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

[Jerri's Kid]

I wanted to play The Witcher games in order, but I can't stand the jank of the first game. In particular, the first major boss you come across has this one long and unskippable cutscene you have to sit through every time you die unless you are quick and manage to save as it's rushing at you. There's also an NPC you want to protect during this fight so that makes this even more annoying. Also, the difficulty increase is rather steep even if you come prepared when compared to the other things you fought before and though I eventually beat the boss it made me not want to play the game anymore.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I wanted to play The Witcher games in order, but I can't stand the jank of the first game. In particular, the first major boss you come across has this one long and unskippable cutscene you have to sit through every time you die unless you are quick and manage to save as it's rushing at you. There's also an NPC you want to protect during this fight so that makes this even more annoying. Also, the difficulty increase is rather steep even if you come prepared when compared to the other things you fought before and though I eventually beat the boss it made me not want to play the game anymore.

There's a really easy way to cheese it by casting Aard, and if you're lucky you can stun the boss and perform an insta-kill attack on it. Of course, this is still really bullshit because if you're a first time player you might not have raised Aard by enough to effectively down the boss and this is all assuming you manage to pull it off without a hitch.

I like the first game, but that part right there is easily the worst part of the entire game.

 

[Jerri's Kid]

There's a really easy way to cheese it by casting Aard, and if you're lucky you can stun the boss and perform an insta-kill attack on it. Of course, this is still really bullshit because if you're a first time player you might not have raised Aard by enough to effectively down the boss and this is all assuming you manage to pull it off without a hitch.

I like the first game, but that part right there is easily the worst part of the entire game.

I don't remember if I raised Aard enough when I tried it, but yeah the game got better after this part. I'm planning to give it another shot this year because the lore is pretty good.

 

[Radola Gajda]

Knights of the Old Republic 2.
"Tutorial"
Someone thought game that is at its best when you interact and go on adventure with interesting characters needed 3-4 hours long first area on space mining station where everyone is dead , outside of killer robots.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Knights of the Old Republic 2.
"Tutorial"
Someone thought game that is at its best when you interact and go on adventure with interesting characters needed 3-4 hours long first area on space mining station where everyone is dead , outside of killer robots.

I don't know about bad per se since Peragus was about setting the atmosphere and tone of the game. The side effect of the murder mystery element of that part is that it also has to be slow, which can be interpreted as boring.

What DOES suck in KOTOR 2 is being on the planet Telos. The party is heavily restricted and you absolutely need a tank, but the party members allowed are not tanky. Most of the planet is open fields with heavily armed merc groups or tight, enclosed corridors to fight robots. Which leads me to Bao-dur's function on Telos.

1. He's a tech specialist that focuses on melee combat. What? He doesn't have the vitality necessary to function as a tank, he can't wear heavy armor, and has no points in dexterity so he's mediocre at range. His remote is useless because it can heal droids, but you're not allowed droids in the party yet, so you can't turn T3 into a ranged tank yet.
2. The level design of Telos does not play to Bao-dur's strengths, his near godly skill pool. He caps every skill BUT stealth, which is what he needs to recover mines without getting shot by turrets or droids. Even then, mine use is limited to animals since the merc groups have blasters and thus, aren't baited into walking into mines. Terminals in the base are about midway through and he can't use Computer Use or Repair to manipulate droids and conduits like you would with T3-M4. The only thing he can do is punch shield walls.
3. In the story, he's cited as an incredible asset and technical genius, but on Telos, he can only show you where the Telos Academy is based on a strange power fluctuation in the polar region. He supposedly messes with Czerka whenever he gets the chance before he joins your party, but how does he do that? It's not like he fucks around with the shield network and traps mercs in inhospitable regions or constantly reprograms droids or turrets.

So, Bao-dur is a big brained character who should dominate since he knows the area best, but he can't take advantage of his skills when the game forces you to use him.

 

[Absolute Brainlet]

Most roguelike games with roster management have nothing to attach you to characters and a linear story. Darkest Dungeon is the easiest example of this to point out, there's no difference between characters and little creativity to the gameplay. The games would be much bigger if you just implemented a stat range for characters, and some sort of branching paths.

Confirmed for having never played Darkest Dungeon. Holy shit, what an abysmal take.

On-topic:
The Cellphone in Terraria.

This item is the combination of every informational accessory in the game, so as you can imagine, it's gonna take a fair bit of grinding to get it.

Now, you might say "But wait just a second, Mr. Brainlet sir! Isn't the Cellphone an optional item? Surely the player must go to great lengths to make it, if they have to go out of their way for it?"
And to that I say – no, you misguided soul, it is not at all optional. You wanna know the current moon phase? Wanna know if there's some kind of rare enemy around? Wanna know if there's a chest or Life Fruit nearby?
What's that? You also don't want to lug around all of the Cellphone's components and have them take up much-needed inventory space? Well, you better get to making the fucking thing, bucko! I just hope you don't mind grinding the fucking Angler's quests (which you can only do one per day of) just to get the three things you need for the Fish Finder, which is part of the Cellphone!

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

I was playing magical quest 3 on snes emulator because I'm a manchild and theres a part in the underwater level where your in a cave under the sea. Theres blocks you need to jump on to progress but if you accidentally hit them theres a chain reaction that destroys them all making it impossible to continue with the level.

The only way to fix this is to kill mickey or donald by drowning them in the pools in the lower levels or keep getting hit by enemies. Dying doesnt reset the level so you needto keep killing yourself until you run out of lives and go to the continue screen.

 

[ditto]

The Cellphone in Terraria.

Terraria has been on my to-play list for years. But everytime I load it up the dread of the grind hits me within a few minutes.

 

[Raiken]

Resident Evil 8 reminded me of a pretty common bad design - Upgradable weapons that are outclassed in every way by new weapons you'll pick up during the game.
The problem here is that there is no reason to use the upgrade system, since you're throwing money/resources away into something that might become worthless in the next five minutes.

If you go by raw power, yes.
But the guns have others stats for what you prefer for your playstyle.

 

[Shining Wit]

The Fiends in SMT4 are dumb as hell.
In Nocturne, they were semi-optional bosses (Matador and Dante were required, but if you didnt fight Daisoujou, then you wouldnt encounter Hell Biker and so on)
In 4 there's one associated with a relatively early Challenge Quest (David) who was a nice surprise but the others are endgame superbosses with a 1/256 chance of spawning in specific locations (with the game notifying you if one is present). Sure, that's how it works in the first two games too, but those are from the 90's and not the 2010's like this game, shit like that shouldn't fly
At least they're sorted in Apocalypse, if only with a different restriction for the purpose of them being the superbosses

 

[The Last Stand]

Bosses that regenerate health. Quit prolonging the fight with cheap mechanics.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

If you go by raw power, yes.
But the guns have others stats for what you prefer for your playstyle.

I couldn't really see any reason to use the older weapons but I may just not noticed. Still correct in a lot of RPGs though (like FF13 I think).

Bosses that regenerate health. Quit prolonging the fight with cheap mechanics.

In general the worst is having bosses that have unbalanced rng dependent moveset. So you are a few bad rolls away from a wipe.

 

[FaramirG]

Knights of the Old Republic 2.
"Tutorial"
Someone thought game that is at its best when you interact and go on adventure with interesting characters needed 3-4 hours long first area on space mining station where everyone is dead , outside of killer robots.

There's a reason one of the most popular mods for KOTOR 2 just lets you skip that entire area.

 

[Considered HARMful]

Terraria has been on my to-play list for years. But everytime I load it up the dread of the grind hits me within a few minutes.

TBH it's not that bad. There's plenty to do in Terraria so that the time passes along for the angler's quests to respawn.

 

[KingofNothing]

Confirmed for having never played Darkest Dungeon. Holy shit, what an abysmal take.

On-topic:
The Cellphone in Terraria.
View attachment 2183120
This item is the combination of every informational accessory in the game, so as you can imagine, it's gonna take a fair bit of grinding to get it.

Now, you might say "But wait just a second, Mr. Brainlet sir! Isn't the Cellphone an optional item? Surely the player must go to great lengths to make it, if they have to go out of their way for it?"
And to that I say – no, you misguided soul, it is not at all optional. You wanna know the current moon phase? Wanna know if there's some kind of rare enemy around? Wanna know if there's a chest or Life Fruit nearby?
What's that? You also don't want to lug around all of the Cellphone's components and have them take up much-needed inventory space? Well, you better get to making the fucking thing, bucko! I just hope you don't mind grinding the fucking Angler's quests (which you can only do one per day of) just to get the three things you need for the Fish Finder, which is part of the Cellphone!

I don't remember if I just did it for the sake of the achievement, but you can create multiple worlds, beeline to the Angler and farm the quest rewards that way if you really want to increase your odds. Still kinda annoying if the RNG gods hate you, but it can be a timesaver.

Terraria has been on my to-play list for years. But everytime I load it up the dread of the grind hits me within a few minutes.

I definitely recommend you give it a go. One of the best 10 bucks I've spent on a game. It has a ridiculous amount of content for something so cheap

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

Bosses that regenerate health. Quit prolonging the fight with cheap mechanics.

Or forcing players to do a specific mechanic to finish the fight or else the boss gets back full health and you have to guess again. Bonus points if it's a long and/or hard fight.

I couldn't really see any reason to use the older weapons but I may just not noticed. Still correct in a lot of RPGs though (like FF13 I think).

Oh jesus I forgot about the weapons in FF13. Fucking hell that upgrade system is worthless. Each character has access to ~6 weapons each, each can be upgraded from lvl 1 to lvl 100, and during that leveling process weapons can evolve to better weapons. There are issues with this.

First up, you have 0 indication on if a weapon will evolve into an actually good weapon until it's level 100 (or you look up a guide telling you what weapons to upgrade). Instantly you're incentivized to either upgrade everything, or wait until you have all weapons to upgrade anything. Neither case is a good idea.

Next up is the upgrade process. You don't get EXP onto the weapon from using it, you get EXP by sacrificing materials to it. You wont have access to anything good to sacrifice until end game, so you're either grinding a shit ton to get shit materials to sacrifice, or you're using under powered weapons until the endgame to upgrade them.

Finally, upgrading is fucking expensive. The best weapon to upgrade your weapons is to drop a metric fuck ton of money at the shop to get the most efficient materials to sacrifice. The whole goddamn game grinds to a halt while you farm up as much money as you can to get materials to make your weapons less shit.

Save yourself the headache, go look up a guide and upgrade shit once you get to chapter 11. Or go play a better game.

 

[JektheDumbass]

Or forcing players to do a specific mechanic to finish the fight or else the boss gets back full health and you have to guess again. Bonus points if it's a long and/or hard fight.

Oh jesus I forgot about the weapons in FF13. Fucking hell that upgrade system is worthless. Each character has access to ~6 weapons each, each can be upgraded from lvl 1 to lvl 100, and during that leveling process weapons can evolve to better weapons. There are issues with this.

First up, you have 0 indication on if a weapon will evolve into an actually good weapon until it's level 100 (or you look up a guide telling you what weapons to upgrade). Instantly you're incentivized to either upgrade everything, or wait until you have all weapons to upgrade anything. Neither case is a good idea.

Next up is the upgrade process. You don't get EXP onto the weapon from using it, you get EXP by sacrificing materials to it. You wont have access to anything good to sacrifice until end game, so you're either grinding a shit ton to get shit materials to sacrifice, or you're using under powered weapons until the endgame to upgrade them.

Finally, upgrading is fucking expensive. The best weapon to upgrade your weapons is to drop a metric fuck ton of money at the shop to get the most efficient materials to sacrifice. The whole goddamn game grinds to a halt while you farm up as much money as you can to get materials to make your weapons less shit.

Save yourself the headache, go look up a guide and upgrade shit once you get to chapter 11. Or go play a better game.

It wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't jew you with the cash drops. You literally don't have a way to farm gil at all until about 1/3 of the way through the game (during a very small sliver of gameplay you normally wouldn't think to grind in) and if I recall correctly your next chance to do so is right at the last 3/4 of the game (again, for a short time), then your next chance is the giant turtle enemies or the last dungeon. Normal drops typically sell for almost nothing so good luck with that.

 

[The Last Stand]

Games that artificially extend the playtime through grinding, activities or collections.

 

[ZMOT]

Games that artificially extend the playtime through grinding, activities or collections.

it's ok if it's lore stuff, people don't care about it can easily skip it.

 

[bigoogabaloogas]

Those who played Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time know the pain of trying to get a single Philosopher's Stone, which you won't even know how to get unless you're extremely lucky or read a guide on the internet.