Topic: Gaming's pet peeves

@Th3solution Aha, I was unaware of the generous saving in the From games, that would help and I briefly considered giving Bloodborne a chance down the line (already bought it on sale quite a while back), but then you reminded me about the PvP invasions in these games. Also, if you die, I assume you have to replay everything from your last "lamp", as well, right? So, that's two strikes for me. The PvP is the dealbreaker, though. Only two games I didn't mind other players coming into my game was Journey and the first Watch Dogs; mainly because the numerous griefers out there had no way to grief in those games. In those two games I actually enjoyed the experience, which is rare as, misanthrope that I am, I typically abhor having other hoomans in my game

I will probably still try Bloodborne at one point anyway, as I love the style and if the amount of replay punishment for failure is manageable, I may have some fun with it. Might get lucky with the PvP invasions as well; played Dark Souls 2 a bit on the X360 way back when and can't remember ever seeing another player in there. Anyway, it's not a priority in my backlog at the moment.

Making some things only reachable if you traverse the one specific way the developers programmed in the game even if you could easily travel up another way, but the game says no. Modern open world design unfortunately, and while it creeped up some in Horizon Forbidden West, I was able to move past it and still adore the game because most of the rest of it was so good.

This issue has cropped up again in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, where I could easily jump with Cloud or my chocobo to climb, only for the game to say no. I had been loving Rebirth and even didn't mind the checklist style side content when you could just go around and easily check each thing off the list, but now in the latter chapters if you don't use your chocobo's specific power for that area, then good luck reaching some of the things involved in the side content.

I'm only doing what I can reach without "jumping through hoops" now in hopes of getting back into a groove with the game. Obviously everything other than the side content is still great as expected if you loved Remake.

@FuriousMachine Yes, the respawn after death in the From / Soulsborne games is back at the lamp / bonfire, which is sometimes quite far and through treacherous pathways to get back to your bloodstain to recoup your XP. Of course, if you die before getting back, then you lose that progress permanently.

In my experience the PvP is not very intrusive. During my playthrough of Bloodborne I think I was invaded maybe twice. And that was back when it was much more popular. You can always opt to play offline too. You won’t see the messages and shadow ghosts left behind of other players, but you also won’t get invaders. In the From games I’ve played there’s select areas that are more known as PvP spots, and so that can limit your exposure as well. But I think you needn’t worry at this point about PvP being much of an issue in Bloodborne. That might change if they ever do a PS5 patch or a remaster which will spike the player numbers again.

Open World games where the world does not function as anything even closely resembling an actual world 😡😓😤 waste of time, resources and budget.

If the city or environment in your world doesn't function as a city or environment in any way, then it is not really an open world game, it is a game in a large empty area filled with crap to collect for no reason to make it seem like it might be an open world with living inhabitants.

Just ban games like that altogether or make them be better for the sake of gaming.

The amount of time devs spend on crafting their worlds and then not making them function as worlds that you exist in is just stupid and a waste of time. There must be hundreds of murals in Marvels NYC that insomniac created, but so what? You barely ever see them as there is no reason to exist at street level or do anything within the city outside of the storyline.

Skyrim is an open world.
The Witcher 3 is an open world.
GTA is an open world.
KCD is an open world.
Red Dead Redemtion is a f***ing open world.

Spider-Man... is a game in an empty city sandbox that barley even functions as a city, or a sandbox, and gives you no reason to treat it as a city. And for some reason digital artists have spent hundreds of hours putting fine details into it and they get shoved into the city and do not have any f***ing importance to the immersion or game function at all. It is literally like they have been told to copy GTA on a design front, but not in any other way at all that makes the game actually function as an open world so you don't see any of the details anyway.

Arguments can be made on both sides for games like AC Oriddysylhalla. Where there are moments when you can be immersed in the world as a world, and the deep history is a character in itself that heavily plays into the world the created feeling more alive and immersive, but it is still filled with silly game sh** that doesn't really serve a purpose. But still, rowing down an English river feels like rowing down an English river, climbing a pyramid does give a sense of awe and scale that you are somewhere and have somewhere to go, and those things go a long way to making the game worlds feel like real places that you exist in while playing the games.

I honestly think Insomniac should have realised this after the first Spider-Man, and gone all in on the game being in a city (yes, set it in the city, that is fine) but with no down time to do boring repetitive sh**, instead the only use for the city should be for travelling to quests that actually matter, and there should be 4x as many of those to make up for the emptiness. They could also have realised that if they are going to focus so much on the design of the city at street level, that they could offer some actual reasons to explore it at street level within more slow paced quests that require thought, investigation and no reliance on super powers.

Be better at designing open world games with more to do in the worlds. Or... don't make open world games. Make laser focused story driven games without worthless downtime that may or may not exist in something that appears to be an open setting, but definitely doesn't rely on padding with fluff if it does happen to have the appearance of an open setting.

There are of course others guilty of doing this "look at me, I'm an open world" statement, but then not providing anything close to an open world experience in the game itself.

As an open world game the Spider-Man series must be about a 3/10, but as story focused action games maybe 8 or 9/10s. And that winds me up so much because they don't do enough of what they do well, and they do too much of what they do terribly haha. Less collectibles, more enemy types. Less "crimes being committed" and more "someone genuinely needs your help in a human way that requires emotional maturity and bravery beyond super powers". Less "travel here to pick up an upgrade part twelve more times" more "travel here because the side quest you are on is multi facetted and you want to go and do more of it because it respects your time and will lead to nice revelations and include more cinematic cutscenes and rewarding outcomes"

Vent over 😤😤😤😅😅😅

@Th3solution Right, fingers crossed for a "non-invasive" Bloodborne experience when the time comes to try it out, then. Hopefully I'll have enough fun with it to withstand repeating the same thing a couple of times to stick with it for a bit

Like what a couple have said in the thread, timed missions where you have to accomplish a certain thing within a time frame are probably the worst things ever. I know they are sometimes placed there to give some people a challenge, but can the developers, like, not do that? It’s especially annoying when it’s done more than once in a game.

I played an obscure Xbox game yesterday called Grabbed by the Ghoulies (cause why not) and it’s FULL of these stupid challenges. I don’t know if I’ll be explaining this well, but there was this one where I had to find and defeat a specific enemy type hiding inside a haunted coat. However, there were multiple coats placed around the room that also held different enemies inside, and I had to figure out which one had the right enemies inside of it while doing it within a time frame of I think a minute to thirty seconds and it ticked me off so much…there isn’t any hints or indicators for which enemies are inside which coat, and although there are these abilities in the room that do extend the time, but using them still didn’t help since I always had to deal with the enemies that weren’t inside the coat. The game probably has some of the worst challenges ever in my opinion and the most repetitive gameplay from how much the challenges repeat, and I’m not going to replay it once I finish it. It’s goofy and I like the tone of the game, but it’s infuriating with its design. There are other challenges the game puts in, like tasking you with exiting a part of an area without getting attacked, or using a limited amount of attacks to defeat enemies. Those two challenges also upset me as well…The same developer behind that game shoved a ton of timed challenges in Banjo-Tooie as well, but compared to Grabbed by the Ghoulies, I actually liked Tooie and think of it highly, but I don’t think I’ll play it again (or soon) because of how many timed missions they put it in. They were both hard and infuriating.

Escort missions might count for me, though I haven’t played enough games with them and I don’t really think they anger me that much for that reason, but I can remember Conker’s Bad Fur Day having two of them in the game. They weren’t really bad since the individuals you escort cannot die and there are no consequences or rules in place during the escorting, but they progressed slowly, especially the first one where you have to escort a baby dinosaur; I know the dino was supposed to be a baby, but it got sort of got annoying when the AI controlling the dino got constantly distracted and stopped moving multiple times to hit and eat cavemen. The second one was not so bad since the character you are escorting was supposed to be an adult (making the character controlled by an AI that had a sense of what it was doing in comparison to the first one) but I feel that the escort missions shouldn’t have been there because of how slow they are.

I should still say that I still like the Banjo-Kazooie games and Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but they have some small things that sorta annoy me. I just think some of these games (ESPECIALLY Grabbed by the Ghoulies) suffered from some poor decisions in the gameplay and designs. The ones in Banjo-Kazooie and Bad Fur Day are less annoying I feel since they don’t really repeat, but Grabbed by the Ghoulies is maybe the worst out of the two.

I don’t like dying in video games. It’s scary and I feel like a little piece of me dies as well.

Eduard Brenton

This is a bit of a blanket statement, but I'm growing rather weary of, well, not necessarily remakes (of true classics), but the remaster trend is getting a bit silly.

I mean, who asked for an Until Dawn remaster? It's already a beautiful game. They could just put a little PS5 symbol on the digital game, throw a new trophy list, and nobody would know the difference. I'm not doubting the work by developers, but it just feels like incredibly cynical and lazy business.

We're all sitting around wondering what Sony's 1st party teams are doing, but Naughty Dog, for one, have used time remastering two games that didn't need it and had probably the one live-service game people actually wanted kiboshed by the circus over at Bungie.

And if rumours are to be believed, we might also be getting a Horizon Zero Dawn remaster. I'm just going to slow exhale on that one. God of War 2018 remaster next?

Sony are having an extremely strange generation. The system is selling fantastically well, but I personally feel that from a software PoV, it's the weakest we've ever had. Highly subjective, but that's just where I'm at.

Jim (we believe in generations 🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦) Ryan did a lot for the company financially, I don't think anyone doubts his credibility as a businessman, but there was no crossover whatsoever with understanding gamers. Remains to be seen where his successors are going to lead the company, but it all feels incredibly arrogant so far this generation. Like they're making the games for themselves with an absolute deaf ear to their audience. Though as a gamer since the 80's, and now a middle aged individual, I'm highly doubtful I'm anything approaching their audience.

I'm really disappointed with Microsoft this generation, Sony are better when the competition is strong. With them tripping over themselves, Sony just feel complacent. The system still feels like PS4.5 to me, like the generation really hasn't even begun. I feel more nervous about the future of the industry than excited. That shouldn't be the case.

I suppose my pet peeve turned into something entirely different. I know it all seems a bit doom and gloom, but it's not all bad. Astrobot looks utterly adorable, fun, and a delightful ode to all things PlayStation. Progression, change and growth is inevitable, but Sony themselves could stand to take a look to the past as inspiration for the future, like Team Asobi have.

@Malaise I can see why you see it as a pet peeve.

I do feel that, while game remasters are great, I definitely agree that there is a ton of remasters coming out lately for modern games that don’t particularly need it, since, like you said, the games already looked beautiful.

I think remasters work more (or at least make more sense) for older or classic games, since the game could be considered outdated and might show its age with issues that are in need of being fixed, for example, the old game might have somewhat blurry visuals that need to be enhanced and more clear. Most modern games that receive the remaster treatment almost always play well and look stunning, which is probably why I do agree that remasters can sometimes be unnecessary, especially for games that have little to no flaws.

@Malaise I think there's a correlation between games taking longer to develop and companies releasing easy remasters in between the bigger releases in order to avoid drought. It's unfortunate that most consumers expect games to look better for each generation as it means they'll take longer to develop and this issue isn't exclusive to Sony. Take Hellblade II that I'm playing now, a five hour experience that took over five years to make. If it weren't for the gorgeous visuals carrying it, it would be a very bog-standard gaming experience even if I'm loving the story and the psychological aspect.

I don't think this issue will persist for long. In the future, I can definitely see companies replacing most employees with advanced AI as it simply won't be feasible to create AAA games anymore with human workforce. Who knows, maybe development times will drastically decrease in the future and we're just in a rough transitional period right now.

As long as development cycles keep getting longer, we'll keep getting more (unnecessary) remasters. That's not to say though that I don't appreciate certain remasters/remakes. I loved last year's Dead Space remake and my favourite games of 2024 thus far are Persona 3 Reload as well Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, both of which I have never played before. Then we have the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, which looks absolutely incredible. But these games are obviously different from remasters of recently released games like The Last of Us Part II. The point is though that companies will keep releasing older games in a fresh coat of paint in the foreseeable future and that's sadly the state of the gaming industry right now.

On a positive note, at least we have more time to go through our backlog while we wait for new games.

@LtSarge @Pastellioli Certainly, I feel remakes have a place in so much as added content, graphical updates, fixing controls, adjusting stories, QoL features, and more. Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 were two of the best games I've played this year. Which I see as both a good and bad thing. Even remasters of older games such as the MGS games and Tomb Raider trilogy, both honour the originals, and update them in necessary ways. Remasters of recent releases however, feel extremely cynical to me. I certainly understand and appreciate your points, both.

On the graphics, while it's true that developers are able to get closer and closer to reality, I think the door is open to be able to make more unique and interesting styles. Something like a comic book in motion perhaps, or hyper sharp cel-shading, or claymation style. There's tremendous scope for unique looks, but so many are relatively derivative of one another. I imagine that could be down to companies using similar engines which would be beyond my understanding. Companies are understandably risk-averse, too. I just feel that creativity has dropped off a little in recent times.

Playing Rise of the Ronin has shown a pet peeve of mine or rather a minor annoyance in recent games. Im not a fan of Rock, Paper, Scissors fighting. As in, you are forced to use a certain weapon/certain stance to beat an enemy type. It takes away a bit of the freedom of using the fighting style/ weapon you like best and find the most fun. Make the penalty a bit less. Have it do only a little bit less damage or maybe one of your special moves doesn't work but the rest do. Not a big problem and I understand the reasoning a bit, but anything that makes it less fun makes it questionable to have in a game for me.
Another pet peeve is so many games making parry mandatory. Would be nice to allow for all three types, block, parry, dodge to be equally effective. I feel like Dark Souls 3 did this best.
All that said, I am quite enjoying Rise of the Ronin. I'm just picking on a few things.

@Elodin At least in RotR, you’re not really forced into matching the combat styles. It only slightly alters how counterspark works. Oddly enough, I use a Shinobi stance as my default stance, which is at a disadvantage against everything, as I love how fast it is. Also, especially when combined with violent gale, I found myself paying less attention to advantages/disadvantages and more to whatever style worked best situationally. Also, unlike Sekiro or Lies of P, where parrying is absolutely critical, it’s nice that RotR gives many other ways to damage the enemies’ ki. Yes, counterspark is devastating and well worth mastering but I found it most effective when used sparingly and in conjunction with other methods, such as shurikens or jumping off of an enemy. Eventually, even your actions against a single enemy will deal ki damage to surrounding enemies and you can even bond transfer proficiencies and buffs between weapons, effectively letting you customize a weapon to your specific play style, so there is at least some flexibility there 😀

@Elodin @Jimmer-jammer I've been curious about Rise of the Ronin, despite the middling reviews, as it looks very much up my alley, but it does have one of my biggest pet peeves and the reason I typically avoid soulslikes: if you're defeated, you'll be returned to the last "bonfire" type checkpoint you activated.
Now, I can deal with that in and of itself, but when the available checkpoints are rare and forces you to travel long distances effectively repeating tons of encounters you've already cleared, I get annoyed. I also don't like it when you're in some way penalized for activating such a checkpoint, like immediately respawning every encounter you've cleared.
Jedi Fallen Order had exactly this system, but in that case I didn't mind that much because the checkpoints were frequent enough that there were only a very few instances where I got frustrated by having to repeat the same encounter again and again because I had the audacity to be defeated by a boss.
So, I guess my question is whether or not there are fairly frequent checkpoints here and if there is heavy repetition with the encounters unless you're really good at the game?
(for comparison, I'm currently playing The Witcher 3 on Death March difficulty and I'm loving it because the game has challenging encounters, but allows me to retry them quickly if I fail, without having to play several minutes of things I've already beat in order to try again)
How would you say RotR works in this regard?

@FuriousMachine So RotR is a little bit of both worlds. While in the open world, there are veiled edge banners (bonfires) all over the place. If you die, you lose whatever Karma you’ve acquired and respawn at a banner. This starts a vendetta with the enemy who killed you. You need to land a critical strike or kill the enemy in order to end the vendetta and reclaim the lost karma. Karma is earned by killing enemies and needs to be banked and then converted into skill points. It’s the only thing lost on death. There are many more ways to earn skill points than Karma though, so honestly it’s not a particularly punishing penalty. Also, due to its open world nature, you can approach the situation differently, so it doesn’t really feel like repeating the same thing. Once public order is restored (bandit camp is cleared out), the enemies are gone for good (for all intents and purposes without getting into late game spoilers), so there’s a real sense of accomplishment tied to doing it.

When in a story mission, it’s more in line with the traditional way of functioning you’ve described above but again, the penalty isn’t overly harsh as Karma is only one avenue of earning skill points.

Fast travel, customization and quality of life options in general are incredibly abundant in this game. It goes out of its way to keep fun at the forefront, which is nice!

@Jimmer-jammer Thank you for providing me with an excellent insight into how the game works. Sounds to me like this is a game I can safely give a go down the line The loss of Karma is a fair penalty for failing an encounter, I guess.
Thanks again, will put this on my wishlist

@FuriousMachine Hope you enjoy it if/when you get to it!

I hate cooldown punishments for dying.

So what, I gotta wait 10 minutes to be able to get gold again? I'm a go play something else.

bloat in games more doesnt equal better

quality not quantity please

Not so much a pet peeve as it is more of a simple observation.

Diminishing returns of technological advances. Saying I've been disappointed in the current generation is a pretty significant understatement. The almost non-existent transition from PS4 hasn't helped, but the drive towards GaaS, the saturation of remasters and the dramatic extension of budgets and development windows has seen my personal interest go sideways, if not backwards. Sony even seem to have lost interest in pushing the supposedly excellent, yet overpriced PSVR2.

I suppose my point is where do we go from here? What's the next step for games? The next big innovation? I feel like things need to take a step back. The development windows are one thing, but the increasing budgets are unsustainable. It's a dangerous world to live in where one unsuccessful project can send your company under.