I love hearing about unique takes on game mechanics. Someone recently convinced me that limited inventories are kind of abused currently and that unlimited inventory systems would give more player choices.
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Hate:
-Real Time Timers: Think FF13 Lightning Returns. It doesn’t matter how many mechanics there are to alleviate the pressure, they make me so stressed out that I don’t enjoy playing the actual game.
-Unrepairable Durability Mechanics: I mean things like Breath of the Wild where you can use a weapon X times before it breaks with no way to repair it. I end up never wanting to use “my good weapon” and tryto beat entire games with a 2x4. If I can go to a vendor and repair my gear, I don’t mind as much.
-Superhard Games without difficulty options. Looking at you Soulsborne games; I appreciate that some people like a challenge, but I really think that whole genre would only benefit from giving the player options. I have noticed that seems to be getting more common though.
Love:
-Meaningful Choices: Not two dialogue options with the same end result, but things that shape either story or gameplay. This could be a major branching story choice OR something like a talent tree.
-Base Building: I like build base. It doesn’t have to be a city builder or strategy game (Though I absolutely love those), but I am a sucker for games including any degree of base building. It’s my favourite part of the XCom games as an example. Bonus if I have to make choices about my base, see previous point.
Superhard Games without difficulty options. Looking at you Soulsborne games; I appreciate that some people like a challenge, but I really think that whole genre would only benefit from giving the player options. I have noticed that seems to be getting more common though.
I’m torn on this… I love playing Dark Souls 1/2/3/etc for the world and the enemies and exploring and overcoming the difficulties and finding cool gear and weapons and trying out new builds.
But I also absolutely hate pretty much every single boss fight in the games.
Superhard Games without difficulty options. Looking at you Soulsborne games; I appreciate that some people like a challenge, but I really think that whole genre would only benefit from giving the player options. I have noticed that seems to be getting more common though.
careful, you might alert the horde with a take like that. (i do agree tho)
I am kind of used to sometimes poking the bear on this one in particular. It’s what I personally dislike though, I don’t necessarily think they are badly designed. I totally get some people absolutely love that kind of thing in games, and I am glad they have games that scratch that itch. It’s just an instant turn-off for me though.
That said, I have never quite understood the people vehemently opposed to having a difficulty slider though; just keep it on hard and it’s literally no different.
Yeah I get why people like hard games too! It’s just baffling that so many are so opposed to others wanting to play on easy. I think maybe for these people they like to be “different” and be fans of something that’s “different,” in that it doesn’t have “medium” or “easy” difficulties. They want to feel like they’re part of a special club.
There are online modes in most of those games, besides Sekiro, that difficulty options would have an effect on, particularly invasions. Fortunately, invasions have been getting scaled back as time goes on, and the games have gotten easier in general, so we might converge on a game with difficulty options.
I am not the expert on the genre by any means, but would limiting invasions to “only other people on the same difficulty” just segregate the player base too much?
Any additional reason you have to divide your matchmaking pool will divide it exponentially, so yes.
I think adding difficulty options is fine but the accessibility of difficulty is risky because lowering difficulty is so enticing to the average person. I love souls games but I admittedly, in games where I can change difficulty on the fly, swap the difficulty to quickly move forward if I hit a wall. On the other hand, I spent 8 hours fighting the Guardian Ape in Sekiro and beating them is my favorite gaming experience of the last 5 years. I am pro accessibility but there should be some disadvantages to doing so (ironic, less accessible accessibility options). The easy one is making them a one-chance option. For example, moving your difficulty down from hard to normal, forces you to play the rest of the game at normal (Dragon Quest XI does this). There are other considerations that can be done, hidden difficulty that gives concessions (Crash Bandicoot, RE4) or attempt to estimate a flexible difficulty.
I think with difficulty there’s always going to be a question of “can we make this easier”.
I think the obvious query is “why should I be punished because you can’t hold back your urge to decrease the difficulty” but the reply could easily be “why should Devs do more work so you can play a game not aimed at you?”
Tl;dr: Shits complicated, cheat engine is always an option for the time being. People who mock you are losers.
If Dark Souls had easier difficulties, they wouldn’t have the reputation they do. People would turn down the difficulty instead of learning the bosses and how to beat them.
The games aren’t as hard as people make them out to be. They just force you to adjust and learn to play in control. There’s a reason people can play them with all kinds of goofy input options, though. If you pay attention to what enemies do and don’t blindly spam attack every second, they’re all beatable
If Dark Souls had easier difficulties, they wouldn’t have the reputation they do. People would turn down the difficulty instead of learning the bosses and how to beat them.
Which is hilarious because people ‘turn down the difficulty’ constantly by using summons or ‘jolly cooperation’ all the time in the games and don’t seem to differentiate that from a difficulty option.
I have definitely heard that argument, and I understand it, but at the same time there are a good number of us who would just simply not play the game then.
I realise it is up to the devs who they want to make their game for, and I am probably not their target audience, but banging my head against a wall until I get through something doesn’t give me any kind of feeling of triumph when I manage it. I just feel frustrated. Whereas the soulslike games I have played where I could turn the difficulty down, I enjoyed way more.
But some people play them with just a Dance pad. Doesn’t that, by your logic, mean they are too easy? Shouldn’t they be even harder? Maybe they’d be even more famous. The point is that difficulty is relative, therefore there OBJECTIVELY isn’t a correct difficulty. You’re just lucky enough to fit into their “difficulty demographic”.
But it’s moot anyway. Games with easy modes will still get played with high difficulty by people that actually enjoy it. Your own enjoyment of a game should not depend on other peoples difficulty levels.
There’s pros and cons to having a single standard difficulty. But anyway, you can use mods/editors to make the souls games (or any game for that matter) much easier.
I’ll be one of the “horde” (albeit more tame) but personally I don’t think developers should make their games easier or change their vision in order to broaden its audience. It kinda reminds me of the “rated R” debate. Certain people want movies like Oppenheimer to be rated PG-13 over being rated R so it can reach a bigger audience. But I don’t think Nolan should be changing his vision of the movie just so it sells better
Your comparison doesn’t make a whole lot of sense though? Movies can’t be rated PG-13 and R at the same time, but games can have easy and hard difficulty levels at the same time. The developers don’t have to “change the vision,” they can just put a little tooltip that says hard is “as it was intended to be played” or something like that. I’ve played plenty of other games that did that.
I’m not out here wanting the game to “sell better,” I’m here wanting to enjoy the handcrafted and detailed story and setting without having to worry too much about it being difficult. I’m sorry for not being interested in the challenge?
Limited re-specing. Playing FFXVI right now and the free, on the fly, just open the menu and experiment respec is a tremendeous breath of fresh air.
Totally agree, I don’t want to have to do research before or during playing and have to consult a build guide for every level up, just so I don’t mess up my character.
Just let me fuck around, find out and do it better all over again in my own time.
I strongly dislike ingame teleporting and pause menu quick travel. I’d much rather the game have more ways for me to get to where I’m going than simply materializing wherever I want to be.
Let the travel itself be part of the game instead of just a way to link the “real” parts of the game together. Make it fun and fast to move around, add unlockable shortcuts, add more in-universe traveling options. Let me get to where I’m going myself instead of doing it for me, and make it fun to do so.
Especially in open world games, not only is this the most true, but they’re the worst offenders. Literally what is the point of making an open world and then letting people skip it? You see everything once and that’s it. If you make an open world full of opportunities to wander and explore, and then players want to avoid it as much as possible via teleportation, you have failed as a designer.
I am really conflicted on this, and I think there needs to be some balance or cost/reward. I mostly agree though.
An example I often use about this is in MMOs. WoW felt like a huge world, especially back in vanilla. You could fly end to end and never hit a loading screen, it felt awesome. If you gave me a map of Azeroth and asked me to label all the zones, I probably could. It’s moved a bit more to people teleporting place to place, but I still can fly end to end of a continent.
On the other hand, FFXIV is a series of maps with loading zones between all of them (a necessity because of the older console architecture, I understand) and teleports in every town. You never actually go end to end of Eorzea. If you gave me a map of Eorzea and asked me to label only the three majors cities on it, I doubt I could. It is definitely convenient to just be able to warp around place to place for a trivial amount of currency.
It takes a lot out of the feeling of “world” to just have a bunch of arbitrary areas, I admit. It’s a tough balancing act between player convenience and player immersion.
Yeah, FFXIV makes is super convenient to revisit a place once you’ve already been there via the aetheryte, meaning you’re probably not going to visit it on foot more than a few times. This means you don’t really make that connection between zones (or at least, I didn’t) and thus don’t really view it as an interconnected world (the loading areas between each zone doesn’t really help).
I’m struggling to give proper credit to WoW because I’m not sure if its the staggering amount of time I played the game, the time of my life when I played the game (younger brain retaining knowledge better?), or the seamless transition between zones which lends it to sticking in my memory so hard as a ‘real, interconnected world’… probably a combination of the three, if we’re being honest.
I think MMOs need fast travel because sometimes you just want to meet your friends in X dungeon and all the scenic travel is just an obstacle to that. There shouldn’t be barriers to the social aspect of these games. MMOs have more than enough padding already, if people want the immersive experience they can choose to do that on their own.
Games that give you rapid and fun ways to travel have been ones that I’ve actually not found tedious to get from point a to point b. Methods I’ve like have been blink (teleporting short distances), grapple hook, super speed, flying, etc.
But, just old fashioned running or driving gets stale fast.
Age of Wushu needed less teleport slots.
Time is limited. I don’t want to spend 30 minutes traveling from one side of a map to the next if I’ve already done that 15 times. Just let me get there immediately so I can talk to this single person and get this item I will never use.
I don’t want to spend 30 minutes traveling from one side of a map to the next
I’m not talking 30 minutes. There should be options that let the player do it in a few, depending on the scale.
Just let me get there immediately so I can talk to this single person and get this item I will never use.
You’re encouraging bad design in order to facilitate bad content. There also shouldn’t be much if any mailman content either, that’s just filler.
I’m honestly fine with traveling if it’s interesting. That’s what I disliked most about red dead 2 was even with the beautiful landscape and soundtrack and the random encounters, pretty much every one of your 50 trips to [insert nearby settlement] within a given chapter are going to be exactly the same, and you can’t go very fast because you’re on a horse.
Enjoyed the traveling in Ghost of tsushima. Never felt like a choir there
I’m pretty sure Death Stranding didn’t have fast travel, and I think it worked quite well there. Part of the challenge is to learn the best route between the stations, so it’s well incorporated into the gameplay. There’s barely any enemies on your way either, and those that exist are easily avoidable.
Traveling in Death Stranding is the game though. Enemies are only one part of the challenge; there’s also terrain and how much cargo you can carry on the way, even if you’ve taken that route before.
Death Stranding is Kojima attempting to sell out by making a walking simulator and accidentally putting too much work into it.
I found Death Stranding to be a game that, even though it has combat in it, it’s a solid demonstration of how many different types of mechanics we could be building a game around besides combat, even with a story and high production value.
I would go as far as to say that the combat is the weakest part of the gameplay. I did not enjoy the boss battles and had to turn down the difficulty for them.
Or just let me call them on a call phone.
How do you incorporate phones in Skyrim?
They never said Skyrim.
Guild Wars 1
Having a character of one main class and a secondary class that could be switched at any time between any of the 9 classes.
8-slot skillbar with one heroic skill that could only come from your main class.
400+ total skills in the game.
Plenty of room for you to make your own homebrew builds, and some classic builds that were outside the box:
The assassin that used a staff (assacaster), the ranger that used necro skills to touch people to death (touch ranger), and the 55 monk, which had almost no hp but so much healing it was hard to kill.
It will always be my MMORPG because of the character design.
If “Secret World Legends” isn’t already on your radar, it might be up your alley.
Haven’t played GW1, but SWL has a moveset similar to what you described.
It’s set in modern day, with the premise that all myths, conspiracy theories, urban legends etc are all true - and frequently need to be contained. There are three factions: STRONGLY recommend you choose Illuminati (best faction story line by a long shot).
The investigative missions will make you feel like a moron, but in a weirdly good way. SUPER satisfying to figure them out without looking up hints online.
Not a game I hear mentioned much, but man Secret World had so many great things going for it. The best quest design in a MMO* I have ever seen, and a really unique setting too. Shame it was managed so badly, in an alternate world where TSW took off and was still getting content updates, I would be thrilled.
*MMO-ish in Legends.
Something I really don’t like is stamina that runs out after running for like five seconds
I hate stealth. I want to go everywhere guns blazing. This is what ruined the Farcry series for me. Having unskippable stealth sections.
Like: open world combat where you can plan and use geography to your advantage.
Hate: Inventory management
The fear mechanic in games like Diablo is really obnoxious to me. Having my character run halfway across the screen uncontrollably over and over during a fight is super fun!
Pretty much any mechanic that just takes away control from the player is a bad one. It’s much better when the player can affect a negative event in some way in order to lessen the event, or just bring it to an end. I bet a fear mechanic that at least allowed you to steer your panicking character would make it a lot more palatable.
IMO reversed input is acceptable to me. If you were walking right you’re flee left. If you were fleeing left, you’ll walk right.
Adds fun strategy in multiplayer
Love:
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Base building. Fortifying against enemies and being creative is a blast.
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Exploration and big worlds. Games like Borderlands, Fallout and Far Cry with unique environments and ambiance.
Hate:
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Escort missions. After all these years they’re still not fun.
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Excessive health bars. Having to carry several different kinds of potions, etc. One of my favorite games is Dark Cloud for the PS2, but I think it had health, mana, weapon health, thirst and effects like poison that never cleared until you took a certain potion. I believe I used a GameShark or similar to get rid of thirst and weapon health.
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I am a collector, and inventory management is always the thing that makes or breaks an RPG for me. Unlimited inventory is just completely unrealistic, but on the other hand, making an RPG inventory completely realistic is just no fun. Of course I want to be able to lug all that sweet loot home, including battle axes, broadswords, several full armor sets, myriad other weapons, potions, etc. Having an encumbrance such as Skyrim has makes total sense to me. I love the idea of being able to sort and filter my inventory, and store items in whatever container I own. I also like to be able to compare the stats of new items with ones I own so I know if something is a trade up.
I hate storage block inventories, where items physically take up one, or a few “squares”. I don’t want to play a tile puzzle with my items.
This is my line in the sand too. I couldn’t play Witcher 3 more than the first hours because of the inventory management.
I got a zero weight mod so I wouldn’t need to bother with inventory management.
Need to make sure you hoard those hundreds of potions and wheels of cheese “just in case” 🧀🧀🧀
RDR2 has one of, if not my favorite, inventory systems. Your own ‘backpack’ that had a weight limit and could only carry smaller things. Big things you’d have to lug onto the back of your horse or find a cart. All of your equipped weapons are displayed on your person. If you want to swap weapons you have to run back to your horse and exchange weapons at your saddle bags
I often find mechanics that only exist to waste time incredibly annoying. In the case of loot, a limited inventory is kind of that. You could absolutely just portal/teleport to town, sell your stuff, and then get back to playing. There’s no challenge involved, EXCEPT that it wastes your real-world time.
I liked the pets in Torchlight for this reason. You could send them off to sell loot, while you kept playing the part of the game that’s actually fun.
One exception is something like Resident Evil, where the choice is relevant to the gameplay directly. But even then, I would’ve preferred limits on individual elements (Only X weapons, only X healing items, etc.) and having extras automatically stored.
The junction system in Final Fantasy VIII. The magic system is based on the amount of spells you have left in an inventory and you can also equip them to your character’s stats. If you don’t take the time to acquaint yourself with the system your stats will take a dive because you’re casting spells like in a more traditional game. The upside to this is if you hoard enough spells and equip them to the right stats you can be unstoppable since early game.
Escort quests! Especially when the person you’re escorting moves incredibly slow (except when running toward obvious danger).
I agree that is clearly broken and overused in many games but if we were able to actually control the walking speed on PC with a keyboard similar to what is possible with a controller, it would probably be more bearable tbh.
I love simple controls or an elegant way to control simply. For example using one thumb to control two buttons simultaneously or the Super Mario Run control scheme where you only press on the touch screen, doesn’t matter where, and that’s it.
I hate it when in co-op game the other player’s actions can screw up the game e.g. moving the screen too far so the other player dies.
Have you tried Divekick? It’s a 2d fighting game (IE, like Street Fighter) that only uses two buttons for 100% of the controls.
No, I haven’t. I looked up a video of it and the fighting reminds me of TMNT arcade games which I like. I might give it a try some day.
Obligatory grinding. Like all those “retrieve my friends bracelet from the Torture Chamber of the Bloodseeking Ghouls”. You’re just running around doing the same things over and over again. Finding the place, killing everything, going back, talk to person A, get referred to person B, etc etc.
This is why I don’t play MMOS anymore. They are padded by crap like this.
I hate games that don’t give any indication of when you’re supposed to do it. They’ll give you some tutorial on it and say “right before you’re hit” but good luck figuring out if you’re doing it too late or too early.
