WHAT DO YOU LOVE/HATE SEEING IN A GAME?

Posts

I recently played Lords of Xulima, which has a metric ton of things I hate in RPGs:

-Class Forcing
If there's a party building game where you have a class system, people never bother to keep in mind you should never be forced to pick a class. It would heavily stunt your party customization as you have one character less to pick. The classes in question in that game are the Paladin (one of the best tanks and starts with a multi-target heal) and the Rogue (only one who can pick locks and disarm traps, though your main can do the detecting). Better RPGs make the units a little more flexible in how to skill them. In EO, you also need certain classes for certain tasks, but since the group is interchangeable, you're not required to drag a ranger around at all times to farm materials. By the way, you're also forced to carry Gaulen around with his special Explorer class, but he's fine (like Mario in SMRPG).

-'Open' World
The game is just as bad as Oblivion, even if it does Level balancing in the exact opposite - you have to follow an exact path encounter-by-encounter or else your group gets slaughtered. I haven't seen this system yet, but I'd like to do it that most areas in the game are very low levelled but quickly grow in levels as you go deeper. This grants you quite a bit freedom of exploration while still preserving the feeling of powerful enemies you can't defeat yet.

-Luck-based Combat
The encounter problem is magnified by the complete lack of skills and only having few consumables, meaning that you can't overcome the more powerful enemies by having either a well tweaked team or a sound strategy (the enemies don't have more than 2-3 moves either). Evenly matched battles, however, are purely determined by RNG - either your blows land or they don't. Either the damage is spread so that your group can take it or a less beefy character gets ganked to death (revival is so expensive that it heavily strains your finite resources). Even the default database in the RPG Maker does this better.

-Critical Failure
Closely related to the above. Do you enjoy random tripping in Brawl? Do you think it increases strategic depth? This is what it's basically like. Performing ANY attack or skill may cause your character to fail completely and take damage (thankfully, it's not much). In many moments where this happens, this can mean you get casualties, but the enemies can get it too. It's an okay mechanic if you want the player to have a shot when fighting suboptimal, but why that's in a game for hardcore players is beyond me.

The story is uninspired, but that hardly bothered me compared to all that.
author=Ilan14
author=Esrep
I hate RPGs that are too level dependent like '.hack//G.U.' Its possible for the player to completely overpower some bosses in the game.I'm talking about all three volumes of it.

What I love is the special level up in 'Kingdom Hearts 2'. You level up when you defeat a boss.If a game implements something like no exp gained from enemies, just gold and items....level up only by defeating the boss.Of course there should be side quests that gives stat increasing items(permanent) as reward.Then the world of RPG would be free of grinds....except when you need gold.
Yeah, I liked .hack//G.U. but the game becomes too easy if you do more battles than necessary...

Also, I played Kingdom Hearts 2, and you can actually get XP and level up from normal enemies. It takes longer, but you can do it.


Yeah im pretty sure you could level up by fighting non bosses, since I remember doing that a lot XD
For rpg maker games I hate:

-Pointless battles: "Close your eyes and mash enter until you're done, repeat for every battle".

-Useless skills: "fire1 fire2 fire3 fire4..." Or effect skills that have all boss monsters invulnerable to them while normal monsters can be easily dispatched using pure damage skills.


For games in general: RNG being a decisive factor.


I can like any game if there aren't many things I dislike.
author=Harbinger
author=Ilan14
author=Esrep
I hate RPGs that are too level dependent like '.hack//G.U.' Its possible for the player to completely overpower some bosses in the game.I'm talking about all three volumes of it.

What I love is the special level up in 'Kingdom Hearts 2'. You level up when you defeat a boss.If a game implements something like no exp gained from enemies, just gold and items....level up only by defeating the boss.Of course there should be side quests that gives stat increasing items(permanent) as reward.Then the world of RPG would be free of grinds....except when you need gold.
Yeah, I liked .hack//G.U. but the game becomes too easy if you do more battles than necessary...

Also, I played Kingdom Hearts 2, and you can actually get XP and level up from normal enemies. It takes longer, but you can do it.
Yeah im pretty sure you could level up by fighting non bosses, since I remember doing that a lot XD
author=Harbinger
author=Ilan14
author=Esrep
I hate RPGs that are too level dependent like '.hack//G.U.' Its possible for the player to completely overpower some bosses in the game.I'm talking about all three volumes of it.

What I love is the special level up in 'Kingdom Hearts 2'. You level up when you defeat a boss.If a game implements something like no exp gained from enemies, just gold and items....level up only by defeating the boss.Of course there should be side quests that gives stat increasing items(permanent) as reward.Then the world of RPG would be free of grinds....except when you need gold.
Yeah, I liked .hack//G.U. but the game becomes too easy if you do more battles than necessary...

Also, I played Kingdom Hearts 2, and you can actually get XP and level up from normal enemies. It takes longer, but you can do it.
Yeah im pretty sure you could level up by fighting non bosses, since I remember doing that a lot XD

I'm aware that we are able to lvl up by defeating the normal enemies. I simply said that I liked the special level up concept in which you instantly lvl up after defeating a boss.
Oh, that. Yeah, that's pretty cool actually! :D
author=Ilan14
Oh, that. Yeah, that's pretty cool actually! :D

Huh I don't even remember that, it's been years since I played lol Can't wait until KH3!

author=Harbinger
author=Ilan14
Oh, that. Yeah, that's pretty cool actually! :D
Huh I don't even remember that, it's been years since I played lol Can't wait until KH3!



What do you mean by 'Can't wait for KH3?'
I thought the game is already out?
I hate arbirtrary triggers. A location is unreachable for no reason whatsoever until you've done something that has nothing to do with the thing you can't get to. There was an RPGMaker game I played ages ago that had something like this. You couldn't enter a city because... something was up and the only way to get in was to give an old lady some medicine in a neighbouring town.

Or the example in one of the call of dutys, where they say "we have to fight these guys" and they are infinitely respawning enemies until you advance. Even though the game explicitly said "hold your ground". Or similarly those arbirtrary cutscene triggers when you've emptied a scene and checked every nook and cranny and then you happen upon the correct spot to walk on and suddenly there are a bunch of guys surrounding you that clearly were not there before.

I like it when things make sense world-building-wise. Fallout New Vegas maybe wasn't the most excentric or with weird and wacky locations all over but each location made a certain kind of sense. If you looked at any location they all had farms or cattle and a water source. The locations made logical sense. In Deus Ex: Human Revolutions there were bathrooms and cupboards with cleaning supplies in buildings. They made it all feel a bit more real and not just a location where gameplay happened. (Unlike say Mass Effect 2 (or was it 3) where chest-high walls LITERALLY spawned just before encounters)

author=Esrep
author=Harbinger
author=Ilan14
Oh, that. Yeah, that's pretty cool actually! :D
Huh I don't even remember that, it's been years since I played lol Can't wait until KH3!

What do you mean by 'Can't wait for KH3?'
I thought the game is already out?

Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't out yet.

author=Shinan
I hate arbirtrary triggers. A location is unreachable for no reason whatsoever until you've done something that has nothing to do with the thing you can't get to. There was an RPGMaker game I played ages ago that had something like this. You couldn't enter a city because... something was up and the only way to get in was to give an old lady some medicine in a neighbouring town.

Or the example in one of the call of dutys, where they say "we have to fight these guys" and they are infinitely respawning enemies until you advance. Even though the game explicitly said "hold your ground". Or similarly those arbirtrary cutscene triggers when you've emptied a scene and checked every nook and cranny and then you happen upon the correct spot to walk on and suddenly there are a bunch of guys surrounding you that clearly were not there before.

I like it when things make sense world-building-wise. Fallout New Vegas maybe wasn't the most excentric or with weird and wacky locations all over but each location made a certain kind of sense. If you looked at any location they all had farms or cattle and a water source. The locations made logical sense. In Deus Ex: Human Revolutions there were bathrooms and cupboards with cleaning supplies in buildings. They made it all feel a bit more real and not just a location where gameplay happened. (Unlike say Mass Effect 2 (or was it 3) where chest-high walls LITERALLY spawned just before encounters)

Agreed, I like some good logic in the games I play. It's a nice added touch.
SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323

Hate:

Reading too much long, boring text, that is completely unnecessary.

Putting in too many frequent random encounters.

Frame rate issues, bad resolution or lighting, poor sound quality, and
games freezing or just up right crashing during play through.

Count me with Ilan as one of the people who likes seeing relationship systems in games. I mean, I guess some of them have crappy implementations, but I'm usually sympathetic to the attempt anyway. I feel like video games are actually an uncommonly good medium for conveying romances, whose potential has so far gone dismally untapped.

Other likes/dislikes:

Distinct character roles. I like it when every character has their own particular usefulness in gameplay which doesn't overlap too much with other characters. The Wild Arms games (at least as far as the ones I've played) are all good at this, giving each character both a distinct combat role, and a set of unique tools they contribute to the solving of puzzles. The Suikoden games do a surprisingly good job with really large player casts. On the other end, Final Fantasies VII and VIII pretty much completely throw this out, and XII amounts to the same thing by endgame.

Interesting inspectable environments. Visual appeal is nice for the games with the resources to pull it off, but I care more about having plenty of things to poke for entertaining text. In fact you could probably string me along for a whole game with this alone, like in the walkaround portions of Prequel Adventure, even though it might not even qualify as a game anymore. On the flipside, I hate games that hide random useful items around scenery which is otherwise non-interactive. Who likes clicking every fucking barrel in town to find out which ones have some kind of permanent stat-raising fruit inside? It makes grinding on monsters seem like the height of entertainment by comparison.
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
I freakin' hate loading screens, especially when they are long as hell.


Hell, with Skyrim in particular, you can get up and take a dump in the bathroom, or complete a short passage in your favorite book and an area still wouldn't load to completion. It's also a great reminder to save very often, because once you die after making a heap load of progress, the loading time you'll get is an even worse punishment than having to do everything over again.
author=Harbinger
author=Esrep
author=Harbinger
author=Ilan14
Oh, that. Yeah, that's pretty cool actually! :D
Huh I don't even remember that, it's been years since I played lol Can't wait until KH3!

What do you mean by 'Can't wait for KH3?'
I thought the game is already out?
Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't out yet.


It must've been KH:Birth By Sleep....
I was checking out this topic for a long time, and I didn't know how to contribute, but it just popped in my head.

I'LL TELL YOU WHAT I FUCKIN' HATE

I hate it when a developer has no awareness of their own potential in immersion, and even worse, shoots it in the foot. Prime example, Final Fantasy X. Everyone has their own opinions about it, but I think it's generally a fine game, with its strengths being consistency in atmosphere and theme. I think it does a great job at storytelling in both its cinematics and gameplay, independent of the quality of the plot itself (basically, even if I thought the plot was garbage, which I don't, I do think that FFX did a great job telling that plot).

Why am I saying this? The soundtrack is no exception, and in this case, the track People of the Far North. One of the strongest, most thematic, moving, bestest tracks in the game, played on one of the most intense areas of the game near its climax, in the background of a very solemn and powerful location, the snowy and windy climb up Mt. Gagazet.

How do the developers decide to get the player to feel the experience? They decide to rip the player out of it via the battle theme totally smashing the BGM with every random battle. It doesn't even have much to do with the random battle mechanic either, the entire reason I mention it is because other games without random battles do it as well.

If you want the TL;DR, its this; Mt. Gagazet in FFX could have been even more iconic and powerful if the BGM played over the battles, even if just that one location. I don't mind battle themes, I really don't. But a little exception such as this in this one location, could have really done a lot.

And yes, I know the exact thing I'm complaining about actually does happen in the next location (the BGM continues over battles), and yeah, it works.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
The soundtrack flowing seamlessly between battles and the map is a really nice touch. Switching to aggressive boss battle soundtracks can kinda ruin the mood, which is why I'm glad the Jenova-LIFE battle in FF7 keeps playing Aeris' Theme instead of the normal boss theme.

I think Super Hexagon handled music very cleverly. It's a game where you fail and restart a lot, but rather than the music starting from the beginning, it starts from a random preset point in the song every time you retry, so you don't end up just listening to the first 15 seconds repeatedly. The songs are incredibly catchy too, but they cut out when you die - forcing you to hit RETRY to start the music again. I've definitely been guilty of playing over and over again just to keep listening.
How about handling it like in Kingdom Hearts where the background music flows into a battle theme that fits the environment? In FE:Awakening, this is even better as the BGM switches between combat and map without restarting each time.
e: ^ Okami also resumes its battle them from where it left off last fight, so you actually get to hear the whole thing! Makes getting into back-to-back fights less aurally repetitive.

author=Feld
They decide to rip the player out of it via the battle theme totally smashing the BGM with every random battle.

Twilight Princess has a similarly frustrating miss on this regard when you're trying to save Midna. They're playing this nice, somber, somewhat tense piano piece... that keeps getting interrupted by the first 5 seconds of the stupid battle theme every time you get within 10 feet of an enemy! Doesn't help that TP's battle theme is one of my least favorites in the series.

Slightly related on this regard is how games often cut the music and fade to black when going in and out of cutscenes. I know it's largely for loading purposes, but it just kinda bugs me. Funnily enough, it didn't used to.

I don't think I ever really paid attention to this until I played the first Sin & Punishment game. That game cuts in and out of cutscenes really quickly and smoothly, and also never stops playing music except for a few choice scenes. Granted, the extent that it keeps playing its music is silly, as it doesn't even have boss music, so for some of the levels you'll be listening to the same song on uninterrupted loop for like, 15 minutes straight. Either way, going from that game to its sequel, and every other game ever, I find that I prefer that to cut music - fade to black.

I think I might be a bit whacked in terms of my taste in music implementation in videogames, though. I find myself always cranking the sound effects volume slider way down whenever a game gives me the chance, and I don't really like the dynamic/ambient music design of most modern AAA games. I just feels to awkwardly silent. I also seem to have a thing for music that's not really appropriate to the scene at times.

Like, for another S&P example, a number of people don't like how one of the stages plays this kinda sad, downbeat theme for its duration (it's also the credits theme), but I really liked it. Likewise, I suppose not everyone was a fan of the disco and "porn groove" music in Dangun Feveron or Marvel vs Capcom 2, but... I love it! Ya get tired of metal/dubstep/EPIC ORCHESTRA after a while, no?
author=slash
The soundtrack flowing seamlessly between battles and the map is a really nice touch. Switching to aggressive boss battle soundtracks can kinda ruin the mood, which is why I'm glad the Jenova-LIFE battle in FF7 keeps playing Aeris' Theme instead of the normal boss theme.

I think Super Hexagon handled music very cleverly. It's a game where you fail and restart a lot, but rather than the music starting from the beginning, it starts from a random preset point in the song every time you retry, so you don't end up just listening to the first 15 seconds repeatedly. The songs are incredibly catchy too, but they cut out when you die - forcing you to hit RETRY to start the music again. I've definitely been guilty of playing over and over again just to keep listening.


I think Xenogears is a good example of a game with a lot of very good songs on its soundtrack, which uses those songs terribly. Apparently the lead director didn't think much at the time about how music could enhance the game's presentation, and when Yasunori Matsuda, one of the most talented composers in the industry, was fobbed off on his project, he had no idea what to do with him.
author=Destertopa
I think Xenogears is a good example of a game with a lot of very good songs on its soundtrack, which uses those songs terribly


Yeah? I've never heard that particular opinion before. I'm very interested! Elaborate?
author=Feldschlacht IV
author=Destertopa
I think Xenogears is a good example of a game with a lot of very good songs on its soundtrack, which uses those songs terribly
Yeah? I've never heard that particular opinion before. I'm very interested! Elaborate?

Well, there are some scenes which use the songs fairly effectively, basically for lack of an easy way to screw them up. If you have a long dialogue scene accompanied by a single song with no transitions which loops smoothly, then there isn't a lot of potential for outright disaster. But there are frequent occasions where scenes transition jarringly from one song to another, or where scenes are set to music which is poorly timed to the length of the scene and cuts out in odd places. The game has only one ordinary boss theme and one random encounter theme, and they both become tremendously overused, and often cut into other songs at odd times and in places where it doesn't fit the mood of the confrontation. There are some really powerful emotional pieces which are used in scenes which really fail to exercise them to their potential, like the first instance of the song Flight being used for Chu Chu's fight with Achtzenn, an embarrassing confrontation between a major arc villain with strong emotional ties to another member of the cast, and the game's Jar Jar Binks, whose entire involvement in the plot could and should have been excised. One Who Bares Fangs At God, one of my all-time favorite boss themes, is used for what's essentially a post-final-boss battle with practically no risk, in a rather obtuse scene where the player is likely to be uncertain exactly who they're being pitted against and why. The scene is too rushed-into for the music to have its proper impact. Overall, I got the impression that the director didn't really know when, where or how to use the soundtrack he had, and apparently the director himself holds largely the same opinion on his work from that time.