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[Moogie]

Motion blur or camera wobble that can't be disabled.

As someone who misses out on so many wonderful games due to motion sickness, this really pisses me off. I don't care how much of a cinematic experience you want to deliver. You can't deliver it at all if I can't play the sodding game to begin with!

[Neonivek]

Motion blur or camera wobble that can't be disabled.

As someone who misses out on so many wonderful games due to motion sickness, this really pisses me off. I don't care how much of a cinematic experience you want to deliver. You can't deliver it at all if I can't play the sodding game to begin with!

What about excessive Camera flare?

[mastahcheese]

Motion blur or camera wobble that can't be disabled.

As someone who misses out on so many wonderful games due to motion sickness, this really pisses me off. I don't care how much of a cinematic experience you want to deliver. You can't deliver it at all if I can't play the sodding game to begin with!

THIS.
I just got the Alan Wake game on Steam, and since I only have a laptop, I have to turn down every available graphics option.
You know what isn't one of those options?

The frickin' camera blur whenever you move the view half a centimeter.
Having to wait a whole minute for the game to load when you want to turn around is not fun.

[Neonivek]

But it makes perfect sense because Alan Wake is a hack writer who the world he is in treats like a master.

Of COURSE he would include motion blur in.

I mean... remember he wrote enemies who are basically just furniture flying at you constantly.

[Enzo]

I disable motion blur in every game. Not because I get motion sick, not because my computer can't handle it, but because it's distracting and ugly. I don't care if you can simulate vaseline smeared all over my monitor, it doesn't mean you should.

[mastahcheese]

I disable motion blur in every game. Not because I get motion sick, not because my computer can't handle it, but because it's distracting and ugly. I don't care if you can simulate vaseline smeared all over my monitor, it doesn't mean you should.

Unless, of course you get Vaseline dumped on you in-game.

[Neonivek]

"That's so cheap."

Translation:  "That strategy beats mine and I'm unwilling to devote effort to countering it."

Ah, them.

I always mention that they are free to use that tactic, too.

I don't know... I recognize that some tactics either are against the fun of the game or they severely limit the game.

It is why I don't do the Fox blaster strategy in Smash Bros. SURE it is a perfectly legitimate way to play the game, but it murders the fun. That is why it is so cheap.

Cheap being something that is Effective and unfun.

What was that you are playing magic the gathering and using an optimized legacy deck? Well while there are no rules against it, you pretty much just killed the game for everyone else. You are being cheap!

What was that? I can use the same deck too? Wow so we can both see if we can draw the combination of cards to win during turn 0?

[mastahcheese]

Stupid Super Smash Bros. I'm so glad I stopped playing that series.

It started fights that you couldn't end in-game.

Also, people accused me of cheating way too many times.

[Ozyton]

There are places where motion blur would make sense, but I have not seen a game where it's implimented where it makes sense. it's not for the camera panning around, it should be for object moving incredibly fast that the refresh rate of your screen can't pick up the change in position quickly enough. The best example I can think of would be tracer rounds for bullets, but most of the time those are highly exaggerated and not affected by your current FPS...

On the subject, I hate, haaaate Depth of Field in a majority of games. The game should not decide for me what my eyes should focus on, everything else will naturally be a little out of focus by simply not looking at it.

Ambient Occlusion is not quite so bad but distracting nontheless. The game makes objects pop out more by adding a black 'glow' around their edges. It's more complicated than that but that's the effect I usually perceive from it.

Oh yes, and how can we forget? Excessive bloom. Do I even need to say anything about it?

The thing about lens flares reminds me, Wolfire did something interesting regarding those a while ago. Unless you're viewing the game world through a camera or a piece of glass/visor/what have you then  lense flares are going to look quite different. If you've ever been driving/riding a train/whatever at night and looking out the windows you will notice the way the glass makes the lense flare look quite dramatic compared to when you're standing outside the car/vehicle and not looking through the glass pane. (EDIT: Ahem, I am referring to street lights here, and headlights from cars.)

The basic idea is to simulate the glare as a human eye would see it, instead of how a camera would see it. This means the glare has to be animated: the movements of the iris in response to bright light cause the diffraction streaks to change in subtle ways. Simulating an eye rather than a camera also results in a more grainy texture and a rainbow-colored lenticular halo, instead of the geometric internal reflections you normally see in camera flares.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Note to self: Remember this thread so I know what not to do with the game I am going to try to program.

[alexandertnt]

Spoiler: Wall-o-text (click to show/hide)

I pretty much agree with the OP, except:

Lack of health bars.
Having blood splash on the edges of the screen is not anymore realistic or immersive than a simple health bar. Let me just see how much damage I can take before dying.

Health bars are obnoxious and annoying IMO. Modern computers with oodles of processing power can surely find a better and more interesting solution to this archaic and awkward mechanic. That being said, a bloodied screen is not the ideal solution.

Sidequestitis

I think a pile of sidequests is totally fine, as long as the sidequests themselves are interesting. Admittedly they rarely are though.

I also agree with:

Trailers that don't show any gameplay.

When I am interested in a game, nothing is more annoying than watching the trailer and still not having much of an idea what a game actually is. They all seem to be effectively movie-trailers. What a waste of my time.

What about excessive Camera flare?

Ah, brings back fond memories of Serious Sam (Great game, overkill camera flare effect). My eye is not a camera 


Some of my own:

Numbers everywhere, for everything
You hit an ememy and a gigantic 10,000 appears above them and floats upwards. You shoot them with some sort of machine gun and lots of little 20's bounce off of them. It seems arbitary and awkward to me.

MMO's seem to be the biggest offender, as it seems that increasing an integer is enough to make people feel powerful.

Traditional RPG mechanics, and tradition in general
Your health is an integer and one-hitpoint-means-a-ok, you walk around as an animated lookup table subtracting 2d5 + str (because computers use dice) to an enemies HP property (Also why do so many games still shorten strength to "str" still? I have a HD screen, there is plenty of room for the few extra characters needed to spell the full word. It seems like it is done because "thats how it is done"). You kindly wait your turn for the enemy to attack you.

It all strikes me as harshly mechanical, and mechanically simple. Neither immersive nor interesting.


Fantasy/Sci-fi Genocide
Being encouraged to murder absolutely everything that moves. Particularly bad in the games that require you to do this in order to advance (else the game becomes too hard later on). I would like to stress that this is mostly an argument against games that do this excessively, as combat is a perfectly valid gameplay mechanic.

On graphics:

Ambient Occlusion is not quite so bad but distracting nontheless. The game makes objects pop out more by adding a black 'glow' around their edges. It's more complicated than that but that's the effect I usually perceive from it.

This is mostly due to the technical implementation of real time Ambient Occlusion, producing only a very rough result (And I agree with you here). AO that is baked into the scene often significantly enhances a scenes lighting and doesnt do that harsh black outline effect.

Low resolution bump-maps and excessive specular highlights
Because not everything is made out of moulded plastic.

[Neonivek]

Also sorry...

I mean EXCESSIVE Bloom

[Ozyton]

EXCESSIVE BLOOM

That probably looks wonderful in the other not-dark theme.

[itisnotlogical]

Adding features that have been around loooong long long before the current generation and counting them as selling points. Just from some of the games I have right here by my computer:

Resident Evil 4: Hit zone aiming system. It was a cosmetic effect in Goldeneye, and actually affected gameplay in Perfect Dark, both of which were N64 games. If you want to get technical, headshots have existed since the earliest 3D FPS games.

Medal of Honor Frontline: "Outsmart Highly-Trained SS Officers". First, this is the most patently false description of a "stealth" mission in living memory. Second, stealth gameplay has existed since Castle Wolfenstein (not the FPS, even older than that) waaaay back in the day.

Conflict Vietnam: "14 enormous missions in jungles, villages, temples, and underground tunnels". These are our levels. There are many like them, but these ones are mine.

And I share this video every chance I can possibly get.

[alexandertnt]

I don't think having or using certain technologies/concepts as selling points was supposed to imply they were the first game to do this. Particularly when those technologies/concepts are not all that common (eg the "Hit zone aiming system"), it still seems like a feature worth mentioning.

Super Mario 64 may have had fish that move out of the way of you before that game, but its still cool regardless.