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[s0]

QTEs: I actually think they can be pretty cool but they require a designer to strike a difficult balance. Too many QTEs and they become tedious, too few and they'll feel out of place. Too hard and they feel unnecessary and unfair, too easy and they're just an especially boring form of "handholding".

QTEs are most often used a cop-out. In 99,9% of the cases I'd rather just watch a cutscene.

Resident Evil 4 used them pretty well I think. RE4 is all adrenaline-pumping action all the time so it makes sense for the game to not give you a "break" during cutscenes. It makes even more intense. I like them in God of War too for similar reasons.

Also, some clarification re: checkpoints and regen health: the problem isn't so much the mechanics themselves as the level design that often arises from their use.

[gimymblert]

Funnily qte in re4 and god of war are always in the flow of the game and totally related to action, it's more like the contextual move of old days except with a prompt. I mean you have a qte when zombie grab you or when to finish an enemy or in a sequence of move, it's totally in the flow. And more importantly god of war does not kill you for failing, it's just failure.


BTW on checkpoint topic, I don't mind them too much especially when the game respawn you as fast as possible, but it does encourage level designer to think in string of pearl instead of a flow. as long you don't die it feel like a stop and go game. Regen is basically a shortcut for reloading save without actually having to do it, it's an improvement on that, it's also an improvement from backtracking health that disrupt encounter flow (exploration should be about reward not loss aversion), but also dumb down the encounter and remove a bunch of tension, disrupt the flow (hide wait go). Running around with only 1 for all health is kinda sucky in most old game. Better would be a system like perfect dark 360 where you have an overall health that decrease slower and a regen health (capped by the overall health) for short encounter with possibly a minimal cap for the overall health. But the best is to do it nintendo way, killing enemy give you health, so it's a risk reward with high stake tension, you stay focus on gameplay, the game reward you for actually playing.

edit:
Another thing to remove is too many actions on too many buttons, Make the action part of the world not of the pad (wtf press x to get ammo, of course i would pick ammo) Game today have more interaction on the pad than in the gameplay or the world, The hugely details world can barely been interact with. Minecraft have more interaction than many modern game and have principally two big main button.

[s0]

BTW: God of War is one of the most popular "art games" ever.

[moi]

exposition and boring cutscenes

[baconman]

QTE's and cutscenes, except as part of an ending/alternative ending, perhaps (like the Soul Blade/Calibur series did).

QTE's -are- cop-outs. I'd much rather the action scenes truly be within the player character's regular capabilities, with you actually directing the character to do the appropriate stuff. Also, nothing sucks more than seeing a fun, exciting scenario as an opening sequence (that you SHOULD BE PLAYING, not watching), only to have the actual gameplay completely pale and minimal in comparison.

Okay, so it's appropriate for Resident Evil 4, fine. But not every 4 out of 5 games out there! And that's where a lot of last 2-3 years' worth of game design has gotten to. At the very least, if you're gonna to QTE's, make the controls more interesting than "Simon."

[MadWatch]

I would remove loading time after you die. It pisses me off. Many modern games does that, after you die you get a "Loading please wait" screen and you have to wait for a few very long and frustrating seconds. Why ? The game is just going to make me respawn in the same level I was in when I died, the same level that is already loaded into ram, why does it has to be reloaded ? Maybe there's a good reason behind it but, to me, it just looks like the programmers where lazy.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Regenerating health. A set amount of health(+ health packs) is fine. I also can't stand all this movement towards "forced" cover points: we took cover perfectly well in old games before chest-high walls!

[laserdracula]

I'm not a huge fan of regen health but I think it beats the hell out of health packs.  Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were nice because you couldn't take that many hits, but you could evade enemy fire.  They didn't need to have health packs.  Most first-person shooters of the time had enemies with perfect accuracy and sometimes perfect reaction time that would whittle away at you with little pot shots.  It always felt stupid because it takes like 50 shots to kill me while the elite special forces bad guys go down in 2.

[McMutton]

I'm unsure about the latest ones, but the first Resistance did the health regen rather well. Your health was divided into four pieces, and if your health went below one of them, it wouldn't regenerate past that till you found a health item to restore it.

So, for example, if you went below 75%, you'd only be able to regenerate up to 75%.

[saturdaymorning]

Halo has/had a nice balance. I only played through some of the first two, but yeah. You had hit points that required health packs and regenerative shield. Couple that with the fairly big environments where you can actually get flanked, and it made for some nice gameplay. I think the regen mechanic feels stupid only when the AI can't do anything about you peeking out shots and hiding for 3 seconds to patch up. Besides that regen is better I think.

Health items scattered on the floor are pretty lame, especially when I'm backtracking for them in anticipation of a fight in the next room. I think the Left 4 Dead way of doing things is pretty awesome. You can only carry one health pack at a time, and it's up to you to manage when you use it because you may or not find another one. The team wide item management really adds to it too.

One thing I really don't like is AI controlled party members in JRPGs or emulating mmoRPG battles in single player games. No! Don't use items to heal! I'm saving those for the non-caster to use. Goddamn it; there you go again casting spells on something we can conserve our MP on. Lemme just go through these menus and set you to auto physical attack for this battle. Get rid of that shit.

[Player 3]

One thing I really don't like is AI controlled party members in JRPGs or emulating mmoRPG battles in single player games. No! Don't use items to heal! I'm saving those for the non-caster to use. Goddamn it; there you go again casting spells on something we can conserve our MP on. Lemme just go through these menus and set you to auto physical attack for this battle. Get rid of that shit.

Being able to quickly set the party's AI types in Tales of Phantasia really helps a lot when it's set at certain parameters. Couple that with TP recovery and there you go, a nearly unstoppable team. Con of a majority AI team: Once the player is stunned, the party is royally screwed a new anus.

[XRA]

[ink.inc]

i do not understand

you want games to be less delicious

i do not know

[Belimoth]

Looting.

From the environment I mean, not from victims. I am all for thievery and murder.

[antymattar]

Sucksauce.

[Ben_Hurr]

Handholding and tutorial text.

I just finished playing Lords of Shadow for a bit, holy shit.  Yes, I get that I press X to use grapple points, you don't have to tell me for the five-hundreth time. 

[gimymblert]

I was really thinking about this and would remover either modern or game, only one of them can really stand as the other just hinder it.

[Tumetsu]

Overly cinematic gameplay. I mean, impressing looking videos are okay and all, but I hate it when it is stuffed into everywhere in every four seconds 

[Nitromatic]

Modern games.

Owait, no. But I really hate World War II scenario, regenerating health and especially voice acting.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

modern games vary so much that it's hard to say specifically what i'd remove from all of them, i can only think of it on a case by case basis

but a lot of (but not all) modern games do these things, which i don't like:

1. lack of challenge, too many tutorials, hints, & hand-holding (gamedevs seem afraid to ever kill the player or get the player stuck, because a lot of players can't handle the frustration)

2. lack of genre variety (FPS and TPS together make up about 75% of all of the biggest budget games)

3. lack of good writing (they should hire real writers, stop letting programmers or designers write your story and dialogue)

4. lack of strategy, variety, or allowance for creativity (e.g. in most games all challenges can be completed in only one way, the intended way)

5. linearity (but this was always a problem, not just with modern games but also with games in the past)

but there are notable exceptions to all of these. for instance, starcraft 2 is pretty hard (in multiplayer mode or hard mode in the campaign) and allows strategy and creativity in your play style (although it also suffers from bad writing, hand-holding, and linearity in its campaign mode)