60 replies to this topic

[proanim]

here's a few of most irritating things that i see as bad design:

• unnatural difficulty spike every now and then
• slow respons on the input as in situations where enemy can knock you down and you are unable to get up until he hits you at least three times (prince of persia sands of time, and prince of persia warrior within)
• bad controls or control layout
• horrible ai - if ai can't find his way from point A to point B, or if ai can make a headshot without you even been able to see him.
• always online DRM (this can ruin the game in the long run)
• pay to win practices
• funky collision detection - as in sometimes when you try to approach the ledge and your character refuses to fall down, but he will fall if you do it few times throughout the level (pitfall 3d - for ps1)
• give full hallway of ammo to the player just before the last boss (not so hard) fight in the game (quake 4)
• unlogical puzzles in adventure games especially inventory puzzles
• overpowered enemies every now and then as in some of the final fantasy games (maybe)
• unskippable cutscenese (this is worse if it is a boring cutscene)
• not rebindable keys

Edited by proanim, 02 November 2012 - 02:28 PM.

[Yikitama]

Here are a few:

• Design a stealth game that revolves around staying out of sight and in the shadows. Then 90% through the game introduce an enemy that has a night-vision/X-ray-vision cross ability... ...(I'm looking at you Splinter cell Conviction)...

• Make a game about team-play, but then add a vehicle that only serves as a good one-on-one counter against that vehicle in combat, and has no other practical use. (Jets in Battlefield 3)

• Any competitive (PvP) multiplayer level up system where playing longer guarantees you a stronger character. (Call of duty, Blacklight, Etc.)

• Make a game about fast paced immersive parkour/platforming, but make various miscellaneous actions slow, tedious, and non-interactive. (Ladders, valves and ledges in Mirrors edge)

• Create a wonderful and unique art style filled with thought and careful themeing, and then a few months down the line fill the game with random and visually incongruous promotional and self-parodying customization options. (Team Fortress 2)

[Burrowing Owl]

All bosses could insta-kill the players at a random point in the fight. They will never see it coming! (Inspired by Final Fantasy XIII)

[dtg108]

They tried to make a decent game with that, but what was the deal with that stupid battle system? It's Batman!

Exactly, the game was so cheesy. That gives me a couple more points:
Make a game with cheesy lines (Spider-man.(Original of course))

[Creath]

Basically everything done in "Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing"

[ShiftyCake]

Market the game primarily around allowing the player to play a known, totally bad ass character, then make it a weaker version of the same character, making no particular difference in power from the last installment.

Hello Bioshock 2.

-Exo

"make it a weaker version of the same character" and then you say "no particular difference in power from the last installment".cause fuck logic.Besides the fact that the characters are totally different, and set BEFORE the first Bioshock. He's a goddamn Big Daddy, he doesn't even seem similar.And no difference in power? What? You have different mechanics and a drill as an arm. Do I even need to go further? A goddamn drill.God I loved that drill.

[Camilo]

On characters/leveling:

• Leveling making the game easier (or staying the same due to matched opponents) instead of harder through increased game depth
• Strategic (e.g. character development or building) "choices" that aren't such because one of them is better in all cases, specially in competitive games

Add permadeath and make it simple to die.

I agree with you, though, strangely enough this works for some games, most notably roguelikes. The randomness of and the character's stats means that permadeath is the only way you will ever roll a playable character instead of keep playing with the same one, while randomness and richness of levels ensures the exploring them and the options of the games stays fun.
IMHO, roguelikes without permadeath are only half as fun.

[Kilzeus]

My pick would be having features/aspects in the game that don't have any effect on gameplay. This is a problem in some strategy games that try to offer many paths to for the player to win but some paths are so tedious/un-fun/less-efficient-than-others that they end up never used. There are also "features" that basically do not exist. Supreme Rulers are great games in many ways, but the player can research many technologies that lower pollution levels. The thing is that the game doesn't model pollution in any way.

[Zed2100]

I think bad game design has a lot to do with lack of fun :

• Make the game as repetitive as possible, variety is bad ! Avoid it at all costs
• Make it as difficult as possible so that only an elite of players can beat it, noobs don't deserve to win
• Give as much achievements as possible, give an achievement for opening the options menu !
• Let players guess how to play, it's much more fun that way !
• As an alternative for 2), strip the game from any challenge so everyone could win, targeting a very large audience (including new-borns) will sure make you filthy rich !

This is an exerpt of my blog post Do these 5 Mistakes at the Risk of Boring Your Audience

[wodinoneeye]

Have complicated many-tiered crafting, which produces things no better than a player can purchase from common NPC vendors (or if marginally better
would require some astronomical small chance while using/consuming very expensive/rare components - and have it soon outclassed by moving into the next higher level content area - easy quest loot). And make all the tedious endless repeated production required to advance have the product sell for much LESS than the components cost that go into it (and the real icing is have one component that ONLY can be bought at a high price from a vendor to go along with the raw materials that have to be tediously gathered). Tools that wear out constantly and need to be expensively replaced are optional.

Make sure that the training/advancing process is so long/slow to produce items just even (or lower) with the players current usability level (specificly just as the player is moving up to the next level) or requires gathering in level appropriate areas so that the player is in danger as well as being bored..

In other words make a grind-fest that isnt worth the bother except that the players expected a 'crafting feature'.

[wodinoneeye]

On a system with save points, Have long cut scenes just after the save point which is right before a VERY difficult (very easy to fail) game action sequence that on average will have to be repeated 30 times. Oh and of course there is no 'skip' feature for the long stupid cutscene.

Might be even better if between the cutscene and the difficult fail point you have 5 minutes of uninteresting game play to go thru (with no intervening save point) just to make the 30-odd tedious repetitions all the more enjoyable.

[wodinoneeye]

Market the game primarily around allowing the player to play a known, totally bad ass character, then make it a weaker version of the same character, making no particular difference in power from the last installment.

Hello Bioshock 2.

-Exo

"make it a weaker version of the same character" and then you say "no particular difference in power from the last installment".cause fuck logic.Besides the fact that the characters are totally different, and set BEFORE the first Bioshock. He's a goddamn Big Daddy, he doesn't even seem similar.And no difference in power? What? You have different mechanics and a drill as an arm. Do I even need to go further? A goddamn drill.God I loved that drill.

Actually it was 7+ years after in BS2, but yes it was different - they added those defensive items/plasmids to set up defensive positions to allow some interesting set-piece engagements. The dual wielding helped some with the firepower combos.

[wodinoneeye]

Make a PC port where the minigames (required to get certain sequences of missions) mismatch in timing and not work the same controls (clumsy buttons instead of joystick) -- with no cheat to bypass and have some with a sufficiently long game situation setup (no save point midway) to make the endless retry attempts nice and tedious. Add a few missions that nobody seems to have tested on the PC - obviously broken which never were fixed.

GTA...

[wodinoneeye]

MP game that speeds up player movements at least 3X 'real' speed (in a game that touts itself as 'realistic') exagerating latency issues. Nothing spells fun like getting killed by someone who ran right up infront of you which you never saw because of the lag let along had a chance to aim at (and of cousre they have an insta-kill they use) ---almost as fun as getting shot dead thru a closed door (not bullet going thru door) before it even opens (to your clients view) for you to see whats on the otherside.

Cod MW2 MP

Edited by wodinoneeye, 15 November 2012 - 05:25 PM.

[SuperVGA]

Give the player the most powerful and funny weapon just before the last boss battle begins, right before the game ends.

Are you referring to RAGE, by any chance? (There are probably more, but I recently completed RAGE so it's fresh in memory)

I suggest that you really do make a great game overall:
Great story, great concept, great atmosphere.
But make the controls really akward, preferrably while preventing
smooth and predictable movement. Staying on predictable,
The principle of least astonishment is a sucker in this relation:
If it surprises the player, it makes the game more interesting.
Maybe the collision bounds are off the expected position and dimensions,
but how about changing it once in a while?

Oh, and if you're making a game revolving around, or taking long time spent driving in cars,
make sure the driving mechanics resemble something equivalent to gta 1,
Maybe even simpler: simpler car handling always makes a game easier to play.
Glue the cars to the road to keep things simple. Speaking of simple,
make cars look alike, to discourage players from collecting them.

(That was mainly something I disliked about the godfather game (~2004?)
But also gangland suffered from weird handling. Some of the nfs games have appaling vehicle physics too, but I guess it's because they are more like arcade games)

It's so easy to be a jerk about other peoples products! I'm enjoying it!

[Dynamo_Maestro]

1. Make sure the uninstaller deletes all non MS appdata
2. Make sure the installer installs poorly which results in game files all over your program menu

Both bugs still present and ignored in a current popular MMO XD

[omegaweapon2]

5 minutes to open the menu. Lag on closing it.

[Amadeus H]

5 minutes to open the menu. Lag on closing it.

Hello, Crusader Kings 2

[GiroKa]

Bad game design does mean you won't sell any just look at The Elder Scrolls series Oblivion and Skyrim. Like the standard D&G RPG you get quests to go from one village to another with a critical mission and along the way there are endless hidden caver and stuff which are not part of a quest so why bother, some may say to find better items, being and hard-core D&G player (play them with graph paper sheet) why would I wonder around look for butterfly when there a crucial quest to attend, more so the endless world that get you to trek miles between quest which is poor gamer gratification (too much time before getting a job done). The can keep their endless world but please make the quest in smaller distance.

[cronocr]

I'm thinking that reaching the "massively" in "Massively Multiplayer Online Game" is bad design, this is why: debate