The other thread about favorite mechanics is great, so let’s also do the opposite: what are some of your most hated mechanics?
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Unrepairable weapons are the worst thing. There’s nothing worse than finding a super cool, rare weapon and being paranoid about it breaking.
That’s one of the big things that bothered my in Breath of the Wild. I wanted to go to this cool looking location and find something neat, but I knew that I’ll either get a weapon that breaks in 5 hits, a seed, or an orb. Really deflated my sense of exploration when I realized this was the gameplay loop.
Exactly! It triggers my hoarding response and I find myself keeping all the weapons because something harder might be around the next corner. I end up with only using boko clubs for half the game…
It was definitely a pain in the ass. That was the first game I thought of. Second was dying light. Nothing like get swamped by a hoard and all your equipped weapons break.
Game timers. I want to screw around on my time. The more time-based a game becomes, the less I enjoy it.
I could never get into Animal Crossing for this very reason
Timers just really stress me out for some reason. Give me more time damn it.
Fucking time trials man
Yes! I remember that I could not really enjoy fallout 1 because of the 150 in-game days time limit to get the water chip…
This!
There’s not much else in gaming that makes my blood boil as much as being rushed… especially in single player games. I’m usually playing to relax so please don’t stress me out.
Radiant quests. You can never complete the game because of this, the quests are generic and repetitive and offer nothing but “stretch the playtime”.
That and mechanics like “rando dragon attacks in Skyrim” and “City is under attack” from Fallout 4. I quit F4 because I was on my way to a mission and got the "city under attack notification, and on my way to defend another city was under attack.
Pretty much a lot of procedural “content”. I guarantee big publishers will capitalize on all of this AI to replace writers with generated stories/quests/etc. No idea what to make of this.
I would disagree, some of my favorite games are procedurally generated.
Factorio, RimWorld or valheim for example.
Oh totally. I didn’t mean to imply “all procedural content = bad”. Terraria comes to mind and is one of my favorite game of all time. The “world” is procedural when created, but there are “key” areas/objectives that don’t change. I’m thinking more along the lines of Fallout 4’s “radiant” junk that big publishers salivate over because mountains of endless+cheap content = ($o$)
To yes-and this: procedural content in general. No Man’s Sky is a snore-fest for me, big, empty, meaningless. Missions in Elite Dangerous and X4 are similarly pretty boring, though the former is more fun the first time around. There has to feel like there’s some world-affecting point to what you’re doing. IMO
I found the procedurally-produced planets in No Man’s Sky to be stunningly beautiful. Then I would walk around on them and the similar-but-not-quite look of every part of the landscape would slowly drive me INSANE.
I started playing No Man’s Sky recently and it looks like they added a mode that’s more ‘streamlined’. Dunno if it’s still procedurally generated, though.
Pay 2 win and excessive abuse of FOMO.
E.g. for the next two weeks you can purchase/grind for [character] with a LIMITED EDITION green hat!
It would be OK if such thing was behind an achievement and allowed to be gained later.
Some companies have gotten a little sneaky with it, like Microsoft with age of empires. They make their newly released DLC civs overpowered for two months then nerf it every time.
Escort quests. Stealth sections in games that aren’t built around stealth would be close second.
Genshin Impact occasionally has little stealth missions where you have to sneak by guards.
Pain.
Perhaps not specifically a mechanic, per se, but save points. I want to be able to save whenever, wherever. I don’t always have time to make it to the next save point before I need to stop playing.
Honestly it’s games lacking save points that has made devices like the Steam Deck so nice for gaming. Being able to have a dedicated gaming device that I can put to sleep whenever without reaching a save point is fantastic.
The new Gollum game was very impressive in the way it managed to implement so many of the mechanics in this thread
That game took one of my most hated mechanics (binary moral choices), came up with a concept for it I could have actually loved (the personas arguing), then botched the execution so badly that it felt even worse than a normal morality system. Impressive is certainly the word for Gollum, just not in the way the devs hoped.
Obligate stamina bars/circles for traversal. Just allow me to move at the speed of fun, and definitely don’t make me stand still to recharge when climbing.
I think it’s telling that death stranding, a game all about traversal, let’s you sprint outright for as long as you want until well after your character’s shoes literally fall off. The stamina bar is more a measure of abuse rather than a limit on your movement.
I like stamina bars in many circumstances, but I’ve decided I hate them specifically in life sim games like Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and similar - at least unless there’s an easy and fun way to re-fill them. I won’t write them off entirely, I think it can be done well, but in practice in these games they often serve no purpose but to frustrate you.
Good point! How is “my time?” I’ve been thinking of getting it to play with my gf. We really like dinkum.
Anything using timers, especially based on the clock. It just artificially adds playtime, and it also means I forget about them and lose track of what I was doing most the time, too.
Agreed, timed missions especially stress me out. Just let me do shit in my own pace!
I can say that the only timed content I enjoyed was in WoW and it was the Challenge Modes.
Both because you could try it multiple times and because the reward was an actual prestigious and awesome reward.
I can’t think of another game with a timed run mechanic that offered anything close to that.
My only contention for good timed content in video games would be examples similar to the beginning of Metroid Prime. “The whole planet is gonna explode and you need to leave RIGHT NOW!!” type of deal. It’s essentially the same as putting a timer on a task, in fact that game does show you a timer with how long you still have until the place explodes, except it doesn’t feel like a fakey cop out
Currently playing through “unsighted”. It is a really nice metroidvania game, however everyone (even you) is dying and only has a certain time left. For now i am really enjoying the novelty, but I hope no game copies this. It does really stress me out. knowing that i have to go and upgrade my weapons now because the blacksmith npc s dying in 4 in game hours(like 10 minutes irl). Or quietly exploring the beautiful world just to get a pop up showing that the (nice elderly) consumables vendor is about to die. Like I said it is quite novel, but does have me not play the game often due to knowing wath wil come. I’d say try it out if you feel like stressing a bit :).
Yep, soon as the calendar came up in P5 I quit. Same with FE3H. I did eventually go back to P5 and followed a single playthrough walkthrough, but it far overstayed its welcome.
Any sort of intense micromanagement of units, resources, etc. I’ve got like 16kb RAM in my brain. I can barely remember what I ate today lol.
Also, invisible walls that make absolutely no sense. Maybe just all invisible walls, really.
Having played a bit of Zelda recently, micromanaging weapons. Oh, I’ve got this metal broad sword and I’ve used it to to stab an unarmored fleshy bad guy and oh it’s broken after three stabs.
I get that weapon degradation is a real thing that happens, as they become blunt or potentially fragile, but Zelda BOTW and TOTK take it way too far to the point of it being a real chore. I thought they’d fix it after all the BOTW complaints but TOTK is just as bad.
Honestly, I think thats just a love it or hate it thing that I can totally see why it isnt for everyone and I dont blame you, but I personally love it and would hate to see it reduced/taken away. Once I leaned into it it really encourages me to explore and I enjoy the new fuse system enough that I like when a weapon breaks because Im excited to make a new one
I’m actually getting impatient when a weapon lasts too long, because I want it to break already so I can use something new and interesting without feeling like I’m wasting it. :P
I think part of it is having enough weapon slots that I’m choosing different weapons in different contexts, and so they all subjectively feel like they’re lasting longer than they did at the start of the game (even accounting for regular vs sturdy weapons).
Also making more use of shield fusions lately, and consumables on arrows, which again results in using the weapons less.
I keep kinda wishing I could fuse things to my bows though lol, even though I can use so many different consumables with the arrows already.
Yeah! I just learned that fusing elemental items to shields adds elemental shockwaves when you block, and it really made me think more about my shield fusions
I like some micromanagement. If it’s tinkering with gear or stats then I’m down. Working out how to squeeze out that little extra bit of damage or efficiency is great. However, if you have to actively micromanage units or resources during combat, then its a pass for me. I feel like micromanagement should be an addendum to the core gameplay loop, not it’s focus.
I really like the early access game Against the Storm, because it’s got micromanagement, but it’s also a bit of a roguelike so that no one run ever gets big enough to get too bogged down. It’s got the feel of the fun early part of a Civ game, but almost all the time, and with fun variations.
You’ve made me suddenly realize how rare invisible walls have gotten in my gaming life.
The closest I’ve come recently are “barriers” that are clearly just, like, a small pile of trash that could be easily walked over, but even that is rarer than it used to be.
Quick-time events but SPECIFICALLY the ones that give you way too little time to react. Like, I never mind them too much, especially the ones in the Yakuza series, but I remember there was this game on the Wii called Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings that would throw these inputs WAYY too fast at you.
The end of Atomic Heart is an absurdly fast QTE. I played that whole game, and basically had to give up at 99.99% complete simply because I wasn’t fast enough.
I like them sometimes, but there should ALWAYS be a way to turn them off, for people who don’t have fast reflexes or have problems with their hands, etc.
Enemies that scale with your level in an RPG. I would rather get completely curb stomped by rare high level enemies, so I have something to work towards. In the same vein, I don’t like it when the stat gain you get from leveling ends up with you literally being unkillable by lower level enemies. Most MMOs are an offender to this, where you can just sunbathe in a group of 30 level 1 enemies and are unable to die to them.
GOD, yes. The Fable games are like that, resulting in a large portion of the endgame map in Fable III positively loaded with werewolves and what feels like nothing else. As these were intended to be hard-hitting and unfairly fast, traveling became an annoyance.
I’m curious what your happy medium is, though, since you dislike being over-leveled as well. I personally think being whaled on ineffectually is funny mental image, and sometimes I really just wanna chill
Offline games which require an internet for no apparent reason has to be my pet peeve
Yeah it guarantees that the game will be unplayable through legal means in a few years when it is no longer profitable to keep the servers running.
non-renewable consumable items.
using consumables is hard enough, but you’re telling me there’s a finite number of these? forget it.
only exception is rougelikes.
Yep. I never use consumables. Unless the game really pushes you to use them they feel like cheating.
they feel like cheating.
Or worthless. This item increases your dmg for 10 seconds.
Dude, 1 second is the animation alone and after consuming it, I need to use 3 skills to snapshot the dmg increase so effectively I have 4-5 seconds of actual usage.
Consumables are horrible as a system in general.
Quicktime events. Please make up your mind if you show me a sequence or if you want me to play. I can enjoy watching, but I don’t want to feel like I am being tested for paying attention.
The beginning of the Tomb Raider remake pissed me off especially. You played a few minutes, then watched a minute of sequence, then play, watch, play, watch. One of the sequences took like 5 minutes, so I leaned back to enjoy when suddenly it flashes a heavy PRESS X in my face. I tried to quickly grab the controller but failed… too slow. I almost rage quit.
I am not playing games to get stressed out…
Quicktime events.
I’d limit it to mandatory QTEs - better games have a “story” mode that doesn’t punish you (much/at all) for having the reflexes of an old-timer.
But yeah, mandatory QTEs are an immediate buzzkill. I don’t intend to waste more time in Tomb Raider - that’s already 21 minutes I never get back.
QTEs are also often pretty bad from an accessibility standpoint, especially the older kinds that had you repeatedly mashing buttons!
After biting myself through the loooong intro session path, the game turned out quite good. It did still have a few QTEs later on, but typically in short sequences, which was okayish. First, because I started to expect it, and second because the sequences were short enough that I didn’t get the impression I might have to sit through a movie.
Still, the beginning of the game has left an ugly impression about QTEs.
My backlog is large enough to not consider that particular game anytime soon. I’d rather retry getting into Witcher 1 or step a toe into Heavy Rain.
I am not playing games to get stressed out…
I pretty much only play souls games. So I’m all about being stressed out. I still hate QTEs.
Same, though my single exception is FF7R. Worth a watch if you haven’t played.
