The humble timer. What a wonderful way to grab the 3D modelers, the pixel artists, the physics developers, and many other parts of the staff and give them a rightful slap across the face for having even bothered.

And I disagree. Puzzles make sense in many contexts. Its when the architecture or the world itself goes out of its way to reshape itself for the incoming hero that makes no sense. Like as is so often the case in the Legend of Zelda. What exactly that hook and claw post is doing on an island largely inhabited by stubby leaf men is a question for the ages.

Why the Hylian Sewers have weighted levers out of the reach of any worker, is also a question that Miyamoto and company are more than happy to leave unquestioned. Why a prison of the damned has tracks specifically for a spinning wheeled disk, nobody knows.

Myst on the other hand, it very much makes sense. The worlds were written and crafted by very magic, with the very specific purpose of being safeguarded against by some very rightfully paranoid men. Traps, puzzles, and moon logic were all carefully planned.


What actually gets me much more riled up is the forced stealth segment in games that don't have Hideo Kojima's name in the credits. What a wonderfully obtuse way to grind the progression of gameplay to an absolutely stunning trainwreck of a halt.

What they think what we are? Stupid Breads throwing away all our money right into their pockets???
Where is my axe...

I don't get it, i've checking the threads that Sachys pointed out but i don't see what's the problem, is it because he does random threads?

Put it this way, I'm a lvl 30 Jester with Xzar's brain chemicals mixed with testosterone-laced integrity. When you figure out what I am talking about you know just who the fuck you are dealing with. HAHA

Hm. One of my #1 pet peeves with game design is the addition of difficulty through not providing information. In Solium Infernum for example, you can't see the benefits of a manuscript piece that you are examining in your deck or tribute screens. This is problematic, as I am left unsure what to do with them - does this apply to a legion, praetor, enemy, or buff my avatar? Only way to know is to check the Bazaar or the wiki. Information in strategy games should be readily available.

My second issue is anything that relies upon grinding. I do not like repeating myself in a very static way, especially if the reward for doing so is not guaranteed. I prefer unique challenges that give unique perks. That saves me a lot of man hours, so that I can spend them on enjoying the actual game.

The third issue has to do with the unlocking of perks: If they are reliant of a certain difficulty level to be selected before a savefile is started, then that is a problem - requiring psychic powers to do the right thing ahead of time is bull. When designing the game difficulty selector, make it state in no uncertain terms of what, if anything, requires a difficulty level.

One bad idea that i run into in pretty much every single "open world" game is that player is made run through the same map areas again and again and again and again and then few times more.

Playing Thief (reboot) atm and i am in the last chapter and done all the optional quests. I think the devs thought they were smart with the "open city" but my opinion is that its actually terribly idea. Put of ...ing fast travel there. Whose interested in avoiding the same guards in the same places and watching same window opening animations trillion times+?

I had this same issues with Far Cry 2.

Getting to new places is cool, but when you drive through the same outpost 10 times and shoot the same identical guard each and every time, it just becomes bother. Plz gimme the cod-tunnel if you cant do it better.

Shooting stuff and action in general. It takes away from the narration and puzzles. I enjoyed Gemini Rue but never got that far because there are these stupid shooting scenes in it. If you want combat, at least make it turn based, where some actual thinking and planning is involved.

QTE"s, its stupid how this is still a thing. A good alternative would be what was done in the recent Alone in the dark game where you actually did stuff besides mash a series a buttons. You would guide your character in performing an action as opposed to having a preset animation correspond with the mashing of a button.

How about puzzles where they are willing to show only one color at a time?

I seriously didn't start playing Qube to do puzzles in the dark, or do heavy memorization...

That was just lazy map design. Around the middle chapters, due to an in-game event, the guards are replaced by some other type of guards. But those new guards are the same in their number, weapons and patrol patterns, only they are reskinned. And the game forces you to sneak past them time and time again.

yeah i was going to play the game sneakily, but ended up playing archer / melee style because it was just that much easier to get to places that way.

Its not exactly exciting to wait for the same damn guards in same shadows time after time.

they really need to stop focusing on graphics. These days they seem to think it is more important than gameplay and level design. It makes games really boring imo...with no replayability.

Ending games on cliffhangers!

And I'm not just thinking about developers who ran out of money before they could release the sequel, but also where sequels are published exclusive to a different platform than the one I played the previous game on... e.g. I played Halo 2 on PC and that's where the series ends for me sadly :(

And I'm also including games where the DRM scheme was altered radically for the sequel, e.g. Mass Effect 2 vs. 3.

But my primary example of a truly brilliant game that ended on a cliffhanger is...

I don't my puzzles. I don't really like QTE's though.