Things in games that annoy you

[GreenPeas]

When the game, which always wanted few years ago, bothers you nowadays in the middle of playthrough.

[Rumblebud]

Too many popular games nowadays making a big deal of online multiplayer.

[B7R]

Someones probably beaten the horse to death already but every mobile game advertisement I see on youtube is some rip off Clash of Clans like clone that is built to only drag money out of players, what I'm trying to say is the games sole existence is purely for microtransactions

 

There's no "Just download our application and play away", It's all "download our application, get addicted and then buy our overpriced ridiculous MTX".

 

I miss mobile gaming when everything wasn't about MTX, you could download a game and play for hours on end. I'd rather pay for a mobile game in this day and age and have it free of MTX rather than the game be free and there's MTX. 

[trip]

Codexes.

I'm not reading sh*t.  You want me to know something?  Deliver it in the game.  Don't seperate me from the game to read some homework assignment.

[Awful Waffle]

1 hour ago, trip said:

Codexes.

I'm not reading sh*t.  You want me to know something?  Deliver it in the game.  Don't seperate me from the game to read some homework assignment.

glad someone finally said it.

 

it's always astonished me that any video game contains huge text files of backstory information.

I'm fascinated by two things; the player who stops what they're doing to read this crap and the poor game developer who had to write all of this crap while just hoping that some player might actually stop to read it...

 

I automatically assume that all text files found in any video game are useless / irrelevant crap otherwise they would have presented it to me in the form of an important dialogue or cutscene. I've skipped so many text documents in games that if strung together they could probably reach the surface of the Moon. and I've not regretted it for one single moment.

[claude1994]

unskippable cutscenes, there shouldnt be any reason why we should have to watch the same cutscenes over and over on new game+ or when we die multiple times in an enemy heavy area.

 

[Commander S]

Something that's come up a lot in recent games, to the point where it's a major reason why I've stopped playing a couple of things entirely, and why I can only play Red Dead for so long, before my patience starts to wear thin:

 

If your traversal mechanics aren't engaging/enjoyable (or even the low, low bar of 'unobtrusive') in their own right, and there's no convenient way to skip them, then you're doing something wrong.

 

Black Desert lost me when I had to spend maybe 5-10 minutes doing nothing, while my character auto-sprints from town to town. Elite Dangerous is fun, but 'point at star, charge up, watch animation, point at next star, repeat' over and over for possibly an hour (or 'point in a straight line and wait 20+ minutes while your ship cruises in-system to wherever') is no fun (particularly on console, where you can't just alt-tab out and do something else at the same time).

 

Meanwhile, Forza Horizon 4 allows for fast travel to any point on the map for convenience (if, say, you want to get weekly events done quickly), even though it's just as fun to cruise around in something that handles nicely, or try bombing across the countryside while racking up skill chains. That's a game that actually has both a skip mechanic and enjoyable/engaging traversal, where you can choose to play efficiently, or enjoy traversal as a feature in and of itself, rather than an attempt at 'realism' that ends up feeling like a chore, or something implemented merely as a perfunctory means to an end.

[Jason]

To play devils advocate, games that trivialise traversal in open worlds with things like fast travel from everywhere and fast travel points that are littered around the map. It's one of the few things that in hindsight I still like about Black Desert, your location in the world actually has meaning as you can't just teleport about, where you choose to setup your home and whatnot actually matters. You can essentially pick a home town and it actually has some meaning. Also, as it's an MMO, traversing the game actually can involve using the aspect of MMO's that is so rarely used these days... the MMO part. Need to cross a giant lake? Catch a ride on an real players boat.

[B7R]

I wouldn't say IN GAMES specifically but I hate it when gaming communities say $50 for an almost 5 year old base game that doesn't come with DLC isn't highway robbery. In my opinion it is, the games been out for a few years now and while it is an AAA title, it's no longer the latest released title and isn't really updated anymore and plus if I was paying $50 for it all these years later I'd be expecting it to come with some form of DLC to justify that cost.

 

The most I'd be willing to pay for a 5 year old AAA base game is $35. 

 

But no I need to settle down and shut the f*ck up apparently because I'm wrong. 

[Commander S]

6 hours ago, Jason said:

To play devils advocate, games that trivialise traversal in open worlds with things like fast travel from everywhere and fast travel points that are littered around the map. It's one of the few things that in hindsight I still like about Black Desert, your location in the world actually has meaning as you can't just teleport about, where you choose to setup your home and whatnot actually matters. You can essentially pick a home town and it actually has some meaning. Also, as it's an MMO, traversing the game actually can involve using the aspect of MMO's that is so rarely used these days... the MMO part. Need to cross a giant lake? Catch a ride on an real players boat.

 

 

Fair, although with Black Desert, I still found I'd be doing quests ages away from the start point, and having to spend long stretches watching what was effectively a glorified loading screen (almost literally, in fact, since I'd be doing nothing with the controller, and just watching something move along a progress bar). And I get the feeling that it's due to the same thing as Elite Dangerous: it was designed for PC to begin with, and waiting for your character to get from A to B for maybe 10 full minutes isn't so bad if you can just alt-tab out and do something else. Same, in fact, as travelling at warp in Star Trek Online - and again, going from the PC version to the console port really drove home how much I used to just alt-tab out during long, unskippable journeys where all you're doing is watching this for the duration:

 

 

 

To go back to my original point, it's not that I want fast travel - it's just that if you can't make traversal into meaningful gameplay (it might not be for everyone, but I really admire Death Stranding's core loop for that), or let them do something meaningful while waiting for a barely-interactive animation to play out, then you might as well make it skippable somehow. And that's a shame, because ideally, you shouldn't have to do that - getting from A to B should be engaging, particularly in an open-world game. As much as I've lost interest in GTAO over the years, I still enjoy how the nearest things to fast travel across the map are either driving a fast car down the highway, or grabbing an aircraft and flying to your destination - it's fast enough not to be a time-waster, but still feels like active gameplay, and all in a way that feels like engaging with the game world like a believable place.

[Malone.]

When a cop leave you in the middle fight due to the higher amount of the criminals. 

[trip]

Menu and pause screes with a choice between two options and no discernable way to tell which choice you've highlighted.

 

 

 

Related but kinda different:

Stuff in games that get my dogs going.  Nothing worse than a game with a long repeating alarm in a scene to get them going.

 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2020 by trip

[darthYENIK]

Speaking of pause menus, pause menus with music or ambient sound.  I want to pause a game for quiet to hear if someone is talking about me in another room or breaking into my house.

[Mister Pink]

8 hours ago, trip said:

Menu and pause screes with a choice between two options and no discernible way to tell which choice you've highlighted.

Haha, yes! Been there a few times. Terrible UI design. 

 

And as for codexes. I'm not against them per se but you are right. It's the old rule in filmmaking too. Show the audience, don't tell them. And I realise codexes are an optional read but I feel compelled to read them. So when I'm playing Mass Effect or whatever, it does take me out the game. And I hate seeing that there's unread content there.

 

[DarksunDaFirst]

On 11/28/2019 at 2:15 AM, B7R said:

Someones probably beaten the horse to death already but every mobile game advertisement I see on youtube is some rip off Clash of Clans like clone that is built to only drag money out of players, what I'm trying to say is the games sole existence is purely for microtransactions

 

There's no "Just download our application and play away", It's all "download our application, get addicted and then buy our overpriced ridiculous MTX".

 

I miss mobile gaming when everything wasn't about MTX, you could download a game and play for hours on end. I'd rather pay for a mobile game in this day and age and have it free of MTX rather than the game be free and there's MTX. 

I just can't stand mobile gaming in general, because everything is a cheap knock-off of something that came out years and years earlier.

Clash of Clans is essentially just the base-building and defense aspects of what Warcraft used to be (WC 1 & 2).  And any MOBA game is just a copy cat of the combat from WC3. 

The only mobile games I enjoy are things like Poker and Risk, which are still waaaay better in real life, but at least I can play those whenever quick and easy.  Everything else is just sh*te.

[The N. Bellic Man]

On 2/15/2020 at 2:13 PM, trip said:

Codexes.

I'm not reading sh*t.  You want me to know something?  Deliver it in the game.  Don't seperate me from the game to read some homework assignment.

It depends. Most of the time you're correct. I really hate when reading breaks the flow, but then sometimes (even if rarely) it makes a game more immersive. Prime example is Assassin's Creed games. How can you tell the history of a city or a building without text? It would take like ten games to show it visually. Of course there could be no text at all and you would have to go to internet and read a Wikipedia article. Or better yet read a book about the real events/cities/buildings. But since reading the codexes is optional I think that it is kind of neat way to get the basic information. I was seriously disappointed when they started to make those texts shorter. Then it kind of lost its point.

 

But of course audio logs or something like that could work.

[B7R]

6 hours ago, DarksunDaFirst said:

because everything is a cheap knock-off of something that came out years and years earlier.

Agreed, I know this is going to sound cliche but trust me, go and look at the cheap GTA knockoff clones on the IOS or application store, there are plenty of them and not very good ones. I'm not saying either they have to be on par with GTA but all these "creators" have mostly done is just used assets either from the Unity store or some modelling website, put them in their so called game and published it to the application store. I don't care if you just want to create a game with downloaded assets and keep it to yourself, that's fine but then putting the game on the application store is where I draw the line, what they've just done is plagiarised other peoples hard work.  Google & Apple are at fault for not policing this sh*t hard enough.

 

And don't get me started on the minecraft knockoffs, plenty of them and their just as terrible as one another but I might give the creators props if they actually created their own textures and blocks, downside is it still looks like minecraft too much. I'm surprised in my youth years Lego games weren't being ripped off with clones.

 

6 hours ago, DarksunDaFirst said:

Clash of Clans is essentially just the base-building and defense aspects of what Warcraft used to be (WC 1 & 2).  And any MOBA game is just a copy cat of the combat from WC3

I'm finding it hard to find decent games now, as you've said everything is a knock off of something else that came out years prior. The mobile market absolutely sucks. If you want to play a decent mobile application game.. guess what it's built around... Microtransactions. Developers have got to keep the money coming in, sure but again I draw the line where the game is revolved around MTX and sucking as much money out of players as possible.. what ever happened to downloading a game and just enjoying it? This is why the F2P model sucks. I'd rather pay $20 for a decent mobile game and never have to worry about MTX, I'm sure there are others that would agree. 

 

Some of my favourite Youtubers not that they can help it, are now stuck promoting COC clones or whatever the latest releases like it are because of the ad problems on youtube, In a way I can tell they hate it just as much as their viewers but they've got no choice, if they want to survive they sadly have to take what ever advertisements they can get, If it's the in-video ones I can just skip over them thankfully. 

[DarksunDaFirst]

4 hours ago, B7R said:

And don't get me started on the minecraft knockoffs, plenty of them and their just as terrible as one another but I might give the creators props if they actually created their own textures and blocks, downside is it still looks like minecraft too much. I'm surprised in my youth years Lego games weren't being ripped off with clones.

 

The mobile market absolutely sucks. If you want to play a decent mobile application game.. guess what it's built around... Microtransactions.

Everything I cut out, 100% agree.  Just wanted to add to these two parts (which I also agree) just for sharing purposes.

 

1.  There is 1 Minecraft knockoff that I actually enjoy - Portal Knights.  Mainly because my 8 y/o loves it, it’s bright and colorful, has it’s own basic story, etc.  Not as much variety or size of Minecraft, but it fills a nice spot in the Minecraft-style games.  It was made for all platforms, but I play it on PS4.

 

2.  I play Risk and Poker on mobile and spend exactly 0 dollars on them.  As fun as they are, spending money for poker chips is cheap-as-sh*t and the unique maps on Risk are fun but not THAT fun.

 

 

Edited March 7, 2020 by DarksunDaFirst

[junkpile]

On 8/13/2019 at 4:03 PM, Guest Billy Russo said:

Harder difficulties = Bullet sponge enemies.

 

That's not hard, it's just annoying and boring. I actually likes how games like Metro do it where you have no HUD and you deal as much damage as the enemies but it's increased. Games that just put the enemy health up to make it 'harder' is really lazy.

Second that. 

Gta 4 was good in that. 

Missions got harder but you could still perform headshots on enemies with the lowest pistol. 

 

If I recall correctly there was only this lazy development in higher levels of the police gang hideouts, dunno. 

 

Dimitri's 3 boat henchmen in buoys ahoy had strange health too but GTA online definitely guilty of this. 

Can hardly go into hard missions without automatic weapons

 

 

 

 

[Commander S]

That annoying thing with games that get lots of post-launch updates: stuff getting patched in/out that detracts from the experience, with no way to revert to a previous version. GTAO might be the most glaring example of this, but things like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Black Desert Online have also done this, and it really drives home how the "live service" future of games just means that you're only maybe an update away from an experience you enjoy going up in smoke forever...

(heck, not even "live service" games - even older things like GTA IV getting music patched out show how the 'everything is online, now' era is really rather bad when it comes to preserving game experiences)

[Malone.]

When you start winning missions, then a hard mission comes from no where to let you fall.

[AngelsOfBloodyDeath]

I'm not the first to say this, and I won't be the last, but campers.

 

I'm not salty, I just don't understand why they play shooters if they're gonna lay in the same spot for 20 minutes.

[Guest]

You are salty.   

 

Unlocking stuff.  I don't mind unlocking weapons/cars etc in single player games.  But in online games it's pure frustration trying be on par with players who have been playing since day 1. Give me everything, all options on the table please.   

[GhettoJesus]

• Plot armor
• If we are in a team then being the guy who has to do everything. I am looking at you CoD 2. Why do I always to put the explosives on the tank? Why am I the one with the sniper rifle everytime? Also in CoD 2 your buddies don't cover your ass if you have to snipe people.
• Stealth mission logic. Hard to elaborate but we all had those stealth mission moments when we went wtf
• Tailing quests. These are so retarded. How come I am the only suspicious guy on the streets? There are hundreds of other people on the road and they don't make you sh*t your pants? I am looking at you SA with the Key to Her Heart mission. You are the worst offender because Millie doesn't even know you. To her you are like any other NPC.
• Invisible walls
• Antagonists making a long speech before killing you

[EmagmaLak]

This one isn't so much the games fault, as it is my own. 

But I will add taking shortcuts to my list. I do it this with every game I ever play. I am on my way from A to B, the mini map has a carefully planned route for me, all I have to do is follow the line, but I don't...

I think "I can drive over this mountain that's faster" or "going off this cliff will save me time" and it so rarely, rarely does.

 

I end up with a dead horse stuck at the bottom of a ravine, or on a mountain side with a rolled over, burning car, stuck with no transport and walking back to civilisation, taking x10 as long as it would of done if I just followed the route. 

 

 

[Leone_Son]

Dodging is useless. I'm talking about Max Payne 2. He often dies while jumping to the side.

Edited April 11, 2020 by pianoir

[SinZer0s]

On 3/4/2020 at 6:04 PM, claude1994 said:

unskippable cutscenes, there shouldnt be any reason why we should have to watch the same cutscenes over and over on new game+ or when we die multiple times in an enemy heavy area.

 

Two words: Kingdom Hearts

f*cking Riku boss fight

 

Oh and in my case I hate long and annoying tutorials. I prefer the Mega Man way of teaching the player as he goes through the level, I also hate games with excessive backtracking to artifically extend the length of the game and finally I also hate games with unobtainable items after a certain point, bitch don't block me out of this item just because I didn't even know it existed 4 chapters ago.

[Meekail]

When you get asked to collect something in a quest and the drop rate is low.

[The Time Ranger]

Cinematics and cut scenes that you can't pause. Sometimes stuff happens and I need to leave the room.

[TheSantader25]

Luck based tasks and challenges. Yeah I'm looking at you RDR2 Gambler challenge 8...