All very good points
@PoptartPresident .
Here's what I have to say to them:
1) Grinding a lot.
I get there's generally supposed to be this idea that you 'earn your way' to a stronger status, but I feel there's games out there where you really need to stick to one section for a while and just fight the same enemies over and over again to reach a decent enough level to continue. I really don't like when it drags out too much.
In my opinion, it's one of the reasons I absolutely loved Omori. Omori makes it to where you really don't need to grind at all because as long as you follow the path, you'll get just enough to level up and fight the boss without needing to do ridiculous amounts of fighting.
Oh
man, I could not agree more with you on this one, especially as a person that played the Digimon World DS games to oblivion.
This kind of grinding takes me out of games nowadays for a very good reason - if you are responsible for the level curve of your game, why artificially inflate the playtime by forcing the player to level grind to fight a boss? Surely you can't have the fight play out the same way regardless? Especially if your battle system isn't mechanically diverse.
Only exception I can think of are post-game encounters, but even then that needs just as much finesse and attention so you're not spending a lot of time prepping.
Having the player do quests
with meaningful storylines and getting EXP from them is a nice way to subvert this grinding nonsense if you want to keep the curve high, since at least then you're interacting with the game in a meaningful way that isn't "kill the same guys over and over".
2) Having way too many items that aren't even worth using.
I'll reuse my example of Omori again because it fell into this pitfall. I feel like there were WAY too many items like healing and HP restores/mood changers that...well, you really don't need to use. More often then not, Hero's basic healing ability (Cook) did more than enough to satisfy the need to use restores outside of battle, and Juice (MP) recharges were never too far away.
It was because of how often I got items that I felt a little overwhelmed with them because I never knew when it was a good time to use them. I kept thinking "Cool, a 60 HP restore? I could use it later."...never really found an optimal time to use it, and would ultimately get much better items, rendering the 60 HP restore worthless. So it just sits there in my inventory....waiting...before I know it it's the end of the game.
Another big point because I feel items need their own niches as opposed to being general-use. In my stuff in particular not only is there a limit per individual item, but the main healing potions drain your MP with every use of them so you can't just spam them.
This is supposed to be off-set by everyone's MP naturally regenerating, but your skills also have percentage based charges and cooldowns (especially healing skills.
Especially multi-character heals.)
What if you need to use a certain skill to defeat an enemy that is about to shift the tides of the battle? That kind of question is meant to pop up all the time after I take off the player's training wheels.
3) Not having enough uses for the game's currency.
I feel like there's this stigma that when you defeat enemies, they 'need' to drop money so the player can buy better items/armors/weapons/accessories. And that's fine of course! But more often than not, the player never really needs money for better gear after a certain point.
I'll use Earthbound for instance: The game was mostly challenging in the very beginning because Ness was by himself, and you really needed to buy those upgrades so he wouldn't die to bullies and police men so much. (Grrr I hate those exploding trees in peaceful rest valley too).
But after a certain point...the game just gets way too easy, and you'll have soooo much money to a point where you won't even know what to do with it.
I feel something I wish I saw more often was Money being needed to progress storylines, serve as a barrier in side-quests, or have different ways of getting money besides enemies always dropping them. Or even if it's possible, have money be a use for something battle-wise like distracting enemies or serving as an extra MP/HP bar for a certain armor/spell. I dunno.
Just pleaaase give me some reason to utilize the 1.5 billion dollars I managed to get.
The game No More Heroes has its main questline battles gated off with money requirements, if that helps.
That said, I super agree with this one. I'm considering not having enemies drop money altogether unless they specifically are treasure monsters, and repurposing it so you get money from doing quests or spelunking through the depths of the dungeons you visit.
Also, thinking of ideas for fun money sinks is a favorite past-time of mine. What if you need to use your cash to pay off a greedy gatekeeper demon, or are gated off from doing a sidequest because you're not "rich enough".
A consistent money sink like an important item you need to keep buying or a service you need to provide for a long-term positive effect is also important, especially if they ask for a percentage of your money as opposed to a hard number.
Disgaeas past 4 have it so you can pay off senators in the Dark Assembly to auto-approve bills you want (since bills in that game were essentially how you unlock more gameplay features), and it made that aspect of the game far less annoying since it actually puts the insane amount of cash you earn to use.
4) Having important decisions in a storyline that are way too early in a lengthy game.
When I think about this, I don't think about things like battle strategies or guides, I'm talking about games that supposedly go down completely different end routes (story wise) in a long game. It's not that I hate the idea entirely, but the fact is that in general, I don't want to replay the exact same game for another 15-20 hours after I beat 1 path, and go aaaaaall the way back in the beginning to get a few changes here and there for a new route. It draws itself out most of the time and I don't wanna grind through everything again just to see the few new changes of my early decision.
A good way to implement this sort of thing is to make it to where the decision completely changes gameplay....such as areas you visit, dialogue, new scenes, tasks...etc. More often than not, I've seen stories where the game is very long, but an early decision you made only effects something near the end, and the entire game just recycles itself. At that point, I would rather just beat 1 path, then look up all the other endings on youtube to save time.
Oooh, I actually have a unique answer to this one. A while back I proposed the idea of a chapter select function where you can actually skip to separate parts of the game with the minimum required skills/items/levels/gold so you don't need to repeat everything just to see something different in a certain part of the game.
That said - conventionally I do not like it when important choices are early on in the game either. I would much rather have important decisions be locked to late mid game / endgame, especially if the game is long.
The reason being that the more those early decisions impact the story/gameplay, the greater its ripple effect is. It just causes more work for something that probably won't pay off as well as intended.
So it's horribly mentally taxing on both a player
and developer side!
5) Long, unstoppable cutscenes.
Cutscenes are great, but please give me a way to make sure I can pause the scene if it plays automatically. That, or just have it where you need to push a button to continue playing the dialogue. Sometimes things pop up in real life and it's annoying when I miss a whole scene because it didn't want to stop itself.
I have more pet peeves, but these are the top 5 for me.
You hit the nail on the head there. That said I really like games that have a "do you want to skip" function like Kingdom Hearts or Dark Chronicle, where it allows you to pause the scene and gives you a prompt if you want to skip the scene altogether.
I like it so much that I've adopted the same mechanic in my own games, and I've found it to work pretty well.
