Most Hated Game Feature(s)

[khaosifix]

In this thread, post the features of games you've played that made you annoyed/angry and caused you to question why the developers decided to put it in there in the first place. Feel free to use the little template I posted below.

Game:
Feature:
Comment:

Game: Suikoden I, II, IV, V, Chrono Cross, and Chrono Trigger
Feature: Mute protagonist
Comment: Why? In the first two Suikodens it didn't bother me much because everything was text. Same with Chrono Cross except for the one-sided conversations that just seem beyond retarded to watch. The later Suikodens had voice-acting which made it even worse to have a mute protagonist. Many other RPGs have this also.

[PoV]

I hate the matching in Tetris.

Sometimes the mute feature is nice. When a character has an annoying voice. Enchanted Arms, Strangers Wrath, ... I wish those had protagonist mutes.

[Garthy]

Game: Any.
Feature: Dialog that says "you must run as Admin" and then exits the game.
Comment: Arghh!! Why do people do this? It's bad enough that some games require you to give complete control of your system over to them. It's even worse when they realise it, and then rather than fix the problem they just pop up a dialog saying you must run it as admin. I realise the main reason for this is that the game wishes to mess with your system in severe ways as a copy-prevention mechanism... but perhaps I just want to play the game I legally purchased instead?

Game: Any (HOMM3, Doom, etc)
Feature: Level-based games where flow-on effects make the following levels impossible to win.
Comment: A personal pet peeve. Some games allow transfer of resources from a previous level to a later one. There's nothing wrong with this per se, but it does become a problem when you complete a level, get access to the next one, and it is quite impossible to win with the resources you brought in from the previous level. Even worse is when you discover that you are going to have to go back X levels (for a large X) to replay all those levels again because you are missing something that was really needed back then. Worse is when there was no indication previously that you had to get it. It also means that one is often forced to spend as long as possible gathering resources from previous levels (which is often slow and boring) just in case. You also have to watch every shot and purchase, because you might need it in a later level. It also means saving and reloading over and over again, just to make sure you got the resource usage on the level down as low as possible. It generally also means starting the whole game again once you're partway into it, because there is no way you did the early levels efficiently enough while you were still learning. This sort of thing just isn't fun. There are ways to manage flow-on cleverly, but some games are just too reliant on it.

[radishan]

*This isn't a gameplay feature, but I think it applies well in this case.

Bad UI

If the game is mouse controlled let the user select menu options with the mouse, same goes for the keyboard. I say always let both the keyboard and mouse control menu options?

[Nexic]

Game: Any (HOMM3, Doom, etc)
Feature: Level-based games where flow-on effects make the following levels impossible to win.
Comment: A personal pet peeve. Some games allow transfer of resources from a previous level to a later one. There's nothing wrong with this per se, but it does become a problem when you complete a level, get access to the next one, and it is quite impossible to win with the resources you brought in from the previous level. Even worse is when you discover that you are going to have to go back X levels (for a large X) to replay all those levels again because you are missing something that was really needed back then. Worse is when there was no indication previously that you had to get it. It also means that one is often forced to spend as long as possible gathering resources from previous levels (which is often slow and boring) just in case. You also have to watch every shot and purchase, because you might need it in a later level. It also means saving and reloading over and over again, just to make sure you got the resource usage on the level down as low as possible. It generally also means starting the whole game again once you're partway into it, because there is no way you did the early levels efficiently enough while you were still learning. This sort of thing just isn't fun. There are ways to manage flow-on cleverly, but some games are just too reliant on it.

I remember playing DragonLore and having to restart about 10 times because I kept missing things that literally stopped you from progressing. For example you needed to get a magic acorn in the forest at the start. If you missed it then you would get stuck about 2/3 of the way through the game and have to start again. In extreme cases like this I agree, it's a terrible thing.

But in general, I feel these mechanics improve a game as long as it never becomes totally impossible. It adds depth and another level of strategy.

Ever play Resident Evil 1 with Chris? You will probably want to commit suicide after playing.

[Bad Sector]

Game: Any (HOMM3, Doom, etc)
Feature: Level-based games where flow-on effects make the following levels impossible to win.

Doom-freak-speak-mode on: this is not something you'll see in Doom. Sure, it might be easier to finish the level if you grab every little thing, but the game was designed in such a way that (given enough patience and skill) you'll be able to defeat each level no matter the weapons (because it was giving you the weapons in early positions - btw remember that in Doom each time you got killed, the level restarted with you carrying a simple pistol).

[Sol_HSA]

Game: any
Feature: any
Comment: a matter of taste

[Garthy]

I remember playing DragonLore and having to restart about 10 times because I kept missing things that literally stopped you from progressing. For example you needed to get a magic acorn in the forest at the start. If you missed it then you would get stuck about 2/3 of the way through the game and have to start again. In extreme cases like this I agree, it's a terrible thing.

Yep, that's pretty-much the case I was getting at. :)

But in general, I feel these mechanics improve a game as long as it never becomes totally impossible. It adds depth and another level of strategy.

Done right, I agree, it works well. I haven't seen it done right very often though. You need some mix where you retain the benefits from a well-played level in future levels without adversely punishing you if you don't do quite as well. Additionally, if there's no benefit to completing a level faster, you run into the situation where you really need to spend as long as possible doing boring tasks for small benefits before moving on to the next level (eg. mopping up in HOMM3 before completing a level).

Hitman did alright in this area (I think- it's been a while). You never really played to conserve every last shot as the benefit to a job-well-done was much greater that the savings for conserving guns and ammo. As such, amount of ammo used was never really a major concern, beyond alerting other foes.

Ever play Resident Evil 1 with Chris? You will probably want to commit suicide after playing.

Can't say I've tried it. :}


Doom-freak-speak-mode on: this is not something you'll see in Doom. Sure, it might be easier to finish the level if you grab every little thing, but the game was designed in such a way that (given enough patience and skill) you'll be able to defeat each level no matter the weapons (because it was giving you the weapons in early positions - btw remember that in Doom each time you got killed, the level restarted with you carrying a simple pistol).

I will bow to your superior knowledge of the series as I never fully got into it for the reasons I mentioned. ;) In at least one of the games in the Doom/Quake series (I believe) it was worth conserving ammo for later levels and playing and replaying each area to minimise ammo use. Seems to me in a shooter like this half the fun would be running around blazing madly.

[Pyabo]

Game: Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake 2, Doom 3, etc, etc, etc
Feature: Monsters waiting for you to pick up that item

This feature got old in the original Doom... but id seems to insist on adding it to every game. You know the one... Look at that nice shiney armor just sitting right there in the middle of the room! I wonder why it's there... I'm sure it would be OK if I just grabbed it... WHIIIRRRR CLUNK. ROOOAAAAR. Oh gee, there was a secret door right there loaded with monsters just waiting for me to come by.

I always wonder... how long have those monster been there? Do they get hungry? Why were they so quiet before the door opened? It looks cramped in there. Who designed this space station with secret doors? Seems an odd choice.

I stopped playing Doom 3 about 5 minutes into it after seeing the first instance there. :rolleyes:

[Grey Alien]

I guess this is more of a case of missing feature, but basically in many RPGs you can just wander into someones house and steal their stuff right in front of them and they don't care. I actually used to feel guilty about this but then I thought "Hey, I'm a hero and I'm gonna save their lives and their town so if their life savings can buy me the one potion that keeps me alive when fighting the evil X then fair enough, they'll be grateful in the end... " ;-)

[bignobody]

I actually used to feel guilty about this but then I thought "Hey, I'm a hero and I'm gonna save their lives and their town so if their life savings can buy me the one potion that keeps me alive when fighting the evil X then fair enough, they'll be grateful in the end... " ;-)

Whatever helps you sleep at night, bud. They were saving that money for the same potion to give to their poor, crippled little Timmy. Now there's no hope for him. I hope you're proud of yourself, "hero".


Personally, I hate game demos that have no time limits and have enough levels to keep people interested, so they don't have to buy the full version for only $9.99... What was he thinking?

[LilGames]

Game: Any
Feature: No Objectives/Tasks/Mission reminders
Example: Worst feature would be when there is no information about your current objective.

ie: Character X told you that you need to go talk to Character Y and fetch Object A. But I decided I had enough for the night and saved the game. Two weeks go by, I load the game and don't know what to do. The map shows nothing, talking to Character X does not repeat my tasks again. What do I do?!

It's especially worse when the game has huge expansive levels and allows you to backtrack all over them trying to find that one little thing you missed.

[rockford]

Game: Platform games, especially Mario
Feature: Jump...
Comment: I hate miss jumps, so I hate jump... I love Mario, but I'm so bad because I never land when I want to land !

[mrkwang]

Game : Point & Click Adventure Games
Feature : Pixel Hunting.
Comment : I really HATE Pixel Hunting! I just wish to play Adventure game, NOT to find some minor little small pixels from the wide game background! Fortunately, I didn't play lots of them, which are infamous for heavy Pixel Hunting. Anyway sometimes I experience it until now, and my worst nightmare was [Crimson Room] & followers. I can endure finding some objects in a small room, even if I don't know WHY I'm captured. But I can't endure to find such a tiny pixel!

[Artinum]

Game : Many.
Feature : Online manuals.
Comment : I mean really - I play games on a standalone laptop, which makes online manuals utterly useless. Even if I'm on a desktop machine, if I'm playing a game and want to look at the Help I then get taken out of the game (a few of which don't come back afterwards) and have to connect to the internet. And even then, what if the site's down? What if I play the game three years later when the URL has changed and/or disappeared completely? Offline manuals are a little better - at least you have one on file to consult.

Phew. Rant over.

[electronicStar]

I guess this is more of a case of missing feature, but basically in many RPGs you can just wander into someones house and steal their stuff right in front of them and they don't care. I actually used to feel guilty about this but then I thought "Hey, I'm a hero and I'm gonna save their lives and their town so if their life savings can buy me the one potion that keeps me alive when fighting the evil X then fair enough, they'll be grateful in the end... " ;-)
Yeah I hate that too,especially some games where you HAVE to do it if you want to be powerful/rich enough to continue the adventure.

two more:


Game: casual and 2D games
Feature: I hate it in platform games when you have something to do or to collect but it's not really useful to anything. For example Sonic 1 you can collect little rings but they aren't necessary to finish the level, you can speed and try to beat speed records but it doesn't really reward you.Only thing that changes is the score.I hate that because these tasks aren't particularly fun and if you remove them the game is rather simple. There are a couple of other platform and casual games with the same "problem" , it's like if the devellopers had added the feature after noticing the game was a too empty to play.
Now that I think about it I hate platformers where the goal is just to collect items through boring levels without even a definite theme .



Game: FPS, RPG, adventure, etc...
Feature: Mazes without automap
Comment: ...:mad:

[Mikademus]

Save Points
Simply generally a sign of poor design: why limit the player to saving his progress only at predetermined positions? God damn, just let me save bloody when I want, if you use save-restore to clear the game it is (1) the player's choice, and (2) a sign that *your game model* is flawed in the first place, and it can't be fixed by restricting saving to artificial "points".


Omniscient AI
Yeah, sure, AI is a bitch to program, but I just loath the games where the AI has knowledge he shouldn't have, like the location of you, your base or whatever. Again, a sign of poor design.

[Nexic]

This feature got old in the original Doom...
Nothing got old in Doom. Doom is perfect. All hail Doom.

[khaosifix]

Save Points
Simply generally a sign of poor design: why limit the player to saving his progress only at predetermined positions? God damn, just let me save bloody when I want, if you use save-restore to clear the game it is (1) the player's choice, and (2) a sign that *your game model* is flawed in the first place, and it can't be fixed by restricting saving to artificial "points".


Omniscient AI
Yeah, sure, AI is a bitch to program, but I just loath the games where the AI has knowledge he shouldn't have, like the location of you, your base or whatever. Again, a sign of poor design.


One thing I've noticed about a great number of modern games is that they borrow features from older games. Half of the features borrowed from older games are generally percieved as "poor game design" after being analyzed a great amount. An example of this is random battles which are unimaginably frustrating and goes against the purpose of what a game should be (they should be fun). It's debatable if prepositioned save points is another example of this. However, I do see the flaw of this (you can't stop playing until you've come acrossed the next save point; otherwise you'll lose data).

[killarkai]

For example Sonic 1 you can collect little rings but they aren't necessary to finish the level, you can speed and try to beat speed records but it doesn't really reward you.Only thing that changes is the score.I hate that because these tasks aren't particularly fun and if you remove them the game is rather simple.

The more rings you collect, the more likely you will re-acquire some rings when you are hurt.

Also in one of the Sonics, you will only be able to enter secret zones if you collect enough rings.

I do feel great when I collected all rings in a level or beat a speed record in Sonic, am I the weird one here?

[Bad Sector]

I always wonder... how long have those monster been there? Do they get hungry? Why were they so quiet before the door opened? It looks cramped in there. Who designed this space station with secret doors? Seems an odd choice.

I stopped playing Doom 3 about 5 minutes into it after seeing the first instance there. :rolleyes:

Hahaha :-). Well, personally i like this kind of design because it makes me (note that i say "me", not "you" :->) being in caution all the time (which is the reason i like FPS and some other action games in the first place - but in FPS it's much more intense if done right, because of the perspective). However having said that, in Doom 3 i think that they didn't got the feeling right (unlike in Quake 2 and previous games), which is kinda odd given that Tim Willits designed one of the best SP episodes (episode 1 in Quake 1) and that Doom3's creepy atmosphere had a lot of potential for such things.

Omniscient AI
Yeah, sure, AI is a bitch to program, but I just loath the games where the AI has knowledge he shouldn't have, like the location of you, your base or whatever. Again, a sign of poor design.

Far Cry. You shoot one guy and the whole island knows it :-P. Well, because of the thing above, i don't really like "good AI"... but more on that below.


@grey alien & big nobody: Now i had a really good laugh :-D. Really. I also find that strange (and then feel guilty :-P) when i'm stealing them but then again it's the first thing i do once i find a drawer in someone house :-D (in-game not in real life :-P). Also i find it hilarious when i go -in some games- into someone's house and he yells "oi! get out of my house!" (usually with some kind of slam, hit or whatever :-)).

Now my dislike list.

Game: RPGs
Feature: Too hard leveling, killing the same monster 100 times in order to advance a bit so you can stop being a loser lamer and find the path to become a hero (or actually the path to hundreds of identical monsters which will give you enough xp in order to get the label of "hero").
Comment: None, but this guy (http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/763/763050p1.html) (part2 (http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/782/782155p1.html)) says everything. Really is the reason why i like to start RPG games but never finish them...


Game: FPS, action
Feature: Rooms packed with loads of way too clever monsters and enemies.
Comment: I love rooms packed with many enemies and monsters, waiting for me to slaughter them and i like the challenge of having to oppose a clever AI in a game (FPS preferably). However these two don't mix.

Game: any
Feature: No subtitles in speech.
Comment: Not anyone is a native English speaker and even if you are, you may just miss something if subtitles are not used.

Game: any
Feature: Self-interrupting entities
Comment: You're reading (or listening) something that an entity (some other human usually) is saying and just before the end of that, a new "stream" of text or speech begins. A very good example of this, is the trader in the beginning S.T.A.L.K.E.R. who not only interrupts himself the first time he talks to you, but the second recording of the speech has a different tone and volume thus it seems a bit out of place.

[ChrisP]

Game: Any
Feature: No Objectives/Tasks/Mission reminders
Example: Worst feature would be when there is no information about your current objective.

ie: Character X told you that you need to go talk to Character Y and fetch Object A. But I decided I had enough for the night and saved the game. Two weeks go by, I load the game and don't know what to do. The map shows nothing, talking to Character X does not repeat my tasks again. What do I do?!

It's especially worse when the game has huge expansive levels and allows you to backtrack all over them trying to find that one little thing you missed.

Oh, goodness, yes. Morrowind almost did this, except that it did have a "journal" which recorded these events. Problem was, if you were given the task a while ago, you might have to scroll back through dozens of pages to find it! Drove me mad...

They fixed this in one of the expansions, and in Oblivion. Now it has a nice active/ongoing/completed quests interface.

[ninesquirrels]

Hahaha :-).
Far Cry. You shoot one guy and the whole island knows it :-P. Well, because of the thing above, i don't really like "good AI"... but more on that below.


For the record - that AI wasn't omniscient at all (the PC version, anyway). They could see and hear - so if they heard a gunshot, they knew something was up and came over to look around. But if they didn't see you they would go look somewhere else. But they couldn't hear things too far away and they couldn't see through solid objects. Instead, they knew where they *thought* something was from the sound and they would go to that spot and make sure you weren't there. The problem was that people had been trained so long on shitty trigger-based AI that they wouldn't MOVE after they shot a bunch of people, so naturally, the AI would jump all over them, because they knew where the sounds came from...

The other big difference in FC was that the AI never completely settled down - which makes sense. I hate games where you go in, kill a few people, and then they go "Well, that's over, I think I'll stand here next to the dead body and smoke a cigarette"...

Sorry - needed to clear that up. :)

[scratchdisk]

I hate poor online matchmaking - especially in consoles.

I should be able to play random people, or my team vs random people, or just my friends. Or me and the guy sitting next to me on the couch vs two random people on line. Most of the time if you want to do these kinds of matches other than quick matches, you have to create a game with a specific name and then have your friends search for the special name, it sucks. Halo II did a good job of match making, most other console games suck at it.

[barrygamer]

Good thread!

Bit of a dull suggestion, but I'd say time limits. They're not always bad, of course, but I usually don't like them when they are the main challenge. Most casual games now have a 'relaxed' mode, at least.
(NB I don't count something like Tetris in this -- the time limit comes from the game rules, thats clever).

For a triple-A example, my favorite mode in Burnout3 was 'road rage' where you just race around crashing into stuff, no time limits. I still play it regularly. In the later Burnout games they put a stupid stupid 60 second (extending) timer on that mode and ruined it. I enjoyed just playing the game, not being hit over the head with their 'challenge'.

[TeeGee]

Game: Morrowind, Oblivion, Fable... some other modern cRPGs.

Feature: A badly done system that adjusts the difficulty and rewards to the player's level and progress.

Comment: I mean - c'mon - it defeats the overall RPG purpose of improving the character. When you start - things are easy, when you advance - things are easy, when you are godly - things are the same freakin' easy.
It destroys the fun of getting to a place, noticing that there are some hardcore monsters there and retreating to get some more advantage. Getting back to the places, that I couldn't survive in earlier, hoping for some revenge and legendary rewards is core point of rpg gameplay for me.
Arriving at a new city and getting excited about all the new items, shop, quests, spells, characters you'll get there is dead too. Now everything is levelled.
All areas are accessible from the start - if you know the game, you can get all the rewards, while the enemies guarding them are still rats'n'bats. I remember seeing a video of guy completing Morrowing in like 10 minutes, because the main boss and his guards were wimps at player's level 1.

The whole idea of levelled content is not bad - I use something like this in my game and it works, but most of the time it's implemented badly.

[Bombsfall]

Game: Morrowind, Oblivion, Fable... some other modern cRPGs.

Feature: A badly done system that adjusts the difficulty and rewards to the player's level and progress.


Agreed. It doesn't irk me too much in Oblivion, especially with all of the mods I can slap on the make it more interesting, but feel I shouldn't have to mess with a core game, really. I love modding but somehow the principle of the matter gets to me. Oblivion is a wondrous and fantastic achievement in most other respects, though, IMHO.

This is a bit hackneyed these days, but...

Game: MANY, but Dead Rising comes to mind...
Feature: The Escort Mission. (for now)
Comment: The escort mission is a great idea, but I just do not think that the average NPC AI is up to the task. I am not a programmer, but I understand that there are a finite number of behaviors an NPC can do, and those behaviors are affected more and more unpredictably in these days of crazy complex gameplay. But for crying out loud, to have an NPC wait in one spot for me to walk up, have a little chat, and follow me to freedom... only to then have him/her run directly into a hoard of the ravenous undead and swing, swing away with their ineffective fists... it all just seems so futile. Why not just swear off escort missions until the tech catches up to the concept?

There HAVE been a few sweet escort missions, though, most notably almost the whole of Ico.

[oNyx]

Game: Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake 2, Doom 3, etc, etc, etc
Feature: Monsters waiting for you to pick up that item
[...]

It was alright in Doom imo. Serious Sam overdid it. Instead of having such a trigger item once or twice (at most) per level it was cluttered up with that stuff. Bleargh.

Game : Point & Click Adventure Games
Feature : Pixel Hunting.
[...][Crimson Room] & followers[...]

You know... you can just use tab and shift+tab in those flash games. ;)

Save Points
Simply generally a sign of poor design: why limit the player to saving his progress only at predetermined positions? God damn, just let me save bloody when I want[...]

I for one hate quicksave. It spoils everything and you can't actually finish it without using quicksave here and there, because the difficulty was adjusted to that. Oh the irony.

Beating a game with quicksave doesn't feel great, because everyone could do that.

[LilGames]

Game: Morrowind, Oblivion, Fable... some other modern cRPGs.

Feature: A badly done system that adjusts the difficulty and rewards to the player's level and progress.

Comment: I mean - c'mon - it defeats the overall RPG purpose of improving the character. When you start - things are easy, when you advance - things are easy, when you are godly - things are the same freakin' easy.
It destroys the fun of getting to a place, noticing that there are some hardcore monsters there and retreating to get some more advantage. Getting back to the places, that I couldn't survive in earlier, hoping for some revenge and legendary rewards is core point of rpg gameplay for me.
Arriving at a new city and getting excited about all the new items, shop, quests, spells, characters you'll get there is dead too. Now everything is levelled.
All areas are accessible from the start - if you know the game, you can get all the rewards, while the enemies guarding them are still rats'n'bats. I remember seeing a video of guy completing Morrowing in like 10 minutes, because the main boss and his guards were wimps at player's level 1.

The whole idea of levelled content is not bad - I use something like this in my game and it works, but most of the time it's implemented badly.

Since this game relies on "levelling up", they structured it that way so you couldn't just go hack lower-level creatures for hours and hours, maxing out all your skills. What fun would that be?

For me seems that as the game progressed I kept surviving just by the skin of my teeth. In many of the advanced Oblivion worlds, I ended up having to just try to out-run my way through rather than fight (or leave and come back when I was stronger/had better equipment)

[KNau]

I agree with all the nominees so far and would like to add:

Game: Any
Feature: Overstaying your welcome
Comment: Just because you can make a game with hundreds of levels and 80+ hours of gameplay doesn't mean you should. I'd take a high quality, short term (10 - 15 hours) game over a drawn out, endless levels of same-ness, 40+ hour monstrosity.

Game: Any (Blazing Angels / any WWII game, really)
Feature: You vs. The World
Comment: Playing Blazing Angels made it look like only 5 allied pilots ever took part in the air war. I understand if you're playing a special agent or covert ops (even then the mission parameters should be reasonable) but when you're supposed to be a grunt then the battle itself should be so much bigger than you. You don't always need to be the "superhero" of a game, sometimes IMO beign a fragile, faceless soldier in the meatgrinder is more dramatic.

Game: Burnout Dominator
Feature: Ruining a good (and popular) feature in favor of a new design direction.
Comment: How many times have you fallen in love with a series and anxiously awaited the latest instalment only to find out that they removed your favorite elements to appeal to one smaller segment of their players. Burnout Dominator has no Crashbreaker challenges. The Crashbreaker is what made Burnout unique - Dominator is just another racing game now, hence why it's collecting dust on my shelf.

Game: Burnout Dominator, anything EA lately
Feature: Stupid soundtrack selections
Comment: Just because the record company says you can put 5 different versions of a god awful Avril Lavigne song on the soundtrack doesn't mean you should. It doesn't fit the game style and if you checked with your target audience it doesn't suit their tastes.

[MrQ]

I hate signing up before I can download or play a game. I know it helps with keeping a customer list but It shits me!

It's not really a game feature but some games make it part of the process to register before downloading or playing. It really bugs me especially for online games. I think some people will actually leave some games because they need to register. I'm all for making the process as simple as possible.

[ChrisP]

Helps with keeping a customer? Well, maybe.

Helps with turning away potential customers? Definitely!

As for Oblivion - I actually like the way it scales monsters to your level, because I don't want to have to level up all the time. I guess I have different priorities to other people; I just want to (1) explore the world, and (2) advance the storyline and finish the game without first having to spend ages hacking on monsters so I can level up.

[Artinum]

Game: Morrowind, Oblivion, Fable... some other modern cRPGs.

Feature: A badly done system that adjusts the difficulty and rewards to the player's level and progress.


I remember reading (and trying out) a walkthrough for Final Fantasy VIII in which you aimed to avoid levelling up as much as possible. I think the point was to make the most of the HP-Up, Str-Up etc bonuses at the end of the game to make your characters super strong but it had knock-on effects throughout - especially when you know the game plot already. You could play through the training mission by killing off Squall and Zell and levelling Seifer up (because he leaves the party during that mission) - thus gaining loads of good spells and items, levelling up your first three GFs to ridiculous heights and giving them plenty of skills at the same time. Then Seifer leaves thanks to the plot and your party are now weak and feeble again - only they've now got three lethal GFs and a massive stock of supplies and powerful magic. Everything becomes easy!

It was a fun experiment to try out but spending several hours in the same location, battling the same limited enemies to get there was very tedious. Thankfully there was a save point nearby.

[soniCron]

I did something similar with the first battle in Chrono Trigger and it left the rest of the game very unbalanced. But, because Chrono Trigger was so well written, I was pleased that I didn't have to "worry" myself with the actual gameplay.

There are very few games that I like to play on "Hard," but when I do, I love to play on "Extreme/Nightmare/Insane." (Halo on nothing but "Legendary," for example -- try it on the PC sometime: it's nearly impossible!)

Which brings me to my peeve...

To me, "Hard" doesn't mean "Easy-but-with-worse-player-shields-and-omnipotent-enemies." I want it to be more challenging in a fun way, not an artificial way. In Halo, for example, the harder you set it, the more adept the AI becomes forcing you to play more strategically. Bungie didn't just weaken the player character and strengthen the enemies, they actually changed the dynamic of the game...and for the better.

It'll be a long time before something measures up to the first time the CPU distracted me with an Elite meanwhile flanking me (out of sight and under cover) with a whole team of other opponents. Getting my ass handed to me never felt better... ;)

[Grey Alien]

Whatever helps you sleep at night, bud. They were saving that money for the same potion to give to their poor, crippled little Timmy. Now there's no hope for him. I hope you're proud of yourself, "hero".
genuine rotfl dude! They are always called Timmy too...

[Artinum]

To me, "Hard" doesn't mean "Easy-but-with-worse-player-shields-and-omnipotent-enemies." I want it to be more challenging in a fun way, not an artificial way. In Halo, for example, the harder you set it, the more adept the AI becomes forcing you to play more strategically. Bungie didn't just weaken the player character and strengthen the enemies, they actually changed the dynamic of the game...and for the better.

Unfortunately this is the easiest way to tweak the difficulty of a game - especially if you've been developing the engine for several months already and a clever difficulty system would involve a total rewrite! I've seen many, many games adjust the difficulty by changing the speed of the enemies, tightening the time limit, reducing the number of lives... ideally difficulty should be set by level design and AI agressivity. But some games have different approaches. Doom (and sequels) affected the speed and so on, but also did the simple thing of putting more monsters in the place. And sometimes removing helpful little bonuses for the harder difficulties. That rocket launcher by the door to the pit full of monsters is moved to the pedestal in the middle of the room if you play on harder difficulties; that sort of thing. For the absolutely hopeless player the easiest difficulty also doubles all the ammo you collect.

The Zombie Smashers games use a little RPG-style levelling up - in ZXS2 your character starts off fairly weak and by smashing up enemies and completing missions you earn cash to power up your stats and learn new combat skills. Because the enemies themselves don't level up - ones you encounter later are simply stronger types - you can always go back to previous locations and batter easy opponents to generate cash to boost your stats. ZSX3 is all space combat but the same thing applies - if things on the next mission are too tough, you can earn some cash with a bit of pirate smashing or trading or some such and aim for the bigger car and better guns.

I once read a review (about fifteen years ago now) of a puzzle game on the Atari ST where the hardest difficulty was actually impossible - this could be mathematically proven! Sorry to say I don't remember the name.

[Additional] - What about Lemmings? The difficulty in that could vary wonderfully. Certain levels would appear more than once - with different time, skills, etc. I mention this as often it meant your strategy would need to change completely.

[Uesugi]

I hate signing up before I can download or play a game.

Me, too. I never give out my real email just to download or play unless it's the absolute last option. Usually I write that site or game off in my head and move on to something better.

[Virtualhavoc]

Game : Halo
Feature : Rubish Health
Comment : When your the strongest human in the planet, and the grunts have more health than you on legendary.

[Bad Sector]

Game : Halo
Feature : Rubish Health
Comment : When your the strongest human in the planet, and the grunts have more health than you on legendary.

The strongest human (actually, cyborg) on the planet doesn't make you the strongest being on the universe :-D

[LilGames]

Game: Baten Katos
Feature: Slow Story / NPC conversations text
Comment: Tried to get into this game but the conversations with NPCs are SO SLOW to get through it's excruciating. It should be possible to just tap tap tap the button to advance quickly through text that one doesn't want to read. Most games get this right, but this one for some reason has prolonged pauses between text boxes.

[KG_Brad]

Game: Raptor
Feature: Bosses that cheat
Comment: Almost every boss in the game fires so many bullets and lasers that you can barely tell where you're going. Even when you dodge them all, you still get hit with the "mysterious" laser that came out of nowhere!

[Tom Gilleland]

I really don't like time-limited tasks. I think it is best to have an option to turn off time limits. I like to take my time on a game and try different things. I also like to acheive all the goals, tasks, and find the secrets. Sandbox type games are most interesting for me. Game like Diner Dash drive me nuts.

[RinkuHero]

My most hated feature (or lack of one) is when a game lacks any type of setting or story or background. For instance, abstract shooters that don't tell you who you are, what you are fighting, what you are fighting to protect, etc. -- sometimes they include a few words about this in a text file, but that isn't enough to make me care about the setting. I'm not saying story is more important than gameplay, I'm just saying that a complete lack of background story or atmosphere is annoying.

[oNyx]

Time limited tasks can be indeed pretty annoying. Especially if the timing logic is scripted and uses a different timer then the game engine itself. Eg MDK2 - the main engine used TGT with a resolution of 1msec but the scripted LUA parts used QPC, which is broken on my machine. The game itself ran perfectly fine and butter smooth, but at the end of the game there was some timed task to do. Thanks to QPC leaping the timer jumped a few seconds into the future every now and then, which made it basically impossible to beat. In theory I might have been able to beat it once in about 1000 tries, but I already gave up after 20. ;)

A complete lack of story is perfectly fine with me. It's certainly better then a super cheesy one. However, I do like super stupid dialogs if it's a genre where any story is completely optional (eg Gunbird 1+2 or Waku Waku 7).

[electronicStar]

Adaptative difficulty has already been mentioned, but it needs a second mention really. It's not only in RPGs like Oblivion, but some arcade games (shooter, platformer,etc...) feel like they have to send you a few more ennemies or more difficult patterns when you perform really well.
I can't stress how annoying this is, I mean the true pleasure in videogaming is when you master the game and can go through, what you previously considered difficult stages, laughing at the computer and tearing it to pieces.
If the computer ups the difficulty it's no fun.

[soniCron]

You should read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060920432/ref=wl_it_dp/002-1830781-4644823?ie=UTF8&coliid=I25OGZZ80D3NZ9&colid=1XETJ194J6CS6). There are a great number of very successful game designers that swear by this book and would chalk your experiences up to nothing more than poorly designed adaptive difficulty. Truth be told, you don't notice adaptive difficulty when it's done "right."

[electronicStar]

I don't know... I don't need books or great theories to tell me what I should like or not in a game, all I can tell is that I enjoy games with fixed difficulty a great deal more than games with adaptive difficulty.

[Artinum]

I think it may depend on the game. If you're playing something with a set storyline, a fixed difficulty is the best approach (the challenge then being to adapt yourself until you learn to beat it). If you're playing something open ended like an RPG, the difficulty should be somewhere in the middle - the progression should go from easy to hard as you follow the quest path, but you should also have the option to go off on side paths to level up a bit if you're finding it too difficult. At the same time, this shouldn't be essential. Nothing is more tedious than having to fight tedious battles just to become tough enough to beat that next boss.

Adaptive AI is, however, a very good thing in strategy games. I completed Command and Conquer (the first one) fairly easily after learning that I could build sandbag walls into the enemy base and utterly choke them off. This is a rather extreme example (and they put a stop to it in Red Alert!) but the point remains - if the AI is set to certain patterns it becomes predictable and thus boring. An AI opponent that thinks and counters your own methods is much more interesting.

[luggage]

Not sure if we're talking about something that advanced. Probably more like...

if (Player_IsGood())
{
enemyCount = 30;
}
else
{
enemyCount = 10;
}

I guess it all depends on what you want to achieve when you design the game. It's hard to allow for people of all standards to play your game. Even a perfectly judged difficulty level could mean players who aren't good at your game hit a point on the curve where they have to improve else get no further. If this is too early on for a player it will be a poor experience for them.

Maybe a better way at looking at adaptive difficulty is that it makes the game easier for poorer players?

[RinkuHero]

I enjoy an adaptive difficulty level better actually, it's more fun to me because it smooths out the parts that are too easy and the parts that are too hard. If it's done well, I mean. If it's done poorly it's annoying, but if it's done well it's almost unnoticeable and it removes the times when I think 'this part is way too easy' or 'this part is way too hard'.

Little Ninja Brothers for the NES was the first game that I played that had it, and I think it worked well there.

[electronicStar]

Adaptive AI is, however, a very good thing in strategy games. I completed Command and Conquer (the first one) fairly easily after learning that I could build sandbag walls into the enemy base and utterly choke them off. This is a rather extreme example (and they put a stop to it in Red Alert!) but the point remains - if the AI is set to certain patterns it becomes predictable and thus boring.
I know I'm only representing my own opinion here, but for me it's part of the fun to learn the behavior of the AI so well that I can discover exploits like these.
I'm not looking for the perfect opponent, I'm trying to overcome every game and if possible, learn something in the process.

[Artinum]

I don't know how much truth is in this (I gleaned this information from reviews at the time) but I remember Mortal Kombat was supposed to "learn" from you. If you used a particular combo a lot the computer would predict it and block it. You could confuse it a little by switching characters.

Perhaps the ideal would be to give the player the option. They could have Easy mode (limited AI), Hard mode (beefed up AI, perhaps with more enemies and faster speed, etc) and Reactive mode (where the AI develops based on your actions).

[LilGames]

My most hated feature (or lack of one) is when a game lacks any type of setting or story or background. For instance, abstract shooters that don't tell you who you are, what you are fighting, what you are fighting to protect, etc. -- sometimes they include a few words about this in a text file, but that isn't enough to make me care about the setting. I'm not saying story is more important than gameplay, I'm just saying that a complete lack of background story or atmosphere is annoying.

So you must hate all the classics of the early 80's. ;-)

[TeeGee]

Perhaps the ideal would be to give the player the option. They could have Easy mode (limited AI), Hard mode (beefed up AI, perhaps with more enemies and faster speed, etc) and Reactive mode (where the AI develops based on your actions).

Nah, not really. How would the player know what to pick, if he just started the game? And most people don't even check the options - just click the "start" button and, if the difficulty is not right (even if they could just switch it), they drop the game.
That's the main reason why adjustable difficulty exists. It's a great concept, but it's often implemented badly. It seems that some devs use it to cover design mistakes and to not worry about difficulty balance.

In Oblivion you could limit yourself to one town and a dungeon. You'd experience the whole game there (monsters/items-wise), just by entering at different character levels.
It killed some of the exploration fun in the game, as no matter where you travelled, you still experienced the same things (depending on your level, not the place you are). If not the quests, there woud be no reason to explore this whole fantastic world. For RPG it's a flaw.

As Rinkuhero and soniCron mentioned - you wouldn't notice a good adjustable difficulty system. You would just feel that the game is well balanced, never knowing that it balances itself just for you.

[luggage]

Regarding Oblivion, most people probably won't realise that that's the case as they'll have a tendency to wander off anyway. I guess the trouble for the designers is, with the way the world was laid out, do they keep the player early on in a smallish area until they're levelled up enough to go out and fend for themselves? What happens if a player just decides to go off on his own and hits a brick wall of a difficulty curve? If you're new to RPG's it would certainly be a shock.

Maybe a better option would have been to start on an island which you buy\trade\fight your way off where upon you're left to do your own thing. Or better visual clues that you're going into difficult terrain.

[Jesse Hopkins]

Regarding Oblivion, most people probably won't realise that that's the case as they'll have a tendency to wander off anyway. I guess the trouble for the designers is, with the way the world was laid out, do they keep the player early on in a smallish area until they're levelled up enough to go out and fend for themselves? What happens if a player just decides to go off on his own and hits a brick wall of a difficulty curve? If you're new to RPG's it would certainly be a shock.

Maybe a better option would have been to start on an island which you buy\trade\fight your way off where upon you're left to do your own thing. Or better visual clues that you're going into difficult terrain.


I remember even in old games like the original Zelda and Golden Axe Warrior (SMS) sometimes I would wander too far, and get my a%$ kicked. I got the message that I should power up, or that what I needed to do was not in the "red" zone. Usually there were visual signals, like a different type of terrain or different enemy types. Being a composer, I think different music could help as well, to let the player know they are in a tougher area.

[RinkuHero]

Yeah, but we should aim to be more user-friendly than those older games. It's only the hardcore players that appreciate being killed if they wander into a hard area, most people would find it annoying. There's a reason only adolescent boys played games in the NES era.

[TeeGee]

In Aveyond, when you get outside of the first bigger town (beginning of the game), you can get to a mountain area with very hard monsters. You meet a character that tells you "don't go there unless you're uber" and there are various signs telling you the same. You need to level-up a lot, to be able to get there and Aveyond obviously isn't played by adolescent boys only ;). It was a nice feature - it left you with an impression that there are things still waiting for you, while not really making you grind some poor critters.

It's all a matter of good design and the key is (as always) to mantain a golden balance. Oblivion is too dependant on the player's level, making it boring (well not really, but you know what I'm talking about ;)) and old RPGs obligated you to kill thousands of crappy creatures, to be able to get to next point, which was boring too.
The best solution is to keep some high end-areas visible (for the "I must get there" feeling), while giving the players lots of things to do in the lower-danger zones. Upon completing all the easy-to-get tasks, players should be able to progress further, without having any problems. Ability to roam through the new, once inaccessible, areas is a reward on it's own and it creates a feeling that earlier efforts were worthwile.
Of course depending on the audience the game should be more on the forgiving/strategic side.

Anyway - the point is to use adjustable difficulty as a tool in making the game better, not as a cover for bad design/balance.

In Fallout, you had a total freedom of movement in a vast world and it would be possible to get into troubles. But a smart design and a good story subtly pushed the player into ares he should be at the moment, while giving him a feeling that he made the choice. Good solution.

In Morrowind, no matter where you went, the monsters and tasks we're based on your level. It made it possible to get all the best things in the game, when they were guarded by rats... and to kill the main boss in 15 minutes from the start, when he was still level one. Bad solution.

I hate to read a guide for a game and learn that I need to farm for xxx hours, before I proceed further. I also hate to read that I have to mantain a lowest level possible, or I'm going to get into trouble. It's just unnatural and silly. For me it's certainly one of the most hated game's flaws.

[RinkuHero]

A warning (in words, not just a change in music or something) is fine, that probably saves it from being annoying.

[RinkuHero]

But what I meant more broadly is: I don't like the idea of "hard areas" and "easy areas" -- all areas should be challenging. It's stupid to have enemies near the first town die when you look at them later in the game, and enemies near the end of the game being so strong they could blow away your level 1 character with one attack. Discrepancies that distinct are ridiculous to me.

[TeeGee]

Sure, I agree with you. I'm just telling that going too far in any of the two directions (or just using exlusively one of them and considering it better) leads to boring games. New ideas like the procedural difficulty, should be used to improve games, not to excuse mistakes.

Easy/hard area concept is kinda outmodern and could be made much more interesting and user-friendly with some adjustable difficulty (preferably justified by the story - fe. times are getting harder as the evil guy is gathering power). But getting into a situation when you've got hundreds of dungeons and areas in Oblivion, but you could as well have just one, is bad. When every plain ruffian and his dog is wearing uber-metal-magic-omg-armor instead of his normal rags, just because you advanced in level, then it's just silly.

Ideal situation is when the player *thinks* that the difficulty is increasing, but in fact it's more or less maintaining the same challenge-level through all the game (with some learning curve at the start and some hard moments at the very end).

[luggage]

But if the difficulty feels the same will it feel like you're progressing?

[TeeGee]

But if the difficulty feels the same will it feel like you're progressing?

The key-word here is "feels" ;). Player should *feel* that the game difficulty is increasing, while the game isn't really getting any harder (well - maybe it is, but also player's skills are improving).
It's so in many good games and it works. In the end of a game, we're fighting with bigger, more nasty and cool monsters, that use flashy skills and therefore we consider them harder. But on the other hand we get more resources and ways to deal with them and our skills (as a player) are much better.
Actually when I think of that, in many RPGs the beginning is harder than the end.

Maybe I should rephrase my last point to:
In the ideal situation, the player is not thinking about *difficulty* at all. He/she just experiences a feeling of flow.

[RinkuHero]

I've been thinking about this too. The key to good balance is not mathematically symmetric or beautiful numbers or something, but rather the psychological aspect that the player feels that the game is balanced. That's what I'm going for as I balance my current game, I'm aiming at the psychological feeling of balance -- the feeling that the game is challenging them in new and interesting ways but not impossible -- rather than the actual fact of perfect balance (which might not *feel* balanced).

As an example, my game has 11 types of "towers". I could obsess over whether no one tower is the best and no one tower is too weak, and make it so they're all perfectly balanced with each other, like fighters in a fighting game, but what really matters is whether they're each unique-feeling and add something and have their 'moment to shine', not pure mathematical equivalence.

[luggage]

I'd put forward you need both. No good having each tower with it's own unique feeling if any of the towers are out of balance. ie. If you make the cheapest tower the most powerful it won't matter how unique feeling the others are they're valueless.

You need to think about what your target is. If it's to get the player to choose one tower from a selection of 11 then you'll probably achieve that by having them out of balance. But if it's to make the player think, and trade off pros\cons of each tower then you'll need to balance them all together as a unit.

It's a bit like cheapening all the effort that goes into any RTS. A Mammoth tank is a totally unique to command compared to the others but it has it's place in the game that's balanced.

[RinkuHero]

There are considerations in the game that make some of what you say not apply (for instance, you don't have an unlimited amount of each type of tower, so you can't just pick the "strongest" and use that; also some of them combine together in strategic ways, so you need a good mix).

I agree that in "pure games" where gameplay is the most important thing then mathematical balance is the more important type of balance. But most games aren't like that; the fun in most games comes from many places, the feeling of playing it, the visuals, the story, and more importantly intangibles that are hard to describe in words. For those intangible aspects of a game to have their full effect on the player, the psychological aspect is more important.

[Jesse Hopkins]

"What's my next power-up" is a big motivator to finish a game IMO. Sheer fun is the main factor, though.

[jefferytitan]

I hate anything that requires super timing. That includes platformers with a dozen platforms moving out of time over a fall to certain death and fighting games where certain key combos are almost impossible to trigger. It just sucks when you know what you want to do, but are unable, and therefore there is no gameplay left for you.

Also clipping errors... I've seen 'em in 2D, I've seen 'em in 3D. Ugly ugly ugly. I don't like being stuck in a wall... you?

And as someone mentioned unclear objectives are just awful. I got stuck in Ultima 8 because I had no idea what to do next, and the world was so friggin big. The mystery games where the objective of the game is never or barely stated. 2D games where the puzzles were super-obscure, particularly based on puns because they don't translate well across cultural boundaries.

[spoomusic]

Game: Oblivion and plenty of others
Feature: Fatigue
Comment: Irritating. Not always, though. For example, it seems to make sense in Battlefield 2142 and those type of games, where ultrarealism is the thing and the action is fast paced... But honestly, it just bugs me in long-hours RPG games.

my two pesos and four marks and a yen,
Ariel

[Jesse Hopkins]

"Overstaying your welcome
Comment: Just because you can make a game with hundreds of levels and 80+ hours of gameplay doesn't mean you should. I'd take a high quality, short term (10 - 15 hours) game over a drawn out, endless levels of same-ness, 40+ hour monstrosity"

Absolutely. These days, I want to feel like I actually played a game through even if I only spend like 20 hours on it. LOL. I am working on music for a "Casual RPG" for cellphone right now. It seems like this sort of thing is the wave of the future.

[tau]

Game: Guild Wars and similar
Feature: kill 30 rats, rinse and repeat

I'm just tired to kill thousand of enemies just to get 100+ points of experience and next level. Give me a good reason and the variety of quest ideas instead

[ilya2]

Game: Baldur's Gate(which was very good except for a couple of "features")
Feature: All "weak" enemies respawn when you load a game.
Comment: Why?!! Imagine that you're walking through some forest in an RPG, and you have pretty much no health. Then you bump into an enemy and die, and load your game. Suddenly, all the enemies in the forest respawn and you're screwed... Or the Firewine Bridge, if you've ever played it.

Game: Baldur's Gate again
Feature: Big pause and a movie to really piss you off after you die.
Comment: When your main charecter dies in BG, the screen becomes interlaced and you have to watch what else happens for five seconds. Then, some movie about a hand that loses all of its skin and turns into a bunch of bones loads from your harddrive and plays. You can hit escape after it's done loading. After all of that, there's a dialog box asking you if you want to load a game or go to the main menu(and you can't do anything before you see this box)... Every time you die....

Game: Baldur's Gate..
Feature: Disk check that asks for a random disk.
Comment: The disk checker in BG asks for disk one, and you put it in and decide to play. Eventually, you stop playing and do something else until you want to play it again. You run the game with disk one in your drive, and it asks for disk two! I think the game will screw around with which disk it wants until deciding to stick with disk three..

Game: Baldur's Gate
Feature: You can't save half the time at random on a certain level.
Comment: On Durlag's Tower, the level before the game of chess(which really pissed me off too), there's a trap that will trigger at intervals instead of if you step on it. In BG, if you trigger a trap, there's usually an explosion or something. You can't save your game during one. So, there's a trap that will trigger all of the time and not let you save by making an explosion even if you're nowhere near it. You can't save half the time on that level. If you try to save and can't, you'll get an annoying voice and dialog saying that "You cannot save at this time." Then you have to go back into the game and wait a few seconds until you're able to save. Brilliant.

Game: Baldur's Gate for the fifth time
Feature: You can't configure your settings unless you're playing a game.
Comment: You have to actually start a game to be able to change the options. You can't do it from the main menu(if I remember correctly).

[Sybixsus]

I hate anything that requires super timing. That includes platformers with a dozen platforms moving out of time over a fall to certain death and fighting games where certain key combos are almost impossible to trigger. It just sucks when you know what you want to do, but are unable, and therefore there is no gameplay left for you.
Don't ever play through the knife fight against Krauser in Resident Evil 4.

[Rainer Deyke]

Game: various
Feature: Automatically setting the system volume.

I have my volume controls optimally set for my sound card and headphones, which happens to be just barely above the minimum for both the main volume and the wave out. Third party programmers don't know about my sound card, my headphones, or my preferences, so they are in no position to make judgments about the optimal system volume level for their games.

[electronicStar]

Game: Baldur's Gate(which was very good except for a couple of "features")
Feature: All "weak" enemies respawn when you load a game.
Comment: Why?!! Imagine that you're walking through some forest in an RPG, and you have pretty much no health. Then you bump into an enemy and die, and load your game. Suddenly, all the enemies in the forest respawn and you're screwed... Or the Firewine Bridge, if you've ever played it.

Game: Baldur's Gate again
Feature: Big pause and a movie to really piss you off after you die.
Comment: When your main charecter dies in BG, the screen becomes interlaced and you have to watch what else happens for five seconds. Then, some movie about a hand that loses all of its skin and turns into a bunch of bones loads from your harddrive and plays. You can hit escape after it's done loading. After all of that, there's a dialog box asking you if you want to load a game or go to the main menu(and you can't do anything before you see this box)... Every time you die....

Game: Baldur's Gate..
Feature: Disk check that asks for a random disk.
Comment: The disk checker in BG asks for disk one, and you put it in and decide to play. Eventually, you stop playing and do something else until you want to play it again. You run the game with disk one in your drive, and it asks for disk two! I think the game will screw around with which disk it wants until deciding to stick with disk three..

Game: Baldur's Gate
Feature: You can't save half the time at random on a certain level.
Comment: On Durlag's Tower, the level before the game of chess(which really pissed me off too), there's a trap that will trigger at intervals instead of if you step on it. In BG, if you trigger a trap, there's usually an explosion or something. You can't save your game during one. So, there's a trap that will trigger all of the time and not let you save by making an explosion even if you're nowhere near it. You can't save half the time on that level. If you try to save and can't, you'll get an annoying voice and dialog saying that "You cannot save at this time." Then you have to go back into the game and wait a few seconds until you're able to save. Brilliant.

Game: Baldur's Gate for the fifth time
Feature: You can't configure your settings unless you're playing a game.
Comment: You have to actually start a game to be able to change the options. You can't do it from the main menu(if I remember correctly).
yeah these were big problems with BG1 (especially the respawning monsters, actually I didn't finish the game because of that), but most of these were fixed in BG2 I think.

[Bad Sector]

It's stupid to have enemies near the first town die when you look at them later in the game, and enemies near the end of the game being so strong they could blow away your level 1 character with one attack.

The "easy monsters near first town" is also very annoying in turn based RPGs because they consume your time.

But, IMHO, you can get rid of this by increasing monster difficultness later and using the story as a reason to do so ("%player%!! There are terrible news coming from your hometown! A horde of titanic monsters attacked it and many were killed!" - and after that the area around the town becomes hard :-).


EDIT: FF8 spoiler now that i think about it, that's what they did in Final Fantasy 8 when the monsters from the training area broke loose.

[V_Sama]

Game: Any
Feature: No Objectives/Tasks/Mission reminders
Example: Worst feature would be when there is no information about your current objective.

ie: Character X told you that you need to go talk to Character Y and fetch Object A. But I decided I had enough for the night and saved the game. Two weeks go by, I load the game and don't know what to do. The map shows nothing, talking to Character X does not repeat my tasks again. What do I do?!

It's especially worse when the game has huge expansive levels and allows you to backtrack all over them trying to find that one little thing you missed.

You mean like...(dare I say) WARCRAFT?! I know it's not a simple little game but it can REALLY get in your craw when you have to trek across 2/3 of godforsaken turf, getting killed multiple times, just to find that one root you needed.

[RinkuHero]

What about games without objectives? There are plenty of games where you don't have to do things in a specific order and the emphasis is more on non-linear exploration. Metroid is a good example.

[rioka]

Game: usually RPGs
Feature: status ailments that can only be cured by buying expensive potions
Comment: It really gets to me when this happens especially early on in the game when you've got no money and can't afford the expensive Panacea (or whatever that game calls it) to cure that one status ailment that the enemy will most likely hit you with again when you get out of the town! Arrrggggg!

[Mr. Sanity]

Game: mostly FPSs
"Feature": Depicting wheelchair-bound individuals with paralyzed arms as having full use of both legs and both arms.
Examples: In pretty much every FPS in existance, the protagonist (if they are shown) sees other people at roughly eye level, and is shown walking about. However, if the protagonist should ever encounter any "obstacle" that goes above knee height (or for the truly gifted, waist height), the protagonist must find another route to go. They cannot jump, climb, or pull themselves up onto areas that they should reasonably be expected to be able to simply fall onto. Is it really asking much for a super-soldier to be able to traverse an "obstacle" that your average 5-year-old can overcome?

This would not be so jarring or insensitive, if the developers at least had the decency of showing that the handy-capable protagonist really did have these physical challenges to overcome, rather than pretending that the protagonist was a genuinely healthy, active adult.

Or alteratively, if the developers really didn't want the player to go somewhere, put a wall there instead of such an insulting obstacle.

[ChrisP]

On a positive note, one game I've seen that overcame the "can't climb up a waist-high wall" problem very neatly was Thief (and Thief 2). By walking near such a low wall and holding down the "jump" key, instead of jumping you would "mantle" (climb) onto it. It was useful for similar surfaces as well; climbing over tables, jumping from rooftop to rooftop (or from a rooftop into a window on the other side of the street), navigating platforms in underground tombs (think Tomb Raider), etc. etc.

Very useful feature, and not actually that hard to implement. I'd like to see more games using it.

That reminded me of another bad "feature":

Game: Splinter Cell, No One Lives Forever 2, and many console/handheld titles that involve special abilities
Feature: "Special ability" spots placed by level designers, instead of the game dynamically determining whether you can use a special ability in this location or not.

See e.g. NOLF 2's stealth system. I only played the demo, but from what I saw there were only very specific locations where you could hide. There were other places where it looked like you should be able to hide, but couldn't because the level designer hadn't thought of that. Special abilities don't feel very special when you can only use them at places where the level designer decided to let you.

Another example: Splinter Cell. You know that special ability that Sam Fisher has where he can climb up a set of two walls by placing one foot on one wall, and the other foot on the opposite wall? It's (apparently) pre-scripted. There are other walls where it looks like you should be able to do it, but the level designers missed it. So you can't.

Is it really that hard to do a world trace to discover if there are appropriate surfaces on either side of the player? I guess it's harder to make it look good if you're in third-person and therefore have to worry about dynamic player animations (Thief was purely first-person, so had no player animations to worry about). Still, it's a situation to be avoided if at all possible, since it breaks player immersion.

[Videogame Biscuit]

A feature that has been annoying me big time lately is one of the boss fights in Prince Of Persia: Rival Swords. You are trapped in an arena with two warriors, one wielding a sword and the other an axe. They are impossible to hit; if you approach one of them they smack you to the ground. No matter what you try, there's no way to defeat them it seems.
After several tries, I looked in a walkthrough, and the trick to beat them is just insane. You have to stand between the warriors and block the sword attacks. When the warrior with the axe attacks, you have to dodge him so he misses. His axe is supposed to be stuck in the ground for a short time after that (even though I have never noticed it) and you have a very, very short opportunity to attack him. After you weaken him enough, you can perform a 'stealth kill' (wich means sneaking behind someone unnoticed and killing him, wich doesn't make sense here). When doing this, you can attack both warriors and kill them. The problem is, there is absolutely no way you can ever discover this trick on your own. Not even the slightest hint!
To make it worse, before you enter the arena there's a long chariot race that's also difficult as hell. Unless you know the entire road and exactly know where to go, you'll crash. Not too big of a problem, though, beating it after a few tries is doable. The problem is, you can't save after that! You are immediately thrown in the arena and if you can't finish the battle, you'll have to do the chariot race all over again.
To summarize it: ridiculously difficult puzzles without any clues, and not be able to save when you really need to. I don't expect to be able to save every second on a console, but after a difficult part saving just has to be possible. By the way, don't get Prince Of Persia: Rival Swords for the Wii. It's a very lousy game and a waste of money.

[Dylan McCall]

Firstly, I really am bothered by ugly sound. Lots of game developers just do not realize the impact that sound effects have, so we end up with everything sounding the same, falling washing mashines that sound like cardboard boxes (great opportunity for a huge noise, but not done).
Particularly lame are the weapon noises in just about any futuristic first person shooter. Guns should be louder in the future when everything is in disrepair from years of conflict, not quieter! Alas, it seems that, in the future, firing a "BFG Clone 91000" is about as satisfying as using a staple gun!


Special ability" spots placed by level designers, instead of the game dynamically determining whether you can use a special ability in this location or not. Ah, yes, that is one of my favourite things to be annoyed by!

Sadly, this sort of junk happens everywhere; not just with special abilities in action games.
"Explore strange new worlds!" - The catch is that exploring consists of being teleported to very small segments of these worlds consisting of a hedge maze and a bunch of enemies. The only thing you get to explore is your weapon.
"Build your own ____" - In other words, arrange blocks into a predetermined pattern to create the same thing as everyone else. (Maybe you'll get to choose from a list of 12 colours. Exciting).
"Fashion your own tools and equipment!" - ...from a list of about six buildable items. Good luck sticking together the "right" ones. (No, you can't poison an arrow or a sword, you can only poison a dagger!)
"We have precisely 100 things you can do!" - The stupidity speaks for itself. They are admitting that the experience is a cookie-cutter experience, in the sense that what you are about to play is a duplicate of what everyone else is going to play. Thus, it is pointless.
"Become a hero" - Become an arbitrary number. Hero #1241148. Level 70, just like all the other heros. Great.With games I design, I strive to avoid this by doing what those games won't dare to do. Flexibility is key here, and it is really not that hard to achieve! It is the difference between designing your game around the exploration, or designing the exploration around the game.
Arbitrary things are fun, but only when coupled with 100% user controllable variables. Two of my projects rely on a system where everything in the game world is created dynamically around a few variables that blend together in every aspect of the presentation. These variables procedurally control appearance, audio presentation and actual gameplay behaviour in a weighted manner, where each value has unique properties.

What I found rather quickly just by pondering it was that this made for an experience that was too predictable in the sense that the player could really easily figure out the dynamics of the actual game. The world becomes reliable and believable, which is good for that exploration mechanic, but too simple. Thus, I throw in some fun little arbitrary events that happen with certain magical combinations, and it's jolly! The difference between my arbitrary events and "their" arbitrary events is that mine live in harmony with a system that is already flexible. The arbitrary special things are just icing. Having a flexible system beneath those arbitrary specials accepts that icing does not work without a good cake.

On the other hand, with easily generated player content that jumps to life, everything is already completely dynamic, so that predictability is dealt with very smoothly, and in a personalized manner. It is like role-playing, but transparent. Spore looks like it does this, for example. Map editors do not count unless they are actual game mechanics, because it is not necessary that players create their own maps (so you only see a small chunk of the game working so dynamically).
A big hurdle then is controls, where it is really hard to come up with a control scheme for such a flexible game without it feeling like a 3D modelling tool.
...With that in mind, is anyone else excited about multi-touch coming to the mainstream? (I am, but having written way too many multitouch-related posts in the last month, I grow fatigued...)

[jeb_]

Game: Plenty of car racing games
Feature: AI cars that always catch up
Comment:

Returning to the "adaptive difficulty" discussion again. I'm extremely annoyed when the opponent cars in racing games are auto-adjusted to be "close" to the player. Cars ahead of you will slow down and cars after you will speed up, making it hard to get the feeling that you are doing good or not.

If I choose "normal" difficulty and practise a lot, I want to be able to crush the opponents! If I wanted them to beat me I would change the difficulty level! Damnit! :mad:

;)

[Wahooney]

Game: Master of Orion 3
Feature: "New and Dynamic Features!"... that ultimately negate what the original game was all about.
Comments: WHY!?!? :(

[Farmergnome]

Game: puzzlers
Feature: matching 3 different colored objects together.
Comments: It sucks because it does.

[vjvj]

Game: All, but second-rate platformers started this crap.

Feature: Forced collection of arbitrary items.

Comments: This is usually implemented in games where a) the designer is cluelessly cribbing off of other games or b) the designer finds the game is not fun/too short/whatever and adds it to make it "more fun". HINT: Super Mario Bros. and Sonic made item collection OPTIONAL. Learn, people!

[bratkitty]

I really hate encumberance on TES IV: Oblivion. It's all based off of strength, which is great for a warrior type character, but if you're a magic user or stealth based (like myself), it really puts you in a bind when you're trying to loot in dungeons. It really sucks if you're in a long dungeon with a lot of good loot because you either have to leave it all behind, or make multiple trips.

Granted there's feather, but if you cast a spell on yourself and you get in a fight and the spell wears off, you're over encumbered and you're sort of stuck in one spot, which is another thing that sucks for non-warrior classes because mages usually have low armor and endurance and stealth characters are usually marksmen who rely on distance. Either way you can't move.
I suppose you could enchant items, but it can get expensive and I prefer to enchant my gear with things that fortify my agility or sneak.

And then there's annoying moments where you're strolling along and you pick,oh I dunno, a flower and *poof* you're over encumbered.