Gaming Cardinal Sins

[Yellowbeard]

Thou shalt ABSOLUTELY NOT use set-length loading screens regardless of actual loading time, making me wait 30 seconds to reload a fight when my machine actually loads it in 2. (Mass-Effect 2)

Thou shalt not carelessly program mouse control with stupid amounts of acceleration. (Bioshock, Dead Space)

Thou shalt not issue patches that break the community-made mods that made your game playable in the first place. (Dark Souls PC)

Thou shalt not require me to log in to play single player.

Thou shalt not set your V-sync at 60 FPS, forcing me to use multiple 3rd party programs to eliminate mouse lag (Everyone except Crysis and Metro 2033)

 

[Hochmeister]

Thou shalt not erect invisible walls within an open world
[glares at Fallout New Vegas]

Thou shalt not use abstract, near identical images to represent units
[glares at Total War Rome 2]

Thou shalt not make thy interface confusing and non-ergonomic
[glares at Paradox and Creative Assembly]

Thou shalt not require actions on three separate menu screens to perform a simple, routine action such as moving ships
[glares and spits at Sword of the Stars 2]

 

[Xaidor]

Thou shalt not lock off the fun parts/upgrades until very late in the STORY mode.
( Im looking at you Ubisoft. Bringing so much open-world and not allowing me to use the shiny rope-dart until almost at the end of your story? Bah.)
Not only Ac4 and other AC"s do this, Far Cry 3 did this as well with its locked upgrade trees, causing me to have about 10 skillpoints I couldn't spend until I did a meaningless mission with it's less-meaningless cutscene.

Thou shalt use the colours grey and brown to define the entire look of the game.
I guess this is quite obvious. Yet it happens from time to time.

 

[GalanDun]

Thou shalt not glitch when said game feels like it
*looks at Sonic 06*

Never really ran into any glitches in the game myself.

 

[Ubersupersloth]

Hmmm. How about, thou shalt not artificially pad games in order to market the game as "X amount of gameplay"

(Games that have done it: Any game in which the enemies have too much health so there is no strategy involved, just monotony, arguably the No More Heroes series [depending on whether you believe that paying for fights was padding in the first and that goddamned car park before Margaret Moonlight was], all open world games that don't have enough stuff in the overworld to justify it [So Skyrim is safe from this cardinal sin])

 

[FPLOON]

Thou shalt not glitch when said game feels like it
*looks at Sonic 06*

Never really ran into any glitches in the game myself.

Huh... Either I've played that game long enough to notice them at "random"... or you had a better overall experience with Sonic 06 than I did...

 

[Colin Bagley]

Thou Shalt not use "Olde Englishe" all the fucking time, in prolonged sections, making everything hard to understand. Or at least make it an option. Looking at you Bladestorm: 100 Years War.

Also, while I'm at it; Numbers in games used for things other than to identify sequel order.
That Eve shooter for PS3; Dust... 514. WTF is that number in refference to? There aren't even that many CoDs, Ass-Credd, and FFs combined to have produced that many games by now.

Related note- Unless it's the sequel number; I forget it. So don't make it an important part of the title, which must be said aloud to the Cinema girl. "I'd like to see... Er. Slave-thingy. A certain amount of years- a slave."

 

[Wasted]

Never make a boss rush mandatory in a story focused game.

Okami is guilty of having a terribly out of place boss rush final level which grinds the ending to a complete halt. The boss fights in Okami are fun and memorable. However, in the story you already fight Orochi twice (with no variation or spike in difficulty) and he is arguably the least polished and most drawn out boss fight in the game (you essentially do the same thing 8 times until he dies). In the final stretch you have you fight him a third time, by then I was sick of him. It also sucks because what I consider the best boss fight in the game, the twin demons, is not part of the boss rush. It would have been great to fight the twins in their full strength since during the story battle you have help from an NPC partner that literally kills them single handedly.

These battles should have been optional since I did not mind fighting the spider queen 2 more times (although reskinned) because it was optional.

 

[theevilgenius60]

"Verily, in thy parkour styled open world game, thou shall make "attempt to climb wall" a different button or action than "sprint"- Assassins Creed games
Second(third? whatever) the motion for no stick waggling QTE's and less QTE's in general.
"Verily, thy guards cannot be faster, stronger, smarter AND more agile than my character(not counting bosses, regular foot soldiers, specifically Janissaries in AC:R). I need at least one foot to stand on."

 

[sagitel]

Thou shalt not make thy NPC slower than me running and faster than me walking.
this is really annoying specially when it comes to places you have to escort them or walk beside them. you have constantly run and walk to maintain your distance

thou shalt not have suicidal NPCs in escort mission.
remember all those games where you have to escore that one fuck which always runs in front and get himself/herself killed by each and every enviromental hazard there is? yeah fuck them

thou shalt not have any escort missions

 

[njrk97]

Thou shall not have Sprint binded to a repeated press of a button instead of simply have you hold down the button.

Its rare but i pain in the arse and almost makes me go out and buy a controller with a turbo feature just to get around it.

 

[Riotguards]

thou shalt not compensate lack of difficulty with more monsters

seriously dark souls 2 has horrible placement of mobs so that it can compensate the lack of lighting

 

[Varrdy]

Don't use button combinations for save file deletion. Don't make everyone play a game of Twister with our fingers because a small minority of idiots accidentally delete their save file.

Wow - this is actually a thing?

Sheesh...

 

[Varrdy]

Thou shalt not tack on crappy, unsatisfying and nonsensical endings to your games!
- Mass Effect 3 (pre-Extended cut) and Ghostbusters: The Video Game, to name but two.

Thou shalt not neglect the single-player campaign in favour of multiplayer!
- About every game with a multiplayer campaign released in the past 3 (or more!) years.

Thou shalt not release DLC while problems still exist in the base game!
- GTA V with its vanishing cars problem, to name but one that's doing my head in!

Thou shalt not implement ANY rubber-banding in driving games, ever! If you suck, tough! If you crash, tough!
- Paging Driver: San-Francisco!

 

[-Dragmire-]

Thou shall make the dev/publisher/engine/other BS intro sections skippable at least after the first view.

 

[Reaper195]

Thou shall not have a silent protagonist and have them say nothing, but record moans and grunts when getting injured or making movements (I.E. Heavy breathing while running, jumping over something, etc). Tell your writers to be less lazy and make the protagonist a real character.

 

[Squilookle]

Everyone loves to demand unskippable cutscenes, but there is something more important: PAUSABLE cutscenes.

Conker's Bad Fur Day had the right idea. You could pause and then resume a cutscene at any time. You could also press a specific button to skip the cutscene, but ONLY after you've viewed it at least once. Sounds like a fair system to me.

 

[babinro]

Thou shalt not make the journey to and fro a quest-giver longer than thine quest.

This traveling 'busy work' seems to make up well over 50% of of the gameplay in just about any MMO on the market. It's remained in a lot of RPG's as well which simply kills the games pacing. This is one area where removing realism is a GREAT thing.

If it's important to have a conversation with the quest giver than simply let us cut to that scene instantly like you would in a movie. It may feel somewhat jarring at first but we'll get it. You traveled back at some point and spoke with said quest giver and then returned back to the point where you were. No need to re-battle dozens of monsters or simply walk through environments/towns for 10 minutes of gameplay.

This is even frustrating in a game like Skyrim with it's fast travel system. Going back to a town and then re-locating the quest giver is much easier with fast travel but it's still immensely time consuming given the sheer number of quests and the lack of new things to do with each return to town.

 

[FFMaster]

This one kinda requires a sub edict, but goes mostly as follows

"Thou shalt not infinitely respawn enemies to throw at the player, unless there is a clearly defined way to stop the respawn"

Said defined way is NOT a hidden move here trigger, but something to destroy or disable etc. Also "the thing to destroy" cannot be the boss that you are distracting me from with the respawning enemies. I should be able to shut down the enemies then focus on the boss.

Games that do this really annoy me as its a cheap way to provide "difficulty". Hell the destiny "Alpha" was guilty of this and in my eyes it shows bad boss design if you need to respawn enemies to provide difficulty.

Another really bad example, final level of Advance Wars: Dark Conflict (Or days of ruin for you americans) with every other turn missiles, lasers... AND infinitely respawning enemies (and a CO that could heal them).

Don't use button combinations for save file deletion. Don't make everyone play a game of Twister with our fingers because a small minority of idiots accidentally delete their save file.

Wow - this is actually a thing?

Sheesh...

Yep, Advance wars again is good for this, as is Kid Icarus.

Although personally i like it as long as its clear what to press, basically impossible for someone else to clear it "by accident"

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Thou shalt name spells and items in a way that makes it easy to remember what each one does, and have appropriate symbols. Trying to remember what the fuck 'quen' means in the middle of combat is not fun, Witcher 2.

Thou shalt pace the tutorial appropriately, especially if the control scheme is not standard for the genre. Again... Witcher 2.

Thou shalt have a GUI and inventory system that makes sense.

Thou shalt not make the NPCs or the PC repeat the same 2 or 3 quips over and over again.

Thou shalt not have unskippable cutscenes.

Thou shalt not make me use fucking Uplay.

Thou shalt not blatantly rip off heroes from existing MOBAs.

Thou shalt either let the player aim, or make sure your auto-aim feature actually works properly. I don't want to be stuck pointlessly shooting walls because I can only target the enemy's chest, when their head is blatantly sticking out of cover.

etc.

Oh yeah, though shalt not have keybinds that make the game completely unplayable anywhere where they might be pressed by accident. For example, there's a keybind in WoW that limits you to walk speed, rather than the usual jog. Accidentally press it in any fight that requires much movement and you're fucked unless you can find it again.