What's your personal pet peeve in gaming?

[Jmustang1968]

-Non-optional motion controls.

-Strategy RPGs where healer characters get low exp for healing and are almost required to get kills to keep level pace.

-Playable flashback sequences. This is mostly referring to RPGs, and these are infrequently done well.

-restrictive game saves, or if the game limits where you can save, then not having a suspend function

-in Strategy RPGs, temporary story driven AI party members

[BoneSnapDeez]

New characters are level 1 - This annoys the hell out of me, especially late game where the character is now way behind the party, way weaker than the enemies he or she will be facing, and the experience split hurts the progression of the other party members who are now tasked with keeping that character alive long enough to beef them up. Instead of becoming a joyous moment of party expansion and potential story exposition, the new character is a liability who drags everyone else down, at least for a while.

So......... EarthBound?

I have some RPG-related pet peeves, but length is a big one. Very few of these games need to be longer than 25-30 hours.

[Fragems]

Some of my bigger pet peeves

1. Invisible walls.
2. Games which restrict or remove your characters ability to jump.
3. Escort missions and dumb ass AI partners in games which feature fail states if they die.
4. Stories that are all over the place / require excessive amounts of in game item collection or out of game media in order to be understood.
5. Poorly placed check points and poorly made save systems .
6. Poor enemy spawn placement.
7. Games with branching stories that feature no truly good decision options.
8. Repetitive filler side content.
9. Excessively long forced stealth sections with instant fail states.

[Ack]

New characters are level 1 - This annoys the hell out of me, especially late game where the character is now way behind the party, way weaker than the enemies he or she will be facing, and the experience split hurts the progression of the other party members who are now tasked with keeping that character alive long enough to beef them up. Instead of becoming a joyous moment of party expansion and potential story exposition, the new character is a liability who drags everyone else down, at least for a while.

So......... EarthBound?

Yeah, but at least the game acknowledges this with Poo and automatically levels him up to 16 when you get him. He's still a hinderance at first, but he's not the worst I've ever seen.

[prfsnl_gmr]

You must never, ever play Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. The game is mostly great, but a lengthy late-game series of fetch quests is infuriating.

As an owner of that game who has not yet played it, that makes me sad man.

You should definitely play it. It is 98% fantastic. You should just go into it knowing that, before you complete the game, you will have to complete the most agonizing fetch quest of all time.

[Forlorn Drifter]

-When games don't give you enough information to find out where you need to go. I don't need an arrow Bethesda style, but my journal/diary/whatever keeps information should get updated if someone says "Yeah, its in this random cave over there". If it says head west from here, it should not be northwest or southwest. Just west.

-Games with unskippable cutscenes. Just no.

-When a game has a puzzle or some other element NEVER introduced before that randomly comes in near the end of the game, or further than the first 1/4 or so.

-Bad saving in general. (Unless its something like Resident Evil 2, where it actually adds to the game, being survival horror.)

-Poor explanation of mechanics. Mechanics should be easy to understand.

-As mentioned, healers having to kill to level up. That's the exact opposite of the purpose of a healer.

-In linear games, any areas that have no purpose, or are a random path with no loot or items that leads to nowhere.

-In open-world games, large areas that aren't useful. (Looking at you, Bethesda. And to a major extent, Rockstar.) If areas are just wide open nothingness with enemies sprinkled in, a "hub" system where you travel to important areas but have a chance to meet things along the way is preferable. (Some old WRPGs fit this fine.)

[Markies]

5. Poorly placed check points and poorly made save systems .

This is my biggest one.

A fine example is the second disc in Xenogears. When I first got to a new area after a large boss fight, there was a save point. I saved and then moved to the next area that had a cutscene and an incredibly hard boss fight. I tried and tried and I could not beat this boss fight. I was now stuck in an area where I couldn't gain levels and was stuck against a boss I couldn't beat. My options were either restart the game or keep trying against the boss. Eventually, I gave up. It took me several years to replay the game and I finally did beat the boss and the game.

I've heard the argument of multiple saves, but that shouldn't fix bad game design.

[Fragems]

Yeah a good example of bad saves is Harvester. There was one section that involved a trap where you were locked in a room unfortunately the door behind you is permanently locked so even once you have finished the puzzle there is no back tracking if you missed something. Worst of all the 2 out of the next three rooms involved puzzles which required items(one of which wasn't very obvious) from the previous rooms in order to be completed . Even though I had multiple saves I hadn't been doing it really frequently. I ended up having to replay about an hour and a half of puzzles(pretty much 75% of the Lodge if you've played the game) to get back to that room .

[Ack]

Here are a couple more, not specifically related to RPGs:

Anything where I have to rely on the AI's survivability. Daikatana, Tom Clancy games, anything with babysitting missions like in Resident Evil 4 or Silent Hill 4: The Room, anything where I am now reliant upon the AI and no longer solely myself instantly becomes a pain, as we are often shown that the AI isn't as capable as we are, and if the AI were more capable, what would be the point of us playing? Instead, let the player play the game free of arbitrary shackles. I am perfectly willing for co-op though, as I am comfortable relying on and being relied upon by another human being.

Also, anything that modifies the control scheme suddenly, such as bosses, levels, status effects, etc., that have the ability to invert or flip control schemes, disable buttons, randomly alter directional inputs, and so on. This annoys me to no end, because instead of creating an obstacle in the game itself, it imposes an obstacle on how I interact with the game. While I think there are times where a game can and should experiment with attacking the player directly, doing so by hindering an established ability to interact with the game is a negative method because it successfully disrupts muscle memory and subconscious control, taking the player out of the game by consciously making them think about their input device and serving as a barrier to the gameplay itself. It is my opinion that the gameplay should remain king.

This is not an argument against bad controls; any control scheme can be adapted to, so long as it remains static. I specifically dislike the changing of established controls during gameplay.

[MrPopo]

we are often shown that the AI isn't as capable as we are, and if the AI were more capable, what would be the point of us playing?

Friendly AI is one of the hardest things to get right because of what you just said. One of the few games I've played that had a ton of friendly AI that I felt was well done was Terra Nova. As an FPS aficionado you should track down a copy sometime.