Pet Peeves with Games?
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
Menu -> Exit Game -> Yes
Scroll Down - > Exit Game -> Yes
Scroll Down -> Exit to Desktop -> Yes
Exit Launcher -> Yes
Jackbox is one of the worst offenders of this. Have to exit 4 times to actually exit the game.
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Hmm… I think for action games it's somewhat of a necessity because there are so many actions the character can take at any given point, so you kinda need to utilize every clickable button.
That said, I agree it never feels great. No matter how good the controller is, it always somehow feels wobbly, specifically after long-term use.
I guess it would depend on the game, but I rarely play games where those are necessary.
I mean, we've reached a state where controllers have more or less been standardized as 2 sticks, 4 face buttons, 2 shoulder buttons, 2 triggers, usually 2 small buttons used for menus/map. Plus 4 directions on the D-Pad, if it's not used for movement. That's a lot already.
That said, every once in a while I do get a game in which they go absolutely crazy on stick press commands. No man's sky use them all the time, including a baffling right stick press to sprint.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
I really hate the trope of having a mission around the 50-75% mark where you are stripped of all your gear and unlocked abilities. I know it must be popular because it keeps popping up in games but I just don't enjoy it personally.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
Single saves. Me and husband have one computer (we're broke?) and too many games have a single save. So we can't play that game trading off cause there's only one save. Like Baldur's Gate 3? Amazing. Billion saves, hell a billion for each character even. Heaven's Vault? Wild Bastards? One save. Guh.
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I guess it would depend on the game, but I rarely play games where those are necessary.
I mean, we've reached a state where controllers have more or less been standardized as 2 sticks, 4 face buttons, 2 shoulder buttons, 2 triggers, usually 2 small buttons used for menus/map. Plus 4 directions on the D-Pad, if it's not used for movement. That's a lot already.
That said, every once in a while I do get a game in which they go absolutely crazy on stick press commands. No man's sky use them all the time, including a baffling right stick press to sprint.
To clarify: by action games I'm specifically talking about Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, The Wonderful 101… etc. Among basic movement, combat mechanics, and weapon switching, they typically eat up the entire controller layout.
I don't imagine Persona, for example, having any strong reason to utilize the sticks like that. Not sure why No Man's Sky did that either; I haven't played it, but it doesn't look like a high-octane game.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
Soloable games that are balanced for multiplayer. It almost always means that basic tasks take ten to a hundred times the resources they should, and arbitrary timers are added to crafting and upgrading to slow down progression.
It's the bane of survival crafting games especially.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
It's rare, but putting cooldowns on basic moves.
I've been playing V Rising lately and it does this weird thing where dodging and blocking are equippable spells with (usually) 8-second cooldowns. In return they also get powerful side effects, but I'd rather have a normal dodge or block button I can use at will than have them relegated to yet another move I use whenever I notice the cooldown has expired.
It doesn't help that your basic movement speed is glacial. Winning boss fights come down more to your character's stats than actual player skill since you can only dodge a few times a minute and bosses love throwing out a half dozen AOEs every few seconds, turning them into DPS races.
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- Games that offer stealth as an option over combat, but have mandatory combat bosses.
- games that have excessive grinding as part of the main gameplay.
- Games where randomness is the primary factor in winning and losing.
I hate RNG so much
I don't get it. Life has too much RNG, I play video games because it's a predominantly skill-based controlled environment.It's like picking up a piano and there's a 35% chance F# is just F every time you play the damn note
I guess it makes sense if you're role playing and want your experience to mimic real life, which is why they're mostly used in RPGs, but I also feel so immersed playing skill-based games without RNG, so I can't assess its actual value.
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Single saves. Me and husband have one computer (we're broke?) and too many games have a single save. So we can't play that game trading off cause there's only one save. Like Baldur's Gate 3? Amazing. Billion saves, hell a billion for each character even. Heaven's Vault? Wild Bastards? One save. Guh.
Hey have you tried Steam Family or whatever it's called? You can make a new user and they have access to all of your game library. Only one account would be able to play at a time but it would solve your save file dilemma - games files are in the common folder but save files are in the user folder
[EDIT] Steam Families
When you join a Steam Family, you automatically gain access to the shareable games that your family members own and they will also be able to access the shareable titles in your library. [...]
Best of all, when you are playing a game from your family library, you will create your own saved games, earn your own Steam achievements, have access to workshop files and more.
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I have many pet peeves when it comes to games, but the biggest that I can think of off the top of my head is the boss fights in games that don't let you use the weapons & skills/techniques that you'd used to get to that point. It just pisses me off when they let you develop a character with particular skills and weapons only to force a particular combat style that's contrary to what you'd used up till that point.
Holy shit, action games and giant bosses you can't juggle… I love Bayonetta, but goddamn… Jeanne aside, some of the worst bosses in the genre.
Assault Spy was awesome for letting you juggle literally every boss in the game.
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Unpausable and unskippable cutscenes
God, yes… it's literally an interactive medium… like, I AM the story, motherfuckers
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Hey have you tried Steam Family or whatever it's called? You can make a new user and they have access to all of your game library. Only one account would be able to play at a time but it would solve your save file dilemma - games files are in the common folder but save files are in the user folder
[EDIT] Steam Families
When you join a Steam Family, you automatically gain access to the shareable games that your family members own and they will also be able to access the shareable titles in your library. [...]
Best of all, when you are playing a game from your family library, you will create your own saved games, earn your own Steam achievements, have access to workshop files and more.
Since they just have the one pc, they should be able to just make a second user on the pc then sign in to the single steam account. The new user won’t have any save files in the local user directories, so the game gets launched and you’ll only see the “second” set of saves. No idea how this would work with cloud saves on the steam side though.
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Games that jump straight into things without letting me see the options menu first.
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Not having the Playstation icons as a preset when I want to use my PS4 controller on PC.
I had to force the PS5 glyphs by creating a Game.ini file and inserting the appropriate lines to get the ps instead of Xbox button glyphs for my ds4 in Clair obscur the other day. It was definitely annoying.
Thanks to searching for a solution to that I found a mod to remove the abysmal sharpening, uncap cutscene frame rate, and remove pillar boxes on my 21:9 display though, so it all worked out.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
I really don't like when games intermix tutorial with story. Unless the story is the main attraction, I cannot get myself to care for it. And then having to click through tons of story texts to pick out the tutorial parts, that is just cumbersome.
I also have to say, though, that it really doesn't help my immersion when the fairy, that just told me she's from the clan Uhgaloogah, then tells me to press the X button on my controller.
If you put in a lot of effort, you can make it credible that the controller is part of the game world and the fairy would know the buttons. But most games do not put in that effort. And then, IMHO it is a lot less immersion-breaking when the game just shows an info box, where we both know that it isn't part of the game world. -
Menu -> Exit Game -> Yes
Scroll Down - > Exit Game -> Yes
Scroll Down -> Exit to Desktop -> Yes
Exit Launcher -> Yes
Jackbox is one of the worst offenders of this. Have to exit 4 times to actually exit the game.
I do appreciate the games that give you quit and quit to desktop in the same menu.
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Menu -> Exit Game -> Yes
Scroll Down - > Exit Game -> Yes
Scroll Down -> Exit to Desktop -> Yes
Exit Launcher -> Yes
Jackbox is one of the worst offenders of this. Have to exit 4 times to actually exit the game.
Alt+F4 is your friend!
Or on Steam Deck, quit the game using the steam menu.
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Since they just have the one pc, they should be able to just make a second user on the pc then sign in to the single steam account. The new user won’t have any save files in the local user directories, so the game gets launched and you’ll only see the “second” set of saves. No idea how this would work with cloud saves on the steam side though.
This might have been the issue as well? All the saves were in the Cloud. But I'm not very techy. While I can follow instructions (I think), software seems to hate me. The hardware, we're friends!
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I really don't like when games intermix tutorial with story. Unless the story is the main attraction, I cannot get myself to care for it. And then having to click through tons of story texts to pick out the tutorial parts, that is just cumbersome.
I also have to say, though, that it really doesn't help my immersion when the fairy, that just told me she's from the clan Uhgaloogah, then tells me to press the X button on my controller.
If you put in a lot of effort, you can make it credible that the controller is part of the game world and the fairy would know the buttons. But most games do not put in that effort. And then, IMHO it is a lot less immersion-breaking when the game just shows an info box, where we both know that it isn't part of the game world.Speaking for myself, the average game got way better when the industry figured out it was better to mix the tutorial with the story. Bespoke tutorials felt like homework, and a lot of people are inclined to skip them, never figure out how the game works, and then come away with a negative opinion of the game. In general, and I'm curious to hear your perspective on this, you can make it exciting by starting the story en media res, so your character is using all of their usual verbs; then you can sidestep that immersion breaking moment by having the button prompts exist in a freeze frame thing, outside of the context of the story, that highlights the action it wants you to do. Do you prefer the bespoke tutorials that we got in the likes of 90s PC games? Do you like the way Gears of War does it, where it still keeps it contextual in the course of the story, but they very clearly give you an option to say that you know what you're doing?
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It's rare, but putting cooldowns on basic moves.
I've been playing V Rising lately and it does this weird thing where dodging and blocking are equippable spells with (usually) 8-second cooldowns. In return they also get powerful side effects, but I'd rather have a normal dodge or block button I can use at will than have them relegated to yet another move I use whenever I notice the cooldown has expired.
It doesn't help that your basic movement speed is glacial. Winning boss fights come down more to your character's stats than actual player skill since you can only dodge a few times a minute and bosses love throwing out a half dozen AOEs every few seconds, turning them into DPS races.
This is why mages are hard mode in RPGs. You’re limited by mana in how many fireballs you can cast. The sword does more damage and costs nothing to swing even though fatigue is a real thing.
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I hate RNG so much
I don't get it. Life has too much RNG, I play video games because it's a predominantly skill-based controlled environment.It's like picking up a piano and there's a 35% chance F# is just F every time you play the damn note
I guess it makes sense if you're role playing and want your experience to mimic real life, which is why they're mostly used in RPGs, but I also feel so immersed playing skill-based games without RNG, so I can't assess its actual value.
The reason they're in RPGs is the same reason they're in any other genre. In a war game, you could be a tactical genius, but the RNG is there to simulate dumb luck, so the game is about forcing you to play the odds, because victory is almost never guaranteed. When the result is deterministic, there can often be a single 100% correct answer, and RNG throws a wrench in that. Something similar can be applied to loot games, where you're rolling with the punches based on what you've found.
