I love hearing about unique takes on game mechanics. Someone recently convinced me that limited inventories are kind of abused currently and that unlimited inventory systems would give more player choices.
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I love mechanics that add another dimension to a level or stage, like Titanfall 2’s time traveling or Duke Nukem’s shrink ray
Not something I essentially hate, but I roll my eyes every time there is a running-out-of-a-crumbling-building-before-it-collapses scene in a game.
Having well placed saved points and QOL features is absolutely amazing. I’m not interested in spending 10-15m running back / repeating myself just because the save progression system is rubbish. A lot more developers are more respectful of your time in that regard so it’s a great improvement
I feel save points themselves are becoming an increasingly archaic design choice. Just let us save anywhere, especially in a single player game. I think most people are just suspending games without expressly saving most of the time.
It’s going to depend on the game. If you’re making a game like Resident Evil, half of that game’s brilliance is in where it puts its save points.
Totally fair. Particularly in survival horror where saves are explicitly limited to highten tension, that makes sense.
I hate
- quick time events,
- minimaps,
- questmarker,
- RPGs without story changing decisions,
- random generated loot (drop chance is fine),
- lack of class or profession decision (one character can do all sucks),
- random generated weapon/gear stats
- coop where process isn’t shared to every player. Requires a multiple saves system to allow single player, as well as coop play, saves.
- enemy level scaling with player level,
- fully breaking weapon without being able to repair them
- bound items. Seriously, this needs to stop. I’d like to share my gear with guild mates or my other characters. I want to be able to sell a good item again if I don’t need it. But so far only Ragnarok Online managed to do this well, that I know of.
- MMORPG with fixed marketplace, like fixed prices, build in price statistics etc. ruining a possible economy focused gameplay in favor of the lazy and dumb players, who complain… because they are not skilled enough.
- non MMORPGS with NPC that don’t move or have daily activities. Gothic did this so we’ll decades ago, I thought this would be standard by now
- any pay2win element
- any pay2skip grind purchases
- any quality of life wallet gated
- Battle-pass, season-pass, fomo bullshit
What I love
- weather and seasons
- music instruments, music class or weapons
- hidden treasures you need to dig for or find treasure maps
- NPC that have activities and are not glued to their vending table
- animal follower
- jumpsuit/glider
- destroyable environment/footsteps
- weapon degradation and maintenance
- professions and weapon/gear crafting
- alchemy like in Kingdom Come Deliverance
- NPC that tell you where to go, instead of a questmarker and path showing you where to go,
- able to respec my stat points only
- verticality in Level Design, like Dark Souls 1
- fishing with a bit of a challenge other than just pushing a button in time
- character customization, hair, skin, body size, height, voice
- fashion slots, like Terraria and now also Cyberpunk2077
- changing cities through actions I did in the game. NPC got killed, house destroyed/build etc.
Gathering mechanics in rpgs. It’s a waste of time neuron activator. I want to get immersed in the world and not walk from bush to bush going grabbing flowers, rocks and sticks.
Enjoyed the way Witcher did it where you just randomly get herbs as you’re running around. Never went out of my way to go find them from memory
The Witcher was actually what came to mind when I thought about games j don’t like this in. Also horizon zero dawn and all the other Sony movie rpgs
rpg grinding is a waste of time.
Sorry rpg lovers, I just genuinely hate the concept of level grinding and item collecting for the sake of expanding gameplay time.
As an old school runescape player I actually like grinding up my levels for no other reason than making the numbers go up. Something about grinding in that game feels right.
Anything that involves the mechanic “defeat all the enemies in this room in order to unlock the next room” is a huge turn off for me.
Hate: Tapping, quick time events, looting animations, long loading screens especially when you’re expected to die often, game taking control away from the player or excessive input latency, long NPC expositions for fetch quests.
Love: addictive gameplay loops that are borderline checklists but fun (Far Cry, Days Gone hordes, Ghost of Tsushima camps etc.), environmental impact like in Death Stranding/reactive NPCs like in Bethesda RPGs.
QTE can be done well imho, for example in Yakuza series they are rare enough to not annoy you and not THAT important but if you can hit them when they appear, it makes your hit just more powerful
Time-limited consumables as buffs can be a huge annoyance. In a ton of games I just end up stacking them, waiting for an opportunity where I need them, but usually when I need them, I don’t have the time to stop and use them. I keep ending those kind of games with an inventory full of potions.
I really like minor stat boosting items instead. So rather than giving me an inventory full of potions, give me three or four slots for items that can have a huge range of different bonuses and penalties, and they are pretty minor, but they’re permanent. That way I get to craft a build instead of just being annoyed
Fishing minigames. I hate them with every single fiber of my body specially when they are mandatory for progress or to get 100% completition
They are not relaxing, they are painfully boring
I love hard games, but only when the challenge is fair, if the game consist solely on trial and error, that’s bad
I genuinely enjoy the “git gud” journey, I find it very rewarding
I agree with fishing mini games, it’s almost never anything like actual fishing, but some sort of weird experience that requires a combination of precise timing, button mashing or both.
That being said I think it’s insane to me that Nintendo crammed a fishing mini game in basically every Zelda game except for BotW and TotK, the two games where it would actually make sense. I just wanna chill and throw out a line. It’s every other zelda game where I just did the minimum amount required to get a bottle or whatever I needed.
Hahaha. If I didn’t know better I would think you just got done doing that fishing competition in Trails In The Sky 3rd.
I don’t mind the fishing mini game in Breath of Fire 3. You can see all the fish and it’s just a matter of skill not patience. That said, it’s optional (the only fish you need, I believe you can buy) and trying to 100% it is a chore I’d rather not do again.
I’m absolutely baffled as to why more than one game I’ve ever played had fishing in it.
I love the X series (despite the unfortunate name), but the literal real-time days you spend waiting for money to appear in your account are still more engaging than any fishing minigame ever.
I think Achievements are useful if they’re tracked separately by each save game. Minecraft does this, and I find it helpful when I return to a world save after a long time because I can use the achievements I unlocked to help remind me what I was doing and resume from there instead of looking at what clues may have been left behind.
I love New Game + mechanics. I think it’s a travesty more games don’t have them.
I hate excessive collectathons or overly repetitious cutscenes or dialogue. I love TotK, but the end-of-shrine bit got old real fast; I found myself missing pre-BotW heart container hunts where they could just be in a chest somewhere. I also feel exhausted just thinking about all the Koroks; I like trying to 100% save games, and the Koroks start to feel like work after a couple hundred in total.
I like when fps weapon recoil moves the player view with the recoil, particularly if the view resets back to where the player was aiming as the recoil cooldown ends. It’s satisfying and also gives the player an odd feeling of agency because the recoil mechanic lets them play “can I control the hose?”
I think Achievements are useful if they’re tracked separately by each save game. Minecraft does this, and I find it helpful when I return to a world save after a long time because I can use the achievements I unlocked to help remind me what I was doing and resume from there instead of looking at what clues may have been left behind.
That only works, though, if the achievements resemble game progress. Some games use achievements as entirely optional bonus challenges…
Fair, but from back when I played a ton on my 360, a large number of a games’ achievements were progression-based, sometimes entirely. That being said, tracking optional challenges within the save game itself can also be helpful in some instances.
For example, if there are challenges that require you to not use special weapons at all, and then you violate the challenge requirements, it could be grayed out to signify that the player locked themselves out of anything related to completing that challenge in that playthrough.
Resident Evil 4: Remake already does this to a degree, though my thought is that it would be most helpful in long rpgs, where it may not be clear after loading where you are in story or what you have and haven’t done if the save hadn’t been touched in months.
Oh yeah, I’m not arguing against your idea. It would need to be implemented per game anyways, so the devs can decide themselves, whether they want their achievements to be suitable or not.
Having said that, maybe what you really want is a similar idea, which I saw pitched a while ago: Dynamic recaps.
Basically, the game would detect that you haven’t started it in a while, so could offer a quick rundown of the controls. And if you’re loading a save from a few months ago, it could offer a quick summary of your most recent milestones in the story / game progression.So, yeah, pretty much your idea, but it’s not re-using achievements for that…
Here’s one I genuinely love and hate at the same time. In Dark Souls and Elden Ring, you drop your souls/runes (currency) on the spot where you last died, and if you die again before recovering them, they’re lost forever. You get souls and runes by killing enemies and generally progressing, so this leads to some interesting scenarios.
One one hand, it incentivizes you to spend your currency (to minimize risk of losing it) instead of just sitting on it, forcing you to make decisions on how you spend it, and whether to take the risk to save up to get more expensive items or level ups. It also forces you to play very deliberately, since there’s a penalty, but only if you die twice.
But… it makes me scared to progress, because I don’t know what to expect, and I don’t want to risk losing my souls/runes. Unless I have just recently lost everything and I have nothing to lose, I feel pressured to play overly carefully and never take risks and play the game in the most fun way possible, out of fear of loss. And even when I DO die and lose my currency, the freedom to play in risky ways only lasts for a short time, because as I kill enemies I start to build up my souls or runes again, and then I’m back in the same situation of not wanting to lose them.
I think that’s the main reason why I haven’t finished Elden Ring despite getting so close to the end. That overly careful playstyle is not very fun, but I can’t get over that fear of losing my runes in order to enjoy the game more.
The run back to your body helps you build up runes too, where a game where you’re loading a save it reverts progress. The souls style allows death to create progress for people struggling. If you’re dying then you’ll be forced to build runes up and can then go level or upgrade gear.
Usually you shouldn’t be too worried about losing souls though because they’re fairly easy to come by. It’s a bit of a trap in souls games to value your souls too much. There are many ways to farm them that don’t take much time or effort, including just going exploring side content and finding new equipment. Once you level up yourself or your gear a few times, the part you were struggling with will be easier. That’s how Elden Ring especially, but even Dakr Souls, is supposed to be played. If you’re struggling and don’t want to be, just go somewhere else. There’s plenty of content to do.
This is definitely one of the things I originally didn’t like about Souls games that have come to realize is a pretty cleverly designed mechanic. Earning enough souls to purchase something shouldn’t take very long and it if is, then it means you already have what you need to be succeeding in your current area. The ‘git gud’ joke is worn out, but genuinely you just need to learn how to face off with enemies (or run past them) until they stop being scary.
The game will not let you progress without learning how to engage with the systems it presents to you. There are typically several or many viable strategies, you just have to figure out what works for you.
By the time you’re dragging yourself through a toxic poison swamp you’ll realize that your level is just a number and nothing lasts forever.
I have several hundred hours across the 3 souls games and ER, and I totally get that it’s a well designed mechanic, which is why I love it. and yeah, I know that valuing souls too much is a mental trap that prevents me from enjoying the game, but I just can’t shake it in Elden Ring for some reason, despite doing so more easily in souls games. (though, it especially sucks in DS2 because of soul memory but that’s a whole can of worms)
The souls series is one of my favorite game series of all time, and I would definitely not change the blood stain mechanic whatsoever because I think it’s about perfect. Especially with rings of sacrifice (or the weird twigs) and homeward bones to give you chances to mitigate the penalty when you really think you need to. It’s excellently designed and forces you to improve at the game.
Despite that, it still causes me hesitation and demotivates me from playing the games sometimes. I have to be in a specific mood to want to improve at a game, and I’m in that mood less often as I have more things I need to spend my time on, and usually play games just to relax and have an easier time nowadays. I still love Elden Ring to death and it’s genuinely one of the best games ever made (in my opinion), and yet I have a love/hate relationship with death mechanics in these games.
Combos. I don’t like them when they’re intentional by the developer, they need to be something that you feel like you’ve discovered on your own. I hear Baba is You is pretty good about that.
I recently observed a game of MtG where a newish player was playing a scry deck, some premade or something, had a guy who would scry every time a creature dropped, and a guy who would place counters every time he scried. He’d edited the deck slightly, added a creature that spawned tokens every time it received counters. Managed to get them all out at once before realising what he’d done; straight up had to ask if tokens count as creatures dropping because he wasn’t sure if infinite combos were real. That’s a good feeling, because it’s something he did, not something that was given to him.
Contrast League or Overwatch or whatever where the devs have specific ideas about how characters should work and will aggressively destroy things outside of that. Or just modern Magic.
Diablo 3 was fucking terrible about this. anytime a good combo was discovered they would nerf it. it’s a single player game, just let me have my overpowered bullshit.
Have you ever tried Skullgirls? You can form a team of up to three characters, and you can select just about any move they have as an assist, forming some wild synergies.
I have tried Skullgirls. I will not try it again.
Tag fighters are pretty good for this though, you’re right, and especially when you can choose the assist move.
Escort quests! Especially when the person you’re escorting moves incredibly slow (except when running toward obvious danger).
I agree that is clearly broken and overused in many games but if we were able to actually control the walking speed on PC with a keyboard similar to what is possible with a controller, it would probably be more bearable tbh.
The junction system in Final Fantasy VIII. The magic system is based on the amount of spells you have left in an inventory and you can also equip them to your character’s stats. If you don’t take the time to acquaint yourself with the system your stats will take a dive because you’re casting spells like in a more traditional game. The upside to this is if you hoard enough spells and equip them to the right stats you can be unstoppable since early game.
I hate not being able to pause a game, particularly a single player game. I think Elite Dangerous solidified my hatred of this, by not telling you the game is still running when you’re on the “pause” menu.
“B-B-BU-BUT it’s a simulation and you can’t pause real life so it makes it more real”
It’s a game, even if it’s a simulation game. It’s a toy for grown-ups. A very nice and fun and relaxing toy, but a toy nonetheless. It’s not more important than a phone call, call at the door, crying child, hungry cat, partner who needs a hand with something etc.
This probably extends to being able to save anywhere and rejoin later, but I think that one is covered pretty well by everyone else :)
The problem with Elite Dangerous is that it is basically an online game, even in solo play and they never bothered to figure out a way for solo players to pause.
This is true for all of the examples of this problem that I’m aware of.
It also seems to keep cropping up in janky 3D Unity games, “We can’t allow pause because it breaks all the physics”.
Soulslikes can’t be paused and it has nothing to do with online play. Fromsoft just hates working adults.
Elite dangerous is a multiplayer game. If you want to go do something else and don’t have time to put your spaceship somewhere safe, you can always exit to the main menu. It only takes a few seconds and when you come back your ship is exactly where you left it.
The game definitely has issues, but not being able to pause isn’t really one of them
I never really bothered with the multiplayer mode in it - I know the game was built with a multiplayer back end, but they did promise a single player mode, and they do present the game as having a single player/solo mode.
Obviously different things annoy different people, and I do get what you mean about quitting and restarting etc, but it was enough for me to stop bothering to play it and play X4:Foundations instead. I did still get over a hundred hours play out of it, so I don’t exactly feel hard done by, but if quitting to the main menu works, then it’s clearly mechanically possible for them to let you pause it, they just didn’t want to.
