Gaming Tropes That Need to GO

[FredEffinChopin]

Has anyone brought up post apocalyptic graffiti yet? Not just in those settings, but wherever people are in despair and / or crazy, it seems that the first thing they do is scrawl on the walls in places where passersby night come and get creeped out.

[Baconrath]

I'm generally not keen on enemies not being affected by the environment / other enemies area of effect damage. If you are going to throw ranged, aoe and close quarters damage at me, then that needs to affect all characters. Not just me. By the same token, I'm fine with my grenades blowing me up. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander after all.

 

I'm ok with close range physical attacks not damaging anything other than the target though. Even if the animation looks like it ought to hurt everyone.

 

What about escort stuff? Like in Dead Rising where your rescueee (?) gets mobbed by dem zambies and they only way to save them is by furiously applying melee to the mob but you end up hitting your friend you were trying to rescue. They then turn on you and all that effort was wasted.

 

Maybe...maybe escort missions are what really needs to go...

[TheFlyingGerbil]

If the graffiti is supposed to be by one insane person I sort of don't mind if it is where someone was confined (e.g. a prison/asylum cell) as I can imagine that happening. When it's spread across an entire city it is just ridiculous as I can't help imagining this gibbering wreck scrawling something, then maintaining their frenzy as they walk half a mile (or scale a building to some inaccessible part) to write a bit more.

 

If it not supposed to be by just one person it makes just as little sense - it's probably the sane survivors and if you're trying to escape an asylum or survive an apocalype, why take the time, and also draw attention to your position and the fact there is someone living here worth attacking? 

[Strangelove]

Umm, I dont think graffiti in a post apocalyptic setting is meant to be after, but before and during the breakdown of civilization.

It's shit that no one cleaned off. Its basically what real cities would look like if the government didnt give a shit about graffiti. Can you imagine what a city would look like if every single piece of graffiti and other forms of vandalism weren't cleaned up over the years? It would looks as shitty as a...uhh, post apocalyptic world.

And if there is graffiti being made after the apocalypse, its usually in the form of a warning from still civilized people or it's unintelligible nonsense from those that have lost their mind.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

yeah, that's what i think doesn't make sense if it was just pre-apocalyptic graffiti it would be everywhere like it is now and it wouldn't bother me

Edited June 12, 2014 by TheFlyingGerbil

[FredEffinChopin]

Umm, I dont think graffiti in a post apocalyptic setting is meant to be after, but before and during the breakdown of civilization.

 

Absolutely. I find it terribly cheesy. To be fair, I'm pretty sure cinema abused it well before video games became good looking enough to. It's kinda like this for me:

 

 I can't help imagining this gibbering wreck scrawling something, then maintaining their frenzy as they walk half a mile (or scale a building to some inaccessible part) to write a bit more.

 

 

It's mostly the "THE END IS NIGH" kind of graffiti that conjures ridiculous imagery for me. I wouldn't pick on it if I didn't see it with fair frequency, but it seems like it's pretty common to imagine that desperate individuals, in times of greatest distress, will naturally turns their attention to scrawling phrases on a wall. Preferably in something that looks like blood. Either that or it's pretty common to lean on a tired-ass trope that one can almost set their watch by in certain types of movies/games.

[TheMightyEthan]

The "THE END IS NIGH" kind of stuff makes sense to me as something that would be written at the beginning of the decline but while society was still more or less functioning.  Like, at the point where most people are still trying to go about business, but the irreversible slide has begun.

 

*Edit* - Though that only works with stuff like a disease or whatever where it's somewhat gradual, not like a nuclear war.

[deanb]

I think it can have it's place where it helps tell a story, but yeah splashing it everywhere just kind of spoils it. I think some nice examples are InFamous, which reflect your "morality" (though it's more posters and such than grafitti) and Watch_Dogs had some Banksy-esque graffiti which was fitting.

 

At the end of the day in a apocalyptic setting writing materials of all kind are ridiculously valuable so sprawling "end is nigh" everywhere would be a bit of a waste compared to "building has good loot", "high radiation ahead", "we're all at the main library ---> 500 yards".

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Not really a trope that needs to go, but with all the recent "look at our graphics" trailers it reminds me that I really don't know why developers insist on showing off waterfalls which invariably look awful no matter how lovely everything else looks. The one I specifically remember from E3 this year was The Witcher, but there were definitely others  and it's a perennial problem.

 

I think the issue is they can only make water look convincing when it is not interacting with anything. Flat bodies of water can look lovely, and the most graphically "wow" thing in a scene until they meet with a character, a boat, the shore etc. and with waterfalls being entirely interaction with other objects the result is inevitably ropey and looks like fire used to in the 90s when it was super obvious it was half a dozen 2D animations sat on top of each other at angles.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I remember thinking that with the Dragon Age 3 (I think it was) video.  The environments were all beautiful, and then I literally laughed out loud when I saw how bad the waterfall looked.  It was just so jarring.

[Mister Jack]

See those mountains in the background? You can climb them.

[Eleven]

Flat bodies of water can look lovely, and the most graphically "wow" thing in a scene...

I remember when I started playing Morrowind we had an old video card, then later we upgraded it and the water looked so amazing. I called my brother and we just followed the river for a while, just looking at the water.

 

Other than that I don't have anything for this topic.

[Mister Jack]

Hey!  Your health is low!  Do you hear that beeping?  It means your health is low!  Why haven't you refilled your health yet?  You must not have heard the beeping.  I'm just gonna go ahead and keep beeping until you find more health because obviously you weren't paying attention the first time.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Urgh. When that happens in Zelda it actually makes me want to kill myself and continue (without saving, obviously) rather than listen to it if I know there are no hearts nearby.

[TheMightyEthan]

I don't mind so much if there's a sound that keeps playing while your health is low, but I fucking hate it when there's a character or on-screen "hint" that repeatedly pops up to tell you that when your health is low you should try to find something to refill it.  Really?  I didn't realize that during the first 30 hours I spent playing this game!  Thank you for telling me again!

[Mal]

Final boss battles where you have to use everyone. This sort of thing kind of irks me in RPGs. Compound it with a four stage boss where you have to repeatedly defeat side enemies to even hit the boss and you got Ys Seven final boss. I swear, all told it can be a 30 minute crawl on a PSP. At this point it is a pain in the ass since you will be sent back to the second stage if you die.

 

I much rather fight Dark Fact than this boss.

[Strangelove]

Jrpg bosses in most games that arent affected by any status effects whatsoever. I just hate the fact that the game tries to teach you how to use all these abilities and they they all get thrown out the window for bosses and it usually devolves into chipping away damage.

Off the top of my head, early 16 bit FF and Persona 3 and 4 are some of the only games I remember where you can use status effects.

There are SOME bosses in the later FFs who are weak to some status effects, but it usually done in a gimmicky sort of way that will only apply tot hat one boss.

[Mister Jack]

I beat the final boss of FFXIII by just poisoning him and then turtling for about twenty minutes.

[Alex Heat]

Speaking of FFXIII, can we drop the whole thing with ranking your performance?  That shit's obnoxious as hell.  Sonic games have been guilty of this since Adventure and it wasn't endearing then either.

[Mister Jack]

I concur.  As if I give a fuck how well the game thinks I passed Butt Zone Act 2.

[Hot Heart]

Honestly, I don't mind the ranking stuff in Sonic. It's not as if any of the levels are particularly hard, so it's more of an optional difficulty. No roadblocks in your game progress, but you'll need to practise to get the best rating.

[Mr. GOH!]

MOBAs. I mean, I guess one or two options is okay. But having a gazillion different MOBAs that feature essentially identical core gameplay is kinda dumb. The barrier to entry is so high that I suspect publishers will find their market exhausted very suddenly.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Mr. GOH!

[TheMightyEthan]

I agree.  They at least need to branch out and stop cloning each other so directly.  Monday Night Combat was a MOBA that felt very different from every other MOBA, and wasn't nearly as hard to get into.

[Mister Jack]

I might be able to enjoy MOBAs if they didn't have the absolute worst communities in all of gaming. It's like every random you play with thinks they were just one win away from qualifying for that million dollar pro gaming esports money if only they weren't surrounded by noobs like YOU.

 

Seriously, fuck people who play MOBAs.

Edited July 25, 2014 by Mister Jack

[Strangelove]

This is completely based on my personal experiences, but I think more games need to drop the minimap. Outside of open world or large games and the few games where a minimap is an integral part of the gameplay(MGS for example), having a small map on the corner screen is unnecessary.

I think if you design a well thought out original and detailed level, you shouldn't need a minimap to help you find direction. I feel like developers use this as a crutch to make really boring under-detailed levels.

Ive spent so much time looking at minimaps this generation that I dont remember what most of the game looks like. I cant remember any details.

 

Though this was also my problem with the Batman games and their detective mode. Detective mode was so damn useful that I had it on pretty much 90% of the time. From the cutscenes I can say the game had good graphics, but thats about it. All I remember is detective mode.

And yes, this is somewhat about TLoU. It doesnt have a minimap and listen mode should be turned off by default. The game is alot better for it. I remember almost all of it.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Strangelove