What do you consider to be the most annoying game mechanic?

I don't like playing an entire game in one sitting, so it's great if you can save your progress at least once. 

I clicked soulsphere a heck of a lot while reading this thread. I guess that's what makes us all Doomers.

First, a word about "Roguelikes". I never thought Rogue would be a household name in a million years, but I am sick to death of "Roguelite love-letters to your favorites from the 80s and 90s." Randomized or procedurally-generated content is fine and dandy and, in fact, I'll say that memorization is my #1 least favorite game mechanic, but these trendy new games are not Rogue-like. As Gustavo described, they are closer to the opposite with their incredibly narrowly-restricted gameplay.

Here's a mechanic that hasn't been mentioned: Whac-a-Mole. You have some action or ability that has a cooldown time, and you have to watch it and click on it as soon as possible whenever it is ready again. I was devastated when I bought FTL and discovered it is centered on Whac-a-Mole mechanics. I'm trying to psych myself up to play the classic Eye of the Beholder and similar games, but the combat is all Whac-a-Mole. I just can't do it.

And another - enemies that spawn at arbitrary locations. You just go into each new area and wait for enemies to stop spawning. There's no sense of conquering/securing territory, there's nothing to scout or aggravate strategically. The level becomes mere decoration. This is one reason Doom > Other Games. (Monster closets are structured and intentional, not the default way the player encounters enemies.)

Killing the player for going the "wrong way". Or forcing the player down a specific path with no room for exploration.

On 11/26/2020 at 7:15 AM, mrthejoshmon said:

Speaking of which, Oblivion nets you a 1000 gold bounty for killing a shopkeeper regardless of witnesses or not, amusingly using a rally spell on the Adoring Fan and a Frenzy spell on the shopkeeper will net a bounty to the Adoring Fan making the guards attempt an arrest on him which he will resist, making him Cyrodil's most wanted man to which guards kill on sight.

My god... that's brilliant. I know how I'm spending my evening. xD

On 11/26/2020 at 3:31 PM, Dark Pulse said:

I can't find the video, but there was a popular Japanese series where pro gamers play arcade fighting games, and there was a world-class Guilty Gear XX player fighting him, and he just got absolutely BODIED. If I do find it, I'll be sure to let you know.

@Master O Remember that video?

Yeah, I found it.

Don't fuck with The General, kids. You're gonna have a bad time.

General: "I am a perfect soldier!"

Pachi: "You don't say?!"

Enemies that become invincible for a few seconds or longer after getting hit, some of which take the bullshit a step further and reflect your attacks back at you. It slows the pace to an absolute crawl, and when there's one of these fuckers, there's a whole hell of a lot more of them somewhere nearby.

The hell warriors in KDiZD, the centaurs / slaughtaurs from Hexen, and especially those god damned angels from Hexen II are the bane of my existence.

Dual classing in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. I finally decided to try it, going for a basic fighter-cleric. 

I thought, okay, lets do it at level 9, and get the max hps that way.

It's not worth losing a potential proficiency i could put toward a weapon, nor the fact I'll be playing quite a while before I get the fighter class stuff back and can use the flail of ages with the mastery in flails I'd built up. Not to mention I wanted to get the fighter and cleric stronghold (using a mod to allow for that) except I had to go back in and fiddle with those mods or I'd be screwed out of the fighter stronghold owing to the class being "inactive". Dual classing can lead to really interesting combinations, but, planning it out is like a masters thesis. 

It's such a fucking clusterfuck thing to do, but I know in future in BG2 unless there is an adamant need to go above level 7 in the initial class (like thief skills or something), that's basically when I should shift to the new class, i.e. immediately when you start the game. Because I realised I'd rather just get the character up and running so they'll be what I want them to be, and there isn't a dire need to min max in the game, this character at level 39 with grandmastery in flails and the the flail of ages +5 and all the other OP shit that will be available to them including the power to summon fucking astral devas isn't going to suffer drastically from losing out on a few HP or a 1/2 attack per round. And I'd get more fun with them dual-ing earlier.

For those who have no idea what I'm saying, it probably would help to know that dual classing is going from one class to another, not multi, and the first class becomes inactive until the character surpasses it by a level, in which case it reactivates. Doing this, allows for a cleric who can train to grandmastery of a weapon, a powerful combination. But due to the exponential growth of exp tables in the game, the later you leave it, the longer the character will not have access to the benefits of dual classing. 

Dual classing does have a benefit over multi-classing in that it won't divide your XP between multiple classes which makes leveling up take longer. I personally prefer the 2E method of dual classing over 3E+ allowing you to level whatever class you want when you want. It just reeks of number crunching min maxing to have a character with levels in four classes which is something I have seen a lot in Neverwinter Nights and Pathfinder Kingmaker build guides.

I'm playing the original Pool of Radiance, and I decided to make one of my fighters a fighter/magic-user. Two of them are lvl 3 and have ~25 hp, meanwhile multiclass guy has 6 hp and occasionally drops at the first touch of a kobold. It's like, good god man pull yourself together.

First edition AD&D can be a little rough.

Most annoying mechanic in BG? Surely it is the constant need to gather your party before venturing forth :P.

^ Also this.

I mean ffs just teleport them to my new location and be done with it. This is extremely frustrating if their AI is complete shit... 

4 minutes ago, seed said:

I mean ffs just teleport them to my new location and be done with it. This is extremely frustrating if their AI is complete shit... 

Unfortunately the pathfinding is the one thing in those games that gets annoying but you just have to deal with it. Apparently Beamdog improved it, then broke it again in the 2.5 update, but I didn't really play them much in that gap so I don't know how much improvement was made, but they promise it will be fixed in the 2.6 update, if that happens within our lifetimes. 

It's just something I accept because I also accept the objective truth Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 are far, far, FAR superior games to anything in the genre made recently. Pillars 1 - decent. Pillar 2 - crap and ruined Pillars 1 too. Divinity Original Sin 1+2 - awful, awful games. Pathfinder Kingmaker - there's a kernel of good completely covered in 5000 layers of Owlcat's terrible decision making. I'd just name the whole game here, it's 90% made up of awful mechanics that should have been scrapped on the drawing board. 

So in context, I have almost no hope for Baldur's gate 3 being good, it does not help that even excluding the fact Larian are making it there's not much of a hook there, like, Mindflayers, WoOoOoo. Not like they weren't scrub enemies in 20 D&D games before now. I do think, there has to be something else they don't intend to show before release, maybe but as it stands. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous on the other hand, it has a hook, it sounds nicely ambituous and I can get behind the idea of becoming a demon to lead a crusade into hell. That one I just want them to get right, then finally BG2 might have a competitor. 

And this has been my moaning about CRPGs and how all new games suck. :p 

59 minutes ago, hybridial said:

Unfortunately the pathfinding is the one thing in those games that gets annoying but you just have to deal with it. Apparently Beamdog improved it, then broke it again in the 2.5 update, but I didn't really play them much in that gap so I don't know how much improvement was made, but they promise it will be fixed in the 2.6 update, if that happens within our lifetimes. 

I know, I can usually deal with it, and it's not the poor man's pathfinding in some games that bothers me as much as it is the fact that I may also have to wait for thdm before entering a new area. I really do not understand how some developers didn't think about this small oversight.

On 11/27/2020 at 10:27 AM, bobstremglav said:

I afraid they even can steal your credit card.

They do not. The credit card is considered an essential item in EarthBound Beginnings and cannot be tossed nor stolen in any way.

2 hours ago, seed said:

 

I know, I can usually deal with it, and it's not the poor man's pathfinding in some games that bothers me as much as it is the fact that I may also have to wait for thdm before entering a new area. I really do not understand how some developers didn't think about this small oversight.

Well, at least the games can still run when you alt-tab out, that's actually a nice feature that now and then deals with the backtracking when it gets a bit too obnoxious. Just make sure to have auto-pause on for enemies or traps. 

• Slippery ice in ice stages are something I hated in retro games, and still hate when modern games do it. I can see you enjoying it if you're good at platforming and stuff, but personally I'd just prefer being able to stand still and not have to fight against momentum very time I so much as fart in any direction.
• Quick time events. The only time I would say I actually enjoyed QTEs was in Metal Gear Rising, and even then it has some really annoying ones, like when those gorilla robots grab you and you have to rock your analog stick back and forth real fast to the point where anything short of breaking the damn thing will make you fail and take damage. Worst one I can think of though(and mind you, I don't play that many modern AAA games, so there's probably worse out there) is in Sleeping Dogs. The enemy type that grapples you and makes you do QTEs to avoid his attacks is incredibly NOT fun to fight and completely ruins the otherwise awesome kung-fu action in the combat.
• Overly complicated skill trees, and upgrades and such. I do enjoy it when it's done like in the original Deus Ex, where it's simple and straight forward, but modern games overly complicate it usually and have several "forks" and requirements, and billions of skills, and by that point I can't be bothered to keep track of any of that.
• Looter shooters. [let me reiterate for the 500th time how much I hate Borderlands]

And lastly, while I don't think it is a mechanic, but more so a trend, is unbroken first person narrative. This might be a bit of a hot take, but for everything good Half-Life did, I absolutely hate that it popularized the whole "first 20 minutes of the game is a boring slog to help you 'get immersed in the universe'", and sections where you're just standing there having exposition spat at you. That's one thing that makes me enjoy the Half-Life series as a whole considerably less, and makes me hate any other game that attempts to copy it. Just let me play the damn game I paid for.

Are Quick Time Events still a thing? I had the impression they were a trend some years ago but then thankfully they became less common.