I've been playing Halo Reach on PC, and the one thing I noticed is that running is considered a power up. How lame is that? This is an FPS, it's our fundamental right to be able to run without it being a power up!! So that got me thinking.. what other bad design choices are there in games? Another one that comes to mind is Zelda Breath of the Wild's weapon durability. Everything is so fragile and gets destroyed so quickly. I don't mind weapons breaking, but not that easily.
So how about you, SW? What are some bad design choices in games?
They made the spartans considerably less powerful in Reach, they can't pick up any heavy weapons or dual wield smaller weapons. Which Master Chief can all do.
On the plus side, they did add a ton of cool new weapons for you to use :)
As for bad design choices?
What about designing your 60 dollar full price game like a free to play mobile game, where all the fun is being locked behind paywalls. But hey, you don't need to pay, have fun grinding!
I hate games like Dark Souls when you die and lose all your things and even exp, and have to head back and hope you can recover them. Also I dislike rogue like games where you die once and have to start completely over.
Some people actually like this though but I stay away from games like this that waste my time.
So you like games like Ass Creed then? You die, respawn exactly where you died, enemies killed prior to your death are all already dead, and you just move on? What is the point of even have a death mechanic, then? If in the Souls games you were losing armors/weapon on each death, that would suck. But all you're possibly losing is xp/currency, and enemies respawn (as they should. Has been a thing since games became a thing).
I'm generally not a fan of a games as a service game as a design choice. I get that it's lucrative but It's also shallow. It pushes you to only play that game, and that game alone. I want to play lots of different games and find new experiences, not grind away on the same maps/events over and over to level equipment that's going to be irrelevant when the next DLC/sequel comes out.
Crafting ammo and stuff is lame. Save it for the survival games
RPG elements have really started to get on my nerves as well - particularly since now they're a way for publishers to push mtx by making you underlevelled - cough Ubisoft cough
Let's replicate Darksouls bonefires, but instead of making it a safe area, let's have the player fight enemies over it, with "resting", the same button as "attack" causing fights to unintentionally reset.
Let's use the light-saber as a torch, but make it barely light shit, and have the player hobble at 1/4 the speed, in darkly lit caves where the objective is purely to hobble to the other side.
When the player dies, let's repeatedly make him climb shit that provides absolutely no challenge, but merely acts as slowing them down.
Let's put as many beams around as humanly possible that serve no purpose other than to slow the player down for the vast majority of the game.
Let's open up a map menu, which suggests complete freedom to tackle missions, but in reality it's a linear path where you will be blocked off from progressing, and thus, a bollocks illusion of freedom.
Let's have combat in tight areas where the camera will have a nervous breakdown as soon the player nears a wall
Let's use a Darksouls lock-on system, but throw multiple enemies firing from screen you can't see when you decide to use or you can turn it off and swing wildly. Great.
Let's add a "Do you want to respawn" screen with no other option than "Yes I want to respawn".
Let's add cinematic hobbled walking whenever we feel like it because that's an easy way to do story-telling.
Let's not allow the player to use Sith abilities, that would be fun. Like Jedi Knight.
Let's make the entire story pointless.
Let's do the Order 66 sequence, but have them killed off like the Jedi are psychotic.
Let's add a bunch of indistinguishable ropes that look like they can be used like others the game taught you, but you'll actually clip through.
Probably more.
Ghost was saying for months these fellows were a modern day Valve.
Another one that comes to mind is Zelda Breath of the Wild's weapon durability.
Not bad game design at all. Weapons are a resource in Breath of the Wild and are in such ready supply that you should never face the risk of being weaponless. It's actually a very interesting mechanic because it removes the trope of always using only the most powerful weapon available and ignoring everything else. Players should learn early on in the game to conserve their more powerful weapons and not waste them on low level enemies.
Another one that comes to mind is Zelda Breath of the Wild's weapon durability.
Not bad game design at all. Weapons are a resource in Breath of the Wild and are in such ready supply that you should never face the risk of being weaponless. It's actually a very interesting mechanic because it removes the trope of always using only the most powerful weapon available and ignoring everything else. Players should learn early on in the game to conserve their more powerful weapons and not waste them on low level enemies.
I don't have a problem with weapon durability in itself, it's the fact that there is no durability at all lol. The weapons break after like 10 swings.
The entire menu system from Oblivion on PC. It worked for consoles, was absolute trash on PC.
Say Skyim's is arguably just as bad.
Like, if you decide to take up poison/potion and make a shit ton of them, rather than a grid when the game pauses, forced to hold down scrolling through crap. The favorite system helps somewhat, but even that turns into a mess that needs reset constantly.
Another one that comes to mind is Zelda Breath of the Wild's weapon durability.
Not bad game design at all. Weapons are a resource in Breath of the Wild and are in such ready supply that you should never face the risk of being weaponless. It's actually a very interesting mechanic because it removes the trope of always using only the most powerful weapon available and ignoring everything else. Players should learn early on in the game to conserve their more powerful weapons and not waste them on low level enemies.
I don't have a problem with weapon durability in itself, it's the fact that there is no durability at all lol. The weapons break after like 10 swings.
The low-end weapons you get from the scrub enemies, yes (although 10 hits is a bit of an exaggeration), but it's not hard to get a collection of decent weapons that do good damage and let you fight through a few mobs before breaking.
The first Call of Duty, because they were recreating the Stalingrad battle in Enemy At The Gates where every other soldier gets rifle and the ones that don't get a clip should the guy with the rifle die. So this means throughout the game, other than just coding that mission for low ammo pick-ups for the rifle for that level, in any other mission you play as a Soviet soldier, if you are using the Mosin-Nagant, you only get a few bullets per pick-up because how game was coded for the earlier level, whereas the game gives much more generous ammo drops for everything else. Yeah, dumb oversight. But one that annoyed me that I still remember.
@uninspiredcup: Jedi Fallen Order had a lot of problems, but I think that was more because they weren't given the proper time to actually work through them and less about the talent of the team making it. The end of 2019 was such a big year for Star Wars, with The Mandalorian and Episode 9 that I believe Respawn was under strict orders from either Disney, EA (or most likely both) to release that game in November no matter what.
The first Battlefront suffered from the same kind of mandates. The amount of control and corporate strategy dictated by the investors at EA really hinder their games, which is such a bummer, as they have so much quality IP that's not being used to its potential.
The Spartan 3s in Reach actually could pick-up heavy weapons. But the dual wielding part was just to balance the damage scales. In Halo 2 & 3, dual wielding weapons were actually considerably weaker individually than they were in Halo 1. That way, they wouldn't feel overpowering when you had 2 of a kind.
The entire menu system from Oblivion on PC. It worked for consoles, was absolute trash on PC.
Say Skyim's is arguably just as bad.
Like, if you decide to take up poison/potion and make a shit ton of them, rather than a grid when the game pauses, forced to hold down scrolling through crap. The favorite system helps somewhat, but even that turns into a mess that needs reset constantly.
Yeah Skyrim's vanilla menus are very bad with mouse and keys. It's a TES game, so you end up with a ton of junk you need to sort though. Better with mods, but you can only do so much.
The Spartan 3s in Reach actually could pick-up heavy weapons. But the dual wielding part was just to balance the damage scales. In Halo 2 & 3, dual wielding weapons were actually considerably weaker individually than they were in Halo 1. That way, they wouldn't feel overpowering when you had 2 of a kind.
I actually don't mind not being able to dual wield. I did it plenty of times in Halo 2&3, and because the weapon roster is so much more expanded in Halo Reach, I use a much more varried selection of weapons.
But I actually did not know you could wield heavy weapons, that's interesting ;)
Boss battles. I despise them in most games because they are often disproportionately difficult showstoppers that kill whatever enjoyment you were previously having with the game and force you to repeat them over and over again, memorizing attack patterns and looking for arbitrary weak spots. I don't know why so many developers seem to think they're a necessary part of game design.
I don’t overly mind datalogs, but both Horizon: Zero Dawn and Control had way, way too many. In Horizon some of the campaign missions were literally: “Enter old facility, get bombarded with datalogs”. It just kills the pacing. At least in Horizon they made sense for the most part. In Control the majority of them were just jibberish.
I don’t overly mind datalogs, but both Horizon: Zero Dawn and Control had way, way too many. In Horizon some of the campaign missions were literally: “Enter old facility, get bombarded with datalogs”. It just kills the pacing. At least in Horizon they made sense for the most part. In Control the majority of them were just jibberish.
I played Control recently and you really nailed it. Do they really expect people to read all this shit? lol.
I don’t overly mind datalogs, but both Horizon: Zero Dawn and Control had way, way too many. In Horizon some of the campaign missions were literally: “Enter old facility, get bombarded with datalogs”. It just kills the pacing. At least in Horizon they made sense for the most part. In Control the majority of them were just jibberish.
I played Control recently and you really nailed it. Do they really expect people to read all this shit? lol.
That’s a good question lol. There are like hundreds of them. I read most of them in the beginning, but then I went ”f* this” and stopped reading them at all.
I’m a Sam Lake fan and all, but even I couldn’t take this much BS lol.
I don’t overly mind datalogs, but both Horizon: Zero Dawn and Control had way, way too many. In Horizon some of the campaign missions were literally: “Enter old facility, get bombarded with datalogs”. It just kills the pacing. At least in Horizon they made sense for the most part. In Control the majority of them were just jibberish.
I played Control recently and you really nailed it. Do they really expect people to read all this shit? lol.
That’s a good question lol. There are like hundreds of them. I read most of them in the beginning, but then I went ”f* this” and stopped reading them at all.
I’m a Sam Lake fan and all, but even I couldn’t take this much BS lol.
I just don't have time for that kind of thing lol. Wasn't it Skyrim that started that? There was a like a million books.
Death Stranding - All of it. The game play is f*cking hiking with experiences such as 'building a ladder' and 'maintain your balance'. It's wonderfully placed into between Monster Energy drink ads.
Civ6 - Wonders taking up tiles themselves is a detriment IMO. They introduced the district mechanic which already eats up a tile. Having wonders do the same makes any sort of tall play impossible. Also, Civ6 ensures that tall play is near impossible with base specialist yields being pitiful in late game. It's go wide or go home.
Jedi Fallen Order - I hate having the light saber act as a mere melee weapon. Let me saw off arms and legs. The most interesting portions of the game were the boss battles. Make enemies with light sabers ignore health, only give them a guard meter that you have to break, with a single killing blow landing once depleted.
I usually like or tolerate everything, except the checklist exploration formula Ubisoft (and some other devs) use in their open world games (you found bandit camp 1 of 5, you fount collectible 1 of 50, etc).
I love blind exploration. When everything is ruled by numbers and you know how many things are left to find, it totally kills the immersion to me.
Any game, that reduces the speed of the character for story reasons needs to be burned in hell.
What do you mean by that ? Like taking away the speed you already got at the beginning because you were "depowered" ? or attaching it to some stamina meter? or just going, nah you can't run in this hallway because the last boss is in there and we need to be dramatic.
Anyway i can't think of any specifics now, but i will say that i hate current EA's UI design, like every menu of any of their games feels the same, just a big mess of giant squares that makes everything feels convoluted.
@dzimm: i was going to post the same thing. I rarely enjoy boss battles - in fact they often actively reduce my enjoyment of a game. Sometimes I'll put a game down and do something else if I feel like one is imminent, because I'm like "do I have the energy to deal with 5-10 minutes of whatever-random-bullet-spongey-shit-that-doesn't-follow-the-world-rules-I've-been-learning-in-the-rest-of-the-game you've put together for me?".
Some games do it well. Some games it's a natural extension of the world and/or narrative. But most of the time it's just frustrating bullshit
@dzimm: i was going to post the same thing. I rarely enjoy boss battles - in fact they often actively reduce my enjoyment of a game. Sometimes I'll put a game down and do something else if I feel like one is imminent, because I'm like "do I have the energy to deal with 5-10 minutes of whatever-random-bullet-spongey-shit-that-doesn't-follow-the-world-rules-I've-been-learning-in-the-rest-of-the-game you've put together for me?".
Some games do it well. Some games it's a natural extension of the world and/or narrative. But most of the time it's just frustrating bullshit
Woah, I believe in the opposite. I don't like when there's no boss battles. Makes me think they were super lazy about it. With that said, I don't like bad boss fights.
games which hide the good mechanics and abilities behind grind walls. in ghost of tsushima you play as a top dog, clan head samurai warrior who's been in strict training all his life, but you start with only the most basic of skills. think a life long samurai would be able to throw a knife? nope. needs unlocking. few things as bad as having that initial excitement of starting a new game doused by the prospect of being drip fed fun slowly over a 40 hour+ campaign.
forcing the player to scavenge. far too much time in tlou2 is spent interminably searching through old buildings for supplies. surely the talented nd folks can come up with a better way to equip the player than the tedium that is wandering around derelict buildings looking for furniture with a "you can interact with this thing" icon. forget the plot, this was by far the most offensive thing about tlou2.
stop, start, stop, start pacing. the first several hours of got interrupts you that many times with cut scenes and tutorials you start to lose the will to live. there's a balance to be had between setting the scene, introducing the mechanics and just letting you get on with playing. who exactly needs so much hand holding. who is playing got who hasn't at least played something ballpark before. i played desperados 3 after got and comparatively speaking it weaves tutorials into gameplay at the start of the game in a sensible non intrusive and inoffensive way. take note sucker punch
Every f'ing game I see anymore is in perpetual twilight or dawn, and I hate it. Not only is it blinding, but it just makes everything look blah. It reminds me of when I was a kid on a Sunday evening when I knew the weekend was over and I had to go back to school the next day.
I also didn't like the armor system in the new GoW. Choosing between strength, runic, and magic? I forget, but it doesn't matter. Whatever gives you the most of each meter is what you want. It's an illusion of choice that doesn't matter.
Annoying tutorial prompts that never go away press E to open door through the whole damn game.
I'm sure I'm forgetting alot but man F.E.A.R. 2 is not only the worst sequel of all time for me but also the worst design choices everything is dumbed down.
Removal of inventory and turning it into simple weapon selection
Removal of skill system
Universal ammo for every equipment
Horrible horrible level design compare to how masterful original level design had
This is not only worst sequel ever made but also one of game of all time too. if you think Crysis 2 or FEAR 2 were bad sequel which they were, try this one which is laughable game.
meanwhile even a creator of game warren spector call this game a mistake. also the first game that start dumbing down and consolization of PC games.
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