That one reoccurring game design flaw!

[Stammer]

Games have been around for a long time. You'd think designers would learn from the mistakes of all the preceding games of the past. Or at the very least learn from their own mistakes.

What is that one design flaw for you? What is something that's bothered you for all these years you've been gaming that developers just haven't quite grasped yet?

For me, it's when developers map one button to do a dozen tasks. For example, in Smash Bros Brawl where the "A" button attacks, smash-attacks, grapples, parries, and picks-up items and powerups. Or in Dissidia where one button (I think it's "R") blocks, dodges, moves your character, allows you to execute certain attacks, and interacts with the environment.

Or more recently in Mass Effect 2 where "Spacebar" (I remapped it to "E") picks items up, opens doors, talks to people, puts you into cover, removes you from cover, vaults over cover, makes you slide, allows you to run, and otherwise interacts with everything.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Doors opening both ways.

I DON'T CARE IF IT'S THE GOD DAMN FUTURE DOORS DON'T WORK THAT WAY.

 

[Lord Quirk]

I agree with you. I found it annoying (in Mass Effect 2) how the same button hid behind cover AND vaulted over it. So, in order to jump over cover (an act which is frequently necessary) you would have to hide behind it and THEN jump over it. Even when there's no enemies! It's a small but reacurring flaw...

 

[Mangod]

Moral choice systems, when the game forces you to play as one extreme or the other to get any of the decet powerups.

 

[Jandau]

Doors opening both ways.

I DON'T CARE IF IT'S THE GOD DAMN FUTURE DOORS DON'T WORK THAT WAY.

Some doors do. Granted, not all doors, but still, it's not like there aren't any doors that open both ways...

 

[Mangod]

Double post, sorry.

 

[Mr Thin]

Putting units into control groups.

I have seen precisely one game do this perfectly, every other strategy title I've played has screwed it up in some way. That game is Dawn of War.

If you select a group of units, press ctrl + 1, they are in group 1. Press 1, it selects those units. Double tap 1, it selects and jumps the screen to them.

Select a group of different units, press ctrl + 2, they become group 2. Press 1, hold Shift, press 2, you have now selected both groups, but THEY ARE STILL IN THEIR SEPARATE GROUPS. They haven't been combined into one group.

You can assign units to multiple control groups at the same time for maximum strategic value. You can have one group that selects all infantry. One group that selects all heavy infantry. One group that selects all anti-vehicle units, including a mix of vehicles and infantry from previous groups.

It's flawless. It's perfect. And I have never seen another game do it right. They always screw up in some way, the most grevious flaw being limits on how many units fit into a group.

Obviously I haven't played every RTS ever, so I can't speak for all of them, but I've played more than a few, and Dawn of War stands supreme as the masters of control groups.

A ridiculous thing to complain about? I don't think so. The little details are what make the game, and Dawn of War is full of such details that make the game stand head and shoulders above the competition.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Doors opening both ways.

I DON'T CARE IF IT'S THE GOD DAMN FUTURE DOORS DON'T WORK THAT WAY.

Some doors do. Granted, not all doors, but still, it's not like there aren't any doors that open both ways...

No, I know. But in games that have that issue, EVERY door opens that way, no matter what. It irks me like crazy.

 

[Random Encounter]

I'm not sure if this applies to all games but Non-Pausable Cutscenes.

Also sometimes when a NPC ends a conversation and I hit the continue button/ leave the room only to find out they had more to say.

 

[Kittynugget]

Ammunition. I hate it. Infinite ammo is way better in every way. It pisses me off how many new shooters don't have an option for infinite ammo. What happened to the good old days of Contra? Half the fun of having a gun is just shooting off into nothing or just holding down the fire button.

 

[anANGRYkangaroo]

Putting units into control groups.

I have seen precisely one game do this perfectly, every other strategy title I've played has screwed it up in some way. That game is Dawn of War.

If you select a group of units, press ctrl + 1, they are in group 1. Press 1, it selects those units. Double tap 1, it selects and jumps the screen to them.

Select a group of different units, press ctrl + 2, they become group 2. Press 1, hold Shift, press 2, you have now selected both groups, but THEY ARE STILL IN THEIR SEPARATE GROUPS. They haven't been combined into one group.

You can assign units to multiple control groups at the same time for maximum strategic value. You can have one group that selects all infantry. One group that selects all heavy infantry. One group that selects all anti-vehicle units, including a mix of vehicles and infantry from previous groups.

It's flawless. It's perfect. And I have never seen another game do it right. They always screw up in some way, the most grevious flaw being limits on how many units fit into a group.

Obviously I haven't played every RTS ever, so I can't speak for all of them, but I've played more than a few, and Dawn of War stands supreme as the masters of control groups.

A ridiculous thing to complain about? I don't think so. The little details are what make the game, and Dawn of War is full of such details that make the game stand head and shoulders above the competition.

If I remember correctly, Age of Empires had this feature implemented in nearly the exact same way

 

[Ancalagon4554]

Moral choice systems - forces one decision to be the "good" one and the other to be the "bad" one, instead of offering multiple options and not making value judgments about them - that's what the player can do for his/her self.

And even when it does this, usually the neutral people get the short end of the stick.

 

[Ninjat_126]

Mass Effect's "everything" button was kind of annoying. And on the PS3 version, they had an unmapped button on the left/right thumbstick and your class-specific power permanently mapped to triangle! I wanted Charge mapped to L2!

My recurring flaw is not giving the player enough freedom in something that should be more open than it is (wordy). Basically, it's omitting something that should be there.

My best example would be disabling your weapons in Avatar: The Game whenever you're a Na'vi riding one of the animals. The only reason I wanted a Banshee is so I could ride it and fire arrows, and you don't even give me that?

Also, background items that look like they could be interacted with, locked doors, meaningless sidequests instead of meaningful sidequests, long treks back to HQ, excessive grinding, secret hidden fun stuff that gives you cosmetic awards and many other annoying things that extend the game while not extending the content.

 

[Rack]

For me, it's when developers map one button to do a dozen tasks. For example, in Smash Bros Brawl where the "A" button attacks, smash-attacks, grapples, parries, and picks-up items and powerups. Or in Dissidia where one button (I think it's "R") blocks, dodges, moves your character, allows you to execute certain attacks, and interacts with the environment.

Or more recently in Mass Effect 2 where "Spacebar" (I remapped it to "E") picks items up, opens doors, talks to people, puts you into cover, removes you from cover, vaults over cover, makes you slide, allows you to run, and otherwise interacts with everything.

That's not really a design flaw, even if you think games should have extremely limited acttions or use hundreds of buttons it's nothing absolute. If Mass Effect assigned a different key to all those actions there's no way I'd play it. It's a flaw when they map contrary functions to the same key though.

For me it's mangled difficulty settings. You select hard then you find the game's a bit of a swine after 5 hours so you drop down to normal. Only you can't because the game locks you to that difficulty. Or you find it too easy and try to notch it up only to find you can only unlock hard after you've finished the game. Or normal is harder than hard. Or there is no hard mode or easy mode.

 

[Mr Thin]

big self snip

If I remember correctly, Age of Empires had this feature implemented in nearly the exact same way

If I recall correctly - and I may not, because it's been a while since I played Age of Empires 3 - selecting a unit, holding Shift and pressing the number for a control group adds the selected unit to the group automatically.

In Dawn of War, this doesn't happen. Units do not become members of a group until you select the units you want in a group, then press ctrl + a number. It gives you maximum control.

It's a minor difference, but still a difference. I've seen several systems come close, but there's always at least one little thing holding them back. And that's the sort of small but constant re-appearing flaw that the thread is about.

 

[wfpdk]

loading screens. i am convinced that these are pointless. a random level from halo will load up on my xbox in about 5 seconds. now that i'm in the future with the new and far more powerful xbox 360 it takes mass effect 45 seconds and oblivion 25 seconds to load up, on average. so I'm not going to get to see shepards' individual nose hairs in HD, i don't care. I just want to play the game. I still replay old games with hardly recognizable sprites bopping around and it plays fine. i figured we'd be past this by now.
also tiny text. this really didn't seem much of a problem until around the time fable 2 came out, but since then it's like a competition to see who can make in game text the smallest.

 

[Magicmad5511]

Regenerating health. Not a massive concern in Sci-Fi games where it is actually part of the canon(Halo) but when you start giving marines in CoD health that comes back over time it becomes a bit weird. Does it mean that if you sit out for a bit the the bullets climb out of your body and you heal? Just breaks the image a bit.

 

[F4LL3N]

3rd person games without even giving you the option to switch between 1st person. If you want to design a 3rd person game, go right ahead. But is it that hard to add a 1st person perspective. How am I meant to "be" my character when I can see the god damn bastard. Do I look like a puppeteer to you? Golly gosh.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Games that have preset control schemes instead of allowing you to completely remap all the buttons how you see fit. This most happens on consoles, but it's still always annoying. Why do the developers think that they know better than me how I want my controls set up?