The Game Mechanics Rant Thread

So, there are games out there that have Mechanics we absolutely hate. Each player is different, some players don't mind mechanics, other players absolutely loathe these mechanics.

This thread is meant to be a thread where players can talk about specific game mechanics that they loathe, but I'd ask people to not bash developers or entire games -- JUST the mechanic(s) you don't like. And please remember that other people might enjoy said mechanics even if you do not.

That said....

I'll bring a few up to get the ball rolling.

JRPGs:

MP Starvation / Spells are Too Expensive One thing I absolutely loathe in a J-RPG, is when a game gets incredibly stingy with MP and MP-Healing. They give you long long dungeons, your heal spells cost so much MP that you dare not use them and you have to lug around a ton of healing items because they just won't let you use your spells without going out of mana after 2 or 3 casts of something. And, of course, MP-Healing items barely heal any MP and are ridiculously expensive. A few offenders of this: Breath of Fire 2 through 4 (#2 is especially lousy for it), Arcana, 7th Saga (at least for awhile), Wild ARMs 1 (at first. It gets better later), Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, Earthbound, Dragon Warrior (the entire franchise, lol).

Don't Ever Let Anybody Die! Almost as bad as the above. This is when J-RPGs make reviving fallen group members incredibly expensive or annoying to do (like requiring you to go back to a town). Items to do so in Combat are almost non-existent, or they are so rare that you'd never use them unless a dire situation arose or you're on the last boss, or something similar. Culprits include Earthbound (a most particularly egregious example, reviving someone in this game is outrageously expensive, and can only be done at a hospital unless you have 1 ultra-rare item that cannot be bought in shops).

Bigger Party = Bigger XP Grind Do you love more pointless grind to fluff out playtime? I can't think of many who do. What's worse than XP Grind? Having to grind -more- because you have more people in the group. There's two types of this retarded mechanic. Type A is when XP earned is divided by number of people either in your group or total, and Type B is when people not in your group don't level up at all. Either way, the entire premise behind this is grind for the sake of grinding. Oftentimes, in these games, a midway point with fewer group members is better XP Grinding than endgame with your entire group together because of this. Culprits include Breath of Fire 1 (by far the worst; try leveling up when all XP gains are divided by EIGHT), 7th Saga (it is best to kill your partner and level yourself up and then get a new partner who will match your level), Final Fantasy X (people who didn't participate won't gain AP), Breath of Fire 2 (Absent Party Members don't get XP).

Bethesda RPGs:

"Do X to raise Y". Ah, yes... the days where the developers thought that having a system where you swung swords to raise sword skill, casted healing magic to raise healing skill... it makes sense on paper, but in-game is a whole nuther story. I think everybody remembers the auto-turbo spacebar to raise acrobatics, or facing a character into a corner and putting a weight on the W key to make them run forward for hours to raise Athletics. Mainly this only applies to Morrowind and Oblivion, but it was so retarded that they didn't include it in Fallout 3 (nor did Obsidian use it in FO:NV despite the same engine being used), and Skyrim saw massive changes to the system, such as the removal of the skills that people felt compelled to exploit the most (Athletics and Acrobatics to name two). It also didn't help that the skill gains were SO SLOW in some of these skills. I remember one time, I swam clear from Burma down to that town at the very bottom of the map (Leyawiin?) in Oblivion and I gained... wait for it... one-third of a level on my Lv30 Athletics. Then I ran from the easternmost town to the westernmost town, running along the roads. Took an hour plus to do... and I STILL DIDN'T GAIN A LEVEL. That crap was just broken. No wonder people would go to sleep with the W key weighted down in some safe place.

Dice Roll to Hit Attacks in FPS RPG Here's another Morrowind thing. Everybody pipes up about how awesome Morrowind was... yes, so awesome.... whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh. I can't hit this (insert weak enemy here) that's standing 2 feet in front of me with a broadsword. Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh. WHACK. I finally hit it! YAY! Upon getting Oblivion and playing it for the first time, I ran up to an enemy in the Prologue, swing, and WHACK. I was like "HAH, this is awesome! So much better!"

Knockback in Side-Scrolling games. One thing I will give Starbound: I am very thankful there's no knockback in Starbound. I absolutely loathe knockback (it is one of the few things that I hate about starting a new playthrough in Terraria). Knockback is that evil mechanic that I just loathe entirely and wish developers would stop using altogether.

So what game mechanics do you guys hate?

 

Err... Hmm... Homing projectiles. For example, when you play a game like League, and you're on really low HP and you think that you successfully flash away from the enemy, but no, over there flies an arrow, which started it's course to the east but somehow turned north, right where you now are standing, and it goes through walls and hit you straight in the knee so you have to quit adventuring forever. Quite nasty buisness indeed.

I must also say though that I'm thrilled to hear that someone else have played the 7th saga.

 

contact damage, it doesn't bother me all the time, but some enemies just get on my nerves.

Honestly the biggest rpg trope I hate? Running being useless.

 

Useless how?

Oh, you mean, escaping from battle, and how it never works? Oh yes. That is definitely one of my pet peeves too. "Can't run." "Can't run." "Can't run." and of course every attempt gives the enemy a full turn to use against you.

I can understand not running from boss fights, but c'mon. Sometimes we just don't wanna slog through every stupid mob in a dungeon.

Oh, and.... encounter rates being too high.

Ever played Breath of Fire 1? I'm sure you remember the Wizard's tower. EVERY THREE STEPS was a battle and they gave you the weakest character in the game (Nina) and the two guards, only one of whom could actually do damage.

For the players who never figured out that the E-Key had infinite uses and was an AoE weapon that did 2x the damage of the strongest warrior's attack.... that place was entirely annoying.

 

Escort Missions with really crappy AI and really just escort missions in general.

I'm talking the kind of AI like in Sacred where you get attacked by a mob while escorting an NPC who then runs away off screen while your killing said enemies only to come running back trailing a whole bunch more who are all intent on killing said NPC. S/he usually dies at this stage.

 

Crappy weapon durability is horrible. In some games it makes sense, but only when resources can be regained somewhat easily. But some games make it just a pain, having to constantly keep an eye on your weapon, only for it to break in the midst of combat while you aren't paying attention. You then either have to run all the way back home to repair it for a ridiculous cost, or just use a weak weapon. Dead Island's crappy weapons are what are currently keeping me from enjoying the game. "Oh. you have a machete with a electricity mod that makes it fairly useful? Too bad it breaks after you kill 7 basic enemies." Sure it isn't real expensive in Dead Island, but you do it SOOOOOO much, it just takes away the fun.

Also, instakill bosses.

 

Random rare drops. I find them to be insufferable, as, rather than rewarding the player for skill, it rewards being lucky with no skill input.
I can let it pass for cosmetic items, such as the Action Figures in Starbound, but, when it comes to gear (SPECIALLY boss drops), it is horrible because, depending on the item, it feels out of place (Think of Terraria: Why would a carnivorous plant have an SMG? Or Borderlands 2, in which it feels really weird to see them drop from bosses that don't use them, such as a machine pistol with infinite ammo that drops from an energy blaster-wielding bandit "doctor" who admittedly HAS a medical license), AND just plain lazy, as they could simply use quest rewards.
In the case of bosses, it is even worse because at least random mooks are fairly easy to kill, but it is awful to NOT get the drop you wanted after spending 30 minutes struggling to avoid getting stomped to death/being on the receiving end of a seriously bad bullet hell/whatever while shooting at the walking tank that is unleashing said punishment with your peashooter.

 

Because it ate someone who was wielding the SMG, lol.

Terraria's drops are (usually!) mostly fair, except for a couple of the ultra-rare items. The thing about Terraria is it really doesn't take long to rack up 100-200 kills for the more important items (ankh charm) so you at least get lots of tries.

Now, other games... say... Earthbound and that stupid sword from a somewhat rare enemy in the middle of a dungeon with no save points and no way to refill HP/MP is kind of ridiculous. I got it, but once. And it took 4+ hours of grinding in there (exploiting the butterfly respawn trick and using mirror on the refueling bots).

The same game has a baseball bat that drops off of 5-6 enemies that do not respawn, and I've never seen that stupid bat, ever. 5-6 enemies in the entire game can drop something that has a 1-in-128 chance of dropping? haha yeah right. Each playthrough (unless you quit and reload your save) only gives you 5-6 chances to get this item. Dunno what they were thinking when they made that.

I will tell you one thing I loathe, though, as far as RNG-based loot goes: Bosses with a list of things they can drop. You put a powerful boss in the game, and you give it, say, 8-10 items it can drop and all the items have an equal drop chance. The problem is, is you end up killing the stupid boss over and over and over and over and over again and sometimes you STILL won't see the item. This is my beef with Terraria. I don't mind the "enemy has a 1% chance to drop something", what I hate is "Boss has 11 drops, good luck getting the specific one you want!"

I've done the 20+ golem kills and no pickaxe. I've never, ever seen a Terrarian drop from the Moon Lord, despite me killing him a good two dozen times by now (the fight is long and drawn out). I have never seen an Axe from Plantera.

This same stupid mechanic, however, is even worse in a game like World of Warcraft where you have 25 people in a group and they are all hoping to get 1 item from a boss. IF the boss did actually drop said item, you probably are competing against 3-5 people (perhaps more, depending on what it is).

They eventually gave us personal loot, but again, you end up with 1 boss dropping THE item you need (usually a weapon) and that same boss is the very enemy that refuses to give you anything other than money. I remember doing LFR in Mists of Pandaria for one of my hunters, killing that one big turtle boss hoping a bow would drop from him... haha yeah right. I killed him AND used Loot Tokens probably 5-6 times (which is like a dozen chances) and never did get it. And Blizz had this nasty habit of giving each class a Weapon + Some other random item that can drop from the same boss, and guess which item almost never drops? Yup, the weapon. If you actually get an item... it probably ain't gonna be the weapon.

One of the many reasons I lost interest in WoW. Got tired of running a very unrewarding treadmill.

Warframe uses this same retarded mechanic, but in an even worse situation! They have the Void Towers, special missions you need a key for. To GET a Key, you need to do other missions and sometimes it is random what kind of key you get, if you get a key and each key has its own loot assigned to it. Let's say the item you need is in, I don't know, Void 3 Survival. Well, first you need a Void 3 Survival Key. Have fun. Get said Survival Key, and then there's 4 tiers of loot in Survival: A, B, C and D. They are at 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes. Let's say you need Survival C for your item. So, you survive to 15 minutes... blah, it gave you something mundane like fusion cores or something. You could wait until the 30 minute mark for another shot at Survival C but after 25-ish minutes, the enemies get so frustratingly difficult, that you're likely to die and lose everything.

And of course, they have the chances skewed. If there are four items, it ain't 25/25/25/25... oh no, it's more like 70% chance of fusion core, 20% chance of common item and then 5% chance that you get either of the two rare items.

Let's just say that it is nearly impossible to get some things without buying them for the Real Money Tokens (Platinum).

I liked Warframe, but the RNG was just crushing. It felt very unrewarding to grind the same stuff every day and never get what you need.

And then there's one of the Warframes, lol. It's called Equinox and to get it, you need to collect 6 items: Blueprints. Two helmet blueprints, two body blueprints, and two system blueprints. They all drop from the same enemy and you need 1 of each. Considering that one of the Warframes that Needed 3 of each took me 50+ kills (no joke!) to get the last part... yeah, I didn't even bother. That's like the last time I played Warframe.

 

Undodgeable attacks in games like Borderlands 2.
That's literally just needless punishment for the sake of having needless punishment, there are much better ways to have difficult boss fights than throwing that BS at the player.
Thankfully they listened to the criticism and now the more recent raid bosses are less annoying and more fun.

 

I came across a mechanic in the recently-released Portal Knights that really slays me.

The combat in said game is set up to be fairly active; you're expected to dodge enemy attacks physically, which is fair enough. However, your weapon mechanics are a "hold down button and auto-combo" sort of deal... and you're frozen in one place as long as you're doing so. I hate that you can't move, and I really hate that you can't dodge. Even once you quit attacking in order to haul ass out of the way, your character will follow through with their swing completely before you're allowed to move again. Essentially, you have to predict enemy attacks before they even begin their attack animations, or you often won't be able to dodge them!

 

I feel your pain there I play warframe on PS4 and there is one item I have all but given up on eer getting in the void towers
The Ash Prime blueprint. *shudders* 50+ runs at T3 Defence where it drops only in rotation C (20/40 minute mark) not once have I ever had it drop for me. In the end I broke down and bought the set of another player in trade for plat.

Equinox was a pain in the backside to get I got every part bar one from both its day and night forms and that took me so many Tyr Regor runs that I can still hear him taunting me.

That said though you should have tried farming for Ivara you had to do spy missions getting all three info dumps for a chance of a piece of warframe to drop. the last two being in lv 35-40 missions.

 

These are among the reasons I no longer play Warframe. They took a good idea and just got ridiculous with it, like so many other people do.

 

To add to that, the NPCs your are escorting move extremely slow and have almost no defense plus if they die, the quest/mission fails.

Other game mechanics I hate are:

Friendly Fire - Too many times I have had situations in game where I'm fighting hostile mobs and an NPC gets in the way just to be instantly killed due to their low health, this makes powerful attacks or weapons almost useless and in the case of Bethesda games, you get pinned with a murder.

NPCs that are mob magnets - Again this is irritating, trying to keep certain NPCs alive is a pain when they agro every hostile mob on the screen, either by running after the first one they see or they wander off toward unprotected zones.

Encombermece Systems (Weight Limits) - Now I don't mind limited inventory based on number of slots (I can work around that), but making it so you move extremely slow or can't move at all because those valuable items you picked up maxed out your carry capacity, its either grab a lot of low value light items or only a few high value but heavy items (This plagues Bethesda games)

 

Ancient Prismatic Wyrm is worth 1 xp- You know that demonic spider that you spent 20 minutes to fight almost as if he was a boss? He is only worth the same amount of xp as the common mook.

Level gate- Be ## level or above or get smeared into red jello. The game forcing you to do the same thing over and over and over and over again wears off one's will to play it in the first place. Which brings to...

Paywall- Pay $$ dollars for money exclusive or be prepared to fight 1000 slimes to get past this part. There are so many excellent (legacy) games that got ruined by this.

4x paperwork- A ton of micromanagement isn't fun in real life, why should you do the same chore in a game? Sadly hard to avert even in the best 4x games even many companies are working on avoid it.

It wasn't the fact that only one soldier can do damage, it's the fact that the first soldier was slower than Ox on the same level progression. Fortunately, your heals has a high priority in turn order that will always be first, even fore-mentioned Ox's heal. Also the encounter rate wasn't that bad for me there. I think the game had an item that is a marble of a sort that dispels random encounter for a certain amount of steps.

Before I finish, here is a funny fan Touhou video where game mechanics is specifically trolling you.

 

We can take that a step further in games like Final Fantasy 6: Bosses are worth ZERO experience points. Doesn't matter how hard the boss is, you just get a piddly amount of cash and occasionally an item and that's it.

How about it's sister: A million options, but only ~10 of them are viable. You start a game, pull up the skills and perks menu and you have hundreds of choices, but only 1 point to spend in them, and they are all interconnected, and it looks like you have a whole world of customization open to you, but yet... you know in the back of your mind... that there are probably less than a dozen viable builds in the game, and you have no idea what those builds are until you go look it up on gamefaqs. Doubly bad if the choices are not undo-able.

You had to have known this ahead of time, because IIRC the town right before the tower does NOT sell Mrbl3, which means you have to walk clear back to Windia to buy them if you didn't have any on you in advance. That, and you know, they cost money... something you probably blew as soon as you reached Windia and saw that awesome broadsword and chainmail as your hero, not knowing it was gonna switch to Nina as soon as you stepped foot in the castle.

 

I actually bought Mrbl3 during the time and used them before but I am one of the RPG players that buys and make uses of consumables on a regular basis. However, I can see those that don't will have some problems, especially egregious that said item was stocked only at Drogen for a good while ESPECIALLY during the time when you only have Gobi (whom I feel is even more fragile than Nina) vs powerful undersea monsters.

 

Well, if you're lucky and if you walked straight to the west once you had Gobi, you'd see the town and it is close enough that you just might get there without running into a battle if the game likes you enough. Otherwise, you plop dead and IIRC, it sends you to the shrine in said underwater town and IIRC, your money was just taken by Gobi (but doesn't show up in his inventory). That's probably why they did that -- they knew there was a 90% chance you were dead before you got to the town which would make some players rage.

And yes, Gobi is more fragile than Nina... about the same defense, but Nina is faster and is actually able to go before enemies, and can cast defense spells and heal herself and has enough MP that she can stay alive for a good long time lol. Depends on how well you leveled her up too. Gobi starts out on like Lv16 I think it was? Usually, my Nina is 25+ when I get there. Also Gobi starts out with almost nothing for armor, while Nina's already wearing the best you can find.

And that brings me to a little hint.... do you remember that Tower of Time, the first time you go there, and your hero ends up separated from your group? Here's a fun little thing to do:

1). Make sure you have 3-4 stacks of Mrbl3.
2). As soon as your Hero finds himself alone south of that town, use one (there are instant death enemies that will kill you if they want).
3). SKIP THE TOWN, DON'T GO IN THERE AT ALL.
4). Go all the way back to the town that was frozen.
5). Save in the Dragon Shrine (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!)
6). Have fun!

Since your Hero is alone, you are no longer dividing all XP gains by 7 (or 8 after Mogu), and most battles give 2,250 or so XP. Normally you'd only get ~300 from such a fight. He will gain levels very fast, and all you gotta do is store your money in the bank and use your Hero's T.Drgn (you DO have the Tier 2 dragons by now, RIGHT?) transformation which is guaranteed to kill everything that spawns there in 1 hit. It only takes a couple hours to get your Hero up to Lv50+ (which is about when you stop gaining stats and his stats max out at 255). The rest of the game should be cakewalk now.

 

Not like BoF was much of a challenge and honestly I don't think Ryu is the one that needed extra levels since he is very reliable regardless, having the 2nd best survivability, competing as the best offensive "spellcaster" and the only one that has a multi-targeting as a default attack with the rangsfor trash clearing. But I think we derailed this topic enough with our BoF talk, heh.

 

That's precisely why you level him up first! That way he mows everything down and you won't care how wimpy the rest of the group is, haha. But yeah... I suppose we could get back to the original topic.