What bores you?

On my authority as a gamer, and the fact that I am on the internet, makes me an authority figure on the subject of what games shouldn’t do. And since I am on the internet, I expect my opinions should be stated as fact and obeyed by all, as a proclamation from the lord of gaming on high.

And of course, the internet is full of such blowhards already, so my piteous yelp for attention will be exactly one more fart in a windstorm of stupid online chatter that doesn’t actually do diddly squat.

What I want to mainly do is to point at game design things I don’t particularly enjoy, as a way of saying, “I want to improve.” Obviously I need to stick to relevant games to The Also Rans; complaining about Jet Set Radio being really stupid to me doesn’t buy a whole lot because… I’m not making some punk aesthetic roller blading, graffiti tagging thing. I’m working on a collaborative RPG, so kinda need to stick to relevant examples. Which is too bad, because of all the punk aeshtetic roller blading, graffiti tagging games I have played, Jet Set Radio is absolutely the worst.

Level valleys and forced grinding

I’d like to claim no RPG maker attempts to put these in, but games with subscription services, or that simply want players to sink time until they decide to throw money at the in-game shop, absolutely do put them in. Still, the leveling journey just seems to have these times where stepping one foot out of town involves you getting nearly beat to death, requiring you to do one fight, flee back to the inn with your butt chewed to tatters, and rest up until you can attempt to survive another encounter, maybe buy the next level of gear, and eventually make two steps out of town.

This usually hits when you take the road into a new area. In MMO’s, this can be exciting, because from that road, you see spiders and bears and whatever other fauna in the woods, turn towards you, chitter “fresh meat!” and start running after you for a taste. And so you run! I still remember getting a night elf through the Wetlands in World of Warcraft, and every crocodile was something out of Steve Irwin’s nightmares. So that part was really exciting, but actually trying to play in that environment, significantly less so.

How to avoid: Give the players a little more choice in the matter. Rather than have the environment static and ready to polish them off no matter what bear ass quests I select, have the quest in question give a little more of a heads up as to the quantity of crocodiles involved in getting to bear country. If a player absolutely wants to leap across crocodile snouts like Pitfall Harry, then sure, let them do that — but maybe don’t put the environmental hazards literally outside of Menethil Harbor the worst ones to deal with.

Price Gouging Shopkeepers

Anything I’d write on picking on Zelda has been better done here, so I’ll just simply say how much BS it is that the single hero that even exists in the game world is charged up the wazoo for the necessary equipment to safe the world. Does anybody else in Hyrule even use a shield? Every time a Like-Like eats my shield, they are still in stock, at the same price, every single time. So clearly there is an abundant, if not infinite, supply of these shields in the back of the shop, and since Link can only carry but the one, and nobody else uses them, the shopkeepers have got to be seriously considering their warehousing cost of all those worthless shields.

I’d complain about being charged anything at all by shopkeepers, since again, I am saving the friggin’ world here, but the in game currency serves no actual purpose but for purchasing stuff, and clearly the shopkeepers have zero other customers in the world besides the hero, they need to make bank where they can — if I fail to save the world, they’re going to need the canned food and shotgun ammo, and if I do save the world, then absolutely nobody will ever shop there ever again, so these shopkeepers need to figure out their 401k like today.

Shop gear as progression wall for grinding monsters to afford swords to easier grind monsters honestly is worse to me than the crocodiles outside of Menethil issue. Crocs I can learn to avoid. Money is just something I have to farm, and there’s very little excitement in killing farmable mobs for salable drops and lunch money.

How to avoid: Just give the damn gear when you get to a new town. It doesn’t have to be a Little Library full of swords and staves (but that would be awesome), but instead, make the upgrades affordable within the first couple of fights/quests. I got to a new area, I want to explore the new area, and spending my first hours there digging through garbage to sell cans so I can afford a +1 sword and survive that new area, feels bad.

The villain is never part of the story at any time

There probably isn’t a good way to avoid this. The final boss, if he showed up regularly to menace the heroes, would absolutely mop the floor with you as a level 1. Even if he razed your village and ignored you because you weren’t worth killing, if he came back after you’d grown up a little bit and saw the burning rage in your eyes, he’d be a fool not to deal with you then. So, at best, you might encounter Ganon really early in your quest, where you have absolutely no chance against him at all, and then never ever again until the end of the game. Or, and most typically, you never EVER encounter The Big Bad in any meaningful way until the final dungeon, and that is your one and only time to face him.

Team Rocket tries real hard to avoid this. They menace you because they have orders from The Big Bad to.. well, mostly be pests. You are going to hand their asses to them, of course, because you have the power of friendship and they obviously do not, but at least in their defeat, you understand that The Big Bad will send more worthless feebs after you. Does Giovanni actually do anything? No, not really. But at least you might think about him, thinking about you.

How to avoid: So, actually I am not going to. This is a trope I want to play with, that The Big Bad is at no point part of the hero’s journey. So not only do I have no solution for this problem, but I am actively going to lampshade it and contribute to the problem! Why buck convention?

So, that’s 2 things that bore me that I’d like to avoid and 1 thing that I will do nothing to change!

What bores you in RPG-like games? Pull up a seat by the hearth and tell me what ales you, traveler!