Mine would be arbitrarily slowing down a character to maintain horror in a game. I get if there are reasons like age, injury, or location that could provide context, but don’t turn my legs into molasses because you need to time the jump scare just right.
RPG’s with very vague abbreviated dialogue options that gives a complete line that might be entirely different from what you were expecting. Also, the three options of Yes, sarcastic Yes and No need to stop.
I would be happy to never have voice acting in an RPG ever again if it meant getting proper cRPG dialogue in them. I remember replaying KOTOR and attacking slavers and being treated like a bad guy for doing it, and I just really wanted an option to explain to Jolee that he was a piece of shit and that the Wookies deserved to be free.
Yeah, the excuse is something like "when those guys don’t report in they’ll send even more people in to replace them and punish the Wookiees for their deaths. Okay, sure. Logic works, I suppose.
But Jolee, my man. My plan is literally to overthrow the current regime. There isn’t going to be anyone left to punish them.
:doubt: https://youtu.be/DmvSieBFPNM
Not exactly an RPG, but the line comes so far out of left field.
maybe this is too broad, but I hate any sort of ludonarrative dissonance. I really hate when a story has my character get captured despite just beating up 12 guys in the previous room with no problem. I hate when a cutscene mysteriously disarms my character.
It goes the other way too. If the game is an FPS where I kill hundreds of people, but in the cutscenes I’m just a normal person, I hate it. I play most games like some kind of kleptomaniac pack rat, finding ever possible little morsel of resources that I can find and stuffing them in my goodies sack, but then my character talks and is super suave and cool. Nah. Lots of games have good harmony between gameplay/story. Undertale, recent Doom games, Hades, Disco Elysium, lots of others.
When you have to follow an NPC for a mission and they walk way slower than you do. So you end up just sitting there tapping W every few seconds like an asshole.
Crafting. Just chuck all that shit in the garbage
It really got annoying when they decided to put it into every single game seemingly because some marketing team decided their game needed it too.
Like did the Last of Us really benefit from having a crafting system?
The only game I can think of where the crafting adds anything is Tarkov. Building a gun with a ton of different parts is interesting and actually adds to the game.
I really hate how it’s infected the way characters talk in game. No one says “craft a knife holster” or whatever in real life, yet this terminology just permeates at least one interaction you’ll have. “Collect resources and craft some equipment for your journey” my mentor says to me. Yeah, no one talks like this and it’s not cute like in Metal Gear when the Colonel tells you to push the X button. It just pushes me away from the whole thing.
I’m okay with it, but I think they need to streamline things a little better. Fewer animations and bulk making items. Maybe a separate item section for ingredients to reduce clutter and a marker to show which are items to sell vs those that are useful later.
But all that’s over complicating a tedious part of many games.
Unless it’s Minecraft lol. Because you can actually craft useful things like doors or buckets, and you can use the same resources for many things. Lots of crafting systems don’t even use resources in interesting ways. It’s just an alternative currency. They’re icons in a menu. In Minecraft you can place wood blocks or make them into sticks and stuff. And even a stick can be an interesting item if you put it in a picture frame or armor stand. It interacts with the world. Crafting doesn’t belong in non-sandbox games. Linear story-games should just use Doom-like weapon unlocks and upgrades.
Hunger meters because no one ever seems to make them well. First you tend to have to eat like 12 eggs, 98 berries, and 6 slabs of meat to get back to full, but also you tend to end up getting so much food that its more of a chore than anything else.
as much as I love Pathologic, this one in particular grinds away at me. The main character should potentially be able to get by without eating for a few days at least, but starts to starve in less than one.
hunger would make more sense as just a stamina mechanic in most games since the time frames to actually starve would be crazy. i think project zomboid (zombie survival rougelite RPG) had the only realistic one i ever saw since you can stay alive for years if you do well enough. you get hunger status and positive or negative weight gain. after long enough time, if your weight falls below a dangerous level it slowly chips away your maximum health until you starve. it can take an in game month or more depending on body weight.
Fallout 76 did away with the negative effects of hunger and thirst a few updates ago. Now you just lose the benefits of being well-fed and quenched if you do get hungry.
Also, especially with certain mutations, the amount of food required to not go from 0-100% is very low.
