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

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Small other thing kind of related, but early on the story has an NPC ask you to join their resistance. It's even written in a way where refusing just re-prompts you giving you the impression you can't turn them down, but after 3 requests its finalized that you won't join them. Ultimately, nothing about the plot changes from this, but the game will reward you with a great accessory for joining them, but only if you refuse them a couple of times first.

In a completely different game, FFXII, the strongest weapon in the game is hidden in a chest in a late game dungeon. The devs thought it'd be a great idea to make it so 4 completely random and arbitrary chests spread out throughout the entire fucking game replaces the strongest weapon with trash should you open them.

What the fuck is up with Square-Enix just shitting on people that didn't buy the strategy guide?

A separate but similar question to the thread title is "What is the dumbest idea you've encountered in an otherwise good game" but couldn't really come up with anything off the top of my head. Not getting the strongest weapon in FF12 won't make the game worse but the chest thing is such spectacularly shit idea, such a tiny detail that is so dumb yet someone put it in there.
Dodging lightning in FFX was dull but someone thought it would be a good addition to the game.

In FF6 I got Shadow off the floating continent on my first playthrough. The game giving me the option to wait made me suspicious, so I waited. Never thought of it as bad game design, I actually really like it.

 

[Cyclonus]

In Super Mario Odyssey you fight a giant bird over a giant pot of stew. So of course the bird attacks by vomiting on you and into the stew. And then when you beat him everyone is grateful and they all start serving out the delicious stew. I don't know if it counts as bad game design, but it made me gag.

 

[Furret]

In Super Mario Odyssey you fight a giant bird over a giant pot of stew. So of course the bird attacks by vomiting on you and into the stew. And then when you beat him everyone is grateful and they all start serving out the delicious stew. I don't know if it counts as bad game design, but it made me gag.

Gotta love video game logic, where vomit vanishes after five seconds and it's like it was never there at all.

 

[An Ghost]

The only thing I don't get is why it took them so long to do that.

Pokemon is worse than call of duty in their iterations of "if it aint broke dont fix it" games. Even worse is the fun things you enjoy that they remove like calling and rebattling gym leaders in HGSS.
I tried playing emerald again recently but forgot it was pre special/physical split which really fucked with me for some reason. Maybe i didnt care as a kid but i dont remember it being so infuriatingly dumb to make "fire kick" absolute shit on pokemon whose sole existence is kicking.

More nitpickingly, aggron (steel/rock) is a solid pick for his typing doesnt actually learn any rock moves through leveling. He can learn rock slide... for 64 bp in the battle frontier.

 

[Fields Of Rye]

One of the Hansome Jackhammer's (talking gun possessed by Jack in Borderlands3) lines is "Hey kiddo I'll pay you to take me to a Renew U station so we can digistruct me a new body." Making this even more confusing.

Which is weird because Maya dies in Borderlands3 and she is in the renew u system in Borderlands2.

Let's just say Borderlands writing sucks ass and is inconsistent.

Pretty sure Maya PM'ed the Wincest Twins something akin to

"Holy fuck I'm trapped on a space ship designed by M C Escher and listening to an Emo lesbian Blue haired feminist bitch about someone named Private Bean and fellatiate Clap Trap while watching all my friends either appear for 7 seconds in a cameo or be killed in the Tale From series no one fucking played, and my only DLC options seem to be about homophobic ghosts or a shittier version of the claptastic Voyage. Can you do me a solid and help me fake my death?"

Before promptly bouncing out of the series forever.

Christ. BL1 I played Roland. BL2 I played Maya. BLS I played The sheriff. I played the Mech Lady in BL3. My condolences to their family.

Oh yeah this thread is about shitty game design.

How is it that a game about shooting and loot doesn't let you shoot OR loot for most of it's opening sequence. In BL2 you have claptrap at the beginning. but basically as soon as you hit liars burg, as long as you aren't in sanctuary, dialogue is at most, done like the fire hawk quest.

In BL3 you have multiple, repetitive, false starts where it gives you a gun, and lets you walk 6 feet before WOAH YOU FOUND A BANDIT LEADER BUT REDDITOR! XD and the dialogue starts.

 

[Gargoyle]

I really hate it when I'm not able to solo group missions in MMOs. And I'm not talking about difficulty here - in fact, the challenge is the main reason people solo them. I'm talking about some bullshit reason when you physically need a group because you can't advance otherwise. I also have to mention that forcing people into a certain playstyle makes them not want to play and in my experience people just tend to avoid group missions altogether in games that offer both group and solo ones.

I'm going to use SWTOR as an example since it's the worst offender out of all MMOs I played. SWTOR used to have A LOT of these - fortunately, some of them have been fixed but not all. To me, the most egregious example of this is the final mission of the Microbinoculars quest chain that would be perfectly soloable if it wasn't for the fact that at the beginning you have to destroy 4 panels simultaneously. I'd heard some people have had this mission since like 2013 and they still haven't done it because no one wants to do this shit. I have had it since 2015 and I still can't be bothered. All the previous quests in the chain are soloable, why make the last one an exception? There is another very similar Dreadseed quest chain that has been added at the same time and significantly more people have done it since the final mission, although pretty challenging, is soloable.

There also used to be that one mission that was required to complete dailies in Section X. I have a personal grudge against it because I tried to solo it and it turned out that at the very end - after defeating the final fucking boss - you had to press two buttons simultaneously to complete it. They eventually removed this requirement because literally nobody wanted to do this quest, it just wasn't worth the hassle of looking for a group. I've done it with a group maybe like 2 times in my 8 years of playing.

I just don't understand why the fuck would you implement something like this. It doesn't improve the experience and doesn't add to the story. It just limits the players' freedom. Completing a challenging guest is fun, why are you cockblocking me, Bioware?

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

A separate but similar question to the thread title is "What is the dumbest idea you've encountered in an otherwise good game" but couldn't really come up with anything off the top of my head. Not getting the strongest weapon in FF12 won't make the game worse but the chest thing is such spectacularly shit idea, such a tiny detail that is so dumb yet someone put it in there.
Dodging lightning in FFX was dull but someone thought it would be a good addition to the game.

In FF6 I got Shadow off the floating continent on my first playthrough. The game giving me the option to wait made me suspicious, so I waited. Never thought of it as bad game design, I actually really like it.

FF games are full of that shit. FF1 decided to hide a super boss as a random encounter on 1 screen of the game just to fuck with players. FF12 had a boss that takes literal hours to kill because fuck you.

More nitpickingly, aggron (steel/rock) is a solid pick for his typing doesnt actually learn any rock moves through leveling. He can learn rock slide... for 64 bp in the battle frontier.

They did my boi Aggron dirty. For the longest time I would throw him out against electric types thinking they couldn't hurt him only to remember he's rock and not ground.

 

[biozeminadae1]

Modern first person shooter map/level design. CoD especially has had extremely boring, three lane maps with low elevation for a while now. Black ops 1 has amazing maps with interactive elements, like the elevator in the Pentagon zombie map. Zombies in general had a lot of bitching maps and you could choose where to go and what to do.

Remember Halo Combat Evolved? Big maps, tons of flanking routes, the second mission in particular is great. Compare it with CoD advanced warfare. Only one fun mission where you could use the advanced tech as you wish. I don't really play fps games anymore because of this.

The first mission of Halo is a corridor level after corridor level. The mission "The Library" is one long corridor after another long corridor. The mission "The Maw" is the first mission. Combat Evolved had some good parts, but it had a lot of shitty ones as well. I mean, the level design at one point got so bad they had to rely on arrows pointing you to the correct path.

Smaug's Smokey Hole said:
Doom 3. Gun, flashlight, choose one. That game was DARK and remember the rich, deep blacks of a CRT and the shiny glass that made things even harder to see even when they were lit? In some areas of the game it felt like playing Ray Charles on a shooting spree.
View attachment 1827566
Imagine getting rid of the flashlight so you can blast that guy.

No flashlight.
View attachment 1827567

I understand Id's intent but jesus christ it did not work.



That's Oni in a nutshell. I had one autosave mid flying kick through a door way, had no health, the boss punches in the air and I die. Autosave loads flying into the room, punched in the air, dead, reload, dead, reload. It was funny in a way. Then Bungie announced that the autosave team from Oni had joined the Halo team and I guess they learned that having regenerating shields would be a good idea. And no quicksaves while in combat.

It only didn't work, because the main weapon - the shotgun, sucked arse unless you configured it yourself in the game's files. Otherwise, the flashlight wasn't really a nuisance or a hindrance, since the battle space was small most of the time and it was well lit when you had to fight in larger arenas.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

It only didn't work, because the main weapon - the shotgun, sucked arse unless you configured it yourself in the game's files. Otherwise, the flashlight wasn't really a nuisance or a hindrance, since the battle space was small most of the time and it was well lit when you had to fight in larger arenas.

Doom 3's shotgun was complete BS. People defend it by saying it's supposed to be used at point blank range, except the problem is that's not a guaranteed kill against an imp, so if the rng isn't in you favour you're going to take a hit in return, which in turn knocks your aim off.

 

[biozeminadae1]

Doom 3's shotgun was complete BS. People defend it by saying it's supposed to be used at point blank range, except the problem is that's not a guaranteed kill against an imp, so if the rng isn't in you favour you're going to take a hit in return, which in turn knocks your aim off.

Absolutely. The best gun, ironically is the smg, due to its stun, accuracy and large magazine. The problem is that there isn't enough ammo for it, because the game was designed with the shotgun as the main gun. How could they balance it so poorly?

Even if you attack an imp with the end of the shotgun at its FACE you can still fucking MISS!!!!!! Wtf

 

[Ruin]

Well the game design in Fallout The Frontier was so bad it nuked the entire game does that count?

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

In Super Mario Odyssey you fight a giant bird over a giant pot of stew. So of course the bird attacks by vomiting on you and into the stew. And then when you beat him everyone is grateful and they all start serving out the delicious stew. I don't know if it counts as bad game design, but it made me gag.

One of the things that really bothered me about Odyssey is that there's like three separate instances of bosses vomiting being used as a game mechanic. I can't remember the others offhand but it felt like a fetish. (eta: one of the reoccuring rabbit minibosses was another with its puke tornado)

On a similar note, the reason I will never ever replay Mario Sunshine : the blue coin stars are easily the worst thing in any 3D Mario. 30 invisible collectibles scattered across each map where each map can be entered in one of 7 configurations where some coins are only accessible in one specific given configuration, plus no bookkeeping of which coins you have beyond a count out of 30. Even DK64's endless collectibles were more manageable, SMS is just frustrating.

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

Pokemon is worse than call of duty in their iterations of "if it aint broke dont fix it" games. Even worse is the fun things you enjoy that they remove like calling and rebattling gym leaders in HGSS.
I tried playing emerald again recently but forgot it was pre special/physical split which really fucked with me for some reason. Maybe i didnt care as a kid but i dont remember it being so infuriatingly dumb to make "fire kick" absolute shit on pokemon whose sole existence is kicking.

More nitpickingly, aggron (steel/rock) is a solid pick for his typing doesnt actually learn any rock moves through leveling. He can learn rock slide... for 64 bp in the battle frontier.

I don’t understand your complaint about Blaze Kick, Blaziken’s Special Attack is almost as good as its Attack. Shouldn’t be a problem unless you use Swords Dance.
As for your Aggron complaint, Pinsir didn’t get a same type attack bonus move besides Hidden Power Bug until GEN FOUR.

The first mission of Halo is a corridor level after corridor level. The mission "The Library" is one long corridor after another long corridor. The mission "The Maw" is the first mission. Combat Evolved had some good parts, but it had a lot of shitty ones as well. I mean, the level design at one point got so bad they had to rely on arrows pointing you to the correct path.


It only didn't work, because the main weapon - the shotgun, sucked arse unless you configured it yourself in the game's files. Otherwise, the flashlight wasn't really a nuisance or a hindrance, since the battle space was small most of the time and it was well lit when you had to fight in larger arenas.

It’s ridiculous how much reused level design Halo: CE has despite being on a disc. Definitely a rushed game.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

Absolutely. The best gun, ironically is the smg, due to its stun, accuracy and large magazine. The problem is that there isn't enough ammo for it, because the game was designed with the shotgun as the main gun. How could they balance it so poorly?

Even if you attack an imp with the end of the shotgun at its FACE you can still fucking MISS!!!!!! Wtf

The Grabber in Resurrection of Evil was possibly the most useless weapon ever put into an FPS - stand still waiting for the enemy to fire, try and catch an arching projectile, have your screen distort whilst you hold it, throw it back and miss, realise you could have emptied an entire clip into them in that time. That said, the double barrel was an absolute beast.

 

[biozeminadae1]

It’s ridiculous how much reused level design Halo: CE has despite being on a disc. Definitely a rushed game.

The second half of "Truth and Reconciliation" is mirrored, or copied, in "Keyes", as well. Also, the snow level is used twice.

Game was famously redesigned three times, because of Bungie's bad business practices. First it was going to be an RTS, then it was going to be a TPS for MAC, then they sold out to Microsoft and they asked Bungie to make a game for XBOX, giving them six months of development time.

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

One of the things that really bothered me about Odyssey is that there's like three separate instances of bosses vomiting being used as a game mechanic. I can't remember the others offhand but it felt like a fetish. (eta: one of the reoccuring rabbit minibosses was another with its puke tornado)

On a similar note, the reason I will never ever replay Mario Sunshine : the blue coin stars are easily the worst thing in any 3D Mario. 30 invisible collectibles scattered across each map where each map can be entered in one of 7 configurations where some coins are only accessible in one specific given configuration, plus no bookkeeping of which coins you have beyond a count out of 30. Even DK64's endless collectibles were more manageable, SMS is just frustrating.

Pretty sure there’s only 2 vomiting bosses in Odyssey. There’s more vomit in Sunshine between Yoshi’s juice and every Piranha Plant throwing up goop. Also, more than half of the blue coins in Sunshine are obvious (plain sight, clean graffiti, help a Pianta).

 

[MysticMisty]

Also, more than half of the blue coins in Sunshine are obvious (plain sight, clean graffiti, help a Pianta).

And there's only a few that are episode specific. And they're mainly the Yoshi ones, which are also pretty obvious (blue butterflies, those weird wall enemies, and below a yellow barrier). You have to be adverse to exploring to miss the majority of the blue coins. And it's not like the areas are featureless voids like most of Super Mario 64 was. There are NPCs with episode specific dialog and locations, and obstacles.

 

[Quintex96]

The second half of "Truth and Reconciliation" is mirrored, or copied, in "Keyes", as well. Also, the snow level is used twice.

Game was famously redesigned three times, because of Bungie's bad business practices. First it was going to be an RTS, then it was going to be a TPS for MAC, then they sold out to Microsoft and they asked Bungie to make a game for XBOX, giving them six months of development time.

Reusing levels is a series staple at this point. Every Halo game does it.

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

Reusing levels is a series staple at this point. Every Halo game does it.

Aside from multiplayer levels, when does this happen in future Halo games? I didn’t notice any repetitive campaign missions in the other games.

 

[Dark Edea]

Oh I have one. Maybe two.

That time they turned a fun Star Fox game into a shitty dinosaur game.

And that time they turned a fun dinosaur game into a shitty Star Fox game.

I AM REBORN. THE MIGHTY KRAZOA GOD.