Like the shitty Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy game, where you have to do QTE's during cutscenes, so you can't even focus on the scenes itself, which are important to the story and if you fail the QTE you will just never be able to follow everything properly?
That was and will forever be THE single dumbest design decision in gaming ever.

What about games written for older consoles in the modern era, like Tanglewood? (I'm pretty sure even the version available on this site is just a Sega Genesis ROM packaged with an emulator.)

(I'm thinking of maybe making some homebrew for some ancient platform, like the MSX or NES. (If you're going to suggest something else, I require a 16-bit or less address space, and that the system used cartridges as a storage medium.))

Isn't Dragon's Lair just like that, except that the cutscenes and QTEs are the entire game?

I really hate level caps. So much I could do and probably only explored less than 50% of the map in fallout 3 and fallout new vegas. But seeing as there is no progression I'd much rather spend another 100 hours on fallout 4 instead. Worked well in Fallout 2.

I know theres some mods that can resolve it but I made 1 attempt to install it on 3 and NV and it seemed to work only occasionally. Didn't want to do exploration and quests to find I was still stuck at level 30 or 50. At least 4 allows you to reach amazing heights, gives me a reason to quest and explore further.

Also baldurs gate. In my first playthrough I felt what was the point of destroying this or that and get a 30,000 experience award when I was stuck at level 7?

My biggest gripe when it comes to flawed video game design very abstrace concept I call "no oomphing", something that nobody talks about yet everyone always talk about, but nobody seems to have a word for it. Its sometimes refered to as "x-feedback" and sometimes people even call it "video game design", although very wrongly. Almost nobody even cares to explain it so most discussions about this online lead to misunderstanding.

Its when an action the player does and the games response to said action leads to less impact than inside the players mind, which will lead the game to become less responsible or "floaty" in everything the player does. It ultimately leads to lesser Game feel. So logically, more oomphing always leads to a better game feel, which ultimately makes the game better. People should care more about oomphing their video games and more people should study it.

So if video game developers care less about making "good oompf" then the game, pretty much always, turns out very badly.

Isn't Yandere Simulator more like that kind of game?

Exactly. Which was why I stopped playing the game. It started out interestingly, but was utterly ruined by this very stupid design decision.

One of the RPG design ideas I've been toying with in my head uses its level cap as a way to change the way progression works, rather than as an end to it. Basically, I've been thinking of an idea where:
* There is a low level cap, reached early in the game (when the player is still learning the mechanics, or shortly after).
* There is another option for progression, like gaining stats by improving skills (which would be improved through usage), or simply gaining stats through action.

Interestingly enough, later Disgaea games, to my understanding, get like that in the post game. For example, in Disgaea D2 (*not* Disgaea 2), you can get *huge* stat bonuses by reincarnating a couple hundred times or so; while you still can't level up past 9999, you can start over with better stat growth, and the D2 exclusive mechanic of "growth correction" adds another multiplier which scales quadratically with the number of times you've reincarnated. Furthermore, if you turn on Land of Carnage (which greatly increases the levels and stats of enemies, so this is *definitely* post game), you get a small stat boost every time you kill an enemy, which is permanent (for that character), persists through reincarnation (allowing a level 1 character to have good stats), and is separately capped (so you can get nearly 100 million (IIRC) from leveling and reincarnation, and another nearly 100 million from LoC stat absorption on top of that). In addition, there's still the mechanic of going into item worlds to level up equipment, which can boost your stats even further.

I could also mention a game like Magic of Scheherezade, where there is a per-chapter level cap; once you reach a certain level, you can't level up any further until you beat the chapte boss and go to the next chapter, at which point the cap is raised. Essentially, this forces you to progress rather than just spending time getting more powerful early.

I don't mind if they make the final levels hard to achieve. I think that was the case in diablo 2, not a level cap but last levels take forever. Right now the other option is to start a new game of 3 or NV and that means too much revisiting the same stuff.

Oh, one other thing I hate, like in Titan quest where you need a certain level to use specific weapons. Thats annoying since theres little I can do to hand over stuff to other characters that I play. If it makes them overpowered so be it, but since I'm replaying the game with a new type I want to have faster story progression.

As I said before, what if the level cap was easy to achieve, but there was another, more important, growth system (other than just equipment upgrades) that was not so easy to max out?

Level requirements for weapons are one of those mechanics that is found in MMOs that are not good in other settings. Another that I have encountered, in Dragon Quest 9, is one where higher level characters getting a bigger share of the XP, resulting in level differences growing rather than shrinking (especially at high levels, where the XP needed to level up remains constant, but still varies by class). (At least Dragon Quest 9 avoided another mechanic I dislike; that of characters dead at the end of combat getting no XP; in fact, when I beat the game, my main character was dead at the end of the final battle, but had XP in excess of the amount needed to level up (you have to be alive to level, but not to get XP).

Incidentally, this whole idea of level requirements for weapons reminds me of a particularly awful combination of mechanics (which apparently happened in Final Fantasy 11 (which really should have been called Final Fantasy Online instead)):
* Equipment has level requirements.
* Level draining is a thing. (In FF11, it apparently happens when you die and lose enough XP to lose the level; games exist where the normal attacks of enemies cause this.)
* Inventory space (including storage) is limited.
As a result, you could reach a new level, upgrade your equipment (and get rid of your old stuff; it's useless, right?), get level drained, and then not have any equipment you can use, which could be a serious issue.

Yeah, but I am playing the game supine, with the keyboard across my quadriceps and the trackball on the bed beside me. I am not a fan of twitch gaming when ludo decubito!

The rest of the game I can play with just the mouse (the two-button forward motion and single mouse-click activation with the mouse to orient the view works almost flawlessly).

I also note they dropped it for the sequel.

This section is deliberate, too, since they use it to prevent players from freewheeling (free-sailing?) across the galactic map to harvest resources.

Did someone already mention RPGs with a world that scales in power level with the player character? The more you progress, the more everything else progresses too. Including lowly bandits and their like. That would make every power gain irrelevant, every level-up pointless even punishing and would lead ingame to such ridiculous things like bandits that wear armor more expensive than a patrician's house in a city or a farm with land. Bandits that are, by the equipment they have, so rich that they wouldn't need to work in their entire life and yet they risk their lives attacking people on the road. Also it would make the entire world unbelievable and the game boring.

But no one would include such a ludicrous idea into an actual CRPG, would they?

How about this combination of mechanics:
* Enemies get stronger as you level up.
* Level ups don't give you any benefit.
* Avoiding encounters entirely isn't possible, and escaping fights either is impossible or more annoying than just winning them.
* There is no cap on enemy strength; it is possible for enemies to reach the point where you are unable to damage them, making the game unwinnable.

(By the way, Final Fantasy 8 satisfies the first point (and is a linear JRPG, unlike the other examples I can think of), and (to my understanding) almost satisfies the second (as most of your stats come from the junction system rather than levels, and enemies gain more stats than you when you level up).)

(Also, the actual CRPG you're referencing (which does strain the definition (if it eve qualifies) because of its collision-0ased, player skill-based combat) also has a major problem of missable stats; while the idea behind its leveling system is interesting, the way stat growths are handled is unsound. At least the interaction of Fortify effects with other Fortify effects is sound, unlike in its predecessor.)

Ah, here's one: The settings menu is something you have to interact with using ingame controls and physics.

Realistic damage and wounds in GTA maybe?
You get shot multiple times and you have to wait a really long amount of IRL time in-game in the hospital to 'recover'.
Or you break a leg and have to wear a cast, also for IRL long ass time.

Actually, that's not the worst you could do with the settings menu. How about these ideas:
* The game is in a fictional language that is created just for the game. There is an option to change it, but the settings menu where the option is found is, of course, in that fictional language.
* The way to access the settings menu isn't obvious. Fortunately, there is a tutorial that tells you how to access it. Unfortunately, the tutorial is voice acted, and subtitles are off by default (and you need to go into the settings to change it).
* The (PC) game is designed with a controller in mind. There is an option to change to keyboard and mouse controls, but the default is to only use gamepad controls; if there is no gamepad connected, then it is impossible to get to the settings menu and change the setting. If you have no gamepad, you can't play the game.
* The (PC) game refuses to start if it detects there to be a keyboard or mouse present. The game does support keyboard/mouse controls, but to use them, you need to first disconnect the keyboard and mouse, then some how start the game, then plug them back in and they will work
* There is an options menu, but for whatever reason, it requires an internet connection.
* The game's script is stored in a foreign language. Whenever the game wants to display a line of text, the game makes a request to Google Translate, has Google translate the text, and then displays the translated text. There is an option to turn it off and just play the game in the original language, but doing this requires going into the settings menu, which also attempts to use Google Translate.

How about this tweak to the game:
* As an alternative to waiting for the wound to heal, you can pay $1 (of real money, not in-game currency) and the wound will heal instantly.

With this tweak, would you say it would improve the game or make it work?

Queen Elizabeth cleaning her big house with a broom, lots of levels to complete.
Also helping sickly people and cleaning them.