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Baffling game design decisions
- Thread starter SleepSmasher
- Start date
Double input commands. For example (in a modern BF game) defibrillators could be used to to represent one button each, push A and B simultaneously to sync a revive. (Maybe to complex for a modern audience)
The Nidoran family in Pokemon.
Nidoran has two branching evolutions based on its gender. Nidoran♂ and Nidoran♀ are two different Pokemon. Nidoran♂ evolves to Nidoking and Nidoran♀ evolves to Nidoqueen.
And for some reason, Nidoran♀ can breed but not Nidorina nor Nidoqueen.
Why GF did this still baffles me.
EDIT: Original sentence was too vague. Thanks Joey Ravn
And for some reason, Nidoran♀ can breed but not Nidorina nor Nidoqueen.
Why GF did this still baffles me.
EDIT: Original sentence was too vague. Thanks Joey Ravn
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A superb piece of design imo. id clearly disagreed, as they removed it from the BFG edition!
Then you run into accessibility issues. More people are uncomfortable holding two buttons rather than one.
Damn that sounds bloody stupid. I'm playing the first Xenoblade Chronicles right now and the tutorials are always available in a dedicated sub-menu. From what some friends told me, it seems there are others pretty backwards decisions in Xenoblade 2. Like, in the first one, random fetch quests are automatically finished and validated when you are done collecting the materials or killing the monsters, but in Xeno 2 you always have to go back to the person who gave you the fetch quest. Shit, that was such a nice QoL improvement in the first one, compared to other RPGs.
It also seems the gacha nature of Blades in Xenoblade 2 is gonna frustrate me to no end...
I just finished Metro Exodus last night(great game),but having the final bit of gameplay have me mash the square button over and over was a bit weird.
RDR2. Rockstar, for the love of God, stop fucking around with my weapons loadout. So many times during that game I'd be hunting something, I'd go to take out a weapon, only to realize Rockstar unequiped it for me in the name of "immersion."
The Lost Vikings is a puzzle platformer where you control three dudes with distinct abilities to get to exit of a stage. In singleplayer mode, things are mostly straight-forward. You select your character, do their bit, swap to the next one, do their bit, etc. Where things immediately get messy is when you play the 2 Player co-op mode. While the game does give you the ability to pass the camera focus to the other person, there is no UI element that actually tells you who has the camera focus. This leads to frequent moments where you think you have the camera, try to do something, only to realise you don't and you die and have to restart the entire level over again. In a similar vein, while the game shows you which characters are active by a player, it does not tell you which player is in control of what character. So once again, you're constantly in situations were you think you think you're about to do something, only for someone else to move. It also makes swapping characters confusing, since you're constantly presented with puzzles that both you and partner want to adapt to. So you both press the swap button, and neither of us who is who. Since we'd both fiddle with the controls, it'd still not be immediately clear. After a while you both get into a habit of doing that "no, please, after you" shtick, where in reality both of us stand there idly because nobody wants to deal with the mess.
All of this could have been fixed so easily with just two UI tweaks. Just slap "P1" and "P2" on the character portraits, and have an extra indicator for who has the camera focus.
All of this could have been fixed so easily with just two UI tweaks. Just slap "P1" and "P2" on the character portraits, and have an extra indicator for who has the camera focus.
Using L3 and R3 whatsoever.
Especially L3 to run.
R3 for lock on in souls is tolerable I suppose.
Skyrim :
If you buy a house you get a chest where you can store shit because the weight system is trash
To store items, you go in the menu that lists your items and press R. Simple right ? If you press E, it tries to use them or equip them if it's a weapon for instance.
So R to store, E to equip
To retrieve items, you go in the menu that lists the chest's contents, then press E to retrieve and R to retrieve everything
E to retrieve, R to retrieve everything. Fucking convenient.
Can't tell how many times I retrieved all 2000 weight units of shit in my chest, and had to store everything again.
Especially L3 to run.
R3 for lock on in souls is tolerable I suppose.
Skyrim :
If you buy a house you get a chest where you can store shit because the weight system is trash
To store items, you go in the menu that lists your items and press R. Simple right ? If you press E, it tries to use them or equip them if it's a weapon for instance.
So R to store, E to equip
To retrieve items, you go in the menu that lists the chest's contents, then press E to retrieve and R to retrieve everything
E to retrieve, R to retrieve everything. Fucking convenient.
Can't tell how many times I retrieved all 2000 weight units of shit in my chest, and had to store everything again.
One of the many reasons why the only thing I cherish from that game is the music.
I don't know, I thought Goldeneye's system worked well with the overall game design. It was particularly useful to do very quick sweeps with the laser gun in Timesplitters 2 when playing on one hit kill mode.
Fire Emblem not having a 'return one round' option (bless 3 Houses, I guess)
Also Fire Emblem not having a menu option to restart a mission/go back to main menu, instead requiring you to shut down the entire game when you lose a unit and want to retry. I dunno how many times I had to do this in Radiant Dawn ....
Also Fire Emblem not having a menu option to restart a mission/go back to main menu, instead requiring you to shut down the entire game when you lose a unit and want to retry. I dunno how many times I had to do this in Radiant Dawn ....
I only got like 7/8 notches with the most interesting charms costing at least 3 slots, so I only could use 2 meaningful charms at the same time.
Man, Far Cry 5 does this too... it's friggin annoying.
Let's see if op gets this:
Shiooo..... aneedle....... Shiooo....
GameFreak, the thread.
Removing amazing features from game to game: following pokémon, Battle Frontier, PSS, Island Scan, Underground, Secret Bases, seasons, pokéball seals, difficulty options (even if they are locked post-game and are version-exclusive), in-game National Dex, DexNav, horde battles, Soaring, O-Powers, Phenomena (Dark Grass, Shaking grass, Rippling Water, Dust Clouds), the radio, Pokétch, rotation battles, Super Training, roaming pokémon, the Game Corner, hidden grottoes, Mega evolution, Z-Moves, etc. It's like every single successful idea GF has is discarded in the next game for "reasons".
Frustratingly teasing everyone with "The Project for the Battle Frontier has begun!" in ORAS. Ugh.
Pokémon Let's Go. All of it.
The amazing choices made for SwSh.
This is not true. Nidoran M and Nidoran F are two different species. A branching evolution based on sex would be Gardevoir/Gallade, for example.
Removing amazing features from game to game: following pokémon, Battle Frontier, PSS, Island Scan, Underground, Secret Bases, seasons, pokéball seals, difficulty options (even if they are locked post-game and are version-exclusive), in-game National Dex, DexNav, horde battles, Soaring, O-Powers, Phenomena (Dark Grass, Shaking grass, Rippling Water, Dust Clouds), the radio, Pokétch, rotation battles, Super Training, roaming pokémon, the Game Corner, hidden grottoes, Mega evolution, Z-Moves, etc. It's like every single successful idea GF has is discarded in the next game for "reasons".
Frustratingly teasing everyone with "The Project for the Battle Frontier has begun!" in ORAS. Ugh.
Pokémon Let's Go. All of it.
The amazing choices made for SwSh.
This is not true. Nidoran M and Nidoran F are two different species. A branching evolution based on sex would be Gardevoir/Gallade, for example.
You're right and I should have made this clearer than I did. Apologies.
If it's between having more actions and making it easy for me personally I prefer that over shallow gameplay.
Which is why I keep playing BF, I guess!
OP
OP
Not sure if I get that yet but I'm sure tired of "Annnnnnnnnnnnd arrived" followed by Pyra's lol'ng.
By the way, gotta love how hectic it gets with everybody screaming the same lines at the same time during bigger battles. My fiancee literally asked me to mute the TV yesterday because she couldn't handle it.
The entirety of Other M is built upong baffling design choices. The game was doomed from the moment they randomly decided it'd be fun to play with just a wiimote sideways. I've tried, and most of the issues during gameplay are fixed by...just adding a nunchuk.
THIS, this is the one I was going to post. By far the most baffling decision I've ever seen in a game. It's pure monkey paw wish. We finally get difficulty choices added to Pokémon. The caveat? It is going to be implemented in one of the most braindead horrendous ways you can think of, making it absolutely and frustratingly pointless and it will never NEVER be tried again. Somehow I get angry just thinking about it. Why? Why? It just makes 0 sense to go out of your way to RUIN IT.
But in general, Gamefreak has tons of baffling design choices that seem completely arbitrary. It's the one developer that always manages to grind my gears, not to mention the entire controversy right now. Nggg.
Echoes did it already. Also, I believe in Normal difficulty (Easy in the west) you can actually save mid-battle.
OP
OP
Probably more an 'oversight' than a 'decision', at first, but I find it hard to believe they never noticed this occurring in testing since it's quite a frequent thing, and they decided to leave the behaviour in:
Forza Horizon 3. I love it dearly, but...
Online adventure mode ranking is based on amount of XP earned.
Some Forzathon one-off timed events give a large block of XP if you complete them.
If you complete one of those Forzathon events in the middle of an Online adventure, you will win with an order of magnitude more XP than any other participant.
Forza Horizon 3. I love it dearly, but...
Online adventure mode ranking is based on amount of XP earned.
Some Forzathon one-off timed events give a large block of XP if you complete them.
If you complete one of those Forzathon events in the middle of an Online adventure, you will win with an order of magnitude more XP than any other participant.
343i: "It seems what everyone dislikes the most about Halo Reach was the armor abilities. Let's double down on them."
*Halo 4 launches and everyone hates it*
*Halo 4 launches and everyone hates it*
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Without level scaling, open worlds like in the Elder Scrolls would be pretty pointless - you'd still be railroaded by level of your opponents.
Levels allow the game to gradually ramp up complexity, and a sensibly built player character should still feel some power increase as their synergies kick in. And top end stuff like dragons shouldn't scale down too far down the level scale so they can still eat over-ambitious newbies, and random bandits shouldn't scale up too far so that you can outlevel them.
I don't really see the problem in that. The Witcher 3 had no leveling by default, and I knew damn well I shouldn't even dare to get to some of the areas with higher level. And it felt infinitely better when you go back to the first areas at 30 levels later and you're able to DESTROY everything that gave you trouble hours back. Same with Horizon Zero Dawn.
You know, feeling good about progressing.
The complete opposite of this is AC Odyssey, where the areas you cleared at level 10 hours ago suddenly have level 50 soldiers, so the progression is false and unnecesary, because it only serves the purpose of you not being destroyed by the soldiers in the next island.
Level gating, for me, is stupid anyway, but if you're going to do it at least make me feel like I accomplished something, not just puffing up a number that means nothing.
Level scaling works in experiments like FFVIII where level means not that much and you can be level 10 but OP as fuck. In Skyrim it was funny to go back to starter areas and struggle somewhat with early cannon fodder. Though I guess the logic is that even though your stats don't mean much your abilities do, and your arsenal of weapons and skills will be better anyway.
But yeah, back in the day I loved to solo old raids in WoW for example or just run around in all zones and roflstomp everything while remembering the good ol' days where I was scared as shit to pull an extra mob lol
But yeah, back in the day I loved to solo old raids in WoW for example or just run around in all zones and roflstomp everything while remembering the good ol' days where I was scared as shit to pull an extra mob lol
Mass Effect 3: Reducing ALL dialogue wheels (bar exactly one) the entire game to a binary choice between "good guy" and "bad guy" or in most cases "yes" or "no", and reducing the amount of interactive dialogue options to less than 50% of the frequency that it used to occur in both previous games.
For context, ME1 and ME2 had an option in the middle to the right that was flavored as "neutral". If you wanted not to take a side; to bluff; to not say it too straight, you'd pick that, lose out on some Exp. points but do what your character would do in that situation. It was also the most context sensitive option. In scenes in which you didn't have enough Charm or Intimidate points you could instead pick the neutral and hope that through cause and effect, it would lead to the better outcome. Examples: Tali's trial in ME2.
Yes, I know oftentimes a design choice boils down to "there were factors in game development which neccesitated this" and it's obvious ME3 was rushed... but it gets a little grey when the developers would also continue to justify it saying shit like "It's war, there's no room for a middle-ground" or such as a writer said at a panel:
True but they seem to not have realized that without choices Mass Effect, especially as it grew, is just like any other game but with a sci-fi flavor. Take out choices from ME1 and it becomes a bad third person Halo clone with tactical inputs. Take it out of ME2 and it becomes a Gears of War clone. Take it out of ME3 (oh wait, we already have that option... "Action Mode") and it becomes a Gears of War meets Call of Duty meets Uncharted clone "in space"... With companions.
Like, it's the most reductive idea I've ever heard.
It's supposed to be ROLEPLAYING. With capital letters! Interactive conversaion in an amazing fictional world is exactly why I bought these games.
Since ME3 BioWare has continued to give their games an inordinate amount of auto-dialogue including Dragon Age Inquisition. That said, Inquisition delivered and then some! in terms of providing choices for roleplaying and character-building. Extremely impressive actually.
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Not being able to use the left/right buttons on the d-pad to switch Nero's Devil Breaker in DMC 5.
I don't care if there's a "strategy" reason for this omission - it's just plain silly.
I don't care if there's a "strategy" reason for this omission - it's just plain silly.
Well apparently the director thought that boys and girls couldn't be friends without becoming romantically involved so it's actually a wonder it didn't turn out worse
When RPG shops don't let you do a proper weapon comparsion with every character. and you have to exit the shop menu and go to the party menu. It's a simple mechanic even some of the biggest RPGs get wrong.
recent offender would be Sniper Elite 4 Coop for me.
In single player, there are constant noises from i.e. airplanes flying over to mask your shots. This mechanic is removed in Coop. Which means you cant effectively use your sniper rifle becasue you will be spotted right away when your shot isnt masked.
So the whole selling point of this game, beeing a sniper and sneakily infiltrate the area is thrown out the window. Great. thats why i bought this game. thanks, i hate it.
In single player, there are constant noises from i.e. airplanes flying over to mask your shots. This mechanic is removed in Coop. Which means you cant effectively use your sniper rifle becasue you will be spotted right away when your shot isnt masked.
So the whole selling point of this game, beeing a sniper and sneakily infiltrate the area is thrown out the window. Great. thats why i bought this game. thanks, i hate it.
