Most annoying non-obvious things in modern gaming

[Ash]

What are the things that annoy you the most about modern gaming

Everything.

Pretty much this

 

[Elthosian]

I don't know if people agree with me on the big UI covering a lot of screen space and with big text/buttons, i like it.

The soulless look of modern games UI i think everyone agrees with me.

I do agree, they usually have a lot more personality. I also like the bigger buttons as I’m not very good with kb shortcuts and squinting at tiny ass buttons gets old quickly.

I despise the battle pass model, even when the content is free. I remember getting the Monster Hunter game that came out for the Wii ages ago and I was really annoyed about some bosses only being available during specific time windows as «events». This is made even worse by the fact console online services are taken down pretty quickly after the next console comes out and you end up with an incomplete game forever.

Of course, the worst offender is the Destiny series. I was never interested in it, anyway, but the moment I heard they took content offline to push players into newer expansions I experienced untold amounts of disgust.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Lack of respect for the players' time.

This isn't about being long or short per se but about being longer than your mechanics + art can justify. Developers seem to feel that games need to pad out their length in to match justify their grossly inflated launch prices.

The problem affects nearly everything currently being released.

 

[Zenithsan]

That are made by nihilistic postmodernist cucks. So any sense of wonder, meaning, and adventure is prohibited.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Lack of respect for the players' time.

This isn't about being long or short per se but about being longer than your mechanics + art can justify. Developers seem to feel that games need to pad out their length in to match justify their grossly inflated launch prices.

The problem affects nearly everything currently being released.

it's because of the neets, the games you beat in like 3 weeks or so by playing an hour every day are beaten by neets in a single sitting

 

[-M-]

Graphics for the sake of graphics.

In Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, people contact Batman via radio.

In Arkham Knight everything is a damn video call that Batman projects via giant hologram in front of his face for the world to see.

 

[Levenmouth]

-I hate that white jizz they put in places where you're supposed to climb/interact. I'm not fucking retarded, let me find it on my own.

It's acceptable when you can toggle it off/on. Otherwise I suppose they do it to disguise the fact they were unable or lazy to put assets that can be clearly distinguishable from others. retarded art direction

It's a direct consequence of modern gaming's signal-to-noise ratio. In an OLD game, if you saw a thing, it was probably a thing you were meant to interact with that did something. In a modern MORE GRAPHICS game, most of what you see is little more than graphical clutter, having no interactable functionality, and it becomes increasingly difficult to sort out what you can actually do anything with from something that just exists to take up screenspace. Thus there is a widening gap between "things you can see" and "things that are actually part of the game", and thus glowies are used to mark interactables from worldspace clutter. Otherwise it would be deeply frustrating trying to interact with things that LOOK like you should logically be able to do something with, only to find that you can't, and there's no explanation of why.

And then it becomes a vicious circle. Glowies become the default and game designers build levels and play-test the game with glowies switched on.

I remember disabling them in the original Dishonored, because I wanted an experience closer to Thief. It worked out pretty well in general, but there was some level where I just got completely stuck and couldn't for the life of me figure out where I am supposed to go, not because I am retarded but because it was not at all apparent. I think it was during one of the segments where you are at the home base with the conspirators. I toggled glowies on, solved the problem and then got on with it.

tl;dr: Even if you are given an opt-out, the game is designed with opt-in in mind making opt-out a less polished experience.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

First-person context sensitive animations replacing what were once seamless actions instantly activated after a button press. See: the System Shock remake and the Thief reboot.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I actually like fancy animations in games. A lot of people complained about all the animations in Red Dead Redemption 2, but I liked them. I just hated that game because the gameplay was really bad and the writing even worse. Otherwise animations are fine, without them, games feel floaty and fake.

 

[CHEMS]

Absolutely unnecessary checkpoints and map markers, everywhere, polluting the goddamn screen, fucking map markers in interior cells, as if the player was retarded "hey, now that you're in this room, follow this marker to your objective that's literally across the table!"

It's just insulting, as if treating the player like he has an attention spam of 5 seconds, it looks stupid and ugly as fuck, and pretty much kills the point of actually exploring in the game

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Otherwise animations are fine, without them, games feel floaty and fake.

Thief is the most immersive first-person game ever and it has none of these gaudy animations. Seeing arms shoot out from the bottom of the screen and perform seconds-long animations without any input from me doesn't make me feel like I am controlling the character.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

-I hate that white jizz they put in places where you're supposed to climb/interact. I'm not fucking retarded, let me find it on my own.

It's acceptable when you can toggle it off/on. Otherwise I suppose they do it to disguise the fact they were unable or lazy to put assets that can be clearly distinguishable from others. retarded art direction

It's a direct consequence of modern gaming's signal-to-noise ratio. In an OLD game, if you saw a thing, it was probably a thing you were meant to interact with that did something. In a modern MORE GRAPHICS game, most of what you see is little more than graphical clutter, having no interactable functionality, and it becomes increasingly difficult to sort out what you can actually do anything with from something that just exists to take up screenspace. Thus there is a widening gap between "things you can see" and "things that are actually part of the game", and thus glowies are used to mark interactables from worldspace clutter. Otherwise it would be deeply frustrating trying to interact with things that LOOK like you should logically be able to do something with, only to find that you can't, and there's no explanation of why.

And then it becomes a vicious circle. Glowies become the default and game designers build levels and play-test the game with glowies switched on.

I remember disabling them in the original Dishonored, because I wanted an experience closer to Thief. It worked out pretty well in general, but there was some level where I just got completely stuck and couldn't for the life of me figure out where I am supposed to go, not because I am retarded but because it was not at all apparent. I think it was during one of the segments where you are at the home base with the conspirators. I toggled glowies on, solved the problem and then got on with it.

tl;dr: Even if you are given an opt-out, the game is designed with opt-in in mind making opt-out a less polished experience.

The first game to introduce glowies that I am aware of was Baldur Gate.

 

[-M-]

Arkham Knight made me think of another one that seems to becoming more common, especially in these very standard 3rd person collect-a-thons, and it's when the game has you play as a different character for a section.

Some of these can be rather creative, but I'm usually annoyed.

Arkham Knight did this like 3x (The Hush reveal was pretty good though)
CDPR with Ciri and Johnny.
Ginger Jedi does this so you can fight Darth Vader, beat him in game, and then lose in a cutscene.
Spider-Man I think has Mary Jane sections that were reviled.

 

[vitellus]

can we get some communal hatred for the devs that make games that can't be made full screen and borderless windowed? it's the 21st century, i should never have to alt-tab out of a game to look something up, and who doesn't have more than one monitor these days?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Otherwise animations are fine, without them, games feel floaty and fake.

Thief is the most immersive first-person game ever and it has none of these gaudy animations. Seeing arms shoot out from the bottom of the screen and perform seconds-long animations without any input from me doesn't make me feel like I am controlling the character.

Thief wasn't good because it had no animations. I actually played it recently, and it feels very floaty and pretty bad graphically/physics-wise by modern standards. Its positive aspects were in other areas.

 

[Butter]

Thief is good for many reasons, one of which is that it doesn't take your control away at any point during gameplay. This means that if you get caught, it's always your fault. There are literally times in Thief 4 when you get seen because Garrett is playing his canned animation and there's nothing you can do to interrupt it.

 

[Elthosian]

A lot of people mentioned the "hold until circle fills" to interact with the environment but it seems Destiny 2 takes it to the next level by making you hold enter to navigate various menus and accept EULAs

https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/249768565?sort=0&page=0

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

A lot of people mentioned the "hold until circle fills" to interact with the environment but it seems Destiny 2 takes it to the next level by making you hold enter to navigate various menus and accept EULAs

https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/249768565?sort=0&page=0

No Man's Sky does that as well. It's console centric programming. I dunno if I said it here or not, but input devices are getting ultra sensitive and it's better to have some sort of confirmation period instead of just having stuff happening. It might've been an error for all we know, pushing a button by accident.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I actually played it recently, and it feels very floaty

Not to me at all. I don't know what you're talking about when you say Thief is "floaty". The movement is very natural-feeling.

For a more "modern" example, see Dishonored 2 compared to Dishonored 1. DH2 added first-person animations for sliding and peeking through keyholes. As a result, sliding feels way more awkward because you can't transition from sliding into other states like running or jumping as easily as you could in DH1, and door-peeking takes like 5 fucking seconds longer than it did. Body awareness in first-person games is absolute garbage.

 

[gurugeorge]

I actually played it recently, and it feels very floaty

Not to me at all. I don't know what you're talking about when you say Thief is "floaty". The movement is very natural-feeling.

For a more "modern" example, see Dishonored 2 compared to Dishonored 1. DH2 added first-person animations for sliding and peeking through keyholes. As a result, sliding feels way more awkward because you can't transition from sliding into other states like running or jumping as easily as you could in DH1, and door-peeking takes like 5 fucking seconds longer than it did. Body awareness in first-person games is absolute garbage.

Not for body awareness

It depends on how much simulation you want to be represented in your gaming. I like a lot, so to me it feels much better to have animations take roughly the time they might take in real life, and I really dislike being a notional point in space that has capabilities for instant action.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

There's something weird about Thief's fpp mechanics, like garret has a longer neck, arms, legs, etc than any normal human. It's like he's slenderman or something. It's still one of the best games of all time.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

It depends on how much simulation you want to be represented in your gaming. I like a lot, so to me it feels much better to have animations take roughly the time they might take in real life, and I really dislike being a notional point in space that has capabilities for instant action.

I think that the way the player character controls should be abstract because the way we interface with the game is abstract. We're not actually moving or opening doors, we're moving a mouse and pressing keys on a keyboard, so the player movement should coincide 1:1 with those keyboard presses and mouse movements; just as pressing a key instantly prints that key's letter onto the screen while typing, clicking on a door in a game should instantly open that door. This way, you eventually completely forget about the way you're controlling your character because you're so used to it and it feels so natural, and you can interact with the game's world with no barriers between it and you.

 

[gurugeorge]

It depends on how much simulation you want to be represented in your gaming. I like a lot, so to me it feels much better to have animations take roughly the time they might take in real life, and I really dislike being a notional point in space that has capabilities for instant action.

I think that the way the player character controls should be abstract because the way we interface with the game is abstract. We're not actually moving or opening doors, we're moving a mouse and pressing keys on a keyboard, so the player movement should coincide 1:1 with those keyboard presses and mouse movements; just as pressing a key instantly prints that key's letter onto the screen while typing, clicking on a door in a game should instantly open that door. This way, you eventually completely forget about the way you're controlling your character because you're so used to it and it feels so natural, and you can interact with the game's world with no barriers between it and you.

I like that too, but I prefer heavier simulation. There being a time delay between intent and action is part of the real world, and I like it when that's represented in some way (although not in an annoying way, which is the tricky part - but that's a question of fine-tuning, like a fair chunk of game development is, I think, like a millisecond off could make all the difference between something being enjoyable or being a chore, that type of thing).

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I like that too, but I prefer heavier simulation. There being a time delay between intent and action is part of the real world, and I like it when that's represented in some way (although not in an annoying way, which is the tricky part - but that's a question of fine-tuning, like a fair chunk of game development is, I think, like a millisecond off could make all the difference between something being enjoyable or being a chore, that type of thing).

When it comes to simulation, I think it's best when the input method corresponds with the game's context. Most simulation games have you piloting a vehicle of some kind like a car or a plane, and playing those games with the proper equipment is a lot of fun. I don't think a similar effect can be achieved with games that have you controlling a human, though, unless it was full on sci-fi virtual reality. I can't think of any first-person game that does body awareness really well; the only examples I can think of (Thief Deadly Shadows, Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic) are completely worsened by the presence of body awareness.

 

[gurugeorge]

I like that too, but I prefer heavier simulation. There being a time delay between intent and action is part of the real world, and I like it when that's represented in some way (although not in an annoying way, which is the tricky part - but that's a question of fine-tuning, like a fair chunk of game development is, I think, like a millisecond off could make all the difference between something being enjoyable or being a chore, that type of thing).

When it comes to simulation, I think it's best when the input method corresponds with the game's context. Most simulation games have you piloting a vehicle of some kind like a car or a plane, and playing those games with the proper equipment is a lot of fun. I don't think a similar effect can be achieved with games that have you controlling a human, though, unless it was full on sci-fi virtual reality. I can't think of any first-person game that does body awareness really well; the only examples I can think of (Thief Deadly Shadows, Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic) are completely worsened by the presence of body awareness.

Good point re simulation and piloting.