The other thread about favorite mechanics is great, so let’s also do the opposite: what are some of your most hated mechanics?
The other thread about favorite mechanics is great, so let’s also do the opposite: what are some of your most hated mechanics?
Hunger or thirst mechanics in anything that’s not explicitly a survival game.
Best hunger mechanics are the ones that don’t harm your character when you’re hungry, but you do get a buff for eating.
Valheim’s like that. Don’t want to eat? Fine. Go multiple days without and you’ll still be ok. But if you want your hp to be all it can be, you’ll want to eat up before going out to fight.
Valheim’s hunger / food-as-major-buffs mechanic is legit the best way I’ve seen any video game handle food.
It’s also the reason I DO NOT like survival games.
I would be ok with this mechanic if I didn’t have to eat 10 bear steaks of 2 kilos each to last me for the next 10 minutes.
This is one of several reasons I didn’t play Ark for more than 2 days. Kill animals, get meat, cook at camp fire, eat throughout the day, store meat where half of it spoils before you can eat it.
Or where it just becomes a nuisance 5 minutes in. For example Subnautica, which is an amazing survival/exploration game. But the hunger/thirst becomes a chore like 30minutes in when you get the possibility to get food basically everywhere and stock up on water. Still enjoyed the exploration/base building a lot. But it really stopped being a survival game quickly, which honestly might have been for the best given its other qualities.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a popular roguelike that removed its hunger mechanic and the game is so much better.
I would be ok with it if I only needed to pick up the stuff and my character would eat it automatically, and not need to open up the menu every ten minutes