The other thread about favorite mechanics is great, so let’s also do the opposite: what are some of your most hated mechanics?

  • BeardedSingleMalt@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Radiant quests. You can never complete the game because of this, the quests are generic and repetitive and offer nothing but “stretch the playtime”.

    That and mechanics like “rando dragon attacks in Skyrim” and “City is under attack” from Fallout 4. I quit F4 because I was on my way to a mission and got the "city under attack notification, and on my way to defend another city was under attack.

    • isosphere@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      To yes-and this: procedural content in general. No Man’s Sky is a snore-fest for me, big, empty, meaningless. Missions in Elite Dangerous and X4 are similarly pretty boring, though the former is more fun the first time around. There has to feel like there’s some world-affecting point to what you’re doing. IMO

      • AngularAloe@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I found the procedurally-produced planets in No Man’s Sky to be stunningly beautiful. Then I would walk around on them and the similar-but-not-quite look of every part of the landscape would slowly drive me INSANE.

      • SugarApplePie@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I started playing No Man’s Sky recently and it looks like they added a mode that’s more ‘streamlined’. Dunno if it’s still procedurally generated, though.

    • winterstillness@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Pretty much a lot of procedural “content”. I guarantee big publishers will capitalize on all of this AI to replace writers with generated stories/quests/etc. No idea what to make of this.

      • BastingChemina@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I would disagree, some of my favorite games are procedurally generated.

        Factorio, RimWorld or valheim for example.

        • winterstillness@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Oh totally. I didn’t mean to imply “all procedural content = bad”. Terraria comes to mind and is one of my favorite game of all time. The “world” is procedural when created, but there are “key” areas/objectives that don’t change. I’m thinking more along the lines of Fallout 4’s “radiant” junk that big publishers salivate over because mountains of endless+cheap content = ($o$)