Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 10:48:48 AM

Login with username, password and session length

Fucking shitty game mechanics

Started by Barry Admin, January 16, 2020, 11:57:28 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Utter Shit

Quote from: bgmnts on January 18, 2020, 04:13:23 PM
Is there a game that DOESN'T have a shit mechanic? Even the best games of all time. I'm intrigued if we can find any.

ISS Pro '98 on the PS1. A beautiful, flawless representation of football.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

Using NPC's to try and hurry you to advance through the game world, especially when you're just wandering around looking at things, or searching for secrets/Easter eggs.

"Open that door marine"
"Where the FUCK do you think you're going? Open that door immediately"
"We have literally seconds to spare before this planet explodes. Open that door"

[15 minutes pass where you've muted the sound so you don't have to hear the cunt's voice anymore. Turn the sound back on]

"Open that door marine"

Even modern games do this. I was constantly being told off mid mission in RDR2 for not hitching my horse quick enough or some such shit.

Trying to push a block in a certain direction on Mario vs rabbids. Actually, even entering a pipe could sometimes take several goes.

Phil_A

Quote from: Elderly Sumo Prophecy on January 21, 2020, 01:35:29 PM
Using NPC's to try and hurry you to advance through the game world, especially when you're just wandering around looking at things, or searching for secrets/Easter eggs.

"Open that door marine"
"Where the FUCK do you think you're going? Open that door immediately"
"We have literally seconds to spare before this planet explodes. Open that door"

[15 minutes pass where you've muted the sound so you don't have to hear the cunt's voice anymore. Turn the sound back on]

"Open that door marine"

Even modern games do this. I was constantly being told off mid mission in RDR2 for not hitching my horse quick enough or some such shit.

I like the guy who badgers you to get off the boat at the start of Morrowind. GET YOURSELF UP ON DECK AND LET'S KEEP THIS AS CIVIL AS POSSIBLE!

bgmnts

Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Instead of making a documentsry or giving a lecture, the developers decided to make a game, but for some reason deciding to make every single mechanic mind numbingly obnoxious for the sake of 'realism'. Kind of forgetting what a video game is meant to ve about.

Especially lockpicking. Anyone who has played this game and tried to pick a lock (which is actually important to one of the first quests in the game) will know what I mean.

H-O-W-L

Quote from: bgmnts on January 25, 2020, 04:16:37 PM
Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Instead of making a documentsry or giving a lecture, the developers decided to make a game, but for some reason deciding to make every single mechanic mind numbingly obnoxious for the sake of 'realism'. Kind of forgetting what a video game is meant to ve about.

Especially lockpicking. Anyone who has played this game and tried to pick a lock (which is actually important to one of the first quests in the game) will know what I mean.

Dropped that shitcunt game after the sword lesson when it turned out that despite being incredibly intricate and in-depth the sword fighting was unbelievably shit, not gonna lie.

Kryton

Quote from: H-O-W-L on January 25, 2020, 11:45:00 PM
Dropped that shitcunt game after the sword lesson when it turned out that despite being incredibly intricate and in-depth the sword fighting was unbelievably shit, not gonna lie.

Exactly the same. It apparently gets better but none of it felt fun and as you say the sword fighting that I was expecting to be great was just mediocre. Got it refunded.

Ferris

Any time your speed is restricted. Load of shit.

Can't run here, it's our camp and there's no running in the camp.

Ferris

Re: rubberbanding - it's fucking annoying in any game. Playing MLB: the Show like the boring baseball twat I am, sit on a high 4 seamer, foul off other pitches until one comes right down broadway, clobber it to your pull side for max power, it drifts out to the warning track and into the waiting glove of some journeyman right fielder turned Babe Ruth because you've already got a SLG over .700 so it's time for the game to arbitrarily insert some "realism" by taking extra base hits away from you FOR NO REASON.

If I wanted reality I'd join a rec league and get annhilated. As it is, I want my freakish 300lb first baseman to hit a hundred dingers a season. Don't take this away from me.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

^ Didn't understand a word of that, friend, but yeah! Fuck it. What an absolute bastard state of affairs that is.

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Kryton on January 26, 2020, 03:21:59 AM
Exactly the same. It apparently gets better but none of it felt fun and as you say the sword fighting that I was expecting to be great was just mediocre. Got it refunded.

The breaking point for me was that I made a save, went about twatting random civilians with my sword, and there was absolutely no real violence or gore. That sounds weird of me but if I'm swinging a sword at someone in a game made in the 2010s I expect at least a bit of blood splatter or more than a dull metallic THWACK and them to go URGH like Deus Ex. Absolutely every impact felt like complete and utter shit. Apparently proper combat does have finisher moves and blood splatters but if I can't go on a rampage in a civvie zone in a supposedly open world roleplaying game, why even make it open world roleplaying game?

popcorn

#71
My personal ultimate pet peeve - which I've complained about on CaB before - are shitty blind narrative choices like this, from Horizon:



Consequences of choices like these can't be predicted as they don't arise from systems with knowable rules. The outcome is whatever the designer has preordained, meaning it wasn't really a choice at all. Arbitrary, boring, unfair, random, fuck off.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

I'd just choose Compassion every time, in case she decides to have sex with the person.

Ferris

Quote from: popcorn on January 26, 2020, 10:37:06 AM
My personal ultimate pet peeve - which I've complained about on CaB before - are shitty blind narrative choices like this, from Horizon:

Consequences of choices like these can't be predicted as they don't arise from systems with knowable rules. The outcome is whatever the designer has preordained, meaning it wasn't really a choice at all. Arbitrary, boring, unfair, random, fuck off.

Worse is when you pick the a reasonable-sounding option and the game penalizes you anyway. Oh you want to protect your sidekick? They found that offensive so you just closed off lots of future dialogue/side missions etc.

(I used to play through TellTale games pressing circle for every interaction choice to protest the illusion of choice. Bonus - sometimes it makes yer character have a totally mad response, while still having no impact on the storyline at all.)

Zetetic

QuoteThe outcome is whatever the designer has preordained, meaning it wasn't really a choice at all.
This is surely more true of fully-knowable and known systems? In those you're either min-maxing according to the rules available, or failing to do so.

Whether or not Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games feel "arbitrary" or "unfair" and whether your choices feel "blind" turns on the skill of the writer - the "systems" should be knowable according to your and their beliefs about how people and the world work. (Just as with non-game narratives, although you won't feel it as keenly perhaps.)

Sometimes, of course, they can feel arbitrary or unfair because you have quite different beliefs and struggle to understand theirs.

popcorn

#75
Quote from: Zetetic on January 26, 2020, 02:35:27 PM
Whether or not Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games feel "arbitrary" or "unfair" and whether your choices feel "blind" turns on the skill of the writer -

People think this, but it's not really true. The best you can hope for is that you correctly guess what the writer is trying to communicate. That's all you can do: guess. Even if they're literally telling you what's going to happen if you choose a certain option, that's not the same thing as a true outcome of a true system. It doesn't "feel" arbitrary, it is by definition arbitrary. (edit: on reflection I might be talking shite here - maybe that isn't quite the dictionary definition of arbitrary? but the point is you're playing with rigged dice.)

Note also that being able to predict the effect of your story choices has the effect of killing any drama the story might have.

Compare to Tetris, a game of completely knowable systems from which infinite complexity emerges. The skill is in making predictions and choices within known parameters. Everything that happens is, therefore, completely your fault. That's far more sophisticated - and profound - than any of these so-called "choice with consequence!!" branching narratives. Tetris is a game of choice and consequence. So is chess.

Zetetic

I don't think the point is about knowing the outcome of a choice ahead of time - but about trust in an appropriate degree of consistency and reasonableness about the world.

QuoteThat's all you can do: guess
As with most choices of any complexity in life. Narratives are usually an attempt to set out some sort of view of how very complex things work, in such a way that it is hard to reduce them to mechanics or perhaps even principles - only illustrative examples.

Zetetic

Quote
Note also that being able to predict the effect of your story choices has the effect of killing any drama the story might have.
This simply isn't true. Not all stories' "drama" turns on the tension of the unknown. (Indeed an obvious strategy for writing a CYOA is to teach the player to infer two principles about how the world works or what the author thinks is right - and then to put them straightforwardly in conflict, forcing the player to resolve the matter, predictably, one way or the other.)

(In contrast this suggests that mechanically-focused games can become boring when you can how they might be "solved" - possibly even without seeing the solution.)

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Zetetic on January 26, 2020, 03:39:38 PM
(In contrast this suggests that mechanically-focused games can become boring when you can how they might be "solved" - possibly even without seeing the solution.)
Wouldn't that mean the game was too easy? That would be boring.

Zetetic

#79
Not necessarily. Some mechanically-focused games are focused on how difficult it is to actually implement winning strategies (because doing so relies on reaction time, precision of movement, memory etc.)..

Edit: Not even this, actually. Sometimes you want to understand the details of some mechanics and sometimes seeing the shape of them - and the work required to map them more fully is enough.

popcorn


popcorn

Quote from: Zetetic on January 26, 2020, 03:28:44 PM
Narratives are usually an attempt to set out some sort of view of how very complex things work, in such a way that it is hard to reduce them to mechanics or perhaps even principles - only illustrative examples.

This is why narratives don't work as mechanics, IMO. It's why choose-your-own-adventures mysteriously didn't replace novels decades ago, or millennia ago for that matter.

Shooting stuff in game is fun because, among other reasons, it has clear rules. You know what your goal is (hit the target), you know how to do it (aim and fire), and you know what went wrong when you fail (you missed). Talking, meanwhile, has no clear rules. The real-world activity of shooting transfers easily to a game environment, and having relationships with human beings doesn't. It is a Fucking Shitty Game Mechanic.

Zetetic

Quote from: popcorn on January 26, 2020, 04:09:03 PM
This is why narratives don't work as mechanics, IMO. It's why choose-your-own-adventures mysteriously didn't replace novels decades ago, or millennia ago for that matter.
I'm not sure any of this joins together. The point about CYOA is that they specifically demand illustrative examples (of whatever it is the author is interested in) rather than reductive rulesets.

I think there probably many reasons why different narrative forms continue to exist alongside each other, with different degrees of prevalence.

QuoteShooting stuff in game is fun because, among other reasons, it has clear rules. You know what your goal is (hit the target), you know how to do it (aim and fire), and you know what went wrong when you fail (you missed).
It's interesting how little this description resembles either a) shooting in the contexts that games choose to depict (since very few shooting games are utterly abstract) or b) shooting in those games.

QuoteTalking, meanwhile, has no clear rules.
Talking has plenty of clear rules in most situations. It also often has many vague rules - which again brings us back to playing around them by specific example.

Zetetic

Quote from: popcorn on January 26, 2020, 04:06:25 PM
So what?
Which means that interactive attempts to look at what it's like to make those sorts of decisions are going to involve a degree of guesswork as well.

Zetetic

I suppose part of this is whether the game feels more like:
- something with a win-state or a puzzle to be solved, or
- something that you're exploring or a story that you're unfolding.

Not that the distinction is always clean, and it can feel very unpleasant to try to crowbar the latter into the former.

Blue Jam

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on January 26, 2020, 03:37:38 AM
Re: rubberbanding - it's fucking annoying in any game. Playing MLB: the Show like the boring baseball twat I am, sit on a high 4 seamer, foul off other pitches until one comes right down broadway, clobber it to your pull side for max power, it drifts out to the warning track and into the waiting glove of some journeyman right fielder turned Babe Ruth because you've already got a SLG over .700 so it's time for the game to arbitrarily insert some "realism" by taking extra base hits away from you FOR NO REASON.

If I wanted reality I'd join a rec league and get annhilated. As it is, I want my freakish 300lb first baseman to hit a hundred dingers a season. Don't take this away from me.

Ever played Super Mega Baseball 2 (or the first one for that matter)? I know sweet FA about baseball but I do enjoy that one as a two-player game. Mainly I like the realistic names of the players, like Junior McSenior and Beefcake McStevens.

You'll like this- it's got a spreadsheet of the players' stats:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/17QDJDQpFcKtxvo0cbv2GQ-0SLJnssvdBCMAGjowUOlc/htmlview

Blue Jam

Stamina is a big one for me too, one of the (many) things I didn't like about Fallout 4.

See also: Being able to jump or clamber over obstacles and then coming across a stairway blocked with a tiny pile of rubble and having to find some means of clearing it before you can pass. If I remember correctly Gears of War 4 had quite a bit of this- FFS, I'm playing as a hulking brute made of homoerotically huge muscles, surely I don't need a cannon to move some rocks, surely I could just flick them away with my little finger?

Basically, any player character who has great strength or speed or superhuman abilities but who can't do something I, a puny human, could easily do in real life.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Zetetic on January 26, 2020, 04:23:22 PM
Talking has plenty of clear rules in most situations. It also often has many vague rules - which again brings us back to playing around them by specific example.

I know plenty of games have a charm mechanic, a mechanic for being an effective liar etc, but are there any where social rules come into play?

On second thoughts Social Awkwardness Simulator is probably something most of us nerdy gamers don't need, hohoho.

Ferris

Quote from: Blue Jam on January 26, 2020, 07:33:34 PM
Ever played Super Mega Baseball 2 (or the first one for that matter)? I know sweet FA about baseball but I do enjoy that one as a two-player game. Mainly I like the realistic names of the players, like Junior McSenior and Beefcake McStevens.

You'll like this- it's got a spreadsheet of the players' stats:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/17QDJDQpFcKtxvo0cbv2GQ-0SLJnssvdBCMAGjowUOlc/htmlview

SMB2 sounds amazing (though the stats on the spreadsheet aren't standard sabermetrics). It is downloading on my Switch right now.

MORE BASEBALL.

This is what the off season does to baseball nerds.

Zetetic

Quote from: Blue Jam on January 26, 2020, 07:43:51 PM
I know plenty of games have a charm mechanic, a mechanic for being an effective liar etc, but are there any where social rules come into play?
Almost all role-playing games, insofar as they expect the player to develop and apply an understanding of the world and people around them.

Mechanically, some RPGs represent knowledge of a particular culture's social rules as a thing that a character can have (in the way that a character can know a language whether or not the player does). For example Shadowrun has "etiquettes" (but I don't think any of the Shadowrun Returns computer games' stories do much with it).