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RPG Bullshit that's an instant refund/uninstall

Silverfish

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 4, 2019
Messages
3,068
Save game corruption.

Best answer in the thread. I'm still salty about Lords of the Fallen.

For me, there's not any one thing that qualifies as an instant quit / uninstall, but rather pet peeves showing up in tandem. Individually, I can deal with

Long loading times
Info dump intros
Crafting
"Kill the 5 whatevers and return"
No quicksave
Dialogue options that make no sense in context
unresponsive controls (in fairness, mostly a Bethesda / Gamebryo thing)

But when two or three are in the mix, I tap out.
 

Bruma Hobo

Lurker
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
2,409
Combatfag games without character creation and customization options.
Storyfag games without choices or exploration.
Explorationfag games with too detailed quest compasses.
Automatic party healing after each and every combat encounter.
Main character with a predefined personality.
Mandatory tutorials, even if the game is just too unique and weird optional tutorials are always better.
 

lobsterfrogman

Scholar
Joined
Feb 11, 2018
Messages
109
Automatic party healing after each and every combat encounter.

How can this annoy you? Clicking rest is not gameplay so all it does is save you time. Do you also long for unskippable cutscenes and slow animation speed?
Unless, of course, the game is on some sort of time limit and resting has to be used as a resource. This is much better because it gives you more systems to play with, but such games are rare and they certainly don't feature auto-rest then.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
"Deep" character customization that only focuses on physical appearance and little-to-nothing with attributes, classes, sub-classes, skills, feats, perks, etc.

No giant spiders.
 

Bruma Hobo

Lurker
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
2,409
Automatic party healing after each and every combat encounter.

How can this annoy you? Clicking rest is not gameplay so all it does is save you time. Do you also long for unskippable cutscenes and slow animation speed?
Games that let the player rest anywhere and anytime without losing any kind of resource nor risking triggering random encounters are also crap, but at least they allow the player to limit his rest-spam as a self-imposed challenge, something impossible when the game automatically heals you after each encounter.
 

Tacgnol

Shitlord
Patron
Joined
Oct 12, 2010
Messages
1,871,734
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
TheDiceMustRoll
HP bloat (trash enemies having way too much health)
So many games do that, and it is always annoying.

If the only way developers can achieve a higher challenge is to make combat last longer (due to absurdly high HP), they have failed in their design.
It's IMO fine if enemies get beefier the further you get and that combat can take a bit longer in end-game than at the start.
But many games go way beyond that.

Vogel's newer games are a good example of HP bloat.

His enemies increase in power (as they should), but their HP and defences increase far more drastically than their attack power.

The result is very often long boring combats where the enemies can't reliably damage your PCs and just sit there shrugging off powerful attacks and spells.

His early games were better for combat as he rarely engaged in HP bloat, he'd usually make encounters harder by mixing up the enemy roster. Compare encounters in Geneforge 1 and 2 to Geneforge 5 for instance.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
I also recently stopped playing Deadfire after about 5 hours because the total VO was super fucking annoying. I can read at least 5 times faster than the VO and it was just grating to constantly have it going in such a dialogue heavy game.
This is one of those things that are perhaps obvious only when someone else tells you about it, but you can mute the VO. I certainly do that in both the D:OS games and PoE2.
 

Edija

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 17, 2017
Messages
670
Location
The Dead City
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I call it corridor/console syndrome, examples that come to mind: Kotor, Dragon Age.

It's the absolute laziness of devs made manifest by the fact that maps that have no reason to be shaped like corridors that you can traverse (mostly outside areas) still only consist of very limited areas that you can pass through while you are hindered to go in any other direction than that by invisible walls. How to do it right: Gothic 1&2, remember the mine shaft you pass through and end up in the valley of mines? It is a very limited area with an limited approach, but it makes geographical sense, compared to other things like: you just can't go there, bruh.
 

Avarize

Magister
Joined
Nov 17, 2019
Messages
1,504
Location
Handmaid's Tale
Anime and Japanese design aesthetics in general. I don't mean something that looks Japanese (Ghost of Tsushima), but something that looks like it was made by Japanese (Final Fantasy series).
 
Joined
Dec 12, 2013
Messages
4,229
I find it excruciatingly hard to play an RPG for longer than 15 minutes if it starts in "ye olde generic village" with all the typical quests and problems it entails, and there were numerous ones I dropped, never to return, just because of that shitty kind of beginning.
THAT FUCKING VILLAGE IN NWN 2

Yep, NWN 2 was one of the games I dropped because of the ye olde generic village start. Two more examples that immediately come to mind are Drakensang and Divinity 2 - fortunately in the latter case I revisited the game at a later point in time and gritted my teeth through that shit, because what follows is great.

I can't explain it, but the generic village start is just overpowering for me. Especially when I first get to spend a decently long time during character creation - but after that, if I'm dropped into Bumfuck, Nowhere, I say 'yeah ok I'll check back later', and never do.

I'm glad the Co8 mod for ToEE adds an alternative leveling opportunity (a small level 1 dungeon crawl) to Hommlet's boring fetch quests. God, Hommlett was such a boring start to the game but you needed the XP.

Moat is playable at 1 level if you have a good party and know what you are doing.
 

Catacombs

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 10, 2017
Messages
5,928
I also recently stopped playing Deadfire after about 5 hours because the total VO was super fucking annoying. I can read at least 5 times faster than the VO and it was just grating to constantly have it going in such a dialogue heavy game.
You can just turn off all character voices.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Paragraphs upon paragraphs of pretentious lore about imaginary, bullshit races, bullshit places, bullshit characters. I stop playing immediately when I notice this. Like Original Sin in the first town. They ruined Divine Divinity 1 and 2, from an unpretentious game to vomiting unfunny and boring lore bile constantly.

Especially when you get all these lore text dumps, and then... you never actually see any of it in the game.

"Did you know the Akazhazaari come from the volcanic desert plains of Phruumazax, where giant cacti grow to be as tall as mountains and they traverse the desert sands on giant bugs?"

Cool I can't wait to see that place!!

"Also, were you aware the the Akazhazaari have a very peculiar religion that involves their young sexy priestesses sucking each other's toes in an ecstatic ritual?"

Hot. I wanna visit one of their temples and take part in such a ritual, hehe.

"Their culture is very rich and they control the southern trade routes, bringing silken clothes, aromatic spices and exotic pets to the northern realms."

Cool so it's kinda like a silk road? I wonder if I will meet some traveling merchants there.

checks map

Wait, that area isn't even on the map. Did this NPC just spend several paragraphs telling me about a country that isn't in the game, and a culture of which there are maybe - at most - three NPCs in the entire game cause they immigrated from there? All that cool shit, and I won't be able to see any of it?

Go fuck yourself.
 

eli

Learned
Joined
Aug 30, 2020
Messages
187
Paragraphs upon paragraphs of pretentious lore about imaginary, bullshit races, bullshit places, bullshit characters. I stop playing immediately when I notice this. Like Original Sin in the first town. They ruined Divine Divinity 1 and 2, from an unpretentious game to vomiting unfunny and boring lore bile constantly.

Especially when you get all these lore text dumps, and then... you never actually see any of it in the game.

"Did you know the Akazhazaari come from the volcanic desert plains of Phruumazax, where giant cacti grow to be as tall as mountains and they traverse the desert sands on giant bugs?"

Cool I can't wait to see that place!!

"Also, were you aware the the Akazhazaari have a very peculiar religion that involves their young sexy priestesses sucking each other's toes in an ecstatic ritual?"

Hot. I wanna visit one of their temples and take part in such a ritual, hehe.

"Their culture is very rich and they control the southern trade routes, bringing silken clothes, aromatic spices and exotic pets to the northern realms."

Cool so it's kinda like a silk road? I wonder if I will meet some traveling merchants there.

checks map

Wait, that area isn't even on the map. Did this NPC just spend several paragraphs telling me about a country that isn't in the game, and a culture of which there are maybe - at most - three NPCs in the entire game cause they immigrated from there? All that cool shit, and I won't be able to see any of it?

Go fuck yourself.
one word, PoE.
 

Melan

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 20, 2012
Messages
6,602
Location
Civitas Quinque Ecclesiae, Hungary
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! I helped put crap in Monomyth
  • Ye Olde Genericke Fantasye Village with Ye Olde Genericke Wolf Pelt / Rat Basement Questes. Never again! (Hommlet isn't so bad, at least in tabletop format. It is the first place of this kind, after all.)
  • QTEs the Game: In Soviet Russia, game play you! No, not interested.
  • Hero's Journey: farmboy-to-saviour epic destiny narratives done in the pseudo-Celtic patchouli idiom are never done well. I need a very good convincing to try games like this.
  • "Empty sandboxes": a sandbox game which has a large, expansive world of generic filler content. Ultima and Morrowind are the counter-examples here, but there are many forgettable RPGs which have advertised 100+ hours of gameplay without making those 100+ hours interesting. I used to have a lot more time, and lower standards. Today, things'd better be good.
  • Words Words Words Words the Lorefaggotry RPG. Into the trash it goes!
Honestly, I have gotten so good at avoiding crappy RPGs I barely play any.
 

Mastermind

Cognito Elite Material
Patron
Bethestard
Joined
Apr 15, 2010
Messages
21,144
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm not a crybaby so nothing would really trigger me so much as to throw my toys out the pram and instantly uninstall a game I purchased.
  • Realtime clusterfuck "Devil May Cry" style combat

DMC combat is rarely a clusterfuck, are you referring to "action" rpgs that have incompetent gameplay design and just go "eh fuck it high level high damage numbers" like FFXV or whatever?

Yes, FFXV is a good example of what I mean, but Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning also did it many years ago. Slash 'em ups / beat 'em ups where the challenge is mashing the button as quickly as you can until the enemy is dead.

I bounce off it when I see it in action games, but I persevere in RPGs if the other systems are good enough - but I'm starting to get really sick of it.

Button mashing in Amalur melee combat will get you killed. The combat isn't a clusterfuck, you need to pay attention to enemy timing, hit when enemies recover and not over-commit to a combo if there's more than one enemy in range of you.
 

nlfortier

Esturia Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 28, 2020
Messages
128
There is no single element that will instantly ruin a game for me, but here are some things that bug me when playing an RPG:
  • Protagonist with amnesia
  • Random encounters
  • Lack of roleplaying/choices in story
  • Aggressive level and item scaling (common bandits with super rare armor and legendary magic weapons)
 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,523
Paragraphs upon paragraphs of pretentious lore about imaginary, bullshit races, bullshit places, bullshit characters. I stop playing immediately when I notice this. Like Original Sin in the first town. They ruined Divine Divinity 1 and 2, from an unpretentious game to vomiting unfunny and boring lore bile constantly.

Especially when you get all these lore text dumps, and then... you never actually see any of it in the game.

"Did you know the Akazhazaari come from the volcanic desert plains of Phruumazax, where giant cacti grow to be as tall as mountains and they traverse the desert sands on giant bugs?"

Cool I can't wait to see that place!!

"Also, were you aware the the Akazhazaari have a very peculiar religion that involves their young sexy priestesses sucking each other's toes in an ecstatic ritual?"

Hot. I wanna visit one of their temples and take part in such a ritual, hehe.

"Their culture is very rich and they control the southern trade routes, bringing silken clothes, aromatic spices and exotic pets to the northern realms."

Cool so it's kinda like a silk road? I wonder if I will meet some traveling merchants there.

checks map

Wait, that area isn't even on the map. Did this NPC just spend several paragraphs telling me about a country that isn't in the game, and a culture of which there are maybe - at most - three NPCs in the entire game cause they immigrated from there? All that cool shit, and I won't be able to see any of it?

Go fuck yourself.
Hemingway developed an idea that he called Iceberg Theory. The gist of it is that your narrative is strengthened by the work you do behind the scenes, that your reader never sees. For example, if you thoroughly develop the backstory of your protagonist, you can more convincingly write him, even if all of that backstory is left out of the book.

RPG writers developed an idea called Unrelated Exposition. They dump huge walls of text on you to explain aspects of a game that you're not even playing, and they think it makes for a good time.
 
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 10, 2018
Messages
6,706
Location
Mouse Utopia
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
Massive loredumps could be okay, honestly, but they belong in books which the character can ignore. Isn't the loredumping pretty epic in a good way in Morrowind, which I haven't yet played?
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Massive loredumps could be okay, honestly, but they belong in books which the character can ignore. Isn't the loredumping pretty epic in a good way in Morrowind, which I haven't yet played?

Yes, but the majority of Morrowind's loredumps (80-90% of it) relate to things you see in the game. Locations you can visit, characters you can talk to, etc. It's not about some far-off province you'll never visit, but about the culture and society of Morrowind, or more specifically Vvardenfell, the island you're playing on. The huge series of 36 Lessons of Vivec? Written by and relating to the backstory of a character you can actually meet and talk to.

Meanwhile I remember Dragon Age having lots of lengthy loredumps about other countries that you know you'll never get to visit in this game, maybe in a sequel if you're lucky (haha no the sequels don't explore most of these places either), so none of it relates to your actual playing experience.

When you read about the history of the Tribunal Temple in Morrowind, or about the conduct of their saints, you can go and visit these temples and talk to their priests. Heck, there's even a quest that requires you to follow the path of pilgrimage as described in the temple's holy books.

If your lore relates to the actual places and characters you encounter, go ahead, dump 100 pages of it on me.
If it relates to far-off provinces you'll never even see as blips on the horizon, it's just a cocktease. It's saying "look at all this cool shit" but... you never get to see it, only read about it being described.
 
Self-Ejected

TheDiceMustRoll

Game Analist
Joined
Apr 18, 2016
Messages
761
The fact that I have 200 hours in PoE and know nothing about any of the non-Dyrwood locations should say something.
 

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