The other thread about favorite mechanics is great, so let’s also do the opposite: what are some of your most hated mechanics?
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I’m not a big fan of fishing mechanics, they’re usually shallow “press button at random signal, get a random prize” mechanics.
Also escort missions where the NPC being escorted does not understand that it should protect its own life. I don’t mind repeating a mission due to my own mistakes, but I don’t want to do it because some AI went potato.
nah man fishing mini games are THE SHIT
it’s not about gameplay it’s about vibes It’s just so calming
Quick-time events but SPECIFICALLY the ones that give you way too little time to react. Like, I never mind them too much, especially the ones in the Yakuza series, but I remember there was this game on the Wii called Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings that would throw these inputs WAYY too fast at you.
I like them sometimes, but there should ALWAYS be a way to turn them off, for people who don’t have fast reflexes or have problems with their hands, etc.
Shout out to Spider-Man on PS4 for this! Love when a game has accessibility options around quick time events, or anything where you need to mash a button really fast.
Radiant quests. You can never complete the game because of this, the quests are generic and repetitive and offer nothing but “stretch the playtime”.
That and mechanics like “rando dragon attacks in Skyrim” and “City is under attack” from Fallout 4. I quit F4 because I was on my way to a mission and got the "city under attack notification, and on my way to defend another city was under attack.
To yes-and this: procedural content in general. No Man’s Sky is a snore-fest for me, big, empty, meaningless. Missions in Elite Dangerous and X4 are similarly pretty boring, though the former is more fun the first time around. There has to feel like there’s some world-affecting point to what you’re doing. IMO
I found the procedurally-produced planets in No Man’s Sky to be stunningly beautiful. Then I would walk around on them and the similar-but-not-quite look of every part of the landscape would slowly drive me INSANE.
Anything where the player is essentially a superhero, I like summers though…
Grinding to advance and make the game easier.
Looking at you fdev with Elite Dangerous, or Rockstar and GTA.
Having balance and not level locking stuff is hard I get that. And you have people that will burn though content like it’s a free crackpipe. But it basically makes a lot of adults or people that just play games casually or in moderation just not fun
Stealth. I hate hiding and creeping around waiting for an NPC to move. It’s like, “oh, you want to play the game? How about not playing the game instead?” Infuriating.
I feel like most games get it wrong and just make you stay in one place waiting for the enemy dude to slowly make his route as you map it in your head. It’s just boring, I don’t know.
A nice way to change that would be to give a button that gives you a “top view” map of the enemies’s movement maybe, to make it a little bit puzzle-y. Or, if you want to make it more “action-y”, give the player a way to hide or disengage by scrambling to find something in the environment that allows them to do that, when they get detected.
Stealth is just implemented in a terrible way in most modern games I feel like. Makes it not fun.
I love the shit out of stealth. The last of us, metal gear solid, and sniper elite are some of my favorite games because of the stealth.
If your game isn’t built for stealth it’s basically universally a disaster, though. If you don’t have tools to manipulate enemies, and AI where stealth is a functional element of the rest of the game, you shouldn’t have stealth sections. They’re a lock to be a trainwreck.
Combo attacks - I’m not coordinated to hit the buttons in order fast enough. I tried Black Desert when it was free and this was the dealbreaker for me, though it wasn’t the only thing that bugged me about the game.
- Excessive grinding or padding in a game just for the sake of it or for microtransaction reasons.
- Microtransaction and pay-to-win models in full price $70 games…
- Overuse of Quick time events Press E to dodge etc etc
- Escort missions when developers want to pad their game out
- Terrible stealth mechanics when an enemey spots me when im standing still in a bush from the other side of the map
Yeah, the older I get, the more “I don’t have time for 10h grinding a day” I get. Just let me play a complete game in peace please.
I decided a few years ago that I play games to have fun and if a game isn’t fun, I don’t play it. I don’t have much time these days to dedicate gaming, so I want to enjoy the time I do.
I’ve had a few I’ve really enjoyed until I hit some really terrible game mechanic or even a boss encounter I can’t get past. I’ll usually give it a few days/tries, but I’ll flat out just bail and uninstall a game if it is causing me too much stress.
Same here, life is too short to struggle ingame :)
