One of my biggest annoyances with games

Is when they take stuff off you that you earned, just for the sake of story.

So many games I have played where I have tried so hard to get all the best stuff I can, and Im having a blast (heck why would I still be playing it?!), making my own fun with my own weapons of my choice, but then something happens in the story, you get captured or you fall off a cliff or whatever else and you have lost all your stuff, and now your having to find all the weapons you earned all over again, and sometimes the game doesn't even let you do this if your required to complete the mission with just a shotgun or a pistol.

This may not bother some people, but it does me especially because I was having fun like that, and the game just decides "STOP! Your having too much fun, gonna take your stuff off ya for the sake of story, sorry" Grr

Does anybody else have any annoyances in games like these that really aggravate you and make you want to stop playing? Whether its really bad AI, or its a part of the game that didn't need to be there and hampered your enjoyment or anything else of this nature. Let me know : )

Umm you didn't earn it. It's a video game and it has rules. At some point in whatever game you're talking about you're being forced to work with very little. I don't see any problem with it.

Paying for the game didn't earn me my fun? Sorry mate your response could of been a little better then that, even though I understand my frustrations are extremely opinionated.

@ryzon: Funny just happened to me in the original Deus Ex and i said "fuck it" , I´ve done this way too many times to do it again on a game im not enjoying as much.

So you prize gameplay over story? Then that makes your choice of a narrative game an odd choice.

No, paying for a game does not entitle you to anything. Maybe the developers expected you to use stealth at a certain point in the game, so you're weapons are taken away from you. The very same weapons they GAVE to you (You didn't earn shit, they purposely placed them within the game).

Well, it entitles me to give my opinion : )

Yes, this is true

@ryzon: What games in particular do you have this problem with? I can certainly see the idea of this being irksome, but I can't come up with any games off the top of my head where this occurs. In a game like the first Assassin's Creed, they give you everything up front only to lose it after the prologue, which I actually enjoy because you know what you will be working towards.

I can think of some instances where it bothers me. For example, when you're reduced to nothing in an RPG or FPS and the hand to hand combat is bullshit or the game is built around a set of powers and you end up not just being ill-equipped for a challenge, but also ill-equipped to utilize the game's featured mechanics in general... that sucks.

I just had it happen in FF7 where Yuffie steals your materia. Short section, but crossing that continent without magic is a real pain in the ass.

But in a game where what you're reduced to is as fun as the most powerful equipment, say a Deus Ex: HR where hand to hand is a viable way to progress it doesn't bug me so much.

Are you saying that despite hours of grinding, learning the ins and outs of the game, preparation, and finally battling the Reaper in Persona 3, I haven't actually earned 5,000,000 yen? It was just plain given to me? You mean I could have gotten it without doing all of that?

EDIT: I haven't actually beaten the Reaper; I was just using it as a good example. /EDIT

Yes, items are purposely placed within the game as rewards for doing something. If they were given to you, then you wouldn't even need to do much of anything to get them.

On topic, though, I don't mind this when everything is given back to you pretty quickly and the story reasons for losing your stuff are well-justified. I also don't mind it when the game shows you how powerful you will eventually become and then takes it all away, like in Metroid Prime. I only really mind it when it isn't well-justified in the story and it really hampers gameplay, like when everything you have is taken away 3/4 of the way through Doom 3 and you don't even get to keep your flashlight. And then all of your stuff is taken away again when you get back to Mars.

Yes. (I say this, having half the amount listed and getting a shitton more from regular battles and Elizabeth's requests.)

Actually I love it when that happens. It's like two games in one! After I master the weapons and gadgets, I get a little bored of them, and it feels great when I'm brought back to square one and I have to use whatever I can until I get my shit again.

It's like a good action movie where Bruce Willis loses all his guns and shoes and has to be a bum for a while.

It's a staple in the "Hero's Journey" story template. Hero goes on quest, Hero almost succeeds in goal, Hero gets screwed over, Hero must now unscrew himself, Hero wins/fails, the end.

Unless you're talking about when a game gives you all of your weapons in the beginning and takes them away within the first hour like in Metroid Prime or Assassin's Creed. Which is is even better since it gives a goal to work towards.

Some games its super annoying, such as RPG's.

But in shooters and such, it's probably a good thing. Playing a long ranged setpiece and starting with your shotgun is probably a bad thing, so its good that they replaced it with an assault rifle for example.

I think it's a cheap trick akin to jump scares, but just like them can be used effectively if there's some effort put into it. I didn't like the way the original Deus Ex handled it, but I thought Half-life did ii effectively the first time around (then I think Gearbox used that in each of their expansions with less successful results, maybe it even happened more than once in the original game). Even the otherwise very flawed Haze did it quite well, first building you up as a macho murder machine and then putting you alone, unarmed and vulnerable in a swamp.

I guess my personal annoyance is when that stuff is done without a story justification - pretty much all the Call of Duty games, Black and Medal of Honor have missions that are supposedly to be set in direct chronological order after each other - but they replace your weapons with the default one on each level transition, which is both annoying from a gameplay perspective if you've found a combination you like, but also doesn't make sense in the narrative, when there doesn't seem to have been any time in between those levels where they could've changed gear.

Yeah, but that stuff still isn't given to you. Though, admittedly, getting money in Persona 3 is almost as difficult as starting the game itself after you start really getting into Tartarus; still, my point stands. You do earn the prizes you get in a game.

Which wouldn't be an issue at all if developers would do the right thing and let us hold all of the guns.

@believer258: Eww, no. I HATE when i can magically hold 15 guns. It's ridiculous, doesn't fit in 90% of games and ruins any sort of strategy or priority cus you're prepared for every possible scenario.

Hell I find it weird when i can hold a shotgun and an assult rifle and tons of ammo for both.

I suppose you also think it's ridiculous when you can magically hide behind something and heal bullet wounds? Bullet wounds that, I might add, do not hinder you until you die.

Sorry, I just don't take realism as a good reason for the two weapon limit. Sure, it fits in modern military shooters, and Halo pretty much popularized the idea so it kinda gets an excuse, but in things like Bioshock Infinite or Bulletstorm or Singularity or Just Cause 2, limits on how many guns you can hold bugs the hell out of me. Those games would greatly benefit from being able to hold all, or at least more of, the guns.

Also, it doesn't ruin strategy or priority at all. In fact, it greatly increases the number of strategies you can execute at any given time, thereby making the game more interesting.

@sadpatrol: how are virtual objects received based on effort not earned? Who cares if a developer coded it to be there, as a player you still put time/skill in to obtain it.

What are you gonna do?

@ryzon: I used to feel that way, but too often I've noticed games get more boring and less stressful as you max out your gear. It just takes the challenge out the experience.

I don't care for the gimmick of just removing your stuff as that feels lazy, but I get why they do it.

Games seem more fun to me, when you have limited abilities/gear appropriate to whatever level you are playing.

You're mistaking options with strategy and tactics. If you have access to all the guns all the time, then "oh theres a guy far away" *whips out sniper rifle* "Oh close ranged enemies?" *shotgun* "medium ranged enemies?" *assault rifle*. Finding a way to defeat enemies with weapons is what makes it interesting.

If you have access to everything, then you're going to use it when its the best thing for that situation. You'll never have to think "crap, i have a shotgun, how do i take out those snipers?" you just whip out your own sniper rifle. You never have to be creative, and if the game doesn't push you to think, most gamers won't.

It also limits what the developers can do to make encounters interesting, because you'll always have the weapon perfectly suited to counter each thing. What's the point of them putting in a challenging attack dog part of a sniper type level if you have a shotgun in your back pocket already? That alien attack ship? NO PROBLEM! I'll pull my rocket launcher out of my butt.

So really it's bad because it doesn't push the player to be creative and think their ways out of situations. Plus it limits the developers ability to create interesting encounters for the player to overcome. Sure it may be fun to play god mode and all weapons, but personally I think it completely ruins the experience when you're given too much.

There are a few games where the "You were captured/arrested/fell off a cliff and your worldly possessions all fell in a pit and exploded" scenario is one of my favorite parts. It can be annoying too, but the "hero hits rock bottom and has to drag himself back up from nothing" is a tried and true story beat.

I guess, like all things, it's in how you use it.

@sadpatrol said:

Well then there's nothing stopping me from downloading a trainer or enabling the console and spawning the weapons in myself. Consumers may not be "entitled" to such things, but that doesn't take away the fact that it's still a poor design choice.

Yeah its annoying but usually in games they either give it back to you later on or its closer to the beginning of the game where all the stuff you earned isnt too hard to earn back.

It sounds like you're trying to defend development decisions that weren't ever really made. I don't really think the limited number of weapons is to make the games more realistic or to try and force you to be more creative. I think it's just a way to avoid the problem of having to find a way to manage large sets of weapons on a controller. You cite an example of having the rocket launcher ready to deal with an attack ship, but when has there ever been a sequence like that in a modern shooter that didn't scatter heaps of rocket launchers around the environment specifically for that scripted moment? Modern shooters don't really allow for creativity, because they just funnel you through this super tightly scripted sequence of events. Get on the turret, get the RPG, shoot down the chopper, use the mortar for a bit, vehicle turret sequence, large vehicle crashes, barely missing you etc, etc. It's totally stifling. I think it's much better to have a bigger array of weaponry. More options leaves more room to be creative.

When I think of shooters that you can actually play creatively, one of the first that comes to mind is the first Resistance game. That game had a ton of really unique guns (I think maybe 16 if you did a second playthrough) and they all had alternate firing modes and many of them have even more things they could do, like the bullseye tag bombs and the rocket launcher drones. I don't know how many people would have actually done it, but I think that game really shone when you played it on the hardest difficulty. To survive, you had to make use of every tool at your disposal. You had to really learn how to get the best out of every gun you had and it made the game so much more fun. You could set up shields, shoot around corners or through walls, etc etc so it didn't try and make you do something outside of the box by setting limitations on your gear etc, it got you to do that by being basically how you had to play to succeed.

Then Resistance 2 just cribbed too much from Modern Warfare and limited you to carrying two guns, so most of the time, you just ended up using the carbine rifle and the bullseye, because those were the guns for which ammo was readily available. I think it actually greatly diminishes creativity, because you end up picking up guns based on overall usefulness. The generic assault rifle is probably going to be good in every situation, so have one of those always. There might be a weapon you enjoy using way more, but it's not as applicable in as many situations and ammo is scarce, so you either don't take it or only keep it with you for about two minutes. It made the game way worse. Resistance 2 did totally have its good points along with the quite a few bad ones, but it was a real shame that they threw away a lot of what made the first game what it was.

Trying to "force" creativity doesn't work anyway. Some people enjoy being creative with games and I am definitely one of them. But I think some people just don't. They'd rather just have a game presented to them to experience. The vast majority of shooters feel built for those people anyway.

@damodar: No, I'm not defending anything. The whole "Two weapon" system most modern shooters use is stupid. As i said, it's weird to carry an assault rifle and a shotgun and tons of ammo for both.

The game that handled weapons the best that I've ever seen in any type of shooter is actually Max Payne 3. You got two one handed guns. Any type you wanted, Uzis, revolvers, 9mm handguns, whatever. You also got a two-handed gun. Again, anytype you wanted. Shotguns, assault rifles, large submachine guns, sniper rifles, whatever. You could dual wield your one handed guns, but you'll drop your two handed gun. Because how the fuck are you going to hold a rifle when you're diving out of a window with twin uzis?

It was believable. It was fairly realistic. It made you carefully pick what weapons you wanted. It made you make choices. "Do i want to dual wield through this part and drop my rifle? is it worth it?". It was also just damn cool to see Max holding his rifle in his other hand as you're using your pistol, it didn't disappear into his anus or float 3 inches off his back.

An easy fix to your whole Resistance thing is not to give you every weapon in the game at all times, but instead give you proper ammo for them. Instead of every gun having its own unique ammo, why not simply divide it up into small guns, medium guns and heavy guns categories and have them share ammo. If they're wacky alien guns it'd work fine with no one complaining. Hell no one would really complain if they did it with modern real guns either.

I understand wanting to be creative with games, i do too. But from a developer standpoint you have to realize that throwing you everygun, in this situation everyone is gonna use this gun. In that situation everyone is going to use this gun. That is the reality of it. Saying "Well i was super creative by ineffectively killing these spider monsters with the sniper rifle in melee range". Thats not creative, thats stupid. However, sending the player on a sniping mission with just a sniper rifle and a sidearm (pistol of some sort), then have spider monsters attack, that could be interesting. Not only does it help the player get into the story and situation the character is in, it also gives the player incentive to use those weapons in a completely different scenario than you'd normally imagine.

Giving you shitloads of guns INSTANTLY would rip me right out of the story, doesn't matter how good your story is, the instant i'm switching from assault rifle to shotgun, to sniper rifle to rocket launcher in the span of 30 seconds would just go "OH! I'm playing a video game ass video game, fuck this story". If you're making a dumb over the top shooter, go for it, I'll play it an enjoy it. But if you're making anything that even REMOTELY wants to be taken seriously. Don't give me a thousand weapons. It instantly rips me and alot of other people out of the experience.

Please dont respond with a regenerating health thing, thats an entirely different topic.

A smart developer would put players in such positions to encourage them to experiment with alternative playstyles and demonstrate new ways of playing the game. When done right this can be very rewarding, though I will admit it's frustrating when you are pushed into a section of the game which is transparently worse purely to mix up the gameplay. That's just lazy.

@clonedzero: @clonedzero:

This is pretty much what I was going to say, better than I was going to say it. Halo 1 is the only game that doesn't really hand you what you need, when you need it, all the time, and it expects you to get by with what you have. I've never played another game that did it that well, and even it had to make sure you had a rocket launcher or a shotgun at times.

@clonedzero That doesn't sell it to me, either. No video game is "realistic". I don't find any of them "believable" because at some point they have to be games. So holding all of the guns doesn't draw me out of the story in the least. Being annoyed with having to drop my shotgun to pick up the carefully-placed rocket launcher to take out the rocket ship and then go track down my shotgun again, however, does drag me out of a game.

In the case of Max Payne 3, you don't have many creative weapons. It works fairly well there. In Resistance, though, you have some crazy-creative weapons, and not being able to hold them all would be a shame. And, in fact, was a real shame in the series's middle entry.

Please dont respond with a regenerating health thing, thats an entirely different topic.

Eh. I don't mind regenerating health anywhere near as much.

I'm a hoarder and I love just hoarding things forever. Getting stronger, getting cool stuff just racking up the numbers. When a game takes the stuff I've been hoarding away from me, I do not enjoy it. Prime example is when the first Bioshock had this habit of taking away ammo from you at regular intervals. It was extra annoying since my hoarding mentality already made me play incredibly conservatively with ammo, so my playstyle didn't change at all, but all the "stuff" I had was arbitrarily taken from me.

It's not really an issue in games like cod or Uncharted or whatever, who doesn't have any kinds of loot mechanics. If I have to throw away guns every two seconds anyways, then it doesn't matter. But then again, I don't think games like that are any fun.

The guy came here to talk about parts of games he dose not like. He earned the items, levels or whatever by trading time, skill for them. You do not have to be a jerk about it. If you do not share his opinion dont start a fight about it.

Regardless, I dont mind it when I am at fault, or I know its coming, the problem I have is when they blindside you with it. It used to happen a lot more in older games. The last game I can really remember that did that out of nowhere was Zelda OoC, In Gerudo valley but Im pretty sure you could have gotten through that without getting caught, i cant remember.

Yeah, this is mostly an annoyance for me with old jrpg's. For a while there, the lose all your stuff and complete level to get it back aka you're stuck in jail for some reason and need to find your equipment and escape sequence, was an apparently ubiquitous addition to all rpg's. It was almost as common as the ever so beloved water level in action games.

Does the fact that Megaman and Samus misplace all their weapons between each game annoy you? How about the fact that your Pokemon kid should start his adventure with a few hundred pokemon inherited from your other pokemon kids?