Worst Gameplay Mechanics

[JetSetDizzy]

Oblivion - pretty much everything.

In that game, every aspect of the game changes according to your character's level. Yes, the loot available to you gets better as you progress, but the enemies become harder. And I mean every single enemy. Suddenly areas that had rats and wolves start to become infested with ridiculous mobs like minotaur lords. Whereas rag-tag bandits would be using rusty daggers and swords at level one, they magically have access to top-tier weapons and armor by the time you hit level 25. There is no benefit to leveling up since the game only punishes you for progressing. It is not only possible to beat the entire game at level 1, it's actually much easier that way.

Also X-Factor in MvC3.

If you know how to abuse the leveling system it is worth leveling, you just have to engineer three x5's where you want them each level.
It's still kinda dumb yeah but its hard to imagine how else they could do it when you can do anything iin any order and have it remain at all challenging. Games are supposed to get more difficult as you go so as long as you don't abuse the fact that you aren't forced to level the difficulty curve should be fairly reasonable.

 

[DCDuck]

Having to exploit a system in a deliberate manner (i.e. having to look up how to do it in online forums, etc.) just to make the game playable proves the mechanic is a lousy one.

 

[IvyFanboy]

• MvC - X-Factor....oh you do block string? Guess what fuck your agenda X-factor! Free kill!
• COD -Kill Streaks...when you have a game where there are soooo many ways to get a lucky kill simply by laming nades in areas randomly, a mechanic like kills streak is simply stupid. I can be 1 underneath my awesome Harrier strike and then out of no where a grenade takes me down by someone who just randomly guessed. The game just DRASTICALLY changed because now I don't get a harrier because of some random BS.
• COD - Grenade buffs/restock...no grenades should EVER do that much dmg with that much range in an FPS with tiny maps and so my legit places to randomly toss them, especially when you can instantly keep refilling them with things like One Man Army and firing upward across the map
• MK9 - JF Blocking...I don't care if it's an old mechanic, it's fucking terrible. There's no visual que, no practice to test timing, and numerous other reasons why it's fucking retarded. If I block your string that's -2 I don't wanna get fucked over because i held block for a frame too long and just created a frame trap, that just means we're both fucking guessing who's at advantage.
• COD - Dat Knife!!! Nothing has made me rage harder than the COD knife, and no I'm not talking about with buffs and other stuff that makes it incredibly stupid, no I'm talking about vanilla knife. In COD while running or moving, guns have a delay before firing, knifes do not. Knifes also have a 10' range and a 90 degree angle of "fuck you!". This means that when you round a corner it's who ever hits the knife button first because there is no counter at all, no gun can beat it and there's no way to avoid it. What makes it really broke is mainly the size of the maps, the design of the stages that allows for easy ways to get close on an enemy, the speed of a character, and the speed of the strike and recoil that allows you to drop multiple targets in seconds. I have literally gotten nukes before using knife ONLY just to prove how OP that fucking thing is. Other games have 1 hit kill knifes, but all of them are much harder to do either due to stage design, walk speeds, slow attack speed and recovery, range issues, angle issues, etc... Only a gun that shoots COD knives could ever top it.

 

[Ghengis_John]

• MvC - X-Factor....oh you do block string? Guess what fuck your agenda X-factor! Free kill!
• COD -Kill Streaks...when you have a game where there are soooo many ways to get a lucky kill simply by laming nades in areas randomly, a mechanic like kills streak is simply stupid. I can be 1 underneath my awesome Harrier strike and then out of no where a grenade takes me down by someone who just randomly guessed. The game just DRASTICALLY changed because now I don't get a harrier because of some random BS.
• COD - Grenade buffs/restock...no grenades should EVER do that much dmg with that much range in an FPS with tiny maps and so my legit places to randomly toss them, especially when you can instantly keep refilling them with things like One Man Army and firing upward across the map
• MK9 - JF Blocking...I don't care if it's an old mechanic, it's fucking terrible. There's no visual que, no practice to test timing, and numerous other reasons why it's fucking retarded. If I block your string that's -2 I don't wanna get fucked over because i held block for a frame too long and just created a frame trap, that just means we're both fucking guessing who's at advantage.
• COD - Dat Knife!!! Nothing has made me rage harder than the COD knife, and no I'm not talking about with buffs and other stuff that makes it incredibly stupid, no I'm talking about vanilla knife. In COD while running or moving, guns have a delay before firing, knifes do not. Knifes also have a 10' range and a 90 degree angle of "fuck you!". This means that when you round a corner it's who ever hits the knife button first because there is no counter at all, no gun can beat it and there's no way to avoid it. What makes it really broke is mainly the size of the maps, the design of the stages that allows for easy ways to get close on an enemy, the speed of a character, and the speed of the strike and recoil that allows you to drop multiple targets in seconds. I have literally gotten nukes before using knife ONLY just to prove how OP that fucking thing is. Other games have 1 hit kill knifes, but all of them are much harder to do either due to stage design, walk speeds, slow attack speed and recovery, range issues, angle issues, etc... Only a gun that shoots COD knives could ever top it.

You wouldn't happen to be a camp-happy sniper would you?

 

[Egg]

Having to exploit a system in a deliberate manner (i.e. having to look up how to do it in online forums, etc.) just to make the game playable proves the mechanic is a lousy one.

Try playing Wizadry V for the Snes. The entire game requires a guide. You dont even know what the spells do since they are named wierd names.

 

[CappuccinoJak]

ninja gaiden 2's mentor and above difficulties. sure a few ICS ninjas make it a challenge but make all enemies ICS, gunner, and rocket ninjas and you get 3 helpings of "OMGWTF IS THIS CRAP?!" (can't wait to get raped in ninja gaiden 3)

everything about COD's multiplayer, don't think this requires explanation.

collectibles in EVERY game! i don't wanna spend 5000 hours trying to find all the tears in Bayonetta or all the feathers in AC2.

throwing in multiplayer for the sake of having a multiplayer (i'm talking to you bioshock 2 and dead space 2). it takes away from a game that should've stuck to it's awesome singleplayer (mass effect 3 better not have one).

a lame story in an action game like bayonetta or devil may cry. yes i come to them for the spectacular action they are.....now if only someone can give them a better story.

 

[Rekano]

• COD - Dat Knife!!!

The knife + the care package marker speed boost(aka Mt.Dew Can) was one of the most fun I've had in a game. And though I was the complete bastard, better players knew how to deal with my shenanigans and would put me down before I could even commando lunge them(at the very least, a second time would never again happen).

Once the speed boost got patched out, I quit playing. The thrill and fun disappeared instantly.

 

[JetSetDizzy]

Lol how in the world can you say vanilla knife is OP? Of course a melee weapon is going to kill faster than a gun at short range. What the fuck would be the point of it otherwise?

Having to exploit a system in a deliberate manner (i.e. having to look up how to do it in online forums, etc.) just to make the game playable proves the mechanic is a lousy one.

wekk if you just let it go normally it works out okay, yeah the game gets hard as you level up but as long as you don't abuse the fact that you can stay level one it just becomes a standard difficulty curve where the game gets harder as you go without restricting your freedom of where you actually can go. Its not perfect but how else would you do it in a game that is so open?

 

[Seven7Swords]

• MvC - X-Factor....oh you do block string? Guess what fuck your agenda X-factor! Free kill!
• COD -Kill Streaks...when you have a game where there are soooo many ways to get a lucky kill simply by laming nades in areas randomly, a mechanic like kills streak is simply stupid. I can be 1 underneath my awesome Harrier strike and then out of no where a grenade takes me down by someone who just randomly guessed. The game just DRASTICALLY changed because now I don't get a harrier because of some random BS.
• COD - Grenade buffs/restock...no grenades should EVER do that much dmg with that much range in an FPS with tiny maps and so my legit places to randomly toss them, especially when you can instantly keep refilling them with things like One Man Army and firing upward across the map
• MK9 - JF Blocking...I don't care if it's an old mechanic, it's fucking terrible. There's no visual que, no practice to test timing, and numerous other reasons why it's fucking retarded. If I block your string that's -2 I don't wanna get fucked over because i held block for a frame too long and just created a frame trap, that just means we're both fucking guessing who's at advantage.
• COD - Dat Knife!!! Nothing has made me rage harder than the COD knife, and no I'm not talking about with buffs and other stuff that makes it incredibly stupid, no I'm talking about vanilla knife. In COD while running or moving, guns have a delay before firing, knifes do not. Knifes also have a 10' range and a 90 degree angle of "fuck you!". This means that when you round a corner it's who ever hits the knife button first because there is no counter at all, no gun can beat it and there's no way to avoid it. What makes it really broke is mainly the size of the maps, the design of the stages that allows for easy ways to get close on an enemy, the speed of a character, and the speed of the strike and recoil that allows you to drop multiple targets in seconds. I have literally gotten nukes before using knife ONLY just to prove how OP that fucking thing is. Other games have 1 hit kill knifes, but all of them are much harder to do either due to stage design, walk speeds, slow attack speed and recovery, range issues, angle issues, etc... Only a gun that shoots COD knives could ever top it.

*n00b tubes this post with Danger Close Perk. Refills with Scavenger*

LoL

I think dual wielding shotty is the stupidest thing Block Ops ever brought to the series, and I was a big advocate against Cammando/Sprint/knife.

Always thought COD was meant to be more realistic until they started dual wielding shit. Mondern Warfare and block ops to me is all about finding the most abusive perk/weapon set up, IMO. I get alot of complaints with last stand/final stand and the quick shooting/reloading revolver. Or better yet, Stoner with FMJ or extended clip.

 

[ArcticKomodo]

...melee weapon is going to kill faster than a gun at short range.

 

[Synraii]

Worst mechanic ever?
Hmm... I'm gonna go with Tekken 6 rage mode - paticularly when active on a Steve player and you are within a 200 mile radius of any given wall ~_~

 

[The Landslide]

wekk if you just let it go normally it works out okay, yeah the game gets hard as you level up but as long as you don't abuse the fact that you can stay level one it just becomes a standard difficulty curve where the game gets harder as you go without restricting your freedom of where you actually can go. Its not perfect but how else would you do it in a game that is so open?

I never beat Oblivion because I hate looking things up online for single player games, and it got to a point when I leveled up something like Mercantile and suddenly went from fighting wolves to minotaurs that I said "fuck this game."

Honestly, it is preposterous that they would design a system that creates an increase in difficulty due to leveling up possibly non-combat skills. I understand your argument in that it makes the world open-ended in that difficulty is similar no matter where you go, but I propose that it stultifies the open-world aspect by limiting you to a certain specific manner in which to design your character.

And yes, melee weapons should kill in one hit in CoD, but they shouldn't propel you forward at 500 miles per hour, or create perks that double the range. There needs to be SOME downside, but many would argue that the power of the knife exists to override the power of lying in one God damn spot like a coward.

 

[IvyFanboy]

You wouldn't happen to be a camp-happy sniper would you?

No, I used multiple tactics my main set up was using UMP with Lightweight/Marathon/heartbeat in MW2 for run n' gun and I would just rape the arena since UMP can snipe full map, the speed allowed me to easily out flank people (and in that game a good flank can mean 5 free kills), and it allowed me to abuse the knife by covering distance. I would also do OMA grenade launcher and literally just aim upwards and fire since i knew how to measure the shot using the radar (i would often mid firefight fire 2 off during a reload). And I would do run n' gun sniper where i would camp 2 or 3 kills then move on.

Really I don't get why ANYONE complains about camping in COD. The whole game is anti-camping with all it's mechanics besides health regen (fuck you halo 2 for that innovation). With how easy it was to kill an enemy, once you knew where they were that was a free kill. However camping the secret area on the helicopter stage in MW2 was a favorite of mine and would always end in a nuke.

I played PC and I did notice my complaints weren't as relevant on xbox because you cant be near as offensive heavy on it. Sneaking up on 3 people on xbox was tricky...on PC you have so much accuracy and speed that you can literally wipe out a whole base of people if you break past one of their defenders and rush in before they can react. but camping was never a strong strategy. Rushdown is WAAAAAY more effective in that game. The knife does not balance this. Knife should either be like CS where it's 2 hit kill, but 1 if from behind or they reduce the range and add a LOT MORE recovery. i literally should not be able to run into a crowd of enemies and be able to flick a 6 inch blade around like an asshole before they can get a bead on me and kill me.

 

[IvyFanboy]

But while we're at it...

Halo 2 - Fully regenerating life after a few seconds. This terrible idea completely invalidated so many strategies and made sniper camping way OP leaving your 2 options to fight being camping with long range or attempting to get super close so they couldn't run away. Halo 1 had it right with the mix of shield and life and felt great. If I peppered the sniper I knew he would only get shield back and would be weak if he popped up again and would have to move...in Halo 2 the fucker just needs to duck a few seconds and suddenly i just wasted ammo for no purpose. The only game this has never pissed be off in is BF:BC2 simply because of the speed at which it does it and numerous other factors that made it hard to abuse.

 

[ArcticKomodo]

No body has mentioned CF in SC4. That's a good thing!

 

[Ghengis_John]

If you know how to abuse the leveling system it is worth leveling, you just have to engineer three x5's where you want them each level.
It's still kinda dumb yeah but its hard to imagine how else they could do it when you can do anything iin any order and have it remain at all challenging. Games are supposed to get more difficult as you go so as long as you don't abuse the fact that you aren't forced to level the difficulty curve should be fairly reasonable.

I get a kick out of the fact that you would do that too. (Was something I found on my own in Morrowind, which should tell you how much I played of that, lol) As for me, absolutely hated the elder scrolls: oblivion for the level-up crap. I play as a good guy and I like my towns to stay populated because I consider the little digital sea-monkeys under my care, so I was none too pleased when monsters started being able to overwhelm the town guards. (Heck one will-o-the-wisp can take out an entire town). And hacking away at the mid section of a Daedra for four minutes to determine a winner was not fun either. No matter how high my levels got I still only hit so hard and my weapon still only had so much hp. Eventually I abandoned the game because I'd done a lot and didn't want to start over and closing oblivion gates was taking me an entire night and it wasn't fun.

Somebody told me some trick about resistances and halving them on each hit and how that can make the monsters killable again, and that helped. I'd link it to you but google is confused by my vague search terms. Needless to say, it's right to say that if you need to look up ways around a mechanic on the internet, it's a bad mechanic. The whole point to leveling up is to make the character feel more powerful. That through their experiences they have learned or grown and are that much more capable. When all the rats and ogres in the world appear to also be undergoing a similarly heroic journey there seems to be little point to continuing to play at all. Not that it wasn't a sight watching a guard fight a minotaur until the poor sod's weapon broke but I'll still agree with the people saying that was a bad mechanic.

I never beat Oblivion because I hate looking things up online for single player games, and it got to a point when I leveled up something like Mercantile and suddenly went from fighting wolves to minotaurs that I said "fuck this game."

Honestly, it is preposterous that they would design a system that creates an increase in difficulty due to leveling up possibly non-combat skills. I understand your argument in that it makes the world open-ended in that difficulty is similar no matter where you go, but I propose that it stultifies the open-world aspect by limiting you to a certain specific manner in which to design your character.

And is chuck ever right on that whole "leveling non combat skills making monsters tougher" point. You should be able to play the game however you want. If the focus is entirely on combat whey do speech and mercantile exist at all? And why isn't the combat system better?

But while we're at it...

Halo 2 - Fully regenerating life after a few seconds. This terrible idea completely invalidated so many strategies and made sniper camping way OP leaving your 2 options to fight being camping with long range or attempting to get super close so they couldn't run away. Halo 1 had it right with the mix of shield and life and felt great. If I peppered the sniper I knew he would only get shield back and would be weak if he popped up again and would have to move...in Halo 2 the fucker just needs to duck a few seconds and suddenly i just wasted ammo for no purpose. The only game this has never pissed be off in is BF:BC2 simply because of the speed at which it does it and numerous other factors that made it hard to abuse.

I liked it actually (In halo 2, by now I've quite had my fill of it). I've always been a close-mid range scrapper in every FPS. If somebody killed you because you had 14% health and he had 100% it was annoying he'd think he was better than you. In Halo 2 I welcomed the change because it meant it was always a contest of equals and I couldn't have charges of being a "map runner" leveled at me anymore. I used to know where every health pack or medkit or pill bottle or shield belt was in a shooter's maps and I'd never engage with less than a full tank if I could help it. I considered it sound tactics but apparently this was an "underhanded" strategy. I particularly loved how much the regen made my friend Jesse complain. He could never kill me in one go in any fps and felt if he took my life to half he was entitled to kill me next time. The way I looked at it if he wasn't good enough to beat me the first time why should he get a kill for free? We both had the same health, that was a duel. It proved nothing if he could kill me when I was almost dead.

Now that I'm not as good as I used to be in first person shooters though and I'm getting knocked off by teenaged cyborgs who only seem able to fire a bullet if it lands between somebody's eyes, let's do away with regenerating health I say!

 

[The Landslide]

And is chuck ever right on that whole "leveling non combat skills making monsters tougher" point. You should be able to play the game however you want. If the focus is entirely on combat whey do speech and mercantile exist at all? And why isn't the combat system better?

Even moreso, the bonuses you get for leveling skills appear only at levels 25, 50, 75, and 100. Which means to get a true bonus from skills such as Mercantile you have to grind the ever loving piss out of them. So if I go to town on Mercantile only to turn around and, expecting Black Bears, I find whatever the fuck that alligator-faced asshole is running amok. King K-Rool mother fucker. Spits on me and I have a heart attack, or punches my horse in the face and kills it. And I paid serious gold for that horse. And those guys ARE EVERYWHERE.

 

[ArcticKomodo]

Dazed from Street fighter: You're putting up a pretty good offense. Let's reward you with free hits and a reset on your combo dampening.

 

[Dullyanna]

Even moreso, the bonuses you get for leveling skills appear only at levels 25, 50, 75, and 100. Which means to get a true bonus from skills such as Mercantile you have to grind the ever loving piss out of them. So if I go to town on Mercantile only to turn around and, expecting Black Bears, I find whatever the fuck that alligator-faced asshole is running amok. King K-Rool mother fucker. Spits on me and I have a heart attack, or punches my horse in the face and kills it. And I paid serious gold for that horse. And those guys ARE EVERYWHERE.

Yo it's all symbolic of the current economy.

 

[IvyFanboy]

I like to cripple people with harassing shots and force them to react under panic. You cant do that with bad health regen systems. All they have to do is avoid for a very small amount of time and undo all your work. I preferred know my enemy was injured and forcing them to make a move or charging in for the finish. Halo 1 was the greatest health system ever and it's sad we don't see it return. The fusion of both regen and health was good because you could recover, but only so much.

Can we count the CS AWP as a mechanic?