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What Grinds Your Gears: video game edition

Last posted Sep 10, 2014 at 10:28PM EDT. Added Aug 18, 2014 at 08:05PM EDT
66 posts from 42 users

What things in games just drive you fuckin' bonkers? Whether an aspect of gameplay, a technical limitation, or something the devs just decided to do. Here's some of mine, post as many as you've got.

Save points

It was more acceptable back in the day when RAM and processing power were at a premium, but nowadays, there's really no excuse. If there's gameplay reasons why you want to use specialized save points, allow the player to use an "interim save" so they can save, take a break, then come back without having to worry about which burning thing to save: their dinner or their character.

This was one of my biggest complaints with Skyward Sword. Every other Zelda game that I could think of, from the original on NES, to Twilight Princess before it, allowed you to save whenever you damn well pleased. (Even Majora's Mask after you get your ocarina back.) Suddenly SS decides "HEY! Save points is mo' bettah!"

Meaningless lives

Mario 1-up mushroom posted for being the most egregious example. There's no penalty for running out of lives in Mario games anymore, so why have them? They serve almost no purpose, and it's perfectlly normal to be able to get 3, 5, even 10 lives at once or more! Why not just do away with finite lives entirely and repurpose the 1-up mushroom as a free mid-level continue or something?

Note the word "meaningless." I have no problem with them if they're implemented well, such as in a challenge or survival mode in a game. But they're a trope of the past and should be left there.

UNSKIPPABLE LOGOS AND CUTSCENES

Sure, it may only be 30 seconds to get to the main menu, but that's 30 seconds of bullshit I have no choice but to sit through. If it were loading something, fine. But I know who made the game, I know you've got the standard deal with Nvidia to pimp their logo, you've got Speedtree, you've got Havok physics, I FUCKING GET IT. Just Cause 2 did it alright. They're only unskippable the first time. After that, it's two clicks and you're staring at the main menu; one more and you're back in game. Good design.

Unskippable cutscenes are not okay either, especially if you have to sit through several long ones before retrying an irritating segment.

I'll add more later, but I'm getting too worked up to avoid devolving into much more than angry ranting now. :P

Last edited Aug 18, 2014 at 08:06PM EDT

GRAPHICS WARS
Why does there have to be a whole huge thing where people will worship something and waste their money on it because it has nice graphics, the last time i bought a game because of the graphics i hated it and returned it for a better gameplay oriented game (I got rid of battlefield 3 for Skylanders). but people still just but things because the graphics look nice not seeing that the game itself SUCKS ASS.

Rage Quitters and Just Bad Sportsmanship
I recently got into playing Smite, it's the only MOBA I can tolerate, and the other day I played a game of Conquest. I myself am a Hel player, as I enjoy her voice actress, Monica Rial, and her play style of strong magic attacks and healing, and I was put on possibly the worst team I've ever played with. There was a Thor player who was suffering a bit of lag, and all the team members did was call him a noob! He left about three minutes into the match and then after that most everyone else left, more than likely due to their jimmies being rustled or something, and I was the only one still playing against 5 other players! The team I went against were at least kind enough enough to say I was at least brave enough to stay until the end of the match and not pussy out. But it just makes me mad when someone is just being a douche bag in an online game knowing that not everyone has the greatest internet and has to start somewhere.

People calling games fun
Fun is just a buzzword when you can't actually think of any real reasons as to why the game is good, don't use it.
Either way, being amused or entertained with something and being immersed are not the same thing.

On save points, Link Between Worlds did it too so I really hope this trend doesn't continue. It didn't ruin those games for me, not in the slightest, but it's unnecessary. I think the best way to save is how Mario and Luigi: Dream Team did it. They had save points, but they were mainly only to remind you you need to save and giving you good spots where you can do it, but you could save using a menu anywhere if you wanted to. This is good because without save points, I often forget I need to save.


So, my own personal nitpicks include:

Ice Levels:

I don't even need to explain this. The only ice level I've ever enjoyed ever is this:

Boring Environments: Most games outside of Nintendo are usually guilty of this. People get so obsessed over making things gritty and mature that they forget to actually put work into their environments. I'm not asking to make them colorful and bright or anything, just make them interesting. Is that too much to ask?

Tutorials That Are Unskippable, Take Up Time, And Treat You Like An Idiot:

I talked above about what Dream Team got right, and this is the one thing it got wrong. I think I can safely say that everyone hates these. Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword were wrong in this way too along with loads of other modern games.

Erin ◕ω◕ wrote:

People calling games fun
Fun is just a buzzword when you can't actually think of any real reasons as to why the game is good, don't use it.
Either way, being amused or entertained with something and being immersed are not the same thing.

Wait what? Fun is easily one of the best words. A artsy or pretentious game that could come be boring, drab or dull. Saying a game is fun means you enjoy the game because it gives you enjoyment doing whatever do in it.

On that note.


Artsy and pretentious games

Uggh this is becoming a thing now where the core factors of a game like if they are fun or not are thrown out to highlight one big aspect that is slightly out the norm of current games. Games can be a success by just not having features. Next we will get more and more artsy games where they cut out anything remotely enjoyable except one feature. I bet we get games that all you do is walk around do basically nothing (Oh wait). It's something every medium goes through but in one so interactive as this you lose what makes your game a game and not some 3D animation film.

Button mashing. Really grinds me (and my fingers).

Backtracking and useless filler get me angry too (dispute my name basic being useless filler)

Broken/inaccurate hitboxes.

Very finicky timed quicktime moments. Esp when you pressed the said button just slightly before the game expects you too,

Fillerthefreak wrote:

Button mashing. Really grinds me (and my fingers).

Backtracking and useless filler get me angry too (dispute my name basic being useless filler)

Broken/inaccurate hitboxes.

Very finicky timed quicktime moments. Esp when you pressed the said button just slightly before the game expects you too,

Backtracking is fine when done well in my opinion. An example of backtracking done badly in my opinion is in Mario and Luigi: Dream Team when you have to build this stupid bed thing. Some good examples are pretty much all Metroid games and Skyward Sword. (at least I think so)

Luck.
Having a good time in Mario Kart until the person behind you pulls a triple red shell out of nowhere on the last lap.

Last edited Aug 19, 2014 at 04:30PM EDT

Rikkhan wrote:

In rpg's high random encounters rate, Its very annoying I remember quitting skies of arcadia on the GC for that bs.

You think that was bad? Apparently the original Dreamcast version was even worse! (Though I guess there was a trick to avoiding them which involved opening the menu every time you heard the disc drive grinding to load stuff up.

Thankfully random battles are becoming a thing of the past now, yet there's two games that stick out in my mind as terrible about them.

First was Summon Night: Swordcraft Story. A great game with a remarkable amount of content for a little GBA cartridge, but when I can't walk five steps without having to fight more monsters (and when materials for crafting weapons are a terrible chore to get), it become little more than a damn irritant that makes Mace look tame in comparison.

Second, there was a DBZ RPG on the Super Famicom which I played once called Legend of the Super Saiyan. It very loosely covered the first two sagas, and it was one of the first DBZ games I played (Back when it was still running on Toonami.) It was sort of novel in that you could not only walk around the world map, but fly around it too, which let you find secret items and such. If you wanted to, you could go into a super-flight mode where you rocketed around the map, but increased the encounter rate. To a level where you would literally end one battle, press the D-pad to move, then start another

@Midna is Mai Waifu

Oh yeah the summon night games on the GBA brings me back old memories, good games but with annoying encounters rates, Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled (DS) was another one with terrible encounter rates. Never played that DBZ one though.

Games that doesn't give you a choice on difficulty. Seriously, I just want to complete a game on my own pace but they decided to give me the big D and gave me a game with only one difficulty: FUCKING SHIT HARD!

Spider-Byte wrote:

Wait what? Fun is easily one of the best words. A artsy or pretentious game that could come be boring, drab or dull. Saying a game is fun means you enjoy the game because it gives you enjoyment doing whatever do in it.

On that note.


Artsy and pretentious games

Uggh this is becoming a thing now where the core factors of a game like if they are fun or not are thrown out to highlight one big aspect that is slightly out the norm of current games. Games can be a success by just not having features. Next we will get more and more artsy games where they cut out anything remotely enjoyable except one feature. I bet we get games that all you do is walk around do basically nothing (Oh wait). It's something every medium goes through but in one so interactive as this you lose what makes your game a game and not some 3D animation film.

>mfw

Games who's Default Settings are JUST point and Click

Especially MMO's. Click to move, click to attack, click to quicktravel, click to win. It removes the amount of skill the player actually needs to play the game turning into a snoozefest only after a few hours.

Artificial Difficulty

"We should like give enemies higher health and nothing but that". The absolute pinnacle of Laziness. You want something harder you make the overall experience actually harder. Not just adjust one setting.

Mandatory Level Grinding

See that part about Artificial Difficulty. I am mainly going to nail all the Pokemons before X and Y, where you had to level up each of your pokemon individually and would wind up needing to grind each one of them individually to a higher level if you are inexperienced.

Turn Based Combat

Wow, a lot of my grudges happen to do with RPGs, eh? This combat style is increasingly obsolete in my eyes. Yeah, there is strategy to it, but takes away ALL the pretty graphics and you fundamentally have a Visual Novel. Combined this with Artificial Difficulty and Mandatory level grinding things get boring reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally fast.

This is why I hold Tales of Symphonia and Vesperia so high in the air. They use everything good about the JRPG Genre and axe the sinker in the room in favor of an Almost Smash Bros system.

Modern First Person Shooters

Uhg…. where to start with this… there are exceptions to everything I am about to say, but here we go. Modern first person shooter game design is absolutely the most biggest piece of repetitive garbage I have ever encountered. This is coming from a guy who watches a lot of Anime, where there is a lot of repetitive garbage.

Variety is Sparse, the Stories are Half Baked, the Single Player Campaign is so linear it has no replayability, Everything is Brown and Grey, the community is Shit, and they treat the poor developers who have to crank out this shit every year like shit.

And worst of all, the only thing they care about is the Online Mode. The ONLY thing.

This is not inherently a bad thing, since games like Team Fortress 2 that where built from the ground up just for Online mode wind up being pretty damn good. But while Team Fortress 2 is on my mind, lets back up for 10 seconds and ask ourselves why that game of all things has not become obsolete yet.

Figured it out yet?

They constantly add MORE CONTENT to the SAME GAME. Team Fortress 3 can be held off for CENTURIES because of the content being added 2-4 times a year! And the game is 7 years old!


There is probably more but I have exhausted my brain writing all that.

Well, as I mostly play pretty much only play RTSs and RPGs, I'll focus on these.

RNG Dependence
Short for Random Number Generator, basically the "Chance to X" bullshit. It's okay if it's in combat Crits n' shit, but anywhere outside there it's just a nuisance. Example is Morrowind, where pretty much everything was RNG-based. Related to that, the existence of stats like Luck is faggotry.
Shitty Combat system
That's actually a problem with many RPG games. While they often pretend to add a lot, in the end it's just mashing left mouse button and praying to RNG Gods for good rolls. Personally I prefer when you actually have to pay attention to what your enemy is doing, dodge or block his attacks manually. With that, I really liked combat in Gothic II, where until around mid-end game most enemies could fuck you with two swings, and you had to be really tricky when fighting, not to mention that fighting against more than two enemies was exceptionally hard as it should be. With that in mind, making avoidance based on RNG is just pitiful.
Closed worlds
What I like about RPGs is that at any point of the game you can take a pause and just go anywhere to explore the world and everything that is hiding out there. When they're locking the door behind you at every step… yeah, fuck you with that. I could tie to this a little rant about running speed in Morrowind.
Dead worlds
Speaks for itself, I guess. The world needs a lot of variety, the NPCs and creatures need to do something more than just fill up the world, the whole thing simply needs to be breathing.
Multiple endings
It might be a rather unpopular opinion, but I prefer when the story for the most part is set-in-stone, and most of what the player can affect is the development of the character and not of the plot. The thing with multiple ending is that you get a cake and get to choose what kind of cherry to put on top of it. It doesn't really add much to the game, but really fucks up the lore, and lore is the most entertaining part of the game to me.
Shit story
Affects RTSs just as much. If you don't want to focus on the story first and foremost, you should choose another game genre.
Repetetive campaign
Now for the RTS. I don't play customs or multiplayer, because it's the story what I mostly am a bitch for. In Warcraft II and Starcraft forgive me my insolence, based Blizzard ;-; the campaign quickly turns into a chain of "rape the whole enemy" missions, which made it extremely boring. I ended up cheating through the campaign just to watch the cutscenes.
Army limit
That's my main cringe if not the only one about WC3. Not only is there a hard cap, there were also three soft caps on the way in the form of Upkeep. On top of that, I rarely made more than twelve units, because it was annoying to control multiple groups, as if they couldn't just make limitless troop selection.
Unit replacement
Often when you start a base you make a lot of low tier troops, and once you get access to better ones you pretty much have to kill off the low tier ones to make space for higher tier ones. And thats bullshit. I like when you can upgrade the units instead of plain replacing them, like Headhunters inti Berserkers in Warcraft III. Well, I really liked the troop tree system in M&B, but that wasn't really an RTS.

Now, I could also rant about turn-based games, but honestly they're too pathetic for me to play.

That'd be, like, the longest post I ever made here. Fuck.

Last edited Aug 20, 2014 at 05:10AM EDT

Let's see… Here's my list.

Crappy A.I.
Sometimes they do what they should, but if the enemy is about to die in one hit, then don't FREAKING use a skill which heals you, and let it do its stuff to hurt more than you just healed.
Poor writing/Anti-climactic ending
Pretty much. Games, I know story writing is hard, but do try to make sure all loose ends are tied at the end. And if so, please do it fitting to the game's end. Epic music won't really give you much points if the boss dies in less effort than you actually did on other enemies before that.
Empty Rooms
Kleptomaniacs, like me, hate this. If you need a room, put something there. Please!!!
Solid gameplay
While not really a concern if your game is different, it still should be played the way it is. Also, test everything. A little too much to think of, since glitches can be fun, but if you can't play the game, why even bother?
Re-releases
Why do I have to buy a game I already completed, have a 100% completion with every single thing you can get, AND still own a digital copy of. It's not really an in-game problem, but it really hurts. Me, and my wallet.

There, my complaints. Phew, wrote this in a single sitting, and this is my most crammed up post I wrote.

Artsy indie games
Indie games don't have to be like it always have to be artistic with some weird gameplay and shit like that. Just be fun, that's all, fucking pretentious hipsters.

Try-Hards

Now these aspects seem to be limited only to multiplayer games, now a try hard is someone who takes the game too seriously and does everything in there power to win. Now there is nothing wrong with wanting too win and no one ever wants to lose. But these guys take it to extreme levels and will most of the time accuse you of cheating when you beat them.

people who abuse the game

Another aspect limited to multiplayer there are people who will take advantage of unbalanced moves or weapons in a game, example i was playing injustice online and i was fighting against someone who was using green arrow (i was using the flash). He kept spamming the freeze arrows and he ended up winning because of it. Then there is call of duty where people will camp and use noob tubes and other unfair attachments. Now its not necessarily cheating, but its still uncalled for.

On the turn-based battles thing and grinding for levels, these are the pretty much the only reasons I don 't really like Pokemon and Earthbound. The only turn-based RPGs I can enjoy are Mario RPGs since usually you level up enough just by going through the levels and meeting enemies naturally instead of having to go back a lot and farm. Also, the combat systems in those are great because instead of choosing an attack and watching it you actually interact with the battle and do counterattacks and attacking takes some skill.

No explanations on how to do things

The game that I'm specifically talking about here is the "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" video game. Take away the fact that this was a completely different styled game from the previous Harry Potter games, there are no instructions on how to cast the different kinds of spells. There's one challenge where you have to use Avafors on enemies a certain amount of times in a certain time limit, the only thing is that they never tell you how to cast it. It's one of the spells you learn at the start, and they expect you to already know how to do it. I only managed to do it just out of sheer luck, but by then the time to fully complete it has already passed.

Faulty genre definitions


I don't really need to explain what genres are, They are simple categories that are made to find media by what mood they aim to give. You tell your friends you what to see an Indie-Action Movie, and they get a good idea of what you're in the mood to watch.

But our video games genres are way too special to be that simple!

Instead of video game genres being defined by what kind of emotion or fun its focusing on, we have defined them by what rules or mechanics the games has, here's an example of why this is a problem.

A: First Person Shooters is a entire genre of games, Loosely defined by including 1:A First Person Camera and 2:Shooting Mechanics

B: Portal and Mirrors Edge are video games that includes 1:A First Person Camera and 2:Shooting Mechanics

C: Therefore, by that definition, they should both be considered First Person Shooters.

I literally just used syllogism with the common genre definition as a premise to make the conclusion. But the truth is that, No body considers those games to have anything but close to utterly nothing in common with the games we consider First Person Shooters besides that superficial definition, and we still use those kind of definitions anyway.

  • You can use that same definition to say that Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls are First Person Shooters, Fallout 3 has combat with guns, and you can shoot fireballs in The Elder Scrolls, even though we consider them to be Role Playing Games.
  • What's the definition of a "Role Playing Game" anyway!? Is it just games with Level Up Bars and the ability to Customize? If so, then what's the line that say "Call of Duty is not an RPG, despite having level ups and the ability to Customize" and "Mass effect Is An RPG because it has Level Ups and the ability to Customize" even though they're both games to has shooting and RPG mechanics
  • Is there anything useful about the term "Action Games"?! "Game that focuses on coordination from the player" is just as loose as "TV Shows that include Guns."
  • And what about strategy games!? They were usually Turn-Based until Real-Time Strategy games came along, and we just kept using that term but and the coordination to micromanage in those games can be very demanding of coordination from the player, so what sets it apart from action games!?
  • MUTLIPLAYER ONLINE BATTLE ARENA!

    HERE WE GO WITH ANOTHER ONE OF THESE LOOSE GENRE NAMES!

Ah Glob, I should at least give a break that Video games are relatively new compared to other media like movies, and that's the reason why their isn't that many people who have looked at game genres like this, But I swear our definitions can be better then this

Last edited Aug 20, 2014 at 02:26PM EDT

Oh, I forgot about one. The Cringiest of all Cringe, the shittiest stain on the art of gaming, and that is Freemium games, in each and every form of it.
…and no further comments to that cancer are needed.

Last edited Aug 20, 2014 at 03:52PM EDT

PvP in general. I suck at it, I hate it, and non-optional PvP has killed otherwise interesting games to me. And yet for some bizarre reason that I cannot fathom, I keep. Coming. Back to it. Even though I know what the end result will be, even though I know I'll get pissed off, then subsequently come down from it and pray for merciful oblivion, I keep fucking doing it.

I'm dealing with that right now, if you couldn't tell. Fucking Chivalry.

MIMU wrote:

PvP in general. I suck at it, I hate it, and non-optional PvP has killed otherwise interesting games to me. And yet for some bizarre reason that I cannot fathom, I keep. Coming. Back to it. Even though I know what the end result will be, even though I know I'll get pissed off, then subsequently come down from it and pray for merciful oblivion, I keep fucking doing it.

I'm dealing with that right now, if you couldn't tell. Fucking Chivalry.

Yeah, because a level capped character versus a lowbie leveling one is a clean and entertaining fight for both sides.
Fuck world PvP. Seriously, fuck it.

Actually I like world PvP, back in my days of WoW I used to do a lot world PvP, I like that feel of "no rules" you can be a ruthless killing machine or a nice honorable guy so its kind of roleplaying, I remember having a rogue dedicated to be especially nasty, some example:

>go to a low level area
>start slaughtering lowbies
>lowbies are mad, they call a level cap character
>I'm confident in my skills, kill that dude
>lowbies are like "oh shit", that dude is pissed and call reinforcements
>using stealth (invisibility) to kill lowbies in front of level cap characters
>they start to spam global chat with insults
>time to go

another one (this one worked for both enemy faction or allied faction):
>go to low level area
>greet a lowbie
>obtain his confidence helping it killing monsters
>make he follows you to a high level area
>when he is surrounded by a lot of monsters kill it.
>watch him respawn and getting killed by the high level mobs

I dont want to overextend but there is a lot of thing you can do in world PvP like provoking skirmishes between factions, invasions, going toe to toe with a similar level enemy, etc. the point is that is not competitive or fair it's just fun to mess with people.

MIMU wrote:

PvP in general. I suck at it, I hate it, and non-optional PvP has killed otherwise interesting games to me. And yet for some bizarre reason that I cannot fathom, I keep. Coming. Back to it. Even though I know what the end result will be, even though I know I'll get pissed off, then subsequently come down from it and pray for merciful oblivion, I keep fucking doing it.

I'm dealing with that right now, if you couldn't tell. Fucking Chivalry.

And this is why I haven't played DayZ yet.

Anyway, I'd have to say my main gripe with rhythm games is when, in the covers in the early Guitar Hero games, the song is played differently only to make it more dickish. "Turning Japanese" in Rocks The 80's is a great example.

"Credit eaters," moments in games, usually ported from arcade games, that exist solely to steal a chunk of your health or nab a life in the hopes it'll ask for a continue. I understand that arcade games need to be rather unforgiving, but that can be done fairly, and there's no cause for it in a home game.

Example: In House of the Dead: Overkill, there are numerous times throughout the campaign where you will turn around, and a zombie is swinging to attack you immediately. If you don't already know where it is, you'll take a hit. This isn't such a big deal unless you're going for a high score, in which case it kills your combo and makes the rather stringent difficulty of high score challenges even more unforgiving.

spoonfeeding
when a game fools you into thinking you are incredibly skilled but really it is treating you like you are 11 months old.

in other words: casual games trying to look like hardcore games

there is a reason i play multiplayer.

The MOBA communities
90% of the people in MOBA games are assholes, type A personality to the extreme. And thing is, the game mechanics actually encourage them to be assholes, through anger displacement. Someone talk shit to the other team, they get angry but won't be able to express it because at the end of the match, they won't see each other again. So they have to displace their anger on someone else in another match. It's a vicous cycle of being assholes.

Seriously fuck the MOBA community.

Natsuru Springfield wrote:

Games who's Default Settings are JUST point and Click

Especially MMO's. Click to move, click to attack, click to quicktravel, click to win. It removes the amount of skill the player actually needs to play the game turning into a snoozefest only after a few hours.

Artificial Difficulty

"We should like give enemies higher health and nothing but that". The absolute pinnacle of Laziness. You want something harder you make the overall experience actually harder. Not just adjust one setting.

Mandatory Level Grinding

See that part about Artificial Difficulty. I am mainly going to nail all the Pokemons before X and Y, where you had to level up each of your pokemon individually and would wind up needing to grind each one of them individually to a higher level if you are inexperienced.

Turn Based Combat

Wow, a lot of my grudges happen to do with RPGs, eh? This combat style is increasingly obsolete in my eyes. Yeah, there is strategy to it, but takes away ALL the pretty graphics and you fundamentally have a Visual Novel. Combined this with Artificial Difficulty and Mandatory level grinding things get boring reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally fast.

This is why I hold Tales of Symphonia and Vesperia so high in the air. They use everything good about the JRPG Genre and axe the sinker in the room in favor of an Almost Smash Bros system.

Modern First Person Shooters

Uhg…. where to start with this… there are exceptions to everything I am about to say, but here we go. Modern first person shooter game design is absolutely the most biggest piece of repetitive garbage I have ever encountered. This is coming from a guy who watches a lot of Anime, where there is a lot of repetitive garbage.

Variety is Sparse, the Stories are Half Baked, the Single Player Campaign is so linear it has no replayability, Everything is Brown and Grey, the community is Shit, and they treat the poor developers who have to crank out this shit every year like shit.

And worst of all, the only thing they care about is the Online Mode. The ONLY thing.

This is not inherently a bad thing, since games like Team Fortress 2 that where built from the ground up just for Online mode wind up being pretty damn good. But while Team Fortress 2 is on my mind, lets back up for 10 seconds and ask ourselves why that game of all things has not become obsolete yet.

Figured it out yet?

They constantly add MORE CONTENT to the SAME GAME. Team Fortress 3 can be held off for CENTURIES because of the content being added 2-4 times a year! And the game is 7 years old!


There is probably more but I have exhausted my brain writing all that.

Artificial Difficulty: Raising the damage can work fine if lack of vulnerability is the issue and not avoiding attacks.

Turn Based Combat: If you're referring strictly to JRPGs, then I agree that it isn't needed unless the complexity surpasses the ability to perform live actions.

Unbalanced Difficulty

When a game starts off super hard then becomes pathetically easy, or if the jump from easy to hard is so fast and so sudden it crushes all you have learned and slices up your morale.

Dice Roll Live Combat

Only game I know that uses this is Morrowind, and it is a horrible system. What's the point of giving you complete control over your character's actions when they magically miss a direct hit onto someone's face with a spear a dozen times? Even without the level up function which makes you miss so starting out doesn't redeem the system at all.

Hipster Games

Games that hide behind the claim of being "art" when they are simply glorified flash games that either reuse an innovation or focus so much on it that there is little else. This includes most "modern retro" games that attempt to feed on a person's nostalgia in order to rack in some doe. Shovel Knight is an exemption, as it aimed to be a proper throwback and succeeded in all sorts of ways.

Lazy Satire

It stopped being funny when people donated toward what is basically multi-viewable photograph(s) of an inanimate object.

Fucked up simulators:
Is this the new trend? Is this the new idea of fun in videogames? Is Goat Simulator the new captain of the modern era of videogames? I'm personally horrified at the thought.
The first simulators were so realistic to be boring. Yet people started to buy and play them in a free roaming way, just to test the limits and laugh at the glitches. So the producers realized they could make more money by making nuts and senseless games and keep calling them "simulators".

Well, I was hoping for the FPS era to reach an end. But if this is what coming next…
But what really made me grind me gears right now is THIS , because it has nothing to do with SEGA games, yet, somehow, it pretends it does.

P.S. Goddamn! Capricornicus Genesis said it before me.

Last edited Aug 25, 2014 at 07:23AM EDT

Here are a few thing that bothers me…

Lack of modding support: Even the greatest games gets old. This is why I love mods, they give a fresh air in our favorite games and expand their lifetime a lot. Simcity 4 is a good example, since it's still enjoyable 10 years after the release thanks to the modding community. As you can guess, I don't need to explain why lack of modding support sucks.

Horrible A.I.: We don't live in the age of truly Artificial Intelligence, but come on! Don't treat us like idiots! You may think I'm talking about RPGs and FPSs, when your team can't understand even the simplest order, but in RTS games the situation can be even worse. When even your hardest opponent is dumper that an amoeba, you know you're in problem. In Empire Earth 3 for example, enemy units invade in your territory and do nothing. NOTHING!!

Humiliating Game Overs: I killed in a battle, I failed in a mission. I GET IT! Don't make me feel like a loser, don't show me a video with the consequences of my failure, don't humiliate me for any stupid reason. Just give me this damn "replay" button to try again.

Unlimited respawning enemies: Why? I mean, WHY? If anytime I kill a guy an other one appears, what's the point of fighting?

Repetitive quotes: "Hey listen" "hey listen" "hey listen" "hey listen" "hey listen" "hey listen" "hey…" SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!

Losing your abilities and upgrades: Not a few of them, but ALL of them, especially when you're in the final stages of the game where you need them. If I really have to lose an ability, at least give me something better to replace it. No? Then how in the name of fuck will I beat the game? I can't? I have to start it over again? Oh fuck you!

Jumping back: Simply enough. If you get hit, you jump back. You may have full health, but just because there's a bottomless pit or spikes or any other generic bullshit behind you, you're dead. It's a severe handicap that's more than enough to ruin the entire game.

And last but not least, Unoriginal villains: They're boring as hell. You know, evil laugh, boring "the world is mine" monologues, and boasting a lot. I just can't bare them.

Last edited Aug 25, 2014 at 08:59AM EDT

Unnecessary or Poorly Implemented Minigames
This is one complaint I have against a few 3D platformers and a few other games. I just hate it when I can't get 100% completion (Canary Mary in Banjo-Tooie, or a lot of Donkey Kong 64 in general) or even worse completely halts me from continuing the game (Star Fox Adventures) just because of a poorly implemented minigame to pad out the game. It just makes me mad and wish I could have just gotten the same gameplay I had gotten earlier instead of a crummy minigame that is sometimes impossible to do/understand. Don't even get me started on ones that force you to press buttons repeatedly against an AI opponent, when you will more than likely suffer thumb fatigue then actually win.

I think save points are still a valid way to save. If you can just save anywhere then, as long as you don't forget, you can just save before a point where you know you'll lose and you haven't really lost anything. With save points, you really, really don't want to lose, because you'll have to redo everything since you last saved, and it makes you feel pressure.

Also, anyone who said they were tired of turn based RPG battles, I recommend that you play Eternal Sonata. I think the best part is that as the game continues, the system becomes more complex, like instead of guarding all the time, you get the option to counterattack. There really is no waiting in this system, because you still have to block attacks during the enemy turn (and if you don't block attacks, you get wrecked so fast).

I stopped playing League of Legends because I can accurately say that more than half the people I played with were complete assholes. My friend told me that one you get into gold and platinum tier games, it stops for the most part, but I got tired of it. Thankfully, Smite is generally full of nicer people, although I don't play Conquest so there's that.

Unnecessary dependence on always-on internet connections
Games like BioShock 2 that refuse to save unless G4WL is fed. It's frustrating for people like myself who can travel up to four hours a day on public transport.

Achievements that don't unlock offline
Say what you want about achievement hunting (ACHIEVEMTNZ AR 4 NUBES!1!!11one), but there's no reason why games can't just cache achievement progress and do an update next time they're online.

Any context within a game where the game tells you to much or too little.

If your game has 2 buttons and a straight-forward design, maybe the tutorial level is unnecessary. I don't need you to tell me how to get coins.

If your game uses every dang key on my keyboard, you might want to throw in a little explanation. I don't need you to hold my hand for the whole game, but i also want the option to be told how to control the game.

Passwords that need an item to to open it
This is a nightmare when replaying a game
"Oh hey you Remember the password from the last game? WELL FUCK YOU! YOU NEED A PIECE OF PAPER WITH THE PASSWORD!"

Really Bad Trial and Error Game Design
If you have ever played Super Meat Boy, Ms. Splosion Man, the rocket barrel levels in Donkey Kong Country Returns or any other difficult modern 2D platformer, you've probably run into this. I really hate it when I can't pass a level in these types of games only because of a puzzle or a quick reflex action sequence that requires the most precise button presses to pass. I can understand trying to make something difficult, but when I have to either skip a segment of a level, or even worse skip an entire level, I think the game design has to be a bit more lenient to the players.

bosses that get weaker attacks the less health they have
The only boss I've really encountered with this trait is the Hydra from Dark Souls. But it's such a fucking slap to the face on the game difficulty in my opinion. I guess it is more of a "Mini Boss" than a normal boss, but for god's sake, Havel was I Mini Boss and he was hard as hell to fight for me. Someone like MasterBurner may likely be a able to kill both of them on their first try in a playthrough, but this is my very first playthrough of the game. The Hydra isn't that difficult to begin with, which Is even worse. All have to do I get within the Hydra's melee distance and watch out for the cliff in the water (which was really the only reason that I didn't kill this boss on my first try). It's melee attacks are even worse. To kill it you have to cut off all of its heads, but the thing is that the more heads that you chop off, the worse it's melee attack becomes. I'm not talking about that it's melee attacks do less damage. I'm talking about that……..

……OH MY FUCKING GOD IT'S NOT EVEN TRYING ANYMORE!!

I hate re-used bosses in a single game. I think with the time a development team has to make a game, if the game is going to have boss fight every single one at least needs to have a different aspect. I can somehow forgive repetivie fight process but if the boss is the same I fight 2 levels ago it just sad. Tha'ts why I hate boss rushes too, and because of that I can't enjoy games like Okami.

Thrash95 wrote:

I hate re-used bosses in a single game. I think with the time a development team has to make a game, if the game is going to have boss fight every single one at least needs to have a different aspect. I can somehow forgive repetivie fight process but if the boss is the same I fight 2 levels ago it just sad. Tha'ts why I hate boss rushes too, and because of that I can't enjoy games like Okami.

Fighting the same bosses may be annoying, but one trope I love in some games is when the same boss comes up later, but it really isn't the "same boss". It's the same character or enemy, it's just stronger than it was before and has new attacks or even completely different moves. Some examples are Black Knight from Shovel Knight and Dark Samus from Metroid Prime 2. The same exact thing multiple times is pretty boring though.

Pay walls

Free to play but pay to get anything done. This should not be any games business model.

Guns Of Icarus had the right idea. Its free to do anything. You never get asked to PAY NOW at any one point during any match. No prompt to purchase things interrupts the gameplay. You don't get forced to grind up levels or PAY NOW to level now. But what you can pay for is dress ups! Character customization and such. I was happy to spend money on Guns of Icarus just to pimp out my character, that made it fun to spend money on the game

But many other F2P games are doing this bullshit where they strip out gameplay elements that were previously free and suggest you BUY the right to use them or grind up the means to use them for free.

Star Conflict just removed players ability to revive killed teammates (a basic but fun gameplay element that's been around since Gears of War) and now ask you to PAY MONEY to revive teammates or yourself. This is a blatant invasive paywall set up over something that's been accepted as a fun gameplay element. This infuriates me.

And there's many other F2P games that think the key to getting money out of their players is to place toll booths for real cash all throughout the game. The sad thing is that there's enough fools to make that work.

Confined Worlds

Being a huge fan of the elder scrolls, other RPGs with worlds that are visibly confined (Like White Knight Chronicles, Phantasy Star Universe, Dragon's Crown and Final Fantasy X) and a lack of exploring capabilites really turns me off when playing them. I wanna see the world, not go through some straight corridor like area.

Also Level Restricted Areas
This goes to A LOT of RPGs (mostly JRPGs) These kind of systems literally prevents you from truly going on an adventure. I really hope the level balancing that is used in Dragon Age and TES catches on toother games. Since with that can of system, you can chose any path you wanna start first before going somewhere else and still keep the challenge of the game.

Skeletor-sm

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