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[Melly]

* The tougher the overall game is, the greater the chance the final boss will be a pussy, despite its imposing appearance and pre-battle cutscene.

* If it's an action game, and has puzzles, there's a 90% chance those puzzles will be filled with infinitely respawning enemies you have to fight while trying to solve it.

* The beauty and architectural artistry of a setting are inversely proportional to the odds you'll be able to explore anything other than a single predetermined path.

* Same as before, only it's directly proportional to the odds of finding invisible walls in the most inconvenient or illogical locations.

* Thou shalt place thy invisible walls on areas where a toddler would easily pass.

* Wooden doors are made of a special type of wood that can withstand the infinite power of heroes that can summon planets to crash upon their enemies and create nuclear explosions with their minds. Maybe they're all built from the Yggdrasil or some other crap.

[s0]

*Throwing a boring, unnecessarily difficult minigame that you have to beat to advance in the middle of an otherwise perfectly fine game.

*Annoying gameplay-interrupting tutorial messages that pop up at every single thing you do. Yeah, I know I just moved my character using the left control stick, thanks a lot.

*These near-unworkable controls are gonna make our new survival horror game that much more scary.

[DYRE]

* If it's an action game, and has puzzles, there's a 90% chance those puzzles will be filled with infinitely respawning enemies you have to fight while trying to solve it.

Somewhat relatedly, in any action game with puzzles, there is a 90% chance that those puzzles will be extremely simple and require no thought whatsoever, completely invalidating any possible reasoning for including puzzles in the first place.

[Mikademus]

Grind. Everyone loves grind.

* Artificially prolong the game by requiring innumerable fetch quests to be fulfilled. As above, bonus points for designing all quest items to be on different continents the player must walk to.
* Artificially prolong the game by requiring the player to grind endlessly to boost enough to be able to advance.
* Alternatively, "reward" grinding by making the game a foregone conclusion pushover for power-levelled characters.

[JoGribbs]

*Throwing a boring, unnecessarily difficult minigame that you have to beat to advance in the middle of an otherwise perfectly fine game.

This annoyed the fuck out of me in Mass Effect 2. Also Jak and Daxter, but let's not talk about that.

* Having the final/ penultimate stage take a radical genre shift. That one's for you Hideki Kamiya; the shoot-em-up section was no fun at the end of Devil May Cry, so I have no idea why you'd bring it back for Bayonetta.

[Melly]

* You shall artificially prolong your game with repetitive challenges and uninspired level design born from levels stretched far longer than they should be so you may meet an arbitrary ammount of time your game must last as commanded by the Almighty Publisher, to continuously spoil the gamer base and teach them to assume the ammount of time a game takes to complete to be a major factor in their decision to buy it.

[Rumrusher]

* If an game has a shock value then chances are most people won't play past it thus no need to work hard on every thing else.

*moral choices that depend on if you hit the shoot button or kill anything.

*add playable characters yet don't change the story to fit their role.

*when your update to a finished game seems like is a downgrade.

*when it's easy to trolls to mess with you if you ask them not to spoil obnoxious things that does not have any part to the story or game like blood types or names.

^when you ask that after 5 years of the game being release.

*free running game needs to have it a scrolling level.

* when you remove fan favorite glitches, this kinda effects most games I reported bugs to.

[jisou-kishi]

the likely hood of you encountering an enemy in an rpg is directly proportional to the need of getting somewhere quickly.

[gimymblert]

*filler fetch quest that does not belong theme or even core gameplay

*annoying hidden stat and vehicle selection, with no clue how the vehicle handle by looking at it, in a fun easy going pick and play kart game. Come on that one is OUTRAGEOUS.

[Ben_Hurr]

the likely hood of you encountering an enemy in an rpg is directly proportional to the need of getting somewhere quickly.

Monsters like to stand in rooms shoulder to shoulder don't you know.

[TheLastBanana]

*Apart from doors, the all-powerful RPG hero's single greatest nemesis is a spattering of knee-high tree trunks.  In fact, the only RPG hero that has ever capable of traversing a tree trunk was Link in the Oracle of Time/Seasons.

[LemonScented]

* There must be a driving section in every FPS, a sliding block puzzle in every adventure, and a slippy-slidey ice world in every platformer. These will not be cut during development, no matter how annoying and incongruous they are.

...I'm putting a slippy slidey ice world in my game

I'm a terrible person.   
Well, except that it won't be slippery.

Here's a secret (shh!) - I actually have a bit of a soft spot for slippy slidey ice worlds, especially when juxtaposed with fiery lava worlds, hi-tech sci-fi industrial worlds, carnival worlds and spooky haunted house/cave worlds. I think that's just my old inner Sonic fanboy speaking, though. Certainly I'd think twice about putting any of that stuff in a game I make, but I wouldn't want to discourage anyone else from doing it.

* The game must contain crates: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html

[Ben_Hurr]

* A platform game will always be full of bottomless pits, even if it makes no sense for them to be there.  Even on the second story of a building.  Even if the room under it has a ceiling where the pit should empty out.

[TwilightVulpine]

* The character will be unable swim, walk across or even touch any water body deeper than a puddle. It will either work as an invisible wall or instant death trap. In the case it doesn't work as a death trap, the character will be damaged and appear on the same side he was before, even if the character was closer to the opposite side of the water body when touched the it.

[inkBot]

* Using 'Up' as a jump button in anything else than a fighting game.

[Chris Whitman]

* Using 'Up' as a jump button in anything else than a fighting game.

How about Prince of Persia style where there's a leap and an upwards jump?

[Destral]

* There must be a driving section in every FPS, a sliding block puzzle in every adventure, and a slippy-slidey ice world in every platformer. These will not be cut during development, no matter how annoying and incongruous they are.

Slippy-slidey ice world in a platformer makes sense as an extra challenge, since platformers are testing your hand-eye coordination and reflexes, and the slippery-slidiness is a handicap to your already established skill.

If the ice stage was at the beginning of the game, however, then yes, that would be bad design of the difficulty curve.

*No matter how much you grind to level your character, there will be one enemy who will defeat you handily the first time you encounter them in order to further the plot of the story.
wws

[moi]

I hated this period in the nineties when every platformer had a mascot and a ice level and a toys-themed level and a cakes-themed level, etc, etc...It was terrible

[William Broom]

* There must be a driving section in every FPS, a sliding block puzzle in every adventure, and a slippy-slidey ice world in every platformer. These will not be cut during development, no matter how annoying and incongruous they are.

Slippy-slidey ice world in a platformer makes sense as an extra challenge, since platformers are testing your hand-eye coordination and reflexes, and the slippery-slidiness is a handicap to your already established skill.

On paper this seems to make sense, but has anyone really played an ice level and actually enjoyed the challenge rather than just getting pissed off?

[Inanimate]

I like ice levels a lot of the time. Only if it is not just using the ice level as an excuse for poor controls, though.