Your minor video game pet peeves?

[sageoftruth]

Super light and dashing rogues being more capable at armed combat than the people who have better arms and armour and have obviously been training for a longer time.
Just for once, I would like to play an assassin's game where fighting armed guards actually feels dangerous, where you have roughly the same amount of health as the people you're going after and your only advantage is your stealth and unusual equipment.

Looking at Assassin's Creed in particular, but plenty of (J)RPG's are guilty of this as well, trained soldiers should not be the lowest grade opponents in your game unless you're Monster Hunter!

Oh yes. This. I've been getting tired of this as well. I remember playing Tales of Xilia. My first encounter was with an armed guard. This was a tutorial fight and he went down super easy. So, what kind of soldier-killing badass was I using? A medical student. Granted, it's later explained that he learned martial arts growing up, but that still doesn't make an an unarmed pencil-pushing med student seem like a match for a military-trained, fully-armored soldier.

 

[Skatologist]

A very simple, minor one.

Let me fast-travel when I'm over-encumbered, dammit!

Look, carry limits make a lot of sense in a lot of games. They're typically there to keep you from hoarding resources that are meant to be scarce (System Shock 2, Dead Space), from having an obscene amount of options to choose from in combat scenarios (The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3 and New Vegas), or a combination of both. Its meant to keep you from being overpowered, and thats fair. But guess what, Bethesda? Guess what, Obsidian? I'm going to hoard everything I find in my personal hideout. I'm just that type of player, I use all the resources at my disposal. You can make surprisingly profitable transactions in Fallout: New Vegas with a bunch of silverware, office supplies and ruined books. Thats just how I am, I can't turn that switch in my brain off when a game allows that option. Just let me hoard in peace. You want to slow my character fine for combat and stuff, fine, but don't make it so I have to make multiple fast travel trips just to get all the loot. I'm going to do it anyways, so just give me a break, please?

Yes, exactly, I have no idea why open world RPGs do this and I'm tired of it. Just let me be able to hoard my stuff in 1 location than having to spread it out or leave it on a body or something.

...I started a new profile in Skyrim two weeks ago and I have over five hundred Iron Daggers just sitting in a drawer in my house. ..

Spoiler: Okay...

As for me personally: Unskippable Cutscenes - only in the sense that if I beat the game once and you know I did, I should be able to skip, or if I die at a boss or something. Haven't played too many recent games that do this, but I do hate it. Even the idea I want to rewatch a cutscene before a boss seems stupid.

Necessary Grinding- I never known when to stop, so I stop until I lose all sense of fun playing the game and just quite because of the boredom and tediousness.

Lack of backpacks and carrying devices in games- I'm not for realism in the slightest, but it irks me that things just pop out of nowhere for most games.

 

[MerlinCross]

Eh two minor gripes that might not have been mentioned.

Auto Battle: Seriously just lemme push a button to win. "Why? Aren't you having fun?" Asks the game, or a few very annoying people. Why yes, yes I am having fun. But I'm not having fun with these enemies I can one shot in an area of the game I'm just trying to get through for a side quest or some other reason. I'm 30 levels above these guys just lemme pass!

Or, and this is something that boggles me,

Auto Win - Earthbound style. Why do we NOT have this? I'm strong enough, it's not gonna kill me, it'll do like 1 point of damage just let me kill this thing already! Or heck just make the enemy sprite(model) run away from me because it knows "Oh wow I have no chance against this, I'm out".

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Both related to pausing, I hate when you can't pause a cutscene and I hate when you pause a game and it still makes noise. If I get a phone call when I'm playing a game I want to be able to pause and answer the phone. I don't want to wait for the cutscene to end and hope the person is still there or miss the cutscene and I don't want the game making noise when I paused it and am talking to someone.

 

[shadyh8er]

Giant monster boss battles that boil down to "run here, do a thing, rinse, repeat." Examples include the Leviathan from Resistance 2 and Cronos from God of War 3.

 

[HardkorSB]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that no Slavic people colonised fictional worlds... buuuuuuut neither have any Americans and yet so many natives of fictional worlds manage to sound very American.

you might not know this but to the people who's native language isn't English, the non-regional American accent (kind of like the one that people on US news use) tends to be the most understandable one.
It's often seen as the "neutral" accent in the English language.

 

[Salomega]

Something I miss and haven't seen in a snarling zombie dog's age is enemies that are 10+ levels below you running from you in terror. King's Bounty does this and its great, you get close and they start running. If you decide they deserve death and run into them it gives you the option to either fight them or let them run off. Letting them run equals a smaller reward of xp and gold/items but you still get something out of the encounter, and if you don't feel like they are worth the time then just let em run.

I hate how most RPG's have this idea that everything should be hostile, even that Dodo penguin I can slap dead in a single hit seems to have a chip on his shoulder and runs at me with no survival instinct. I guess what I'm saying is give the enemies some survival instinct!

 

[ArcadianDrew]

A pet peeve for me (or is it a major annoyance) is when your super awesome character can bend time and space to their will, destroy enemies by looking angrily at them and generally is the most powerful bad-ass ever, so powerful they can even beat a really tough boss, taking their health to 0. But then, in the following cut-scene it shows my character getting the shit kicked out of them. What was the point of me fighting them if they were just gonna have my character lose in story anyway. This is especially silly in MGS when you blow up Rex with Liquid inside, but in the cut-scene Snake is the one passing out and Liquid is calmly walking towards him. No game! I beat him, I want my moment NOW!

 

[dohnut king]

Checkpoint based save systems. There is no reason for them when all consoles have hard drives.

 

[Randoman01]

For me: Whenever I play a space based 4X type game and pick the Humans. I never seem to start on Earth or in the SOL system. It is usually always some random planet.

Your fault for not playing Galactic Civilizations or it's sequel.

Solution : Get Galactic Civilizations or it's sequel. Do it now.

I have it. So there is no need to worry.

 

[Tayh]

Getting that unskippable notification, every time you start a game, about not shutting the game off when the autosave icon is blinking IN A FUCKING PC GAME.
Or that "Press any key to continue to main menu" screen that serves absolutely no fucking purpose in a PC game. I don't even know what it's for on a console.

Lack of manual saving function, and by extension, save waypoints.

 

[Ima Lemming]

Games that insult the player when they quit.

Look developers, most people aren't going to finish your game in one sitting. Don't insult them for "wimping out" when they just need to take a break.

I know it's meant as a joke, but it's still irritating.

 

[Dalisclock]

Lack of variety in accents. Most accents in games can be summarised as 'generic American' or 'fake "so painfully English I piss hot tea"'... Where are the real English (in all their colourful regional varieties)? Where are the Kiwis? The Aussies? The Saffas? The non-postcard Irish and Scots? Where are the Welsh, me boyo? (and yes, I realise that they all have their own regional variations)... Where are the Canadians whose accents can be picked up by people who aren't from North America? Would a Newfie Inquisitor have been that bad? A Taffy Shep? An even slightly slavic sounding Geralt?

That's probably one of my biggest minor issues with XCOM: Enemy Withen. They added numerous non-english languages to reflect a muti-national team, but all the "English" accents are American, which sounds really odd when there are Autralians, Nigerians, South Africans, Egyptians and Canadians on my team. Even wierder, since Japanese isn't one of the available languages, my Japanese XCOM soldier speaks in unaccented American English. Considering they went through the trouble of recording dialogue(combat, mostly) in 7 different languages, would it have been that hard to find someone with a passable British or Australian accent to fill out the English language voices?

 

[MerlinCross]

Games that insult the player when they quit.

Look developers, most people aren't going to finish your game in one sitting. Don't insult them for "wimping out" when they just need to take a break.

I know it's meant as a joke, but it's still irritating.

Example please?

 

[Evonisia]

I hate when I have to follow an NPC and my running speed is faster than theirs, but my walking speed is too slow and the game doesn't have variable speeds depending on how far you push the analogue stick.

If anything is immersion breaking it's fucking that.

In addition, when games force you to a specific speed without a reason during a character's dialogue. Gears of War is a massive offender of this (as I've been made painfully aware by replaying all of them this month). If I want to walk, I will do it through my choice, not because you limited my fucking movement speed.

It's OK in the likes of Tomb Raider 2013 when your character is going through the umpteenth injury recovery process, but it's usually beyond irritating.

 

[Ima Lemming]

Games that insult the player when they quit.

Look developers, most people aren't going to finish your game in one sitting. Don't insult them for "wimping out" when they just need to take a break.

I know it's meant as a joke, but it's still irritating.

Example please?

Steel Storm on Steam was one. I think one of the comments when you quit was "You'd kiss your mother with those lips?"

Didn't help that the game itself was pretty crap.

 

[MerlinCross]

Steel Storm on Steam was one. I think one of the comments when you quit was "You'd kiss your mother with those lips?"

Didn't help that the game itself was pretty crap.

Ah, don't know that title. Myself I don't think I've seen a game insult you when you quit. When you die yes, just in different ways. Rayman games(Origin and Legends) eventually ask if you want to skip the stage, same with Explosion Man. And a small title called Risk of Rain has a bunch of death messages it can put up; from small tips to "Rekt".

 

[aozgolo]

I have a lot... here goes.


The Brick Bossfight - You know the one, where some big large heavy indestructible boss charges at you for a couple of rounds then bangs his head on some piece of the scenery and you have a couple of seconds to wail in on him with relative impunity before he gets back up and repeats the process 2 or 3 more times... Yeah I'm getting real sick of this boss formula.

Time-Saver DLCs - Their very existence suggests that the dev put pointless annoying NOT FUN repetitive tasks in the game to try to sucker you into these things to progress past them.

Inventory Stack Limits WITH Inventory Weight Limits - I get the point of a stack limit, to show there's some kind of limit to how much your character can carry, but when you also have weight limits, having a stack limit also just is irritating...

No-Confirmation Cutscene Skips - Moreso than unskippable cutscenes I hate when I'm either not expecting a cutscene or I accidentally press a button and suddenly I've skipped the whole thing and now I have no clue at all what just happened! Give me a cutscene skip option but please don't tie it to my primary action buttons, or at least ask me "Are you sure?" first

In-game DLC or Online Content reminders - I hate having guys in my camp in Dragon's Age telling me I can go on an awesome adventure... if I buy a DLC... or my ship cabin in AC4 telling me I need to be online to use this feature... it's so immersion breaking.

Modern RPGs that don't show equipment changes on your characters - I can forgive this well enough for any game pre-2000, but it's gotten to the point where status quo says if you upgrade from a leather jerkin to iron armor you should have something to indicate that your character is at least now wearing a shirt.

No Body Sliders in Character Creators - I appreciate the 500+ options to fine-tune my character's face but why can't I so much as alter their height or basic build? Outside of Saints Row 2/3 and The Sims I've rarely seen any sort of options for modifying your character's body, we're not all cookie cutter you know! Maybe I want my heroes pudgy or at least not looking like Arnold Scwarzenegger in his prime.

Tactical RPGs on Flat Maps - Final Fantasy Tactics came out in 1997, over 15 years later we're still getting tactical RPGs that can't top that. The biggest pet peeve are completely flat maps with no height terrain or obstacles, that's just booooring!

No Jump Button - Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance was wonderful enough to give us a jump button and absolutely zero use for it whatsoever (save that one spot where you could jump on crates to get to a chest) but it was there! I don't expect devs to add clever uses for a jump mechanic in their game, but just the ability to jump somehow improves your game by a nominal margin!



Last of all, this isn't actually a "game" pet peeve but:

When the cost of all DLC is more than the game + all DLC - I can't stand it when I see a GOTY or Ultimate Edition of a game I already own for like 7$ and if I just want to buy all the DLC for that game I have to pay 12.50$... admittedly this seems to be more of a Steam issue than anything but... yeah.