Lazy things in game development that you hate is accepted

@bojackhorseman said:

OK

@charlie_victor_bravo: I'm really not gonna bother doing that. Just watch a gameplay video if you don't want to play the game. Besides, Skyrim already has an animation for opening doors, it's just that the character is not part of that animation, and that's stupid. You just stand there like a fool looking at the door while it opens. It always gets modded into Bethesda games, and it's literally just a hand pushing the door. The character doesn't have to stop, there's no slow or locked animation, it's literally just a hand. And it makes the immersion of the game 9845x better. And that's math. You can't argue against math.

Reading this thread has made me realize just how few people have any experience actually working in a a creative environment with project goals and deadlines that are out of your control. It drives me crazy seeing people complain about these things and have no idea whatsoever what its like to actually work on a game or project like this. None of the complaints in here are because of developers being lazy. I don't work in games but I do work in a creative field that has unrealistic project goals and deadlines, just like games. I would love to be able to implement every single feature of a project and finish them on time and budget, but its just not possible. Bugs happen, feature creep happens, features don't work out how you expected and have to be scrapped, deadlines get moved around, other things pop up that pull you away from a project, etc, etc. Something as simple as showing a hand pushing open a door might seem very easy to you, but for the devs, its probably not worth the time because they have 20 other features they need to complete that are more important. So again, none of this is the result of laziness, its a result of the reality of working on a project with unrealistic goals, expectations, and deadlines. If a game did every single thing possible to implement every feature a player could possibly want, it would never get finished.

@bojackhorseman: I certainly wouldn't say most quests. But even those that do, it is generally only one part of the quest, whereas in Skyrim, the map marker is your guide 100% of the time. To be fair, I don't think you can even compare them, though. As little as I like witcher senses, at least trails have a physical presence in the game's world and they have to be found first before they can be followed. I'm not sure what map markers are meant to represent.

@williamhenry: I don't think anyone in here really think of any developer as lazy. What you just wrote shouldn't be news to anyone. The topic should have been named something like "Things you wish were standard in games but isn't" or similar. I would also suggest to replace "developers" with "publishers", and "lazy" for "greed". I think it's fair to criticize big budget game series that's making crazy amount of money, that still neglect to implement some common complaints because they know the game will sell anyway without it.

Well, you're wrong. I'm actually currently playing through The Witcher 3 yet again (as I'm in fantasy mode ahead of Skyrim rerelease), and I can tell you without a doubt that almost all quests involve the use of witcher senses in one way or another. All witcher contracts and most side and main quests. That's not an opinion, it's just a fact.

And sure, they have a physical presence, but it also makes the game worse. When you're doing the same thing over and over, it gets old real fast. It's probably the biggest gripe I have with The Witcher 3.

@bojackhorseman: So, in another words ESO does not prove your point? Lets look at Skyrim. You can open doors with your bow drawn while moving. Great idea for smoothness of game flow. How are you going to animate opening door smoothly with that in mind? Do you choose to not animate that but choose to animate when you are not holding anything? How often are your characters hands free? Left or right hand side? Do you make gameplay step where character unequips and equips for the door opening?

They made a decision based on what works, not because of laziness. You press a button - that replaces action of touching a door in most players mind. It is thing that we can easily overlook, just like things like character not having a need to urinate, character not randomly waking because they ate too much cheese and character handing over the money to the shop keeper one septim at the time. Those can be modded in but they are not necessarily great ideas and there is reason beyond laziness why those are not found in the base game.

@void: @williamhenry: Since this is such a common theme in this thread, I'll just add what my friend said about this topic. It was somewhere along the lines of "yeah, most people don't get bothered by small stuff like that, so we don't bother putting it in our games". That friend of mine works for a developer you might have heard of, Funcom. He's worked on games like Age of Conan, The Secret World and most recently Hide and Shriek. Even he admitted to it having nothing to do with publishers, memory issues or time constraints. Jeez, can't understand why people get so hot and bothered by the word lazy.

Oh my god, this is so silly. Of course your character shouldn't be able to open a door while aiming a bow and arrow, and that just proves my point. It takes me so much out of the world, that they could just as well have him move through the door like a ghost.

And you're point about it being the same as the characters need to urinate is also just silly. It's not the same thing at all. It's the same as having no animation for swinging your sword. You're pressing a button, so you can just do the rest in your head, right?

Spoiler: It's lazy.

@bojackhorseman: Your English is getting better, so I did not recognizance you immediately Swery65. Look, yes your Deadly Premonition did things that other games haven't done to that extent, but that does not make those things great. Sure it is realistic to wait for a character to put car on the park before stepping out, but it is unnecessary and hinders the actual game play. It is realistic that you can't open the door while holding a drawn bow - just like it unrealistic to use magic to fight dragons and vampires with boob physics - but it is fun.

And animated sword swing. That is part of the combat game play. You have to judge that you are at right position that when swing happens it will hit. You will also get visual feedback from it rewarding you and making judging following attacks easier. There are games that do not animate sword swings but that is because their combat mechanic is different.

You really should make a game with bows, swords and at least one door.

What the hell are you even talking about? And why do you bring in Deadly Premonition? I've never mentioned that game. Most I've ever seen of that game is a few episodes of the endurance run.

There's a difference between fighting dragons and opening doors with your bow drawn. Yes, it's fun to fight dragons, but I don't see how it's fun to open doors with a bow drawn. Why is that fun?

You're whole bit about swords and combat gameplay seem to have no relevance to this discussion. What I'm saying is that it's equally lazy not to animate the opening of a door, as it is to not have a animation for swinging you're sword.

But hey, since you've proven yourself to be some conspiracy theorist with this post, I'm just not gonna bother repeating myself anymore. Soo.. Good luck and get well, I guess?

yeah compressed video that looks worse than the game itself in a cutscene really takes me out of the experience. I've seen compressed 24 fps cutscenes of prerendered gameplay footage talking compressed to 720p with heavy artifacting... how is that acceptable or what you want as a developer to present in an experience.

that's not something a consumer should have to worry about. Welcome to the real world where your customers don't care. Ever work in retail? You think the customer cares that you have to downstack a pallet to get to the item that they need?

To reiterate, I don't like the witcher senses, but it's only a single element of a quest rather than 100% of it, as it is in Skyrim. I don't think it's less lazy, just that there's far less of it in the game. I don't know how you are playing the game, but I am playing through it as well, and far far less than a tenth of my time with the game is spent engaging with the Witcher senses.

But if you want an example of a game that truly has no compass marker and no senses, and manages to keep the player well oriented and well informed, I've already mentioned Morrowind.

@mandude: There's no way around it. Witcher senses factor into every quest in that game. Not that you're holdning down the button at all times, but at some point during a quest, you can bet you're gonna do that. And when not, you always have a quest marker to follow anyway, so it's the exact same as Skyrim.

While I liked Morrowind a lot, I think it's easy to forget just how bothersome that game could be at times. I'd rather prefer some version of the compass from Skyrim, than no compass at all. I've mentioned it earlier, and the ideal way to go would be some kind of marker that takes you to a location, and from there you have to consult your quest log to find out where a character is within a given city, how they look etc.

Oh, and one thing I really did love about Morrowind was the fact that the quest log was a actual book. Just small things like that make me a instantly like a game 10x more.

@bojackhorseman: Aye, but I feel like you missed it when I said I play without the HUD; it's hardly the exact same as Skyrim for me. I don't care if witcher senses appear in most quests or in every quest in the game so long as it doesn't account for 100% of the navigation, and it doesn't. Far from it.

Sure, I don't think think map markers are inherently bad. What I said was lazy, is that there is literally not a thing you have to do in Skyrim that isn't informed by the compass, which is present and active on-screen at all times. A quest-giver might tell you to assassinate someone in a given village, and your compass will lead you right to their house, on the upper floor, to the exact bed they're sleeping in. It seems like we agree on the central point, though. As you say, it's not a case of all or nothing.

Not animating a hand opening a door in Bethesda games is not a result of laziness.

jesus christ.

Crunch.

It's not heroic. It's not necessary. It's not even efficient or your best option when meeting a deadline. It's just poor management that hurts your staff due to your own failings.

And, yeah, I don't care if this thread was meant to be a thread hating on developers for small nitpicks or legit design choices so you can inaccurately and ignorantly call developers "lazy" despite people largely not knowing how game development works.

I'm going to say an ACTUAL lazy thing I hate about game development.

Invincibility frames are a sound gameplay mechanic. It's based on timing and awareness. That it doesn't make realistic sense doesn't mean it's shit. So many gameplay mechanics are unrealistic, but the best ones are not the ones that are necessarily real. You can obviously not like it for it, but it's hardly an objective reason to call it shit.

As for Dark Souls and the Witcher, I think I said before I don't think those two can be compared at all, yet people keep doing it. That wasn't a point I was trying to make, so let's forget that comparison. I just felt W3 was inconsistent in it's animations, and therefor timing of damage, blocks and the like. If you take a combo like light attack, light attack; Geralt doesn't seem to hold true to any consistent rules of attack. One time you use them he slices immediately on the first attack, then pivots for the second making the second hit take longer to connect than the first did. That's okay and cool, but another time you use the exact same combination (with exact same enemy position) he suddenly pivots on his first attack making it hit later than it did before, then pivot twice on his second slice making that hit even later than before. Meanwhile, I can count the literal frames my attack would've connected too late which caused me to be interrupted and take damage.

You can make the argument I should stun, control, use ranged attacks or whatever else first, but I want control of my character. Telling me I need to approach something differently because it's not working is fine, but not because you won't allow me to engage in mastering the timing of moves. That said, I'm hyper-critical of sensitivity, sharpness, movement and consistency in combat games, especially melee ones. They are some of my favorite games and W3 just doesn't hit the high demands I have for them.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

@zevvion: Well, I get what you're saying, but the thing about The Witcher's animations is that they are dependent upon Geralt's positioning. While it's true that you get largely the exact same animation at all times in Dark Souls, I think that is a weakness. I get that it's a very specific style of game, but it makes it feel so binary. Not a fan of that very static feel.

As for invincibility frames, I just really don't like them. It feels so cheap. It actually undermines the difficulty of the Dark Souls series, because I always feel like it's just added as a "out" instead of a actual skill-based way of getting out of the way of an attack.

FPSes

You still need to actually time the dodge to even utilize those i-frames, and you still need to dodge in a direction that won't put you right into another attack/into the middle of the attack you're trying to dodge. Just because it's not skill based in the exact same way as a game you like doesn't mean it doesn't require skill to pull off.

An entire genre is lazy now I guess.

What is even this thread

"Lazy" is a pretty lazy criticism.

@bojackhorseman: THAT NUMBER 2! I FINALLY FOUND SOMEONE LIKE ME!

I would also add the thing that irks me even more is guns just sticking to character's backs. No holster, no sling, no nothing. Always notice it, ALWAYS SUCKS. Especially when you see the rare opposite attention to detail, like Max Payne (in Max Payne 3) always holding his long gun and switching it to one hand when you pull out a pistol, or Uncharted 4's EXCELLENT slings on the guns, along with animations that the characters do to sling the rifles over their shoulders when not in use.

The number one thing I noticed (with glee) from the new Red Dead trailer? That the rifles actually have slings on them! It seriously was my favorite thing.

Disclaimer: I am a huge nerd about this stuff, and I accept that.

Bad. And only getting worse.

But stuff like this contributes and makes it better. You go guys!

Old comment but I was playing ME2 not that long ago and this is a spin on that point: Pre-rendered cutscenes that use in-engine assets/tweaked renderer from the console to capture them and then don't do anything about it on PC. So you get in-game PC graphics with "seamless" transitions to console footage. Pet peeve that's clearly just a time/work issue but seems like such a waste. Only that's not seamless on PC. Can you spot when this is and isn't in-engine (ouch!):

I can agree to a point, but I mostly play role playing games or other open world type games, and it just always bothers me whenever something takes me out of the experience. I'd rather just see a contextual dodge, like a guy rolling under the tail that's about to hit him. Makes me feel so much more in the game, and less like I'm just manipulating a system.

Breadcrumb missions. A good example of this is shit like Arkham or Witcher 3. You find a crime scene, you pick up on some evidence, and then you have to follow a trail of bread crumbs. This has and will always be the most annoying shit to me. Point A is where you get your evidence, the end goal is simply to hit Point B, but you have to follow this dumb winding path between those points which only really serves to make everything take longer than it needs to. Each and every time I have to slog through one of these missions it feels like the devs were just trying to artificially inflate the length of the side quest. Witcher 3 was a cool game that was bogged down by this crap and I hated it.

Edit: I would place these mission types right up there with target stalking missions (think GTA and Assassin's Creed), and basic fetch quests.

Pre-rendered cutscenes that does not accurately depict what's going on in the actual game. Mafia 3 is the most recent title I can think of that did this. You can roll up on a mission at night but the story calls for it to be day time so there's just a jarring cut. If you're going to use pre-rendered cut scenes, at least makes the scenes match. GTA V used in engine cut scenes but if the story mission was set during the day, it would at least do a transition from night to day by speeding up time.

I don't feel like reading through 3 pages of responses right now and I am sure others have already mentioned this but...

30FPS

Games look so much better at 60 and I would gladly take any graphical hit in order to get 60FPS

I hate the fact that the Super Mario man can't run to the left. What the hell, lazy game designers? Get it together!

@bojackhorseman: Sure. But that feels more like a clash of opinions. I do get why you'd not like invincibility frames. There are some things I don't like in games that others do. I was talking about this the other day with someone else here. I really don't like restriction based-difficulty settings. Like: 'Here's our game and all the things you can do. For Hard Mode, here's a list of things that we'll scrap from those possibilities'. Ugh, I think it's the worst.