Little details in RPGs that annoy you

[Serus]

Spoiler

How the fuck do you even wield the first one lol

The 4th and the 6th otoh look serviceable though the proportions are a bit off.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Ran into some old friends while playing Neverwinter Nights 2 yesterday and it reminded me of another game made by devs equally deficient at recognizing the trappings of modernity. Sure hope Shandra's John Deere wasn't in the barn when the Lizardmen burnt it down.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[tentanz]

Hello. I'm a major storyfag, and one of the details I hate are character backgrounds. Don't give a shit about you. Can you fight? You're in this party to do a role, not be a character. Our story is: there's loot in that cave.

 

[laclongquan]

Also stat bloat - you start with 50 HP and finish the game with 5000.

Stat bloat are mostly a problem of too quick levelup compared to levelup gains.

Take FNV for example: 5Hp per level up so the quick levelup still produce nice enough Hp curve. But 14 skill points per levelup (10INT) mean a big jump for each one. 5+ int/2 is more like it... but it lead to unsatisfied users of such mod who dont really want to feel being robbed of points.

Which is why slower level up mod has good uses. It prevent the feel of stat bloat, because it's not that easy to levelup.

 

[curds]

Hello. I'm a major storyfag, and one of the details I hate are character backgrounds. Don't give a shit about you. Can you fight? You're in this party to do a role, not be a character. Our story is: there's loot in that cave.

I don't think storyfag means what you think it means.

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

The MMO in RPGs

 

[Kruyurk]

In Divinity: Original Sin the "click-box" of an enemy is its 3D model, so the exact area that you have to click to target it changes during the enemy idle animations. Sometimes you try to left-click on an enemy to confirm an attack but the pixel that would have selected him just a moment before is not anymore where the enemy is, and the left-click gives your character a move order instead (that will probably trigger attacks of opportunity for extra fun).

And this does not happen only if you target the edge of the enemies as some of them have quite large amplitude idle animations. The skeletons around Cyseal sometimes squat down. If you took a good while to select your tactical options in a long and tense fight and finaly decided to hit that skeleton, but at the exact moment that fucker decides to matrix-dodge your mouse cursor, really that can be more than annoying.

Idle animations are annoying in general because devs tend to overdo them, but this particular case in D:OS is infuriating. Or maybe it is another case of Belgian humor.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

When it's a highly pixellated classic/retro game that could use 1 pixel to represent the nipple, but doesn't do it.

 

[Robotigan]

There's an expression in statistics. I don't remember it precisely, but to paraphrase it goes something like this "When participants start performing to the metric, it ceases to be a good metric." In roleplaying games, stats aren't there for players to flex their mastery of basic arithmetic, they're there to indicate character proficiencies and attributes. As much as possible, stats should coincide with the more abstract concepts they're meant to represent. And if that can't be done, it's worth considering why you're trying to assign a number to something you can't even quantify. Developers shouldn't be afraid of imperfect balance or metagaming potential, those are inevitable but otherwise not at all detrimental to the core experience unless they're super blatant.

All this to say, I hate numbers wherever they aren't necessary. They're contrived and gamey. Enemies shouldn't need a level indicator, more threatening enemies should simply look more threatening. The player usually doesn't need to see damage or even health (aside from their own) either, they just need to know whether their attack connected and what if any status ailments have been applied. If you want to communicate something to the player, try to find a diegetic alternative. And when something does need to be quantified, really consider just how much granularity is meaningful.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

All that background furniture and shit you can't interact with. It is just fucking annoying obstacles and art.

NPCs you can't kill or rob or w/e.