Things to avoid in (video) game design

[Kato]

Alright, the title might sound a bit negative but I would still like to talk about / gather things people can think of that are either recurring problems or things that bother you with otherwise good games or what have you. Not just to complain for the sake of complaining but to possibly help avoid these.

Something that many games nowadays avoid but used to be a large problem (and sometimes still occurs)... Unskippable cut scenes. I love the story in most games I play. But if replaying it means I need to sit through the third repeat of a scene I'm getting annoyed. If the scene is right before a hard boss and I need to watch it again if I die, you cannot expect me to be happy about that.

Bad random encounters.. More common in RPGs... Comes in different formats, e. g. fights not worth waiting because they are neither challenging nor rewarding. What's the point of those? Or the FF Tactics problem... Encounters you can't predict, can't avoid and take way too long. A normal encounter takes a minute or two, but those take five to ten and you need to reload to get away!

Picky puzzles. There is nothing wrong with a hard puzzle but if I try a solution and it doesn't work be I'm a Pixel of or I didn't wait long enough or mistimed something that is not clearly time sensitive I might abandon my idea and end up being stumped.


I'm sure there are a hundred other things but those are the ones I could think of immediately.

[Dienekes]

Farming for loot, or experience.

If to beat the game, I have to go through the same repetitive task after I've already accomplished it, I will hate you and your game. I should note, there is a difference here between having a gauntlet that you have to complete the full way through in one go or you have to start over at the beginning. That can be done well if the challenge of the gauntlet feels fair and varried. Hell, that's basically the entirety of the Dark Souls games.

But if I have to beat some boss for 15 times to get a specific magic weapon. Or I get sent on a mission to collect 25 bear anuses. I will drop your game immediately.

Mechanics that need to be used to progress one section while being entirely irrelevant the rest of the game. At least without a lot of prep. So there are two ways to go about doing this. The good way and the bad way. Look at Mario Odyssey regularly has you possess different creatures to give you control of their new mechanics. But the game is designed in such a way that upon gaining the new mechanic you go through a quick tutorial on how to use it and then the puzzle is you using the mechanic in increasingly complex ways until it's done. This is opposed to games that show you a mechanic in the beginning of the game. And then it is nearly irrelevant for the entire game except one section midway through that requires you to do it correctly to pass. That's horrible.

[Lector87]

Complaining about the following is almost cliche at this point, but...

quick-time events
micro-transactions
loot boxes
comparing your game in any way to Dark Souls

I might have a more thoughtful contribution later - just had to get those out of the way.

[Starbuck_II]

Alright, the title might sound a bit negative but I would still like to talk about / gather things people can think of that are either recurring problems or things that bother you with otherwise good games or what have you. Not just to complain for the sake of complaining but to possibly help avoid these.

Something that many games nowadays avoid but used to be a large problem (and sometimes still occurs)... Unskippable cut scenes. I love the story in most games I play. But if replaying it means I need to sit through the third repeat of a scene I'm getting annoyed. If the scene is right before a hard boss and I need to watch it again if I die, you cannot expect me to be happy about that.

Bad random encounters.. More common in RPGs... Comes in different formats, e. g. fights not worth waiting because they are neither challenging nor rewarding. What's the point of those? Or the FF Tactics problem... Encounters you can't predict, can't avoid and take way too long. A normal encounter takes a minute or two, but those take five to ten and you need to reload to get away!

Picky puzzles. There is nothing wrong with a hard puzzle but if I try a solution and it doesn't work be I'm a Pixel of or I didn't wait long enough or mistimed something that is not clearly time sensitive I might abandon my idea and end up being stumped.


I'm sure there are a hundred other things but those are the ones I could think of immediately.

Speaking of random encounters:
FF1 had this ice cave where there was death or stone cause enemies that were worth almost nothing for XP/gold so there was challenges that weren't worth it that can kill you randomly.

Really just frustrating as can be.

[GolemsVoice]

Speaking of cutscenes, make sure that they come BEFORE the boss' savepoint, so that you don't have to skip it every time you retry.

[Velaryon]

A few more, in addition to what's already been mentioned:

Bugs:
-A game being non-functional at launch because the bugs weren't cleaned up. Yes, patching is a thing, but if I need to download a big patch on day one to make the game playable, then it wasn't ready to ship.

-Even worse is when major bugs and glitches go un-patched for long periods of time.


DLC:
-When content is already on the disc/in the initial download, but locked so that it can be sold as "DLC." The way I see it, that's basically charging me twice for something I already paid for. (Capcom is a known offender here)

-I understand why they do it, but I'm also not a big fan of expensive season passes, especially if the content I'll be getting with them hasn't even been announced yet. Even worse though is when the season pass doesn't even cover all DLC, especially if the developer rushes out subpar content to fulfill the season pass promise and then releases better content later. (I feel like Borderlands 2 did a bit of this)


Game Balancing:
-When developers react to anything deemed OP by simply nerfing it into complete uselessness, then calling it a day. (EA Battlefront)

-Making balance changes that aren't needed, just for the sake of making changes. (Overwatch)


Older problems that you don't see much anymore:

-Rubber band AI (NBA Jam)

-Impossibly fast reactions by AI opponents in fighting games because the system is reading your button inputs (early Mortal Kombat games)


Miscellaneous:

-Multiplayer games not having dedicated servers (For Honor)

-When games are padded out to seem longer than they are by requiring tons of travel time between actual content. (No Man's Sky for example, but lots of sandbox games do this)

-Making promises and not keeping them (No Man's Sky again)

-Excessive amounts of uninteresting resource management (No Man's Sky... again)

-Escort missions

-Water levels

[Dienekes]

Miscellaneous:

-Multiplayer games not having dedicated servers (For Honor)

Woo, FH is getting dedicated servers. Only a damn year late.

-Escort missions

-Water levels

I'll actually disagree with both of these. Bioshock: Infinite and Last of Us are both essentially overlong escort missions. They work by making the escort engaging, useful, and so you don't have to worry about the character slowing you down or dying stupidly.

As to water levels. I'm a weirdo who generally likes the water temples in Zelda games. Usually they're the most complex puzzles in the game. I will note that Ocarina of Times (I think, I can't remember exactly) had that whole item select issue that made actually finishing the puzzle take dramatically more time than solving it. But that was more of an equipment issue than the water level itself.

[Lector87]

I'll chip in with a pet peeve that isn't necessarily "bad" design, objectively - collapsing platforms.

I know it's a legitimate gameplay challenge. I just hate them.

[Maryring]

Using Luck as a substitute for difficulty. This doesn't mean "no random elements" but rather "no random elements that arbitrarily decide victory or loss". If a boss has a randomly used super-attack that's practically guaranteed to end you if used several times in a row isn't difficult. It's just frustrating and arbitrary. A boss that randomly alternates between fire and ice styles and thus force you to adapt and change your strategy is a challenge that you can master and overcome.

Not allowing you to change your control scheme. Let people map buttons as they please.

[Psyren]

I'll save myself a lot of typing and just point to the entire Extra Credits channel.

[Lector87]

Using Luck as a substitute for difficulty. This doesn't mean "no random elements" but rather "no random elements that arbitrarily decide victory or loss". If a boss has a randomly used super-attack that's practically guaranteed to end you if used several times in a row isn't difficult. It's just frustrating and arbitrary. A boss that randomly alternates between fire and ice styles and thus force you to adapt and change your strategy is a challenge that you can master and overcome.

Not allowing you to change your control scheme. Let people map buttons as they please.

What about Luck as a character stat?

I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, having a character who's primary attribute is just dumb luck is...appealing, in a funny way! Especially combined with Charisma (or similar). There are many comic heroes who seem to skate by on mere charm and good fortune, and that can be fun to play.

But most of the time (especially in a computer game) Luck is just a dump stat - very hard to balance it, mechanically, with more straightforward attributes like combat strength or magical ability.

[Jama7301]

A few more, in addition to what's already been mentioned:

Bugs:
-A game being non-functional at launch because the bugs weren't cleaned up. Yes, patching is a thing, but if I need to download a big patch on day one to make the game playable, then it wasn't ready to ship.

-Even worse is when major bugs and glitches go un-patched for long periods of time.

Waves to every Bethesda game ever.

Semi-off-topic, but man, I don't get how they can release such busted games and not get slammed for it as hard as other companies that release games with lesser bugs.

[Lector87]

Waves to every Bethesda game ever.

Semi-off-topic, but man, I don't get how they can release such busted games and not get slammed for it as hard as other companies that release games with lesser bugs.

I think they get a pass because...

A. The games are so huge, and there's so much complexity and content, that people say "well of course they couldn't catch all the bugs, there's just too much stuff"
B. Since they leave their games completely open to modding, the mod community quickly throws together their own patches

At least with the Elder Scrolls games (haven't played the Bethesda Fallout series), the mod community complaining about bugs and fixing bugs and finding ways to break the game is part of the fun.

Which might be perverse and misguided, but there you go.

[Wookieetank]

-Surprise stealth levels in non-stealth games. *CoughFFXVcough*
-Surprise platforming in non-platformers
-Surprise anything really that is completely unrelated to the game mechanics so far, shows up late game, and is Required to progress in the game.
-Having a wide cast of characters and arbitrary party size limits. Juggling characters has never been fun for me, especially if I feel like I'm missing out on dialogue by not bringing someone along.
-Sequence memorizing to defeat bosses, its dull, and only shows how well I can memorize something, not how well I can actually play the game.

[Aotrs Commander]

Inability to pause at any time, especially during cutscenes.

I do not want to miss the pivotal cutscene because the postman arrives or Nanny phones for come computer help or something. Computer games do not exist free of the outside world.



Actually, long areas with no save points, period, and save points in only a few specific places.



Hell, save points as an entity entirely. They are not longer necessary from a programming artifice like they were originally, now they are just artificical difficulty (by forcing repetition, for game overs) and an irritant (when the aofrementioned rest of the world around you interjects). If you absolutely absolute MUST insist on having a bee in your bonnet about people svaing and reloading (and really, you should not), at the very least allow exit and save at any point and autosave before any cutscenes).



Oh, yeah, not allowing people to name saves if you have more than one, because re-installing the Witcher 2 in its entirety to check which save was the last one is kinda annoying, to put it MILDLY.

[Olinser]

Woo, FH is getting dedicated servers. Only a damn year late.



I'll actually disagree with both of these. Bioshock: Infinite and Last of Us are both essentially overlong escort missions. They work by making the escort engaging, useful, and so you don't have to worry about the character slowing you down or dying stupidly.

As to water levels. I'm a weirdo who generally likes the water temples in Zelda games. Usually they're the most complex puzzles in the game. I will note that Ocarina of Times (I think, I can't remember exactly) had that whole item select issue that made actually finishing the puzzle take dramatically more time than solving it. But that was more of an equipment issue than the water level itself.

Bioshock:Infinite is not an escort mission. She can't die, doesn't take damage, can never cause mission failure no matter what she does, and her abilities aren't affected by her sprite's actual physical location. She is, for all intents and purposes, a piece of equipment that happens to have a sprite that follows you around.

Which is everything wrong with escort missions. I have literally never EVER seen an actual escort mission that added meaningfully to gameplay, which is why the gaming community as a whole loathes them.

[Hunter Noventa]

"Heads I win, Tails you Lose"
If you can't write a story for winning the 'unwinnable' boss battle, don't make it a boss battle. Xenogears had a pretty bad example where a late game 'battle' that was supposed to be unwinnable was winnable, you got a piece of loot, but nothing changed afterwards and they had no problem with making other auto-loss cutscenes.

[Olinser]

One thing that's always annoyed me that seems to have thankfully disappeared was RTS or squad campaigns where everything carried over from mission to mission.

Which on the surface could be an interesting thing. If you're doing very well you get benefits that make future missions easier or might even get different missions based on how you are doing. Warcraft 3 did it very well where you have persistent heroes that level up and find items (and quite a few hidden items) that make them significantly more powerful and make some missions much easier, but not finding all the super powerful bonus items didn't make missions that much more difficult. It was done pretty well but if you knew where the good items were and how to properly gear your hero, even on Hard difficulty a lot of mission became huge jokes because your hero was just invincible.

When its done POORLY, as it usually was in most other games, missions are programmed thinking you were going to do well in previous missions and this leaves you in literally unwinnable missions and forcing you to restart the entire campaign. Probably the worst example of this I recall was a Starship Troopers game from the late 90's which was a squad game, and your squad was persistent from mission to mission, troopers gained experience based on their kills and from mission completion, and if troopers died they got replaced with green troopers. The problem was that the heavy armor and weapons could ONLY be equipped by high level troopers with hundreds of kills, and after just a few missions bug attack waves were literally impossible to beat without a full squad of veteran troops geared with heavy weapons. So on your first play through you probably took casualties and then got locked into an unwinnable scenario just a few missions in before you realized that the only really effective way to beat the game was to sit forever in early missions on the slow bug spawners and just grind out kills and experience on your squad, and then constantly save scum in every mission past the first few until you could beat it with zero casualties.

Either that or you ended up with Homeworld - which was an absolutely fantastic game in every other respect - but because everything, including resources, carried over from mission to mission that meant at the end of every mission after you've already killed all enemies, you went afk for an hour while your resourcers mined out the rest of the map. Thankfully Homeworld 2 added a 'instantly gather all resources' feature at the end.

[Douglas]

Speaking of Homeworld: easily circumventable limits. There is, supposedly, a limit to how many of each size category of ships you can have. But there's a type of ship, available right from the start of the game, that can capture enemy ships, and capturing ignores that limit. You can easily amass a fleet several times larger than the supposed limits by the simple expedient of capturing every enemy you encounter.

Also, game mechanics being blatantly ignored - during gameplay, not a cutscene - because of plot. An early Homeworld mission has the enemy being led by a carrier, the second largest ship class in the game (behind only the mothership). Carriers can normally be captured. The plot dictates that this particular carrier escapes to be fought again in the next mission, however, so the capture ships (called salvage corvettes) have no effect on it. In the next mission, you can capture it just fine.

[Olinser]

Speaking of Homeworld: easily circumventable limits. There is, supposedly, a limit to how many of each size category of ships you can have. But there's a type of ship, available right from the start of the game, that can capture enemy ships, and capturing ignores that limit. You can easily amass a fleet several times larger than the supposed limits by the simple expedient of capturing every enemy you encounter.

Also, game mechanics being blatantly ignored - during gameplay, not a cutscene - because of plot. An early Homeworld mission has the enemy being led by a carrier, the second largest ship class in the game (behind only the mothership). Carriers can normally be captured. The plot dictates that this particular carrier escapes to be fought again in the next mission, however, so the capture ships (called salvage corvettes) have no effect on it. In the next mission, you can capture it just fine.

Oh sure, and the 2nd to last mission had a massive armada of Ion corvettes defending an installation.

Except they were spread out in static positions in a 3D globe around it, and with the crappy AI, you could aggro just a couple at once, capture them, go aggro a couple more, and literally loot their entire fleet.

Going into the final mission with over 100 ships makes it ludicrously easy.

[Kato]

I didn't exactly plan on doing this but I'll actually debate a few points made. Obviously, some of these are up to personal preference and on some I can't comment because I never or rarely came across them but...

quick-time events

I think what wookietank said very much applies here... they're annoying if they pop up in games that are not focused on them. But considering there are whole games that basically are built around QTEs I don't think it's fair to dismiss them per se.

micro-transactions
loot boxes
[also, dlc]

These are... interesting. Not that Ithink I will every commit to micro transactions or loot boxes, companies make billions with them. So clearly there are millions of people who are fine/ happy with it. You can't blame a company for making money in a way people are willing to accept. And if it's not for you... well, nowadays it's easy to find out if a game includes them, considering it's mostly openly labeled.
Kind of similar reasoning applies to DLC. Frankly, I consider it mostly as (mini) expansions. I won't say I wouldn't prefer to get the additional content for free, butif I'm willing to pay 30 bucks for an expansion pack, I won't per se say I'm unwilling to pay 2 for a smaller add-on. Of course this depends on price / worth of the content. But again, I wouldn't dismiss all DLC as bad.

Game Balancing:
-Making balance changes that aren't needed, just for the sake of making changes. (Overwatch)

Again... eh... it depends? It seems to me many people like it. Also in other games, like Dota, people enjoy the changes to the meta because of balancing so you don't always get the same heroes and abilities. Yes, you will get some ideal things for each patch but not year after year the one optimal setup.

"Heads I win, Tails you Lose"
If you can't write a story for winning the 'unwinnable' boss battle, don't make it a boss battle. Xenogears had a pretty bad example where a late game 'battle' that was supposed to be unwinnable was winnable, you got a piece of loot, but nothing changed afterwards and they had no problem with making other auto-loss cutscenes.

Hm... well, guess if you entirely dismiss it, yeah. And I won't say I didn't come across instances of it that kind of bothered me. But then again, it's pretty easy to have the villain say "hah, I was holding back! Now feel my true power!" I'd like my unwinnable boss fights to be made clear, though, so I don't waste too much time trying to win them...

Also, game mechanics being blatantly ignored - during gameplay, not a cutscene - because of plot. An early Homeworld mission has the enemy being led by a carrier, the second largest ship class in the game (behind only the mothership). Carriers can normally be captured. The plot dictates that this particular carrier escapes to be fought again in the next mission, however, so the capture ships (called salvage corvettes) have no effect on it. In the next mission, you can capture it just fine.

Hm... I'd put it under "necessary evil that (sometimes) can't be avoided. I guess coming up with some excuse for it is nice but I'm willing to take it if it's just the way it is. I mean, I don't like it but I can live with it.

[Knaight]

Needlessly opaque mechanics and level design that get in the way in obnoxious ways (Fire Emblem has a couple of recruitments like this) are high on my list. With that said, based on current games I have something specific:

If you have a multiplayer game the best way to play multiplayer shouldn't involve a third party email server which you manually send and receive files in email attachments, that are buried deep in some hidden subfolder somewhere. Find something better.

[danzibr]

If you have a multiplayer game the best way to play multiplayer shouldn't involve a third party email server which you manually send and receive files in email attachments, that are buried deep in some hidden subfolder somewhere. Find something better.

What the heck game does this?

[Olinser]

I didn't exactly plan on doing this but I'll actually debate a few points made. Obviously, some of these are up to personal preference and on some I can't comment because I never or rarely came across them but...


I think what wookietank said very much applies here... they're annoying if they pop up in games that are not focused on them. But considering there are whole games that basically are built around QTEs I don't think it's fair to dismiss them per se.


These are... interesting. Not that Ithink I will every commit to micro transactions or loot boxes, companies make billions with them. So clearly there are millions of people who are fine/ happy with it. You can't blame a company for making money in a way people are willing to accept. And if it's not for you... well, nowadays it's easy to find out if a game includes them, considering it's mostly openly labeled.
Kind of similar reasoning applies to DLC. Frankly, I consider it mostly as (mini) expansions. I won't say I wouldn't prefer to get the additional content for free, butif I'm willing to pay 30 bucks for an expansion pack, I won't per se say I'm unwilling to pay 2 for a smaller add-on. Of course this depends on price / worth of the content. But again, I wouldn't dismiss all DLC as bad.



Again... eh... it depends? It seems to me many people like it. Also in other games, like Dota, people enjoy the changes to the meta because of balancing so you don't always get the same heroes and abilities. Yes, you will get some ideal things for each patch but not year after year the one optimal setup.


Hm... well, guess if you entirely dismiss it, yeah. And I won't say I didn't come across instances of it that kind of bothered me. But then again, it's pretty easy to have the villain say "hah, I was holding back! Now feel my true power!" I'd like my unwinnable boss fights to be made clear, though, so I don't waste too much time trying to win them...



Hm... I'd put it under "necessary evil that (sometimes) can't be avoided. I guess coming up with some excuse for it is nice but I'm willing to take it if it's just the way it is. I mean, I don't like it but I can live with it.

Gamers don't hate the idea of loot boxes, as an idea. We're generally 100% fine with it for cosmetic rewards like skins or models, or for rewards/bonuses that only work against the AI.

What people hate is games that lock PROGRESSION IN THE GAME behind RNG bull**** in a transparent attempt to squeeze more money out of people to PLAY THE GAME.

If anything from a loot box other than a cosmetic reward is useable in a PvP or ranked game (if a separate mode), **** your game.

That's why such a massive backlash hit EA over Battlefront 2. They locked actual weapons, skills, and heroes behind loot box crap.

[Spore]

Controls, oh my god. The amount of games I have put down after 20 minutes because the controls are just terrible (or inconvenient) is mind boggling. You do not have to have the most awesome story nor brilliant graphics. If your central gameplay element, the control of your units or characters is bad the game is just destroyed instantly.

[Grif]

Controls, oh my god. The amount of games I have put down after 20 minutes because the controls are just terrible (or inconvenient) is mind boggling. You do not have to have the most awesome story nor brilliant graphics. If your central gameplay element, the control of your units or characters is bad the game is just destroyed instantly.

Look at you, Mordheim. The consolitis of that game was palpable.

[Aeson]

Controls, oh my god. The amount of games I have put down after 20 minutes because the controls are just terrible (or inconvenient) is mind boggling. You do not have to have the most awesome story nor brilliant graphics. If your central gameplay element, the control of your units or characters is bad the game is just destroyed instantly.

Relatedly:
Non-rebindable controls - and I don't mean just the "here are three different controller configuration options you can use" thing that a number of games do, I mean actually allowing the player to assign keys to actions. I can forgive a default control setup being bad if I can fix it up to be something that I find decent.

If you do have re-bindable controls and you have prompts to tell the player which key to press in certain contexts, don't hard-code the prompts to tell the player to use the default key. I probably don't remember what pressing 'E' did before I reconfigured the controls; don't make me look it up to play the game.

Stacking multiple actions on the same input. Yeah, for some input devices it's unavoidable, but having Jump and Context-Sensitive Interaction or something like that bound to the same key can get really annoying, especially if your game is finicky about where, when, or how you have to do the context-sensitive interaction. If you do need to have multiple actions bound to the same key, then I'd really appreciate it if you would let me choose which ones are stacked, because however much it may have made sense to you to have Jump and Kick on the same key while Parry and Roll get their own dedicated keys, some of us might rather have Jump and Kick on dedicated keys while Parry and Roll share.

To a lesser extent, I'm also not fond of actions that require a certain combination of inputs to perform, especially if the game is finicky about the timing of the inputs (e.g. standard movement being WASD, jump being ' ', and kick being 'w'+' ' pressed nearly simultaneously).

What the heck game does this?

Dominions.

[Aotrs Commander]

Gamers don't hate the idea of loot boxes, as an idea. We're generally 100% fine with it for cosmetic rewards like skins or models, or for rewards/bonuses that only work against the AI.

I think you are over-generalising there; I think an increasing number of folk are not behind it, even if it is only for cosmetic items.

Personally, I am pretty strongly against the idea entirely (as distinct from in-game randomised loot). I am of the opinion that if you want to charge people money for stuff, it should not be random stuff - I, at the very least, want to know what I'm getting. I don't agree with blind bags (to name just one of the examples) and always politely decline raffle tickets etc, so I certainly am not going to make an exception for computer games. On the other hand, I suppose, my opinion is irrelevant to the "AAA" game industry (or the free-to-play mobile game industry) insomuch as they don't release anything I want to play in the first place, so they aren't getting my money even to start with.

[Keltest]

I think you are over-generalising there; I think an increasing number of folk are not behind it, even if it is only for cosmetic items.

Personally, I am pretty strongly against the idea entirely (as distinct from in-game randomised loot). I am of the opinion that if you want to charge people money for stuff, it should not be random stuff - I, at the very least, want to know what I'm getting. I don't agree with blind bags (to name just one of the examples) and always politely decline raffle tickets etc, so I certainly am not going to make an exception for computer games. On the other hand, I suppose, my opinion is irrelevant to the "AAA" game industry (or the free-to-play mobile game industry) insomuch as they don't release anything I want to play in the first place, so they aren't getting my money even to start with.

I definitely don't like the idea of being unable to just point to a specific thing I want and then pay for it. I'm not going to gamble for skins, even if they don't affect gameplay. But I don't mind earning them through in-game actions and currency that I didn't have to pay extra $$$ for.

[Velaryon]

Woo, FH is getting dedicated servers. Only a damn year late.

Too little, too late. And it's only the most egregious of many problems I had with that game.

I'll actually disagree with both of these. Bioshock: Infinite and Last of Us are both essentially overlong escort missions. They work by making the escort engaging, useful, and so you don't have to worry about the character slowing you down or dying stupidly.

Olinser rebutted this point pretty well. The defining attributes of escort mission is that you must keep an AI-controlled character alive against threats, so you have an escort NPC who is vulnerable and on whose survival the mission's success depends. I have not played Bioshock: Infinite, but if his description is accurate, none of that applies. The problem with escort missions is that your AI buddy isn't smart enough to stay out of your way effectively and let you do your job. They blunder into your line of fire, they wander off from you or don't follow close enough behind, and when they die, you fail and have to do it all over again.

As to water levels. I'm a weirdo who generally likes the water temples in Zelda games. Usually they're the most complex puzzles in the game. I will note that Ocarina of Times (I think, I can't remember exactly) had that whole item select issue that made actually finishing the puzzle take dramatically more time than solving it. But that was more of an equipment issue than the water level itself.

You're free to enjoy what you want to, but since at least the days of the NES there has been a consistent pattern in video games: the obligatory "water level(s)" are usually a giant pain in the butt. They often saddle you with mechanics you don't have to deal with anywhere else in the game, and for whatever reason they often have some of the least appealing music in the game.

To list just a few examples:

-the underwater stages in Super Mario Bros.
-the infamous underwater stage in the NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (though I do like the music in this one)
-the various water levels in Mega Man games *
-Labyrinth Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog
-Hydro City Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (though this song I find really catchy)
-Jolly Roger Bay and Dire, Dire Docks in Super Mario 64
-Angler's Tunnel in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
-Inside Jabu Jabu's Belly and the Water Temple. You may like them, but you're obviously aware that you're very much in the minority on that.

*PinkKittyRose makes these look a lot less obnoxious than they really are because A) they're really good at these games, B) some at least are clearly being played on an emulator, and C) they're clearly making liberal use of turbo fire, which wasn't a feature in the original games unless you had a third-party controller with turbo functionality. They claim in the Toad Man video they aren't using much turbo, but all it takes is watching for 10 seconds to see that's a lie.


And those are just games that I've actually played. Quickly browsing Youtube shows numerous videos counting down the "worst water levels" in games, including many that I haven't listed here. So yeah, you do you, but I (and apparently many others) would rather just not have these.

--

Back to the general topic of things to avoid in video games, I'd like to add platforming in first-person games. If I can't even see my character's feet, then gauging where I need to be positioned to make the jump is a pain in the butt. Save platforming for games with a third-person perspective.