Gameplay mechanics you despise/Don't like

[Rewemarkt66]

Who doesn't know that feel, playing a game and then your forced to do something you just hate to do?

For example for me:

-Flying: I just suck at flying controls, no matter if it's a Battlefield, GTA, Spyro or whatever. Everytime I'm forced to fly in a new game you almost can bet i die alot before slightly getting into it.

-Underwater: Especially when control sucks, many enemies underwater and no infinite breath

-Protecting: Especially if they barely can handle damage or are instant game over when hit/captured etc.

 

What's you'res...if you have any?

(If wrong topic, please move, wasn't sure)

[KingGuy420]

Untracked collectibles.

 

Not sure if this counts but I despise them. I enjoy trying to find the collectibles on my own but I always come up a couple short. If they're tracked, I can just look up the ones I missed. If they're not tracked, I feel forced to use a guide right from the start which is never fun.

[Redgrave]

Escort missions mainly when I have to protect someone that can't really fight back or they just keep sending waves of enemies. Some games have gotten better about this though where they don't have a health bar and you just have to make sure they don't get captured or you don't die.

 

QTEs to a certain degree. I don't mind QTEs as long as the game doesn't focus on it for the most part but I think what I hate the most are QTEs that are designed to trick you into thinking your input matters as in the game will prompt you to mash but then no matter how good you mash (and believe me I know how to mash a button) the game decides you lose anyway. I know some other games have done it and I don't remember what they were but in recent memory the Yakuza games are a big offender of this because there will be some enemies or bosses that will grab you or do something that has the prompt to mash a button but the game will just say no and you wind up getting thrown anyway and I absolutely hate that because it's like the game is giving you false hope and then even though you know you should have succeeded it just pulls the rug from under you anyway. They might as well just have the enemy throw you or whatever and not even bother putting the prompt on screen.

[Phlegeth]

Stealth, I am not a stealthy person.  I want to go in swinging.  And when it (inevitably) kicks off, I'll stand my ground if they don't boot me to the menu screen.  Pretty sure I've killed every guard in the Paris level in Hitman once.  Did not get Silent Assassin rank that run.

[Beyondthegrave07]

Can I just put Kingdom Hearts mini-games down as a whole? Most are either boring, uninspiring, tedious, or a mixture of the 3. Ice cream beats is still one of the worst minigames I've played in a video game ever.

 

I'd say minigames in games in general are terrible/I dislike, but somehow, Kingdom Hearts seems to be the best at making the worst ones.

 

Hot take, I know.

[ladynadiad]

7 hours ago, Beyondthegrave07 said:

I'd say minigames in games in general are terrible/I dislike, but somehow, Kingdom Hearts seems to be the best at making the worst ones.

 

Actually I'd say Square/Enix in general because the Final Fantasy games have some pretty awful ones too.  I can't say minigames in general though because the Pom minigame in Ao no Kiseki and Trails of Cold Steel IV was actually a lot of fun and I fully admit to playing it more than I needed to for any trophies.

 

My gameplay mechanic that I dislike is limited ability to save.  I especially dislike games that don't allow for manual saving or to disable auto-saving, but I think every game should allow for you to save at any point that isn't a cutscene or battle.  If you're just wandering around the world map or a dungeon you should be able to save the game and come back to it at the same spot.  I also am not fond of point of no returns.  To me the only point of no return should be the final boss battle and any time up until that point you should be able to go back and prepare for it but so many games have the final dungeon or area be a point of no return and if you didn't know that and saved over your file there and weren't prepared, you are screwed.  Slightly better if the final dungeon at least has a shop, means to heal and respawning monsters so you can make up for any lack of preparation, but still annoying.

 

And as a bonus, a mechanic I miss is exit and warp spells.  Old school games nearly always had it where your magic user could learn a spell to exit a dungeon and warp to any town you visited, which was great.  Some games have quick travel options to replace this, but many games lack any such mechanics and I miss that a lot.  The absolute worst is lacking this and the game requiring a ton of backtracking.

[DaveMcDamage]

18 hours ago, Beyondthegrave07 said:

Can I just put Kingdom Hearts mini-games down as a whole? Most are either boring, uninspiring, tedious, or a mixture of the 3. Ice cream beats is still one of the worst minigames I've played in a video game ever.

 

I'd say minigames in games in general are terrible/I dislike, but somehow, Kingdom Hearts seems to be the best at making the worst ones.

 

Hot take, I know.

Mini-games should be there for a break from the norm. Offer a little challenge yes, but if a dev puts in a requirement then it should be play X amount of times, rather than win X amount of times. Very few games get the mini game medium right. I think the last great one was Gwent for Witcher 3. 

 

Its been years since I played Kingdom Hearts so I can't remember much from them, but after going through the Yakuza series and now onto Judgement, I think its more of a Jap developer thing to go out of the way to make requirements miserable for gamers. But then again I suppose age comes into it to. When you're a nipper, you don't let anything stop you, especially when it comes to video games, but as you get older and repetition comes into your life a lot more, these mini games can be a chore rather than a break from the norm. 

 

Another hate

is the aged old fetch quests. Again this is something CDPR fixed with Witcher 3. Yes it had fetch quests, but just adding an extra few lines of dialog actually felt like there was a purpose to doing them. Every other dev out there has been doing the same shit for more than 30 years now but now they're more shiny. 

 

 

[Beyondthegrave07]

51 minutes ago, DaveMcDamage said:

Mini-games should be there for a break from the norm. Offer a little challenge yes, but if a dev puts in a requirement then it should be play X amount of times, rather than win X amount of times. Very few games get the mini game medium right. I think the last great one was Gwent for Witcher 3. 

 

Its been years since I played Kingdom Hearts so I can't remember much from them, but after going through the Yakuza series and now onto Judgement, I think its more of a Jap developer thing to go out of the way to make requirements miserable for gamers. But then again I suppose age comes into it to. When you're a nipper, you don't let anything stop you, especially when it comes to video games, but as you get older and repetition comes into your life a lot more, these mini games can be a chore rather than a break from the norm. 

 

Another hate

is the aged old fetch quests. Again this is something CDPR fixed with Witcher 3. Yes it had fetch quests, but just adding an extra few lines of dialog actually felt like there was a purpose to doing them. Every other dev out there has been doing the same shit for more than 30 years now but now they're more shiny. 

 

 

They're not all bad, and there are some that I absolutely love to death like Blitzball in FFX or Tetra Master in Final Fantasy IX, but Kingdom Hearts ones in general (especially Winnie the Pooh ones) are just terrible. Bad mechanics, simplistic, and boring for the most part imo. There's also a special place in hell for Ice cream beat, but let's not go into that... Haha.

 

In the end, I just feel like devs shouldn't be so lazy and flesh out mechanics rather than giving us a simplistic, silly game to fill in time.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Beyondthegrave07

[Silverbackmethod]

QTEs in some games. Don’t get me wrong, QTEs are not a problem in general and 1 or 2 chained after another is all fine. But there are games out there which are driving me nuts. Knight’s Contract on the Xbox360 for example. Anyone beat the final boss in the hardest mode? It’s 7 QTEs in a row! 7! And the response window is just insanely small. One miss and you have to start all over again. 

Edited November 10, 2020 by Silverbackmethod

[RadiantFlamberge]

Mandatory stealth. I don't care for it when getting detected by the enemy makes you automatically fail the mission and restart. Stealth should be just an alternate way to do it... I like having the option to go in guns blazing.

 

XIII has an area like this, but in this case it's not so bad. While an alarm being tripped will fail the mission, you are able to avoid this by quickly killing an enemy who has spotted you and become "alerted".

Edited November 11, 2020 by RadiantFlamberge

[pogo_loco]

I want to pile on to QTEs, specifically the ones with hitting the same button as fast as possible, because that gets harder every year.  However I recently played Uncharted 4 which had an option to hold the button in lieu of rapid presses — and wow did that make me feel geriatric.

 

So I’m changing my answer to “Game options that don’t let me choose Dutch as the spoken language.”  Because that is the most entertaining pronunciation I’ve ever encountered. 

[AJ_Radio]

• Shoehorned minigames that serve no purpose than to pad the games. Flappy Goat in Goat Simulator and the crane minigame in Broken Age are two that immediately come to mind. I suppose you can add Fector's Challenge in Stardew Valley. They force the player to adapt to entirely different mechanics that are contrary to what the rest of the games have you doing.

 

• Forced online integration in otherwise solely single player games. Mad Max and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor literally only had/have one component that requires online, everything else can be done while a console is offline. Why developers/publishers feel this kind of integration is necessary is beyond me.

[pogo_loco]

Level Caps.

 

I just hit max level on Horizon Zero Dawn and it completely sucked all the air out of the game.  Worst.  Design.  Choice.  Ever. 

[AgentSmiz]

Collectables that aren't tracked, escort quests, sewer levels and forced pointless online connectivity (leaderboards in single player games etc) are some of my main ones I dislike.

[DeadlyPerfume]

I hate collectibles that exist just to be something for the player to collect. The rubber ducks in Rise of Insanity, the glass bottles in Alice: Madness Returns, etc. Collectible notes that give exposition on the story and add to the atmosphere of a horror game are fine, and collectibles that upgrade a stat, unlock new abilities and otherwise give you some incentive to search for them are fine, but "find all 746 rolls of duct tape scattered throughout the world!" for a bronze trophy...just makes me question what I'm doing with my life. 

 

I'm also pretty sick of sanity meters. I love Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but every game after that which includes some kind of look at the darkness/enemies too long and you die mechanic has just been more annoying than scary. Amnesia: Rebirth and Visage are recent offenders with this. Let me decide for myself when I'm scared and want to run out of a room, rather than force me to because my character was in a shadow for .05 seconds and immediately has a panic attack. 

 

 

[VigilantCrow]

Needless game timers, that prevent players from exploring or admiring the work put into a product.

 

[StraightVege]

I'm usually not a big fan of inventory management or crafting. I rarely feel like they add anything to a game, other than tedium.

[PineConesRULE]

-Poor map navigation, especially if they're large in size and have no fast travel

-Combo Challenges like (Get 50-200 hits without getting interrupted) 

-Not sure if this counts but, Unskippable cutscenes during a 2nd playthrough or more

-No way of tracking progress for trophies, like collectables or types of kills

-Having more than 3 types of collectables. This is fine if they have substance or use in the game, but if its just bs like colored rocks or some shit. I don't like it. Uncharted, although being one of my favorite franchises, has some of my least fav types of collectables 

-"Follow this person and dont get caught" missions, in games that aren't typically stealth based. 

 

Just some off the top of my head

[Snoeijske]

On 11-11-2020 at 7:33 AM, pogo_loco said:

I want to pile on to QTEs, specifically the ones with hitting the same button as fast as possible, because that gets harder every year.  However I recently played Uncharted 4 which had an option to hold the button in lieu of rapid presses — and wow did that make me feel geriatric.

 

So I’m changing my answer to “Game options that don’t let me choose Dutch as the spoken language.”  Because that is the most entertaining pronunciation I’ve ever encountered. 

 

I'm from the Netherlands and the first thing I do when I get a new game is set the spoken language to English? The Dutch voice acting is not very good in games. 

 

Another thing I hate, weather I'm not sure if it's a 'mechanic', is a (unskippable) cutscene right after a checkpoint. In the worst scenario I need to watch a cutscene a dozen of times because I keep dying over and over.

[wiesbadenIIX]

The hunger/thirst mechanic in any "survival" game (á la Fallout 76).

 

Whomever invented that gameplay mechanic needs to be bitchsmacked up the head.

 

In any real life post-apocalyptic situation, you aren't going to need to eat every 2 minutes, so why include something like that in a video game?

Thankfully, they removed the hunger/thirst penalty in FO76 in the latest Steel Dawn update, and just made it so it buffs your character.   As it should be.  

[Shmeefly]

On 08/08/2020 at 10:55 PM, Redgrave said:

Escort missions mainly when I have to protect someone that can't really fight back or they just keep sending waves of enemies. Some games have gotten better about this though where they don't have a health bar and you just have to make sure they don't get captured or you don't die.

 

QTEs to a certain degree. I don't mind QTEs as long as the game doesn't focus on it for the most part but I think what I hate the most are QTEs that are designed to trick you into thinking your input matters as in the game will prompt you to mash but then no matter how good you mash (and believe me I know how to mash a button) the game decides you lose anyway. I know some other games have done it and I don't remember what they were but in recent memory the Yakuza games are a big offender of this because there will be some enemies or bosses that will grab you or do something that has the prompt to mash a button but the game will just say no and you wind up getting thrown anyway and I absolutely hate that because it's like the game is giving you false hope and then even though you know you should have succeeded it just pulls the rug from under you anyway. They might as well just have the enemy throw you or whatever and not even bother putting the prompt on screen.

Yea QTEs suck, worst experience was probably the Krauser boss fight in Resident Evil 4 all them years ago, but the big one, not so much of a QTE, more of a LTE, L meaning long as F... The infamous microwave corridor in MGS4, i swear i almost phoned up Hideo and threatened to take him to court over giving my thumb arthritis over that damn section, and whats worse, if you want the platinum your forced to do that bit EIGHT F'ing times

 

Which brings me to my input... Multiple Playthroughs or NG+. Such a lazy and cheapskate way for devs to try keep us playing a game, any game that forces me to wade through everything i just did for a single trophy or 1 collectible that locks me out of a trophy deserves nothing more than a frisbee throw out the window when its finally done, devs getting proper dickish about it lately too and throwing in NG+ DLC after ive already uninstalled the damn game, why, its fun the first time so let me savour that memory, if it was that good il enjoy another playthrough in a few years for nostalgias sake thanks.. but no instead im forced to skip cutscene after cutscene and sprint through the game like Jason Statham in that movie (forget the film title, if you seen it u know) So my last emotion of the game is a negative one bc bored and im never wanting to touch it again, its so uninspiring.

[flugurnarrr]

- Online components in single player games. Recently I played a game where one of the trophies was a time trial of sorts across the main campaign levels. However, due to stupid leaderboards they implemented for no reason other than to stimulate micro-transactions, you’re forced to be connected to the servers while playing on your own. If the servers are down (which happened to me), even if you do the required time, the game will not register your progress. Annoying, to say the least. 

 

- “Survival” mechanics, like hunger/temperature. It’s boring, it’s never well implemented, and the attempt at realism falls flat when the character needs to eat a whole bear every 30 seconds just to keep going. 

 

- Unnecessary crafting. I enjoy it when it’s creative and actually central to the game (e.g. Minecraft), but it’s ridiculous when it makes absolutely no difference in the gameplay and it's just there because the devs had no idea what else to add to the game but were forced to by the suits so they could promote  "a cool new feature". 

[CloudLoku]

- Escort / protecting mission. I hate these especially when the ally AI is not much great.

- Stealth mission in a non-stealth game. I like stealth in a games like MGS, but the stealth quests in other genre are often crappy developed.

- Unskippable walking-dialogue in 2nd/3rd/etc playthroughs.

[Eagle]

• Mandatory stealth (especially if the game's not built for stealth).
• Naval combat.
• Bosses who are basically a big QTE (I don't really like QTEs in general, but these are the worst offenders).
• Unskippable cutscenes in a NG+.
• Cutscenes that don't allow you to pause in the middle of them.
• No option to manually save.

[Dr_Mayus]

Collectibles with no in game tracker ?