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Outdated gaming mechanics.


CastletonSnob

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I think my biggest 'can we get over this already' mechanics would be any of the forced cinematic nonsense like a game randomly limiting your sprint speed, forced walking sections, incessantly babbling AI partner or even main protag. Essentially Naughty Dog-isms. The idea of taking control and agency away from the player to tell your story seems outdated and pretentious to me.  

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30 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I think my biggest 'can we get over this already' mechanics would be any of the forced cinematic nonsense like a game randomly limiting your sprint speed, forced walking sections, incessantly babbling AI partner or even main protag. Essentially Naughty Dog-isms. The idea of taking control and agency away from the player to tell your story seems outdated and pretentious to me.  

I think if you have a moment or maybe two like that in the entire game, it's not a big deal. Psychonauts 2 did that pretty well. But having them over and over and over and it just basically being a walk-and-talk is just annoying. You didn't want to spend the money to give me a good cutscene but you also didn't want me to run off and ignore whatever conversation wasn't worthy of that hypothetical cutscene.

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39 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I think my biggest 'can we get over this already' mechanics would be any of the forced cinematic nonsense like a game randomly limiting your sprint speed, forced walking sections, incessantly babbling AI partner or even main protag. Essentially Naughty Dog-isms. The idea of taking control and agency away from the player to tell your story seems outdated and pretentious to me.  

 

You must have hated taking Ayaka to the festival on Amakane island then!

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It's been awhile, but I guess I used to get frustrated with having to find/craft light sources or trying to find batteries for flashlights with the narrowest light beams possible. I don't know if that is an out-dated mechanic. I know it adds some immersion in survival/survival-horror games.

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1 hour ago, Derek said:

It's been awhile, but I guess I used to get frustrated with having to find/craft light sources or trying to find batteries for flashlights with the narrowest light beams possible. I don't know if that is an out-dated mechanic. I know it adds some immersion in survival/survival-horror games.

 

Alan Wake must have been torture for you then :p One of the side missions in thee Iki Island expansion for Ghost of Tsushima uses this mechanic too.

 

Another one I thought of is using a stamina bar to make a game more challenging I guess. Like a character gets tired after a few steps of sprinting. The first Evil Within game was TERRIBLE with this mechanic and it nearly ruins the game. The second one is only marginally better.

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14 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Perhaps you' have a misunderstanding of the term. It was meant to be used in jest not a literal description. It was a joke phrase termed by Yahtzee then people used jokingly and the console peasants got their jimmies rustled.

 

It always sucked, it’s like people trying to use Pepe “ironically”

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2 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

Alan Wake must have been torture for you then :p One of the side missions in thee Iki Island expansion for Ghost of Tsushima uses this mechanic too.

 

Another one I thought of is using a stamina bar to make a game more challenging I guess. Like a character gets tired after a few steps of sprinting. The first Evil Within game was TERRIBLE with this mechanic and it nearly ruins the game. The second one is only marginally better.

I really like The Evil Within but the stamina meter was stupidly small. I remember constantly dumping upgrades into that. 

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5 hours ago, Bloodporne said:

I think my biggest 'can we get over this already' mechanics would be any of the forced cinematic nonsense like a game randomly limiting your sprint speed, forced walking sections, incessantly babbling AI partner or even main protag. Essentially Naughty Dog-isms. The idea of taking control and agency away from the player to tell your story seems outdated and pretentious to me.  

I believe the forced walk / slow down is sometimes done to allow assets to load? Or maybe in thinking of when your character has to slowly squeeze through some narrow passage. Either way,  hopefully we see less of it in a near future with faster storage devices being standard. 

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Just now, Raggit said:

I believe the forced walk / slow down is sometimes done to allow assets to load? Or maybe in thinking of when your character has to slowly squeeze through some narrow passage. Either way,  hopefully we see less of it in a near future with faster storage devices being standard. 

 

Both of those techniques are used to mask asset loads.

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On 9/17/2021 at 3:56 PM, Xbob42 said:

Any attack/status effect that takes control away from the player. Hate it in single-player games, multi-player games, everything. It's especially awful in MMOs because instead of crafting interesting combat they're all about just chain stunning someone until they die. Super fun to be on the receiving end of that!

 

On 9/17/2021 at 5:35 PM, Ghost_MH said:

 

I so absolutely hate the "I'm winning this fight, cut scene, oh no I am defeat". It's still out there in games. Fuck you. If you're going to make me lose anyway, don't let me waste time restoring my health or have to "win" the fight by knocking the enemy HP down to some random number.

 

I think the most recent bad offender here is Kakarot in the fight versus Raditz. You have to lose that fight, but it still makes you go up against Raditz for two rounds and bring his HP down to zero before he's like "Ha, you're so weak and I was holding back". Meanwhile Goku went from 100% HP in the fight to ragged and almost dead in the cutscene.

 

The combination of these is Far Cry 5. For those unfamiliar, there are a few points in the game where you suddenly get kidnapped by the baddies and there's nothing you can do.

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While not quite the same thing as slow walking for asset loads or story, I hate climbing sections in modern games that are super linear. It's become the anti-platforming segment that was never a good idea, but has felt really outdated since the first AC. Assassin's Creed came out in 2007! A lot of these games have some similar (if slightly more limited) climbing systems. Of what interest is it to me as a player to mindlessly climb from yellow handhold to yellow handhold? Even worse, it's nearly automated in many games, so I'm not timing jumps or really doing anything other than pushing forward and jumping. Sure, they can make it really "cinematic" but it's boring as hell to play.

 

Sometimes games will try and spice things up by not coloring the handholds, but they still only make a single possible route through some cave or tomb or whatever. So now I'm mindlessly moving through this space, but every once in a while I jump towards a ledge that looks like I should be able to grab it, but I fall to my death because it's not "the way."

 

I blame Naughty Dog, but there are tons of games that do this. I loved Horizon Zero Dawn and its great big world to explore however I wanted. They clearly had some kind of generic climbing system, but they'd still throw in the odd climbing section.

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18 hours ago, johnny said:

if my weapons or armor are going to degrade, do not make it a pain in the ass to fix it 

 

19 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

There isn't really anything "outdated" about inventory management/encumbrance or weapons/armor durability - those are perfectly reasonable mechanics/challenges for the player to overcome.

 

The issue is the EXECUTION of those game mechanics because that execution is extremely tricky in assuring the proper challenge/frustration balance.  As a result, most developers probably shouldn't even attempt it to begin with.

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KOTAKU.COM

Ultra Age has a refreshing take on weapon durability, and I love it

 

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3 hours ago, Bjomesphat said:

"Are you sure you want to quit? Any unsaved progress will not be saved."

 

Welp, since there's no physical save option, I guess I'll just assume the game autosaved and I'll restart at this checkpoint after quitting. What's so hard about telling you the last time your game saved when quitting out?

Good one. I was just complaining about this in the Deathloop thread.

 

It should be illegal to show that prompt in any game when there's nothing left to save, but especially when there is no manual save option. If you have unsaved progress, it should ask you if you want to save (or tell you what you need to do in order to save, i.e. progress to a checkpoint, etc.) otherwise it should just let you quit without making you think that maybe there's something unsaved.

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8 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

Alan Wake must have been torture for you then :p One of the side missions in thee Iki Island expansion for Ghost of Tsushima uses this mechanic too.

 

Another one I thought of is using a stamina bar to make a game more challenging I guess. Like a character gets tired after a few steps of sprinting. The first Evil Within game was TERRIBLE with this mechanic and it nearly ruins the game. The second one is only marginally better.

I don’t mind stamina when it matters, but there needs to be infinite stamina in the areas it doesn’t matter. Like, I’m playing Mass Effect 2 now and Shepard can run like 8 feet before she’s exhausted. When you’re on the Citadel and just want to get from point A to point B it’s very annoying.  

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1 minute ago, Paperclyp said:

I don’t mind stamina when it matters, but there needs to be infinite stamina in the areas it doesn’t matter. Like, I’m playing Mass Effect 2 now and Shepard can run like 8 feet before she’s exhausted. When you’re on the Citadel and just want to get from point A to point B it’s very annoying.  

Yeah I'm playing Mass Effect 2 as well and Shepard's sprint speed is so bad I never even bother using it. There are portions in the game where it really doesn't work because you're dealing with melee enemies that swarm you and Shepard just can't move fast enough to get away from them.

 

That said, MAN I love this game and world and really miss playing it. ME2 is definitely my fav in the series.

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A lot of these mechanics you guys are listing in this thread aren't even outdated, they're just mechanics you either don't like or weren't implemented well. :p

 

A truly outdated mechanic would be something like passcodes you need to put in to access your save point like in the original Metroid, or Mega Man X. 

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9 minutes ago, Brick said:

A lot of these mechanics you guys are listing in this thread aren't even outdated, they're just mechanics you either don't like or weren't implemented well. :p

 

A truly outdated mechanic would be something like passcodes you need to put in to access your save point like in the original Metroid, or Mega Man X. 

 

We have a winner!

 

I honestly don't believe that any actual gameplay element can be considered "outdated".  Those things that do become "outdated" are externalities to the gameplay itself.

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14 minutes ago, Brick said:

A lot of these mechanics you guys are listing in this thread aren't even outdated, they're just mechanics you either don't like or weren't implemented well. :p

 

A truly outdated mechanic would be something like passcodes you need to put in to access your save point like in the original Metroid, or Mega Man X. 

 

Blowing on your cartridge to get it to work!

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5 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

We have a winner!

 

I honestly don't believe that any actual gameplay element can be considered "outdated".  Those things that do become "outdated" are externalities to the gameplay itself.

 

Random encounters in JRPGs. It only ever existed because of hardware limitations of drawing too many sprites on screen, but it's wildly outdated. Pokemon didn't even get rid of random battles until the most recent game.

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22 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Yeah I'm playing Mass Effect 2 as well and Shepard's sprint speed is so bad I never even bother using it. There are portions in the game where it really doesn't work because you're dealing with melee enemies that swarm you and Shepard just can't move fast enough to get away from them.

 

That said, MAN I love this game and world and really miss playing it. ME2 is definitely my fav in the series.

It really is good, better than I remember actually. I think when I was younger I took the writing and just basic world building for granted. I could take or leave the battles but meh I knew that wouldn’t age super great. 

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