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[Shadowlord]

Yeah, that definitely is a peeve of mine too, especially if the only way to get what you need to beat that boss is to restart from the beginning of the game and build your characters differently.

[Rolan7]

Very much so.  I usually experience that peeve in character creation and leveling up.  I worry that I *might* be unable to beat a boss or challenge later, because I have no idea which skills are required and which ones are useless traps.

It's a little bit thrilling to master a system like that, but it's also incredibly frustrating.

[Chaosegg]

Aside from the [previously covered in this thread] other obvious things everyone dislikes, such as;
stuff that does't make sense (bugs, enemies that level with you, cut-scenes, bad hitboxes, invisible walls etc), bad controls,
games made just good enough you won't know it is not till you've spent the money and put hours into it... etc,
TLDR: here's my 2 cents rant on immersion breaking names.

Enemies that can only be defeated through cheese or optimized strategies... in an RPG.[/b]  Okay devs, when I play an RPG it is to be immersed in the role I am playing, not to ram my head against enemies built in such a way that you have to abuse game mechanics or use one singular "best" strategy to beat... snip...  What I should not be doing is searching online to find out how to actually bring an enemy down, and find an entire community of players who have the same issue I do with a given enemy.  This is bad design, the meta should never overtake the gameplay.

Yes.
Immersion breaking; it is all over the place.
In multiplayer games, people naming themselves without regard for immersion is rampant,
and is the pet peeve which is a bigger deal to me than you might think.
I wish more devs would make a name filter of some kind, and/or some other way(s) to avoid this form of immersion-rape.

Example of a naming policy in the spirit of anti-immersion-breaking... for the most part, is in spoiler below.
Minor changes made by me for emphasis on the immersion-related bits; see original text at the quote link.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The following types of names are considered unacceptable:
-Vile, profane, rude, or racist names including common swear words, anatomical references, racial slurs, and homonyms of these words.
-Combinations of words that produce an offensive result (e.g. Hugeazz, Tug Mcgroin).
-Names of religious, occult, or significant historic origin (e.g. Jesus, Allah, Satan, Stalin).
-Copyrighted or trademarked names of products, characters, services, or concepts (e.g. Bigmac, Marlboro, Sony).
-Names from popular media. These names can be either fictional (e.g. Rambo, Darthvader) or non-fictional (e.g. Garth Brooks, Pierce Brosnan, George Washington, Michael Jordan).
-Fantasy-oriented names which are easily recognized from popular existing media (e.g. Merlin, Gandalf, Drizzt).
-Common >>>words and phrases that would not be found in the time, place and setting<<< of EverQuest (e.g. Switchblade, Phaser, Toaster, Cannabis).
-Proper names from EverQuest (e.g. Rathe, Karana). This also includes the first or last name of any significant EverQuest NPC (e.g. Dorn, Trumpy, Karn).
-The names of senior Customer Support Representatives or developers of Project 1999 (e.g. Nilbog, Rogean, Uthgaard). game officials.
-Names chosen with the intent or possessed with the effect of harming the reputation of a player or Customer Service Representative game official(s).
-Forenames containing titles within them, such as, but not limited to: The, Lord, Lady, Master, King, Knight, Sir, Father (e.g. Sirtallon, Lordeagle, Mothermaggy, Darksister).
-Names that contain sentences (Ikillorcs), phrases (Ontop), or two or more words that do not form descriptive compound words (Petcarbob, Diediedie and Tablechair).

-Names where the combination of the first and last name forms a phrase or violate a previous rule (e.g. Crymea River, Bran Muffin, Story Thyme).
-For all of the above, misspellings and alternative spellings (such as spelling it backwards) of the word or words are also unacceptable.
-For all of the above, any foreign non-English variations are also unacceptable. If a player petitions a name he or she feels is offensive in a foreign language, all rules set forth shall be applied.

+Descriptive compound words are allowed in first names and are encouraged in surnames (e.g. Treehugger, Giantslayer).
Descriptive compound words (each separate part of the word and the entire word) must otherwise adhere to all other naming rules.
-Above all else, you may not choose character or guild name which, in the sole and absolute discretion of the Project 1999 Customer Service Staff, deems to be offensive or improper.

[EagleV]

Low-framerate scummable games
Ahh, the joy of doing timing-heavy things in slow motion when there is no slowmotion there... putting the fps into very manageable levels (such as half fps). This is more of a balancing concern than a pet peeve, through... unless you put multiplayer in it, in which case, noobs.

I had the opposite problem in Saints Row 4: My laptop could handle it in a low-but-manageable framerate at a low-but-acceptable resolution. However, one sequence had you fly a space ship trough a corridor with moving walls and gates, and the timing of some of the obstacles depended on the framerate, in such a way that below 20 fps, a gate would close a few frames too early. This made the whole segment impossible and I spent hours thinking I was just terrible at it, before looking up a guide. At very low resolution and 25 fps, the level was suddenly easy.
Not sure if this is a pet peeve though, as I haven't had similar problems in any other games.

So here's another one, last instance of that would be GTAV:
Vehicles that autotrigger side missions when entered
I would like to fly that plane without having to deliver packages. As it is now, you have to enter the plane and complete a mission before you actually get to play with it. If you end or fail the mission, you get back to the hangar and can't enter again without restarting that same mission. Something similar to the taxi/ambulance thing where you get in and may choose to start a mission would be much better.

[94dima94]

Can't remember if I already posted this here, but...

Multiplayer-only achievements / trophies

Those are the reason why many times you just don't care about those things. If I buy a game like, say, Assassin's creed: Revelations a few years after release (it was a while ago, something like late 2014, but still, the game was already old) you can't get all the trophies, because you need to play the multiplayer. And either you don't find anybody, or the only 3 people playing it already know everything about it and are so much better than you, so you can't really play and learn anything because you just die constantly.

Whenever you see something like this, the only answer is "don't even care about trophies, you won't complete those anyway".

[itisnotlogical]

I only find achievements fun if I didn't expect there to be an achievement. Like "Hey, you did something neat, here's a little doodad for you!"

[hector13]

Well trophies in and of themselves are a bit pointless.

They're essentially "you played the game! well done!" though there are some that are slightly ridiculous "you did something you never would have done if there wasn't a trophy for it! well done!"

[karhell]

When well thought-out, trophies can be an incentive to play in a different way then usual, or an extra challenge. Unfortunately, they're usually of the "Congratulations for playing normally!" kind, which is pretty pointless indeed.

[Delta Foxtrot]

They often seem to just add grinding and boredom into otherwise fine games. I'd hate them if it wasn't so easy to just ignore their existence. Just looking at Shadow of Mordor, you get achievements for doing all rescue missions (the ones that get old halfway through or earlier), same for survival missions (except those got old in ten minutes). Even something as cool as "execute a burning berserker" fails to attract since I've already burned and executed and executed burning orcs a ton. There's nothing inherently special about executing a burning a berserker specifically, and I'm not going to grind one to tick an imaginary box.

Achievements are right up there with Busywork Simulator 201X. Clearly there's a market for them, even if I completely fail to see the attraction.

[hector13]

They often seem to just add grinding and boredom into otherwise fine games. I'd hate them if it wasn't so easy to just ignore their existence. Just looking at Shadow of Mordor, you get achievements for doing all rescue missions (the ones that get old halfway through or earlier), same for survival missions (except those got old in ten minutes). Even something as cool as "execute a burning berserker" fails to attract since I've already burned and executed and executed burning orcs a ton. There's nothing inherently special about executing a burning a berserker specifically, and I'm not going to grind one to tick an imaginary box.

Achievements are right up there with Busywork Simulator 201X. Clearly there's a market for them, even if I completely fail to see the attraction.

The only achievement from Shadow of Mordor that was kinda different was saving... 10? I can't remember the specific number. Anyway, saving however many hostages it was while on riding one of the cat things, in 90 seconds. There was literally no reason for you to even try to do that unless you were going for the platinum trophy.

[itisnotlogical]

I think in Deus Ex: Human Revolution there's an achievement for getting the ball in the basket in Detroit, which is actually referencing an easter egg from the first Deus Ex game. That's the kind of achievement I'm into. I've already got tons of achievements in WH40K Space Marine for just completing chapters and killing enemies, which is rather annoying because that's just playing the game.

[Rolan7]

I'm trying to think of good achievements.  I actually use the Achievement Showcase in Steam, but mainly to show off difficult optional-challenge achievements.  And as a way to show off games I really liked.

Spoiler: Fondly regarding my achievements (click to show/hide)

So I've got Bastion:  "Complete the Kid's Dream with all 10 gods invoked", which was a rough trip
Payday's "OVERDRILL": A weird and difficult secret area I completed with friends, which involved guarding a drill for close to an hour.  Fond memory.
CK2 "It's Better to be the Emperor":  Empress, actually.  Made it from countess to Empress of Scandinavia, in gavelkind.  Even managed to reform the religion and bring stability.  Didn't know about the achievement until I got it.
Borderlands 2 "Unseen Predator":  Stayed in Zer0's invisible melee mode for 10 seconds by chaining finishers on weak enemies.  Wasn't hard, but was fun - and I got it "accidentally"
EYE Divine Cybermancy: "Voices from Beyond, Let madness fill you, and hear the voices from the other world."  It's trivial to get, it just looks dang cool.

So yeah, progression achievements seem like pointless spam (except for "finish the main game")
Optional-challenge achievements, I like.  It's a log of my achievement.
Clever achievements are a treat, and hard to do right.  Like... In Cave Story, you get ambushed by a cute little Mimiga at one point.  She runs back and forth with her eyes closed, and only takes one hit before calming down...  But she actually can hurt you, and eventually kill you.  There's an achievement for that, and I think it's funny.

I like achievements when they serve as reminders for fond gaming memories, or neat surprises (:

[94dima94]

Yeah, "Completed level 2 / 3 / 4!" Achievements bother me too. It's fine to give those for important/memorable moments of the story, but in this case it seems pointless...

Also, "You started the game!" Achievements only work if they are intended as a joke (and even then, not really, it's kind of getting old...)

Those two cases ruin the concept of achievements and trophies. You should be at least a little happy to get those, as a "reward" for your ability. Yeah, it's all just for bragging rights, but those are not even good at that!

[Persus13]

I like the EUIV/CKII achievements because they usually give me an end or mid-game goal for the nation/dynasty I'm playing as.

Progression achievements are interesting because you can use them to see how far people actually get in games by looking at the global achievements stats for the game.

[Shadowlord]

Progression achievements are interesting because you can use them to see how far people actually get in games by looking at the global achievements stats for the game.

This ^