Support NeoGAF

[Grildon Tundy]

What is your gaming pet peeve? Something that gets your goat, grinds your gears, jams your steeze?

My #1 gaming pet peeve at the moment is the unnatural delay between lines of dialogue when players are having a conversation with an NPC. Playing Final Fantasy XVI, this happens A LOT. Here's an example:



In real life, people don't often take a full second to respond to someone or to begin their next sentence. I've heard that this awkward cadence & delays in games is due to having to load in the next animation/audio track, but surely with modern hard drives and memory, this is no longer necessary?

I want to play a game where people speak like people: accidentally stepping on each other's responses, giving cues that they want to cut in, reacting to each other more seemingly spontaneously. Recording with voice actors in the same room would go a long way to making things feel more organic. That'd increase the budget and time necessary to record, but I'd love to see it. Let me know if you know of any games that did that.

What's your gaming pet peeve?

 

[radewagon]

When a game that I wanted to like sucks.

 

[Spukc]

hand holding..
just fucking dump me in the game

 

[Bartski]

Sheath clipping through cape

 

[T4keD0wN]

Playing as a supersoldier who cant sprint for more than 8 seconds before his stanima runs out.
Having to kill 10 animals and only one of them drops a liver or whatever.
Crounching somehow making a person less noisy drives me crazy.

 

[Hendrick's]

Battle Passes

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

OP that is a good one. IDK why Japanese games always do that. It doesn’t flow like a real conversation, more like they’re just reading off the screen to you and it sounds stupid as hell.


My biggest pet peeve is when a game has a character growth system where you can gimp yourself by unknowingly playing the “wrong way”. E.g. Final Fantasy VIII you get weaker relative to enemies if you gain levels unless you have the right stat growth junctions. Xenoblade 3 if you use your bonus XP all you are doing is cheating yourself out of job points that you would’ve got if you leveled up by fighting enemies. Dragon Quest VII if you’re overleveled it’s impossible to level up your job.

Worst one of all is Elder Scrolls: Oblivion which has the most retarded character growth system I’ve ever encountered. If you play the way the game seemingly wants you to play you end up getting shit stat bonuses at level up. Instead the “right” way to play is to pick as your primary skills the ones that are easy to level up on demand. Then in between character levels you have to micromanage which skills you leveled so you could get +5 to your chosen stats.

 

[Kiya's Guard]

OP that is a good one. IDK why Japanese games always do that. It doesn’t flow like a real conversation, more like they’re just reading off the screen to you and it sounds stupid as hell.


My biggest pet peeve is when a game has a character growth system where you can gimp yourself by unknowingly playing the “wrong way”. E.g. Final Fantasy VIII you get weaker relative to enemies if you gain levels unless you have the right stat growth junctions. Xenoblade 3 if you use your bonus XP all you are doing is cheating yourself out of job points that you would’ve got if you leveled up by fighting enemies. Dragon Quest VII if you’re overleveled it’s impossible to level up your job.

Worst one of all is Elder Scrolls: Oblivion which has the most retarded character growth system I’ve ever encountered. If you play the way the game seemingly wants you to play you end up getting shit stat bonuses at level up. Instead the “right” way to play is to pick as your primary skills the ones that are easy to level up on demand. Then in between character levels you have to micromanage which skills you leveled so you could get +5 to your chosen stats.

I saw a video explaining it and god, had no idea back in the day. It's way too damn convoluted and unnecessary

 

[NeonGhost]

When playing fps games and the character you play is shorter than everyone. seriously go play a fps game and go talk to a npc each one is like a foot taller than you

 

[dave_d]

I think I've mentioned this before but when games don't have an option to return directly to the title screen. (Where you have to quit the game entirely and then restart then you get to the title screen.)

 

[Fuz]

Sheath clipping through cape

Levitating sheaths.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

BTW OP the “loading” excuse is a bunch of bullshit. Japanese games have been doing this forever, and a lot of them you can advance/skip lines by pressing a button and the next line will start immediately by some technological miracle.

Also I give props to 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim for letting you adjust the delay between lines. IDK why this even needed to be a setting, but you can turn it down to 0 and then the conversations actually flow naturally like they should.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

When a game has no way of telling the real life time in game, like dating when you save.

Rockstar games are bad about that, one time I got so immersed in GTAV I didn't quit until the sun started to rise.

 

[Fuz]

Not being able to jump
This:

Spoiler

 

[Spaceman292]

Not being able to jump
This:

Spoiler

The off centre protag is so that the player can see what's directly in front of them. It makes more sense.

 

[Fuz]

The off centre protag is so that the player can see what's directly in front of them. It makes more sense.

Spoiler

 

[TexMex]

The dumb fucking pivot to the Destiny style cursor in the UI to make menu selections.

 

[Spaceman292]

Spoiler

Your crippling OCD doesn't beat logic

 

[Esca]

Hair clipping through clothing
Bugs the hell out of me. We are suppose to connect with our characters and really get into customization of them and soon as they turn their heads it's ruined

 

[Fuz]

Your crippling OCD doesn't beat logic

There's no logic in that. It's a bullshit excuse. There are plenty of games with a good camera, instead of a retarded uncentered camera. You can perfectly see what's in front of the character in them.
Uncentered camera is a retarded trend for "MORE CINEMATIC!!1!" type of designers, like 30 fps and stuff like that.

 

[Piggoro]

Thick metal chest and shoulder armor plates that bend and stretch when character moves in cutscenes.
Also, ending trailers and cutscenes with some big monster roaring into the camera.

 

[ReBurn]

Overly cinematic games where the gameplay is just a thing you have to do to get to the next unskippable mini-movie.

 

[Codes 208]

Hand-holding and cinematic experiences

Let me play the damn game

 

[Comandr]

When characters are being interrup—

* full second later*

Interrupted by another character talking!

It’s not interrupting if there’s a long ass pause between lines. Why did the first character just stop talking in the middle of their sentence and wait? Wtf.

 

[Gojiira]

Leaving in links/hooks for cut content, the Battle Gear and even the whole goddamn ending in MGSV is one of the worst offenders.
Franchises ‘appealing to a wider audience’ and therefore dumbing down the gameplay, DMC4 introducing Nero for Xbox players for example.
Tutorials dragging on or unskippable hand holding sections
Meaningful story choices being a button prompt rather than actual gameplay, example ‘Do you kill X, Square for yes,Triangle for No’ rather than simply letting the player walk away or kill on their own.
Obnoxious screen effects to represent madness or ‘spooky’ shit
Bethesda charging actual money for mods

 

[R6Rider]

Constantly forced dialogue sequences. Almost always pointless, bland, and not voiced.

Very common in JRPGs, but TotK does this a lot as well. It's like every single action requires this and it's fucking annoying.

 

[captainpat]

Unskippable game intros. They should be a thing that you see once after you install the game and you should just able to go instantly into the start menu after that.

 

[Drizzlehell]

• Unskippable cutscene right before a broken-ass fight that gets you killed like six times before you figure out how to cheese it.
• Slow walk masquerading as an expository dialogue scene.
• Squeezing through a crack in a wall only to get grabbed by something upon exit.
• Pointless climbing that poses no challenge or even has a possibility of failing.
• Mashing a button to open a door/pull a lever/overpower an enemy in a sword lock/wedge a finger up your ass/etc.
• Rubberbanding in racing games that is really fake and obvious.
• Having a health bar in a racing game and then losing it so fast that you'd think your car is made out of chocolate.
• Pointless skill trees that offers no branching character builds and only serves to gimp the player early on in the game (what is even the point? Just have the abilities unlock on their own like in a normal game).
• RPGs where the world scales up to your character level.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Double post.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Sheath clipping through cape

Absolutely hate this shit. Grinds my gears to no end.

 

[Fuz]

Double post.

Which games do that?

 

[Raven77]

My number one gaming pet peeve is easily hand-holding. I might mean this in a different way than you're thinking though. Ubisoft is the embodiment of what I'm referring to.

Instead of giving players a world full of stuff to discover and explore on their own, they put 400 icons on the map exactly where you need to go. It turns it into a boring chore instead of an adventure.

Elden Ring is one of the best games I've ever played because it is the complete opposite of the Ubisoft problem with open world games.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

When characters are being interrup—

* full second later*

Interrupted by another character talking!

It’s not interrupting if there’s a long ass pause between lines. Why did the first character just stop talking in the middle of their sentence and wait? Wtf.

Yes! It comes off like a middle school play where the kids missed their cues.

 

[ZehDon]

*trigger lengthy cutscene*
*walk through a non-interactive environment listening to dialogue*
*trigger cutscene*
*move through an environment, usually climbing or running, as dialogue unnaturally plays over the top*
*walk forward*
*trigger cutscene*
*dumped into contrived and irrelevant combat encounter*
*achievement pops: "Made a difficult decision"*

 

[Raven77]

*trigger lengthy cutscene*
*walk through a non-interactive environment listening to dialogue*
*trigger cutscene*
*move through an environment, usually climbing or running, as dialogue unnaturally plays over the top*
*walk forward*
*trigger cutscene*
*dumped into contrived and irrelevant combat encounter*
*achievement pops: "Made a difficult decision"*

Recently started over in Red Dead Redemption 2. It is amazing how frigging bad the first few hours of the game are. Slow, depressing, just downright booooring.

Once you get to the train part and set up your camp it's all good but WOW those first few hours are bad.

 

[mopspear]

When playing fps games and the character you play is shorter than everyone.

Doom 64. The demons stop you by putting their hands on your forehead while you run towards them.

 

[small_law]

Constantly-depleting health. It still shows its ass every so often.

I don't like being forced to trust NPC scripting in order to progress quests, missions, etc. Don't make an NPC have to show up at a certain location on the map or go talk to another character. Put the progress in my hands.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Gimmick situations/bosses for which you can have no foreshadowing and that wipe you out so fast unless you happen to have the right skill/equip by pure chance. Recently happened to me in Persona 4:

Spoiler

There’s a late-game boss that at one point takes control of your party members for two turns. They go all out with their stronger physical attacks and you are so dead unless you have a Persona with a certain skill that nullifies physical attacks. With so many Personas and skills in the game, this is not granted at all.

Of course fans of a game that has this will always handwave this away with some fanboy bs.

Skill trees with a high chance that you’ll end up with an unbalanced character. In 50+ hours games there’s no way you can know what may come up at one point, and in JRPGs especially it’s likely there’ll be times when a certain character build or skill will be very useful while any other will put you at a disadvantage. Or you have a choice of multiple skill trees and if you try to balance them you will gimp your character. Just make me commit to one skill tree and balance the game according to my choice.

BTW, the actual dialogue in the OP is way more offensive than the delays. It’s just awful.

 

[Spaceman292]

There's no logic in that. It's a bullshit excuse. There are plenty of games with a good camera, instead of a retarded uncentered camera. You can perfectly see what's in front of the character in them.
Uncentered camera is a retarded trend for "MORE CINEMATIC!!1!" type of designers, like 30 fps and stuff like that.

Either you peek over the character's head, which looks dumb, or you peek round the side, which looks cool. What's the problem with an uncentered camera anyway? Are there any negatives?

 

[DGrayson]

Insanely long development times

 

[Fredrik]

Hand-holding
Too much map markers
Companions telling me where to go
Hints when doing puzzles
Marked ledges when climbing

In short it feels like the devs think I’m a kid. Meanwhile the violence is rarely for kids, so I still can’t give the games to my kids instead but has to play this kids game with ultra violence that is probably making my brain into goo from not giving me enough stimulation.


Slow story walks or story rides or story climbs.
That’s usually where I fall asleep. For real.


Invisible walls.
Just put up a real wall. Seriously. Don’t make me try to climb or jump over a pile of small rocks if it’s clearly not possible.

I mean it’s so simple to hide it. I wouldn’t try to jump over a wall… But yes, a rock that is 20cm high I will try to jump over… and get annoyed when it’s not possible, because it actually makes perfect sense to try that instead of walking away 5 kilometers and use 3 keys on a door to get some special pants so I can talk to a guy called Urban who wants those pants and will trade me a grappling hook so I can get past that pile of rocks that a toddler would’ve managed to climb over.

Bad third person cameras
Elden Ring - Elden Beast. The camera is your real final boss. Mechanically the boss is actually easy but it becomes difficult simply because you can’t see what’s going on.
Why not zoom out when an enemy is bigger than the screen?

 

[Mr Hyde]

Which games do that?

 

[Kataploom]

Save kidnapping is the main reason why I won't play a game no matter how masterpiece it is. I hate, for example, that Resident Evil Remake still needs you to find ink in order to save the game and that's called "difficulty", or when games make you run long distances to fight a very hard boss just because, but these are the less offensive so won't skip a game for it... For as much as I love Dark Souls, second half is evidently rushed because of that. That's not difficulty, Genichiro and Isshin in Sekiro are more difficult without that bs cheap design, that's just annoying.

Other thing that makes me get mad very often is constantly waiting for small animations to end that I can't skip, Nintendo is very guilty of this and in Zelda TOTK the naked challenges in shrines that have the text shown at you every fucking time you retry made me angry more than once, I literally have like 4 of those unfinished because when I entered the shrine and saw it was one of those, I just went out to never go back. Not something that makes me hate an entire game but something I wish they stopped doing.

Jump scares. Cheap "horror", I won't play a game or watch a movie that rely on them, I'd just feel dumb to ever give them a chance a again.

Also Japanese/anime games without Japanese voices. It's just insufferable to hear English dub over anime characters, I just can't, they sound so wrong to me it's literally one of the biggest reasons I started PC as my main platform (apart from securing 60+ fps), so I can mod those games to make them playable to me. When I had my 3DS, the only way I could play SMT4 and FE Fates was hacking the console and putting some undubbed version of the games in it, had no choice too play them. Nowadays I will always confirm if an anime game comes with Japanese voices before purchasing.

Not being able to pick voice and text languages separately. For some reason devs believe that people always want to play games in their mother language. Actually I've seen the opposite among most people I know, original for voices and their own for text is like an unwritten rule. Some even use voices that sounds better just because or try setting voices to whatever place the story takes like Italian in AC or Polish for The Witcher.

 

[winjer]

Games where we reach a mid point and they decide to take all our gear, just so we have to spend the next half hour doing some half assed stealth mission in a prison, until we get all our gear back and the game goes back to the same point.

 

[BBG]

I'm honestly just shocked it took 41 posts for someone to mention invisible walls. That's gotta be in the hall of fame of most annoying videogame tropes ever since the dawn of 3D gaming.

 

[SCB3]

When a game has a cut scene, a 2-10 second walk, then cutscene

Final Fantasy is notorious for it

 

[Mediocre Arachno-Lad]

"Press start" splash screen before main menu.
Bonus vitriol points if it takes you right into a long-ass cinematic intro, with QTE prompts for buttons you gonna swap after this whole shit is over anyway.
Oh yeah, and when 90% of buttons don't do nothing until they're tutorialized.

 

[KungFucius]

PC games that make you quit to the menu before letting you quit to the desktop.

 

[Three]

That's intentional and good game design.

 

[Punished Miku]

Having to manually scroll down slowly through multiple terms of service contracts and agree before starting a game. I've bailed on games for that and never made it to the start screen.