Inventory management - unless it's there to intentionally limit your loadout (a la Deus Ex), as opposed to limiting how much vendor trash you can carry (a la Torchlight). Just let me cashify that shit on the spot already, or better yet, just drop cash instead of trash I obviously will never equip.
Obnoxious HUDS - Stop using HUDs to display something you could easily display in-game. If you must use a HUD, don't have it take up half the screen just so it looks a bit prettier.
Manually picking up ammo - Seriously, just cycle the pick-up animation automatically if you must. If I'm carrying that gun I want that ammo, don't flash a huge green triangle up on screen to point it out to me, just pick it up.
Having checkpoints and then forcing me through 2 unnecessary load-screens to get back to said checkpoint - GTA 4 I'm looking at you.
@shulinchung: DLC just needs to be done in a proper fashion, If the game is lacking to begin with and then they throw some DLC at you a month after release... Thats bad. But if the game seems finished to begin with and they actually spend time developing a good DLC pack, Then I dont know about you but Im all for paying a little more to get a little more.
Encumbrance can work if its done right... As long as it isn't so strict to the point of not being fun. Level caps suck. Especially in games like Oblivion and Fallout where there would be little negatives to going higher.
The Level cap in Borderlands was WAY too low. I understand that they want to balance the game but if you are putting that much time in so what if you can max out your talent tree? Borderlands two could do with a much more intricate Skills tree and maybe a couple less Classes instead, but thats getting off topic.
For some genres I like encumbrance and inventory management. They just need to have less junk to pick up. You wouldn't go picking up every piece of trash you saw along side the road in real life, because most of that shit would be useless anyways...
" For some genres I like encumbrance and inventory management. They just need to have less junk to pick up. You wouldn't go picking up every piece of trash you saw along side the road in real life, because most of that shit would be useless anyways... "
" @shulinchung: DLC just needs to be done in a proper fashion, If the game is lacking to begin with and then they throw some DLC at you a month after release... Thats bad. But if the game seems finished to begin with and they actually spend time developing a good DLC pack, Then I dont know about you but Im all for paying a little more to get a little more. "
Oh yeah, GTA4, fallout 3 annnd Borderlands too atm are showing how DLC should be handled and also the quality at which it should be given to use...stuff like mass effect's DLC....makes my stomach churn.
Death is not fun. I feel like it's a relic in video games from the arcade days when developers wanted us to die so we'd put more quarters in. Multiplayer games are obviously excluded from this, but for action adventure games, it's just tedious to keep playing parts over and over. I think Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time is really the gold standard for this. You've still got death, but you can just rewind when you make a mistake, and the game is still plenty challenging as well, so you're not sacrificing difficulty, if that's you're thing. I'm really happy that racing games are adopting the Rewind feature as well. If you're making PC game, there are only a few exceptions when the game shouldn't at least have a Quicksave feature.
And I completely agree with time limits. Boo-urns.
Depends on the game. Encumbrance sucked in STALKER SOC, but worked GREAT in STALKER COP. Encumbrance is fine as long as there are things to allow you to carry more (ie extra strength or pockets associated with armors, etc...).
But I agree with removing low level caps. Level 25 in unmodded Fallout 3? That's absurdly low. I wanna get up to level 150 before expansions.
"When a boss fight is actually you fighting wave after wave of his lackeys. Fuck how I hate when developers do that. "
A jab at Batman Arkam Asylum? I haven't played it myself but thats what i hear the majority of ''boss battles'' play out like "
To some extant. That was the only complaint I had on an otherwise great game though Batman: AA is defiently not the first one to do it and most definitely not the last one either.
I'd say I like a little more depth to my gameplay, depending. Some games handle encumbrance poorly, STALKER for example. As long as they avoid me constantly dropping items so I can pick up others it can add some interest to a game. Plenty of games handle it very well, nothing tedious about it.
I think encumbrance as a NUMBER needs to go away. I hate how the system is used in Oblivion and Fallout, where each item has a specific weight. I'm fine with having a certain amount of item slots, however, especially since in games without them, I feel like the inventory gets too huge to be manageable efficiently. Main example would probably be Mass Effect.
Other than that, I get really irritated at large scale games that don't include a mini-map in which you have to continually pause to bring up a large map so you can see where the hell you're supposed to go. It doesn't have to be super-detailed, just as long as it's able to be read and can be brought up to a larger size during gameplay.
Dialogue trees in which the answer you choose is not spoken by your character. Hell, dialogue trees in general just feels unnatural to me, with everyone just standing around looking all stoic while you read through the options. I wish more games handled it like Fahrenheit where you had to choose an answer fast, to make the conversations flow a little more smoothly. Obviously you couldn't have any long answers like in certain RPG's I could mention, but I don't particularly enjoy long conversations in games anyway. I found myself just looking for the quickest way out of the conversation in every single dialogue while playing Dragon Age. To the point: something needs to be done about dialogue trees, because they're basically a very good idea.
" Dialogue trees in which the answer you choose is not spoken by your character. Hell, dialogue trees in general just feels unnatural to me, with everyone just standing around looking all stoic while you read through the options. I wish more games handled it like Fahrenheit where you had to choose an answer fast, to make the conversations flow a little more smoothly. Obviously you couldn't have any long answers like in certain RPG's I could mention, but I don't particularly enjoy long conversations in games anyway. I found myself just looking for the quickest way out of the conversation in every single dialogue while playing Dragon Age. "
Well I think the problem lays more with the silent protagonist then the dialogue trees. Now that I think about the whole silent protagonist concept is the dumbest thing ever. "let me do everything everyone tells me to do with no question what so ever"
Cutscenes that you can't pause or skip. Emphasis on PAUSABLE CUTSCENES NEED TO FREAKING EXIST. Guide button doesn't always work (more often than not, it doesn't).
"Dialogue trees in which the answer you choose is not spoken by your character. Hell, dialogue trees in general just feels unnatural to me, with everyone just standing around looking all stoic while you read through the options. I wish more games handled it like Fahrenheit where you had to choose an answer fast, to make the conversations flow a little more smoothly. Obviously you couldn't have any long answers like in certain RPG's I could mention, but I don't particularly enjoy long conversations in games anyway. I found myself just looking for the quickest way out of the conversation in every single dialogue while playing Dragon Age. To the point: something needs to be done about dialogue trees, because they're basically a very good idea. "
Then why'd you play a Bioware game in the first place when everybody knows that half of any Bioware game depicts long conversations. Honestly I don't think the dialogue tree system should be changed at all, I loved the way games like KOTOR, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect actually let me choose what I wanna say rather than let the douchbag protagonist make the choices for me.
Hell the dialogue tree system is the main reason why Bioware is so popular. Farenheit's systen shouldnt even be counted as a dialogue tree, all it is are just a set of cutscenes that play as soon as you choose an option.
" Cutscenes that you can't pause or skip. Emphasis on PAUSABLE CUTSCENES NEED TO FREAKING EXIST. Guide button doesn't always work (more often than not, it doesn't). "
Seconded. I thought this would have become standard in the PS2 era. Or at latest by now.
On dialogue trees: nearly every game needs this. But not necessarily selecting what your character will say word-for-word. One thing I hated about Fallout 3 is that the choices were always extremely short because they wanted to be able to fit the entire selection in one or two lines of large SD sized text.
I guess while I'm on the subject of responses, Try giving the voice actors the entire context of speech before recording the lines. So many missed inflictions and annunciation in videogames makes me think the director gives the actors a shitload of lines then tells them to say them many different ways each, then the sound engineers grab what sounds the most correct and put it in the game. Most voice acting feels very cohesionless.
Encumbrance doesn't need to go away. It forces you to manage your inventory and take what you need instead of grabbing every little thing in the environment and keeping it with you.
" Escort Missions. Straight up. The worst part of any game is the part where you have to protect something you have no control over. Also, I guess timed missions suck as well. The main reason why I don't like Majora's Mask. "
well those kinda did die I haven't played an escort mission in forever
" Also, I guess timed missions suck as well. The main reason why I don't like Majora's Mask. "
Well, then I would say the reason you don't like Majora's Mask is the reason others love it. That very feeling of urgency, of time actually mattering in the game. I think Majora's Mask is one of the early implementations of the 4th dimension in a video game, and I absolutely loved that aspect of it.
" Also, I guess timed missions suck as well. The main reason why I don't like Majora's Mask. "
Well, then I would say the reason you don't like Majora's Mask is the reason others love it. That very feeling of urgency, of time actually mattering in the game. I think Majora's Mask is one of the early implementations of the 4th dimension in a video game, and I absolutely loved that aspect of it. "
I don't want to get into this here, but basically I don't enjoy being rushed and forced to repeat everything if I mess up. You like it? Good for you. (I don't even mean that in a condescending manner.) Of course there are other reasons why I don't like Majora's Mask, but that is for another thread in another time.
there are a lot of things that i hate in games, timed missions,
escort missions,
short games (developers need to make games longer),
DLC ( i'm talking about games that have been out for like a few weeks and they release some DLC for it. things that should have been in the game to begin instead they release it as DLC),
make AI actually smart ( some games out there have made the AI stupid, like walking into walls and keep on doing it). all that i could think of.
Death is not fun. I feel like it's a relic in video games from the arcade days when developers wanted us to die so we'd put more quarters in. Multiplayer games are obviously excluded from this, but for action adventure games, it's just tedious to keep playing parts over and over. I think Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time is really the gold standard for this. You've still got death, but you can just rewind when you make a mistake, and the game is still plenty challenging as well, so you're not sacrificing difficulty, if that's you're thing. I'm really happy that racing games are adopting the Rewind feature as well. If you're making PC game, there are only a few exceptions when the game shouldn't at least have a Quicksave feature. And I completely agree with time limits. Boo-urns. "
Well that's a first. Games have already diluted death down to a minor inconvenience in most games with checkpoints and the end of the lives system in general. I wanna see more consequences for multiple deaths, not less.
And what grinds my gears is mandatory fetch quests. I'm not a fan of collecting 20 widgets in order to move on to the next level or town.
Well I think the problem lays more with the silent protagonist then the dialogue trees. Now that I think about the whole silent protagonist concept is the dumbest thing ever. "let me do everything everyone tells me to do with no question what so ever" "
Yeah, silent protagonists is a pretty stupid idea. I buy it in old franchises like Zelda because it's such an integral part of the whole Zelda atmosphere, but in Half-Life 2 it's just weird.
@JB16 said:
Then why'd you play a Bioware game in the first place when everybody knows that half of any Bioware game depicts long conversations. Honestly I don't think the dialogue tree system should be changed at all, I loved the way games like KOTOR, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect actually let me choose what I wanna say rather than let the douchbag protagonist make the choices for me. Hell the dialogue tree system is the main reason why Bioware is so popular. Farenheit's systen shouldnt even be counted as a dialogue tree, all it is are just a set of cutscenes that play as soon as you choose an option. "
Uh, I don't think I've ever played a Bioware game before so I most certainly didn't know that. Now that I think about it, I don't really have a problem with the long conversations, I played through Fallout 3 and the The Witcher just fine and they had some lengthy talks as well. I guess I just found Dragon Age's characters and world to be completely uninteresting and didn't care about what anyone had to say about anything.
And I agree completely that dialogue trees are a good idea, I just think they're implemented poorly in most cases. The answers you get to choose from really don't need to be several sentences long, it's not like they'll ever hit on exactly what I'D say in that situation anyway. Oftentimes I'll just sit there, staring at the options given, not wanting to say any of them.
When I mention Fahrenheit I don't mean I want every game to play exactly like that, but I liked how the system made conversations flow, and I would like to see other games try something similar instead of going for the Bioware approach.
"short games (developers need to make games longer)"
Let games be as long as they need to be. I just played through Knights of the Old Republic and that took me 32 hours, and that was great. The story felt very well paced over those hours; I got to do lots of exploring and I took my time through the game, and then it came to a climatic end. Just last month I played through Modern Warfare 2 in 5 hours and was just as impressed. In the very back of my mind I wanted to get online, and this single-player seemed to know that. More than that though, it didn't artificially lengthen the game by having me run around fighting waves of meaningless enemies. Let the game be as long as the development cycle allows for while maintaining a level of quality.
Really badly laid out HUDs, or HUDs that take up tons of space unnecessarily.
Bad Camera.
Time limits that are ridiculous.
Escort missions with retarded AI that gets you killed when if it was not there you could easily get by a certain area.
Timed Escort missions >.>.
Cutscenes that you can not skip (I really don't want to see a badly animated explosion for the sixth time carry out in a 45 second duration, when I just want to shoot a duder.)
Parts of a game that are not pausible. (Annoying when a person walks in the room asking questions when you are trying to hear dialogue or watch a cutscene.)
Being able to get knocked down over and over and over by annoying enemies. Nothing pisses me off more than getting hit by an RPG, then as soon as I am back up, get hit by another, and on and on. Make the knockdown have diminishing returns or something.
Quests to collect items in mundane places as a part of the story line.
Silent Protagonists for the most part. I find it really weird when your character never speaks a damn word. It can work in some games (Zelda, Mario(usually silent)), but I find it really weird that you're silent in Call of Duty games and others where you're being directly addressed all the time, but you never respond or acknowledge them.
Specialization trees that can not be unlearned. I'm sure a lot of people spec out their character un-optimally the first time and then their character is screwed up the rest of his virtual life.
@xobballox: I agree with pretty much everything, except: Typically the silent protagonist is a mechanism that attempts to insert the player as the character. It doesn't work all the time, but I don't see anything wrong with it.
Also encumbrances are there for a reason - to prevent you from being a greedy and looting everything you see.
It's actually weirder for me to carry 10 guns and thousands and thousands of rounds of ammo (like in HL2, UT, etc) than it is to have two guns and not that much ammo (a la STALKER, MW2)
EDIT: Most of this is a matter of opinion, of course.
" Regenerating health in some games. Fine in Halo. Retarded in COD. "
I think the degree of regeneration is one of the main problems with it. You should be able to heal slowly over a number of game hours or use a medkit for instant relief, like Stalker:COP.
Also I like the way bleeding was handled. That should make it into more games.
" @xobballox: I agree with pretty much everything, except: Typically the silent protagonist is a mechanism that attempts to insert the player as the character. It doesn't work all the time, but I don't see anything wrong with it. Also encumbrances are there for a reason - to prevent you from being a greedy and looting everything you see. It's actually weirder for me to carry 10 guns and thousands and thousands of rounds of ammo (like in HL2, UT, etc) than it is to have two guns and not that much ammo (a la STALKER, MW2) EDIT: Most of this is a matter of opinion, of course. "
Yeah, what I mean is something like Torchlight, where you have a small inventory but there are some essential things you need to carry in it, and one of the hooks of the game for me is getting lots of loot. Of course the dog being able to run to the store for you pretty much fixes this. Another example would be Oblivion or Fallout 3. Heavy armor in Oblivion took up so much room until you got proficiency with it.
I loved how Resident Evil 4 did inventory/encumbrance. It was sort of a strategy thing of how you're going to fit which things you want or need to take on a mission.
@MrKlorox: Yeah I liked the way Stalker handled it as well. Basically, 2 bullets you're dead unless you take a medpack. It forced you to actually think realistically and was more immersive as such. You couldn't just run and gun into a room full of 6 people, hide behind a desk for 5 seconds and then just magically be "all better" after being turned into swiss cheese.
- Making the screen turn red when the character is hurt, or making an absurd beeping noise. This was one of my main problems with ODST, though the rest I liked.
- I personally think that more games should be in first person. Third-person functionality is fine too, (Oblivion) but i'm tired of dealing with cameras. That's soooooo ps1.
" Escort Missions. Straight up. The worst part of any game is the part where you have to protect something you have no control over. Also, I guess timed missions suck as well. The main reason why I don't like Majora's Mask. "
Totally agree with escort missions. Oh man are they bad!
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