Board 8 > Mind-bogglingly bad choices for developers to make in a modern game

(+) Yeah! (+)

masterplum posted...

KH3 having save points

yo low key

Is it an RPG thing?

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Another example: having Motion Controls in Super Mario Odyssey.

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the motion controls are generally fine, essentially requiring them sucks

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SantaRPidgey posted...

But the game itself is perfect, and degradation is the foundation on which it's built. It's like looking at a garden and being like "yeah the earthworms are gross tho. Bad design"

You definitely have a point with people who think the game is flawless except that 1 little thing that they wish they could just change and magically make the game better.

But the game sucks ass and the weapon degradation is a symptom, but far from the core issue that made the devs put it in the game in the first place. Consumers can only see the surface layer of the design as it is presented to them, they don't know the whole house of cards of issues and solutions holding everything up. (This is totally okay of course, you don't and shouldn't need ANY expertise in game design to enjoy a game.)

And yes this means the devs know better than you how to make their own game. Otherwise you could just go make your own better game. Which you can do btw, it's totally free and can take as little as a weekend. It's just not gonna be better than a Nintendo game.

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How long do you have to spend in Hardmode before the entire Jungle gets corrupted? I've never run into that issue of totally locking out progression but I've always progressed at a quick pace when I've played it.

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Not gonna lie, weapon durability is just one of several reasons I personally do not enjoy BotW.

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Yeah people don't realize how crucial weapons as a reward is important to the exploration of BotW.

But then when you think that you're spending items and weapons just to get items and weapons the gameplay structure becomes kinda skeletal. I really went in more with the mindset of enjoying the locales and just opening every chest for the sake of it, but they have a lot of ways to improve on giving you more things to want.

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I've only put a few hundred hours into terraria I think, and never once have I had my entire jungle get overrun. Not even close to half of it. Maybe you got a weird seed and then left the game running for a week straight?

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Over the shoulder camera in God of War

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Any Action RPG

MetalmindStats posted...

I also love Terraria, and that post isn't true in the slightest from my experience. Sure, crimson/corruption/hallow start spreading after you beat the Wall of Flesh, but never fast enough to force any sort of strict time crunch.

Yeah, I've never gotten close to being locked out of progression either.
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Peace___Frog posted...

I've only put a few hundred hours into terraria I think, and never once have I had my entire jungle get overrun. Not even close to half of it. Maybe you got a weird seed and then left the game running for a week straight?

Now that you mention it, I've run a multi-player server and while it was years ago so I dont know how much time we spent going from Hardmode to Planterra, I'm certain that I would have HAD to leave the game running a week straight and we still had no issue

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I got to experience BotW for about 2 hours. The weapon stuff wasn't a big deal at that point because all my weapons sucked and sucky weapons were plentiful, but I have a REALLY sore spot for games that make you constantly repair/replace weapons or force consumables upon you. Whether or not the rest of the game is good or not, I don't care. I don't see how I could possibly like that component of the game, and not see it as a big boat anchor dragging everything else down. Maybe it floats anyway, since everyone loves it so much, but I will never never not ever see weapon durability to the point of the weapons breaking to be anything but an abhorrent abomination.

On topic, the thing that bothers me more than anything is when developers make PC games that have functions unavoidably bound to the scroll wheel. Like, they might let you rebind everything else, but a feature on the scroll wheel? Nope! There's no other analog inputs on your mouse or keyboard, so therefore that has to be on the scroll wheel. Hope you didn't want to actually zoom your map out or anything.

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The Jungle in Terraria cant actually get completely corrupted because chlorophyte ore cant be converted, prevents nearby blocks from being converted, converts mud into more chlorophyte, and can convert dirt blocks into mud as well. The surface of the jungle can get fully corrupted but the underground wont.

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Great_Paul posted...

Cutscenes that you can't skip or pause.

Beat me to it

Or trying to pause a CS and it skips it instead

Inability to pause a game (Bloodborne)

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Damnit guys I only made this topic to bitch about Shadow of the Tomb Raider
jesus

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I really don't want to fuel the discussion, but making it sounds like you rarely go through an encounter in BotW without breaking a weapon is flat out wrong. That's only very early when you use tree branches and rusty stuff.

Murphiroth posted...

Cutscenes that you can't pause but trying to pause automatically skips them.

This is the real winner of the topic. Nothing is more frustrating.

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I haven't played a game with unskippable/unpauseable cutscenes in a while - which I guess is why it's a good example, because when I come across it I'll be fucking furious

But at the same time, does pressing the PS button on the controller not pause the cutscene?

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Not necessarily at least.

This is not the best example, probably, because it's 8 years old, but I'm playing MGS HD collection right now and despite the fourth game fixing this issue years before, it's not fixed in 2 and 3 HD and the cutscene just runs in the background if you play the PS button. Having been pissed about that doing it twice in the past 24 hours fueled it.

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XIII_rocks posted...

But at the same time, does pressing the PS button on the controller not pause the cutscene?

Pretty sure it depends on the game

Re: degradable weapons in BotW, I'm pretty sure that the point of the mechanic is to force you to constantly use different weapons. It annoyed me for the first few hours, but after accepting it I stopped having an issue with it. In fact, what probably ended up annoying me more was when my inventory was full of good weapons and I found another one, and either had to leave it or toss something else good!

I totally get that a lot of people don't like it, but I disagree that it was an "objectively bad" design choice or something.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

In fact, what probably ended up annoying me more was when my inventory was full of good weapons and I found another one, and either had to leave it or toss something else good!

This annoyed me more too, actually, at least I encountered it a lot more. You could only store so many unique weapons in your house and expand your inventory so much. It certainly wasn't far into the game that this became the issue and I occasionally beat enemy camps only to feel like I hadn't thrown anything away.

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Making a PC game that doesn't have an option to quit straight to the OS from gameplay. Why do I have to go through multiple menus, separated by lengthy loading screens, logo animations and online profile checks, just to stop playing?
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Task manager?

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For the record I bought BotW pulled off degradable weapons. I dont know if the game would be better without it but it sure would be different. It was cool having utility swords that you didnt want to use and being excited finding second copies of strong weapons. Having the master sword helped too.

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XIII_rocks posted...

I haven't played a game with unskippable/unpauseable cutscenes in a while - which I guess is why it's a good example, because when I come across it I'll be fucking furious

But at the same time, does pressing the PS button on the controller not pause the cutscene?

Like LotM says, depends on the game. To the point of me not risking it anymore.

Like I mentioned above, with Bloodborne the only way to pause is by putting your PS4 in rest mode

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BlackMageJawa posted...

Making a PC game that doesn't have an option to quit straight to the OS from gameplay. Why do I have to go through multiple menus, separated by lengthy loading screens, logo animations and online profile checks, just to stop playing?

I'll second this. I just finished Ace Attorney Trilogy, and I learned to alt-F4 my way out of the game after saving.

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azuarc posted...

On topic, the thing that bothers me more than anything is when developers make PC games that have functions unavoidably bound to the scroll wheel. Like, they might let you rebind everything else, but a feature on the scroll wheel? Nope! There's no other analog inputs on your mouse or keyboard, so therefore that has to be on the scroll wheel. Hope you didn't want to actually zoom your map out or anything.

this so hard

kind of on me to play games like 100% orange juice, a purely mouse-based game, regularly without a mouse admittedly, but scrolling on touchpads is genuine hell and it would be infinitely better to just map it to keys ugh

azuarc posted...

I'll second this. I just finished Ace Attorney Trilogy, and I learned to alt-F4 my way out of the game after saving.

I just played through the first two Zero Escape games, and got kind of annoyed at needing to go through the main menu before I could exit the game.

Also, unskippable cutscenes at the beginning of a game meant to be played through multiple times might have infuriating as well.

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XIII_rocks posted...

I haven't played a game with unskippable/unpauseable cutscenes in a while - which I guess is why it's a good example, because when I come across it I'll be fucking furious

But at the same time, does pressing the PS button on the controller not pause the cutscene?

DMC5. Can't remember if the PS button pauses though.

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