Features that sounded good in theory, but failed in practice

[raeior]

Black and White was full of this. The idea of teaching your creature how to behave was really cool but then you slapped your creature because it destroyed a village and it interpreted it as "I shouldn't eat grain" because in the meantime it decided to eat something and instead starts to horribly murder villagers because you obviously want it to eat villagers instead of grain.

That's actually how things work in psychology. If you are going to use positive punishment, you have to punish immediately after the action you are trying to decrease. Frustrating, perhaps, but at least it was psychologically sound.

The problem was, immediately in this case could be anything between 1 second and 1 minute or something. Sometimes the creature still had a villager in its hands that you didn't want eaten but slapping led the creature to believe you didn't want her to do something else entirely. It was a mixture of unclear interface and also some bugs that led the creature to misinterpret things I would guess.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Scaling Monsters.
In theory, it allows a content to be challenging and rewarding at any level or character development.
In practice it, at best, negates the point of leveling up, since you don't actually become more powerful relative to monsters.
at reasonable, snaps the difficulty curve over it's knee, as players exploit your power metric.
at worst, renders a game unwinnable due to sub optimal leveling choices resulting in an actual decrease in relative power during level up.

So much agree with this one. I prefer having to level up a bit more before entering a new area, to being able to beat the last boss at the minimum level you get from exp story quests.

Double agreed. Leveling up or getting different skill sets are already good ways for a player to customize their game. Like a challenge? Don't grind. Boss using you as a floor mop? Kill some more frowning scoops of ice cream until your bicep alone can beat the boss and his cousin.

Scaled gameplay is the failure that keeps popping up when it needs to die or at least the developer really needs to think how this would break the game. FFVIII and TES: Oblivion stick out the most in my mind. Want to beat the Sorceress without a sweat? Draw magic but never kill an enemy unless it's plot mandatory, only level Squall a little while keeping everyone else's and therefor your team's average level down, and upgrade his gunblade so you can hit even harder with his limit breaks. Hate fighting Daedroth and Dremora spiders when you just want to pick some Nirnroot? Never sleep or make your major skills things you almost never use. Any mudcrabs or scamps bothering you will feel your expert level destruction magic. Does that leveled loot or spell disappoint you? Join the Mages Guild and make your own! (Just hide any black soul gems from your fellow mages.)

 

[bbchain]

The open world bit in FFXIII, Gran Pulse. For 10 chapters you've had a tight story, following rails and being on a time limit, and then they decided to introduce a whole chapter that basically said, "screw the story, do what you want". Except the next chapter, we're back on the rails and the time limit up until the end of the game. I wouldn't have minded if Gran Pulse opened up as an after story bit, but as it is it stands out like a sore thumb.

I always saw the Gran Pulse chapter, at least in the Archylte Steppe and other branching areas, as more of something to intimidate you rather than open up the world for you. Besides the wolves, flans, and smaller enemies, most of the creatures there were too high leveled for me to even consider trying to kill, and i was decently leveled for the time. To me it was more something to go back to when you reach the end of orphan's cradle and need to grind on some beasties.

 

[Avaholic03]

Procedurally-generated worlds. It's either too open-ended so that you get vast areas of boring nothingness with no indication that you shouldn't bother exploring it so you end up wasting tons of time trying to find the good parts (i.e. Minecraft). Or else it goes the opposite direction with just a few random puzzle pieces arranged in nearly identical patterns (i.e. Diablo). I've yet to see a game that uses this feature in a compelling way where the random terrain is new AND interesting.

 

[Atomic Spy Crab]

I suppose this will be rather contentious but the PVP in Dark Souls. It's a cool idea in theory, but in practice it's just a bunch of hackers and lag stabs.

Yeah... and those who don't hack are usually giant dads and fast havels. In dark souls 2 instead those it's havel sorcerors that use sunlight spears.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I feel the topic's title is pretty self-explanatory: What features in games sounded good in theory, but failed in execution?

"We are using cutscenes to tell our story, since we're unimaginative and unable to integrate storytelling with gameplay. But do players want to sit there passively and watch a movie unfold?"
"I know, we could make them interactive!"
"How can you make a cutscene interactive? That's crazy talk!"
"We force the player to push a button in the time where we've taken all control away from them. It will ensure they're paying attention as well as give the appearance that they're still involved somehow, even though they aren't."
"That's brilliant! But what happens if they don't push it?"
"Well...we could reload and make them watch the whole thing again, unable to skip it, until they push the button. We limit the time too so it feels like a challenge of timing."
"What a great idea!? We can tell our story, the player feels like they're driving it and we don't have to do anything complicated like use gameplay which the player might miss or do differently than how we want them to. We should use it everywhere. What will we call it?"
"How about "Interactive Story Reaction?"
"Nope. That's stupid."
"Player Reactionary Event"
"Hmmm...no. But I like event. It sounds...important."
"How about...Real-Time Event? Interactive Event? Player Skill Event?"
"No, no and no. It needs to give the completely false impression that player-skill and timing are involved without stating it outright."
"What about Quick-Time Event? The Quick will tell the players they're awesome for having uber reactions you see, that their skill in pushing a button when we tell them to is the driving force behind the narrative, since the only way we are able to deliver it is in passive, movie form"
"Yes, that's it. Fantastic. We'll have these...Quick-Time Events everywhere. Then we can just make a movie in a game engine and not have to create actual gameplay, levels, mechanics or anything remotely dynamic. Players just push a button and we give them more movie. If they don't push it, we start again until they do it our way. Well done Bob."
"Thanks Jim. Say Jim, I've been thinking...what about if we don't use cutscenes so much? I mean, less passive movie and we instead unfold the story during the game, for the player to find by themselves, creating immersion and a truly player-driven narrative?"
*Jim and Bob look at each other for a moment, and burst out laughing*