While there's currently another thread for people who want to discuss why their FIFA microtransactions are oh so harmful, here I will point out the issues we, as in people who still play decent games and actively look for non-shit games, currently face. While things like loot boxes and micro transactions tend to be less common in indie RPGs and strategy games, we still face our share of design decisions that may not be as anti-consumer, but sure are anti-fun. Now, before the usual retards start spewing their usual drivel: this thread is NOT about micro transactions, pay to win, etc. If you play Diablo: Immortal, FIFA and the like, you're a soy filled manboon and you deserve to be milked like the tasteless cow you are. With that out of the way, it's bullet point time:
- Modifier Hell: Paradox is the main source of this cancer, but it has spread into every other company and transcends the strategy genre. Basically, I find the "+2% +2% +3% -1% -3%" thing to be a frustrating design choice. It's fucking impossible for a sane person to keep track of infinity modifiers over several planets/bases/etc, multiple characters, races, troop types. The end result is always the same: the player goes "fuck it" and stops caring. I don't know how or why this came to be a standard in modern gaming, but FUCK modifier hell. Give us few modifiers that actually matter (at least 15%) and stop wasting our time with "dislikes fighting goblins under the moonlight on a Tuesday: -1.5 % accuracy".
- RNG says "fuck you" mechanics: hard to pinpoint exactly where that came from, but basically modern indie games just LOVE to flip a coin and screw you through no fault of your own. This is trash design. Sure, it can be used sparsely and in meaningful ways, but I've yet to find a person with a triple digit IQ claiming the "comet spotted" event of EU IV is anything other than trash. These coinflip mechanics are lazy and used in lieu of a properly well thought out script. Recently I made the mistake of giving Darkest Dungeon a try and OH BOY, does that game enjoys its RNG says fuck you mechanics. Finished a dungeon with no casualties and no stress? Well, too bad, your guy now has syphilis and fears an enemy type he never encountered, lmao, guess he got tentacle raped by Eldritch horrors when I wasn't looking. RNG says fuck you mechanics punish the player for simply playing the game. The natural solution is, ofc, to stop playing.
- Meta progression: unlike the previous two, I don't consider meta progression to be bad by itself, BUT it's being over used and not in a fun way. I'm ok with more complex stuff being locked behind meta progression, I think Slay the Spire is a prime example of progression done right, BUT OTOH we're seeing way too many games that give the player a bigger stat stick OR straight up lock core gameplay mechanics behind meta progression. I mean, COME ON, don't devs claim to care about new players and all that jazz? How does locking core gameplay mechanics behind some form of meta progression NOT fucks new players in the ass? And stat stick progression makes the player suspicious of his own success, as one wonders how much did he actually improved at the game and how much is due to the fact that his own tools now function better. Tainted Grail is a pretty bad ofender IMO as it locked the functionality of its archer classes behind meta progression by designing its core defense card as "double X" where X is a meta stat that starts at...ZERO. So the card is dead weight until you acquire meta stats. 11/10 design, goys! Another noteworthy example is Iratus: Lord of the Dead. In its early versions the game had no meta progression, but a town building system was introduced as soon as a big publisher took over. Coincidence? Or do suits believe indie games NEED meta progression because "big numba gud"?
- Dailies/weeklies/seasonal events: all these rewards can go fuck themselves. Inb4 some retard claim "but it's just a bonus", fuck you, it is not. Dailies are usually tied to the game's overall meta progression, so it's a solution to an artificial problem. Fuck, I just remembered Killing Floor has this crap, and it's a FPS. Like I said, this cancer goes way beyond RPGs and strategy games.
- Prestige/Ascension: so you played this indie game that was fun and interesting. How about replaying it but now everything has a "minus X because fuck you" attached to it? The gradually increasing difficulty for "extra challenge" is cancer that incentivizes meta obsession, reloads, rerolls and what have you. Since the game was originally designed around its default difficulty, it's unsurprising that adding a bunch of penalties to the player results in forcing him to play certain strategies, abuse certain exploits and turn what was once a relaxing experience into an overthinking sweat fest. I believe "hardcore modes" should be left to the deranged minds of masochistic modders.
- Mandatory Ironman: such hardcore, much wow. "Roguelikes" and their obsession with limiting save files can crawl into a hole and die. Your autosave is always one bug away from completely fucking several hours worth of gaming. And even if no technical issues fuck with you, there's still the possibility of being screwed over by a missclick, a single UI-misinformed decision or plain old bad luck. The only time when this is acceptable is when the game is very short by design and you can finish a run in a single gaming session, like FTL/StS etc. In a grindy and LONG game like Darkest Dungeon, whoever decided to implement this "hardcore, bruh" feature deserves to be shot in the kneecaps.
- Confusing skins/customizations/bad art direction: OK, this one is rare, but EXTREMELY ANNOYING when encountered. I remember reading a long article on why readability is KING and why everything in WC3 is out of proportion/looks cartoonish. Basically, the idea was to go for readability (meaning: the player can quickly tell what unit/building is on his screen, what spell is being cast etc) above all else. This is good design, IMO. What annoys me is precisely that nowadays readability is taking a backseat in a lot of games. Units that look similar to each other, spell effects that blend together and buildings that you can only tell apart if you bring up a tooltip. This makes for a miserable gameplay experience, tho some might disagree. The devs of Old World made a big post on why they decided to go for "fidelity" over convenience and that's a respectable choice, but one I had issues with. I prefer glancing at a map and being instantly able to tell a spearman from a swordsman even if that's achieved at the cost of cartoonish large weapons or impractical outfits. Anyway, that's a difference of opinion. OTOH shitty skins and cosmetics that make a unit look like another unit are nothing but straight up garbage. If you MUST shove that garbage into your game, at least make sure the unit's visual identity remains unchanged.
- BLOAT: last but not least, a reminder that less is more and modern marketing kinda fucks with the quality of games. Because claiming your game has "over 100 feats to customize your character!", "hundreds of weapons and spells" and "dozens of classes and races to choose from" makes for great advertisement, we're seeing a regrettable trend of quantity over quality. Yes, there are 157 weapons in the game, but they all do the same shit with barely noticeable tradeoffs. Iratus was a much better game in its early stages, when it had less minions, but they all had a clear identity. I call this "modder mentality" because every game has mods that increase the number of weapons and armors, but it NEVER introduces new worthwhile mechanics to the games they mod. It's always adding shit for the sake of adding shit. That's bad, kids. When you make your dream game, please, DO take the time to comb the systems for redundant pieces and take them out.
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