Little details in RPGs that annoy you

[markec]

Games that have low level enemies that look like giant dangerous monsters and high level enemies that look like small creatures that look harmless compared to low level ones.

Elden Ring.

And every MMO ever made.

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

Story heavy games with a specific villain but with some random character you make that does nothing to fulfill the premise of the story.
If they want to have a specific story, I prefer a specific character with a more specific role.
If they want you to make whatever character with a bunch of random party members, make it story light or looser.
Fallout games are an example of where it's story light (relative to some other RPGs) and you end up with some different endings because your character can be different.
Almost all stories in games are terrible and pointless so I think the casuals don't really care all that much but I just need to tune it out.

you're trying so hard to fit in

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The "emulation" of exotic languages by stupid word substitution of generic terms, and the forced repetition of these terms.
Ekera!

 

[curds]

A lot of RPG modeling was done as a massive abstraction back in the day because there was either no computers involved at all, or very primitive computers. Now, we have the hardware to delve much deeper, and these abstractions are no longer necessary.

Emulating PnP is a noble cause, but it should not be the end goal of the cRPG.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

current audiences expect primarily mouse driven interfaces.

You wish. This wasn't true anymore in the last 15 years.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

When you find useful expensive stuff, including money in random barrels scattered around settlements.

Partially related to this: when wild animals or unsentient monster drop money.

 

[Fedora Master]

Non-shared inventories. Especially when the game also encourages hoarding.

Reading the thread it seems most people here can't handle abstractions.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Combat against dragons and such should be nothing like typical combat. Imagine trying to take a dragon down with a sword or a spear. Those thing would be like toothpicks.

This was particularly annoying in Elder Ring, where you can kill a dragon by repeatedly hitting its pinky toe with a sword.

 

[Darth Canoli]

For me, I can't STAND it when an RPG based on a medieval model includes any kind of modern language and/or phrases in it as part of its actual PC or NPC dialog.

This is the worst offender, along with 20XX purple dangerhair.

Also:

• Cooldowns
• RTwP
• Uncontrollable companions
• Backtracking areas with no new content
• Fetch quests
• Items with level requirements (DOS)
• Any diablo itemization (+1% XXX)
• obvious tier itemization
• x2 power (or more) each tier when doing tier itemization
• Garbage UI (Elminage)
• ...

 

[Fedora Master]

Actually, reading this thread, it seems like most people here don't like RPGs.

 

[Falksi]

Fishing.

Fuck RPG fishing.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Actually, reading this thread, it seems like most people here don't like RPGsJRPGs.

 

[Faarbaute]

Voice actors with ethnic accents that don't fit their character or their place in the setting.

Bonus points if you can immediately place their accent in the real world, and it's something particularly obnoxious.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Maps that can't be annotated.

 

[monilloman]

Cooldowns

Currencies that don't make sense, I'd rather have bartering over those.

Romance-able companions. Dialogue is hard enough as it is considering you only get a finite amount of answers with the character you're trying to portray and it only gets worse when "seducing" someone - it feels like an awkward minigame, I already have dating for that awkwardness

Edit: JOURNALS WITH NO MANUAL EDITING. Why can't we write on our journals

 

[Joggerino]

I hate when I look at all possible party members in an RPG and it's a multiracial mishmash.

 

[JarlFrank]

- Cleave - this doesn't make any sense in terms of RL combat. How would you cleave in RL? You would have to cut cleanly through the first guy's torso to hit the next guy. Yeah...

As ridiculous as this clip is, EVEN IN IT it wouldn't be a cleave, since the sword got stuck midway through.

He kills 2 and hurts 1 with a single strike, which is basically what the Cleave feat in D&D mechanically represents.

D&D has no rules about swords getting stuck in enemies or not.

 

[JarlFrank]

-Swimming in armor. It's always hilarious to me in any game. Complete immersion break.

 

[TedNugent]

-Swimming in armor. It's always hilarious to me in any game. Complete immersion break.
-Likewise, when a game treats going in and out of water like it's nothing. Which is every game really. Most people are deeply uncomfortable walking in even moderately wet shoes, let alone trudging through waist high water.
-Armor in general is not depicted correctly. We could have a debate on the general approximation of hit points and what they represent in the abstract but the fact remains the concept of 'punching through armor' with a sword is ridiculous. Plate armor was a full tech tier ahead of medieval weaponry to the point that knights could wail on each other all day long without seriously harming one another. Battles were fought until one side got tired and gave up, then they paid the winners some money. Or they devolved into fist fights and grapples with combatants reaching under each other's armor and pulling their opponents nuts off (true story).

Grappling is obviously challenging to implement in a CRPG and would require a separate and possibly more involved system than the typical hit roll versus DC system. But it's worth exploring over the usual magic buff/debuff stacking garbage that passes for complexity in a CRPG combat system.

Also, point of fact, while swords were incapable of chopping through armor and are generally poor percussive instruments, that doesn't mean that a longbow or crossbow could not pierce munitions grade plate outside of the nose of the breastplate. It also doesn't mean that you could not half sword and guide the tip of, say, an estoc into an armor gap or joint similar to a rondel dagger.

In my opinion, one of the finest knightly weapons was the pollax, since it is a fabulous lever and has a sharp, narrow spike. Now, a game that could appropriately adapt something like this would be a really fascinating thing.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

- Cleave - this doesn't make any sense in terms of RL combat. How would you cleave in RL? You would have to cut cleanly through the first guy's torso to hit the next guy. Yeah...

As ridiculous as this clip is, EVEN IN IT it wouldn't be a cleave, since the sword got stuck midway through.

He kills 2 and hurts 1 with a single strike, which is basically what the Cleave feat in D&D mechanically represents.

D&D has no rules about swords getting stuck in enemies or not.

Oh, I didn't realize he was meant to have killed the guy behind also. Haha, the sideshot clearly shows that his sword is not long enough to have done this, maybe he disemboweled the guy behind with the violent splatter from the first guy.

 

[JarlFrank]

Best scenes from the movie are King John's little rage episodes tho:

 

[Zizka]

* Resurrection in games.

It makes no sense. Villains can never die and neither can heroes. There’s no end to anything, no impact to the finality of death.

* Poison which doesn’t scale its damage output on total HP. It’s useful at first then becomes a waste otherwise.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Games where there's a vast magic system, but all the attack spells are useless, owing either to harsh mana limitations or just being too weak, and regulating the system entirely to utility magic.

 

[Sratopotator]

Porky, you do realize that combat in D&D has been purposefully, and by design, obfuscated by representative analogs in things like "hit points", "armor class", and the like, right?

Yes, I realize this, but what you have to realize is that this choice has led to a lot of problems:

1. Because the DnD power curve approach leads to non-realistic outcomes (e.g. constantly growing health, damage, etc), it leads to a lot of boring combat. Once your character has 50,000 hitpoints and hits for 2,000 damage, most fights become trash fights, and non-trash fight between you and a dragon with similar stats take forever, while you exchange blows for 2 hours. Compare this to actual combat, which is always exciting and one blow can decide a fight, and you will see what I mean.

2. Things like Power Attacks never add anything of value to the combat. It usually comes with a penalty to hit chance, so you never use it while having low toHit, and then always use it once your toHIt is high. Real combat abilities should be more interesting.

Sir Porky, this is beyond stupid.
Real life being abstracted into simple to understand verbs with simple systems behind them is not a choice here.

"Abstracting" is intrinsically entwined with, among other things:
- Science, reality and your brain - when a human tries to describe how shit works, abstracting and simplifications always pop up, impossible for it to work otherwise considering the complexities of reality and how humans function
- Games - games of all kinds are abstractions of reality, that's a big part of their definition; RPGs, c or not, deal with this in spades, due to the usual focus on systems
- 'Computors and how do they work' - even if you know how shit works irl, you still have to "convert" it to code, which in all cases means literally abstracting a phenomenon (that's already abstracted by human cognition, see above), literally into numbers, which then are literally abstracted into images you see on your screen

So, playing even the smallest, inconsequential computer game already results in like 4 layers of abstraction from reality.
Using simplifications is not a choice at all. "Representative analogs" that Crispy talks about, will always exist, if we won't switch to 100% perfect simulations (btw, who would want to "play" those?).

So, god fucking dammit, argue with D&D's implementation of something, but not with the fact that they use abstractions of reality. Having shit like Power Attack in games is a necessity. Its implementation may be dumb, sure.

 

[Sratopotator]

Regarding op question:
Inconsistent pc/npc character systems and templates.
When a game gives you a system, or a character sheet looking thing, and then completely ignores to either apply the systems to npcs, or display those npcs at least partially in a similar fashion. If something is trying to be an RPG, I always wonder wtf designers think, not creating the game with shit like that in mind. It's not like simplified character sheets are exotic, even to mainstream audience.
Problem can apply to gameplay too of course, if characters do not act according to the system the game provides - hp sponges, bosses, player/enemy being unique snowflakes, AI "cheating", etc.
Just to get the point across, cause the issue is not limited to cRPGs: It's like in a COD-like shooter, sp mode, when you get to the last fight of a map, only to find out the big bad boss is not Health-based, but rather script/specific trigger based. You can shoot the motherfucker all you want through the cracks of his barrier, but he is too strong, hits are not recognized, you have to use that conveniently placed 1 ton ACME anvil.