@DerMeister Yeah, the older Call of Duty games like Modern Warfare 2 used L1 R1 which is weird to go back to. It’s funny because I’ve been playing Medal of Honor on PS1 (thoughts on what I’ve played so far coming soon @RogerRoger) and it uses L2 R2 as the most logical control system. It doesn’t have iron sights but it just feels so much more comfortable using the back triggers.
I’m not sure if this has been said already, but I hate it when you’re in a game and an NPC is talking and if you walk over to a point on the set that triggers an event (like an enemy popping or something in the environment changing to progress the story) or if you open a door or start to climb a wall, etc and then the NPC’s conversation is cut off by the in game event and so you never get to hear the end of what they were going to say. It’s usually not important dialogue, but still, I want to hear it. So I’ve gotten to where I just stop my character in their tracks and not move until the NPC is finished talking, and only then do I start to search around and continue the game.
Another similar pet peeve is when a tutorial pops up and you’re trying to read it and also pay attention to events of the game going on simultaneously and so you either miss the game event or you miss the tutorial, and you have to just figure out the new mechanic it was teaching on your own (or sometimes you just never learn it at all and just survive the game without knowing it, like a special move or something). The most effective tutorials will pause the action when the tutorial box pops and it will require you press a prompt before it disappears.
@Th3solution I agree with the pop up comment. I can’t remember what game it is I played in the last year or so where that kept happening.
As for the first point, I’ve noticed more games have countered that slightly. TLOU2 and possibly RDR2 would carry on conversations if action sequences interrupted them. One of the characters will say something like “what were you saying?” and the audio will pick up where it was interrupted.
@DerMeister After a brief dalliance with a couple of old-school PC shooters in my youth (which means I still wanna move with the arrow keys and shoot with Ctrl, no matter what) I grew up with Bond and Medal of Honor on the PSone and PS2. For the longest time, they used L1 and R1 for strafing, and L2 and R2 for things like "manual aim" and crouch. You fired your weapon with Cross, or sometimes Square. It was bad enough when I had to adapt to analogue stick movement when Agent Under Fire came along, but for the entire PS2 generation I'd re-map any FPS which expected me to shoot with the shoulder buttons because, after genuinely countless hours, I simply couldn't rewire my brain.
@nessisonett Looking forward to your Medal of Honor thoughts, for sure!
@Th3solution Yeah, as @Thrillho says, it's a godsend that modern games are clever enough to return to an ongoing conversation if you interrupt it. Waiting to hear the end of an often-inconsequential sentence used to get real frustrating. Going back and playing some older games, I've encountered a worse variant on being cut off, though; overlapping. NPCs who just carry on speaking over somebody else, like an incoming order on a headset or heck, even a triggered cutscene. It was bad enough when one line of dialogue deleted another, but overlapping means I can't hear either of them!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@Thrillho@RogerRoger Yes, the first time I noticed the game to pick back up a conversation that was interrupted, I think it was Uncharted 4. I was pretty blown away by that.
Some modern games will also counter with taking control of how quickly your character can walk, effectively forcing you to hold back and not make it to the next trigger point. I think I noticed this in Ghost of Tsushima and I think God of War is doing it (which is what prompted me to remember this pet peeve). I appreciate this too, although it’s less elegant than that Naughty Dog / Rockstar technique.
I can’t remember having two overlapping audio sequences in a game but that’s certainly maddening!
@Th3solution See, whenever a game slows me to walking speed, I assume that I'm enduring a hidden loading screen. Even if it's for conversational purposes, I suspected tactical technological reasons!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
One of my major pet peeves is that I don't like when my actions have consequences.
Take for instance, Dishonored. You get the good ending for not killing anyone at all or something. Those kind of things just limit me in playing the game in the way I want. And of course I could accept that and go for the mediocre ending, but... why would I play this game at all about saving the country, when my actions will only lead to dispair? And from a narrative standpoint, even in the world of Dishonored, it just doesn't make sense to me that killing a few people here and there, will put the country in turmoil.
I hate that about Dishonored, a game I would have otherwise loved. And I really don't like when they add that kind of thing in a game, making the player feel like there's a "right" way to play.
@Kidfried Very true - particularly if those decisions are not signposted. I don't like the concepts of 'good endings'. I want an ending that stays true to the way that I have played and not punishing me for it.
I'm playing AC: Valhalla (boy is this a long 'ole game) and I just got a whiff that a decision about how to interact with a character was going to have repercussions. I googled it and yep I was right. The story carries you in a certain direction but if you go with it, turns out you can get the 'bad' ending.
Another one was Ghost of Tsushima. My only really complaint is that your gameplay choices make no impact on the story despute it suggesting that it would.
Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot
@Rudy_Manchego most of the games with multiple endings don't even take player's own endings into account in the sequels. only dragon age and mass effect take your choices into the next game via save data but most other games don't.
so the different endings stuff is just some "trendy" fluff imo.
it only serves as replay value but considering most of those multible ending games are huge rpg's style games,i can't be bothered with playing it again unless the sequel is releasing soon.
@jdv95 Very true - I think it is Metro games where Exodus picks up from a particular ending in Last Light but this is not the ending I got at all and having looked into it, there are a fair few very specific requirements to get the 'perfect' ending that really needs a guide. Each game effectively ignores multiple endings.
As for the replay value, I tend to play narrative games as the person I want to play as and how I want to respond. Replaying it in a different way to get a different ending lessens the impact of the game coz you can see the strings behind all your choices.
Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot
I actually felt the same about Dishonored. I was about 6 or so hours in, then my friend explained that attacking the zombies would lock me out of the best ending as it means more rats. But I already had done so, after all, what's so morally reprehensible about attacking a few flesh eating zombies? I stopped playing and never went back to it, even though it's clearly a very good game.
What a cool subject! OK here are a few things I find the most annoying design wise
1) I absolutely hate that every game has to have half baked choices nowadays . Horizon Zero Dawn was a good game but honestly what was the point of the dialogue wheel?
2) Traveling from point A to point B in open world games . I've read something really accurate one time that said that traveling in open world games is like the worlds longest interactive loading screen and damn if that's not the truth
3) Open world games might have impressive looking mountains and rivers but almost all of them are lacking in detail except for Rockstar games . I'm sick and tired of traveling through the barren empty map only to arrive in a small hub world that's supposed to be a village or a city
4) Last but not least damage sponge enemies and level based enemies that force you to grind or do unrelated side missions in order to progress the story . They are huge pacing killers and my biggest dislike in the new God of War was that you barely felt like a god anymore as even the tiniest minion could whoop dat mass
That's it from me
Written in detail and interesting. I completely agree with everything about open world games.
Uneeded hub areas. I started up Remant: From Ashes (or whater ashes it is), and going through that pointless empty hub almost made me want to just quit. The combat was fun, but that hub should've been a menu or have a menu option if ever I've seen that need. It works great if it's a true part of the game like FE: Three Houses or Dark Souls, but here? No, it shows how overused and tacked on it can be.
@Jaz007 Ah yes, the ol' sandbox trend. I know it's a bit niché, but Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm committed the same sin. It touted a living, breathing incarnation of the Hidden Leaf Village but you start to wander around it between fights, and it's just... nothing. You can collect scrolls scattered about and do some shallow side quests, but it feels so empty and unnecessary. Most of the time you're just running between shops which you have to enter to access various menus. Not good.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
I FFFFFFF'ING HATE THE LACK OF AUTO SAVE POINTS IN PERSONA 5 ROYAL AND ANY GAME WITHOUT IT. HOW IN THE HECK DO YOU DARE TO LAUNCH A GAME LIKE THIS WITHOUT IT. DO YOU JAPANESE DEVELOPERS HATE PROGRESS IN GAME DEVELOPMENT OR SOMETHING? I LOST TWO HOURS OF PROGRESS, ME GRINDING THROUGH MEMENTOS, BECAUSE I PUT MY PS5 IN STANDBY MODE AND SOMEHOW IT SHUT OFF.
This is me done with Persona 5 for the foreseeable future again. I was completely engrossed in the game, but this is the second time I lost a serious amount of progress.
Really... how as a dev do you not have an autosave after any period of the day passes?
@Kidfried Ooph... that sucks. But I’m with you — I agree that the save mechanics of Persona 5 definitely leave a lot to be desired. It’s one of, if not the biggest complaint I have with the game. There are long stretching without even the ability to manually save, then times when you’re able to save at every moment. So it’s quite easy to lose a couple hours of progress like you did, especially in Mementos where the save points can be quite spread out. The sections where the game has tons of exposition scenes are another place where it seems like an hour or two can go between save opportunities, so heaven forbid you have an power issue like you had. It was such a breath of fresh air starting up Hitman, where the game not only liberally autosaves, but you also can manually save anywhere.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
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