Gaming Tropes That Need to GO

[TheMightyEthan]

I like motion blur if it's done well, it can smooth out the appearance of the motion, especially if you're not running at 60fps. But yeah fuck chromatic aberration, I always turn that shit off, and if the game won't let me I start googling for ini edits.

 

*Edit - Related to @MetalCaveman's comment about Sunset Overdrive, the mission where I finally quit Monster Hunter World was an escort mission entitled "The Best Kind of Mission" and it's like okay, winking at the fact that you know it's bad doesn't make it less bad. (I didn't actually quit because it was an escort mission, it was just something I noticed.)

[toxicitizen]

I'm indifferent on motion blur and rarely turn it off unless it's egregiously bad, most times I honestly don't really notice it. I can't say I remember ever being bothered by chromatic aberration either (or any other post-processing effects that people complain about like lens flares, DOF, bloom, film grain, etc). As with anything they can be misused, but in the hands of a good art team they can add a touch of realism to an image that I'll usually like.

[MetalCaveman]

The only time I remember being bothered by any of that stuff was the beginning of Halo Reach, that made my head hurt and my eyes bleed.  

[TheMightyEthan]

That's funny, I don't remember even noticing the chromatic aberration in Reach. The chromatic aberration in No Man's Sky literally gave me headaches though.

[Mister Jack]

Even if you don't mind them visually, they tend to affect performance to a significant degree too.  That's reason enough for me to turn them off.

[MetalCaveman]

9 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

That's funny, I don't remember even noticing the chromatic aberration in Reach. The chromatic aberration in No Man's Sky literally gave me headaches though.

 

It was more the excessive bloom and motion blur, though it only bothered me on the first couple of missions, afterwards I don't remember any serious issues like that one.  

[TheMightyEthan]

@Mister Jack Yeah, they do affect performance, so if I'm close to 60 fps but not quite there I'll turn off motion blur, but if I'm playing in the 30 fps range I'd rather keep it on so the motion doesn't look as jerky.

[Mister Jack]

Durability systems. Can we just get rid of them? They're not fun. In fact, by their very nature they're designed to not be fun. I get that games want to be "realistic" but then they often make your stuff break faster than they ever should in real life unless you're using a real piece of crap. It's even more ridiculous when you have to find gasoline for vehicles. I've never in my life ridden a vehicle that runs out of gas in 20 minutes from a full tank. Hell, even those shitty power wheels for kids will last for at least 45 minutes before they have to be recharged. The exception to this annoyance would be melee weapons you pick up off of the ground, I suppose. I admit those would probably break fairly quickly if you're using things like baseball bats or 2X4s so I am begrudgingly willing to accept that, but if you're using an actual sword or something and it breaks before you even finish a battle? Nah, to hell with that.

[danielpholt]

My least favourite aspect of Breath of the Wild was without a doubt the durability aspect of its weapons.

[TheMightyEthan]

I actually didn't mind it in Breath of the Wild. It seemed like they wanted you to think of durability as you would ammo in something like Halo, where you just play with one weapon until you're out and then pick up something different.

[CorgiShinobi]

I'm playing through Resident Evil 2 (2019) and this tripped me up three times last night.

 

Examining items to use them...

 

When used in a puzzle, I don't have a problem. But when I receive an item and I essentially have to examine it to open a box, it feels so unnecessary. It's like an extra step in using the inventory menu. Admittedly I'm a little sour about this because I didn't see the switch on the jeweled scepter until I was in the sewers. This releases the jewel which combined with the jewelry box opens it and you get a S.T.A.R.S badge. Examine that and it becomes a USB. That USB can be used to open a locker area to get a powerful weapon.

 

All because I didn't rotate the scepter properly the first time I looked at it. Thankfully I'll have a chance to go back to the police station, but that won't be for a while...

Edited February 5, 2020 by CorgiShinobi
spelling

[Mister Jack]

I actually think this is kind of cool but I can understand how that can be subjective.

[Mister Jack]

So I like this new Fire Emblem quite a bit but I have a problem with the support cutscenes. The pre-rendered story cutscenes are fine, but the ones where they are just standing around and talking are bare minimum. Cutscenes with people just standing around and talking don't bother me that much. What bothers me is when they start acting like they're doing something that they clearly aren't because you can see it plain as day. For example, there was a cutscene where a big, muscular character is talking about how he's carrying a whole bunch of heavy objects in his arms and on his back, but he's not carrying jack shit. He's just standing there like normal. The argument in favor of this might be something about budget or time, but to that I say that if you don't have the time, money, or talent to animate somebody performing a physical action, maybe don't write a scene that requires them to perform physical actions. I can look past this sort of thing for little indie games where small teams or sometimes even single creators are just trying to make the best of what they have, but Fire Emblem is a sixty dollar AAA title from a major studio so there's no excuse for that.

[TheMightyEthan]

I thought the dialog implies that he put down the load immediately before the conversation began...

 

I agree they're pretty barebones, but think of how many of those they had to make, multiple ones for every single combination of side characters.

[MetalCaveman]

"Is the player a bad guy?"

 

Not THE bad guy, but A bad guy.

 

Granted this is more of a rant on how poorly Arknights handles this, but still.  

 

Some backstory:

 

In Arknights you play as The Doctor, leader/CEO/commander of Rhodes Island a pharmaceutical company that also functions as its own military because... reasons.

 

There's this disease called oripathy that slowly transforms the body into a chunk of originium, a rock.

 

The infected are treated harshly by many, in some places they're even rounded up and killed by the government.

 

RI is trying to find a cure while also dealing with all the problems that come from trying to help people some governments deem a threat simply because they are alive. RI is home to infected and not infected alike and is the best example of how the two can live and work together.

 

Reunion is a group if infected that seeks revenge on those who harmed them in the past. They show no mercy to any non-infected, regardless of who they are.

 

Now here's my issue with it. Arknights tries to paint most Reunion commanders as tragic enemies who seek revenge for their tragic past and whatnot. The problem is that Reunion is full of genocidal maniacs, the first time you run into them they are destroying an entire city, killing women, children, infected, not infected, anyone and everyone is a valid target to them in their quest for revenge. They go as far as just prevent the people there from escaping what's known as the Catastrophe, a storm that, instead of water or ice, has huge chunks of rock falling from the sky. So, for all intents and purposes, they murder the crap out of everyone in there, even those who were infected, because they refused to support Reunion or because they tried to help others.

 

Your encounters with them are no different, these people are all about shoot, shoot some more, shoot even more, stab, maim, kill and then, if you feel like it, ask questions. They continuously send forces after you to kill you because they see RI as their sworn enemy, a traitor to all infected, because you're not killing the not infected.

 

So every story encounter goes like this:

 

Reunion: *Goes around murdering everyone*

 

Rhodes Island: *Tries to save as many as possible*

 

Reunion Commander: "Rhodes Island! You traitors! You murderers! How can you side with those that harm the infected!"

 

Doctor: "We're not siding with them, we're helping any wounded, and we're trying to find a cure for this disease"

 

RC: "Bullshit! You stand idly by as infected are killed!"

 

Doctor: "We talk to governments, asking them to allow all infected people to flee into Rhodes Island, where we then cooperate with those who welcome the infected to find a place for all of them"

 

RC: "You're not killing the not infected! Die! All of you, die!"

 

Doctor: "We don't have to do this, we can help you, we can help all of you, just, don't go around murdering everyone, let's talk first"

 

RC: "Kill them all!"

 

*Fight happens and you crush all of Reunion's forces*

 

RC: "I knew it, Rhodes Island hates the infected, how could you harm us! How could you kill us!"

 

Doctor: .... *facepalm*

 

Other Rhodes Island characters: "Doctor, maybe they're right, maybe we are in the wrong for fighting them"

 

I don't know what Reunion expects from you, if you don't fight them, they kill you and everyone you know, if you fight them you're the monster for defending your life.

 

It gets annoying when in most chapters some Reunion characters try to kill you directly, setting up ambushes and resorting to all manner of dirty tricks, but then when one of your operators saves your life another Reunion character somehow sees this as the ultimate sin against the infected, and they go on a tirade about how horrible you are because you didn't just sit there and die.

 

After several instances of this I kinda just wish you could say something about it, unfortunately, most of your choices are pretty limited and most characters around you tend to agree with Reunion, those that don't limit themselves to "It's us or them, no point thinking about it."

 

That was my rant, it felt good to get that off my chest.  

[deanb]

Seems less like a particular bad trope, and more just poor writing.

[Mister Jack]

I am still pretty tired of games that try some fourth wall meta bullcrap like whoa maybe you're a bad person for playing such an awful game! It was okay when Spec Ops did it because it was a relatively new idea at the time but now it just annoys me. If you're going to shame me for playing your game then you better have given it away for free because otherwise you people are gigantic hypocrites. Yeah, maybe I'm playing something violent and messed up but you're the ones who spent years making it and are now profiting off of it so what's that say about you?

[Mister Jack]

"This is the largest open world we've ever created!"

 

When I hear this nowadays I actually see it as a negative. When a developer brags about how huge their open world is that tells me one of two things:

 

1) There's huge patches of boring, cut and pasted emptiness

2) The space between actual mission areas are filled up with an overwhelming amount of busywork and meaningless collectibles rather than meaningful content

 

You know what I prefer? Open worlds that are smaller, but more thoughtfully crafted. I'd rather have a smaller open world with love and care put into every inch than an enormous world where long stretches of boring traversal is a feature. Even Rockstar is guilty of this.

[TheMightyEthan]

I agree with you in general, but man Ghost of Tsushima's world is huge and awesome. Sure it's cut & pasted in a lot of places (eg identical farmhouses) but it's fairly well hidden, so it rarely feels cut & pasted.

[Thursday Next]

On 7/24/2020 at 2:07 AM, Mister Jack said:

"This is the largest open world we've ever created!"

Even Rockstar is guilty of this.

 

Especially Rockstar is guilty of this. Started with San Andreas.

[TheMightyEthan]

Back in San Andreas days it was fine, because at that point "open worlds" were so small that you could see places that in-world should have been hundreds of miles away, but our open worlds are big enough now to give an adequate sense of scale*, they don't need to be bigger.

 

*I say this, but actually I felt like Death Stranding's world didn't convey the scale it was supposed to represent. Looking at the map it's supposed to be the entirety of the US, but it feels more like 1 state. Like it's Colorado. That was the only part of that game that bothered me.

[Mister Jack]

This whole "screen turns red when you take damage" thing needs to piss off already. There are too many games where taking even half damage might as well be a death sentence because once the screen gets to a certain point you can't even see what you're doing anymore and whether or not you live is mostly going to come down to luck. Figure out some other way to display your health, god damn it. Even the version where the screen turns black and white is preferable because at least there you can usually still make out your surroundings.

[TheMightyEthan]

What game have you been playing where it's that bad? I often have the opposite problem, the effect isn't pronounced enough so I don't realize I'm taking damage until suddenly I die.

[Mister Jack]

This time it's Control but that's far from the only game that's guilty of it

[Thursday Next]

There's a thing a lot of games with health bars do where the first 80% of your health bar actually constitutes like... 60% of your HP. So when you think your health is very low, you actually have say 10% more health than you think you do.

 

I wonder if this is something that Control does not do, so you really only get that low health warning when you are actually very low on health?

 

I only suggest this because I found in Control that I also found it difficult to get myself out of the nearly dead zone.

 

I think the other reason this doesn't really work is that health in Control is via pickups rather than hiding. Red screening is fine if you just need to hide for a few seconds and it clears, it encourages you to take a break till you can see clearly. When you have to actually be aggressive and get kills to get health drops, it stops being a handy reminder and becomes a huge hinderance.