Gaming pet peeves

zegh8578

zegh8578

Keeper of the trout
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What are your gaming pet peeves? Do you have a list off the top of your head? Are there things you don't think about, untill it happens, and you go roll your eyes all the way around your head?

One mechanical pet peeve of mine is the forced auto-save/checkpoint-save.
Often the intention seems to be to prevent save-spamming, but here's two little problems I have with that:

1) Fuck. Off: I paid for the game, I'm in my home, I'll do whatever the fuck I want. Did they not inteeend for me to save-spam? What else did they not intend for? What if I smear my game disc in peanut butter? What if I play my game naked? With a boner? Ejaculating while playing? Let me do what I want.

2) I'm not even interested in save-spamming. I'm an adult, I can handle a challenge. My main problem with this shit is that games crash, they crash often, and they crash with gusto - most of all, they tend to crash when things are happening a lot, when you have done and accomplished a lot - as in, the WORST possible times, and the times you MOST want to have saved.

On the narrative side, I have a pet peeve for insane demographics, for example how the "DC Wasteland" has several hundred million raiders, and less than a hundred ordinary civilians. Beyond this obvious absurdity, I can't help but notice a general sense of bloated manpower capacity with baddies in general, especially shooters.
"Go fetch the macguffin toaster!" "Yes sir."
*toaster is defended by 20 brigades of bandits*

Another narrative pet peeve of mine is the sortof porn-scenario type of impatience - like some plumber knocks on the door, lady opens, plumber whips dick out *there and then* - no build up, no earning, no nothing.
Perfect example of this is Skyrim, where you're sitting in a horse cart AND THEN YOU'RE DRAGONBORN!!! DOVAKHIIIN DOVAKHIIIIIN TRALALALALALA!!!!!
Like fuckit, I guess I won the fucking game then, what else do I even need to strive for at this point? Oh yeah, I gotta learn to shout with the gandalfs and whatnot, I'M ALREADY DRAGONBORN, everything is a snorefest beyond that!
This one manifests in many (but not all!) roleplay games in much subtler ways - in particular when it comes to doing murder. Shooters are shooters, but imho - roleplay games should make a bigger deal out of the character resorting to violence. FO1 and 2 did this well, in that you can avoid violence, and thus make it a big deal yourself. I'm not talking about pacifism - but allowing more narrative weight to the fact that you have transitioned from adventurer to warrior.
Other games do NO such effort, such as FO4, in particular in how clumsily they treated player gender. If you're the man, you're allready a combat veteran - but if you're the woman, you're suddenly a master ninja killer for NO reason. At least give both of them the same contrived veteran-backstory.

Okay, I'm this close to making this about Todd Howard, so - what are your personal gaming pet peeves?
 
I have a lot of downright hates, but that's a topic for another time.

I do agree, forced checkpoints/save points annoy the hell out of me. Like I need to go out somewhere or do something, just let me save.

Bullet sponges get to me too. This is mostly seen in Fallout 4 where I just gave up and turned the difficulty down. The radiated enemies have led to me just giving up a couple of times.
Regardless, bullet sponges are a waste of my time. I've got better things to do that spend 20 minutes trying to kill one enemy.

One that's in Phantom Pain, just let me start a new save file without deleting the old one...
Even Peace Walker allows for multiple saves. It just makes the game easier to play whenever I want to go through the whole series again...
 
Games where the main story completely conflicts with the open world game design because of their urgency. Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim and the first Red Dead Redemption are the immediate examples that come to mind. It's extremely vexing, because it either breaks your engagement with the story or breaks your engagement with the world.

New Vegas and Red Dead Redemption 2 are good examples of the opposite, where the openworld gameplay is perfectly blended with the main quest.
 
zegh8578 said:
What are your gaming pet peeves?
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Other people's opinions. I'm always right. They're always wrong. They should just shut up already and listen to me!

I hate games that hold your hand too much. Teaching me the basics of a game is fine. Leading me everywhere and constantly reminding me of shit or to go do something is a pain in the ass. Adding a bunch of systems to make the game easier is also annoying. Like having everything highlighted. Some games need a slight highlight around items that you can interact with, sure. But plenty do not need to highlight the sharp pointy stick that I don't care about because I'm well past the first levels of the game.

Also, DRM and/or forced online connections for singleplayer aspects. Of course. I don't want it. I don't need it. I paid for it, let me have it.

Being opposed to modding efforts and communities. Also refusing to sell games that are ancient and then being upset that people pirate the things you refuse to sell. Looking at you Nintendo.
 
Atomic Postman said:
Games where the main story completely conflicts with the open world game design because of their urgency. Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim and the first Red Dead Redemption are the immediate examples that come to mind. It's extremely vexing, because it either breaks your engagement with the story or breaks your engagement with the world.

New Vegas and Red Dead Redemption 2 are good examples of the opposite, where the openworld gameplay is perfectly blended with the main quest.
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Witcher 3 is guilty of this too. Clear out all of Valen for 6 months then go stumble up to the Bloody Baron's doorstep. It always makes the game feel bloated and unfocused despite the story telling you should be making it your top priority. Ironically I think Fallout 1 had a hand in poisoning the well for having time limits unfortunately even if it worked there.
 
The open world meme. All it does it waste your time. Very rarely is an open world ever needed. It's almost always just padding. Why yes I would love to spend 70% of gameplay doing literally nothing just trying to get to actual content. Ridiculous.
 
Uninterruptible gameplay animations.
Amazed it's still so pervasive. Sometimes it's deliberate in the design, but I feel taking away control of the character from the player like that at any point other than death is a very bad idea. I will stop playing games sometimes because of it.
 
Gameplay Cutscene dissonance when the only way for the story to progress is for your character to become a moron or otherwise incompetent enough that something effects them in a way that while you were in control would have never happened.
 
Recently played Doom Eternal. At some point you enter a giant gun turret and a first person cut scene plays where your guy sits down in the turret and automatically controls it to shoot the things that need to be shot with no input from the player other than pressing the interact-button.
Here's a novel idea: if there's things that should be shot in first person in this first person shooter, maybe the player should be in control for that?
Otherwise don't be a tease and just have a switch that flips and makes something else automatically shoot the thing.
 
PlanHex said:
Here's a novel idea: if there's things that should be shot in first person in this first person shooter, maybe the player should do that?
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Reminds me of the baseball part in Bioshock Infinite. The player could have tossed the ball themselves... it is a FPS after all.
 
SquidVan said:
Reminds me of the baseball part in Bioshock Infinite. The player could have tossed the ball themselves... it is a FPS after all.
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Yes, I also thought of that matthewmatosis bit when that happened.
 
I love that video as much as I hate Bioshock Infinite. Someone sent it to me after I ranted about Infinite being bad. Matthew helped me hate it more.
 
PlanHex said:
Recently played Doom Eternal. At some point you enter a giant gun turret and a first person cut scene plays where your guy sits down in the turret and automatically controls it to shoot the things that need to be shot with no input from the player other than pressing the interact-button.
Here's a novel idea: if there's things that should be shot in first person in this first person shooter, maybe the player should be in control for that?
Otherwise don't be a tease and just have a switch that flips and makes something else automatically shoot the thing.
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I think those are called turret sections and that is a peeve of a lot of people.
 
TheGM said:
I think those are called turret sections and that is a peeve of a lot of people.
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But it was only a single tentacle that had to be shot.
Though I suppose if they actually coded the turrets in, they would use them more.
So just make a damn switch that makes the turret shoot the tentacle automatically instead of teasing that you could do it yourself.
 
Oh, forgot - any explicit personal history presented to you in an RPG, lookin at you FO4! Playing through Cyberpunk, most of the dialog handled this okay - with a few exceptions here and there that felt jarring enough to prompt quick skips - it takes me out of the character head-canon!

Ties to narrative, such as in FONVs Lonesome Road are okay, if they make it about purely mechanical action (even then I dislike being informed of my supposed prior actions deep into gameplay) - but the worst is having a kid, a home, a marriage, with everything that entails - thrust onto your own rpg head-canon.

In a game like Witcher the character is established for you, and with 3rd person play, I am never him, he is never me, and I relate to him more separately, and so learning of his past just adds to the character that I observe and aid in his adventures, rather than "live through".
 
Skill check mini games in RPGs really annoy me. The lockpicking/hacking mini games of Fallout 3/New Vegas/4/Skyrim, the hacking mini games of Mass Effect 2, and so on. If I have a high enough skill just let my character do it, don’t make me play some bullshit every time.

Oh yeah, and I think voiced protagonists are almost always a bad thing, in any genre of video game.
 
zegh8578 said:
Ties to narrative, such as in FONVs Lonesome Road are okay, if they make it about purely mechanical action (even then I dislike being informed of my supposed prior actions deep into gameplay)
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Either i'm remembering it wrong, but i believe you can actually deny you're the one sent the package to the Divide. Meaning you can choose to not have that whole thing be a part of your character's background.
 
Norzan said:
Either i'm remembering it wrong, but i believe you can actually deny you're the one sent the package to the Divide. Meaning you can choose to not have that whole thing be a part of your character's background.
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I don't remember that, maybe you can claim not to remember? Can't recall now.
 
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