What overdone gameplay mechanics would you like to see improved or eliminated altogether?

It's become pretty cliché at this point, but I hope JRPG side quests can be improved. A lot of times they are fetch quests. Go to this location, pick up this shiny object lol. Sometimes it's a welcomed diversion, but you would think they would put more effort into it. Another mechanic that has been more recent, and that I have seen done better, but it's starting to get old, is the eating mechanics. In Yakuza 6, it's done in a pretty good way. The food helps you level up, and may also give you buffs too. But there are games like the one I'm playing now, Persona 5 Strikers, where there are like a million stores, and you have to visit them to buy ingredients to keep making the same items you need, just because the game wants you to work for them. That is not the way to do it!!

So how about you, SW? What overdone gameplay mechanics would you like to see improved or eliminated altogether?

Sleuthy vision. The "hold X to see exactly where you need to go" just blows. It's a waste of the gamer's time. If you don't want to give them the time and perceptual tools or environmental clues to find what they need to find just skip the sleuth mission entirely and do something else with our time.

Cinematic walking.

Deliberately crippling the players speed so they can tell their "story".

Resident Evil 6 and Jedi: Fallen Order are particularly guilty of this. In the case of Fallen Order it's not even telling a story, just wasting your fucking time and padding the game out.

QTE as well, no brainer. Was shit in Resident Evil 4. Oh rando rock rolling, oh, I'm dead.

Great design. Very exciting. Much fun.

Tomb Raider got plagued with this shit after the originals. Over and over and over. Some dickhead developer thinking this shit is great.

It's not. You fool.

Crafting. Picking up random items so they can be scrapped to craft new item has been done to death now.

This... but I actually didn't think it was too bad in Fallen Order.

Crafting/ loot/ rpg elements are overdone.

Picking up ammo is pretty damn tedious too. Tomb Raider for example... you could just pick up ammo by walking over it in the PS2 games, in the reboot you have to pick it up manually. What does this add?

In the case of the original Tomb Raiders, ammo and weapons were hidden, secrets. Sometimes quite well requiring the player to traverse off the beaten path, earning a weapon in advance.

Upon finding the item their was a "aha" and a jingle played. This combined with manually picking it up yourself was gratifying and part of the fun, as they weren't just given to the player and arbitrarily dropped all over the shit in Legend and all other future titles where that explorative reward is completely absent.

The use of durability of melee weapons (handheld), bows, and shields. I saw it first hand with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. While there is a rationale for weapons, bows, and shields breaking after constant use, it does not seem realistic as they are not often made with fragile material such as wood. It makes sense that a wooden weapon, bow, or shield will eventually break, but one made with a strong metal such as iron and a strong alloy (combination of metals and chemicals) such as steel?

Every Ubisoft game has Far Cry 3 outposts.

I want to see that mechanic removed.

Pretty sure they don't anymore. I know AC doesn't anymore and FC5 didn't have any.

RNG loot systems that encourage micro-transaction purchases. If a game gives me only two options to either A: grind the same game modes/raids over and over in hope that I get what I need or B: Spend extra money to reduce the grind and get what I need, I'll just avoid playing the game. It's not worth the time investment.

I absolutely HATE this in games and it is so freaking popular. Who the **** enjoys this shit? It is the worse part of modern day gaming.

Developers trying to make their games "cinematic" and placing an undue emphasis on their pathetically written stories. When I buy a game, I want a game, not a damn movie.

Roguelite design in general.

What made roguelikes click for me was the test of a player's pragmaticism, but roguelites shifted the focus away from temporary items to permanent buffs to your character. Oftentimes being fairly dull statistical upgrades rather than something truly interesting.

Sometimes you find potionlike items or temporary stuff, but they are usually quite moot compared tothe permanent powerups. And even these are mostly just passive effects rather than something like a Wand of Wishing. Which allowed for all sorts of shenanigans.

That of course is not the only issue, permanent cross-play upgrades also made these games infinitely less rewarding to play. But at the very least, you can usually just start a new game so this point isnt so bad. Beating any modern roguelite is nowhere near as satisfying as Ascending in Nethack was. It was so satisfying going deeper and deeper solely because of your skill at the game, rather than you unlocking more and more bonuses until you finally brute force it.

Far Cry New Dawn's main mechanic is reraidable Far Cry 3 Outposts

AC Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla all have Far Cry 3 Outposts

Watch Dogs has Far Cry 3 outposts

Ghost Recon Breakpoint and Wildlands have Far Cry 3 outposts

And what do I mean when I say Far Cry 3 outposts?

They are camps filled with enemies, where you can either go in sneaking or loud, there is a resource there or upgrade that you want and there is usually a wild animal locked up.

Ubisoft towers needs to die. In almost every open world game from idk 10 years ago to Zelda breath of the Wilds to Horizon Zero Dawn. Die please.

Sorry, don't know why but I read that as towers. Yeah the outpost is pretty over played by now.

That being said, I still do enjoy clearing out an outpost though.

I was going to say first person in RE games but there's obviously a fan base for it and I'm done with the series. Thus it doesn't matter to me.

Instead, I'll go with online only focus games... or at least competitive online only games.

Regenerating health, QTE, grenade indicators, to many scripted moments.

Idk to me the problem with Jedi Fallen Order was the amount of backtracking you had to do. We visit Zeffo too many times and I am personally irritated cause I went to Dathomir first and cleared bunch of enemies only told to comeback near endgame cause I can't double jump or something. Dude a jedi can force push and pull but cant double jump. Crewmates telling stories only appeared like few times and you can ignore them in ship.

Agreed 100%. Luckily some games nowadays we can turn off QTE which I fully took advantage in Jedi Fallen Order and Spiderman.

As overplayed as it is, I don't even mind the towers.

Far Cry 3 did them ok, and in Ass Creed I do like scaling a large building to get a view of the land xD

But man, those outposts are starting to suck so hard. "You can do it either stealth or go gun blazing"... Yeah that gimmick wears off if it it's in every single Ubisoft open world game and you are literally doing it for the 500th time.

What I want to say is: I won't be 100% completing New Dawn lol. It's main gameplay trick revolves around redoing the outposts, while in previous Far Cry games this was optional.

Overburdened. **** off.

@hardwenzen: great shout. I specificly dislike weight based inventory system like Fallout, Elder Scroll or Dragon Dogma.

I could go without long tutorials that take up 40% of the game.

JRPG's are the biggest offenders of this. There's simply superior ways to respect a player's intelligence than a game that pauses every three steps to remind you where the sprint button is for the fourth time in two hours.

Randomized loot/ARPG mechanics in games they don't belong in.

Any game that uses randomized loot where its just the same weapons/armor but with randomized stats/different levels need to stop that shit.

Just makes for tedious gameplay where you have to run around after each fight, pick up all the colored items, then fumble around in you inventory for a while to find the best AK-47 or whatever. It always devolves into "find the items with the highest numbers" until you reach the so called "end game" where you can try and balance your build but that is also where the most tedious gameplay tends to be found.

I think some series are starting to move away from this (eg. AC Valhalla) but in general we need less loot games. Its becoming pretty damn obvious that its just a way to easily monetize shit with unique/rare gear.

If games actually do the randomized loot well (ala Borderlands or some traditional ARPGs) thats another matter but it just feels shoe-horned into way too many games these days.

Multiplayer progression and unlocks in action games. If the only way to have people keep playing your game is to dangle "only _ more XP until you unlock *marginally better weapon*" then your game isn't fun enough to stand on its own; only reason people keep playing is to get better gear. Everything should be unlocked from the get-go, everything available to everyone.

QTE's. The one thing everyone hates that people should actually hate lol.

And, last but not least: god....damned....sticky....COVER. I've been crouching behind crates and obstacles for decades, do I really need sticky cover? All it does is get in the way, and for what? B/c it looks cool?

The looter-shooter genre as a whole. Just piss off, please? The best you have to offer is Destiny, and it ain't that good.

Yea, yet to play a game where that's actually fun.

Tactical shooters like Rogue Spear where it was 100% about planning and positioning with basically 1 shot and your dead make sense to have lean mechanics in first person.

But like... a third person "action" game, sitting your ass playing wack-a-hole. How is this shit fun?

I feel like I could write a novel to this topic...

But off the top of my head, id love for developers to be more free with perspective. I can't say I've been wowed by too many first and third party games in a while. I already know how they'll play and feel months before playing it. Are we unable to deliver the gamer a unique perspective any longer? Sad...

Instant-fail stealth missions. Who decided this was good gameplay design?

Boss battles. Yes, I think they should go. I rarely enjoy boss battles which are often inordinately difficult compared to the gameplay leading up to them, and usually require very specific tactics to win which often boils down to memorizing attack patterns so you can avoid getting hit, and waiting for limited windows of opportunity to hit the boss's glowing weak spot.

Yea crafting, and inventory management. Yuck!

Agreed.

I love boss battles :( .

First person viewpoint, its the worst viewpoint for gaming. Without seeing your character its like looking at an empty screen bounce around, breaks all immersion for me.

Unskippable cutscenes, trying to make me watch your suckage, yeah you can take a hike.

Weapon breakage, i don't care if a wooden bat etc breaks in real life after you've beaten a few enemies to death, this isn't real life.

Defend said character until the timer gets to zero.

Escorting characters to places, when they rarely ever follow and get stuck on rocks etc.

Missions with a timer attached to it, they make you rush through the level not experiencing anything, just a dash to the end.

There are other, but that will do for now.

A few things actually:

Give us the complete game from the get-go, and get rid of multiple game 'packages'.

Get rid of all pay lootboxes. Mobile games/mmorpgs do not apply here.

Limit the quantity of DLC content. Take a look at the modern DOA, Train Simulator games. Describing those as 'greed' is an understatement.

Many to choose from, but the one that truly grinds my gears:

The formulaic mission design and chore/errand-fest that permeates nearly every open world game in existence. It’s a damn shame how detailed R*’s worlds are (for example), and how despite their remarkable technical achievement and cohesiveness in affording the illusion of a breathing, living world, they’re ultimately nothing but a shallow facade held together by the underpinnings of a heavily antiquated and boring game design philosophy that could, literally, be achieved on a Gameboy.

“Go here. Do this. Go there. Do that. Blow shit up and create meaningless chaos in the interim“.

This encapsulates the entire mission structure and general gist of the experience. It is superficial, stagnant, and ultimately unsatisfying. This may have been adequate in the infancy of the open world construct, but it’s LONG past due to evolve. I want an open world game, a GTA, that is actually dynamic, alive, consequential and allows me to PLAY it instead of just play in it. Give me access to economy, trade, infrastructure, politics, real estate, alongside the illicit means to affect them. Don’t script me into becoming a mob boss, give me the goddamn tools, set me a goal, and let me do it on my own volition. Let every player uniquely express themselves in how they play. Some may choose brute force, some by political corruption, bribery, extortion, or a mix. The potential is endless.

This is the natural course these games should be headed in, yet we’re still playing the nigh exact same one we were on the original PSX, following the errands of the developers, only with a new coat of paint and physics, without the ability to step twenty feet out of line lest you fail. It’s incredibly ironic in how a game that is seemingly so free and open, how I’ve never felt so constrained. This is mostly a criticism I lay at R*‘s feet (though can be placed at many other developers’ feet as well) as they produce, bar-none, the most convincing and comprehensive open worlds in the business, and it astonishes me how they show absolutely no ambition to push their world design in any respect past the superficial, and in doing so, preclude themselves from truly revolutionizing the genre they helped popularize.

Instead, we just get a shinier, bigger prison to play in every five-ten years. I’m done with it. Their lack of any meaningful gameplay advancement is painful to see in every new release, it sticks out like a sore thumb, but I guess it would be hard to do, and what they do now still sells shitloads as gamers are content with it, so it will never change.

Video games with very basic RPG elements like a skill tree.

Repetitive puzzles in games that are very simple and useless. If you're going to add puzzles into your game at least make it different each time.

Yeah, that shit sucks. What kind of moron finds that mechanic fun or engaging? Blue's Clues is more subtle...

And is why Dead by Daylight lasted me only 2 hours. Would have lasted me 30 if it werent for friends liking it :3

I bought a steam key elsewhere so no refunds.

This is something I have been arguing for a long time, and why I dont really call games like Skyrim or GTA sandboxes. Instead calling them themeparks. You can play in them all you like, but you can't really manipulate them all that well, and you are still following a script. And you often get a mission failed if you deviate even slightly from it. You can go anywhere you want, but what you can do and how you can execute them are far too often, just too limited. The freedom they give you is too superficial.

That said, there are some themeparks that did a fairly decent job satisfying me;

Hitman, MGS5 or BotW come to mind. As do 3d Marios.

Those above games are juicy, as they give you a lot of varied approaches to the same problem, but may not have enough permanence for some.

Sim City, Dwarf Fortress, Liberal Crime Squad, Rimworld, X series, Eve Online, Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Factorio however, are games that allow you to orchastrate your own madness. Some of them even being engineering projects.

Your post in particular makes me wanna suggest giving the X series a try if you havent already.

Randomized loot was arguably the thing that did the most to kill my interest in Divinity: Original Sin 2.

Massive Power Curve + Dullass random loot = No thank you.

Looter games need serious updating. Endless loot that is just trash drops. (designed to make you feel that you get something when actually you are getting nothing)

Games like Diablo, Fallout, Elder scrolls, Path of Exile, Destiny just to name a few are all serious offenders. I am really starting to get bored of that crap.

Can they be saved? Yep. Devs just need to come up with more interesting ways to do loot.

Crafting, which in turn forces you pick up every piece of crap you encounter along the way, because you just know that then you need to craft your ultimate sword of doom in then endgame you will need 5 wooden handles and 7 steel bars and no they are NEVER anywhere to be found if you didn’t drag them along since level 3!!

And don’t even get me started on having to pick up 5 billion different plants when you are out hunting dragons or trying to save the world, sooooo annoying!!!

Also unnecessary weird stories where nothing is ever explained!! E.g I loved Alan Wake even though it ended with a few loose ends, control (which I just finished recently) was just a weird mess where nothing made sense and when you finished the game you had more questions when you started...

Anything with a hunger/hydration system where you die if you don't eat or drink. It's one aspect of tarkov I really don't lile.

@dzimm: This is exactly how I have felt about video game bosses since the 1980s. Bosses suck.

RPG mechanics. Way too over-used. They need to be dialed back.

@pmanden: Get better.

Sticky cover and the inability to jump.

probably hunting and crafting for me. Just never got into it. But personal preference I guess.