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[Akura]

I don't really like it when a game's protagonist is somehow some kind of super-warrior, without any real reason behind it. You can take some dumb kid off a farm, and by the end of the story(which, in some stories, often takes at most a few weeks) they're capable of taking down some kind of god-like being - despite the fact that most forms of weapon skills(as depicted) take months or years to master.

Spoiler: Grandia II actually averts this (click to show/hide)

All the characters(except Elena) actually are justified in doing this. Ryudo grew up on an island that literally worships swords, and he's one of the better ones that came out. Millenia is literally a fragment of the devil itself, plus she uses a crossbow which takes far less training to use effectively. Mareg is a decades-old professional warrior. Tio is a robot soldier. Roan's best friend is the captain of his guard(not impossible to assume he trained Roan to fight), and spent a significant amount of time travelling with a group of circus performers, one of whom is a knife expert(not impossible to assume she showed him a few tricks).

Even Elena is somewhat justified as well. Her physical attacks suck, but her magical abilities are great(all her special attacks appear to be magical as well) and the priest she served under is established a badass spellcaster himself.


Grandia III, however, doesn't really make any sense. The main character is a mechanic, but somehow can handle a sword without any explaination.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy X is also an aversion (click to show/hide)

Except for Tidus, all of the characters are professional warriors in some form or another. Tidus, however, is a world-class athlete(of a physically impossible sport), which makes it more reasonable for him to pick up on something that requires just as much physical strength and discipline(such as fighting) fairly quickly. It's notable that the first time he holds a sword, he struggles with it.

[Bohandas]

I don't really like it when a game's protagonist is somehow some kind of super-warrior, without any real reason behind it. You can take some dumb kid off a farm, and by the end of the story(which, in some stories, often takes at most a few weeks) they're capable of taking down some kind of god-like being - despite the fact that most forms of weapon skills(as depicted) take months or years to master.

Spoiler: Grandia II actually averts this (click to show/hide)

All the characters(except Elena) actually are justified in doing this. Ryudo grew up on an island that literally worships swords, and he's one of the better ones that came out. Millenia is literally a fragment of the devil itself, plus she uses a crossbow which takes far less training to use effectively. Mareg is a decades-old professional warrior. Tio is a robot soldier. Roan's best friend is the captain of his guard(not impossible to assume he trained Roan to fight), and spent a significant amount of time travelling with a group of circus performers, one of whom is a knife expert(not impossible to assume she showed him a few tricks).

Even Elena is somewhat justified as well. Her physical attacks suck, but her magical abilities are great(all her special attacks appear to be magical as well) and the priest she served under is established a badass spellcaster himself.


Grandia III, however, doesn't really make any sense. The main character is a mechanic, but somehow can handle a sword without any explaination.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy X is also an aversion (click to show/hide)

Except for Tidus, all of the characters are professional warriors in some form or another. Tidus, however, is a world-class athlete(of a physically impossible sport), which makes it more reasonable for him to pick up on something that requires just as much physical strength and discipline(such as fighting) fairly quickly. It's notable that the first time he holds a sword, he struggles with it.

There's also occasionally rpgs with the opposite problem. The character or chat=racters are introduced as extensively trained and/or are possibly recurring from a previous game which makes it odd that they suck so hard at level one.

[Shadowlord]

I never figured out how to play AI war properly, but I never got anywhere in it, probably because I get so upset by my ships seeming to be INCREDIBLY DUMB when I try to play it:

I order ships to attack enemy ships which are moving towards my base. They fly into range and then stop. The enemy ships fly right past mine and mine just sit there and don't bother following them or continuing to attack.

I order long-ranged ships to attack short-ranged enemy ships. They fly into range and then instead of backing away while continuing to fire, they just sit still while the enemy ships fly up to them and kill them.

I order a fleet to jump through a jump point. It arrives on top of some guard bases or something, and decides it should sit still and neither shoot at them nor run away. The fleet dies before I can do anything about it.

 (╯° °）╯︵ ┻━┻

(I found The Last Federation much more fun - the combat is actually fun instead of aggravating)

Hmm... well there's an auto-kite setting which might have helped your units keep out of range(I don't know why it's not set by default...), and there's an attack move command that would make your fleet actually try to kill the other ships, typically your ships shouldn't act that stupid. 

When did you play it last? That game has gone through a LOT of changes over its lifetime, you might find it more enjoyable now... or not...  I found it fun for a while, but the gameplay does get a bit repetitive...

I tried it again a week or two ago because steam cards were added since I originally tried it. Where are those options hidden?

[blazing glory]

Pet peeve!

PVP MMO's with a single player practice site labeling bots with 'player' names.

Seriously, who are you trying to fool? We all know that these are bots, you don't need to pretend otherwise, if I'm seeing if some build or whatever is remotely viable then seeing 'x360haxorzx' is just going to irritate me rather then contribute anything at all to the game.

[Rolan7]

Relevant Penny Arcade

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Neonivek]

Our characters are more special than your characters

Ok this is such a minor one but it always bugs me that in a game where you can create your own characters... there is often a character from either the expanded story or extra novel who can join your team (temporarily or otherwise) who is just flat out better then what you can make because the developers don't mind cheating for people who aren't you.

Sometimes I can accept this (one of the shadowrun games has a CLEARLY broken character... but he is a cameo from a videogame where you COULD play him and he was every bit as broken in that as he is in shadowrun) but other times it feels like the developers are cheating.

A HUGE one is just the Warhammer series. There are tons of characters who just flat out ignore the rules to be many times stronger then you can ever be.

For villains it doesn't really matter. Afterall you are supposed to be fighting against the odds, not against equal opponents.

For example there are plenty of hero units in Warhammer 40k you can't use but who exist who can pretty much solo entire mechs.

[Neonivek]

Ok so what is it called when a piece of art like a movie, TVshow, or videogame... is all message/twist but no substance?

Like a game where you have to chase down your pet turtle without context and at the end of the game it turns out the turtle was trying to get away from you...

The game is ultimately vapid. It doesn't really explore its themes of obsession or the mindset of someone who could convince themselves that they are doing the right thing even when the blatantly obvious is staring them in the face. Nor does its use of imagry and symbolism dress the message. Rather it tries to get you into a position where you want to do something, then slaps your hand and goes "See! now you are a crazy stalker too!"

It is kind of why I will always hold "The Void" as the gold standard of "Art game" because every single part of the game was hand tailored towards the themes and concepts the game has, even when you think you are reading too deep (Say, thinking that maybe the colors themselves have a significance) the game outright rewards you for it.

Yet it isn't the only art game I ever felt was of value. There was a very short flash game just about a long distance relationship and you can sort of make it work or don't. Yet the point of it is that in the end the completely separate experiences created distance between you two.

There are games with themes that it explores but have just dreadful metaphors. "Ohh my a game where I play a kid... and I can only go in one direction and the more to the right I go, the older I get..." which I guess the issue is, there REALLY isn't anything to take from JUST a metaphor. In the Void you can take "Color" from veins and that certainly was a metaphor, but it had substance behind it especially with how it related to the overall experience.

I guess it is to say... Metaphor without substance is shallow, it is just an overly elaborate political cartoon. The weight people see are just what they attribute to your work, not its inherent value.

---

I think I want to play another good art game... or watch a bunch of really hilariously bad art games.

[SealyStar]

watch a bunch of really hilariously bad art games.

In my experience, pretty much all art games are just there to watch. You may have the mouse and keyboard and controller right in front of you - might as well be a Let's Play.

[EnigmaticHat]

Ok so what is it called when a piece of art like a movie, TVshow, or videogame... is all message/twist but no substance?

Like a game where you have to chase down your pet turtle without context and at the end of the game it turns out the turtle was trying to get away from you...

The game is ultimately vapid. It doesn't really explore its themes of obsession or the mindset of someone who could convince themselves that they are doing the right thing even when the blatantly obvious is staring them in the face. Nor does its use of imagry and symbolism dress the message. Rather it tries to get you into a position where you want to do something, then slaps your hand and goes "See! now you are a crazy stalker too!"

It is kind of why I will always hold "The Void" as the gold standard of "Art game" because every single part of the game was hand tailored towards the themes and concepts the game has, even when you think you are reading too deep (Say, thinking that maybe the colors themselves have a significance) the game outright rewards you for it.

Yet it isn't the only art game I ever felt was of value. There was a very short flash game just about a long distance relationship and you can sort of make it work or don't. Yet the point of it is that in the end the completely separate experiences created distance between you two.

There are games with themes that it explores but have just dreadful metaphors. "Ohh my a game where I play a kid... and I can only go in one direction and the more to the right I go, the older I get..." which I guess the issue is, there REALLY isn't anything to take from JUST a metaphor. In the Void you can take "Color" from veins and that certainly was a metaphor, but it had substance behind it especially with how it related to the overall experience.

I guess it is to say... Metaphor without substance is shallow, it is just an overly elaborate political cartoon. The weight people see are just what they attribute to your work, not its inherent value.

---

I think I want to play another good art game... or watch a bunch of really hilariously bad art games.

This is my complaint with so much art, especially anything considered "high" or otherwise more worthwhile than other things of its class.

A good theme, a good metaphor, the creator having something to say, can push a good work of art towards being a great one.  But its like a pyramid.  You have to do the base level things before you see to the higher up priorities.  No one will care if your story actually about Jesus if its boring and your grammar is bad.  No one will care if your video game has a nice story if it isn't meaningfully interactive (which at this point, is fucking mandatory, you have no excuse).

The higher level stuff also needs to speak back to the lower level stuff.  In Bioshock (spoilers if anyone doesn't know at this point) there's a twist about you not having control over your decisions.  This works, because you're given a lot of decisions over the course of the game, and very few of them ultimately matter.  It works; it relates to itself.  Compare to the movie Prometheus which has a major religious motif and a theme about discovering the nature of the universe.  And yet no real discoveries are made except about aliens, no one's primary motivation is discovery or religion, and ultimately there is no actual real or fictional religion included in the movie at all.  So it all falls flat.

[Shadowlord]

No one will care if your video game has a nice story if it isn't meaningfully interactive (which at this point, is fucking mandatory, you have no excuse).

Weeelll... Do you know what visual novels are? Have you ever heard of Steins;Gate?

[EnigmaticHat]

That is fair.  I was thinking of those in a different box then the video game box, but I guess strictly they aren't...

[Cyroth]

Another one that the current beta of Tree of Savior reminded me of.

The existence of megaphone type items (that allow players to broadcast messages to the whole server, ToS has those) and chat windows that can't be closed, especially if they have forced access to a server wide chat.

I don't think I've ever seen those things used for a legitimate purpose. Not even a single time.
It is either players spamming nonsense, non-english speaking players spamming nonsense in their language, english speaking players making racist slurs against non-english players or non-english players making racist slurs against english speaking players.
That is literally everything that ever happens with those items/in those chats.

They are one of the biggest cancers in MMORPGs, but every second one insists on including them.

[itisnotlogical]

Related:

The "(player) has got (some rare item) from a lockbox!" messages that flash across the screen, in games that feature lockboxes. People are constantly opening lockboxes in any decently-populated game. It makes it seem like the really rare items are common when they're not (I opened 20 lockboxes in a row in STO and didn't get jack shit).

[Neonivek]

Useless Bone Files

Ok this is an unfair pet peeve, but come on this is the pet peeve topic... not the rational discourse topic.

So in many roguelikes and even other games there are bone files. Which are essentially the game remembering you after you died in the game. That way it usually can put a ghost, maybe a few of your items, and a corpse in the appropriate spot.

Yet goodness Roguelikes this is one of the GREATEST IDEAS EVER CONCEIVED and only the Mighty Chalice (or massive chalice) has ever done anything interesting with it.

Where are the roguelikes where say... The entire party consists of previously dead characters. Undead lords or demon tyrants who are your previous character. Artifacts named after him, stories of his adventures, heck maybe you can meet him.

I've never seen a single feature more under utilized in my life. It has only been used for corpses and MAYBE a ghost.

[Sergarr]

Inexplicable rock-paper-scissors in strategy games

I've seen it so many times. "Oh, I have to balance the units, guess I'll just give units arbitrarily weakness to each other for no apparent reason so that it makes a circle and players will have to buy all of them in relatively equal proportions, muahahaha!", this kind of stuff.

It's really insulting when there are game developers that apparently consider this the height of strategy design. Yet it's so, so fucking popular among those "wannabe", oh, sorry, "indie" strategy games...