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

Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com> writes:

Grinding

Thinking of Horizon Forbidden West here, grinding for animal parts to
max out my ammo pouches. Machine parts for other upgrades, usually armor
I think. I hated that but the completionist in me made me do it
anyway. To some extent, some upgrades were so much work I just didn't
bother.

But it was tedious as heck and also buggy and weird. Especially the
fishing. Apparently Aloy swims like a fish since that's the only way to
fish underwater. You catch up to a fish and get a prompt to grab the
fish and then get a random fish part for your trouble. Repeat ad
nauseam, especially as the fish just randomly disappear too. At least
the game gives hints where specific machines or animals might spawn.

So, generally not a huge fan but will do some for reward.

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.

Yah, not a fan of the Bethesda flavor of inventory in Fallout 4 and
London inherits that. The categories they have are OK
(weapons/apparel/aid/misc/junk). But the game wants to handle some
categories in different ways. I'm just in an annoying situation in
Fallout:London. I can't disassemble random bits of leather or clothing
to get plain leather or cloth to use as raw material, unless I take over
a settlement and use the base building UI. Leather armor though,
I just need an armor workbench.

Other kind of inventory, what to keep and what to leave behind? Yes,
it's annoying to figure out where I can leave stuff that'll be needed
later. Or having to hoof it back and forth to get a few more guns or
ammo clips to the new area I can't return from... It's annoying. Star
Trek Elite Force got it right, you could just dematerialize anything you
didn't need at the moment into a transporter buffer. Then again, it
didn't have a lot of stuff anyways, a few different energy weapons and a
tricorder maybe.

Puzzles - Although I've been seeing better puzzles of late, in the
past you pretty much had to have internet or cheat books to get past
some puzzles in games that use them much.

I'm game. As long as I don't have to do another "towers of Hanoi" ever
again. Or have to think up really weird solutions to obvious puzzles. I
recently played the old adventure Rex Nebular and in one of the puzzles
all you need to do is put an audio tape in a tape player. Except you
can't *unless* you pick up the player first and it looks like a big old
ghetto blaster so I'd rather leave it on the table... To confuse the
issue the game actually has two other tape players but those you can't
have. So I was stuck there.

OTOH, I quite enjoyed the chess puzzle in the System Shock
remake. Although once I read how simple the algorithm the game uses is,
it's a little embarrassing I screwed up so many times... It's also a
pretty good puzzle in that you can't easily cheat. I guess you could put
the situation on the board to some chess engine and get help or even a
solution but that's actually some learning curve too for someone who
doesn't play chess.

I didn't really like the "Pipe Mania" style puzzles that are more common
in System Shock. Can't really complain, there aren't that many. Except
one time one seemed impossible and another time there was a lighting
issue that made one really hard.

Some other maybe unlikeable gameplay features that came to mind:

* Legendary weapons/gear that's really powerful?
Ridiculous immersion breaking crap or useful to break up the tedium
inevitable in a long game?

For example, I just picked up an "instigating service rifle" in
Fallout:London. Double damage if target has full health. With my stealth
build I expect to be using this for a lot of deadly headshots. So, a fun
thing and considering I get damage buffs from other skills too, it
doesn't break my immersion any more than the game mechanics already do.

Borderlands 3 also had a couple of extremely powerful weapons (drops
from the "Miami Vice" event thing) and it's been a bit of a staple in
the series, e.g. the Hellfire SMG and the corrosive revolvers in
the original game.


* Passing gear from one character to another?

To me this is a cool idea but I've almost never used it in practice. In
a way, the different gear you get in different playthroughs shapes that
particular playthrough.

* Needing a specific skill to do a simple thing?

Fallout 4 example again, need to have "scrapper" skill to, for example,
get screws when disassembling a weapon. Um, why exactly? Without this
skill you can't figure out a screwdriver, only a hammer? Or maybe just a
rock? Even if your INT stat is 8?

I guess this generalizes to something like "your player character can't
do things that most people can do without specific training". Knee high
railings you can't get over, impenetrable hedges, portable ladders you
can't move or climb. In some other games, weapon classes. Can't even
equip a weapon if you don't have a specific weapon skill. I guess
there's been more of this sort of thing in more traditional RPGs.

* Enemies that drop random loot instead of the thing they were just
  killing you with?

Hate that.

* Enemies that drop a nerfed version of the weapon they were just
  killing you with?

Hate that too.