[badger2d]

In this thread, we talk about little annoyances in games. Not irksome enough to make you stop playing a good game, but enough to make your teeth grind a bit. (Also known as the "why couldn't they have just ______ ?" thread.)

My gripe list:

1) Expansions always change the title screen art/music...whether you like it or not.

Starcraft swapped out a perfectly decent zealot/zergling/marine loading picture for a leering, ugly Kerrigan mugshot. Warcraft 3 downgraded an ominous, stormy sky with fiery meteors dropping in the background, to (so staggeringly dull it's hard to believe they chose this image) an iceberg. More recently, as I've taken up Bootcamp-enabled gaming, I've groaned at Titan Quest, which began promisingly with a nice shot of Greek temple columns, sunny sky, and a flag flapping in the breeze; but on expansion, degenerated into some murky scene rendered entirely in variations on that lovely hue known to bold artists everywhere as Gray. I've also been mildly piqued at Dawn of War, in which they absolutely nailed the right title screen music with their fierce first piece, and then, of course, changed it for the expansions.

Why couldn't they have just: added the option for customizability? By all means put in some new art and/or music for the expansion, but let the user choose which they prefer.

2) Computer games are fundamentally built on numbers...but some games just won't show you the numbers that matter.

This one is particularly (though not exclusively) galling in strategy games, which are my favorites. Starcraft had three damage types and three armor types, with specific penalties involved (e.g. explosive damage would only do 50% value to small armor types), but you'd never have known that just from playing the game, and not even from reading the manual, for that matter. Dawn of War helpfully offers suggestions as to what each unit will be good at (e.g. "best against heavy infantry" "best against vehicles and buildings"), but fails to give the more deeply interested player any insight on the inner workings so he can make his own decisions about what "best against" really means. It also laughably fails in certain respects, e.g. the fact that every unit in the game has some "accuracy" value affecting how much damage it does, but you'll never know what that value is, not to mention that various in game situations and abilities can help and hurt those values, but again, you never know by how much.

Why couldn't they have just: I don't need to come up with a how-it-should be scenario here, because it's been done, in Age of Empires 3. That game comes with in-game tooltips that give you a qualitative idea what things do (e.g. a certain upgrade will say "makes villagers gather gold faster"), which is of course good for the beginner, but it also has an option for the more advanced player to turn on that will show you all the behind-the-scenes numbers you could ever care to see.



And now...your turn. Let the whine flow, IMG!

[QuantaCat]

Still, you cant say something is a lot or not if you just started playing the game by observing statistics. percentage maybe, but not pure numbers. You'd need to read up on that anyways. And sometimes it is fun finding out by onesself.


About the menu art, I honestly don't mind, as the art of CnC3: Kane's Wrath really made it better.

[badger2d]

QuantaCat, on August 15th 2008, 06:57 PM, said:

Still, you cant say something is a lot or not if you just started playing the game by observing statistics. percentage maybe, but not pure numbers. You'd need to read up on that anyways. And sometimes it is fun finding out by onesself.

Yeah, that's why I like the double-barreled approach that AoE 3 built in. You start off learning things more by feel, and they give you helpful hints to help you navigate that part. But then, if you really like the game, and you've played it enough to know it pretty well, at that point it makes a difference to see the numbers. Every game has parts that are not intuitive.

[MILBOP DIPPLEBERRY]

badger2d, on August 15th 2008, 07:10 PM, said:

1) Expansions always change the title screen art/music...whether you like it or not.

Starcraft swapped out a perfectly decent zealot/zergling/marine loading picture for a leering, ugly Kerrigan mugshot. Warcraft 3 downgraded an ominous, stormy sky with fiery meteors dropping in the background, to (so staggeringly dull it's hard to believe they chose this image) an iceberg. More recently, as I've taken up Bootcamp-enabled gaming, I've groaned at Titan Quest, which began promisingly with a nice shot of Greek temple columns, sunny sky, and a flag flapping in the breeze; but on expansion, degenerated into some murky scene rendered entirely in variations on that lovely hue known to bold artists everywhere as Gray. I've also been mildly piqued at Dawn of War, in which they absolutely nailed the right title screen music with their fierce first piece, and then, of course, changed it for the expansions.

Why couldn't they have just: added the option for customizability? By all means put in some new art and/or music for the expansion, but let the user choose which they prefer.

Oh man, I so agree. Warcraft III RoC's title screen had such great atmosphere. The snow background even makes bnet text kind of hard to read. I've always dreamed of some kind of mod that replaces the title screen and the background in bnet with the original one.

Another good example is Civ IV and Civ IV Warlords. They changed it from a cool image of planet earth and the epic piece "Baba Yetu" to some guy just sitting there with a sword along with dumb ambient music.



A gripe I have is repetitive sound. It annoys the hell out of me in games like KOTOR where all of the supposedly dynamic characters yell the same three catchphrases over and over again during battle throughout the entire game. I guess you could say the same thing about Neverwinter Nights, as each sound set only has one or two different phrases for each situation. This annoyance doesn't seem to carry over to RTS's for me since the units already seem static, and even for heroes in Warcraft III since they seem to be talking to you, not necessarily saying it in the game world.

I'm sure I'll think of other things.

[Naman]

My (and many others') #1 pet peeve with video games: filler. I would much rather play a short game in which everything flows extremely well and I'm left feeling like I had a wonderful experience (Portal, Braid, Call of Duty 4, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, etc.) than play a game bogged down with repetitiveness and boring objectives to extend playtime. (Super Paper Mario, Oblivion, Mass Effect)

By the way, to any of you who have Xbox 360s and haven't tried out Braid yet, _please_ do yourself a favor and download it. It's one of the best games I've ever played, hands down. Worth more than the $15 it costs.

In close second would be: frustration = challenge. You can make a challenging game without it being infuriating! That's what great game design is like. Games that really test your skill can be a lot of fun (Super Mario Bros, Ikaruga, etc.) but games that throw broken mechanics and/or random crap at you are just annoying. (Geometry Wars, Oblivion, Mass Effect, etc.)

[The Liberator]

I agree after (even about two hours of playing any game that takes longer, I am already sick of the voice overs of the NPC's. Three and a half examples: Morrowind, Oblivion, Assasin's Creed and the half example GTA III: Liberty City.

Liberator HD 1.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

A part from the title image as already mentioned, I can come with two more:
• Lack of polish. Oh boy. Im playing Harry Potter 5 on my Wii as we speak, and... Eeeek!!
• 700.001 animated movies before starting a game. (Im looking at you Baldurs Gate 2 and Halo!)

[Bill Ramey]

My main peeve is a general one: I'm a little worn-out by cut scenes, dialogue, and story development in games. It's not that I can't appreciate those things, but I long for the Super Metroid-style of video gaming, wherein you're plunked down on an alien world and left on your own--no dialogue, no cut scenes, no plot hammering. System Shock 2 isn't a bad compromise, because the story and dialogue unfold as you play.

Another peeve has to do with RPGs. I hate stingy quests, i.e., quests that give you stuff no better than what you already have. There should be an algorithm in the game that ensures that you always get something at least a little bit better than what you have. For example, you might get the same sword you have, but the new one does fire damage, just in time for your trip to the frozen realms of doom.

[the Battle Cat]

I don't like not being able to change my keyboard settings to whatever the hell I want them to be. Nothing is worse than playing with a unique keyboard setting to a game dying and otherwise miss-keying through the game until you reset your well trained reflexes... only to have to set them back for the next game. It makes you not replay the game and I like games I can replay.

Checkpoint saves that don't give a popsnizzle that you died one second later.

Checkpoint saves in general. They discourage one from experimenting and doing stupid and fun things that make a game worthwhile.

[Tacohead]

Games that have no native windowed mode when there's absolutely no reason why they shouldn't. I don't like being blocked from my IMs, emails, and Internet while playing and there are other reasons. Most importantly, my oncreen keyboard is often blocked by such games which really makes things difficult for me. The Fallout Games and Dungeon Siege are some examples.

Games with tiny, difficult to read text. Eve Online comes to mind here (along with incredibly busy and confusing interface).

-PN

[Frigidman]

A few of mine:

• Having to look at and figure out all these blastid numbers and what they actually mean, when they could have just given some nice graphical "this is better cause its more green" or something. If I wanted to do calculus on the fly, I would go back to school... not play a game.

• Having to use the developer's idea of keyboard layout without any options to change them.

• Sitting through the same splash screens everytime I load the game, even though I know what they are, and know I don't care to watch them again.

• Having to go "Back" then "Back" then "Back" again then selecting "Exit Game" ... why can't they just let you fricken quit the game at ANY TIME (you know, boss may be walking in....)

• "Loading..."

Thoughts on others:

• Tiny text, or bad font... oh god yeah. There is no point in using a frilly genre font when you have to do a lot of reading (like in RPGs).
• Checkpoint saves... haha yeah =) Its like I'm watching a huge rocket two inches from my face with 1 tick of health, and I see "Checkpoint Saved!" ... DOH!
• Stupid RPG rewards... yup yup yup! Or worse yet, the only good stuff you get is FROM the rewards, and looting is next to useless except to mule to a shope to sell for coin, which is useless because there is nothing good to buy better than the quest rewards!
• Frustration != challenge. Yes, this really pissed me off with StarWarsGalaxies. The game was going good, then the devs decided "lets ramp up all difficulty to stupid levels across the board so no one can do anything without being in a full group of highest level players! Yeah then they call it "challenging"... bah! its just downright frustrating!!! AND STUPID!

[Frigidman]

OH!!! ... How could I forget this pet peave:

"Timed popsnizzle = Great fun!" NOT!

I so hate anything that is TIMED! Click this thing and it opens some other thing and you have ten seconds to race across this unholy obsticle course to get through the door before it closes.

I almost broke my keyboard out of frustration (something I rarely do when playing a game, that is, explode with seething anger), when playing the final levels of Tomb Raider Anniversary, where you had to shoot some timer thing, then do these horrible acrobats and whatnots that were kind of glitchy to get 'just right', and if you didn't do it in time, you fell into lava and died and had to start over.

I think I spent about 5 hours doing ONE stage of that damn level... and my poor keyboard actually lost a few of its keys as slammed my fist down into it.

Because of that, I have sold off that game, and have absolutely NO desire to ever play it ever again.

[Eric5h5]

Frigidman, on August 16th 2008, 03:34 PM, said:

"Timed popsnizzle = Great fun!" NOT!

And its cousin, "fake timed" stuff. Usually in FPS games. "Hurry, you must turn on the Frobmotic Thingamajig before the Fortress of Ultimate Doom explodes!" Except it's all scripted, and you can take 5,000 years if you wanted and it would have no effect whatsoever on the outcome. I guess this is done to give a false sense of urgency, but it backfires because it's obviously fake and just makes me annoyed. Note to game devs: if you're going to have timed stuff, have an actual timer so it matters. Or better yet, just leave out the timed stuff altogether, because it's never fun. Does anyone actually enjoy it? I don't think so.

--Eric

[The Liberator]

Thain Esh Kelch, on August 16th 2008, 08:01 PM, said:

Im looking at you Baldurs Gate 2 and Halo!

Sorry, I do not know how Halo does this really at all. Basically all of the cut scenes and whatever I have come across, they have been skippable.

Frigidman, on August 17th 2008, 05:34 AM, said:

"Timed popsnizzle = Great fun!" NOT!

I so hate anything that is TIMED! Click this thing and it opens some other thing and you have ten seconds to race across this unholy obsticle course to get through the door before it closes.

I almost broke my keyboard out of frustration…

Me too, where it gives you timed crap because the devs do not have a better idea for what to use in the game.

Liberator HD 1.

[badger2d]

Naman, on August 16th 2008, 01:08 AM, said:

My (and many others') #1 pet peeve with video games: filler. I would much rather play a short game in which everything flows extremely well and I'm left feeling like I had a wonderful experience (Portal, Braid, Call of Duty 4, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, etc.) than play a game bogged down with repetitiveness and boring objectives to extend playtime. (Super Paper Mario, Oblivion, Mass Effect)

As an aside to this one, it highly amuses me that so many games print the ungodly number of hours of your life they expect to occupy right on the box, as a selling point.

[Frigidman]

badger2d, on August 16th 2008, 05:18 PM, said:

As an aside to this one, it highly amuses me that so many games print the ungodly number of hours of your life they expect to occupy right on the box, as a selling point.

Yeah lol.

"OVER 40 HOURS OF GAMEPLAY!" ...

What does that tell me? NOTHING! Sometimes, a game is just easy and it doesn't take that time. Sometimes I am pounding my head with frustration because I'm forced to use some idiot devs key layout, and it takes me just that much time to finally get used to it. Sometimes the game has a lot of side branching and exploration, and me being an explorer I like to step foot on every inch of every game level... so it takes me a horrendous amount of time to finish it.

[the Battle Cat]

Man, I've pounded my fist down on my keyboard hard enough to knock some keys out. I'm more controlled these days but still feel the urge on occasion.

I'm playing Max Payne these days and I don't think I'll play it again for awhile. It has a great selection of weapons, varied and effective plus it has really great fights but it also has a collection of things that are my pet peeves. It has a long, nearly endless maze with no landmarks to make mental note of. It also has a super dark cliff ledge maze that was so awful to navagate... that they DID IT AGAIN LATER IN THE GAME! Gee thanks you gibbering nose nuggets! Thanks for that. Which one of you jangle toothed yoinks actually played that level and said, "Hey, you know what? We should do that again! Think of how cool that would be!!"

Also this game suffers from some horribly planned cut scenes. Now I like cut scenes. I've always found them entertaining but the worst thing a game can do is to force you to watch a long ass cut scene and then start the game again where you have been placed in the middle of an ambush or other extremely deadly situation. You die then you watch the damn long ass cut scene again then maybe you survive but maybe you die. Most likely though you get to watch the long ass cut scene again.

[Eric5h5]

Here's one I haven't seen in a while: boss fights with no health bars, especially when your attacks don't necessarily do any damage depending on where you hit, so you have no way of knowing if you're being effective or not. I think developers wised up to that one, fortunately. Last time I saw that was the final boss in Descent 2, which was actually somewhat recently since I played it with D2X-XL. Extremely annoying, so I eventually turned on the "cheat" which lets you see enemies' health.

--Eric

[The Liberator]

Yeah, I would not call that much of a cheat either, more of a mod (or something).

By the way, THOSE GOD DAMN LONG ARSE CUT SCENES!!!. I really agree with you on that point.

Liberator HD 1.

[AussieMacGamer]

I cant believe no one has mentioned opening developer, producer, sponsor, the other producer, the PC developer, the console developer and advertising videos at the start of most games often of which you cant skip!


Repeated dialougue as Liberator stated. Assassins Creed is the worst modern example of this. Not because you hear the same sound file over and over again, but the dumbass scripters decided that rather than having different people say unique lines, they would get them to all repeat the same one, so we here different people saying the exact same thing! "if only my sons were half as brave as you" AHHHGGGHHHRGH MAKES ME WANT TO KILL!!!! and not to mention "ELLDORALE!!!!!!!!" ahhhhfghhhh for fire trucks sake stop saying "ELLDORALE!" every two fire trucking minutes!

If anyone ever played Fable and happened to not know how to turn off the guildmasters commentary, i know you will shudder when i repeat "Your low on health, do you have any potions, or food?".

And hahaha, Gary i jumped of an elevator in the library in Halo and it decided to autosave just one more time had to start the entire level again on legendary.