The other thread about favorite mechanics is great, so let’s also do the opposite: what are some of your most hated mechanics?

  • KickMeElmo@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Game timers. I want to screw around on my time. The more time-based a game becomes, the less I enjoy it.

    • nlm@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      This!

      There’s not much else in gaming that makes my blood boil as much as being rushed… especially in single player games. I’m usually playing to relax so please don’t stress me out.

    • Synthclair@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yes! I remember that I could not really enjoy fallout 1 because of the 150 in-game days time limit to get the water chip…

  • BeardedSingleMalt@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Radiant quests. You can never complete the game because of this, the quests are generic and repetitive and offer nothing but “stretch the playtime”.

    That and mechanics like “rando dragon attacks in Skyrim” and “City is under attack” from Fallout 4. I quit F4 because I was on my way to a mission and got the "city under attack notification, and on my way to defend another city was under attack.

    • isosphere@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      To yes-and this: procedural content in general. No Man’s Sky is a snore-fest for me, big, empty, meaningless. Missions in Elite Dangerous and X4 are similarly pretty boring, though the former is more fun the first time around. There has to feel like there’s some world-affecting point to what you’re doing. IMO

      • AngularAloe@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I found the procedurally-produced planets in No Man’s Sky to be stunningly beautiful. Then I would walk around on them and the similar-but-not-quite look of every part of the landscape would slowly drive me INSANE.

      • SugarApplePie@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I started playing No Man’s Sky recently and it looks like they added a mode that’s more ‘streamlined’. Dunno if it’s still procedurally generated, though.

    • winterstillness@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Pretty much a lot of procedural “content”. I guarantee big publishers will capitalize on all of this AI to replace writers with generated stories/quests/etc. No idea what to make of this.

      • BastingChemina@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I would disagree, some of my favorite games are procedurally generated.

        Factorio, RimWorld or valheim for example.

        • winterstillness@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Oh totally. I didn’t mean to imply “all procedural content = bad”. Terraria comes to mind and is one of my favorite game of all time. The “world” is procedural when created, but there are “key” areas/objectives that don’t change. I’m thinking more along the lines of Fallout 4’s “radiant” junk that big publishers salivate over because mountains of endless+cheap content = ($o$)

  • Vulcaria_Tors@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Unrepairable weapons are the worst thing. There’s nothing worse than finding a super cool, rare weapon and being paranoid about it breaking.

    • winterstillness@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      That’s one of the big things that bothered my in Breath of the Wild. I wanted to go to this cool looking location and find something neat, but I knew that I’ll either get a weapon that breaks in 5 hits, a seed, or an orb. Really deflated my sense of exploration when I realized this was the gameplay loop.

      • FourEyesWatching@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Exactly! It triggers my hoarding response and I find myself keeping all the weapons because something harder might be around the next corner. I end up with only using boko clubs for half the game…

      • Vulcaria_Tors@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        It was definitely a pain in the ass. That was the first game I thought of. Second was dying light. Nothing like get swamped by a hoard and all your equipped weapons break.

  • hungry-kin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Escort quests. Stealth sections in games that aren’t built around stealth would be close second.

    • Witch@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Genshin Impact occasionally has little stealth missions where you have to sneak by guards.

      Pain.

  • Rentlar@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Pay 2 win and excessive abuse of FOMO.

    E.g. for the next two weeks you can purchase/grind for [character] with a LIMITED EDITION green hat!

    It would be OK if such thing was behind an achievement and allowed to be gained later.

    Some companies have gotten a little sneaky with it, like Microsoft with age of empires. They make their newly released DLC civs overpowered for two months then nerf it every time.

  • Seungyeon@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Perhaps not specifically a mechanic, per se, but save points. I want to be able to save whenever, wherever. I don’t always have time to make it to the next save point before I need to stop playing.

    • Fubarberry@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Honestly it’s games lacking save points that has made devices like the Steam Deck so nice for gaming. Being able to have a dedicated gaming device that I can put to sleep whenever without reaching a save point is fantastic.

  • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Less of an issue nowadays but unclimbable knee-high walls which force you to go round. Always drove me crazy!

    • UntouchedWagons@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Fallout 3 and NV had loads of this crap. A door is busted to hell and somehow locked but you need a key to unlock it. A stiff breeze will destroy the rest of the door.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Fatal Frame 4 release has the most agonizing form of this.

      There’s a hallway you’ve been down before, but at one point a ghost blocks it with a wheelchair. A WHEELchair.

  • Baphlew@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Sadly, the whole “rogue” genre if that counts as a mechanic. I don’t enjoy replaying everything over and over again in different ways in a system where its designed one should fail eventually, so you must lose to continue. It sounds great on paper but hell it really sucks. Also, turn based stuff.

    • BigJimKen@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I like it until I get pretty good at the game. At that point the runs start taking too long to complete and it’s no longer fun. I know this is pretty controversial but I especially hate it in games like Hades where you progress, come up against something new, fail until you learn the mechanic, and then have to get through all the previous bullshit before you can apply what you learned.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Definitely. Crypt of the Necrodancer probably has really cool locales and enemies in it. I don’t know, because most of my sessions were locked to the first few worlds where any mistake minimizes your time in future worlds.

    • Sentrovasi@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I think you’re describihg “Rogue-lites”, which are games where you can maintain some permanent progression even after you lose. “Rogue-likes”, which are games that are like the game Rogue, are games where when you lose you just go back to the start with no progression at all, so you need to complete the game altogether.

      The permanent progression rewards are meant to be a kind of crutch, which is where the “lite” comes from.

      Why I’m making this distinction is that the original rogue-likes don’t expect you to fail at all - or rather, they do, but there’s no expectation of needing to fail to progress.

      • Baphlew@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        That’s an important distinction for sure, thanks for adding that. Roguelites looks so fun and I wish I could enjoy them but after awhile it just feels like a timewaste. But that’s just me of course. I wonder if I would enjoy roguelikes more, not sure if I’ve tried one or not? What are some examples of roguelikes today? I tried searching Steam but for some reason games use both the tags roguelike and roguelite.

        • Lojcs@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Risk of rain 2 is almost a pure roguelike. The only thing that you can increase from run to run are lunar coins that can be used in a run to buy lunar items with tradeoffs. But other than adding extra variety to the game you don’t need to use lunar items at all, winning depends on skill and partially drop rng.

          I’ve not beaten it yet but Noita seems to be a pure roguelike.

    • Mars@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I understand the sentiment, but in some way I think you are missing the point. Let me try to explain the appeal.

      When you play, for example, Diablo you spend the time with the game making your build. You also play the story and see the bosses but your focus gameplay wise is your build.

      Yo go for that skill. You farm that weapon. Yo optimize your buffs and load out.

      And when you are done, after 20 or 30 hours… the game becomes extremely easy. Playing your fully builder character has no challenge. And building another is a 20 hour time investment.

      So you get into PVP. Or into boss rushes where yo can get marginal improvements. You repeat a very small amount of end game content for months.

      Enter the “rogue” mechanics.

      The play unit is no longer “the character”, now it is “the run”

      You build a full character each run. You make meaningful decisions to make the most of your build with what the game is offering.

      If a run goes badly you are 30 min or less away from getting were you were. If you win you can play again for a completely different experience.

      You have no complete control about your build, so you can’t really on the same strategy and gameplay for the whole game. You have to engage with every system.

      And your reward for playing is choice (more options to better controls your play style) and knowledge (to better use what the game throws at you)

      And it’s true you repeat the initial part of the game a lot. But in Diablo (keeping with my previous example) you repeat the endgame. The only diferente is that one is front loaded and the other is back loaded. And initial areas USUALLY have more work put into them in both cases.

      Also remember that there are a spectrum between Isaac likes and Hades likes. There are games were chance has lots of importance and a good build in the hands of a bad player can steamroll the game, where in others a bad build in the hands of a great player is viable.

  • ax28@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    The new Gollum game was very impressive in the way it managed to implement so many of the mechanics in this thread

    • Seraph089@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      That game took one of my most hated mechanics (binary moral choices), came up with a concept for it I could have actually loved (the personas arguing), then botched the execution so badly that it felt even worse than a normal morality system. Impressive is certainly the word for Gollum, just not in the way the devs hoped.

  • peanuts4life@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Obligate stamina bars/circles for traversal. Just allow me to move at the speed of fun, and definitely don’t make me stand still to recharge when climbing.

    I think it’s telling that death stranding, a game all about traversal, let’s you sprint outright for as long as you want until well after your character’s shoes literally fall off. The stamina bar is more a measure of abuse rather than a limit on your movement.

    • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I like stamina bars in many circumstances, but I’ve decided I hate them specifically in life sim games like Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and similar - at least unless there’s an easy and fun way to re-fill them. I won’t write them off entirely, I think it can be done well, but in practice in these games they often serve no purpose but to frustrate you.

      • peanuts4life@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Good point! How is “my time?” I’ve been thinking of getting it to play with my gf. We really like dinkum.

  • Manticore@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Anything using timers, especially based on the clock. It just artificially adds playtime, and it also means I forget about them and lose track of what I was doing most the time, too.

      • Alkalyon@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I can say that the only timed content I enjoyed was in WoW and it was the Challenge Modes.

        Both because you could try it multiple times and because the reward was an actual prestigious and awesome reward.

        I can’t think of another game with a timed run mechanic that offered anything close to that.

        • mananevergone@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          My only contention for good timed content in video games would be examples similar to the beginning of Metroid Prime. “The whole planet is gonna explode and you need to leave RIGHT NOW!!” type of deal. It’s essentially the same as putting a timer on a task, in fact that game does show you a timer with how long you still have until the place explodes, except it doesn’t feel like a fakey cop out

    • troye888@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Currently playing through “unsighted”. It is a really nice metroidvania game, however everyone (even you) is dying and only has a certain time left. For now i am really enjoying the novelty, but I hope no game copies this. It does really stress me out. knowing that i have to go and upgrade my weapons now because the blacksmith npc s dying in 4 in game hours(like 10 minutes irl). Or quietly exploring the beautiful world just to get a pop up showing that the (nice elderly) consumables vendor is about to die. Like I said it is quite novel, but does have me not play the game often due to knowing wath wil come. I’d say try it out if you feel like stressing a bit :).

    • teruma@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yep, soon as the calendar came up in P5 I quit. Same with FE3H. I did eventually go back to P5 and followed a single playthrough walkthrough, but it far overstayed its welcome.

  • sunaurus@lemm.eeOP
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    1 year ago

    For me, the absolute worst is when the game effectively punishes you for not constantly menu diving to change your equipment.

    Some random examples:

    Disco Elysium - your clothes have a MASSIVE effect on some specific stats which influence dialogues. In order to get the best outcomes, you have to change your clothes before an interaction with another character.

    Ghost of Tsushima - you get separate armor sets for different activities, which is not too bad, except one of the sets is for exploration. So every time you switch between combat and riding your horse, if you don’t switch your armor sets, then it feels that the game is punishing you.

    I love both of those games, but really really hate that mechanic.

    • simple@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      If you hate menu diving then Tears of the Kingdom will actually make you go insane. I’m constantly swapping armor and scrolling up and down to find specific items.

      • BigJimKen@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        For a game that has borderline genius baked into almost every system it presents, the UX of the menus is bafflingly shite.

      • rivingtondown@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        That’s funny, I actually think TotK is great in this regard.

        The DPad Up quick inventory menu is awesome and the sorting options are exactly what I’d want (most used, attack power, type, and zonai).

        Having quick swappable equipment sets would be nice but so many games lack that feature that I don’t even think about it. In TotK it also seems unnecessary unless you’re into min-max. Like, I just need one piece of fire immune clothing to go into Death Mountain, I don’t need to wear an entire set and if I was really lazy I could pop an elixir from the quick select menu instead.

        Cooking is annoying though. It’s such a fun animation and satisfying outcome but the laborious hold and drop mechanics get tedious when you’re cooking in bulk.

      • Drew@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Oh my god yes, couldn’t someone have come up with a better way to do this over the 6 years of development time? I keep itching for full text search at the very least.

  • cadellin@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Offline games which require an internet for no apparent reason has to be my pet peeve

    • cnnrduncan@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yeah it guarantees that the game will be unplayable through legal means in a few years when it is no longer profitable to keep the servers running.

  • tebicat@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    non-renewable consumable items.

    using consumables is hard enough, but you’re telling me there’s a finite number of these? forget it.

    only exception is rougelikes.

    • Lojcs@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yep. I never use consumables. Unless the game really pushes you to use them they feel like cheating.

      • Alkalyon@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        they feel like cheating.

        Or worthless. This item increases your dmg for 10 seconds.

        Dude, 1 second is the animation alone and after consuming it, I need to use 3 skills to snapshot the dmg increase so effectively I have 4-5 seconds of actual usage.

        Consumables are horrible as a system in general.

  • aksdb@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Quicktime events. Please make up your mind if you show me a sequence or if you want me to play. I can enjoy watching, but I don’t want to feel like I am being tested for paying attention.

    The beginning of the Tomb Raider remake pissed me off especially. You played a few minutes, then watched a minute of sequence, then play, watch, play, watch. One of the sequences took like 5 minutes, so I leaned back to enjoy when suddenly it flashes a heavy PRESS X in my face. I tried to quickly grab the controller but failed… too slow. I almost rage quit.

    I am not playing games to get stressed out…

    • TheRoarer@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I am not playing games to get stressed out…

      I pretty much only play souls games. So I’m all about being stressed out. I still fucking hate QTEs.

    • embix@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Quicktime events.

      I’d limit it to mandatory QTEs - better games have a “story” mode that doesn’t punish you (much/at all) for having the reflexes of an old-timer.

      But yeah, mandatory QTEs are an immediate buzzkill. I don’t intend to waste more time in Tomb Raider - that’s already 21 minutes I never get back.

      • cnnrduncan@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        QTEs are also often pretty bad from an accessibility standpoint, especially the older kinds that had you repeatedly mashing buttons!

      • aksdb@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        After biting myself through the loooong intro session path, the game turned out quite good. It did still have a few QTEs later on, but typically in short sequences, which was okayish. First, because I started to expect it, and second because the sequences were short enough that I didn’t get the impression I might have to sit through a movie.

        Still, the beginning of the game has left an ugly impression about QTEs.

        • embix@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          My backlog is large enough to not consider that particular game anytime soon. I’d rather retry getting into Witcher 1 or step a toe into Heavy Rain.

    • teruma@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Same, though my single exception is FF7R. Worth a watch if you haven’t played.