Outdated game mechanics.

[CastletonSnob]

What game mechanics do you consider outdated?

[Daedius]

Not a mechanic, but generally speaking, stupidly low drop rates... especially in single player RPGs.

Was playing Demon Souls (PS5) recently, finally got my Platinum [100%], going after the Achievement to get all rings. One of it involved trading a gold coin. Said gold coin took me 3 fucking hours of farming for it to finally drop...

It is the absolute laziest way of extending play time in games.

[Exkrementor]

Durability. There is not a single game that gets better with degrading items.

[Daedius]

Durability. There is not a single game that gets better with degrading items.

My number 1 reason why I never bothered playing Breath of the Wild.

[gd8]

Having to gear up

[Hellobolis]

Durability. There is not a single game that gets better with degrading items.

a very powerful but unrepairable weapon can have it's flair.

sure same effect as rare special ammo but if it's a sword it's a bit hard to come up with a ammo equivalent.

what's your take on potion durability? 1 time use? few charges that reset on rest? infinite use only limited by cooldown?

[deenman]

Durability. There is not a single game that gets better with degrading items.

degrating items is a core element of survival games or games that wanna keep scavanging important even late game,kinda like dying light

ofc in wow the reason for it is very different,initialy the idea was to make players stop playing to much trying to fight a boss,kinda like the ingame reminders of some other mmo's ''you have been playing for 15 hours! go take a dump!!''

[Santti]

Limited lifes, like in Super Mario games.

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My number 1 reason why I never bothered playing Breath of the Wild.

Same.

However, it's not exactly the degrading items that I dislike. It's the eternal gaming paradox that it creates that I dislike; "Useful, therefore never use".

[gondrin]

Durability. There is not a single game that gets better with degrading items.

Durability is fine in games that are based around survival as it makes sense there. However, in games with magic and other fantastical, unrealistic stuff, no, it doesn't make sense other then to be a time sink. Like someone else posted, that is why I cannot get into BotW.

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Not a mechanic, but generally speaking, stupidly low drop rates... especially in single player RPGs.

Was playing Demon Souls (PS5) recently, finally got my Platinum, going after the Achievement to get all rings. One of it involved trading a gold coin. Said gold coin took me 3 fucking hours of farming for it to finally drop...

It is the absolute laziest way of extending play time in games.

This always bothers me, especially things like brains from an animal or something that every animal should have. If it is a "perfect specimen", I can understand it not dropping but if you go ask me to get "8 bear eyes", I'm pretty sure every bear has one.

[Thelxi]

Laborious inventory management. I can imagine that if you are the first to design a certain type of game you might stumble into this, and I can see some people actually enjoying it and even some developers years later adding it to their modern games out of nostalgia, but it's a big fat no from me. We can do better now and move the gameplay away from terribly designed UIs to actually fun activities.

[unfilteredJW]

Encumbrance/bag space.

Time limits.

[BeepBoo]

Having to gear up

This is my choice as well.

I'm past the whole "grind to get power" thing. Completely 110% over it.

Making me master skill to progress? Sure.
Making power growth a natural part of the game's story as a way of soft-gating me into proper story flow in an open world game? Sure.
Making me grind the same ez activity 100 times over so I can get gear to get power to complete another activity (or optimize my character)? Hell. No.

Fuck u wow/destiny/most fucking MMOs. Let me just freely access your hardest content without any other hoops to jump through besides "meets skill requirement" and "has large enough group of friends"

[Very Tired]

Anything with any sort of limited lives.

Durability. There is not a single game that gets better with degrading items.

Durability can help with immersion. Like in Skyrim I had to head back into town to sell all my crap and restock, wouldn't have minded repairing on top of that. People like small meaningful tasks to get them prepared for adventure.

[Vespian]

This is my choice as well.

I'm past the whole "grind to get power" thing. Completely 110% over it.

Making me master skill to progress? Sure.
Making power growth a natural part of the game's story as a way of soft-gating me into proper story flow in an open world game? Sure.
Making me grind the same ez activity 100 times over so I can get gear to get power to complete another activity (or optimize my character)? Hell. No.

Fuck u wow/destiny/most fucking MMOs. Let me just freely access your hardest content without any other hoops to jump through besides "meets skill requirement" and "has large enough group of friends"

Problem is, there are games that do everything you want, except they are simply a different genre than games that do require gearing up. Gearing up is another progression count that works in some games and doesn't work in others.

And just like in real life, there is psychologically speaking a lot of reasons why there would be gear progression. there's more satisfaction when overcoming hardships. A sense of achievement, having earned the privilege. I guess you belong to the gaming journalists that want everything to be story mode, because effort equals QQ.

[PrairieChicken]

Any game that has inventory management as a "difficulty" without a good reason. People who really say "hey arrows only stack to 10 and every time you run out you have to open up your bag to refill" is a good design is beyond me.

I am kind of OK with encumberance as long as it serves a purpose (i.e. prevent people from dropping their strength stat to minimum to do ridiculous minmaxing)

Also "collect bear arse" quests are cancer and should be eliminated from all games. In fact I think most games should have their questing trimmed as there are too many quests for the sake of questing. Just remove the fat and leave the ones that are relevant to the main plot.


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Durability. There is not a single game that gets better with degrading items.

My experience is that degrading items could be good design if done correctly. In the old Mabinogi weapons had a chance to fail to repair and lose durability permanently, so all weapons had a limited lifespan. It had the following effects on the game:

1. Act as a gold sink, you had to invest in new weapons all the time so people always had a place to throw their money and time at. In addition, repair bills were substantially higher for NPCs with higher success chance, so people had to throw more money at better weapons.
2. Extend the content lifespan and curb power inflation. You could not sit with your BiS weapon and just wait for the next patch as it will wear out over time.
3. Serve as a catch-up. When fully upgraded and enchanted weapons reached low durability, the hardcore players would throw it in AH, and more casual players would buy it at a cheaper price and used it. It created a cycle where loots were funneled down from hardcore playerbase to more casual crowd.

It's not always a good design but can be beneficial with a good design.

[McNeil]

Time limits and limited lifes. They don't make the game more fun and are just an annoyance, in multiplayer it also brings out the worst in people.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Large scale fixed size and fixed schedule groups. It's pretty much antithesis to modern gaming and I doubt we will see such in the form 40 man raids outside of classic wow anymore.
I mean in general MMOs are ripe with outdated mechanics that barely get used anymore, like xp/item loss, deleveling, multi-hour boss fights against a single boss, etc. There is stuff here thats simply doesn't fly anymore and while someone will probably attempt it again and again, I think much of that will always result in an unseccessfull game in the long run.

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My number 1 reason why I never bothered playing Breath of the Wild.

I agree with breath of the wild (couldn't stomach it either because of that), but I disagree from the perspective of proper survival games with base building. BotW wouldn't be as bad it the durability wasn't as low as it is and you could actually repair it. There is also plenty of opportunity to make "unbreakable" traits something the player can work towards in the form of adventure/crafting/research etc.

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Laborious inventory management. I can imagine that if you are the first to design a certain type of game you might stumble into this, and I can see some people actually enjoying it and even some developers years later adding it to their modern games out of nostalgia, but it's a big fat no from me. We can do better now and move the gameplay away from terribly designed UIs to actually fun activities.

This one is interesting, but I feel your platform affects this alot as well. I don't want dumbed down systems where everything is just auto use in my survivial game, but I also don't want to play those with a controller. I certainly can't stand the old FF or Pokemon type of combat menu that has you not just scroll but also step through menues heaved upon menues. /shudder.

[loras]

What game mechanics do you consider outdated?

I am not certain many, or even any, game mechanics really get outdated.
Sure there are a lot that go out of fashion, or that i personally dislike severely, but that doesn't mean they're outdated in the sense of being permanently replaced by something better.

Among the ones that (seemingly at least) have been out of fashion (for reasons i understand and strongly agree with) are games that do not have a set end and only get harder until you fail.

My personal biggest pet peeve and as such most disliked "mechanic" is when games featuring collectibles or choices with objectively better outcomes do not allow you to go back, or where it's even so far back before you discover the (often completely unclear or even illogical) consequences of a decision you made weeks ago.

Others mention that durability / attrition of armor is one, and i tend to agree, but i know for a fact that many friends of mine really enjoy that mechanic, claiming that it adds to the sense of survival in other games and even making WoW feel more dynamic.
Likewise they enjoy "permadeath" modes too in pretty much any game, immediately invalidating all time spent up until that point.

Seems like a boring waste of time to me, much like "hard" games where the only hard thing is having the patience to wait until the endless hail of 1 hit ability ceases for a moment so that you can actually play before the wait resumes.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Has somebody said "having to socialize and engage with other players in multiplayer games" yet?


Because having to social and engage with other plays in multiplayer games.

[Myokony]

Terrible durability systems like botw come to my mind.