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[Sergius]

I remember an Oblivion speed run where stacking lots of pieces of paper into each other or something allowed you to skip to the final boss room. Stacking the papers took a really long time tho, and was basically the entire duration of the "speed run".

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I remember an Oblivion speed run where stacking lots of pieces of paper into each other or something allowed you to skip to the final boss room. Stacking the papers took a really long time tho, and was basically the entire duration of the "speed run".

There was also the glitch that allowed you to access the developer's room and get a bunch of cheat stuff, not to mention the infamous climb the white-gold tower with magic floating paintbrushes exploit.

[Ultimuh]

Sounds pretty convoluted for a speed run though.

[itisnotlogical]

The most recent route I've seen is much simpler. There's a door to the final cutscene hidden just behind its pre-quest-activation equivalent. Being a Bethesda game, it is easily reached via clipping errors.

[Neonivek]

Games where you make something (often through minigames) and the result shows NONE of this...

Some on! you make a game where I make a Salad, let me see what salad "I" made! If I burned it, let me see the scorch marks.

Heck let me see what I just made in general.

Seriously it actually really bugs me and immediately hurts my enthusiasm.

You did well!!! (NO I DIDN'T I SUCK!!!)

Honestly I prefer games that berate you over how much you suck unless you do PERFECTLY over games that praise you even when you do horribly!

Come on I can take the honesty! As long as the game isn't too TOO demanding for praise (Look I am only human!)

[AzyWng]

You did well!!! (NO I DIDN'T I SUCK!!!)

Honestly I prefer games that berate you over how much you suck unless you do PERFECTLY over games that praise you even when you do horribly!

Come on I can take the honesty! As long as the game isn't too TOO demanding for praise (Look I am only human!)

I understand this one fully.

I mean, if you're, say, on foot and fighting a giant walking nuke tank with missiles, miniguns, and a railgun, it makes sense for people to praise you for having the stones to take the fight to it in the first place.

If you accomplish a particularly difficult task or mission, praise is perfectly in order.

But doing the basic tasks needed to succeed throughout the entire game?

That sort of thing has kind of made me completely numb to praise in real life.

Games where you make something (often through minigames) and the result shows NONE of this...

Some on! you make a game where I make a Salad, let me see what salad "I" made! If I burned it, let me see the scorch marks.

Heck let me see what I just made in general.

Seriously it actually really bugs me and immediately hurts my enthusiasm.

I think it might be difficult to show nearly every detail or factor in every possible outcome. I mean, let's say you're making a salad that requires two minigames to make. The minigames have 3 different outcomes: Failure, Success, or Great Success (that sort of phrasing is probably worthy of another pet peeve post, but we'll deal with that later). That means that you have six different possible outcomes (assuming I didn't screw up the math). If you just add in a third minigame, you essentially explode the number of unique possible outcomes.

Even if you try to reduce the amount of required assets by instead adding some sort of hidden value that changes the salad's appearance once completed, you need to have program the entire hidden value, complete with what outcomes will give how many points.

Not every game developer is up for that, I guess. And even if they were they can't exactly go the Metal Gear Solid 2 route where ice cubes from a spilled bucket melt realistically -- producers or the market may demand some sort of early or overall quick release that doesn't give them time to add details, or they may have bigger priorities (like finishing the development of the game itself).

TL;DR -- Programming for that takes a lot of time that not every player will appreciate, and not every developer wants to go to the trouble of adding those details in the first place, for whatever reason.

Also, unless the salad contains something that's cooked, how are you supposed to burn it short of horrific failure at the minigames?

[Cyroth]

Also, unless the salad contains something that's cooked, how are you supposed to burn it short of horrific failure at the minigames?

Spoiler: By the power of "doh", obviously.. (click to show/hide)

You did well!!! (NO I DIDN'T I SUCK!!!)

Honestly I prefer games that berate you over how much you suck unless you do PERFECTLY over games that praise you even when you do horribly!

Come on I can take the honesty! As long as the game isn't too TOO demanding for praise (Look I am only human!)

I absolutely loathe this. If your game has a rating system please tell me when I screw up.
I've played games where any evaluation worse then a completely unsarcastic "ohmygawdyouaresosuperawesome" is pretty much impossible to reach, even if you do it deliberately (and sometimes probably doesn't even exist at all).

[itisnotlogical]

Half-assed "controller support" for PC games

Between my two game controllers, Oblivion only supports the left thumbstick on either of them. At that point why even bother? Unless the game is so fucking picky that it needs a first-party 360 controller and absolutely nothing else will do, in which case I still think they really shouldn't bother anyway.

And side note fuck all the people over the years who replied to "How do into controller?" questions with "just use mouse and keyboard :^)" I hope those people are in misery and torment until the end of time

[SeriousConcentrate]

I agree on that last bit. That aside...

No patch notes

It seems like every day on Steam I have like thirty things wanting an update. Sometimes it's a big update, so I want to see what changed and I click 'view news' below the download. The last news item is (for example) talking about a price discount for the 2013 Halloween Sale. So now I have to download 100mb or so on a slow-ass connection the next time I want to play that game, and I don't even know what was changed.

[EnigmaticHat]

Half-assed "controller support" for PC games

Between my two game controllers, Oblivion only supports the left thumbstick on either of them. At that point why even bother? Unless the game is so fucking picky that it needs a first-party 360 controller and absolutely nothing else will do, in which case I still think they really shouldn't bother anyway.

And side note fuck all the people over the years who replied to "How do into controller?" questions with "just use mouse and keyboard :^)" I hope those people are in misery and torment until the end of time

To be fair to developers, there are a lot of controllers out there and the developers probably don't have room in the budget to buy all of them and test them.  AFAIK they all use different software as well.

The PC elitists have no defense tho.

[itisnotlogical]

On modern USB game controllers, each button and axis is assigned a number and what changes between them is which physical button matches to which number in the software. Sure they could buy and test controllers if they wanted to create presets, but they could also make a system to rebind which button or axis does what much like every modern PC game has rebindable keyboard controls.

After some googling I found out that I can manually set joystick bindings in the .ini file. Not ideal but also not the worst thing in the world.

[Neonivek]

Super Special Hidden Mechanics if Importance!

I will never understand what is going in the minds of devs when they make mechanics hidden from the player when it would be more fun to allow them to see and actively play with or against those mechanics.

Don't get me wrong this isn't "Hidden mechanics are bad" far from it. This is more about how bizaar it is for developers to hide information from the player and often require them to memorize a surprising amount of information or to just not know what is going on... ESPECIALLY when that information is important.

[Parsely]

I agree on that last bit. That aside...

No patch notes

It seems like every day on Steam I have like thirty things wanting an update. Sometimes it's a big update, so I want to see what changed and I click 'view news' below the download. The last news item is (for example) talking about a price discount for the 2013 Halloween Sale. So now I have to download 100mb or so on a slow-ass connection the next time I want to play that game, and I don't even know what was changed.

It pisses me off that they updated Stronghold and barely revealed what they actually did to the game. Like they mentioned new resolution support, and it's like "hey cool", but they follow that with some vague mentions of "long overdue bug fixes" and something about archer fire. Like, what? You're not going to go more into that?

[Rolan7]

Not strictly Fallout 1, but obviously inspired by me playing it recently!

Constant quicksaving being expected and balanced around, to the point that it's far more convenient than most of the UI.  (Half Life 1 syndrome, though HL1's UI was fine).  Unlike HL this isn't Perfectitis, this is there being literally no defense against enemy criticals (except maybe kiting).

Did someone say kiting, or taking cover?  Peeve 2:  Spawning encounters right next to you, and giving them the first turn!  Applies to both random and scripted encounters.

But maybe crits are rare, and 1 or 2 are survivable?  Peeve 3:  Being outnumbered by enemies capable of critting you at range.  (and luck doesn't help, on defense).  Yeah max luck might get you a 10% chance - there are 5 of them with 5% each.  And...

Having allies, but you get targeted first.  Or maybe your dumbass mortal companion.  Maybe a certain big bad just gave a speech toward his nemesis, the sheriff.  Turns around and attacks you, as do his waves of guards.  Clearly, the almost untrained way you hold that spear across the room makes you more of a threat than his freakin nemesis waving an assault rifle in his face.
I eventually beat that encounter by sprinting into a side room (still getting hit through the door, but not as much), then my companion getting *very* lucky.  As in he almost killed in round 1, just enough to realize he should flee uselessly and thus live.

Enjoying this game, though, just kinda peeved (:

[Darkmere]

Man. One of the Wesnoth Dwarf campaign missions had you leading a convoy including a VIP Dwarf priest through a mountain pass.

For the uninitiated, Wesnoth is a hex-map turn-based strategy game. It uses zones of control, so you can screen healers with infantry and stuff like that.

Except on that mountain pass, it spawns an ogre or giant or something right in the path. You can't screen it, it spawns there when you're moving over it. Can't detour, you're under time pressure. Did I mention it spawned right by the VIP escort?