Things in games that annoy you.

Eimran

Member
Name some annoying things that developers implement in games but you still see returning everytime.

Let's skip the obvious things like microtransactions, early acces and stuff but rather the things that ruin the gameplay enjoyement.

Mine:

1) Suddenly limiting your characters walking speed to "enjoy" the scenery or when another NPC is having a conversation with you. Example: uncharted 4. That game felt like an entire E3-demonstration.
(There's a special place in hell for programmers when the NPC is walking too fast for your protagonist to walk by but too slow to run.)

2) backtracking. This is highly game dependent and can be great if done right. But this is rarely the case.

3)bosses whose health resets to 100 after you defeat them. Or when they have a sudden invisible shield that breaks your combo (MK9's Shao Kahn is a perfect example of this)

4) very few checkpoints. Having you die making you go back 30 minutes or more. This is not so much the case since last gen. But i remember screaming at my screen when playing Jak 2 on the PS2.

5) lastly....unneccesary open world games!!!
Me: give me a nice lineair story driven game pls.
Developer: Nah, have an open world with RPG-elements, Ctrl+c, ctrl+v-buildings and useless scattered collectibles.

So what's yours?
 
Having to listen toTake on me while there is an apocalypse going on outside this music store in Seattle.
 
When the character clips through a dead body, or physics when moving across it.
When things like weapons or swords clips through things like capes, bags. This usually happens when you're using a custom skin but some games are lazy about it.
When a character is able to place a gun on their back with no contextual reason for it. The only game that got it right, was Uncharted 4 whereby the weapons use a strap to make weapons physically tangible and not just floating points. Halo and Gears got it right in their own contexts as the weapons are like magnets that clip on steel.
 
I noticed when a game has an unfixable problem and gets criticized, and the developers release an update that claims to address it, there is kind of a placebo effect and gamers seem to accept it and say "the developers fixed it now." Except no, it's unfixable. Example: Mass Effect 3's utter nonsense ending. A lot of people pretend that was fixed.
 
Underwater/Sewer segments in games.

Bugs in main quests that prevent you to progress in the game. I had that in Fallout 3 near the end of the game.
 
Other players
Unskippable cutscenes
Pointless fluff to extend the length of a game
Locking the game behind a paywall, rather than being able to unlock shit after completing the game
 
Wannabe "Soul's difficulty" when actually the game just overwhelms you with enemies. Please stop!

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Next, quite often cameras in combat. They can get really annoying.
 
Everything.
Seriously, I could write a book.
Just recently though, the radio chatter in Spiderman (MJ)whilst you're engaged in combat, or any sort of game whilst you're in some heavy action scenario.
Let me explain. I have partial hearing so subtitles are essential for me so it's frustrating to read subs whilst enemies are swarming all over you.
Couldn't the conversation wait till AFTER the fight, shootout, whatever? Why can't your protagonist say "Look, fuck off!, I'm in the middle of something here!"
 
Getting to a new area, getting beaten down mercilessly, having to go back to the previous area to grind so that the beatdowns stop, eradicating whole towns in the process just to get by
 
Any sort of stun, stagger or knockdown in which you are robbed of control. Even for short periods, these stack up and annoy.

I refer to them as 'not-a-games', because these are periods of non-interactivity. And some games have a lot of them, on top of cutscenes and mantling animations, etc - just masses of periods of non-interactivity.

EDIT: also bosses that have some stupid gimmick instead of letting you just play with the normal game mechanics.
 
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Micro transactions,
no physical versions,
season pass and downloadable content,
online account bullshit (unless it's a multiplayer game),
early access and day one patches
 
Ok I'll try not to retread what others have said but here we go.

  • No mid-mission checkpoints. See GTA4.
  • Always-online DRM for single player. See Metal Gear Survive.
  • Not being able to change button/key bindings.
  • Unskippable/pausable cutscenes.
  • Making you wait through an intro video/cutscene before letting you get to a settings menu.
 
- Underwater areas
- Having to walk slowly with an NPC to get somewhere
- 'Defend X while something else happens' scenarios
- Forced tutorials for basic actions. Like when the screen freezes with a prompt 'press X to jump over'. At least let the player try and discover for themselves as 95% of the time 'X/A' will be jump
 
Long, non-interactive cutscenes, where you are reduced to a passive viewer, as if you're watching a movie. They can add a lot if they are relatively brief (5 - 10 minutes) and focused concisely on character or plot development. But if they go on a long time (e.g., Kojima, FF), I get impatient.

I am not interested in being a passive viewer of entertainment. If that's what I wanted, I'd spend my time watching TV or movies (which I don't do, hardly at all, specifically because I don't like just sitting there watching something passively). I'm playing a game because I want an interactive experience, not a passive one.

So I think that's my number one gripe. It's kind of weird, because in many ways, I love a good story and good characters. Some of my favorite games have plenty of cutscenes that flesh these elements out (e.g., the one in my avatar). But there is a big difference between using cutscenes judiciously and using them excessively. I'm objecting to the latter.
 
Games with too many checkpoints. Or games that are just too afraid to penalise the player for failure(looking at you Bioshock).

RPGs with level scaling. (Looking at you Oblivion).

Games that sell themselves on having complex branching narratives when the majority of your choices don't affect anything (Looking at you Heavy Rain).
 
Long winded tutorials in sequels. I remember how to play just tell me what's new and let me start the game.

Basically every Assassins Creed game since AC3.
 
Redundancy in dialogue. RPG's are very guilty of this. You know, when they have to beat a dead horse again and again and again all in the same exchange because they treat the audience like morons (which i don't blame them).
 
As I get older super long games, I don't have time to play 60hr games (saying this as I put 25hrs into Valhalla already lol).

hard games, I play games to relaxes don't want to get pissed at them. Almost checked my controller at the screen during one of the boss fights in the new destiny 2 expasion.

that said if I like the game I'll power thru, but they are negatives in my head and the positives have to put weight them.
 
hard games, I play games to relaxes don't want to get pissed at them. Almost checked my controller at the screen during one of the boss fights in the new destiny 2 expasion.
Could this have something to do with aging? A few years back all I looked for was a nice challenge, loving games like Dark Souls and not playing anything that felt easy, even to the point of dropping games like Yakuza 0 for that reason.

Nowadays I think I just prefer plain fun. In fact I'm giving Yakuza 0 another chance and I'm having a lot of fun.
 
This is obviously primarily a console problem, but when one button is mapped to too many functions. Press X to roll, stick to cover, pick up items, talk, examine and open doors.

When there's dialogue between characters that's long in tooth enough to suggest that you're supposed to be listening to it AS you play the game instead of standing still, only to cross an invisible threshold and have it end. Shit like that is why I still appreciate cutscenes.
 
Could this have something to do with aging? A few years back all I looked for was a nice challenge, loving games like Dark Souls and not playing anything that felt easy, even to the point of dropping games like Yakuza 0 for that reason.

Nowadays I think I just prefer plain fun. In fact I'm giving Yakuza 0 another chance and I'm having a lot of fun.

Dunno I have so many things competeing for my free time now I just can't play something where I'm not having fun.

Might be easier for young people with more free time for sure though.
 
When you cleanly beat an opponent online and they blame the game, lag, connection, input drops, etc and not themselves.

That's not really a game gripe, but one i do have is loading screens where it tells part of the story and sometimes spoils things for you.
 
voice-acting
I don't have a problem with voice acting when done in the right context.
For example, in both FF7: Remake and the Metro games (especially), characters are constantly talking over one another. It drove me to the point where I deleted Metro: Exodus after an hour of playing and quickly proceeded to play other games worthy of my time.

Fuck Metro. I'm tired of giving that franchise a chance.
 
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My biggest annoyance is a timer. I couldn't enjoy Dead Rising because of it. I get in a way that certain things happen on a schedule but I never felt like I could enjoy the game on my own terms. It felt like I was constantly pressured to do things on a schedule, like work. I know a lot of companies do it, but it feels like to me that Capcom has the biggest fetish for timers in their games.
 
When they start talking about important story plot in the middle of games.
When the subtitle/fonts are too small.
Escorting missions... even worse is escorting and fetch quest at the same time.
Non-skippable dialogues.
 
Name some annoying things that developers implement in games but you still see returning everytime.

Let's skip the obvious things like microtransactions, early acces and stuff but rather the things that ruin the gameplay enjoyement.

Mine:

1) Suddenly limiting your characters walking speed to "enjoy" the scenery or when another NPC is having a conversation with you. Example: uncharted 4. That game felt like an entire E3-demonstration.
(There's a special place in hell for programmers when the NPC is walking too fast for your protagonist to walk by but too slow to run.)

2) backtracking. This is highly game dependent and can be great if done right. But this is rarely the case.

3)bosses whose health resets to 100 after you defeat them. Or when they have a sudden invisible shield that breaks your combo (MK9's Shao Kahn is a perfect example of this)

4) very few checkpoints. Having you die making you go back 30 minutes or more. This is not so much the case since last gen. But i remember screaming at my screen when playing Jak 2 on the PS2.

5) lastly....unneccesary open world games!!!
Me: give me a nice lineair story driven game pls.
Developer: Nah, have an open world with RPG-elements, Ctrl+c, ctrl+v-buildings and useless scattered collectibles.

So what's yours?


I completely agree with you on 1-4 and totally disagree on #5. I love big open-world games with RPG elements so for number 5 I'd substitute fetch and escort quests.
 
Boss fights that are not clear on what to do. Wolfenstein games seem to excel at this.

Escort missions or coop based missions with bad AI as the escort or partner.

In RPG's sidequests that basically just take you from one end of the map to the other for useless items.

Hidden chests or secret areas that don't have good items.
 
Games with hard difficulty that is basically easy after 10 hours and a coule of power up, balance your fucking games until the end, devs.

Locking the latest difficulty level behind bullshit requisites like completing the game at least once...nigga i want my ultra hard mode during the only run that i'm gonna do with the game ffs, the percentage of people who play a game a second time is lower than drunkman testosterone level...

Shitty rewards for exploration.

No ragdoll or having precanned death animations in any game where you kill stuff, it's 2020, not 1995.

Complicated ui\menus

Levels\missions with a timer
 
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