Decline Your Most Hated Gameplay Elements? (poll)

[Gregz]

darkpatriot: Someone should take a poll of all the most hated gameplay elements

Note: Choices are unlimited, select as many as you want. There may be some duplicate options or overlap. If a poll option is missing, please suggest below.

Edit: "Invisible walls" should read False walls.

 

[Fedora Master]

A lot of those are only relevant when you play weebshit.

So don't.

 

[NotSerious]

Time limits that punish exploration

Ah man they fuckin suck

 

[Strange Fellow]

Impressive list, but you missed one: Detective/Bat/Witcher/whatever-vision.

 

[Catacombs]

Randomized loot stats with no way to compare items side by side

This shit.

 

[V_K]

Wow, that's a fairly comprehensive list. It's going to be a pain to calculate the results. Some of my personal pet peeves that didn't make it:
- Tuff moral choices you can't refuse for no logical reason other than the designer deciding it should be a tuff moral choice;
- Arbitrary quest triggers, when to progress in one quest you need to do something unrelated in a different quest;
- Generally, quests. As in, having an NPC (or worse still, the quest journal) telling you exactly where you need to go and what you need to do next;
- Combat encounters (especially boss ones) that can only be solved through trial and reload (i.e. having no way of scouting or gathering intel and preparing ahead, nor of fleeing when things get too tough);
- Overreliance on RNG, where it can fuck you up no matter how good your tactics and character build are.

 

[Humanophage]

dealbreaker (my only addition)

Turn-based games with long animations that can't be sped up or removed

very obnoxious

Unskippable cinematics or cut scenes
Forcing players to go through long boring levels with little to no challenge
Long animations for harvesting resource nodes

obnoxious

Mandatory grind to be able to advance the game
Lazy filler trash encounters - but very obnoxious if turn-based
Arbitrary item equip restrictions - level
Overpowered/Unbalanced abilities (Harm in Arcanum, etc.)
Can only save at specific locations or times
Bland itemization where it is just a few numbers changing
Invisible walls

somewhat annoying

No Fast Travel
"Gimmick" encounters that require moon logic to solve
Puzzles that require moon logic to solve
Multiple dialogue options that all get the exact same response
Crafting items and armor that are always inferior to stuff you find just lying around
Inventory space being too low when the gameplay expects you to pick up tons of stuff
Inventory/Encumbrance requiring frequent trips back to town
Unskippable tutorials
Randomized loot stats with no way to compare items side by side
Having only one movement speed
Console UI with huge text that takes up 10x as much screen real estate as it needs
Quest descriptions and dialog that don't provide enough information to solve without Quest Markers.
Auto-replenishing hp/mana
Slow animations between stats screen, inventory, game
Games with false barriers you can never cross (shrubs), invisible walls, etc. - if they pretend to be free-form
You've entered a new game level. Now you can never go back and explore the previous level
Cut scenes forcing you to leave an area after a fight, before you get a chance to fully loot - annoying but understandable
Permadeath - may be highly annoying if restarting is boring or may be good if it is fun

neutral

Quest timers
Forced companions
Forced companion monologues, dialogues, conversation, etc.
Losing companions for "story purposes"
"hard locked doors" that you need story items to advance through
Encumbrance
False choices where it seems like you can choose one thing, but railroads you regardless (better than nothing)
Crafting items and armor that are always better than the stuff you find just lying around
Forced losing to enemies in cut scenes
Having different walking speed than an NPC you are following
Plot essential immortal NPCs that you can't kill
Arbitrary item equip restrictions (class, alignment, etc.)
Mandatory quests that force you to use playstyles you haven't built your character for
Unused party members having no way to catch up with the main party with levels/xp
Blindness
Long stretches of difficult gameplay with no opportunity to save in between
Useless skills (or severe underutilized in the game design)
Factions that have no memory of you murdering all of their buddies as long as you wait a bit
Games that cheat, or artificially break the ruleset in obvious ways - depends, might be good if it helps the AI and makes the game pleasantly challenging
Games that encourage prebuffing before encounters - may be positive, means the encounters are tough; but also means you have to game the system a bit too much
Permanent loss of companions (Battle Brothers, etc.) - as permadeath
Stats or information being buried 3 or 4 levels deep in the UI
Boss fights that introduce completely new mechanics instead of being a "final exam"
Rewarding or punishing the player for playing a certain way (bonus XP for stealth kills, etc.)

positive

Element or weapon type immunities on certain enemies
Enemies that take away experience/levels
Bosses or mobs that "die" twice and turn into a super boss after dying the first time - a bit cliche plot-wise, but perfectly fair
Mandatory alignment systems
Time limits that punish exploration - they usually don't, they just encourage efficiency
Difficulty tuned for metagamers - usually the metagamers aren't especially hardcore
Not being able to open a chest without having a thief, or theif-like skills

don't know what that is

Spinners
Games that require "corpse runs" but your corpse can fall into geometry and you lose all your stuff - never encountered

 

[Ivan]

any adventure/exploration game
-wrestles control of the camera away from you to show you an overview of the "level" you just entered
-wrestles control of the way from you to show what new path was opened by activating a switch

 

[Butter]

Romance.

 

[asfasdf]

I don't see pretentious writing and level scaling.

 

[wahrk]

When your character is hurt or injured in a cutscene and the game turns into a walking simulator where you hold W down and watch your character slowly stagger forward for dramatic effect.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

When someting requires real time to delevop. Like you spend X amount of resources into something but you have to wait real 30 minutes until it gets ready. That shit is from mobile games, don' put it in my rpgs ffs

 

[DraQ]

No QTEs?

Thread sucks, OP is a faggot, but happy new year regardless.

 

[Funposter]

Unskippable cutscenes, hard-locked doors, unskippable tutorials, essential NPCs, console UIs

 

[Gargaune]

tldr should've opened poll with "all of the below" I've been drinking happy new year

 

[octavius]

Now I understand why Gregsie's list of games completed in 2020 was so short.

 

[DalekFlay]

Lots of your Pathfinder complaints spread throughout I see, lol.

Anyway my number one pet peeve is save restrictions. Been saving anywhere I want since I started PC gaming with Sierra adventures and Wolfenstein 3D, and fuck you for trying to mess with my free time and take it away.

I voted for a half-dozen other annoyances but crafting making all other items pointless is a big one. Especially in games where exploration is a major part of the experience, like say Skyrim, being able to craft the best stuff early on makes diving into bandit caves to find chests rather pointless. In my Skyrim playthrough I was a stealthy archer and I remember working to craft an ebony bow and then having zero reason to give a shit about anything else. Same thing in a bunch of other recent games. New Vegas is glorious as always in letting you mod weapons without taking away the joy of finding a cool unique one.

 

[deuxhero]

Crafting only works when it provides either items entirely different from what you find and being the only source of that item type (for example, in New Vegas it's the main way you acquire improvised explosives which, besides the quest-gated Dogtag Fist, is the only weapon or armor you can craft in the vanilla game), or you want a very particular item (for example, in New Vegas almost all ammo bought and dropped is ball or corrosive shit, while crafting gives you the ammo types that are otherwise rare, or you want a very specific weapon type with particular properties)

 

[[UCHIHA]XxDarkSasuke420xX]

daily systems
as soon as that shit rears its head, the game's fucked

 

[flabbyjack]

Missed an option: Infinitely respawning enemies.

That was a major sore point at the end of Underrail... but it's really not so bad.

 

[Wunderbar]

Most of those options aren't mechanics/gameplay elements, just bad/lazy design decisions.

 

[Crispy]

How can you not know what a spinner is?

Fuckin' kids.

 

[PapaPetro]

Hit Points.
This isn't the 80s anymore. We can rebuild it, we've got the technology.

 

[PapaPetro]

How can you not know what a spinner is?

Fuckin' kids.

 

[Takamori]

First of all Happy new year grognards.

As for the thread, fuck I hate level scaling shows that the devs can't be assed to craft a decent system and encounters, so they just scale the whole thing makes power gain meaningless given that you will always be fighting in the same grounds. So that road bandit will be sporting in a few levels a fucking adamantite plate +5 and a magical two handed axe because fuck reasons of the encounter and what a road bandit is.

Not in the options but ARPG + MMO RPG loot convention, it shows the failure of development of game when the dev put that sort of shit, we will shower you with a fuckton of loot where you get little dopamine injection by seeing the number getting bigger and biggers, instead of being interested in the item power, brand,lore and when you acquired it. Acquiring a powerful item in any RPG should be an adventure itself, a whole story inside that. You acquire fucking bad ass two handed greatsword from the demon general in a very difficulty fight, you fucking earned that power.
With the zoomer arpg mmo retardness, any retard goon will drop "legendary" item and making gearing your character just a mindless retarded journey devaluing your journey in the RPG. Level Scaling + Plethora randomized Loot thats a way that I will categorize an RPG pure shit.
Story, character interaction can be sour experience depending but if you got a decent gameplay you might overlook the retarded shit the writer did.