The Game Mechanics Rant Thread

Discussion in 'Games' started by Xylia, Apr 7, 2016.

  1. MilkCalf

    MilkCalf Supernova

    Thankfully Assasins Creed games implemented a cinematic auto-walk beside the NPC thingy.
    Worse yet. There's loot on the way and you are jumping all over the place while you should be listening to the important things they have to say.

    Another one:
    Surprise horror level/elements. You ever played a non-horror game that had a horror plot twist near the end. You just prance around shooting or slicing bad guys when they introduce something zombi-like. Or better yet a horror mission at the midle of a game. Although this might not exactly be bad game design and I understand that this is supposed to be a nice surprise I don't like getting scared. The gameseries that has these at the end where kinda cool to me. They built suspence and I knew how to play the game so I wasn't that out of my element.
    One game that is made to be gloomy is Thief and it nails it. It's fun and depressing to sneak around the dark city and steal from the rich. What I wasn't expecting though was for it to have a main mission where you go to a haunted mental hospital. It's already horrifying if ypu just speed through it, but my greedy hands made me stay there longer. I just completed the mission after a two year break.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 30, 2016
  2. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Fallout: New Vegas did this with Dead Money... but you know what? IMO, they pulled it off rather well.

    I didn't, however, like the Dunwich Building in FO3. That was just too creepy... the ambient sounds, the flashes of the Pre-War guy and then when the flash ends a Glowing Ghoul is standing there ready to rip you in half before you can hardly react, and that.... thing.... in the bottom is kinda ick, along with the book you find in that place. Just... All of my NOPE. I usually go in there just far enough to grab the bobblehead and then get out as fast as I can.
     
  3. Vilespring

    Vilespring Subatomic Cosmonaut

    The scariest part of Fallout is the damn barrels.

    Sneaking around, no sounds, then DON-BOOM-BONG! and a barrel goes light speed across the screen.
    I will never look at 55 gallon drums the same.
     
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  4. STCW262

    STCW262 Heliosphere

    To be fair, they had an use: If you put them horizontally with an end facing you and the other end touching a NPC, and you try to run towards the NPC, the barrel will hurt the NPC and the player, which can be used to kill NPCs without any repercussions (Including things such as Karma changes or nearby NPCs turning hostile).
     
  5. LazerRay

    LazerRay Cosmic Narwhal

    I never had any trouble with the barrels, but all those tin cans and glass bottles made sneaking tricky, I got to the point of picking up every can or bottle I saw just to avoid alerting anyone nearby.
     
  6. TTStooge

    TTStooge Big Damn Hero

    Let's not forget Dunwich Borers in FO4.

    The game has a unique ambient track JUST for that area, and there's the familiar flash-backs as well as earthquakes while you're going through the mines.

    The cause of the quakes is an ancient...THING underneath the mine. The owners were mining towards it and actually unearthed part of it before the nukes dropped. This titanic being is actually TRYING TO GET OUT.

    God knows what that thing will do when it's unleashed.


    But since I don't want to derail the thread too much, there is ONE thing very frustrating about the area.
    At the end there's this very deep pit of water that can actually trap you if you head down there with power armor.

    Only way out? Leave behind a valuable power armor frame. Thank goodness reloading is a thing.
     
  7. Jonesy

    Jonesy Sarif's Attack Kangaroo Forum Moderator

    Glad I'm not the only one who's a tad worried by that... thing. I was hoping for a DLC including the Abbey of the Road that would expand on it more, like with Point Lookout.

    Who knows, might need to get into modding someday...
     
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  8. Diamond Dog

    Diamond Dog Guest

    You know what i hate?
    In sm4sh there is a 25% chance that you go into an animation that doesnt let you tech after being hit.
     
  9. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Here's a Less-Than-Legal entry:

    Stealing in J-RPGs.

    I really can't understand the "Almost-Never-Works" Steal Command in JRPGs. Seriously. Surely the game developers knew that any player who knows that any enemy that has something good to steal, that they are going to steal from that enemy over, and over and over and over and over and over again until they FINALLY get the stupid thing they're trying to steal?

    Egregious examples of this include FF4 (Steal almost never works and is used by the weakest character in the group), FF9 (even WITH the accessory AND skill that supposedly improves steal chances, it can still take 50+ attempts to get an item off a boss), and Chrono Cross (You can only steal once per battle and that's if you only have a certain character in the group, and it usually misses, and in some cases, you get the wrong item because some enemies that have awesome items, have two different items and of course you usually steal the wrong one).

    I wonder why they even bothered adding the stupid thing in if it (almost) never works.
     
  10. Lava Cake

    Lava Cake Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Non-gradual carry weight limits. In other words, if I'm in Skyrim near maximum weight and I pick up some Snowberries, that shouldn't make me not be able to run. Also, how am I able to carry an ungodly amount of gear and still be able to run as fast as I am able to run carrying nothing? It's very strange and I would like a game that made weight gradual and slow you down depending on how much weight you are carrying, it would be a nice challenge to manage your inventory instead of just worrying about going over that dreaded weight limit.
     
  11. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Eh, to be honest, to each their own but I hate what you're proposing. With that type of system, you're encouraged to never carry anything if you have any indication you could get into a battle, because you're probably moving at reduced speed, like always. And unless there's some sort of "equipped armor weight is ignored" type system, it unfairly punishes heavy armor users in actual combat. It's bad enough heavy armor users get the short end of the stick when it comes to carrying stuff, but heavy armor is also more expensive to repair to boot.

    To be honest, I hate inventory weight entirely. You know everybody and their brother is a kleptomaniac because of how expensive stuff is in most games like that until you get near the end. You're encouraged to take everything that isn't bolted down and hawk it. And then they slap punishing weight limits on you and go "ha-ha, now you gotta make 50 trips to clean out this dungeon!"

    I HATE that.

    Limited Inventory Room is a huge pet peeve of mine. No, making several trips back to town is NOT fun. It's needless tedium. Why do you think Torchlight 2 allows you to send your pet back to sell your junk for you? They recognized how ANNOYING that is in games like Diablo where you can't carry more than a few pieces of armor before you gotta drop what you're doing to go running back to town to sell it. Even with Town Portals, even with UNLIMITED Town Portals in D3, it's still annoying. It breaks the flow of combat, and it brings forth a groan from deep within my throat every time I hear "I CAN'T CARRY ANYMORE!" "I DON'T HAVE ROOM FOR THIS!" "NOW WHERE WOULD I PUT THIS!?" 3 minutes after I just got back from going to town.

    URRRRRRRRRRRGH.

    I HATE that.

    Yes, Excessive Inventory Management is one of my top pet peeves in gaming.

    I love J-RPGs like FF6 where you cannot possibly fill the inventory up no matter what you do, lol. See, THOSE games did it right.
     
    Lava Cake likes this.
  12. STCW262

    STCW262 Heliosphere

    To be fair, that is often done so that players can't carry a lot of specialized weapons so more generalistic ones are still useful, but that could be fixed by making it so that there's a limit for the emount of weapons that can be equipped so the player can carry a lot of weapons to sell or store, but they can't be used right away. That would be a way to avoid the "Too many weapons" issue, but then, it would be weird to add because it wouldn't make much sense to, say, be unable to take a sword or gun or whatever and use it straight away (Probabily an in-history explanation would work, but I can only realy see it in sci-fi settings or high fantasy).
     
  13. Zerukoba

    Zerukoba Pangalactic Porcupine

    Dragon Dogma did this. In fact Dragon Dogma is "the little things" the game. Your character size/weight decide how likely you will get blown away by gusts of strong wind, able to get lift by harpies, how likely you get knock down by a powerful attack and how much you can carry before moving like a slug. Smaller characters have a faster stamina regen, can move faster in shorter distances and able to enter special areas like goblin holes that big characters simply can't enter. The game is really spot on, your lantern might go out if you walk into the water as a small character but not as a larger character as even that is depended on your height.

    Good game with a ton of flaws but most agree the things it did right outweigh the clear flaws that exist within it making it an amazing game overall. The flaws though is what keep it from being 10/10 game of the year of every year as there is only one major city in the whole game for starters and the AI can be extremely stupid sometimes.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2016
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  14. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    More Mechanics Rants.

    The Equipment/Statistics Episode!

    What does this even DO, anyways!? I know this is a bit of an old out-dated mechanic, but hey, I still see games doing this occasionally (just indie games though). Ever picked up a sword and it either has no stats listed, or it has some arbitrary stat listed that means next to nothing? In older RPGs, okay yeah they didn't have UI room to tell you what every weapon did (though I don't really believe that. There had to had to have been a way). But nowadays, what's with the tendency for some RPGs to not want to tell you what weapons and armor actually do for you? You pick up a weapon and it says "Base Damage: 5.6" and I'm like "...uh, ok." Then you take it out and you hit something and it does, say, 400 damage. Or, again, you might in some games to into a weapon shop and... there's no way to see what anything DOES. Sometimes you'll get an up arrow that says "This is better than what you have." .....but by how much? I don't want to dump 5,000 hard-earned gold on a sword that only gives me +1 damage, lol.

    So......which is actually better again? Some RPGs love complexity for the sake of complexity. Maybe there's 5 million different damage types, maybe there's 50 talents/perks/skills/whatever that affect how much damage you do and take, and of course, the game never wants to tell you outright exactly what something does. You mouse over, say, a longsword, the one you had and it says "5.6 Base Physical damage" and "+1 snot damage" and "+1 to One-Handed Weapon Specialization" (which is a talent that you have).

    Then you find another weapon, say a one-handed axe and it says "5.2 Base Physical Damage" and "+2 fart damage" and "+1 Roid Rage" (which is another offensive talent).

    So you're scratching your head saying "UM, ok, which weapon makes me do more damage, then?" There's nowhere in the tooltips that says "YOU WILL DO X WHEN YOU SWING THIS WEAPON" or anything like that. No, you gotta get out a calculator and a BIG sheet of paper and start calculating all of the possible damage ranges, that's assuming you actually know how the game applies all of these formulas... you got Strength, you got talents, you got racial bonuses, blah blah blah. By the time you're done, you MIGHT have the answer by the time you filled both sides of an 8x11'' sheet of paper with math.

    Would it kill developers to give you a damage preview of what to expect assuming you're swinging at a 0 defense target? I remember a game that did this, and it was awesome. I can't remember the game's name, but you moused over a weapon and it said "Attack vs Defenseless Target: x" "Attack vs Target of (insert your defense rating here): y" with all the numbers and calculations thrown in.

    Sometimes, at the end of the day I just wanna know what my equipment can DO.

    EXP-to-Level: This usually isn't an issue in today's games, but man, some SNES games... urrrgh. Some of these games did NOT tell you how much XP you need for a levelup. Breath of Fire 1 is an example, it tells you how much XP you've collected total, but does not say how much you need until you attain your next level. What's the point in telling me how much XP I collected the entire game!? I want to know how much until I levelup. Breath of Fire 2 was almost as bad, it shows you Current and then What XP you will level up at. For example, it'll say 123456/152333 and you gotta add it up in your head. What's the point in telling you the overall XP you've collected, anyways? It's useless information. What I want to know is exactly how much I gotta get until I levelup. That's all I need to know. The BoF games weren't the only games around to do it either, I remember other SNES-era and perhaps even a few Playstation RPGs doing similar.
     
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  15. Ariskelis

    Ariskelis Ketchup Robot

    There's a mod for that. ;)

    I hate it when games where other NPCs don't fight eachother, no matter how different they are. Like Skyrim wildlife - Everything is against *you* and that is it. Everything is centered on you, never fighting amongst themselves. Thankfully, there's also a mod for that! ;)
     
  16. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Eh, even without mods, I've seen wildlife attacking people a lot. I've seen bandits attacking wolves, and bears... and especially dragons. Dragons love snacking on random squishy people, almost more than they enjoy picking a fight with you. I've seen dragons just fly above me, whooosh... and a couple minutes later, I hear sounds of a battle in the distance, and the dragon decided to pick on some random traveller or two (it's funny when dragons attack those elven bad guys that you had to infiltrate their base, lol. What were they called, andvari or something?).

    And of course, vampires. One of the reasons I hated having the vampire DLC installed, is random shopkeepers getting killed left and right because the vampires start murdering random people in towns, INCLUDING IMPORTANT SHOPKEEPS AND QUEST NPCS!

    I HATE that!

    Same goes for the assassins sent from Dragonborn DLC.

    Attack ME all you want, but leave the stupid townspeople alone!
     
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  17. Ariskelis

    Ariskelis Ketchup Robot

    Ye, all the major factions can fight, but wildlife never fights other wildlife. Sabercats never fight wolves, etc.
    Also yeah vampires are annoying as all hell. :rofl:
    I hate that sometimes AI is so.... off. Sometimes an unarmed civilian will put up fisticuffs to a dragon, but a fully armored guard will flee. Wut?
     
  18. Vilespring

    Vilespring Subatomic Cosmonaut

    The AI in most games also seem to lack common sense. "See that guy wearing full power armor and armed with a .50 cal rifle? I'm gonna mug him with my pool queue, great idea huh?"
     
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  19. Diamond Dog

    Diamond Dog Guest

    I have another example!
    "Hey, you see that settlement over there? Yeah that one, the one with all the turrets everywhere and the gaurds with rocket launchers and the deathclaws patrolling the perimeter! Lets attack it with our unmoddified pipe pistols and nonexistant armor!"
     
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  20. STCW262

    STCW262 Heliosphere

    To be fair, throughout the Fallout series, raiders consistently are shown to take more drugs than a rock star; so they might be high as satellites when they do such dumb decisions.
     

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