yeah pretty much this
i opened this thread just to post something similar

as well as dlc
the chopping up a full game in dlc or the useless "decorative" dlc just to jickle and dime gamers

I would uninvent microtransactions. The need to make all the particularly good parts of a game needing payment or being able to cheat by paying is destroying gaming from within. You pay for a game (even if you pay by hour played) and that's it.

Same goes for mindless grinding or trying to extend playtime as long as possible without adding more fun. Fortunately many modern Indie games are suprisingly short.

What I actually like and which I miss in old games is the much better user interface nowadays. Developers really learned something there. Almost no need to read a manual anymore.

All in all I think the production budgets of AAA games are a bit too big. I would concentrate more on story and deepness than about effects, but that is something that goes on for a long time. I just wish a bigger part of the budget would go towards the design of the games and less about even better and more shaders.

Achievements and social stuff is okay as long as it's completely optional. Then I just turn it off and don't care about whether it exists or not.

3D graphics in strategy games.

- QTEs - I can never think of any game in any genre where QTEs were ever enjoyable nor enhanced the game experience.

- Lack of ability to skip a cut-scene or other form of dialogue by pressing a key or some other mechanism. Games that force you to watch a cut-scene with no ability to skip it are irritating. Once you've seen the cut-scene or read the dialogue once, having the OPTION to see it again is nice in many games but not having a way to skip over it when you already know what it says and do not have any need to see it again is just friggen irritating. This is especially true when the cut-scene occurs immediately upon loading a level/mission/etc. or when you respawn after death at a checkpoint or whatever. There is never a good reason to not offer the ability to skip a cut-scene. If the cut-scene contains important information that the player should not miss, maybe make the cut-scene forced the first time only perhaps, but after that allow them to skip the damn thing. I have permanently quit some games due to inablity to skip over boring cut-scenes or similar which I saw many times because immediately following the 2 minute long forced cut scene is an impossibly insane difficult boss or situation that you get killed in 10 seconds for. So it goes "2 minutes of cut-scene, 10 seconds figuring out what to do/how to do it -> die -> reload -> 2 minutes of cut-scene, 10 seconds to figure it out... repeat over and over". That is JUST NOT FUN. Instant quit and uninstall for me.

- 8-bit retro pixel graphics/art/whatever in brand new games coming out.

- microtransactions

- multi-player that requires an online central service without also providing LAN or direct-IP modes if it is technically feasible and makes sense for the type of game play in the eyes of the actual consumer buying the game. Naturally this doesn't apply to MMOs, MOBAs or other games to which the given game is centralized by the very design of the game.

- single-player with mandatory online features such as mandatory cloud storage for single-player game experiences

- All forms of copy protection/anti-piracy measures. Not to promote the ability to pirate games but to stop punishing paying honest customers by treating them like pirates.

- Just because I own a game controller and happen to have it plugged into my computer when I start the game, do not fucking assume that means I want to use the game controller to PLAY that game and disable the keyboard and mouse and force me to completely exit the game, unplug the gamepad, then start the game back up just to fucking play it with a keyboard and mouse. That is damned annoying! Too many games do this, and it is a form of consolitis that has creeped into PC gaming and needs to stop. Allow me the option to use a controller, but let me decide whether or not to use it and let me change that option WHILE THE GAME IS RUNNING. In fact, let me use the keyboard and mouse or game controller at the same time - there is no need to force one and disable the other, the computer supports multiple input devices working at the same time - use it.

- Stop dumbing down the "Options" screen in games and removing the ability to change the resolution, aspect ratio, 3D effect settings etc. PC games are not an Xbox or Playstation, and PC gamers want to configure that shit FFS. More consolitis.

- Don't start the game in a fixed resolution predetermined by the game designer. Detect the person's native display resolution, aspect ratio, and DPI at game startup, and by default use the person's native monitor resolution and properly adjust the game's display to all of these factors using sensible scaling methods including scaling the size of the HUD elements, font sizes and mouse cursor to the DPI of the display. If the person's computer is not powerful enough to handle running the game at the native resolution it is acceptable to run some performance diagnostics when the game is started for the first time and auto-detect the best settings to use which might set a lower resolution. However, if the person's computer is a screaming monster, there is never any good valid reason to set the resolution to lower than native in a properly designed and programmed video game. In addition to all of this, every game should be designed to predict what future graphics hardware might be capable of in terms of resolution, refresh rates etc. and not have hard coded limitations built into the game to limit it from taking advantage of future hardware capabilities that are easy to predict and code for. (Fortunately there are some even old games that handle all of this properly, although it is not the normal situation for most games.)


That's a good starting point on my list for now anyway. :)

I'd say microtransactions and tons of pointless DLC.

I never understood these types of questions. Any mechanic can be used effectively creatively, but their excessive use by all genres and devs seems to have convinced many people some mechanics are objectively bad. Such kind of thinking only stops more creative ways of using those mechanics.

Also what is it with so many people hating on death? Games without death often need to be very easy or non-mechanical or both. And so many games have been creative in their implementations of it. All games naturally aren't equally creative about it, but why condemn the broad prospect of it?

(Repost because it didn't seem to post the first time.)

For me, it's not death itself, but rather the presentation of that mechanic as something that is to be avoided at all costs. The way I see it, why bother to implement a mechanic into the game if it is something that the player doesn't want to encounter?

It is honestly much more fun when the game is designed in such a way that dying on purpose is sometimes a good strategy. Maybe it takes you back to a certain spot that you actually want to be. Maybe it takes you to the nearest (or most recent) checkpoint, even if that checkpoint happens to be one that you can't reach at the moment otherwise. Maybe there's a special item that, when you die, instantly revives you while doing heavy damage to all enemies on the screen, making intentional death (with that item in your inventory) often the fastest way to win battles (but the item is expensive/limited in supply, so you need to decide whether it's worth using). Maybe there's a special ability that you only get by dying.

By the way, for an interesting game without death, check out Wario Land 3 on the Game Boy Color.

Edit: Add note about special ability.

You might be interested in Prince of Persia 2008. They did away with actual death, many people disliked it but it's interesting.
When you fall instead of getting a game over/continue screen your partner uses her powers to save you at the last moment and puts you back in the last safe area.
Ya know, like checkpoints. :P
Depends on your definition of QTE's though.
I like the interaction stuff in Heavy Rain, you could call those QTE's.

Not familiar with Heavy Rain personally. As for QTE's the Wikipedia article covers it pretty much though...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_time_event

Example of a game with annoying QTEs: Tomb Raider (2013)

The game is an amazing game and I love it as a whole, but the worst part of the entire game is those damned QTEs. You're playing the game and experiencing immersion, and then all of a sudden you're forced via on-screen prompts to press certain buttons in a row at precice timing and if you get it wrong you die and are warped back to a few seconds or so before the QTE triggered and have to do it over and over again until you hit the right Mortal Kombat Fatality move for the f'ing damn game. That's not fun, it is mechanical grinding that rips and tears me out of the immersion of the game I was playing to be forced to do this robotic assembly-line push button crap that adds no value to the game and drives me mad. The worst one was about 2/3 or so through the game when Lara falls down a stream going down the side of a mountain and you have QTEs where you have to move left or right within a certain narrow time band for her to slide down the stream to the next QTE safely, over and over again N times until you make it all the way down. If you dont press the exact right button within a small range of time of the game expecting it, then Lara slams into a wooden spike that goes through her skull. You then start at the top of the mountain and repeat that boring irritating crap over and over again until you snap your keyboard over your knee and throw it at a moving car or something out of frustration. :)

For those not familiar with that portion of the game, here is a video of Conan O'Brien experiencing this wonderful QTE in the game:

https://youtu.be/xCe8-1dbXZc?t=358

Incidentally, watching Conan struggle with that QTE and scream and creep about it made me laugh at least. :) When I got to that part in the game I got so pissed after 10 times trying it that I stopped playing the game and have never finished it since.

For me, QTEs ruined Tomb Raider 2013, even though I love the game and want to finish it some day. The QTEs are just purely totally not fun at all for me though and if there is a hack or mod to just hit a button to skip that shit I would hit it in a heartbeat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmlulA8Drvs