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

[mrthejoshmon]

You know when an enemy grabs you and you have to QTE to get out whilst every other fucker pounds you? That one is the worst, been co-oping Dying Light which is an absolute fantastic game but it has a mechanic where the standard biter zombie will grab you and it is so damn common it isn't even funny.

[TwinBeast]

13 hours ago, holaareola said:

Fallout 3 is a game

Reminds me when I wanted to silence confessor Cromwell by killing him (he's just so loud 24/7). I'm well hidden and equipped with a sniper rifle, no one can see or hear me. I shoot Cromwell, and somehow the entire town of Megaton instantly knows I killed Cromwell, even if they had been on the other side of the town. Tried several different approaches to this problem, but they always know.

[Hisymak]

Completely useless and pointless items in games, and especially when those items are considered "rare" and located mainly in secrets. The best example is Holoduke in Duke Nukem 3D - why this item even exists? Is it a joke?

[mrthejoshmon]

1 hour ago, TwinBeast said:

Reminds me when I wanted to silence confessor Cromwell by killing him (he's just so loud 24/7). I'm well hidden and equipped with a sniper rifle, no one can see or hear me. I shoot Cromwell, and somehow the entire town of Megaton instantly knows I killed Cromwell, even if they had been on the other side of the town. Tried several different approaches to this problem, but they always know.

Fallout 3 is unique to Vegas in the fact that many world items cause impact damage, fetch a barrel or shopping cart and keep ramming it into people to eventually eliminate them unblamed.

 

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.

Edited November 26, 2020 by mrthejoshmon

[Master O]

10 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

SNK Boss Syndrome? Pfft. Easy-peasy, once you can find a pattern that will cheese the boss.

 

On the other hand, when it's General Time, your ass is grass and he's the lawnmower, weed killer, earthquake, lava from the volcanic explosion, mile-thick ice, plate tectonics, transperambulation of the Earth into pseudo-cosmic antimatter...

 

How bad is he? This guy literally got the dev team fired because he tanked the game's revenue and is the reason mechanics like air blocking were INVENTED.

 

 

 

General must have exploitable weaknesses, though.

[HavoX]

The RNG. Especially the part in Pokémon Sword/Shield: The Crown Tundra where I try to stock up on Custap berries (lots of SR'ing involved), the game's RNG goes through its terrible twos. Not fun. :(

 

 

Also, Ness getting Homesick.

[Dark Pulse]

6 hours ago, Master O said:

General must have exploitable weaknesses, though.

No. No he does not. He has absolutely NONE. He has insane priority, ridiculous reach on his moves, the ability to teleport at will, including right up next to you to immediately throw you (and he can do it several times in a row with no cooldown or lagtime! There's a clear example of this starting around 19:37, and it happens all throughout the round), and he has absolutely no qualms about just stuffing any move you do if he feels like it. There is one specific character (at least) who can generally cheese him, but it requires both split-second timing - as well as the General willingly playing along.

 

Again: This boss literally made other fighting games invent mechanics.

 

 

(General Time begins at 13:40.)

 

Took the dude nearly an HOUR to clear the game. Continues used: 33. Given the standard price of an arcade game at the time, that would've been $8.25 for the privilege of beating the General - and that's assuming 25 cents and not 50 like some arcades were starting to do at the time this game came out (around 1994-1995). At the time, that was pizza money. And he tried a few other characters partway through for good measure. Didn't work, and he eventually switched back to relying on cheesing him with Lihua.

 

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.

Edited November 26, 2020 by Dark Pulse

[jazzmaster9]

Two sticks out in my mind

- Unskippable cutscenes

- QTEs

[Roofi]

Missions that try to be more fun and creative than usual, but are actually very annoying to complete and not fun at all. This GTA SA mission is an example, but I could mention the course with the poisoned water in Super Mario sunshine.

 

 

 

[seed]

Thinking of RNG, there is something else.

 

RNG-based combat where it really could do much better without it, see Morrowind for one. Glad future titles removed it for the hit chance.

 

And when RNG just bullshits the player constantly because. If you ever think Doom's RNG is "unfair" again, play a few matches of pazaak and have the AI just shit on you even with a good deck, when you're one point away from 20.

 

Or you easily get to 20... only for the AI to repeatedly catch up. Some things in the Kotor games can just fuck right off. No surprise there's mods out there that nerf it.

[GraphicBleeder]

Infinite ammo boxes.

 

 

Removes all challenge of ammo conservation.

[ShortedOutFuse]

Most annoying mechanics I can look past and still have fun but the one that genuinely ruins games that would otherwise be great to me is when games feel the need to have randomly generated “perks” that you constantly pick up And have to equip and unequip throughout the campaign

 

The kind of thing where they give you +0.005% damage to one type of enemy but -0.002% damage to another type

 

I hate in games like Shadow Warrior 2 or Control where towards the end of the game you have to spend forever in the menus micromanaging, equipping, and unequipping These perks to find the optimal ones to have equipped so that the bullet sponge enemies don’t take quite as many shots to kill, then after each fight you pick up another 40 of them and have to do the same thing again before the next fight

 

it’s generally paired with enemies that level up and take more shots to kill the further you get through the game so you don’t feel like you’re getting and stronger, you just have to spend hours micromanaging in the menus so that the enemies die in about the same amount of shots as they did at the beginning of the game

 

hope that made sense, I don’t know if there’s a term for it

[Hisymak]

Infinitely spawning new monsters into a level, based on a timer trigger, or player reentering specific place in a level.

This way, I can never fell fully "safe" in that level or can never feel the level is fully cleared from monsters and done. It's just annoying and boring to re-fight the same monsters again and again, just because you need to spend a bit more time in a particular map or trace it back to get forgotten goodies or progress elements.

Hexen is the most typical game doing this. Vanilla Hexen is not that much bad (it's just respawning a bunch of Ettins which is ok), but some custom WADs brought this into extreme, like respawning centaurs, chaos serpents, stalkers every minute. Ugh.

[spineapple tea]

When your player speed drops like a bag of rocks because you pull out your main weapon. I know assault rifles are heavy but I'm here to have fun, not remember how much a gun actually weighs.

[Beginner]

I absolutely despise when in a game that lets you acquire levels to upgrade stats, skills, etc. all enemies automagically grow in power as well, even worse if enemy power growth outpaces player's.

[hybridial]

You know based on what many people are saying here, it almost sounds like most modern games rely on annoying mechanics. 
 

Just sayin'

[HavoX]

Yeah, game developers don't really seem to like it when we try to outsmart them, so they try to outsmart US first!

[seed]

2 hours ago, Beginner said:

I absolutely despise when in a game that lets you acquire levels to upgrade stats, skills, etc. all enemies automagically grow in power as well, even worse if enemy power growth outpaces player's.

 

But why? This makes no sense.

 

If they wouldn't, by the time you'll reach some level 50+ there will be no more challenge whatsoever.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

This one:

 

 

Actually, Borderlands has some perfect examples of mechanics and features that I hate:

 

-Randomly generated guns where 99% of them aren't actually any fun to use. A lot of focus on diverse weapons, no focus on satisfying combat.

-Boring fetch quests.

-Annoying characters that never shut up.

-Cringeworthy humor that is supposed to be funny because "lol it's done on purpose".

-Skill trees mostly filled with boring passive skills.

-Unsatisfying, floaty vehicle physics and poor vehicular combat.

-Combat that is more of an equipment check than an actual challenge.

-XP tokens awarded at a snail's pace, just to get a passive 0.05% increase to a stat.

-Poorly designed areas that aren't fun to traverse.

-Weightless physics.

-Bullet sponge enemies.

-Garbage loot everywhere, shields, weapons, money, ammo, mods, grenades, etc.

-Audio logs everywhere, many of them serving no point other than inflicting lame jokes on you.

-Poop jokes, pop culture references that are outdated by the time the game is actually released.

-Farming that isn't actually any fun, existing mostly as a time sink.

-Poor boss fights that are just enemies with a lot of HP.

 

I realize that not all of these are actual game mechanics, but still.

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[GamingMarine]

Enemies that don't necessarily kill you, but just steal your currency and/or lives when they hit you (Donkey Kong Country 2's special Klobbers come to mind).

[kalaeth]

4 minutes ago, GamingMarine said:

Enemies that don't necessarily kill you, but just steal your currency and/or lives when they hit you (Donkey Kong Country 2's special Klobbers come to mind).

 

even worse if they can't be killed.. I'm looking at you, thief that walks around the village in Legend of Zelda : LttP.

[bobstremglav]

Just now, GamingMarine said:

Enemies that don't necessarily kill you, but just steal your currency and/or lives when they hit you (Donkey Kong Country 2's special Klobbers come to mind).

It remind me birds (maybe crows) from Eartbound for NES. They can steal items from your inventory, but after battle you'll still lost them. I afraid they even can steal your credit card.

[Nekr0s1s]

Disclaimers.

 

Not an actual game mechanic, but i hate when you start up a game only to be greeted by a threatening disclaimer. I'm not a lawyer, so take your legal crap and shove it where the sun don't shine. And while you're at it, stop telling me not to attempt to repeat some act. I wear the goddamn seatbelt and i can tell reality from fiction.

[Nekr0s1s]

8 minutes ago, GamingMarine said:

Enemies that don't necessarily kill you, but just steal your currency and/or lives when they hit you (Donkey Kong Country 2's special Klobbers come to mind).

 

Thief Bot from Descent 2. Comes outta nowhere and steal your weapons.

[TenenteZashu]

flying, small and fast enemies that deal low damage but are hard to hit, even worse if they explode on impact

[TwinBeast]

1 hour ago, Nekr0s1s said:

Thief Bot from Descent 2. Comes outta nowhere and steal your weapons.

And in one of the secret levels the thief bot respawns everytime you destroy it.

[Tetzlaff]

A restrictive save system with badly placed checkpoints combined with unskippable custcenes. So that the game forces you to play a hard part over and over and to watch that damn custscene again and again.

 

Also: extremely linear levels with invisible barriers everywhere.

[Dr. Crowley]

Speaking of Fallout 3 and tons of useless loot... I was always wondering why is it possible to take (and to wear) every goddamned suit of raider armor? I am not sure if anyone used this armor type, since you can get armored vault suit or leather armor pretty quickly and these armor sets are much better than raider armor.
Well, I guess Bethesda thought that Fallout raiders are the same type of the enemy as TES bandits (both mechanic-wise and lore-wise)...

 

[URROVA]

38 minutes ago, TenenteZashu said:

flying, small and fast enemies that deal low damage but are hard to hit, even worse if they explode on impact

like lost soul and its explosive variants?

 

save checkpoints that doesnt look like save checkpoints, eg in some RPG maker games you save on a raven or on things that doesnt look like you can save game in it

[Dr. Crowley]

2 hours ago, URROVA said:

save checkpoints that doesnt look like save checkpoints, eg in some RPG maker games you save on a raven or on things that doesnt look like you can save game in it

Haha, I know that feel. However, if you are making a game there using only RTP resources, you will quickly run out of ideas about which sprite should you use for the save point. There some good sprites (floating crystal, for example) but if you wish to be creative... welp.