This thread is about things in gaming that really bug you, not because they are bad in and of themselves, but because they pull you up short and remind you that you're just some dude pitting his wits against a piece of code rather than The Chosen One, Saviour Of Mankind.
Recently I've been playing Oblivion, and while it really is a great game there are a couple of things that make me stop and think "WTF was the reasoning behind this?". Please note that I'm not talking about bugs (audio or visual), or Oblivion's well-documented issues with the number of voice actors and the strange way characters look at you. I'm talking about things which are clearly intended to be part of a game, but just don't sit right.
Now, enough explaining, on to the tedious whining!
My first issue with Oblivion is shop limits in comparison to item values. Each trader or fence has a maximum limit they will pay for an item; for example, if a trader has a maximum limit of 500 and you try to sell them an item which is worth 1000, the maximum you're going to get for it is 500 because they cannot go any higher. With me? Good.
Now, where this becomes a problem is that the upper limit seems to be very low. The best I've found so far is about 1500. This seems pretty cool, getting 1500 gold for one item is pretty sweet, right? Well, it is, except that later in the game you're picking up loot that is worth many, many thousands of gold coins. Personally I no longer bother looting anything worth less than 4000 gold. What struck me is that this is nothing more than a reflex action on my part; I see a high value item, and I loot it. Simple. When I come to sell it though, I'm only going to get (at best) 1500, so why the hell did the devs code items of such high value? Every time this happens, it pierces the suspension of disbelief a little. Is there really any point to massively valuable items that you cannot sell? Cyrodill seems fairly prosperous, there must be at least some shopkeepers willing to pay more than a quarter of an item's value! They seem quite happy to sell me items that cost more than their upper limit, so where are they buying their stock?
My second problem, and I feel stupid even saying this, lies with the motivation of the NPCs. Most are fine, they have a storyline or are just running their shop or doing their job. The ones that really piss me off are bandits, the classic RPG staple. In Oblivion, loot drops tend to scale with the player rather than the NPC: at level 5 you'll be picking up junk whereas at level 30 you'll be picking up much nicer items even if you're killing the same NPC. I can see the idea behind it, who wants to play for 50 hours and still be looting the same rusty iron daggers?
What pisses me off about it is that every time I kill a bandit, a dude who sleeps in a tent in the woods and waylays travellers for the few coins they have on them, the bastard is wearing a suit of armour and wielding a sword that costs more than my house!. Every single time it happens it jerks me right out of the fantasy, because why the hell is a dude who is actually wearing more loot than I've found in an entire castle standing out in a forest stealing from peasants? You're supposed to be a desperate man, driven to lawlessness out of desperation! Did you turn to highway robbery because you spent all your bloody money on shiny armour?!
TL;DR - poor design choices can damage a fun experience, even when they are incredibly minor in the scheme of things.
Ahem. Sorry, rant over with. Anyway, the point of the thread (other than to give me a place to whinge) was so that you guys can share your own experiences with bad design choices that like to kick your suspension of disbelief in the nuts. Go crazy!
Recently I've been playing Oblivion, and while it really is a great game there are a couple of things that make me stop and think "WTF was the reasoning behind this?". Please note that I'm not talking about bugs (audio or visual), or Oblivion's well-documented issues with the number of voice actors and the strange way characters look at you. I'm talking about things which are clearly intended to be part of a game, but just don't sit right.
Now, enough explaining, on to the tedious whining!
My first issue with Oblivion is shop limits in comparison to item values. Each trader or fence has a maximum limit they will pay for an item; for example, if a trader has a maximum limit of 500 and you try to sell them an item which is worth 1000, the maximum you're going to get for it is 500 because they cannot go any higher. With me? Good.
Now, where this becomes a problem is that the upper limit seems to be very low. The best I've found so far is about 1500. This seems pretty cool, getting 1500 gold for one item is pretty sweet, right? Well, it is, except that later in the game you're picking up loot that is worth many, many thousands of gold coins. Personally I no longer bother looting anything worth less than 4000 gold. What struck me is that this is nothing more than a reflex action on my part; I see a high value item, and I loot it. Simple. When I come to sell it though, I'm only going to get (at best) 1500, so why the hell did the devs code items of such high value? Every time this happens, it pierces the suspension of disbelief a little. Is there really any point to massively valuable items that you cannot sell? Cyrodill seems fairly prosperous, there must be at least some shopkeepers willing to pay more than a quarter of an item's value! They seem quite happy to sell me items that cost more than their upper limit, so where are they buying their stock?
My second problem, and I feel stupid even saying this, lies with the motivation of the NPCs. Most are fine, they have a storyline or are just running their shop or doing their job. The ones that really piss me off are bandits, the classic RPG staple. In Oblivion, loot drops tend to scale with the player rather than the NPC: at level 5 you'll be picking up junk whereas at level 30 you'll be picking up much nicer items even if you're killing the same NPC. I can see the idea behind it, who wants to play for 50 hours and still be looting the same rusty iron daggers?
What pisses me off about it is that every time I kill a bandit, a dude who sleeps in a tent in the woods and waylays travellers for the few coins they have on them, the bastard is wearing a suit of armour and wielding a sword that costs more than my house!. Every single time it happens it jerks me right out of the fantasy, because why the hell is a dude who is actually wearing more loot than I've found in an entire castle standing out in a forest stealing from peasants? You're supposed to be a desperate man, driven to lawlessness out of desperation! Did you turn to highway robbery because you spent all your bloody money on shiny armour?!
TL;DR - poor design choices can damage a fun experience, even when they are incredibly minor in the scheme of things.
Ahem. Sorry, rant over with. Anyway, the point of the thread (other than to give me a place to whinge) was so that you guys can share your own experiences with bad design choices that like to kick your suspension of disbelief in the nuts. Go crazy!
