Things in modern gaming that you dislike

[Szuran]

These just grind my gears.

 

• Numbers shooting out of enemies when you hit them. What a stupid, immersion breaking idea, I disable it whenever I can, as I did in Nioh, Dead Island and, I think, Shadow Warrior.
• Too many pointers. 3 objective markers, minimap, compass, active quest list, quest journal, main map, dotted line on the minimap, arrows on the ground... Jeez, it's either to hide awful level design (you wouldn't have a clue where to go without these) or a sign of lack of faith in me.
• Too complicated. I really don't need an RPG-like progression system in every. Single. Game. Just reward me with new guns and pickups.
• The oh so precious story. So much dialogue. So many cutscenes. So many unskippable parts where you walk a straight line. "Evil army invades. Stop them maybe?" - that's enough, I'M IN.
• No keyhunts. Call me weird but I like keyhunts.
• Everything is so slow nowadays. No fast movement.
• Open worlds. Open (boring) worlds everywhere.
• Lots of busywork and filler.

[yakfak]

my main hang-ups are

 

- repeatedly hearing the same rather small cast of AAA voice actors all over the place

- games completely eschewing a HUD or UI in favour of full-screen action, which is a selling point in a way, but then not creating good menus to make up for it. everything on a console has a sort of skyrim-style behind-the-scenes inventory and skill system which is fairly bad at relaying info to teh player and you have to manually sort through everything individually. bring back icons imo

edit: - the setting of so many games just being a "you are an organized crime bad-guy but the game is a comedy setting" mega-whitewashing of the world's worst people

 

that's just the really big productions though. indie games are more aware of themselves nowadays and that's where my focus is. not like im gonna play the new cyberpunk game ever

Edited June 18, 2019 by yakfak

[ReaperAA]

These things (particularly for FPS games):

- boring level design

- enemy rooster not being good. Most enemies in modern games are hitscanners(and on hard difficulties, they do insane damage forcing the player to cover-hug)

- slow movement. I am not asking for doom-like or quake-like movement. But I would like the player movement to be a bit faster than it is in many modern games.

- Unskipable cutscenes. Not all games have unskipable cutscenes but those that have them can become annoying for a 2nd walkthrough.

- Lack of unique weapons and 2-weapon limit.

- Multiplayer involving perks and xp related.

- Not being as moddable as older games.

[Immorpher]

I agree with a lot of your points! I really want to get into Halo, but when I play it now it feels so slow and floaty, like I am in syrup or something.

One of my gripes with Rage 2, is that its RPG style upgrade system is mostly used as busy work to extend the length of the game. After the 10th Bandit Den searching for "upgrade parts" it's pretty boring.

Here are my two main gripes...

- Linear Levels... I think the focus on always forward linear levels is part of the reason why key hunts are gone, because they don't want you to go back and explore. I like exploring levels and finding secret areas. I even liked getting lost in Turok 1. It makes the levels feel as if they are apart of a real space. When it feels like I am artificially forced on a linear path it takes me out of being immersed in the game. I have heard this has become a problem because so many companies were (and still are unknowingly trying to) badly copy Half Life.

 

- Dash and Double Jump... As mentioned earlier a lot of modern games move like they are stuck in the mud. So instead of making movement faster they add dash. I don't know if they are doing this so the player doesn't see texture pop-in as much, or they are just badly trying to copy Halo in slow movement. But I rather they just increase movement speed. Also there is a lot of double jump now. I appreciate that it makes platforming a little easier, as I didn't like the platforming in Turok 1, which didn't have double jump. But it doesn't make sense to me that things can double jump (unless they have wings or something); it just takes me out of the experience. And I don't think you need double jump anymore as grabbing-ledges mechanic which helps fix FPS platforming. I know Doom Eternal will both have dash and double jump and I will still like the game, but I would prefer if it wasn't designed around those mechanics.

[snapshot]

Can't say I relate, these things don't bother me, well maybe except the first and seventh points. To be honest I haven't noticed the lack of keyhunts because the games I play usually make up for it in other ways.

16 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

- Unskipable cutscenes. Not all games have unskipable cutscenes but those that have them can become annoying for a 2nd walkthrough.

I agree, I especially hate it when I'm not invested in the story at all and the game still tries to force me to watch them.

[Immorpher]

44 minutes ago, tempdecal.wad said:

Can't say I relate, these things don't bother me, well maybe except the first and seventh points. To be honest I haven't noticed the lack of keyhunts because the games I play usually make up for it in other ways.

I agree, I especially hate it when I'm not invested in the story at all and the game still tries to force me to watch them.

For the most part I don't mind cut scenes, but when the story is particularly bad, the cutscenes are grueling. I really disliked the story of Far Cry 5, which is a shame since I think it has the best gameplay (excluding Blood Dragon) of the series. So it was a pain in the ass when they would randomly shoot you with a dart when you were exploring to force a cutscene.

[Loud Silence]

Modern games. Newest games i play are from 2006.

[ReaperAA]

21 minutes ago, Loud Silence said:

Modern games. Newest games i play are from 2006.

 

LMAO

Spoiler

Is it because of them being bad or your computer couldn't run post-2006 era games (because there are some good games too)?

 

[MrFroz]

60 dollar games with tons of DLC.

[Loud Silence]

1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

 

LMAO

  Reveal hidden contents

Is it because of them being bad or your computer couldn't run post-2006 era games (because there are some good games too)?

 

L stands for licking? Joke. I don't see anything new or original in new games. And yes, my current laptop and desktop couldn't run post-2006 games. I still have tons of games to play from that era. I could buy brand new gaming PC, but i don't think it would be worth it.

[whirledtsar]

2 hours ago, Immorpher said:

For the most part I don't mind cut scenes, but when the story is particularly bad, the cutscenes are grueling. I really disliked the story of Far Cry 5, which is a shame since I think it has the best gameplay (excluding Blood Dragon) of the series. So it was a pain in the ass when they would randomly shoot you with a dart when you were exploring to force a cutscene.

Plot in a game is like the seasoning on a steak. A well-cooked steak is still delicious even without any. But good spices can tremendously improve the steak experience, and likewise bad spices will ruin it.

[wolfmcbeard]

Games as a service, I don't need every game I play becoming an mmo.
not enough story in an open world game.
Online only, some game really could use a solo only mode aka offline mode aka a normal fucking campaign.
Unfinished games for $60+, if studios did this back in the day, they stood a good chance of going bankrupt.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

1) stupid shitty crafting systems that are usually accompanied by equally shitty enemy drops.

2) Games trying to copy what worked in another game and completely failing.

3) Games acting like I'll ragequit if I die even once.

4) Pointless systems in the game that you can completely ignore.

5) Hard difficulty is just FUCK YOU HERE TRIPLE ENEMY STATS, HARD NOW?

6) I'll go with way too much mobility in many games. Positioning doesn't mean shit in a lot of games when everyone can teleport or dash.

7) 99% of collectibles, especially if they impact gameplay.

8) Microtransactions, especially anything that impacts gameplay.

[Szuran]

52 minutes ago, Pegg said:

4) Pointless systems in the game that you can completely ignore.

 

 

Can you elaborate?

I also noticed that in modern games there is no level design. None. In linear games there are no loops, just more or less straight lines that lead from setpiece to setpiece. There are also arenas and open world "bases" to conquer - which pretty much don't require any thought-out design, because it's quite convenient to tell the player to "approach them in any way". So no challenges, no feeling like you maybe are getting lost just to lead you back to some hub-like area where you go "A-HA!" and remember where was that door you needed a key for...

 

I just finished Shadow Warrior 2013 and even though I liked it in the beginning, I soon realized there was almost no level design. Later the game turned into arena shooter, with basically big flat rooms being the arenas.

Oh, and a way to challenge the player? MORE MONSTERS! No interesting placement or shifting floor levels, no surprises - just 'here, fight 30 more of these'.

EDIT: last thing: weapon sounds. No meaty weapons nowadays, even in Doom 2016 the shotgun sounds "soft".

Edited June 18, 2019 by Szuran

[Gaia74]

that require a good pc to run a game that almost always is not replayable and it's not fun

[unerxai]

Having to watch like five logos from game or hardware companies, then watch some boring introductory cutscene. When you finally have control over your guy, you have to do some assholish thing like walk somewhere and talk to an NPC so you can watch another cutscene. Then finally if you're lucky, you can have some actual gameplay.

 

 

[Doomkid]

Plenty of good points here, but I'll add another: The rarity of splitscreen or any sort of 'local multiplayer' option. I remember when gaming with friends meant, you know, gaming with friends. Long distance multiplayer is an AMAZING feature and I praise John Romero for making DOOM the first ever game where that was a possibility, but somewhere along the way devs forgot that we actually do still have friends in "real life" (hate that term because it implies humans on the internet aren't real but w/e you get me)

 

the setting of so many games just being a "you are an organized crime bad-guy but the game is a comedy setting" mega-whitewashing of the world's worst people

In my own personal experience it's actually quite rare to see games whitewashing politicians!

[Immorpher]

13 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Plenty of good points here, but I'll add another: The rarity of splitscreen or any sort of 'local multiplayer' option. I remember when gaming with friends meant, you know, gaming with friends. Long distance multiplayer is an AMAZING feature and I praise John Romero for making DOOM the first ever game where that was a possibility, but somewhere along the way devs forgot that we actually do still have friends in "real life" (hate that term because it implies humans on the internet aren't real but w/e you get me)

Oh ya I miss splitscreen! My wife and I don't play that many games together anymore because of the lack of split screen. On steam there is a big topic on the newerish game Alien Breed where we are all complaining that they deleted the split screen (which was on the console versions) when they ported it to PC.

[wolfmcbeard]

22 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Plenty of good points here, but I'll add another: The rarity of splitscreen or any sort of 'local multiplayer' option. I remember when gaming with friends meant, you know, gaming with friends. Long distance multiplayer is an AMAZING feature and I praise John Romero for making DOOM the first ever game where that was a possibility, but somewhere along the way devs forgot that we actually do still have friends in "real life" (hate that term because it implies humans on the internet aren't real but w/e you get me)

I've missed split so much, the games I play or the games my gf play, like Ark and Minecraft fortunately support it still except Halo 5, but we both quit playing that over a year ago.
I'd dare say Halo 5 ditching split screen was what put that crap trend into overdrive since the Halo franchise was well know for both good online multiplayer and great local multiplayer.

[scalliano]

- Incomplete physical copies. If I wanted a dowload, I'd have bought it digital.

- 100+GB file sizes. There are only so many hard drives I'm willing to hook up to my systems.

- Broken launches. I don't care if it ends up being good next year, I've paid for it TODAY.

- Mobile game mechanics in AAA games.
- Mobile games.

- Subscription services. Too many of 'em. Why do you think TV show/movie/sports fans just end up going "fuck it" and getting a cracked Android box?

- Live services. I don't like the idea of losing the ability to play a game through any reason other than my system or media breaking. Also see the mobile point above.

- Artificial grinding. There is only one reason it would take forty hours to unlock a new item. Again, see the mobile point.

- DLC whaich has clearly been siphoned off the original game.

- DLC less than 100KB in size. So the data was on the disc the entire time?

- Paying Sony £50 a year for online multiplayer and a couple of generally shit indie games per month.
- Paying Microsoft £50 a year for online multiplayer and a couple of generally shit indie games per month and STILL getting ads on the home screen.

- Paying Nintendo £18 a year for online multiplayer, a bullshit mobile voicechat app, a bunch of NES games I've played a million times already and another bunch nobody of sound mind could ever possibly care about, features that don't actually work in all games, and the privilege of not having my Switch bitch at me every time I load up DOOM because even the goddamn MENU needs the sub to work properly.

- Lack of new IP's from big studios.

- Getting excited for a new game and then seeing the Epic Store logo in the corner of the trailer.

- Every Playstation exclusive being an over-the-shoulder stealth-action game.

- Every Nintendo exclusive having to run on the Switch.
- Every Xbox exclusive failing to exist.

[Maser]

Modern games are just too easy and have no real "game over".  The games auto save like every step you take and there's no consequence for being a shitty player.  Hell, games like GTA5 actually reward you for playing shitty. 

[Reisal]

In no particular order:

 

• Poor sound design (especially weapons).
• "Return to the battlefield!" bullcrap when you stray away from the predefined path. Seen in linear military shooters.
• Mobile games ported to PC/Consoles.
• Epic Games snatching up and grabbing promising games that either rips backers off or betrays promises that they'll be originally be on Steam.
• Games as a service. Fuck off with that bullshit.
• Sequels, prequels, remakes, remasters..
• 10+ different Collector's Editions.
• CRINGE from E3, Gaming Awards and others.
• Appeasing the tiny, screaming vocal minorities demanding XYZ over something trivial instead of listening to the gigantic reasonable majority. (This applies to game developers and publishers)
• Getting tired of every other game being "Open world"..

[Doominator2]

4 hours ago, Pegg said:

3) Games acting like I'll ragequit if I die even once.

What do you mean by this?

[SOSU]

This is quiet a subjective (duh) and abstract opinion but it feels like the west and east don't play around with each others ideas anymore.

Back in the day western and eastern media always played around with eachother, after wizardry came out based on tabletop rpgs like DnD (Who were based on Books and pulps wth a fantasy setting who were based o folklore and mythology) the east (Enix) made Dragon Quest (Warrior in the west) with the inspiration from Wizardry and with a more eastern spin (Akira Toriyama designs which if we go back are a variation of the Osamu Tezuka style who was inspired by Disney).

In the 2000s from the anime boom we got a lot of shows from the west that tried to be in the style of anime (Teen Titans for example, and if we go back to the 40s japanese animation was pretty western styled)

Games now feel like they didn't get anything from the other end of the world, modern elder scrolls, fallout, witcher feel too western as if the developers lived in a bubble where japanese rpgs never existed, japanese games are too animoo Dx (We lived in a society where a bunch of people though MGS was western before playing it and LoK eastern) 

I have noticed something simmiliar with many games now (and other mediums) where they only take inspiration from older games and not things like movies, books or even music, there so many modern retro games that are inspired by retro games instead of books or something else. I believe that this gets rather stale because the mentality shifts from "Aww yeah i like Metal and action packed Schwarzenegger and Stalone movies, let's make a game like that!" (Which is Doom) and becomes "Aww yeah i like Doom and Shadow Warrior, let's make that!" which isn't as cool :( (a good chunk of the people who grew up on 70s, 80s and 90s anime greats now make some harem comedy trash now imagine what the people growing up on that will make in the future Dx)

 

I hope you guys understand my thoughts :'') <3 (Let's count all the "()" in this post :D)

[Mr. Freeze]

- Unmemorable music

- Pay2grind2getrewarded (fuck you MK11)

- Faux-retro games made by people with zero understanding of how retro games worked 

- Developers creating an official subreddit/discord/facebook page for updates and communicating once every blood moon, if that

[SuperCupcakeTactics]

The grind.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

When publishers pressure developers to turn their games into something they were never meant to be, in an attempt to sell more. An example which frustrated me to no end was Dead Space. The first Dead Space didn't have a huge fanbase, but I was one of those people who really enjoyed that game. I could see what they were aiming for with its gameplay and atmosphere, and I was right on board. Yeah, it got a little repetitive (boring) by the third act, but I loved that game, and it made a huge impression on me. I had mostly the same response to Dead Space 2, as well. But then, along came DS3, and I was beyond disappointed.

 

One of the developers appeared at a GDC talk and actually explained that EA (the publisher) had really pushed them to steer DS3 towards a more action-shooter style game, because "shooters were all the rage", and EA believed that doing so would boost sales. Dead Space did not transition well into a shooter (in my opinion), and it almost entirely stripped the game of the "mood" it had at its core in the first two (especially the first). So, what we wound up with was a game that didn't appeal to the audience that EA was hoping to gain, and a game that disappointed its original fanbase, because it steered so far from what we loved about it. And then, Dead Space died.

 

I understand that it is a business, and if I were a publisher, I too would be more concerned about sales then I would be about how much a small niche of players is enjoying a product - but, it was still a shame. 

 

 

[seed]

7 hours ago, scalliano said:

- Incomplete physical copies. If I wanted a dowload, I'd have bought it digital.

- 100+GB file sizes. There are only so many hard drives I'm willing to hook up to my systems.

- Broken launches. I don't care if it ends up being good next year, I've paid for it TODAY.

- Mobile game mechanics in AAA games.
- Mobile games.

- Subscription services. Too many of 'em. Why do you think TV show/movie/sports fans just end up going "fuck it" and getting a cracked Android box?

- Live services. I don't like the idea of losing the ability to play a game through any reason other than my system or media breaking. Also see the mobile point above.

- Artificial grinding. There is only one reason it would take forty hours to unlock a new item. Again, see the mobile point.

- DLC which has clearly been siphoned off the original game.

- DLC less than 100KB in size. So the data was on the disc the entire time?

- Paying Sony £50 a year for online multiplayer and a couple of generally shit indie games per month.
- Paying Microsoft £50 a year for online multiplayer and a couple of generally shit indie games per month and STILL getting ads on the home screen.

- Paying Nintendo £18 a year for online multiplayer, a bullshit mobile voicechat app, a bunch of NES games I've played a million times already and another bunch nobody of sound mind could ever possibly care about, features that don't actually work in all games, and the privilege of not having my Switch bitch at me every time I load up DOOM because even the goddamn MENU needs the sub to work properly.

- Lack of new IP's from big studios.

- Getting excited for a new game and then seeing the Epic Store logo in the corner of the trailer.

- Every Playstation exclusive being an over-the-shoulder stealth-action game.

- Every Nintendo exclusive having to run on the Switch.
- Every Xbox exclusive failing to exist.

 

11 hours ago, Pegg said:

1) stupid shitty crafting systems that are usually accompanied by equally shitty enemy drops.

2) Games trying to copy what worked in another game and completely failing.

3) Games acting like I'll ragequit if I die even once.

4) Pointless systems in the game that you can completely ignore.

5) Hard difficulty is just FUCK YOU HERE TRIPLE ENEMY STATS, HARD NOW?

6) I'll go with way too much mobility in many games. Positioning doesn't mean shit in a lot of games when everyone can teleport or dash.

7) 99% of collectibles, especially if they impact gameplay.

8) Microtransactions, especially anything that impacts gameplay.

 

Those pretty much sum up my thoughts as well, don't really have anything else to add here.

 

Apart from maybe the fact that for quite a while now there's been way too much focus on MP as a whole, it's almost like everything needs to have MP otherwise "it's shit". Yeah, right...

[Szuran]

Game distribution as well.

Why can't I buy Xbox One Turok on a disc?
Why aren't re-editions or GOTY editions already updated on the disc?

Why day 1 editions are usually completely broken?

Why aren't there game manuals anymore?

 

[snapshot]

Pre-ordering and Early access.