Game Design Stuff You Hate

[Kaftan Barlast]

Realisticly, if you have a character thats essential to the plot, you hav two choices really: either you make him unkillable or you allow the player to kill him and break the game for himself. Players tend to really dislike the latter, so that only leaves one option.

 

 

It takes so much effort to create content for todays games that its not possible to cover as many alternate sidetracks as you could in the old days. I suppose you could go for a more oldschool story that dosnt rely on characters to convey it, but those tend to feel kind of flat in comparison (to me atleast)

[Volourn]

"Realisticly, if you have a character thats essential to the plot, you hav two choices really: either you make him unkillable or you allow the player to kill him and break the game for himself."

 

Nope. Those aren't your only two choices. You can make it so *no* character is so essential to the story that killing them breaks the game. Perish the thought - using logic!

 

You can still craft a wonderful story with fantastic characters that are killable.

[CoM_Solaufein]

Characters that can not die. Everyone should in the game should be able to kill. If it breaks the game, then designers need to design their game better.

 

That causes it's own restraints, and makes progression already more of a nightmare than it is... I don't believe you really thought about the impact of what you're saying before you said it... Think about it, and you'll see it is almost 100% impractical.

Baldur's Gate is a good example. You go around and attack a bunch of townies and a bunch of powerful guards and war wizards show up and deal with you. You attack Gorion or any other key person in Candlekeep and they show you how powerful they are. There's ways around it. Everyone is killable in BG but you pay the price for attacking key people or innocents.

[Hell Kitty]

You attack Gorion or any other key person in Candlekeep and they show you how powerful they are.

 

What does that even mean, "they show you how powerful they are"? Aren't those key characters still unkillable?

[Tigranes]

Very very few are unkillable though, i.e. Elminster due to licensing reasons, Gorion, and... that's it, really.

[Hell Kitty]

If Gorion is still unkillable, then I don't get why him showing you how powerful he is (I assume this means he attacks and kills you) is relevant, unless the issue isn't that characters can't be killed, it's how the games handles it. So unkillable characters are fine if they attack and kill you?

 

In Deus Ex main characters would attack if provoked but then all of a sudden they'd stop, seemingly forgetting what just happened. It was ridiculous.

[Janmanden]

What is some stuff you wish game designers would get rid of in games? What stuff really pisses you off or has made for some traumatic gaming moments when you thought your monitor was going out the window due to extreme frustration?

 

None of my five previous monitors in the last two years ever got that far.. 2 CRT's and 3 TFT's.. Gotta love the TFT's they are nice and soft and fairly cheap.. But those CRT's, damn they are hard, busted my knuckles a couple of times..

 

I think pain-pads could solve this, but that's another story..

 

*Ahem*.. what?! oh right, there are small grievances like clunky interface, controls, console to pc-ports, deathtraps and other erm, surprises, which really doesn't bother me relatively speaking, no.. offline singleplayers are quite safeguarded from hate and OOC action, well at least before FO3, but online multiplayers..

 

- Configs, tweaks and cheats. When fun and skill is offset by funky bitstreams and laggy connections and updaterates.. and.. and the game (or engine) support and sport the abuse with tweaks and cheats. I absolutely hate that. VAC?! Pftth!!

 

- Corpse retrieval, grief play and ressurection sickness. When dying becomes a part of the game and it's a puzzle and the pieces are made of meanness.. It's a really long pointless waste of time to run from the graveyard to the scene of the crime where some high level asshat is waiting to do it again and the alternative is to get ressurection sickness for TEN minutes.. Wtf?! This particular game design was obviously made to annoy and bore.. Especially after an update, where it was changed into that you have to be online for the duration to shake it off.. Ffffff.. It's not really a 'new' thing and therefore not just WoW of course, but it's still terribly annoying.

 

- Ladders.. getting on and off and being stuck on it.. would be nice to try without the hassle, injury or death.. and with at least a one-handed weapon at the ready, when just hanging there..

 

- Crouch-jumping.. to enter tunnels and jump on crates.. that's really one of those silly moments, where I feel a bit old and erm, rheumatic..

 

- Getting stuck in weird geometry.. or objects that are stuck in geometry and making noises, because it's trapped in animation as well.. happens to a lot of 3D games..

 

- Console-style non-multi-purpose buttons.. Maybe more of that oldness, but I simply can't keep track of more than ASWD + a jump, sprint, crouch and a prone button and the mouse and wheel buttons.. and that's already too much.. more keys and it's hell.. Having the mouse as a multi-purpose button have been used in a few games, but it's not all that common, unfortunately.

 

- And of course, any shooter-port from the Console to the PC HAVE TO HAVE ASWD + mouse support.. unlike RE4.. Urgh.. and when the game takes over and starts playing itself and leads you with hints "Press 5 + 2" or some such just like in Tomb Raider.. where I had to cross some bridge.. and "press some arrow key" now.. erm.. d'oh.

 

Yep, that pretty much sums it up for me. All these immersion breakers, where you have to switch your focus from the game to the lame and fiddle and twitch with controls and horisontal bungy jumping.. It's making me angry and you won't like me when I am angry, I don't even like me when I am angry.. and my monitors they are scared to death.. actually more like pummeled to death.. but.. well.. .

[Deadly_Nightshade]

You go around and attack a bunch of townies and a bunch of powerful guards and war wizards show up and deal with you.

 

"We Serve the Flaming Fist!" Yeah, those guys could get annoying - although I did enjoy collecting their armor.

[Amentep]

I can't say I've ever really seen the appeal of being able to kill anybody so games that don't allow the freedom to do so have never bothered me.

 

I got bored with the cowled wizards in BG2; just for fun I decided to have my wild mage character upon returning to Athkatla start casting buffs, which led to the Cowled Wizards attacking and I just plowed through all of them. After awhile it got boring and I loaded an earlier save...

[Gorgon]

Unkillable companions are worse than unkillable NPCs. You sort of understand why certain NPCs are there to bring the plot together, best thing to do with those from a writing standpoint is to get them out of the way as soon as possible, and generally have as few of those as humanly possible.

 

NWN2 had the worst of both worlds, immortal NPCs you could not get rid of. Well not until well into the game.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I can't play and drink beer at the same time.

 

You might want to consider some beer goggles, MC

 

Don't think I really can add much to what's been said, though.

 

I disagree with unkillable NPCs on principle, since it shackles the player to antiquated design fetishes. However, if you can't really design the game any better, there are ways to integrate this more efficiently. If you want to make liberal use of these, create reasons and design areas that explain ingame why they are invulnerable. Invisible War comes to mind as a good example, as it had areas lockdown your weapons usage for security reasons (which actually tied in neatly to the setting without ruining suspension of disbelief or breaking "immersion"). Otherwise, just place random signposts with mandatory story or fetch quests, since at least there's the chance people will find it amusing rather than farcical.

 

Minigames. Not minigames themselves, but the way they are often a clear division of the remainder of the game. A minigame can - and should be - a game within a game, not a different game altogether. Why do I have to play a surreal version of Wheel of Fortune to dialogue with characters? Stronghold maintenance quests in Baldur's Gate 2 can be considered minigames; they are set within the gameworld you've been exploring for the last hours, operate under the same rules (which brings familiarity to players and largely means there's no point in coming up with akward new rules on how to play your newfangled Frogger remix, all of them eloquently explained to gamers with GIANT INDICATORS ALL OVER THE SCREEN), and are generally more satisfying than playing unrelated segments.

 

Romances. Don't. Or if you have to, don't.

 

Cutscenes. We get it. The Xbox is an awesome platform for crummy, low quality FMVs. However, sequences using an ingame engine are much less jarring and often produce equally good results, if not better - for the simple reason you won't be introducing stuff like character abilities that players can never have (like heroically jumping over chasms when you can't even use the Z axis).

 

Invisible Walls and unpassable design miscellanea. The mightiest hero can kill hundreds of demons but can't even jump - let alone walk over - a few pebbles. At least create environments that justify this, instead of creating exploration'em ups where you're playing the medieval equivalent of a corridor shooter like Doom - which actually *let* you fall over acidic pits.

 

Unlikely Armor Design. I know you have to pander to preteens who think a bikini is as good as full plate, but strive to dignify gender representation a bit more. A barbarian wearing nothing other than loincloth, a horned helm and some boots is as tasteless as a female warrior clad in a bikini and assorted bondage gear.

[Nightshape]

No, no it isn't. A good designer can do it. If they actually want to. It's lazy, or poor effort on deisgners who make thinsg unkillable. And, yes, I know BIo is guilty of it. Doesn't make it right.

 

Can it but done? naturally, that isn't my dispute. My point is about the extra work caused by doing it... That has a chain effect which effects the final result and overall design, it actually causes it's own restrictions.

 

Fallout 3 kind of handles this, but it still results in you being unable to kill children for example. It's a pass the buck thing, all it does it move the problem elsewhere, and really you need structure over absolute freedom so as to ensure that quests etc... Don't become broken. You also end up with much larger requirements on the whole.

 

To be brief and to the point, it ends up making more sense to just have the character unkillable so as to ensure the game still allows for some amount of control in regards to being able to finish the game.

 

What use is a broken game? What's worse is allowing the player to break the game, that's poor design, and the more situations you allow for the longer the list of requirements becomes, you eventually have to go for very generic characters with little to no complexity at all, and what I mean by that is that they're merely a character with no interaction at all.

 

Now you do have scope for solutions sure, but you also have a budget which you can't really change, at the end of the day you have to ship.

[Nightshape]

"Realisticly, if you have a character thats essential to the plot, you hav two choices really: either you make him unkillable or you allow the player to kill him and break the game for himself."

 

Nope. Those aren't your only two choices. You can make it so *no* character is so essential to the story that killing them breaks the game. Perish the thought - using logic!

 

You can still craft a wonderful story with fantastic characters that are killable.

 

The only way to do that is to make all characters generic, basically you recreate the character as another character. You need another character to step into it's shoes and fill the gap.

 

It is otherwise utterly impossible to create an experience which stays coherant.

[Nightshape]

Characters that can not die. Everyone should in the game should be able to kill. If it breaks the game, then designers need to design their game better.

 

That causes it's own restraints, and makes progression already more of a nightmare than it is... I don't believe you really thought about the impact of what you're saying before you said it... Think about it, and you'll see it is almost 100% impractical.

Baldur's Gate is a good example. You go around and attack a bunch of townies and a bunch of powerful guards and war wizards show up and deal with you. You attack Gorion or any other key person in Candlekeep and they show you how powerful they are. There's ways around it. Everyone is killable in BG but you pay the price for attacking key people or innocents.

 

At certain stages you will always need unkillable characters. Like I said it's causes restraints on what you can do outside of that... It's not impossible, but it's costly to implement, and questionable as to how worthwhile it is in most games.

 

Depends on the depth of characters, style of story delivery etc... etc...

[Nightshape]

Unlikely Armor Design. I know you have to pander to preteens who think a bikini is as good as full plate, but strive to dignify gender representation a bit more. A barbarian wearing nothing other than loincloth, a horned helm and some boots is as tasteless as a female warrior clad in a bikini and assorted bondage gear.

 

I demand chainmail bikini's, and dislike all games without scantly clad women, because I am a leacherious sick pervert AMEN!

[Morgoth]

I never really cared much about killable/non-killable characters. Good designed games even don't let the player think about doing that. Or was the first thing you thought when you met Alyxx in HL2 to blow off her head?

[Nightshape]

I never really cared much about killable/non-killable characters. Good designed games even don't let the player think about doing that. Or was the first thing you thought when you met Alyxx in HL2 to blow off her head?

 

No, but I did want to stick my gun in her mouth

[Morgoth]

Hehehehheheheh...

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I never really cared much about killable/non-killable characters. Good designed games even don't let the player think about doing that. Or was the first thing you thought when you met Alyxx in HL2 to blow off her head?

 

Tell me again what happens in a game where your teammates have godmode on. What happens to challenge, story telling, "immersion"?

[Walsingham]

Crouch jumping is something I'd neglected to mention because it is SUCH a pet hate that I flat out refuse to play games with it in. Thus it didn't spring to mind.

 

I dislike intensely the idea that a character is unkillable. By all means make them bloody dangerous, but I want to be able to kill them. That is, after all, a main reason why I play games, I enjoy working out how to kill things. And I think it's a tremendous testament to a game's design where I can be ingenious about it too. For example, in Oblivion there is a particularly fierce type who I enraged, and then set off, wwearing as little as possible, for teh nearest habitation. Once there I climbed up on top of a barn and sat there while the inhabitants of the city did my work for me. I read a boook while this was going on. 30 minutes later I descended and looted the considerable pile of treasure ensuing.

 

You can't say "Oh you'll never kill me." Because it's the one thing guaranteed to make me try to kill you.

[Morgoth]

I never really cared much about killable/non-killable characters. Good designed games even don't let the player think about doing that. Or was the first thing you thought when you met Alyxx in HL2 to blow off her head?

 

Tell me again what happens in a game where your teammates have godmode on. What happens to challenge, story telling, "immersion"?

Always depends on the game. In Thief, you could kill (or disable) everybody without breaking the game. And then there are these games where teammates go make a nap in the middle of a battle and wake up once that's done. What do I care about these drones? They're serving a purpose, nothing else. And for those that actually have emotional involvement required, just don't make them killable. For the most part, players don't want to kill characters they feel empathy for.

[Hell Kitty]

Invisible War comes to mind as a good example, as it had areas lockdown your weapons usage for security reasons (which actually tied in neatly to the setting without ruining suspension of disbelief or breaking "immersion").

 

Gah, no! IW was horrible in that regard. Why does some scabby little bar possess weapon-locking technology that the rest of the major corporations don't? Tarsus could have saved themselves a whole lot of trouble. If you're going to have an in-universe reason for no weapon zones then it better be good, like Elysium in Bloodlines, whereas IW is just all over the place. In Far Cry 2 there are certain locations, like factions bases, the bar, and player safehouses, where upon entering the player will put away his weapons, but an in-universe explanation is never given.

 

I'm fine with unkillable characters for the reasons Nightshape has mentioned, so their inclusion in a game isn't an immersion issue for me at all. How it's handled is what matters more to me, like I prefer the way Doom 3 doesn't allow you to attack non-hostile characters at all (crosshair changes and weapon lowers) compared to something like FEAR, where attacks on allies have no effect on them, and characters simply don't respond to your actions.

 

Invisible Walls and unpassable design miscellanea. The mightiest hero can kill hundreds of demons but can't even jump - let alone walk over - a few pebbles. At least create environments that justify this, instead of creating exploration'em ups where you're playing the medieval equivalent of a corridor shooter like Doom - which actually *let* you fall over acidic pits.

 

If the result of falling off a ledge is always going to be death, is it better to let the player suffer the consequence of their (possibly accidental) action, being a reload or respawn, or use an invisible barrier and save them the trouble? I don't think there is a right answer because either way you'll annoy someone. Personally I'm happy with what's in Fable 2, you need to press a button to jump from any height, and you can't do it if there is nowhere to jump to safely. The players exploration isn't hindered, and they never need worry about a silly accident.

Edited November 17, 2008 by Hell Kitty

[Hell Kitty]

Always depends on the game. In Thief, you could kill (or disable) everybody without breaking the game.

 

In mission based games like Thief or Hitman, important storyline characters are hidden away in non-interactive cutscenes, unkillable characters in such games ought to be a non-issue. So like you say, always depends on the game.

 

Discussing "immersion" isn't particularly useful here because what is good or bad for immersion depends entirely on which game conceits you are or aren't willing to accept.

 

I dislike intensely the idea that a character is unkillable. By all means make them bloody dangerous, but I want to be able to kill them. That is, after all, a main reason why I play games, I enjoy working out how to kill things.

 

So you're first thought on meeting anyone in a game is "I'm going to enjoy figuring out how to kill you"? Duuude.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Gah, no! IW was horrible in that regard. Why does some scabby little bar possess weapon-locking technology that the rest of the major corporations don't? Tarsus could have saved themselves a whole lot of trouble. If you're going to have an in-universe reason for no weapon zones then it better be good, like Elysium in Bloodlines, whereas IW is just all over the place. In Far Cry 2 there are certain locations, like factions bases, the bar, and player safehouses, where upon entering the player put away his weapons, but an in-universe explanation is never given.

 

One lousy implementation - or rather, a potentially good one followed by a string of illogical absences - doesn't mean it's not a good idea in itself. The problem wasn't so much that a scabby bar had it, but that, as you say, large corporations didn't seem to. But the core concept is the same - invincible NPCs whose condition is explained by ingame context is much preferable.

 

 

I'm fine with unkillable characters for the reasons Nightshape has mentioned, so their inclusion in a game isn't an immersion issue for me at all. How it's handled is what matters more to me, like I prefer that Doom 3 doesn't allow you to attack non-hostile characters at all (crosshair changes and weapon lowers) compared to something like FEAR, where attacks on allies have no effect on them, and characters simply don't respond to your actions.

 

I'm fine with HL2's system as well. It's a good compromise. But the minute you give players the choice to use a weapon against an NPC, but then negate any consequence of using it, is farcical (which is why Deus Ex, God bless all its other goodness, and similar titles get mentioned).

 

 

 

If the result of falling off a ledge is always going to result in death, is it better to let the player suffer the consequence of their (possibly accidental) action, being a reload or respawn, or use an invisible barrier and save them the trouble? I don't think there is a right answer because either way you'll annoy someone. Personally I'm happy with what's in Fable 2, you need to press a button to jump from any height, and you can't do it if there is nowhere to jump to safely. The players exploration isn't hindered, and they never need worry about a silly accident.

 

Although I understand your point, that's not quite what I'm getting at. One thing are environmental hazards like cliffs; an invisible wall of sorts that prevents accidental collapse is fine. Not every game can be, or needs to be like Morrowind, STALKER, and so on. Another is, say, Jade Empire, where a jumping martial arts phenomenon can't even jump over a few pebbles and needs to go the long route around something to reach the intended destination. The first Fable also comes to mind in this regard. Haven't played the sequel yet, since I suspect it's going to be the same all over again.

Edited November 17, 2008 by Diogo Ribeiro

[Diogo Ribeiro]

For the most part, players don't want to kill characters they feel empathy for.

 

And they also try to protect them from harm. Which becomes pointless when they can't be harmed. Where's the emotional connection there.