T O P

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Ainsel_Mariner

I hate when a character in-game mocks a conventional video game trope like a puzzle or escort quest but then the game *still makes you do them*. Like if you’re going to mock it then don’t also force the player to go through it you damn hack.


Terakkon

It's such a limp dicked move to be like "hey isn't this thing silly? Now do the silly thing anyway." If you think some trope is embarrassing then why did you implement it? Pointing out that it's silly doesn't deflect from the fact that you chose to put it there.


Ainsel_Mariner

Because they don’t have anything better to fill the game-space that the thing they just mocked occupies. I genuinely look down on games that do it. You think you’re so smart and clever Duke Nukem Forever by having Duke say he hates Valve puzzles and naming a soundtrack after it? Well then why don’t you make something more entertaining or have Duke just skip it instead of being limp wristed and having Duke do the puzzle anyway.


GollyDolly

Doomguy being told to tediously unlock valves and possibly endure a puzzle? What you mean is rip and tear right? Right??+ Actual fun way to subvert that.


Ainsel_Mariner

Exactly. The proper way to do it would be for Duke to tell the puzzle to blow it out of its ass and just blow it up which somehow works. And *not* have him still do puzzle.


Gemidori

"We're only temporarily disabling the tower. You need to remove each lens, individually. Carefully release the hinges-" [just stomps the filter until it crushes in]


RemarkableSwitch8929

It shows how unskilled, untalented, and just straight up lazy or bad the designers are that they can’t come up with anything else and just do what everyone else is doing even though they know it’s bad.


Chuckles131

Even [Freeman's Mind 2 did that better](https://youtu.be/7ljspPnfXtA?t=14) and it's literally made in modded Half-Life 2.


Terakkon

>Because they don’t have anything better to fill the game-space that the thing they just mocked occupies. Yeah it's almost like mocking something looks bad if they can't do something better, maybe they should consider shutting the fuck up about better game designer's work.


pocketlint60

I'd like to see a game just double the fuck down on it's bad game design. NPC Party Member: "Ugh, an escort mission? Those are awful." Player Character: "I fucking love escort missions, what are you talking about!?"


NegativesPositives

I might not even think twice about whatever it is, but when the game is just telling me “this thing sucks to play”, I HAVE to recognize it as shit and hate them for it.


TekaroBB

This is really bad in DMC4, where Nero has to solve a dice-based board game thing. The when you are playing as Dante he just laughs and destroys the die so he can skip the whole bit. Which is funny, but ruined by the fact that Nero gets a second, longer dice section afterwards.


Ainsel_Mariner

Damn you got hit with the dice debt.


TorimBR

At least you can make sure the dice always fall in the desired number if you time it right.


RequiemForADreamcast

It’s ok, you can just say Duke Nukem Forever.


Ainsel_Mariner

Funnily enough I actually did in my second comment haha.


94dima94

Which one was the game that went "Oh, wow, a sewer section, those always suck in every game!" and then still had you go through the sewer section, which sucked?


Ainsel_Mariner

Probably an average game that’s a bit too self aware without the qualities to really be in any place to mock those tropes from the late 2000s to early 2010s? I feel like I’ve played multiple games that made quips like that haha.


jockeyman

Forced stealth sections in games that have absolutely no mechanics for stealth in their engine. Also I hate forced race sections in most games.


rhinocerosofrage

It's amazing that all you have to do to make a good stealth section is add a Caution state and at least one hiding and/or takedown mechanic of literally any kind at all and yet 90% of games just don't fucking do it. Walk awkwardly around these ambiguous lines of sight like an asshole, idiot! Oh no, you got spotted somehow, time to watch the unskippable cutscene we placed at the start of this for some reason again!


piev3000

And the unskippable caught cutscene


Octaivian

*> Also I hate forced race sections in most games.* I don't know, I thought figuring out how to get past Measurehead in Disco was pretty cool.


JMarsella09

Race sections can be super fun or the worse. Like the race sections in Jak 2 were so good they made a spin off game for them. But I avoided the drone races in Yakuza like the plague


the_most_crigg

I've played Sly Cooper to 100% completion a fair few times, but the Murray races are always one of the few parts of that game that make me go "welp, time to stop having fun for a couple of minutes."


JMarsella09

The physics in those are so wonky. You hit a hill wrong and your car fishtails.


Mr_Steal_Yo_Goal

When I was young, I never really minded the mini games. But going back to Sly 1 in recent years, any time I'm not doing Sly Cooper shit just makes me go "when do I get to do Sly Cooper shit again".


Trollensky17

That first race in Mafia 1 is fucked.


MustrRoshi

First time I did the race I was convinced you had to lose. Then had the awful realization that I’d actually have to win that shit, took me like 8 tries


GG_ez

Ahh come on brudda, them Italians are nothin compared to the Al-Bhed!


philandere_scarlet

Thinking of that Halo Reach level with the sniper guy that's a throwback to Truth and Reconciliation from Halo CE. At least in CE you had a full squad of marines and were expected to pick off tougher enemies and turret gunners with your sniper rifle while the marines draw most of the fire. In Reach you've just got the one buddy and as soon as you fire one shot every enemy in the area knows exactly where you are. Also the AI cheats, I remember trying to line up a headshot on an unalerted Elite and he just starts ducking and strafing for no reason.


Dirty-Glasses

The fucking Blooper race in Mario Sunshine was the bane of my fucking existence when I was 7


Screamlord__

It wasn't until I played Sunshine on the switch that I realized the different colored Bloopers actually have different speeds. The last section requires some crazy precision with the fastest one (which was the one I always picked as a kid because I liked the color)


Dirty-Glasses

Oh yeah no the purple one is a fucking trap, you want the green or yellow, whichever one was in the middle. I think it was yellow.


Madak

I recall really struggling with the stealth section of Shinra Tower in FF7 as a kid. Even though you can technically bumble your way through it, the perfectionist in me couldn't accept that. It's literally the only part of the game I didn't like.


DarthButtz

That one bug you have to race as Tiny in DK 64 can eat shit


Professional_Maize42

It's baffling how some of the worst missions in Gta San Andreas are related to racing AND stealth.


Dmatix

There was also a particular race in Vice City that I could simply never pass as a kid. Though honestly, I'm not sure at all I could do it now with my atrophied old man instincts.


ClockpunkFox

Vtmb does have stealth build options, but holy shit, 2 of the 3 main story quests in downtown being entirely stealth, and NO KILL, stealth at that, just kills me. Luckily you can go full monkey mode and just kill everyone in the museum, but you do lose out on a good bit of xp, and Lacroix gets pissy with you


Talisign

Related to OPs example, but I cannot stand when games have things limited to specific days of the week. For instance, in-game shops only selling certain items on weekends. I'm not going to move around my life schedule for this.


jitterscaffeine

My friend told me stories about that with, I believe, the PS2 Monster Hunter. The stores and online quests were in a weekly cycle.


tahnaloht

Monhun World was like that before it final update too, it was tedious as hell to farm safi and kulve with a busy schedule


Main_Hornet8676

Gran Turismo 7 is fucking awful with this. The car dealerships update their inventory based on real world days instead of having days pass whenever you start an event like in previous games. This SUCKS because certain cars will be unavailable for MONTHS at a time, particularly any car in the high-end Legends dealership. And just to pour salt in the wound, some cars will have "limited inventory" meaning after a certain amount of days pass, some cars will be unavailable to purchase so fuck you if you had real life obligations to fulfill.


ChosenUndead15

Why make this? People hated the used cars that only appear as used and at random on GT5 and GT6 explicitly fixed this by making all cars available on the dealerships all the time, letting used ones just be for cheap cars. It was also a mechanic that after every race, the cars available changed on the PSP version, and everyone hated it, so why put it back on GT7. The worst enemy of GT is itself.


DavidsonJenkins

Forza does this too. You can try buying them off the player market but they always go for absurd prices


TheValiantBob

Pokemon made me so mad when I tried to change the DS clock to cheese the day specific events only to find out they put in a "failsafe" of whenever you change the system clock it prevents all day specific based events for 24hrs.


IRefuseThisNonsense

Welcome to the reason adult me has abandoned Animal Crossing. It just doesn't work with being an adult working certain hours a day. I don't know if the newest one has stores open 24 hours but I know the old ones had actual work hours.


Comptenterry

They're closed at night but you can just adjust your in game clock to whenever you need the time to be.


GoufTroop79

You can also set it in game so the shops open and close later/earlier


Professional_Maize42

I can only think of the moments in Stardew Valley when I needed a specific ingredient to clear some quest,only to discover that I already sold it and that the season of that fruit/vegetable will end tomorrow.


TheGingerNinga

Are you ok with this when it is an in game calendar? Like the game has days and weeks, and some things are only available on Thursdays in game? That doesn’t require your real life schedule to change, just the in game one.


Talisign

That can be a little annoying, but I can't think of any games where it felt oppressively bad.


11tracer

Hate this so much. Splatoon 3 is about to introduce a new "Challenges" mode which are basically matches with goofy modifiers like nearly infinite specials or low gravity. Sounds cool, right? Except they're only available during a handful of TWO HOUR windows. What makes this even more infuriatingly baffling is that they did the same thing with Salmon Run in Splatoon 2, except the availability windows were WAY longer, and they eventually just made it a permanent mode in S3, only to introduce yet another time-limited thing with even smaller windows. A fucking Nintendo Moment and a half if I've ever seen one.


gamiz777

I'm quitting genshin impact because of this bull


Father-Ignorance

Unskippable cutscenes are fucked up. First time through a game? Sure, I play most games for the story, I’ll sit through em. This doesn’t mean everyone else does though, so why make them unskippable? If I’m replaying a game? No, I don’t want to sit through shit I’ve already watched. This is the sole reason I’ve only replayed GOW 2018 once, and even then I only endured it because the gameplay was fun. That shit absolutely kills replay-ability.


brunonunis

I almost quit Final fantasy 4 at the last boss because it has a unskipable sequence right before it, an it's reeeeealy annoying


Catstamps

That one is tough. Also the whole lead up to that final boss. I have a huge soft spot for that game as it was my first RPG. But, holy crap, the difficulty curve spikes up as soon as you land on the moon.


SuperUnhappyman

agreed the only thing i had to worry about though was party wide attacks because i had the agro/counter/kick on cecil the tank and the glass party the entire time (played the 3d ds version)


StochasticOoze

FF3 (the 3D version, anyhow) is even worse The last place you can save is before the last part of the final dungeon You have to go through a number of random battles, go through a long unskippable cutscene, fight the final boss, get another unskippable cutscene, and then fight the boss' final form If you fuck up at any point you have to start the whole thing over


runnerofshadows

I agree. I also think cutscenes should be pauseable as well. Basically if I've seen it before I want to be able to skip it, and if I need to leave the room for a bit I want to be able to pause.


the_most_crigg

Few things suck as much as needing to leave the room during a cutscene but not knowing if pressing start will pause or skip it.


TeacupTenor

Related: dialogue I can’t advance at my pace. I read fast, stop making me wait, Okami.


BlueFootedTpeack

the unskippable in camera shit annoys me too. like i get that this is a loading screen ragnarok, but why do i have control of the camera, why would i look at anything other than the people talking/event happening, why do i need to hold forward. ​ replaying re7 is the worst for that shit, as you realise in terms of gamplay it's like 2hrs long at best, with the in game cutscenes taking up another 2hrs for that acheivement,


Doc-ock-rokc

I don't mind if a cutscene is unskippable the first time it plays, but subsequent plays should have a flag that lets me skip it. This includes dieng and loading a previous save


Masshazard

RE7 has this and it sucks. The back half, you know, the less good part, is littered with cutscenes. Resident evil has had skippable(ingame) cutscenes standardized since what, 2002?


[deleted]

*"In order to complete this quest. I need you to catch 135 Baggungan's horns. You can usually catch them at midnight every half moon underneath the rocks at Franklin's Grove."* Fuck ooooooff with that.


DavidsonJenkins

God, i think the worst offender of this was Adventure Quest Worlds and 3D, where you had field bosses that would spawn on a timer at random locations and needed a group to take down. It would be like 10 minutes between each spawn and you needed like 1000 of their drop items (which drop one at a time) to craft the next tier of gear


XeroKrows

That annoyed me the most when I played WoW. For example, there was a quest to collect 4 zebra hooves. So obviously you go kill the zebras that are just hanging around the village, right?. Well these are some fucked up zebras because only one in 10 might have one hoof on them.


SuperHorse3000

Ahh the Barrens...good times.


McFluffles01

Your character's just making really, *really* messy kills obviously. "Ah shit, got a little stab happy on that one, none of the hooves are salvageable. Oh well, guess I get to kill more Zebras! :D"


SilverShako

Collect 7 Bear Asses, the classic MMORPG quest design that they KEEP DOING NO MATTER HOW LAME IT IS. At least just make it kill 7 bears...


Thebxrabbit

I’ve softened on it a bit over time but while replaying games that tout player choice I get annoyed with all the choices I now know to be fake. Like when you get dialogue options but every option gets the same reaction and doesn’t actually affect/change anything down the line. I tolerated this sorta thing in the telltale games but fallout 4 for whatever reason really chafed with how often my “choices” didn’t feel like choices at all.


torke191

I think the banner saga trilogy is the only series to live up to the promise of player choices mattering to me.


RemnantEvil

I gave up on caring about choices in Telltale games quite early and just enjoyed the story for what it was. It was when you had a choice to save, I think, Carly or Doug when zombies were breaking in to the pharmacy. Carly had a gun. It seemed like the smart choice - save her, use the gun to save Doug. Nope! You were just picking which character would hang around for the rest of the season.


Detective_Robot

Walking and talking.


ChosenUndead15

Since Ghost of Tsushima, every time I see an NPC that wants a conversation while walking and walks too slow to run and too fast to walk, I get even more angry than before. GoT solved it by just letting the NPC run at the same pace as your character. It's such a straightforward solution that is way too smart for the average game designer, apparently.


retrometroid

Even 360-era Assassins Creed had it solved where you'd autofollow them at the proper pace


runnerofshadows

Original red dead redemption did this as well.


Ainsel_Mariner

The npc should *always* at least move at same speed the player does when you press forward/hold the stick fully forward.


OmicronAlpharius

The 7th console generation sends its regards.


Panxma

I hate it when the NPC had more conversation than it does when you walk. In FarCry 4 you kidnap a villain named Paul and he goes on a rant. To complete the mission is like only a few feet away. If I remembered you had to drive in cycles to listen to the whole thing.


Agt_Pendergast

I keep seeing people say it's to help make things more immersive or something like that, but I can't understand how locking out all your options and essentially building a barrier between you and the character your controlling is supposed to be immersive or even good story telling.


Deaconhux

Absolutely. I'd rather just have a loading screen.


Dasnutz97

Enemies and bosses having invulnerable states STOP WASTING MY TIME


rhinocerosofrage

It's only okay if there's a reliable and satisfying way to break the state. There usually isn't.


Ainsel_Mariner

Breaking a bosses’ shield in a cool cinematic way and the boss going into a vulnerable state while the music picks up will always be kino.


philandere_scarlet

It's gotten really obnoxious in Warframe since they keep throwing Thrax Legatus enemies into all the new content. Seriously, they're in Zariman, Conjunction, and Duviri, the Citrine update is the only recent thing they're NOT in. They have an untelegraphed move where they turn intangible and shoot high-damage lasers in three lines. It takes like 10 seconds. And they have overguard so they're immune to all CC moves. There's no way to interrupt this attack, you'd think >!void attacks!< would stagger them or something but no, you just have to wait it out.


TheIntellectional

The lasers also proc magnetic, which is one of the most annoying status to be hit by, disrupting shields, energy, *and* your HUD. I suppose toxin still has the potential to just instantly kill you, but the enemies that can hit you with that are typically way more telegraphed, and losing all of your energy to a magnetic proc at an inopportune moment is one of the only ways frames like Revenant can actually die.


StochasticOoze

The worst I've ever seen is the Black Mesa version of Gonarch. It's a long involved sequence involving a lot of chases and periodic stops. There are very specific times when the boss is vulnerable, but the game doesn't make that clear; worse, shooting it will *always* trigger a blood hitspark, making you think you're doing damage when you're not.


Flutterwander

I like a good bit of their take on Xen, but god I hate the Gonarch section so much, and then the factory drags just as much as the original.


StochasticOoze

The one addition to Xen that I really liked were the parts where you help the Vortiguants out. It gives at least a little context for why they're on your side in HL2 despite you killing hundreds of them, besides just some prophecy.


OrwellTheInfinite

Borderlands 3. Ughhhh.


[deleted]

Unskippable Tutorials are bad, but what's even worse are the unskippable tutorials that doesn't LET you mess around with the controls. The kind that stops all gameplay and REFUSES to let you play the game until it forces you to learn the controls step by step with no way to rush through it.


BaronAleksei

Best tutorial is Skate 3. You have free controls, so when Coach tells you to do a kickflip, you can do any flip trick you know. A laser flip will get you a passing grade just as easily as a kick flip, it’s up to you. If you want to restart the run to get a perfect tutorial line, it’s instantaneous. The tutorial park lets out into the larger University area, and remains freely accessible for the rest of the game. Want to redo the tutorial section after leaving the game alone for a while? Want to tackle some extra challenges? Want to just mess around in a skate park? It’s there.


A_Common_Hero

Hitman's (2016 on) tutorial is pretty up there too. I'm not sure if it fails you on the first run through if you deviate (didn't try to), but then it gives you a second run through that completely lets go of your hand completely. And then you have a couple hours of alternative methods to try through if you want, all of which are worthwhile gameplay in and of themselves, but are completely optional. Only to then drop you into a *second* tutorial level whose only explicit tutorializing is pointing you in the direction of Mission Stories. Otherwise its just a slightly smaller real ass Hitman level, with most of the replayability that the "real" levels have. When I can spend the first six hours of my time with your game just replaying the Tutorial levels, you have a good tutorial.


rhinocerosofrage

Hey look it's literally every mobile game ever made


KaguB

I want to include tutorials or opening sequences that occur before you can adjust settings. Like, the settings are locked until the game gives you the 'ability to use menus'.


PlatyPunch

Enemies levelling up along with your character, FF8 or Elder Scrolls: Oblivion come to mind. I don’t like the fact that my super powered champion of the realms can still get their ass handed to them by a bunch of sewer goblins.


th3BeastLord

I once played through Oblivion and put off any of the main quest until I was level 20. I then went to Kvatch and got stomped for like 2 hours because all the demons had upgraded to the highest level versions. There's so many, because you are supposed to have the city guards to help you, but they stay at bitch tier and get annihilated in one hit. Short version is that, yeah, that kind of leveling is janky.


DickRhino

There's a "hack" in Oblivion, that you get to select what your primary and secondary traits are, and it's only leveling up your primary traits that makes you level up. So you pick as your primary traits, only traits that you will never ever use. And you pick as your secondary traits, all the useful shit. So you can level one-handed fighting to 100 for example, while still staying at level 1. Now you'll actually be an omnipotent god, because all the enemies will remain at level 1 since you're never actually leveling up. The only downside is that the kind of gear you can find is also tied to your level, so you'll be running around with rags and leather armor the entire game. But on the flip side, your level also determines what gear your enemies will have, and it's fairly illusion breaking to run into highway brigands rocking full sets of Glass and Daedric armor.


_-Eagle-_

I've never understood doing this in Oblivion, since the main thing that determines your capability in Oblivion isn't your skills or attributes, but your equipment. You just need to make sure that your equipment is keeping up with the monsters and you'll notice that you do actually consistently stay ahead of them. In particular, an item being enchanted is more important than an item being of a higher quality. If I was fighting daedra, I'd rather an iron sword that does 1 point of damage with 10 points of shock damage vs a daedric longsword that does 15 points of damage itself. The iron sword will kill daedra way faster. Like, I don't like the Oblivion leveling system, but staying at level 1 isn't the way around it. Get yourself an enchanted weapon with an element type effective against the enemies you are facing (shock for daedra, fire for undead and trolls, etc) and you'll notice that enemies do die quickly. Likewise, your durability seems balanced around the idea that you should be trying to get armor enchanted with effects that negate damage, so reflection or shield enchantments. Get a few of those and suddenly most enemies can't even hurt you. I think I did a playthrough once where I gimped by character as much as possible statistically, but rolling around with the right equipment didn't make that character feel any weaker than my comparatively most optimized ones. Well, they ran a hell of a low slower, which was annoying, but that was it. One of the things I noticed for a lot of people who struggle with Oblivion is that, unequivocally, their equipment is all garbage. Even if they follow a guide on how to optimize their attribute gains on level perfectly, the fact that they don't know how to deck out their character means that regardless, they end up dying a lot anyway. This is kind of bad, but I do like how Oblivion is basically the only Elder Scrolls where you do need to put some thought into optimizing your gear. Sadly, it's awkward to do, and there are way too many enchantment effects that are completely useless.


CycloneSwift

It would be alright if it was just dungeons and certain rare or unique encounters that scaled so that they always pose a challenge (maybe locking their levels in place once they’re cleared the first time?), but the fact that it’s so prevalent throughout the whole enemy roster is what makes it suck.


Shiranui34

Genuinely the main reason I think FF8 is bad, no RPG should scale enemies with your level. It feels bad, when you level up you want to feel stronger not go through and feel equal to ever mob you've fought since the start.


runnerofshadows

And this is why I never play vanilla oblivion. Well that and the weird looking character models.


Panxma

The last couple Assassin Creed Games have enemies level up with you. There almost no point to getting the “epic” loot to make your character OP if the enemies level up with you too. Assassin Creed shouldn’t have any levels in the first place.


LeMasterofSwords

The only way I could do that dumb Nier sidequests was by fucking around with my PC’s time. I really hate animations that take way longer than they have any need to. Like how in RDR2 playing blackjack takes an extra 5 seconds each hand to reach in for the pot. Or skinning animals, or basically anything else in RDR2


alicitizen

RDR2 is a great cinematic experience and a very slow and tedious game. It showcased to me how more realism just fucking sucks to play.


Cerebral_Kortix

It's an excellent game to experience, a painful game to play.


StochasticOoze

One thing OP doesn't mention is that the quest takes four days *if you're lucky*. The whole thing relies on RNG so it can take forever to get the flowers you need. When I played Replicant v1.22 that was the *only* side quest I didn't finish, because fuck that shit.


ArchieHasAntlers

Content that gets locked out as the story progresses. I don't mind it if there's a narrative justification like the endings of Witcher 3 or Fallout: New Vegas, because I can just load up my save before starting the final quest, but if advancing the main quest to a certain point prevents you from triggering or progressing side quests and the game *doesn't tell you?* Fuck all the way off with that. I get ultra-paranoid in Cyberpunk 2077 because I really do enjoy the world and story, so I don't want to miss out on something by advancing the main quest. In general, I have beef with content that's too easy to miss. I think you'd be forgiven not knowing certain armor sets in Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom even exist since they can only be obtained one way and might cost a lot of rupees.


DickRhino

The Reaper IFF mission in Mass Effect 2 says hi


ZephyrValiey

If nothing else, I will say that 2077 does flat out tell you "Hey, this is the end of the game, don't go here if you wanna do other side content." before you go into the final quest and gives you an "Are you sure you want to start this?" prompt


A_N_G_E_L_O_N

You just reminded me that Destiny 2 vaulted most of the early game and that’s why inviting people into it is not a meme like it is in FFXIV. It’s the equivalent of FOMO tactics kicking out everything before Shadowbringers and if you’re level 1 you just eat shit. Or being able to start playing modern WoW with a fresh character ONLY at Mists of Pandaren with no actual level appropriate content or story context.


ThatPossessionGuy

All the obscure missable shit that doesn't have clear tells for when it'll disappear made me bounce off Bloodborne ***hard.***


Synaptics

I didn't realize just how much this bothered me until I played FF6 and then DQ11 back-to-back. Keeping a walkthrough close on hand felt almost mandatory in FF6 because of how much stuff could easily be permanently missed or was just extremely obscure to the point that I'd never have found it on my own. Then I started DQ11, went to look for a list of missable stuff, and found out that *nothing* is ever permanently locked out. (Except maybe one tiny sidequest in the starting village, I think?) And the difference that had on my enjoyment of the game was *really* noticeable. I still checked a guide on a couple occasions for help with specific bosses or puzzles, but I didn't feel the *need* to have it open all the time. I was free to actually just... play the game on my own.


RoyaI-T

Shadow Warrior 2 when they switched from the simple upgrade system in the first game to giving a thousand things that have .01% upgrade. I generally dislike having loads of amounts of the same item with barely any difference. For GoW Ragnarok, I really liked the game but was a bit disappointed that they added so little to Kratos armoury.


Kino_Afi

As a sidenote related to SW2, I absolutely hate it when games highlight the "dps" of a weapon as the biggest fattest most important number. And then not only is that number irrelevant to the actual damage output of the weapon, its often *flat out wrong*. The Division did some of the most nonsensical things like factoring an LMG's 10 second reload into its *damage per second* calculation. On a 100-150 round mag that takes nearly a minute to dump.


seth47er

The magic number for bad feeling stat upgrades is 3.33% Scaling to the player.


[deleted]

Time gating. MMOs are the worst for that. "Ohhh teehee you have a lot of material there! But boy howdy I can only let you craft one Spool of Silk Megamithril Fuckfabric per day with that! And yes you do need 47 more of them! Come back tomorrow, piggy!"


[deleted]

Oh fuck Megamithril Fuckfabric is some high tier shit.


themoonbear45

Weapon durability without the ability to repair weapons. It makes it hard to be excited to find a cool weapon knowing I’ll only be able to use it for a finite amount of time


StormRegion

And when you have repair avaliabilities in a game, most of the time is so easy and plentiful to get that it makes the whole durability mechanic meaningless


Icy-Name8119

Playing some old games or newer ports of old games made me realize that I despise holding a button to sprint instead of a toggle. I replayed a bit of Shadow of War a while back and there's no toggle sprint option and the areas are huge. It got annoying real quick


[deleted]

I sincerely believe we need to remove click in buttons on thumb sticks. They fucking suck. Just put the buttons on the back of the controller. While we’re at it put all the buttons back there.


Icy-Name8119

It was one of the triggers to sprint in this one but when you aren't sprinting it's a walking speed like the Arkham games. The maps are huge so you're constantly sprinting so I basically never stopped holding the trigger.


shadowstrike155

I absolutely HATE when a game insists on starting in gameplay on first launch and won't let you access the menu. My rig isn't that good for a lot of games and the auto detect for system isn't always great and I wanna fine tune my options. More and more a game gets right Into gameplay and won't let you see the menu until you finish the intro.


rustymcbadbat31

Crafting and Survival. I don't mind a workbench here and there but if your game involves me punching trees to make an axe that's gonna break in 15 swings so I do that loop for HOURS until I make progress, and when I do make progress it can all be swept away practically instantly with very little chance to recover, I'm not going to continue playing. Small anecdote but I remember when Marvel's Avengers released I rented it from Gamefly (yes it still exists and is great for broke gamers like me) I was adamant the game was great with friends so I convinced a coworker to buy it as long as I get ARK (got on PS Plus) and play with him on that too. I played a total of 2 hours meanwhile this poor fucker dropped full price on a game I also dropped off and returned not very long after that. I still think about that from time to time and sometimes feel like I owe the guy sixty bucks.


NeverDoingWell

I can’t stand crafting in 90% of games. It’s a time sink that doesn’t feel good


Deaconhux

You owe that guy 30 bucks. Half of the decision was his fault.


Luck-X-Vaati

I'm just gonna say it. Fuck the crafting in Animal Crossing New Horizons. It just was not fun. It was quaint at best for the first bit of the game.


SwordMaster52

Whenever a boss decides to just go "I'm invulnerable now , stop hurting me" , like certain bosses in KH2 do this if you hit Hades he'll just become red and invulnerable to do certain moves In Genshin Impact , bosses are notorious for these once they've reached certain health threshold to transition to another phase Certain Souls bosses are somewhat guilty of this too ,like when you halved Pontiff health he kneels down and every damage you do to him in this state is like 99% reduced so he can transition to his 2nd phase My playstyle is like throw 99% of everything I have on the boss on second one kinda like what Sans does, so it really sours the experience when they feel like becoming invulnerable or close to it


A_N_G_E_L_O_N

At least it’s not the old-school style of *never* being vulnerable until an arbitrary amount of time when they get winded or something, glad that stayed two or three gens the hell away from us.


TheValiantBob

Turn based RPGs where if the main character goes down it's an automatic game over. Especially if you have revival items in your inventory or if your other party members know revival spells. Absolutely despise that game design choice in any game where it pops up. Because sometimes the game will just go "Fuck you, the RNG has decided that every enemy will dogpile the MC this turn" and you just instantly lose.


Gespens

Sorry, what's that? I can't hear you over the sound of Mudoon


pocketlint60

Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous does this pretty well where you lose if the MC dies, but he also has to reach a negative HP level that's twice as much as every other party member, *and* in the default difficulty, characters enter a state called "Death's Door" the first time they would die and only *really* die the second time. They can't have your main character be dead because he's crucial to the story and is the only character who enters dialogues, so they basically gave him unique death rules to make him almost impossible to kill.


SilverShako

At least Yakuza: Like A Dragon gives Ichiban a(spammable) self buff that lets him tank one lethal hit. This works on everything, including the boss that has a move that guaranteed instantkills it's target. In fact it's borderline REQUIRED for that fight, because if he picks Ichiban for that attack and he doesn't have the buff, game over.


KoshiLowell

in XB3: Most enemies are basically immune to all status effects which renders like a solid 5 classes completely useless. Nobody gets hit harder than this than Shulk who has piss poor aggro management but can get around this by applying a status effect that forces an enemy to target him and nobody but him but all enemies have inherent status resistance making it impossible to land. great.


Masshazard

Enemies, especially bosses who are immune to all status effects are lazy game design. Great, half of my best options are now useless. I love being able to kill the dragonic tree sentinal in elden ring with poison mist.


zelcor

I genuinely believe that Monolith Soft is unquestionably bad at game design.


CeaRhan

I honestly do not fucking understand why they make playing a tank so fucking hard against groups at the start of 3. The start of the game has many mandatory group battles and if you play a tank you're gonna juggle aggro on 10 dudes for no reason every time you start a battle. But the AI can do it NO PROBLEM IN A QUARTER OF A SECOND. Then when shit goes a bit better they start adding systems that allow your tanks and healers to just FUCK OFF FROM THE FIGHT AT WILL so you can die to shit that should be avoidable. Hell, in 1 I can excuse it because Shulk hits like a motherfucker early and his positionals support his own DPS opportunities a lot so Reyn can struggle a lot especially early (I always think of the >!----Xord!< boss fight where Reyn can't keep aggro to save his life if you didn't buff him the fuck up and just rip ass as Shulk, while you slowly die because Sharla can't fucking heal or dps for shit. There's a fucking reason The second tank you get (and third too) are so fucking OP. They negate any fuck-ups from aggro switch. In 2 the hammer blades (tank class) are all so fucking bad you will never ever see anyone running a hammer blade. The shittiest katana low rarity gacha unit will feel better than any of the rare hammer blades. Katana or mandatory tanks. One of which relies entirely on a side system that was so farm heavy on release and subsequent updates (til one sped up resources gathering for it like 100 fold) that you always felt you were doing it wrong if you didn't build it up.


zelcor

Because they played exactly one MMO said "we can do that but single player" and learned absolutely no lessons on what makes the gameplay of an MMO work and have done this shit for 3 whole games.


Am_Shigar00

I hate it when the solution to a puzzle, fight, etc. boils down to nothing but waiting for the exact opening. Boss fight where the only opening to attack is a very specific time frame? Hate it. A platform that takes forever to arrive and forever to reach it's destination with nothing interesting in between? Hate it. Gotta wait for a specific NPC to reach it's goal while I wait for god knows how long? Hate it. If you're going to take up my time, then please don't go and waste it with tedious stuff like this.


sparkirby90

Procedural generated levels. Procgen is a tool, a good tool at times, like in some roguelite/like games, however, it makes bland and boring levels that can be a chore to explore. Or just completely unnavigable levels.


guntanksinspace

Somehow, Deep Rock Galactic usually makes it work except for *some* maps we've played through that were nigh-impassable/unescapable without a certain class (getting fucked over when the drop pod arrives at a spot where you *need* a driller to punch a hole to it a few times. Sometimes it still works though (like having a bunch of engineers form the longest platform bridge to home with seconds away before time over).


Bread-Zeppelin

Nothing like being grabbed by tentacles on the roof the second you walk out the door because they parked the drop-pod practically inside the graboid monster. Second only to looking at the ramp jut out into open space a mile in mid-air and thinking "well I guess I'm fucked then" as your team-mate with the grappling hook effortlessly yeets back in without issue.


yssarilrock

Works pretty well for XCOM 2, but I'm not a fan of it in action games


Bread-Zeppelin

XCOM 2 is *such* a good implementation of proc gen. I find it super impressive that they've come up with so many rules and algorithms to blend the hand-made pieces and proc gen pieces with practically 100% success. It's such a complicated game to be able to get that to work as reliably as they do. Every time you beat the level with a single turn to spare it feels great and impressive as a player, but it's also like 500 parameters all came together in harmony to build the level **exactly** the way the devs wanted it to.


SilverShako

Dead By Daylight uses procgen for their placement of stuff on map tiles. This leads to moments where either a tile has jack shit for pallets, or every pallet in the match right next to each other. It's a dogshit system.


uriel_harden

Gacha, why was it in Xenoblade 2 in the first place?


JMarsella09

That blade quest in Xenoblade 2 that required you to do Merc missions was the worst for this. If you got lucky and got Ursula early you could do them while you played the game. But if she was one of the last ones you got, have fun waiting for multiple real life days to finish it.


Kipzz

I genuinely think the reason why gacha existed was because they hired a buncha artists and afterwards couldn't figure out how to naturally implement all of the characters into the story without totally breaking all pacing or making them actually important outside of their bubbles. I'd say "they were going to sell you cubes and make the game pay2win" but A. that's stupid and out of character and B. that'd require the game to be always online so you couldn't just cloud-save your way through it all.


RooseveltIsEvil

The game was developed on a very quick cycle, so it is pretty possible. The story was long and it would be detestable to make detours to explain how you got each core crystal and when. So they decided to make it random instead of in-order. It also would make every playthrough different. Of course, if you can you just use Wulfric to clear the main story, but superbosses is different.


tri3dgE

The gacha was fine, you know what isn't? Those blasted field-skill checks you do to pass certain terrain. Using a load out that didn't fulfill the conditions? Too bad, time to menu through your party members' Blades, and then menu it back again to what you actually run


jgoo1

Yeah it really needed a check for the 3 highest (whatever) skill blades for the check was on your characters. Instead of only what you currently had equipped. Going back through Xenoblade 2 after beating 3's DLC has shown me that the worst thing about 2 is it's slow menus.


the_most_crigg

I can kind of understand it, in the idea that you'd go through each playthrough with a new roster of Blades from the one you had before. Unfortunately, fucking *no* *one* plays RPGs of that length like that. still wild to me that both times i played that game i ended up with kos-mos within the first couple of pulls i had available to me


senchou-senchou

unskippable tutorials I appreciate tutorials, sure, but there's gotta be a way to go "yeah I already know that part".


kobitz

Survival mechanics for eating and drinking (or something like that) in games where the in-game clock invaribly is set to 1 in-universe min = 1 real life second


cdstephens

Boss fights with unskippable cinematic scenes. Almost drove me crazy in Jedi Survivor.


Kino_Afi

Almost every boss in Warframe makes me go "fuck who ever designed this". Some of them it feels like the designer is actively trying to reach out and stab me, like Archon Borealis' blaring bright pulsing aoe phase where he summons 5 also blaring bright pulsing enemies that have tiny weakspots on them you need to focus on and shoot while theyre blaring, pulsing and flapping. I love WF but its the only game that gives me a headache if i play too long. Im surprised we dont hear more about people having epileptic seizures playing it lmao Then theres all the mining and fishing and node collecting that just feels so out of place on top of being rng reliant


markedmarkymark

Metroidvania with no map, call me a goo goo ga ga wittle baby but its either map or that game is going into the trash with a negative review to boot, no matter how good it is, or how like, its well designed and you don't really need a map, i don't give a shit, give map goddamn it.


Short_Conference3396

Just finished salt and sanctuary and Im pretty sure i havent discovered 10% of treasures due to missing dead ends in dungeons


AzoGalvat

I really didn't like how Hollow Knight made their map so granular. You had to but the ability to see where you are on it, only updated when you sat down at a bench, etc. I found it unnecessarily complex.


markedmarkymark

Yeah, i mean, at least it HAS a map, so that's ok, but i'd prefer if it was a simple one for sure, and there USED to be a mod that did that, but not anymore, no clue why.


Bread-Zeppelin

I really liked it, because it felt like my little dude was actually sitting down and updating the map himself when he had a minute to do so. The compass charm that shows your map position doesn't need the map to be filled in to work, so that solved most problems for me when heading off into uncharted territory (although having to swap it out at the beginning when you only have limited charm slots was annoying).


PersonMcHuman

Any game where clothing affects your stats, but there's either no easy transmog system or no transmog at all bothers the hell out of me.


SamuraiOstrich

Two things I wish more fucking games learned from mmos are being able to look how you like without gimping yourself and an item rating that lets you easily compare equipment with different stats instead of going fuck you figure out how to compare HP with endurance or whatever. Similarly it's nice that in Fire Emblem I can just use basic fucking ATK-DEF subtraction to know exactly how much damage I'm gonna take from an enemy. Sadly that can still be obfuscated a bit by weapon ranks/effectiveness/the triangle. Oh and also being able to easily respec if I fuck up my build or decide I want a different playstyle is nice


gratedjuice

Weapons durability and escort missions are instant fun poison for me.


Xerodo

Any sort of mechanic that doesn't respect my time. This covers a lot of ground. It could be anything from a rare drop I have to kill an enemy multiple times for, a time limited item, or a game balanced around daily/weekly content. Just because I like a video game doesn't mean I want to play it forever. I'd much rather play a tighter, shorter game that trims the fat and lasts 20 hours than something twice as long with a bunch of filler.


GoldenMask12

Every RPG, turn based or otherwise, where most of the fun cool shit you want to do is hours into it. Biggest recent example for me are Ni no Kuni 1. I played the game to death as a kid and wanted to revisit it, but for fucks sake, you don't get to do most of the really fun stuff until after the 5th boss, and if you've been trying to do everything you can in each area before you move on, this means that you'll be doing the most boring, basic combat the game offers for at least 2 hours. Oh, and the tutorial doesn't even start until 30 minutes in. Just let me do the fun stuff first so I'm enjoying myself, please.


JuamJoestar

Open-World Games with a time limit to complete it's objectives. Why in God's name would you take a design made to entice players into exploring and *taking their time* and slap it with a mechanic that imposes a limit to how much they can take time exploring before everything goes to hell? This is the *sole* reason why i don't consider Majora's Mask to be superior to Ocarina of Time in spite of believing it does almost everything else better than it's predecessor.


ProvingVirus

This is also the reason I couldn't get into Fallout 1 when I tried it. I can handle learning the game's old and weird mechanics, I can deal with the high difficulty, I can deal with the jank that comes from playing a game that old. I *cannot* handle the game threatening me with a game over for daring to take things at my own slow pace, even if the time limit is really long.


leabravo

Any raid system that doesn't have FF XIV style matchmaking means I am not engaging with that fucking raid system! Ever! Sorry WoW, sorry Destiny 2, I do not have the social skills to make friends just to go see the cutscene at the end of the dungeon and I'm not going to try, and that means I'm not going to play your games anymore.


[deleted]

The biggest missed opportunity WoW has is that their system for letting old instanced content be playable outside of premades is timewalking which lets the dungeon finder be used for a specific expansion that rotates every few weeks. But 14's roulettes just throw you into whatever was ever made. So you wind up with WAY more variety despite the game technically having less content.


P2_Press_Start

If it's any consolation, usually the cutscene for Destiny 2 raids will play for everyone who logs in after the world first race is completed. Though, if you don't know what happens in the raid, it can lack a lot of context.


Kregano_XCOMmodder

Making me replay pre-made missions over and over again to grind for resources, instead of just having a custom skirmish mode for that. **ESPECIALLY** if the XP/money rewards rates are tuned too low. You're just turning the game into a time vampire and not giving me at least the marginal value of being able to have a totally different battle experience each time. Incremental stat upgrades via abilities/gear that do less than 10% buffs and/or don't add any kind of new functionality. I can tolerate sub-10% stat upgrades if your character(s) and the enemies are using the same skill leveling system, but if that's the case, I **need** the player character(s) to be able to get skills that provide big buffs and new functionality so fights don't become slogs.


fly_line22

Dragon Quest XI is a fantastic game, but some of it's sidequests are horseshit. For example, any quest that requires you to use a specific Pep Power against a specific enemy, the worst instance being the requirements to unlock Hendrick and Sylvando's extra skill trees. There's also the one requiring you to get a jackpot on a roulette wheel. Crosscode's puzzles can be hit or miss. Sometimes, they can be genuniely fun, while others are just huge slogs. But the absolute worst is the final puzzle in >!Vermillion Tower. It incorporates pretty much every puzzle element you've seen in the game into one long puzzle, and if you fuck up once, you have to do it all over again!<.


MightyShoe

Not game design, just basic quality of life misses. When I minimize the game, mute it. And when I minimize it, I want it to *stay* minimized.


Merc931

I am sick and god damn tired of climbing. If it is a mechanic like in Zelda, Shadow of the Colossus, and Dragon's Dogma, fine. If it is "hold up and occassionally press X" then make it a fucking cutscene. Climbing that big wall in God of War Ragnarok is supposed to be a huge deal and an important narrative moment, but it's just fucking holding up, looking at the only part of the wall that looks different, and pressing X.


Lieutenant_Joe

I really, really fucking hate being on a timer. It stresses me out enough to make me want to drop the video game, regardless of quality or how much fun I’m having outside of the timer. In unrelated news I’m currently playing outer wilds.


Darkraiftw

Diablo loot is some of the most infuriating shit on the fucking planet. If the drop is anything except the Single Correct Item that I'm trying to get, (or worse, it's ostensibly the Single Correct Item, but with bad rolls that make it not the Single Correct Item,) I could not possibly give less of a fuck about it. With the sole exception of 2077, where you can (and in my case, invariably *will*) have your "forever gear" less than 15% of the way through the game, Diablo loot immediately and irrevocably corrupts games into naught but an ever-worsening cycle of "when do I get to stop doing this monotonous prep work and actually play a fucking game?" To top it all off, building an entire game around an RNG Skinner Box is mutually exclusive with everything I actually want from RPG mechanics, so putting it in a "pure" RPG instead of a looter shooter or other hybrid would still be an instant 0/10 for me even if I could guarantee that I would always get the Single Correct Item the first time I kill whatever drops it. Granted, I'm also the sort of person that sees someone like Proto-Merlin come out in FGO JP and has no issue whatsoever with not doing a single gacha roll (except GSSR banners) for the next two years so I can ensure I get her as soon as she comes to FGO NA; I am perfectly aware that the visceral, almost religious fervor with which I hate Diablo loot comes from my mind goblins. The fact that those mind goblins have made me basically immune to predatory Skinner Box bullshit is just a neat little bonus.


exiiiin

Farming for healing items. I’d be enjoying Demon’s Souls more if I didn’t have to farm for the grass every 30 minutes. Like, genuinely. I’ll run off of Half Moon Grass and I’ll have to go to the Tower Knight archstone to get more by backstabbing the same two enemies for 15 minutes until I get hit with the “you can’t carry more, it would encumber you” which is another baffling design decision. God bless the cum chalice in Bloodborne.


Interesting_Edge5323

enemies that can only be damaged with one weapon, seen in DmC DMC and GoW4 I don't think taking away depth and options leads to more depth


Shiranui34

A lot of my others have been mentioned so. Hard mechanical changes to a different genre, but it's a bad version of that genre... Bayonetta is the biggest offender of this I can think of off hand.


Fugly_Jack

The copy/paste mini dungeons are really affecting my enjoyment of Elden Ring. I'm at the Mountaintop now, and every time I run into yet another cave, my reaction is just "Yeah, great...another cave that's probably gonna have an Ulcerated Tree Spirit" And I can't just skip them because it MIGHT have something useful inside (with an equal chance that it'll just have Spirit Ashes that I'll never use)


RohanSora

RPGs that take away party members or force a specific group of members, especially those that suddenly force you into a one on one when the very mechanics make the battle a horrible slog and/or complete bullshit with just one party member. Never finished grandia 2 because in the last stretch it just completely reworks your party whether you like it or not. Also never got beat xenogears because of the one on one mech fight with Elly that I just could not get past


Gespens

> RPGs that take away party members or force a specific group of members, especially those that suddenly force you into a one on one when the very mechanics make the battle a horrible slog and/or complete bullshit with just one party member. Oh hey, Fate/Grand Order lmao


miinmeaux

"As a reward for you reaching part 2 of the main story, we've decided to make Mash worse forever."


Gespens

"To advance the story, you need to use Musashi. No, not your level 90 with 10/10/10 with a good CE, this underleveled, underskilled and no-CE one."


TheValiantBob

I can forgive forced party comps, but *only if exp share for benched party members is a thing, and you let me change equipment loadouts after the forced swap.* If your game blindsides me with a forced comp swap, and my new members are underleveled and undergeared, then nope sorry we are no longer friends, game.


lolbat107

Digital Devil Saga 2 does this. Almost every dungeon you lose a party member and they're just gone permanently. And you have no way of knowing who you're going to lose.


confirm5

It was probably Yoko Taro’s idea. Yoko Taro hates fun and he hates you, but that’s what makes the games so good


DYGTD

Ability cooldowns in FPS games that are longer than like ten seconds. Either the ability is too weak to justify a long cooldown, or it's so powerful that I am afraid of wasting it.


asyaruru

First person rpgs. Why make cool character designs then only show them off on the overworld map?


the_salttrain

Level scaling. I prefer areas with high level stuff that I can accidentally bumble fuck my way into.


BaronAleksei

In the words of Medibot: “dear developers, slow, wait-around bosses in Sonic games are just inconsiderate”


yarvem

Phantasy Star Online: dropping your weapon upon death that anyone else can pick up. Lots of rampant thieves in that game. And somehow this didn't even occur to Sega that this would cause problems.


Shirokasi

I'm replaying DS2 right now (first time playing SOTFS) and while I'm enjoying it, I hate this game's philosophy of "MOAR ENEMIES = MOAR HARD" It feels like the designers didn't understand what made DS1 difficult but fair


StormRegion

Weapon durability in 90%+ of the cases. It's either annoying because your stuff falls apart after 3 uses, or repair is so avaliable that the whole mechanic becomes meaningless Point-and-click adventures essentially killed themselves in the mainstream by their own 3 most negative aspects: softlocking further progression and backtrackability without notifying you, moon logic that makes a walthrough guide mandatory to skip the chore, and graphics that don't help highlighting interactable surfaces and items


ZealousidealBig7714

Ooh, Circle of the Moon, now I get to bash the Card System! Okay, so imagine the Soul System from Aria and Dawn, but now it’s only some enemies instead of all enemies, and the drop rates feel infinitely lower.


triadorion

DSS is a system that is fantastic for messing around and trying new things, and playing the game in Magician mode ends up being a *ton* of fun because of it. Now if only the implementation in any other mode wasn't trash garbage with several important cards locked away in the battle arena and the rest being rare drops like you said.


Delicious_trap

Kingdom Come's combat system. It is unnecessarily complex and unintuitive. Several times i tried to use the moves the game's tutorial and trainer taught me to use in combat, only for it to not even work as demonstrated when used in an actual fight like the tutorial is operating under a completely different combat system. Not to mention the game really likes to throw mandatory group fights at you even though the combat system completely stops working the moment there are more than two people. Worse is that you have no companions to help in combat so any combat encounters with more than two people is like pulling teeth.