GameCentral readers share pet peeves from the current state of video games, from skill trees to a lack remappable controls.
The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Blitz, who asked what’s your least favourite aspect of modern gaming? What gets you most upset about video games today and why?
There were lots of different suggestions, from common gameplay elements to publisher practices, but the two most common were games being too long and having too little respect for your time and the toxicity of gamers themselves.
Masters of unlocking
I’d have to say one of my least favourite aspects of modern gaming is how much micromanagement is now incorporated in a large amount of games and how bloated they’ve become as a consequence. It often feels you spend more time in menus spending points to unlock skills (a term which I use in the loosest sense in a lot of cases) than you do utilising the unlocked powers or skills actually playing as a super-powered hero. I mean is ‘Iron Hide – Take significantly less damage from explosions and fires.’ really a skill than can be learned in context by a young heroine lost in the wild, as is the case in Rise Of The Tomb Raider?
It seems as though so many games now force you to spend points to unlock skills or powers, forcing you to endlessly enter and exit menus to make the tiniest of adjustments. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve obtained a slightly better skill or weapon and have to wade through numerous menus to equip it or unlock it for the tiniest of gains. It’s almost a given in an role-playing game like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but to shoe-horn it into action games feels out of place.
Good examples are Rise Of The Tomb Raider and Marvel’s Spider-Man. You literally have unlocks behind unlocks, so if you want to unlock that cool power or ability you have to unlock that power or suit, which is unlocked by collecting numerous objects or obtaining enough skills points or experience, it’s just all so… arbitrary. Can you really not learn to attack someone from above without first learning a bunch of other loosely associated skills?!
It just feels like there’s too much in all these games now and it would maybe be more fun to lose the micromanagement and logically unlock skills as your progress automatically; sure you’d lose a bit of agency to craft the character you want to play as, but a lot of these skills are almost essential so you end up making a generic all-rounder a lot of the time anyway.
I’m all for choice but not when it is forced upon a player resulting in them having to spend so much time in menus as opposed to participating in the action.
Paul Conry
Unhappy ending
I’ve moaned about it before, it’s unfinished games! The studios seem to make a lot of noise about their games going gold but then have a big day one patch, it’s not so bad if you’re adding stuff (e.g. Uncharted 4’s multiplayer was added this way) but when you’re fixing stuff that should have been sorted already it really frustrates me as I don’t have broadband, so I’m potentially getting a new game with a lot of problems.
Also, so many games are too bleak for me at the moment. What happened to happy endings?! Thank goodness for Nintendo!
LastYearsModel
No map
What gets my goat is not being able to re-map controls. This gets mentioned every now and again, by both gamers and developers, but there never seems to be any kind of concerted effort to offer the option as standard.
The worst thing is I have absolutely no idea why it’s deemed a problem. The only thing I can assume is the developers think their set-up is best and don’t want people fiddling with it? Or they’re worried people would change it so much the game would become unplayable and they’d give up on it? I guess I cold see that, sort, of but it had seems like an insurmountable problem.
There are system wide options on the Xbox One but I don’t think many people are aware of them and I don’t know why games just can’t offer the option normally, within their own menus.
Loptin
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You don’t want it till you can’t have it
I hate the way that unlockables are no longer really a thing. Back in generations past you would unlock items, like extra characters, alternative outfits, and new modes by playing the game and they would be your reward for getting a certain way or discovering things in the environment.
Nowadays all that kind of stuff is paid-for DLC. The game is just the game, as bare bones as it can be, and everything else has to be bought separately. The worst thing is it’ll never go back to the way it was because this way is too damn profitable.
The irony is though I think a lot of people never used to care all that much about those sort of extras and yet nowadays they’ll happily pay £5 for a new hat for their favourite character, or whatever. That tells you something about human nature I guess.
Sharkboy
Good times
I do wish big budget games would be a bit braver, but then the experimental games never sell, as much as I like them. I can understand that there is little incentive to make more interesting big budget games but fortunately the Indie market has managed to nurture imagination, experimentation and innovation.
I also do not like artificially stretched games. A short game that is excellent throughout is much more appealing to me than one that contains a lot of busy work. I would happily pay full price for a shorter game but many gamers would not, so padding to prolong the play time has become the norm.
I also wish microtransactions and loot boxes were not a thing, but as long as people buy them where is the incentive for publishers to remove them? A low entry price with ongoing charges seems more palatable for many and I must admit I like the low entry prices, although I would be happy to pay more if it improved the work-life balance of the developers.
As much as it pains me, I know that I am no longer the target audience and I can accept that. But I really want to have an old man rant about the good old days. About how it was nice when multiplayer gaming was sitting on a sofa with a mate and did not include being racially abused by a teenager from another continent.
The good old times when big games could be experimental and take unexpected turns without people calling for them to be boycotted. How every major game that is not completely generic gets review bombed. A time before gamers created petitions to change a game’s content because they did not like it. When voice actors were not sent death threats because the fictional character they voiced killed a different fictional character.
Why can we not return to a time when big budget developers are not sent death threats because they delayed a game people were excited for? A time when indie developers were not sent death threats because they released their game exclusively on a different PC store to the one most people use.
When did it become normal for female developers to be harassed online? Or for journalists to be sent death threats for simply pointing out that there are a few sexist tropes in games? Why are we incapable of accepting criticism?
I hate that sending death threats has become normalised within pockets of the gaming culture. I would like to return to a time when it was possible to argue that games do not negatively affect people without a seemingly endless supply of evidence to the contrary.
My least favourite aspect of modern gaming is how some other gamers throw a tantrum every time they do not get what they want. And how outsiders will continue to see our hobby as juvenile because of the immaturity these gamers display.
PazJohnMitch
Get on with it
The thing that always annoys me is how long it takes some games to get going. More than once I’ve put off starting a new game just because I can’t bear the thought of the endless cut scenes and tutorials before you get into the meat of the game.
Assassin’s Creed used to be the worst for this, but Death Stranding was another bad one recently, where you were still getting tutorial hints 10 hours into the game.
Caspian
Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here
Left in limbo
The biggest gripe with gaming at present is the uncertainty of the future enjoyment of them. Maybe I won’t have time, due to other gaming releases. The main worry is that only some retro games from the past may be on a particular gaming store. But there are a lot of Super Nintendo and Mega Drive games, which have not been re-released yet and are unlikely to be either.
If you currently have a working retro console and the gaming cartridge, then great. Otherwise going illegal is the other option (not recommended). The current games are kind of worse since the PlayStation 3 era. Countless updates and patches which keep getting uploaded onto the console! But say the console in the future breaks down and expires! A disc of the vanilla game with all the bugs is what you’ll have left!
So unless any of your current or past gaming catalogue has a remake or remaster, then you’ll be a bit stumped or have a ton of glitches to get through, if you can still play the original.
Films, music, TV programmes, and books are much better for locating a particular title. Games on the other hand can be left in limbo and unfortunately going through unlawful methods is the only way to get the game you want. And you still have to know how to do it.
Other issues with modern gaming are more multiplayer orientated and less single-player games. But luckily there are still plenty of single-player games at present to keep us going. Microtransactions, loot boxes, and subscriptions are something I don’t have to deal with.
If in the future, nearly every game ever released gets uploaded on a cloud type system for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo’s future generation consoles, then great! The licensing and who owns the game content though, is a minefield of highly explosive court and legal battles, and technically (and very unfortunate for us gamers), stops this dream in an instant.
After a hundred years or so, do various forms of media/entertainment go into the public domain?
Alucard
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The small print
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