Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

The smaller things that annoy you in RPGs

Catacombs

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 10, 2017
Messages
5,928
Gems in BG (shame they are never used for anything other than vendor trash)

After collecting a lot of them in BG1 and not getting a good return on investment, I've since skipped collecting all gems in BG2. What a waste.
 

paperjack

Literate
Joined
Jan 5, 2020
Messages
24
  • 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.
  • Blue potion/gem/whatever is for mana
  • Red potion/gem/whatever is for health

It's actually good design to let players intuitively figure out what a thing does from how it looks - just because something is a trope it doesn't mean it's bad.
If it were a book, I'd expect something novel, but in a video game/rpg, why make it harder for the player? Color coding and forming quick connections ( red -> fire, green -> poison, etc) is an useful thing. That way I can quickly tell, oh that loot is green and I want that because my character uses poison to fight, even in the middle of something intense.
On the flip side, there are several rogue likes where everything is random, and there is an unique fun in the discovery aspect of it.
 

Fishy

Savant
Joined
Jan 24, 2019
Messages
398
Location
Ireland
Unsafe containers. If there are boxes, wardrobes, chests, I want to know that I can put stuff inside and find it afterwards. I don't care that since I last left something inside I did 3 dungeons, changed chapter, leveled up, divorced twice, finished the main quest and turned the tavern into a camel breeding business: my shit should still be in that chest.
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
That nothing has reproduced Morrowind's simple and elegant system of holding ctrl while clicking to take one item and shift to take the entire stack without having to use the quantity selection.

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.

In 3E all core races except Human and Dwarf just plain old sucked in comparison to Human and Dwarf. Half-elf sucked and its only use was that it sucked less than elf (no con penalty) and could still pick elf-only stuff.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Unsafe containers. If there are boxes, wardrobes, chests, I want to know that I can put stuff inside and find it afterwards. I don't care that since I last left something inside I did 3 dungeons, changed chapter, leveled up, divorced twice, finished the main quest and turned the tavern into a camel breeding business: my shit should still be in that chest.
Actually, it shouldn't, unless it's your chest (and no one pilfered it). However, any items with any degree of uniqueness to them should still be in the world somewhere. Stuff truly disappearing is the main problem with unsafe containers. Same should happen with such items when dropped for whatever reason - if the game notices it's cleaning them up it should put them somewhere and possibly attach some breadcrumbs.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
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.
To be fair, real life lore isn't exactly less shallow.

"This is a flammenwerfer. It werfs flammen."
 

InD_ImaginE

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 23, 2015
Messages
5,367
Pathfinder: Wrath
Game which is 90% combat like old Wizardy/Might and Magic. Especially when the combat is just excel simulator where you grind grind until you get bigger numbers to fight bigger enemies.

Unituitive progression system. I am fine with characters build which could fail and becomes unplayable. Some games like old Wizardy go out of it way to not tell you anything about race/class combination and sooner or later you are softlocked because you are not reading character building 101 in Wizardy written by Aweigh who had 200 hours to try shit out beforehand.
 

RoksCQ

Novice
Joined
Nov 12, 2019
Messages
25
What are some of the smaller things that really annoy you about RPGs? Stuff that other people may not notice that much.

One of mine is when you can't turn down quests. So you talk to an NPC, they offer a quest that may be completely out of character for you to do so you say "no fuck you", and the game STILL gives you the quest with the NPC saying "Ok... but I'll be here waiting for you anyway!"

Entering the "Sphere of Plot" areas with no indicator forcing you into a conversation / cutscene point of no return. Especially taking the wrong turn in a dungeon and missing whatever could have been at the other side of the fork in the road...
 

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.
To be fair, real life lore isn't exactly less shallow.

"This is a flammenwerfer. It werfs flammen."
Except Flammenwerfer is a piece of technology engineered specifically to werf Flammen. Ruby, OTOH is just a rock that happens to be red.
If magic lore in your setting amounts to a kindergarten level match the colour puzzle why is not every peasant an archmage?
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,278
Location
Massachusettes
- randomized loot
- mandatory excessive grinding to succeed or level up
- cliched characters & villains
- procedurally generated or "repeatable" quests
- cookie-cutter NPCs
- the same 20 or 30 lines repeated by every NPC over and over again when they're in hearing or viewing distance

Regarding that last one, not an RPG but I liked how Black Mesa had a huge variety of different voice acted lines for the scientists. I could listen to those timid wimps all day.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,184
Location
Bjørgvin
Companions AI.

From Morrowind's companions that insists on always positioning themselves between you and the nearest enemy, alway repositioning when you try to move around.
To Diablo 2, where the Rogue instead of just parking her butt at a safe distance and plonking away has to constantly move around, preferable inside a monster group or right in front of flame throwing enemies, getting herself killed. I swear I've never used the phrase "stupid cunt" as much as I've done the past few months. I'm starting to get worried that the neighbours will call the police for abusing my GF/wife (I don't have one, but they don't know that).
 

Metronome

Learned
Joined
Jan 2, 2020
Messages
277
Killing enemies is morally neutral
But stealing from them lowers your alignment

Or killing certain enemies, even if they are initially hostile, lowers your alignment
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Killing enemies is morally neutral
But stealing from them lowers your alignment

Or killing certain enemies, even if they are initially hostile, lowers your alignment

I'd go one step further and say that having a single global monodimensional reputation is annoying. As an example i think Fallout New Vegas does it both right and wrong at the same time: it has per-faction reputation that isn't even monodimensional (you cannot go from negative to positive, negative and positive actions are accounted separately - though TBH i cannot recall any situation where a mixed reputation is taken into account) but at the same time it does have a global reputation that is monodimensional - and even worse, it has the issue where stealing from a faction that you are enemies with lowers that reputation. Fortunately AFAIK it rarely never into account (i think Boone or Cassy wont talk to you or something, but even when i played as a cannibal serial killer who killed everyone that wouldn't be of any use, they'd still talk to me so i don't know how extreme you have to be).
 

InD_ImaginE

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 23, 2015
Messages
5,367
Pathfinder: Wrath
and even worse, it has the issue where stealing from a faction that you are enemies with lowers that reputation

A thief is a thief no matter who he stole from.

And for Bethesda engine open world games nothing is stopping you from stealing from your allies anyway, so global reputation that the player is dirty kleptomaniac thief is warranted.
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
and even worse, it has the issue where stealing from a faction that you are enemies with lowers that reputation

A thief is a thief no matter who he stole from.

The problem is that it doesn't make sense - for example Cass is aligned with the NCR (and even attack you if you are labeled a terrorist by them) but at the same time she will stop talking to you if you have Evil karma - which is lowered by stealing from Legion. Besides the game already has the ability to take into account the player's reputation when stealing from some factions. For example stealing from Powder Gangers will lower your karma unless your reputation is low with them. If you feel like both Powder Gangers and Legion are wrong and/or evil and your reputation with them is very negative, it feels arbitrary to have your karma lowered by one but not the other.
 

Geckabor

Savant
Joined
Mar 6, 2016
Messages
173
Dungeons or areas where the background story is only explained through random scattered notes or stuff like computer logs. I can deal with it if it's done occasionally, but it just gets tiring if overused and I stop caring.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
After collecting a lot of them in BG1 and not getting a good return on investment, I've since skipped collecting all gems in BG2. What a waste.

No Twisted Rune for you, then.
 

Necroscope

Arcane
Joined
Jul 21, 2012
Messages
1,985
Location
Polska
Codex 2014
There's a small thing that annoys me in many RPGs.

Junk loot.

Too many types of potions, food, alcohol, drugs, gems, herbs, mushrooms, whatever and tons of fucking clutter like cutlery, plates, mugs, broken pieces of items, scrap metal etc. I hate having a mess in my inventory and having there items that I cannot find any good use for. Sometimes I resist to sell them because "maybe they will come in use eventually" but sell them anyway after finding even more of them. But then comes a fucking quest that requires me to obtain an item I recently sold... Not cool.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom