Oh, where to start. It's a long list, certainly increased by 'modern' game designs, which IMO frankly suck.

1. Cut scenes (and other gimmicks used to to try and trick me into thinking I'm playing a bad movie rather than a good game).

2. QTE and other rapid, instant gratification functions which takes away fun for the player while replacing it with a developer's intended narrative.

3. Stingers and cliffhangers for story/RPG games which elude to sequels and/or future DLCs in order to build a franchise at the expense of a single cohesive story to engage in.

4. DLC. Just make the game and sell that game. Increase prices even if needed in order to keep ROI up. Nickle and diming gamers has been a sad but continuous strategy for publishers for far too long.

5. Publishers' empty promises. Every single game these days, especially big budget RPG games offer everything plus the kitchen sink. Open endless worlds! Do anything you want! Radiant AI that reacts to your decisions! And what you end up with is cycled NPCs spouting the same 4 lines over again, a main quest that breaks due to scripting bugs, and a bunch of game mechanic placeholders left stunted or empty for future DLCs or addons.

6. Any form of shoe-horned politics. Gaming development should be about designing fun games to play, not shoving some political agenda down everyone's throats. Leave the politics for election cycles (and message boards). Keep social messages and political gimmicks out of our games.

There's more but I'll leave it there. Too much throttling of a dead horse.

A few come to mind:

1)
When a game's story relies on some kind of prophecy or destiny and uses it as the sole means of moving the story forward. Still have a bad taste in my mouth after finishing Starcraft 2. Hell, pretty much every Bliizzard game does this and it is pretty annoying to see the same motive repeated over and over. Diablo? Prophecy. Starcraft? Prophecy. Warcraft 3? Prophecy. Time to get original Blizzard. Or should I say ActiBlizz?

Same goes for cliches like "ending the cycle" or "despite our differences, we must unite against a greater evil blah blah blah".

2)
Copious amounts of backtracking. After finishing Darksiders II yesterday, at one point I just said "fuck it" and just moved on with the story. I hope that they tone it down in Darksiders III. It is just a lazy way to pad the play time.

3)
Overreliance on RNG. Games that are just a glorified slot machine at their core like World of Tanks or maybe even X-COM. Nothing is worse that getting completely screwed by RNG. "Oh, sorry. That 95% chance to hit shot that would have killed that enemy that is about to wipe you missed" Better luck next time!!"

4)
Checkpoint only save systems. Bonus negative points if they are just placed badly. No, I don't want to replay the same part over and over.

This^ and limited saves or explicit save point/place.

Instantly respawned enemy. Like when you just got out of the town gate in an RPG and then you have to go backtracking in a short matter of time the enemy hoard is already there again.

Reminds me of another hated "feature": missable stats. Basically, if there is a level cap and no other way to boost stats, having random stat gains (unless stats are guaranteed to max out) or having stat gains be based on what you happen to have equipped at the time of level up rubs me the wrong way. Final Fantasy 6 is an offender with its esper level up bonuses (I think the game would be better off without them); Dragon Quest 3 SFC, on the other hand, isn't an offender thanks to seed farming as an alternative (and practical!) way to increase your stats. With that said, I would say that Morrowind and Oblivion *are* offenders due to the way stat and HP gains work (non-retroactive HP gains are another example of this, unless the game has no level cap like the old Bard's Tale games or has another way of getting HP like Might and Magic 2).

I would rather have explicit saves than have auto-saving as the only save option.
How else are you going to get the experience you need to level up, or the money for equipment?

I would actually mention not having enemies respawn as something I dislike; it's my main issue with Might and Magic 4-5: World of Xeen.

Also, having armor break in a game where armor isn't useful enough to justify the action (again, World of Xeen).

Weapon durability when it isn't used as a balancing factor (Elder Scrolls); it's fine if used as a balancing factor, provided weapon attacks are still worth using (SaGa Frontier 2 is a weird case, where weapon attacks are limited by durability and harder to recover WP, while magic doesn't need durability and SP increases to a minimum if it gets too low, making spells cheaper than weapon attacks).

Yes, this is annoying, but all the more in closed spaces. Having cleaned up a dead end, and then finding enemies there who couldn't have got in without passing through you in the first place.

It's an immersion-breaking design flaw in my eyes, but it becomes a gimmick when it's justified in-world. The Star Trek shooters relied on teleportation to re-populate corridors, and it made sense in-game, but I still feel it very annoying because it deprives you of some vague strategic thinking about where to turn your back to. You lose a sense of tactical advance.

In instantly i mean the game didn't even gave you the time to breath, at all. Not even 2 minutes gone by and the map is already full again. Sacred is the worst example of this. It was a waste of character resource and a waste of time.

Enemy respawn itself is fine.

Instant Failed Stealth? Oh YES. So much. Expecially when the consequences of being detected is not well established, and no mechanism for trying to correct your mistake is given (kill that npc before he triggers the alarm). And even worse when the stealth mission stands out like a sore thumb as a mechanism that is out of place in the game you bought.

And escort missions? Don't get me started. It's bad enough that you've got to look out for your own life, but you end up protecting a weakling/coward/moron incapable of helping in the slightest, and sometimes rush headlong into the fray instead of staying clear and ether block your line of sight or stand toe-to-toe with something you wouldn't dare face directly. Often made worse with bad AI design.

Witcher 2 stealth was wretched. You couldn't see what Geralt could see or hear what he could hear. You had to take crazy risks and throughout the game, I never once passed one. I couldn't tell where the bad guys were going or where they were.

Oh god... this is huge. I agree.

I'll tell you something tragically funny. The english word "Log" in italian can be translated in two ways:
1) "Ceppo/Tronco" which is the "wood" one.
2) "Registro/Diario" which is the "report/diary" one.
Well, in Fallout 3 you could use a wood log as a chair in a specific quest, but in the italian version it was translated in the other way: it was like "sit on that diary"

That is so funny. So funny, in fact, I'm going to write it in my tronco tonight.

I actually got angry just reading this, that's how bad of a gameplay element that is.

That actually reminds me of another one: In RPGs with separate battle screens, having enemies move in real time outside of battle. It turns what should be a turn-based game into an action game, and in some cases (SaGa 3 remake, I'm looking at you) leads to an encounter rate that's actually *worse* than games with random invisible encounters (in particular, original SaGa 3 is less frustrating in this regard). It also leads to, in some situations, not being able to heal or manage inventory between encounters, and (for games with save anywhere) can lead to the "saved into a softlock" issue.

If you want to have visible enemies that move in real-time, something like Zelda 2's approach (where enemies don't appear until a certain number of steps or time have passed since the last encounter) would work better, but to avoid the "turning into an action game" problem, this should only be done for action games (which Zelda 2 is), not RPGs.

Incidentally, I am starting to think that the Final Fantasy Mystic Quest approach might be best; dungeon encounters are visible and in specific spots, so you have to fight to progress (can't just run from everything), but you don't get repeatedly attacked. (The enemies respawn when you leave the dungeon, but only then.)

Edit: Also, it should be "breathe", not "breath". "breath" is a noun; "breathe" is a verb.

Escort missions are bad when you have to deal with AI, but aren't so bad if they're designed in such a way that you don't. (VVVVVV's escort mission is an example of one where AI is not needed; your escortee's movement is deterministic and easy to predict, and there are no enemies in that section, just spikes and moving platforms. Also, if it really bothers you, the game has a built-in invincibility cheat.)

Sometimes, I enjoy playing such games; the original Dragon Warrior is a good example of this. (I note that the remakes of this game drastically increased XP and GP yields from enemies, becoming much shorter as a result.)

In some cases, like Oblivion (on hardest difficulty), this is the result of a poorly implemented difficulty setting. The game isn't so bad at default difficulty (especially at low levels), but raise it to the maximum and the game becomes rather unfun.

Haha, I just got a new keyboard and the size is smaller than the old one. Typo galore.