Game Design things you hate

I'll start!

-Making the player backtrack through a giant world to get one thing, then travel through the whole world again.

-Not having fast travel in a large game

-Forcing the player to grind to get ahead

-Unskippable cutscenes/dialogue sequences

In general, I hate when game designers don't respect the player's time.

What are yours?

-When the developers place invisible walls everywhere

-Quest lines that are basicly one fetch quest after the other, get's repetitive after a while and i like to not know what will the game make me do next.

-Not being able to set custom markers on you map in big open world games

-Savepoints, let me save whenever i want or put in autosave, don't make me go look for a magical pole/artufact/machine thing to save the game. In my opinion it just turns the game into a race to the next savepoint.

-Your character has the need to say something about everything that happened or is happening with some random one-liner.

-Random encounters or any kind of situation that you can't avoid (unless it's scripted), random things happening in the game world is fun but make them have sense and not frustrate the player. An example is Final Fantasy games where I was always put off exploring the world it presented to me becasue i was afraid of taking a step into an unnecessary long button spamming battle with an enemy i can 1 shot kill. Pokemon does this right tough.

-Abuse of quick tiem events

-Prompts, it's nice in the tutorial and the first time you do soemthign but being halfway trough a gaem and have a message telling you what button to press to interct with an object is a bit dumb. The player isn't stupid.

Other than that I agree with Chris'.

I hate some things you guys hate, don't care about others, and even like some of the things you hate, heh. I like grinding, but yeah, it's not very fun if it's forced.

One thing I really hate is the extreme hand holding in some games, and the game punishing you for not doing exactly what it orders you to do. I know sometimes it's needed, but some games exagerate too much on that.

I hate games that try to offer a free to play System, but don't give you any chance without paying lots of bucks!

I hate games that try to offer a free to play System, but don't give you any chance without paying lots of bucks!

absolutely second this. It's in the same vein as "Pay-To-Win" schemes that, for some ungodly reason, are still supported by player bases as being integral to the game existing. Newsflash, it's all to grab as much cash as possible.

/end rant[/code:b2eiz5ox]

Wolves always find sheeps it's like real life. The more money you have the easier it gets!

I'm going to disagree with:

-Making the player backtrack through a giant world to get one thing, then travel through the whole world again.

-Not having fast travel in a large game

It's from some NES games, it makes us to burn our calories, being nostalgic and having faster reactions from our brains due to emotions.

Easy games aren't good games.

-Not having fast travel in a large game

I was going to say, except when moving around the sandbox is fun like prototype where you freerun and fly around or just cruising with the radio on in GTA. But still, there's really no excuse not to have a fast travel, there's no benefit to forcing the player to waste time like that if they want to get somewhere fast

In general, I hate when game designers don't respect the player's time.

Strongly agree. I know devs want people to play their game for as long as possible, but I'd rather play a shorter game with great content than a longer game that is bloated and drawn out.

my personal hates are:

-Anything that makes me want to check a guide online rather than figure it out myself, like collectibles in open world games, buying a map in game and crossing off the map items one by one is fun, finding a map online and trying to keep track of which ones you have, isn't fun

-escort quests. yeah these can be done well but mostly are terrible, worst offenders are the ones that include; stupid AI, escortees that run blindly into danger, weak escortees that die easy and make you restart the whole damn thing.

-tutorials that treat you like an imbecile. you know the kind, "before you get to the good part of the game, jump through all these hoops for 20 mins until you've proved you can do every little thing from pressing A to jump to this complicated thing you aren't even going to use"

Games that want your to see all the content, but make your repeat areas when dying.

As an example of Bad Death

Mass Effect

A highly narrative driven game where the game is designed for you to experience the story not dying.

An Example of Good Death

Mega Man(NES and Retro)

A game where dying and retrying is the focus of the game. The level is the game not the story.

An Example of Fantastic Death

Mount and Blade Singleplay campaign mode

A light tactical rpg. Players don't die. When they lose they are taken prisoner and have no control of there character. Time is accelerated. Armies are lost. World goes on. Finally the player is either rescued or escapes. however the world has changed and the player had no influence. So the player is punished and set back, but the game progresses under a different route.

Pointless QTE

First I like the theory of QTE. I have some dynamic QTE games in mind. However often QTE are used to content blocks. Fail a QTE then you are forced to repeat the QTE until you pass. Where as QTE that determine a path or out come are not pointless.

Sample

Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicals(Wii)

Some QTEs when you fail force your character down a different less ideal path. The game is harder on this temporary path. Where as the later QTEs when you fail just make you repeat the QTE and punish you by HP loss.

jayderyu : I agree with the QTE, I loved Prince of Persia:The two thrones QTE's speed kill, perfectly justified, if you lose, you aren't punished too much (you just do the fight the brutal way, which is still a lot of fun)

— : "Easy games aren't good games." => wrong statement, Super princess peach is easy, and it is a good game, same goes for Monster World 4, because difficulty is a tool that has to be well used, a game starting out difficult is bad, since the player has to have time to adapt to the game to enjoy it, the difficulty should just come from a low point at the beginning to an higher point at the end of the game, or ideally to have the player choose how to do things, the easy way not rewarding but safe, or the hard way more difficult but rewarding.

Of course this is game specific and so we cannot have a simple rule for that

As already discussed by Beaverlicious and DatapawWolf, worst thing ever is probably cash grabbing mechanics. They feel borderline blasphemous to me, and it's something I really can't stand. I'm still new here, so I can't post links yet, but I suggest googling "Dark Game Design" to find some interesting insights in this and other "evil" practices.

Beside this, I hate equipment grinds, most of all when grinding long enough supersedes any level of skill.

the third dimension

just kidding!

I agree on special save portals, grinding, long distance backtracking without quick travel, escort missions with bad ai, and pay to win.

At this hour I have no original complaints or definitive examples.

Grok.Games.MakeBetter(Rock, Paper, Scissor, Spock);

-Random encounters or any kind of situation that you can't avoid (unless it's scripted), random things happening in the game world is fun but make them have sense and not frustrate the player. An example is Final Fantasy games where I was always put off exploring the world it presented to me becasue i was afraid of taking a step into an unnecessary long button spamming battle with an enemy i can 1 shot kill. Pokemon does this right tough.

This I kinda agree with and disagree at the same time. But I guess it depends on the mood I'm in for the game. Sometimes I do like to do some senseless grinding to get stronger for something or to look for a certain item in final fantasy. I do agree that there could be things that are done though for people that want to avoid it. Chocobos in Final Fantasy allowed for avoiding fights. Some games have an item you can purchase to temporally not do a fight. Or certain paths that don't spawn like in Pokemon you mentioned.

I agree that QTEs can be a pain in games if not done right or like when an enemy has only one weak point on it's enormous body and is completely invulnerable everywhere else a la Achilles' heal and the enemy moves around a lot blocking it where you only have maybe a split second at a time per opening.

I agree with Save Points as well not being very good, while I can see their point but at times you don't want to have to backtrack from 50 minutes of game play you just did, because the last save point you were around was eons ago.

Can't really think of any non-mentioned things at the moment though.

what I hate: baddly designed savepoint with gameover:

If a savepoint isn't giving you full life (can be justified sometimes), AND that being killed result in a return to title screen, the player can be trapped forever.