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The smaller things that annoy you in RPGs

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,523
RT crpgs that give you a dozen different party formations + ability to create your own and then regardless of which one you choose, it falls apart as soon as you give order to move 1,5m. How are we still having this in current year in games like Deadfire or Kingmaker is unfathomable. Just contact the Age of Empires 2 devs, they somehow did it in 1999.

Also, giving a ton of items with unusual descriptions/icons/whatever. You know, the kind that instantly makes you think "I probably need it for a quest later". Which is in fact vendor trash 99% of the time, but selling it still stresses you out.
 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,523
Also, giving a ton of items with unusual descriptions/icons/whatever. You know, the kind that instantly makes you think "I probably need it for a quest later". Which is in fact vendor trash 99% of the time, but selling it still stresses you out.
BG1 trolling the player by creating a bunch of vendor trash gems, and then one of the quests being "Hey give me a sphene gem."
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
Patron
Joined
Apr 24, 2015
Messages
19,113
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
Also, giving a ton of items with unusual descriptions/icons/whatever. You know, the kind that instantly makes you think "I probably need it for a quest later". Which is in fact vendor trash 99% of the time, but selling it still stresses you out.
BG1 trolling the player by creating a bunch of vendor trash gems, and then one of the quests being "Hey give me a sphene gem."
That's why I hoard at least one of everything somewhere.
 

Removal

Scholar
Joined
Jun 23, 2017
Messages
204
useless healing items that heal so little that you're better off blowing magic or resting on healing rather than carry potions with you
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
What are you basing this on?
Well, in 3E, half-elves were basically the lame duck, getting neither the major benefit of humans nor the major benefit of elves. That is sufficient to puncture "always" the best, and if I looked for more counterexamples in other editions and rulesets I am less familiar with, I'll probably find enough examples even if we treat "always" as hyperbolic and downgrade it to "usually". I'm pretty sure that aren't even USUALLY the most powerful and will not head the list in the core rules power builds of most editions.
 

Riddler

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
2,353
Bubbles In Memoria
Barbarian civilisations acting like "noble savages" and war in general being clean.

I want to see people acting horrifically and games not censuring the the baser aspects of humanity.
 

Lurker47

Savant
Joined
Jul 30, 2017
Messages
721
Location
Texas
What are you basing this on?
Well, in 3E, half-elves were basically the lame duck, getting neither the major benefit of humans nor the major benefit of elves. That is sufficient to puncture "always" the best, and if I looked for more counterexamples in other editions and rulesets I am less familiar with, I'll probably find enough examples even if we treat "always" as hyperbolic and downgrade it to "usually". I'm pretty sure that aren't even USUALLY the most powerful and will not head the list in the core rules power builds of most editions.
I'm just basing my claim off of Baldur's Gate and Arcanum. It's also more so that the implication that many human hybrids are taboo while half-elves are pretty accepted.
 

Not.AI

Learned
Joined
Dec 21, 2019
Messages
305
Equipment that has a minimum skill level required to equip them. I hate miraculously obtaining a powerful item only to be told I can't use it.

God, Elex is so guilty of this. Playing through it now and enjoying it immensely, the exploration is top. But then you find a super awesome unique weapon, but it requires such high stats that I can't see myself reaching the requirements at any point in the near future. In fact, it has been at least 10 hours of play time since I found that weapon, and I still don't have enough character points to remotely reach the required stat scores.

Meanwhile I just upgraded a generic two-handed melee weapon twice, and that thing now does more damage than the unique legendary I found... and has lower stat requirements.

I will likely never get to use that unique, and I don't even have to because I found something better with lower requirements by now.

Hard stat requirements for equipment just sabotages the joy of finding a high level item early in the game. I defeated an extremely hard enemy to get my hands on that thing, but then I can't use it until 5 minutes before the endgame because the stat requirements are so ridiculously high? Give me a fucking break!

This.

Good point.

Minimum skill levels for using items that the player finds is of those ideas that sounds good as a game system, but like recently Tim Cain pointed out, most conflation of things determined by player skill and things determined by character stats, in any actual game, has annoying side effects and often produces results contrary to whatever systems reason it was in there in the first place.

One of the problems minimum skill levels for using items is supposed to solve is to prevent merely knowing where some special item is and speedrunning to grab it easily breaking the game. One you know where something is, can you really resist the temptation to just run by all the enemies and grab it? (Like quite possible in Call of Pripyat,) The side effect of being annoying in ordinary play, however, could outweigh the benefits.
 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,523
"Go get this item and bring it to me."

...

"Good. Now go get this other item and bring it to me."

...

"Good. I just need one last item..."

You're behind 3 loading screens, asshole. Just give me the damn shopping list to begin with.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
Buying items at a shop doesn't show how they will affect my charaters' stats.

Playing KotOR 2 right now and there isn't even a simple comparison to your gear, you have to go to the sell menu and look at what's marked equipped. Also even that doesn't show companion gear. Infuriating!
 
Self-Ejected

Alphard

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jul 18, 2019
Messages
1,487
Location
Draghistan ( former Italy)
Not really small, but:
- inventory management. I mean as much i love Deus Ex, i hated the tetris simulator that is inventory. I get that you can't carry everything, but filling inventory quckly, especially in games with a lot of loot is simply irritating
- loot. Having hundreds of useless items drop wich you have to compare to your equipped one, adds nothing to gameplay, just wastes player time.
Have less but meaningful loot drop and hand placed in important /secret locations, ala DS
- enemies :
1- AI, or better AR ( artificial retardation). There is no fun fighting against dumb opponents. We are in 2019 and AI has barely improved compared to first rpgs
2- variety. Recolors and reskinned enemies are the worst

- world. In general what i call "simmetry" all the levels, progression, quests are "simmetrical" in the sense that are homogeneous.
You complete a secondary quest and get a reward, another quest in the same area will give you a similar reward.
In a level there is x number of enemies, paths, items, a miniboss and a final boss.
In the next level there will be similar number of enemies, items a miniboss and a boss.
All the world is too monotonous, too flat, there are no surprises, no variations, nothing that could resemble the real world
 

Jackpot

Learned
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
224
When a big area opens up and there are a hundred quests scattered around and you have to start all of them at once if you don't want to backtrack for a few hours.
Or worse when you're doing one quest and you're forced to start a different one because you walked into an area/talked with an NPC accidentally that starts it.

I end up not really giving a shit about the quests and glossing over dialog because I can't keep track of which plot I'm following.
 

Peachcurl

Cipher
Joined
Jan 3, 2020
Messages
8,794
Location
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Invisible boundaries. Or visible boundaries that are not really boundaries, such as a 10 inch curbstone. Because the devs were too lazy to implement jumping. If it's a 3D game, give me 3D exploration. Jumping is a minimum, jetpacks are great.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Obvious/shallow/banal minor lore.

For example:
  • This is ruby. It can be used to imbue weapons with fire damage because red.
  • This is sapphire. It can be used to imbue weapons with cold damage because blue when it procs it palette swaps the victim to monochrome blue.
  • This emerald. This one is for poison because it palette swaps afflicted to monochrome green.
  • This is topaz. It does lightning damage because we have ran out of primaries.

Or:

  • Blue potion/gem/whatever is for mana
  • Red potion/gem/whatever is for health
Fucking fuck.

Decent counterexamples:

  • Minerals and gems in Divinity 2 ED/DKS.
  • Consumables in PS:T.
  • Potions in Revenant.
  • Gems in BG (shame they are never used for anything other than vendor trash)
 

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