Events happening in real time. I mean it literally, like some events in games (mostly japanese, I could name Pokèmon) taking place a certain day at a certain hour in our real life calendar. This is so, SO bothering.

Even worse, games like Shenmue that require you to wait a set, unskippable amount of time for things to happen.

Also, quick time events. Nobody ever liked them, and now that everybody is aware of the general dislike I wonder why they're still around.

Howdy, Enbias.

There's a reason why I never caught a Lapras in Pokemon GSC. Because you have to be in a cave, in a specific room, on Friday for a set encounter. You not only have to navigate to the place, but also be prepped.

Bleh.

But Pokemon committed two more sins: Magic encounters. Feebas in RSE only appeared in four tiles governed by some insane formula, Wynaut was limited to an island that had a 1:"Go fuck yourself" chance of appearing, and there was a cave in Gen 3 that never even had an event to populate itself with.

The other sin: "Go to this toy store at 15:09 exactly and get in the queue to get a limited number of this mythical pokemon!" (Note: Your nearest store is over 30 km away.)

I used to be deep in the Pokemania.

Shenmue is one of those games where I wonder how they managed to get popular, given they're a glorified goose chase & chore sim.

After quite some time playing it vanilla, I bit the bullet and started to use GD Item Assistant. Now I have infinite item space, but without proper listing tools, you would have to scroll through hundreds or even thousands of items. The idea is that if you put that into your game, you would have people just getting lost in their ever expanding lists of items. For power gamer focused on endgame content that might be ok, but for casual players it forces them to keep their inventory somewhat tidy. Especially in the beginning you wouldn't know what to keep and just keep everything. After 10 hours you would feel like a filthy hoarder and would probably have problems finding stuff again.
After playing those games for decades now, I would say the optimal way would be: Limited stash and inventory to ease players in, and then open up once you reach the endgame.

FEEBAS. I nearly went berserk in Sapphire to get one! I hate it to this day.
Still, Milotic was powerful and made me won the beauty prize. :P

Btw, totally agree on Shenmue. I just don't get it, never did.

I think it is, but unless you want a very specific UI or there's a technical limitation that I'm not aware of, wouldn't it be easier to just not code a limit?

Perhaps the save slot index is coded as an 8-bit integer, which can only take on 256 different values. Similar issues, though with much larger limits, can happen if you use a bigger integer as the index. (This can apply, for example, to the local variable the game uses to keep track of the position in the save menu.)

Some filesystems have a limited number of files (called inodes on some file systems), or files per folder.

There is typically a limit on the length of the filename or pathname. Given that there are only finitely many characters available, this imposes a theoretical limit on the number of files (and hence save files) that can be represented. Note that this limit is very large, and the disk will fill up long before this limit is reached, but it still exists in theory.

And, of course, disk space isn't infinite.

As for "why not just code a limit", coding a limit does simplify things. For example, memory needs to be allocated to store the names of all the saves stored on the disk, and by imposing a limit, one can limit the amount of memory required (plus, dynamic memory allocation is harder than static memory allocation).

-When you can get yourself completely stuck
-Hidden stats in RPGs
-Having to read the manual for basic mechanics (unless the manual is something special)
-Nonsensical P&C Adventure puzzles
-"Impossible until you learn the whole pattern and execute it near perfectly" enemies or bosses
-Lack of directions or clues for puzzles and/or quests in AA & RPG games
-"Hit every generic wall tile in this room to find the secret"
-Having to draw your own map or write down other external notes, stuff that should be in a quest log/diary for example. I should be able to place markers and make notes in-game.
-Limited continues
-Dungeon crawlers with clunky tile-based movement and having to click icons to perform actions instead of pressing hotkeys
-Collectathons with forced collecting of all/lots of generic point or key type items a la Rayman 1 and Banjo Kazooie (here they are also often placed in mundane locations)
-Uninteractive and bland tutorials (see FF8)
-Invisible walls when you stray from the intended path(s)
-When it's super hard to recover in shoot 'em ups due to losing all upgrades and not being able to regain them reasonably quickly
-Excessive dead space/long travel distances. Should be used sparsely for dramatic effect or to convey a sense of scale. Common problem with earlier 3D games

I disagree with extra lives if the game is well designed around them, so you are rewarded for exploration and don't lose too much progression from losing all of them. Then they become a resource like food or healing items and can make a shorter and more intense game more exciting to me.

Also leads to an interesting dynamic when there's a reason to lose a life on purpose, like in Zelda 2 where you recover your HP and MP, but losing your last life sends you back to the start, takes away all your XP, and in the Japanese version lowers your three levels to match the lowest one (so if your levels are Attack 4, Magic, 5, and Life 2, after a game over they all become 2). Also, in some shoot-em-ups (including, for example, the Touhou series), dying gives you a new set of bombs to use.

That reminds me of one mechanic that does seem to have disappeared, but was quite common in the NES days, but could be considered obsolete: Only way to save is to game over. (Examples include Zelda 1 and 2, Metroid, and Castlevania 2. Magic of Scheherezade was also partially like this, but you could also save (or, rather, get a password) in mosques, but later chapters don't have one in the starting town.)

Another mechanic of that sort that has disappeared and could be considered obsolete is password saves. In some older NES and GB (and some SNES) games, when you go to save, you are given a password, and to reload, you have to enter that password. For some games, like the Japanese version of Dragon Quest 2, these passwords can get pretty long, which makes it rather annoying to save your game. (Note that this type of save system is found on the SMS (Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap; the modern remake even includes such "retro passwords", but they're not required to save/load) and probably on the Sega Genesis.)

eh. if you're trying to sound knowledgeable about the genre it would probably be better to talk about Raizing/Yagawa games than 2hu games, since the most notable (and controversial) aspect of them is the rank management.

Password saves will always be a soft spot for me as I would not have been able to beat a Mega Man without them. Not to mention the hours spent trying to crack the codes to supercharge yourself, like a game genie built into the game itself.

Though not a mechanic: achievements

For Gog's sake, Steam engines are way obsolete and should be put to rest.

Actually, I think the proper term for that is either "deathwarp" or "death warp:".

I actually prefer it when the game has mechanics like death warping that encourage intentional death in some cases to when games harshly punish death.

Except that you can't start past the beginning of the castle stages with one, and in Mega Man 4-6, there's too much in that part of the game to comfortably clear it in one setting.

(Also, annoying how in Gargoyle's Quest there's no password to take you straight to the endgame, but it's not as much of an issue because the endgame isn't overly long.)

On Hidden Stats: Or worse yet, stats/skills that do absolutely nothing or are worthless but come up in a mandatory stat check for main progression.

Nonsensical P&C Puzzles: Which also reminds me of an old trope; having to exhaust every conversation option before you can move on. Turns out the frog in the far off corner was the event flag.

You know, I think Collectathons are the only games that managed to show that they weren't even ready with their earliest entries and only recently has technology allowed them to be managed sanely.

Or the branching path that leads to absolutely nothing. At least it isn't Dirty Harry (I think) where the empty room is also a purposeful softlock.