Recently I've been thinking about all the bad designs and features that I've encountered in my short journey with RPGs and games in general that somehow are repeated over and over again and they are always hot mess and pretty much never work out. I would like to dedicate this thread to gather as much as possible retarded ideas that some game devs still think are a good idea. Let's begin:
1. Level scalling:
I don't know which game started with this idea but from the get go it was one hell of a stupid feature. They tried to explain it by stating that it would provide user with constant challenge and the world would level up with you, what it really lead to is that the same bandit that you could beat as complete newbie is still same threat as when you're knight in plate armor, everything becomes bloated, including your mother and all the fun of leveling is gone. It almost as communism where everyone is "equal", that in reality means everyone gets shit. I think I encountered it first in Oblivion but I bet it was there way before that.
2. Difficulty modes:
I remember the times when there was single difficulty mode, tailored for best possible user experience that would be both challenging and do not insult your intelligence while still not being too tedious. At some point there came this trend where game dev decided to put shit ton of difficulty modes, one for morons called easy and anything below, one for so called "normal" players and few other for complete masochists where nothing really changed other than giving enemies some bloated numbers in their stats and making the whole experience an nightmare fuel. I find this idea to be complete waste of time, that could be used in other areas of the game. All it does it makes it harder for you to choose the one mode that the devs had in mind when creating the game and avoiding all others all together so you won't end up either as demi god or complete pushover that have to hit enemy 15454646466 times before he dies and he can do as much as fart and you're dead and your save game gets purged.
3. Balance <insert Josh Sawyer here>
Similar to Level scaling it makes everything bland to the point of throwing up. All spells sucks, everything gets countered, your character can never become good at anything, everything in the name of the equality and fair changes. You will never fell as if you achieved anything because you will be bring back down to the ground by our smelly balancing mechanism. Absolutely disgusting.
4. Replaying same areas
Nioh and other asian games I'm looking at you. You know these games, they reuse every asset possible and make you go trough the same level, do the same shit but you start from other area of the map. I think the only game where it was slightly enjoyable were Severance Blade of Darkness, other than that it always feel dull and it's just petty attempt at making you grind more hours in their shitty game. I already played this level why would I like to replay it?
5. Grind Required
I'm not sure how narrow your asian eyes have to be to don't see what a waste of time is the idea of grind. You literally do the same shit a if you're working second full time job in some god forsaken game and it's somehow enjoyable? That's one of the reasons why I never could get into JRPGs and I can't understand what I had in mind when I was little younger, played MMOs and lost hours of my life on grinding some useless shit while cool kids made fun of me buying everything they needed in Item Shop. Who ever came up with the idea of grinding in games must be a chink. It wouldn't be so bad if grind was optional but hell no, if there's grind in the game you can be sure you will have to hustle to get to the end.
6. Random encounters
Especially when they are as boring and useless as in Solasta or Wasteland 2. They don't bring anything to the table, it's just a time waster oh hey some random, good for nothing bandits attacked you while you were camping 212131233th times and they didn't learn anything from last 23232323232 attemps where they failed, quess it's pointless combat again Woooohoooo. I think the only game where it kind of worked were first two Fallouts but even though those random encounter could be just areas to visit and then they could removed all together. Even if they did removed completely nothing of the value would be lost.
Ok that would be it for now, your turn!
