My biggest gaming pet peeve as it currently stands, by far, is a badly designed checkpoint system

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that makes me want to rage quit a game(and has caused me to permanently quit games and never go back) more than bad checkpoints. There are a lot of annoying things that can happen in games. Bugs, slowdowns, crashes, annoying menus, bad voice acting, etc. But there is nothing that sticks in my craw more than playing a game for a while, dying, and when it reloads you're like "Wait... it's starting me here??? I have to do all of that all fucking over again???"

Nothing will have me just quit a game faster. And frankly, in modern gaming it's absolutely unacceptable for most games to have awful checkpoints.

Anyone else have bad checkpoints as their biggest pet peeve?
 
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Biggest pet peeve in gaming currently is having a giant ass open world and filling it with so much shit side content that i feel overwhelmed. I'm talking about collectibles, quests where you have to do a certain thing 30 to 40 times around the map, journal entires all over the place filled with crap writing and stories that are meaningless, and just having markers all over your map to the point i wanna throw the controller. I feel like the bigger a game is, the more i get overwhelmed and it causes me to not wanna play it anymore.
 
Thats not great. But fail state stealth missions (when the game isn't designed around them).

And, "This isn't even my final form" boss fights absolutely drive me nuts.

I can't stand it.

I'm old, and just want to get on with it.
 
I'm playing a lot of retro games these days and it's quite mindblowing how we tolerated to be thrown back to the very beginning of a level if we died an inch from the end. Or against the boss.
Stuff like NES Ninja Gaiden would be downright criminal these days.
 
I'm playing a lot of retro games these days and it's quite mindblowing how we tolerated to be thrown back to the very beginning of a level if we died an inch from the end. Or against the boss.
Stuff like NES Ninja Gaiden would be downright criminal these days.
Yeah it was by design to increase play time. Arcade mentality. It was stupid.
 
My only complaint with modern games is how they can get to look like shit even at max settings. Post-processing, forced upscaling, artifacts, Lumen...
 
Yeah it was by design to increase play time. Arcade mentality. It was stupid.
Not really stupid because, let's face it, the average Game Boy platformer / action game lasts maybe half an hour if you use savestates.
What I really hate is having to redo an entire stage if you get a Game Over against the final boss and their usually ludicrous patterns.
 
I wanted the OP to give some recent examples.

Retro games, that was the standard, because well, as some have said, it was arcade mentality and also designed so you cant rent it, beat in a weekend and be done.
 
Bad checkpoints? Dunno if that'd even be in the top 10 for me.

Biggest pet peeve in gaming currently is having a giant ass open world and filling it with so much shit side content that i feel overwhelmed

Definitely a big one for me. Seeing that stuff just drains my mental energy these days.
 
Back in my day we had to start at the beginning when it was game over. We just got good and tried to die less. There was no other option.
 
Not my biggest issue with games, but absolutely up there. And as already mentioned here: bosses with multiple phases/forms. Just die already!
 
Nothing delights me more than watching a Souls stream and seeing someone die to a particularly hard enemy and the have to start far back. It angers people. It is fun and it is a fun part of gaming. I wouldn't see it gone for anything.

There should be some punishment or setback for failure.

If anything, my pet peeve is no difficulty or consequence in a game.

When a game is too easy or made easy by a checkpoint system that provides no punishment for failure, that is worse than a game that makes you do a runback.

Don't remove the run back from gaming. The run back is the best part. If my friend quit a game because of a runback, that would tickle the hell out of me.
 
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I don't think the "Back in my day" argument holds any weight here. You can have any system from 16bit's passwords to PC quicksaves, each game has to be taken on its own merit and the standard it has set.

I will play pre-memory card games without complaint, but if a game chooses to have checkpoints - like one that presents a legitimate challenge that will likely die repeatedly to - then the decent thing to do is to not be a pain in the arse with its checkpoint position. Don't put the checkpoint before an unskippable cutscene or something equally frustrating. Respect the player's time.

And let's be honest here, when games are designed to have checkpoints they're more likely to... let's say... not mind having the checkpoints be used. A cheap death doesn't make a game more fun.
 
I wanted the OP to give some recent examples.

Retro games, that was the standard, because well, as some have said, it was arcade mentality and also designed so you cant rent it, beat in a weekend and be done.
Gears 5, Robocop: Rogue City, Star Wars Outlaws, etc are some ones I hated recently but not the worst I've ever played. It depends on the game too. Action games are a little different for example because they usually have checkpoints between battles, but sometimes if those battles are long, like taking out a room of like 50 guys, if you die once you have to do the entire room over again. In more open style games like Star Wars Outlaws you can't die once until you're clear of all the enemies or you'll have to clear an entire section again. Future patches may have fixed it though I know they updated a lot of things.
 
Back in my day we had to start at the beginning when it was game over. We just got good and tried to die less. There was no other option.
And being younger you have more patience.

Nowadays, no way. I'm not grinding myself into paste messing with it.
 
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that makes me want to rage quit a game(and has caused me to permanently quit games and never go back) more than bad checkpoints. There are a lot of annoying things that can happen in games. Bugs, slowdowns, crashes, annoying menus, bad voice acting, etc. But there is nothing that sticks in my craw more than playing a game for a while, dying, and when it reloads you're like "Wait... it's starting me here??? I have to do all of that all fucking over again???"

Nothing will have me just quit a game faster. And frankly, in modern gaming it's absolutely unacceptable for most games to have awful checkpoints.

Anyone else have bad checkpoints as their biggest pet peeve?
Kingdom come 2 would drive you insane with its shit auto saves, and having to use a potion to save. No potion? No save.

This is really only an issue in the state when you're broke or don't want to pick flowers to make the potions which is a chore of in game tasks to create.

Once you're rich and have 50+ at a time it's no sweat, but that is one of the stupidest choices of design in that game lol.
 
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that makes me want to rage quit a game(and has caused me to permanently quit games and never go back) more than bad checkpoints. There are a lot of annoying things that can happen in games. Bugs, slowdowns, crashes, annoying menus, bad voice acting, etc. But there is nothing that sticks in my craw more than playing a game for a while, dying, and when it reloads you're like "Wait... it's starting me here??? I have to do all of that all fucking over again???"

Nothing will have me just quit a game faster. And frankly, in modern gaming it's absolutely unacceptable for most games to have awful checkpoints.

Anyone else have bad checkpoints as their biggest pet peeve?

I played Nine Sols today, looked like a great game with great reviews and everything. There was an optional boss fight I wanted to do. Every time you die you have to walk back. Did a few times, got tired of it, uninstalled.

There is no reason that the checkpoint can not be at the boss door. None. This is just a waste of my time and at a time where time comes at a premium I can not be bothered with it. Probably not my biggest pet peeve but its up there because it would cost the devs nothing to implement it. Same reason I said Clair Obscure need a restart battle option.

I vividly remember people being up in arms when FF13 introduced spawning you in front of a boss after dying. Of course until then FF was known for some of the worst boss runs in gaming, especially with its random encounters and unskippable cut scenes. I new understood that mentality.
 
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Gamers have been complaining for 30 years about games where you can only save or checkpoint before the boss battle and you're forced to watch the cutscene before the battle over and over again and devs will never do anything about it ever

It's likely the devs want to punish you for dying again by making you watch the boss monologue about his terrible childhood for 5 minutes every time because I don't know of any other explanation for this after decades of complaining
 
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