The Cardinal Sins of Game Design

[GhandiOwnsYou]

So everyone has them. Those few tropes, those repetitive WHY elements that are consistently stuck into otherwise awesome games. We shake our fists angrily at the screen, moan, whine, plead for it just to be over so we can get back to what we liked about the game. Eventually it is, but it's only a matter of time before that level just pops up in a new game, ruining your rhythm and totally messing with your enjoyment again.

My personal peeves are:

We took all your cool guy stuff, and you have to complete a level using restrictive/alternate gear in order to get it back. HAHAHA YOUR LEARNED TACTICS MEAN NOTHING. Notable Abuser: Alan Wake's "You only get flashbangs now" level.

You know what this game needs? Racing. Yeah, we know, this is a third person action game. But screw it, everyone likes racing. No, you have to win or you can't go on to the next level. Sorry. Notable Abusers: Sly Cooper and the Thevius Raccoonus, Beyond Good and Evil

So you had a blast playing this game right? I mean really, you've played all the way through to the last level, you MUST enjoy the gameplay here. So we're going to shake things up a bit, and make the last bit of the game COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than the game you've been playing so far. Have fun dying repeatedly, turning your dramatic escape into a cavalcade of trial, error, and rote memorization. Notable Abusers: Devil May Cry, Halo, Portal


Now, don't get me wrong, I am not calling any of these games bad. In fact, they are ALL among my favorite games. These are just some of my personal pet peeves when it comes to game design. You have anything that just makes you say "Oh hell, this again?!" ten seconds into a level?

[krissy]

ESCORT MISSIONS

I'm lookin' at you, RE4.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I liked the racing Halo missions. Especially the achievement in Halo 3 to do the last level with 4 people on Ghosts.

[Alpha2099]

I hate when things are overly dependent on a Random Number Generator. It's a necessary component of most RPGs, to be sure, but in certain situations I have seen developers lean on it like a crutch.

A few months back I was helping to beta test an online anime-themed card game called Sword Girls. Conceptually, it looked a lot like Magic: the Gathering, so I thought this would be neat to play. After playing about 50 games or so, I quickly realized that the flow of the game -- and by extension, the likelihood of winning and losing -- was really random. You have virtually no control over what happens in a turn. You just put down a few cards and click "Go". The rest happens by itself, and you just watch. So I complained about this (as did about a hundred other beta testers). We were basically told that the developers made this game intentionally random. The RNG is the engine that drives the game, and they tried to feed us a ton of BS about all the different strategies you can employ even though the game itself is random. I would have none of it, and I left.

So, back on point: RNG is good in some cases, bad in others. Don't EVER make it the driving force of a game.

[VeloZer0]

Not being able to remap the controls. This is the twenty first century, there isn't any reason not to give me the ability to control the game as I like.

[Slothy]

So you had a blast playing this game right? I mean really, you've played all the way through to the last level, you MUST enjoy the gameplay here. So we're going to shake things up a bit, and make the last bit of the game COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than the game you've been playing so far. Have fun dying repeatedly, turning your dramatic escape into a cavalcade of trial, error, and rote memorization. Notable Abusers: Devil May Cry, Halo, Portal

While I agree with the sentiment here, I disagree with your using Portal as an example. Every part of Portal up until the escape is meant to train you to use the Portal gun. To get you to learn what it can do, gradually build on what you learn, and get you to recognize situations and surfaces where it can be used, and how it can be used. The escape doesn't change anything except that you now have one long interconnected area to get through instead of smaller test chambers, and the visuals are different. But all of the situations that you encounter are ones you've already seen, and while there is more to see and do, that's the point. You're now an expert at using the Portal gun and it's time to throw you into an unfamiliar situation so you can really show off your skills.

As to game design decisions I hate with a passion, fetch quests are a big one. If the best quest you can come up with is go get me 10 of these and 15 of those then there's a good chance I'll stop playing your game, because that sort of busy work is one of the most boring things imaginable, and 9 times out of 10 you're a bad game designer padding game length artificially if you use them. At the very least couple it with exploring a new area so I don't want to kill myself.

Not being able to remap the controls. This is the twenty first century, there isn't any reason not to give me the ability to control the game as I like.

I once read a GamePro issue in either the late 90's or early 2000's where in the letter section someone asked the editor under the alias Major Mike why he always knocked off half a point on the controls score if you can't customize them and would make a point of always pointing it out in his reviews. He said that he once talked to someone at Capcom to find out how long it would typically take for them to implement fully customizable controls in a game. They said it would be half a day to a days work usually.

There is a reason that has stuck with me so vividly for so many years. There is absolutely no excuse for not implementing so basic and simple a feature in a game. Ever. Sure, I love when a company works at perfecting their default control scheme, but nothing pisses me off more than having no option to change it if I don't like it. One of the things I absolutely despised about Resistance 2 was that the controls were almost nothing like COD4 (the other thing I despised being everything else. Zing!), which at the time was about as perfect as I could imagine console FPS controls being. But I couldn't just change them to match that and had to suffer through pressing the wrong buttons half the time.

And this is coming from someone who has never failed to learn and get comfortable with a control scheme inside of 15 minutes. I was halfway through the game and still trying to press buttons like it was COD4.

[Ultima Shadow]

Permanently missable stuff that doesn't even have any good reason to be missable.

I love Tales of Vesperia, but I just don't get why you MUST see an easily missable event mid-game in order to unlock the super boss dungeon at the very end of the game. That's just stupid.

[Roto13]

I dunno about cardinal sins. Every decision I generally hate, I can think of a way it's been done that I actually like. Like underwater segments, escort missions, vehicle segments. None of these things have to be bad.

[Pete for President]

Not speaking in level terms, but I really despise the fact that almost every game seems to have some kind of collectibles. For a lot of games it doesn't fit the gameplay at all.

[VeloZer0]

Permanently missable stuff that doesn't even have any good reason to be missable.

Defiantly.

I don't want to have to play the game with a FAQ by my side to make sure I am not screwing myself for later. Some of us just want to relax and play the game.

[Sephex]

Almost any racing game. Absurd rubber band AI. This is why I stopped caring about Mario Kart.

[Shattered Dreamer]

When hard mode just means you can't get shot any more than 3 times rather than the AI becoming harder or puzzles more difficult.

[Slothy]

Almost any racing game. Absurd rubber band AI. This is why I stopped caring about Mario Kart.

Ugh. This is the reason I haven't enjoyed a Mario Kart game since MK64. The rubber banding was annoying in that, but it managed to get a lot worse after. When I played Mario Kart Wii I remember actually being disgusted with the experience because they'd finally crossed the line into race outcomes being decided more by random chance than anything resembling skill.

[Roto13]

Item balancing is why I don't play Mario Kart any more. It's a party game now. Whether you win or lose is based more on randomness than actual skill. Getting bukkakked with blue shells is not fun for me.

Mario Kart 64 4 lyfe.

[Alpha2099]

Almost any racing game. Absurd rubber band AI. This is why I stopped caring about Mario Kart.

Have you ever played Crash Team Racing? You don't have to worry about rubber band AI there. Of course, I stopped playing CTR because I can win every stinkin' time.