Game mechanics you hate for any reason

1) is that a real person or one of the many parody accounts on twitter now.

2) my god the profile pic looks exactly like the sort of nerd who spouts alpha male anti woke shit and I would expect to have a subscription to incel weekly.

If the reviewers actually played the game, they’d see that the moment he looks at his girlfriend’s butt is a turning point in his whole life’s trajectory. Stupid wokes!

Days Gone was the best documentary game about Luton I ever played. Until I realised it was all just a huge coincidence.

Is ea, activison, square Enix, etc going to hire him after that comment?

Blaming his team members and blaming reviewers for being woke for low reviews?

How daft is he.

Cdpr at least blamed their contractors not their overworked staff.

This isn't really a mechanic so much as the lack of one, but...

If you are designing an RPG that has multiple potential party members, enough of them that some members have to be on the bench...

MAKE IT SO THAT YOUR BENCHED PEOPLE LEVEL UP EQUALLY WITH YOUR MAIN PARTY.

This is a disease that afflicts even games that I like (mostly JRPGs). The idea that, if you want everyone to be useful, grinding up your main party isn't enough. Oh no, you have to do the grind several times over, and it is infuriating bullshit. Even worse if the game forces you to use one of the underlevelled members, and they instantly die because the game didn't bother to tell you that this person was plot-important.

Fuck it, fuck it with a rusty spoon.

The only game I can remember where that issue is somewhat addressed by the narrative is Tales of Phantasia. That said, I don't think you were actually forced to use Chester after he rejoined your party, so it wasn't actually a problem in terms of gameplay. Plus he got a few free level ups during cutscenes, even if they were entirely inadequate.

Another fun XP mechanic is when characters who are KO'd don't get XP.

This ties into the previous comments. It is especially infuriating when trying to level up a character who got left behind / wasn't available, so they nearly always die. And then if one of the better levelled characters has a counter attack, or there's some damage over time effect that kills the enemy there's no time to resurrect them. Meaning they don't get any XP. Meaning they don't level up.

Such a shit mechanic.

It's cool that there's a narrative reason for it in that case.

But honestly I don't really care, just make it so that they're doing pushups in the background or something. There's no real justification for parties not leveling up together, it's the sort of archaic shit that should have died decades ago.

The only exception for me is tactics games like Xcom, where adding a rookie to a team heightens the drama.

Don't give them ideas!

Yes, that was slightly confusing for a moment

Definitely onboard with reversed controls. The rest i can kind of accept as possible, but that's the worst.

Rayman had an entire level with reversed controls. And it would have been a pretty hard level even with regular controls.

Luckily, if you were playing on PC, it was just a matter of going into the control options and binding the arrow keys in reverse.

How about the bit in Guitar Hero boss battles where they reverse the strings?

Skill trees are a dodgy one. When they're used to pad out a game, or add superficial character development, I hate them. Especially when the skill trees in question are so large and unlocks are so frequent. Stat boosts shouldn't belong on a skill tree unless you're building a character to play or operate in a very specific way. Also, you shouldn't be expected to, or be given the opportunity to fully complete a skill tree.

But honestly, I only like skill trees when they're used to slowly reveal a set of core game mechanics. Something that buys you time to grasp specific skills and ease you into the full fat experience. Any more than that and it immediately begins to feel bloated.