Video Game Pet Peeves

[Heliocentrical]

I have quite a few pet peeves with video games that I figured I would just make a thread solely dedicated to them as these pet pet peeves are much more tangential.

 

*Secrets in FPSs

In FPSs like Doom I've found that purely beneficial secrets such as more ammo/health packs/armor really do fuck with the overall pacing of the game and as result they significantly reduce my overall enjoyment of a game. If I find all of the purely beneficial secrets in a given level I'm basically untouchable and there are so many purely beneficial secrets in a doom level that I become untouchable far too often for my liking. I've done it so often that it's become boring and unchallenging. Now I'm actively going out of my way to avoid secrets. I really wish Doom's secrets had more secret levels or alternate paths like how Crash Bandicoot. I know I'm comparing a platformer to an FPS but I feel the same overall principle could still be applied

 

*Hamfisted Story Elements

Hamfisted story elements can really get under my skin. I hate it when I the player can figure out how the narrative in a video game will play out. One of the most recent instances for me that I can think of was with Suchong from Bioshock 1. For whatever reason the same game that had interesting characters such as J.S Steinman and Sander Cohen couldn't think of a way to make Suchong interesting. So the game decided to go with the most immediate shock value available and have Suchong

literally kill a puppy

so that that Suchong could pretend to interesting. This element of Suchong's character was so poorly thought out and hamfisted to the extreme that it made me think worse of Bioshock 1 for it. In fact the entire latter half of Bioshock 1 is just a mess but I digress.

 

*Fictional words that do not explain how to pronounce them.

There needs to be a rule that if a video game provides a fictional word in text it must also provide how that word is pronounced if it's going to be spoken at some point. I'm still incredibly hung up on how I pronounced Skellige for the first twenty minutes of the Witcher 3. I had no idea that's it's pronounced skell-egg-gu and not skell-egg until the game told me later down the line. That was just annoying.

[Psychotic Ninja]

(I just pronounced it as "skull-age" myself)

 

 

As for me, games that claim to be a RPG but have little to no RPG elements I'm looking at you Bioshock (Infinite), games with autosave only/one. Save. File. I'm looking at you Pokemon. Boss fights that are 1-hit-kill/can't loose, QTE, and ones where you hit boss (usually one big attack), it goes away, you fight it's mooks, and repeat (usually 2 more times), games that rely heavily on RNG (Dragonball Xenoverse and Payday 2). There's probably others, that I'm just forgetting.

[Meelis13]

1. mazes in FPS. While thankfully mostly thing of the 90-s, it still happens today (Doom 2016). Not to be confused with non-linear maps. Who in their right mind thinks that for an FPS its good idea "go to this end of the map, get this key card, then go to other end of the map to door, rinse & repeat"?

 

2. Badly used cliches. Here is the thing- i dont hate cliches, but i do hate if they are horribly used. See, you can use cliches very well, but it often is on same level as in "chosen"

 

3. "follow NPC" missions. Well, do i really need to say anything about it?

 

4. Crafting. Yes, crafting. I really dislike crafting, because in so many games its only way to get certain items- in some games its basically only viable option. I dont like this. It feels like cheap substitute to creating balanced economy & forces you collect a LOT of random junk. To make things worse, in lot of those games you have actual weight limit or capacity limit for certain items- and as it happens, those limits are usually lowest for most nessessary items. Granted, there are few games where crafting is actually fun, but those are in minority. At least im glad games are coming out of this "must have crafting" period..

 

5. Weapon limit. Ok, in reality perspective it does make sense to have just 2 weapons, as well as keeping multiplayer in mind as well as balancing. But i still want games, where i can have all the guns i can find on me at all times. It would make so much more fun to experiment with different solutions. At least GTA with its good ol' insanity has kept me satisfied enough in that regard

[Heliocentrical]

Oh I just remembered another one.

 

*Upgrade Systems

They're awkwardly crammed in everywhere in modern games and I hate it. They're usually incredibly minimal so what's the point in having them? Also Super Bunnyhop has an excellent video about upgrade systems which I totally agree with and will post here.

TR-EuyU2hb8

[Psychotic Ninja]

2 weapon limit, upgrade system (like the video said), and regenerating health for me as well.

[TheTron852]

Lessee... Severe difficulty spikes, lack of proper directions (and, if present: lack of any ability to review it again) and confusing environment (not just mazes), enemies with annoying immunity (THAT guy from Skyrim), pay-to-win micro-transactions (reason I abandoned Realm of the Mad God) and unfair enemies. Also this is not really video game related, but I also dislike companies that force region lock and BAN ENTIRE COUNTRIES WITHOUT ANY PROPER REASON. This is why I hate Nexon.

[Icebox]

Difficulty settings that only do one thing, make you hit for less damage while enemies hit for more damage and do nothing else.

[Malhek]

Health Potions. Every game that has instant health replenishing consumables turns into a button mashing contest that renders the health bar into a meaningless little thing. I'd much rather have higher health, be more careful about damage, and replenish my health after battles.

[Selfsurprise]

*Fictional words that do not explain how to pronounce them.

There needs to be a rule that if a video game provides a fictional word in text it must also provide how that word is pronounced if it's going to be spoken at some point. I'm still incredibly hung up on how I pronounced Skellige for the first twenty minutes of the Witcher 3. I had no idea that's it's pronounced skell-egg-gu and not skell-egg until the game told me later down the line. That was just annoying.

I definitely feel dem feelz broseph :3 I'm actually quite good at grasping a particular real life language tropes and the manner in which non-English words are supposed to be pronounced, especially if they are European, and given that the fantasy genre draws heavily from this rich cultural heritage. Many people find the place and people names in Skyrim unutterable before hearing it spoken aloud because they might not be used to Northern European standards, but being a giant history geek I'm usually quite adept at pronouncing them. Not knowing how to pronounce something correctly gives me a feeling akin to a mixture of nerd rage and multicultural inadequacy. Looking at Anglicized South East Asian words makes me feel like an abject philistine.

[The Signless]

Microtransactions. Just because they are annoying as fuck nowadays just because it's a 'viable' part in a game? Fuck no. Even worse, they force you to buy items in game for completion! That's so bullshit! Can you give me the item for free, you GREEDY ASS GAME DEVELOPERS! Except one which i like, but it's a Dragon Ball MMO. So this gets a pass. For the other games, i have one more thing to say, FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR MICROTRANSACTIONS!

 

Unwinnable situations to the point of giving up. Seriously, every heard a boss that takes little damage to kill, kills you and your 50-man guild? Yeah, i wasn't that person good god. Mess up a puzzle? Yeah, good luck finishing the game. The game being an asshole while you complete by killing the boss and you get killed after the start of a cutscene and while it still plays while you are fighting the boss again and again? Yeah, try getting out of that with the max level possible! This is why i prefer stable, bug-free games.

 

Well, that's it i guess? Sorry for the profanity left behind.

[Blightmare]

Games that try too hard to be, well, hard, for the sake of attracting players by marketing just how hard they really are. This is kinda funny coming from a Soulsborne fan because those games do just that but on the other side of the coin they are well made games that reward you for overcoming it's difficulty. What I hate are the games that once you get past it's unfair hardness there's very little substance or even likability to the game. Games like Witcher 3 and and Dark Souls I like because once you learn it and adapt to it's difficulty there's a full game there. I have over 600 hours total in the Soulsborne series and over 100 hours in the Witcher 3 BECAUSE once I learned those difficulties, there was a huge, open, fun game there for me to experience. Not just "HEY WE'RE HARD THAT'S GOOD RIGHT? LOOK AT JUST HOW HARD WE ARE!"

[Miss Stonesinger OOS]

Ross has already covered most of the things that annoy me about games, but I suppose I can list which things he is spot on about and come up with a few of my own.

 

--Naming your recent remake of an already famous game the EXACT same title. We had a perfectly nice Tomb Raider released in 1996 and then clever marketing man said "lets just use that name for our new game!" in 2013.

--Attacking mechanics in the style of Diablo games that just involve clicking on enemies repeatedly, being unable to avoid their attacks and attacking and running away without variation. I'm just a bit prejudiced towards hack and slash games.

--Weight carrying limitations in anything that isn't supposed to be a serious or realistic survival experience. It's a game! It's fantasy! I want to carry all the shit I find!

--Jumping mechanics that requite precise placement and activation via an action button, as opposed to just being able to jump. I guess it removes some of the risk that used to exist in platformers and adventure games, but it feels so limiting.

--Dog enemies in survival horror games. I get it, they are a staple and it does mix things up a bit from humanoid enemies, but then don't limit yourself to those pets. Chuck in some zombie cats, parrots and iguanas in for some variety!

--Online games. I know a lot of people will disagree with me here, but in my experience most people on them are horrible self important babies.

--Killing games that require a server to play especially if they have decent single player modes. Enough said. I sent letters to EA like everyone/Ross asked.

[BTGBullseye]

--Online games. I know a lot of people will disagree with me here, but in my experience most people on them are horrible self important babies.

Depends on the game community, but in general, yes.

[K4_Kydure]

Cheating braindead AI, one of the main reasons I stopped play Civ V. I've recently discovered in Europa Universalis that the AI often get very good roles during sieges, almost never hitting the natural 1, rarely will they get status quo, and their artillery will never take casualties until all infantry and cavalry have died. This is not the case for players in which their artillery will always take casualties regardless of how many units are left and I also ended up getting two natural 1s in a row then a status quo on the same fort I just lost to a 14% chance.

[Meelis13]

to be fair, cheating AI isnt always bad if you can neutralise it somehow. But thats mostly case in older RTS

[K4_Kydure]

The thing is I did neutralize it in Civ V. The harder settings only give the AI more money and happiness while making them expand with cities more aggressively. I had a mod that removes those bonuses and the AI can never keep up because they don't become smarter, they're just as dumb on King as they are on Settler. (Unless it's Persia who have a really broken golden age bonus.)

[Psychotic Ninja]

Cheating braindead AI

 

I feel ya. I also get the feeling that the AI, when playing Witcher 3's Gwent, loves to cheat. I've only played it three times, lost all three times. Only won a single round once.

[Blightmare]

when playing Witcher 3's Gwent, loves to cheat. I've only played it three times, lost all three times. Only won a single round once.

That's mostly due to them mixing AI with high level decks with AI with low level decks which on it's own kind of annoys me because I can't be bothered to remember which vendor in lvl 5 village is the easy one and which one kicked my ass in gwent back when I had the kiddy deck. I really wish the gwent decks were appropriate for the level of the area with the tough ones being the quest opponents.

[Heliocentrical]

*JRPG Combat

Just no, I'd rather go watch a let's play at that point and spare myself the pain. What on earth do JRPG designers think combat is? Your characters can't move and your actions look completely identical to one another. There is nothing interesting about this combat system. I'm so glad that the more recent Final Fantasy titles have addressed this and are working on fixing it. I actually really liked the combat in Final Fantasy 12 because it felt much closer to actual combat. It's not ideal mind you but I still consider it to be an overall improvement compared to the other Final Fantasy games' combat systems. I'm also looking forward to FF15 and the FF7 remake since it looks like I'll be able to play them.

[K4_Kydure]

JRPGs are more like a puzzle of numbers rather than an action game. It's more about figuring out how to win in the next fight or how to beat a really tough boss than button mashing.