Let’s talk about gameplay aids that are immensely distracting or annoying.

[Lightning Count]

Right, ERA, time to air some grievances about features that are in their to help gameplay/mask loading but either make gameplay worse or ruin the presentation.

No walking, some characters literally do not walk ever, unless a specific cutscene or segment requires it. Ones that stand out to me to includes Wei Shen in Sleeping Dogs, no matter how light you are with the analogue sticks Wei will either do a medium speed jog or a full out sprint. I find this particularly annoying as I enjoy taking my time to examine my surroundings and just slow down from time time.

Glowing aura's around interactive objects, a big offender for this is Alien Isolation, a game whose aesthetic I love, it is so true to the original film,I can often just sit and admire it for long periods of time, then the illusion is shattered by that awful orange glow that pops up whenever you get close to anything that ve intwrsxted with, such as a computer, switch or something similar. Assassins creed is a series that gones one worse though even applying this effect to characters in addition to things.

Colour coded climbing surfaces, just stop this please, it is very immersion breaking having climbable surface being a certain colour, once you notice it becomes hard to ignore, same with rags denoting climbable again, stop it, design your levels in a way that doesn't insult our intelligence, bring back trial and error we as players can figure this out without these aids. Thankfully the newest Tomb Raider game did include the option to disable climb paint, making the levels more visually coherent.

Over to you now, ERA.

I'll throw a few predictions of what we'll see

Motion Blur
Unskippable cutscenes
Too long between checkpoints
Forced slow walking (btw before you cry on this one, it's normally done for pacing and exposition)

 

[nded]

Okami item descriptions every time you pick something up.

 

[Omar310]

Auto combos in fighting games. Never liked em, never will.

DBFZ is probably the biggest offender where the characters will cancel into the next hit despite whiffing and then they'll fucking turnaround and tag you with the third hit into a dead character. Makes me drown in salt everytime.

That and superdash is why I dropped that game.

 

[SteveWinwood]

hey listen!

 

[SteveWinwood]

also Skeeping Fogs sounds dope

 

[Kamaros]

any pop-up that takes the screen and pauses the action.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

Glowing aura's around interactive objects, a big offender for this is Alien Isolation, a game whose aesthetic I love, it is so true to the original film,I can often just sit and admire it for long periods of time, then the illusion is shattered by that awful orange glow that pops up whenever you get close to anything that ve intwrsxted with, such as a computer, switch or something similar. Assassins creed is a series that gies one worse though even apply this effect to characters in addition to things.

Colour coded climbing surfaces, just stop this please, it is very immersion breaking having climbable surface being a certain colour, once you notice it becomes hard to ignore, same with rags debiting climbable again, stop it, design your levels in a way that doesn't insult our intelligence, bring back trial and error we as players can figure this out without these aids. Thankfully the newest Tomb Rauded fane did include the option to disable climb paint, making the Jeeves mire visually coherent.

Click to shrink...

Kingdom Hearts 3 literally combines these two things. All climbable walls have this glowing aura. In one of the town areas, basically every single building is climbable so the whole town is just having a DBZ power up for no reason.

 

[SparkleMotion]

any pop-up that takes the screen and pauses the action.

Click to shrink...

Do you have such ADD that you can't have your "action" paused to explain intricate and vital game mechanics?

 

[Trust]

Had to do a double take on the thread title.

But yeah any pop up aides that stop the flow of the action are kind of distracting and annoying, imho.

I played the FFVII Remake demo at PAX East yesterday and they had those during the demo. Still enjoyed the game but they were annoying.

 

[Deleted member 7883]

Do you have such ADD that you can't have your "action" paused to explain intricate and vital game mechanics?

Click to shrink...

i do! altough I dislike 'em for reasons other than having my action paused lol. Depending on how complex/unfamiliar the game's mechanics are, and depending on how frequently the pop-ups show up, I have a really hard time learning how to learn a game. There's been a handful of games I've had to look up alternative sources/tutorials to figure stuff out, so I can see all the information at the same time or just have a video to follow.

 

[Jessie]

Xenoblade 2's persistent HUD that tells you which buttons to press to open the menus

 

[VPplaya]

Lol anything Fi related.

 

[Zephy]

The controls guide that can't be deactivated and that pops up every time you stop moving for a second in DBZ Kakarot. For the entire game, in case 40 hours in you forget how to jump or run. It's so annoying because the game has pretty beautiful vistas and that obnoxious pop up with its unnecessary black background takes a huge chunk of screen.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

hey listen!

Click to shrink...

 

[Kamaros]

Do you have such ADD that you can't have your "action" paused to explain intricate and vital game mechanics?

Click to shrink...

no i just don't like it :) it's no different from Navi or Fi for me.

specially when the same game do it better like this w/o pausing:

 

[Lightning Count]

Click to shrink...

You do realise he'll just fly back to where you are, right?

 

[Zephy]

any pop-up that takes the screen and pauses the action.

Click to shrink...

Well I like those, they give me time to understand the mechanic before having to react to what's happening in game. Bonus point when you close the pop up by pressing the required button for the action.

 

[Slamtastic]

Forced experience share making Pokemon evolve while never seeing combat once.

 

[TransEuropaExpress]

I absolutely loathe AI partners, or your own character, constantly Naughty Dog-ing it and throwing hints at you via talking to themselves. It somehow seems really patronizing and annoying to me. I don't care if others like it but at please give me a slider for frequency or just an option to turn it off totally.

God Of War was really obnoxious about this in my experience where you'd enter a, or what I'd call, puzzle room and within ten seconds the kid shouts the answer from across the room. I don't care if the answer was obvious anyway or whatever, it just cuts through the mood like a knife for me every time.

 

[spool]

Tutorials/help text that bother you throughout the entire game. Just in case you forgot how to play, I guess. Tips are fine on the loading screens, but not when they intrude during gameplay. I wonder how the SSD-powered next gen is gonna be in this regard?

New Tomb Raider also has that instinct mode or whatever it's called that's super annoying but is difficult to entirely opt out of using as it's helpful for finding stuff you need in cluttered environments. I'm not sure how that effect was approved for the first game, let alone carried forward into two sequels.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

You do realise he'll just fly back to where you are, right?

Click to shrink...

It's a matter of principle.

The best thing about Omochao though was that you could actually throw him into enemies as a weapon. Like the robots would explode and Omochao would get amnesia from the blast.

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

The screen turns red because you're taking damage.

No dick, I'm taking damage cause I can't see through this red shit.

 

[Lightning Count]

Tutorials/help text that bother you throughout the entire game. Just in case you forgot how to play, I guess. Tips are fine on the loading screens, but not when they intrude during gameplay. I wonder how the SSD-powered next gen is gonna be in this regard?

New Tomb Raider also has that instinct mode or whatever it's called that's super annoying but is difficult to entirely opt out of using as it's helpful for finding stuff you need in cluttered environments. I'm not sure how that effect was approved in the first game, let alone carried forward into two sequels.

Click to shrink...

Detective mode is garbage in general. Should be reserved only for very specific scenes,

 

[banter]

aim assist in shooters (especially when you cant turn it off). Nothing like trying to line up a shot in the distance and someone runs infront of you and your crosshair just starts following them. Or sometimes youre trying to line up a distant headshot but the aim assist keeps pulling it down to center mass.

 

[Panther2103]

Almost all forms of "protect this character" gameplay. A Plague Tale did it okay because it didn't feel like as much of a hindrance but that's the only positive example I can think of.

 

[Adhrast]

Almost all forms of "protect this character" gameplay. A Plague Tale did it okay because it didn't feel like as much of a hindrance but that's the only positive example I can think of.

Click to shrink...

I agree, all the escort missions and the likes are literally one of the worst things in gaming, I don't think I've ever come across a game who managed to do that right.
That's one of the reasons why I hated The Last of Us, which was basically Escort Mission: The Game. Making Ellie immortal was even worse, tbh.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

Lol anything Fi related.

Click to shrink...

There's one really clever puzzle in Skyward Sword that I remember Fi ruining. It's the Sand Ship dungeon, where you need to hit the timestone up on deck to progress. At one point, you are inside the ship and you need to hit the switch but it's on deck so you obviously can't hit it. The solution is that one of the rooms has a skylight you can see the stone through and you can just shoot an arrow through it. The problem is, the moment you walk into that room, Fi tells you about the skylight. Like damn Fi, let me at least try to figure it out on my own.

Almost all forms of "protect this character" gameplay. A Plague Tale did it okay because it didn't feel like as much of a hindrance but that's the only positive example I can think of.

Click to shrink...

Is that really a gameplay "aid" though?

 

[Adhrast]

The thing I hate the most is, as other already mentioned, invasive hints.
It'd be great if we could choose the amount of handholding we want to have: I play some hidden object games when I'm bored, from time to time, and I usually play in casual mode with tons of hints because I just wanna chill. But if I'm playing a "serious" game, I'd like to have to at least think a bit about what I need to do.
Fi in SS being one of the worst offenders.

 

[Transistor]

Minimaps. I hate minimaps because all they do is draw my attention to it rather than the game itself. The same with POI compasses and waypoint markers. My eyes just focus on that dot / arrow instead of on the rest of the environment.

 

[spool]

Most minimaps don't bother me, but the one in The Witcher 3 is an exception. It's like the quest design and even the world itself encourages you to navigate by minimap over using your surroundings to orient yourself. I tried turning the minimap off and found the game a whole lot more immersive. But you can't really play the game that way, since you lose waypoints and other vital information.

 

[Astral]

Last Guardian was still teaching you how to play like 50% into the game.

 

[Ploppee]

In games like Uncharted and the new Tomb Raiders when tombs / caves that are meant to have been untouched for millennia have really obvious yellow paint / some sort of modern marker screaming 'YOU CAN CLIMB HERE'. Like I'd rather explore the tomb thanks and also who the hell put this stuff here?

 

[Deleted member 7883]

Minimaps. I hate minimaps because all they do is draw my attention to it rather than the game itself. The same with POI compasses and waypoint markers. My eyes just focus on that dot / arrow instead of on the rest of the environment.

Click to shrink...

this x 100. There's a bunch of last-gen/early–mid current-gen games that I WANT to play, but am unable to enjoy bc of this. I'm glad more adventure-ey games coming out today are steering clear of FOLLOW THE MAGIC TRAIL type stuff, and are letting me piece things together on my own.

 

[Transistor]

this x 100. There's a bunch of last-gen/early–mid current-gen games that I WANT to play, but am unable to enjoy bc of this. I'm glad more adventure-ey games coming out today are steering clear of FOLLOW THE MAGIC TRAIL type stuff, and are letting me piece things together on my own.

Click to shrink...

It's pretty much why I've fallen out of love with the Elder Scrolls / Fallout games. They're basically glorified "connect the dots" games now.

 

[Pyro]

Aim assist I can't turn off, it always hurts more than it helps for me.

Do you have such ADD that you can't have your "action" paused to explain intricate and vital game mechanics?

Click to shrink...

Throwing up text boxes to explain your game is objectively shit design. We accept them because of how intimidating a controller can be to new players, games can be so different from each other, and putting the time into making a tutorial is hard/isn't as fun to create as the other stuff.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

Throwing up text boxes to explain your game is objectively shit design. We accept them because of how intimidating a controller can be to new players, games can be so different from each other, and putting the time into making a tutorial is hard/isn't as fun to create as the other stuff.

Click to shrink...

How is explaining how your game works shit design? The examples you gave are exactly why they can be good.

You can't expect every player to just instinctually know what to do, what buttons to press, what this random things does. Tutorial boxes can definitely be overdone or poorly implemented but I think they're much better than being forced into boring tutorial stages. Just give us the information quickly and let us try it out ourselves.

 

[SturokBGD]

Mini maps.

Single handedly ruined game design. I hate them. If the response is "you need them to get around" then the game is a failure. Might as well play Pac-Man if you're just going back and forth collecting dots, at least that's fun.

OK maybe that's a wee bit of an exaggeration, but in this day in age, everything on the HUD should be an option.

 

[Deleted member 18379]

"Can you hear me, Zero?" And I know what you will be thinking, "just push R3 and let her talk." Okay well here is my counterpoint, don't even make the hint dialog optional if it's never going to stop pestering you. Burn to the grr burn bur burn toooo the ground. One of the worst games ever. Action starts at 48 seconds in.

 

[inner-G]

hey listen!

Click to shrink...

Came here to post this

so annoying

 

[Pyro]

How is explaining how your game works shit design? The examples you gave are exactly why they can be good.

You can't expect every player to just instinctually know what to do, what buttons to press, what this random things does. Tutorial boxes can definitely be overdone or poorly implemented but I think they're much better than being forced into boring tutorial stages. Just give us the information quickly and let us try it out ourselves.

Click to shrink...

It's about teaching the players in a more natural way. Here's some great examples of why:






Neil Druckmann also talks about this on a great video/channel about story (usually about film) at 8:27

 

[Lightning Count]

In games like Uncharted and the new Tomb Raiders when tombs / caves that are meant to have been untouched for millennia have really obvious yellow paint / some sort of modern marker screaming 'YOU CAN CLIMB HERE'. Like I'd rather explore the tomb thanks and also who the hell put this stuff here?

Click to shrink...

I touched on this in the OP but let me add one massive thing in Uncharted I hated. Fire escapes everywhere in ancient ruins.

 

[VPplaya]

There's one really clever puzzle in Skyward Sword that I remember Fi ruining. It's the Sand Ship dungeon, where you need to hit the timestone up on deck to progress. At one point, you are inside the ship and you need to hit the switch but it's on deck so you obviously can't hit it. The solution is that one of the rooms has a skylight you can see the stone through and you can just shoot an arrow through it. The problem is, the moment you walk into that room, Fi tells you about the skylight. Like damn Fi, let me at least try to figure it out on my own.

Click to shrink...

Yeah Skyward Sword is actually my favorite Zelda but Fi tries really hard to ruin it lol

 

[thisismadness]

Any unskippable cutscenes or preamble before/during difficult events.

 

[SirKai]

"Can you hear me, Zero?" And I know what you will be thinking, "just push R3 and let her talk." Okay well here is my counterpoint, don't even make the hint dialog optional if it's never going to stop pestering you. Burn to the grr burn bur burn toooo the ground. One of the worst games ever. Action starts at 48 seconds in.

Click to shrink...

Holy shit this is an actual nightmare.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

It's about teaching the players in a more natural way. Here's some great examples of why:

Click to shrink...

I don't really have time to watch 3 separate videos but I think I get the gist of what you're trying to say.

I understand that games can teach players how to play the game through gameplay and other more natural ways. However, I feel like there are certain types of mechanics that are not expressed so easily and naturally within the game world. I think it's more common in RPGs which might have more complex, abstract mechanics or features. Sometimes it just makes far more sense to simply tell a player "hey this thing exists" and allow the player to then engage with that than to try and find some roundabout way to not break immersion or put the player in some mandatory tutorial level. I don't think it's bad design to expect a player to read a few lines of text. Games used to have instruction manuals they expected you to read. It's the same thing really.

Are there really bad examples of popup tutorial boxes? Sure, there's plenty. I don't think that makes them inherently shit though.

 

[Horp]

Botw showing some notifications/sounds/animations eeeeevery time.
Powerups in Link's Awakening showing the same animation every time.

edit:
Oh oh oh I just remembered the worst ever.
Fable 1:
"Try to get your combat multiplier even higher"

 

[Lightning Count]

Botw showing some notifications/sounds/animations eeeeevery time.
Powerups in Link's Awakening showing the same animation every time.

edit:
Oh oh oh I just remembered the worst ever.
Fable 1:
"Try to get your combat multiplier even higher"

Click to shrink...

"Hero, your will energy is low, what the devil is that?"
"Your health is low do you have any potions or food?"

 

[Horp]

"Hero, your will energy is low, what the devil is that?"
"Your health is low do you have any potions or food?"

Click to shrink...

Fffffffffffff

 

[MinusTydus]

The Last Guardian: A game so hopelessly broken that the developers decided it was literally unplayable unless on-screen prompts constantly remind you how to play the fucking game.

"B-b-but pets sometimes ignore you! It's not a bug, it's a feature!"

Fuck yourself into oblivion.

 

[Primal Sage]

Well I like those, they give me time to understand the mechanic before having to react to what's happening in game. Bonus point when you close the pop up by pressing the required button for the action.

Click to shrink...

Totally agree. In the first Red Dead Redemption they have popups in the corner during the action which disappear after a short while. First time I played it I totally missed the info because I was having a gun fight. Took me a while to figure out how deadeye worked because that was the only time the mechanic was explained. Now a popup pausing the game would have been perfect for this.