I absolutely can't stand aggressive weapon durability loops. Getting awesome loot should feel like a reward, not a maintenance chore that breaks every five minutes.
What’s a common mechanic that always makes you roll your eyes when you see it in a new game?
Been saying this for awhile, increased health and damage in hard mode is NOT an increase in difficulty. It's an increase in tedium.
I would die so often because I want to space out.
That's what I love about the Dark Souls series, enemies that dance around you and hit you quickly usually die in 1 to 2 hits. But if you don't learn how to deal with them, they'll chip you down quickly.
Yes, I always say that as well. It’s lazy hard mode and is not engaging. I prefer engaging enemy AI to make the game harder, not health.
Doom games for example are really good at this. The enemies are still killable but they put them at you in such pairings that the game becomes difficult.
this is why i love certain game mods that change the AI.
i’ve been playing a lot of Blade and Sorcery recently and one of the things that made it too easy was how the AI would rarely swing at you and how predictable and avoidable they were. adding a mod that makes them adapt to your own personal fighting style kicked it up a notch in difficulty and i now come VERY close to dying uncomfortably often (in a good way). i also added new magic that makes the boss very challenging when it decides to use it as well. it makes for a much more engaging and rewarding experience.
I never really got into Borderlands because of this. Enemies felt way too bullet spongy and you constantly pick up new weapons that are only marginally better pea shooters than the last one.
Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance but that was how I felt.
Same! I love Borderlands, but the solo game mode can become tedious if you get unlucky with the drops, especially with how bullet spongy the enemies can be, especially early on.
Honestly? Depends on the game. Skyrim, for example, is absolutely obnoxious with this as it makes no sense. Level 5 bandits should not survive getting a steel warhammer bashed into their face six times.
Some games however (Expedition 33 as my example) really do help scale back the OP-ness of certain builds or characters. Sometimes I like to actually experience a fight and enemy's attacks before I utterly annihilate them
This is where I'm at. If a player gets to a point where they're skipping or circumventing the majority of the encounter because they defeat the enemy before it gets to do its routine, then that's a battle that becomes more difficult when the enemy has more HP.
This ruins the immersion of The Division games for me. I wanted them to be hardcore shooters like older Ubisoft shooters like Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six
There's also the opposite, where you flawlessly beat the shit out of a boss, only for it to play a cutscene where you get sucker punched like a chump and knocked out.
PTSD flashbacks of the Thessia fight during Mass Effect 3 where the super lame "villian" can get shat on by the player, but he summons a fuck ass gun ship to "cover" him while he heals up to full health. Repeat this three times only for the player to loose during a Cutscene.
ETA: I wish I could meet the dumbass who decided to include that cutscene loss. A better version of the "loss via cutscene" is as follows: Just have Shepard and crew get there a little too late, they have a breif fight and then after a set amount of time (say two minutes) Kai-Lame ends up escaping in the gunship at the last minute, and Shepard is also forced to flee before their location is overrun by Reapers.
That way the player still looses, but it's just because Shepard ran out of time and because allied forces are too busy trying to fight off Reapers or evaquate civillians/survivors, that Kai-Lame's gunship is able to get through unhindered. Shepard and Crew are also forced to flee, but not before scaning leftover/damaged/incomplete data from the Prothean artifact.
Less painful and more palletable than "loosing because the higher-ups want Kai-Lame to live a little longer."
He was technically introduced in the books first as the main antagonist for Anderson iirc. But he’s the same there lmao, they want him to be so cool so badly but have Anderson blow his kneecaps out.
We are like-minded concerning this topic. I basically posted the same thing. Also in cutscenes you can take ridiculous levels of damage, but in-game you’d be seeing “Restart from last checkpoint” if you took the same damage.
Rubber banding in racing games. Nothing kills the high of enjoying a massive well-earned 1st place lead like the AI driver behind you inexplicably becoming a flawless speed demon that instantly teleports to your bumper.
Adding to that, it's almost insulting when the AI driver inexplicably slows down after holding 1st place after you've been struggling to recover from bad luck.
Marvel Rivals “Practice AI” matches do this every single match. Your team is dominating but right before a checkpoint, they crank it up to 300% to make it “fun” and “competitive” with an “earned win” to prolong the match until the final moments. It gets exhausting seeing it every single time when I’m just trying to practice new characters and our randos on chat are freaking out and switching to their mains.
It’s like clockwork. But I ain’t a bot-losing scrub, so I’ll fully admit I do it too lol. (Eh hem… within reason)
That's why I turn on auto mash when ever I can in any video game now. And i know it's like "you're just cheating, and you're not even trying"
I fucking spent YEARS of my life mashing buttons as fast as I could. As an adult I'm fucking tired of it. It's loud, it breaks my buttons on my controllers down faster than necessary, and it's a pain in the ass when I have to fucking pull out a spoon in order to keep up with the games demands. Fuck that shit.
Running into a "dead end" that clearly isnt a dead end i.g. a fallen sapling in the way, that or escort missions where thier walking speed is faster thrn your walking but slower then your running so you have to keep speeding up snd slowing down
This reall ruined God of War: Ragnarok. So many situations, where there is literally 2ft tall fence in front of you, but it is inpossible to cross and you need to go around through the cliffs. That is just shitty design
The thing that BOTW and TOTK do best. You can climb literally anything, how difficult it is, is based off of stamina, and weather. Which there's also work around and armor to help that.
The real exception would be shrines but I've seen many videos where if you're clever enough, there's always an alternate way than intended. And it's not cheating, just the game mechanics and skill.
Exactly! And while I really understand that it is a different game than openworld Zelda, then I at least demand, that the environment reflects better, that there is something I can’t pass. Give me a lava pit, not a picket fence. It was the same with Jedi Survivor - like my character is a jedi and does crazy acrobatics, but because the metroidvania game mechanics dictates it, can not cross 6ft of wet slippery metal, that I am sure he could just jump over.
I'm more annoyed when this isn't consistent through the game. Like you have a ledge that you can climb. But then you see the same ledge, but can't climb it. WTF?
Some definitely do it better than others. I always liked how halo 1-3 and odst integrate it by calibrating chief’s armor and punching the emergency door release on the drop pod instead of just basic look up and down.
It's also important for people to remember that people who've never played games but want to need these basic ass tutorials to understand simple game mechanics if they've never played before. It's automatic for us who've grown up with universal controls/games in general to understand aiming and movement but it wasn't always the case when H1-H3ODST were around and when theses games were coming out there was still a huge portion of players who were just now entering the gaming scene.
I actually think the gaming industry by and large has lost the ability to understand accessibility by assuming everyone already knows how to play the game and while annoying I'm greatful whenever a game takes the time to recognize that this might be someones first game.
It's worth noting that any fusion engine you construct in a settlement has a fully seated fusion core but every single one we can loot from fusion engines around the wasteland is not fully seated and partially ejected.
I always assumed they were ejected as they were low and needed replaced. That could explain why we only get hours of use instead of years or decades.
I think that's eaxctly it, now If they had added a "unused fusion core" or something that you could eventually obtain and did what that mod does it could've explained away the difference using my assumption.
Scaling difficulty. Makes it feel like you never really get stronger in a game. I love the feeling of over leveling after losing to an enemy and coming back like Goku and absolutely destroying said enemy
This was my problem with the original Oblivion. Get attacked by wolves in the woods at level 3...that's a challenge. Run into the same pair of wolves in the same location at level 45...still hard to kill them despite all the weapons, armor, and spells I have now. LOL
Agreed. I hated XCom2 because of its timers. I don’t see the need to be rushed in a strategy game. If the developers were going for a sense of tension, then they dropped the ball. I had to quit the game until I learned I could download the mod that disabled all the timers. Once they were gone, I fell in love with a game.
I agree with a BUT.
I can handle one or 2 in a game where it is actually needed. Best example is the end of Halo, best use of a timer as it generated a genuine use and urgency.
I have no issue when it is a defend this section for 10minutes till reinforcements arrive. But I hate, drive here and complete the objectieve in five minutes
Make that anything where you have to use gimmick controls.
I remember being excited to try the Vita Uncharted game, only to find out that in order to throw a grenade you had to use the rear touch pad thing. Same for several other things. Quickly became obvious this thing was a Vita tech demo more than a serious effort at a fun game.
Not as common now... But 'optional' multiplayer. Optional in quotes because the reality is that, if you want 100% completion, you either need to do it or, if you're lucky, engage in an extremely long grind if you can't/don't want to play with others.
For something that is still around a lot today... game mechanics that require careful timing/set-up/etc, followed by massive swarms of enemies that render said mechanics pointless. I get wanting to stop the wild flailing/button mashing, but if a core mechanic of your game only works properly in 1v1 or 1v2 fights at the most, don't proceed to make the majority of the fights something like 1v4 fights where such tactics are nullified.
Man, Mass Effect 3 triggered me so hard for this. I got into the series about 3 years after it wrapped up. So yeah, being "forced" to play the MP for a few rounds every couple of days was rough (heard it used to be worse when it first released), especially since the only lobbies that were avaliable to someone unfamiliar with shooters, especially online co-ops, were gold and plat...yeah I spent a lot of time dead before I unlocked decent gear and characters.
Dont get me wrong, I was happy that there were still people playing the Multiplayer, but it was rough.
I think weapon durability is really difficult to balance. Some games include it, but it’s almost meaningless because it rarely affects gameplay (looking at you, DS3). Others make it a core part of the combat loop, where you constantly switch between weapons because their durability is limited (like BotW).
That's why it sucks so much. Any half-decent player is either going to be able to negate it (thusly rendering it moot as a mechanic) or intentionally use the 'crap' weapons and never use the 'good' weapons until they can be replaced easily (thusly rendering it moot as a mechanic). The very few times I've seen it 'work' it's been treated effectively as ammo more than anything.
Yeah I think it works here. Awakening treating weapon durability like “ammunition” of sorts keeps you prioritizing using the stronger weapons on stronger foes. Just adds another layer to the strategy.
My personal gripe about this is how it's implemented. Have me maintain my stuff every now and then, that's cool. Like in RDR2 with cleaning your guns. It doesn't get tedious and you can mostly ignore that if you don't care, but I found the extra bit of realism nice.
But then you have games like the Alone in the Dark remake where a pickaxe, a tool specifically designed for smashing against rocks, breaks in like 20 swings.
State of Decay handled it pretty well. It was balanced well enough that it was something you needed to consider, but it never became a chore to deal with
I’m a firm believer that the champion weapons and the master sword should not have had a durability attached to them. Make them unbreakable, but not the highest damage weapons in the game for balance
Completely agree. I’ve had the same thought. Make some breakable weapons more powerful so there is still incentive to use them but you don’t have to constantly find new weapons due to all of them degrading.
On top of that, in TOTK I feel that instead of the “pristine” weapons in the depths, there could have been “quests” to restore the previously degraded weapons from each class- an extra mini dungeon in the four corners of the world with a super version of the overworld boss
They sell it as an element that makes the game more dynamic, but then if you buy an amiibo figurine with an nfc tag you can make crates fall from the sky that give you unlimited guardian weapons, completely nullifying that mechanic. Turns out, the explanation for that game mechanic is “money.”
Then I never use my good weapons because I don't want them to break so I used the shittiest weapon I have until it breaks then use my next shittiest weapon
It really depends for me, sometimes I LOVE it. It feels immersive and makes me pay attention to what I have. I like it in Oblivion and Dying Light,but I hated it in Fallout 3 for example
I wouldn’t mind it so much if there was also a repair mechanic. If you add weapon/shield degradation as a nod to realism, you utterly negate that of there’s no way to fix them.
Hate it in most games, but not in others. KCD is one where it makes sense. Also survival games like Green Hell. But I hate it Fallout 76 and especially in LOZ: BOTW.
I swear I broke so much weapons in that game😂 but you get spells and items like the repair powder to use to repair them. Alternatively, a blacksmith could repair them
Torchlight solved this. You can load your pet up, and send it to town to sell the items. Its been a while, but I think it could buy things like potions too
In Skyrim, I didn’t mind it, as it emphasized the fact that just because you could pick up everything, you really shouldn’t. If you could just carry everything, I would have wasted so much time picking up all the bullshit in every environment. Because it was limited you just need to focus on what you actually need/want.
It's part of the core gameplay loop. It forces you to take breaks from killing to go back to town, organise your shit, maybe hit a trainer and LVL up etc.
It also helps you better engage with the loot. You don't auto pick up everything, you weigh up whether you want to take the iron sword or drop it and instead keep the 2 pairs of iron gloves. It forces you to evaluate rarity and good value and be strategic.
But yeah, sometimes you just want to take 400 wheels of cheese in your inventory, which is why mods are so great for this.
Back when Oblivion first came out, I remember a friend literally calculating the value/weight ratio for items and choosing what to pick up based on that. And yes, it included literally everything with even one gold value.
Tutorials that stop the game dead and give you a window instead of letting you do the mechanic it’s trying to explain. I couldn’t pass the monster hunter rise tutorial because it using stopping the hand for a tutorial window every 30 steps. I just gave up out of frustration and uninstalled.
To be fair, Monster Hunter has so many damn mechanics that it’s difficult for new players to figure out what’s going on. At least the last 3 Monster Hunter titles gave you some direction instead of just plopping you into the world.
Sorry mate saw you wanted to save the world and all but this half destroyed crate is in the way and the manager says it can't be moved so what can we do 🤷🏻
Oh don't look at me like that, hop on, you've got a 3 chapter side quest that will take you just round the corner in 1 to 2 hours.
Oh my god, the fricken side quest to open up a part that just looks like you can go through….
Or some fat ass fish man that just needs to scoot his butt out the way (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
When a boss doesn't take damage because they're not in their "I can take damage" phase. I hated the boss fights in The Force Unleashed for this reason.
For me it’s leveling and unlocking skills and not being able to unlock every skill at once, and a game not having new game plus that brings the level and skills with you to the next play through. Like I’m sorry but I’m not playing the exact same story 4 times just to have a slight difference in gameplay styles and having to grind over and over.
That, or missable quests and or timed quests in an open world game. I hate missing out on content.
Don’t know if it’s a mechanic, but having your character do all these amazing feats and tricks during cutscenes. Then once you resume gameplay you can’t do those amazing feats. Spiderman and Dante from DMC comes to mind with this.
or the opposite when in a cutscene suddenly your character gets beaten by something that wouldnt be a big deal in regular gameplay (I'll just use pheonix down on aerith, right?)
Unskipable cutscenes and intros. I can understand it first time but if I need to beat a boss and for 30 attempts I need to watch 10-20s intro it pisses me off.
In addition to breakable weapons I am a big stinker about QTEs. If im in the middle of a cut scene I don’t wanna have to babysit it to make it go, I wanna see cool shit happen
Yeah, I think that may be the quirk about eating/drinking in survival games that is just obnoxious as hell.
There are so many survival games that I really really want to like but they’re all just annoying b/c if I don’t eat a full thanksgiving spread and drink a bathtub of water every day, I will die.
I want to like The Forest and Green Hell and The Long Dark but all of them are like 5 minutes from thirsting to death and 10 minutes from starving to death.
Subnautica is just as bad but food and water are so readily abundant that those factors just become minor annoyances after a short while and become just background noise to the games.
If a studio could just make a survival game like those where food and water were a bit more rare with less constant impending need, like the player character is a hummingbird flitting from flower to flower, it could be a much more interesting to see but as it’s currently implemented, it’s really hard to enjoy.
i hate being timed. i understand the narrative importance in some situations too but i like to explore and i like to mess around. ruined dead rising 2 for me. always screwed around too much and soft locked a game over
Not a huge deal, but I hate when characters give me hints for a puzzle I’m solving, unless it’s very vague. Defeats the purpose. If I’m genuinely stuck, I’ll look it up. I don’t need Mimir ruining the fun.
I'll give it a pass if the character is giving me the hint after it's been a long time (Ten minutes at least) or if I ask.
If I'm 10 seconds into a puzzle and they're already trying to give me help then it's annoying, especially if they're telling me something really obvious.
QTEs, especially in spectacle fighters. The moment I have to stop my attack rhythm to play Guess The Button, I give up. Yes, that's means the God of War games, but also the Telltale Walking Dead games. I don't care how amazing your game is, the moment you tear me away from your game's primary gameplay loop to play digital Simon Says, I'm unhappy.
I'll give a pass to rhythm games like PaRappa and Space Channel 5, mainly because that's their primary mechanic. You get to survive...in small doses
Just giant ass open worlds in general at this point, like don't get me wrong when it's done well. Like with Skyrim, it's super fun and enjoyable to explore.
But that's really rare, and when it's down poorly it SUCKS SO MUCH and just ruins any kind of fun for me.
It's gotten to the point when as soon as a game company starts bragging about it's open world, and how big it is. Alarms instantly start blaring, it's become a big red flag for me.
This! If it feels lived in, then I’m fine with it, but if it’s just large empty areas that I need to traverse for the sake of the creators saying how large it is, then I check out.
Then they put in fast travel points to get from one spot to another, but then why have these large open areas if we are just going to fast travel past them… just bring these points closer together
This something Oblivion did incredibly well with. Seeing all the NPCs including guards have a daily routine where they slept, art, socialized, and worked absolutely blew my mind as a kid, and made a sparsely populated game feel alive.
What hits harder is that Skyrim is one of those open worlds that is so full of random crap not marked on a map people are STILL finding things.
Skyrim may be one of those games held together by duct tape and the modding community, but it still puts a smile on my face to wander the around the woods and stumble upon a Fairy Circle (A ring of mushrooms)
Shoehorning open world into games that don't benefit from it at all really bugs me. Metal Gear Solid 5 would have been such a better game(and probably actually finished) if Kojima hadn't wanted to join the open world bandwagon. More recently Metroid Prime 4 its just like....why?
The whole time travel bit of Assassin's Creed. They have this perfectly good formula - play an assassin in multiple historical eras - and they slathered this wholly unnecessary bit on top as what? connective tissue? You have that through the secret societies.
It's entirely my opinion, ofc, but it wrecked the whole series for me.
1.9k
u/2_Sir_Zero9 9d ago edited 9d ago
Artificially increasing an enemy's health and damage and nothing else.