RPG irritations

[DarkDragoonX]

So I've been wondering... what are those traits in RPGs that really bug you? YOu know, little things that just get under your skin when you're playing an RPG?

Mine include:


NPCs that join your party and become far weaker than they were. Likewise, I hate it when you have to fight one of your ex-party members and they mysteriously gain thousands of HP.

Big Number Syndrome (BNS) - This is just sloppiness on the part of the game designers. Your attacks don't need to do 5000 damage... that's just retarded. Games with smaller amounts of HP and damage are almost always much, much more refined and fine-tuned than games that use huge numbers. If I go play Dragon Warrior 3, I find that every level I gain, every stat point I get, every single goddamn point of HP is important, and I cherish it. Whereas in Final Fantasy 264, I think "Another 2k damage, Whoop-dee-doo."

Using text and voiceovers at the same time. I finish reading the text before the voice has even reached the thir word, and so when I play RPGs that use both text and voiceovers in conjunction, it's very irritating. "And then" "But he was" "We have to" "Evil chicken", etc, etc.

But Thou Must! A condition wherin you are presented with a choice you don't really have. For example in Dragon Warrior, after you rescue the princess, she'll ask you if you love her. If you say "No," she will repeat "But thou must!" for eternity, until you finally cave in and choose "Yes." I hate that. If I dont really have a choice, don't give me a false impression of choice to begin with!


So, what bugs YOU?

[Beldaran]

I agree with all of yours, for starters.

Others include:

Saying a game has 80 hours of gameplay, when in reality it has 1.5 hours of story, and 78.5 hours of levelling up so you can fight the next boss.

The old classic: You can hold 99 of every single item in the game, but you can't hold 100 potions and nothing else.

This one bugs me a lot: The king tells me to run an errand for him in some other kingdom, but he won't tell me where it is or how to get there. Instead, I have to talk to every single peon in his castle until some random chef or doorman blurts out the location of the other kingdom. Irritating.

Greedy innkeepers: "Thank you for saving our town from the evil dragon who burned us and raped our women for his own amusement! You are the greatest hero ever! By the way, it costs 50 gold to sleep here. Pay up or get out"

[Ibis, God of Magicks]

I Hate being forced to go to a certain place. Why give me this huge world map if I can't freely explore it.

I hate party members that leave the party after you've spent the past 25 hours leveling them up and fine tuning their skills. Specially if they keep their equipment.

I kinda don't like that there is always a save right before something big happens. You walking through a dungeon, you find a door and a save point. "Oh shit, I better prepare" kinda takes the surprise out of it.

I hate buying "Teh armor of doom" for 12456330 gil, only to find it in a dungeon's random treasure chest 15 minutes later.

[Cloral]

I hate RPGs that aren't difficult enough. This includes the majority of modern RPGs. You should have to think about what you are doing in order to make it through - otherwise, what's the point in playing it at all? If they are worried about it being too hard for the casual gamer, then they should have an easy mode for the pussies to play.

I also hate when RPG characters try to say something profound, since it usually comes out stupid and pointless. I also dislike characters that do things 'for justice' or because it is the right thing to do. We all know that nobody would travel the world, risking life and limb, just for an abstract concept like justice. This concept can work for superhero games and the like since they aren't heavily dependent on story. But in an RPG where story matters greatly, there needs to be a stronger reason for what the characters do.

[DarkDragoonX]

I hate RPGs that aren't difficult enough. This includes the majority of modern RPGs. You should have to think about what you are doing in order to make it through - otherwise, what's the point in playing it at all? If they are worried about it being too hard for the casual gamer, then they should have an easy mode for the pussies to play.

I heartily agree. That's probably the main reason for my growing distaste for the Final Fantasy franchise... the fact that they've become so easy, a dead man could finish them.

Specially if they keep their equipment.

Also known as "Die and burn in hell, Nash!"

I hate buying "Teh armor of doom" for 12456330 gil, only to find it in a dungeon's random treasure chest 15 minutes later.

Although it IS highly annoying, it doesn't bug me TOO much. After all, you generally don't have anything better to spend your cash on, since (this ties into what Cloral said) the game is usually so simple you can finish the whole thing without ever even glancing at the "Item" command.

And another one of my own: last-minute sidequests. Okay, so the giant meteor is hovering above the globe. Time to spend half of your total time playing on random sidequests! I really think sidequests should be spread over the course of the game, instead of the current method, which is to have none for the majority of the game, then a giant orgy or sidequests at the very end, when all you really want to do is finish the damn thing.

[Dart Zaidyer]

Some of my beefs include:

• Bad Transrations. These days it doesn't really happen, but ten years ago it wasn't so uncommon to see the grammar disintegrate right at the crucial plot revelation.
• Random battles. So here I am walking through a fairly deserted-looking dungeon, when all of the sudden comes the Giant Skull of DEATH from out of absolutely freakin' nowhere to tear my party a new one right before I can reach the save point. GRRRRR!!!
• Bad allusions to Christianity. We get it Japan, you don't understand us at all. Now stop making us fight Evil Cyborg Jesus and his entourage of creepy-looking evil angels in the middle of the local Evil Catholic Church.
• Villains whose greatest ambition is to declare themselves gods. Didn't they learn anything from the Evil Church? Being a god automatically makes you evil and destined for defeat. Unless you're the earth itself or some guy's wise ancestor, that is.
• Narcissistic pretty-boy villains. Not really ambitious, but they're likely to give you a long lecture about some kind of existentialist crap before each battle.
• Endings that drag on forever and ever and before you know it, a half hour has gone by since you beat the game and the credits haven't even started yet.

[*b*]

random battles. I love games like SO3, whwre you can avoid battles if you want (or can) when you don't want to battle, or if you want to battle the same enemy, you just leave the screen then re enter. that's not going to stop me from playing FF anymore, though

party members that HAVE to be in your party. especially if they suck. I like to be able to form my own parties, instead of having three characters present by defauly, and having seven other people to choose for my fourth member

party members that leave permanently, and take their equipment with them. you go through ten dungeons, gain a godly level, equip them with the best items, then they die from an arrow in the back. come ON

this one isn't so much as "OMG FUCK YOU I CAN'T BLIEVE YOU DID THAT TO ME!", but more of a "darnit" thing. not being able to chose the person you run around as. like in ToS, you can chose who you play as, and who is displayed when you're going places. games where the main character is set (like SO3 and GS) kinda bug me

[Kairyu]

Brain-dead heros. Okay, this is the only guy who can save the world. He can kill any monster. Kings honor him with huge parties. He can cast the ultimate forbidden spell, Ownageus 666 X^2. He has a magic sword that makes Excalibur look like a hedge trimmer. So why can't he figure out that the party member who keeps sneaking off to talk to strangers about evil sacrifices and destroying the world probably isn't on their side?

There's always one weapon for each player at one time. One. Yes, there are all those weapons you picked up earlier, but they are useless now. You don't need to think, what weapon should I give my Swordsman? You just give him the most expensive thing you've got. Blam, battle-ready warrior. My Mage? Expensive Staff. Blam, battle-ready warrior. Bard? Expensive musical instruments. Blam, instant character who's only slightly less useless. The only difference between one weapon and another is attack or magic power.
Sometimes you get a weapon that deals elemental damage, or has a 1 in 2 billion chance of randomly killing any enemy weak enough to die in one hit anyway, but those are just side benefits. The weapon is still better than previous items, and weaker than anything you don't yet own. Would a little choice or the occasional curve ball really kill someone?

Cliche characters presented as original works of art. It's even more annoying when people think they're badass or something. See also: almost every character in Tales of Symphonia.

I also hate artificial exploration limits. Okay, so it'd be suicide to explore the final dungeon at level 1. But why can't I just go ahead a little bit? Because there's an old man who won't let me pass without a dozen magic swords of power or his stolen underwear. Even though I could easily walk around him, or maybe throw him out of the way. You can only go to one place and do only one thing to continue the story. Until you get your vehicles. Then you can explore the whole world, and need to find the one person somewhere in it who will let you continue. After you get him the other dozen magic swords of power or a beer keg.

[bigjoe]

I hate when rpgs reuse the same story over and over.

"You're a rebel trying to take on the evil oppresive empire!"

"You must spend the entire game trying to destroy the giant dude clad in blackish blue!"

"You must fight someone who is trying to change the laws of space and time!"

For once, Id like to see an rpg that casts you AS the evil oppressive empire. Or makes you the eight foot tall scary guy. Or gives you the power to go back in time and kill people when they were babies!

[Cloral]

Kinda to combine what I said earlier with what Kairyu said, I hate when you get to a new town and there is some sort of local problem that you just have to go fix in order to progress. This is the stupidest story mechanism used but it cropps up a lot (see the entire game of Lufia 2 for a great example of this). If they want to have local issues that you can solve as a sidequest if you want, fine (in fact, good. As DarkDragoonX said, there aren't enough sidequests during the course of most RPGs). But they shouldn't be required, unless there is a specific reason for it.