I wanted to get an idea of the type of mechanics, quests, gameplay, etc. that really irks or frustrates you as you play a game. Or what are those in-game things that cause you to perhaps stop playing the game, become frustrated or annoyed or worse, rage (quit). Of course, it should go without mentioning bugs, let’s face it, bugs are common so I don’t think this should fall within that space (or at least game-breaking ones).
For me, one thing that I have experienced lately and is really getting my goat, is me (as a playable character) getting stuck or “hooking” on the game’s environment. Even more frustrating in an open world game where traversing the expanse of the world is part of the gameplay experience and causing the player to get stuck on a piece of terrain (like a stone) while running is just infuriating.
What says ya’ll, what are some of the in-game nuances that you could do without?
A thing in CoD that really annoys me is sometimes the character model would not even be looking at me and yet he is shooting at me and kills me, then when I watch the kill-cam, from his perspective, he is staring straight at me the whole time. And invisible walls, when you can clearly see the enemy, yet when you shoot at them the bullets hit “something” that is apparently right in front of you
Oh my word, I have so many I don’t even know where to start.
Games that have lots of dialogue but no voice acting.
Anything with excessive grinding to progress. For example free to play games that would otherwise be great but you have to pay if you don’t want to be bored to death.
Games that have so many cut scenes or so much exposition that it takes what feels like hours before you even get to play the game, or you only get to play a minute or two before the next bit of exposition. It seems Japanese games are especially guilty of this but Max Payne 3 always comes to mind too.
Silent protagonist: Laziest gimmick ever. It’s fine if it’s explained well in game like Doom or if there is no dialog in the game at all, but in most games it’s just bad. The character is just a puppet that just does whatever literally anyone tells them to do with no opinion or personality of their own.
Un-rebindable keys. I play with my mouse in my left hand so games that don’t allow me to rebind EVERYTHING, especially IJKL are often just unplayable to me. Cyber Punk 2077 released like that and Outer Worlds is still guilty of this after all this time.
Not something major, but something I really wish they could improve is clipping, especially a character’s own clothing or items clipping through each other as they move.
Certain graphic styles also tend to put me off. Especially Cell shaded stuff, unless it’s done really well.
Games that don’t allow you to pause during cutscenes, or where you can’t pause at all.
This kind of feedback is so valuable. Perhaps not to me but also give me insights and things to consider, at least in my space. I find that hella interesting, thanks for sharing your feedback.
However, it’s not always the case. I mean, I finished Nioh and Dark Souls and such. But as an example, I didn’t finish Control. The game itself is not that hard. But there was this feeling of a lack of control (yeah I know). I was doing this one side thing that I didn’t even have to do. And I kept dying and it made me rage uninstall. In Dark Souls you die and you learn from it and it’s fun. In Control you die and it’s just annoying.
Which leads me to Nier Automata. I play the first bit and get to what’s apparently the final boss of the tutorial thing. It took an hour or something to get to it and I die. Bam boomity boom, I’m right at the start again. Have to watch all the cutscenes again with no way to skip them. Instant uninstall. I don’t care how good the game is supposed to be. I find it unacceptable.
In most cases I will stop playing if a game is too difficult and there’s no difficulty options. But then I have finished many difficult games. It depends on the annoyingness of the difficulty.
Speaking of Control, something I hated besides the difficulty was the constant respawning of enemies. If you take too long in the fight, the next wave of enemies would start spawning while you’re still busy with the first wave. I eventually just played with a trainer to get through it and the whole time I was playing I was thinking “thank goodness for this trainer or I would have quit this long ago”. For the DLC I dropped the trainer because they built it into the game to prevent dying.
Generally I also hate forced auto-save, or rather, auto-save is the only way to save with no manual or quick saves possible. If it saves at the wrong time and I have to play through a whole section multiple times just to reach the point where I died ealier… then I find it hard to stay motivated to push through.
I have a slightly different perspective on this. For me, unpausable cutscenes are the default so I appreciate pausable cutscenes, but not frustrated when they’re not. Unskippable cutscenes are however unforgivable, especially when combined with forced auto-save.
One thing I can’t stand is when I get stuck, or don’t touch the game for a week/month and forget what I was doing, and spend 25 minutes running from one end of a map to the other to try and figure out what I’m supposed to do or where to go…
I don’t usually play games to think, so waypoint markers for quests are basically a must have.
Another mechanic that JRPG games always seem to have, is excessive backtracking, even though the game itself is fun, I hate getting to a place that is like only 10 minutes into the game and it being like " oh no, you need to get blue power of water wielding before you can continue" and then you only get that power 1 room before the final boss fight, so now you have to go aaaallll the way back just so that you can get the +1 strength bracelet or whatever, obviously I am exaggerating immensely, but it is just one of those things that I feel could be handled better. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night suffered from this unfortunately, even though the game is really fun.
Firstly, my apologies for the delayed response here. I wanted to respond here with meaningful content and not just have it as a generic “kthnxbye” kind of response.
I think this is a fantastic response, and I think stems from the basis of respecting the players time. Not just due to a loss of progression, but also from cutscenes that are not skippable (especially if they’ve already been seen). And as @MetalSoup mentioned, even having the ability to pause during cutscenes.
Another topic I think and is hot contention and one that has been broadly discussed with viewpoints on both sides.
I think this is very valid too, and something I notice Ubisoft games doing more regularly is affording the user the option of playing how they want to, be it from an “exploration” or “guided” experience.
Lately, I find myself not being able to settle on any one particular game and instead, find myself playing or trying a multitude of them to find one that can shtick.
Something that has got my goat lately is not being able to read the onscreen font, be it captions, subtitles, menus, HUD elements, quests, item descriptions, etc. I love it when a game gives you an option to adjust the fonts, especially when you’re sitting 6ft away from your display.
I’ve gone exactly the opposite way. My Steam library has the same effect as Netflix - so much stuff I end up doing nothing at all. Total option paralysis.
When I first got my PS I downloaded everything that was free with PS+ only to stop myself from falling into the same trap. Now I only like 2 games installed and that’s all I can play.
Anyhoo, on topic now, everyones favorites of course: stupid fetch quests, escort missions, timed missions, loot systems that shower you with pointless shit all the time and open world games filled with nothing at all to do, confusing and sometimes totally unhelpful quest markers and lack of fast travel. I’ve gone completely off open world games and these days prefer linear to-the-point games.
Games that have so many cut scenes
^ this drives me insane as well (Final Fantasy/Yakuza looking at you)
Also over the top character animations as well, particularly in action games. Like putting their arms around there head and then shooting a gun or something(Final Fanstasy looking at you. Again)
Infinite quests suuuuck, Skyrim had those with The Dark Brotherhood and it really annoyed me, it keeps making me feel like I have left something undone, and the worst part is, it then makes me question every quest I take thereafter because now I am worried it is some useless infinite quest that give me nothing but the most microscopic amount of exp and gold, and ends up just wasting my time, I like a nice good linear quest line with a conclusion where me and the NPCs can give each other a nice goodbye and never really have to do anything with each other again.
This goes with daily quests as well, I understand their point, and reason for them existing, but honestly when I am done with a quest, I want to be done with a quest.
I don’t mind over the top animations as long as it fits with the game, if i see some weird animation in a JRPG, I am fine with it since its just “good old anime” but if I see it in like CoD then it would be weird.
Oh yes this one as well. Games that are stingy with XP (and not the ones that are designed that way). Spend ages doing a quest and then you get 1xp and the choice between a pair of shoes you already have and an apple or something. I remember Witcher 3 being really scrooge with XP
