Worry not!
Those obsolete mechanics are being replaced with modern ones:

https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/23/17042242/metal-gear-survive-sv-coins-boosts-character-save-slots-micotransactions-konami

Non re-bindable controls.

FPV games that don't have an invert y-axis option.

Non streamlined HUD's that just get in the way and break immersion.

+1 on unskippable cut scenes and producer idents at launch.

+1 to limited save slots. There are absolutely no excuses for any game this day and age not to have multiple save slots. Most of my gripes are towards turn-based games:

1. Random battles and no way to control to influence their rates. Octopath Traveler (2018) is a good recent example. They're not a dealbreaker since I'm so used to them now, but they're a PITA.

2. Overtutorialization. Either throw the player directly into the game and figure it out themselves and bury a tutorial section inside the menu OR prompt the player at the start if they want to skip.

3. Any sort of in-game time limits in a turn-based game that apply to the entire playthrough. LR (2013) is a good example. It forces you to rush through everything or fail at least a couple times so you have to pre-plan all your events like a project manager to beat the game legitimately.

4. Crafting. I don't mind it if you're not money starved the entire game like monsters dropping it, but not knowing what items you keep encourages hoarding of old equipment and drops, resulting in unoptimal gameplay. And where they present, backtracking is also a major part of gameplay too. Another alternative is to make monster drops non-sellable too. Tales of Zestiria (2015) has this issue.

5. Backtracking. I don't mind if it's a couple times, but within reason please. If I have to go back 5-8 times for repeated quests, there's something wrong with the game. TMSFE (2015) is a good example.

6. Unable to switch out your main party leader. Whenever the party size is big enough that I have to choose my party members, I'd like to be able to replace the party leader. Not only could this open up a dozen more team combinations, it also barely changes much of any story anyway since it's inherently assumed the others are following closely behind or ahead of you anyway when your team does split up. Even CSH (2017) has this problem.

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7. No auto-pickup or auto-looting in ARPGs. IIRC this is an issue I have with Grim Dawn (2016)* that dissuades me from buying it. I think there's a community mod or tool that does this, but I've no idea why it wasn't pre-programmed in the very first place. Players should just be focusing on killing monsters (core loop), not stopping every couple minutes to pick up drops.

8. Time and turn limits severely crippling progress. I couldn't get far in Papers, Please (2013) because I sucked at it and there were a dozen things to check by Day 6. Yeah, I know it's supposed to be hard for gameplay reasons, but a game expecting me to play at its pace is not a game meant for me. XCOM 2 also has issue with turn limits too (and a community mod I'm considering that stops this); not looking forward to that when I get through my backlog.

EDIT: * thank you to Acriz for correction on auto-pickup. Grim Dawn no longer has this issue.

Except that, even with the extra payment, according to the article you still are limited to 4 save slots.

Assuming the battles are turn-based, I would rather have the battles be invisible and only happen when you move, than visible and moving in real time, because I do not want the game to turn into an action game when trying to avoid (or seek out) enemies.

Also, some implementations are better than others. The original SaGa 3 (Final Fantasy Legend 3 in the US) has invisible random encounters that are paced well enough that it never feels like you're getting repeatedly attacked (rather, you're more likely to experience the reverse issue). In the SaGa 3 remake, however, the visible enemies, by the later part of the game, are moving so fast that you can't avoid them without stopping time (which uses up a resource that can only be restored by fighting or entering a single use secret code), resulting in getting attacked far more frequently than in the original, and with the same issues of not necessarily having enough time to open the menu between battles, and of the game turning into an action game.

I'm thinking that, for encounter handling, something like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (enemies are visible and don't move, but they're usually blocking the path (but don't respawn until you leave the dungeon)) pr Lufia 2 (enemies move only when you do) is ideal for this sort of game, though there's still the downside of a lack of tension when you are getting close to a town (or save point) but either are low on resources or not strong enough to reliably win battles.

(Note that I don't have this issue with games like Zelda 2, as the game doesn't even pretend to be turn-based; when an encounter starts, it's real-time platforming action.)

Same here, but with disk speeds being faster, I'm of the opinion that load times should be considered obsolete. I'd like to play the game right *now*, not wait a few seconds for it to load.

I had this issue with Grandia Xtreme. It's particularly bad when it comes to XP distribution, as you can't easily level up your characters evenly when one particular character is *always* in your party, taking a share of the XP.

Even worse is when the main character is male, preventing me from using an all-female party. (Also annoying is when a game has plenty of male characters, but not enough female characters to form a party.)

I could mention that, in Dragon Quest 8's 3DS version, which adds new playable characters, you still can't remove the main character from the active party, even though you could in DQ4-6.

Corrolary: Diallowing backtracking. I *hate* it when the game doesn't let me go back to an earlier town to buy a useful and interesting consumable that isn't sold later, or when an area becomes permanently inaccessible, resulting in missable items or lost opportunities for XP/money/ABP/stat farming. When a game makes it harder to level up just because you go past a certain point, it creates a dis-incentive to progressing further in the game, which is bad game design. (SaGa Frontier 2 suffers from this issue; after the Hahn Ruins, you don't find a spot as good for learning advanced techs until the start of the final generation.)

Clarification: for dungeons. I have no issues with backtracking in towns. FF4TAY drove me crazy forcing you to go through the same dungeon 5 different times. I even had a worse time considering I played 4 immediately before, so it was 6 times. Ask anyone who has played the game and that is one of their biggest gripes about it. One of the worst FFs I've ever played.

FF4 (non-TAY) doesn't actually re-use dungeons, but you could easily have to re-play the Magnetic Cave if you forget to trigger a certain cutscene in the castle. (The boss will hit your characters physically for 9999 damage each, and when your party wipes (you have no chance in this fight), it's a hard game over.) It does, however, have one annoying dungeon where Teleport (Exit) doesn't work, so you either have to walk out or realize that Warp *does* work and cast it repeatedly.

FF6, it occurs to me, actually re-uses one dungeon (Figaro cave) 3 times at different parts of the game, and there's some other re-use (like Zozo, which I count as a dungeon rather than a town). FF5 has a couple dungeons that are optionally re-used, but no mandatory re-use (the part of the Ancient Library that you re-visit doesn't count as a dungeon to me).

Seaking of which: Disabling spells to warp out of dungeons should be considered obsolete. There are some games that are particualrly bad about this (FF2, Famicom FF3 (you can't teleport out of Eureka here, forcing the player to walk out), original Dragon Quest 5 (Return/Zoom is often blocked in towns for no good reason, and even worse your MP is wasted if you try).

Yeah, I never had any issues with those FF games' backtracking. It was either tolerable, not as frequent, or had plenty of content between each revisit.

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Might as well throw some more in here:

9. Limited sprinting or no default running. LR (2013), FF15 (2016), and BOTW (2017). Why not just increase the enemy's movement speeds assuming you're running 100%?

10. QTEs. Distracting when I'm trying to view a narrative cutscene and I have to snap back quickly to ensuring I input the proper controls. Tomb Raider (2013) has this and thankfully most games these days are phasing it out.

11. Dialogue choices with no effect on the story or responses. I believe Fallout 4 (2015) was infamous for this.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I didn't know this was released a couple years ago.

My question is then why not increase storage space? Online MP I can understand, but could you help me understand why they wouldn't do that if you had to do inventory management every 5 kills in single player mode?

Apparently there's a function in Steam Big Picture/Steam itself which allows a "force quit"; Lutris also has a game ejector button. (It sends SIGTERM). Hit it again, and it sends (SIGKILL).

Solution: Make it impossible for inventory to fill up. Do what early Ultima games (up through 5) and later Final Fantasy games (starting with 5, but also including most remakes of earlier titles) did, allowing you to carry up to 99 (or some other large number) of each item and no limit to the number of types of items carried. In other words, make item storage effectively unlimited.

Even something like modern Dragon Quest games (as started in DQ6 and refined in the DQ3 remake) would solve this problem.

(The one downside is the hoarding of consumables, which can eliminate some of the resource management aspects of the game.)


That doesn't allow you to resume playing from where you left off.

By the way, on Linux you can send SIGSTOP to a process like a game, and it will stop running, using up no CPU time (and the RAM used will be paged to disk if you run other software that needs it in the meantime). One SIGCONT and the process will continue from right where it left off. So, for example, if your game needs more resources to run, you can send SIGSTOP to the browser that you are running (that browser will be unresponsive afterwords; that's normal), and then SIGCONT when you're done playing your game, and your tabs will still be just as you left them.

Drawback of using SIGSTOP is that the process won't survive a shutdown or power cut, so you won't be able to continue from where you left off in that instance.

Makes sense. I use graph paper so that the lines are straight.

I went soft and started using a Grid Cartographer some years ago.
Apart from ease of use (but less room for improvising) it has the advantage that old maps are easier to find if I should need them.

I've actually been able to get through much of Bard's Tale 1 without making or referencing a map.

In fact, in my most recent play of that game (classic, not remastered, as remastered has an auto-map unless you disable it in Legacy Mode), I was actually able to get through Kylearean's Tower without a map. (That particular dungeon is particularly devious, with things like a secret door in a dark area that only appears if you answer a riddle elsewhere in the dungeon, and even some twice twice teleports in an area that also has spinners in symmetric rooms.)