The other thread about favorite mechanics is great, so let’s also do the opposite: what are some of your most hated mechanics?
For me, the absolute worst is when the game effectively punishes you for not constantly menu diving to change your equipment.
Some random examples:
Disco Elysium - your clothes have a MASSIVE effect on some specific stats which influence dialogues. In order to get the best outcomes, you have to change your clothes before an interaction with another character.
Ghost of Tsushima - you get separate armor sets for different activities, which is not too bad, except one of the sets is for exploration. So every time you switch between combat and riding your horse, if you don’t switch your armor sets, then it feels that the game is punishing you.
I love both of those games, but really really hate that mechanic.
If you hate menu diving then Tears of the Kingdom will actually make you go insane. I’m constantly swapping armor and scrolling up and down to find specific items.
Gear breaking is the worst mechanic of them all. At least if it is every 5 hits.
Never understood the hate for weapons breaking. You practically get showered with weapons and in ToTK you have a slew of weapon parts you can use to very quickly make another good weapon. If weapons never broke then you’d use the same one throughout the entire game and never be encouraged to try something new.
That’s funny, I actually think TotK is great in this regard.
The DPad Up quick inventory menu is awesome and the sorting options are exactly what I’d want (most used, attack power, type, and zonai).
Having quick swappable equipment sets would be nice but so many games lack that feature that I don’t even think about it. In TotK it also seems unnecessary unless you’re into min-max. Like, I just need one piece of fire immune clothing to go into Death Mountain, I don’t need to wear an entire set and if I was really lazy I could pop an elixir from the quick select menu instead.
Cooking is annoying though. It’s such a fun animation and satisfying outcome but the laborious hold and drop mechanics get tedious when you’re cooking in bulk.
I think forced stealth mechanics in games not designed for them are my pet peeve. Looking at you Witcher 2.
I hate stealth mechanics in general, it is just not my type of gameplay. It is the reason I stopped playing Death Stranding, although I loved everything else in it, but being forced to use stealth mechanics was so off-putting to me, I just stopped playing and can’t go back.
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Slow, boring climbing sections that add nothing to the game and just pad out playtime. I’m looking at you, God of War (2018).
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Lives systems. Luckily modern games never use it anymore, but every now and then I play an older game and wow, losing 30+ minutes of progress just because you died a few times SUCKS.
QuickTime events. I started replaying RE4 original. Did not miss them.
