Submitted 2 weeks ago by nilo@reddthat.com to gaming@beehaw.org
Title is tongue in cheek, of course—they probably are gamers. I get that making a game is complex and full of trade-offs, and you can’t please everyone. Still, there are certain design decisions that just feel like they weren’t made by people who play games regularly.
Can you bring up the pause menu at any point (including cut scenes).
I’ve always felt like a sign of a well polished game was one where the pause menu would work at any point, including during cutscenes.
The worst is when the start button latently skips the cutscene with no confirmation/warning
Playing the metal gear collection and this immediately stood out. The cutscenes are long
When you can’t tap a button to fill the text dialogue, and have to wait for each letter to individually populate for 15 speech bubbles in a row.
or even worse when you have to wait for the voiced dialogue to finish before it lets you continue.
I like that BG3 let’s you skip the voice dialogue but I wish there was an option to speed up the voice acting because I really love the voice acting and the story is great but I find myself spacing out during long cutscenes. I don’t want to skip them I just want them to speak quickly!
I’ve been replaying Dragon Quest Builders 2. The game isn’t voiced, most of dialogues are classic RPG text boxes that you can speed up and skip, BUT. There are special lines of dialogue that are “voices” in a character’s head.
They are unskippable, and they’re like a dozen words each that stay on screen for about 20 seconds or more. Some of those dialogues have about 6-7 of those. It’s unbearable, and it’s genuinely the worst part of starting a game again. Hell, it was the worst part of doing it the first time, too.
Somehow English localisation created this, in Japanese the messages go a lot faster. Though even those couldn’t be skipped, because… fuck you that’s why.
I just played through Pentiment and even on the fastest speed dialogues were painfully slow. It wouldn’t fix all the other pacing issues, but the text popping up instantly would be a huge improvement.
When the into cannot be skipped after the first start.
In the same vein, when the game starts immediately without giving you a chance to configure it. Because the default configuration is always wrong.
I love experiencing their carefully crafted intro sequence in 4fps/480p/etc.
cry in 12 years old pc
Falcom spoiled me forever by offering a startup option to continue from last save that skips all the logos, intros, etc.
Quick Time Events
Putting a QTE or a limited time choice in a long cutscene or a level segment.
Or a fake limited time choice, as in, the character speaks as if they have to act or choose quickly! But if you don’t press anything, they’ll just stand there in a dramatic pose. Or go ahead and act as if you pressed the button anyway (Saints Row 3 had those)
Long cutscenes that don’t let you save or pause when anything comes up that forces you to leave the keyboard or just focus elsewhere.
“Control” was the worst wrt this. I was just about to go to bed when it showed me a “cutscene” that went on for more than 30 minutes. Turned out later that you could actually go back to watch it again afterwards, but there was no indication of that at the time.
That would have been Quantum Break. I don’t recall Control havy any one cutscene that long.
But Quantum Break did the whole video-game/TV-series hybrid media thing, and was full of “episodes” that were essentially 30-minute cutscenes.
The Steam Deck is great in that regard. Just put it to sleep.
Same with the Switch and easily one of the top features. Laundry done? Sleep mode. SO asks something? Sleep mode. Done pooing? Sleep mode.
I'm playing through Control now and haven't encountered that (fun game btw!), so methinks it's Quantum Break you're thinking of.
I agree with you, though. Sometimes I have to step away for whatever reason and end up missing something because I can't pause.
Unskippable cutscenes. While I do love Soul Reaver’s storytelling, sometimes I just want to skip the damn thing and get on with the adventure.
Walking simulators. The devs just wanted to tell a story, not make a game.
I play walking simulators and other games, I can’t agree with that one.
If we’re complaining about bad UX, and speaking about Soul Reaver, games with no subtitle option. Or bad, unreadable subtitles that spoil 2 minutes of dialogue at once (and that one’s for you, Bioshock).
Would you kindly… 🥰
When the game is such a precious labour of love, so obviously cared for, and constantly improved, that there’s no way the dev has any time left for gaming.
When maxing out the damage stat just makes your game trivially easy.
Stat systems are hard and prone to optimization problems. But c’mon, you at least gotta test the glass cannon build that you know everyone’s gonna try first.
When going from point a to point b takes ages or is otherwise a pain. I get you worked hard on your world, but it losses its charm the 10th time running across it.
And don’t force me to hold/tap a button to sprint. Or worse, make me click in the left stick.
It’s not the time or distance, its the barren wasteland of no content in between A and B. I’ll hold W down for 30 minutes no problem as long as it’s interesting.
I’ll go first: when mouse sensitivity is unbalanced by default—horizontal movement is way faster than vertical—and the game only allows you to change the overall sensitivity for both axes together.
E-mail the developers that you know they’re using ultrawides and will literally never figure out how. And that’s part of the problem.
I sing think I’ve ever seen that but in the same vein, when the game idea a terrible laggy software mouse in menus with the sensitivity tied to the look sensitivity in game
I’ve been streaming recently, and one thing that stands out to me is when you first boot up a game and it doesn’t have a start menu with settings.
I noticed it before, but now I really notice it. If something is wrong with the settings, sometimes that intro is unplayable or a less than optimal experience. So you have to try and skip, fix the issue, and then restart the game and try again.
Singleplayer games with time-based farming simulator minigames you won’t complete without gaming the date\time in your system (easter eggs are welcome tho). Grindy platinum achievements well outside even a dedicated minority’s norms, just getting bigger numbers or save skamming for opposing endings. Button-mashers with an undisclosed randomization of a final result under the hood.
Toby Fox was forced to add trophies to the PlayStation release of undertale and deltarune, and made them oppressively annoying in protest, so I feel like there are exceptions to this
The replies here feel more like “list of game features that I do not like”
It’s interesting to try to separate those two categories. Why else would a dev do those things unless they’re out of touch with actual gaming?
Probably priority? They have a tight deadline and skipping cut scenes is not a priority feature.
I have also seen game where dev deliberately ignore call for adding a skip scene button because they want their players to read the story. You can disagree with it but maybe the dev really think their cut scene is worth watching. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t play games, its just that they have high pride in their work.
I know the above is a controversial take. But I have no problem watching cut scenes if that is the dev’s intention.
Developer ≠ Management/C-Suite forcing implementation
(Does not apply to small-scale indie devs)
One thing, and it’s likely just an oversigt, but controls. With Consoles being the computers that everything is designed for, the lack of proper controls for Mouse & Keyboard have become a bit of a nuisance.
Normally, it’s not a big deal. You just configure them yourself.
But it did irk me some when I gave Cyberpunk a go and tried to switch the Interact/select button from (F) to (E) and it didn’t move both functionalities. Now (E) was Interact, but in menus it defaulted back to (F) as if menu select was apparently a different function.
Alternatively, when the console control scheme is tight and well made but the PC controls are ASDF + whatever random keys spread at opposite ends of the keyboard.
Yup, it’s a peeve. I don’t know why the buttons just get thrown onto the keyboard with a shovel.
Who thought crouch belongs on © and Interact goes on (F) or even (X)? I get (F) if the game has a peek-mechanic, but most don’t.
Just use (E). And crouch & sprint has always been on (Ctrl) & (Shift) respectively. It’s the optimal configuration with WASD.
Don’t know if it’s due to not playing games, but why tf is motion blur almost always on by default?
When things aren’t balanced. It either tells me the devs do not play their game or they have a dominant strategy and don’t bother playing anything else.
I’ve heard stories from professionals and you would be surprised how many devs don’t actually play the game they are developing.
In almost every game the gameplay tips and tutorials they give you are not only suboptimal but often outright counterproductive. This is especially bad in multiplayer games.
It was really nice in Doom Eternal, where they added quick swapping to the tips.
Pc version of open world game without quicksave key. There’s a lot of wrong with Grounded, but man i feels like Obsidian really losing touch with PC game with this one.
Conversely, Grounded has the best inventory management system of any survival game ever.
To the point that I have a hard time playing others now because they all feel tedious in comparison.
That’s true, a key for depositing item and also control whether the chest is affected or not is really handy for inventory management. Which really bother me that they don’t have quicksave, graphic setting customisation, turning off the character chatter, among other thing.
JUST for hot deposit, yeh. the rest of the inventory/hotbar management always makes me wish i was playing something else.
the hotbar not being inventory space is fine, but tools disappearing because they’re in your hand is absurd. they really just added a “looking for the tv remote that i’m already holding” mechanic. the pinning system with filters is handy for food, but feels clunky outside that one usecase.
like they went with a realistic “the forest” style building system, and then the inventory management is the most videogamey shit in the world.
also the scroll wheel swapping hotbars by default is straight up whacky, i’ve heard the whole thing makes more sense on controller lmao
Oooh, grounded felt like they didn’t play test for solo players. The end game suddenly got very grindy, and I decided not to finish because of it.
When a game starts at max volume
I wouldn’t really say it’s the devs for most of the stuff I see that has me questioning if whoever was in charge ever played a video game before. Stupidly simply QOL things that end up being absent in a game that is ripping off another game, likely only absent because the dev team didn’t have time to work on those elements.
However, games that constantly take control away from the player like every 2-5 minutes, I have to question the designer themselves. I wanted to play a game and these kinds of games end up getting watched like a movie with how often you don’t have any control over what’s happening.
They work for Ubisoft or Bethesda
Screenshake enabled by default, or not even an option to disable.
Top-down/twin-stick games where the aim (especially on controller) uses camera handling features, like smoothing the input or a cross-shaped deadzone.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 weeks ago
When there are several waterfalls in the game and not one has a secret behind it.