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[sjm9876]

I have a slightly dissenting opinion on that one, though it's limited because I'm just now playing Half-Life 2 for the first time (yeah, I did actually live under a rock for a few years, true story!).

*Rock dweller high five*
Yeah, it picks up a tad, but I find that many developers specifically put that kind of thing in as a 'change of pace'. i suppose it's all a matter of taste.

[mastahcheese]

It shall be called KOTOR III: Canderous and HK-47 Fuck Shit Up.

I am totally sigging this.

I'm actually playing KOTOR 2, although I'm really not that far into it, which is why I find it fun, judging by the opinions of it here.
I tried to make a character that used two pistols, and when I leveled up, I took improved rapid shot.
Except it wasn't rapid shot, it was flurry. FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU. Now i'm wishing I had my stupid lightsaber.

[ProfHockenbery]

Brace yourselves, cause this is going to be a dousy

Story integrated tutorials

"Hi general, now that you're about to lead this great nation into war, let me pass you off to this private, who'll teach you how to open a map".
These are always a lot longer and a lot more immersion breaking than a simple tooltip would have been. Far Cry Blood Dragon did this great, vaporized the fourth wall with their onscreen popups.

Unpaused menus

Moving through a game menu is me relaying my decision to my character. If I decide to cast fireball, there's an animation for that, there's no need for him to stand still while being hacked to death just because I don't have a neural shunt in.

Any and all alien technology

While no expert in alien psychology, I'm pretty sure that if I made a planet killing device, I'd add a little more security than just requiring you to palm the console. And said console would probably contain more than one button

Unslowable/automatic respawns

There really is no excuse for this one. If I want to switch loadouts or sip a drink, let me do it in peace!

Uberbuffed Allies

Often developers compensate for poor ai by giving npcs ridiculously powerful weapons or abilities. This only makes it worse when you die, because you know they had the power to turn around that whole situation if they knew how to use it. Particularly bad when they only discover their potential during cutscenes.

Sharing time peasant

She wouldn't give you directions to save her life, but she'll tell you her whole life story if you look at her sideways. Even better when she orders the prophesized one and her rightful king to help with the turnips.

One off mechanics

Why do I always end games with a backpack of equipment that was each only useful once? Note that you don't get off the hook for having me backtrack to area 1 for a secret.

Indirect point-giving

A staple of multiplayer gaming is the guaranteed kill low ammo reward weapon. If you want to give a player points, just give them and same half the enemy team from dying to his indefensible airstrike.

AIs who get stuck in corners

If mario 64 had fish who could swim away, you'd think that 2013 would have fish who could figure out they hadn't gotten any closer to their destination in the last few minutes, and try a different path to get there.

Press and hold x objectives

Uninteresting objectives make for uninteresting stories. Saving a planet, assassinating a king, and digging a hole all start to blur together when advancing the plot always consists of "press and hold x". Even within a single game, I'm expected to believe stabbing a man, defusing a bomb, and drinking a coffee are functionally identical. Developers really need to get away from such A to B waypoint gameplay if they want to hold interest in many AAA titles and genres.

[MoLAoS]

My personal pet peeve is shitty storylines that get treated like they are an Arthur C. Clarke novel when a three year old could have written a better one. I'm looking at you The Last of Us.

[Gamerlord]

It shall be called KOTOR III: Canderous and HK-47 Fuck Shit Up.

I am totally sigging this.

I'm actually playing KOTOR 2, although I'm really not that far into it, which is why I find it fun, judging by the opinions of it here.
I tried to make a character that used two pistols, and when I leveled up, I took improved rapid shot.
Except it wasn't rapid shot, it was flurry. FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU. Now i'm wishing I had my stupid lightsaber.

Thank you! And I once managed to get a rifle user to the final segment before _________ destroyed my lightside arse.

[miauw62]

Unchangeable keybindings

This annoys me more than anything else. I use an azerty keyboard and I don't want to change my keyboard layout every time I come across a game that doesn't let me change my keybinds. It can't be that fucking hard to just let me change my keybindings.

[hector13]

Unchangeable keybindings

This annoys me more than anything else. I use an azerty keyboard and I don't want to change my keyboard layout every time I come across a game that doesn't let me change my keybinds. It can't be that fucking hard to just let me change my keybindings.

Have to say this annoys me quite a bit as a left-hander. I've gotten used to using the number pad for a lot of games, and when a game doesn't let me change the WASD nonsense, it fucks me right off. It's also annoying when there aren't enough keys around the number pad in order to facilitate all the things that need to be moved, but that's more a hardware problem than a gaming peeve...

Now that my PC is dead and I'm relegated to using my wife's laptop, I have no number pad, and therefore I can't really bring myself to play anything which needs to be controlled with anything more than a mouse. Bugger.

[Gamerboy4life]

Happy Endings

This is just a personal thing. You rarely see unhappy endings, or emotionally unsatisfying endings anymore. Endings which leave you empty, and in no way can be considered happy or glorious. I'm just sick of saving the galaxy, or being the hero. And I don't mean the main character dying, but everything still working out for the better (I'm looking at you Rockstar), I mean a downright depressing ending. As a kid, I always wanted Ganon(dorf) to beat Link, or Bowser to beat Mario. I just hated how it was predestined for the PC to win. It'd be even better if there were endings for games where you are not the hero, and everyone hates you for it. Or people just forget your name. I know, sounds depressing, but I think it's what some games need. I mean, think on Farcry 3's endings. Neither could be described as happy, and they're both decently written. Whatever problems you had with the game, I think you can agree with that. I loved both those endings, but my final problem is one I encountered hugely in Farcry 3...

I mostly agree with this, I'd like a nice depressing or even bittersweet ending once in a while, if it's done well, at least. Happy endings are all well and good, but there are many. The reason there are less downer endings is because the publisher/developer are afraid of pissing off the playerbase by giving them an ending that isn't absolutely perfect. Granted, players can be fickle with what they want in a game as well, so I don't usually blame them for going a safer path.

But back on topic,

When your AI buddies are nearly invincible in the game, but end up dying in a cutscene with one blow/bullet.

The most notable example of this I think off the top of my head is Kat from Halo Reach. Her death was by far the shittiest in the game. Not to mention the fact I usually dislike cutscenes.

[nenjin]

Games not recognizing new key mapping for on-screen prompts.

Usually an issue with console ports, but not always. Sometimes even PC games fuck this one up.

When you've got a move sequence you need to pull off, and your prompt reads like ", + Left Button + , Right Trigger" not only does the player have to re-interpret what the triggers are mapped to, they don't even have a clue what the other buttons are when the screen simply fails to report the key binding. This is why you don't bake screen information into the game. A static image that gets displayed can't and won't change to new inputs, which tells you exactly how much some companies honestly care about the ports they know they're going to make.

[mastahcheese]

Games not recognizing new key mapping for on-screen prompts.

Usually an issue with console ports, but not always. Sometimes even PC games fuck this one up.

When you've got a move sequence you need to pull off, and your prompt reads like ", + Left Button + , Right Trigger" not only does the player have to re-interpret what the triggers are mapped to, they don't even have a clue what the other buttons are when the screen simply fails to report the key binding. This is why you don't bake screen information into the game. A static image that gets displayed can't and won't change to new inputs, which tells you exactly how much some companies honestly care about the ports they know they're going to make.

This, freaking this.

[Person]

Missions where you "almost rescued your friend."
Max Payne 3 and, to a lesser extent, Borderlands 2. When your failure to rescue someone repeatedly is the excuse for 3 levels of gameplay, I want to kick the story writer in their testicles.

It's actually possible to rescue that person in time in Borderlands 2. It's difficult, but I remember doing it on my first run through. So that one is actually an example of a proper branching mission with a penalty for failure. I'll probably go back to this thread later and actually make a post that's more on topic.

[itisnotlogical]

"RPG ELEMENTS"

It's become the new "and some artificial flavoring" on the ingredient list that you know is just sawdust and rat hair clippings. It's wood paste. I've seen too many games advertise it like nobody's heard of it before, and with two exceptions (DE: HR and the Revenge of the Sith game for GBA) they've all been crap.

Minor graphical errors

It really bothers me if I can tell when somebody's been lazy. If anybody has WH40k Space Marine on hand, fire it up and look at the back of Leandros' legs as he walks. The tops of his legs aren't actually attached to anything, so you can see the hole in his model's geometry when he's walking away from you. I haven't thought to look for it again, maybe they patched it or it was a one-time glitch, but stuff like that drives me nuts.

[nenjin]

The Sacred Quartet of Elements

I mean, it's just getting tired. It still absolutely has a place in many games, but lately all games seem to lack imagination of any kind when they apply it. Got a weapon? Well, obviously the enchantments will be Fire, Ice and Lightning! There probably don't even need to be more than that, right?! Gonna have spell schools of some flavor? Why, Fire, Ice, Wind and Earth should be plenty! Those 4 cover everything magic can be, right?

It's either tacked on where it didn't belong, or it's used in its most tired, unimaginative form. Sure, there's subtle little things going on under the hood of some effects. But we know what they all are, we've been consuming them for decades now! We know fire is damage over time or panics an enemy, we know ice slows, we know lightning arcs or cancels out shields or stuns guys. We know a basic earth attack is just going to do a shit ton of damage because "that's what earth does." If you're going to use elements, perhaps in games where they make no sense, at least commit to doing more with them than 1 shot "yes more please" enhancements that are used as a weak form of customization or progression. When a game gets to the question of enhancing your equipment or showing you available spell schools, and the choices are 3, perhaps maybe 4 elements, it makes me want to slap a dev. Yes, that thing Japan gave us has been amazing and had a huge influence on our shared culture. That's not an excuse to stop exercising any creativity when it comes to these things.

[mastahcheese]

The Sacred Quartet of Elements

This is where I find Wizardry 8 did brilliantly, it gave you 6 elements (Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Mental, and Divine) and gave you a separate mana bar for each one. And the spells that went into each one were also very varied and useful. And the spells were further divided up by schools, to limit who got them. There was no "water mage", you could have 2 people both use water, and have totally different spell choices.
I really like the way that game did magic.

[Flying Dice]

I think that it would be rather interesting to see a take on the classical four elements that sticks fairly close to their alleged traits, maybe throwing in a bit of humourous temperaments; using an element would increase your character's tendency towards the associated humour in terms of the available options in dialogue, key decision points, upgrade paths, and so forth. So, for example, a character who uses fire magic quite a bit would tend towards direct solutions, aggressive approaches, and a willingness to lead in both fluff and stats/perks.

I would actually be quite interested in an RPG like that, where the sort of magic you use affects the ways in which you progress through the game and upgrade your character by limiting you on some paths of development and advancement while opening others up, with it becoming more difficult and costly to change the longer you go.