Traffic cones come in all shapes and sizes. It goes about to his hip which seems not out of the ordinary
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Annoying/distracting game design choices.
- Thread starter Lightning Count
- Start date
Good call, in design jargon it's named tabular figures.Text fonts where the numbers are not all the same width.
The number 1 should have space around it so that it is as wide as the other digits. Particularly in racing games with timers and speeds that are continuously changing, when the numbers vary in width, it looks like there are moving objects in the corners of the screen, which can be very distracting when you want to keep your eye on the course:
Wipeout is an amazing series with otherwise impeccable design. I can't understand why this was allowed to happen.
These are minor IMO compared to the most annoying design choice ever... Forced slow walking sections... If you want to guarantee that I never replay your game again... Fill it with a bunch of these moments...
ClayKavalier
Banned
Yeah, it almost looks like you're driving in heavy rain or something, not sure what they were thinking with that one.
Unnecessary crafting mechanics. Seriously, it's like every game that comes out nowadays has to show that it has depth by including crafting in a way that feels very contrived. Most of the time, for example, you're walking around, find bandages, then open up a couple of menus to craft a health kit with those bandages. Can I ask what did this accomplish exactly? Why did I have to craft it in a meaningless manner instead just finding a health kit lying around?
Crafting is nice when it forces a difficult choice on the player. For example, in Last of Us, you have to decide whether or not you'd like to create a health kit or a molotov, each using the same materials but both having totally different uses. It made sense and actually added depth.
Then, you have games like Far Cry 3 / 4 which ask you to go around hunting different animals to be able to craft upgrades to weapons's capacity and carrying limit. It doesn't make sense considering I don't need to hunt down a white tiger to create something I could create just as well using a regular deer's skin. It also is just plain bad design considering many of the upgrades that make the game more fun to play require you to hunt down animals that you can only get to at the second half of the game. It's the definition of bad design.
Instead, the game should have just opted to using money to buy upgrades. How you use that money is up to you. You get cash by doing those side quests to people that will pay you, and then you are presented with a choice in which upgrade you'd like to use that money on.
Crafting is nice when it forces a difficult choice on the player. For example, in Last of Us, you have to decide whether or not you'd like to create a health kit or a molotov, each using the same materials but both having totally different uses. It made sense and actually added depth.
Then, you have games like Far Cry 3 / 4 which ask you to go around hunting different animals to be able to craft upgrades to weapons's capacity and carrying limit. It doesn't make sense considering I don't need to hunt down a white tiger to create something I could create just as well using a regular deer's skin. It also is just plain bad design considering many of the upgrades that make the game more fun to play require you to hunt down animals that you can only get to at the second half of the game. It's the definition of bad design.
Instead, the game should have just opted to using money to buy upgrades. How you use that money is up to you. You get cash by doing those side quests to people that will pay you, and then you are presented with a choice in which upgrade you'd like to use that money on.
Fahzgoolin
Banned
Challenge for the sake of challenge. If it's going to be challenging, make it interesting and meld with the gameplay well. Dark Souls gloriously succeeded and failed simultaneously at this (still love the game).
I love a challenge, but creating frustrating scenarios or enemies just to inflate challenge is the worst. Needs to be logically consistent with the context and logic of the game.
Unfortunately a lot of modern games don't have challenge at all because creating a balanced and compelling challenge is hard to design.
I love a challenge, but creating frustrating scenarios or enemies just to inflate challenge is the worst. Needs to be logically consistent with the context and logic of the game.
Unfortunately a lot of modern games don't have challenge at all because creating a balanced and compelling challenge is hard to design.
The screen being covered by blood-like effect to inform me of my low health, thus rendering me unable to react to threats anymore.
Often accompanied by extremely annoying sounds of heavy heart pounding or something similar (beeps in Halo 3 ODST).
The entire environment collapsing whenever the playable character sets a foot in it (Tomb Raider 2013, Uncharted series, Half-Life series and so on).
Often accompanied by extremely annoying sounds of heavy heart pounding or something similar (beeps in Halo 3 ODST).
The entire environment collapsing whenever the playable character sets a foot in it (Tomb Raider 2013, Uncharted series, Half-Life series and so on).
Easy. Not enough processing power in order to maintain FOV and resolution. It isn't good, but I've told you why.
One of the worst things of Skyward Sword's over the top tutorials is that they are recycled when you play the game in hero mode, which is ridiculous because you can only unlock hero mode after beating the game once before.
Also, horror games like RE4 and The Evil Within will crunch the FOV in order to increase tension while playing since it makes it difficult to see all the enemies at once, forcing you to keep the whole evironment in mind during combat. However, The Evil Within wasn't just a design choice since it was also done for framerate purposes.
Stormhammer
Member
The lycan fights in The Order.
pinkurocket
Member
Skyward Sword's menus and the way it treated the player as a dumb amnesic person is one of the most annoying design choices I can think of. Like every time you started up the game, it would reset the info prompts when picking up something. The text would tell you what it is, followed by an image of your inventory where the item went. Every goddamn time! So annoying.
Not even Fi's prompts were as annoying as that. I get really annoyed with games that keep on giving you text and info when really no one cares. Pokémon battles annoy me because you have to tap through all this text every time (DS Black/White were the last ones I played, I couldn't bear it).
Yup, absolutely hate these. I'm also tired of terrible side quests for the sake of filler in RPGs. I mean a few I can understand, like "Help old grandma get the ingredients". but once I'm starting to help grandma, grandpa, their horse, the neighbor, the uncle twice-removed, etc. it's just stupid. I know, these are SIDE quests, but the whole point of an RPG is to get immersed and spend hours with the game. Why can't the side quests have substance to them?
Gunstar Ikari
Unconfirmed Member
Stat boosts tied to visible clothing.
Zombegoast
Member
Junahu
Member
Being forced to choose between perks upon levelling up (or having a pool of stat points to apply to my character's stats). The game is asking me to make irreversible choices that will have a huge effect on how the rest of the game plays out, but is neglecting to give me enough context to make informed decisions.
I could be setting myself up for failure because I didn't put enough points into Axes, or I didn't choose the perk that lets me survive fatal blows, or I didn't know that AGI has an effective cap of 70 and every point past that is worthless.
I could be setting myself up for failure because I didn't put enough points into Axes, or I didn't choose the perk that lets me survive fatal blows, or I didn't know that AGI has an effective cap of 70 and every point past that is worthless.
ClaptoVaughn
Member
X-ray vision (seeing enemies through walls) that can't be fully disabled.
Watch Dogs automatically tags enemies and enemy cars, allowing you to see them through walls, and there's no option to turn it off or avoid using it. Maybe an option was patched in after I stopped playing it, though.
Far Cry 3 and 4 only lets you turn them off for iron sights. They're still there when you use the binoculars. Luckily on PC there were mods that removed that.
I also dislike flashing loot boxes/chests, weapons on the ground, dead bodies, etc.
Pretty much anything that transposes itself ONTO the game world or things you're supposed to interact with, so generally I'm ok with HUDs as long as they're not cluttering the screen. I don't care if the story has an explanation for it (Deus Ex Human Revolution's "piss outline" for ladders, doors, and boxes), either. It should always be an option to go "pure," so to speak, visually.
Watch Dogs automatically tags enemies and enemy cars, allowing you to see them through walls, and there's no option to turn it off or avoid using it. Maybe an option was patched in after I stopped playing it, though.
Far Cry 3 and 4 only lets you turn them off for iron sights. They're still there when you use the binoculars. Luckily on PC there were mods that removed that.
I also dislike flashing loot boxes/chests, weapons on the ground, dead bodies, etc.
Pretty much anything that transposes itself ONTO the game world or things you're supposed to interact with, so generally I'm ok with HUDs as long as they're not cluttering the screen. I don't care if the story has an explanation for it (Deus Ex Human Revolution's "piss outline" for ladders, doors, and boxes), either. It should always be an option to go "pure," so to speak, visually.
Out of all the time wasting design decisions in SS, that was definitely the worst. It got to the point that I would actively avoid picking up small items due to how long it would take to go through the stupid textboxes.
Animations for picking up guns, ammo, searching bodies. Pressing a button to do this is fine for swapping weapons but other stuff, hell no. I hate Far Cry and Bioshock with a passion for these.
Skill trees for depth in simple action games, please don't bother. The sequel has an even longer skill tree because it's a sequel. Can't I just have fun instead of spending skill points and XP, speaking of which, enough with the XP.
Floating camera and no full body. It's just wrong.
X-Ray vision is getting far too common, what happened to sound.
Skill trees for depth in simple action games, please don't bother. The sequel has an even longer skill tree because it's a sequel. Can't I just have fun instead of spending skill points and XP, speaking of which, enough with the XP.
Floating camera and no full body. It's just wrong.
X-Ray vision is getting far too common, what happened to sound.
tallbroski
Member
Because cinematic that's why.
I hate quick time events placed in cutscenes, i am enjoying the cutscene.... and i`m dead
Jonneh3003
Banned
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Honestly it's pretty shocking that this even made it into the game. You could have a 50 hour save and it would STILL do this.
Elites and brutes are like 8 feet tall. You're taller than every human. In a lot of games though, it's usually because of this.
- When you're at the top of the menu & can't press up to instantly go to the last item & vice versa.
- When you're given missions to not take so much damage, but your health is indicated by a meter with NO numerical value what so ever
- Having to guess if I can pause cutscenes, only to find out it skips it. Also unskippable cutscenes.
- "Hey, should we translate this line in a game that's completely in Japanese voices?" "Naaaaah, they can look it up online"
- Oh sorry, were you trying to get this collectible? Well too bad, you were only able to do one attempt at this one part, so now you have to waste time replaying the stage just to attempt to get it again........also checkpoints won't help you.
- Not having some kind of achievement/trophy counter. It would be REEAAALLLL helpful if I knew how close I was to doing ## thing, like battles, defeating enemies, collecting something, etc. Why don't more games do this?
- When you're given missions to not take so much damage, but your health is indicated by a meter with NO numerical value what so ever
- Having to guess if I can pause cutscenes, only to find out it skips it. Also unskippable cutscenes.
- "Hey, should we translate this line in a game that's completely in Japanese voices?" "Naaaaah, they can look it up online"
- Oh sorry, were you trying to get this collectible? Well too bad, you were only able to do one attempt at this one part, so now you have to waste time replaying the stage just to attempt to get it again........also checkpoints won't help you.
- Not having some kind of achievement/trophy counter. It would be REEAAALLLL helpful if I knew how close I was to doing ## thing, like battles, defeating enemies, collecting something, etc. Why don't more games do this?
Burger_Baron
Member
One annoying thing I just remembered is that when you get shot in some TPS games, you get visible bullet hole to lets say torso(Max Payne 3), but PC doesn't react to it at all. It sometimes looks painful and I wish I could do something about it, especially when the wound stays there for a while.
On the other hand, if the wound would close up on it's own it would look silly too.
I would love a game where you patch up/bandage visibly the shot area after you have been hit, and the bandage would stay.
On the other hand, if the wound would close up on it's own it would look silly too.
I would love a game where you patch up/bandage visibly the shot area after you have been hit, and the bandage would stay.
I hated this too.
I agree with this.
That sounds like a mobile game or some F2P game.
Elites and brutes are like 8 feet tall. You're taller than every human. In a lot of games though, it's usually because of this.
lol!!
SinShep
Member
In Max Payne's case, his mouthful doses of painkillers are probably the reasoning for this.
unholyrevenger72
Banned
The Witcher 3 Geralt can consume an entire Turkey Leg in Combat, but can't apply oil to his sword....
amnesia
Member
Unskippable logos when you start a game. I hate them with passion.
These two videos pretty much sum up my thoughts:
If Quake was done today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU
If Doom was done today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw
I hate games that are treating us gamers like complete retards.
These two videos pretty much sum up my thoughts:
If Quake was done today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU
If Doom was done today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw
I hate games that are treating us gamers like complete retards.
Green Mamba
Member
Arkham Origins arbitrarily putting level-up upgrades into linear skill trees and forcing you to linearly complete challenges while also tying some upgrades to these challenges is all pretty annoying. I'm just playing through it now, and while it is rough around the edges compared to the others, I am having a lot of fun but the needless convolution around the upgrades is obnoxious.
Elites and brutes are like 8 feet tall. You're taller than every human. In a lot of games though, it's usually because of this.
Not much you can do about this due to the limited FOV in most games. Unless you're Star Citizen or you're doing VR I don't see that changing much.
Hibiki Kurosawa
Member
Losing health when running in Lunar Dragon Song.
Also collecting that shit before the final boss in FFX.
Two of the most annoying and dumbest design decisions I've witnessed and can remember.
Also collecting that shit before the final boss in FFX.
Two of the most annoying and dumbest design decisions I've witnessed and can remember.
Tactics Ogre: LUCT Crafting: The Thread
"Let's make players craft 6000 items requiring 173 button presses a piece to make the item they want!"
"I don't know if that sounds right... We should probably make it so they can fail the craft and have to start over if they do, right?"
"Damn, I wish I thought of that."
The game has a bunch of bizarre design choices like that, but none that irk me more.
"Let's make players craft 6000 items requiring 173 button presses a piece to make the item they want!"
"I don't know if that sounds right... We should probably make it so they can fail the craft and have to start over if they do, right?"
"Damn, I wish I thought of that."
The game has a bunch of bizarre design choices like that, but none that irk me more.
Oh god yes. It's even worse when you skip certain ones, but then all of a sudden, you HAVE to see others. With J-Stars Victory Vs., you can skip the company logos, but then you get to the copyrights, you HAVE to see them, not allowed to skip them.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It doesn't annoy me. It looks weird when the camera is in a different place, I think Outlast has a different FOV than typical first person games.
Dice//
Banned
Fbh
Member
Also, and I know this one would be really hard to make right, special weapons that aren't all that special in terms of stats:
"For all you have done for me I give you THE DRAGON SLAYER!!!"
"It's real?!?!?! I thought it was a legend!!!"
"Oh but it isn't. Forged with dragon fire by ancient Elves, this sword was used centuries ago by the great hero Dudorin to slay the elder dragon. Infused with magic that has long been forgotten it will never age, never rust and never loose its sharpness."
"I..I can't accept this"
"But you must!!!. This sword has been in my family for generations but I want you to have it. Without you I'd be dead and my kingdom in ruins so it's only right that you should wield such a legendary weapon"
"Ok then, thx, I will proudly use it for the rest of my life"
*Opens inventory: It's shit compared to a sword I found 2 hours ago after killing some random monster in a sidequest*
* Sold 10 minutes later to some random blacksmith for 50coppers"
"For all you have done for me I give you THE DRAGON SLAYER!!!"
"It's real?!?!?! I thought it was a legend!!!"
"Oh but it isn't. Forged with dragon fire by ancient Elves, this sword was used centuries ago by the great hero Dudorin to slay the elder dragon. Infused with magic that has long been forgotten it will never age, never rust and never loose its sharpness."
"I..I can't accept this"
"But you must!!!. This sword has been in my family for generations but I want you to have it. Without you I'd be dead and my kingdom in ruins so it's only right that you should wield such a legendary weapon"
"Ok then, thx, I will proudly use it for the rest of my life"
*Opens inventory: It's shit compared to a sword I found 2 hours ago after killing some random monster in a sidequest*
* Sold 10 minutes later to some random blacksmith for 50coppers"
Was gonna post about UI elements, like the Halo and Metroid helmet, and the splatter/darkening of the screen when you're close to death. UI elements should all be informative and non-invasive. At least the death warnings are informative. The helmet overlays serve no purpose unless you find them immersive.
Also regenerative health. It doesn't make the game any harder. It just makes me hide behind cover for longer.
Also, mutiplayer. That's it... just multiplayer.
Also regenerative health. It doesn't make the game any harder. It just makes me hide behind cover for longer.
Also, mutiplayer. That's it... just multiplayer.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Arkham Origins, either console version or PC version with settings turned down.
Fbh
Member
"We will just go ahead and asume you have never played a videogame before...ever....not even once"
- Most Nintendo Games (but Zelda in particular)
Ragelink26
Member
When you have to follow a character, but your characters walk is too slow to keep up, but your run is too fast. AC is the worst offender of this. It should be fixed by now, but the Witcher 3 does it too and it drives me nuts
BouncyFrag
Member
The 'skin rash' curse imposed on you in Hand of Fate's last level has ruined, until then, what had been a very enjoyable game.
The Lone Courier
Member
Agreed pretty much one of my nitpicks with most Rockstar games.