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I thought about my answer, since many mechanics I don’t like can have good implementations, or at the very least are a sort of lesser of two evils kind of thing.
What I can’t stand are tactical or RPG games with realtime or turn based combat option toggles. I play many games with one or the other and enjoy them, but when I play a game with both that can be toggled in options I always feel like neither setting feels perfectly right. The balance is always off no matter what. Understandable with game devs having to double the amount of work for creating combat and tuning items and it ends up feeling a little soggy every time.
One of the worst game mechanics ever found in a game was where the enemy got harder as you gained levels. The same enemy. It basically defeated the value of having more levels. I think it was Oblivion
Skyrimwhere I found this, particularly annoying.Level scaling. It’s a mechanic designers put in because they think the game needs to stay challenging, which is true but I’ve never agreed with level scaling as the answer.
The least bad implementations (but still not good) at least replace low level enemies with different kinds of enemies entirely. The worst, most lazy implementations just increase existing enemy HP and damage.
I think it is much better to have different locations or zones where different ranges of enemies spawn, with more powerful enemies tuned to the expected level of a player character for the quests in the zone.
It’s one of the reasons that I will always cherish the old Gothic games (esp. 1 and 2). They created different biomes and regions within and hand-placed mobs which thematically fit both from their appearance and strength.
The placements didn’t necessarily align with the player’s journey through those regions so that you always had to be on the lookout for what’s coming when exploring new areas. And it really made the difference in your power growth more viscerally apparent when you could return to the starting zone and easily defeat the mobs there, as well as those you always had to run from off the beaten path earlier.
OG Oblivion has the most utterly broken and unplayable version of this problem that I’ve seen. Every bandit wearing glass or daedric, every enemy the strongest version, eliminating all variety. And their idea of difficulty? Just make them take longer to kill. All fun dissolves into a slog.
You know what, I think it was OG Oblivion and I just mixed it up with Skyrim… It got me to quit playing the game after a while.
I think it was Skyrim where I found this
Doubt it because the unmodded game allows you to change difficulty even in mid-game, where the novice setting will have you easy kills even at high levels and your player character gets only bruised, and the legendary setting makes enemy NPCs deadly with a couple sword hits or one-hit lightning attacks.
Any game that forces snap to center cameras. No one should ever have to fight against the controls in a game.
(Looking at you No Man’s Sky)
Escort Missions. Especially when pathfinding AI was terrible.
Quick Time Events in a game that it isn’t the focus. Halo 4 had exactly two quick time events. One in the first level and one in the last level.
Not the worst, but I’m annoyed by invisible walls. Just give me a reason why I can’t be there.
A multiplayer game that pits you against lousy AI bots with human looking names for your first "games’ so you feel like you know how to play and makes the game seem fair and fun.
Then after you’re comfortable, you get pitted against a lobby of 12-year-olds who haven’t seen daylight since birth who annihilate you and curse you out on coms.
“Am I getting older and slower?”
“No, it’s the children’s fault.”
“Here’s a rare weapon dropped by this boss! But wait, you need to be at least level 30 to use it, and you’re still on level 2.”
I went out of my way to repeatedly grind and kill this late game boss during early game, just give me my reward for not following the stupid linear progression
Puzzles that are entirely music based with no visual cues.
They’re bad enough for me as just a guy with no rhythm or note recognition, but also just fuck deaf people I guess?
Exponentially growing requirements that out pace rewards. I don’t want to spend 10 hours grinding just to level up.
So the was this dnd inspired text based multi user game. Actually there are hundreds of clones and variations.
It was called circleMUD. The server version I played was called Riftsmud.
Now it was a long ass time ago and World of Warcraft didn’t exist at all yet.
When I started playing there was a level 50 cap. A few years later they revised the game and it became a level 100 cap.
Now we grinded. Oh my God did we grind.
But when you hit those power spikes it was so worth it. The grinding actually meant something because when you hit the level cap and maxed out your experience you could remort.
Meaning start over picking your class all over again and a keep a all the level up stat bonuses you got every 10 levels.
And also a base increase on your health/mana/stamina
The other thing though was that you also kept 15% of the skills from the class you maxed out.
Some of the classes(casters mainly) got skills or spells almost every level. Martial classes many boring levels.
However after a few times remorting you started to develop a unique way to play the game.
And while originally it was completely random what should you got, to we ended up getting to designate a few skills and you would get one of those 4 for sure, and if lucky more than one.
Some skills were unique to a class. Some were available at different levels between classes. A neat thing was if you had a keep at a higher level than another, if you ever went a class with a lower level you would lower the level on your keep, so keeping them at the lowest level first was awesome, or getting those unique skills first time round
Did my 21 time remort character hit 24 attacks in a really lucky roll when using the ranger skill flurry? Yes yes he did.
Did I find out that if you successfully execute the skill, but a teammate kills the enemy before your hits land the flurry is saved until your next round of attacks? I did
Did I also have a skill called rampage that attacked every mob in the room with your full compliment of attacks? Well I was a warrior and I did have that skill yes.
Did the game give me flurry of blows on every mob in a room? Yes yes it did.
Did I have a skill that could sacrifice gold at an altar to do more damage? I did go Paladin. Did I have a spell that increased my damage by 50% sure why not, keeps baby.
Did I have a skills that did more damage when I was low on life? Also yes.
Did I have sanctuary and also super sanctuary to cut my damage received by 25% and then 50% as well? Sure did.
I maaaaay have walked into a zone that had a high amount of enemies in the same room after buffing the ever loving hell out of myself while at 10% life with a stacked flurry and rampaged on over a dozen mobs.
Did I crash the server?
Yes yes I did.
Worth it!
You know when you are in the middle of a game’s story and then you get caught or something wjd the enemy takes all your gear and you have to find your gear or fight to get it back? No screw that. So annoying.
And I’m the kind of player that does all sise quests before doing the main story so I can be OP and plow through the story. Just let me do that and don’t take what I worked hard to get.
Waiting.
Lootboxes
I’ve got a time-traveling kick in the nuts prepared for whoever invented wall-humping for unmarked secrets. I first remember this from Wolfenstein 3D but I’m not sure if it existed before then.
It’s very obnoxious. What’s worse is when the secret areas provide armor or weapons that feel mandatory to beat the level with. If the secrets are just for a score I can at least ignore them.
Ps1 Spider-Man having 3 bosses in a row at the end of the game.
Health as a resource
Technically inclined to agree but The Long Dark implements this rather well…
