"It's Always Been Done This Way" What's your most disliked game element we can't seem to escape?

[barretxiii]

I start with a twofer.

Contact Damage: It made sense when games had serious memory limits and enemies didn't get attack animations, but now that's clearly not an issue, so it makes no sense to keep adding it, at least except for enemies that are obviously meant to be dangerous to touch (Covered in spikes or some dangerous element). One of the most egregious offenders is the side-scroller souls-like Afterimage, where the mechanic is so poorly implemented that your dodge/dash is pretty much useless until a late game upgrade grants you i-frames, and the greatsword's midair down+attack is totally worthless since contact interrupts you before the attack registers.

No Pausing: For the Soulsborne purists out there. This only makes sense in ONLINE games that obviously can't be allowed to pause, lest they cause issues with connectivity between players/servers. It does NOT make sense in single player games (or predominantly online games played in an offline mode). One of the dumbest arguments I read in favor of no pausing was that it would somehow allow players to "cheese" the game by giving them more time to react to incoming threats... That's not how pauses work!

 

[Advil Lavs]

Microtransactions, lootboxes and anything similar

 

[barretxiii]

Microtransactions, lootboxes and anything similar

The pain is real...

 

[gwardojones]

Shield enemies. Specifically the kinds that invalidate all strategies, except for the very specific one the game wants you to use on them.

DOOM Eternal was the most recent offender that I played. Not only do the shield enemies in that game completely stop your murder momentum, but the freaking Marauder blocks literally everything if you don't hit him exactly the way the game wants. It feels like cheap design every single time.

 

[barretxiii]

Shield enemies. Specifically the kinds that invalidate all strategies, except for the very specific one the game wants you to use on them.

DOOM Eternal was the most recent offender that I played. Not only do the shield enemies in that game completely stop your murder momentum, but the freaking Marauder blocks literally everything if you don't hit him exactly the way the game wants. It feels like cheap design every single time.

Hard agree. On paper, they sound like a good way to make the player adapt and adjust their strategy... In practice, it's just annoying, since they tend to implement them poorly, especially when the shield is impenetrable. They tend to make them always face you apart from some very brief window during an attack, so simply running around them is rarely a viable move, and you rarely get some kind of pass-through dash/attack to bypass them completely.

 

[usergaycoolguy]

I feel like to some extent we're moving away from this trend but in FPS games I basically feel like there's two play modes:

1) you have bullets for the shotgun and 2) you don't have bullets for the shotgun so you've got to use any other gun.

I don't know if it's the wide spray or the sound design or the look of the gun (probably a combination) but it's so much more satisfying and for whatever reason there's just such a clear difference in fun between the feel of the shotgun and literally any other gun that I'm basically annoyed any time I have to switch out.

Since Doom 2016 it feels like there's been more of a conscious shift in design philosophy to only include stuff that actually feel fun to use in a given roster, and to include enough ammo that you're basically encouraged to use whatever gun that suits your play style. But especially when I'm playing something from like 2000-2015 it just feels like a massive slog for half the game like I'm eating veggies (assault rifle) to get to dessert (shotgun my beloved).

 

[Moreno909]

Retro inspired indie games that are ball-crushing hard for no reason than other of cargo cult

 

[Banana_Mojo7]

Yellow paint. I understand that sometimes people need a push in the right direction, and that's fine. But most of the time it's overbearing, and it ruins my immersion. It feels like the game designers think the average gamer is an idiot.

 

[Mahopon]

exp and lvl. I feel like exp and lvl are treated as an obligatory feature checklist. They’re often added to a game that doesn’t necessarily need them.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with them, I just dislike mechanics that feel like they’re there because the developer/shareholders have an obligatory feature checklist, rather than adding mechanics because the game actually needs them.