Game development sins

[miawallace]

What are the most aggravating flaws in games? Not the annoying stuff, but the things which will actually ruin a game, or at least your enjoyment of it?

For me, the worst thing is problem-solving games in which the solutions don't make any sense. When I've spent three days driving myself mental trying to solve a problem and then it turns out the solution has no relation to anything I've been told or shown, or to what would work in real life, I wonder why I'm bothering. Riven was a bit like this in parts. I'm fine with these games being insanely difficult, but I expect them to make sense. There's no point if it all comes down to just trying absolutely everything until you stumble on the answer.

The other one is games with fixed save points in which every time a boss kills you, you have to run through half the level, fight a whole lot of low level things and so forth before you can get killed by him again. Or it plays the same fucking cut scene you saw the first time.

Bad camera angles are another killer, but Yahtzee's spent enough time on that.

Oh, and screwed difficulty curves. Either 'assume you know all the huge number of features before you've even started', 'really really easy so that you don't have to learn how to play your character properly or get any upgrades, then suddenly turn up the difficulty so that you really wish you'd done all that stuff when you didn't need it', or 'properly challenging for the first two thirds or so, then stupidly easy'.

 

[The_Deleted]

Guns that seem to float in hands rahter than look as if they are being held.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Console shooters without complete splitscreen support. "Remind me again- why do I own a console?"

 

[Downside]

being unable to skip cut scenes so when you die you have to watch the same one over and over again!

also boss levels where the only way to kill the boss is by some stupid illogical means or is insanely difficult and obscure, i'm looking at you Kayne and Lynch truck boss.

 

[51gunner]

- Puzzles solved by "Moon Logic" as Yahtzee put it.

- Ridiculous amounts of cutscene, or making these cutscenes unskippable. I could never get into the MGS series for this reason: if it's going to end with a game that's 80% movie-watching, fuck that shit. I play a game to... PLAY!

- Enemies in RPG's that permanently drain attributes or even worse, levels. I'm looking at you, Morrowind. Nothing worse than ending up at the bottom of a dungeon, then having some dick knock your strength down to zero and make it impossible to move. Oblivion cut this down some, but it's still a dick move.

 

[titus_barca]

After watching my brother play The Force Unleashed, I'd say that game has its fair share of design flaws.
Ones I immediately noticed was how when the action gets thick, the character is constantly rolling around on the ground (after being hit by heat seeking missiles, or some power punch some baddies do to the ground.). He spent more time on the ground than actually fighting in one scene.
And in another part he had to use his force powers to move an incredibly large object while it was shooting at him and while tie fighters were blasting him. The directions it gave to properly smash the thing jedi style were actually wrong! According to the on-screen directions, he was actually doing it wrong, as the red flashing joysticks indicated.
In general, I hate it when a game contains enemies whose attacks cannot be avoided; it just feels cheap.

 

[Littaly]

Overhyping, though guess that is not really a part of the developing

RPGs where you hit a wall and the only way to advance is mindless grind to level up

As someone mentioned, floating guns, although every game seems to do this, first person perspective should mean seeing through the eyes of the character. When I look down I see my torso, legs, arms and feet, if I look down in a lot of FPS I pretty much just see the ground. Haven't played many modern FPS so it's possible this is a thing of the past.

Also probably not considered part of the development, but having a franchise that runs along well for one console and then suddenly comes out with a game for another completely different console, even worse if the game is important to the story.

 

[Nazulu]

Any game that makes you have to run for a long time over hills and mountains with no action, games that I have to leave my computer to occupy myself while waiting for something, games that I can beat by just leaving something heavy on my left mouse button and games that expect me too read more than play.

Any game that has any of these flaws just become tedious to me and thats because it is not a game but a waste of time!

 

[Gitsnik]

- Enemies in RPG's that permanently drain attributes or even worse, levels. I'm looking at you, Morrowind. Nothing worse than ending up at the bottom of a dungeon, then having some dick knock your strength down to zero and make it impossible to move. Oblivion cut this down some, but it's still a dick move.

Personally I'd argue this, but I play nethack a lot so I consider getting that far and then death just a natural aspect of a game and a chance for me to do better.

My own list of things I don't like:

- Having to re-learn controls moving across games in the same series, or at least by the same developer (God of War to God of War II on the playstation - I picked it up quickly but come on guys!)
- Dealing with huge fuckoff boss fights only to have to redo the same boss fight again only this time it's not a boss (DMC3 anybody).

 

[Dommyboy]

Releasing a game before actually testing it. Example: all STALKER games, Fallout 1 & 2.

 

[Sir_Substance]

games that require micromanagement of resources. i dont mind scaricty of ammo in an FPS, nore scarcity of resources in an RTS.

but, i never got into age of empires, because handling 4 resources at once was to fucking fiddly.

i never got into deus ex 1 because, although i could clearly see a shining golden path to gaming glory just over there ->, there was a bunch of enemies between me and there, and i had 4 units each of 50 different kinds of ammo, and i could never kill anyone because i had to keep switching weapons when the piddling amount of ammo id picked up for each gun ran out.

so that's it for me. if you put too much crap in for me to collect in order to proceed, i wont bother collecting it, ill just hit the quit button.

 

[MarcusStrout]

Casual Games without at least ONE obscure, to-far-down-the-road-for-non-gamers-to-reach reward. Honestly, I think once you have max hobby enthusiasm and all career rewards and all the money and stuff in the Sims 2, you should be able to kill people by clicking on them.

But, that might just be me.

 

[rossatdi]

Challenges that can only be defeated through repetition and memory of the right steps. The best/worst example of this is in DMC4 when there is a series of jump platforms that fire Nero or Dante (I can't remember which) up into the screen, the next platform obviously being hidden until your at the apex of the jump (and therefore unable to readjust).

Games with no challenge, the worst offender in recent years being *cough* Bioshock. Lesson #1 to game developers: if you've designed the game well all of the bad guys should not be easily killed by the shotgun and a few grenades through the art of sidestepping.

Oh, yeah, and in shooters enemies that don't react to being shot and shoot you anyway. Particularly bad when they jump out of nowhere and unload on you before you can do anything about it. I remember finding that frustrating in Doom 3, and again in Bioshock.

 

[rossatdi]

i never got into deus ex 1 because, although i could clearly see a shining golden path to gaming glory just over there ->, there was a bunch of enemies between me and there, and i had 4 units each of 50 different kinds of ammo, and i could never kill anyone because i had to keep switching weapons when the piddling amount of ammo id picked up for each gun ran out.

That's not the game I remember. You don't get handed loads of ammo but that should encourage you to search for it and use it wisely. Plus it was more about taking out groups of two or three men without wasting shots than running into a room full of people and blasting wildly at them.

 

[Sir_Substance]

i never got into deus ex 1 because, although i could clearly see a shining golden path to gaming glory just over there ->, there was a bunch of enemies between me and there, and i had 4 units each of 50 different kinds of ammo, and i could never kill anyone because i had to keep switching weapons when the piddling amount of ammo id picked up for each gun ran out.

That's not the game I remember. You don't get handed loads of ammo but that should encourage you to search for it and use it wisely. Plus it was more about taking out groups of two or three men without wasting shots than running into a room full of people and blasting wildly at them.

my example for you is this: by the time i got to hells kitchen, i had like 2 clips of pistol ammo, some crossbow bolts, shotgun shells, AR ammo, sniper ammo. never more then 20 shots on each.

now, in any other game, that would be a lot of ammo. but due to deus ex's RPG system (which was epic, this is a dig at the gun system, not the skill system)i could only use the pistol and crossbow effectively at that point. the other weapons were all rifles, and i was only trained in those, not advanced.

the end result is that its almost impossible to use ammo wisely, at least at the start of the game, because your skills dont let you. you can take a bead on someones head with a pistol on trained, and wait till they are 2m away and the crosshair is 100% focused, and still miss.

of course, once you miss you have to blast like a madman because the person you missed is about to cap yo ass. good intentions, but badly thought out plan.

 

[Nathan A.]

One thing that kind of annoys me is that because half life 2 has the cool physics engine, the dev's seem to feel that they HAVE to use physics puzzles every time, which makes it kind of obvious and easy to solve the puzzles (Hmm here is a pulley system, basic physics suggest I should put heavy stuff on this end and make me go up... yay).

Maybe the fact that the puzzles are mostly intuitive is a good thing, because it saves you from being frustrated and not finishing the game but... at the same time it makes them feel a lot less... puzzling.

 

[Unknower]

- Enemies in RPG's that permanently drain attributes or even worse, levels. I'm looking at you, Morrowind. Nothing worse than ending up at the bottom of a dungeon, then having some dick knock your strength down to zero and make it impossible to move. Oblivion cut this down some, but it's still a dick move.

That was annoying. I put God-mode on when that happened.

Protip: if it was really annoying in your previous game, it will be annoying in your new game too!

 

[neoman10]

games with no cheats (mercenaries 2)

 

[Limos]

- Enemies in RPG's that permanently drain attributes or even worse, levels. I'm looking at you, Morrowind. Nothing worse than ending up at the bottom of a dungeon, then having some dick knock your strength down to zero and make it impossible to move. Oblivion cut this down some, but it's still a dick move.

That was annoying. I put God-mode on when that happened.

Protip: if it was really annoying in your previous game, it will be annoying in your new game too!

It didn't drain them permanently, just until you got to a shrine or took a potion to restore attribute. That's why you should always have an Almsivi intervention on hand.