Least Favorite Mechanics in Gaming?

[DarksideEric]

Hey all, thought I'd drop a discussion here about good ol' video games and some things we dislike about them.

So what are some of your least favorite gameplay (or even story) mechanics in gaming? Let's break it down genre wise.

Infinite Combos
I'm a big fighting game fan. I've been around fighting games since Street Fighter II hit the arcade and immediately fell in love with the genre. However, as time progressed in the genre people began to want bigger, longer and flashier combos in fights. Combos so big and long that (when performed correctly) they could full on kill a character from 100% health. I love flashy and long combos mind you, but over the years (especially with the Marvel vs. Capcom series) I have grown really very tired of seeing matches almost being completely decided by the fact that you blocked high instead of low and thus let your opponent ramp up into an infinite combo that you have no way of escaping (unless they mess up). For example, Zero in MvC 3. So many times I've heard players and commentators say that once the Zero infinite starts going, you might as well just put your controller down because it's a single player game at this point.

I'm not saying I don't have respect for players that have the skill to pull off these combos mind you, I'm saying I don't like the fact that there's very little to no way to counter them once they start going.

How about you guys? What are your thoughts on infinite combos and what are mechanics you dislike? I'll post another later on.

 

[ヒュー　G.　レックション]

Repeating bosses. I'm sure many franchises do it but Zelda is one that sticks out to me, you have to beat all the previous boses again before the final boss, Stuff like that. Also in games when bosses have combinations of previous bosses moves. Like Zant in Zelda TP. He would've been so much better if he had just been a standalone boss but instead you just go through the same cycle of bosses you fought previously, (I don't think it even explains how Zant knew all these bosses' moves and locations to teleport to).

This is also in a similar vein, fighting game bosses whose movesets are just a mishmash of other characters. I'd much prefer it if they had their own unique movesets. Seth from SF4 is a perfect example, and a shitty, boring boss as a result.

 

[Dagger Dias]

Repeating bosses. I'm sure many franchises do it but Zelda is one that sticks out to me, you have to beat all the previous boses again before the final boss, Stuff like that. Also in games when bosses have combinations of previous bosses moves. Like Zant in Zelda TP. He would've been so much better if he had just been a standalone boss but instead you just go through the same cycle of bosses you fought previously, (I don't think it even explains how Zant knew all these bosses' moves and locations to teleport to).

This is also in a similar vein, fighting game bosses whose movesets are just a mishmash of other characters. I'd much prefer it if they had their own unique movesets. Seth from SF4 is a perfect example, and a shitty, boring boss as a result.

I'm going to have to disagree partially. I like when you face rematches of previous bosses and bosses towards the end like Zant or the first form of Lavos in Chrono Trigger. It's like a reminder of what you have been through up until that point. I like it when it's done right. These should only be done during the last quest/event of a game. These bosses shouldn't be the final encounter. However I do like them when used towards the end, right before the actual final encounter. That's the best way to do it.

Mine would be gathering components to create an item or cast a spell. Item creation was never something I've been a fan of, I'd rather purchase potions and equipment from shops. Then you have things like in FF9 where you had to create some weapons through combining (synthesizing) other sets of equipment, it got ridiculous because you then had to synthesize multiple synthesized weapons to unlock some, and of course there HAD to be ability you could only learn from THOSE weapons. I'd wind up making myself have up to 4 of every single weapon just to make sure I had enough to keep synthesizing them, it was so frustrating. You didn't HAVE to do this, but they often were better than the regular shop weapons and could teach you abilities you otherwise couldn't learn.

On a similar note I also hated having to find the items needed to create the alchemy "spells" in Secret of Evermore, I ended up boycotting that and relying on Call Beads instead when weapons were not enough. I used only the spells the game forced you use, so for 99% of it I just attacked everything with my weapons and called on Horace/Sydney/etc with a Call Bead if I needed healing.

 

[info62]

Quest Markers
I hate when RPGs add features like this. Right after talking to an NPC and starting a quest, the exact place you need to get to is marked on your map or a compass-type feature. Sometimes they do this when you weren't given adequate information, or they mark items' locations when you are supposed to be searching for them. It's not hard to search when the exact location is given right to you immediately. This was one of the big problems I had with Oblivion, and I thought it was infuriating that there was no option to turn it off.

Sanity Meters
The other genre I play a lot of is survival horror. A few of them have sanity depletion and it just plays out stupidly. Like of course in Amnesia TDD, where standing in the dark for two seconds too long makes you see little roaches crawling around in rooms for the next while. When the game is new it's more annoying because you want to see what the monsters look like, but if your character looks at them directly then their sanity just drops.

The feature is just a nuisance. I don't think horror games should implement sanity unless it's in specific scenes of the game's storyline, like Penumbra: Black Plague, and others have done.

 

[DarksideEric]

A mechanic I absolutely abhorred in Skyrim was the "put a skill point in it, now everything is unlocked."

Counter to Dagger (sorry Dagger), I like actually doing item recipes and stuff (at least sometimes) as well as straight buying items/equipment from shops. What I hated in Skyrim in the Smithing Skill Tree (as well as some other non-crafting skill trees) was if you put a point in say, Dwarven Smithing, every single Dwarven item was now craftable. No recipes, no breaking down items to learn how they're made just... BOOM, you now know how to make every single Dwarven piece of equipment ever.

The same mechanic is used for things like, I think it was Speechcraft, where you could take a perk that got you 10% off all stores globally. I'm fine with mechanics like that in say, a Final Fantasy, where it's not open world and you're not trying to develop relationships with shop NPCs, but in a game like Skyrim I just don't like it.

 

[DarksideEric]

Another mechanic that I dislike now (and hope it gets redone) are Quick Time Events (QTE).

QTEs were pretty cool when they were first introduced, in the way back times of Dragon's Lair. They got increasingly popular in gameplay thanks to God of War and then well... it seems every action game (and more) needed them and they became boring and overused, not to mention frustrating in some games (Conan on 360).

I grew to dislike QTEs because they got overused and felt stale. For the longest time I've wanted to see QTEs go through a change (I may have missed it, been retro and mobile gaming mostly) where QTEs now had pathways rather than the same move over and over with random inputs.

What do I mean by this?

Well, last I checked (and stopped playing), QTEs were as follow:

Fighting a major minion and going for the special deathblow? Input a randomly selected command to get the same deathblow every time. Such as mash A over and over to stab the minotaur in the throat.

What I'd love to see is actual pathways that are limited to the more essential enemies, like mid bosses, bosses and final bosses.

What do I mean by pathway?

Get enemy to X health to prompt the QTE.

Enemy comes at you with say... a diagonal sword slash.

Press X or A.

X makes you roll under the attack and grab the enemy from behind.

A makes you parry the slash and stab forward with your knife.

If you pressed X, you get a brief window to press B or A.

If you press B, the enemy counters you and breaks the hold.

Press A, you lift up and slam the enemy.

Etc, etc.