Things to avoid in (video) game design

[danzibr]

There are so many games out on the market these days, so a game rarely gets more than one playthrough from me. So yeah, a game should be very doable without walkthroughs on the first go-around. Or at least give you the chance to go back and grab stuff you missed for the best ending once you reach the end-game.

And never, ever EVER go full FFX-2. "Oh you skipped through a long and tedious dialogue? No golden ending for you."

100%ing X-2 is still on my list. Definitely going to follow a guide rather close on that one.

[Velaryon]

This one is just personal preference, but for remakes/rereleases of older games don't add voice acting if it wasn't in the original game. I'm playing the PS4 remake of Secret of Mana now, and the voice acting is terribly cringeworthy and out of place. For remakes of older games like this, just let me read the text windows instead.

[The_Jackal]

This one is just personal preference, but for remakes/rereleases of older games don't add voice acting if it wasn't in the original game. I'm playing the PS4 remake of Secret of Mana now, and the voice acting is terribly cringeworthy and out of place. For remakes of older games like this, just let me read the text windows instead.

I'm gonna come right out and suggest that fully voiced games are generally bad. IMO, voice acting in a game is a 'less is more' kind of situation. If you're going to use it, keep it clever and punchy, and don't clog your game with tons of boring NPC blather. Your game production budget should go into game, not yakking.

[huttj509]

I'm gonna come right out and suggest that fully voiced games are generally bad. IMO, voice acting in a game is a 'less is more' kind of situation. If you're going to use it, keep it clever and punchy, and don't clog your game with tons of boring NPC blather. Your game production budget should go into game, not yakking.

I've been really surprised with the latest Assassin's Creed (Origins). The characters all have, well, character. Instead of being annoyed with the narration thinking "get on with it" I'm annoyed at the NPC wanting to shake him and tell him to get on with it, and those are characters specifically written to either be rambling about unimportant things, or using flowery language, or having a bad stutter due to being scared.

[deuterio12]

I actually quite enjoyed the battle chatter of Xenoblade chronicles characters, in particular the bit where every party combination has their own randomized winning quotes. Even "THIS IS THE POWER OF THE MONADO!" somehow never got old. Also enjoying Xenoblade Chronicles 2 voices so far.

The super robot wars series also does the voices thingy pretty well when they do it, probably because they go out of their way to get the original anime voice actors. Hilarity ensues when Amuro Ray meets Ribbon Hallmarks (who are voiced by the same person).

Dawn of War goes into "so bad it's good" territory with their voice acting.

[PopeLinus1]

Radiant Quests. The worst part about them is that right of the bat you can tell that there radiant, and are completely aware of there lack of content, challenge, or story.

[Avilan the Grey]

Radiant Quests. The worst part about them is that right of the bat you can tell that there radiant, and are completely aware of there lack of content, challenge, or story.

I definitely disagree.
I think they work well in both Skyrim and Fo4.
They are... XP food. Instead of random grinding you get an objective and a guaranteed reward. That's better than just randomly run in circles until you killed enough goblin ears to earn a level.

Now, for me...

Here are my no nos:
1. Quick Time Events that actually can kill you
2. Disjointed Endings, inconclusive endings
3. DLC-based Endings
4. Annoying characters

[Keltest]

I definitely disagree.
I think they work well in both Skyrim and Fo4.
They are... XP food. Instead of random grinding you get an objective and a guaranteed reward. That's better than just randomly run in circles until you killed enough goblin ears to earn a level.

Now, for me...

Here are my no nos:
1. Quick Time Events that actually can kill you
2. Disjointed Endings, inconclusive endings
3. DLC-based Endings
4. Annoying characters

Isnt that last one somewhat of a tautology?

Anyway, I dislike QTE's period. Don't make me spend 60% of the game learning this one set of mechanics, only to throw it out the window because you don't think ill stay awake during the cinematics. Even if theyre easy, it means I'm watching for the prompts, not watching the cutscene or whatever.

[Maryring]

Radiant Quests. The worst part about them is that right of the bat you can tell that there radiant, and are completely aware of there lack of content, challenge, or story.

What is a "Radiant Quest"?

[Lector87]

What is a "Radiant Quest"?

It's like a normal quest but extra shiny.

[Keltest]

What is a "Radiant Quest"?

In skyrim, for example, its a fairly generic type of quest generated randomly from a list of constraints. So instead of talking to NPC X and getting the same quest to go to the Cave of Bad Guys to retrieve the MacGuffin of Important Stuff every game, sometimes youll be sent to the Mountain of Improbably Sharp Rocks With Long Drops to rescue a kidnapping victim, or kill a boss. Skyrim uses them as filler quests a lot, although a few bigger quests have radiant elements.

[Wookieetank]

Isnt that last one somewhat of a tautology?

Anyway, I dislike QTE's period. Don't make me spend 60% of the game learning this one set of mechanics, only to throw it out the window because you don't think ill stay awake during the cinematics. Even if theyre easy, it means I'm watching for the prompts, not watching the cutscene or whatever.

I don't mind QTE's, so long as that is the game mechanics the game is based around. Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Until Dawn and the like are fine examples of how to do QTE's right. They also used varied enough prompts that it keeps things interesting. Throwing QTE's into actiony games however, should be against the Geneva Conventions or some such (looking at you Tomb Raider).

[The_Jackal]

In skyrim, for example, its a fairly generic type of quest generated randomly from a list of constraints. So instead of talking to NPC X and getting the same quest to go to the Cave of Bad Guys to retrieve the MacGuffin of Important Stuff every game, sometimes youll be sent to the Mountain of Improbably Sharp Rocks With Long Drops to rescue a kidnapping victim, or kill a boss. Skyrim uses them as filler quests a lot, although a few bigger quests have radiant elements.

Well, they can be done well or poorly. I think Fallout 4's 'kidnapped settler' is a better-executed radiant mission, for example. I also think the 'Dark Brotherhood Forever' quests made sense, given the outcome of that story arc. Doing procedurally-generated content well can give your world a bit of verisimilitude. The trick is to keep them in the background, rather than become the focus of the game, where the repetition can make your game seem more contrived, rather than less.

I don't mind QTE's, so long as that is the game mechanics the game is based around. Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Until Dawn and the like are fine examples of how to do QTE's right. They also used varied enough prompts that it keeps things interesting. Throwing QTE's into actiony games however, should be against the Geneva Conventions or some such (looking at you Tomb Raider).

I thought Shadow of Mordor's 'random button QTE to avoid death' mechanic was a pretty decent use of them, but I mostly agree that they're kind of crap. Essentially, a quick time event is a (bad) way to making a cut-scene pass for gameplay. They can also be really anti-climactic, when you've got some really fun, challenging regular gameplay to get to an ending, and then you cut to the Simon BS, and all sense of tension is gone.

[Avilan the Grey]

Isnt that last one somewhat of a tautology?

Anyway, I dislike QTE's period. Don't make me spend 60% of the game learning this one set of mechanics, only to throw it out the window because you don't think ill stay awake during the cinematics. Even if theyre easy, it means I'm watching for the prompts, not watching the cutscene or whatever.

Exactly.
If you have that little respect for either your own skill in presenting the cutscene, or worse, so little respect for ME that you think I'll just walk away... screw you.
Of course there are also those who actually think QTEs are good design. Those people should be rounded up and moved to the company cafeteria instead of doing game design.

That said, if (like in Mass Effect) the QTE only makes something slightly cooler happening... I can live with that. I can survive not punching an admiral in the stomach if I forget to press the button in time.

As for games that use QTEs as a major part of the design? Welcome to 1983.

[warty goblin]

I don't actually generally mind quicktime events. Sometimes they suck sure, but I thought they added a lot to, say, the new Tomb Raider games.

I can't say I've ever played a game where crafting, as it is currently understood, is fun though. Mostly it just gives me newer, grinder ways to get stuff with bigger numbers, which is just another form of running on the leveling treadmill. The leveling treadmill isn't fun. Killing a dude with a +200 sword isn't any more satisfying than killing a dude with the starter sword if the mechanics are exactly the same; in fact the beginning of the game is often *more* satisfying because it's not a total cakewalk yet. So the payoff is boring. The process is just hoovering up every diseased rat spleen and exceptional dragon kidney I find, which is about as fun as cleaning the apartment, but instead of being useful it just fills me with a sense of yawning emptiness as my soul slowly erodes. And the crafting itself is similarly stupifying, go into the menu, click through a bunch of nonsense, hit craft, and I get... a slightly better sword. It's like working through an Excel spreadsheet, except utterly useless. And it usually even feels useless in the game because all I get is a sword I'll use for like 20 minutes before replacing it with a better one. Woo.

The crafting in Dark Messiah was enjoyable. Notably it did a few things differently:
1) It was an actual process you did in the world. Like, with animations and everything. There was a forge, not a 'crafting interface'
2) It was exceedingly optional, nearly an Easter Egg.
3) The stuff you got from doing it was good and useful, but wasn't a straight-up power boost so much as expanding your options, since having a fire sword was handy against the undead. But not having a fire sword was fine too.

[Yaktan]

In skyrim, for example, its a fairly generic type of quest generated randomly from a list of constraints. So instead of talking to NPC X and getting the same quest to go to the Cave of Bad Guys to retrieve the MacGuffin of Important Stuff every game, sometimes youll be sent to the Mountain of Improbably Sharp Rocks With Long Drops to rescue a kidnapping victim, or kill a boss. Skyrim uses them as filler quests a lot, although a few bigger quests have radiant elements.

I like Skyrim's quests like that. It plays well with the open world nature of it; if I hit a cave while exploring randomly, then I can still get a quest to kill some bandits, they are just in a different cave. Especially because there are a mix of fixed-location ones and ones like that, it makes for good re-playability.

[Wookieetank]

Crafting is terrible

Fallout 4 was hit hard with this. I spent so much time picking up every bit of scrap just so I could keep my power armor in working condition. The lack of durability on it was also grating. Having to run back to base after most any encounter just to repair my armor, find out I don't have the supplies for it, and then having to go out on a supply run just completely derailed any sense of urgency on most any quest, let alone the main plot line. It did give a very convincing scavengery feel to the setting, but it was rather excessively done. I'll take survival mechanics over crafting mechanics any day (food/water/healthiness).

[GloatingSwine]

I thought Shadow of Mordor's 'random button QTE to avoid death' mechanic was a pretty decent use of them, but I mostly agree that they're kind of crap.

'random button qte to avoid death' is literally the worst kind of QTE ever.

The only good kind are where using a normal gameplay command has the normal effect. (As an example in a lot of cutscenes in Bayonetta 2 end with the enemy doing an attack, if you press dodge as it ends you go back to gameplay in witch time, despite the attack being "fake" and them actually starting the fight normally).


Also: Weapon durability in almost every game ever can get in the bin.

[Avilan the Grey]

Fallout 4 was hit hard with this. I spent so much time picking up every bit of scrap just so I could keep my power armor in working condition. The lack of durability on it was also grating. Having to run back to base after most any encounter just to repair my armor, find out I don't have the supplies for it, and then having to go out on a supply run just completely derailed any sense of urgency on most any quest, let alone the main plot line. It did give a very convincing scavengery feel to the setting, but it was rather excessively done. I'll take survival mechanics over crafting mechanics any day (food/water/healthiness).

I love Fallout 4. I love the weapon and armor crafting.
I don't use Power Armor all that much tho, but I never did in FO3 / NV either (The FO4 model for Power Armor as a "vehicle" is FAR superior to those games, though. Especially since in FO3 and NV the helmets for the PA was worthless, so you could kill thousands of PA-wearing guys by shooting their heads off (the Armor was what? marginally better than an army helmet?))

As for survival... I HATED the mechanics in both NV and FO4.
It's just super-annoying.

I just checked btw, I have 1135 or so hours in FO4 to date...

[The_Jackal]

'random button qte to avoid death' is literally the worst kind of QTE ever.

In this instance, I disagree. Did you ever play it? The effect was to give you a second chance, and properly gave the feeling of panic as you struggle to hit the right inputs when you're trying to avoid being bisected by some grossly overpowered orc. Of course, by the end of the game, you were so all-powerful that nobody could survive long enough to put you in danger, which is another game design problem to avoid: Progression is all well and good, but don't let power creep trivialize the game.

The only good kind are where using a normal gameplay command has the normal effect. (As an example in a lot of cutscenes in Bayonetta 2 end with the enemy doing an attack, if you press dodge as it ends you go back to gameplay in witch time, despite the attack being "fake" and them actually starting the fight normally).

Also: Weapon durability in almost every game ever can get in the bin.

I pretty much agree with this one. I've never played a game where having your items break on your was ever meaningful, as opposed to a tedious core. If you want to carry some verisimilitude in your game, then have the PC's idle animation be 'maintain weapons' instead of 'stand around like a turd'. Because, seriously, maintaining a blade is pretty simple, and doesn't require expert assistance. Maybe if you're wanting a razor-sharp culinary knife, but for a war sword, you don't need a very fine edge, and as for a blunt weapon like a warhammer, how exactly would you maintain it, anyway?

[warty goblin]

I pretty much agree with this one. I've never played a game where having your items break on your was ever meaningful, as opposed to a tedious core. If you want to carry some verisimilitude in your game, then have the PC's idle animation be 'maintain weapons' instead of 'stand around like a turd'. Because, seriously, maintaining a blade is pretty simple, and doesn't require expert assistance. Maybe if you're wanting a razor-sharp culinary knife, but for a war sword, you don't need a very fine edge, and as for a blunt weapon like a warhammer, how exactly would you maintain it, anyway?

I liked the weapon durability in STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. For one thing, the steady failure of every single piece of equipment in the game was a perfect reflection of the game's overall philosophy of the steady and inevitable decay of everything human in the Zone. For another, it was actually strict enough with weight limits and caliber requirements for guns that you were forced to make some actually difficult decisions. Is it better to stick with the NATO rifle with its scope and superior accuracy, even though I'm low on ammo and all the dudes around here are using Soviet bloc guns? Or suck up the accuracy penalty and go back to AKs? It wasn't a cash hole to try to keep money meaningful in an RPG's hopelessly borked economy, but an actual decision and thematic point.

[The_Jackal]

I liked the weapon durability in STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. For one thing, the steady failure of every single piece of equipment in the game was a perfect reflection of the game's overall philosophy of the steady and inevitable decay of everything human in the Zone. For another, it was actually strict enough with weight limits and caliber requirements for guns that you were forced to make some actually difficult decisions. Is it better to stick with the NATO rifle with its scope and superior accuracy, even though I'm low on ammo and all the dudes around here are using Soviet bloc guns? Or suck up the accuracy penalty and go back to AKs? It wasn't a cash hole to try to keep money meaningful in an RPG's hopelessly borked economy, but an actual decision and thematic point.

Well, the problem I have with that is that really, all it takes to keep guns in working order is to clean them regularly. A non-defective rifle has a more or less infinite service life if operated and maintained correctly. Now a Kalashnikov is definitely more forgiving in terms of maintenance than a western rifle, but there's no reason that a NATO rifle can't last one or two hundred years, with decent upkeep. Thematic choices are well and good, but it strains credulity a bit.

[Wookieetank]

I love Fallout 4. I love the weapon and armor crafting.
I don't use Power Armor all that much tho, but I never did in FO3 / NV either (The FO4 model for Power Armor as a "vehicle" is FAR superior to those games, though. Especially since in FO3 and NV the helmets for the PA was worthless, so you could kill thousands of PA-wearing guys by shooting their heads off (the Armor was what? marginally better than an army helmet?))

As for survival... I HATED the mechanics in both NV and FO4.
It's just super-annoying.

I just checked btw, I have 1135 or so hours in FO4 to date...

I quite enjoyed FO4 overall, just wish the armor durability actually meant something, particularly against raiders with bits of wood as weapons...

[warty goblin]

Well, the problem I have with that is that really, all it takes to keep guns in working order is to clean them regularly. A non-defective rifle has a more or less infinite service life if operated and maintained correctly. Now a Kalashnikov is definitely more forgiving in terms of maintenance than a western rifle, but there's no reason that a NATO rifle can't last one or two hundred years, with decent upkeep. Thematic choices are well and good, but it strains credulity a bit.

Sure, but this is also a game where you can get shot about a hundred times over the course of an afternoon, but so long as you have time to apply bandages between bullets, will continue to operate at peak efficiency indefinitely. Sometimes the credulity-straining is in the player's favor, sometimes it isn't. I can't figure why I should be happy with the first, but complain about the second. Particularly in a game like STALKER, which generally isn't one of those fun'n'happy times player empowerment games. After all you can get killed by having a psychic monster yank your brains out through your ears, or by being stalked and eaten by a frequently invulnerable and most invisible monster, or because you stepped in the wrong place.

[The_Jackal]

Sure, but this is also a game where you can get shot about a hundred times over the course of an afternoon, but so long as you have time to apply bandages between bullets, will continue to operate at peak efficiency indefinitely. Sometimes the credulity-straining is in the player's favor, sometimes it isn't. I can't figure why I should be happy with the first, but complain about the second. Particularly in a game like STALKER, which generally isn't one of those fun'n'happy times player empowerment games. After all you can get killed by having a psychic monster yank your brains out through your ears, or by being stalked and eaten by a frequently invulnerable and most invisible monster, or because you stepped in the wrong place.

As a rule, I'm not a fan of those sorts of games. I've never found the horror genre to actually be scary or viscerally entertaining, rather I find the conventions (limited ammunition and health, terrible controls, etc.) to be universally tedious.

[warty goblin]

As a rule, I'm not a fan of those sorts of games. I've never found the horror genre to actually be scary or viscerally entertaining, rather I find the conventions (limited ammunition and health, terrible controls, etc.) to be universally tedious.

STALKER isn't really a normal horror game. It's not based around gore (it's rated M, but isn't a particularly hard M and isn't really much more violent than Halo) or jump scares (though those sometimes occur, mostly as a result of the ecosystem simulation and nights being dark as hell). The controls are pretty good for a semi-hardcore/realistic shooter, and ammo isn't generally particularly limited after the hard-as-nails beginning. You may not have ammo for the gun you want to use the most, but you've definitely got ammo for something.

The horror of STALKER is built much more around a sort of existential dread. Reality in the Zone is broken, human artifice and intelligence is very much not up to the challenge of understanding, let alone reversing it. Everything human is decaying, rusting, failing. Even the artifacts that make you stronger also wind up making you weaker. Your own mind is often used against you, your perceptions are not necessarily trustworthy, and everything from the nature of reality to the wildlife to your purpose is deliberately opaque and difficult to understand. Most things have an attitude of semi-hostile indifference towards you.

I mean there's some parts that are flat out terrifying, but mostly because they're building on this atmosphere.

[LibraryOgre]

"Skip Words" button being the same as the "select words" button. I.e. "I have played this game 30 times, I don't need to hear more conversation about the Protheans... and now I've accidentally called her a tentacle-headed whore, because I misguessed how many times I needed to skip it."

Companion AI that does stupid things. Stop running into fire. Stop running away from the guy I told you to attack to attack someone on the other side of the screen. Or "I will cast my most powerful spell against these orcs, because there is no possible way I will ever need it again."

PC crafting that is either pointless or overpowered. If I can craft, the things I make should be useful... but the things I craft shouldn't be able to exceed gods-crafted artifacts that everyone is murdering each other for.

Personal pet peeve: Resting not mattering. You can fight and rest and fight and rest and there's no downside to going nova with theoretically daily abilities in every single fight.

[Starwulf]

I don't mind QTE's, so long as that is the game mechanics the game is based around. Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Until Dawn and the like are fine examples of how to do QTE's right. They also used varied enough prompts that it keeps things interesting. Throwing QTE's into actiony games however, should be against the Geneva Conventions or some such (looking at you Tomb Raider).

Or Resident Evil 4...*shudders*. So many deaths in that game were solely because of the QTE's. A few nearly caused me to quit the game because I couldn't get the damn timing right and just kept dying for like an hour or more.

[Arbane]

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.

It's an escort mission, it's just that BOOKER is the one being escorted.

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.

Ever play Ico?

[Kitten Champion]

My three pet peeves

1. Hard to read font. Whether it's too small, lacks contrast from the background, or uses a font that's difficult to decipher at a moment's glance. I especially have issues with numbers looking too similar in a blurry kind of way. I hate straining my eyes to see whether it's a 3 or an 8 or a 9 or maybe a 2... possibly a 1 even.

2. Being too dark, in a literal lighting sense. This is related to the above in obvious ways, but seems rather more common nowadays where modern games want to start their gamma at a moonless, cloudy midnight for some reason. Though, in a general aesthetic sense, the preponderance of mud-brown games last gen was mentally exhausting. I like colour, colour is my friend, draining it from the world and calling it "realism" is such a cop out for creative art design, just like saying you need darkness to make horror.

3. This is dependant on various factors in your game design, but I hate the feeling - particularly in MMORPGs -where your game character moves 10-25-50% slower than it ought to, especially when the game's content is all spaced out across largely empty maps. Similarly, when the character does move fast for a brief while but then has to spend minutes to catch its breath due to a restrictive stamina meter to effectively have the same feeling. Or if your character moves well enough but the map designer has created these unintuitive spaces where you find yourself looking for that one door or stairway that you have to get through for forever. A lot of successful game feel - the positive sensation of playing a game for any length of time - is about doing the most mundane aspects well, like when you push a button or tilt forward a joystick the character you're playing moves how you think it should, and you can find the obvious things the games want you to find. This is the issue of why water-levels are rarely fun, you're slowed and it's hard to find things in such an environment.