Retarded mechanics/features that never works out

[Blutwurstritter]

Any gameplay mechanic/system can work and even enhance gameplay, if executed appropriately

Item durability that can be undone by a simple repair skill or a minimal fee at a shop.

The problem is usually that devs never really penalize players for fear of annoying them
As examples of good implementation: in Bayonetta 1 you can pick up the weapons of fallen enemies and while powerful they usually allow for only 2/3 combos before breaking, so must make them count; in Blade of Darkness most shields break rather quickly, the reason is to punish players for playing passively

I thought it was clear enough, but I meant specifically the combination of trivial repair and durability. Limits to the usage of items is fine, but please avoid butchering quotes to make a point.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Whelp, my bad
Although I would say the problem for that specific context is finding the mathematical sweet point between values that make the system too harsh (therefore frustrating and cumbersome) and values that are too lennient, making it an annoying chore

 

[Sykar]

Biowares retarded "guess your dialogue line" dialogue system:

 

[Reinhardt]

Fallout: New Vegas

is oblivion with guns

 

[Sykar]

New Vegas is actually a decent, outright great at times unlike Oblivicrap.

 

[Bohrain]

Yeah I can't really think of any game on the top of my head where I liked crafting. Usually the issue is that crafted items aren't really good and/or you have to pick up several specific environmental clutter items to do build something. I kinda wanted to do an IED build in NV sometime, but having to look for particular clutter items like wonderglue and tape for basic DIY nades and mines just isn't fun. In defence of Fallout 4 I think being able to reduce any item to base components was a good design decision since you don't have to look for a specific random item. But the actual things you could craft were basically just radiant quest basebuilding crap. If you had that base component thing along with appropriate equipment scarcity and high repair cost for better equipment, crafting could possibly add to something. The mechanic tends to boil down to clicking a button to combine an array of items into one thing and that's not really the appealing part when someone thinks of cooking or wood- or metalworking in real life.

 

[Sykar]

Crafting should be left to craftsmen NPCs imho. I still do not understand why we cannot have that. It is very unlikely that a traveling adventurer of any kind will have enough time to truly work on sophisticated hardware. I can see McGuyer like improvisation and that is a form of craftsmanship, almost art, but to make items of professional quality? I sincerely doubt with all the travels and dangers that you have enough peaceful times to actually me something significant in any reasonable amount of time. Craftsmen NPCs would at the very least be a good alternative. Underrail implemented it at least to some degree with the refurbishment system to upgrade unique weapons but it does not go far enough imho.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Fallout: New Vegas

is oblivion with guns

Oblivion

Oblivion with Guns

Oblivion with Guns and Skill-Checks

 

[Reinhardt]

new vegas is so shit even ll mods can't fix it.

 

[Camel]

1. Owlcat devs responsible for kingdom management/crusade mechanic must be sent to gulag.
2. Crafting is usually boring waste of time. Only Kotor 2, Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4 had a good system of crafting.
3. Breakable weapons are a pet peeve of mine since Diablo 2 and New Vegas.
4. Survival metrics like hunger, thirst etc. are rarely implemented competently unless it’s the Mask of Betrayer.

 

[0sacred]

"Trainers"

that is, buying stat increases with money. I've never seen a good implementation of this.

 

[NecroLord]

Yeah, I think Difficulty scaling makes no sense.
If a game is trying to use a certain RPG tabletop ruleset, then adjusting difficulty levels makes no sense.
Arcanum, for example, makes you get less XP and makes it harder to use your skills effectively. This is rather frustrating because certain skills, like Pick Locks, require serious investment to even have a chance to succeed, and playing on "Hard" decreases those chances.

 

[Kabas]

1. Game drowns you in trash loot that you're going to instanly sell the moment you hit the next shop.
2. Quests that force you to constantly backtrack or run in circles. Especially if going from point A to point B takes a lot of time.
3. Game drown you in trash fights, specifically when instead of fighting it feels like you're playing janitor who very slowly cleans the map. This one is the reason i ended up dropping icewind dale and the spellforce games i played recently.

 

[Gargaune]

Do you think REmake would be half as tense if you could save anywhere, at anytime?

Dunno, not interested in that kind of game. But Quicksave didn't stop STALKER or the Shalebridge Cradle from scaring the pants off me.

 

[Dadd]

"Trainers"

that is, buying stat increases with money. I've never seen a good implementation of this.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Do you think REmake would be half as tense if you could save anywhere, at anytime?

Dunno, not interested in that kind of game. But Quicksave didn't stop STALKER or the Shalebridge Cradle from scaring the pants off me.

STALKER and Thief are quite different beasts to classic Resident Evil in regards to their horror elements
RE's terror is due in great part to the fact you're exploring the same closed space - with more deadly obstacles than helpful resources - for hours
Having an even scarcer resource be your Save Game "currency" (which also can only be used at few specific locations on the game world) is a brilliant design choice - as it forces the player to truly ponder how far he wants to risk himself and also forces him to improvise and adapt went something goes wrong (as it heavily discourages savescumming)

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Never played it personally.

As far as I can tell you have no choice. The reason U4 is referenced as a good "morality play" is because progress often doesn't involve violence, which in 1985 was apparently hot shit to players.

The virtues themselves are cute. I remember reading cRPG Addict saying he used U4 as a perdonal basis for his ethics during his 20s...which is utterly absurd, but whatever. Kid wanted to stick to old-man Christianity I guess

Sounds kinda shit, honestly. I don't see how this makes a good morality system.

The player's growth in the virtues is just another aspect of Ultima 4's non-linear progression. The whole game is a scavenger hunt where the player has to collect several trinkets and passwords in order to gain entry to the Stygian Abyss. It makes it feel like an authentic fantasty adventure. The virtues are just a part of that. They don't serve the role of morality systems in newer games, which is mostly "player expression" or roleplaying, but rather to add more dynamic gameplay and decision making to the overall adventure. That's what makes them good. The player "collects" virtue points just as they collect the magical ship wheel, the skull of Mondain, the key of three parts, the eight stones of virtue, the bell, book, and candle, and discover the relationships between the eight virtues and three principles. All of that stuff culminating in the final expedition into the Abyss is one of the most memorable and pathos-filled scenes in any game for me.

5. Grind Required

6. Random encounters

I used to hate these too until I got into Dragon Quest (and even then, I knew some other CRPGs to handle random encounters very well, such as Ultima 4 and 5). That's because in more modern games these things are mostly vestigial. In, say, Dragon Quest 3, grinding has some preparation required. The best grinding spots are in dungeons and towers, which have extremely high encounter rates and stronger monsters. So in the early-game, before you have easy access to Outside and Return spells, you need to pace yourself and know when it's time to pull out; otherwise you'll end up dying, losing half your gold, and having to spend even more gold on reviving your party members. This, combined with the fast pace of progression, makes the process of getting stronger feel meaningful and fitting for the game, rather than a pointless exercise in "grinding".

 

[JarlFrank]

Crafting should be left to craftsmen NPCs imho. I still do not understand why we cannot have that. It is very unlikely that a traveling adventurer of any kind will have enough time to truly work on sophisticated hardware. I can see McGuyer like improvisation and that is a form of craftsmanship, almost art, but to make items of professional quality? I sincerely doubt with all the travels and dangers that you have enough peaceful times to actually me something significant in any reasonable amount of time. Craftsmen NPCs would at the very least be a good alternative. Underrail implemented it at least to some degree with the refurbishment system to upgrade unique weapons but it does not go far enough imho.

BG2 had the only good crafting in an RPG ever.

Find broken legendary artifact.

Pay smith to reassemble artifact.

No "collect 30 pieces of super-ore to forge the sword of badassery, but only if you maxed out your smithing skill lol"

 

[almondblight]

5. Grind Required
I'm not sure how narrow your asian eyes have to be to don't see what a waste of time is the idea of grind. You literally do the same shit a if you're working second full time job in some god forsaken game and it's somehow enjoyable? That's one of the reasons why I never could get into JRPGs and I can't understand what I had in mind when I was little younger, played MMOs and lost hours of my life on grinding some useless shit while cool kids made fun of me buying everything they needed in Item Shop.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Procedurally generated dungeons/quests. Usually done in the name of variety and freshness, produces the opposite effect.

Procedurally generated dungeons, especially with a good algorithm, I can tolarate, but procedurally generated quests is cold, impersonal, incurable, untreatable terminal cancer.

 

[almondblight]

I hate the IE/NWN/PoE style "traps." You waste one characters points pumping up a detect traps skill, then you're whole party moves slowly around with your thief in front so you don't accidentally trigger them, and then when a red rectangle appears you click disarm trap and click on the red rectangle to make it disappear. And then do the exact same thing 1000 times. There's no thought to it, the whole thing is just a colossal amount of busywork dropped on the player.

 

[Butter]

I hate the IE/NWN/PoE style "traps." You waste one characters points pumping up a detect traps skill, then you're whole party moves slowly around with your thief in front so you don't accidentally trigger them, and then when a red rectangle appears you click disarm trap and click on the red rectangle to make it disappear. And then do the exact same thing 1000 times. There's no thought to it, the whole thing is just a colossal amount of busywork dropped on the player.

I'm pretty sure PoE actually lets you deploy traps that you've disarmed. It's not as awful as it was in the IE games.

 

[JarlFrank]

Procedurally generated dungeons/quests. Usually done in the name of variety and freshness, produces the opposite effect.

Procedurally generated dungeons, especially with a good algorithm, I can tolarate, but procedurally generated quests is cold, impersonal, incurable, untreatable terminal cancer.

But once you've seen enough proc gen dungeons, you've seen them all. They stop being fun because it's just going to be the same boring random shit over and over again. You explore and you KNOW you will not find anything unique, anything with purpose. No hand-designed encounters tailored to be a challenge. No hand-designed artifacts hidden in some dark corner. It's all just random crap spewed forth by some algorithm, without purpose or soul.

 

[Konjad]

Romance.

Patty in Risen 2 was awesome though.

 

[Hag]

Gimmick bosses.

Not a RPG-only plague mind you. There are bosses that are powerful opponents firing deadly spells and crushing attacks that you need to bash to dust, requiring skills, experience, equipment or whatever you've gain during your adventure.
And there are the bosses that are invincible but if you hit the crystals in some order or do some trick with that background prop or use that weapon three time at a specific time it explodes and you've won.
A real fight vs a puzzle. While some classical bosses are badly made, scripted fights always leave me unsatisfied and somehow angry.

Best example I have in mind RPG-wise is Morrowind. I love it but the second Dagoth Ur encounter is bullshit and anticlimatic. Tribunal and Bloodmoon get it right though.

 

[luj1]

Crafting.

Worked great in Arcanum and Underrail

Even in SWKotOR I-II