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[AzyWng]

Fates Worse Than Death

Basically, there are situations in some games where death (or its equivalent) is preferable to surviving.

For instance, Need 4 Speed: Most Wanted (2012) is a racing game that's quite arcade-y - there's nitrous, drifting, and cars respawn if wrecked.

The thing is, when your car is wrecked in a race, it respawns along the race track.

If your car spins out or if you slow down too much, but don't crash, you are given no such handicap.

That means there are cases where it's better to slam headlong into a wall rather than slow down to avoid it.

I'm not sure if I really need to explain why I hate this mechanic.

[Shadowlord]

I attempted to try the Mirage: Arcane Warfare beta:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

upload pictures

It took ~2 minutes after I told it to launch to show a splash screen, before which it showed nothing at all, another 3 minutes to disappear that and show a fullscreen splash screen, and another 3 minutes after that to finally show the main menu. During that time Spotify was slow as hell*, presumably because Mirage was doing some Heavy Shit with either the internet or hard drive.

* I was trying to search for Metallica, load their list of songs, scroll down, and play one, and everything but the playing was slow.

This hit almost every one of my loading time peeves on the way down: being invisible while loading, taking several minutes to load, slowing other shit down while doing it, and finally when it loaded the characters I could see in the main screen had graphical quality on par with quake 3, which would be fine if it loaded instantly (and everything in the options was set to low but that didn't stop it from taking forever to load)!

The only loading peeve it missed was "launches a launcher which patches the game instead of doing it through steam," although since it demanded firewall access just before the splash screen appeared, maybe it actually did that, but was trying to be stealthy about it. IDK.

[Neonivek]

Anti-narrative choices

I am reminded of exactly two games. Dark Messiah: Heroes of Might and Magic... and Resident Evil 7.

Both of these feature a choice you need to make a certain part of the game. The issue is that one of these choices really don't make sense for your character... In fact not doing the sensible choice runs counter to your character and his motivations.

Reload each bullet manually

This used to be a neat idea but now I am kind of sick and tired of it.

Especially since, and I know this is a science far beyond mortal man, but obviously aliens have discovered ways to instantly reload shotguns, revolvers, and other non-cartridge guns fully without fiddling with things one bullet at a time.

There are games where this doesn't bug me, those would be the ones where the Shotgun's ability to reload one at a time is an advantage (and typically they reload about as fast as any other weapon in those games as well) because it means you can fire between reloads incase you get ambushed.

[Shadowlord]

The Witcher 1 does a thing where you can make some choices, influence Geralt a bit, but there are things that he is dead certain about, and will act on those convictions regardless of what you, the player, think.

The ending of the game is one such thing. The Big Bad convinced me that he was right; Geralt, however, was not convinced. But starting early in the game and proceeding through it, you are able to choose between two sides (The eternal fire, or the scoia'tael) or trying to remain neutral. (I tried to remain neutral)

Spoiler: actual spoilers (click to show/hide)

Near the end of the game, I went to a town which the scoia'tael had occupied, and the eternal fire was outside of, and I got the knights of the eternal fire to let me go in to negotiate. So, I'm negotiating, etc etc, and the kid I'm supposed to be looking after is there.

Well, the eternal fire rushes in and attacks while I'm there. The kid panics and disappears to somewhere else in spacetime because he's a Source. The knights and scoia'tael start murdering each other. I kill all the knights which come near me, and eventually there's just one scoia'tael elf archer left alive. I'm walking out of the town and
*plink*
*plink*
He's shooting arrows at my back.
TL;DR I turned around, killed him, and left. Took a boat back to town. It was on fire. Both sides fighting in the streets. I went full Anakin Skywalker and murdered them all on my way to the Big Bad.

[Draignean]

Dark Messiah, if I remember correctly, had a bit of fridge nuance to its choice.

Spoiler: Mild Dark Messiah Spoilers (click to show/hide)

On the one hand, you're purifying yourself of something people tell you is evil, and you make the attractive girl you've been helping through the game happy. (And you don't have to kill her later, but that's meta knowledge)

On the other hand, you're literally murdering the only companion you've had through the entire game, and the one who saved your life when everything seemed hopeless.

It's not as counter narrative as it first seems. Hell, I chose the demon the first time through, because she actually helped when the chips were down.

(That and demon form is way cooler than an infinity+1 sword)

[Krevsin]

the only thing I remember from Dark Messiah is the throwing people off cliffs.

Not enough throwing people off cliffs
more games should give you the option to throw people off cliffs.

[Sergius]

the only thing I remember from Dark Messiah is the throwing people off cliffs.

Not enough throwing people off cliffs
more games should give you the option to throw people off cliffs.

And those spiky walls.

I want spiky walls that fall into cliffs when you throw people at them.

[Neonivek]

Dark Messiah, if I remember correctly, had a bit of fridge nuance to its choice.

Spoiler: Mild Dark Messiah Spoilers (click to show/hide)

On the one hand, you're purifying yourself of something people tell you is evil, and you make the attractive girl you've been helping through the game happy. (And you don't have to kill her later, but that's meta knowledge)

On the other hand, you're literally murdering the only companion you've had through the entire game, and the one who saved your life when everything seemed hopeless.

It's not as counter narrative as it first seems. Hell, I chose the demon the first time through, because she actually helped when the chips were down.

(That and demon form is way cooler than an infinity+1 sword)

You seem to have picked up on the wrong "counter narrative"

It is the first choice that is counter narrative... Not the second (which is... by the way... the canonical choice as well )

The only reason to chose the first is mostly player instinct/opinion over what the character would think/feel.

[AzyWng]

Just a brief one brought on by bad luck but:

Percent Chance of Bullshit: 1(00)%

I remember hearing last Friday from a Fire Emblem player who was completely incapable of chipping a single point off an enemy's health because said enemy kept activating Buckler (a skill that negates all damage) for several consecutive turns.

I just posted in the die thread on how I failed 4-5 rushes at the beginning of the game in Fallout Shelter.

When that percent chance determines the odds of a good thing happening, you never get it, and when the percent chance determines misfortune...

Let's just say I'm lucky I was taught not to break the things I own.

[Tawa]

I have long known the pain of this. Hours of grinding for the Sword of Kings (which I never got). Reset levels because of a 1% crit chance. The eternal agony of trying to off a pesky kid by pushing him off a tower for a 10% death chance and only getting him crippled, yet dying from sex at an old age every time the event pops up.

[itisnotlogical]

It makes me wonder what any variety of X-Com would be like if you just plain couldn't see the hit percentages. I theorize it'd feel less like bullshit, since you won't be missing shots that you should clearly hit (I've had my fair share of 90% misses before). Maybe instead of having percentages show the player a "guaranteed/likely/impossible" rating for each shot, and keep percentages under the hood.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

It's almost more annoying when you miss a shot you "can't miss."

Frankly, I think TBS w/ lots of RNG and dice rolling needs to fuck off. That's my pet peeve.

[Shadowlord]

The dice rolling works great in Dominions 4, but that's different, I suppose.

It's especially bad in something like the first Baldur's Gate. "Your follower got hit and now they're dead because nobody has any HP. Sowwy. Better reload!"

[Neonivek]

People who complain waaaay too much at a game of chance being a game of chance.

Not referring to people here but BOY am I sick of hearing people complain about this. A game of chance is a game of chance? NOOOOO!!! really?

And then they complain that they cannot save scum better loot (Or that they "Have to savescum better loot" because otherwise they might not have constant epic gear -_-) and that the game shouldn't even have random loot... that it should ALL be pre-generated...

You know... maybe you should just stop playing games with chance mechanics.... Frustration =/= bad...

-_- UUUGH! it is on and on with these people. Not that chance mechanics can't be bad... but they just complain on and on that chance exists... On and on how the game should be boring and predictable without a shred of working with what you got... and that it should be showering them with amazing overpowered gear all the time.

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, that's a weird thing some people do, for sure. There's definitely a continuum between "boringly predictable" and "too random and impossible to get the right items" where "just right" is in the middle somewhere.