The other thread about favorite mechanics is great, so let’s also do the opposite: what are some of your most hated mechanics?
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Most open-world games have areas on the map that are blank until you “explore” them by climbing a tower of some kind and “activating” that region on your map.
This results in trudging blindly into the middle of every new area, ignoring interesting stuff along the way and beelining to the tower just so you can see the damn map. It’s an annoyingly unnatural way to explore.
I didn’t even realize that I disliked it until I played Far Cry 6, which has a much more organic and immersive landmark discovery process. You learn locations of interest from readables and by talking to friendly NPCs that you encounter in the world.
In FC6 it’s even thematic, since you’re guerilla fighters passing intel along by word of mouth.
Edit: sp
Controversial opinion but I mostly hate crafting. I feel like it’s a huge time sink just to make you waste time in the game. It’s not content at all just mindless farming for no real reason.
There are games where the whole game revolves around it so you couldn’t really remove it from those games. Minecraft is an example.
But I feel like every single game now has some kind of crafting mechanics. Mainly the F2P to get some kind of weird limitation that will either take you half a lifetime to accomplish or $5…
The bit in the RPG when your character gets captured and you lose all your gear, and have to do the shitty stealth thing.
When you enter a level and the camera pans over every important thing in the level before you can move. I’m not an idiot. I can discover the level on my own. Stop holding my hand.
Probably simple, mindless side/fetch quests. Defeat enemies, get loot, run it back, rinse and repeat. It also is incredibly dry to watch as well as actually do yourself.
Daily quests or login rewards, things to force me to play the game, always stop playing
I know it’s a popular mechanic that lots of people love, but I really don’t like games where you die a lot, or where death has significant impact. I generally play games to chill out and just have fun and I often feel like games are punishing me when that happens and I find myself doing sort of “risk management” and becoming a hermit in the game.
I love shooters but I can’t do fortnight or any game mode that CS-esque because I need that respawn
Combo attacks - I’m not coordinated to hit the buttons in order fast enough. I tried Black Desert when it was free and this was the dealbreaker for me, though it wasn’t the only thing that bugged me about the game.
Radiant quests. You can never complete the game because of this, the quests are generic and repetitive and offer nothing but “stretch the playtime”.
That and mechanics like “rando dragon attacks in Skyrim” and “City is under attack” from Fallout 4. I quit F4 because I was on my way to a mission and got the "city under attack notification, and on my way to defend another city was under attack.
To yes-and this: procedural content in general. No Man’s Sky is a snore-fest for me, big, empty, meaningless. Missions in Elite Dangerous and X4 are similarly pretty boring, though the former is more fun the first time around. There has to feel like there’s some world-affecting point to what you’re doing. IMO
I found the procedurally-produced planets in No Man’s Sky to be stunningly beautiful. Then I would walk around on them and the similar-but-not-quite look of every part of the landscape would slowly drive me INSANE.
I’m not a big fan of fishing mechanics, they’re usually shallow “press button at random signal, get a random prize” mechanics.
Also escort missions where the NPC being escorted does not understand that it should protect its own life. I don’t mind repeating a mission due to my own mistakes, but I don’t want to do it because some AI went potato.
nah man fishing mini games are THE SHIT
it’s not about gameplay it’s about vibes It’s just so calming
Stealth. I hate hiding and creeping around waiting for an NPC to move. It’s like, “oh, you want to play the game? How about not playing the game instead?” Infuriating.
I feel like most games get it wrong and just make you stay in one place waiting for the enemy dude to slowly make his route as you map it in your head. It’s just boring, I don’t know.
A nice way to change that would be to give a button that gives you a “top view” map of the enemies’s movement maybe, to make it a little bit puzzle-y. Or, if you want to make it more “action-y”, give the player a way to hide or disengage by scrambling to find something in the environment that allows them to do that, when they get detected.
Stealth is just implemented in a terrible way in most modern games I feel like. Makes it not fun.
I love the shit out of stealth. The last of us, metal gear solid, and sniper elite are some of my favorite games because of the stealth.
If your game isn’t built for stealth it’s basically universally a disaster, though. If you don’t have tools to manipulate enemies, and AI where stealth is a functional element of the rest of the game, you shouldn’t have stealth sections. They’re a lock to be a trainwreck.
Grinding to advance and make the game easier.
Looking at you fdev with Elite Dangerous, or Rockstar and GTA.
Having balance and not level locking stuff is hard I get that. And you have people that will burn though content like it’s a free crackpipe. But it basically makes a lot of adults or people that just play games casually or in moderation just not fun
Nintendo’s inability to make things easy like crafting multiple items at once in BotW/TotK and Animal Crossing
Escort quests. Stealth sections in games that aren’t built around stealth would be close second.
Genshin Impact occasionally has little stealth missions where you have to sneak by guards.
Pain.
Quick-time events but SPECIFICALLY the ones that give you way too little time to react. Like, I never mind them too much, especially the ones in the Yakuza series, but I remember there was this game on the Wii called Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings that would throw these inputs WAYY too fast at you.
I like them sometimes, but there should ALWAYS be a way to turn them off, for people who don’t have fast reflexes or have problems with their hands, etc.
Shout out to Spider-Man on PS4 for this! Love when a game has accessibility options around quick time events, or anything where you need to mash a button really fast.
