dartmonkey

Video Game mechanics to retire

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I could probably use without fighting a boss battle in most games. I remember six or seven years ago playing the first FEAR and the first Bioshock, thinking, "That's great. We've gotten past ending games with huge bullet sponges that scream the game's themes at us in explicit terms while we kill them." And then Bioshock had an actual boss after you killed the boss.

 

I never miss boss fights when a game doesn't have them, but nine times out of ten I wish I could skip them when they do appear.

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Explicit tutorials messages. At least try to make the tutorial part of the game.

 

"I hear you can press the A Button to jump; whatever an A Button is!"

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Explicit tutorials messages. At least try to make the tutorial part of the game.

 

"I hear you can press the A Button to jump; whatever an A Button is!"

 

Colonel Campbell: "Snake, if you want to go up or down a ladder, just press the Action Button by the ladder. Approach the ladder and press the Action Button to climb it."

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I could probably use without fighting a boss battle in most games. I remember six or seven years ago playing the first FEAR and the first Bioshock, thinking, "That's great. We've gotten past ending games with huge bullet sponges that scream the game's themes at us in explicit terms while we kill them." And then Bioshock had an actual boss after you killed the boss.

 

I never miss boss fights when a game doesn't have them, but nine times out of ten I wish I could skip them when they do appear.

 

Arkham Asylum, a perfect game if just a few boss fights were cut.  Fuck you Mr. Matador-Bull-Rush Boss.  It's hard for me to remember the last game that used that enemy type where it was actually fun. 

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I wouldn't mind if they replaced difficulty settings with "I'm an adult, respect my time" and "I'm a snotty teen, if the game isn't infinity hours long I'll whine on every social network".

 

There are so many mechanics that make games a slog now, bullet sponges, bullet sponges with cover mechanics, that make the first combat take more time than a whole level of an older game. I'm also against regenerating health, specially when they do the "everything is red, when you are almost dead" thing, "bureaucratic filler", when games make you fill in form "keycard_A" and take it to "Door_1", only to have "Door_1" tell you fill in form "Fuse-23" in "Basement_C", "mini-Boss_145", "Forced Arena Fight_45", ad infinitum...

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Ergh, Bureaucratic Filler. Though that spills out into a much murkier area of gating and missions. You need X. Y has X. Y has beef with Z. Eliminate Z to get X from Y. I groaned so much when Tess and Joel needed weapons from Marlene. Any sane homocidal video game dude would just butcher Y to get X. Fuck Z.

 

 

But, then you only get half as much game and your game:$ ratio will plummet! You might as well stop giving games marks out of 10.

That's the time to crack out the 5 star system.

 

 

Explicit tutorials messages. At least try to make the tutorial part of the game.

I'm in two minds. Part of me enjoys a cleverly contextual tutorial. The other part likes the honesty of the explicit. For some reason I've got Zelda tutorials stuck in my head and they've been getting steadily worse since Ocarina. God help me if I have to Z-target another tree stump.

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For some reason I've got Zelda tutorials stuck in my head and they've been getting steadily worse since Ocarina. God help me if I have to Z-target another tree stump.

 

I guess you've not played A Link Between Worlds. That's more like "Want to know how to play?" "No? Cool, let's get on with it then." 

 

My fix for health regeneration would be that as soon as you die, you appear in the body of another member of that team/army/whatever. "Realistic" damage, but without the frustration that comes from having to restart every time you die. I don't need to feel like a mega superman, if I'm playing a shooter I'm content to be the grunt.

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My fix for health regeneration would be that as soon as you die, you appear in the body of another member of that team/army/whatever. "Realistic" damage, but without the frustration that comes from having to restart every time you die. I don't need to feel like a mega superman, if I'm playing a shooter I'm content to be the grunt.

 

That could work if the story wasn't dependent on you being a specific character.  I would also say that it might promote the idea that people are expendable but those types of games already do this anyway.

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I think Search and Loot would be way more entertaining if you had to spend a limited resource to even look. So you get to open either the cupboard or the barrel but you can't look at anything else. You would probably also have to build the game so that you didn't have to search through shit to find the resources you need to play, which would also be super.

 

DayZ does this in a way. Your hunger and thirst are always in play, so each moment you spend looking through a town consumes some of those resources. If you are too meticulous in your search, you can end up not having enough energy to make it to the next town. My last character starved to death because I searched to slowly and came up empty.

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 I would also say that it might promote the idea that people are expendable but those types of games already do this anyway.

This made me chuckle and think of every turret sequence I've played in shooters. 

 

I was thinking more on the [insert popular military shooter here] side of things. They have a barely serviceable story anyway.

 

I actually enjoyed the search/loot mechanics in The Last of Us. They fit with the story. It was a long journey where the characters were devoid of all resources. Looting places was what they did on a regular basis. Similar to State of Decay; search and loot makes sense in that context.

However, I'll agree with you that there are some serious offenders. Bioshock games drive me nuts. My character turns into one of those homeless people wheeling around a shopping cart full of bags of junk they've pulled from bins. It's stupid!

 

Also any game where you're running away from or out of something, but for some reason there's a collectable or loot to be found. It's so dumb. I always pick it up and it breaks me out of immersion. The character would not stop for the $10 on the floor if they're being chased by a monster. They wouldn't stop for the golden trigger if the house they're in is on fire and collapsing. 

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My fix for health regeneration would be that as soon as you die, you appear in the body of another member of that team/army/whatever. "Realistic" damage, but without the frustration that comes from having to restart every time you die. I don't need to feel like a mega superman, if I'm playing a shooter I'm content to be the grunt.

 

Not a miliary FPS, but Aliens: Infestation did this. It even changed the dialogue!

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BI's looting was particularly egregious because they had Elizabeth feeding you items. They didn't even need a looting mechanic! Put the stuff you want players to get right out in the world, and have Elizabeth gather 'loot'.

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Elizabeth feeding you items. 

 

Urgh! I forgot about that. I hated that so much. What was the point in having limited ammo, limited life or limited mana if whenever you get low your magic lady throws exactly what you need at you?

Side point, but man I really loathed Infinite. 

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Urgh! I forgot about that. I hated that so much. What was the point in having limited ammo, limited life or limited mana if whenever you get low your magic lady throws exactly what you need at you?

Side point, but man I really loathed Infinite. 

 

Whats the point in having doors, if every time your pressed F to open one, Elizabeth threw you an item instead. That is the single most irritating thing I have encountered in a game in may years*.

 

*I also did not enjoy Infinite.

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My fix for health regeneration would be that as soon as you die, you appear in the body of another member of that team/army/whatever. "Realistic" damage, but without the frustration that comes from having to restart every time you die. I don't need to feel like a mega superman, if I'm playing a shooter I'm content to be the grunt.

 

I never played it, but did the NES Friday the 13th game do that?  I can't tell from the Wikipedia description.

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I'm willing to admit that perhaps I bring this on myself. I'm one of those people who has to systematically scour every room for items before moving on, and in a Run'n'Gun cinematic FPS perhaps I'm just playing it wrong.

 

This really annoyed me in Dishonored. I'm trying to be the good guy here, be as stealthy as I can and avoid killing as much as I can. But if I see a nice statue or painting, why not steal it? The need for upgrades and ammo sort of turns you into an obsessive burglar.

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I feel like the looting in Last of Us was in this weird place between being thematically justified and kind of out of place at the same time. Scrounging for items makes sense in the context of the world that's established through the story, but it makes a bit less sense on a mechanical level. I think the disconnect comes from there being no time constraint on looting (like a couple people already pointed out, as compared to something like DayZ). The rest of the game does a pretty excellent job of establishing a sense of desperation and urgency, but you can be as leisurely as you like scouring (most) areas for loot once you've taken care of the baddies. Not only does it break up the pacing, it damages the sense of world by forcing you to map out the areas you're moving through by literally scouring every corner for loot prompts. It becomes more difficult to buy into a level as a believable chunk of world when you know its dimensions so exactly.

Idunno, maybe that's just me. This is coming from the same guy who couldn't leave any given cave level in Diablo 2 until the automap was completely filled in. :v

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I liked the lackadaisical pace of the looting/exploring sections of The Last of Us.  It needed those timeless spaces.  If you had a clock ticking on every scene...it would have ruined something.  It would have been existing in this perpetual stress machine.  Which in a way they are, but you need the downtime between combat. 

 

That said, I still felt that looting was mechanically broken and could have been better.  I enjoyed the element of finding the little mini-story in many areas far more than finding loot.

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Is Ys the first example of a regenerating health mechanic? I can't think of an older game that has it :/

 

What's really been bothering me in recent video games (Nintendo ones specifically) is when important words are highlighted in a different colour because we don't want to read the whole sentence, just the key important words. Notable examples: Every Nintendo game Nintendo has made in the last 2 years.

 

Also Achievements. I hate achievements. After a bout of Achievement-free games, I have realised how pointless and meaningless it all is. Fuck Achievements.

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Unless a game has immaculate UI, I'm probably going to hate the crafting system in a game. I'm playing Fallout: New Vegas right now, and mostly like it way more than Fallout 3, but the crafting system drives me bonkers.

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Is Ys the first example of a regenerating health mechanic? I can't think of an older game that has it :/

 

What's really been bothering me in recent video games (Nintendo ones specifically) is when important words are highlighted in a different colour because we don't want to read the whole sentence, just the key important words. Notable examples: Every Nintendo game Nintendo has made in the last 2 years.

 

Also Achievements. I hate achievements. After a bout of Achievement-free games, I have realised how pointless and meaningless it all is. Fuck Achievements.

You know what's funny about this color text thing? It annoyed me too. Until I started playing the La Mulana remake. Now I love it because fuuuuuuuuck this game is a pain.

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