Re: Gamplay "mechanics" you don't like?

On Thu, 19 Dec 2024 08:45:23 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
wrote:

Or is it just game dev decisions?
>
Mike S. mentioned a few things in another thread, and I thought it would
be an interesting topic. Or at least an opportunity to rant a lot.

I wouldn't call most of these 'mechanics' so much as just bad design

     [although this tread's perilously close to Layne's Law,
      where ultimately all arguments on the Internet degenerates
      into a debate about definition]

Mechanics for me are more nitty-gritty; the speed at which the gun
fires, the spread of the bullets, the amount of damage the bullets do,
whether there is control when your character is in the air after he
moves, if there's a little bit of leeway given to the player if he
jumps right at the edge of a precipice. Things where there are very
definite answers.

But many of the issues below are quite subjective (one man's grinding
is another's crafting) and things like 'easily broken quests' are
hardly intentional mechanics. They're poor practices but not what I'd
call mechanics.

[Like I said, Layne's Law. I just like to jump ahead and
get  to to that bit from the start ;-)]

Backtracking - don't like it, especially if it's a lot, a little bit is
o.k.  I particularly don't like where like in some of the older games
you'd have to go find a key to an area and go back repeatedly.

One thing that most game developers have learned over the years is to
create what's often termed, "a door to before", where at the
conclusion of a quest you're given easy access to the start of the
dungeon through a shortcut.

Inventory Management and Junk - So much junk and often poor inventory
management in RPGs, pretty much all bethesda games fail on this, BG3 as
well.  I don't want to spend my time doing organizational inventory
chores.

I'm generally with messy inventories but I detest carry-limits of all
sorts. Whether its inventory-tetris or weight limits, I want none of
it. Let me vacuum up every bit of debris from the dungeon floor! I
will not abide a messy dungeon! ;-)

But overall, most of your dislikes reflect mine, and can be broken
down to: "I don't like repetition". Don't make me retrace the same
terrain over and over again, don't make a huge world that's filled
with the same stuff, don't force me to repeatedly play the same
actions just so I can level up to get to the new stuff. Which I can't
fault.

But a lot of people LIKE that stuff (I mean, fuck, the above describes
pretty much every sport game in general!). It's been a consistent part
of video gaming from the start (hello Pac-Man!) Repeating the same
challenge over and over again until you master the controls and
achieve a high-score that nobody will ever over-top! These designs are
used because there are people who want it in their games, and find
less repetitive games, with focus on story and strong pacing, to be
annoying (and sometimes, by their definition, not properly 'games' at
all).

It's a YMMV situation, but the problem seems to be less problems with
the games than your choice of games that you play. ;-)