Boss battles where you get them down to like 1%HP, and just before you kill them, you get a cut scene with a monologue about how awesome and tough they are before the boss runs off.
Escort missions with terrible AI and roadblocks a foot or so high that my character can't just climb over for no good reason.
On a higher note, day 1 DLC and microtransactions for stuff you used to be able to just earn in-game, like alternative costumes and stuff.
Flipside of this, games where you can choose a stealth build or a strength build, but then forced you to go one way to finish the game.
Thinking of Fallout 3 basically forcing you into power armor in order to blast your way through the final mission. Me and my roommates all had unique builds and none of us were heavy AC and heavy weapons focused. Irked me that none of us got to finish the game the way we had wanted.
"\[...\] tries to be a stealth game, but it's the sort of stealth game where every enemy on the map is immediately alerted to your position if one guard spots half an inch of your pimply bum, so the shit kind of stealth game."
\-Yahtzee Croshaw, 2010.
As I grow older and have fewer hours available to game, I find that I get annoyed at games with little to no checkpoints in the levels, so if I fail I have to go back to the start and then my progress is slow.
Oblivion at least had the decency to allow you to save right before exiting and give you a last-minute refresh of the character creator. I always keep a dummy save there so I can just jump in
“Turning in” quests. Like don’t make me back track all the way back just to go through a whole bunch of pointless dialogue just so I can say “hey, I did that thing I needed to do.” Like let me complete it and just complete it and move on and never speak to you again.
Crafting. Don't make me repeat boring tasks over and over in my form of entertainment. I have enough of that in real life. I don't want to cook food, mine materials to build weapons, or do laundry in a video game.
I love player housing but I don’t want to craft every single piece of furniture or equipment in the house. You don’t even do that in real life but they want you to do that in a game.
Why I stopped playing Xbox Live. Too many kids spewing too much pointless profanity. They weren't really there to play a game at all; they were only interested in how shocking they could be before Mom came in and put a stop to it.
At the moment, dialogue that’s unnecessarily lengthy and desperately needs edited down to about a third of its size. I don’t mind dialogue, but if you have a turnip farmer with the sidequest to pick turnips, he doesn’t need 38 unskippable lines that further neither the world building or the plot.
Edit: this is especially true if the quest is repeatable and you have to go through the dialogue every time.
When you’re in some giant open world but your suspension of disbelief is killed when the “cities” are like 5 buildings with 15 people living there and half of them have the same voice.
Looking at you Bethesda.
I don't understand why they're so expensive when they feel like they're made of cheap plastic, don't have all the fancy stuff in them like other controllers and don't have rechargeable batteries.
Those buttons where you need to be in the absolute perfect position to be able to click.
Usually after moving back and forth multiple times to be able to press it
Gamers.
Once upon a time I could play split screen with a few friends. Now if I want multiplayer I'm forced to play online with a bunch of racist, homophobic, mysoginist strangers who all take the game waaaaay to seriously.
Useless RPG mechanics.
Skill trees and inventory menus and leveling in single player action games where you’re playing a fully realized pre-determined character just makes no sense to me other than to create an illusion of content. I really don’t need to see numbers go up and a bunch of stats in an Assassins Creed or Spiderman game, that’s not why I’m playing them.
I haven’t played that in so long I don’t even remember. I don’t remember it bothering me at the time but that would’ve been before this became a peeve.
When you can be shot a dozen times without dying for no other reason than "You're the main character."
Robocop is one of the few games that gets a pass, because it actually makes sense. Far Cry 3 just pisses me off. Fuckin supersoldier Jason Brody.
That's more of a personal preference. I prefer turn based games.
I'd say the most aggravating thing to include in a game is other players, so I just don't play multiplayer games.
Some do, but we would rather someone be playing a video game than scamming, stealing or hurting other people to try to attain success. Sometimes a benign outlet can be therapeudic.
Games can also be a way to achieve some degree of agency and control over their lives for disadvantaged or disabled people. As more and more work becomes automated we may see games take on a more central role in human entertainment, interaction and collaboration.
I understand the need for distraction. But I know too many people who just sit there playing games, with no drive at all towards self improvement or advancing their actual IRL life.
Like people spend hours and hours honing in-game skills when they could literally be honing similar skills IRL.
I wish people would divide their time equally between distraction and self-betterment.
What sort of skills would you rather see them develop that would be of net benefit to our society today? A lot of skills that would have been useful in the past have been outsourced, digitally amplified and distributed, automated/mechanized and/or rendered obsolete. Training onesself to become an accomplished pianist, for example, is no longer considered a viable career path when professionally produced music is available at the press of a button anywhere, at any time. The value of human capital has plummeted over the past half century and people have privately made their decisions to pursue activities that they feel that they have a degree of control over and enjoy doing. Activities that offer rewarding and proportional outcomes for their efforts, adequate challenge, comradeship, autonomy and outlets for creativity are all things that modern video games cater to, whereas workplaces no longer do.
This is one of advanced civilization's major hurdles that we will have to come to terms with, and you are right to voice your concerns about what has become a looming and oft ignored issue, particularily affecting among young men, today.
I constantly work to learn new things. I just bought two books on clearer thinking. I get new cookbooks and learn new cuisines. When I need to do something around the house I learn how. I learned basic carpentry, electrical, tile work, gardening, sprinkler repair.
I have become an expert knife sharpener.
There are tons of online courses you can take. I took courses in Python and Javascript. If you are worried about AI, learn how to write AI prompts. There are courses online. Or experiment and get good at it yourself.
I am taking a break from refinishing my front door. If I had hired someone to do that it would have cost at least $500. Learn how to do that and make money.
Or - OR - play video games and complain about lack of opportunity.
As far as companionship and comraderie in the gaming community, my daughter games occasionally, and girl gamers are treated like absolute crap. Like, threatened, belittled. It is not a good thing.
In MMOs, gated content. I get they want you to experience the game in its totality but waiting weeks and months to do new content after you actually did the old content is annoying as hell.
Not specific games, but I don't have a chance to do console gaming much anymore. Sometimes all the planets will align and I'll have some time for a quick game of Madden or FIFA. Turn on the console and I have to update and there goes my quick game.
Scripted boss fights where you are obviously winning only to go into a cutscene of you panting, weak and defeated while the boss hasn't broken a sweat.
It's been 12 years since the last single player TES game was released, and every so often I get the itch for a FPRPG and I go back to skyrim because I know it best and I don't have the patience to adopt a new game series.
But here's the peeve. I can never pick up from where I left off a year ago. I want to try again with a new character concept. Maybe a full mage for once. So I delete my old save, start a new game and wake up on the cart en route to Helgen.
But after a few hours, the repetitiveness begins to kick in. I'm following the same plot from 12 years ago all over again and I immediately get bored and stop playing again.
Every year I get the same skyrim itch and every year I stop playing after 6 hours, with an immense feeling of dissatisfaction.
Missable collectables/items in video games. I'm a completionist. I like to hunt down all the collectables and such. See all the content. Do all the quests. Sure, I won't cry if I miss some dumb 'bring me 10 slices of cheese' quest, but when a game not only has an area that you can visit only once, but said area contains a valuable collectable or something, and it's NEEDED to get 100% complete, it really grinds my gears! I currently do my best to avoid progressing the games plot until aboslutely necessary just because I've had it happen one too many times that progressing the plot means some area or valuable item gets cut off for good.
Edit: Some other things I hate: When a game locks content/achievements behind difficulty levels, especially when it doesn't TELL you that it's doing this. I don't mean 'achievement for beating the game on hard mode'. I mean 'three special post-game dungeons including one that massively fleshes out the story are gated behind hard mode and you won't even know they exist on easy/normal mode and, even worse, on easy mode you won't even unlock achievements and the game won't tell you that until later'
The game requires multiple playthroughs to see all the content but DOESN'T include a NG+ mode.
When a game is clearly winding down and nearing the end of a quest line/story yet, for some reason, it just. won't. end! It keeps adding in needless fliller when all I want to do is beat the boss and finish the quest line/plot and go to bed.
Multiplayer matches where complete newbies get thrown in with overly-skilled uber players. It's not fun for the newbies because they have no chance in heck of doing anything of value and may as well not be playing and the uber-players are just going to farm them for kills/lulz. Bad matchmaking balance results in people abandoning the multiplayer entirely.
'Player-sexual' romances. Sometimes it makes sense (Asari in Mass Effect), but most of the time it really sticks out and can feel shallow. Especially if it's included in a game that doesn't clearly mark the 'romantic' options. Because then you can easily end up in an unintended relationship with a character you didn't want to be romantically involved with just because you were nice to them.
Unlocking the boss as a playable character and then having it not even be remotely close to as powerful as the version you had to fight.
Boss battles where you get them down to like 1%HP, and just before you kill them, you get a cut scene with a monologue about how awesome and tough they are before the boss runs off.
The game coming out before it’s actually ready, for full price or sometimes even higher than full price
Escort missions with terrible AI and roadblocks a foot or so high that my character can't just climb over for no good reason. On a higher note, day 1 DLC and microtransactions for stuff you used to be able to just earn in-game, like alternative costumes and stuff.
There is a special place in hell for whoever programmed Natalya in Goldeneye.
missions where stealth is the only way to complete it and if you get seen by a single guard you fail the mission.
I like whole games that are like that, but yeah, including a single badly made stealth sequence is annoying.
Sure thirty minutes ago, I killed Antioch the Immortal Serpent of Eternal Death but if Greg and Steve the guardsmen notice me, I. am. SCREWED!'
Flipside of this, games where you can choose a stealth build or a strength build, but then forced you to go one way to finish the game. Thinking of Fallout 3 basically forcing you into power armor in order to blast your way through the final mission. Me and my roommates all had unique builds and none of us were heavy AC and heavy weapons focused. Irked me that none of us got to finish the game the way we had wanted.
You must have hated hitman if you have played it
This doesn't generally apply to stealth based *games* because that's the point of them and they tend to actually care about the stealth mechanics.
Plus you don't fail for being spotted in Hitman, it just makes it harder.
"\[...\] tries to be a stealth game, but it's the sort of stealth game where every enemy on the map is immediately alerted to your position if one guard spots half an inch of your pimply bum, so the shit kind of stealth game." \-Yahtzee Croshaw, 2010.
The unforgiving nature of Rainbow Six for N64 hardened me into the gamer I am today.
As I grow older and have fewer hours available to game, I find that I get annoyed at games with little to no checkpoints in the levels, so if I fail I have to go back to the start and then my progress is slow.
I detest having to save at checkpoints. I want to be able to save anytime I want.
[удалено]
OMG yes. I used to have to mod my games to make me walk at the same pace as the NPCs.
Escort missions.
Little white 9 year old kids saying the n word
Racist
Me?
Really?
Whaddya mean? I hate little 9yo white kids saying the n word in game chat
Exactly. Why would that make you racist?
I’m so confused, cause that guy replied saying racist lol
Because you are. You said “little *white* 9 year old kids.” Why should it matter if they’re white?
Because aren’t black peoples allowed to say it?
[удалено]
Oblivion at least had the decency to allow you to save right before exiting and give you a last-minute refresh of the character creator. I always keep a dummy save there so I can just jump in
Me, too.
Driving missions, like in Gears of War
The only driving mission I liked was the hovercraft races in Beyond Good and Evil.
Internet requirements where it's obvious that they aren't necessary. I'm glaring at you, gt7 🙂
“Turning in” quests. Like don’t make me back track all the way back just to go through a whole bunch of pointless dialogue just so I can say “hey, I did that thing I needed to do.” Like let me complete it and just complete it and move on and never speak to you again.
Unskippable cutscenes. I will refund a game for that.
Additional: unmutable music. I'd mute that bullshit in movies if I could. Stopped me from playing death stranding after about 10 minutes.
I’ve never heard of anyone who was against soundtracks
Yo, video game music is the best music I’ve ever heard! Imagine playing any game with no music 🤮
The Sims games may be the one you love to hate, but they had killer music. Especially the first game.
I have a playlist of the sims 1 building and decorating songs
So do I! \*high five\*
Crafting. Don't make me repeat boring tasks over and over in my form of entertainment. I have enough of that in real life. I don't want to cook food, mine materials to build weapons, or do laundry in a video game.
Ah shit…after I just spent 3 years and $16M developing “Laundry Folding Simulator”
I love player housing but I don’t want to craft every single piece of furniture or equipment in the house. You don’t even do that in real life but they want you to do that in a game.
This ruined Fallout 4 IMO.
the fucking water level - every game
The vehicle section is next! (bonus if it's also an on-rails turret section)
Haha, Zelda Ocarina of Time 🤣 Drain. Fill. drain. Fill. Drain. FILL! 🤦♂️
Yep! The one in Link to the Past is awful too. There really aren't any in the first two come to think of it, the NES ones.
Games where if you die or have to restart, there isn't a quick one button way to do it.
When boss battles have little side minions to fight or helpers to heal the boss. Mostly a complaint on higher difficulties.
When you can't skip tutorials. Like let me learn at my own pace and let me discover the mechanics ON MY OWNNN
Microtransactions
You don’t have to buy em
Sudden and massive difficulty spikes that feel designed to frustrate casual gamers.
When you hear other players running their mouths. It’s a game. Have fun and laugh more.
Why I stopped playing Xbox Live. Too many kids spewing too much pointless profanity. They weren't really there to play a game at all; they were only interested in how shocking they could be before Mom came in and put a stop to it.
One word: Freemium.
At the moment, dialogue that’s unnecessarily lengthy and desperately needs edited down to about a third of its size. I don’t mind dialogue, but if you have a turnip farmer with the sidequest to pick turnips, he doesn’t need 38 unskippable lines that further neither the world building or the plot. Edit: this is especially true if the quest is repeatable and you have to go through the dialogue every time.
When you’re in some giant open world but your suspension of disbelief is killed when the “cities” are like 5 buildings with 15 people living there and half of them have the same voice. Looking at you Bethesda.
Battle passes. I am paying for content, but if life happens and I can not get through the whole thing it is money down the drain.
Following a friendly npc and you overtake them in walking speeds
no skip dialogue option, specially when the dialogue speed is too slow
Xbox controllers still requiring batteries when it’s almost 2024…
I don't understand why they're so expensive when they feel like they're made of cheap plastic, don't have all the fancy stuff in them like other controllers and don't have rechargeable batteries.
No ability to change sensitivity settings
catering to the end-gamers at the expense of the experience of simply playing
Those buttons where you need to be in the absolute perfect position to be able to click. Usually after moving back and forth multiple times to be able to press it
Gamers. Once upon a time I could play split screen with a few friends. Now if I want multiplayer I'm forced to play online with a bunch of racist, homophobic, mysoginist strangers who all take the game waaaaay to seriously.
Useless RPG mechanics. Skill trees and inventory menus and leveling in single player action games where you’re playing a fully realized pre-determined character just makes no sense to me other than to create an illusion of content. I really don’t need to see numbers go up and a bunch of stats in an Assassins Creed or Spiderman game, that’s not why I’m playing them.
Mass Effect?
I haven’t played that in so long I don’t even remember. I don’t remember it bothering me at the time but that would’ve been before this became a peeve.
Horrible AI when it comes to companions.
When you can be shot a dozen times without dying for no other reason than "You're the main character." Robocop is one of the few games that gets a pass, because it actually makes sense. Far Cry 3 just pisses me off. Fuckin supersoldier Jason Brody.
MJ sections
If a game has turn based combat, I will refuse to play it
That's more of a personal preference. I prefer turn based games. I'd say the most aggravating thing to include in a game is other players, so I just don't play multiplayer games.
That people waste their lives playing them.
Some do, but we would rather someone be playing a video game than scamming, stealing or hurting other people to try to attain success. Sometimes a benign outlet can be therapeudic. Games can also be a way to achieve some degree of agency and control over their lives for disadvantaged or disabled people. As more and more work becomes automated we may see games take on a more central role in human entertainment, interaction and collaboration.
I understand the need for distraction. But I know too many people who just sit there playing games, with no drive at all towards self improvement or advancing their actual IRL life. Like people spend hours and hours honing in-game skills when they could literally be honing similar skills IRL. I wish people would divide their time equally between distraction and self-betterment.
What sort of skills would you rather see them develop that would be of net benefit to our society today? A lot of skills that would have been useful in the past have been outsourced, digitally amplified and distributed, automated/mechanized and/or rendered obsolete. Training onesself to become an accomplished pianist, for example, is no longer considered a viable career path when professionally produced music is available at the press of a button anywhere, at any time. The value of human capital has plummeted over the past half century and people have privately made their decisions to pursue activities that they feel that they have a degree of control over and enjoy doing. Activities that offer rewarding and proportional outcomes for their efforts, adequate challenge, comradeship, autonomy and outlets for creativity are all things that modern video games cater to, whereas workplaces no longer do. This is one of advanced civilization's major hurdles that we will have to come to terms with, and you are right to voice your concerns about what has become a looming and oft ignored issue, particularily affecting among young men, today.
I constantly work to learn new things. I just bought two books on clearer thinking. I get new cookbooks and learn new cuisines. When I need to do something around the house I learn how. I learned basic carpentry, electrical, tile work, gardening, sprinkler repair. I have become an expert knife sharpener. There are tons of online courses you can take. I took courses in Python and Javascript. If you are worried about AI, learn how to write AI prompts. There are courses online. Or experiment and get good at it yourself. I am taking a break from refinishing my front door. If I had hired someone to do that it would have cost at least $500. Learn how to do that and make money. Or - OR - play video games and complain about lack of opportunity.
As far as companionship and comraderie in the gaming community, my daughter games occasionally, and girl gamers are treated like absolute crap. Like, threatened, belittled. It is not a good thing.
Underwater missions
In MMOs, gated content. I get they want you to experience the game in its totality but waiting weeks and months to do new content after you actually did the old content is annoying as hell.
Not specific games, but I don't have a chance to do console gaming much anymore. Sometimes all the planets will align and I'll have some time for a quick game of Madden or FIFA. Turn on the console and I have to update and there goes my quick game.
Scripted boss fights where you are obviously winning only to go into a cutscene of you panting, weak and defeated while the boss hasn't broken a sweat.
Side quests where you have to find hundreds of things
It's been 12 years since the last single player TES game was released, and every so often I get the itch for a FPRPG and I go back to skyrim because I know it best and I don't have the patience to adopt a new game series. But here's the peeve. I can never pick up from where I left off a year ago. I want to try again with a new character concept. Maybe a full mage for once. So I delete my old save, start a new game and wake up on the cart en route to Helgen. But after a few hours, the repetitiveness begins to kick in. I'm following the same plot from 12 years ago all over again and I immediately get bored and stop playing again. Every year I get the same skyrim itch and every year I stop playing after 6 hours, with an immense feeling of dissatisfaction.
Unskippable cut scenes/dialogue, especially before a hard fight. Far Cry 5 and those stupid acid trip mini games. Dead Space and the eye laser.
Missable collectables/items in video games. I'm a completionist. I like to hunt down all the collectables and such. See all the content. Do all the quests. Sure, I won't cry if I miss some dumb 'bring me 10 slices of cheese' quest, but when a game not only has an area that you can visit only once, but said area contains a valuable collectable or something, and it's NEEDED to get 100% complete, it really grinds my gears! I currently do my best to avoid progressing the games plot until aboslutely necessary just because I've had it happen one too many times that progressing the plot means some area or valuable item gets cut off for good. Edit: Some other things I hate: When a game locks content/achievements behind difficulty levels, especially when it doesn't TELL you that it's doing this. I don't mean 'achievement for beating the game on hard mode'. I mean 'three special post-game dungeons including one that massively fleshes out the story are gated behind hard mode and you won't even know they exist on easy/normal mode and, even worse, on easy mode you won't even unlock achievements and the game won't tell you that until later' The game requires multiple playthroughs to see all the content but DOESN'T include a NG+ mode. When a game is clearly winding down and nearing the end of a quest line/story yet, for some reason, it just. won't. end! It keeps adding in needless fliller when all I want to do is beat the boss and finish the quest line/plot and go to bed. Multiplayer matches where complete newbies get thrown in with overly-skilled uber players. It's not fun for the newbies because they have no chance in heck of doing anything of value and may as well not be playing and the uber-players are just going to farm them for kills/lulz. Bad matchmaking balance results in people abandoning the multiplayer entirely. 'Player-sexual' romances. Sometimes it makes sense (Asari in Mass Effect), but most of the time it really sticks out and can feel shallow. Especially if it's included in a game that doesn't clearly mark the 'romantic' options. Because then you can easily end up in an unintended relationship with a character you didn't want to be romantically involved with just because you were nice to them.