What’s your most hated game mechanic?

Unreasonable grinding: This can be for in game currency, or materials for crafting, or achievements. It’s almost like the developers don’t care that many players have lives outside of gaming. Grinding to increase player game time does not equal a better, more successful game. Unlocking items in games, or earning currency should be a reasonable challenge and take a reasonable amount of time. I point to Rockstar and GTA Online regarding a lot of this. Before the first or second DLC expansion they did, we have armored trucks spawning in the map that you could rob (which was a nice challenge), missions paid decently and vehicles, though expensive, were worth grinding for it. Once the criminal enterprises DLC dropped, the armored trucks were removed, mission payouts were reduced, and more and more weaponized vehicles were added that required you to own 2 other properties and research technologies in order to properly utilize the vehicle. Costs for some of the vehicles are ridiculous and VIP missions are locked behind owning a specific vehicle (which again, requires you to spend many millions of dollars on properties before you’re allowed to own the vehicle). The grind to earn this stuff is ridiculous if someone plays casually or just for fun. The mechanics are now designed around those hardcore players who play for hours and hours each day or spend money on shark cards (which in my opinion, is the point of all these mechanics…to encourage shark card purchases so players can speed up progress).

But achievements that require you to kill thousands of enemies with a certain weapon (even if that weapon sucks), or devote hours roaming a map in order to get enemies to respawn so you can get that one particular material.

I guess this is a good thread for a little ranting. Some of mine have already been mentioned

I hate stamina systems. It just makes the characters you are using feel like wimps. Why are you tired like every 5 seconds? What the heck is wrong with you? Are you 90 years old? Jesus, go to the gym. Overheating weapons doesn’t bother me quite as much though, because you typically have other options available. If your gun over heats in The Red Star (a PS 2 game you’ve probably all never heard of) it just means switching over to melee combat for a few seconds and the game handles that pretty seamlessly.

Inventory limits annoy me, but I understand their place in survival horror. Resource management is just part of the genre

I also hate double standards in game play, like how every single Streets of Rage game has blocking enemies yet there has never been a single entry in the series where the characters that you play as can block. So apparently my highly trained martial artist doesn’t know basic self defense but some random thugs I encounter do?

Crafting systems are lame and boring and I don’t think anyone actually likes them. Just give me a powerful piece of equipment for my efforts not some stupid recipe. I tolerate crafting in some otherwise great games, but it’s certainly not something I enjoy all that much. At least some games keep it simple though. I can’t stand overly complicated crafting systems.

I hate stealth games that punish you for killing or don’t allow it at all. There’s a big difference between feeling like prey (not fun) and feeling like a predator (very fun). I enjoy stealth games that let you flip the switch and go from being the hunted to the hunter. That’s what makes games like Tenchu, Mark of the Ninja, and the Batman Arkham games fun

I also agree about counter systems or perfect dodge mechanics. I love them in theory, but they make the timing on these things so strict these days and punish you severely for messing up. A lot of players just don’t bother with them and I don’t blame them. Plenty of players got through Sekiro just using literal hit and run strategies and smart use of items and equipment. I don’t even waste my time trying to do perfect dodges in Resident Evil 3 Remake. I can down Nemesis with a grenade instead of trying to do annoying perfect dodges every 2 seconds whenever I run into him. And there’s more then enough ammo to down every zombie and monster if the game if you actually take the time to explore the areas, so screw avoiding or perfect dodging them all. I like how countering worked in the original version of Ninja Gaiden on the original Xbox. You blocked an attack, then you had a pretty wide window for doing a counter right into an izuna drop. Very satisfying and very intuitive.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by WeareChaoS.

It’s busy work, a challenge one can legitimately take or leave, because as you said, they don’t affect the game.  That might be a positive aspect?

Recently I finally completed a challenge in Borderlands 2 performing a stunt that I had not been able to complete after several attempts off and on for 8 years.  Unlike a trophy challenge, successful completion of this challenge actually generated 10 points in the game and checked a box in an in-game check list.  I’m a completionist, so never being able to check that box bothered me. I resented the fact that this wasn’t a trophy instead (see reason below).  I can ignore trophies; they exist outside the game. Let those who have all the time in the world tackle the trophies. I’m glad they exist for the people who like them, and I have no problem with them because I can easily ignore them.

Slightly off topic, to explain the why I thought this challenge should have been a trophy instead of an in-game challenge with points:

The poorly designed graphical infrastructure (invisible ceilings, for example)  made completion of this challenge almost impossible.   It required a long series perfect precarious jumps and the only way to figure out how to complete some of the jumps without getting knocked of by invisible objects was to just keep trying, over and over, memorizing where those invisible objects were. I felt like a lab rat in a maze, which was infuriating.  I’ll probably always resent the developers a little for never addressing the graphical issues that complicated this challenge, but I am glad I finally finished it.  The name of the challenge is “Slab UHF”, aka “Climbing the Radio Tower in Thousand Cuts”.

Or that you immediately find a random drop of another weapon far more powerful. Thanks for the pointless side quest, game!

Yes!

“Resident Evil 4”, Krauser Boss Fight: QTE Hell.

Tutorials are one mechanic I hate, no matter what platform the game is on. It wouldn’t be so bad if the tutorials didn’t treat the player like they were a moron. Why does every tutorial go over camera controls, how to walk forward and backwards, and basically every single mechanic that is in every single game? Mobile games will not allow you to do anything until you follow every single one of their instructions, RTS games tend to have you follow their recommended actions that don’t necessarily put you in the best position to continue (as opposed to letting you just figure it out on your own and decide for yourself the best course of action to take).

Animation cancelling. Some say, “well the devs let you get away with it so…”  I say f that, it breaks the “realism” of the combat system and rewards one-button-pushing macro whores. </end rant>