Things that annoy you - Gaming Edition

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.

I read somewhere once that grind is actually considered a positive feature for RPGs in the Japanese market, which explains a lot.

I've literally abandoned games I was otherwise enjoying before, because I found myself in a situation where I would just need to go and grind through some random battles for a while just to get the resources I needed to progress the story, and I flat out couldn't be bothered.

This has probably been said already but text size. Why is it so often so small. I dont understand. The industry has a massive issue with this. Do playtesters only test games with their nose up to the screen?

shy guy 64 wrote:
was it the fight on the mountain? cause that was has a combo deliberately for one shoting

Yep.

Even the moment to moment battles in FFX are boring though. Once you fight the enemies for the first time and figure out what their weakness is the battles just become a chore.

There's no interesting decisions to be made it's just "do the thing it's weak to, win" aka the Pokémon/Persona formula.

Fade wrote:

shy guy 64 wrote:
was it the fight on the mountain? cause that was has a combo deliberately for one shoting

Yep.

Even the moment to moment battles in FFX are boring though. Once you fight the enemies for the first time and figure out what their weakness is the battles just become a chore.

There's no interesting decisions to be made it's just "do the thing it's weak to, win" aka the Pokémon/Persona formula.

That is widely regarded as one of the most irritating fights in the game regardless of people’s view on the overall combat system

I often opted for the insta death route

Cheeky Devlin wrote:"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.

I hate this so much. Days Gone for some reason has missions that start in a camp, you then walk with a character very very slowly down a path and then get on your bike for the mission to start. Why not just have that bit be a cutscene if all we're going to do is walk down a straight line and talk? Can only assume it's masking loading for the bike ride bit.

Worse still is some of these walks, the character would stop dead if you got even a tiny bit ahead (you walk quicker than they do) so you have to edge forward, and sometimes they're going to walk off in a different direction, so you almost have to guess where they're going to go then make sure you step in that direction or they just stop

Tomous wrote:This has probably been said already but text size. Why is it so often so small. I dont understand. The industry has a massive issue with this. Do playtesters only test games with their nose up to the screen?

The devs are on PCs right so basically yes

shy guy 64 wrote:

Fade wrote:

shy guy 64 wrote:
was it the fight on the mountain? cause that was has a combo deliberately for one shoting

Yep.

Even the moment to moment battles in FFX are boring though. Once you fight the enemies for the first time and figure out what their weakness is the battles just become a chore.

There's no interesting decisions to be made it's just "do the thing it's weak to, win" aka the Pokémon/Persona formula.

That is widely regarded as one of the most irritating fights in the game regardless of people’s view on the overall combat system

I often opted for the insta death route

Insta death route?

Fade wrote:

shy guy 64 wrote:

Fade wrote:

shy guy 64 wrote:
was it the fight on the mountain? cause that was has a combo deliberately for one shoting

Yep.

Even the moment to moment battles in FFX are boring though. Once you fight the enemies for the first time and figure out what their weakness is the battles just become a chore.

There's no interesting decisions to be made it's just "do the thing it's weak to, win" aka the Pokémon/Persona formula.

That is widely regarded as one of the most irritating fights in the game regardless of people’s view on the overall combat system

I often opted for the insta death route

Insta death route?

theres an optional summon you can get just before you go up the mountain that you give money to fight. if you give him enough money he will insta death any enemy including the super bosses.

or knock them into their next form

Victor Mildew wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:"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.

I hate this so much. Days Gone for some reason has missions that start in a camp, you then walk with a character very very slowly down a path and then get on your bike for the mission to start. Why not just have that bit be a cutscene if all we're going to do is walk down a straight line and talk? Can only assume it's masking loading for the bike ride bit.

Worse still is some of these walks, the character would stop dead if you got even a tiny bit ahead (you walk quicker than they do) so you have to edge forward, and sometimes they're going to walk off in a different direction, so you almost have to guess where they're going to go then make sure you step in that direction or they just stop

Unnecessarily 'interactive' cutscenes drive me insane, feels like they last so long too. I can kinda get it if it's to mask a loading screen, but at the same time it feels like they're going for a realistic/immersion thing. Like yes, I get to walk and talk with the characters realistically, until I run ahead too far like a mad man and randomly bump into NPCs etc. Just seems foolish.

Code in the Box Switch retail releases, it wastes plastic, worth nothing in resale and does bugger all for game preservation.

imbusydoctorwho wrote:Code in the Box Switch retail releases, it wastes plastic, worth nothing in resale and does bugger all for game preservation.

yes it does seem to be a rather redundant thing to do

I'm playing Rayman Legends at the moment and in order to play the game I had to install Uplay and Ubisoft Connect.

I don't want or need this bullshit

Just let me buy and play the game without installing a load of gooseberry fool alongside it. Maybe it's needed for the multiplayer stuff, but I don't give a gooseberry fool about that. Could be DRM related I guess, but again, shouldn't be needed. I also don't want all these Uplay banners popping up mid-game to tell me I've achieved something. Doesn't even tell me what I've done or what I've achieved.

Also, I don't want Ubisoft Connect to be open once I've finished playing the game. I don't even know what it is. Just close it when I close the game. I've selected the option in the settings menu to do this, but of course, it doesn't work.

What a load of gooseberry fool.

Prompted by a few games I've been playing recently:

> Title screens that say "Press Any Button", but only accept certain buttons being pressed. If the developers have strawberry floated this part of the game up, it really doesn't bode well for the rest of it.

> Seeing as nobody can be arsed making manuals anymore, I'm finding more and more that key information just doesn't get relayed to you. It's happened in a few games lately where there's an item, or a gameplay mechanic, or whatever, that you pick up or use and there's zero explanation as to what it does, how it works, or why it's there. Sometimes there might be a 'tip' on a loading screen that explains it briefly, but in that situation you have to hope you stumble across that loading screen, and it's by no means a guarantee that you will. You end up having to look stuff up online, which is a pain.

> Linked to the above, important information that only gets told on loading screens. If it's important, make sure you tell me, don't just rely on me stumbling across it like that. Also: telling me how to make my character jump doesn't constitute a 'tip' - it's a fundamental part of the character controls.

> Cheating AI in racing games. It's always happened, but it doesn't make it any less annoying. I'm using the best vehicle in the game, that I know has a higher top speed than anything the AI racers are using, yet they sail off into the sunset whenever I get close to them, and with zero boosting in sight. strawberry float off.

> When you get to the end of a game and unlock a character, vehicle, weapon, or item that's got the highest stats and is the best version of that particular thing in the game. Yet because you've completed the game now, there's absolutely strawberry float all point in giving it to me. Great that I've got the fastest car now with the best boost, handling, and acceleration, but I've completed everything in the game now, so I don't want to use it. Seems like such poor design.

Many games having Dark Souls like elements to them. Have to be honest, it's feeling a little over done at this point.

Any sort of 'trial by death-rinse-repeat' game pisses me off. Fortunately there are plenty of games that don't do that, so I can safely ignore them.

I find a lot of bugbears have improved in recent years. There was a time when you could never skip cutscenes for example, now they typically all allow you to hit a button to get through it quickly.

When games freeze/crash just as you realise you haven't saved in ages.

Was playing one of the 3ds Fire Emblem games (via emulator) and just lost over an hour of gameplay

Imrahil wrote:Any sort of 'trial by death-rinse-repeat' game pisses me off. Fortunately there are plenty of games that don't do that, so I can safely ignore them.

I find a lot of bugbears have improved in recent years. There was a time when you could never skip cutscenes for example, now they typically all allow you to hit a button to get through it quickly.

This is why I don't like most Rogue-like games.

A lot of them just use the Rogue-like elements as a band aid for their lack of content.

"hmm our game would be 2 hours lond without some kind of grind, I know let's just make the game really difficult instead and introduce upgrades the player needs to grind for to make the challenge reasonable"