Things in modern gaming that you dislike

I refuse to acknowledge that the Giant Space Program was ever considered, by anyone, as a bug instead of, you know, the game's best feature.

11 minutes ago, FractalBeast said:

Dynamic systems are great (just look at Dwarf Fortress), but they're literal hell to debug.

i know that as a programmer. but as a customer... i can't care less.

we have a deal here: i am giving developers my money, and developers giving me their game. i filled my side of the contract: i gave them my money. not some "beta quality money that sometimes cannot be used", not "money that should be fixed with DLCs or community mods to be usable". and i am expecting the same for the game i'm getting from the devs. if they cannot deliver that, they should -- at least -- first, give me back some of my money, and second, stop promising what they cannot deliver.

how come false advertising being prohibited, yet game studios doing it all the time, and getting away with it?!

now, i paid nothing for DF, for example, and i cannot demand anything from its devs. there wasn't any deal between us, devs just gave me something for free. ok, bethesda, give me your games for free, and i will stop complaining too!

Review bombing sucked.

Sure, one could argue that people review bombing games for valid reasons (like when devs/pubs f**ked up; or the game doesn't match people's expectations, like NMS), but often, the reasons are usually because things that are not involved with the games' contents in any single way.

Some will argue that "I paid it, I could review it however I wanted", but most "review bombers" (for the lack of a better term) usually just buy the game, idle the game past the 5/10 minutes, review bomb it, and refund. 
In the end, when the devs/pubs realized and fixed the mistake, the sales would have been heavily damaged by that time.
(At least after the review bomb, the reviews slowly faded into obscurity and we have Valve's Anti Review Bomb system now.)

(And yes I think this belong to the modern gaming part.)

4 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Valve's Anti Review Bomb

why don't call it by its real name, "valve censorship"? sure, valve can do what they want on their platform, and even require to name things as they want -- on their platform. but outside of it, why don't call the thing by their real names?

45 minutes ago, ketmar said:

why don't call it by its real name, "valve censorship"? sure, valve can do what they want on their platform, and even require to name things as they want -- on their platform. but outside of it, why don't call the thing by their real names?

Gotta agree here sadly, because that's kind of how this erm... damage control system was implemented. I still remember back when Epistle 3 was posted on Pastebin by Laidlaw and guess what happened as a reaction to the revelation that Half-Life literally ended in Pastebin? People bombed Dota 2 as a sign of protest.

As a result of the review bombing, Valve implemented a counter measure. Okay so, let me understand: Other games had gone through this before and I think there were complaints about review bombing in the past, but you did nothing about it, but when people bomb one of your money cows you act immediately? My my.

Now let me get something straight: By all means a review should always be about the product you're reviewing and should be as informative as possible so that potential customers know what they're investing in. "It's good/it's shit/*insert random sarcastic/toxic comment here*", those are not reviews and just plain, useless shitposting. Learn to write and come back later. Or don't. Give reasons to support your opinion, and so on. But, whether you agree with the practice or not, review bombs can be an useful way to protest against something and warn other people in the process, while also attracting the attention of the developer, publisher, or both. So, while I personally don't agree with review bombing, I definitely get the point of the people who practice it. At least those that are reasonable and done for a good reason. Ion Fury's case definitely does not fall under this category for instance.

yeah, i don't really think that "review bombing" is the right tool, but sometimes we simply don't have any other way to force publishers to listen. the only way those Big Wheels can be forced to change something is loud public backlash. of course, "review bombing" can be abused, as much as any other tool, but trying to use censorship to control it is not going to work in the long term. people need a way to express their opinions in a way that cannot be simply ignored, and "just don't buy the game you don't like" is not enough anymore.

no, i don't know how to solve that problem. but i know for sure that introducing censorship is NOT a solution.

Regenerating health. It's complete trash, a stupid idea, the worst thing ever brought over to first person shooters.

8 hours ago, ketmar said:

why don't call it by its real name, "valve censorship"? sure, valve can do what they want on their platform, and even require to name things as they want -- on their platform. but outside of it, why don't call the thing by their real names?

What does Valve have anything to do with the topic? If they're something you hate in modern gaming, then that's understandable.

11 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Regenerating health. It's complete trash, a stupid idea

I don't mind it as long as it's done right, CV Lords of Shadow did something interesting with it and only allowed you to regenerate health by "Playing better", basically the more stylish you play and the longer you avoid getting hit, the more power orbs you receive, which you can then decide whether to collect them for Light Magic to replenish health for each successful hit (when activated) or for Shadow Magic to increase attack damage. Balancing these two becomes a necessity especially in later chapters of the game. Looks like Doom Eternal is trying to do something similar to this.

17 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Regenerating health. It's complete trash, a stupid idea, the worst thing ever brought over to first person shooters.

I think regen health is not that bad when it's implemented well, like in cod2.

I prefer health packs.

Yea, I'm not fond of regen health either. That's primarily because it forces you to constantly hide behind cover to refill your health rather than keep playing and just contributes to overall frustration. Frankly CoD is one of the worst examples IMO, that's exactly what I don't want to see.I still can't believe non-regenerating health is now considered an old school game mechanic.

I prefering the HL or Doom/Build way, medkits, power ups, and stations. The only kind of regen health I ever liked was in RPG/FPS games a la Elder Scrolls, I actually like it there for some reason, maybe that just works best for me? In pure shooters I find it annoying, despite being practically much faster than in such RPGs.

Regenerating health allows them to bandaid stupid games with nothing but hitscan enemies or grenade spam.

Regen health just reminds me of leaving the character standing around in a safe room and going out to do something, coming back later (sometimes much later) to find the player avatar fully healed and ready to finish the level.

For single player games, I'd rather see healing items (some of which can be gotten by finding secrets, beating enemies, etc. so they're reward for active gameplay) and some amount of instant healing between each level. Perhaps something like up to 10 points of percentage towards the maximum or up to the next higher 25% threshold, whichever is more.

For multiplayer games, then regen health is okay, because evading the enemies long enough to heal becomes active gameplay. Human-played enemies are not going to be stopped from reaching you in the same way AI monsters can.

1. FPS obsession, specifically with 60 FPS and all the "OMG 30 FPS UNPLAYABLE" comments. I've been gaming since mid-90s, grew up building my own PCs with various budget sizes and thus performance. I've played some games in 15 FPS, I've played games in 144 FPS. Sure, you can feel the difference between 30 and 60, but it only really matters in competitive multiplayer, but anything above that is mostly vanity. Also, you could get 70 FPS on a PC in 1024x768 in 1998.

2. Launch day DLCs. Back in my day™ you got the whole game when you bought it. And it wasn't unheard of for the expansions to be almost as big as the base games. And if you wanted fancy skins to show off in multiplayer, you just downloaded them for free or even made them yourself.

3. Microtransactions, pay-to-win, lootboxes and other "surprise mechanics". I don't think this one needs any explanation. My most recent experience with those has been NFS Payback. The game is far from perfect to begin with, but the speedcard system (essentially, all performance upgrades are tied to a lootbox/microtransaction system) outweighs whatever good the game had to offer, and completely ruins the endgame experience.

4. Launchers and mandatory account registration for everything, especially the latter. Want to use your Razer mouse? Register an account. Want to use the software that comes with your graphics card to record your gameplay and update your drivers? Get a freaking account. Heck, you need an account to use all the features of Windows 10! And some of those have completely retarded password strength requirements, often even stricter than those at my bank! I just want to save some videos ffs, what do I care if someone hacks into my NVIDIA account? What are they gonna do with it, record they own gameplay? How awful!

5. Endless early access and abandoned games. Also, in some cases, games made and released without the publisher's influence. I know it's gonna be an unpopular opinion, but some companies just don't know what the hell they're doing, and their games could have been much better if someone told them when to stop. I have one very specific example of such game: Carmageddon Reincarnation. The humour in the classic Carmageddon games has already been a hair's breadth away from going too far, and it kinda was part of those games' flavour, I guess. But in Reincarnation it's like a horde of 12-year olds has been let loose with no one to look after them, and the result was plain and simple tasteless. If only there had been somebody to tell them they had gone too far and that they should have turned it down a notch or few...

Luckily, there are plenty of counter-examples--great games that would have never made it with a publisher, or even through a publisher--but some developers just don't have the taste, or sense, or whatever it is that it takes to do it right unsupervised.

About 1) it depends on what you are playing. You aren't going to feel it in a game where most animations were designed to look normal at 30 fps as much as a game where every frame can end your game. For example playing Enter the Gungeon with "laggy" projectiles (sub 60 fps) will make dodging really annoying compared to having silky smooth moving projectiles. Even though it should play the same. Double so against bosses who fill the entire screen with moving projectiles, good luck dodging faster ones at low fps until you get muscle memory maxed out!

that's why simulation timer should be capped at ~30 msecs! ;-) (but really, most of the time it is enough, and "smooth 60 FPS" can be done with interpolation.)

On 9/1/2019 at 8:24 PM, The Strife Commando said:

Regenerating health. It's complete trash, a stupid idea, the worst thing ever brought over to first person shooters.

Project MSX is one of Doom's best gameplay mods and is very well balanced. 

1 hour ago, Ajora said:

 

Project MSX is one of Doom's best gameplay mods and is very well balanced. 

is it though

2 hours ago, Mr. Freeze said:

 

is it though

 

Simplification and over streamlining games.

Example, Medieval 2 Total War was deep with many interesting mechanics. Sieges were amazing, religious politics could result in power over crusades, hundreds of unique characters traits which would de/evolve based on actions, many build options, unique cinematics for agent actions and much more.

The Total War series has deteriorated from there. Each installment does one thing well and everything else poorly or non existant.

Regenerating health should make sense or, be a reward. If I spend half the game collecting all the alien DNA, and all the parts for the CRISPR machine, HELL YESSS I want to be rewarded with regenerating health. But just starting the game right of the bat with regenerating health, no thanks.

FarCry 2 had the BEST compromise regen-hp. You had health pips that could regenerate within their boundaries [▓▓▓][▓▓▓][▓▒░][░░░][░░░] (In this example, the player is regenerating health in the third pip, but he won't get more than three pips unless he sleeps in a safehouse or uses a medkit.) Getting shot at by a guard with an automatic weapon from 500m wasn't a death sentence like it is in STALKER (random stray bullets won't hit often enough to fully deplete a pip), but up close even a pistol will take down a pip fast.

14 hours ago, Chezza said:

Simplification and over streamlining games.

 

Example, Medieval 2 Total War was deep with many interesting mechanics. Sieges were amazing, religious politics could result in power over crusades, hundreds of unique characters traits which would de/evolve based on actions, many build options, unique cinematics for agent actions and much more.

 

The Total War series has deteriorated from there. Each installment does one thing well and everything else poorly or non existant.

Assassin's Creed 2 streamlined AC1's gameplay, which is sad.

Third person action games are largely dead.

Bayonetta 3 is really the only interesting thing on the horizon.

Devil May Cry hasn't been good since 3

Ninja Gaiden hasn't been good since Black or Dragon Sword

Shinobi games are almost always good but we're lucky to get one every seven years

God of War was never good

Assassin's Creed has been ridiculously horrible at every point in its existence

10 hours ago, FractalBeast said:

FarCry 2 had the BEST compromise regen-hp. You had health pips that could regenerate within their boundaries [▓▓▓][▓▓▓][▓▒░][░░░][░░░] (In this example, the player is regenerating health in the third pip, but he won't get more than three pips unless he sleeps in a safehouse or uses a medkit.) Getting shot at by a guard with an automatic weapon from 500m wasn't a death sentence like it is in STALKER (random stray bullets won't hit often enough to fully deplete a pip), but up close even a pistol will take down a pip fast.

Agreed. Mass Effect 3 also had similar hp pips and I liked it.

RPG-style elements in games other than RPG. Every game now has obligatory 'level ups', when you upgrade your health or unlock skills etc. It's something else to discover an item that gives you this ability and something else to checkmark it after killing X number of guys. Also, usually games that use this system become stupid easy before hitting the half way mark.

Ubisoftization of games, meaning just piling up mechanics and elements from previous games. Every new Ubisoft game is built atop the previous one, and it's quite annoying when The Division's character model look and move exactly like models from Assassin's Creed. And in every game there are the same side missions, one new is introduced, which just adds to the busywork. These piled up things make games unfocused and not really good at anything.

• Micro-transactions,
• How stupidly EASY games are (they're practically made for idiots these days) -
• Politically correct nonsense being put in games to appeal to a tiny demographic that doesn't make up the majority of gamers
• The amount of bad Indie games flooding Steam, GOG, and other websites
• Re-boots and sequels that fail to live up to the hype. See Duke Nukem Forever.
• J-RPG's

Oh and the complete lack of a modding community for 99% of games past 2005 or so. The software these days is so complicated, like ID TECH 6, that a simple editor for Doom 2 isnt even possible.

Do we REALLY need another graphics boost? Really?

I dislike the fact that most games lack skill-based movement nowadays. I get that flying around using jumping and strafing isn't very realistic, but it's probably the most fun and interesting thing I've seen in video games.