The broken rules of video gaming...

[Britishfan]

So I play a lot of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer on PC and here we go:

1. Thou shall let us see a list of available servers [and their ping] and choose one as an alternative to having one chosen for us
2. Thou shall let us see our own, and other players' ping.

Of course the reason EA violates these 2 rules is because they are trying (and failing) to hide the fact they have violated the next one.

3. Thou shall have enough servers close enough to your customers so that they can actually play your game without unacceptable levels of lag and without losing the connection to the servers.

4. Thou shall have customer service which acknowledges what customers are telling it. "the problem must be with your internet connection, make sure you're probably connected to the internet otherwise you will not be able to access the online portions of this game" is NOT an acceptable response when your customer has explained that; they are properly connected to the internet, they can access the online portions of the game. That when they do lose connection to their server they are still connected to the internet, and that their game is only product with which they have this problem.

From this I have created some rules for gamers:

1. Thou shall like many of EA's games, but still hate EA.

2. Thou shall not use EA Origin whenever an alternative is available.

3. Thou shall EA's customer service

4. Thou shall hate EA.

 

[Leemaster777]

If thou MUST have an escort quest in your game, make sure that the damn escortee has more health than a wet tissue. Also, make sure they have decent pathfinding, and A.I. that can tie it's shoes.

 

[FoolKiller]

1. Thou shalt allow multiple save slots
While save-scumming is possible with multiple slots, I really detest auto-save one save mechanisms for two reasons.

a. When it auto-saves while you have virtually no health and have thus broken the game to the point of having to restart from the beginning.

b. When this single save gets corrupted losing 35 hours of work, it irritates me.

2. Thou shalt not have online achievements (that are not just participation based
Now while some may think this is being petty, I have found that achievements that require some great feats online lead to boosting and people playing the game for reasons other than to play. It was/is very irritating when you go online to enjoy your dose of murder and mayhem to find a bunch of people who don't like you and kick you since you don't want to sit around and help with their achievements. Believe it or not, this helps Modern Warfare since people online are there to just play.

3. Thou shalt not have context sensitive buttons in scenarios where you have more than one context to use
I find this to be greatly irritating in many cover shooters such as Gears of War and most recently Spec Ops. If I need to do things quickly then I can't waste time to figure out what the button does. This was really bad in Spec Ops where the A (X if you play PS3) button was sprint, hug wall, slip out of cover and heal your teammate. This worked well in the tutorial since they only ever wanted one thing from you, but when you are trying to run to cover and you stop, stand up, and heal your downed moronic monkey teammates who hop around in the middle of battlefield like dancing retards, and you subsequently die for this action it is unacceptable.


4. Thou shalt not have an online pass for a server that is to be shut down
This may be a little high level but I don't care if there is an online pass, however, if that is the case the server to play better damn well be up till the end of the generation. I can buy older games new and get screwed out of the experience since the server doesn't actually exist anymore. There is a disclaimer that they can shut it down with thirty days notice, but that isn't really fair since you may have purchased the game afterwards.

5. Thou shalt not force players online for a single player experience
Interesting fact: NFS: Carbon for xbox360 can't even be started to play the single player campaign without a connection to the server.

6. Thou shalt not have infinite enemies spawn while having limited resources
It especially sucks when the enemies are forever but the ammo or whatever I use to dispatch them is limited. I love Payday but I get annoyed when I run out of ammo after killing 200 cops in under ten minutes. Where the fuck do these supercops come from anyways? I don't think anything short of a state of emergency would warrant a response like that that quickly.

7. Thou shalt not have damage/health based difficulty
If you want your game to be more challenging on harder difficulties then make it so. Don't just nerf my ability to kill and my health down to two hits. That is not a challenge. That is just an exercise in frustration management.

8. Thou shalt not place an unskippable cutscene after a checkpoint
I get the idea of putting the cutscene after it. I may have put the game down for a day or two and want a refresher on what is going on, but if I die repeatedly I shouldn't have to watch the same sequence of 2 minutes every time I die.

9. Thou shalt allow customisation of controls
For fuck sakes, its 2013. Let me set up the controls the way I like it. EA in particular, I don't want to use the second analog stick to shoot in hockey. It worked better with the buttons. Let me use them already. This is why I only ever buy your hockey games for $5 used anymore.

I could go on but I'm tired of typing...

EDIT

10. Thou shalt have all difficulties available at the start of the game
Why the fuck do I need to beat a game on one difficulty to unlock another difficulty? Let me try the hard ones first if I want. If I suck, the game will beat me down and I will switch the difficulty to a lower level. I don't need you to hold my hand for me.

 

[rosac]

parts of RPGs that seperate you entirely from your party. Seriously annoys me.

Useless characters in RPGs (Looking at you kimahri!)

 

[Subscriptism]

How about: Thou Shalt Not Have Inconsistent or Haphazard Checkpoints?
My example of this is the original Mass Effect. Since I found combat to be clunky at the best of times and an absolute clusterfuck at the worst, I do not like going through three rooms and six loading screens without manually saving just to be one-shot by a rocket drone off-screen, sending me all the way back to square one. What makes this worse is that the game does autosave, only it does so so rarely that it might as well not.
At least they fixed that in the sequels, but it still led to a lot of frustration.

Oh god, this a thousand times this, the amount of times I threw my controller down and refused to continue for a few days. The one that always got me was the level where you go to get Liara and right before you enter the mine you have to fight a fuck ton of geth and one of the geth tanks on foot. If you die there you go back to the beginning of the level about twenty minutes of bouncy tank gameplay to re-do.

Yeah, that was where I got stuck too.
The other egregious offender was Luna base. Those bastarded rocket drones...
While not story important, it gives a good reward, and there isn't a reason NOT to do it, but those fucking drones ruin it.

Noveria peak (whatever number) did that really badly too, I remember leaving the hot labs after activating the purge thingy and getting killed, I went back to when you first arrive on the tramway. Nothing puts me off a game more than shit autosaves.

I know exactly what you mean.
After spending a good couple of hours fighting your way through a dungeon, only having the whole run, perfect or otherwise, erased in an instant because of an oversight is what used to put me off a lot of games when I was younger, specifically RPGs. Nowadays, I just grit my teeth and endeavour to get through the section as quickly as possible, and as identically as the first time. But it's never as good as the first time, is it?

Never is as good. Thankfully most game producers don't make these mistakes any more.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Thou shalt not make attack and block the same button.

Are you referencing the new Metal Gear demo by any chance? God that is so bad... Forward X to parry, X to attack. Professional game design.

OT: Don't make unique final bosses in fighting games... Especially ones based around keepaway. The final boss of DoA4 still haunts me to this day. I DID beat her with every single character in the end though. Moral victory. Her regular grab took off three quarters of your health bar.

Bloody Marie in Skullgirls is bearable because she's damn cool and the music and stage is awesome. UMVC3 somehow makes Galactus the easiest boss ever... X-Factor really shows its place as a completely broken mechanic there.

I might say something about not including a comeback mechanic but really, UMVC3 shows the power of a hilarious power up button. Literally a God Mode button avalible to both players, so it's completely balanced yet absolutely broken at the same time.

 

[LtFerret]

Insta-death dice roll areas around enemies in action games.

Yeah, fuck you Resident Evil 5.

God those cockroaches were just Bad Enemy Design 101. Do not make enemies that can only be hit in a weakpoint but then give the player no way to reveal the weakpoint. You just have to sit there and wait until he decides to reveal it. Speaking of the insta-kill, its basically how not to do one-hit-kills. It comes out instantly, has deceptive range, and has no way to save yourself/be saved once he starts it.

Basically, don't make shitty enemies like that

 

[The White Hunter]

Insta-death dice roll areas around enemies in action games.

Yeah, fuck you Resident Evil 5.

God those cockroaches were just Bad Enemy Design 101. Do not make enemies that can only be hit in a weakpoint but then give the player no way to reveal the weakpoint. You just have to sit there and wait until he decides to reveal it. Speaking of the insta-kill, its basically how not to do one-hit-kills. It comes out instantly, has deceptive range, and has now way to save/be saved once he starts it.

Basically, don't make shitty enemies like that

That enemy is one of the worst in any game ever, my friend and I powered through the entire game until those things came. One is fine, since they basically demand power weaponry or insane patience and accuracy, but when they have random spawns the mission after they come in it's ridiculous.
I looked into a it a bit more and from what I gather it's based on a dice roll when you're within a certain range.

The range is about 10 feet though, which is pretty big, and the dice roll is something like 1/10 and re-rolled every 5 seconds or so. Which is why those things are fucking bullshit and on a second run were nothing but rocket launcher fodder for me.

6 was better than 5. No RE game to date has topped the masterpiece that is 4.

 

[Phlakes]

Rule 4 is a big one.

And one that Bit.Trip Beat fails at completely.

What's the point of the game? Hitting neon squares with your neon rectangle. The neon squares get increasingly difficult patterns, making reflexes the most important thing the player has.

Simple enough.

And then it decides that it also feels like throwing around hundreds of non-essential neon squares, on a background full of neon squares, because particles were fun in Geometry Wars, right guys?

Nope, now I just can't fucking see.

And don't even get me started on the trial and error bullshit in Runner.

 

[Anathrax]

Quick question, this thread isn't going to get into any trouble because of some people's tendency to swear here, right?

 

[Bad Jim]

Thou shalt not make upping the difficulty grant the Computer cheats and omniscience. I am now pretty much permanently against upping the difficulty on any RTS because I have never seen one that didn't just make the computer cheat more than I did on Age of Empires 2.

Well if you can think of a way to make RTS AI genuinely outsmart human beings feel free to share it. Maybe you'll get a job at Blizzard or something. Possibly you might get a Nobel Prize.

Current AI is only better than humans in specific cases where it has natural advantages. Eg:

- Limited possibilities. The number of chess positions a computer must examine to see 6 moves or more ahead is small enough for the computer.

- Fast reaction times.

- Complicated maths required. That's why computers can play poker well.

- Multitasking. Women claim they can multitask. Computers really can multitask. They are reasonably good at Starcraft because they keep doing basic stuff like building workers, expanding, building supply depots on time, upgrading, and making sure they spend their income. Humans, women included, generally drop the ball and get behind unless they are really good.

Now that last one does mean that an AI can be difficult without actually cheating. Unfortunately this is only true when efficient production requires constant attention. Other, arguably better games, make production largely maintainence free, and suddenly the AI has no edge. In Age of Empires you can queue up lots of units because you only have to pay for them when they actually start production. In Starcraft you must pay when you queue them, tying up cash, so good players must use queues minimally and be constantly ordering more. I'd prefer unit queues that are actually useful.

TL/DR no such thing as AI that genuinely outsmarts experienced humans. Maybe in future, but today you are asking too much.

 

[sethisjimmy]

There are not and should not be any inherent "rules" not to be broken in video games.

The main problem with them is that everyone's idea of a rule never to be broken is subjective. There's no point in setting close-minded rules when anyone can pull an example where said rule was broken yet done well. Seriously. Almost any "bad game design" rule someone can bring up, someone else can provide an example of where that mechanic was used well. That's just how diverse games are.

I would instead focus on mechanics of individual games instead of trying to generalize "every time this mechanic is used in any game it must be bad because I say so".

Also, I've never played Meat Boy, but Super Meat Boy was superb and I wholly recommend it.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Thou shalt not trip gameplay with quick-time events.
Thou shalt not spread checkpoints thin.
Thou shalt not sneak in stealth missions in non-stealth games.
Thou shalt not make sidequest windows and cut-offs invisible.
Thou shalt not rip off GTA for sandboxes.
Thou shalt not rip off RE4 for third person shooters.
Thou shalt not rip off God of War for hack n' slashes.

 

[Lazy]

What game did that?

Are you referencing the new Metal Gear demo by any chance? God that is so bad... Forward X to parry, X to attack. Professional game design.

That is indeed what I was referring to, though Fable II and III did this as well.

 

[Easton Dark]

Thou shalt allow the player to save at all times when it is not a function of the challenge.

Bethesda gets it, Creative Assembly really gets it, GSC Gameworld gets it.

Fuck all of you games with only autosaves + a lesser fuck you to games where you can save anywhere, but you always start out at a designated point when you load said save, ala Borderlands which ports you back to a respawner.

Resident Evil gets away with the typewriter system because being able to save anywhere in the old Resident Evils would seriously take away from the challenge and tension and make the time meta-game pointless and way too easy.

 

[ComradeJim270]

Thou shalt allow the player to save at all times when it is not a function of the challenge.

Bethesda gets it, Creative Assembly really gets it, GSC Gameworld gets it.

Fuck all of you games with only autosaves + a lesser fuck you to games where you can save anywhere, but you always start out at a designated point when you load said save, ala Borderlands which ports you back to a respawner.

Resident Evil gets away with the typewriter system because being able to save anywhere in the old Resident Evils would seriously take away from the challenge and tension and make the time meta-game pointless and way too easy.

Exactly! We're in the 21st century, damnit. There's no reason people should have to put up with that crap. Also, it's a good thing GSC gets it, can you imagine STALKER without quicksave?

 

[TrevHead]

There are not and should not be any inherent "rules" not to be broken in video games.

The main problem with them is that everyone's idea of a rule never to be broken is subjective. There's no point in setting close-minded rules when anyone can pull an example where said rule was broken yet done well. Seriously. Almost any "bad game design" rule someone can bring up, someone else can provide an example of where that mechanic was used well. That's just how diverse games are.

I would instead focus on mechanics of individual games instead of trying to generalize "every time this mechanic is used in any game it must be bad because I say so".

Also, I've never played Meat Boy, but Super Meat Boy was superb and I wholly recommend it.

I agree with this chap, For many game mechanics it's not the ingredients that are bad it's just the chef who doesn't know how to cook the dish correctly. Even though eating Puffer-fish (quick time events) might be toxic normally but skillfully cooked can be palatable (in Bayonetta).

That said we all have our pet hates just as long as you know it shouldn't be some kind of golden rule for every game, barring one or two exceptions like long unskippable cutscenes and redefinable controls.

My pet hate is the use of luck in competitive action games, like shmups, fighters etc, as for action games as apposed to poker, luck, ie rolling a dice destroys the point of playing a challenging skill based game, both for those trying to beat the game, and for those competing against each other in MP or score.

It's a common fault of many devs make when they don't understand the genre they are making a game for, Sine Mora the shmup is a big offender this, where balancing of the game is abysmal and totally broken in harder difficulties where the games faults show up the most. Been unlucky in that game (ie be unlucky with random drops) and the game is impossible to beat due to the stingy timer.

 

[nymz]

7. Thou shalt not have damage/health based difficulty
If you want your game to be more challenging on harder difficulties then make it so. Don't just nerf my ability to kill and my health down to two hits. That is not a challenge. That is just an exercise in frustration management.

This. I hate when this happens, what happened to smarter enemies, new abilities or more environmental hazards. On the topic of this, Bleed does difficulty wonderfully. Levels and bosses were so excellently designed around this. Bosses had more abilities, more projectiles, cannon fodder took two hits instead of one (good use of hp increase), and it ups the difficulty in such a way that every level feels just like a slightly tougher challenge. One of my pet peeves is difficulty/difficulty curve done wrong, so to play a game that does this incredibly well was a real joy.