General game pet peeves/ "You know what grinds my gears?"

-edit: I intended to put this as a Nier Automata thread but I think staying here will do-

I think this would be a good place to vent about things we'd all dislike
First me:

You know what grinds my gears?

'True' endings

It always implies me as a fool or letting down or forgetting something at a first run and I feel absolutely unsatisfied. And if I wanted to go for it, its always in the most contrived, complex and niche goals you need to achieve in order to do another thing so as to do and another, ad nauseam. I'm just focusing on the leveling up for fighting the boss I can't handle building social connections or side quests!
Having to put myself through the whole ordeal of playing again is tiresome, and squeezing out that games appeal long enough to play again is a cheap tactic

Just give me a "you've won" ffs

All of this probably won't relate to P5 since I haven't played it yet.

I have a pretty long and extensive list of tropes and aspects that annoys me in games:

True endings
Forced level grinding
Lots of empty space and general down time
Being unable to carry medkits when the game has finite health especially if the weapons are hitscan
Games dedicated primarily to cover shooting with nothing else to break up the pace
Automated platforming
Limited Continues
Repeating lots of content to get back to the hard part that is killing you. Any form of Checkpoint Stravation.
Games that rely heavily on exposition to the point where you are hardly playing it
Lack of agency during gameplay
Scripted sequences where all you are doing is running down one path as explosions are happening
Getting caught in a stealth section in a cutscene
Waypoint markers especially inconsistent waypoint markers
Slow movement
Hard puzzles in games that aren't puzzlers
Characters spouting out hints
On foot tailing missions(vehicle and especially car tailing is cool though)
Contextual animations especially when in the heat of a tough gameplay challenge
Regen health for the most part
Crashes for any game
Mini games especially an over reliance on them(looking at you especially Jak 3)
Games that don't at the very least have an excuse plot
Protect Missions
Escort Missions
Side Missions(never really cared for it, the whole concept just sounds like a filler episodes to a TV show)
Phased Bosses especially doing the phases over when dying on one
Long Load Times
Lots of Load Screens
Stalker Enemies(Yup never liked Nemesis in RE3)
Extremely Inconsistent Stealth game AI. I don't mind dumb AI but inconsistent AI pisses me off.

For pet peeves I cant stand how AAA developers seem to think high fidelity and high frame rates are the only way to make a good game and then wind up rushing out incomplete trash. Large update files for a game that should of been finished from the get go. Remastering fairly current games when they have a library of classics that people would kill to see a remaster.

Most of my pet peeves I guess are with the industry.

My pet peeves (not P5 but generally)

games with a lot of missable events/content
generally games that require you to follow a walkthrough
turn based games with a turn or time limit
escort missions
complex games that don't have any tutorials or just the most basic tutorials

True endings don't bother me unless it has an unreasonable amount of BS. Some collectables, maybe another dungeon, ok. Do part B for subsection E-2 that has a prerequisite of elements III, IV, and VIII and my morale suddenly plummets. I'm aware of the true ending requirements of the Nier games.

Required hidden areas/items that I would have never found w/o a guide (Metroid)
Lag, any kind
Unskippable cutscenes, with those before boss fights most offensive
Animation delays
Attacks that can't be canceled
In-game driving sequences (looking at you LA Noir)
Unpausable games/sequences
Limited saves
Death punishment by lots of sequences to redo
Overpowered bosses that can wipe you out in 2 turns or less despite being armed to the teeth (Fantasian, why)
Not being able to manually save in an autosave only game
Missable items/achievements/etc.
Extremely tight time limits
Races in non-racing games (Croc 2 and don't get me started on Kao 3)
Lack of local co-op, which has become frustratingly common

My biggest pet peeve is when games ask if you want to lower the difficulty after dying a few times. I've only seen this in God of War and the RE2 and 3 remakes, but it pissed me off every time. No Sony, I don't want to lower the difficulty, that won't help with the shitty platforming.

Bad UX- if upgrading my character/buying items is a slog or can't be done quickly I get annoyed super fast
Most contemporary dialog writing- characters in specific real-life time periods or fantastical worlds should not speak like us
Inoffensive character writing that has everyone apologizing all the time/learning lessons too quickly- let them have room to grow
Inconsistent AI- if your enemies are incompetent and brain-dead, at least make it so they're always like that and not so hard that it creates difficulty spikes
Difficulty spikes- games that don't ramp up in a logical way feel like they don't know what they want
Putting coziness/aesthetics over gameplay/UX- cute vibes do not mean you should shove excessive or unintuitive menuing into your game
Using fonts or text effects in subtitles that make them difficult to read- making an accessibility feature inaccessible is evil
Walking simulators that make walking boring for no narrative reason or even worse, dizzying with motion blur
Motion blur
Lack of tutorials for complex systems or games where time is a factor in the player's success
Having a woman, POC, or LGBTQ character be one of the or a possible main character but never showing them in marketing or on the box art
lll-proportioned character models
Sheathed weapons that clip through your character's outfit
Hair and cloth physics that don't simultaneously appear in the environment that the character is in

Lately in newer games, I absolutely hate how the games will outright spoil puzzles for you before you even get to begin thinking of a way to solve them. This is particularly bad in God of War: Ragnarok and the Horizon games, where characters will just straight up blur the answer out before I even get a good look at what I need to solve. Stuff like this drives me crazy as I love to attempt to figure out puzzles on my own. I understand why some studios do it for accessibility reasons, but I think this really needs to be turned off by default, and be an option for those who need some extra help with said puzzles. Or maybe even something like the hint system for the uncharted games, where the game leaves you to your own devices for awhile, but after a bit once will give you a notification that asks if you want a hint on what to do.

I think this topic is not about Persona 5 anymore...

Here are some of mine from the top of my head:
- Stealth sections in action games
- Unpausable single player games
- Holding a button to perform a short action
- Long animations for a simple action
- Gimmick boss battles without a clear hint
- Overuse of screen shake
- Motion blur

I think this topic is not about Persona 5 anymore...

Here are some of mine from the top of my head:
- Stealth sections in action games
- Unpausable single player games
- Holding a button to perform a short action
- Long animations for a simple action
- Gimmick boss battles without a clear hint
- Overuse of screen shake
- Motion blur

This topic was never about Persona 5, I don't know why it's in the "Game Specific" section instead of the "Gaming" section.

This topic was never about Persona 5, I don't know why it's in the "Game Specific" section instead of the "Gaming" section.

Accidental selection, it was intended to reference the topic to Nier Automata (very first post was edited). Likely due to all the endings it has and what you need to do to get them. Particularly the true one…

Accidental selection, it was intended to reference the topic to Nier Automata (very first post was edited). Likely due to all the endings it has and what you need to do to get them. Particularly the true one…

Even then, I feel like if a game is only meant to be used a a jumping off point to talk about something not related to the game (the title even says general, not Nier pet peeves), it shouldn't be in the game specific section.

Most of my pet peeves have been named already, but anyway, here are the chosen ones, from "I can live with that if the game is good" to "makes me cry every time" :
- difficulty modes (always thought they were a lazy excuse for badly balanced games)
- automated platforming (seriously, what's the point?)
- stealth sections
- open-world working as giant checklists
- too much customization (I want a game to offer me something, not to do the whole job myself!)
- water levels. All of them, in any type of game.
- form over substance (it's a game, so gameplay has to be first, period.)
- and by far the worst one (which hopefully became rare nowadays) : reverse controls.

I'm not picky but the Forza games despite my love for them DRIVE ME INSANE with this. I usually play on Average Difficulty since that's my go to for the entire game whether it be Motorsport or Horizon. But I hate when the game suddenly asks me "You're doing too good! Turn up the difficulty by one level?"

Why? Why would I want to turn up the difficulty when I'm comfortable with what I'm playing on for my skill level? I know you get better rewards if you do so, but seriously, I don't wanna have to think about that or worry about difficulty. At the very least in all the Motorsport games from 5 and up, you had the ability to check "Never show again." Not in Horizon though. Nuh uh. It constantly pesters you into changing the difficulty. It's like a tease! It's like the game is judging me for the difficulty I'm playing on just because I've won a bunch of races in a row. Let me be!

Other things:

-Style Over Substance (Mainly in games that cater to nostalgia like Boomer Shooters, Platformers, JRPGs, that stuff)

-Stealth Sections in Early Video Games

-When the game treats you like a dumbass by literally giving you the answer to what you need to do (Sniper Elite is NOTORIOUS for this. Karl just never shuts up and doesn't let the player think for themselves. He literally says "I should do this!" at every given opportunity. This is one of the reasons why I stopped playing this series is because of crap like this. Please, just let me figure it out myself! And if I can't, a walkthrough won't hurt!)

-Unoriginality (I'm mainly seeing this a lot in the Indie scene now that I think about it. This also goes back to the Style over Substance problem, but so many games now are just rip offs of better games you could be playing at this point. I recently tried out Disney's Bolt for Xbox 360 and the game is basically Children's Devil May Cry with a Superpowered Dog and it's so obvious that it is that. I don't mind games being influenced by other games if it's done neatly as that's just a normal thing. Influence can help make your game better in some cases! But when you're game comes down to "Quake but with Cults." or "Devil May Cry but with a Dog!" it usually means "It's this game but it's worse." Not all the time though! The game I want to make is basically Yakuza meets Dungeons and Dragons but there has to be more than just ripping off mechanics from another game. It needs some spices and herbs! Basically, something that makes it stand out from other games)

And one more thing: Hit-Scan Enemies. That is all.

I never really bothered to list them before, but I definitely agree with quite a few mentioned above, adding some more of my own:

- games being too easy (I find it really hard to focus on what's going on in the game if my interaction with it let's me get away with simple button mashing, it is the ideal setup to cure insomnia though)

- games suggesting to lower the difficulty (when things do ramp up and I die a couple times too many, I like to continue exploring other strategies without the game mocking me with a popup that you can accidentally click on, you can kindly fuck off and let me enjoy getting railed)

- unskippable cutscenes (the most prominent examples being games like Far Cry 3 / 4 or Dead Space 2, titles that hold significant replay value, but are annoying to come back to because of that, I've already seen all the highs and lows, now let me just enjoy the damn game!)

- stealth in older (non-stealth) games (these segments usually came with cracked AI that would notice every bloody dust particle caused by a slight tilt of your analog stick or spot a pixel of your player model from a mile away, I'm almost positive that none of these levels were actually play-tested)

- swimming in older games (I'm dreading these levels in retro titles, you spend way too much time fighting the controls more than anything else)

- escort missions in older games (babysitting an AI that has a mind of its own and often does not respond to command features has never ever been fun and is one of the most artificial ways of upping the difficulty)

- badly placed checkpoints (I always felt like 2010 was the year when that "trend" started: ready to fight a tough boss? here, watch an unskippable cutscene or suffer through a downtime section every time you have to redo it!)

- story over gameplay (unless I'm playing a Telltale-like, I want the game to be engaging as a game without forcing the narrative down my throat, that is however not seen often in recent triple A games)

- forced slow walking (devs telling a story by slowing the game down to a crawl, yeah I know how to walk in games at this point and I don't need you to hold my hand for that)

- bulletsponges (oh yeah, who doesn't like those, especially without any sort of feedback. It sometimes makes sense when you're dealing with a chunky lad, but not when every damn regular unit is bathing in large HP)

- being unable to save whenever in story-driven games (this is probably a technical thing, but I do wish I could quit and continue at my leisure, there is nothing at stake gameplay-wise so you might as well grant me full agency over how to progress)

- tailing (by car, on foot, it really doesn't matter. It's so fucking boring, even in my beloved Grand Theft Auto IV, especially Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag took it to the next level and made almost every second mission just that, zzz)

- uneven difficulty (so many developers out there think it's perfectly okay for the whole game to be either easy or manageable and ramp shit up all the way through the fucking roof at the end, because.... well, it's the last battle, it has to be hard? Not if I grow accustomed to the lack of challenge over the course of the whole game, I don't want to suddenly have to completely readjust myself just so I can finally see the credits roll)

- absence of an FOV slider (newer games are getting better at including one, but I still hold the opinion that first-person-anything should come with it by default and that is not yet the case)

- obnoxiously artsy games (games with an art direction so obnoxiously "unique" where gameplay mechanics don't have to be good, simply because the artistic values is what the game is all about: GRIS or Shadow of the Colossus to name a few)

power of friendship endings/bosses with too many forms

power of friendship endings/bosses with too many forms

I hate how much I love bosses with multiple forms. It's just the fact that massive-ass forces of nature need to play all their cards to fight "us". And then the guardian ape goes Headless and fucks me up way too bad. I hate that shit-flinging asshat.

-edit: I intended to put this as a Nier Automata thread but I think staying here will do-

I think this would be a good place to vent about things we'd all dislike
First me:

You know what grinds my gears?

'True' endings

It always implies me as a fool or letting down or forgetting something at a first run and I feel absolutely unsatisfied. And if I wanted to go for it, its always in the most contrived, complex and niche goals you need to achieve in order to do another thing so as to do and another, ad nauseam. I'm just focusing on the leveling up for fighting the boss I can't handle building social connections or side quests!
Having to put myself through the whole ordeal of playing again is tiresome, and squeezing out that games appeal long enough to play again is a cheap tactic

Just give me a "you've won" ffs

I think they're conceptually cool.
You too have fallen for the illusion that had overcome the reality of the game, but you know better and know that something else needs to change.

The issue is that, let's take P5R. Turns out you need to replay 100 hours of content to play the thing again! (I think this is more of an issue in Nier's case because, yk, you can just load your save file in games like P5R

A few from me:

Most crafting and building systems: These mechanics just aren't really for me. I find the loop of 'perform monotonous tasks in exchange for stuff' to be too similar to IRL work, and if I wanted to build something I'd prefer to have an unrestricted sandbox along the lines of Tiny Glade.

The Ubisoft open world formula: Basically any open world game which is broken up into checklists of samey activities to complete. It turns worlds which should be fun and exciting to explore into big, bland containers for busywork.

Pointless Padding: I don't have a huge amount of time to play games these days, so I find it annoying when games add a bunch of slow, fetch-quest style objectives inbetween the main missions that don't serve a clear gameplay or story purpose, and exist primarily to extend the runtime. See also: you're given a straightforward main mission to do X, but oh no, due to a series of weird contrivances you now need to do A, B, C and D before you can do X.

Unnecessary Saving Restrictions: I'm not automatically against the idea of restricting when players can save, because an argument can be made that a game is testing your ability to get from point A to point B in one go. What I do find annoying though is when games restrict saving for no mechanical benefit (e.g in Final Fantasy XIII, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to save anywhere on the field because party health resets after every battle).

One big pet peeve I had forgotten to mention was the time limit in Fallout 1.

I've read that the time limit is not harsh. I don't remember myself. I've played F1, but, you know, like over 20 years ago. But just the idea to implement a time limit in an RPG is mind-boggling to me.

I remember feeling stressed by it. Should I explore that town still? What if then the remaining time is not enough to finish the main story line? In my mind it's so stupid to limit the available time in a game with a big world and many quests. You want the player to explore as much as they want and do as many quests as they want. The player can't know how much content is available still or how long a quest takes beforehand. I assume setting time limits in theses games is an attempt to increase urgency for the main story (and not have the player play 100 h of Gwent instead) but it's the worst way to do that.

I was reminded of this today by another RPG, the blood of dawnwalker, implementing a time limit. And it seems many people dislike time limits just as much as me. There were like 60 comments under the respective article saying basically the same: "Time limit? I'm out"

One of my biggest pet peeves is when games don't explain things well enough in-game, to the point where you have to pull out a guide. I shouldn't have to resort to those methods to make progress. It detracts from the experience and is a big negative in my eyes since it means that the game does a poor job of explaining itself.

You know what grinds my gears?

Invisible walls in games! Put a small fence or a police tape or a visible wall! Maybe experiment with the design or put an NPC that tells you to go back! Even an inner monologue of the character saying that they shouldn't go that way! But I can't believe invisible walls are still a thing in modern gaming.