Using too many dimensions/variables in a misguided attempt to add detail. Invariably the process fails in one of two directions:

1. Either the needles peg in several metrics, making them pointless and throwing balance out the window
   
2. Or they create an enormous space of possibility which is then filled with an incredibly steep bell curve, where everything is in the middle, making the vast space deceptively pointless.

Typically the outcome is that You Must Have Steel Armor, Steel Sword, and the Adamantite Breastplate, and everything else sucks.

[Edited by - AngleWyrm on September 3, 2010 9:49:58 PM]

Military Game that is touted as 'realistic' and where they try to go to at least some way in that direction in the solo game, but in the multiplayer game they pander to the excitement junkys and the gimmick junkeys to a point where a 'fantasy' (Bioshock 2) game's multiplayer is actually MORE realistic.

Modern War 2 - multiplayer.

The multiplayer I think was built by 3rd string designers and interns, but likely was a management decision to warp realitity so absurdly to maximize the players (the usual 14-year old mentality).

The 'perks' you accumulate as you rise rapidly to 70th level make you outclass lower level players so much and becomes so absurdly unfair (instead of having a very flat/small advantage where skill makes the difference).

For some reason they have players bounce around like pingpong balls on uppers.
People can run around behind you (fast) in the circular terrain paths and kill you much too easily -- you have no flanks you can count on for more than mere seconds. Perks to make the runners quiet exist (where you in real world make a lot of noise anytime you clump around in military equiptment (60lb of equiptment) and cant really do the warp maneuvers this game allows. Targets are gone before you can raise a gun to aim -- actually moving 5x any realistic speed. Real soldiers move with deliberation and sprint (but cant do much while moving that fast).

The guns accuracy (especially scope rifles) at long range is much too easy and can be snap fired (contrary to how any real scope rifle works). People run and shoot and hit targets much too easily (even while running on uneven ground). People hop and go prone way too fast and even weapons that spray walls of bullets dont hit unless you are close to bullseyeing on the target at close range.

The knifing attack is one of the most absurd things as someone runs up to you rapidly and kills you literally in 1/8th of a second (at a run) and is already gone (often running right over you). You have no peripheral vision so its extremely easy to do these 'run up from behind attacks' when YOU are moving slow trying to spot an enemy who will shoot you absurdly easily at long range.
You dont hear them coming and the fast movement has them on you instantly -- there is no Melee, as you can have in BioShock --- you are basicly insta-dead.

There is virtually no penalty for dying so that when you look at the statistics often the top scorers also have died the most times. No reason not to bonzai charge someone or use the loophole of the fast ambush strategy.

In effect the game is little more than constant ambush with everyone moving around at top speed trying to kill enemies from behind or around blind corners. Latency problems are actually aggravated as people can suddenly appear start shooting at you before you can react (or sometimes even see them).

At the higher levels you get vehicles (helicopter gunship/rpv/AC130) to fire down and with 1/2-2/3 of the players being the top(70) level this happens every other minute which disrupts any deliberate movement (as you scramble for cover) Killing people via the vehicles is so easy that a chimp could do it (red boxes outline enemies even inside of buildings) and many of the maps are largely open so that the vehicles (rare in real combat) simply disrupt any tactical coordination of team players -- the whole game.


All in all they ruined what could have been a good multiplayer game by selling out to the skilless and attentionally deficited players, and as for realism, you might as well get A 'Giant Sword' or BFG9000 or a Fartgun for all it matters. The game mechanics make alot of the weapons specifics irrelevant as they are exagerated by accumulated perks.

Moder War 2 Multiplayer is pure fantasy, and WRONG for a game that is supposed to be about (at least moderately) realistic 'modern war'. It is actually a shame and the only reason I still play it is to see how more absurd it can get and to see what I would have done to fix it -- better balance of realism without making it as tedious/optioneless as real war situations are.
Toning down many of the factors (speed/accuracy/gimmicks) could have been easily done. Modding is no good as they dont really work for pickup games and the 14years old mentalities DONT WANT anything but the fake war the as-designed scenarios/mechanics supply.


The usual too small number of maps result in the campers/best spots and other typical distortions, after players have played the same maps 100X by the time they get to 70 (you would think that with 0$ investment the developers could optionally flip each map over one axis (mirror) and throw off the map memorizers at least a little. We are stuck with such maps until 'good' procedural generation takes off (no time soon).

What I dislike is:

- TOO long and boring storylines -
Yes, some game try to do the best about storyline / story telling
but the mess up with too long explenation of things etc. I know that I'm
not the only one that would rather jump into the game and found out the story
slowly while playing / over interactions. I know story needs to be told before
sometimes but it can be done in much more interesting way than reading 100000 lines
of text.

- Games without storyline -
Even the most simple games can have a story. It doesn't need to be told
but it can be written in game description at least. In single sentence.
I found different over-done games like sudoku interesting because there
was somethnig behind it like - "Old wise asian left 1000 years old riddles
behind. It looks like.... Are you ready to face ancient sudoku riddles?"
As simple as that is fine, rather than seeing game developer just wanted
to show off his knowledge or something.

Maybe I'm wrong in general but that's just my thinking.

I dislike boss battles where I don't feel like I'm actually fighting the boss. All too many games take the approach where to kill the boss, you actually have to pull a series of levers that make the thing fall on the thing and indirectly cut off the bad guy's health regeneration or something. The boss becomes nothing more than a passive harm tile all too often. Similarly, sometimes folks try to make the boss so epic, it's really just an enormous level, and all of the locks and keys you have to use are said to be weak points or vitals.

After how well Shadow of the Colossus pulled it off, I admit that it's hard to live up to, but it's a damned good model that everyone knows, and more people should aspire to it.

AI is a big one, defence missions where you must protect bad AI are the worst.

A common annoyance for me are those boss fights where you dodge an enemy, let them run into a wall (they get stuck) and you slash the boss from behind. This boss appears in every game ever! always bugs me!

Quote:

Original post by Bladerz666 A common annoyance for me are those boss fights where you dodge an enemy, let them run into a wall (they get stuck) and you slash the boss from behind. This boss appears in every game ever! always bugs me!

Thanks for an idea :D

Ok, seriously, I don't like bosse without inovation. There are thousands of options how to make boss tactics interesting, but sadly, we see more or less the same ones over and over.

[Edited by - Blodyavenger on September 8, 2010 12:33:52 PM]

and don't get me started on those bosses who jump, release a wave of damage that the player must jump over. Those are all over the place.

Quote:

Original post by BangladeshOblivion 2: Letting the monsters level up with you and slap on a different name. The first kobold you encounter is just as hard as the last one when the character is max:ed out. All that leveling for nothing.

Actually, it wasn't just the monster scaling that was the issue. It was the monster scaling combined with one of the worst character leveling systems in any RPG:

- In Oblivion, if you specialized your character in the skills you used the most often, you could not control when your character leveled up.

- The number of attribute points you earned on level up was based on which skills you used during the level.

- If you didn't use enough of certain skills, your character would earn less than the maximum number attribute points awarded per level.

- Bad Side Effect: If you don't babysit your skill use during a level, the act of leveling up will actually make your character relatively weaker to everything in the game (remember, the world levels with you).

- Therefore, in order to min-max a character in Oblivion, you have to specialize in skills you do not use, since that is the only way to control when you level and ensure you get the maximum attribute bonuses every time.

I'm not really sure how a system can get much more broken than that. I did finish the game though. I became the "Arena Champion" at level 2 and finished the game at level 10 or so. Due to the scaling system, if I would have continued playing to level 15, I would have run into random Wild Boars and Wolves that could easily kill anything in the "final end-game zone" which I cleared back at level 10.

Quote:

Original post by MeshGearFox RPGs --- 1. Grinding. This doesn't need to exist. 2.A pervasive lack of balance, especially in JRPGs. If I ever review games, I'm going on a scale out of ten and taking off a point for every useless spell or skill. 90% of JRPGs are going to be in the -30s. 3. WRPGs aren't much better about that, although in recent years its improved. Nothing like MegaTraveller 2 where there were literally skills that *had no function* and were only there to maintain compatibility with the PNP game it was based on. 4. Any cutscene lasting longer than 30 seconds. 5. Any battle animation lasting longer than 5 seconds. 6. Any period of time when I'm forced to just talk to a bunch of signpost NPCs without any decision making or meaningful input. This is filler. This is bad. 7. Skills systems that are obsessed with associating every. single. action. with a skill. 8. Non-interactive worlds. 9. Strict linearity. Plot linearity is fine but at least let me have multiple solutions to problems. 10. Go anywhere, do anything RPGs generally needn't exist. 11. Crafting systems. Letting the player make items as fine but as soon as it's a crafting system it's terrible. FPSes --- 1. Awkward segments that force the player to do something, lose, reload, and try again with what they learned. Forcing the player to LEARN isn't the problem here but rather creating a situation that is completely unwinnable without knowledge of what is going to happen. RTSes --- 1. Bad AI. 2. Being a generic base-builder RTS in the style of C&C or *craft. Hi. This isn't the 90s. Those weren't even that interesting *then*. 3. Not including a pause, issue orders, unpause option. 4. Resource gathering, in the *craft style. There's better ways of doing this. Seriously. Use those instead. 4x --- 1. Focusing on military progress at the expense of other areas. 2. For that matter, preventing peaceful outcomes and cooperations. 3. Wars that are always a zero-sum game. Realistically, how many wars are winner take all situations? Yeah, that's rare. 4. Completely ignoring meaningful domestic development/upkeep. Adventure Games --- 1. Generally as soon as your adventure game has an inventory, it's started down the long, dark road of braindead puzzle design, since inventory-based puzzles are almost *always* disguised key-hunts, where the only puzzle is figuring which key goes to which door, and the ones that are more ornate than that are typically stupid. Space Traders --- 1. Elite really wans't that good. Stop copying it and try to advance your genre, plz. 2. Dead worlds. Seriously. Some dynamism is nice. Have other space ships puttering about doing things. 3. Newtonian Physics. Or at least make realistic space flight optional. Some people are playing these games for A) The blowing stuff up and B) The economic model. General --- Most games would benefit from a lot of addition by subtraction.

I can honestly say that I am in complete disagreement with most of the points on that list. I say this not to be argumentative, but to illustrate the point that care should be taken in trying to satisfy everyone. What draws one to a game will likely turn someone else away. It's best to design to a particular type of gamer and stay true to that.

Quote:

I can honestly say that I am in complete disagreement with most of the points on that list. I say this not to be argumentative, but to illustrate the point that care should be taken in trying to satisfy everyone. What draws one to a game will likely turn someone else away. It's best to design to a particular type of gamer and stay true to that.

Would you care to explain *why* you disagree? Just saying that you DO disagree doesn't really add anything to the conversation :P