WTF?! Why did they do that?!

[thesheeep]

Alternate title: Your favourite worst game design decisions

Nice title, huh?

Anyway...
I hope you already know what this thread is about. It's about those decisions in games that made you think "WTF?! What were they thinking?!" when you encountered them. They may even be in your favourite games!

I'll start right away with one of my personal favourites.


The game: Universe At War

First of all, I like that game. Finally, a strategy game with really unique races! Yeah, the balanced was not good. But that would have been patchable, if the game wouldn't have been left to rot by its developers. The game had other, much worse, shortcomings.

One of them is the tutorial. In it, you play the Humans and have to save the president, build units from your buildings, defend your position, etc.
Then, the tutorial is over and you will never be able to play Humans again. Wtf?
I know the official reason is: "Humans are too weak to play with the aliens."
But the very tutorial missions prove that this is not the case. Your units are doing pretty fine against those invaders. The missions also show you that the Humans do have their own buildings, units etc. Therefore, perfectly suited for a playable race.
Also, I am human, so I want to play as Humans, if I know that they exist in the game!
Other than that, the Human "hero" is the first face you see in the game. Your first character. After the tutorial he is degraded to some weakling and serves as a hostage in a later level.

This all is very serious case of "WTF were they thinking?!".

I'm absolutely sure you have such examples, too.

 

[Gerrard]

 

[thesheeep]

Come on, you can do better than that.
This is not "post a pic of your favourite worst game"

 

[MetalCraze]

I think this gives you a precise list of games with crappy design decisions.

 

[Black_Willow]

I am human

 

[Suchy]

Warfare mode in Armed Assault 2's SP campaign...
For those who don't know it - it's a realistic FPP battlefield simulation, where you're a single soldier on a fucking huge terrain and war going on around. Everything is great as long as it's divided in missions. You play and advance so that soon you're the squad commander.
And later they introduce Warfare mode. Basically it's high command over all squads on the whole map, while you can still play FPP as one of the squad leaders. And this would be great if it was only ordering different teams around, with limited resources and no base management. Instead they implemented the most idiotic shit taken straight from RTS games. You can buy units so that they pop out of thin air, fast travel, etc. And enemy can do the same - so it's full of situations where you're attacking enemy town and hostile units just keep spawning around you. Forget about tactically blocking roads to stop reinforcements - fast travel=teleport.
WTF?! In a game that otherwise makes the old R6 or Ghost Recon look like arcade shooters for console kids.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

I think this gives you a precise list of games with crappy design decisions.

If it's not on a platform I own, it has to be shit, amirite? What a dumbfuck.

 

[Suchy]

I think this gives you a precise list of games with crappy design decisions.

Nah, this is the sole reason:

 

[MetalCraze]

If only.
Consoles are also a source of tons of shit flooding PC market with retarded stuff like health regen, cover system, games-must-be-liek-mov13z, static enemies that is an OK stuff on consoles, quest compasses and other primitive dumbing down so the list of games having these will be very long.

 

[Barrow_Bug]

I actually really like IW. But then again, I'm a console tard from way back.

 

[thesheeep]

Warfare mode in Armed Assault 2's SP campaign... [...]

This sounds weird, indeed.

Consoles are also a source of tons of shit flooding PC market with retarded stuff like health regen, cover system, games-must-be-liek-mov13z, static enemies that is an OK stuff on consoles, quest compasses and other primitive dumbing down so the list of games having these will be very long.

But those do not belong here. A quest compass in a modern game is definitely not a Wtf-decision. It's a completely understandable one. They put it in games where most of us would rather not have them in order to appeal to the masses. No "Wtf" involved.

So come on, grab your brain's collar, think about some games and present us a nice, confusing wtf-decision instead of derailing my thread.
And if you still must, derail it with bread, ffs.

I am human

Damn, and here I was, hoping that nobody would notice.

 

[Trithne]

Actually, in Universe at War's human missions, you AREN'T holding out just fine. You can't do SHIT to the walker before the Novus arrive. Humans were originally meant to be a playable faction, hence the buildings etc, but they changed their mind. It was only only going to be a 2-faction game, but that wouldn't sell so they added the Masari instead of doing it later on, which is why they're so half-assed.

The real culprits for that game dying are Microsoft (U@W was the test pig for GFWL, and GFWL killed it and showed Microsoft that PC gamers wouldn't pay for an online service), and Sega, who put NOTHING into advertising it. The game itself was brilliant, and could've really taken off if they'd been willing to actually support it.

 

[DriacKin]

Combat in arcanum.
Seriously. WTF were they thinking?

 

[thesheeep]

Actually, in Universe at War's human missions, you AREN'T holding out just fine. You can't do SHIT to the walker before the Novus arrive.

I certainly don't remember feeling helpless against the Walker. That either means that I killed it or that it was scripted (almost) invulnerable.
Anyway. You CAN hold off all other troops just fine. And whoever can do that basically can take down a Walker as well.
I didn't know that they were planned as a playable race. Which idiot put those half-assed Masari in in their place?...

The real culprits for that game dying are Microsoft (U@W was the test pig for GFWL, and GFWL killed it and showed Microsoft that PC gamers wouldn't pay for an online service), and Sega, who put NOTHING into advertising it. The game itself was brilliant, and could've really taken off if they'd been willing to actually support it.

Yep. That and a partly fucked up interface, and ridiculous campaign videos (seriously, they look they were made in an alpha-version of the game engine), and...

 

[Ch1ef]

Combat in Gothic 3.
Seriously. WTF were they thinking?

fixed

 

[Silellak]

Combat in Ultima 7
Seriously. WTF were they thinking?

fixed

Re-fixed.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

If it's not on a platform I own, it has to be shit, amirite? What a dumbfuck.

Go back to your "GotY 2008" wapafag.

 

[L'ennui]

All of Dante's game.

 

[Multidirectional]

Far Cry 2 is the game where I had most of these "wtf" moments. Especially respawning.. People say respawning in STALKER is annoying, but it's nothing compared to FC2. I mean, I clear the enemie checkpoint and sometimes all enemies in it respawn when I haven't even left the damn place yet. And I don't mean I linger around it for long, just a minute or so. "Stealth killing" with machette too.. I remember trying it for the first time. I lurk in darkness until single enemie comes close, others being quite far away, I do the "stealth kill" and I alert the whole goddamn base. At that point I would have liked to spray shit all over Ubisoft's building, just to give some of it back you know..
Of course it's the case of them not thinking rather than thinking something weird, but it's still so moronic it's impressive. At some point during development of that game some of them had to play some of it, I refuse to believe no one did. And to let shit like that stay in game is just plain evil. Street whores have better work ethics than these folks. Easily one of the worst games ever created.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Entire STALKER. Biggest pile of wasted ideas(great ideas too) ever made.

 

[Turok]

-Dawn of War 2

The infestation indicator, it affect nothing the game, you can let the infestation bar go up and still nothing happen, is a shame that the game after 3 missions it get all repetitive, same tactics all the time and same standard mission (defend a base or attack).

-Space Siege

What the fuck they where thinking? really.

Awesome engine (i love it i always imagine playing ultima 7 with this engine). Almost all games that comming out invest everything to add eyecandy to their engines and left the design story and gameplay to a second plane.

 

[thesheeep]

I have another one.

From The Witcher, actually.
As great as that game is (and it really is!), the first boss is a simple pain in the ass. You just have to look at the forums, it is the no1 topic about the first chapter.
The problem is, that until that point in the game, you don't need the potions, you don't need preparations and all that. And even if you do, the fight basically resolves around luck.
Luck that The Beast doesn't stun you all the time. Luck that the mini-beasts attack the witch, and not you. Luck, luck,....

It's just too much for the first boss of a game. And they really should have noticed that, as it is obvious as hell

 

[Wulfstand]

- NWN 1's storyline, henchmen system (the AI, the fact that you couldn't control any of them, not even choose what spells your mage henchman would learn ffs.., and becouse of the fact that I couldn't control jack shit of them it made me praise the fact that you could only have 2), and oc (everything about it).
Seriously, even tho BG 2 wasn't the best rpg ever made, and ToB felt more like a IWD expansion, you still had at least SOME expectations regarding Bioware's next project.
Out of curiosity tho, I never really checked, could you actually import a character you made in bg 2 and play with it in nwn?
- NWN 2's camera control (from the top-down perspective, which is the secont option out of the 3), and most of it's OC. I would've said something about the party ai too, but I've recently observed the fact that you could completly turn off the AI in the character window (turn all those options off, such as puppet mode,etc).DAMN was the camera messed-up, it was like at every 10 seconds you had to turn the camera around, not to mention that the spell effects are sometimes too much, you can barely understand what the fuck's going on around there)
- Heroes of Might and Magic 5's complete lore-rewrite,only the quetion here isn't WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING, it's just a simple WHY?! WHY did they have to do that?
One of the best things about the M&M series was it's lore, it's music-style, and it's superb world design (as examples just look at HoMM 3's Tower Castle), which made everything look almost alive, with the help of a little imagination. THEY CHANGED/REWROTE ALL OF THAT.
WHY THE FUCK DID THEY EVEN CALL IT HEROES OF MIGHT AND MAGIC THEN? Oh, well it's 'cus it has elves and dwarves in it, and ...uh, it has turn-based combat, and uh... you know, those other things...
And if they'd at least TRY to make it a decent universe, nut just your plain old Lord of the Rings meets Warhammer universe....they even have the balls to copy plot-lines from the previous heroes games (freshly made queen fights off his undead father (h3)/husband (h5), now leader of the undead army,etc)
- Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Same thing, why even call it a might and magic game IF IT'S NOT EVEN A RPG. The whole game feels like a fucking engine benchmark ffs, where they added some storyline, but again, nothing too difficult for your average rayman fan, just the good ol' "Chosen one meets his destiny" cliche.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Also, I am human, so I want to play as Humans, if I know that they exist in the game!

Why would you want to play as boringmans when you have alienz and shit

FarCry 2

Yeah, the developers admitted it was shit in an interview. The respawning isn't that bad of a problem, because you could just zip through the bases, 900 mph...except the rubberband AI makes them hop on their cars and catch up with you, forcing you to either stop and take thm out everytime or go into the jungle and pray they get stuck on a tree.

It helps to think of "getting to the mission start" as part of the mission.

 

[Shannow]

Out of curiosity tho, I never really checked, could you actually import a character you made in bg 2 and play with it in nwn?

Not that I know. Wouldn't make sense either since you're neither continuing the Bhaalspan story nor is the character system the same.

I'd say FO3: OK, it was Beth and I expected lots of the bad stuff, but a town built in the crater of an unexploded atomic bomb?!? Oh, and the [Intelligence] dialogue options. Those could have hardly been more WTF? if Beth had been ridiculing themselves.