What is one thing in gaming that you feel devs get wrong alot?

What is one thing in gaming that you feel devs get wrong alot?

For me it's satisfy gunplay it has gotten better over the years but games like Mafia 3 and the Mafia remake failed hard at this guns sound weak and you can barely hear the bullet shells hit the ground. I'm no game developer but this shouldn't be that hard to put in the game. I'm not even much of a gun nut but having weak sounding guns in a game can really destroy the immersion and fun factor for me.

Most of third person games have bad gunplay.

Gunplay in Doom 2016 and Eternal have most satisfying gunplay since FEAR.

the thing developers keep doing wrong is making everything Open world.

Looter-shooters.

I think they have it backwards; they tend to have fewer enemies on-screen than the other great loot genre, isometric-action RPG's.

Bullet-sponge enemies are the worst. Give us hordes of enemies.

There's also just too much loot for the most part and, unlike in isometric-action RPG's, the loot is a pain in the ass to manage.

I think they need to take some hints from other loot genres of games, learn what they do right and can do, learn what they do right and can't do and come up with something better/different.

Hellgate: London is probably the only looter-shooter I ever liked, I'm sad it failed so hard.

Yeah, this.

Guns sound weak these days. Far Cry games especially, just completely meh.

I know a few games years ago did BTS videos and they went out to gun ranges and recorded sounds. If it was a sci-fi game or something they still did that, but then they edited the sounds to be a bit more futuristic or cool-sounding.

I wonder if they still do that.

Storytelling in games. Cutscenes and the dreaded walking cutscenes are are methods of storytelling that are better executed in movies and TV. Games are capable of telling stories in a different way but developers are so enamored with becoming low grade movie directors that we get mediocre storytelling, poor pacing and a frequently interrupted gameplay experience. The shit is terrible and gaming seems to be fine with the awfulness of this new standard.🙄

Voice acting, especially English voice acting. More developers need to hire better voice actors as much of voice acting in games are quite laughable and sometimes outright cringe-worthy. If they need to hire Hollywood or TV actors with solid reputations for voicing characters, so be it.

Bad voice acting is one of major dealbreakers on whether I am interested in a game. I will lose interest in a game if the voice acting is quite bad.

Holding in a button to open boxes or picking up loot and plants for crafting.

Holding the X button for 3-5 seconds....f@#k off...a simple tap of the button is enough

Not necessary "wrong", but i am just amazed by the fact that it hasn't improved in decades. CLIPPING. FFS how many generation will we go through seeing hair clipping through the body, robes through legs, etc. So tired of this crap.

Any and *all* QTEs. Just a lazy game mechanic.

Unskippable cutscenes before any boss fight. Because WHY.

Stuffing basic rpg or progression mechanics into everything.

Missable items in 40+ hour games.

Cinematic moments that aren’t quite cutscenes so you can’t skip.

Games with low voice audio even on max setting.

Oh my god. I agree with Bluestars for once.

HaH

@Ghost120x: “ Cinematic moments that aren’t quite cutscenes so you can’t skip.”

That’s probably the most annoying thing ever invented, even more so if it’s before a tough boss battle so you have to see the same crap several times!

Also crafting, I am sick of every developer jamming some super complex crafting system into their game that forces me to haul around 100 different items, because otherwise you just know that the sword of ultimate butt kicking requires five of some random item you haven’t seen since the beginning of the game!!

The “let’s release a broken game, and the fix it over time through updates“ methods. This type of thinking should not be welcomed in the gaming world.

One of my most beloved series (BF) latest iteration “strongly“ comes to mind for a prime example (BF 2042), and while I do not support it, I can’t really get my BF fix from any other FPS shooter. So I’m somewhat forced to play it.

Nothing in here that I think I can add. All of these are annoying.

Pretty much everything you guys have mentioned, plus...

Backseat Gameplay - With a lot of games, a quality gameplay loop seems to be an afterthought. Prioritizing player spending over player enjoyment.

Art Style - Way too many games look and feel the same. Whether they are chasing trends or are using the same tools, I don't know, but it turns me off instantly. The magenta color scheme is overused, everything framed in a blinding sunset/sunrise, all menus are too clean and clinical, fonts don't match the theme, iconography is often minimalistic geometric shapes (triangles, squares, diamonds) instead of an awesome monster skull, or emblem, or something unique to that world, etc.

Cool Factor - Most new games find a way to make a decent idea lame. Showing me something I have never seen is always a plus, but if it isn't cool...I probably don't care to see it.

MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT (JEDI FALLEN ORDER) ****BE WARNED****

Not a massive fan of the game. It wasn't bad, but almost none of it felt like Star Wars to me. Way too much time fighting random creatures. Anyway, the two coolest moments were at the end. One where you fight in the arena, and basically just do what you've been doing the whole time... fighting random spiders and buzz bugs. I'm sure it was a money and time constraint, but this would've been the PERFECT time to have you fight unknown creatures, classic creatures (Wampa, Nexu, Rancor, etc), or other prisoners (Sand People, Dugs, Twi'leks, Droids, etc). Nope... same five f*cking creatures you've fought for hours. Then when you encounter Vader, and the Jedi chick that's been with you, and training you the whole time tries to attack him... and gets thrown down a chasm (presumingly to her death), like a bug being flicked from his arm. It was so cool how little she compared to...VADER... but then two minutes later she comes back and bests him. Completely undermining everything cool they had just done. Maybe if they would've spent less time on all the 'tight spaces' you have to shimmy through, they could've made those moments mean something.

Having to download day 1 updates. I wish games were actually finished before they were shipped.

Uneven difficulty spikes - there have been too many games running time extended by later levels over-powering their cannon fodder.

Bosses with OP moves - bosses are meant to be a test of the skills you should have learned. As it is a boss you are expecting a harder and longer fight but some seem to have an OP move you cannot defend against and some come with no warning. The Soulsbourne bosses are in the main pretty fair - you die if you make too many mistakes or become too greedy but there have been some games where even if you play well it can just kill you with one shot. Final Fantasy is one of the biggest culprits for this with the later stage bosses.

Can I just add the terrible gameplay on this site? The utterly dreadful Captcha system. I have no idea why this site uses the dreadful system - delusions of grandeur - but there are times when I cannot be bothered with finding the square with the tiniest bit of whatever you are meant to be ticking.

It is 2022 Gamespot - there must be more modern ways of dealing with bots. The amount of extra traffic the site must have to deal with with failed attempts would be interesting to see.

Or maybe it is just me!

Developer: Players love our RPG's and would like to play with their friends, lets make an mmo, with MMO systems and gameplay design that is the antithesis of the game our RPG players want to play.

Reality: Let me invite a friend (or two) into my world so we can play the RPG as it is and enjoy the content together. (essentially the fromsoft approach without the janky invites/matchmaking.)

Gunplay is huge.. a lot of games just have terrible controls that feel blocky, janky, unresponsive, etc. How hard can it really be to just make the aiming smooth?

That said, although I VERY MUCH SO agree with the OP's #1, mine has to be the fun factor. It seems like all too often these days the devs forget that games are supposed to be fun.

Making every f**king game nowadays open world... enough already!!

Some devs still think that early releases are a good idea, when it's a known fact that people end up losing interest in the IP. Good thing we are seeing less and less of it, these days.

@dracula_16: No game was ever 'finished' at release. People like to pretend that games used to be more complete and polished back then just because the option to improve them later didn't exist. Sorry man but that's just lack of analytical thinking.

I have played thousands of games through the last 3 decades, and can't think of many that could not be improved or fixed later.

yeah. storytelling and pacing stands out like a sore thumb.

fine, imitate cinema, take inspiration, there's some really cool influences to be had, but lifting and shifting plot delivery should not be one of them. it's the jurassic park so preoccupied with whether you could, didn't stop to think if you should thing. so much superfluous narrative bullshit that results in those creatively barren forced interactive cut scenes. baffles me how it isnt picked up in playtesting. youd think someone would say this is starting to f*cking drag can we cut it. priorities all wrong. fewer things frustrate me more in modern aaa gaming

That’s far too vague a question, I’d need it narrowed down to genres to really answer well.

But in such broad strokes, I’d probably have to go with mechanical and system coherence. Many games feel like they’ve been developed in parts independent from one another, then stitched together to afford an amalgamation of gameplay that manages to work, but feels disconnected.

The Witcher III is a prime example, whereas TLoU II feels to cohere flawlessly. It’s like playing silk.

Unskippable talking/walking scenes. !@#$ off with that shit. If I'm engaged and enjoying a game, especially for the first time, I'll watch/listen to them. Otherwise let me play the damn game. Who comes up with that shit?

Too much gun on screen/ear lobe guns in first person shooters really does my head in.

That players want 100+ hours open worlds with repetitive content

Before game releases we often see devs gloat about "hundreds of hours" of gameplay without explaining further that those hours involve doing the same repetitive sh*t you'll be doing on the first 2 hours of the game. It feels like sidequests these days are all the same: 1. follow trail/meet NPC at specific spot 2. Kill camp of baddies 3. collect something 4. return to npc quest giver... repeat that 100 times and voilá, over 100h of gameplay!!!

I swear, devs dont even try anymore. No more originality on quest design

Too many open world games that are just empty boring grassy fields and they still have to have the same repetitive side missions. Sick of these types of games.

Game devs who emphasize retention over enjoyment.

How long did you spend on portal? Probably an hour or so.

Yet you still probably remember more of Portal than you did of say... Borderlands 3, and have much more fond memories of it.

How about Far Cry 6? A bunch of samey outposts. All over the place that are there for no reason other than give people stuff to do. How about Modern WoW? With its biannual daily chore that comes with every expansion pack.

There is a reason I have been really enjoying Simulation/Strategy RPGs. They are often not over 20 hours long. Instead it is handcrafted mission followed by handcrafted mission.

Especially Fire Emblem and Valkyria Chronicles.

Long games for the sake of long games.

Not always but too few devs concentrating on making sure their SP campaigns above all are Fun..... with compelling stories and characters and intuitive control mechanics with a steady difficulty range and ample reasons to replay the campaigns with bonuses earned from previous play through's.

There is an audience of gamers who look for games with the issues mentioned in this thread such as games being released broken with the desire to patch later, unskippable cutscenes, QTE, unresponsive gameplay etc ? 🤔

Note, that I listed issues not games. Please realize the difference.

This thread is literally about the issues. You are trying to arguing that the issues mentioned are the reason the folks purchased these games. How can you draw that conclusion is beyond me.

@girlusocrazy: Generally speaking, gamers overlook issues in many games because they enjoy other elements in the game. This is expected. They don't look for games with these issues to enjoy as you originally implied. However, you answered in the affirmative to

"There is an audience of gamers who look for games with the issues mentioned in this thread such as games being released broken with the desire to patch later, unskippable cutscenes, QTE, unresponsive gameplay etc ?

Definitely, some things are subjective issues.

@warmblur: Lengthy CGI and 20 minutes of "game play" where you press one button.

I'd argue retention is enjoyment over time. People aren't going to continuously play your game without enjoying it.

Perk systems / upgrade points. I like levelling up and feeling stronger, but usually you will get overpowered sooner or later, which takes away the challenge completely. Take Fallout for example. It is pretty tough in the beginning, but after 30 perk unlocks, it becomes a walk in the park.

It's because consumers demanded more content and, longer games.

Handcrafting every element of a 20hr long AAA game is brutal; an open world game allows you to reuse more of that work.

I see a lot of complaints about specific mechanics but I'd say a lot of these things aren't inherently bad, but are often implemented badly.

Open world isn't inherently bad. I actually like the idea of the game world seeming like a real, expansive place that can be explored rather than a series of badly disguised linear hallways. But don't make a game open world just to drag out the amount of time spent between objectives. No More Heroes 1 had a completely blank open world with nothing to do except go from point A to point B, so they wisely removed that from the sequel.

Walk and talk cutscenes aren't inherently bad, but any kind of cutscene with mediocre writing will drag. TLoU had lots of story delivered through dialog while exploring the world but nobody complains about that because the dialog is great.

I would agree with or add the following though:

Unskippable cutscenes before boss battles (or in general). I don't skip the story in games but make the scenes skippable no matter what. I get that sometimes cutscenes are used as hidden loading screens but forcing the player to sit through the same scene over and over on re-plays or right after reloading a checkpoint. Max Payne 3 was a specific example.

Poorly implemented difficulty settings are another. I generally prefer to play on a notch or two above the standard difficulty level in most games, but some games just double enemy health and damage. In the Uncharted games, harder difficulty just means that enemies can take multiple headshots before dying. Setting the game to hard should result in more aggressive AI or remixed enemy placement, not just doubling the stats.

maybe if they're a brief prelude to gameplay, some sort of short intermediary transition between a cinematic cutscene into gameplay or vice versa. or if they're seamlessly integrated into gameplay so you can continue to play unhampered. and if theyre used very sparingly throughout the game. but very few games manage these things.

it's a long time since i played tlou so don't remember the specifics well enough to comment. but tlou2 is a serial abuser of them.

it's not just a quality of dialogue thing, it's also the on rails aspect, the necessity of the dialogue, and the length of time you're forced to endure both it and any cinematic cutscenes that preceded it. the very worst are the ones when they gimp the controls so nothing else works other than pressing forward to walk and, if you stop, the character who's talking to you stops talking and waits for you to move again before continuing. i can feel the vein bulging in my head and my eye twitching just thinking about it

@Nonstop-Madness: Yep, and makes the game worse.

Quality > quantity

@byshop: Walking cutscenes are a problem when the only input that is required from the player is perpetually pushing forward just for story exposition. Exploring or part taking in regular gameplay while character converse with you and doing exposition is a no issue because you are still able to play the game. But, being forced to push forward in order to continue progression, is just trash. As you have stated, implementation matters and in the cases being references in this thread is is poor implementation.