Things in RPGs that annoy you.

[RCXGaming]

And I think this is the real issue here. Big Open worlds are not fun. Because there's usually nothing fun to do in those big open spaces. I don't have a concrete for sure solution for that problem but I think if you were to go about solving the issue of fast travel vs no fast travel the first step would be in making the Journey the point.

How's that saying go..."It's the Journey not the destination." ?

That's what's missing from Open World RPGs.

I mean I actually do have a good starter solution. Fleshed out companions. Not Lydia "I'm sworn to carry your burdens." But like...actually written characters that you can conversate with as you walk, that you can hear conversating with one another as you walk. But that's a lot of work to make their dialogue not seem too samey so I'm not all that shocked few if any have undertaken it.

But also like...activities. You need a reason to do stuff in the areas between your destinations. Longer days with a hunger system better paced so you're not having to click to eat every 2 minutes. But rather food time is something that becomes an event. You set up a camp sit around the fire and chat with your companions as you cook up food. Maybe one of them makes a comment about something you fought that day or how weirdly peaceful the journey was this day.

Maybe someone offhandildly mentions a little brother they used to hunt with or another companion takes off for the woods saying their mother taught them a few helpful herbs to be found in this area.

Maybe your group can interact with a nearby water source for fishing or cleaning their gear.

Just...I think the world needs more random mundane **** to do in order to make Fast Travel seem like a terrible waste. Because right now, in most games? It's like you said. The meat is all in the destination, the journey is just a boring inconvenience.

This post tells me you've never played or watched Red Dead Redemption 2, because it has most if not all of those things you've talked about.

Either way, ignoring the fact that your suggestion isn't universally applicable (you can't force the journey to be the focus, especially in a large game like a Rockstar GTA-like), nothing you've said would necessarily help the problem of "open world games not being fun".

Sure, some people will find the activities amusing for a time. But what about people who just see them as a "boring inconvenience" and want to do something else in the game? What if they just want to do missions at specific areas of the game and want to cut out five minutes of going through the landscape that objectively just wastes time unless you're personally into it?

I'm not saying to strip them out of the game, but you cannot use them as an argument against fast travel.

You can't force immersion and you can't use immersion as an excuse to take out features that would otherwise help your players cut out the tedium, like fast travel or mini maps. It's a form of convenience that is open for people to use if they need to, and nobody in the thread seems to acknowledge this.

Literally nothing is stopping you from taking in the world of the game on your own terms.

It's just ridiculous and all of this is a reductive way to look at things. It genuinely makes me ask the question "if something like this is enough to break your immersion, how does doing anything in a video game not bother you?". It feels like missing the forest for the trees.

I feel the best way I can encapsulate my thoughts on this matter is through this youtube comment I pulled from Razbutin's "I Hate Fast Travel" video:

"Even in games where I enjoy travelling, I tend to reach a point where I'm sick of it and just want to get where Im going"

Which was my original point to begin with.

 

[Iron_Brew]

As much as I disagree with the "immersion" arguments, they mainly boil down to personal preference and my preference is to have them regardless since them being in a game usually does not affect my immersion. A world with large scope is only really impressive the first time - after the dust settles, I'd much rather have a way to quickly get between areas of interest because that's where the real meat is.

That said, y'all had me until you said this:


I don't think it's weird to see this and just think "huh?" because I vehemently disagree. It's easily the most bizarre reasoning I've ever seen. It just makes no sense, like - allow people to customize their characters if they are given the ability to, especially if they invest a lot of time and actual cash money for doing so.

What benefit is there if this kind of feature is removed? You'd get everyone looking the same since all they'd be wearing is either optimal gear or something weak that's aesthetically appealing to them. And that's boring, like straight up.

Cosmetic gear in this instance would be just as good a reward as something that gives you actual stats, because it has value in a different way than just powering you up and doesn't necessarily need to be locked behind the middle or end of the game.

I totally get your point on immersion, and I agree that convenience is a big factor. I work long hours, so I appreciate games which respect my time. Given your vehement disagreement on my hatred of transmog though, I'm gonna explain my reasoning again:

Gonna address your points here one by one:

> I don't think it's weird to see this and just think "huh?" because I vehemently disagree. It's easily the most bizarre reasoning I've ever seen. It just makes no sense, like - allow people to customize their characters if they are given the ability to, especially if they invest a lot of time and actual cash money for doing so.

This isn't actually an argument against the point I made in my post that glamour/transmog stops the game from quickly imparting information onto other players visually. If people spend cash money for items, that's on them, it doesn't confer any mechanical advantage and is purely for flavour. I don't see why characters shouldn't have these kinds of cash-shop items, but why would a bikini you bought for £15 be as effective as plate armour from the end of the game?

> What benefit is there if this kind of feature is removed? You'd get everyone looking the same since all they'd be wearing is either optimal gear or something weak that's aesthetically appealing to them. And that's boring, like straight up.

Again, this was in my initial post, the benefit is in peacocking your accomplishments in the game (rather than your ability to buy items on the cash shop) and in imparting to other players the gear that you have equipped, which is relevant to gameplay. I'm aware that in most games with transmog you can still 'inspect' players, but it's dull and flavourless to walk into town and see people dressed as schoolgirls when they're actually max-level-warrior-types.

And if they want to wear school girl outfits in town, it's not like I'm advocating taking that stuff away, just stopping you from making your big metal armour look like it's made of cloth.

I agree with what you're saying to an extent - currently games have been casualised to the extent that everybody has the same endgame gear, and getting items is no longer actually impressive. Back when World of Warcraft first came out (and Transmog wasn't a thing) you'd see players sat in cities wearing armour from endgame content and it would be genuinely impressive because not everybody had it - and not everybody could have it. Which was the opposite of boring, like straight up.

I get it. Everyone wants to look cool, but if your game's focus is gameplay then your gear should surely ideally show other players something relevant to gameplay, not that you have hundreds of pounds to spend in the cash shop, or you love catgirl bikinis?

In addition to this, the 'everyone looking the same' issue could be circumvented with or mitigated by:

- more pieces or sets of endgame gear for classes
- a greater variety of viable endgame builds requiring different gear
- greater scarcity of good items
- more robust customization of endgame gear
- player customization not purely linked to gear

The glamour system isn't the only option we have to give variety in endgame character aesthetics, but it does allow for additional profits to go into the game from microtransactions and an increased social element, so that can be a benefit to the studio and to their ability to develop games as a whole.

I do see both sides to this, I hope this explains my perspective better.

 

[AeroPergold]

1. Not being able to buy bulk items from shops
2. Not being to save my progress anytime anywhere
3. I'm fine with random encounters in general but I hate it when I have to face some sort of enemy every alternative step and not having some kind of repel item to abate this

I think those are my top three, my other RPG annoyances have more to do with tropes in storytelling more than anything else.

 

[ericv00]

Minimaps exist to have secrets hidden in areas that don't show up on the minimap.

 

[The Stranger]

@Iron_Brew I love good glamour systems in any game. I hate wearing ugly gear in RPGs, so if I can make my trashy armour make my character look the way I envisioned them when I first made them, then that's a good thing, imo.

I usually find one costume I like and wear that exclusively, though. I loved having different costumes for different roles in FFXIV. I loved the glamour system even more in Guild Wars 2; even if most people ran around in the most gaudy looking costumes imaginable. lol.

I understand the whole peacocking element, but I'd rather be able to make my character look how I want them to look, at least clothing wise, than have all the best looking stuff reserved for those in raiding groups and what not.

I guess fashion is just an aspect of MMOs, and RPGs in general, that I get a lot of enjoyment from.

 

[Iron_Brew]

@Iron_Brew I love good glamour systems in any game. I hate wearing ugly gear in RPGs, so if I can make my trashy armour make my character look the way I envisioned them when I first made them, then that's a good thing, imo.

I usually find one costume I like and wear that exclusively, though. I loved having different costumes for different roles in FFXIV. I loved the glamour system even more in Guild Wars 2; even if most people ran around in the most gaudy looking costumes imaginable. lol.

I understand the whole peacocking element, but I'd rather be able to make my character look how I want them to look, at least clothing wise, than have all the best looking stuff reserved for those in raiding groups and what not.

I guess fashion is just an aspect of MMOs, and RPGs in general, that I get a lot of enjoyment from.

Yeah, I totally get this viewpoint - I think my priorities are just in a different place

 

[GodCiunas]

GLAMOUR SYSTEMS

This is probably more specific to MMOs than anything else, but I hate "glamour" systems which make your gear look like other gear so so so much.

I understand what you mean. I get the point of having one and what u r saying. before wow had that glamour system i used to collect lower gear just for the outfit change. So i could be an all white crystal blade wielding warrior. Stats sucked but looked nice. However there is a large variety of ppl who want to look different without the stat loss. So glamour it is. But you could do what you want by implementing a variety of different outfit styles related to the same piece of gear and having a large customizable color variation on individual parts. I imagine though it will involve alot of complexity and time. To do that for an already increasingly large database. Just in rpg maker mz i am making items on the shop tables purchasable and how they actuallly look. Just doing that is incredibly time consuming. I have to make an entire sheet with each item from different viewpoints then either tile it or use it in characters then alter each weapon animation using plugins to show a different weapon when it is equipped.

 

[Iron_Brew]

I understand what you mean. I get the point of having one and what u r saying. before wow had that glamour system i used to collect lower gear just for the outfit change. So i could be an all white crystal blade wielding warrior. Stats sucked but looked nice. However there is a large variety of ppl who want to look different without the stat loss. So glamour it is. But you could do what you want by implementing a variety of different outfit styles related to the same piece of gear and having a large customizable color variation on individual parts. I imagine though it will involve alot of complexity and time. To do that for an already increasingly large database. Just in rpg maker mz i am making items on the shop tables purchasable and how they actuallly look. Just doing that is incredibly time consuming. I have to make an entire sheet with each item from different viewpoints then either tile it or use it in characters then alter each weapon animation using plugins to show a different weapon when it is equipped.

This guy gets it!

 

[Benny Jackdaw]

tbh I would strongly recommend NOT playing Pokemon like a "normal" person. From my experience, it's a tedious slog where you have to constantly grind just to keep up with the level curve; and because you're at best barely keeping up with the A.I.'s levels, you'll also having to contend with the plethora of bulls**t RNG mechanics like parafuse, double-sanding, and potion/crunch-death-spirals.

If I had a second 3DS, I'd transfer the mons on my copy of Ultra Moon elsewhere and then delete that save file in a heartbeat and start over from scratch, only using a single pokemon instead of wasting my effort maintaining a team of six.

You'll like the generation 8 Pokemon games, then. It's hard NOT overleveling in those.

 

[FirestormNeos]

You'll like the generation 8 Pokemon games, then. It's hard NOT overleveling in those.

Already answered on another thread:

idk, tbh i find Sword/Shield's change to experience feels like a half-***ed bandaid solution that pleases no one. If they really wanted me to enjoy using more than one Pokemon, they'd have just added a button to automatically sort your team starting from lowest-to-highest level, with pokes of the same level sorted from furthest-to-closest towards leveling up.

 

[Benny Jackdaw]

Already answered on another thread:

I was kind of kidding anyway.

 

[Froggo32]

I hate puzzles in RPGs that arent puzzle oriented. Puzzles that requires luck or are very hard. Like mazes.
SO there was this one warrior cats fangame, Power of Three. At one point you had to go in a completely black map - you had to go through THREE completely black maps with no hints whatsover where to go. Oh, and there were enemies inside. And no way to heal. Except wasting your items. If I remember correctly, when you finally got out of this cave, you couldnt get a free heal. And you had to fight a hard boss. Hard at least for me. Because I didnt like grinding, I had too low level and opponents were really strong. I hate grinding too. That and useless battles, like side ones. I get it, youre supposed to get stronger, but cant your character just go to tym or have cutscene of training hard?
Also I hate when RPGs just throw logic out of the window. For example, when youre fighting some character - a character that normally is positive or at least non-aggressive towards you. Lets say that you train. And you lose. And your character dies. Like, you spar with a friend for fun and they kill you. I experienced this thing while playing the PoT warrior cats fangame...

 

[Iron_Brew]

Hm... I've been trying to figure out the wording for this for a little bit, but something I really hate in RPGs is when a game falls into the same tired tropes "because it has to", rather than in service to the game as a whole.

Like, "the previous game had it" isn't a good reason to include a part of the game 99% of your playerbase is going to hate. "Well, Demon's Souls had a horrible poison swamp level, so every Souls game has to have one!" - like... Why? "Oh, Final Fantasy IX had summons that drove the plot and everyone loves, so FFXIII let's make Ifrit into a sportscar!" - I... Uh... That's... creative?

Why not do something else that's creative rather than tickling the ol' member-berries? I get that you're never gonna get away from tropes, and a lot of people (myself included) love these tropes, but if I have to sit through another "childhood friend to lovers" cutscene because the audience expects romanceable NPCs because previous games in the franchise had romanceable NPCs, but the romances add nothing to the game, or are straight up unenjoyable; cut the feature and use the budget to polish the features of your game which do work and are cool/unique.

EDIT:

Oh, this one I can say with a bit more brevity:

I really REALLY hate it when a game has a main plot with a massive sense of urgency and then punishes you for not doing sidequests. Cyberpunk 2077 is the worst example of this by far, the game tells you your brain is gonna die in a fortnight, has a dynamic day and night system and then hides the best ending behind side content which canonically makes the game longer than 2 weeks. Weakest possible storytelling, that.

 

[Rej72380]

Having played a lot of dungeon crawlers for the past few years, I'd say level-draining monsters are high up there on the list of annoying things in RPGs. Your party Level 20 adventurers encounter a group of wights and by the end of the battle they are at around Level 12 or some low number.

 

[C64_Mat]

This is really specific. Dark Souls: The Basilisks which cut your HP in half with Curse. And it STACKS.

 

[wilpuri]

Different things annoy me in different RPGs:

- Let’s start with RPG Maker games: If the developer doesn’t bother to use his/hers own graphics or buy some custom graphics not already in a thousand games, I will not play it ever. RPG is always about some sort of immersion in the world and characters and there needs to be some effort there. Same goes for joke-meme worlds in some games where nothing is connected and nothing really makes sense.

Dungeons & Dragons: Low level wizards. In games like Icewind Dale etc. the spellcasters are so useless and fragile in the early game it makes every battle about protecting them. They can cast one spell and then need to sleep. Sleeping in a dangerous cave after every battle is a little bit immersion breaking, but then again having a useless wimp throwing rocks at trolls is annoying too.

Fallout 4: I am actually one the people who really loved F4. After they patched it a bit the survival mode was very intense. The annoying thing was that the survival and base building didn’t go well together. When you can’t carry much and have no fast travel hauling random materials around the world to build the bases becomes very tedious, but if you don’t do it the people will not be happy and that is annoying too. The poorly done first-person building mode didn’t help. They should have gone all in on the surviving the wild or the base building, together they were a mess. Maybe if there was just one home base it could’ve worked.

Endless health bars: Too long boss battles are tedious. For example in DA: O one dwarf boss can take damage for over twenty minutes. Just endless clicking around and this tiny dude takes blow after blow and fireball after fireball. With big monsters it’s not so bad (still boring), but completely kills the mood if the enemy is just a guy, but for some reason has 500 times more health.

 

[ZombieKidzRule]

Ah, I just remembered another thing that bothers me, and actually does so more than crafting systems do. Not being able to see the enemy's HP might be amongst my biggest annoyances in RPG's, and I'll never understand why developers would actively choose to hide it from the player, and why RPG Maker continues to refuse to offer a way to display it without the use of plugins. There are literally no pros to hiding the enemy HP from the player, and endless amounts of pros for displaying it. By hiding it, your game is objectively worse off for it, you cannot change my mind on this one.

I definitely understand your point on this and I kind of feel the same way. However, some people could look at this as realism and immersion. I think a very realistic game play element to incorporate, if possible, would be to NOT have any hint at the enemy HP until you have actually faced that enemy. Or, you could link it to a skill that could be chosen or that a particular class has so your player has some knowledge. Then, as the game progresses and you fight the same enemy, you "learn" more about how tough it is and you start seeing a HP type bar without actual numbers.

As an example, if I go out in the woods and come across a bear, I have no idea how much damage said bear can take or how much damage I can do to said bear with whatever I am carrying. Now, based on personal experience and specialized knowledge, I might start to figure things out a bit, but I will never truly know how strong one bear is from another. But I might learn to avoid bears.

So again, some people might prefer this sort of design element as a matter of realism or immersion. But it is definitely a preference thing and I have my own deal breakers with games.

Having played a lot of dungeon crawlers for the past few years, I'd say level-draining monsters are high up there on the list of annoying things in RPGs. Your party Level 20 adventurers encounter a group of wights and by the end of the battle they are at around Level 12 or some low number.

Oh, I really understand this. And this isn't anything new. I remember feeling this same way playing D&D when we didn't even have home computers. I remember getting so mad when this happened, even when the DM included something shortly after such an event where you could get your levels back. There is something very visceral about losing what you have invested.

I have also experienced games that do something like take random stuff from you when you sleep, like an NPC sneaks off with some of your stuff, or you get thrown in jail and lose your stuff. That is hard to stomach as well.

 

[Milennin]

I definitely understand your point on this and I kind of feel the same way. However, some people could look at this as realism and immersion. I think a very realistic game play element to incorporate, if possible, would be to NOT have any hint at the enemy HP until you have actually faced that enemy. Or, you could link it to a skill that could be chosen or that a particular class has so your player has some knowledge. Then, as the game progresses and you fight the same enemy, you "learn" more about how tough it is and you start seeing a HP type bar without actual numbers.

As an example, if I go out in the woods and come across a bear, I have no idea how much damage said bear can take or how much damage I can do to said bear with whatever I am carrying. Now, based on personal experience and specialized knowledge, I might start to figure things out a bit, but I will never truly know how strong one bear is from another. But I might learn to avoid bears.

So again, some people might prefer this sort of design element as a matter of realism or immersion. But it is definitely a preference thing and I have my own deal breakers with games.

Turn-based RPG's would be the last type of game I'd be playing if I was looking for realism. The mere concept of taking turns in a fight is as unrealistic as you can get.

 

[ZombieKidzRule]

So I responded to a few of these posts and now I will post my personal pet peeve that probably a lot of people will disagree with and won't understand. It is definitely just a weird personal preference.

I personally can't stand games with over inflated, huge numbers. HP in the thousands, damage in the thousands, etc. I guess that is the current trend and what is desired from the current generation of players, but it really bugs me. I just haven't been able to get into a game with what I consider to be over inflated numbers. So far, it is an absolute deal breaker for me.

I am an original-school or ancient-school player who started playing D&D before there were CRPGs. I used to think I was an old-school gamer, but "old-school" has been appropriated by the next generation and now old-school isn't the 80s or even 90s, it is the 2000s. Just like how different generations have different understandings of what "classic rock".

I cut my teeth on CRPGs when games didn't hold your hand, they didn't give you hints, they didn't give you maps (draw your own on grid paper if you want thank you very much), you didn't have tutorials, videos, walk throughs, wikis, or whatever. I guess that still impacts my preferences to some degree.

Another one is games that don't have manuals. Again, ancient-school gamer who actually likes to read a manual before ever starting the game. But that is just me again and not a deal breaker.

I also get peeved with very bad grammar and English translations.

This is a very interesting thread and it seems like a lot of the personal preferences may be based on when you actually started playing games (generational preferences).

I also think it is very interesting what breaks immersion for some people. I don't particularly care about immersion personally, but I think it is interesting when something breaks immersion for someone yet there are a ton of other things in the game that should similarly break immersion but players are like "don't you dare take that away from me because it makes the game more convenient for me to play, immersion be darned!"

Finally, I find it interesting what different players think constitutes a "real RPG". For me, the mere fact that you are assuming a role in a game that you wouldn't normally have makes it an RPG. Most of my D&D experience centered around groups of players who mostly wanted the combat. Any sort of story was peripheral. And early CRPGs had bare bones, sometimes dubious, plot and story. Group of adventurers needs to go into a dungeon and explore. Once you go in, you are trapped until you get to the end. Not much plot, but it can still be fun.


Based on some of these posts, Wizardry 6 would drive some posters absolutely nuts! And try playing it without any sort of help from the internet. Good luck!

Anyway, thanks for all these posts. This is very interesting to me.

 

[ZombieKidzRule]

Turn-based RPG's would be the last type of game I'd be playing if I was looking for realism. The mere concept of taking turns in a fight is as unrealistic as you can get.

This could be true for some, but some people might appreciate realism while still preferring turn-based combat over isometric or real-time combat.

I happen to prefer turn-based combat, but I also appreciate realism. But it needs to be balanced for me too. Just comes down to personal preference.

I would actually like to see a game where the player could choose options like this.

See HP/stat bars or not. I have seen games that do allow for a wide variety of player preferences and those seem like nice features.