Game design choices that annoy you

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- putting two very different controls on the same button. A good example was FIFA08 for the Wii. Swinging the remote was shoot ... or slide tackle. It's pretty easy to see how that could be a problem. This is a more common occurrence in sports games because they tend to require a lot of different controls.

Um. Im Fifa, all the buttons have 2 differen't controls, when your defending all the buttons are defence related, when you have the ball, all the buttons are passing\shooting orientated. I dont really see how you could make the Fifa control scheme different than that thought, as it would require you to have twice the amounts of button for the same controlability.
 
This is the last I'll say, since we're going way off topic. It's not that a walker couldn't have any application anywhere for any reason. It's that in the case of Rex, billing a big, slow, walking tank with small cruise missile launcher attached to it as "being able to launch a nuclear missile from anywhere in the world" is ridiculous. It's more like "able to launch a nuclear missile with a small tactical warhead within a relatively short distance from its area of deployment to a target maybe 20 miles away, if that." It came off as an excuse to have the end boss be a giant robot.

So I guess I can say a complaint of mine is when the whole game revolves around things don't make sense, like when a bad guy is dead set on unleashing a dark goddess that will destroy the universe or something. I need motives that make sense within the game world. If you can't give me a sensible motive, just don't even bother with a plot.
 
The use of industrial indoor environments. Offices,lab,warehouses..ick.Just not attractive settings but they seem to be a staple for some reason.

Always playing as a humaniod character. I understand the reason why it's the dominant character type,but these are games and have almost limitless possibilities,take some risks.
 
This is the last I'll say, since we're going way off topic. It's not that a walker couldn't have any application anywhere for any reason. It's that in the case of Rex, billing a big, slow, walking tank with small cruise missile launcher attached to it as "being able to launch a nuclear missile from anywhere in the world" is ridiculous. It's more like "able to launch a nuclear missile with a small tactical warhead within a relatively short distance from its area of deployment to a target maybe 20 miles away, if that." It came off as an excuse to have the end boss be a giant robot.

So I guess I can say a complaint of mine is when the whole game revolves around things don't make sense, like when a bad guy is dead set on unleashing a dark goddess that will destroy the universe or something. I need motives that make sense within the game world. If you can't give me a sensible motive, just don't even bother with a plot.

REX used a railgun to launch warheads. But I understand your sentiments, however I still stick with my mechanical design idealism. If you can't make it believable and fit with the game world, don't do it. Trying to make something look powerful or cool doesn't do the job on it's own. It takes some thought, intelligence and some artistry.
 
REX used a railgun to launch warheads.

OK, 200 miles--still not enough to hit DC from the secret base. Why not just mount the railgun on the ship you're using to deploy Rex to begin with? Right, because giant robot dinosaurs look cool and powerful.

I'm getting really sick of crates, ever since that...uh...one guy pointed out how much level designers abuse them. The empty crates in HL2 were ridiculous.
 
  • using quicksaves to counter balance/gameplay issues. eg FPS that just stupidly throw you in situations where you dont even know where you get headshotted from and you gonna need to know enemies positions before peeking your head into a new area
  • overdone slowmotion-crap. I hope anyone agrees nowadays how stupid many 80`s action-movies look when showing a slowmotion-closeup on a face screaming "AAAARAAARAAGH" between swinging and punching. And I hope soon everybody will realize its a poor choice for action-movies to bring action to standstill regulary and even worse for action-games.
  • sticking to realism and randomness. Good example for this and previous points is the first Max Payne: load a quicksave where a bad guy with shotgun is approaching, then shoot (shotgun) and dodge. Each time you do this, trying to exactly match the button/keypresses, the outcome is different and somewhere between you killing the bad-guy cleanly without getting harmed and missing him while fully catching his shotgun-blast. Wheres the thing that should keep me playing :rolleyes:, I mean the control to actually make a damn difference instead of just save/load till all pieces just randomly fit.
  • braindead sidekicks that you have to keep from killing themself.
  • online-crap killing offline-experience. It takes more than just insanity to create a Burnout without splitscreen, whoever came up with that clearly aims to pull gamers and earth into a dark abyss.
 
Same here, im not 8 years old, im not amused by running around and looking for hidden objects that do nothing, for me it adds 0 value and 0 replayability.

This is what ruined Bioshock for me. They buried a decent FPS under a ton of crap. Looking for ammo in boxes, registers, etc. that lame Mini-game. All this made a 12 hour game into a 20 hour one.
 
This is what ruined Bioshock for me. They buried a decent FPS under a ton of crap. Looking for ammo in boxes, registers, etc. that lame Mini-game. All this made a 12 hour game into a 20 hour one.

But ammo is not a useless thing in that game rite?.... And better to have to find them on logical places than the ammo and medipacks being placed in random spots on the ground...
 
But ammo is not a useless thing in that game rite?.... And better to have to find them on logical places than the ammo and medipacks being placed in random spots on the ground...

Logical, like ammo in vending machines which you hack with a mini-game? Fun is more important than being logical. I'd rather have a short game that is 100% fun than a 20 hour game full of filler.
 
If you spent 8 hours looking for ammo and/or hacking things in bioshock you were doing something wrong imo. But as shifty said early this is about personal opinions and there's not much reason to nitpick them.
 
OK, 200 miles--still not enough to hit DC from the secret base. Why not just mount the railgun on the ship you're using to deploy Rex to begin with? Right, because giant robot dinosaurs look cool and powerful.

I'm getting really sick of crates, ever since that...uh...one guy pointed out how much level designers abuse them. The empty crates in HL2 were ridiculous.

You seriously underestimate the potential of railguns, and I'm not talking science fiction either. Their potential is insane. The current problem with railguns is the massive storage capacitor needs and output of electricity coupled with the energy released by the round itself. Rails quickly erode after a few firings due to the huge velocities of the rounds, however the tech is getting better. It's because of this potential railguns have been under intense study as ballistic-missile warhead interception systems and of course as a bombardment weapon and a more peaceful use: launching payloads into space.
 
Um. Im Fifa, all the buttons have 2 differen't controls, when your defending all the buttons are defence related, when you have the ball, all the buttons are passing\shooting orientated. I dont really see how you could make the Fifa control scheme different than that thought, as it would require you to have twice the amounts of button for the same controlability.

Yeah, I wasn't really as clear as I could have been. I was hoping the example would explain. Obviously with sports games, you have no choice. FIFA was particularly a pain on the Wii because you'd be trying to shoot and you'd end up with a yellow card or giving your opponent a penalty kick from a slide tackle.
 
Logical, like ammo in vending machines which you hack with a mini-game? Fun is more important than being logical. I'd rather have a short game that is 100% fun than a 20 hour game full of filler.

Not played Bioshock except a bit with the demo. Neverthless in any game except pure arcade ones I like it when the ammo, medipacks etc are placed in logical places.
 
You seriously underestimate the potential of railguns, and I'm not talking science fiction either.

You seriously underestimate drag, turbulence, and energy. That's why you're talking science fiction when you claim it's perfectly plausible that a robot with a miniscule gun on its arm could launch a nuclear warhead across a continent (nevermind that it still has no advantages over a sub). A railgun projectile the size of the one Rex could launch at the sort of speeds it would be capable of wouldn't be able to travel for thousands of miles through the atmosphere, certainly not with any kind of usable accuracy. That's why ship-based railguns, which currently launch projectiles weighing only a few pounds, are accurate to hundreds of miles instead of thousands.

Remember, we're not talking about the general theory of railguns or the general theory of mechanical walkers. We're talking about Metal Gear Rex. Nothing about it makes it as formidable a weapon as they were acting like it was in the game. Rex's railgun is too small to launch a large payload thousands of miles, it lacks mobility to get within range of any important targets on its own, and it's too big to be deployed secretly.

Let's do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. A nuclear warhead powerful enough to level a city is going to weigh in the neighborhood of a ton. Let's say we want to fire it at a mere 13,000 mph, which is the muzzle velocity of a railgun tested by the Navy with a range somewhere on the order of 200 or 300 miles. Well, that's going to take at least 306 GJ of energy, since that's the kinetic energy of the projectile. And remember that energy increases the like the square of velocity. Sorry, Rex's little peashooter of a railgun isn't going to be doing that...that's assuming the warhead would even fit!

Sure, a railgun might launch something into space someday. But it won't be a 10-m popgun mounted on a smallish walking robot. It'll look more like the launch tower for the Shuttle. Rex isn't plausible. Even if it were, it's still awkward and limited compared to a sub. I guess that's what you call bad mechanical design.
 
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Let's do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. A nuclear warhead powerful enough to level a city is going to weigh in the neighborhood of a ton.

Not to nitpick, but the actual weight of a warhead is small compared to the Launching system. Around 270kgs for 1-4 megaton warheads. So the energy is 1/2*m*v^2 using straight kinetic or .5*270*(5811^2) or 4.6*10^9 or 4.6 GJ of energy. A rechargeable lithium ion battery holds .5-.7 MJs / kg. So we have 4600 MJ / .5 (assume we don't allow full depletion) or a battery weight of approximately 10,000 kgs. This is actually achievable on a Mech that would probably weigh in at several 10s of thousands of kgs. The problem would be it is a 1 shot thing with batteries. If you could build a small nuclear reactor like those used in Satellites and capacitors large enough to store that much energy though.....


Sure, a railgun might launch something into space someday. But it won't be a 10-m popgun mounted on a smallish walking robot. It'll look more like the launch tower for the Shuttle. Rex isn't plausible. Even if it were, it's still awkward and limited compared to a sub. I guess that's what you call bad mechanical design.

Nitpicking aside, this is correct. The real problem isn't as much energy in my mind though, it is probably acceleration. To accelerate something to the right speed in a 10m range would create forces that would rip apart anything thrown (including a nuclear warhead). So to launch payloads or humans into space requires a long rail gun with lower acceleration to reach final velocity.

I still want a mech for my backyard though.
 
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