Gaming

Unrepairable weapons are the worst thing. There's nothing worse than finding a super cool, rare weapon and being paranoid about it breaking.

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.

Pay 2 win and excessive abuse of FOMO.

E.g. for the next two weeks you can purchase/grind for [character] with a LIMITED EDITION green hat!

It would be OK if such thing was behind an achievement and allowed to be gained later.

Some companies have gotten a little sneaky with it, like Microsoft with age of empires. They make their newly released DLC civs overpowered for two months then nerf it every time.

Escort quests. Stealth sections in games that aren't built around stealth would be close second.

Game timers. I want to screw around on my time. The more time-based a game becomes, the less I enjoy it.

Anything using timers, especially based on the clock. It just artificially adds playtime, and it also means I forget about them and lose track of what I was doing most the time, too.

Offline games which require an internet for no apparent reason has to be my pet peeve

Perhaps not specifically a mechanic, per se, but save points. I want to be able to save whenever, wherever. I don't always have time to make it to the next save point before I need to stop playing.

Any sort of intense micromanagement of units, resources, etc. I've got like 16kb RAM in my brain. I can barely remember what I ate today lol.

Also, invisible walls that make absolutely no sense. Maybe just all invisible walls, really.

Quicktime events. Please make up your mind if you show me a sequence or if you want me to play. I can enjoy watching, but I don't want to feel like I am being tested for paying attention.

The beginning of the Tomb Raider remake pissed me off especially. You played a few minutes, then watched a minute of sequence, then play, watch, play, watch. One of the sequences took like 5 minutes, so I leaned back to enjoy when suddenly it flashes a heavy PRESS X in my face. I tried to quickly grab the controller but failed... too slow. I almost rage quit.

I am not playing games to get stressed out...

non-renewable consumable items.

using consumables is hard enough, but you're telling me there's a finite number of these? forget it.

only exception is rougelikes.

People have said escort quests but I'm going to go more specific.

Escort quests WHERE THE NPC INEXPLICABLY HAS A DIFFERENT WALKING/RUNNING SPEED THAN THE PLAYER.....

Quick-time events but SPECIFICALLY the ones that give you way too little time to react. Like, I never mind them too much, especially the ones in the Yakuza series, but I remember there was this game on the Wii called Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings that would throw these inputs WAYY too fast at you.

Enemies that scale with your level in an RPG. I would rather get completely curb stomped by rare high level enemies, so I have something to work towards. In the same vein, I don't like it when the stat gain you get from leveling ends up with you literally being unkillable by lower level enemies. Most MMOs are an offender to this, where you can just sunbathe in a group of 30 level 1 enemies and are unable to die to them.

Daily quests or login rewards, things to force me to play the game, always stop playing

Probably simple, mindless side/fetch quests. Defeat enemies, get loot, run it back, rinse and repeat. It also is incredibly dry to watch as well as actually do yourself.

• Excessive grinding or padding in a game just for the sake of it or for microtransaction reasons.
• Microtransaction and pay-to-win models in full price $70 games...
• Overuse of Quick time events Press E to dodge etc etc
• Escort missions when developers want to pad their game out
• Terrible stealth mechanics when an enemey spots me when im standing still in a bush from the other side of the map

Escort missions

Obligate stamina bars/circles for traversal. Just allow me to move at the speed of fun, and definitely don't make me stand still to recharge when climbing.

I think it's telling that death stranding, a game all about traversal, let's you sprint outright for as long as you want until well after your character's shoes literally fall off. The stamina bar is more a measure of abuse rather than a limit on your movement.

Card games that get bolted on to other genres. cough genshin cough

Squad/micro-strategy mechanics in fps games. Commanding npcs to do specific things in the middle of a gunfight isn’t fun. Bonus points if the npc ai gets in your way when you're not fighting as well.

Bad tutorials. Don't teach me the game mechanics that could be learned in-game in an environment different from the rest of the game. Also dislike sudden lore dumps after the tutorial.

Mechanics in games where they don't belong. Not every game needs skill trees, not every game needs stories or lore.

I hate how in a lot of retro games water kills you instanly.

Less of an issue nowadays but unclimbable knee-high walls which force you to go round. Always drove me crazy!

Combo attacks - I'm not coordinated to hit the buttons in order fast enough. I tried Black Desert when it was free and this was the dealbreaker for me, though it wasn't the only thing that bugged me about the game.

The new Gollum game was very impressive in the way it managed to implement so many of the mechanics in this thread

Consumables.

They either offer too little for a too short time or too much too easy.

I haven't seen a game where consumables are promoted from the get-go and are easy to use and not a hussle or completely broken.

Alaloth has a great iteration of consumables but I still wouldn't say it's fun as a standalone mechanic.

Loot

I hate collecting it, managing inventory, selling it, crafting it, and so on. I used to love it, but these days I much prefer a more guided experience where the only items I get are interesting. Elder Scrolls completely destroyed this whole mechanic for me because I'm a bit obsessive and would try to bring literally every plate back to town to sell.

As a corollary, I'm not a fan of dealing with shops in general. I'm fine if they exist, but I really think the game should supply you with everything you need to complete the game, and shops should be a backup plan, not a core mechanic.

crafting dear god I hate crafting if I ever find the person that introduced crafting into the triple a formula...

I've never been a fan of character weapon skill being tied to the bullet not hitting where the player is aiming in first person RPGs and immersive sims. Think something like Fallout 3, where a shot with a sniper rifle can be perfectly lined up, but the bullet might veer off randomly.

I do understand and appreciate character weapon skills being tied to certain weapons being more viable, but there are many other ways to impliment it that don't feel as arbitrary. Tying character skill to greater reticle swap, longer time to aim down sights, longer reload times, more likely to jam or jams taking longer to clear. It accomplishes the same goal of rewarding putting points into the skill and making players feel like they are progressing, but without creating the instant frustration of missing a clearly lined up shot.

On that note, actively degrading weapons are not something I think has ever been a good idea. It's neither fun, nor is the rate of degradation ever realistic. If the goal is to make player cautious, then limiting ammunition and the availability of good weapons is a much better idea. I have no problem with weapons in different conditions existing in a game, for example: Pristine rifle, good rifle, rusty rifle, etc. That's fine, but a good rifle should never degrade into a rusty rifle in the hands of the player.

Areas of open worlds dynamically level scaling to match players is another gripe I have. Once a player notices it, it takes away the feeling of progress from leveling up. In some cases, smarter players in games have found certain areas easier to beat with low level characters. It creates a bad kind of meta-game. I much prefer worlds where every area is built with a certain player level in mind. Honestly, overleveling in RPGs and going to wreck starting bandit camps is a joy that shouldn't be taken away.

Stealth. I hate hiding and creeping around waiting for an NPC to move. It's like, "oh, you want to play the game? How about not playing the game instead?" Infuriating.

Death penalties. Any game that seriously penalizes you for dying is just so frustrating for me. I understand that there has to be some form of reason to not die but please, at worst just reload an earlier save for me (and make sure you have frequent autosaves too).

If I lose all my items on death I'm just reloading a save. If I have to respawn at a checkpoint ten thousand years away I'm going to be very mad. If I have to listen to someone monologue to me every time I die I'm refunding your game.

Cutscenes for repeated actions like in the Zelda series. Having to dig through the menu to perform simple actions.

Quest systems, especially in linear games. All is does is clog up the UI, and if you need to constantly tell me what to do and where to go, is your game really designed that well?

Flowcharts for multiple endings. Let me take multiple distinct routes from the start, or make a choice at the end I can come back to. I hate going through some of the same content again and again and having to look up guides just to find the true ending (looking at you Persona).

The bit in a certain DOS game where a demon respawns lower level demons... If you know, you know.

I hate RNG-heavy progression that discourages playing the actual game.

Path of Exile had terrible loot droprates and gamble crafting when I last played in Ritual League. Starting a league = poring YouTube for safe league starter builds to follow step by step. Gearing up = only picking up currency and buying items from other players on a website. Making $$$ = flipping items (buy low sell high) in hideout (personal town).

Path of Champions (PvE gamemode in Legends of Runeterra) drops shards and fragments to unlock new champions and relics that add a passive effect. Drops are random and not duplicate protected. Champions need 2 star upgrades totalling their unlock cost to feel playable. Optimal progression = speedrunning dailies/weeklies, 2-starring meta champs, and logging out.

Stamina, why can't i just keep running forever!! Even worst in open world games.