I realise, having read the thread that several things seem to recur, particularly the hatred for button-matching minigames, so I'll leave those off the list. Here's my 2 pennorth:
1: Chattybitch bad guys who give minute-long monologues about how they can destroy you, blah blah blah and you have to stand there passively whilst the villain du jour spouts off... It's bad enough in RPG games, where this stuff is an annoying but accepted part of the genre, but in an FPS/3PS game? Considering the rate of fire of most automatic weapons is upwards of 600 rounds a minute, even a 10 second speech should provide enough time for the protagonist to empty 2 clips (including the reload time) from an SMG, which in an even half-realistic game would turn the opposition into pate.
2: Shitty clipping and hit detection. Whilst game designers battled to bring out processor-raping, beautiful graphics, they forgot about making the outlines for these graphics interact in a realistic way. This is such a major source of problems that I have broken it into the following symptoms...
a) Despite excellent cover I get shot full of more holes than a Swiss cheese because the wall/block of granite/California redwood is pixel-thin and doesn't interact properly with my character or bullets.
b) An attack or other damaging effect hits my character's improbable anime hair or little toe and promptly kills him.
c) Surfaces start and end before they should, resulting in misjudged faceplants into chasms/pools of acid/lava etc.
d) the exact opposite of b): only head and torso hits on an enemy even affect them. Specifically I remember this being a problem in Vietcong, where combat was deadly by FPS standards. I would be crawling through a tunnel network, encounter a VC soldier, and empty a revolver into his upper legs, although each bullet left a bloody red mark, he would turn around, seemingly unaffected and pop me twice with an identical gun, killing me on the spot.
e) Fat bastard enemies can become bullet-proof by hiding behind thin railings/telephone poles/mesh fences etc.
3) No visible legs on FPS character, making jumping a real ****.
4) Otherwise superhuman military characters who obviously skipped the assault-course sections of their basic training, as they never seem to have learnt to climb a fucking thing, nor to hang on to ledges to preserve their worthless hides.
5) Invisible level walls. Not too bothered by them on most games, as they're more symptomatic of lazy design than a real problem, but in RPGs with an exploration element (most of them) they're incredibly disruptive to the sense of immersion and in tactical games like Full Spectrum Warrior where flanking an enemy in an urban environment or seeking cover behind something sturdy are vitally important parts of the game, the inability to do so is a pain in the arse and a liability which often results in slow-mo ragdoll sequences as your beloved dumb grunts take sniper shots from the impervious insurgents, whose sandbags must be filled with admantium powder because they never degrade, even after a pounding with suppression fire and an M203 grenade launcher.
6) Another bugbear from FSW: Suppression fire from one fireteam whilst another fireteam moves (often vital for the mission) is as much risk to your own troops as the enemy. I know that the protagonists are American soldiers, the undisputed kings of friendly fire incidents, but it's a little galling that the soldiers suppressing don't avoid shooting their squadmates. Neither, for that matter do the dumbasses who are moving stay low to avoid the enormous expenditure of ammunition downrange (again, what kind of 'tard basic training do these muppets receive? I'm sure every armed forces in the world employs the "low crawl under live fire" drill) often walking straight through a wall of flying lead which, predictably, shears the fireteam in half. Don't even get me started on the fuckwits' inability to climb stairs- presumably the game feels smugly superior in allowing NPCs to shoot you from improbable angles which cannot possibly be anticipated and jealously guards this annoying ability for itself.
7) Party/squad/unit limits in RPG/RTS games. I know these are just to save the processor and RAM requirements, and they can sometimes be handy- after all, juggling the equipment of an enormous party in a D&D based RPG would turn into an excercise in double-entry book-keeping around the 10th party member, and the exponential power growth of levelling up in D&D games would mean that such a group quickly became powerful enough to destabilise small countries. But WTF is wrong with NWN? 2 people do not a party make. Instead, they turn the game into a set of tough decisions about multi-classing, as your (single class) companion can only ever fulfil one of the 4 basic D&D roles (possibly 2 if they're a priest with decent combat ability)
8) Binding a control which should not be used mid-combat to whatever button is defined by pushing the analogue stick. Sorry, perhaps I'm a cack handed chump with an overly strong reflex, but the analogue stick is supposed to make you move (or turn) to a variable amount, based on how hard you push it. So when I press it, that's what I expect to happen. Not a change in camera type (GTA:SA) or drawing/sheathing a gun (Oni). Most of the deaths that occurred early on in those games were due to accidentally switching to a cinematic mode in which I could not see my character or the car he was driving because of a huge fucking palm tree (GTA:SA) or getting into one of the much-vaunted melee fights in Oni, trying to turn and pulling a gun, which enemy #1 kicked out of my hands, only for enemy #2 to pick me up and shoot me with it.
1: Chattybitch bad guys who give minute-long monologues about how they can destroy you, blah blah blah and you have to stand there passively whilst the villain du jour spouts off... It's bad enough in RPG games, where this stuff is an annoying but accepted part of the genre, but in an FPS/3PS game? Considering the rate of fire of most automatic weapons is upwards of 600 rounds a minute, even a 10 second speech should provide enough time for the protagonist to empty 2 clips (including the reload time) from an SMG, which in an even half-realistic game would turn the opposition into pate.
2: Shitty clipping and hit detection. Whilst game designers battled to bring out processor-raping, beautiful graphics, they forgot about making the outlines for these graphics interact in a realistic way. This is such a major source of problems that I have broken it into the following symptoms...
a) Despite excellent cover I get shot full of more holes than a Swiss cheese because the wall/block of granite/California redwood is pixel-thin and doesn't interact properly with my character or bullets.
b) An attack or other damaging effect hits my character's improbable anime hair or little toe and promptly kills him.
c) Surfaces start and end before they should, resulting in misjudged faceplants into chasms/pools of acid/lava etc.
d) the exact opposite of b): only head and torso hits on an enemy even affect them. Specifically I remember this being a problem in Vietcong, where combat was deadly by FPS standards. I would be crawling through a tunnel network, encounter a VC soldier, and empty a revolver into his upper legs, although each bullet left a bloody red mark, he would turn around, seemingly unaffected and pop me twice with an identical gun, killing me on the spot.
e) Fat bastard enemies can become bullet-proof by hiding behind thin railings/telephone poles/mesh fences etc.
3) No visible legs on FPS character, making jumping a real ****.
4) Otherwise superhuman military characters who obviously skipped the assault-course sections of their basic training, as they never seem to have learnt to climb a fucking thing, nor to hang on to ledges to preserve their worthless hides.
5) Invisible level walls. Not too bothered by them on most games, as they're more symptomatic of lazy design than a real problem, but in RPGs with an exploration element (most of them) they're incredibly disruptive to the sense of immersion and in tactical games like Full Spectrum Warrior where flanking an enemy in an urban environment or seeking cover behind something sturdy are vitally important parts of the game, the inability to do so is a pain in the arse and a liability which often results in slow-mo ragdoll sequences as your beloved dumb grunts take sniper shots from the impervious insurgents, whose sandbags must be filled with admantium powder because they never degrade, even after a pounding with suppression fire and an M203 grenade launcher.
6) Another bugbear from FSW: Suppression fire from one fireteam whilst another fireteam moves (often vital for the mission) is as much risk to your own troops as the enemy. I know that the protagonists are American soldiers, the undisputed kings of friendly fire incidents, but it's a little galling that the soldiers suppressing don't avoid shooting their squadmates. Neither, for that matter do the dumbasses who are moving stay low to avoid the enormous expenditure of ammunition downrange (again, what kind of 'tard basic training do these muppets receive? I'm sure every armed forces in the world employs the "low crawl under live fire" drill) often walking straight through a wall of flying lead which, predictably, shears the fireteam in half. Don't even get me started on the fuckwits' inability to climb stairs- presumably the game feels smugly superior in allowing NPCs to shoot you from improbable angles which cannot possibly be anticipated and jealously guards this annoying ability for itself.
7) Party/squad/unit limits in RPG/RTS games. I know these are just to save the processor and RAM requirements, and they can sometimes be handy- after all, juggling the equipment of an enormous party in a D&D based RPG would turn into an excercise in double-entry book-keeping around the 10th party member, and the exponential power growth of levelling up in D&D games would mean that such a group quickly became powerful enough to destabilise small countries. But WTF is wrong with NWN? 2 people do not a party make. Instead, they turn the game into a set of tough decisions about multi-classing, as your (single class) companion can only ever fulfil one of the 4 basic D&D roles (possibly 2 if they're a priest with decent combat ability)
8) Binding a control which should not be used mid-combat to whatever button is defined by pushing the analogue stick. Sorry, perhaps I'm a cack handed chump with an overly strong reflex, but the analogue stick is supposed to make you move (or turn) to a variable amount, based on how hard you push it. So when I press it, that's what I expect to happen. Not a change in camera type (GTA:SA) or drawing/sheathing a gun (Oni). Most of the deaths that occurred early on in those games were due to accidentally switching to a cinematic mode in which I could not see my character or the car he was driving because of a huge fucking palm tree (GTA:SA) or getting into one of the much-vaunted melee fights in Oni, trying to turn and pulling a gun, which enemy #1 kicked out of my hands, only for enemy #2 to pick me up and shoot me with it.