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[[Nintex]]

I almost forgot,

-QTE's
-QTE's
-QTE's

Official list of developers allowed to use QTE's:
Shinji Mikami
Hideki Kamiya
Sony Santa Monica
Yu Suzuki(he's retired anyway)

 

[Dogenzaka]

Filling cutscenes with quick-time events. The ONLY game that seems to have done this right is Heavy Rain. Every other implementation is lazy design. Why not just let me do what's in the cutscene? Or hell just let me watch it.

-Lack of freedom or the game trying to impose its own sense of morality on the player. Example includes the stealth scene in Ocarina of Time. It always pissed me off that I'd have to restart every time the castle guards caught me. Why can't I just kill them?

Because kid heroes of time don't kill Hylian castle guards? Use your head.

 

[Fio]

Nonlinearity is always good.

Unfortunately to many developers - and good part of the videogame media - it seems that linearity is something intrinsically bad when it comes to game design. This shit has to stop, it has already ruined enough games.

Spoiler

Burnout Paradise

 

[hayejin]

The idea that cutscenes are bad and that your character shouldn't talk at all because you are the character aka the Valve philosophy...

Pretty much this.
I can't replay Half Life 2 or any of the episodes b/c I have sit through the boring ass conversation everytime. Why can't I just skip them like cutscenes?

 

[Dandy]

I hate it when friendly AI is dumber than enemy AI.

 

[PataHikari]

-Grinding in RPG's

...name the RPG made in the past five years that has grinding that isn't simply a player going "This is too hard I don't want to think!" And mindlessly levels up or decides "I'm going to become the most powerful being EVER" after beating the game.

Oh, I am quite serious.

The STALKER series are even more openworld, with more freedom and a no HUD option.

And, yes they also take a dump on HL2 from a great height. I quite like the story in Half-life but the gameplay is antiquated.

GTA III was the greatest revolution in modern gaming.

HUDs are for flight sims and T-800 terminators only.

I pray you never make video games. Ever.

 

[BlueScrote]

You guys should play Ninja Blade :lol

Worst offender of QTE Misuse.

Its almost a modern day dragon's lair.

 

[Freshmaker]

Aye, I should have added "in most cases" to that, but the cold, hard fact of the matter is that it's not a stylistic choice in most cases. It's more a choice rooted on the time and monetary resources a game is allowed for development. Hand drawn 2D, at high resolutions, is EXTREMELY time consuming and expensive.

Is there an actual source for this common assertion? I'd love to see the actual breakdowns.

BlazBlue is the one game I've seen use 2D sprites at a high resolution that looks as good/detailed as low resolution 2D.

What was BlazBlue's budget? 3 billion dollars?

 

[KittenMaster]

...name the RPG made in the past five years that has grinding that isn't simply a player going "This is too hard I don't want to think!" And mindlessly levels up or decides "I'm going to become the most powerful being EVER" after beating the game.

This is the truth. Grinding is only prevalent in, uh... MMOs (which is a vague assumption, since I'm only really familiar with Lineage II and some free MMOs) and Dragon Warrior 1 (NES version, so maybe the GB version altered EXP tables).

I don't know if JRPGs are still like this, but usually you end up overleveled without grinding because of trying to collect a bunch of items and doing side quests that you may fight on the way to completion.

 

[teeny]

Games in which the developer sees fit to rip control away from me during actual action scenes, and then proceeds to show me what I could be doing via a cutscene. There is nothing more irritating than being stopped every five minutes because the gameplay isnt as cool as whatever CGI I am being shown.

 

[Koopakiller]

Because kid heroes of time don't kill Hylian castle guards? Use your head.

That was just an example. I've noticed annoying limitations in a lot of games over the years...

And I'm not talking about making it easy to kill them or even possible to kill them, just giving me the option. It would still be a stealth sequence if you had the option because the guards would be so vastly overpowered that it would be nearly impossible to progress unless you sneak past them.

My thoughts on this are especially strong towards Zelda games, where it seems like the point of Link being a silent character is to make him into a representation of the player. If Link is truly supposed to represent the player, then there should be given more freedom to the players actions.

...name the RPG made in the past five years that has grinding that isn't simply a player going "This is too hard I don't want to think!" And mindlessly levels up or desides "I'm going to become the most powerful being EVER" after beating the game.

Persona 4.

If I have to go out of my way, backtracking, doing extra battles on the way to the boss in order to defeat him, that to me is too much grinding. It's just repetitive gameplay, not fun at all.

 

[Azure J]

Well GAF has been on fire with the things mentioned so far, but I guess since I have a few I'll put them here:

- Taking out the gamey elements - mentioned a few times before, but seriously, I play games to play games, not to be bombarded by a developer's wishes at creating an "interactive cinematic" experience.

- No place for quirky ideas alongside the juggernauts - this is better explained with a comment someone made in another thread. They said that if things like Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros. or Katamari came out this gen, no one would give them a chance. At first I thought "hey, that's just because the audience has changed and they want something different", but thinking about it, maybe it's because developers won't try to make something other than what's tried and true.

- QTEs, although this really is more on how a developer uses it rather than the concept as a whole. Say what you will about this example, but I think the saddest thing I've ever seen in my gaming life was input strings to determine which path you would get to take after making a jump off a ramp in Sonic Unleashed. I was seriously like "wat". That kind of shit is unacceptable in a platformer.

- Downplaying entire visual styles (2D, cel-shading to an extent)

- "Let's make all these beautiful as shit places and character models, but forget that these things need to animate just as well!"

-also-

"CodeBro: My V-Sync is Fucked Up So This Shit's Gonna Chug/Tear"

 

[Crash Station]

Persona 4.

If I have to go out of my way, backtracking, doing extra battles on the way to the boss in order to defeat him, that to me is too much grinding. It's just repetitive gameplay, not fun at all.

You shouldn't be grinding in P4. Nearly every situation can be solved by fusing a different persona.

 

[Lazy vs Crazy]

Making excellent gameplay anything other than the number one priority at any point in development.

 

[Koopakiller]

You shouldn't be grinding in P4. Nearly every situation can be solved by fusing a different persona.

Maybe I'm just no good

But thinking about Persona 4, reminds me

I hate randomly-generated dungeons/areas

I get that it's supposed to add reply value, giving the player a new experience every time, but really, I'd rather go through the game once and see something uniquely designed, something that the level designers put serious effort into creating, instead of barren/generic environment that looks slightly different every time I enter it.

 

[Dennis]

I pray you never make video games. Ever.

:lol To bad for you things are going my way.

 

[Princess Skittles]

Is there an actual source for this common assertion? I'd love to see the actual breakdowns.

Source? Hmm, try drawing a detailed dot by dot character sprite at say, 250x500 pixels.

Then do that a couple hundred times for each frame of animation.

Then do THAT a couple dozen times for multiple characters.

 

[JWong]

That multi-branching storylines will work...

until Heavy Rain comes out.

 

[Kittonwy]

I'll cut to the chase: the one thing that bothers me more than anything else are boxes/fences/barrels impeding your progress. I remember playing Dead to Rights, and in one level the only thing stopping you from getting to your destination were some stacked boxes that were only waist high. Instead of just jumping over them, you have to take your gun and blast your way through about a hundred enemies to find the staircase that goes up to the other side. I've got no problem blasting enemies, but let's not be so insulting as to assume I won't see these things, shall we?

No jump button is fucking stupid.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

ambigiuse choices, dont get me wrong I love choice in my games, but when the choice is yes/no and theres no way of me knowing what happens either way the game turns into frustration and i tend to replay the game just to see what happens had i chose the other option.

a really small abstract example of this is gears of war 2, there where a lot of places where you split up, trouble is the different paths where pretty ambigious so I was always wondering if im missing out on something and should have chosen the other path

 

[Drinky Crow]

cutscenes.

gestural or novelty controls.

mini-game segments.

"qte" segments.

 

[Freshmaker]

Source? Hmm, try drawing a detailed dot by dot character sprite at say, 250x500 pixels.

Then do that a couple hundred times for each frame of animation.

Then do THAT a couple dozen times for multiple characters.

This costs eleventy billion dollars?

 

[CadetMahoney]

I don't like "weighted controls". heh/

I used to love Japanese games so much but now it just seems like anytime I try to go back and play one I'm bombarded with cinematics when I just want to play the game.

pretty much. I've always preferred games with more gameplay than storytelling and cinematics.

 

[heringer]

Escort missions. It's keeping me from buying Bioshock 2. I fucking hate them.

 

[Tiktaalik]

Thinking that Multiplayer is needed when it's not.

This isn't a design decision. It's a marketing decision.

From a number of approaches there seems to be growing body of evidence that multiplayer and coop increases the sales of games and increases the time before a game is sold (thus limiting the amount of used games on the market, leading to greater sales).

 

[-COOLIO-]

I have never liked frankendesign, where the game you are playing is clearly "what if you combined game X with game Y."

o god yes

 

[JayDub]

Linearity=bad. Seriously, linearity can and usually is a good thing if done right.

Yes. Holy shit. A lot of crap that developers perceive as a "flaw" in their game were just bullshit bulletpoints for reviewers to add in their cons. They feel as if they NEED to point something out to remain credible.

This shit includes:

Zelda needs voice overs (no it does not)
So and so game is too linear (no it is not)

At the same time, developers need to really listen to reviewers when they say, "IF i had to say something bad, its that...." which doesnt necessarily mean its a flaw, its that your game is so good the only thing we can do is nitpick.

Anyway, to contribute to this thread, I say:

LACK OF SAVE ANYWHERE feature. No, it does not make your game more tense, all it does is make me want to shut the game off. I dont want to plan my gaming sessions depending on when and where the next save point is. Fucking hate it when I save and 5 mins later, 10 corriders down, I receive a much needed upgrade and have to run 10 corriders back to the save point so that I wont lose it at death.

Fuck save points. They're a relic. And fuck you, Dead Space.

 

[kai3345]

"Oh? You don't want to buy new? Welp, looks like you'll have to pay a ridiculously high price for one of the best characters in the game"

 

[To Far Away Times]

Quick Time Events. If I'm supposed to be playing a game then I should be using things that I have learned, and not playing simon says with the controller. When your knowledge of the controller is more important than your knowledge of the game mechanics, your game sucks.

 

[Safe Bet]

Making excellent gameplay anything other than the number one priority at any point in development.

In the future I see, narrative is gameplay.

 

[Devil Theory]

This isn't a design decision. It's a marketing decision.

From a number of approaches there seems to be growing body of evidence that multiplayer and coop increases the sales of games and increases the time before a game is sold (thus limiting the amount of used games on the market, leading to greater sales).

+1

 

[Desi]

local multiplayer over Online!

I just wanted to be against the grain. But seriously I don't live in dorms or out in the suburbs where all my friends live on the same street. And with snowpocalypse outside...

 

[Retro]

- "Cinematic" Emphasis: Players need data to read, act, and react to situations within the game. I'm all for a more engrossing experience, but never at the cost of playability. Removing health gauges, ammo-counters, mini-maps, etc. should be done only if the data is represented clearly in some other fashion.

- Quick Time Events. Don't need to cover this.

- Emo Art games. There's a new one every week and they're all the same shit. Sadly, a lot of them have GREAT gameplay concepts, but they bury it behind a ton of artsy bullshit. Game first, art second.

- Free to Play design. It irks me that there's an entire sector of game developers who are working diligently to milk as much money as possible from players first, and entertain second. That entire approach really bothers me for some reason. (Read more here.)

 

[Apath]

Things that should be mandatory for games, as opposed to not included at all:
- Skipable Cutscenes
- Quick Save
- Chapter Select

Things that need to stop:
- Huge bosses that take an hour of repetitive actions to kill.
- Artificially increasing game length via back tracking, arbitrary and repetitive missions, etc.
- Cliff hanger endings (* cough Halo 2 *) that expect a sequel.

 

[jdogmoney]

Mostly these.

EDIT: Cutscenes are good, and shouldn't have to be skippable. Pausable, sure, but they should be good enough that you don't even want to skip them.

[I do make exceptions for cutscenes that are between when you respawn and the boss that just killed you.]

 

[Unknown One]

I got a lot of gripes.
- Invisible walls are put in areas that looks like it can be accessed. I seriously can't jump on top of a box? Way to kill the immersion there.
- Rubberband A.I, one of the most stupid concept I've seen
- DLC, I'm against paying for map packs, skins, and minor things that should be free. I don't got anything against expansion packs though.
- Recoiless guns and guns that kills too fast making headshots pointless. I don't like shooting Fisher Price toys and in reality body vest can absorb more then 4 rounds from 5.56 NATO rounds.
- Rewarding any player for being skilled or worthless in fps. Yes I'm calling Call of Duty 4 and MW2 out. Not only is it not balanced, those skill streaks dominate the battlefield. If you reward skilled players it will only make it worst for the opposition making it harder for them to make a comeback and if you reward less skilled then the game is officially Mario Kart.
- Non balanced teams, please even up the teams. When one team has over level 30s fighting against a team with under level 20s something is wrong.
- Traversing in RPGs, I can't seriously hop over that fence? I have to walk like 1/4 a mile just to get to the other side!
- Power weapons, it is very hard to get the balance right with these weapons being camped/whored by 1 team.


I'll think of more later.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

That was just an example. I've noticed annoying limitations in a lot of games over the years...

And I'm not talking about making it easy to kill them or even possible to kill them, just giving me the option. It would still be a stealth sequence if you had the option because the guards would be so vastly overpowered that it would be nearly impossible to progress unless you sneak past them.

My thoughts on this are especially strong towards Zelda games, where it seems like the point of Link being a silent character is to make him into a representation of the player. If Link is truly supposed to represent the player, then there should be given more freedom to the players actions.

That's just not Zelda.

Plus I'm pretty sure Link can only use the Master Sword because of pure-heartedness. If he killed some guards, when he had the option to avoid them, he'd probably die the second he tried to touch the Master Sword. In other words, you just ruined the plot to OoT. I hope you're happy.:lol

 

[T Ghost]

There are a LOT of Things that annoy me in game design:

The entire boss concept. Loathe it.

Any higher difficulty system that is not BASED on better AI, i.e., high difficulty based strongly on less HP on my character/more HP to AI character, less damage points on my ammo/more damage points on AI ammo, etc.

Pattern based AI. It belongs to the 1990's, period.

The philosophy that an awesome gameplay mechanic and level design totally eliminates all and every need for excellent and captivating atmosphere, settings and characters.

Rewards for memorization of long string "combo" systems.

Turn based combat systems

Also, stuff that annoys the heck out of me on art design:

Characters that look like cartoon children. Specially the ones with squeaky voices. It's an immediate "back to the shelf/Gamefly".

Emo-androgen characters.

Exaggerated big swords

That's all I can remember for now.

 

[Ranger X]

That every feature, mode and gameplay in your game must be for everyone.

This is dilluting the experience most of the time and making games more soul less.

 

[mugwhump]

-"choose your own adventure" narrative branches
-The idea that QTEs are substantial enough to be the basis of an entire game

 

[HK-47]

That every feature, mode and gameplay in your game must be for everyone.

This is dilluting the experience most of the time and making games more soul less.

Your game needs more heart, man.

 

[tino]

The idea that cutscenes are bad and that your character shouldn't talk at all because you are the character aka the Valve philosophy...

Yeah this annoys me a lot.

 

[Alphahawk]

Another thing that bothers me is how sequel driven this industry is, and how theres no such thing as a succesfull one-off game, companies are always money hungry to milk franchises until they're dry...

 

[Freshmaker]

The idea that everyone has to not only have dialogue, but every single part must have a voice actor attached to it.

Nothing like a feature that artificially pads the running time, and increases costs.

 

[Nessus]

The idea that cutscenes are bad and that your character shouldn't talk at all because you are the character aka the Valve philosophy...

I'd basically be on the opposite side of the fence.

Games are interactive entertainment. Non-interactive cutscenes are anathema to the ONLY advantage games have as a story-telling medium.

This ongoing obsession the industry has with trying to appear legitimate, constantly comparing itself to movies, mired in inadequacy and insecurity.

Novels don't sell themselves on being "cinematic" and neither should games. They are different mediums with different strengths. They should play to their strengths. Games should instead develop their own syntax for narrative delivery instead of trying to emulate movies.

 

[thehillissilent]

-"choose your own adventure" narrative branches
-The idea that QTEs are substantial enough to be the basis of an entire game

I guess that you don't like the gameplay of Heavy Rain or Indigo Prophecy/Fahereheit.

 

[Retro]

Another thing that bothers me is how sequel driven this industry is, and how theres no such thing as a succesfull one-off game, companies are always money hungry to milk franchises until they're dry...

That's because the current games industry is still modeled after software development instead of an entertainment industry. It's very similar to how films were in the 40s and 50s; major studios kept creative talent on staff and under contract (requiring huge overhead), and there was almost no creative freelancing as there is now...

Originals were not smiled upon in those days, believe it or not. There was very little interest in originals in those days. [...] Studios, distributors wanted the assurance of someone else having thought a property worth publishing[...] In those days, if you went to a party in the Hollywood community and somebody would ask, "What are you working on, Ernie?" and you replied, "I'm doing an original now," the response would be "Oh." [...] Like they were a little embarrassed[...] If you were working on something that you were going to create all by yourself, they'd secretly think, "He's in bad shape. Working on an original." That definitely was the climate at one time in this town.

Sound familiar? Consider the work of Jonathan Blow, who spent 3 years and $180,000 of his own money producing Braid completely outside the development process of the industry.

Once a film was an established hit, the studio would simply churn out similar films (cycling in the various stars and directors they kept under tight contract) with every-increasing budgets (witness the constant recycling of sword-and-sandal history films leading to the disastrous Cleopatra in 1963, which practically ruined 20th Century Fox), trying to milk as much as they could to keep all of their employees paid.

Anyone doing anything creative pretty much signed away their rights to their work and remained under contract unless they made a ton of money via private funding, set off on their own, and... sold their work to distributors (who owned the theaters) who still made the lion's share of the profits (similar to how console makers control distribution, though it's not nearly as tight as films were).

You can read more about it here; http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22045

I didn't mention it because it's not really a design issue, more of an industry-wide attitude. I also don't agree with everything in that article, but change really is needed.

 

[Monocle]

- "Bigger, better and more badass."

- Obstacles in FPSs than any normal human would be able to step over, but you and your pathetic jump cannot. Maybe Halo's spoiled me in this area, but sometimes things get really silly.

- Cutscenes that can't be paused or skipped. I don't mind watching, really I don't, but if I can't have someone knock on the door or call me on the phone without being forced to miss a plot point, there's a problem.

- QTEs for chests and doors, etc. No, kind dev, I can think of nothing I'd rather do than mash buttons to perform basic tasks. In fact, I love it so much that I'd like you to make me do it dozens of times over the course of a single playthrough. Dozens, I tell you!

- Bosses when no bosses are called for. (Hi Halo 2.)

- Action and fighting games that lack fully customizable controls for every mode.

- Memorization games.

- Tank controls. Get with the times, Resident Evil. Seriously.

- Limited continues.

- Infrequent checkpoints.

- Infinitely respawning enemies.

- Stupid crap that requires an inordinately long period of concentration. (Example: Dodge 200 lighting bolts in FFX).

- Lack of new game + in action games and RPGs. Alternatively: crappy new game +. (Major offenders: God of War, Ninja Gaiden, Lost Odyssey. Thankfully, the sequels to the first two games addressed the omission.)

- Timed sequences in action games and RPGs. I don't like the pressure; maybe that's just my personal issue.

- When games that heavily rely on trial and error take too long to restart. (The wrong way to do it: pre-patch Burnout Paradise. The right way to do it: Trials HD.)

- Swing on the beam, jump across the platforms...UH-OH, YOU FELL DOWN, DIMWIT. Time to run all the way back to the starting point and repeat the process again! Especially fun in action games, where my character can rip apart a group of 20 monsters but lacks the basic motor skills to hop over a hole without falling in. (Yeah, I know it's my fault. Except in Ninja Gaiden games, where enemies like to spam you with projectiles at the most inopportune times. Then it's Itagaki's fault.)

- Pull the lever and get to the door, run to the door, halfway there, keep running, holy shit the door is closing, so close to the door...*door slams*

- Tedious achievements. No I am not going to fucking hunt down 200 pigeons, GTA4. Do you have any idea how much important real life stuff I could get done in the amount of time that would take?

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Not being able to jump (The Witcher).

Heh, I see your point on this. Some games don't feel like they need a "jump" action (Gears of War series, for example) but other games like Brutal Legend and Fable II should have had the ability to jump. It felt especially awkward in Brutal Legend.

 

[Dark Octave]

I'd basically be on the opposite side of the fence.

Games are interactive entertainment. Non-interactive cutscenes are anathema to the ONLY advantage games have as a story-telling medium.

This ongoing obsession the industry has with trying to appear legitimate, constantly comparing itself to movies, mired in inadequacy and insecurity.

Novels don't sell themselves on being "cinematic" and neither should games. They are different mediums with different strengths. They should play to their strengths. Games should instead develop their own syntax for narrative delivery instead of trying to emulate movies.

Novels can never be "cinematic", games can. I have yet to see a game tell a story better than by having all characters speaking, with a fixed camera angle, showing their facial expressions, with music and the whole nine. Giving the player total control during an important scene is pointless, as the only focus should be on that scene at that particular point and time.

Allowing the player to spin around in circles trying out his/her new weapon while their AI teammates are saying their last goodbyes, does not make for a very memorable story/scene.

Edit: Almost forgot to mention the topic. I'd like to play a game to where when you take damage, it isn't always because you got physically injured. I'm talking about characters like Marcus and Nathan taking thousands of bullets to the ass, taking a breather and being 100% A-OK.

How about a game where the player is met with many close calls (bullets that visually don't hit but are close) resulting in his mental state to decline (power bar equivalent), allowing for that one perfect shot to finally hit and kill him or he takes cover, allowing him to regain his composure and get back in the fight.

Or the sword fighting character that instead of getting sliced up and drinks a potion to regain health, blocks differently, to tell the player that that was a hit and the power goes down appropriately. He then drinks something to calm his nerves (regain his health) so he will be mentally sharp for the next fight.