Things your favorite game/game genre do that you hate
DragonKing
Member Posts: 1,979
in Off-Topic
What are some thing that a game or game genre does/did that you hated or were annoyed by?
Time to roll back the clock the year was between 1998- 2000, the dragon king was just a little dragon prince who started playing a little game he would for ever fall in love with called final fantasy tactics. The first game in the FF series that he had ever played and will play yo this day without getting bored!
Still wish I had my psp that was stolen with the lions war remake, miss it so
Anyways, fft did something that i just absolutely hated, it's something that continues to this very day...NPC ONLY CLASSES!
After you turn on the game and go through the opening sequence, you get tossed into your first battle with no actual hand-holding (there was a tutorial with a crap ton of reading on everything at the main menu, but I was a kid.. Yeah, that wasn't happening it was sink or swim for me.)
So you get tossed into your first match, 2 knights, 2 squares, but wait there's more! 2 guest not fighting for you... And their classes was very specific, holy knight and dark knight and low in behold they were dropping dark energy and crystal structures on our enemy and i WANTED THAT!
So being a child of the rising age of the internet, when i went to school and searched how to get those classes, i found constant nonsense. Note i also call this the age of online gaming lies because you could find constant bull crap being said about every game! Don't get me started about the lies on how to unlock goku AND megaman in the original super smash brothers that i fell for.
Moving on, i did every little thing this articles told me to unlock these class until eventually i found people saying they were npc only classes and can't be unlocked with a mything less than a game shark... (Haven't used those words together in a very long time).
So i gritted my teeth and bared with it, continuing to play the game, keeping my mc going mastering all the classes, focusing on magic first but eventually i hit them all.
But then the game hit me with the biggest f-u. It introduce one npc class i wanted above all others. Was it more powerful than the assassin class? No, that class was in godly broken, a 100% instant kill ability, a 100% stop ability, 6 Square movements...ef the assassin class!
Some of you know me a little by now so you can probably guess what type of class it was, it was the sorcerer class.
"A magick user with countless incantations at his command. His powerful spells make all those who oppose him suffer."
If you look at the game files it's not that impressive seeing how it only has about 5 active skills and that's it (npc only class remember, you only fight one once in the entire game.)
But i wanted it for the MC!
There was another class, i can't remember what it was called, but it had a job command called "all magick" the enemy casted both black and white magic from that one command...
There was also many npc teammate who had classes i wanted for the MC, Beowulf who was a framing template/temple knight... They are basically orators/mediators that carry swords, wield shields and can wear for, but due to their sword skill being magic based they were better off with robes that increased their mp and ma.
Then there was Reis' class... It was basically a freaking dragon born styled class, 4 different breath attacks, fire/ice/lightning/holy and a lot of dragon specific abilities!
While I'm a little more forgiving when it comes to npc only classes that you get access through by playing specific npc characters, but it urks me when extremely awesome classes are made simply for npc only.
Time to roll back the clock the year was between 1998- 2000, the dragon king was just a little dragon prince who started playing a little game he would for ever fall in love with called final fantasy tactics. The first game in the FF series that he had ever played and will play yo this day without getting bored!
Still wish I had my psp that was stolen with the lions war remake, miss it so
Anyways, fft did something that i just absolutely hated, it's something that continues to this very day...NPC ONLY CLASSES!
After you turn on the game and go through the opening sequence, you get tossed into your first battle with no actual hand-holding (there was a tutorial with a crap ton of reading on everything at the main menu, but I was a kid.. Yeah, that wasn't happening it was sink or swim for me.)
So you get tossed into your first match, 2 knights, 2 squares, but wait there's more! 2 guest not fighting for you... And their classes was very specific, holy knight and dark knight and low in behold they were dropping dark energy and crystal structures on our enemy and i WANTED THAT!
So being a child of the rising age of the internet, when i went to school and searched how to get those classes, i found constant nonsense. Note i also call this the age of online gaming lies because you could find constant bull crap being said about every game! Don't get me started about the lies on how to unlock goku AND megaman in the original super smash brothers that i fell for.
Moving on, i did every little thing this articles told me to unlock these class until eventually i found people saying they were npc only classes and can't be unlocked with a mything less than a game shark... (Haven't used those words together in a very long time).
So i gritted my teeth and bared with it, continuing to play the game, keeping my mc going mastering all the classes, focusing on magic first but eventually i hit them all.
But then the game hit me with the biggest f-u. It introduce one npc class i wanted above all others. Was it more powerful than the assassin class? No, that class was in godly broken, a 100% instant kill ability, a 100% stop ability, 6 Square movements...ef the assassin class!
Some of you know me a little by now so you can probably guess what type of class it was, it was the sorcerer class.
"A magick user with countless incantations at his command. His powerful spells make all those who oppose him suffer."
If you look at the game files it's not that impressive seeing how it only has about 5 active skills and that's it (npc only class remember, you only fight one once in the entire game.)
But i wanted it for the MC!
There was another class, i can't remember what it was called, but it had a job command called "all magick" the enemy casted both black and white magic from that one command...
There was also many npc teammate who had classes i wanted for the MC, Beowulf who was a framing template/temple knight... They are basically orators/mediators that carry swords, wield shields and can wear for, but due to their sword skill being magic based they were better off with robes that increased their mp and ma.
Then there was Reis' class... It was basically a freaking dragon born styled class, 4 different breath attacks, fire/ice/lightning/holy and a lot of dragon specific abilities!
While I'm a little more forgiving when it comes to npc only classes that you get access through by playing specific npc characters, but it urks me when extremely awesome classes are made simply for npc only.
3
Comments
Also too few 10' poles available in modern fantasy games. Back in my day we never left house without one.
@Kamigoroshi, for a high fantasy book series subverting practically all common tropes and clichés check out Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson.
A 10' pole, a blanket, a rope, some iron-rations and a good mule. Never leave home without 'em!
Using Bargain Bin H.P. Lovecraft knock-offs. I can only handle so many stories that devolve into hushed, terrified whispers! of "They Who Shall Not Be Named Even If We Could Pronounce Their Name Which Sounds Like A Dog Throwing Up", scenery-chewing madmen with tentacles coming out of their hands and eyes that are actually mouths, and things that are supposed to be scary that are not geese.
Do you want existential dread? Look a goose right in the eye.
J.R.R. Tolkien Cloning.
And Robert E. Howard Cloning, for that matter. Conan himself is an interesting character, but clones of him aren't, especially when they're more clones of the Conan from the Ralf Moeller show.
Escort quests. But only if they're poorly programmed! Some poorly-done ones are still fun, like the ones in World of WarCraft where you had to escort robotic chickens. Those can stay.
https://classic.wowhead.com/quest=546/souvenirs-of-death
Or fetch quests where the drop rate is low. I like to joke that the farmers in the quest I linked have capsules that, when they bite them, disintegrate their skulls.
Explain to me how a 50 pound animal produce 2 pounds of meat?
How a medium to the large bush of *insert plant here* produces ONLY ONE OF *insert what you're collecting from it here.
How a orc, ogre, or whatever... That has a mouth full of teeth/claws or whatever only gives ONE AFTER YOU KILL IT!
For me it's injecting MMO/console style combat into games that don't need it. Crappy melee combat that's nothing more than slash away, auto-aim/target lock/auto hit ranged. Seriously if Jedi Knight 2 could have amazing saber duels over 15 years ago, why can't more RPGs do better combat? Dark Messiah also had some amazing sword play, as well.
Resource gather is another. Somehow it felt good and right the way skyrim did it. I can't put my finger on what is exactly that makes me happy to run around that map to find all the mines, kill animals for soul gems and hides, etc that Skyrim made fun. Dragon Age: Inquisition's travel and crafting was just annoying and boring.
Which brings me to the next thing. Tiny incremental progression. Leveling in games like DA:I and Assassin's Creed Odyssey was mostly meh, now I just have to dump a ton of time tracking down more effing olive branches for wood just to keep my equipment at a level above worthless. Like whatever happened to finding a really cool item you'd use for a long time? Could you imagine BG2 without Carsomyr or Celestial Fury?
I'll ask my sister, she oughta have a bead on what made it so great!
This reminds me of how, in an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game I was in running Dwellers of the Forbidden City, I got a shield +5. Good stuff.
I do agree with you to a degree but just have to point out that neither of those games had equivalents to AC/DR/DT/BAB/THAC0 etc to determine hits and damage, which pretty much all RPGs have. Finding a way to combine player skill with character skill would be awesome and I would like to see more games go down that route (we've seen some of it in the modern FO games for example), but I don't really know how. Perhaps swings could be faster and do more damage by investing proficencies and/or skill points etc, but let's see what future games might come up with.
Edit: Btw.. I recall a very old game called something like "Sliver" or "Silver" that was a RPG-like where you moved your mouse to trigger different kinds of sword swings. But I never played it myself, I just remember reading about it and feeling it would be awesome.
I wanna say to look into feedback panels, for that kind of thing! I've been to one or two, and while they may or may not listen, the idea's out there, and if the company that you're (hopefully) being compensated by doesn't use the idea, then someone present might in the not-too-distant future!
When it comes to worldbuilding, the only author I can think of that comes close would the Dune guy.
You could do it that way with increasing damage or speed of attacks. Another way is learning specific maneuvers. I admit, that doesn't work for every game, but could you imagine if how cool Skyrim would have been if it was more than just a few slash attacks and had locational damage? Once you had a handle on Dark Messiah's combat, you could place your sword strikes anywhere you wanted. Clearly I don't think this type of skill based combat should be injected into top down games, but would have actually have made DA:I's combat interesting, instead of making playing a warrior a complete bore.
Specifically, I hate forced dialogues that trigger when a stealthed character who's scouting ahead triggers them, which ends the stealth and teleports the rest of the party to the dialogue location. Pillars of Eternity and Icewind Dale definitely did this, and I'm fairly certain Baldur's Gate 2 did as well.
Dragon Age was rotten with this.
Calling it innovating might be a stretch since its similar to older games, but you are correct that it does have this mechanic and it's also RPG in the sense that you level up your skills and can choose equipment etc. Up mouse is a strong attack, back pedal and mouse give another and depending on if you have a sword/board or a twohander it also adjusts to that. I've played quite many hours of M&B, but to be frank, I was never really good at it, hehe..
Now I'm sitting here trying to remember the first game that had this.. I remember a very old medieval fighter game that had very interesting attacks, kinda like an old-school SW JO/JA saber-battle, but can't come up with its name. Humm.. but I guess it's ok, more than just a little off-topic anyways
Maybe I was spoiled by games like champions online (I miss my early college days where my roommate and I would do mmo hoping looking for things to play together and then going to some game design class the next day) but they let me create a freaking female dragonborn with claw attacks, breathe attacks, winged flight, super strength, super endurance, and regeneration... Yep it was awesome and I loved it!
Yet many rpgs don't even let you change things like skin color or body type let alone the characters race and his forbid they even try to escape tolkien's shadow and not follow the same generic formula that has been used so many times that know harbor dislike for elves!
I wish there was a reaction that could perfectly state just how much I agree with you here and empathize with you over the frustration that practice engenders.
Daggerfall and Morrowind had similar systems. I think it was phased out in Oblivion.
* I don't know enough about Arena to know if that one did as well, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Oblivion had some fun moves once you got your acrobatics high enough, all sorts of rolls and flips that you could use to dodge. I was let down Skyrim didn't have that, too.
Oh shoot, it did? I never did get my acrobatics very high.
I barely remember it but I know a mod in Oblivion added things like flips, backflips side rolls based on acrobatics but honestly I didn't pay much attention to acrobatics since it always automatically went up just by taking a leisurely stroll.
And high acrobatics is amazeballs.
The one issue with those moves is they were completely unrealistic. Rolling around in a melee makes you very vulnerable and is actually not hard to redirect your strike to where they're rolling. It was a lot of fun, though.