What are some of the biggest examples of bad game design you’ve seen?

[White Devil]

The funniest thing I think was how so many players would screech about Jenners being OP, muh lagshield, muh impossible to hit. PGI rolls out Host State Rewind to nix any kind of "missed because of latency", people STILL screech that Jenners etc. OP. PGI eventually nerfed the Jenner so bad it's a goddamn joke now, almost nobody plays the fucking thing, and honestly most of the mechs from early game are rarely played because ANYTHING ELSE IS BETTER. Atlas? There are so many better assault class mechs out there it's not even funny. Dragon? One variant still has a niche use due to quirks, the others are practically ignored. Hunchback? Almost nobody uses them above Tier 4-5. Awesome? Largely considered one of the worst assaults, the 8Q has a niche use with triple Heavy PPC after Civil War tech dropped, idiot LRM players occasionally use the 8R and usually suck in it. Cicada? Rarely used, has horrific "back armor hit from front" issues, it's a suicide sled and you're better off with nearly anything else. Raven? Only the 3L has an edge-case use as a Stealth NARC mech. Commando is actually pretty solid, it's the exception here. Stalker? Surprisingly prevalent, but generally only as an LRMboat and most LRM players are hilariously bad. Centurion? Considered to be such a lackluster medium that it only gets played out of sentimentality. Most anything from Founders beta or slightly after is just considered outright obsolete, and players REFUSE to call it what it is (power creep).

I haven't played since the engine rework turned everything into molasses years ago.

I will say however that the Centurion made a great zombie SRM boat. A Lance of them could take out 12 mechs easy, done it plenty of times.

 

[TFT-A9]

I haven't played since the engine rework turned everything into molasses years ago.

I will say however that the Centurion made a great zombie SRM boat. A Lance of them could take out 12 mechs easy, done it plenty of times.

You'll be happy (not really) to know that the Cent now has absolutely no role where it can shine because they tweaked its hitboxes so it can't zombie for shit and in any other role you're better off taking something else entirely. SRMboat? Take a Dervish. Ballistics? Tons of other, better options. Specifically in the 50t slot the Hunchback IIC is better at ballistics, the Huntsman is better at SRMbombing, the Enforcer pretty much entirely supplants the Cent in a role with mixed energy/ballistic, the Crab is an infinitely better zombie, and that's just the 50t slot. Mediums in general, Dervish, Bushwacker, Wolverine, Arctic Wolf, and that motherfucking Vapor Eagle are leaps and bounds ahead of ANYTHING that launched in beta or just after.

 

[White Devil]

You'll be happy (not really) to know that the Cent now has absolutely no role where it can shine because they tweaked its hitboxes so it can't zombie for shit and in any other role you're better off taking something else entirely. SRMboat? Take a Dervish. Ballistics? Tons of other, better options. Specifically in the 50t slot the Hunchback IIC is better at ballistics, the Huntsman is better at SRMbombing, the Enforcer pretty much entirely supplants the Cent in a role with mixed energy/ballistic, the Crab is an infinitely better zombie, and that's just the 50t slot. Mediums in general, Dervish, Bushwacker, Wolverine, Arctic Wolf, and that motherfucking Vapor Eagle are leaps and bounds ahead of ANYTHING that launched in beta or just after.

I'm not surprised that newer mechs are better than the beta ones. PGIs model was to release a new mech, make it OP, then nerf it into the ground two months later right before releasing another mech.

 

[TFT-A9]

I'm not surprised that newer mechs are better than the beta ones. PGIs model was to release a new mech, make it OP, then nerf it into the ground two months later right before releasing another mech.

they forgot to do anything about the Vapor Eagle, it's hands-down one of the best mechs in the fucking GAME and if it were paywalled would rightfully be considered pay-to-win, the thing is BONKERS. You can do ATM spam, CERPPC spam, quad SRM6+Artemis and LB20X ON A FUCKING MEDIUM MECH WITH FANTASTIC AGILITY AND JUMP JET ACCESS, the list goes on

 

[737 MAX Stan Account]

Promethean Knights of Halo 4, teleporting bastards with quick charging shields and an insta kill melee attack that doesn't have start up animation. Alongside the disappointing weapon sandbox and level design, Halo 4 is essentially a 10 hour long affair of "hide behind door, strip shields and spam light rifle."

The worst part of all is that 343 couldn't be bothered to draw any sort of inspiration from Bungie's work.

 

[Quintex96]

Promethean Knights of Halo 4, teleporting bastards with quick charging shields and an insta kill melee attack that doesn't have start up animation. Alongside the disappointing weapon sandbox and level design, Halo 4 is essentially a 10 hour long affair of "hide behind door, strip shields and spam light rifle."

The worst part of all is that 343 couldn't be bothered to draw any sort of inspiration from Bungie's work.

This also Watchers. Irritating to shoot, throw back grenades, shield eemies and revives dead ones.

 

[Cheese-Loving Citizen]

Vehicle sub-missions in any 3D GTA. Specifically, Taxi and Paramedic.

To explain further, Paramedic is a sub-mission you do where you pick up patients all around the city and bring them to the hospital in an ambulance, advancing to the next level once all patients are done. Taxi is where you find fares and take them to their destination - rinse and repeat.

What makes these sub-missions absolutely insufferable when going for 100% is that they're incredibly fucking repetitive.

In each level of Paramedic after Level 1, a patient is added. You have to complete Level 12 to beat it, so that's 12 patients in total. Unfortunately, your ambulance only has three seats. More unfortunately, absolutely nothing else is changed other than more patients. It's fucking mind-numbing, especially in earlier titles.

Taxi is even worse. To complete Taxi, you have to drop off 100 fucking fares. Rockstar, thankfully, dropped the goal to just 50 in SA, but it still didn't change just how suicide-inducing it is. And as you can already tell, there is no variation either here. No special events, no random encounters - nothing. Just keep on driving.

I still pray for the day someone finds a way to cheese these for the entire Trilogy. You can already cheese Paramedic in SA by going to a smaller town, as well as Taxi in III by being able to do the mission in any vehicle. I haven't heard of any cheese strats for VC, though.

Thank God these aren't a thing in the newer releases. It took Rockstar roughly 8 years to finally realize these sub-missions are shit.

 

[Beresford's Whip]

Vehicle sub-missions in any 3D GTA. Specifically, Taxi and Paramedic.

Oh christ, the paramedic missions. That goddamn ambulance handled like a brick, they were just so mind numbingly bad to try and run.

 

[Lurkio]

I've been playing Persona 4 recently, and while it's a solid game, I hate how nonsensical the combat can be sometimes in regards to enemies weaknesses and resistances.

There's only seven types of damage in the game (one being physical, which only semi-counts) and two of them only come in the form of "insta-kill" moves (Light and Dark) which is very limiting as, unless a creature is specifically weak to Light or Dark, it's probably not gonna miss them, but if they are it's a guaranteed hit. Not super frustrating, but it with only five other damage types in the game is just feels dumb to restrict what little you have. I could understand if this was an older game or the first in the franchise, but this is the fourth (not counting the Tensei series) and Persona 3 had ten damage types, so it's wierd to see a game go backwards like that. I mean, I'm all for making combat less uneedly complex, but I was able to figure out the 16 different elemental types in Pokemon when I was a kid, 7/10 is nothing.

Oh wait, there's eight! I forgot Almighty damage which doesn't appear the elemental list because it's suppose to be the "consistant solid damage" element. As in nothing is resistant to it and nothing is weak to it, you use it and you're for certain to do at least some decent level of damage...except for things that randomly DO resist it because reasons!!! Also the damage calculations are weird on some monsters. How can a Knight only take, like, 40 damage from a Lightening attack that it's weak to, but then take 120 damage from and Ice attack that's neutral against it?

I mean, I'm enjoying Persona 4, but it's not hard to understand why people have grips about it's combat.

 

[Archeops]

Seeing as how the VG portion of the Pokémon IP was already discussed I’d like to bring up one form of bad game design that’s currently plaguing the TCG side of the franchise.

You see this shit right here? Right now Arceus & Dialga & Palkia GX, the card seen above, is basically running rampant in the competitive scene. It’s in large part due to its GX attack that, when its easily-filled secondary requirements are met, basically causes you or your opponent to win the game after knocking out 2-to-3 of their Pokémon. Historically speaking, the game has mostly required 3 or more Pokémon knock-outs to reach that stage.

As for the rising HP counts that Pokémon have been getting lately? Well...

...yeah, as you can see they don’t mean shit when you have a Pokémon that can easily get charged up by your next turn.

But you know what the REAL kicker is? Instead of banning Arceus & Dialga & Palika GX due to its game-breaking GX attack...

TPCi decided to make a fucking prebuilt deck based around common archetypes that can be found in the various league-stomping decks featuring it and Zacian V.

Thankfully Arceus & Dialga & Palkia GX is getting rotated out of the Standard format this August but it’s still surprising to see that Creatures Inc. would design a card like that in the first place.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

all of fallout 3's world, all of fallout new vegas' story, and all of the mapping in STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl. If you want i'll write a fucking essay on how much time and mental strength Fallout 3's stupid fucking blips have cost me.

Please do.

As for my own gripes, sections where an NPC is talking at me and I'm supposed to follow alongside, but their walking speed is faster than mine but slower than my running speed. You know goddamn well how fast my character moves, devs, make their speed match mine. Or better yet, make it a cutscene. It's not really more immersive when my character is lurching between two speeds like I'm learning to drive stick.

Tailing missions in GTA-style games. My target is apparently so paranoid they freak out at some random car pulling up behind them at a traffic light, but they don't notice the same car randomly stopping in the road 30 yards back. San Andreas has a particularly annoying mission like this about halfway through.

A gripe from a specific game, but I recently played through Saints Row the Third and enemies have an annoying habit of twitching out of you crosshairs at the exact moment you aim at their head, even if they're 100 yards away looking at someone else. When you have to take down five guys at once and every single one "just happens" to flinch just as I get a bead on their heads, it turns combat into a chore and punishes the player for valuing accuracy. To say nothing about that shitty zombie mission. Fuck that mission.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I really don't get the MMO RPG appeal, maybe it's just that I played the wrong ones, but I've seldom been so miserable as when I tried to play an MMO RPG with friends.
Namely Runes of Magic and Age of Conan. Path of Exile to a certain degree, too.

Runes of Magic: Terrible GUI, combat that is literaly just "click on enemy and then press puttons 1-10 in order over and over until the target dies". One of the most annoying things, you had a bag in your inventory that couldn't be dropped or sold, it contained a bunch of potions, some gems or whatever... and another bag that would unlock on the next level. Surely enough, it contained potions and stuff and another locked bag that would be unlocked when you reach the next level... and so on. That felt like the most desperate attempt to sucker people into the game, by showering them with a shitton of useless crap (I literally never used any of those potions and I couldn't even be bothered to look up what the other items do).
The quests were utterly terrible "Kill 10 wolves" and of course, they only stand around in groups of 4... anything with a "get X of Y" quest had this setup. Annoying as fuck and it's just broing busywork. Adding a layer of "walking in circles, hoping for a new group of Y to pop up" is mind numbingly boring.
A friend of mine obsessed over this game and spent days grinding stuff to unlock and upgrade a guild-hall, that literally no one from outside the guild could even see.

Age of Conan wasn't much better, the combat wasn't as terrible, but overall, it still had one of my MMO pet-peeves on full display: Enemies that just stand around in small flocks, waiting to be killed. Wouldn't even be that bad if their agro-range wasn't so comically small. There's just a bunch of barbarians standing around, with their thumbs up their ass, until you approach closer than 10 feet and they go into full rage mode. I like games for the immersion, and this breaks immersion immediately. Doesn't help that the quests are of the aforementioned "kill x amount of Y" types with "walking around until you find enough Y" shit.
I was outright miserable trying to find enjoyment in this game, hoping it'll become more fun at some point. But nope. Only played it like 3 days and the most fun I had was on the last day, when my friends and me did some quests together, after like the 2nd or so, I just stopped giving a fuck and went along with them without even taking the quests. At the end, I trolled them by shooting pillars that they needed to destroy and the game wouldn't recognize the quest as being finished if someone without the quest destroyed them, so they had to wait for them to respawn.

The only time I was equally miserable in a game was when we played Borderlands 2 (I think) in coop mode with 4 players. Every enemy was an absurdly hard to kill bullet-sponge, there was a shitton of loot getting dropped all over the place (and the "Oh look a better gun!" dopamine rush ends, when that shit happens every 5 seconds and the enemies still take a minute of concentrated fire by the entire party to die). FFS, I played that game for about 90 minutes and uninstalled it. The humor and constant QUIRKAAAAAY dialogue pissed me off, too.

Another pet-peeve that kills any interest, especially in FPS games: Pop-ups for XP, damage, hitpoints and so on. I think CoD does this, where you shoot a guy and your screen gets cluttered with popups announcing you shot some wanker in the dick for a tripple double extra XP boost for the next 25,3seconds or whatever the fuck that clusterfuck on the display is supposed to mean. I don't care if it's somewhere in the periphery, but when it pops up in the middle of the screen, it's just annoying as fuck. Doesn't help that the entire attitude towards gaming that this stands for is utterly toxic to me.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

View attachment 1838791

Speaking of Nuketown, COD:Warzone recently changed it's gulag to Nuketown, and it's fucking cancer. The map isn't designed for a fair 1v1, even without the backyard. One spawn places you behind the wooden sign post, and the other near the car. Depending on your weapon, it's an easy win. Snipers behind the sign get a free win because they don't have to move to get a pixel-peak headshot at the other player. LMG/Assault Rifle matches go to the player near the car because they can mount up on the car safely for cover and just mow down the other player. Alternatively, they can just shoot through the wooden sign for a wallbang.

All together, Cold War integration has been absolute ass, I hate it.

 

[ShortBusDriver]

Speaking of Nuketown, COD:Warzone recently changed it's gulag to Nuketown, and it's fucking cancer. The map isn't designed for a fair 1v1, even without the backyard. One spawn places you behind the wooden sign post, and the other near the car. Depending on your weapon, it's an easy win. Snipers behind the sign get a free win because they don't have to move to get a pixel-peak headshot at the other player. LMG/Assault Rifle matches go to the player near the car because they can mount up on the car safely for cover and just mow down the other player. Alternatively, they can just shoot through the wooden sign for a wallbang.

All together, Cold War integration has been absolute ass, I hate it.

Agree 100% if you're starting behind the wooden barrier it doesn't matter what you do if you the other guy has a sniper rifle you're going to get sniped.

Same with unarmed, due to the janky hit detection with melee whoever swings first is almost always going to win.

Gulag should be the shower and pistols, period.

 

[Calandrino]

Putting long readables in an action scene or action game.

Level grinding. It's padding of the worst sort. It could be removed from any game and you'd only gain.


Maybe it's because I'm a game dev, but there's two sighs of bad design that often go hand in hand for reasons that have more to do with development than design.

This won't go over well, but high difficulty. It's trivial to up stats on enemies, give the computer perfect knowledge, etc. I struggle to think of a game that had a tough-but-fair challenge. N+ and Geometry Wars are the only ones I name off the top of my head. This bad difficulty can come from anything from beginners traps, to buffed enemy stats. This seems to be done to pad the game, and avoid having to do the tricky task of balancing it. Plus it makes your game criticism proof as you can just say "git gud" to anyone who complains.

Randomised levels. Not bad on it's own, but as with high difficulty, it's mostly use as a crutch to pad the game. Designing levels is hard and time consuming. Spend a little extra time and you have a game you don't have to design levels for, and has infinite replay value. The only game I can think of that did randomisation well is Xcom 2. You can add randomised loot for the same reason. Borderlands doesn't feel like it has infinite guns, it feels like has about 10 with slight tweaks in numbers.

These two things often go together. So many potentially good games are ruined by this rogue-like trend, and to me it comes across as lazy more often than not. eg. Lobotomy Corporation was meant to be a SCP management game, but it's a rogue-like so you have to keep replaying the game over and over and over, slowly gaining in power and hoping for a good run. Everspace was well made, and could have been a fun space action game, but they put rogue-like elements in and ruined it.

Well, if you're a game dev I guess it makes sense that you would hate everything that brings me joy in video games and seek to destroy it, I do see a lot of that out there.

Randomization was an idea ahead of its time -- aside from Rogue, there were even Atari 2600 games with randomized levels. Unfortunately now that it's become a fad it does seem most devs have a better grasp on what it can do for their development cycle than what it can offer players. Usually there's some kind of metaprogression that persists after "permadeath" and the randomized elements are unbalanced, so it amounts to pulling the arm on a slot machine until you've unlocked enough crap for it to maybe let you win.

So while I'm autistic enough to play ASCII roguelikes, and I think randomization can offer a lot to action games, I do read "roguelike elements" as a red flag and probable generic indie game cancer until proven otherwise.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I think randomization can offer a lot to action games

Agreed. Payday 2 and Halo are examples of randomisation that offers decent replay value. It takes a few runs before you can figure out where the randomised spawns are. There is still some "pulling the lever" as you put it, but most of the time it adds enough to the game to extend the playtime and prevent spawn camping, while also allowing the designer to pace the levels properly. Left 4 Dead has a good system for item placement, though the lack of semi-fixed enemy spawns make most levels feel samey.

I like to play Resident Evil Randomizer every now and then. Though I do wish there was a way to weight the RNG to ammo instead of health because I tend to lack ammo but have a surplus of herbs. Road Redemption was also pretty good, though the randomised element didn't add much.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Final Fantasy 13-3: Don't make a 30 hour game timed and don't make it so events on it are limited to specific times. I don't know what bullshit the game will throw at me and the risk of replaying the game because I missed something is too big.

Roguelike with unbalanced randomized loot: I don't want to make my 30 minute run a glorified slot machine. Either give me a sure way of getting the good stuff or make it so that the player isn't gimped by bad rolls.

Almost every modern game: If you give me a gameplay scene with characters talking, make it so you can advance normally and not miss dialogue, rather than give me the choice of either playing and missing world building or just standing like a retard because walking one meter might cause an event to happen.

Falcom games: STOP WITH THE WIDE PANNING SHOTS. It takes forever and it's literally the only shot they have. Also don't make too many characters super powerful because then the question becomes why don't they solve all the problems.

A lot of jrpgs: Missable "hidden objectives". It's basically means for 100% completion you either use a guide or speak with literally every character in every scene. Also enemy variety today seems significantly worse than 20 years ago.

Huge budgeted video games or tiny indie games: Make mid budget games common again, because the other two universally suck balls.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

Don't know if it's been brought up and don't care to scan through the topic again, but Pokemon Black 2 being the only game with a) a Hard Mode and b) it being unlockable only after beating the game is bullshit. White 2, by the way, is possibly more aggressively stupid - an Easy Mode that, like Black 2's Hard Mode, is only available after you beat the game so what's even the fucking point?

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

This fucking yeti from Spyro: Year of the Dragon.



This boxing minigame is the most absurdly difficult segment in the entire Spyro trilogy and for all the wrong reasons. Firstly, Bentley's controls are delayed beyond belief; sometimes it will take a solid second before he actually throws a punch, or sometimes he won't do anything at all. Meanwhile, the yeti moves lightning fast, chains punches together, and can quickly change from blocking to punching, none of which you can do. Secondly, the hit detection is horrendous. Your punches will sometimes go straight through the yeti and not do any damage. Sometimes the yeti falls prey to the bad hit detection, but he punches so rapidly it doesn't matter.

Even worse is the fact that you have to beat him twice if you want to 100% the game. The second fight in particular is a pain in the ass because it goes for three rounds and the yeti has an insane amount of health. The only way to effectively beat the yeti is to cheese the fight by circling around him and throwing hooks at him. And it sucks because Year of the Dragon is so awesome otherwise, it's just this one bit that's outrageously bad.

 

[Dysnomia]

I really don't get the MMO RPG appeal, maybe it's just that I played the wrong ones, but I've seldom been so miserable as when I tried to play an MMO RPG with friends.
Namely Runes of Magic and Age of Conan. Path of Exile to a certain degree, too.

Runes of Magic: Terrible GUI, combat that is literaly just "click on enemy and then press puttons 1-10 in order over and over until the target dies". One of the most annoying things, you had a bag in your inventory that couldn't be dropped or sold, it contained a bunch of potions, some gems or whatever... and another bag that would unlock on the next level. Surely enough, it contained potions and stuff and another locked bag that would be unlocked when you reach the next level... and so on. That felt like the most desperate attempt to sucker people into the game, by showering them with a shitton of useless crap (I literally never used any of those potions and I couldn't even be bothered to look up what the other items do).
The quests were utterly terrible "Kill 10 wolves" and of course, they only stand around in groups of 4... anything with a "get X of Y" quest had this setup. Annoying as fuck and it's just broing busywork. Adding a layer of "walking in circles, hoping for a new group of Y to pop up" is mind numbingly boring.
A friend of mine obsessed over this game and spent days grinding stuff to unlock and upgrade a guild-hall, that literally no one from outside the guild could even see.

Age of Conan wasn't much better, the combat wasn't as terrible, but overall, it still had one of my MMO pet-peeves on full display: Enemies that just stand around in small flocks, waiting to be killed. Wouldn't even be that bad if their agro-range wasn't so comically small. There's just a bunch of barbarians standing around, with their thumbs up their ass, until you approach closer than 10 feet and they go into full rage mode. I like games for the immersion, and this breaks immersion immediately. Doesn't help that the quests are of the aforementioned "kill x amount of Y" types with "walking around until you find enough Y" shit.
I was outright miserable trying to find enjoyment in this game, hoping it'll become more fun at some point. But nope. Only played it like 3 days and the most fun I had was on the last day, when my friends and me did some quests together, after like the 2nd or so, I just stopped giving a fuck and went along with them without even taking the quests. At the end, I trolled them by shooting pillars that they needed to destroy and the game wouldn't recognize the quest as being finished if someone without the quest destroyed them, so they had to wait for them to respawn.

The only time I was equally miserable in a game was when we played Borderlands 2 (I think) in coop mode with 4 players. Every enemy was an absurdly hard to kill bullet-sponge, there was a shitton of loot getting dropped all over the place (and the "Oh look a better gun!" dopamine rush ends, when that shit happens every 5 seconds and the enemies still take a minute of concentrated fire by the entire party to die). FFS, I played that game for about 90 minutes and uninstalled it. The humor and constant QUIRKAAAAAY dialogue pissed me off, too.

Another pet-peeve that kills any interest, especially in FPS games: Pop-ups for XP, damage, hitpoints and so on. I think CoD does this, where you shoot a guy and your screen gets cluttered with popups announcing you shot some wanker in the dick for a tripple double extra XP boost for the next 25,3seconds or whatever the fuck that clusterfuck on the display is supposed to mean. I don't care if it's somewhere in the periphery, but when it pops up in the middle of the screen, it's just annoying as fuck. Doesn't help that the entire attitude towards gaming that this stands for is utterly toxic to me.

I played Maple Story years ago during the beta and a few years beyond that. It was pretty fun early on. But when it became corroded with spammers and morons who would ask you to train them then go idle while you did all the work... Forget it.

It was fun to talk to people and do quests back when it started. I assume now it's even worse than I remember when I quit playing. They had to alter a bunch of grinding spots to deter bots. But it didn't work out as well as they thought.

I'm just not into MMOs for a lot of the reasons you describe. I think "kill x amount of this and get x amount of that" quests are just easy to program with no thought so they end up being too numerous.