The other thread about favorite mechanics is great, so let’s also do the opposite: what are some of your most hated mechanics?
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Radiant quests. You can never complete the game because of this, the quests are generic and repetitive and offer nothing but “stretch the playtime”.
That and mechanics like “rando dragon attacks in Skyrim” and “City is under attack” from Fallout 4. I quit F4 because I was on my way to a mission and got the "city under attack notification, and on my way to defend another city was under attack.
To yes-and this: procedural content in general. No Man’s Sky is a snore-fest for me, big, empty, meaningless. Missions in Elite Dangerous and X4 are similarly pretty boring, though the former is more fun the first time around. There has to feel like there’s some world-affecting point to what you’re doing. IMO
I found the procedurally-produced planets in No Man’s Sky to be stunningly beautiful. Then I would walk around on them and the similar-but-not-quite look of every part of the landscape would slowly drive me INSANE.
I started playing No Man’s Sky recently and it looks like they added a mode that’s more ‘streamlined’. Dunno if it’s still procedurally generated, though.
Pretty much a lot of procedural “content”. I guarantee big publishers will capitalize on all of this AI to replace writers with generated stories/quests/etc. No idea what to make of this.
I would disagree, some of my favorite games are procedurally generated.
Factorio, RimWorld or valheim for example.
Oh totally. I didn’t mean to imply “all procedural content = bad”. Terraria comes to mind and is one of my favorite game of all time. The “world” is procedural when created, but there are “key” areas/objectives that don’t change. I’m thinking more along the lines of Fallout 4’s “radiant” junk that big publishers salivate over because mountains of endless+cheap content = ($o$)
Unrepairable weapons are the worst thing. There’s nothing worse than finding a super cool, rare weapon and being paranoid about it breaking.
That’s one of the big things that bothered my in Breath of the Wild. I wanted to go to this cool looking location and find something neat, but I knew that I’ll either get a weapon that breaks in 5 hits, a seed, or an orb. Really deflated my sense of exploration when I realized this was the gameplay loop.
Exactly! It triggers my hoarding response and I find myself keeping all the weapons because something harder might be around the next corner. I end up with only using boko clubs for half the game…
It was definitely a pain in the ass. That was the first game I thought of. Second was dying light. Nothing like get swamped by a hoard and all your equipped weapons break.
Pay 2 win and excessive abuse of FOMO.
E.g. for the next two weeks you can purchase/grind for [character] with a LIMITED EDITION green hat!
It would be OK if such thing was behind an achievement and allowed to be gained later.
Some companies have gotten a little sneaky with it, like Microsoft with age of empires. They make their newly released DLC civs overpowered for two months then nerf it every time.
Game timers. I want to screw around on my time. The more time-based a game becomes, the less I enjoy it.
Timers just really stress me out for some reason. Give me more time damn it.
I could never get into Animal Crossing for this very reason
Fucking time trials man
Yes! I remember that I could not really enjoy fallout 1 because of the 150 in-game days time limit to get the water chip…
This!
There’s not much else in gaming that makes my blood boil as much as being rushed… especially in single player games. I’m usually playing to relax so please don’t stress me out.
Escort quests. Stealth sections in games that aren’t built around stealth would be close second.
Genshin Impact occasionally has little stealth missions where you have to sneak by guards.
Pain.
Anything using timers, especially based on the clock. It just artificially adds playtime, and it also means I forget about them and lose track of what I was doing most the time, too.
Agreed, timed missions especially stress me out. Just let me do shit in my own pace!
I can say that the only timed content I enjoyed was in WoW and it was the Challenge Modes.
Both because you could try it multiple times and because the reward was an actual prestigious and awesome reward.
I can’t think of another game with a timed run mechanic that offered anything close to that.
My only contention for good timed content in video games would be examples similar to the beginning of Metroid Prime. “The whole planet is gonna explode and you need to leave RIGHT NOW!!” type of deal. It’s essentially the same as putting a timer on a task, in fact that game does show you a timer with how long you still have until the place explodes, except it doesn’t feel like a fakey cop out
Currently playing through “unsighted”. It is a really nice metroidvania game, however everyone (even you) is dying and only has a certain time left. For now i am really enjoying the novelty, but I hope no game copies this. It does really stress me out. knowing that i have to go and upgrade my weapons now because the blacksmith npc s dying in 4 in game hours(like 10 minutes irl). Or quietly exploring the beautiful world just to get a pop up showing that the (nice elderly) consumables vendor is about to die. Like I said it is quite novel, but does have me not play the game often due to knowing wath wil come. I’d say try it out if you feel like stressing a bit :).
Yep, soon as the calendar came up in P5 I quit. Same with FE3H. I did eventually go back to P5 and followed a single playthrough walkthrough, but it far overstayed its welcome.
Offline games which require an internet for no apparent reason has to be my pet peeve
Yeah it guarantees that the game will be unplayable through legal means in a few years when it is no longer profitable to keep the servers running.
Perhaps not specifically a mechanic, per se, but save points. I want to be able to save whenever, wherever. I don’t always have time to make it to the next save point before I need to stop playing.
Honestly it’s games lacking save points that has made devices like the Steam Deck so nice for gaming. Being able to have a dedicated gaming device that I can put to sleep whenever without reaching a save point is fantastic.
non-renewable consumable items.
using consumables is hard enough, but you’re telling me there’s a finite number of these? forget it.
only exception is rougelikes.
Yep. I never use consumables. Unless the game really pushes you to use them they feel like cheating.
they feel like cheating.
Or worthless. This item increases your dmg for 10 seconds.
Dude, 1 second is the animation alone and after consuming it, I need to use 3 skills to snapshot the dmg increase so effectively I have 4-5 seconds of actual usage.
Consumables are horrible as a system in general.
Enemies that scale with your level in an RPG. I would rather get completely curb stomped by rare high level enemies, so I have something to work towards. In the same vein, I don’t like it when the stat gain you get from leveling ends up with you literally being unkillable by lower level enemies. Most MMOs are an offender to this, where you can just sunbathe in a group of 30 level 1 enemies and are unable to die to them.
GOD, yes. The Fable games are like that, resulting in a large portion of the endgame map in Fable III positively loaded with werewolves and what feels like nothing else. As these were intended to be hard-hitting and unfairly fast, traveling became an annoyance.
I’m curious what your happy medium is, though, since you dislike being over-leveled as well. I personally think being whaled on ineffectually is funny mental image, and sometimes I really just wanna chill
Obligate stamina bars/circles for traversal. Just allow me to move at the speed of fun, and definitely don’t make me stand still to recharge when climbing.
I think it’s telling that death stranding, a game all about traversal, let’s you sprint outright for as long as you want until well after your character’s shoes literally fall off. The stamina bar is more a measure of abuse rather than a limit on your movement.
I like stamina bars in many circumstances, but I’ve decided I hate them specifically in life sim games like Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and similar - at least unless there’s an easy and fun way to re-fill them. I won’t write them off entirely, I think it can be done well, but in practice in these games they often serve no purpose but to frustrate you.
Good point! How is “my time?” I’ve been thinking of getting it to play with my gf. We really like dinkum.
Quicktime events. Please make up your mind if you show me a sequence or if you want me to play. I can enjoy watching, but I don’t want to feel like I am being tested for paying attention.
The beginning of the Tomb Raider remake pissed me off especially. You played a few minutes, then watched a minute of sequence, then play, watch, play, watch. One of the sequences took like 5 minutes, so I leaned back to enjoy when suddenly it flashes a heavy PRESS X in my face. I tried to quickly grab the controller but failed… too slow. I almost rage quit.
I am not playing games to get stressed out…
I am not playing games to get stressed out…
I pretty much only play souls games. So I’m all about being stressed out. I still hate QTEs.
Quicktime events.
I’d limit it to mandatory QTEs - better games have a “story” mode that doesn’t punish you (much/at all) for having the reflexes of an old-timer.
But yeah, mandatory QTEs are an immediate buzzkill. I don’t intend to waste more time in Tomb Raider - that’s already 21 minutes I never get back.
QTEs are also often pretty bad from an accessibility standpoint, especially the older kinds that had you repeatedly mashing buttons!
After biting myself through the loooong intro session path, the game turned out quite good. It did still have a few QTEs later on, but typically in short sequences, which was okayish. First, because I started to expect it, and second because the sequences were short enough that I didn’t get the impression I might have to sit through a movie.
Still, the beginning of the game has left an ugly impression about QTEs.
My backlog is large enough to not consider that particular game anytime soon. I’d rather retry getting into Witcher 1 or step a toe into Heavy Rain.
Same, though my single exception is FF7R. Worth a watch if you haven’t played.
People have said escort quests but I’m going to go more specific.
Escort quests WHERE THE NPC INEXPLICABLY HAS A DIFFERENT WALKING/RUNNING SPEED THAN THE PLAYER…
I think it was on one of the Half-Life 2 developer commentary where they mention that the made the NPC move faster than your walking speed, but slower than your running speed, so that you are able to catch up with them if you stay behind to look at something. If they move at your running speed, you are kinda forced to follow them all the time, and any obstacle will separate you more and more from the NPC that you are supposed to escort.
But that feels terrible if you want to follow them without stopping (or in the case of obstacles, are able to).
Even Ocarina of Time, in 1998, got this right. The Dampe race, which isn’t technically an escort, would feel weird if Dampe was too much faster or slower than you, because it would feel unfair. But not everyone moves as fast while playing - some people like rolling, which is a different speed from walking, etc. Also, he throws fireballs at you, and players who are less good at dodging them will end up being slower. So Dampe doesn’t “follow you,” (in fact, he spends most of the thing in front of you), but he has a rubber band effect. If you get too far behind, he slows down. If you get too far ahead, he speeds up. This does a good job of keeping him in view, which helps give the feeling that you’re going at an intended pace, whatever reasonable pace you take. If you’re too slow, you will fail, but… it pretty much requires standing still or getting hit by lots of fireballs.
In contrast, the Yunobo escort in BOTW feels terrible casually and even worse to speedrun. He’s faster than you walk, but much, MUCH slower than you run. And if you get too far ahead of him? He stops.
I have yet to play a game where NPCs have the same speed as the player, have you? I get it on the game design level, since NPCs need to move at a speed that their animations look natural at but player characters need to move fast enough to not feel frustrating to the character.
I have yet to play a game where NPCs have the same speed as the player, have you?
RDR2 did an excellent job with this by making it more of a pseudo cutscene. You can just hold a button and your character will match the target speed.
That seems great. I have RDR2 on my wishlist but unfortunately it would require more storage space than my entire laptop has at the moment.
Hunger or thirst mechanics in anything that’s not explicitly a survival game.
Best hunger mechanics are the ones that don’t harm your character when you’re hungry, but you do get a buff for eating.
Valheim’s like that. Don’t want to eat? Fine. Go multiple days without and you’ll still be ok. But if you want your hp to be all it can be, you’ll want to eat up before going out to fight.
Valheim’s hunger / food-as-major-buffs mechanic is legit the best way I’ve seen any video game handle food.
It’s also the reason I DO NOT like survival games.
I would be ok with this mechanic if I didn’t have to eat 10 bear steaks of 2 kilos each to last me for the next 10 minutes.
This is one of several reasons I didn’t play Ark for more than 2 days. Kill animals, get meat, cook at camp fire, eat throughout the day, store meat where half of it spoils before you can eat it.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a popular roguelike that removed its hunger mechanic and the game is so much better.
Or where it just becomes a nuisance 5 minutes in. For example Subnautica, which is an amazing survival/exploration game. But the hunger/thirst becomes a chore like 30minutes in when you get the possibility to get food basically everywhere and stock up on water. Still enjoyed the exploration/base building a lot. But it really stopped being a survival game quickly, which honestly might have been for the best given its other qualities.
I would be ok with it if I only needed to pick up the stuff and my character would eat it automatically, and not need to open up the menu every ten minutes
Squad/micro-strategy mechanics in fps games. Commanding npcs to do specific things in the middle of a gunfight isn’t fun. Bonus points if the npc ai gets in your way when you’re not fighting as well.
Bad tutorials. Don’t teach me the game mechanics that could be learned in-game in an environment different from the rest of the game. Also dislike sudden lore dumps after the tutorial.
Mechanics in games where they don’t belong. Not every game needs skill trees, not every game needs stories or lore.
Squad/micro-strategy mechanics in fps games. Commanding npcs to do specific things in the middle of a gunfight isn’t fun.
While it’s ai is still sometimes a drunk toddler, i like the way arma offers it. You set rules of engagement and kind of a “ready mode”, and the formation and you’re set. Also quick hotkey based ways to change them.
You can still set up positions and micro manage your squad if you wanna but 90% of the time its unnecessary.
undefined> Bonus points if the npc ai gets in your way when you’re not fighting as well.
I swear I have yet to see a game where an NPC/ally doesn’t walk right in front of when attacking an enemy.
