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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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 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.
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.
Game timers. I want to screw around on my time. The more time-based a game becomes, the less I enjoy it.
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.
Timers just really stress me out for some reason. Give me more time damn it.
Daily quests or login rewards, things to force me to play the game, always stop playing
Eve Online did this and it is so jarring.
I know it’s a popular mechanic that lots of people love, but I really don’t like games where you die a lot, or where death has significant impact. I generally play games to chill out and just have fun and I often feel like games are punishing me when that happens and I find myself doing sort of “risk management” and becoming a hermit in the game.
I love shooters but I can’t do fortnight or any game mode that CS-esque because I need that respawn
The bit in the RPG when your character gets captured and you lose all your gear, and have to do the shitty stealth thing.
Disclaimer: not always
Character stats, commonly called “RPG elements”.
In games with low enough detail that I have to use my imagination, it makes sense to have a character constitution 10 increase to 15 and take 50% less damage from blunt weapons. It works perfectly in Rimworld, ADOM, Terraria and the like because you can’t completely see what’s happening, so when your character does low damage your imagination has room for him to hit badly or be partially blocked.
But in games with modern graphics and animations, it feels… off. An attack animation that shows someone swinging a sharp steel battleaxe perfectly and connecting with bare flesh at momentum, deals… no damage because the wielder has low strength and axe skill, while the target has a high armor value.
IMO it goes triply so for games with guns, if regular enemies can just shrug off bullets to the head I have difficulty enjoying it cause it just makes the weapons feel weak
Controversial opinion but I mostly hate crafting. I feel like it’s a huge time sink just to make you waste time in the game. It’s not content at all just mindless farming for no real reason.
There are games where the whole game revolves around it so you couldn’t really remove it from those games. Minecraft is an example.
But I feel like every single game now has some kind of crafting mechanics. Mainly the F2P to get some kind of weird limitation that will either take you half a lifetime to accomplish or $5…
I’ve never been a fan of character weapon skill being tied to the bullet not hitting where the player is aiming in first person RPGs and immersive sims. Think something like Fallout 3, where a shot with a sniper rifle can be perfectly lined up, but the bullet might veer off randomly.
I do understand and appreciate character weapon skills being tied to certain weapons encrouages distinct playstyles, but there are many other ways to implement it that don’t feel as arbitrary. Tying character skill to greater reticle sway, longer time to aim down sights, longer reload times, more likely to jam or jams taking longer to clear. It accomplishes the same goal of rewarding putting points into the skill and making players feel like they are progressing, but without creating the instant frustration of missing a clearly lined up shot.
On that note, actively degrading weapons are not something I think has ever been a good idea. It’s neither fun, nor is the rate of degradation ever realistic. If the goal is to make player cautious, then limiting ammunition and the availability of good weapons is a much better idea. I have no problem with weapons in different conditions existing in a game, for example: Pristine rifle, good rifle, rusty rifle, etc. That’s fine, but a good rifle should never degrade into a rusty rifle in the hands of the player.
Areas of open worlds dynamically level scaling to match players is another gripe I have. Once a player notices it, it takes away the feeling of progress from leveling up. In some cases, smarter players in games have found certain areas easier to beat with low level characters. It creates a bad kind of meta-game. I much prefer worlds where every area is built with a certain player level in mind. Honestly, overleveling in RPGs and going to wreck starting bandit camps is a joy that shouldn’t be taken away.
Crafting. I don’t want to have to remember the recipe to stuff, then find out where it is, then keep going back to make it again
I like crafting in general, but the “trek across the map to collect large quantities of ingredients only available in a specific place” part of it, when there is no way to automate that process, and especially if you also have very limited and manually managed inventory space, is maddening (looking at you, subnautica, gosh darnit.)
When you enter a level and the camera pans over every important thing in the level before you can move. I’m not an idiot. I can discover the level on my own. Stop holding my hand.
crafting dear god I hate crafting if I ever find the person that introduced crafting into the triple a formula…
I enjoy crafting if its a core game component, like in a survival game. But having to craft in order to upgrade your gear in Assassin’s Creed was just tedious.
This - either I avoid it completely, or I just craft whatever I can with the ingredients I have just randomly collected.
I hate how in a lot of retro games water kills you instanly.
Most open-world games have areas on the map that are blank until you “explore” them by climbing a tower of some kind and “activating” that region on your map.
This results in trudging blindly into the middle of every new area, ignoring interesting stuff along the way and beelining to the tower just so you can see the damn map. It’s an annoyingly unnatural way to explore.
I didn’t even realize that I disliked it until I played Far Cry 6, which has a much more organic and immersive landmark discovery process. You learn locations of interest from readables and by talking to friendly NPCs that you encounter in the world.
Edit: sp
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.
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.
