Cardinal sins of game design

[Kaftan Barlast]

In the yahtzee thread we were talking about some rally annoying and frustrating stuff in games, so I thought Id beat everyone else to the.. pancake? And make a whole thread about it. I know I wasnt the first to bring up unskippable cutscenes so Ill let someone else do that.

 

 

 

cardinal sin of game design # X

 

Placing checkpoints too far back so that the player has waste time replaying large parts of a mission/level before he gets to the hard part when he dies.

 

This is one of the dumbest and most annoying things developers do, most recently it was GTA4 where you restart so far back that you actually have to drive to the mission startpoint before you can begin playing again. So not only do you have to replay an entire bloody mission, you have to drive all across the whole friggin' town to do it! This is increadibly frustrating and very boring.

 

Solution: use a regular save/load system(with quicksave), or place checkpoints before and efter every difficult stage of a level.

Edited September 11, 2008 by Kaftan Barlast

[Meshugger]

Cardinal sin X+1:

 

Game bosses breaking the very rules that the game is supposed to have

 

Example:

- The player is limited to one multicast spell per turn. The boss can multi-cast and multi-attack on the same turn. This feature is never available for the player itself. These spells/attacks are also usually unique to the boss itself. These kinds of buffs and attacks are usually casted at the end of 45 minute long battle, and without any prior knowledge to the player, the game usually ends there and one has to restart the whole damn thing, usually from a checkpoint long before the very battle itself.

 

Occurance:

- Almost every goddamn jRPG ever made.

[mrmud]

Not allowing the player to change the method of input.

Examples for PCs is being unable to rebind the movement keys in an FPS or change invert mouse.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Letting enemy NPCs snipe you from a mile away without any difficulty while your effective rage is about three feet or so...

[newc0253]

inability to skip cut-scenes.

 

hey game developer! i know you put a lot of work into your kewl-looking cut-scene. man, those graphics are amazing! and, wow, that dialogue is better than shakespeare's 10 best plays combined! it's like truth and beauty and a car chase and explosions all rolled up into one!

 

but you know what? it gets pretty boring to have to sit through it every. single. time i restart the quest or whatever. like they say, familiarity breeds contempt.

 

so, here's a thought, why not have a button that the player can press to skip it second-time-around?

[Enoch]

"Gotchas" in character stat/skill/ability selection.

 

Options presented to the player in character creation/leveling up should be of approximately equal usefulness. Far too many RPGs have options presented to the player which no sane player with experience in the game would select (outside of a masochist run as a gimped character). Examples are too numerous to mention, but include a few skills in the Fallout games (First Aid; Outdoorsman), at least half the spells included in the various D&D games, about 80% of the character options in Arcanum, and the "Thief" class in Baldurs Gate 2.

Edited September 11, 2008 by Enoch

[taks]

in defense of D&D "gotchas," many of the crpg gimps are actually useful in pnp, but that usefulness gets lost in the translation to the computer due to limitations of the engine (and a lack of true roleplaying ability).

 

^meshugger: i agree, it is extremely annoying. this is done as a trade for decent AI/scripting. just give the boss powers that he shouldn't have and you don't have to put any thought into how he uses the powers he's supposed to have.

 

taks

[Calax]

Saying your character has a hidden power but we never are able to use it.

 

Most RPGS of any kind. You're special and powerful only in cutscenes. otherwise your best friend could take your place during combat and you'd still win.

[Monte Carlo]

Romances.

[samm]

Thanks, Mote Carlo, now I don't have to write this

 

Thiefs in BG2 were teh ubar class, because you could kill e.g. demogorgon with traps only...

 

 

Sins:

 

Claiming on the game box that choices influence the game world.

Unwarned points of no return.

Inconsistent game design, including art.

[Stephen Amber]

Annoying mini games that have little, or no, resemblance to the game play of the rest of the game. Like the asteroid shooting segments in KoToR, the controls of which were baffling and frustrating. It was hard, and you had to go back and watch the same cut scene every time on the re-load.

[random n00b]

I hate when a game is designed to favor a particular playstyle over others significantly and for no reason... on purpose.

 

The example that comes to mind is how absurdly the Tekken games favor juggling as materialized by the insane amount of guaranteed damage they deal. A pretty complex fighting engine which ultimately boils down to learning premade juggles, and how to best deliver the launcher.

 

The opposite example is, of course, Deus Ex.

 

Oh, and movereading (the AI reacting to what you input as opposed to what your in-game avatar does) is total bollocks.

[Monte Carlo]

RTS fantasy games that give 'hero' units names and the odd upgrade then claim that this means that the whole joint has "RPG elements."

 

It doesn't. It has a couple of lame hero units.

[Enoch]

in defense of D&D "gotchas," many of the crpg gimps are actually useful in pnp, but that usefulness gets lost in the translation to the computer due to limitations of the engine (and a lack of true roleplaying ability).

The obvious answer to which is, if usefulness is lost in translation, don't bother to translate it. Yeah, you might offend some D20 fanbois, and you lose the ability to brag on the box about having "over 1200 spells to wield," but you'll make a game that will be more fun because it saves everyone the time spent reading the description of "Polymorph Sandwich" before concluding that it was completely freakin' useless.

Edited September 11, 2008 by Enoch

[Zoma]

No option to invert mouse control in any FPS or Third person action games.

 

I simply cannot play nor able to fanthom how are you guys able to play games without using inverted mouse.

[taks]

agreed. it also saves development time giving them the option to either a) release a game earlier or b) spend more time developing other aspects of the game.

 

taks

[taks]

ooh, i got one: baddies that automatically level with the player ala those moronic bethesda games. i can understand sizing the main battles accordingly, but man, a 20th level goblin is taking things a bit too far. what's the point of having levels if all battles are equally difficult? at best it discourages progression. at worst it discourages future purchases.

 

taks

[Meshugger]

ooh, i got one: baddies that automatically level with the player ala those moronic bethesda games. i can understand sizing the main battles accordingly, but man, a 20th level goblin is taking things a bit too far. what's the point of having levels if all battles are equally difficult? at best it discourages progression. at worst it discourages future purchases.

 

taks

 

Heh, i am surprised that no-one else mentioned this earlier. Maybe it just was too self-evident, like "Man, murder is really bad thing, you'know?"

[Gorgon]

No option to invert mouse control in any FPS or Third person action games.

 

I simply cannot play nor able to fanthom how are you guys able to play games without using inverted mouse.

I have one more, inability to map controls like you want them. I don't understand the benefit of inverted mouse setting, left to go left up, up, down is down, whats so hard about that

 

One think I have never gotten used to is using WASD for movement, and mapping all the important keys around them. How hard can it be from a development standpoint to include key mapping.

[Gorgon]

Not allowing the player to change the method of input.

Examples for PCs is being unable to rebind the movement keys in an FPS or change invert mouse.

Ahh, missed that

[GreasyDogMeat]

I think the game design flaw I've hated the most in games I've played is a combination of the checkpoints too far away and the unskippable cutscenes. Nothing feels more like gamer hell than having a checkpoint before a boss fight, walking up to the boss and having to sit through a 2+ minute cutscene, losing and having to repeat over and over until you figure out the boss pattern, or bash your head into the monitor.

 

Another thing I hate is button mashing sequences & quick time events. ::Glares at the otherwise superb RE4::

[Stephen Amber]

ooh, i got one: baddies that automatically level with the player

 

Think the last game I played like that was wizardry 8. The encounters would scale to the party in pretty much any dungeon. Didn't play the game long...

[SteveThaiBinh]

In point and click adventure games, allowing the PC to die has become a cardinal sin of game design. I appreciate that you shouldn't be allowed to get into a position from which you can't go on to win the game, but some of the best and funniest moments of Space Quest and Quest for Glory were all the cool ways you could get yourself killed.

[Niten_Ryu]

I think the game design flaw I've hated the most in games I've played is a combination of the checkpoints too far away and the unskippable cutscenes. Nothing feels more like gamer hell than having a checkpoint before a boss fight, walking up to the boss and having to sit through a 2+ minute cutscene, losing and having to repeat over and over until you figure out the boss pattern, or bash your head into the monitor.

 

This must be the most stupid that still plagues game design. Cutscenes should be always optional and unless there's techical limitations, saving should be possible at any point.

 

Cutscenes are generally bad if you have to watch 'em over and over but nothing is worse then non-game engine cutscenes that load forever. I recently played KotOR again and I almost didn't finish it because of all the stupid videos (that sometimes crashed on Vista). It didn't help that videos still were in extremely low resolution, while I could play much higher resolution (while KotOR was bad in this, Farcry must be the worst I've ever seen). Thankfully this is less likely to happen with games today as in-game engines allow really high quality cutscenes if needed.

 

Also developers should give players more optional ways to get more info about the story / world. Cardinal sin would be to hit every player with wall of text but it's equally bad not to give info for those players who enjoy it. I think Mass Effect's codex and Warhammer Online's Tome of Knowledge are big step in right direction.

[newc0253]

Unwarned points of no return.

 

yes, this and also those phony urgent quests.

 

these are both sins of game design, but particularly egregious in CRPGs which stress exploration.