Things that annoy you - Gaming Edition

infuriating and completely inexplicable!

There's a text scaling option (which only goes up to 125%) which I'll try tomorrow but I'm not expecting it'll make much difference.

Edit: tried changing the scaling to 125% and can read the text now (just about).

Games that make it difficult to exit.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2021, in order to exit the game from Masterleague requires 15 controller inputs! (b, left, a, right, right right, a, down, down, down, down, down, a, right, a)

Dark Souls was annoying for this as well I seem to remember.

Alternatlivly, games that are awkward to begin (MGS2 I'm looking at you)

Status effect moves. The only status I'm interested in affecting is reducing their HP to 0.If it doesn't do damage, it's pointless. See also, enemies that use status effect moves that turn fights into a boring grind. Played the first gym in pokémon heart gold lately, and the combo of the gym leader's Pidgey using sand attack to reduce accuracy and that roost move to restore health meant the fight took about ten times longer than it should have.

Learning enemy attack patterns. The only attack patterns I'm interested in learning are how many times can I attack and how hard.

Knoyleo wrote:Status effect moves. The only status I'm interested in affecting is reducing their HP to 0.If it doesn't do damage, it's pointless. See also, enemies that use status effect moves that turn fights into a boring grind. Played the first gym in pokémon heart gold lately, and the combo of the gym leader's Pidgey using sand attack to reduce accuracy and that roost move to restore health meant the fight took about ten times longer than it should have.

I can see that ^...

Knoyleo wrote:Learning enemy attack patterns. The only attack patterns I'm interested in learning are how many times can I attack and how hard.

...but doesn't this ^ mean you just want to use moves on training dummies? Genuinely curious, what is the ideal "boss battle" for you?

Albear wrote:Games that make it difficult to exit.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2021, in order to exit the game from Masterleague requires 15 controller inputs! (b, left, a, right, right right, a, down, down, down, down, down, a, right, a)

Dark Souls was annoying for this as well I seem to remember.

Alternatlivly, games that are awkward to begin (MGS2 I'm looking at you)

EA games seem to have started putting the Quit button in the Options menu sometimes and it's really infuriating. It's one of the most important main menu buttons there is for a PC game, in fact for any PC application. Quitting is, quite literally, not an option!

Karl_ wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:Status effect moves. The only status I'm interested in affecting is reducing their HP to 0.If it doesn't do damage, it's pointless. See also, enemies that use status effect moves that turn fights into a boring grind. Played the first gym in pokémon heart gold lately, and the combo of the gym leader's Pidgey using sand attack to reduce accuracy and that roost move to restore health meant the fight took about ten times longer than it should have.

I can see that ^...

Knoyleo wrote:Learning enemy attack patterns. The only attack patterns I'm interested in learning are how many times can I attack and how hard.

...but doesn't this ^ mean you just want to use moves on training dummies? Genuinely curious, what is the ideal "boss battle" for you?

At this point in my life, my ideal boss battle is probably one I can faceroll through, or just no boss battles at all. Increasingly I've found boss battles to be some of the least enjoyable experiences in a lot of games, that act like a blocker to progress, rather than something I look forward to, even in games like Yakuza 0/Kiwami which I massively enjoyed otherwise. Its not like they're games where there's isn't already a massive amount of combat, so I don't see why making me go up against one enemy that has like 30x the health pool of normal enemies and a load of invulnerable moves is seen as a more enjoyable thing to experience.

Boss fights like Shadow of the Colossus I suppose would be closer to my "ideal" boss fight, because they're more like a big puzzle than a direct imbalanced combat encounter with a much more powerful opponent.

Conversely I love good boss fights (Mario Galaxy 1 and Twilight Princess spring to mind as games with tremendous bosses), and I also love whittling my opponents down to nothing with status conditions and watching them struggle feebly until they breathe their last.

Ah, fair enough Knoy. I enjoy a solid boss battle but I can see what you mean now!

I love a good boss battle. Sadly many games don't know how to give you those!

I also really like status effects, it adds much more strategy and nuance to a combat system!

Balladeer wrote:Conversely I love good boss fights (Mario Galaxy 1 and Twilight Princess spring to mind as games with tremendous bosses), and I also love whittling my opponents down to nothing with status conditions and watching them struggle feebly until they breathe their last.

Squinty wrote:

Balladeer wrote:Conversely I love good boss fights (Mario Galaxy 1 and Twilight Princess spring to mind as games with tremendous bosses), and I also love whittling my opponents down to nothing with status conditions and watching them struggle feebly until they breathe their last.

Jenuall wrote:I love a good boss battle. Sadly many games don't know how to give you those!

I also really like status effects, it adds much more strategy and nuance to a combat system!

On the topic, a genuinely annoying thing is bosses who are immune to, or really hard to inflict with, status ailments. If they’re in my moveset they ought to be a valid tool against the game’s toughest foes. (I can understand full sleep/paralysis and instant death I guess, but I should definitely be able to poison ‘em!)

Balladeer wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I love a good boss battle. Sadly many games don't know how to give you those!

I also really like status effects, it adds much more strategy and nuance to a combat system!

On the topic, a genuinely annoying thing is bosses who are immune to, or really hard to inflict with, status ailments. If they’re in my moveset they ought to be a valid tool against the game’s toughest foes. (I can understand full sleep/paralysis and instant death I guess, but I should definitely be able to poison ‘em!)

Oh yes this is a bad one! Especially if you've set one or more of your characters up based on using those kinds of skills and then find yourself stuck in a battle where none of your attacks do anything!

While we're on the subject of annoying boss battles, Balan Wonderland's final boss (and it's seizure triggers) has reminded of something that needs to get in the sea:

Bosses who release patterns of rings you have to jump over, be they electricity, fire, or just shockwaves from slamming the ground. strawberry float off and think of something actually creative.

"Follow NPC" sections where the character you are supposed to be following walks at a completely different speed than the player and you can't match it so you run ahead of them all the time.

RPGs that have a massive 'difficulty' spike near the end and provide no clear way to alleviate it.

Gonna use the strategy RPG Jeanne D'Arc on the PSP as an example. I'm on the very last map and it's ridiculous. Main boss with massive HP in the middle, big enemies around it and constantly spawning smaller enemies. The big enemies randomly heal the boss and other enemies or do multiple attacks that hit everyone on the map. Also the enemies that spawn can also heal the boss and are a pain to deal with. Best of all, I can't exit out to the main map and grind on free maps, which is a problem throughout the whole game and is another peeve of mine especially since contemporaneous SRPGs like Fire Emblem and Disgaea did not have this problem. And there's a 30 turn limit.

The annoyance is compounded by how slow the game can be as it cycles through all the animations with pauses in between as the game figures out what to do next, and stopping every time for exp gains and auto health recoveries.

Edit: Found a way to cheese the boss but my point remains lol

Kriken wrote:RPGs that have a massive 'difficulty' spike near the end and provide no clear way to alleviate it.

Gonna use the strategy RPG Jeanne D'Arc on the PSP as an example. I'm on the very last map and it's ridiculous. Main boss with massive HP in the middle, big enemies around it and constantly spawning smaller enemies. The big enemies randomly heal the boss and other enemies or do multiple attacks that hit everyone on the map. Also the enemies that spawn can also heal the boss and are a pain to deal with. Best of all, I can't exit out to the main map and grind on free maps, which is a problem throughout the whole game and is another peeve of mine especially since contemporaneous SRPGs like Fire Emblem and Disgaea did not have this problem. And there's a 30 turn limit.

The annoyance is compounded by how slow the game can be as it cycles through all the animations with pauses in between as the game figures out what to do next, and stopping every time for exp gains and auto health recoveries.

Edit: Found a way to cheese the boss but my point remains lol

wow that sounds like the worst

Knoyleo wrote:Status effect moves. The only status I'm interested in affecting is reducing their HP to 0.If it doesn't do damage, it's pointless. See also, enemies that use status effect moves that turn fights into a boring grind. Played the first gym in pokémon heart gold lately, and the combo of the gym leader's Pidgey using sand attack to reduce accuracy and that roost move to restore health meant the fight took about ten times longer than it should have.

Learning enemy attack patterns. The only attack patterns I'm interested in learning are how many times can I attack and how hard.

The thing that strawberry floats me off about status effect moves is that in most games you can only use them against cannon fodder.

In JRPGs especially most bosses are invulnerable to them all.

Honestly seems like JRPGs in general have a lot of poorly thought out and just plain bad combat design decisions

FF7 is still one of my favourite games but I think that's because the ATB system and materia combinations help to keep the combat fast and interesting.

In games where certain characters have specific attacks and your only way through some battles is to grind more rather than come up with a creative set up, it just takes away a bunch of interest decisions as well as your own agency once in the battle.

I stopped playing FFX at one of the Seymour battles because the game clearly wanted me to grind (I was getting one shot even with a bunch of buffs up) rather than come up with a creative solution. gooseberry fool like that just shows the limitations of turn based RPGs if they're designed too traditionally.

Fade wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:Status effect moves. The only status I'm interested in affecting is reducing their HP to 0.If it doesn't do damage, it's pointless. See also, enemies that use status effect moves that turn fights into a boring grind. Played the first gym in pokémon heart gold lately, and the combo of the gym leader's Pidgey using sand attack to reduce accuracy and that roost move to restore health meant the fight took about ten times longer than it should have.

Learning enemy attack patterns. The only attack patterns I'm interested in learning are how many times can I attack and how hard.

The thing that strawberry floats me off about status effect moves is that in most games you can only use them against cannon fodder.

In JRPGs especially most bosses are invulnerable to them all.

Honestly seems like JRPGs in general have a lot of poorly thought out and just plain bad combat design decisions

FF7 is still one of my favourite games but I think that's because the ATB system and materia combinations help to keep the combat fast and interesting.

In games where certain characters have specific attacks and your only way through some battles is to grind more rather than come up with a creative set up, it just takes away a bunch of interest decisions as well as your own agency once in the battle.

I stopped playing FFX at one of the Seymour battles because the game clearly wanted me to grind (I was getting one shot even with a bunch of buffs up) rather than come up with a creative solution. gooseberry fool like that just shows the limitations of turn based RPGs if they're designed too traditionally.

was it the fight on the mountain? cause that was has a combo deliberately for one shoting