Things you're tired of seeing in video games

Yes I copied the title. Post anything for game mechanics to story, characters, etc.

My big gripe is in RPGs like Fallout or Skyrim. I hate when you have the best armor in the game, but the NPCs still treat you like you're some yocal. For example, wearing T51b power armor in Fallout 3. The Outcast and BoS guys still say something like "Oh look. Here's some of the local wildlife now".when you're around them when you have better armor than they do. I mean, they record lines for all kinds of possible situations, but couldn't record a few more so they deal with you like an equal?

Another is when the game gives you a sniper rifle, but enemies don't appear until you're so close it's not useful. For some reason, even with a pretty high powered gaming PC, in Saints Row IV some enemies don't appear until you're in the area so you can't snipe them.

Finally I had been talking with a couple cousins (who are female) about the female armor in games. I'm kind of conflicted on this, because for certain stories, settings, or species the "sexy armor" could make sense (like the Asari in ME). I also think you have to separate the so called "boob armor" from the "sexy armor". The difference being boob armor is like the female Mass Effect where the armor looks effective, but it, well has boobs on it. The sexy armor usually has a midriff showing, lots of cleavage, and no leg armor. Anway they think both are stupid. I say for the boob armor, it's more of being able to tell that a helmeted character is female I think. My cousin argues that in the US military they are working on women's armor by making it fit their breasts underneath the armor, so it still looks flat on the outside. So she said future armor would probably be like that. For games like WoW or some other fantasy games, it's more about the look and not supposed to be really serious though.

I don't know whether to blame marketing or the designers for the sexy armor. Someone still thinks only teen boys play these games and targets them.

My rant:
Some games make the weak spot on monsters horribly obvious. "Ooh, a scary dark monster with fluorescent yellow spots. I wonder what I should shoot at?"

- Over reliance on fetch quests.
- Usually anything time based that doesn't fit within the context of the games storyline.
- Escort missions where whatever you're escorting has no sense of self preservation.

3D shooters

Unskippable cutscenes. That includes interactive cutscenes that masquerade as gameplay in which you can't do anything until the little skit is over.

For me it's gameplay taking a backseat to ANYTHING.

GAMEPLAY is number one. Story, graphics, sound effects, music, atmosphere... It's all a waste if the game doesn't play smooth. Thankfully not as big a problem any more (that I've noticed) but in past MANY games suffered from this. Getting caught in the hype of a game just to find out that the controls are broken is frustrating as all Hell.

Another would be mandatory online play. I'd love to play some Titanfall, give me a damn story mode! I don't play online, it has no appeal to me at all, give me a story and local multiplayer. Remember when video games with your buddies was actually a social event? 2-4 guys in a room with controllers. That's the way I like my multiplayer. Sadly it seems Microsoft and Sony are abandoning it for the most part. Thank God for my Wii U (and my vintage systems).

Finally, games released before they're ready. I don't care if you're going to patch it later, DON'T RELEASE THE GAME UNTIL IT'S COMPLETELY FINISHED! And don't finish the game on some massive cliffhanger that requires DLC to complete! DLC should be an ADDITION to the game, not a mandatory part of the story. :thumbsdown

Anyhow, I'm sure there's more but that's my rant for now.

Mirco-transactions and alpha access.

escort missions

Any game that has a camera that won't show your character when they get backed into a corner while fighting. Shadows of Mordor was horrible with this. I'll second cut scenes you can skip adding it's even worse when the cut scene is part of the save point. Far Cry 4 was so bad with this, I returned it after a day.

DLC's.

Open world games where each individual thing that you can do is actually kinda lame on its own, and where story missions require you to solve them in one single way for no reason.

The only game that did well with this is the Assassin's Creed games, where having to do it a particular way works for "synchronization" purposes. By contrast, GTAIV requires you to follow a car that you're supposed to be chasing, and you physically CANNOT catch it or do anything to it until you reach the place where the cut scene is going to play out so you execute the guy. For an open world game, to me, that's just...incredibly irritating.

I'd also say lens flare and extreme glare SUCKS. Battlefield 3 was TERRIBLE about this. And, of course, idiots online would say crap like "Hurrr durr it's realistic!" No, genius, it isn't. Lens flare DOESN'T OCCUR WITH THE HUMAN EYE. But, of course, for children who only experience the world through movies and other video games, I guess you can't expect much more.

Other things I find irritating is "no offline bot mode." I get it. Bots are a pain to code and seem irrelevant when compared to online play. But you know what? Sometimes I don't wanna play online. And when the online community for a game dies, but I still want to play it, what am I supposed to do if ALL you have is multiplayer? This is one of the big problems, in my opinion, with a lot of EA's games nowadays. There's no singleplayer and no bot mode. By contrast, I could go play Unreal Tournament til the cows come home, even though the game is almost old enough to drive now. Why? That's right. Bot mode.

I also have to say that I find the attitudes about certain "hard" games to be stupid. Like, Dark Souls. I tried this game and holy CRAP does it suck. That is, if you aren't a masochist. I get that some people like incredibly difficult games, but I didn't see the game itself as beign truly "difficult," so much as "cheap" and time consuming. Like, you round a corner and SURPRISE YOU'RE DEAD. Well, now you've learned that the flaming boulder rolls down hill at that point. So, next time around you dodge it, walk out into the open and SURPRISE YOU'RE DEAD because a dragon flew down and ate you. Ok....so now you know that you have to dodge to the side when that happens.... So, you walk along a little further and have to fight a skeleton. Cool. You beat the first one. But then SURPRISE YOU'RE DEAD another one jumps you, and now you have to do a corpse run to the experience you had AND re-fight the first skeleton.

None of this is actually difficult. By that, I mean that none of this requires a ton of critical thinking, analysis, or coordination, other than perhaps the fighting sequence where you do indeed have to learn the system. The rest? Padding through tedium. The game is supposed to take something like 80 hours to beat, but that's because you spend most of the time REPLAYING THE GAME. I'd bet a straight runthrough where you know what's around each corner would take about, oh, maybe 8 hours total. But some dudes think they're all big and tough because they beat the game and feel a sense of accomplishment.

I decided that I'd rather do pushups than play Dark Souls. Seriously. It's that irritating of a game. When I play Dark Souls, you know what I have to show for it? Nothing. Well, maybe high blood pressure as I get pissed at the game. But otherwise nothing. When I do pushups, on the other hand, I'm doing a different equally tedious activity, BUT I get stronger and can use my new strength to do all manner of things. Know what I can do with my knowledge of Dark Souls? Play more Dark Souls. Or maybe Dark Souls 2, at least as far as the battle system goes. Although I'd bet the sequel screws you just as much.

This wouldn't be so bad if the game bothered to include a difficulty setting or cheat codes, which, by the way, I use ALL THE TIME. Why? Because I don't CARE about the difficulty of the game. I want to experience the story and run around an have fun blowing crap up. That's because I'm a grownup with limited leisure time, and I don't really have any interest in doing the equivalent of "video game pushups" with nothing to show for it but having beaten the game.


Last thing:

Although I find myself doing them, I'm also equally tired of achievements and collectibles in games. These do not add value to your game in most cases. Again, in my experience, the exception is the Assassin's Creed series, where the collectibles take you through the world and challenge you to solve the puzzle of how to reach them. I appreciated that. But otherwise, screw your collectibles. Next time give me more STORY instead.

I'm tired of hand holding and games where you really can't fail. I find this especially bad in games like skyrim that are supposed to be about choice

Thought of another one:

Unlocks.

Seriously, **** unlocks. Unlocks are possibly one of the WORST things to happen to gaming that I can recall.

See, I remember when games were abotu the joy of playing the game itself, rather than playing a meta-game within the game to try to get new gear or whathaveyou. Games have become Skinner Boxes where you just end up conditioned to stay on the hamster wheel and get your next reward. Battlefield 3 was the last game that did this that I played. You have to unlock EVERYTHING.

And see, the concept of an unlock system, especially in multiplayer, is inherently unbalanced. I know people say "Well, all of the guns are competitive" or whatever, but the truth is that someone who has a wider variety of choices -- assuming those choices are meaningful -- has a better ability to tailor their choices to their chosen playstyle or the situation. In other words, the guy with more toys is ALWAYS at an advantage.

You ask me, unlocks should be eliminated, and the point should be to, you know, PLAY THE ****ING GAME, rather than perform mechanical tasks just to unlock the next toy. I like games where you start with all your gear. To me, that shows that the point isn't to gradually give you new toys as some kind of reward, but the actual gameplay itself. And no, unlocking stuff is NOT gameplay. It's meta-gameplay. It's the game-within-the-game. The gameplay would be actually, like, shooting stuff and running around. If that's not enough to entertain people, and they need a hamster wheel to keep them entertained....maybe your game just isn't that good and you should focus on making it better and more interesting.

Sadly, this is now a foreign concept in gaming. You'd never see a Classic Unreal Tournament style game, where you just grab weapons and go. Instead, the companies making these games recognize that the whole point is to create a loooooong hamster-wheel experience, and then time the next release (whether DLC or a full game) out to what their datamining shows is the point where people have "finished" the game by unlocking everything. Then they'll buy for their next fix, and Behavioral Psych 101 continues.

It's this same mentality that also led to the death of modding. Because why allow the community to enhance the game, when you can CHARGE them for a mediocre DLC pack that repackages the same old maps over and over, right?!

Nowhere to put the quarters

DLC, Multiplayer tacked on, the lack of turnbased RPGs for consoles, a lack of JRPGs where there are plenty of good ones, companies whoring out their franchises to contractors instead of bringing over games from japan (I'm looking at you Square and that turned Front mission evolved you gave us instead of FM5), digital downloads of any sort, overpriced special editions.

I think DLC can work. It doesn't most of the time, but if you have the right game, the right reason and the right group of talent to pull it off, getting DLC for a game to me is no different than getting an expansion. I think DLC works best when the game you're playing is more story oriented and has a lot of room for customization. Take BioWare games for example. I still consider the later two games to be perfect examples of what DLC can enhance a game without it feeling like it was an element that was left out. Mass Effect 2 had Lair of the Shadow Broker which enabled players who romanced Liara to not only continue that relationship but cement it in a way that the first game couldn't. Plus you can play that DLC after you've completed the main game's story line which not only the DLC acknowledges, but also provides a much better ending to Mass Effect 2 in general. Even the Citadel DLC showed that BioWare doesn't stand by their stance on how to tell a story (i.e. The game takes place during a war so there should be less fun in your adventure) by having a goofy story. It didn't really fit in with Mass Effect 3's story at all, but I see it as a little taste of what ME3 could have been if they hadn't been so wrapped up with themselves that they actually felt obligated to make the story and it's conclusion miserable ("We didn't want him to be a boss because it felt too video gamey").

The DLC I do not want to see are:
- On Disc DLC. You should always get what's on the disc.
- Multi-player only. Playing the reboot of Tomb Raider, I couldn't have been more welcoming towards DLC content. Unfortunately, the entire focus was put towards Multiplayer. The one element I had no desire in playing.
- Random Boxes. Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition suffer from this in their Multi-player platform. You buy these boxes that give you random chances at something like a character, item or just some other thing you can use. It's like grab bags.
- Product Placement. Mario Kart 8. Real world branded cars have no business in Mario Kart.

I agree, if it's an addition to a complete game then DLC is fine. Good example would be the additional tracks in Mario Kart 8. The Mercedes cars don't bother me, they were free.

On that note, there is absolutely NO NEED for sports games to be released every year. There's little significant change from year to year. Most of the time a DLC patch to update rosters would be a far better and more economical way to do things. Release a new game when there's a significant change.

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I agree with the DLC comments but the problem is companies are cutting content from games to sell it later, Destiny is a good example of it and even the stuff they're selling you isn't improving things much. Capcom was good at gauging with DLC when Azura's wrath (i think that's the name) charged you for the real ending for every character. If it wasn't for sports games EA'd have gone out of business. While we're on EA i'm tired of seeing publishers push around the studios making the game like EA has done with Mass effect 3 and Deadspace 3, it really hurt those two games.

FPSers.

They have been repackaging the same thing, with minor changes to some poorly written plot, and better graphics since Halo came out.

It's funny halo and Advanced warfare are the only FPS i really like and everyone's hating on Advanced warfare when it's better than the last few. I'm still not happy with Bethesda turning Fallout into a FPS but at least VATS makes it feel turn based.