Gaming pet peeves.

[Casual Shinji]

Time to get shallow about gaming (as if we could stop ourselves) and complain about those little things. The things that don't by any means ruin our immersion of the game, but that just slightly annoy us as they buzz by like a mosquito. This could be anything, from gear changing when the game goes into a cutscene, to clothing clipping through body parts.

So without further ado...

Make it DARK!
Two of my most recent favourite games suffer from this (The Last of Us and The Witcher 3) and it's when I get presented with nighttime sections that just aren't dark enough. Because I can only assume the developer doesn't want to obstruct the player's vision, we get areas where it's apparently night that bath in ambient lighting. Now, I can understand that the player needs to see where they're going, but when they have a source of illumination for the player character to use it just feels like a missed oppertunity.

Even stranger is that both these examples have areas where it is sufficiently dark. This always gets me slightly miffed, to the point where I feel inclined to mess around with my screen settings just to get it nice and dark. One game that actually handled this very well was Dragon's Dogma.

'I can fit through there.'
There's plenty of barred and walled off areas in games, yet few that feel like they could actually keep anyone in- or outside. A lot of times I'm like 'I can totally climb over/squeeze through that with a bit of effort.' Resident Evil 4 is loaded with this kind of level design. Because the game doesn't feel the need to put a 'climb' or 'piggyback' prompt in that particular section I now need to fight a horde of pitchfork and chainsaw wielding crazies in order to get a key to unlock some rickety door. (Not that I don't obviously enjoy this more than circumvention.)

Now again, I can fully understand the purpose behind walling the player off with assets that have a bit more variety to them then just having it be a bunch of brickwalls, but still, I can't help but gaze at those wooden pillars and think 'if only the game would let me...'

Jumbo skullz.
Any game that shows skulls lying around will instantly have my brain checking whether those craniums are equally sized to that of the protagonist. And a lot of times they're not. In Batman: Arkham Asylum for example you have skulls in Killer Croc's holding cell that compared to Batman's are the size of a watermelon.

So how's about you? What is your little thing?

 

[renegade7]

When games are hard, but have long loading screens. I hate this so much, because the result is that you'll be dying a lot but spending more time watching the loading screen than playing the game. Some parts of Skyrim were extremely guilty of this.

Screwy perspective can become irksome. For me, it was enough to make me stop playing Bioshock (is your character literally 3 feet tall?) but it also sometimes happened (though to a much lesser extent) in Metroid Prime. Basically, this is when the game doesn't give you many graphical cues to judge exactly how large or how far away something is, especially in a first-person perspective game, ultimately causing difficulty in orienting yourself in the game's world. This can due to things like bad shading, bad scaling and projection, and positioning the camera in the player character's chest rather than their head. Now, I studied just as much vector calculus and linear algebra as any graphical programmer so I know of the careful nuances that are involved in projecting a three-dimensional scene down to a 2-dimensional display, but that doesn't mean that doing it convincingly is impossible or even especially hard by any stretch, and that still doesn't preclude the careful use of visual cues like shading.

That's all I can think of.

 

[Batou667]

You regain consciousness. Fight!
Having the protagonist lose/regain consciousness as a way of changing scene without having to go through the tedious nitty-gritty of story-telling and world-building is just friggin' lazy.

Oops, you dropped all your equipment.
Often found in conjunction with the above. Ha, ha! All that sweet equipment you collected and all that ammo you painstakingly conserved has just been vacuumed out of your pockets. Back to the basic pea shooter. Or if the designers are feeling especially sadistic, maybe you're unarmed and suddenly in a forced stealth section.

Got to hold on to this special equipment for the boss! Wait, the game's over?
Maybe even more perverse is when a game hypes up the rareness and/or utility of an inventory item but never raises the stakes sufficiently to convince you to use it. Related: "I just know this boss is going to have one more final form! Oh, he's dead for reals?"

When in-game mechanics and canon stop working in cutscenes
Often a character is reduced to a pathetic shadow of their usual selves for the sake of driving the story - ingame you can usually take half a clip of assault rifle fire to the torso and regain health by resting momentarily behind a wall, but suddenly a single 9mm round is deadly. And that health kit/revive potion that usually lets you reroll death? Guess what, they suddenly stopped existing.

Look at this vast, sprawling expanse, just begging to be explored! No, don't actually try exploring, just look.
It's a huge kick to the teeth (not to mention a blow to immersion) when you realise that the level is just a series of pretty corridors. This was one of my biggest sore points with Serious Sam 2, especially since the original had exceeded expectations with its agoraphobia-inducing mix of FPS and sandbox.

 

[Dalek Caan]

When a game starts off at the end or middle of the game and then some thing happens, your attacked or knocked out, and then it starts at the beginning. Thanks to that I now know I have a invincibility shield for the rest of the game. No twist or surprises where it turns out I might die half way through and have to change characters. It's also the same for any NPC's I see, I know any danger they will be in until that point means nothing.

 

[MeatMachine]

Ludonarrative dissonance
When cutscenes and gameplay totally contradict each other in terms of how the world works. Like in Borderlands, you play as Roland, a buff, tanky Soldier who's been shot over a hundred thousand times before the end of the game - but in Borderlands 2, when he is an NPC, he takes a single handgun shot to the back, and falls over dead. I know that's been said before in this thread, but that's the most stand-out example I had.

Changing the level locations with a lazy transition
Again, you probably play as a super badass 1-man army who has thoughtlessly grinded through hordes of enemies, but when a gate drops behind you, a horde of enemies rushes in, and the big bad guy says, "haha, you fell into my trap, now surrender!" and your guy actually does... fuck off. Same can be said for being knocked unconscious.

When a game sacrifices enjoyable, fun "gamey" things to adopt "realistic" things
I'm really biting my tongue and trying to give what I've seen of the new DOOM game the benefit of the doubt, but it looks like it's trying to balance itself between ludicris game nonsense and realistic limitations. You can run faster than in DOOM 3, but not even close to as fast as in the classic DOOMs. The colorful asthetic seems to have been dropped in favor of simply looking as cinematic and photorealistic as possible. Again, I haven't actually played it yet, and it probably won't be close to being the worst offender about this, but I'm gonna cry if it plays too far into it.

Low inventory limits in games all about harvesting the planet for everything
Thankfully, most RPGs have gotten fairly lenient about letting your character haul around 300lbs of equipment and drawing the line when you have over a dozen weapons and STILL feel compelled to steal every last one of Dr. Pinkerman's 40 fusion batteries. Still, occasionally there are games where you find your inventory full when your mission is halfway over and everything seems too valuable to simply abandon in the mud.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Games that ask you to choose the color of something, but don't have labels for what the colors are or a colorblind mode.

I'm colorblind, so games that lack colorblind options are a bit of an annoyance to me. Sure, I can ask someone around me to help out when it happens, but that's still an inconvenience to both me and that other person. It's not enough to make me give up on a game, but it's enough to start things off on a sour note.

MMORPGs in particular are guilty of this. For example, it's the one and only thing I hated about the character creator in City of Heroes/City of Villains - a game which, to this day, I still use as a measurement to compare other games' character creation to.

 

[someguy1231]

Games that try to be "realistic"

I don't play games to compare them to real life. I play them to have fun . No game has ever made me say "Wow! I'm having so much fun because this game is so realistic!" As far as I'm concerned, "realism" is just an unnecessary restriction on how creative developers can be and how fun a game can be. Even if a game is supposed to be "realistic", it always has to make several uses of artistic license. For example, Battlefield 4 is supposedly a "realistic" game, yet it's also a game where any fatal wound can be instantly cured with a pair of defibrillators.

Playing as "The Chosen One"

I've written a little about this before here, but I really dislike this whole character archetype. It leads to the game feeling far too player-centric (Bioware's games are particularly bad about this) and almost inevitably breaks immersion for me.

Unskippable cutscenes or tutorials

This one should be obvious.

Any significant game mechanic that's based on luck

Luck should only be a factor in games when it comes to insignificant cosmetic rewards, like rare mounts/pets/etc in World of Warcraft. Basing a whole gameplay mechanic, or a boss fight, or things like that, on luck is a very bad idea. Players should not be beholden to the "random number God", as I call it.

Obvious railroading/path-blocking

Some linear games do a good job of hiding their linearity (Half-Life 2). Others...not so much. If I'm seeing rickety-looking doors that my player character can't open, or a tiny bit of police tape is preventing him from accessing an area, I'll feel like the devs are pretty obvious about telling me where I have to go.

"Press X to fall in love"

I've said this before, but you're asking for pet peeves, so here it is again. I utterly loathe the way video games depict interactive romance (again, Bioware is Exhibit A). It always comes across as cheesy and shallow. The only game I've played that's even done it remotely well is The Witcher 3, and even that game is kinda cheating since Geralt already has an (unseen) past with most of the women.

"Shortcut kits" in multiplayer games

I can't see these as anything but cheating from players who can afford it. Unlocking all weapons/addons/etc early while the rest of the playerbase has to earn them.

"Cinematic" games

Video games are not movies, and developers should stop trying to turn them into one (looking at you, Naughty Dog). Devs describing a game as "cinematic" is a red flag for me. I always see it as a euphemism for a game with obvious linearity, simple gameplay, QTEs, short length (less than 10 hours), and little reply value. They seem to think the game's story can "makeup" for this. A game could have the best story I've ever seen, but if it's not fun to play, I won't buy it. Instead, I'll just watch someone's Let's Play on Youtube (Hey, if they're going to treat their game like a movie, then so will I! )

 

[Something Amyss]

Illusion of choice: I mean, there's always an element of this in games, because you can never truly play freeform. But GTA advertised freely swapping between characters to complete missions how you wanted. Except when they lock you from doing it. Oh, and they assign you certain roles that don't even necessarily make sense. Franklin's an awesome driver, why am I not putting him in a car? Similarly, HEists were supposed to offer you freedom, except they don't.

Empty, hollow worlds: Saints Row 2 had quite a few buildings you could enter, and I was actually hoping for more, not less, as games progressed. Actually, there's a larger them there, because as games get bigger, the niave child in the back of my mind still thinks this means we'll get more content. Silly child, no. But we get these huge worlds without much actual substance. I'm reminded of the old adage, it's not the size, it's what you do with it. Even in more involved games, you often basically have a huge map and a need to skip a chunk of it.

Note that for some games, an empty world may fit. But I play a lot of sandbox games, and it can sort of get annoying.

One Size Fits All: Stop making Spider-Man like Batman. I know there are parallels in the comics, but there's no reason Amazing Spider-Man has to play like the Arkham series. I like the Arkham series, but if I wanted to play it...I have the Arkham series.

That's what immediately comes to mind.

Games that ask you to choose the color of something, but don't have labels for what the colors are or a colorblind mode.

I'm colorblind, so games that lack colorblind options are a bit of an annoyance to me. Sure, I can ask someone around me to help out when it happens, but that's still an inconvenience to both me and that other person. It's not enough to make me give up on a game, but it's enough to start things off on a sour note.

MMORPGs in particular are guilty of this. For example, it's the one and only thing I hated about the character creator in City of Heroes/City of Villains - a game which, to this day, I still use as a measurement to compare other games' character creation to.

Name your character "The Clash." Problem solved.

No, but seriously, I sort of feel your pain. I hate it when subtitles aren't available in a game. Especially when they given you orders that are verbal only.

 

[FuzzyRaccoon]

Arbitrary checkpoints that end up screwing you over.

A cap on the amount of save files you can have to a game for what feels like no reason.

When a game holds your hand so much that you just feel like a child being lead along.

When a game is so opaque and nonsensical about what you're supposed to be doing next that you don't even want to play anymore.

So many peeves too be honest.

 

[Casual Shinji]

snip

These sound less like pet peeves and more like major bones to pick.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Playing as "The Chosen One"

I've written a little about this before here, but I really dislike this whole character archetype. It leads to the game feeling far too player-centric (Bioware's games are particularly bad about this) and almost inevitably breaks immersion for me.

Pretty much this when it come to online MMORPG due to the fact the massive multiplayers defeat the purpose of the one of the chosen one. Has there ever been an MMORPG that has the npc that address the character as one of the few/ group/ heroes that save the world/ slayed the villain or monster etc?

OT- Selective savepoints

It irk me in an rpg there can be few save points about in the area and while there are usually multiple save slots but limited savepoints and it was annoying to build the characters up inbetween the saves. I mean I was stuck against this boss but the last saved was at the start of the dungeon and the character growth was quite large during the dungeon run.

 

[someguy1231]

Pretty much this when it come to online MMORPG due to the fact the massive multiplayers defeat the purpose of the one of the chosen one. Has there ever been an MMORPG that has the npc that address the character as one of the few/ group/ heroes that save the world/ slayed the villain or monster etc?

None that I know of, which is exactly why I prefer creating my own character in MMOs over single-player games. Since I'm just one of many players in the world, I never feel like the world revolves around me.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I. Can't. CLIMB.

Be it a chain-link fence, a guard railing, or even a freaking slope (I'm looking at you, Dragon Age Inquisition), my character lacks the climbing abilities of a six year old. Come on!

 

[Denamic]

When menus have an animation or a fade effect that makes it take a second or two to appear. Like with Fallout 3 and NV's pipboy. Takes like two seconds to bring the pipboy to your face, and then another second of screen flicker before you get to browse your inventory. Sure, it's no big deal the first few hours. But after you've seen that shit literally thousands of times, it gets reeeeeeeeeeeally old. I've the same problem with skyrim's transition into the skill tree constellation bullshit.

 

[Asclepion]

Weapon sights below the center of the screen

I have no idea why game designers do this. Most players level the center of the screen with the horizon line, and the glowing crosshair provides a visual focal point that the eye gravitates to. Having the weapon sights offset forces you to either stare ahead past the glowing reticule, or raise it and have your view angled towards the sky as you move forward. WTF?

While we're at it, be rid of the intrusive reticules as well. I'll take a small dot over a big and pointlessly complex design any day.

 

[Casual Shinji]

When menus have an animation or a fade effect that makes it take a second or two to appear. Like with Fallout 3 and NV's pipboy. Takes like two seconds to bring the pipboy to your face, and then another second of screen flicker before you get to browse your inventory. Sure, it's no big deal the first few hours. But after you've seen that shit literally thousands of times, it gets reeeeeeeeeeeally old. I've the same problem with skyrim's transition into the skill tree constellation bullshit.

Yeah, that can get annoying.

You should typically be able to traverse a menu faster and faster as you get more familiar and skilled with it, like with Resident Evil 4's attache case. But a lot of menus in current games constantly trip up your speed by having to load in.

 

[OpticalJunction]

my number one pet peeve is INVISIBLE WALLS it's just a lazy crappy way of enclosing the area, I wish devs would be more creative about how they implement structure

also trailers that play nothing like the actual game

 

[FPLOON]

At first I was going to ask my past self, in which he'll say:

1. Multiplayer Trophies - Let me break this one down with three reasons why this in one of my pet peeves... #3) These types of trophies are the least likely to last as long as you want them to, compared to single player trophies... (In other words, "get then while they're hot"!) #2) If you don't have the "skillz" to pull them off, I'm sure persuading one of your friend to help you get them by any means necessary... and #1) They are required to get in order to get that 100% achievements... (Fuck you game for thinking I was going to roll with that, especially when the multiplayer is either shoe-horned in and/or the trophies themselves could have been in their own damn section!)

2. Lack of Enjoyment - Subjective as it is, if I'm not having fun... It's not always me who has "the problem"...

3. Inexcusable Criticism - I get how you don't like a particular genre or a particular style of gameplay... That does not mean it objectively "sucks"... (Also, you better have a good reason for your opinion of a game you haven't even played, yet you're already have your "suck pistols" at the ready...)

Those last two seem to switch, given both the circumstances and/or my subjective mood that day... However, #1 will always be #1 until I grow old and complain about the next next generation's technology or something like that... (I WILL have a cane, dammit! ...And I will NOT be afraid to smack some sense into that particular generation, by gummit...)

But then, not that long ago this month, actually, I remember the one minor thing that peeves the pets off of me to no ends... Luckily, this Penny Arcade is here to sum it up for me:
http://i1216.photobucket.com/albums/dd363/AraHamako/215545125_2WyZt-L-2.jpg

Spoiler: Mmmmmm... Ranting... (Warning: Contains too many unnecessary uses of the word Fuck...)

But seriously, FUCK YOU, JIMINY'S JOURNAL!! It's bad enough your fucking journal in Kingdom Hearts 2 made me never play that fucking game on anything less than fucking Proud ever again just to see that super special awesome fudge-coated fucking secret ending without having to fucking deal with your fucking requisite bullfuckingshit, but NOW I have no fucking choice but to either finish your fucking Journal (only this fucking time it's the FUCKING "Final Mix" edition with more bells and whistles than the many fucking objectives (fucking required and not) in the DS version of fucking 358/2 Days) or get my fucking ass kicked by both the fucking Lingering Will as well as the fucking data replicas of every Organization XIII member ON TOP on giving those fucking Mushroom XIII fuckers every type of metaphorical non-sex-related sex-job just so that they can cough up one of the three fucking proofs that I'm fucking worthy of unlocking the muthafukkin' "super special awesome fudge-coated fucking secret ending"-esque secret fucking ending for Birth By Sleep this fucking time because I'm fucking playing the fucking game on FUCKING CRITICAL! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?! What the fuck happened between fucking FM games 1 and 2 that made you fucking go "Holy fucking shit! There was so much fucking shit I wanted recorded in the first fucking journal that I want you [Sora] to fucking top that shit almost thrice-fold, muthafukka! DID I FUCKING STUDDA, *****?!" metaphorically speaking? For fucks sake, I hope your fucking journal in Kingdom Hearts 3 doesn't makes me hate it more than how it is in fucking Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix, especially if that shit leads to a fucking unlocking of a[nother] fucking "super special awesome fudge-coated fucking secret ending"-esque true/secret fucking ending in the fucking process... Shit...

(I'm really sorry for those of you that only clicked on this spoiler tag out of sheer curiosity...)

Anyway, it's the only thing that peeves me about Kingdom Hearts 2 [Final Mix] in general, so it's SUPER minor in comparison to how much fun I do have in said game in general... Other than that, RNG collectible-finding (or just most RNG-based mechanics) in any game in general peeves me in a more annoying way than in a frustrating kind of way since they're more based on luck than skill when you [really] get down to it...

Thanks, me! I still have not gotten over those gaming pet peeves... especially the multiplayer trophies, RNG collectible-finding, and Jiminy's Journal to be more specific... Regardless, I haven't received any new gaming pet peeves, so there's that...

 

[The Wykydtron]

I don't like it when a dev looks at the story and goes "y'know Bob, you know what we need? Grimdark. We should make the story as dark as possible for no real reason"

It's not that I dislike dark stories, I don't but there's a time and place for them and they need to be well executed. Witcher 2 is the perfect example, it's probably a good game but everything is just so dark all the time and it basically made me tired of the game. You're probably out to save the world or the country or some shit but the universe is sooooo dark and edgy that it's hard to imagine that anything you do would make a difference so I don't feel like trying. Y'know?

Look at something like, say Comyu (I know it's a Visual Novel but hear me out) it's pretty damn dark but never forgets to take its foot off the dark pedal frequently to lighten the mood with some comedy scenes. Except in fuckin' Saejima's Route when the next two routes unlocked after hers are basically a massive apology for the unending violence and grimdark via lighthearted comedy.

Anyway, dark as it can be, there is always hope that there can be a proper happy ending eventually. That's how a good dark story should be.

Also much more specific, as much as I love the game, the Infinite Prevention System in Skullgirls can eat a massive dick. Just give us a proper Burst, one per game/round, it's not hard. It's been tried and tested in every ArcSys game and it WORKS.

Actually using the IPS gives a free reset to your opponent 99% of the time because for SOME reason, the Burst isn't safe on block and has a ton of recovery on it. So they stop comboing for half a sec, block the Burst and get a free reset instead. Good fucking game design, ten out of fucking ten. Fuck.