Things that will never work out but devs are pushing them still.

QTEs obviously.

Mostly in regards to RPGs: building the game in such a way that the player will see everything in a single play-through. All games now days just feel like checklists; bite sized fragments of a game linked together by cinematic events.

Parkour.

 

Cover systems. The only good use of a cover system I've ever seen is in Red Orchestra 2. 99% of cover systems seem to exist just to look cool so you can watch your character roll around dodging bullets like he's hot shit. I preferred it back when taking cover involved pressing crouch or standing behind a wall.

 

Sometimes i wonder if RPGcodex is full of retards or full of trolls or trolls that are retards.
One case of good implementation doesn't mean jack shit when 99,8% rest of games take those features and make them shit.

It's like a fucking zombies currently. Everyone is doing them and most of those games are shit but every once a while there will be some faggot that will say BUT BUT BUT THERE WAS AMAZING BOOK ABOUT ZOMBIES WORLD WAR Z !!! therefore all zombie shit in games is justified.

Or QTEs. God of War did them in really good way (aside from those annoying doors and chests), therefore now game devs think they should have QTE because they are cooool. Now they are fucking not cool when you make QTE from brutal finishers into game of hold a button to mop the floor.

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BACK ON TOPIC FUCKERS

MINIGAMES. This is almost thread worthy.

Like in QTE case devs take it as completely different thing that it should be. Back in old days minigames were ACTUAL minigames. No i don't shit you, they were like actual mini games. They were mostly optional and build from start up to be FUN. They were entirely optional because they worked as sidekick for gameplay. Sort of a breather from normal gameplay if player wanted it. So if you wanted you could spend some time playing them and maybe in some cases getting some better loot and interesting stuff.

Now what devs do today with this concept ?

THEY FUCKING DO IT WRONG.

First they make it not optional. They make it literally part of what you need to do in game.
Secondly use "minigames" as filler. Want to open door ? Here is lockpick minigame. It's fucking easy for anyone even your dog but you need to spend xx seconds to do it.
They are not fun. Because of a) they are filler b) not optional and finally c) as non-optional things to do, there is no goal so there is no reward.

Instead of minigames they should be called boring time fillers.

So if you are dev, reading it and you think, that creating hacking minigame for your game, that will not be optional, is a good thing... then you are a faggot and you should fucking die.

You know what you should do instead ? Do fucking kayboard stuff and password like in fucking Deus Ex or fucking Multitool again like in Deus Ex because shit supposed to be done instead of fucking around playing jackstraws for braindead.

 

RTwP in RPGs.

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Shotguns and range. This is mostly due to the fact that almost all ranged combat in video games takes place at very reduced ranges. When most combat is limited to 30m or less(a range at which almost all firearms are still effective) then you have to have comically shortened effective ranges for different weapons to differentiate them. So shotguns are only effective within 10 feet of you and you need a sniper rifle if you want to shoot someone more than 30m away. This effects all firearms in video games, not just shotguns, but it is much more noticeable with the weapons that are supposed to be 'short' range like shotguns.

 

Choice and consequences.

 

yeah but when you have a gun that works only in malee distance then obviously something is wrong.

But i guess concept of DT is something devs struggle to understand.

 

Stealth. Always sucks.

 

Something else - what about thing that give you fun but shouldn't?
For me it's ragdoll system. Just like cover system - first game that introduced it (UT2k3 in case of ragdoll and kill.switch in case of cover system) were good and later titles fuck thing hard.
You know something is wrong when watching wacky ragdoll doing strange things is more fun than playing game itself (i.e. shooting/chopping/blasting stuff in corridor levels).

THe Dark Mod and Thief3 Derply Shat Downs - is good example, considering the fact that you can carry bodies anywhere.

 

Real time combat in RPG's.

 

It always sucks mechanically but it can be used effectively anyway if the devs know what they're doing.

Granted, the list of games that use it effectively is about 4 games long, with two of those games being Thief and Thief 2.

 

It's amazing to think that Western RPG developers were content with having shit/mediocre gameplay in RPGs for almost 2 decades (mid 90s-2012-2013), barring few TB exceptions and even RTwP games like BG2. Not that japs were more successful in implementing real time combat systems, they just kept their games TB (though only few had truly good battle systems). I can't actually think of any real time RPGs outside of Demon/Dark Souls that's deep and challenging enough to not be popamole and that is simultaneously fun to play&well programmed. Diablo clones and hack n slashes are mostly brainless button smashing and all FPSRPGs have clunky, poor gunplay compared to actual FPS games.

 

Yet they were afaic, by not letting the RPG have too much influence on the arcade aspect. so that even today in games like Dark Souls you can rely on twitch skill to beat them at low levels. There are exceptions. I think you are fucked if you don't level up in the Seiken Densetsu games, as some enemy attacks are hitscan or whatever such concept is relevant to 2D games. Compare to Diablo or Elder Scrolls, where you're basically just pressing buttons while your stats do most of the real work. You can kind of evade attacks in those games, but it's not a refined mechanic, and you will still take damage at some point no matter what you do. Whereas in many Jap ARPGs you can do no damage runs. I've been working on a no-hit run of Shadow Tower Abyss. Control wise it has similar limitations to ES games, but the enemies operate according to the action game model of attack windows, recovery, and interrupts.

All of that isn't to say I'd recommend Faxanadu over Morrowind.

I don't see the problem with real time combat in single character RPGs. Outside of roguelikes (in which you don't wait for turns), I can't think of a single character game with TB combat that didn't make me think it was a dumb decision.

 

That stat influence vs skills dichotomy is the big paradox of action RPGs, not that most people who aren't grognards give a shit. But I would credit the fact that you can kill things naked, level 1 etc in Dark Souls as a strength of the game and showcase of how well it is designed, even if it looses some of its RPG purity in the process. Though if the alternative is F3/NV, VTMB or Elder Scrolls combat, RPG purity can go fuck it self for all I care. If you're gonna go the action route, do it properly or just stay TB.

Yeah, TB tends to be boring in single character games. The question is why did CRPGs (counting AAA multiplatform garbage as CRPGs here) stopped having party creation? Story faggotry. Combining narrative driven, C&C heavy games where you can solve problems in various different ways with engaging core gameplay (deep character&party customization and combat) are almost mutually exclusive design paths. Deus Ex/VTMB style gameplay where non combat characters are equally viable is a much harder (if not impossible) thing to balance in a setting where you have 4-8 characters to spec rather than one, and naturally you won't see as well designed&challenging encounters and bosses in a game like that when comparied to a dungeon crawler or a tactical RPG. There are also other problems with balancing, like dedicating one character to do all the speaking. The problem with party creation is that it prevents writers from doing stories where the player's party is central to the storyline (+giving different characters deep personalities). Of course there's the Fallout/Arcanum/Ultima middle ground between Wizardry&Goldbox and Planescape&Mass Effect, but so far games like that have a bad track record of doing the gameplay right.

 

Imagine killing duck on 50 meters. Even if you are very good shooter and use full choke shotgun, there are only several shots that hitted the duck. For example, 200 shots at 50 meters will spread as approximately 140 shot in 75 cm circle. Now compare it to size of the duck. Of course, human is bigger but don't forget that ALL weapons in games have decreased range and damage. Thus dozen or so birdshots should deal negligible damage. Buckshot should be deadly, but very inaccurate on distance because of the spread. (How many shots in #4 buckshot? 24 or something?)
Still, shotgun should be amazingly effective on pistol distances.

 

The shotgun in Natural Selection 2 is very powerful, indeed it is the best thing for killing aliens except for the mechsuits with miniguns and railguns.

 

So, poison as a disabler rather than killer?

Talking about shotguns and range... why are they being despicted lately as a AoE light weapon? Seems weird to me.

 

I think you are the retarded here.

One case of good implementation does mean that the feature works. When 99,8% of the games make that feature worse is the incompetence of the developers, not the feature. That´s why i think your first example was good because motion controls will never work.

 

Rolling dice for character creation. Just make it fucking stop oh god

edit: oh and the Borderlands PreSequel reminded me - finishing the game before being able to select higher difficulty modes. The intent is to give you a reason to keep playing, but making the first impression of your game boring for many people ON PURPOSE must be one of the stupidest ideas ever.

 

Are devs still pushing that? I haven't played a game with that since Baldur's Gate 2.

 

The GBA Eye of the Beholder, which is a VERY weird game (3.0 rules with its bullshit skills, having to push diagonals on the control bad to move on a tilted grid, rolling for status) and over a decade old now.

Temple of Elemental Evil allowed it optionally (though you were given a horribly low point buy and the roll method was very generous so there was no reason not to roll), but it's also over a decade old.

 

Speaking of, miniguns.

In almost every game miniguns deal 5-10% of the damage of an assault rifle and/or spray fucking everywhere.
Serious Sam is one of the few exceptions where the minigun works as it should.

 

Alien: Isolation.

 

This was something Allied Assault had down pat. In multiplayer, you had two buttons that let you lean left and lean right. Why the fuck they turned it into a context based action I have no clue, cuz back then it worked juuuust fine.