How do you feel about such caps in idle games, where said cap is there to prevent the player from getting an excessive amount of a resource just because they left the game running for a long time?

(I can see more than one argument here.)

Even worse is when the "rubber banding" happens in a mini-game that's needed either to progress in the main game, or that has a really nice reward that you want for the main game. Zelda: Majora's Mask is an offender here; in the Goron Races, I'm pretty sure that my best time was not a win, despite having won the race with a significantly worse time; I could actually spot an opponent teleporting near the end of the race; the strategy becomes not getting the best time, but rather being ready to derail that opponent at the end, and that feels wrong, and may be why that part is so frustrating (aside from being out-of-genre).

First person shooters that will take all your carefully hoarded guns and ammo away midway through the game.

PLEASE WAIT; COLLATING REPLIES...

A: Why even include the option if it can't be used?

B: True, redundantly unclear stats are a special kind of awful.

C: Oh, clipping can occur in very incompetently programmed grid based games, just look at pokemon.

D: Or defaulting to a language with a very bad dub/localizing.

E: That feels more like an honest apology for a scripting sequence breaking than a tongue and cheek, "WHOOPS, GUESS I SHOULDA FIXED THAT!"

F: Especially when you're subject to a party system where members come and go as they please. I know a couple games that have that.

G: Indeed, indeed.

H: I can't exactly think of an idle game that comes to mind with that.

For C, I can't, offhand, think of an example in 1st generation Pokemon that has what I would call a clip (and I'm choosing that generation simply because it's known to be spectacularly buggy, and it's still grid based).

For H, there's CivClicker, where your capacities for basic resources (Food, Wood, Stone) are limited, initially to 200 but you can increase it with certain buildings. Cookie Clicker also has a minigame where you cast spells, and your mana has a cap (though there's the rather curious fact that it regenerates faster when it's higher to begin with).

One other note on story/gameplay inconsistency: I would argue that it's not a problem if it improves the gameplay. For example, I think Final Fantasy 7 wouldn't be as bad if the game allowed you to use a certain character after their death with no explanation given at all.

One other hate: When a game gives you power-ups as you progress, and you get multiple lives, but if you die you lose *all* the power-ups you've collected over the course of the game, essentially making the game a one-life game. (Gradius and Zero Wing come to mind here.) (Yes, this may remind you of another topic I made recently; I intentionally put that sort of problem into the game described into the first post of the topic.)

Another one: I dislike it when games fully heal you when you level up, as I just don't like mechanics that make the precise timing of level ups matter. It also breaks the whole idea of managing healing and resource consumption when the game can unexpectedly restore you to full.

I hate mazes, combined with savegame limitations! (example: Silent Hill 4 subway (2))
FPP is usually worse than TPP....

In Terraria at least there is a way to pause, just fiddly. press esc to go to your inventory/crafting menu, go to settings and enable autopause, then when you press esc it will pause, does mean you cannot place items from your inventory screen anymore though but you can turn it off again after you need to pause.

on the topic.

unskippable sequences that only exist for story, the beginning of fallout 3 and 4 come to mind.

-Severe trial & error like when you can get yourself completely stuck or hidden stats, having to read the manual for basic mechanics (unless the manual is something special), nonsensical P&C Adventure puzzles, "impossible until you learn the whole pattern" enemies or bosses
-Confusing and clunky interfaces
-Bad camera controls (loose scrolling in 2D games)
-Dungeon crawlers with clunky tile-based movement and having to click icons to perform actions
-Poorly balanced difficulty
-Unskippable cutscenes or dialogue you can't speed up on a per paragraph/text box basis, Long and unskippable boot up sequences (logos etc.)
-Pre-Doom (w/ mouselook & strafing) FPS games/engines and pre-Warcraft 2/C&C RTS engines (lack of hotkeys, queues and group control)
-When it's too far (20-30+ minutes of gameplay) between checkpoints or save points
-No control config
-No maps in an exploration-focused game
-No journal/quest log feature in a quest focused game
-Dying from falling like half a screen's length (old platformers)
-Collectathons with forced collecting of lots of generic point or key type items a la Rayman 1 and Banjo Kazooie (here they are also often placed in mundane locations)
-Long/frequent loading (around 10+ seconds is too much)
-Don't really care for mechanics like stealing or stealth being reduced to a dice roll, such as in Fallout & BG
-RPGs/AAs/ARPGs where the NPCs sound like pieces of a guide (sometimes poorly translated) and interaction with the environment is rather low while there's lots of visual detail and objects lying around in houses for example. I guess this still happens to a degree. I tend to agree with the Chekhov's gun principle except I also like some flavor text that isn't necessary to progress, as is common in P&C games.
-Games that use save anywhere, frequent checkpoints or lots of 1-ups as an excuse for a poorly designed challenge - sadly this kinda became a thing in platformers not that long ago with Meat Boy, VVV etc. except there the segments between checkpoints are just much shorter
-Permanently stat- or item stealing enemies with no chance of getting them back
-The Rogue-like mechanic of not being able to practice a segment because if you die then a new world is spawned, especially combined with very uneven difficulty.
-Dead space/long travel distances. Should be used sparsely for dramatic effect or to convey a sense of scale. Common problem with earlier 3D games
-No stash anywhere in limited inventory games
-Missing too much vs regular enemies in an RPG (even worse in an ARPG where you manually attack the enemy and can still miss when it looks like a hit)
-Overly random battle outcomes in TBS/SRPG games (Fire Emblem MnN SNES)
-Having one save slot per game only
-Backtracking and one way paths in exploration focused games with interconnected worlds. Especially when there's nothing new to see in or new way to traverse a previous area
-Having lots of gear (or abilities) in a game that becomes useless shortly after finding it. See Igavanias
-Having to unlock easy mode or some OP ability/build, or hard mode. Pretty common in Igavanias
-Uninteractive and bland tutorials (see FF8)
-Double tap to run or dodge
-Escort segments where the NPC can't be ordered around adequately and/or has poor pathfinding

That's a lot of hate...
Want to have a cup of tea, some sweet snacks and talk about it?

This tends to be a problem with accuracy-focused mechanic, as seen in D&D, as well as early CRPGs that tended to copy many aspects of D&D. Specifically, we have the following characteristics:
* Leveling up increases the character's accuracy and sometimes number of attacks, but not the damage dealt per hit.
* Armor increases the character's evasion rather than reducing damage.

As a result, accuracy *has* to be low initially in these systems, so that there's some room to grow, and as a result attacks tend to miss more often than in damage-focused mechanics.

This problem can, for example, be see in the following games:
* Ultima 1-4
* Wizardry series
* Might and Magic series (at least through 5, and perhaps later games to some extent)

Then some games made armor reduce damage, but accuracy/number of attacks is still the thing that improves with level (or equivalent):
* Ultima 5-6
* Wasteland and Dragon Wars
* Final Fantasy 1

For comparison, here's how some other games handle it:
* Final Fantasy 2-4 have number of attacks be the main thing that improves, with some accuracy improvements (note that FF2 has the problem with attacks frequently missing at the start; FF3 finally fixed that issue); Final Fantasy 5 made accuracy/evasion not stat dependent so many weapon types can't miss unless the target has evasion (which only certain enemies do)
* Dragon Quest has attacks hitting by default, with each enemy having its own evasion chance (Demon Knights have a high evasion chance (about 25%, so still less than many of the examples here), while others have low evasion chances (Metal Slime; what might look like a miss is actually an attack failing to do damage because of the high defense of this monster species); unlike the other examples, leveling up does significantly increase the damage you do when you hit the enemy, allowing this series to avoid the problem.

These are some points that I didn't think of but would definitely subscribe to as well.

The camera thing mostly bugs me in Third Person 3D games while fighting or platforming, when the camera automatically changes the angle in inconvenient ways, or even when you're given full control but without any ease-of-use and you have to control character and camera independently of each other, no locking onto your target etc. Also, in RPGs like NWN2 or the Divinity: Original Sin titles, I always felt the need to zoom out more than the games allowed me to - they had tactical combat without giving you sufficient tactical overview, and I even found it hard to orientate sometimes because the camera was zoomed in that closely. In the D:OS games I also didn't like how the camera was constantly switching focus on the currently active character in combat, so that it was hard to look around outside of your own turn, and I didn't see any option to toggle that off.

Inventory management is a part of many games, for better or worse, but it often gets in the way of my enjoyment if I constantly have to deal with it and it's interrupting the flow, slowing the pace; therefor I don't really like inventory limits, worse if the game is rather stingy with regards to them. Also weight mechanics - you can carry 5 different sets of armor, but 6? Now that would be unrealistical! ;P

Having only one savegame slot per game is not just inconvenient but also very risky. I lost all of my progress in Rayman Origins due to that because that one single autosave file got corrupted during saving.

And it's happened several times that I was so weary and exhausted after playing or reading through a tutorial that I took a break or quit afterwards and never really got to play the actual game. I'm thinking more about recent games, but the same also happened to me with Deus Ex and Alpha Protocol. I think I've played through the tutorial of Deus Ex two or three times and always quit afterwards, never really played the game. Zeno Clash 2 comes to mind as featuring one of the most terrible tutorials, where you're overwhelmed with learning a whole bunch of abstract combos before you even start the game and walk around a bit. IMO games should ease you into everything, letting you jump right into the action and teach you by playing. Beginnings are very important, in games just as much as in books. I don't want to have to rely on other people's "it gets more interesting after the first few hours".

On the contrary, a lot to love when it's done right/avoided in games. But that's not the topic. Not sure why you gave this dismissive response to me particularly lol.

Right, well I suppose it's also reductive to hone in only on that since it also matters what the enemy can do to you in the downtime if you miss, or what you were trying to hit the enemy with and thus, the level of frustration due to missing with a potentially very important attack.


Yes, pretty much agree with all of this. :)

Earlier 3D games tended to net let you get behind the avatar if standing near a wall or other large obstacle, instead of making that transparent and letting you rotate as normal.

Some more I've thought of, regarding RPGs with XP-based leveling and either level caps (even if more than 2x the expected endgame level) or ever-increasing XP requirements:
* Skill point systems (without easy respec), but I've mentioned that before
* Random stat gains
* Random starting stats, when they matter in the long run (Wizardry and Bard's Tale are OK, Icewind Dale is not)
* Missable stats; for example, items (or other equipables) that boost stats if they happen to be equipped at level up (FF6 and FF9 are guilty of this) (stats depending on current job in games with job systems are another example)

These factors aren't as much of an issue in games where there's no level cap (short of the maximum integer) and XP requirements stop increasing past a certain point.

Another mechanic I dislike is the HP/MP restore at level up, as it really ruins resource management. For example, in my magic-only (except for one boss) playthrough of Final Fantasy Adventure, I found that, even though I was casting spells all the time, I rarely needed Ethers because I would level up and fully regain MP before needing to use it, and that just feels wrong. Also, it makes the precise timing of a level up matter, which is a mechanic I don't like (equipment affecting stat gains also has this issue).

I remember Super Mario 64 DS having this issue; they did not fix the camera issues that the original SM64 had.