What are some things that just get under your skin about games?
For me, it’s games that do not allow controller rebinding. I have neuropathy and my fingers don’t all work. If I can’t rebind buttons so that I have necessary moves (for example: parry) be on buttons I can reliably press the entire game becomes unplayable.
And on console, where I can’t refund a game after I downloaded it (fuck you Sony) then it really screws me over wasting what limited funds I have on games I just can’t play.
Games you can’t pause. I love Dark Souls, but PLEASE give me a real pause button !
I’m okay with the inventory not pausing, that’s part of the game design. I’m not okay with the fact I can’t pause at all, so if my neighbour rings for their spare key when I’m fighting Kalameet I just have to die 🤷🏻♀ (true story btw)
When the music doesn’t stop on the Pause screen.
Every game has controller remapping with Steam ! But the on-screen hints might get mighty confusing 😅
Games that don’t allow you to pause and skip cutscenes.
I don’t want to have to miss half of the cutscenes just because someone interrupted me or the phone rang or something half way through. Alternatively, when I’m on my 23rd replay of a game, I do not want to have to sit through every cutscenes I already know by heart.
Oh, and modern games that allow manual saving at any time, not having any kind of regular auto save (looking at you here BG3).
If you’re fine from a gameplay pov with having the player save whenever, then there’s really no good reason whatsoever to not have one or two auto save slots that get saved every 10-20 minutes or so, at least as an option in the menu. ESPECIALLY in open world games (like BG3…) where you can easily go literal hours at a time without hitting a checkpoint save. And yes, I am still salty over learning about BG3’s lack of regular auto save when I lost like 2.5 hours of progress on my first run.
I do not want to have to sit through every cutscenes I already know by heart.
Forget it, there’s no way you’re taking Kairi’s heart!
I add non-Steam games to Steam just so I can use Steam Input for controller rebinding
Alright, I’ll limit it to just pet peeves.
Tutorial sections that just suck. Some don’t explain enough, others treat you like you’ve never played a game in your life. Or, when they interrupt you to explain a mechanic in great detail, but it’s too much of an info dump, and you’re just left wondering wtf they just said. One game that I really liked how they did it was BG3. There’s a tutorial, but you can also turn it off on future runs. Worst tutorial I think I’ve ever seen was Xenoblade 2.
Games (and really any consumable media) that just don’t know when to end. There are very few games I’ve completed, mostly because I get bored. The game overstayed it’s welcome and I’m done. The grind isn’t worth the final boss fight or whatever is at the end. Generally, it’s because games (especially RPGs) think grinding is a “fun” mechanic when it’s more of an imbalanced game. Take, for example, Expedition 33, not once in that game do you need to run around grinding levels. You can successfully go through the entire game, only going to each stage once. Fucking fantastic. But then you have games that just went too far with things. Some games, like Skyrim, CP2077, (especially) Hogwarts Legacy, I only know the ending to those games because other people beat them. Ex33 I got 52/55 achievements (just need to win the gestral games and find whatever record I missed). I beat that game entirely in 74 hours. My first run of BG3 (53/54 achievements, only missing the bard one, because I think it’s boring), first playthrough was maybe 120 hours (currently over 700 due to multiple playthroughs). Skyrim… 146 hours… 27/75 achievements. CP2077, 133 hours, 18/57 achievements. Hogwarts sits at 50 hours with 19/45 achievements (that game should be a 20-hour game at most).
Games that don’t really respect your time. This one, Nintendo does a lot. Actually perfect example is Breath of the Wild. It’s a giant fuck off world that’s mostly empty, peppered largely with the same enemies throughout the whole thing. You have a weapon mechanic that encourages you NOT to fight (just get some good weapons and head off to exactly where you need to go). The cooking is bullshit, no recipe book, no making a bunch of something, a stupid cutscene every time. And the entire poop joke… like getting 20 for a poop joke would already be too much, but collecting 900 with (IIRC) no fucking way to track them… Or the fact that the way Nintendo expects you to get arrows is to grind out rupees to buy them. And the exploits used to get arrows or rupees quickly, in a single player game, they actively tried to patch out. That’s just one game, Nintendo does this on SO MANY GAMES, which actually pushed me to “fuck Nintendo” and I didn’t buy and won’t buy a Switch 2.
Some games are combos of these. One game I really like, but I always hit a wall is Satisfactory. Once I get to trains/aluminum, it’s just not fun anymore for me. I work 40-80 hours a week (sometimes I work 5x12s and 8ish hours Sat/Sun)(only sometimes, usually closer to 50 hours a week)… so all the extra planning and time to making a factory… like I just don’t have the fucking time. Same thing with Dune Awakening. The first zone was the best. Getting your first Orni wasn’t too bad, but it was already starting to push it. Having to fucking pay taxes in a game… Oddly, it was about the time I was farming up aluminum, I quit that game too. Maybe I have a pet peeve with aluminum in video games…
Games (and really any consumable media) that just don’t know when to end.
Watched a gameranx video the other day about this. It’s the lack of closure. Players need that catharsis and pay off for all their efforts or else it inevitably starts to feel pointless rather than fun.
Even MMO’s had a closure for their main story arcs and you played the end game content. The new Live Service model though doesn’t like that cause it means they can’t milk it for eternity. They’d have to keep making new stories and actual game content but that is time consuming and meticulous for creative industries. You can’t pump it out like you can cosmetics and battle passes.
It’s honestly a huge issue in the industry. The gameranx video goes much deeper into the topic.
Edit: I should have finished reading before I posted this. Now I look dumb for jumping the gun
Actually, what you said unlocked a memory. Though I don’t know if it falls in line with the Gameranx video (I’ll have to go watch that) or your sentiment. But the ‘Players need that catharsis and pay off for all their efforts or else it inevitably starts to feel pointless rather than fun.’ immediately made me think of the first Shadow of Mordor game. It was a great game, undone by a QTE final boss.
But yeah, so many of these games just don’t go anywhere. To your point, the live service games. It’s not 100% with what I intended, but I feel it ends up in the same area… I’m spending all these hours… what am I accomplishing? What’s the point of all of this? It’s just endless padding with endless travel time, side quests, and anything that requires you to wait real time for the quest to progress. Dailies in WoW, were my WoW killer. Some people saw it as “easy gold”; I saw it as non-content meant to drive daily engagement but not actually accomplish anything in the game. It’s all just padding for extra “engagement” or to make a game seem bigger than it is (or should be).
I’ll break down some of the issues I had with the games I listed for better context. And I’ll front this with, I know you don’t have to do side missions. It’s more like, you realise instead of giving you a tight, compact story that’s well crafted, they spent too much time padding it out so it appears to be a bigger game. CP2077, the main story is absolutely dwarfed by all the side content. The main quest line is like… ~35 missions? There are like 70+ “gigs” and the same for “side missions”. The main story is the thing you do the least. With missing mechanics, I can’t help but think it would have been more interesting if it were done in a more linear fashion like Deus Ex Human Revolution. Instead of a giant city that’s mostly empty boxes (the buildings aren’t buildings) and padded out with side quests. Skyrim, the thing that killed it for me, was just how pathetically easy it was to become the leader of the various groups/factions. It felt so unearned. I can only take being handed “wins” left and right because I’m the fucking chosen one… before it’s just dull. It was Medieval Idiocracy. I could have just started learning spells and they’re ready to give me the college because I’m the smartest person they’ve ever seen. Brawndo, it’s what Dragonborns crave. And Hogwarts, walking around the castle, was the best part. It felt magical and alive. Some of the puzzles were fun. But the classes were boring tutorial sections, and the main thing you do in the game is LEAVE Hogwarts to go do unspeakable things in non-descript burrows and dungeons scattered all over the place. That game has 15 main quests, 21 side quests. 95 Merlin Trials…
The tl;dr: An easy way to look at it, CP2077, Hogwarts, and Expedition 33 have similar playtime for just the main quest (per howlongtobeat.com, ~26-28 hours). But how it feels to play the game is drastically different. One had a story to tell and a point to get to, and it does that. The others made a world with a whole bunch of other stuff to do.
Live service games that start getting long in the tooth adding too much content.
There’s plenty to hate on with Dead by Daylight, but I was at one point pretty good at it both killer and survivor. Eventually I started to feel there were too many perks and characters to keep track of and I lost interest.
I felt the same about Team Fortress 2 when they started adding new weapons. That’s probably not a popular opinion but the initial updates tying weapon unlocks to achievements really soured me on the game, permanently. I stopped playing.
If the game supports voice chat in-game, then it is not ok to play background music while talking in-game. Just mute yourself and don’t make us listen. It’s the same as people walking around neighborhood and blasting their music from their phone as if they’re the only ones with ears.
I’m left-handed. Key rebinding has gotten better in some ways throughout the evolution of gaming, but it has recently regressed in the past few years.
I make custom layouts for every game I play. IJKL to move, Semicolon to sprint, Quote to crouch, M to interact, etc. I find many games where “I” is hard-bound to inventory, some bindings overlap keys I’ve bound with no way of fixing without going outside the game, some keys are unable to rebound entirely in-game, some keybindings menus require jank to actually work, some keybindings menus completely glitch out as I change entries, some games require .ini edits, some keys seem like they are working fine rebound, but completely bug out in unique ways, some games allow keys to be bound with modifiers (e.g. Shift + Mouse Button) and some don’t, and so forth.
It’s very frustrating. I can only imagine what people with physical disabilities and assistive devices deal with if it’s this hard for me. I’ve tried using my right-hand for my mouse and WASD, but I get way too much pain doing so - even if I could properly learn to use a computer and game that way. I can’t use WASD and my left-hand on the mouse as it is incredibly painful.
I just have to imagine this is all the case because QA is nonexistent and developers are overworked.
It’s also pretty bad when you’re not using QWERTY layouts.
I can only imagine what people with physical disabilities and assistive devices deal with if it’s this hard for me.
I learned AutoHotkey and I genuinely couldn’t play many of the games I do without it.
Unfortunately, some games seem to monitor keyboard activity directly, not letting AutoHotkey assignments take effect.
Yeah, I’ve encountered a few games that do that.
Same, but I left Windows. On Linux/Wayland, it’s a bit more difficult and less powerful with current tools. AHK can’t be beat right now over here.
Currently, I’m replaying The Witcher 3, and the main annoyance I’m having right now is not being able to pause during timed choices (and timed choice are a whole other problem in games too).
You can pause during non-time-sensitive dialog choices, but not during timed ones. I don’t know why they specifically deny pausing for those. Maybe to prevent people from pausing and thinking it out? But, some of these times sensitive choices greatly effect the story. I want to be able to think about these choices when they effect the story.
I mean that is kinda exactly what the developers want to provoke with timed dialogue choices. Timed dialogue choices are a game design mechanic to try and get a player to answer on instinct/gut feeling, rather than over analysing and trying to optimise the dialogue.
You not getting to think about it long is very much the intended effect, and allowing a pause would entirely defeat it.
There are of course definite accessibility concerns that should be considered and worked around, such as people with dyslexia who may not be able to properly parse the dialogue options before the timer runs out, but as a game mechanic I think forcing the player to pick on instinct definitely has merit. It helps make the game more immersive, because it puts you under the same pressure to react as your character is in the story right now, and it can lead to more interesting and ultimately enjoyable games by forcing players to potentially make a mistake, and having to find out a way to deal with the fallout.
Timed choices have their place in games as a valid storytelling mechanism but please not in my open-world, RPG, fantasy hack-n-slasher.
Like if I’m playing a role I need to think about my choice and make sure it fits the character I’m trying to play. I’m not playing myself so my knee-jerk choice might not be the same as what I’m trying to experience.
Unrealistic loot.
Like when you kill a wolf and get shotgun shells as loot.
But also more subtle stuff like enemies in a remote place that don’t carry or have any kind of food and drink with them.
And when the enemy is clearly carrying a weapon, but it’s not lootable and you get some random stuff instead.
Reminds of the old pile of gold (empty) meme
I think shotgun slugs would be good loot from a werewolf, but they should be a junk item or a crafting item to combine with gunpowder and casings to make new ammo, not ready to use shells that’s just silly why does a werewolf have those?
when you can rebind movement keys (I’m an esdf player as opposed to wasd), but it does not rebind consistently. So a map is panned using wasd still, or menu browsing is, or even basic movement in a mini-game, or driving using a vehicle etc. It seems developers rarely really test anything but wasd…
Worst was cyberpunk, which always jettisoned me from the car in a super dramatic leap… on every right turn. XD
edit: also, when rebound keys are not represented correctly in tutorials or prompts… ugh.
Points of no return and anything else that’s permanently missable. No, I am not doing a second playthrough of a 100 hour JRPG.
Final fantasy 9 comes to mind but I know all of them are guilty of it
Especially when there is some kind of “open every treasure chest” type of achievement, with one or two things locked out. So if you miss them in your initial playthrough, you’re completely locked out of that achievement until you replay it from the beginning.
It really depends of the implementation for me.
I completelly understand that if you take a mission where you kill a merchant, you loose the option to purchace from them or miss their questline etc. Its a story point where your acts changed the world.
But if you miss some unique loot item from dungeon you can go trough only once, because, it was too well hidden or it was behind some convoluted puzzle that you missed, im pissed.
Trails in the Sky has some interesting logic behind this where the gameplay serves the story.
You’ll do some quests for people who actually end up being evil later in the plot. There’s also party members who temporarily join you while they have time off from their other job - then as the story progresses, their “lunch break is over” and they go back to their life. So, if you try to save content for later, it won’t be there anymore.
Those little things end up putting more focus on what is accessible at a given moment, so a level 60 player isn’t going back to the starting area to wrap up quests he doesn’t care about for completion.
Putting too many game mechanics into a game, like fighting system, bonus crystals, combinations of stuff to upgrade other stuff, plus pets, minigames, repetable quests, party combinations, crosswords, and more, in a single player game especially.
And dark patterns of course.
Yeah, I particularly hate when crafting mechanics get shoehorned into a game, simply because market studies told the publisher that games with crafting sell better. Especially when the crafting system is clearly an afterthought, and the game is entirely unbalanced as a result of it.
For example, the game had crafting added after the inventory system was designed. And crafting doesn’t really become viable until near the end of the game, because it requires a wide variety of materials and you only have access to half of them for the first half of the game. So now you’re drowning in crafting materials that are taking up inventory space/weight for the entire first half of the game.
Another example, devs had an end game build in mind, but decided to lock it behind 35 hours of crafting material grinding. Crafting isn’t really used for anything else in the game, but the end game builds all require a ton of extra grind, with obscure materials hidden behind rare or secret enemy drops. The only purpose is to artificially inflate the playtime, so the publisher can claim the game has “over 100 hours of gameplay” in the ads.
Another example, devs were told to add crafting after the game’s equipment was balanced. In order to encourage players to actually use the crafting system, it is full of super overpowered gear that completely wipes the floor with anything else in the game. Or inversely, the devs didn’t want you to be able to grind materials for gear before you were “supposed” to have it, so all of the crafting gear is subpar at best.
That shit has ruined so many single player games that were otherwise fine.
Logins. I hate games with accounts. Just let me play.
oh, hey, you haven’t launched this game in a year
please download and install the new launcher. please login to the new launcher. your login does not work, please go to the website to reactivate your account. you must restart your system to reset the launcher login screen. please wait a full minute for the launcher to finish loading. please wait thirty seconds for us to process your login credentials. please wait fifteen seconds for us to begin the process of launching the game.
I want to punch your comment.
