What are some of the biggest examples of bad game design you’ve seen? -

[Jarolleon]

Power scaling, in most games it's pretty bad what's the point in progressing and building your character if you're going to change enemy health/defence and damage values to match? Its so bad in some games players have intentionally worn bad or no equipment because the boost from scaling was often far more powerful than any gear.

Titanforging in world of warcraft, you put in the same effort to kill the same boss as someone else, get good RNG to have the item you want drop, then on top of that you get another dice roll to find out if it's good or not. It was a terrible idea that made people care less about gearing up.

That bullshit is the primary reason why the only WoW I play is the Classic re-release. Despite all its problems (i.e. a game whose primary difficulty stemmed from lack of player knowledge, where half of the battle was learning shit, re-released in a world where there's a guide for everything) at least character progression isn't a goddamn treadmill.

 

[milk]

I really don't get the MMO RPG appeal, maybe it's just that I played the wrong ones, but I've seldom been so miserable as when I tried to play an MMO RPG with friends.
Namely Runes of Magic and Age of Conan. Path of Exile to a certain degree, too.

Runes of Magic: Terrible GUI, combat that is literaly just "click on enemy and then press puttons 1-10 in order over and over until the target dies". One of the most annoying things, you had a bag in your inventory that couldn't be dropped or sold, it contained a bunch of potions, some gems or whatever... and another bag that would unlock on the next level. Surely enough, it contained potions and stuff and another locked bag that would be unlocked when you reach the next level... and so on. That felt like the most desperate attempt to sucker people into the game, by showering them with a shitton of useless crap (I literally never used any of those potions and I couldn't even be bothered to look up what the other items do).
The quests were utterly terrible "Kill 10 wolves" and of course, they only stand around in groups of 4... anything with a "get X of Y" quest had this setup. Annoying as fuck and it's just broing busywork. Adding a layer of "walking in circles, hoping for a new group of Y to pop up" is mind numbingly boring.
A friend of mine obsessed over this game and spent days grinding stuff to unlock and upgrade a guild-hall, that literally no one from outside the guild could even see.

Age of Conan wasn't much better, the combat wasn't as terrible, but overall, it still had one of my MMO pet-peeves on full display: Enemies that just stand around in small flocks, waiting to be killed. Wouldn't even be that bad if their agro-range wasn't so comically small. There's just a bunch of barbarians standing around, with their thumbs up their ass, until you approach closer than 10 feet and they go into full rage mode. I like games for the immersion, and this breaks immersion immediately. Doesn't help that the quests are of the aforementioned "kill x amount of Y" types with "walking around until you find enough Y" shit.
I was outright miserable trying to find enjoyment in this game, hoping it'll become more fun at some point. But nope. Only played it like 3 days and the most fun I had was on the last day, when my friends and me did some quests together, after like the 2nd or so, I just stopped giving a fuck and went along with them without even taking the quests. At the end, I trolled them by shooting pillars that they needed to destroy and the game wouldn't recognize the quest as being finished if someone without the quest destroyed them, so they had to wait for them to respawn.

The only time I was equally miserable in a game was when we played Borderlands 2 (I think) in coop mode with 4 players. Every enemy was an absurdly hard to kill bullet-sponge, there was a shitton of loot getting dropped all over the place (and the "Oh look a better gun!" dopamine rush ends, when that shit happens every 5 seconds and the enemies still take a minute of concentrated fire by the entire party to die). FFS, I played that game for about 90 minutes and uninstalled it. The humor and constant QUIRKAAAAAY dialogue pissed me off, too.

Another pet-peeve that kills any interest, especially in FPS games: Pop-ups for XP, damage, hitpoints and so on. I think CoD does this, where you shoot a guy and your screen gets cluttered with popups announcing you shot some wanker in the dick for a tripple double extra XP boost for the next 25,3seconds or whatever the fuck that clusterfuck on the display is supposed to mean. I don't care if it's somewhere in the periphery, but when it pops up in the middle of the screen, it's just annoying as fuck. Doesn't help that the entire attitude towards gaming that this stands for is utterly toxic to me.

You missed the boat on MMOs. WoW onwards has been all trash, including WoW. All the older ones are dead and aren't worth playing anymore as they modified their games to attract the WoW crowd.

 

[Meat Target]

The only time I was equally miserable in a game was when we played Borderlands 2 (I think) in coop mode with 4 players. Every enemy was an absurdly hard to kill bullet-sponge, there was a shitton of loot getting dropped all over the place (and the "Oh look a better gun!" dopamine rush ends, when that shit happens every 5 seconds and the enemies still take a minute of concentrated fire by the entire party to die). FFS, I played that game for about 90 minutes and uninstalled it. The humor and constant QUIRKAAAAAY dialogue pissed me off, too.

It was funny when I still thought 2012 Reddit humor was funny. I'm sure I'd breaking shit out of annoyance if I were to play it now.

And Borderlands 3 was just so bland. The villains being streamers was one of the worst cases of "How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?" I'd ever seen.

I gave up when I found out the hottie Maya gets killed off for that annoying little shit Ava.

 

[Orange Rhymer]

I bought this horror game called "Gone Home" once, but they forgot to put any monsters in it.

The monsters made the game.

 

[Un Platano]

A more simple gripe: Minesweeper

Your likelihood of winning decays exponentially with board size to the point that it becomes statistically impossible to solve a board over a certain size even if there aren't that many mines, simply due to the number of times you would have to successfully guess which spot has a mine. You can get as good as you want recognizing patterns in the mines but success ultimately depends on a series of coin tosses no matter how skilled you are. Kaboom should have been the default rules to begin with. Regular minesweeper is a cruel joke.

 

[South American Tapir]

1. X-Factor in (Ultimate) Marvel vs. Capcom 3. It was a limited time boost that would increase the power for your characters. Most characters would also get a boost in speed. Your red health would also slowly restore. The time and power of the boost would increase depending on how many characters you had left (ie if you were down to your last character, the boost would last about 15 seconds and your character could be extremely fast and powerful). This could EASILY turn the tables for less skilled players, as even if you were getting wailed on, you could turn X-Factor on and start winning with a character you barely knew how to play if you got a few lucky hits. Certain characters like Wesker, Dark Phoenix, and Strider Hiryu were ridiculous with X-Factor on.

It wouldn't matter that much if X-Factor could be turned off, but it was always available, and the only way it could be avoided is if both players didn't use it.

2. Gems in Street Fighter x Tekken. Your characters could be equipped a power pack of gems that could increase various abilities to your characters (more attack power, faster moves, etc.) Like X-Factor, Gems were basically a crutch to help less skilled players do well against people that actually tried to win the game. Not helping that some gems were straight up broken compared to others, especially whether you got the ridiculously OP gems by pre-ordering the game from GameStop. The saving grace is that you didn't HAVE to use them, but if you went online, good luck in finding someone with the same mindset.

 

[anti SJW]

Forcing you to use controls you don't like.

Nintendo is the top offender. I had a WiiU, one of the selling points Nintendo was trying to promote was motion controls. You tilt or move the controller, camera or something else would move on screen.

There were a couple of WiiU games where motion controls were enabled by default. Plus you couldn't change it until you finish the tutorial. So you are forced to play like that for part of the game. Add to the fact that I play inverted Y axis and its normal Y axis really screwed me up.

Everyone hates that shrine in breath of the wild where you had to use the motion controls to move a ball through a maze.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I forgot to add a controversial "zero consequences on going forward" in gameplay.
While I know it will suck losing potential sidequests from advancing the story, the result is that there are very little stakes in the overall plot as the devs need to make sure everyone is alive and in the same condition if they are in a quest, while not being in a quest is a giant red flag for death/treachery).

Also having the game suddenly have a "realistic" time limit or twist without informing the player. It is pointless and usually exists to insult the player to thinking he is playing a game.

Actually, I'll add the Mass Effect 2 final mission to having the latter twist plus a possible death for every character, guaranteeing that the badass crew you assembled for the third installment won't be anything but glorified cameos since it will be impossible to account for every possible death.

 

[LifeguardHermit]

I really love it when a reboot of an older game has horrid proprietary keybinds that can only be fixed in a cfg file bc some retard dev forgot that keybinds shouldn't conflict when you're walking vs driving.

But thats just the dated version of this gripe! Now, thanks to steam, we can properly go fuck ourselves: steam has started storing configuration files in json for some games so haha mouse 2 is forever "change weapon mode" and Z is zoom bc fuckyou.

 

[LifeguardHermit]

Forcing you to use controls you don't like.

Nintendo is the top offender. I had a WiiU, one of the selling points Nintendo was trying to promote was motion controls. You tilt or move the controller, camera or something else would move on screen.

There were a couple of WiiU games where motion controls were enabled by default. Plus you couldn't change it until you finish the tutorial. So you are forced to play like that for part of the game. Add to the fact that I play inverted Y axis and its normal Y axis really screwed me up.

Everyone hates that shrine in breath of the wild where you had to use the motion controls to move a ball through a maze.

Sorry for the double post, idk why that did that when I was editing the prior post.

 

[Idiotron]

A few that come to mind:

1. Planet scanning in Mass Effect 2.
I can't think of a more grindy, tedious time wasting game mechanic.
I've fallen aasleep in the middle of scanning a planet several times, that's how exciting it is.
It made me not even want to try out ME3.

2. Drawing magic in Final Fantasy 8.
I know what some of you will say: "There are other methods of getting magic'.
Sure but imagine for a moment that you got the game back in 1999 and you can't just look stuff up online.
What do you do? You do what the game tells you to do and you spend countless hours getting your ass kicked by enemies just so you can stock up on magic that you won't even use because you need to equip it to your attributes i order to be strong, fast and resilliant.

3. OTE's in general.
QTEs are just a lazy cop out that devs implement when they don't feel like adding actual gameplay.
Special mention goes to QTEs where you have to mash a button like you have Parkinson's.
The worst thing however areQTEs out of nowhere during cutscenes.
"Oh, finally a cutscene, I'll just grab my drink and..." BOOM! YOU'RE DEAD!
Fuck Sega for popularizing that shit.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Blades in the Dark. It's a TTRPG with no roleplaying. It's a heist game where you don't plan out the heists. And your reward is currency that can be used for fuck all because there's nothing interesting in the game. Absolutely terrible.

 

[FencePost]

The general idea that giving enemies more health is a difficulty modifier, especially while not increasing player damage. I'm looking at you, (A)RPGs, MMOs, and shooters; quit padding your game with 6 flavors of damage sponges.

The concept of a 15+ minute long boss fight in any genre. The "Will of the Emperor" fight in WoW is the best example I know of. It's just 15 minutes of half the raid wailing on one guy while the other half beats up additional guys that spawn at intervals. No real positioning aside from the bare minimum; just beat up some dudes in a mausoleum basement. FFXIV is better about it with their "Ultimate" versions of fights since there's constant raid wipe mechanics and positional changes; but once you get the mechanics down, they become a very involved dps check.

 

[Freebirth Toad]

The textures on some terrain can mislead you into thinking you can climb it when you can't, which is incredibly irritating.

The Hibernal Rift map is HORRIBLE about making you think "hey I can get out of this death trench here" and cockblocking you. There are "ramps" that not even Locusts and Fleas can do their gravity defying run-up-walls bullshit on.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

The concept of a 15+ minute long boss fight in any genre. The "Will of the Emperor" fight in WoW is the best example I know of. It's just 15 minutes of half the raid wailing on one guy while the other half beats up additional guys that spawn at intervals. No real positioning aside from the bare minimum; just beat up some dudes in a mausoleum basement. FFXIV is better about it with their "Ultimate" versions of fights since there's constant raid wipe mechanics and positional changes; but once you get the mechanics down, they become a very involved dps check.

I do like that in MGS3 you're given a couple of options to avoid the roughly 45-minute fight with The End. The fight itself is actually well-designed since it's supposed to be a slow, intense sniper battle where you're actively trying to get the upper hand, but at least the game allows you to bypass it if you don't want to do it.

 

[Fields Of Rye]

Let me explain to you the hell that is smut gaming

>Download game for porn, big reviews, life simulator in Russia, seems funny at least

>Described as "Play as a magical girl during the fall of the soviet union", how can you not at least be curious
>Game is somehow fucking 30 GB large because retards slapped 4k images of the russian countryside or some shit
>Start off as dude because of course you do
>By 30 minutes you have not seen as single tit
>Have to manage Food, Drink, Shit, Piss, hygiene, et cetera
>Have to manage fucking University. Homework, and studying.
>There is still no porn
>School ends and summer begins
>Get on train because apparently the "big city" is better
>Get surrounded by Russian Officials
>They take your money and leave you alone
>Get jumped by a Gopnik on my way off the train
>He only spoke fucking Russian
>click randomly hoping for smut
>There is no smut
>Character falls down dead because I hadn't been brushing my teeth with toothpaste, and had developed fucking Gingevitus

I have so many of these, you have no fucking clue.

 

[AbyssStarer]

Tales of Zestiria's water temple has eyes that warp you to the beginning/middle of the dungeon if they spot you, and you have to fling your camera around every angle at every step to avoid them. Iirc there's even some on the ceiling and there's one on the floor right in front of a spot on the map that looks safe. This one eye actually progresses you, but every time I have seen somebody do this dungeon they scream bloody-murder when they hit this eye because they're damn sick of walking through the dungeon over and over.

The wind dungeon is also shit in that it tests your spatial memory but the layout is such a mess and the moving parts are all the same objects copy-pasted, and every time you activate a switch the game has to have one of those mini-cutscenes displaying it, and you hate the characters making Witty Quips (tm) as you run around.

And the music has no right to be as good as it is

(I know these thumbnails look gay, but that's because the game is actually gay and has heavily implied gay characters.)

Also Zestiria has a way to make your run-speed higher but the way to proc it (which you have to do multiple times to get to max speed) is by overhearing people in towns, or by getting into encounters. It makes no sense whatsoever.

It also has an overly-complex equipment system where you have to luck-out buying equipment so that it not only has beneficial bonus-skills, but that it also gets a bingo on this (which iirc you can't see unless you equip the item). You also have to continually fuse items together kind of just because. This shit is entirely tacked on.

At least the game which came after this one was way better.

 

[Cod of War]

Let me explain to you the hell that is smut gaming

>Download game for porn, big reviews, life simulator in Russia, seems funny at least

>Described as "Play as a magical girl during the fall of the soviet union", how can you not at least be curious
>Game is somehow fucking 30 GB large because retards slapped 4k images of the russian countryside or some shit
>Start off as dude because of course you do
>By 30 minutes you have not seen as single tit
>Have to manage Food, Drink, Shit, Piss, hygiene, et cetera
>Have to manage fucking University. Homework, and studying.
>There is still no porn
>School ends and summer begins
>Get on train because apparently the "big city" is better
>Get surrounded by Russian Officials
>They take your money and leave you alone
>Get jumped by a Gopnik on my way off the train
>He only spoke fucking Russian
>click randomly hoping for smut
>There is no smut
>Character falls down dead because I hadn't been brushing my teeth with toothpaste, and had developed fucking Gingevitus

I have so many of these, you have no fucking clue.

I played one of those. You had options on how you'd start with some giving you powers What's fucking hilarious is that in the magical power route includes Naruto characters.

 

[Dysnomia]

The bat boss in the first Ys game. Fuck that guy. I hope the Chinese turn him into soup.

No matter what it's pretty much a war of attrition where you better hope he dies first. He transforms into a swarm of bats and makes a beeline for you after you open the chest in the boss room. You have to herd the bats and circle around them so they don't spread out too much and hit you too much. Then you better hope you are fast enough to hit him in the split second he is vulnerable while very briefly reforming into a big bat. Once he starts closing his wings again you can't hit him even if he hasn't split into a swarm yet.

I have beaten him without silver gear but I think it was the DS version. The level cap is higher there anyway. In other versions Adol is capped at 10 and the strongest you can be at that point is level 10 with silver equipment and the power wing.

The tower boss that's just an orb with glowing rocks around is is a lot easier even though it looks worse.

It's a short game even with the extra dungeon in the DS version. So I guess annoying bosses helps pad out the length. Half the length is the tower, which you can't leave once you enter. But since you have to have all the silver equipment before entering it's not like there's anything you are really going to need. You just make sure you got all the rings because they are all pretty useful. Meanwhile, since you can't use items while in boss battles, once you have the heal ring potions are not really needed much unless you get trapped in a gauntlet somewhere.

Oh, and it seems like you don't need that large shield, which you likely skipped because you get the silver one in the shrine. But once you trigger an initially unavoidable trap in the tower all your silver stuff is temporarily stolen. I didn't want any blank spaces so I got the large shield even though I didn't even need the middle shield.

Big Bad must be defeated with the silver equipment even though you get better stuff further up in the tower. However, since that stuff won't work against him I guess it doesn't matter. You'll take massive damage and do no damage without it. Just seems silly to have better gear you can't even use against the final boss. I understand why you need it as it's part of the series' lore. Just seems stupid since you later find stuff with better stats. Why then can't the silver equipment be the best stuff and in the tower then? Especially since they were important relics and hiding them in very noticeable red chests is not the best way to collect precious cleria for your evil plans. Maybe because getting the sword from the Roda tree would have been impossible for a bunch of low IQ monsters? I dunno.

 

[Marissa Moira]

The bat boss in the first Ys game. Fuck that guy. I hope the Chinese turn him into soup.

No matter what it's pretty much a war of attrition where you better hope he dies first. He transforms into a swarm of bats and makes a beeline for you after you open the chest in the boss room. You have to herd the bats and circle around them so they don't spread out too much and hit you too much. Then you better hope you are fast enough to hit him in the split second he is vulnerable while very briefly reforming into a big bat. Once he starts closing his wings again you can't hit him even if he hasn't split into a swarm yet.

I have beaten him without silver gear but I think it was the DS version. The level cap is higher there anyway. In other versions Adol is capped at 10 and the strongest you can be at that point is level 10 with silver equipment and the power wing.

The tower boss that's just an orb with glowing rocks around is is a lot easier even though it looks worse.

It's a short game even with the extra dungeon in the DS version. So I guess annoying bosses helps pad out the length. Half the length is the tower, which you can't leave once you enter. But since you have to have all the silver equipment before entering it's not like there's anything you are really going to need. You just make sure you got all the rings because they are all pretty useful. Meanwhile, since you can't use items while in boss battles, once you have the heal ring potions are not really needed much unless you get trapped in a gauntlet somewhere.

Oh, and it seems like you don't need that large shield, which you likely skipped because you get the silver one in the shrine. But once you trigger an initially unavoidable trap in the tower all your silver stuff is temporarily stolen. I didn't want any blank spaces so I got the large shield even though I didn't even need the middle shield.

Big Bad must be defeated with the silver equipment even though you get better stuff further up in the tower. However, since that stuff won't work against him I guess it doesn't matter. You'll take massive damage and do no damage without it. Just seems silly to have better gear you can't even use against the final boss. I understand why you need it as it's part of the series' lore. Just seems stupid since you later find stuff with better stats. Why then can't the silver equipment be the best stuff and in the tower then? Especially since they were important relics and hiding them in very noticeable red chests is not the best way to collect precious cleria for your evil plans. Maybe because getting the sword from the Roda tree would have been impossible for a bunch of low IQ monsters? I dunno.

You want to talk about bullshit in YS try the Boss Rush for YS Origin on nightmare.

The game is so unstable that you have a high chance to have the game freeze midway through and lose all your progress. The Boss Rush is generally very hard on Nightmare because it levels you down to the bosses level so you don't get to use your endgame abilities and stats.

Ys 8 really fixed most of the problems in the series that were holding it back. 9 is set to come out in the west next month.