ITT: things that are considered good game design practices but actually make a game worse.
>tight gameplay loops
In my experience, a tight and well-thought out gameplay loop can make a game more engaging, but it doesn't necessarily make it better or more fun. The tighter a gameplay loop is, the less a player can express themselves through their gameplay. This ultimately makes the experience repetitive. The best example I can think of is Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup: the developers continue to remove features that they believe add tedium or unecessary complexity to the main gamepley objective. What's left is a less immersive, on-rails experience. When you design your game with a flowchart, it will feel like a flowchart.
>phobia of having a "gamey" game.
A lot of developers seem to be deeply afraid of players realizing that they're actually playing a video game. This leads to design decisions such as: UI's becoming minimized. Health bars being removed. Consumable and Item descriptions being vague and never directly mentioning gameplay mechanics/affects. It even gets in the way of level design: now every environment has to priotize consistent real-world logic before being a good environment to maximize the expression of gameplay mechanics. Every environment has to flow into the next one seamlessly, no more "levels."
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Skill trees
They feel so tedious to progress on. What's worse is that you just know the fart sniffing devs think they're clever for implementing them.
>Skill trees
I like em' in Borderlands but that's about it.
I love skill trees as an idea, but hate most implementations. Often they feel like they're just tacked on for the sake of having skill trees, they don't actually do anything for the game, they're just another marketing bullet point.
fpbp, it's fine if the entire game revolves around it but it couldn't be more obvious when it's used as a crutch, we need to go back to the times where every dev didn't turn everything into diet RPG but it takes actual skill to program real gameplay that turns into a real skill ceiling so who knows when is that going to happen
Skyrims best feature
Only when modded.
Base game skill tree is the most boring shit imaginable.
Skill trees should feel amazing but they never do. Devs always feel like the pussy foot around actual meaningful skill tree choices. that could lead to different gameplay experiences. Even though it's not technically a skill tree, Elden Ring feels really good to replay because there's just so much softlocked gameplay styles. That's what skill trees should be more like, i m h o.
I really hate how so many modern games have tutorials and accessibility features for every little thing. A basic controls tutorial is fine but don't give me a popup explaining every random item and mechanic the second I lay eyes on it, let me figure shit out on my own.
I hate this opinion, I want to know how to actually play not muddle through guessing and end up funneled into some ez bake strategy because I don't know how to do anything else.
Anything that involves the world "streamlined".
>idea man who has done zero game tells industry veterans how to make better games
though i will agree with your 2nd bullet point, idea man.
I'm just a guy who plays games. This is my subjective experience, nothing more or less.
overly descriptive subtitles
ARPG's in general are a bad genre, stat and character progression frick up the difficulty for the action gameplay, and the action gameplay means stuff like less enemy variety and RPG content overall.
All the best ARPG's are either barely RPG's, or barely Action games for this reason.
I agree with this take 100% you can either outstat your shitty gameplay, or outplay the entire progression scheme. Either way its no fun.
>a gamey game
Silly anon, don't you realize? Games have to be like movies now to be taken seriously! Less GAME! More MOVIE! More HOLLYWOOD! If I don't feel like I'm playing a MOVIE, it's just not a REAL VIDEO GAME!
I can agree with this to some level. If the action is just heavily reliant on big numbers and status prevention than actual skill, you're just playing a glorified RPG with 3D controls.
This is why KH2 is one of the greatest ARPGs to ever do it, because the devs were smart to have the game level with you. Everything else is fluff, you still need some thought to win.
This tbh. Fundamentally, RPGs are metholodological games that requires slowing down to properly analyze your options and carefully make decisions that can make or break your run, while action games are far more mechanical which instead require you to have quick reactions and to apply more short term problem solving. Both genres inherently contradict one another with how they want the player to overcome challenges, which is evidently difficult to balance. That being said, mixing both genres is possible, but is very hard to pull off, since you usually end up with a action game with light RPG elements or, less commonly, an RPG with basic action elements as one genre takes over.
More frustatingly, most devs just give up on making a proper rpg system in such games and instead use it as a cheap clutch for casuals who can't handle the action elements, making spells either op or useless and having few items that are any deeper than healing/cures. The genre has potential too, but there's no real effort put into it.
Difficulty exclusive items or boosts.
Flat stat boosting perks or skills in skill trees, they have no reason to exist
.
ARPGs work if they have passive skills and items instead of ones that require an activation, really any change to the rpg formula that makes it faster and less tedious (IE borderlands, shitty game series but very good executions of RPG mechanics in an action game)
Female characters. Men can't write them. Women can't write.
Hehe
Why the frick would you write a female character? Women's purpose is to be bred and looked at, you're not supposed to listen to them.
>Why the frick would you write a female character?
As tragedy fuel for the fire that will consume the hero before the end
This is what I meant by men can't write them.
Even the ancient Greeks had female characters in their plays
lust provoking image, irrelevant time wasting question
I hate not being able to skip any and all dialog / cinematics / explanation
>playing video games
Some of the best games were made by people who had no experience in Vidya. I rather have someone who works in amusement parks or business design a game than a hipster fresh out of Cali.
I can see how that would happen, do you have any examples?
Both Kojima and Miyazaki didnt have a background in making video games when they started.
>Kojima
Severely autistic man with an eye for detail and doesn't care how ridiculous his stories aree, backed by a loyal team
>Miyazaki
Talentless hack backed by a Bethesda-tier band of shitters
So Metal Gear is one of the best games out there? Surely you aren't about to day something like Metal Gear Solid or later because at that point Kojima has plenty of history with vidya.
Name 10 games right now.
Hard agree here. You need non-game inspiration to really create something interesting.
The guy that modded the first battle royale designed it after he almost died climbing a mountain. Pokémon was modeled after the feeling of catching bugs as a 10 yo.
Gamers will just fixate on whatever pissed them off about the genre instead of what makes the genre worthwhile.
And Zelda came from Miyamoto exploring as a kid. If your inspiration comes from a single source from within the same medium, the end product is going to be bland because it's not branching out.
I feel like part of the latter point is from the art department vetoing the devs in design
Overfocusing on bosses at the expense of everything else.
>the bosses are unremarkable anyway
Stupid sexy Yukiko
Open worlds. These days it means Ubisoft clone.
Drift to turn in racing games. It too heavily forgives poor driving.
Small inventories and item carry limits. You do realize this is actually done to slow gameplay down and manipulate you to become more financially and emotionally invested, right? It's not to make the game better, it's to squeeze you some more.
Hard = good mindset. There's a limit and they usually go overboard, and the game just ends up feeling broken or like a mod. And another way to pad perceived game length.
Easy/"Accessible" = good mindset. This is how movie games happened. Good controls, level design, and mechanics offer more accessibility than making enemies do little to no damage and act moronic.
Stamina meter. There's almost no games that have a stamina meter and wouldn't be better if you just straight up deleted it from the game.
Yeah stamina meter is one of those things that make perfect sense in theory but are impossible to do well.
Agreed. Stamina bars just lead to scummy gameplay.
Base HL2 merging the oxygen, flashlight, and sprint meters together is one of the biggest problems of HL2 imo. They fixed it in the episodes but honestly they should've just sticked with autorun like in HL1
Rubber banding and health sponges
any game with these is automatically regarded as shit in my view since none ever do it right
Listening to the playerbase, especially if it's a complex MMO where different parts of the playerbase have conflicting self-interest.
>Listening to the playerbase
Doing this completely destroys pvp games. Every moron thinks he knows better and says everything needs to be buffed to the level of the OP meta weapon/s, but then that weapon will no longer be the strongest and they will demand a buff. It always shrinks the kill time to the point were people just want to turn it into CoD.
On a related note, I still remember when BF3 came out, and people cried about being killed by the Scar-H a lot, thinking it was OP. It wasn't OP at all, it was the first weapon unlock for Engineer in a popular game that just released, of course people are going to be trying it out and killing you with it a lot.
The moral of the story is that practically all users are borderline moronic on a good day when it comes to balance and game mechanics in general.
>Doing this completely destroys pvp games
Exactly. Most players suffer horrible myopia and selfishness when it comes to opining on balance.
The loudest whiners are usually the most misguided as well, so it's really tragic when devs listen to them.
the tragedy of team fortress 2
>Listening to the playerbase
EVERY FRICKING TIME I can tell when some indie dev made the most moronic changes to their game because of their discord sycophants.
>nerfed innocuous item/ability into the dirt because some nuthugger has a problem with it or claimed it could be degenerately exploited in some speedtroony edge case
>New content! All balanced around metacuck playstyles and at a level of difficulty astronomically out of line with everything else
>single player game btw
>le good story
>is just a movie
I hate this shit so much.
Progression systems are a crutch for creators who cannot imagine a work being good without them. The idea that a game is supposed to get harder; characters are supposed to get stronger; you're supposed to have some kind of grand finale; it's all bunk. Countless games have done without progression systems, and were better for it! Not worse.
My opinion? Games need more variety and less progression. Add more levels to your game. More weapons. More monsters. More NPCs. More, more, more. Older games should have more content than newer games, and not the other way around.
streamlining is generally considered a type of elegance, in practice its just anti friction and how close you adhere to homogenised design from the current era. Considering gameplay is a balance of different types of intentional friction worshipping its removal is what leads to modern blizzard.
This is why good games rely on having devs with both a "vision" and a spine.
The game (You) want to make is going to outshine anything you make that’s trying to please everyone at once, and you need to be able to stick to your guns.
I've been saying vision and direction have been lacking in this industry for years. If you're trying to please everyone on the planet, you're actually making everyone upset because nobody will be getting enough of what they want.
If you do this, you're pretending to care and everyone can see right through you as an unreliable fence sitter. A totally untrustworthy flake.
The problem is that AAA development filters out people with vision, The type of person who has it is not the sort who wants to cajole 200 autistic engineers, outsourced Indian artists and he/she/xer writers. Games are in a weird place where every level of development has serious blockers, single devs have no production capacity, mid sized games have no source of funding and AAA has no vision.
The only hope is games get easy enough for solo devs to make whatever they can imagine or successful indie teams begin to grow and fill the AA space. I dont think it will ever be as good as the golden age of games where mega corps where pumping millions into what was essentially AA artist led products.
I know this is gonna sound shill-y but I hope AIslop gets to the point where it can make 3D models. Even just basic shit you can then touch up would be a godsend for asset creation.
There’s a reason why enemy recolors are all over the damn place at all levels of gamedev.
AI presents its own even more serious problems. In the ideal scenario a great artist would use it to boost his production capacity and make something amazing but I'm 100% sure it will lead to a generation of people who expect finished art to be produced instantly and who will increasingly rely on an inherently homogenised algorithm to make important creative choices for them.
Unfortunately true, but frankly we already have had that and will continue to have that. The mobile industry is a fricking wasteland.
The asset stores already enabled this to a degree. The major difference is that with AI you could get what YOU want instead "well this generic asset is close enough". This makes little to no difference for some jeet who was already shitting out 50 shovelware f2p pieces of shit a week, but it does matter to someone who has something specific in mind.
The problem is AI doesnt give you exactly what you want which is why it appeals to pajeets with no vision. It's good precisely for generic assets, maybe with a slight twist but for the things that require vision it will remain more frustrating than useful. As long as it is used where it is intended, to trivialise repetitive, well understood tasks it will only improve the quality of games, but people are lazy and it will lead to an era of games that are the equivalent of games directed through google image search and royalty free music sites.
The video game industry is one of the few places I see a real use for AI. It's going to force competition. It's not kids using it to make porn or LARPing as an artist for undeserved fame or post purchase rationalization after buying a $1,000 GPU they don't actually need. There's way more to a game than telling a computer to generate a picture, which is why I get it in that sort of application.
>The game (You) want to make is going to outshine anything you make that’s trying to please everyone at once, and you need to be able to stick to your guns.
Devs like Kojima and so on do this and get shit regardless.
I suppose I should have specified that making what you want and not mass-appealing can make a game that is amazing <to a select group of people.> You're not going to please everyone, or maybe even most people, but that's how you get something that's unforgettable to a few people, which I think is the best outcome.
Obviously this doesn't always work out, I don't know if I've ever seen diehard Stranding fans, but you get the idea.
Every highly regarded person also has haters.
And for good reason.
>The game (You) want to make is going to outshine anything you make that’s trying to please everyone at once
While I'd rather have devs designing games to their own preference, that's simply not true for most people. Mass appeal works because the masses are a bigger demographic than any niche, and appealing inherently requires designing a game that goes against creative vision
>Making a game [difficulty mode] on purpose
homie just make good levels.
The avoidance of difficulty spikes and the obsession with smooth difficulty curves is like making music or movies with entirely linear tension/release cycles. Which is to say, predictable and fricking boring.
Overly convenient save, checkpoint and escape features. I get it, people want to cut down on tedium. But not enough devs know the difference between avoiding tedium and handholding you too much.
camera shake, motion blur, depth of field, lens flare are all moronic
of having a "gamey" game.
>A lot of developers seem to be deeply afraid of players realizing that they're actually playing a video game. This leads to design decisions such as: UI's becoming minimized. Health bars being removed. Consumable and Item descriptions being vague and never directly mentioning gameplay mechanics/affects. It even gets in the way of level design: now every environment has to priotize consistent real-world logic before being a good environment to maximize the expression of gameplay mechanics. Every environment has to flow into the next one seamlessly, no more "levels."
This is the problem I'm having with the Jrpg I'm developing. I'm prioritizing "realism" over good dungeon design. Any way to avoid this?
My advice would be to first design for realism, then when you're done with that cut off all the parts the gameplay doesn't need. For example, pretty much every place people spend time in needs to have a toilet of some sort, but not every game needs to model toilets. A permanently locked impassable door to nowhere with a toilet sign on it satisfies the realism need for a toilet to exist, but doesn't get in the way of gameplay.
CRPG and RTS are the worst genres and no matter what technical merits they have there's not getting around the fact that topdown/isometric camera angles are the least engaging cameras and are a holdover from the old days before we could render things up close
you sound moronic and mad. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it is bad
Isogays are so defensive, it is literally true that the genre was born out of technical limitations and further out = less immersion. People rightfully questioned why halo wars was even made, especially given that halo 1 was originally going to be an rts until they realized "wait this is stupid, lets actually look at all this cool stuff we're making"
I bet you also think turn based was because of technical limitations lmao
There's probably some truth to that, it's probably more like budgetary restraints than technical ones, now address the real point. We've seen what primitive non-isometric rpgs were like, shit like ultima underworld and elderscrolls 1/2, things that were shit then and borderline unplayable now. I guarantee you not one person who worked on Zaxxon wouldn't have preferred if they could make their game look like oblivion if they could have.
oh so you are moronic I'm so sorry anon
The peak isogay defense
Woah
get filtered
Convenience is one of the worst things to happen to vidya, yet players and devs alike worship it.