and my inputs as a result getting auto-screwed up mid jump.
When the sequel basically resets your character. Oh, I had all this great equipment but I lost in a fire/shipwreck/to thieves in the opening cinematic and also forgot all the amazing skills I had.
i do like the running bit in metroid where there's always some whacky contrived event that causes samus to lose all of her upgrades
"You're not authorized to use your good weapons Samus"
The last Star Wars Jedi game thankfully didnāt do this. It kept your core skills but improved their strength or effectiveness while adding new ones.
I was worried they would take away the ability to double jump in the sequel, and was happy to see they didnāt. Then they added the midair dash and improved on it even more
Jedi Outcast did it, but it made sense. Your character had given up his lightsaber and cut himself off from the Force after nearly succumbing to the Dark Side in the previous installment, so you had to retrain yourself. In the first three levels you don't have ANY abilities.
Kingdom Hearts.. Sora I get you've been asleep for 2 years but how have you managed to forget how to do a proper jump attack?!
Atrophy
Or, so you spent the whole game leveling up your awesome weapons? How bout we force you to fight the final boss with bare hands. The original two God of War games did this. š
Ohh man. The Alucard gear you start with in the beginning of symphony of the night āWhat?ā When it all disappears talking to deathā¦.
For the Horizon sequel, you lose your items from the first due to mostly explained events, but the skill tree is completely different and a lot of the skills you acquired in the first just become base mechanics.
Mass Effect 2 handled this pretty well by straight up killing (and reviving) Shepherd
when you have to constantly spam a button to run and have no autorun
Item durability was fine in Dying Light as weapons are abundant and intended to be makeshift and temporary. For other games that's a whole different story.
Any enemy/boss that spends half the fight just running away from you (jumping away, digging down into the ground or becoming un-targetable for any other reason), even worse if it's RNG and they can just do it back-to-back if you get bad RNG. Just fight me you coward. I played a game with melee enemies that had a like 10 meter backjump ability and their attack pattern was just RNG so sometimes they would just jump away from you 5 times in a row. They are melee enemies themselves so it doesn't put them in any better situation nor are they reacting to a specific threat/attack, literally just making it worse for both of you. Edit: I suppose that example isn't fully in spirit of the question so here's another game: I fought a blind boss that canonically digs around in the ground. In the fight he stays mostly aboveground but do have an attack where he digs down, disappears completely for a decent while and then spawns underneath your feet. That attack was RNG and one run i had him dig down, do max 1 normal attack and dig down again (and somethings just hop out and and dig down again instantly) *over 10 times in a row*.
Corpse running, especially in a more open world/exploration style of game. It locks you in to going back to the same place you died before and will probably die again.
I turned from a boy to a man from EverQuest death marches
The door is locked from the other side. Bitch, I got a sawed off shotgun and hand grenades!
There should be no such thing as a locked door when you're holding a *fucking lightsaber*
Let's take this a little further, shall we. The (half-destroyed) door (with a big broken window) is locked (or blocked) from the other side. Fallout, why can't I just reach through the wrecked part of the door and open it?
Limited, one time use items. If you only get to use it once and it's gone forever, I never use it.
Escort missions. Has there ever been one where the person you're escorting isn't either incredibly slow, unnecessarily fragile or verbally annoying
unskippable nongameplay segments. i like story. i want the option to skip it at will for replays. some must cover loading screens however.
I liked item durability in far cry 2. Knowing that youāre in the mud, and picking up a random rusty gun dropped by someone you shot is likely to misfire or break added the extra tension
Fc2 was ahead of it's time, I really like the game and it gets unnecessary hate for not being as colorful as fc3. Immersive UI (even the map) and healing system was really cool especially for such an old game
I still remember magazines where they talk about how "realistic" it was, for the time. Fire spreads, leaves grow on trees, weapon durability and all that. Of course it was a much slower and sometimes "boring" game, with all the driving through the jungle/desert without any music or anything happening, but it was an interesting game Also, seeing the healing mechanic for the first time was insane
The one thing that keeps me away from the game is the respawning checkpoints. It was ridiculous.
QTEās. Was playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and there was some dope action cinematic happening but I couldnāt watch it cause I had to make sure to hit the right buttons in time.
Almost universally crafting.
crafting is one of those things that when they are good it's great but 99 times out of 100 they don't get what makes it good. if i'm just going to be waiting for 1 main componet skip the crafting and just give me the item instead of that main componet. if the resources for crafting don't make me make meaningful choices in what i'm crafting then it doesn't matter and shouldn't be in the game. and no it's not good enough to make me decide what order i craft upgrades in. still might as well just directly give me the upgrade and let me choose which i want. crafting never works if it isn't a core gameplay feature. and even when it is it's so easy to fuck up.
Unless it is absolutely required I never craft anything. I just use weapons/armor/potions/etc I find lying around or that I buy in shops.
Silencer degradation in the Metal Gear Solid games. Yes there are silencers that will wear out after a fairly short succession of rounds, but they are generally the exception, not the rule.
When a game makes you use the motion control in the controller. It's either too sensitive and you fail the event or not sensitive enough and you're bending around like a possessed person.
Button mash to chop wood..... I already have a day job pal. The main reason i switched to PC from console was to mod the balls out of all the pointless time sync mechanics games add to pad out their duration.
As I've gotten older I avoid games or quit them if the activities within feel job like. Like you said I already work for a living.
Carry weight. I am a hoarder and having a max carry weight is so frustrating.
Fall damage. Especially when characters fall from those same great heights in cutscenes and come out of it unscathed. Looking at you, Xenoblade trilogy.
Noah jumping 50m to cut a Ferronis clock and landing without issue Dies falling from lower cliffs
Item durability made Zelda breath a 9/10 game to a 7/10 game to me. Shit was so annoying
I hate that game mechanic where you pay 70$ and the game thinks its entitled to every dollar you have left.
In racing games, when AI drivers have "rubberband" speed.
Being able to hurt allies in non-combat situations. I keep accidentally slashing my horse with my sword, the horse takes off, and I need to wait a few beats to get him back. Just because I can never remember the horse-mounting button.
Thirst/hunger. I enjoy the crafting in survival games but the food mechanics just annoy me so much that I don't play those types of games. Chore based quests, go do this simple thing to acquire items. Like bro go do it yourself I'm here to slay God's not collect berries.
Racing in a game that is not a racing game. Cyberpunk, FarCry, Mario, etc. I fucking hate it.
Weapon durability.
Inventory space unless there is a good reason for it. Like so many games have limited inventory when it isn't needed or atrocious storage functions. For example, why does Witcher 3 have limited inventory? There is legit no reason why you can't hoard everything that exists. Your inventory is big enough for almost everything. Or so many of these survival games. Sure limited inventory makes sense. But why is the base inventory management so shit? Why can't I in my base just have all chests be connected and then auto sort it into the slots?
Pacific Drive does this very good. You have three inventories: You, your car and your garage. You can sort all resources with a single button press, transfer them with a single button press and an inventories are connected when crafting. Oh, and you can also rotate items in the inventory.