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Stat/EXP loss on death.
Unskippable cut scenes, especially before a boss. I want to play on hard difficulty, which means I WILL die to bosses. Do not force me to watch that shit 5+ times or I’m out like trout.
The Messenger does something similar but in a different way: dying summons a demon that eats any coins that the player collects for the next minute. I already suck, and now the game is punishing me by delaying upgrades.
Microtransactions - the answer always has been and always will be microtransactions.
2 sets of teeth, the first only lasting 1/9 of your life and the second being 8/9. 2/9, 7/9 would be much better or just 2/9, 4/9, 6/9.
Oh, hair falling out and all your joints hurting for 5/9 of your life kinda blows as well.
Buddy, fucking what?
I fucking hate trying to figure out the default bindings for teeth 2/9
stupid devs
9’s are great. 2/9 = 22.2 years, 5/9 = 55.5 years. Works the whole way up if you pretend people live 90 years. Lol
(Don’t check the math, just believe in the game)
Escort missions
The only good escort missions are the ones where you aren’t limited at all by the NPC you need to escort, which no longer makes it an escort mission.
Yep, I can’t remember the game anymore, but was super excited to be playing it as a sequel, then came upon the first escort mission… I immediatly turned the game off, and never played it again. Nothing enrages me more than artifically wasting my time/difficulty because the dev’s can’t design a mission properly without using such a shitty crutch…
For me: weapon durability.
I dunno, my mind changed a bit on this once I played BotW. As long as weapons are significantly different enough and there’s always ways to be effective with each, and you get a non-stop slew of them to rotate through, it’s fun.
If you lose any of the above conditions though and you’re just constantly trying to repair your weapon set, needing to pack stupid numbers of repair kits or stop at the corner store in town or whatever to repair your only set, that’s a no from me dawg.
But it can be fun. When I first played BotW I was really frustrated about durability until I complained about it to my friend and he was like “dude who cares, just pick up one of the 20 weapons laying on the ground and keep moving” I realized that I no longer need to hoard all the best weapons and I could just send it, and the game got way more fun.
That being said, most games do it poorly and 90% of the time I agree with you. Looking at YOU dead Island 2
I was thinking specifically of Breath of the Wild.
For me, Zelda has always been about scratching my completionist itch.
Making all the weapons temporary means I never get to feel the power of a completed inventory. Instead I’m just trading off weapons that I don’t like for more weapons that I don’t like. And if I do like one, it breaks anyway.
I didn’t even bother with Tears of the Kingdom for that reason. It’s a feel-bad mechanic, and I’d rather not do it.
Games with inventories where they treat a single gem or a flower petal as occupying the same space in your rucksack as a pair of boots.
Guys, we go back to Ultima 7 with the key ring, the problem was solved along fucking time ago. Stop being lazy and have gem sacks, crafting bags, keyrings, etc for small items.
QTE, especially when they’re randomly inserted into an otherwise action/skill based game.
Time limits / countdowns.
Insert real world money to continue/for advantage. Whether it’s modern FTP with MTX or old school quarter eaters, it’s poison to games.
Timer that can be skipped with paid currency.
Pay to win.
I don’t like durability mechanics when its clearly there just to waste your time or money or whatever. Any game that makes you do more hiking to repair benches than fighting is either getting a thumbs down or I’m going to download a mod.
Breath of the Wild is generally pretty good about letting you explore your own way. For example, the exposition ghost at the start explicitly acknowledges you could go straight to the final boss after leaving the tutorial area if you want, and there are plenty of ways a determined player can reach areas faster than the typical progression routes would take them.
But my goodness the pitiful weapon durability made me want to avoid combat. I distinctly remember coming across a white lionel relatively early and determining I shouldn’t bother trying to fight simply because I didn’t have enough weapons to get through its health bar.
Yup. I played through BotW always holding onto things I thought were good because the stupid durability mechanic made me hoard stuff.
When I started TotK I decided to turn durability off and see if I enjoyed more and I absolutely did. Made the game way better. The only thing that broke was some balancing around crafted weapons. For example you can take a stick and slap a horn on it and get a very powerful, but brittle, weapon. With durability off it just becomes a very powerful weapon, which pretty much matches or beats any proper weapon you can find. If you think that’s too hacky you can just make a rule for yourself not to craft things like that.
Many games have gone through this and time and time again scarcity makes people not use things. In Witcher 2 you had to craft potions manually by collecting all the ingredients each time. In Witcher 3 they just replenish after a rest if you have alcohol on you. 2 is more realistic, but the work involved (and the fact that you had to drink them before combat started) made them too much of a pain and I just went without. In 3 you can simply use them and not worry.
Microtransactions
Unskippable intro levels that teach the control mechanics.
Bonus if you also can’t access settings and it’s stuck in a stupid resolution or something.
Make sure the volume could win you a court case for blowing your fucking ears out and I’m there
My favorite is Killing Floor 2 which doesn’t look at your volume setting in the config file until AFTER the intro videos and the menu has loaded.
This is way common. Biggest offender recently was gears of war remake #2 with the loudest chainsaw noise you could imagine in the opening credits/developer logo
Not really the worst, but my hot take of something I don’t like: puzzles rather than problems. By that I mean puzzles have one correct solution and everything else is wrong and doesn’t work, while with a problem you’re given some tools and an obstacle and just let loose. It’s so much more satisfying to find your own solution that it is to reach the end and realize you were being sneakily handheld through it to make sure you found the only possible way through. I’ve done a few good problems where I reach the end, then immediately reload the save from before and try some different routes just to see if it works.
Puzzles do have their place though, especially in tutorials.
