The smaller things that annoy you in RPGs

[Dr Skeleton]

Maybe it was their last one? Dunno, the quest is really fucking stupid, it's an extreme version of the quest where you kill rats in the basement for a peasant, except this time the peasant has the biggest arsenal of guns in the world and shoots everything that moves, EXCEPT the rats.

 

[Gregz]

What are some of the smaller things that really annoy you about RPGs? Stuff that other people may not notice that much.

Fucking headbob.

 

[EldarEldrad]

- Unproperly made inventory system. If I need to run from trader to dungeon zillion time to sell all that fucking stuff dropped from chests - it is bad. If I need to carry zillion crafting items just in case - it is bad. I still wonder how Vogel fucked up inventory: it was good in Geneforge 1, but turn complete shit in Geneforge 4.
- Trash combat
- Useless options and unworking mechanics
- Bugs

 

[Trashos]

Containers that I cannot place stuff in (I can only take stuff from)

Containers that stop being containers after I empty them (they cannot be interacted with anymore)

Containers that randomly "lose" their content

 

[JarlFrank]

Things like "my daughter is dying, please bring medicine back fast" is just the writers not taking into account how the game plays. Though i'd rather have that than having a time limit (unless it is something like going to the doctor next door and i have a limit of three days or whatever - but at that point it becomes a question of why wont the parent go?). But preferably i'd rather have time be something abstract that doesn't get acknowledged in any specific terms (and really since most RPGs that have time treat it like that anyway, it gives me the impression that they mostly track time so that they can have pretty day-and-night visual effects rather than any gameplay reason, since you can wait/rest for the time you want anyway).

Oh no no no. Terrible take, mang.

The writers not taking into account how the game plays? What the fuck does that even mean? When a writer comes up with a "bring me medicine within the next two weeks or my daughter will die" means that the writer/quest designer decided to include a side quest with a time limit. Due to the fact that such a quest has just been implemented, that's how the game plays now. Time as something abstract that never gets acknowledged is lame. You can do so much with time as a gameplay mechanic. You can have quest details change with time, even beyond simple fail states. "Yo mate we've been trying to breach the dungeon door for days but haven't broken through yet. Give us some more time and we might get it open. Until then you'll have to look for an alternate entrance, if one exists. That would make access to the dungeon easier." So you wait a couple of days, and then the archaeologists broke through the front door of the dungeon and you can get in that way, but you get less XP than if you had discovered the side entrance. Or maybe there's a slave who tells you he used to be a nobleman but was betrayed and sold into slavery, and if you buy him off the slave trader and help him return to his home and get revenge, he'll reward you greatly. If you don't buy him right then and there, and return a week later, someone else will have bought him already and you have to track down his new owner and either buy him from the new owner (for a higher price than the slave trader charged) or free him in a stealth mission.

Time as an actual thing that passes can add a lot to a game if done right, and can extend beyond simple fail states.

- When a game won't let you complete quests outside of a certain sequence defined by the developers. For example in Oblivion there is a quest in which a farmer is having trouble with bears, but the bears don't actually exist in the game until you speak to the farmer. You should be able to kill the bears on the way to the farm then tell the farmer you've already done it.

I love Piranha Bytes' games for that. You can do exactly that a lot of times in those games, come across some monsters and kill them, go to town and talk to an NPC, get the quest to kill those monsters, say "Oh yeah they're already dead.", get your reward.

 

[Bad Sector]

The writers not taking into account how the game plays? What the fuck does that even mean? When a writer comes up with a "bring me medicine within the next two weeks or my daughter will die" means that the writer/quest designer decided to include a side quest with a time limit.

To clarify, i meant in the case where the game does not have a time limit but the dialog/writing pretends there is one.

Time as something abstract that never gets acknowledged is lame. You can do so much with time as a gameplay mechanic. You can have quest details change with time, even beyond simple fail states.

Well, the topic is about "things that annoy you" and the examples you mentioned (i don't quote them to save space) wouldn't be fun for me. I'd rather have these happen as a consequence to explicit actions i made, not through my inaction towards that specific quest. But i do understand that they may be fun for others, as i already wrote in my original message. I know that time could be taken into consideration when creating quests - of all the trigger and condition types for quest events, time is one of easiest to implement - and what could be done with them (anywhere you can branch on a choice, you could also branch on time passing), but due to the way i play games, i personally find time triggers more annoying than fun.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

It happens pretty often, things that I perceive as an annoying obstacles (like crafting and trash combat in RPGs or fucking puzzles in Adventures) most people perceive as a core mechanics of genre as they understand it.

Maybe I'm the Chosen One.

also FUCKING BARRELS AND BOXES WITH LOOT INSIDE.

 

[curds]

I love Piranha Bytes' games for that. You can do exactly that a lot of times in those games, come across some monsters and kill them, go to town and talk to an NPC, get the quest to kill those monsters, say "Oh yeah they're already dead.", get your reward.

Yeah, I had Gothic specifically in mind when thinking of how it should be done. Beth should've been taking notes from PB back in the day.

 

[Sigourn]

A better example would be finding FISTO. He was *right around the corner* guarded by rats! But maybe it's one of those things.

I don't mind Fisto because the Garretts would have sent someone either way, so it may as well be the player. But the Boomers and the BoS should be able to take care of their own problems, except in obvious circumstances: like when they ask you to retrieve holotapes. "Why do they need me?" -> Because the BoS is under lockdown. On the other hand, there's a quest at the Mojave Outpost where you are asked to kill some ants down the road. But the game never properly conveys how troublesome those ants are. Killing them only earns you extra EXP and Reputation, nothing else. That is a problem.

Any quest posed as "urgent" must have obvious consequences for doing it or refusing it. Child needs potion to cure illness -> Refuse quest (not just "ignore quest" -> Chlid dies. Therefore, the obvious consequence to doing the quest is that the child lives. Otherwise, in a mediocre game, the child is always alive, even after being "dying" for hundreds of hours.

And for fuck's sake, make the world move. It's ok if the child dies because you are literally the only traveller in days to come across the old man's home in the middle of nowhere. Or if he offers no payment, which explains why many mercenaries would not bother (especially acceptable in a post-apocalyptic setting where people would not be willing to risk their necks so easily).

 

[Grampy_Bone]

-Arbitrary limits on the number of quests you can accept
-Forcing you to trundle back to a questgiver when a quest has no story component (collectathons, bounty hunts, etc). Borderlands is awful with this.
-Hitting the level cap well before the endgame

 

[Modron]

The lack of keyrings. So simple but only a few rpgs have had them.

 

[Obsequious Approbation]

When you kill a rich merchant, but it turns out they keep their wares in another dimension and have nothing in their inventory except a few coins.

 

[Cat Dude]

Lacks of enemy types. It has been always the problem in all wrpg I have played.

 

[Cat Dude]

Sex scenes/ fan services. I'd rather watch porn. Jrpg and The Witcher series are notorious with this. Not all of us gamers are basement dwelling computer nerd virgins.

 

[Gibson]

3. Elves.

Elves.

Elves. fuck those cunts

 

[Sigourn]

It's not a small thing but it's so prevalent in RPGs that I may as well say it: I don't give a shit about your lore if it is contained in books and dialogue only. I don't need exposition in an already exposition-heavy genre. If you are going to feed it to me either way, at least feed me the cool exposition, instead of making me read books where 95% is boring garbage.

 

[Swigen]

Character model looking NOTHING like the character portrait. Why’s my character model look liek Spock from a disctance? I’m a bald guy with a goatee FFS!

 

[hexer]

When a game starts and a family member/lover dies within 5 minutes.
It's supposed to be a story hook, but you don't even care for the character.
Lazy!

Also the way almost all dialogs are setup and feel is entirely unnatural.
You approach a total stranger with the cliched "I have some questions".
Seriously, who talks like that in real life?
The best way to handle this would be to create branching natural dialogs.

 

[Beastro]

When a merchant's wares are scattered on the counter before him and the counter is too high and the objects are perilously close to the natural torso location that you want to click to interact with him. So 25% of the time you accidentally "steal" an apple off their counter which of course alerts the town guard, locks down the building, and dispatches a SEAL team to your position.

RPG version of speedtraps~

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Level requirement for equipping items.
You find something that looks good, but no, must be level 17 to wield stick of slightly better than current stick.

 

[Serus]

Sex scenes/ fan services. I'd rather watch porn. Jrpg and The Witcher series are notorious with this. Not all of us gamers are basement dwelling computer nerd virgins.

Keep lying to yourself you basement dwelling computer nerd virgin.

 

[JarlFrank]

Level requirement for equipping items.
You find something that looks good, but no, must be level 17 to wield stick of slightly better than current stick.

This can make a rewarding exploration design feel unrewarding just by itself.

You manage to defeat an enemy 5 levels higher than you, find an epic item in a chest behind him, celebrate your victory... and then realize you can't equip the item until 5 levels later.

Ok.

So managing to defeat this enemy against all odds to get my hands on this epic item did... exactly nothing. I can't use the thing until I leveled up several times, and by that point the almost impossible enemy I just defeated would have been easily manageable.

Meh.

 

[Swigen]

Anime.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Level requirement for equipping items.
You find something that looks good, but no, must be level 17 to wield stick of slightly better than current stick.

This can make a rewarding exploration design feel unrewarding just by itself.

You manage to defeat an enemy 5 levels higher than you, find an epic item in a chest behind him, celebrate your victory... and then realize you can't equip the item until 5 levels later.

Ok.

So managing to defeat this enemy against all odds to get my hands on this epic item did... exactly nothing. I can't use the thing until I leveled up several times, and by that point the almost impossible enemy I just defeated would have been easily manageable.

Meh.

It's like developers heard about players doing early power armour runs on Fallouts and decided to do everything on their power to stop such fun.

 

[Chaosdwarft]

DLC quest lines that just activate right after you start a new game, even though the content is supposed to be accessed on higher levels.

DLC starting equipment.