Worst game design choices

Zeostar

Zeostar

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    What are some questionable things you've seen in video games?

    This one is minor but honestly really frustrating.

    I like dragon quest 7 a lot. Nonetheless there's a cave with a strong boss fight, the reward for winning is a room full of chests. My party was almost dead from the fight, so I was planning on just taking the chests and leaving to go heal. One of the "reward" chests was a fake and forces you into an inescapable fight with another strong monster. So I got wiped out anyways.

    The way that was placed was sadistic.

    Another way one that comes to mind is Light Platinum. The first route being full of bug catchers with 4-5 pokemon with no way to heal, so it's almost impossible if you don't pick charmander. It's a rom hack...but still.
     
    The entirety of Breath of the Wild is a bad game design choice. But that aside, some more specific examples, avoiding the obvious of anything locked behind a paywall:

    - Auto-battle and auto-repeat in Disgaea 6. Having the game basically play itself was a necessity given the higher levels of stats, but that in itself was the problem: there was no reward to be had from the grind, because you didn't HAVE to grind. The game would grind for you. Reaching those upper echelons of power through effort and determination has always been an incredibly satisfying aspect of the series, but in Disgaea 6 NIS shifted the goalposts to absurd heights and compensated for this by not requiring the player to do anything to get there. It was a great idea in principle, but it was so poorly executed that it made the game a complete waste of time.

    - The combat roulette in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. This was always an odd one in that it made most of the game entirely RNG-dependent, and that could be VERY frustrating when the roulette would repeatedly pull you out of the action so you could watch it spin aimlessly. That you needed three 7s to level up made it even worse. I didn't dislike Crisis Core as a game, but this system definitely held it back and prevented it from being all it could have been.

    - The Blade gacha in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. When literally the only good story content in Xenoblade 2 comes from the rare blade sidequests, gating those behind a frustrating gacha system makes this especially repellant. Common blades weren't completely useless so this wasn't as bad as it could have been, but with how bad the narrative and cast of Xenoblade 2 were, these sidequests really should have been front and center. Core farming was tiresome and you didn't have that many items to swap blades between owners either, which made it even worse in some ways because it limited party customisation. There really wasn't any need for it.

    - Assigning movesets to weapons in Samurai Warriors 5. This was just sheer bloody laziness on KT's part, and it turned the already pitifully small roster into a bunch of moveset clones. Moveset clones being the one unforgivable thing in any Musou game, because they're a complete waste of space. Since any character could equip any weapon, it completely removed the point of playing with different characters. This was very badly thought-out.

    - Tracking in Monster Hunter: World. World in general was a complete mess honestly, you'd spend more time tracking and then chasing monsters than you did actually fighting them. But I question the person who thought it'd be fun to scrape up monster leavings and footprints and follow a glowing trail before actually getting into the combat, which is the only reason people actually play Monster Hunter.

    ...there are more. I'll probably add to this.
     
    1. Forced backtracking. Likes the idea of revisiting places in theory. Usually goes somewhere, finishes one part of the main quest, and then never returns. Wants to uncover more or continue interactions. Might have befriended a powerful, underground group. Makes sense to see them regularly and perhaps report back. Changes the world from isolated islands to a connected region. Botches this far more often than not.

    Thought of two examples of how to not do it:
    - Chrono Trigger's bonus content. Created a new area in the port. Example: Go to the southern swamp in the Middle Ages. Talk to Nu. Discover the ladder is out. Return to the village. Go back south for vines. Try to fix the ladder. Go to Prehistory to actually fix the ladder. Return to the Middle Ages. Climb the ladder.

    Harries you with forced encounters the whole time. Respawns if you left the screen. And for what? Fixing a ladder.

    - Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Find General White. Saw them in the first town. No, try the second town. No, try the third town. Repeats until you return to where you started. What was the point of all that?

    2. Deadly traps and monsters with little/no counterplay, once found. Usually becomes trivial upon knowing about it. Winds up losing gameplay. Examples:

    - Ambush reinforcements in Fire Emblem. Appears on the map, without warning, and assassinates someone. Understands a rare asssassin. Refers to things like large groups of cavalry suddenly appearing on top of your units. Is not known for being sneaky.

    - Spider swarms in Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Who thought immunity to physical and single-target spells was okay for a level 2 party of four characters? Nauseates (cannot attack or cast spells) and drains strength on top of that. Helpfully gives you Alchemist Fire. Good luck hitting. Quickly ran out after the first enemy.

    Another instance: Dug up a chest. Discovered the trap. Triggered it while trying to disable it. Launches Finger of Death, a 7th level Wizard/Sorcerer spell (8th for Druids), for 120 damage. Might be the most damaging trap in the entire game. Shows up not long into the first non-prologue chapter.
     
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    being softlocked out of previous areas. i like going back to explore even in linear worlds.
     
    Invisible Walls
    This is especially annoying when a game allows you to jump. It just completely throws me out of the world, reminding me that it's really just a game. The most recent example I encountered in Tales of Arise where there was an NPC on a roof doing some repairs and you could pretty much get on the same level as the roof and with a jump could have easily made it. But no, it's impossible because of an invisible wall blocking your way. <_<

    JRPGs with wide open maps really like doing that which makes those supposedly open maps feel a lot more like those really limited dungeon maps...

    Also modern JRPGs kinda still lack in the dungeon puzzle department. I suspect that the 3D environments really limit what you can do in terms of creative puzzle designs.
    Dawn said:
    - The Blade gacha in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. When literally the only good story content in Xenoblade 2 comes from the rare blade sidequests, gating those behind a frustrating gacha system makes this especially repellant. Common blades weren't completely useless so this wasn't as bad as it could have been, but with how bad the narrative and cast of Xenoblade 2 were, these sidequests really should have been front and center. Core farming was tiresome and you didn't have that many items to swap blades between owners either, which made it even worse in some ways because it limited party customisation. There really wasn't any need for it.
    Click to expand...
    I'd really like to know what you don't like about the XB2 cast.
     
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