Most annoying non-obvious things in modern gaming

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Ooooh, I got a great one!

Enchantment visual effects on weapons in new age isometric RPGs. Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, etc. Enchant your weapon for some bonus stats/damage, and BOOM, your cool medieval sword now looks like a fucking glowstick... God these things are ugly.

They show the mental age of developers too. How old do you have to be to think that making your weapon glow and shit is cool?

40 something, apparently

ninja edit: wasn't the glowing sword in The Hobbit as well? Memory's a bit hazy right now

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Glowing weapons are bad enough, but they are especially hideously ugly in isometric RPGs, because given how rendering works, you have a fairly small weapon model wrapped by a giant ass glowing cloud around it.

 

[Ash]

Hmm, non-obvious eh? Well, the following will be obvious to some, but many especially any young ones among us will not get it:

-Pandering, cringy, lowest-brow pop culture references.
-Simp-baiting to an obscene degree (e.g RE: Village). But I guess this is very obvious yet most just don't gaf. Note: the girls in old gaming marketing were not simp bait, just good old fashioned bait.
-Outrage culture baiting (this one is much more subtle)
-Achievements & achievement hunters. Probably the ultimate decline-enablers.
-Music/soundtracks have become extremely subdued to not scare away those with narrow tastes. again not a very subtle decline but I seem to be the only one that ever complains about this, which is shocking.
-PC games are still designed for stock keyboards, which aren't designed for gaming at all, but typing words. This results in lack of progress such as still stuck with limited 8-directional, binary I/O movement (WASD).
-Console controllers and their standardization evolved rapidly up until the PS2 era, and since then there have been very minimal refinements. Because too many buttons will scare off newbies & 'tards (only new button in 20+ years added was a social media share button, which is of course decline incarnate).
-Feminazi-ified western games, optimized cringe factor eastern games. We see lots of complaints about the former, not so much the latter. I understand what's going on with the west, serious decline, but the east (Japan specifically) I have no idea. Seems like a country-wide competition to make the elaborately-lamest game possible with the only parameter being feminist shit can not be used. It's frightening in a very different way. (obviously a couple rare exceptions apply, like From Software. Somehow only these guys didn't get beaten with the retard stick?).

That'll do for now, people don't listen to me anyway. Old man yelling at cloud or whatever.

 

[gurugeorge]

Ooooh, I got a great one!

Enchantment visual effects on weapons in new age isometric RPGs. Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, etc. Enchant your weapon for some bonus stats/damage, and BOOM, your cool medieval sword now looks like a fucking glowstick... God these things are ugly.

They show the mental age of developers too. How old do you have to be to think that making your weapon glow and shit is cool?

 

[Ash]

Ooooh, I got a great one!

Enchantment visual effects on weapons in new age isometric RPGs. Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, etc. Enchant your weapon for some bonus stats/damage, and BOOM, your cool medieval sword now looks like a fucking glowstick... God these things are ugly.

They show the mental age of developers too. How old do you have to be to think that making your weapon glow and shit is cool?

I...I don't get it? How are glowing magic swords not cool? Power only feasible in fantasy, pretty fluctuating colors, potentially a way to modify melee weapons to your liking, further meaningful combat mechanics (enchantment charge and the management of it). I've not played Pillars nor D:OS so maybe they're shit there, but it's cool in the games that I play. Let's say Arx Fatalis, since I know you have a partially justified Morrowind hate-boner.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Always-online DRM.

This one is a total fucking bitch. Brought steamdeck to work to let colleagues mash on some SF6 in preparation for playdate that evening, install it on-site, all good runs like a charm, that evening meet up with the bois at friend's house, game stutters every 20? seconds. WTF is going on, it was fine fucking 4 hours ago??? Long story short, it was the fact that at work I connected it to the wifi to DL, friend has wifi on router dissabled; Enabled the wifi and connected deck and wtf do you know? NOMOREFUCKINGSTUTTERS. Yeah I was pissed fuck fucking DRM up it's ugly fucking ass.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Ooooh, I got a great one!

Enchantment visual effects on weapons in new age isometric RPGs. Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, etc. Enchant your weapon for some bonus stats/damage, and BOOM, your cool medieval sword now looks like a fucking glowstick... God these things are ugly.

They show the mental age of developers too. How old do you have to be to think that making your weapon glow and shit is cool?

I...I don't get it? How are glowing magic swords not cool? Power only feasible in fantasy, pretty fluctuating colors, potentially a way to modify melee weapons to your liking, further meaningful combat mechanics (enchantment charge and the management of it). I've not played Pillars nor D:OS so maybe they're shit there, but it's cool in the games that I play. Let's say Arx Fatalis, since I know you have a partially justified Morrowind hate-boner.

I'm not a fan of glowing shite; my late game Pillars 1 party was like a roving mid 90s nightclub.

 

[gurugeorge]

Ooooh, I got a great one!

Enchantment visual effects on weapons in new age isometric RPGs. Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, etc. Enchant your weapon for some bonus stats/damage, and BOOM, your cool medieval sword now looks like a fucking glowstick... God these things are ugly.

They show the mental age of developers too. How old do you have to be to think that making your weapon glow and shit is cool?

I...I don't get it? How are glowing magic swords not cool? Power only feasible in fantasy, pretty fluctuating colors, potentially a way to modify melee weapons to your liking, further meaningful combat mechanics (enchantment charge and the management of it). I've not played Pillars nor D:OS so maybe they're shit there, but it's cool in the games that I play. Let's say Arx Fatalis, since I know you have a partially justified Morrowind hate-boner.

I'm not a fan of glowing shite; my late game Pillars 1 party was like a roving mid 90s nightclub.

Ah, but Pillars 1 was particularly bad wrt glowy shit covering the screen, it was absolutely horrendous. Glows in PoE2 and most other games are much more discreet. The PF games are right on the edge - the glowie stuff is detailed enough, in miniature, to be quite nice, but it piles up when you've got umpteen buffs going.

I think whether it's offensive or not really depends on how well scaled and how refined it is. If it's some giant blob, then yeah, it's offensive, but if it's a refined effect that you only really see when you're close up, and only get a hint of it zoomed out, then it's just perfect, because that's how one imagines it would look irl if magic were real.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

New entry: bears.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Simp-baiting to an obscene degree (e.g RE: Village). But I guess this is very obvious yet most just don't gaf. Note: the girls in old gaming marketing were not simp bait, just good old fashioned bait.

How's this "simp-baiting" different from the old-fashioned bait? You mean the whole femdom shit that's trendy recently? I agree, that's a cancer that even transcends gaming.

 

[Ash]

Simping is the ultimate sin, lowering yourself, having no standards, being weak, destroying society just for a mere whiff of pussy. Men are in serious state of decline. Not that the opposite extreme: hyper masculinity is a good thing either, but this is so fucking low and society is truly fucked.

Excessive Simp baiting as with the RE:Village example, well after the terrible RE6, Mediocre but OK RE7, we have yet another game without any real merit and prestige the series was once known for, but sold like hotcakes and this genius degenerate simp baiting is part of the reason why.

Sure, old fashioned bait is not exactly commendable either, but pretty girls do exist, men like them a hell of a lot, and so they will be used to sell shit. It's not THAT bad, maybe it's even good, because hot feminine babes motivate us men to be better/ambitious, or are supposed to but femininity as we knew it back then is hard to come by these days. Whatever the case it's not anywhere near as bad as simps and simp baiting. No game should have fem dom roleplay as the main fucking attraction, or if it should it should be a niche thing, a loverslab mod for the weirdos and losers, whatever. Fucking gamers sad fucks. Clearly society is cucked on a grand scale, especially western. What a laughing stock. Soon the chinese will steamroll us at this rate. We're lucky we have insane military budgets protecting us.

 

[Levenmouth]

Ooooh, I got a great one!

Enchantment visual effects on weapons in new age isometric RPGs. Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, etc. Enchant your weapon for some bonus stats/damage, and BOOM, your cool medieval sword now looks like a fucking glowstick... God these things are ugly.

They show the mental age of developers too. How old do you have to be to think that making your weapon glow and shit is cool?

That's hardly "modern", but I hate it too.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

In older games it was done differently. For example, in Baldur's Gate, if I remember correctly, and in Diablo 2, magical/enchanted weapons would have their blade glow. Now, all things being equal, I'd prefer not to do that, but if you are going to do it, that's the way, very subtle.

In modern RPGs, it's a literal color cloud around the weapon, or some other banal, obnoxious effect, like sparks flying around an +shock enchanted sword. Just disgusting.

Btw, there is a mod for Pillars of Eternity at least to remove this shit for lashes/slaying enchantments. Doesn't work for unique effects though.

 

[gurugeorge]

In older games it was done differently. For example, in Baldur's Gate, if I remember correctly, and in Diablo 2, magical/enchanted weapons would have their blade glow. Now, all things being equal, I'd prefer not to do that, but if you are going to do it, that's the way, very subtle.

In modern RPGs, it's a literal color cloud around the weapon, or some other banal, obnoxious effect, like sparks flying around an +shock enchanted sword. Just disgusting.

Btw, there is a mod for Pillars of Eternity at least to remove this shit for lashes/slaying enchantments. Doesn't work for unique effects though.

Eh, I don't think you're going to get much traction on this Porky old bean

 

[Kabas]

Magical weapons in Daggerfal and Warlords Battlecry games had very pretty sparkle animations. I liked those

 

[man-erg]

Bad aliasing/graphics artifacts. Edges that shimmer, lines that turn into marching ants and can only be marginally improved by blurred anti-aliasing that wrecks performance.
Irritating sound FX for EVERY action you make. Burps, clicks, sub bass thuds. buzzes etc just because you passed the mouse over something. No, I don't need a loud "swish" when I turn a page on screen. It's stupid, not immersive.
In Sci-Fi/Futuristic games, screens that flicker and have scan lines going up and down. It's the future, how can MS teams today be even better than what they will have 500 years from now?
Research trees that tell you how long something will take to research. How can this be? In so called "realistic" games? "We can research the cure for cancer in 10 years, but 8 years if you put 2 more scientists on it".
Inventory and info screens done in the 3D world, so they whoosh and wobble slowly into view and jiggle around while you try to use them. (credit to Borderlands that actually provides a setting to keep them stationary. curses to Arkane, who never do).
Classical music in sci-fi games. Just no. It should be futuristic synth stuff, should be more Burial than Beethoven. (check out FO1 for a better example of what the future should sound like).
And also in sci-fi games (pattern emerging), fighter planes in space. We dont know the future, but one thing for sure, it will not consist of humans in futuristic Spitfires dogfighting in space. It will much more likely be automated AI controlled weapons firing from millions of miles away.
Pixel art. It's an oxymoron.

 

[ds]

Classical music in sci-fi games. Just no. It should be futuristic synth stuff, should be more Burial than Beethoven. (check out FO1 for a better example of what the future should sound like).

Disagree.



A lot of sci-fi settings are alternate universes so your complaints about not being a realistic future are unfounded. If anything, we meed more retro-futurism in sci-fi. Show me what could have been not what will most likely be.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Research trees that tell you how long something will take to research. How can this be? In so called "realistic" games? "We can research the cure for cancer in 10 years, but 8 years if you put 2 more scientists on it".

Not surprising given how most managers think about projects: that 9 women could make a baby in 1 month

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Classical music in sci-fi games. Just no. It should be futuristic synth stuff, should be more Burial than Beethoven. (check out FO1 for a better example of what the future should sound like).

Disagree.



A lot of sci-fi settings are alternate universes so your complaints about not being a realistic future are unfounded. If anything, we meed more retro-futurism in sci-fi. Show me what could have been not what will most likely be.

I the majority of modern Sci Fi, the retro style is not a conscious decision, but just a symptom of lack of imagination and of derivative thinking.

 

[Zlaja]

Unskippable publisher/dev/game engine logos when starting the game.

 

[ds]

Unskippable publisher/dev/game engine logos when starting the game.

These are like an extra fuck you from the developer if the game crashes a lot.

At least you can often just delete the video files to remove that shit.

 

[man-erg]

I the majority of modern Sci Fi, the retro style is not a conscious decision, but just a symptom of lack of imagination and of derivative thinking.

Agree 100%. Add it to the list! A lack of imagination and too much derivative thinking in sci-fi/futuristic games. Starfield won't have anything we haven't seen in games 1000 times before.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Unskippable publisher/dev/game engine logos when starting the game.

These are like an extra fuck you from the developer if the game crashes a lot.

At least you can often just delete the video files to remove that shit.

Thank god for PCGW. Incredible self-indulgence.

 

[El Presidente]

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Another example of Whole Chungus Nu-Masculinity is the game The Last of Us. A masculine stoic bearded man has to survive the zombie apocalypse while protecting a pretty 14 year old girl who is not related to him. They never have sex or have any sexual tension...