RPG Mechanics Made Pointless By Game Features

Ever play an RPG which has a certain gameplay mechanic... armor damage, fatigue penalty, limited travel, whatever... that is made completely pointless by another aspect of the game? It makes you wonder how the left hand could have so completely ignored what the right hand was doing. Let's hear about the worst offenders...

Some examples:

• The Outer Worlds has an aspect to the lockpicking stat which requires more lockpicks the lower your skill rank is, yet the game gives you a massive overabundance of lockpicks through randomized loot, making this limitation pointless.
• Dragon Age 2 has an injury system where falling in battle reduces the party member's health until they use an "injury kit," but injury kits are given out through a dynamic system that always gives you more of them when you need them, making the penalty pointless.
• Many D&D style games limit options or stocks based on a "per day" system, but then let you rest anytime you want outside of combat with zero penalty, making anything but per-battle limits pointless.

 

Level scaling systems that makes acquiring levels and/or gear pointless and tedious.

 

Witcher 3. Bunch of mechanics, but everything besides left click is unnecessary.

 

Any RPG with consumables such as health potions, scrolls, etc. rendered redundant by inflation in the game economy. You either earn way too much money that there are no hard choices in what you decide to purchase or the items drop too frequently for the items do add a strategic layer to the gameplay.

 

Dark souls kinda avoids it, by making money non-permanent and Planescape kicks you in the nuts for spending big amounts of money on consumables. I'd love to see something like Metro, where money are useful limited resource (like crafting material or magic catalyst).

 

Exploration: made more or less pointless by level scaling, unless there's hand place loot.

 

Fallout 1/2: different ammo types, skills: traps, first aid, gambling.

 

Morrowind: Everything, inclluding alchemy, being rendered irrelevant by alchemy.

Consequences and even most stats and loot in pretty much any game with unrestricted save systems being rendered irrelevant by save scumming.

Reputation penalties in Baldur's Gate being overwhelmed by reputation bonuses for donations. So murdering a random quest giving npc and donating some of his wealth and keeping the rest is a net positive effect on your 'alignment.'

 

The Swimming Skill in Deus Ex. Highly situational, rarely important, and can be rendered completely useless with the right Nano-Aug.

 

At one point I complained about useless skills in the early Fallouts myself, and I included gambling. Then some Codexer appeared (do not remember username), and informed me that it was entirely possible to base a character on gambling. It was news for me too.

 

Thief skills when you have TrapZap skill with no risk of failure.

 

Deus Ex: Human Revolution's shitty "director's cut" gives you cheat DLC hacking devices which make higher level hacking skills pointless.

 

Most of the mechanics in Human Revolution are made pointless by other features. Items that restore health and energy when both automatically regenerate by default and every area is packed with cover to hide behind while regenerating. The choice between lethal and non-lethal playstyles when non-lethal rewards you with 3 times the XP lethal does, makes less noise and has a host of other advantages. A radar that shows you were enemies are before you can even see them, removing the need to scout ahead. Passwords you can find that punish you for using them by depriving you of the XP you would have received if you had hacked them. Frequent third-person interactions that serve no purpose and only make gameplay worse by freezing time. A progression system where the things most players will be primarily using for the entire game are already unlocked before the game even begins. Many augmentations that are useless in practice because of how the game mechanics work.

 

I know that, in Fallout 1 at least, beyond a certain gambling skill ensures infinite money at one of the games in Gizmo's but I don't think that's quite the same as base a character on. All that money doesn't mean jack if you don't have the right non-gambling skills (combat/thief/talker).

 

Reputation and karma, usually.
Resting in most D&D-inspired games.

 

Pillars of eternity actually fixed this with campfires and limited them based on difficulty which is great but decided their audience was too stupid to handle it so they pretty much removed it in the sequel. Pathfinder kingmaker fixed this early game but completely ruined it because by end game you could carry as much rations as you wanted. I'm hoping at least one of these new dnd inspired games have the balls to do it properly. Limited rests, some dungeons you can't escape and are stuck with how much rations you brought in, and forcing people to do a walk of Shame back to town if they over rest be would be amazing.

 

But then the hand placed loot is also scaled to your level, so something that would be the best weapon in the game if gotten later, can instead be a decent low level weapon that turns into vendortrash within 1 hour of playtime.
Bonus points if it is a unique DLC item.

 

- Half of the skills and spells in Realms of Arkania, half of the skills in Daggerfall, half of the spells in majority of D&D games - in all these cases there is simply no way to actually use those skills and spells efficiently.
- If there is unlimited resting system, then the whole vancian casting.
- Firearms in V: TM - B.
- Sneaking system in Gothic.
- First aid in Fallout 2
- Usually everything that is related to making money.
- All the non-Jedi skills and abilities in SW: KotOR 1 and 2. Make it double since the game is actively punishing you for leveling too early in the first one.
- Leveling up in Oblivion

 

Firearms in V: TM-B are fine in the mid game and one of the strongest late game options if you play a clan that has bullet time celerity bloodpower. Slow time, get close and mag dump two entire MP mag (or any other high firerate gun) into your opponent from close range. This kills some of the nastiest beaters in the game in seconds and makes the sewer section "almost" fun. Its just the first pistol in the game that is so relentlessly garbage that it gives the weapon category a bad rep.

Id say this only holds true for KotoR 1. Lightsabers are way too good in that game. In KotoR 2 weapon crafting makes guns almost equal and non force users definitly playable. Also the better special attacks make force speed less of a must have rofl button.

Completely agree on the rest

 

So, you can't base your character on gambling alone ... Still, gambling is far from pointless, it's a great alternative to barter as you won't have to carry a truckload of loot with you.
So, low charisma low strength character should invest in gambling rather than barter (not that barter needs a lost of investment) and can avoid hoarding shit.

How is this pointless ?

Traps isn't pointless either, you can't base your character on that skill either (we dodged one here) but it's useful, just don't need a lot of investment and will reward the character with some xp.

 

skyrim had armor penetration without giving enemies armor

 

RNG is rendered pointless by reloading.

 

Likely during play testing it can halt an important quest path or simply frustrates certain types of players, so the easy fix is to just provide an abundant amount of the resource than take the time to remove the function entirely.

 

Shitty Dead MMO I'm In: Absolutely everything is made pointless through a combination of paperwork tasks and strategically going AFK. There's absolutely no benefit to be had from actually playing the game and just about everything of worth comes from lootboxes.

It's only pointless if the RNG is highly telegraphed and binary, with a high level of impact attached to it. Like if you fire 30 bullets a turn and each of them is RNG, you're probably not reloading for each bullet. But if you're able to gamble everything on double or nothing, yeah, why is this even in the game?

 

Darth Canoli

Fair enough on gambling, but the XP you get from traps is so minuscule and infrequent as to be effectively zero.