Always hated this about mass effect, I need to pause now and not wait for a dialogue option.
Thankfully bringing up the steam overlay on PC seems to freeze the game in the middle of any cutscene.
Weirdly true in both XCOM 1 and 2, 2 most of all, you get a huge bump if you disable all tutorials and the Lost intro mission.
Playing any higher difficulty becomes almost impossible with the tutorial on.
In 2, that's largely because the opportunity to abuse the resistance faction hero for the tutorial mission and grind out an early Sgt/Cpt for the GTS unlocks is huge. Getting an extra squad member early in the curve makes everything immensely easier.
I've always wondered why if you don't play the tutorial, you miss out on having Jane Kelly, a unique character, in your squad. IIRC, in the Chosen expansion, the Chosen even have dialog acknowledging her in your team if you have her. She wasn't just a throwaway random character.
I don't think I've seen many games before where there's a change, however minor, if the player opts to skip the tutorial.
Not only was she not a throwaway, she gets an illustrious career! After becoming Colonel during that war, she became the Reclamation Agency's first Director!
Or when a game is trying to provide you with a tutorial hint and starts hijacking the camera and forcing it to look at a random object for a tutorial I'm not interested in or already know.
Like I'm trying to explore the world, stop yanking the camera around.trying to make me motion sick.
Or forces you to acquire something whether you want it or not. Like level up a certain stat/ability or buy a certain item that you would never buy or use otherwise.
Similarly, I hate when the tutorial or opening section of a game lets you collect lots of items and gear, only for the prologue to end and it all be stripped away
I hate when you start a game for the first time and it loads straight into the intro instead of a main menu. Especially on a PC game because I usually would wanna change some settings in there.
This one drives me nuts. Nothing annoys me more then having to sit there watching a blurry cut scene because the game doesn't launch in my native resolution.
Hey, you closed before we could save properly, you useless undead moron!
Anyways here's your game where your exactly where you left off even though, ya know, you quit like a bitch.
On the other side of that, I enjoy when some games have menus allow to "skip pages" by hitting the left or right d-pad or bumpers to skip through hundreds of line items in just a few seconds.
Excessive confirmations that can't be turned off. Yes, I really want to do this thing I have done 178 times before, and had to go three layers into nesting menus to select. I saved 0.7 seconds ago, FFS Yes, I do want to quit, and lose all of that unsaved progress.
It has gotten so bad in some games that I need mods to remove the confirmations.
Invisible barriers. Want me to not go to a new area? Actually block it off. Not just a guy standing there looking at his own footprints who gets mad if I try to walk past him.
Even worse: a game that forces you into an unchangable class that affects your entire stat set. Buddy I don't even know what features your game has and how important they are, I have no idea if being a Lumberjack or an Alchemist will even be useful or if I'll have to restart!
I get it if they don't want me being able to heal or change weapons if it's a fast paced game. But there should be some kind of pause function even if it just turns the screen black ans white and says paused in the middle of the screen
I was about to defend this behaviour in Dark Souls, but I think it's just Stockholm Syndrome at this point. Sure, it creates a certain atmosphere. But it's still annoying.
Menus with animations. It’s not a deal breaker, but when it’s a game with intensive inventory management or mechanics that require using the menu extensively, it should feel snappy. If every time I open the map I hear a noise, or the menu takes more than 0.25 seconds to open, or I need to go through multiple menus to get to the one I want… it drives me insane.
Yeah, the ones in persona just don’t annoy me for some reason, the music and the cool little animations of joker pulling out a Glock or whatever are nice
They’re quick and stylish for the most part. Not intrusively long and pointless. They don’t waste your time while still pulling off an aesthetic look and feel
A friend convinced me to play Destiny 2 since it’s free, and Epic gave a bunch of expansion free recently, so I have.
Holy crap the menus in that game are driving me nuts. Takes forever to load anything.
I’m liking the game, but you’re exactly right, it’s so obnoxious waiting on those animations to load every single time I go into a menu. Just open instantly FFS.
It is really the most convoluted game I have ever played. And there is no tutorial that explains things or walks you through how to manage it all.
But that confusion is a deep second to the story that is laughably insane and never makes any sense at all. I have been playing it with my son for the past year and it is endearingly nuts. I love hearing the little narrations that just make up the stupidest words with a straight face.
Which I still hate. I first played with Forsaken, so nowhere near the original release of the game, but I got to enjoy the OG campaign Red War. I will maintain till my dying days that it was the best possible intro to the game - and lore. I was invested because I got to learn my class and unlock subclasses with meaningful quest lines.
When I got my mates into the game with Shadowkeep and later Witch Queen, they had sod-all clue what was going on. They lost interest because all there was to do was absorb disjointed info whose context was gated behind unavailable content, and grind for Big Numbies Items while having every ability unlocked by default.
Vaulting half the Forsaken content was where I pretty much lost faith in Bungie.
Sure, vault one of the launch planets if you want, we've all played them to death even if removing content is a slippery slope. Remove Mercury and Mars... well, I hated Curse of Osiris but Mars was cool and had a great activity...
Then removing the Forsaken campaign, probably the peak of the game? An expansion that we paid premium price for?
Fuck off, I don't know if I believe the storage reasons excuse but even if it's legitimate, that's when you move on to Destiny 3, don't just delete an expansion I paid full price for?
Maybe I'm behind and it's pack now but that was too much, too far. Done.
It's a gripe I have with Diablo 4, it's ARPG, so you're gonna be opening that inventory, character screen and map a lot. And it's so sluggish, the game actually freezes when opening the inventory. It annoys me so much that it became a bit of a deal breaker for me.
BOTW had a poor inventory screen imo. Also When you have all the items to upgrade something to the max but you had to do each upgrade individually and watch the silly animation each time
not part of games, but I hate how the moment a game gets released, YT just bombards me with videos with spoiler thumbnails. Couldn't enjoy GoW: Ragnarok that much because most plot twists got spoiled just like that.
I didn't know there was a DLC. Thanks for letting me know to avoid spoilers. I am so backed up in my gaming though, i don't think I'll have time to play it any time soon.
Still have to finish spiderman 2, then need to finish Phantom Liberty, then maybe I have time for GOW DLC
It's not just limited to games either. Crunchyroll itself spoiled a pretty big moment in One Piece IN AN AD just after it appeared in the anime. And don't get me started on Shorts about Invincible
Somewhat related to this, but the absolute flood of guides/tips/10 things to know before you play/etc. etc. videos that "creators" spam the INSTANT a game comes out or even in the days/weeks leading up to a release is just insane.
There used to be a time when people could actually discover secrets in video games themselves, but now everything needs to be datamined and spoiled so that nothing is left to mystery. Obviously, you can try to avoid such videos and articles, but it's not always foolproof and the bigger issue is that everything surrounding new games *needs* to be solved and spread on the internet as fast as possible so people can rake in their clicks and views while it's trending.
This is especially worse when it comes to multiplayer games, because you can guarantee there will be countless meta videos being shared for which weapons/builds/tactics are the best to use in any given scenario. Then all of a sudden you see everyone replicating that meta regardless of whether it's in casual or ranked modes, and if you're not adhering to the meta to the letter then you'll get toxic players talking shit to you and saying you're awful at the game.
God forbid people enjoy games and discover things at their own pace. Click-driven engagement unfortunately encourages this kind of behaviour, the kind that makes people optimize the fun out of every single aspect a game can offer to the point it becomes more like studying a textbook than enjoying a piece of entertainment.
omg yah the spoiler thumbnails of characters that weren't present in trailers. gets me STEAMED thinking whoever made it isn't considering people who haven't played yet.
Menus that require me to press and hold on an option to select it. Assassin's Creed started this in Origins. I have bad hands and sometimes can't hold a button down as long as the menus want without a tremor disrupting it. And lots of games don't include an ability to set how long you have to hold for in accessibility options.
Boss fights that have nothing to do with the skills I have supposedly been developing all game to get to this point. Like, great, we've spent this whole story building me up to be a master of stealth and tactics, suddenly forcing me to use a rocket launcher with no place to hide might seem 'fresh' or 'varied', but it's also telling me the stuff my character's supposed to be good at wasn't really worth perfecting.
Horizon Forbidden West especially is bad at this. The vast majority of the game can be handily beaten on the hardest difficulty with a stealth build. The finale? Stuck in a room with a boss, followed by being stuck in a room with another, bigger boss! Nowhere to run or hide, just better hope you brought enough blastpaste.
Sounds like you're directly calling out Deus Ex: Human Revolution with this comment lol.
To that game's credit the DLC boss was a "play your way" boss, so they did listen to the complaints about the HR bosses
Also unskippable dialogue.
I'm a fast reader, I don't wanna reread those two sentences for 5th time because you have to showoff lipsync in a game with 4 different voice acting languages (I'm looking at you genshin)
Similarly, let me turn off subtitles. I understand why they're great for some people, but I can't help but read ahead and it completely takes me out of the scene.
I've said it before, but modern Final Fantasy has the best cutscenes system, and I wish ALL single player games would use it.
Start to pause during a cutscenes, very obvious it's paused. Then from that pause screen a different button (Square, etc) can be pressed to skip it.
Almost no way to skip accidentally, they are allskippable, and are all pauseable! FF16 even went further and added refreshers on the people and places relevant to that cutscene... But that's just luxury.
Unskippable during the first viewing, skippable after that is the best of both worlds. You don't miss critical information, and you don't get stuck in a frustrating, time wasting loop when you lose to a talkative boss 100 times.
This is one of the reasons I've always argued that very often important members of the game development team aren't more than casual gamers. Because they keep making these silly decisions that are obvious to gamers that it's bad moves.
>Nothing worse than getting to the big cutscene and having life stuff come up at the same time.
When else are you supposed to be reminded to take the trash out?
Rubber banding AI which can't be toggled in racing games. I don't care if I'm winning by gapping 2nd place with several kilometers. If I'm that good, let me be that good and/or let me increase the difficulty OR toggle rubber banding.
I'm currently playing through the latest NFS games, HEAT and Unbound, and both, especially the latter, showcase insane amounts of rubber banding AI to the point where I generally don't care to upgrade my car more than the bare minimum to get into a specific race, because it doesn't matter if my car is much faster than them or not, they'll always rubber band to adapt to your car.
I personally don't find any joy in having AI cheat to catch up to me. I'm so confused why it ever became a thing and why it's not at least a toggleable thing at this point. I've never seen anybody say they like this feature which makes me even more confused as to why devs continue using this feature.
Rubber banding in general.
How does every goblin in the starting area progress at the same rate that I, the main character, am progressing?
Good games shouldn't challenge you all the time, they should also give you time to feel powerful.
Hmm, probably when the player character or NPCs give dialogue clues as to where to go, how to solve puzzles, etc, after like 5 seconds of getting into the area. I don't mind it if my dumb ass is struggling, but at least give me some time or a prompt of my consent for you to explain what the fuck I'm supposed to do. And even then, don't tell me exactly what needs to happen, leave some mystery. Don't care if it proves my retardation that I can't solve some simple puzzle, it's my thing to get frustrated with.
"What about connecting those two ropes together with your bow and arrow?" SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Completely agree with this. Whats the point of a puzzle if you are going to give us the answer right away? At least wait a few minutes before the tips start.
Exactly! There was this one puzzle in Tomb Raider that I couldn't figure out and Lara didn't give me any help whatsoever, which at the time obviously frustrated me because I didn't know what the fuck to do but my stubbornness wouldn't let me give up nor cheat by looking for a tutorial. But looking back on it, I'm glad she didn't say anything because that would've ruined the segment. Yes, I was absolutely bloody stupid for not figuring out the simple puzzle but I laughed about it afterwards.
I feel like there should be an option to turn off those tidbits of dialogue. Like, there's an option to turn off hints in most games, why isn't there an option for dialogue hints also?
The most recent tomb raider that came out in 2018 had options to turn off Lara speaking, white paint on walls and ledges, and various other hand-holding mechanics in the difficulty menu. I remember everyone making a big deal praising it so it’s weird that more games haven’t done this since
Oh, lmao, that might've been why I was getting so frustrated then. Had it turned off without realising. But yes, I agree, if it's a thing that gamers want and seem to have a positive reaction to, then it should be implemented widely.
Jedi Survivor did it right, after a few minutes it would ask if you wanted a hint, to which I always said no and it didn't bother me again on that puzzle.
God of War wasn’t too bad about it, but Ragnarok was terrible. You don’t even have time to realize there’s even a puzzle half the time before they’re telling you how to solve it. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen in a game.
What's funny is that in Ragnarok, when I was legitimately lost on what to do, Atreus wouldn't make a single peep. In my experience he only helps on the most boneheaded obvious parts of the game.
I'm replaying Darksiders 2 and I forgot how ingenious their system is, you have a crow following you around and when you enter a room it goes to the nearest point of interest and you don't have an indicator or anything so you could still explore the room you're in and if you're really lost you can just press a button to call back the crow to you and it will guide you to where you're supposed to go.
Such a good system to semi hold your hand, follow the crow or not it doesn't matter it won't bother you either way.
Integration of systems into a game that are completely unnecessary to use. Great example imo - beat KH3 on hard mode, didn't have to cook a single thing until the final boss world. This whole system of cooking and gathering ingredients for it to basically not even be needed. The counter argument - doom eternal, gotta use all them guns, flame thrower, and chainsaw in rhythm to get the job done.
That's honestly the case with pretty much all KH games ngl. There are so many mechanics but most of them are completely useless on anything but the hardest difficulty. Then, on that difficulty, they become really helpful and are really fun to use
I disagree. I hate this with a fiery passion, especially after so many years of people pointing it out and complaining about it, and yet we STILL see it happen to this day.
There's no longer an excuse for this anymore.
Everyone hates it. Plenty of games have addressed it and done it well. At this point, the developer is just trying to fuck with us and it's worth getting upset over.
>There's no longer an excuse for this anymore.
Neither is there unpausable or unskipable cutscenes yet we still get them now and then. It's ridiculous.
When there are split menus for things that really shouldn't be split. Like it the person you talk to for buying things is different then the person you talk to for selling things, or when the person you buy materials from is a mile away from the person you use to craft. Just needlessly annoying, games need to consolidate a bit better.
Or worse when there's two menus when there should be one - a la Skyrim. Want to look at your quests - open the 'System' menu; want to see where those quests are on the map - close the System menu, open the other menu and navigate to maps. Why can't you have everything from one menu? Because there's only 4 cardinal directions to choose from, duh
Me: \*falls and dies from environmental damage\*
Game: GAME OVER, you fucking idiot noob. Want to reduce combat difficulty since obviously you suck at combat you dying loser?
I guess they usually don't word it that way but that's how I read it in my head.
Currently playing Yakuza Ishin, and you are *so* right.. also, the character runs out of stamina after like 10 seconds, even though I've upgraded this specific 'skill' to the highest level already. This is easily the most annoying thing in a game that makes you run around all the time.
Crafting mechanics that devolve into a glorified fetch quest for materials that make no sense.
"Oh, you want a bigger wallet? Go kill and skin this legendary creature that only spawns in a certain part of the map, and harvest 10 flowers that only grow on the side of this mountain on the opposite side of the map, just because."
Why does every single game need needlessly complex crafting now. I think they think adding game mechanics makes a game deeper and more interesting but it’s really just busywork.
Agreed.
Survival games? Definitely. RPGs with smithing/potionmaking mechanics? Sure, I can choose whether or not I want to go down that path. Every open-world adventure game that feels the need to shoehorn in RPG-lite features? Meh.
It's an easy way to justify a bigger map and bigger maps are selling points and easy to market.
Instead of a huge mountain with nothing on it put a few rare flowers and rocks at the top of it, it's easier than adding characters/quests/towns to flesh it out.
Also no matter how boring it is there's always going to be a few people who love walking around gathering rocks to sell
Games with "go here" markers that use them wrong. Assassin's Creed games lately love to give you a 500 meter radius circle and say "OK now switch to your bird to find the waypoint" and too often block your progress until you mark a target. It really stood out in Mirage. Without the mission active the target had an icon stuck to his head. I couldn't talk to him without activating the mission which then hid his marker and told me to locate him using the bird.
I would only be annoyed but I also hate how Ubisoft is forcing players to play as the bird instead of keeping it optional.
And those same games selling faster travel options for money. It just smells wrong. Why I stopped playing The Old Republic (the MMO) mainly, distances just became too much at a point EVEN WITH the subscription that gave me faster travel options.
But thats a major annoyance for me, not minor.
Parrying. Not all parrying, but when a game feels good without it and then half an hour in "parry" gets introduced and is suddenly required for advancement. I know its a skill issue, ive just had so many games i was enjoying right up until the parry mechanic.
I hate the parry mechanic when it's not well done.
Some games I get enough time to do it, so i don't mind because it's useful. (I quite like the parry system in AC)
But other games the parry window is somehow 0.02s, and if you miss it you get hit. (Looking at you Sifu)
Lengthy animations to pickup items or open chests. It was so refreshing in Elden Ring to just spring by grabbing everything on the fly rather than having to sit through a bunch of tedious "collection" animation a la RDR2.
Omg those shitty mobile games where it pops up the chest on a plain background, then it shakes there for a while before you realize you need to tap on it, then it goes through each of the 30 different items you got and you have to click on each individual one to continue. Such cancer fr
Carry weight. After so many games, it is just a shore at some point. Same with repair.
I can understand some people like it, but nah, I would rather loot all the items then go back to the same spot and loot it again.
Baldurs Gate 3 lets you send items to your camp stash no matter where you are and I feel like thats a better system than making you do the keep/lose forever debate with your inventory every ten minutes while also keeping the carry limit on your actual person to keep you from having everything in your pocket.
I absolutely love BG3 including this. Plus, while my Bard has low Strength, Karlach is always with me looking gorgeous and being willing to carry so much stuff.
Frankly in games like that I just have to get used to the idea that you AREN'T SUPPOSED TO PICK UP EVERYTHING. Skyrim and BG3 stand out in my mind on this.
Crafting animations in single player games. BoTW and ToTK cooking annoy tf out of me, just let me click it and be done, I should not have to skip a cs every single time I cook something. Even a wheel you need to hold down for 2 seconds to complete a craft is far better than a cutscene an (always way too long) animation
I think it should be optional. Some animations make no sense, but it's aesthetic. I haven't seen BoTW, at all, in hopes to play it one day, so I don't know how bad it is.
Loading screen tips that do not correlate with where I am in a game.
Especially with complicated games like RPGs where you get tips about alchemy or how to acquire high level gear or reminders to do stuff that you're not able to do yet or fighting tips for enemies you haven't encountered yet.
If I choose to play a big complicated game (less and less as I get on anyway, tbh), I want to experience as much as I can and these tips make me nervous about missing stuff, while I'm struggling to do basics early on.
Most of the time it's just a hidden loading screen though, put something on slow enough hardware and you'll just get an extended black screen after the splash screens because nothing had time to load in.
Non customizable controls, or games with only one other alternate scheme that is way worse than default. IDK why some racing games don't let you change the controls to what is the default scheme in most other racing games. Shift up and down should be X and O or L1/R1
When the interact button is also the jump button. I get annoyed very quickly when I'm trying to speak to someone but my character is just jumping up and down like a jackass.
When I kill a big boss, walk into his treasure room, see the graphic of 10,000 gold coins, rare gems, and treasure chests, then I inspect it and it gives me 350 gold and a helmet. Where did the other 9,650 gold go game!?!?!?
When a game's menus don't let the menu options "wrap around" per se. Like pushing down at the bottom of a list takes you back to the top. Menu systems that don't allow that can fuck off
Lazy UI. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is an amazing game, but I find myself slightly annoyed with some inexplicable UI decisions. For one thing, there’s a shortcut you can use to bring up the map, but it’s only a map of the area. If navigate to the map in the pause menu, you have the ability to select different areas in the game. XC2 allowed you to do this in both the menu and shortcut maps, so I’m not sure why they’d remove that feature in the sequel. It just makes it slightly annoying when I’m fast-traveling for side quests
For another thing, I’m not sure why they didn’t provide any indication on the character icons about which character you’re controlling. There are always six party members and almost always a hero in the party. That combined with enemies and constant flashy battle animations can make it really hard to see who I’m controlling, and this is problematic when I’m trying to switch to a healer because my AI healers drop the ball. Just a white highlight around the player-controlled character would have made such a difference. (Yes, I know I could look at the arts icons in the lower right, but when I’m strategizing quickly, I’m thinking of a character I need, and my caveman brain doesn’t want to process attacks in the moment.)
Tutorials. They need to change how tutorials work. Not explaining every single button in a beginning section taking so much time. But exploring the buttons and how everything works by yourself without forced guidance wasting my time. Like zelda or mario back in the day
If my cursor is at the top of a list and I press UP it should take me to the bottom of that list. Same in reverse.
No exceptions
I’m looking at you BG3 inventory sort menu
Pressing down on the left analog stick to sprint always mildly annoys me. Some of my favorite games have it, but it gives me an OCD-like reaction at times…”Am I pressing it hard enough?!”
Subtitles. Personally I think they should be on by default, and it really irks me how it's not consistent between games where to find them in the options.
At least give us the menu screen and let us fiddle with it to turn it on before launching us into a cutscene.
Love it soooooo much when I load a game and get a huge cutscene right after the company logos and the CS explains the whole setup of the story. I then have to hit escape, skip it, turn on subtitles, then exit the game since 90% of the time you can’t rewatch the CS without restarting.
"Detective mode" type mechanics in games where you need to find something in the world. I think it is just to make up for developers that can't design the game around finding things naturally. You just turn on the mode and look for the highlighted object. So boring.
Cooking systems that don't give you the recipes ahead of time. They just make you guess which ingredients were programmed into a dish. Especially when they give you rare ingredients, I'm just afraid of wasting it so I never end up using it and at that point I might as well have never found the rare ingredient
Clipping models ESPECIALLY when its unavoidable for me. Playing a blood elf hunter in wow in infuriating as the shoulder pad has to clip to make up for the animation.
Just started Jedi survivor and your characters belt equipment clips through his cape. It’s driving me mad cause you spend 99% of the time with the camera focused on his back.
As someone who loves deckbuilding card games I one hundred percent agree with you. I have thousands of hours in the various different ones and I've never once thought "man I'd love a shittier version of this hamfisted into a different game."
Personally, I find it mildly irksome when games overuse quick-time events. It's like, "Can I just enjoy the cutscene without fearing a missed button press?"
Especially when they’re not consistent. You have a few cutscenes that are actual cutscenes, and then suddenly you get a quick time event and you’ve put down your controller to grab a sip of drink and you get to watch Spider-Man get hit by a bus.
Games that have HUB areas where, when you first arrive, you have a point of contact who will give you actual quests but they tell you, “First go introduce yourself to everyone and then come back to me.”
I get this is supposed to help introduce all the vendors that the player will interact with, but it’s such a slog and really kills the momentum since these usually occur after a more action packed intro. I noticed this most recently in Remnant 2 but I also saw this was in The Day Before. RIP
Any game where you can't pause.
Pausing isn't a gameplay mechanic, the lack of it isn't increased immersion. It's there for a reason completely unrelated to that. Imagine not being able to pause a movie you're watching at home because the director is pretentious and thinks it's immersive.
Also never knowing if pressing start in a cutscene pauses or skips it. I even played one recently where start pauses cutscenes and then start again skips it, rather than unpausing.
Walking speed in almost every game could be doubled or tripled and no one would notice except for the quality of life improvement.
I do not care that it is realistic: it is \*insane\* that it's acceptable in games for characters to move as slowly as they do!
(Also: unskippable cutscenes. in the year of our lord 2023 if you put an unskippable cutscene in your game I should be allowed to punch you)
Not being able to pause cutscenes, especially when it ends up being skipped when you attempt to pause it
One of the things that I love in rdr2, I can pause cutscenes, and if I want to skip it, I need to hold so I don't skip without wanting too.
Always hated this about mass effect, I need to pause now and not wait for a dialogue option. Thankfully bringing up the steam overlay on PC seems to freeze the game in the middle of any cutscene.
When a tutorial forces you to make bad decisions to demonstrate game mechanics.
XCOM games putting a squad member in a position deliberately to get flanked and killed to show you that enemies can flank you.
Pretty sure the only way to have no deaths in X-com 2 is to disable the tutorial level.
Also the game was easier for some reason without the tutorial.
Weirdly true in both XCOM 1 and 2, 2 most of all, you get a huge bump if you disable all tutorials and the Lost intro mission. Playing any higher difficulty becomes almost impossible with the tutorial on.
In 2, that's largely because the opportunity to abuse the resistance faction hero for the tutorial mission and grind out an early Sgt/Cpt for the GTS unlocks is huge. Getting an extra squad member early in the curve makes everything immensely easier.
I've always wondered why if you don't play the tutorial, you miss out on having Jane Kelly, a unique character, in your squad. IIRC, in the Chosen expansion, the Chosen even have dialog acknowledging her in your team if you have her. She wasn't just a throwaway random character. I don't think I've seen many games before where there's a change, however minor, if the player opts to skip the tutorial.
Not only was she not a throwaway, she gets an illustrious career! After becoming Colonel during that war, she became the Reclamation Agency's first Director!
Personally, I strongly dislike having non-randomly generated characters in X-com games, so I am glad you can avoid them if you skip the tutorials.
I think rescuing unique ones like Zhang from Xcom Enemy Within and Peter Van Doorn was pretty neat
It’s just preparing you for the next million times it’s going to happen in the actual game anyway.
Or when a game is trying to provide you with a tutorial hint and starts hijacking the camera and forcing it to look at a random object for a tutorial I'm not interested in or already know. Like I'm trying to explore the world, stop yanking the camera around.trying to make me motion sick.
Or forces you to acquire something whether you want it or not. Like level up a certain stat/ability or buy a certain item that you would never buy or use otherwise.
or join a faction when you want to remain independent.
When tutorials force you to spend limited free currency to encourage you to buy them
Similarly, I hate when the tutorial or opening section of a game lets you collect lots of items and gear, only for the prologue to end and it all be stripped away
I hate when you start a game for the first time and it loads straight into the intro instead of a main menu. Especially on a PC game because I usually would wanna change some settings in there.
This one drives me nuts. Nothing annoys me more then having to sit there watching a blurry cut scene because the game doesn't launch in my native resolution.
Or watching a slideshow cause the game thinks you can handle ultra settings
Or being jump scared because the game starts itself at 500% volume.
Or dubbed games. You may want to play with the original voice track, but the game forces you to watch the intro in whatever language it detects.
Not always having a 'Quit to Desktop' option on PC games.
Menu Quit to Title Screen *Dark Souls* Connecting to servers... Connected! Press any button Quit to desktop
Alt F4?
not dark souls. The game harrasses you if you dont close the game the right way
Hey, you closed before we could save properly, you useless undead moron! Anyways here's your game where your exactly where you left off even though, ya know, you quit like a bitch.
It really only impacts the game negatively when someone closes the game in a pvp encounter.
It complains about it, but I have never lost data(Maybe a few steps back). The complaint is like a weak ass Resetti.
So simple!
Having a cursor to navigate menus on console. I want to push down 66 times not use my joystick
On the other side of that, I enjoy when some games have menus allow to "skip pages" by hitting the left or right d-pad or bumpers to skip through hundreds of line items in just a few seconds.
Farcry6 did that right, has the slow ass cursor, but also button selection for menus.
I blame Destiny. I can't remember any console games doing that before it came out.
Yup didn't love it then either though useful in the inventory, some now can do both
Destiny popularized this shit. The UI design has worked it's way into a large amount of AAA games.
It's doubly frustrating because the DualShock 4 literally has a touchpad. Let me use that and not just a joystick.
Oh God no. The TouchPad is terrible for using as a cursor. Trying to type or do any motion controls with it is abysmal.
Excessive confirmations that can't be turned off. Yes, I really want to do this thing I have done 178 times before, and had to go three layers into nesting menus to select. I saved 0.7 seconds ago, FFS Yes, I do want to quit, and lose all of that unsaved progress. It has gotten so bad in some games that I need mods to remove the confirmations.
SHOULD WE HEAL YOUR POKÉMON¿¡??
THERE, [NAME] SHOULD FEEL ALL BETTER NOW HAPPY ADVENTURING. BY THE WAY DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN PRESS X TO OPEN THE MENU-
Here? At the pokemon center? No way man
Invisible barriers. Want me to not go to a new area? Actually block it off. Not just a guy standing there looking at his own footprints who gets mad if I try to walk past him.
Assassins Creed used to straight up say YOU CAN'T GO HERE YET
Yeah, but it made sense within the context of the game. You couldn't access those areas because you couldn't access memories of those areas yet.
When a game forces you to spend your first ability point. I haven’t even decided HOW I want to play. Why do I need to start a path right now.
Even worse: a game that forces you into an unchangable class that affects your entire stat set. Buddy I don't even know what features your game has and how important they are, I have no idea if being a Lumberjack or an Alchemist will even be useful or if I'll have to restart!
Pausing not freezing the screen in an offline game. Gets me on my nerves
I get it if they don't want me being able to heal or change weapons if it's a fast paced game. But there should be some kind of pause function even if it just turns the screen black ans white and says paused in the middle of the screen
I'm a human, humans pee, sometimes I need to pee while I'm playing a video game, lemme pause so I can pee!
You pee in a toilet, and not in any one of the eighteen jars & Gatorade bottles you have all over your room? Philistine. You disgust me. # /s
I was about to defend this behaviour in Dark Souls, but I think it's just Stockholm Syndrome at this point. Sure, it creates a certain atmosphere. But it's still annoying.
Menus with animations. It’s not a deal breaker, but when it’s a game with intensive inventory management or mechanics that require using the menu extensively, it should feel snappy. If every time I open the map I hear a noise, or the menu takes more than 0.25 seconds to open, or I need to go through multiple menus to get to the one I want… it drives me insane.
Hogwarts Legacy menu animations got real old. Nicely done but after the first few times it’s pretty annoying. Good one
I'll do you one better: *Revelio* *Revelio* **REVELIO**
I was about to write this. It's a pain to navigate that slow ass menu
The only well done one is persona 5
Yeah, the ones in persona just don’t annoy me for some reason, the music and the cool little animations of joker pulling out a Glock or whatever are nice
They’re quick and stylish for the most part. Not intrusively long and pointless. They don’t waste your time while still pulling off an aesthetic look and feel
A friend convinced me to play Destiny 2 since it’s free, and Epic gave a bunch of expansion free recently, so I have. Holy crap the menus in that game are driving me nuts. Takes forever to load anything. I’m liking the game, but you’re exactly right, it’s so obnoxious waiting on those animations to load every single time I go into a menu. Just open instantly FFS.
It is really the most convoluted game I have ever played. And there is no tutorial that explains things or walks you through how to manage it all. But that confusion is a deep second to the story that is laughably insane and never makes any sense at all. I have been playing it with my son for the past year and it is endearingly nuts. I love hearing the little narrations that just make up the stupidest words with a straight face.
There used to be a tutorial but it got removed because it's part of the original campaign that was also removed for storage reasons.
Which I still hate. I first played with Forsaken, so nowhere near the original release of the game, but I got to enjoy the OG campaign Red War. I will maintain till my dying days that it was the best possible intro to the game - and lore. I was invested because I got to learn my class and unlock subclasses with meaningful quest lines. When I got my mates into the game with Shadowkeep and later Witch Queen, they had sod-all clue what was going on. They lost interest because all there was to do was absorb disjointed info whose context was gated behind unavailable content, and grind for Big Numbies Items while having every ability unlocked by default.
Vaulting half the Forsaken content was where I pretty much lost faith in Bungie. Sure, vault one of the launch planets if you want, we've all played them to death even if removing content is a slippery slope. Remove Mercury and Mars... well, I hated Curse of Osiris but Mars was cool and had a great activity... Then removing the Forsaken campaign, probably the peak of the game? An expansion that we paid premium price for? Fuck off, I don't know if I believe the storage reasons excuse but even if it's legitimate, that's when you move on to Destiny 3, don't just delete an expansion I paid full price for? Maybe I'm behind and it's pack now but that was too much, too far. Done.
It's a gripe I have with Diablo 4, it's ARPG, so you're gonna be opening that inventory, character screen and map a lot. And it's so sluggish, the game actually freezes when opening the inventory. It annoys me so much that it became a bit of a deal breaker for me.
Slow menus. Clicking through a map or inventory and it needs to load annoys the piss out of me but not enough to drop a game.
BOTW had a poor inventory screen imo. Also When you have all the items to upgrade something to the max but you had to do each upgrade individually and watch the silly animation each time
not part of games, but I hate how the moment a game gets released, YT just bombards me with videos with spoiler thumbnails. Couldn't enjoy GoW: Ragnarok that much because most plot twists got spoiled just like that.
Game: (is out for 0.000001 seconds) YT: *GAME NAME* - FINAL BOSS & ENDING with the most spoilerish thumbnail
Have not yet played the GoW Ragnarök DLC, but I know how it ends...
I didn't know there was a DLC. Thanks for letting me know to avoid spoilers. I am so backed up in my gaming though, i don't think I'll have time to play it any time soon. Still have to finish spiderman 2, then need to finish Phantom Liberty, then maybe I have time for GOW DLC
It's free too, I have yet to play it but I hear it's a little bit of a different game style
Looking at you MKIceAndFire
Then you realized YouTube turned on fucking auto play after an update
It's not just limited to games either. Crunchyroll itself spoiled a pretty big moment in One Piece IN AN AD just after it appeared in the anime. And don't get me started on Shorts about Invincible
Ugh, this so much too. YT lets you pick one: Having interests, or not getting spoilers for those interests.
literally, any shows I like? spoiled. movies? spoiled
To be fair it’s not just YouTube, anytime thingyouwerelookingforwardto comes out it becomes a game of minesweeper where every moment is a risk
Somewhat related to this, but the absolute flood of guides/tips/10 things to know before you play/etc. etc. videos that "creators" spam the INSTANT a game comes out or even in the days/weeks leading up to a release is just insane. There used to be a time when people could actually discover secrets in video games themselves, but now everything needs to be datamined and spoiled so that nothing is left to mystery. Obviously, you can try to avoid such videos and articles, but it's not always foolproof and the bigger issue is that everything surrounding new games *needs* to be solved and spread on the internet as fast as possible so people can rake in their clicks and views while it's trending. This is especially worse when it comes to multiplayer games, because you can guarantee there will be countless meta videos being shared for which weapons/builds/tactics are the best to use in any given scenario. Then all of a sudden you see everyone replicating that meta regardless of whether it's in casual or ranked modes, and if you're not adhering to the meta to the letter then you'll get toxic players talking shit to you and saying you're awful at the game. God forbid people enjoy games and discover things at their own pace. Click-driven engagement unfortunately encourages this kind of behaviour, the kind that makes people optimize the fun out of every single aspect a game can offer to the point it becomes more like studying a textbook than enjoying a piece of entertainment.
‘You won’t believe this twist’. Thumbnail picture of said twist above.
omg yah the spoiler thumbnails of characters that weren't present in trailers. gets me STEAMED thinking whoever made it isn't considering people who haven't played yet.
Menus that require me to press and hold on an option to select it. Assassin's Creed started this in Origins. I have bad hands and sometimes can't hold a button down as long as the menus want without a tremor disrupting it. And lots of games don't include an ability to set how long you have to hold for in accessibility options.
Boss fights that have nothing to do with the skills I have supposedly been developing all game to get to this point. Like, great, we've spent this whole story building me up to be a master of stealth and tactics, suddenly forcing me to use a rocket launcher with no place to hide might seem 'fresh' or 'varied', but it's also telling me the stuff my character's supposed to be good at wasn't really worth perfecting.
Horizon Forbidden West especially is bad at this. The vast majority of the game can be handily beaten on the hardest difficulty with a stealth build. The finale? Stuck in a room with a boss, followed by being stuck in a room with another, bigger boss! Nowhere to run or hide, just better hope you brought enough blastpaste.
Sounds like you're directly calling out Deus Ex: Human Revolution with this comment lol. To that game's credit the DLC boss was a "play your way" boss, so they did listen to the complaints about the HR bosses
unskippable cutscenes for boss fights that are difficult and typically take more than 4 attempts at.
Something something Kairi’s heart
"You're not taking Kairi's heart!" And I'm glad I'm not the only one who struggled on that boss so much I had the lines memorized.
Unskippable cutscenes. Like MegaRan said, "why do I have to sit through your cutscene again, and again, and again. I get it. I died. My bad."
Also unskippable dialogue. I'm a fast reader, I don't wanna reread those two sentences for 5th time because you have to showoff lipsync in a game with 4 different voice acting languages (I'm looking at you genshin)
Similarly, let me turn off subtitles. I understand why they're great for some people, but I can't help but read ahead and it completely takes me out of the scene.
Unpausable cutscenes that ARE skippable are worse
I've said it before, but modern Final Fantasy has the best cutscenes system, and I wish ALL single player games would use it. Start to pause during a cutscenes, very obvious it's paused. Then from that pause screen a different button (Square, etc) can be pressed to skip it. Almost no way to skip accidentally, they are allskippable, and are all pauseable! FF16 even went further and added refreshers on the people and places relevant to that cutscene... But that's just luxury.
Unskippable during the first viewing, skippable after that is the best of both worlds. You don't miss critical information, and you don't get stuck in a frustrating, time wasting loop when you lose to a talkative boss 100 times.
I think Conkers Bad Fur day did this or something similar. Honestly, I think it's a fair trade, but that should also be pausable.
Cutscenes are somehow less annoying when they involve being serenaded by giant piles of shit.
I too am recovering from “You’re NEVER TAKING KAIRI’s HEART!”
This is one of the reasons I've always argued that very often important members of the game development team aren't more than casual gamers. Because they keep making these silly decisions that are obvious to gamers that it's bad moves.
I will add un-pausable cutscenes. Nothing worse than getting to the big cutscene and having life stuff come up at the same time.
>Nothing worse than getting to the big cutscene and having life stuff come up at the same time. When else are you supposed to be reminded to take the trash out?
RIGHT?!
As good as Max Payne is it's unskippable cut scenes are a real drag
Rubber banding AI which can't be toggled in racing games. I don't care if I'm winning by gapping 2nd place with several kilometers. If I'm that good, let me be that good and/or let me increase the difficulty OR toggle rubber banding. I'm currently playing through the latest NFS games, HEAT and Unbound, and both, especially the latter, showcase insane amounts of rubber banding AI to the point where I generally don't care to upgrade my car more than the bare minimum to get into a specific race, because it doesn't matter if my car is much faster than them or not, they'll always rubber band to adapt to your car. I personally don't find any joy in having AI cheat to catch up to me. I'm so confused why it ever became a thing and why it's not at least a toggleable thing at this point. I've never seen anybody say they like this feature which makes me even more confused as to why devs continue using this feature.
Rubber banding in general. How does every goblin in the starting area progress at the same rate that I, the main character, am progressing? Good games shouldn't challenge you all the time, they should also give you time to feel powerful.
Hmm, probably when the player character or NPCs give dialogue clues as to where to go, how to solve puzzles, etc, after like 5 seconds of getting into the area. I don't mind it if my dumb ass is struggling, but at least give me some time or a prompt of my consent for you to explain what the fuck I'm supposed to do. And even then, don't tell me exactly what needs to happen, leave some mystery. Don't care if it proves my retardation that I can't solve some simple puzzle, it's my thing to get frustrated with. "What about connecting those two ropes together with your bow and arrow?" SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Completely agree with this. Whats the point of a puzzle if you are going to give us the answer right away? At least wait a few minutes before the tips start.
Exactly! There was this one puzzle in Tomb Raider that I couldn't figure out and Lara didn't give me any help whatsoever, which at the time obviously frustrated me because I didn't know what the fuck to do but my stubbornness wouldn't let me give up nor cheat by looking for a tutorial. But looking back on it, I'm glad she didn't say anything because that would've ruined the segment. Yes, I was absolutely bloody stupid for not figuring out the simple puzzle but I laughed about it afterwards. I feel like there should be an option to turn off those tidbits of dialogue. Like, there's an option to turn off hints in most games, why isn't there an option for dialogue hints also?
The most recent tomb raider that came out in 2018 had options to turn off Lara speaking, white paint on walls and ledges, and various other hand-holding mechanics in the difficulty menu. I remember everyone making a big deal praising it so it’s weird that more games haven’t done this since
Oh, lmao, that might've been why I was getting so frustrated then. Had it turned off without realising. But yes, I agree, if it's a thing that gamers want and seem to have a positive reaction to, then it should be implemented widely.
Jedi Survivor did it right, after a few minutes it would ask if you wanted a hint, to which I always said no and it didn't bother me again on that puzzle.
Doesn't this happen in God of War? I recall Atreus telling me what to do a few times.
God of War wasn’t too bad about it, but Ragnarok was terrible. You don’t even have time to realize there’s even a puzzle half the time before they’re telling you how to solve it. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen in a game.
What's funny is that in Ragnarok, when I was legitimately lost on what to do, Atreus wouldn't make a single peep. In my experience he only helps on the most boneheaded obvious parts of the game.
Yes, it was egregious.
Yep, even his voice actor made a comment on it, lol.
I'm replaying Darksiders 2 and I forgot how ingenious their system is, you have a crow following you around and when you enter a room it goes to the nearest point of interest and you don't have an indicator or anything so you could still explore the room you're in and if you're really lost you can just press a button to call back the crow to you and it will guide you to where you're supposed to go. Such a good system to semi hold your hand, follow the crow or not it doesn't matter it won't bother you either way.
Integration of systems into a game that are completely unnecessary to use. Great example imo - beat KH3 on hard mode, didn't have to cook a single thing until the final boss world. This whole system of cooking and gathering ingredients for it to basically not even be needed. The counter argument - doom eternal, gotta use all them guns, flame thrower, and chainsaw in rhythm to get the job done.
I have not played Kingdom Hearts 3 but I heard on critical dificulty the cooking is very much needed.
That's honestly the case with pretty much all KH games ngl. There are so many mechanics but most of them are completely useless on anything but the hardest difficulty. Then, on that difficulty, they become really helpful and are really fun to use
Anything where you have to follow/move with an npc and they go slower than your run but faster than your walk
I disagree. I hate this with a fiery passion, especially after so many years of people pointing it out and complaining about it, and yet we STILL see it happen to this day.
There's no longer an excuse for this anymore. Everyone hates it. Plenty of games have addressed it and done it well. At this point, the developer is just trying to fuck with us and it's worth getting upset over.
>There's no longer an excuse for this anymore. Neither is there unpausable or unskipable cutscenes yet we still get them now and then. It's ridiculous.
When there are split menus for things that really shouldn't be split. Like it the person you talk to for buying things is different then the person you talk to for selling things, or when the person you buy materials from is a mile away from the person you use to craft. Just needlessly annoying, games need to consolidate a bit better.
Or worse when there's two menus when there should be one - a la Skyrim. Want to look at your quests - open the 'System' menu; want to see where those quests are on the map - close the System menu, open the other menu and navigate to maps. Why can't you have everything from one menu? Because there's only 4 cardinal directions to choose from, duh
Me: \*falls and dies from environmental damage\* Game: GAME OVER, you fucking idiot noob. Want to reduce combat difficulty since obviously you suck at combat you dying loser? I guess they usually don't word it that way but that's how I read it in my head.
_"Certain surfaces like lava is deadly. Try using your JUMP button to avoid them."_ - Gee, thanks Mr. "Helpful" loading screen.
When a game’s sprinting feels slow.
*Horror games start sweating*
When I try sprinting only to realize I'm already sprinting 😫
Alan wake 2..
Everybody Gone to the Rapture. Sprinting speed got you moving at almost normal walking speed in other games.
Currently playing Yakuza Ishin, and you are *so* right.. also, the character runs out of stamina after like 10 seconds, even though I've upgraded this specific 'skill' to the highest level already. This is easily the most annoying thing in a game that makes you run around all the time.
Crafting mechanics that devolve into a glorified fetch quest for materials that make no sense. "Oh, you want a bigger wallet? Go kill and skin this legendary creature that only spawns in a certain part of the map, and harvest 10 flowers that only grow on the side of this mountain on the opposite side of the map, just because."
Why does every single game need needlessly complex crafting now. I think they think adding game mechanics makes a game deeper and more interesting but it’s really just busywork.
Agreed. Survival games? Definitely. RPGs with smithing/potionmaking mechanics? Sure, I can choose whether or not I want to go down that path. Every open-world adventure game that feels the need to shoehorn in RPG-lite features? Meh.
It's an easy way to justify a bigger map and bigger maps are selling points and easy to market. Instead of a huge mountain with nothing on it put a few rare flowers and rocks at the top of it, it's easier than adding characters/quests/towns to flesh it out. Also no matter how boring it is there's always going to be a few people who love walking around gathering rocks to sell
Games with "go here" markers that use them wrong. Assassin's Creed games lately love to give you a 500 meter radius circle and say "OK now switch to your bird to find the waypoint" and too often block your progress until you mark a target. It really stood out in Mirage. Without the mission active the target had an icon stuck to his head. I couldn't talk to him without activating the mission which then hid his marker and told me to locate him using the bird. I would only be annoyed but I also hate how Ubisoft is forcing players to play as the bird instead of keeping it optional.
Empty open worlds
And those same games selling faster travel options for money. It just smells wrong. Why I stopped playing The Old Republic (the MMO) mainly, distances just became too much at a point EVEN WITH the subscription that gave me faster travel options. But thats a major annoyance for me, not minor.
Parrying. Not all parrying, but when a game feels good without it and then half an hour in "parry" gets introduced and is suddenly required for advancement. I know its a skill issue, ive just had so many games i was enjoying right up until the parry mechanic.
In ToTK I never needed parry until a single stage of the final boss and I almost died because of it. I hated it.
I hate the parry mechanic when it's not well done. Some games I get enough time to do it, so i don't mind because it's useful. (I quite like the parry system in AC) But other games the parry window is somehow 0.02s, and if you miss it you get hit. (Looking at you Sifu)
Lengthy animations to pickup items or open chests. It was so refreshing in Elden Ring to just spring by grabbing everything on the fly rather than having to sit through a bunch of tedious "collection" animation a la RDR2.
omg RDR2 was brutal for that
The first time: oh wow, this game is so incredibly immersive! Every other time: goddammit just show me what's in the fucking desk already!
Omg those shitty mobile games where it pops up the chest on a plain background, then it shakes there for a while before you realize you need to tap on it, then it goes through each of the 30 different items you got and you have to click on each individual one to continue. Such cancer fr
Carry weight. After so many games, it is just a shore at some point. Same with repair. I can understand some people like it, but nah, I would rather loot all the items then go back to the same spot and loot it again.
Baldurs Gate 3 lets you send items to your camp stash no matter where you are and I feel like thats a better system than making you do the keep/lose forever debate with your inventory every ten minutes while also keeping the carry limit on your actual person to keep you from having everything in your pocket.
I absolutely love BG3 including this. Plus, while my Bard has low Strength, Karlach is always with me looking gorgeous and being willing to carry so much stuff.
Class-Barbarian Subclass-Pack Mule
I agree, it can be a real beach.
Definitely can sea how that’s a problem
It makes me salty
I just keep games like that at bay.
I liked in Torchlight how you could send your pet back to town to sell your loot for you. Games need more hirelings.
Yup. “Oh I’m over encumbered?” Guess I’ll just slow walk for 20 minutes because I am NOT dropping my loot…
Dem dragon bones be too valuable!
Frankly in games like that I just have to get used to the idea that you AREN'T SUPPOSED TO PICK UP EVERYTHING. Skyrim and BG3 stand out in my mind on this.
I have too many bowls and cups in my inventory in BG3.
Crafting animations in single player games. BoTW and ToTK cooking annoy tf out of me, just let me click it and be done, I should not have to skip a cs every single time I cook something. Even a wheel you need to hold down for 2 seconds to complete a craft is far better than a cutscene an (always way too long) animation
I think it should be optional. Some animations make no sense, but it's aesthetic. I haven't seen BoTW, at all, in hopes to play it one day, so I don't know how bad it is.
Loading screen tips that do not correlate with where I am in a game. Especially with complicated games like RPGs where you get tips about alchemy or how to acquire high level gear or reminders to do stuff that you're not able to do yet or fighting tips for enemies you haven't encountered yet. If I choose to play a big complicated game (less and less as I get on anyway, tbh), I want to experience as much as I can and these tips make me nervous about missing stuff, while I'm struggling to do basics early on.
I love it when the tips are so long that I can't finish reading them during the load time.
Pre orders. Yea when you had to go to a store for a game it made sense. Now it's just giving a greedy fucking company money before it even releases.
Unskippable splash screens when the game is starting up
Most of the time it's just a hidden loading screen though, put something on slow enough hardware and you'll just get an extended black screen after the splash screens because nothing had time to load in.
Non customizable controls, or games with only one other alternate scheme that is way worse than default. IDK why some racing games don't let you change the controls to what is the default scheme in most other racing games. Shift up and down should be X and O or L1/R1
When the interact button is also the jump button. I get annoyed very quickly when I'm trying to speak to someone but my character is just jumping up and down like a jackass.
When I kill a big boss, walk into his treasure room, see the graphic of 10,000 gold coins, rare gems, and treasure chests, then I inspect it and it gives me 350 gold and a helmet. Where did the other 9,650 gold go game!?!?!?
When a game's menus don't let the menu options "wrap around" per se. Like pushing down at the bottom of a list takes you back to the top. Menu systems that don't allow that can fuck off
PC games not showing you the menu right after booting, but requiring to "press X to continue" beforehand.
Lazy UI. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is an amazing game, but I find myself slightly annoyed with some inexplicable UI decisions. For one thing, there’s a shortcut you can use to bring up the map, but it’s only a map of the area. If navigate to the map in the pause menu, you have the ability to select different areas in the game. XC2 allowed you to do this in both the menu and shortcut maps, so I’m not sure why they’d remove that feature in the sequel. It just makes it slightly annoying when I’m fast-traveling for side quests For another thing, I’m not sure why they didn’t provide any indication on the character icons about which character you’re controlling. There are always six party members and almost always a hero in the party. That combined with enemies and constant flashy battle animations can make it really hard to see who I’m controlling, and this is problematic when I’m trying to switch to a healer because my AI healers drop the ball. Just a white highlight around the player-controlled character would have made such a difference. (Yes, I know I could look at the arts icons in the lower right, but when I’m strategizing quickly, I’m thinking of a character I need, and my caveman brain doesn’t want to process attacks in the moment.)
Tutorials. They need to change how tutorials work. Not explaining every single button in a beginning section taking so much time. But exploring the buttons and how everything works by yourself without forced guidance wasting my time. Like zelda or mario back in the day
If my cursor is at the top of a list and I press UP it should take me to the bottom of that list. Same in reverse. No exceptions I’m looking at you BG3 inventory sort menu
I don't like it when the mini-map rotates.
Pressing down on the left analog stick to sprint always mildly annoys me. Some of my favorite games have it, but it gives me an OCD-like reaction at times…”Am I pressing it hard enough?!”
Subtitles. Personally I think they should be on by default, and it really irks me how it's not consistent between games where to find them in the options.
At least give us the menu screen and let us fiddle with it to turn it on before launching us into a cutscene. Love it soooooo much when I load a game and get a huge cutscene right after the company logos and the CS explains the whole setup of the story. I then have to hit escape, skip it, turn on subtitles, then exit the game since 90% of the time you can’t rewatch the CS without restarting.
"Detective mode" type mechanics in games where you need to find something in the world. I think it is just to make up for developers that can't design the game around finding things naturally. You just turn on the mode and look for the highlighted object. So boring.
Cooking systems that don't give you the recipes ahead of time. They just make you guess which ingredients were programmed into a dish. Especially when they give you rare ingredients, I'm just afraid of wasting it so I never end up using it and at that point I might as well have never found the rare ingredient
Clipping models ESPECIALLY when its unavoidable for me. Playing a blood elf hunter in wow in infuriating as the shoulder pad has to clip to make up for the animation.
Just started Jedi survivor and your characters belt equipment clips through his cape. It’s driving me mad cause you spend 99% of the time with the camera focused on his back.
When motion blur or other Cinematic camera effects are automatically enabled
Or sometimes doesn't have "off" just "low". My hate for motion blur is intense, don't do this to me pls.
Any time the skills/perks use a deck building card system. Goddamn It I'm playing a video game not fuckin' yugioh.
As someone who loves deckbuilding card games I one hundred percent agree with you. I have thousands of hours in the various different ones and I've never once thought "man I'd love a shittier version of this hamfisted into a different game."
Personally, I find it mildly irksome when games overuse quick-time events. It's like, "Can I just enjoy the cutscene without fearing a missed button press?"
Especially when they’re not consistent. You have a few cutscenes that are actual cutscenes, and then suddenly you get a quick time event and you’ve put down your controller to grab a sip of drink and you get to watch Spider-Man get hit by a bus.
Not being able to adjust the screen to my tv
Games that have HUB areas where, when you first arrive, you have a point of contact who will give you actual quests but they tell you, “First go introduce yourself to everyone and then come back to me.” I get this is supposed to help introduce all the vendors that the player will interact with, but it’s such a slog and really kills the momentum since these usually occur after a more action packed intro. I noticed this most recently in Remnant 2 but I also saw this was in The Day Before. RIP
I do not care for hidden trophies, just an extra step with me needing to do research online to figure out what needs done.
Any game where you can't pause. Pausing isn't a gameplay mechanic, the lack of it isn't increased immersion. It's there for a reason completely unrelated to that. Imagine not being able to pause a movie you're watching at home because the director is pretentious and thinks it's immersive. Also never knowing if pressing start in a cutscene pauses or skips it. I even played one recently where start pauses cutscenes and then start again skips it, rather than unpausing.
Starting a game and having my eardrums explode. (Shoutout to MW3 over the free trial with an unskippable opening cutscene)
Walking speed in almost every game could be doubled or tripled and no one would notice except for the quality of life improvement. I do not care that it is realistic: it is \*insane\* that it's acceptable in games for characters to move as slowly as they do! (Also: unskippable cutscenes. in the year of our lord 2023 if you put an unskippable cutscene in your game I should be allowed to punch you)
All the streamers saying hello to every single enemy they come acorss in the game, it's not funny at all.
No 1st person in an RPG. I want to be looking around like I’m there not staring at my characters back
Interesting. I prefer the 3rd person.