I've mellowed out over the years, I'm not as easily annoyed by some things anymore. Rare item drops crap just means I don't bother, because I stopped being anal about being a completionist and I like that they do give me some incentive to come back to a game.

My cardinal sins:

This is for JRPGs specifically, though Final Fantasy/Squenix are easily the sole offenders on the market. Building gameplay around the post game. I am sick and tired of having the main storyline quest be incredible easy and downright tedious just because all the best equipment and abilities are designed to be used for all the super hardcore bosses that unlock around the time the final dungeon opens up. It makes the story part feel like a chore, it also makes it feel super linear cause often there is nothing to do until the end of the game, and the main storyline is usually ridiculously easy cause the leveling system is designed for those end game creatures and I can still get access to those infinity +1 swords before I ever run into the ultimate monsters. It doesn't help that the post-game is also mainly a giant grindfest to face off against stronger monsters and nothing more. FFX and FFXIII are easily the biggest offenders.

Creating a game around a specific gameplay mechanic, but then clumsily throwing in another gameplay mechanic to make it appeal to a larger audience. I'm looking at you Mirror's Edge, you have a great FP platforming experience and the challenge is just trying to get the right rhythm to keep going continuously. Then you decided we had to have some unskippable forced combat sequences, except you poorly designed it and it really runs counter to the game's story and characters, for what? So Little Bobby Boy can get an FPS fix? smurf you.

The Action Stealth genre - You don't exist. You're always one, with a few elements of the other, but you have never been able to balance both. I'm sad that stealth seems to have lost the relevance battle and seems to be dead. Not to mention you spend so much time balancing one aspect you once again leave the other horribly unbalanced. Old Snake is a literal one man army in MGS4, so who needs stealth? Altair and Ezio are murdering machines, who have become even more overpowered in combat with each new entry in the franchise. I just miss the days when stealth actually meant something and victory actually hinged on it instead of success just meaning I don't get to do a 10 minute one sided killing spree. Granted AC does give you missions where stealth is imperative and being discovered means auto-failure, so it might be making a comeback, I'm just sad my favorite series has trivialized it after they were the ones that put the genre on the gaming map.