Gaming

Slaughter hordes of enemies, but don't kill the guy who has been in charge of them the whole game. Because that's a line you can never come back from.

NPC: "Great hero will you do this task for me?"

Player dialogue options:

1. Yes.
2. Yes, but be a dick about it.
3. Yes, but pay me more.
4. Yes, but later.

Game Devs: "Your choices matter and have an impact on the story."

Artifacts. We need the 5-20 Artifacts. Why? Coz

Not just in gaming... "The less you know the better" or something to that effect is the worst.

the main antagonist being responsible for something bad that happened to the main protagonist early in life.

Probably the button-smasher games.

One that FF16 abused the fuck out of is the arbitrarily locked gate. There was a period in the midgame where you'd do a big climactic boss fight, then the next section would be running errands because a town locked their gate, then you'd rinse and repeat like five times.

Sometimes the excuse to "reset" the characters can be silly, like how Samus loses her powers at every single Metroid game, lol Hard to remind situations were a "reset" is well written, it just happens out of convenience

the ending to half life 2.

"good job you killed the final boss. Now go away until we see you in the sequel" no fucking resolution at all. you don't even get to see the thing finish exploding.

The locked door that my jacked up killing machine character can't bring down because I'm supposed to go through some bullshit in order to find the key.

You and your friends are the only ones that can save the Kingdom, Country, World, Interstellar Government group.

Whomever sends you on this quest/mission/whatever? They give you about 200 gold/dollars/credits/whatever the money is and note the shopkeepers who also know you are your friends are the only ones that can do this, charge you an arm and a leg for everything. Thus that 200 will get you a T-Shirt along with a pointy stick and maybe a one healing item.

Granted a lot of games haven't done this in some time. Last one I can remember was Fallout 2 where, "Good job getting past the Temple of Save Scumming and getting the Vault Dwellers underware. Here's a Spear and $200 bucks. Now go get us that GECK!"

Cults. It's basically already written for them. Just slightly alter the costumes and nicknames.

Your create a character is immediately beloved by every one they meet.

Hogwarts Legacy was probably the worst offender at this, but it happens in most open world CaC games. Every random NPC is pleasant towards you and happy to help you or entrust you with their lives, the main villain respects you and tries to woo you to their side because you’re so awesome and cool, and people are willing to be inconvenienced on your behalf even though you literally just appeared in their world a couple of hours ago.

It feels so pandering and takes me out of the game.

Narrated slides as a finale. I'm looking at you, The Outer Worlds.

Collectibles that give snippets of obscure lore that they hide in the most obnoxious places to try to get to.

You made me waste an hour out of my life figuring out how to get all the way up to the highest point in a map for a fucking JOURNAL PAGE ABOUT CATS!!!?? 😠

I broke through an invisible wall and had to snail crawl up a wall to find a journal explaining a completely mundane event.

"Open world rpg! You can be literally whoever you want to be"

Proceeds to make an empty game with repetitive quests, dungeons, and AI. And you have to imagine your character does everything instead of them being actual features because "it's a role-playing game"

The amount of games that have a huge plot twist in act 3 which essential nullifies the entire game outside of the first mission. The assassins creed series does this a few times for example where in the final chapter of the game you find out the first good guy you met is bad and just kill him to end the game. Lazy af imo

Tragically, the same narrative issue that occurs in any setting... Also the name of a video game or three! Deux ex machina (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina). "....  is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly or abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function is generally to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation...."

Its a cutscene so even when you have everything, you can do nothing.

When long standing conflicts have simple resolutions that for some reason no one but the player character ever thought of.

“Here, deliver this message for me.”

Bro you’re sitting at a computer e-mail them

Side missions involve some complex social/political/legal interplay between individuals/factions, but the player's only roll is to shoot/fight their way to some mcguffin that settles the whole issue instantly.

1. Talk to npc A. A tells you to go to B.

2. Go to B (takes 5 minutes in game). Npc at B tells you to talk to npc A.

3. Goto 1.

I’m specifically talking about Starfield, but this extreme laziness shows up in a lot of games.

Revenge plots

Fire Emblem Fates was FILLED with it. The worst was the third route having the main enemy be invisible enemies that you're not allowed to talk about as a poorly designed excuse for everyone to want to kill you for a good chunk of the game.

Entire game is littered with garbage like this.

You're a regular grunt in the army! Get ready for the real gritty grunt experience! Hooah!

*immediately gets separated from any team mates*

"Just get to here and we'll be able to help you!"
"Ok now go here!"
"You're too late! Go here and meet up with your team mates!"
"Just a bit further now!"

*game ends*

This thread is so meta.

"What's one of the laziest writing devices used to create threads in r/gaming ?"

This exact fucking kind of post.

If anyone else is super annoyed by this kind of threads popping up lately, do like me, I've been blocking any author of these threads (well rn I'm answering only because I had to point out the irony). Ofc now the sub feels super empty but at least I feel less fucking annoyed by these dumb engagement baits

Sequels that strip all your abilities away at the beginning because they don't know how to make a game challenging/interesting without reducing the character down to a useless flake.

"I need eggs, go to the store and get me a dozen eggs."

• Comes back with eggs *

"Okay, good, here's your reward. Now I need milk. Go to the store and get me some milk."

Ancient races leaving technological artifacts behind to catapult future races into ultra-advanced space-faring status.

Amnesia.

We need a villain team so it’s Nazis. Could be 50 years in the future or 200 years ago, they could use Nazis and everyone would just “oh ya! Bad guys!” Not that Nazis are good, just pick a new villain.

Amnesia. Very rarely, if ever, have I seen this trope used well in any entertainment media.

Fetch quests

There’s some trouble going on in a faction that needs looking into.

But you’re the outsider so you’re obviously the perfect candidate to do everyone’s busywork.

Having a woman character that exits for the sole purpose of being killed and, in dying, motivating the main character to do the rest of the story.

I am the "chosen one" but have zero explanation or exploration into my motivation or character development

easily a keyboard

Here’s one I’m extremely piffed off about right now. Instead of coming up with a decent send-off for a character that’s being written out of a series, they just say eff it and kill him 😡

Destiny

"There's no time to explain!"

Go to our website to learn about the story

Heres a controversial one, but in Fighting games, I think its really lazy to make a character whose whole gimmick is "they did this thing in the show once, and its not an attack, but we put a hitbox on it so now it is." ESPECIALLY if you're putting it onto a character who actually does know how to fight, but you're going to have them pull a random object out of thin-air for this move.

This is usually more prominent in Fan movesets that people post online, or with characters that actually cant fight at all (Kirino in Dengeki Bunko, basically half the cast of Nick All-stars, etc.). I dont just mean characters who pull stuff out of hammer space either like Frank West in MvC and TvC as they're more of a gray area I can also get into, but I always found it DEEPLY uninteresting in almost every case. I like it when characters feel like they're actually FIGHTING in a fighting game. When you have Hugh pull out pizza boxes but the pizza boxes have a hitbox so I guess its an attack now, Its hard not to roll my eyes.

That being said, there are people who like these kinds of movesets and there are characters where you really NEED to do that to get them to work (Nick all-stars again of course needed to do that) but I find it much more interesting if you try to come up with an original moveset that still reflects the character. Shredder in NASB1 just pulling a grappling hook or Spear out of thin-air for three attacks is way lazier than just making him do an attack in my mind, and Danny STILL using the fenton thermos for a normal in NASB2 even though its also his super now is really disappointing. The character isnt better represented just because you're adding something else from their show here. (disclaimer, Nick all-stars is still fun and I'd recommend it)

I always roll my eyes when NPCs quest me to investigate what is essentially their backyards.

Helicopter/Plane Explosions

That moment when you get captured and lose all your equipment and abilities. I'm not even mad at it, chances are, I'm actually waiting for it - it's almost a canon even that has to happen. Yeah even in far cry 5 - I know people hate it but taken for its cheesiness, it's so bad it's good.

For be personally it’s spell check and auto correct. So lazy. Like learn to spell if you’re going to be a writer….

Chasing an antagonist in an uninterrupted chain:

• Get location
• He runs
• You found clue to next location
• He runs
• ...

A way to do it properly is to sometimes interrupt the chain, and either have the protagonist forced to give up initiative and wait for the antagonist's move, or to make a new alliance, or a desperate move that was previously out of question or find out about an even bigger threat, or...

Retcon.

It's not just games, but shows movies books, etc.

Retconning is the laziest way to over extend a story that should have ended 29 chapters ago. Oh you just beat the big bad, here's a new bigger badder that you've never ever heard about. And now 50% of what you've done makes no sense, but hear me out bro. This new big bad is really epic.

Whatever Bethesda is doing since Oblivion.

Retcon and forced diversity to me are signs of rubbish writing.

Amnesia, the blank slate device is and always will be an over used item.