Bad Game Design

[ReikkiMerru]

I hate it when there are certain parts in a game where it suddenly turns into a treasure hunt. I don't want to waste my time looking for gems when I can be hacking bad guys.

What do are some other examples of bad game design?

[Stratadrake]

I consider the "impromptu item-fetching quests" to be more of bad [i]plot[/i] design rather than bad [i]game[/i] design.

I don't have much on general examples of bad game design that I can think of, but I do know many specific ones:

Sword of Mana (GBA)
- The magic system. You have to navigate a MENU to select what magic element you want to use in battle, but you have to cast the spells real-time. I'd prefer using a full-on menu system for spells like in the older Mana games. Even Kingdom Hearts, which also had a menu and real-time spellcasting, did better. (And no, I actually love Kingdom Hearts a lot)
- The combo system. If you repeatedly pressed the attack button at a specific rate, your character would execute a 3-hit combo onthe enemy. BUT, if you pressed the button even [i]slightly[/i] slower, your charactre will simply attack over and over and over again with their weapon. This, of course, is called "button mashing". Why bother with combos when you can just swing your weapon over and over and over again as if [i]that[/i] were a combo?
- Angel Grails are worthless because if your main character falls, it's Game Over and you have absolutely no chance to revive them. And the supporting character, unless they're played by another person for co-op, is too dumb to live anyway. If they die, do yourself a favor and leave 'em that way.

Legend of Mana (PSX)
- Inability to flee from battle when in danger.
- Your HP returns to maximum after every battle. (Fortunately though, if your main character gets KO'd, it isn't an instant Game Over like in Sword of Mana)
- There are no curative items or spells.
- You can't use ANY items in battle.
- Enemies have poor AI.
- Supporting characters have poor AI.
- Combos. Just like in Sword of Mana, you can execute a multi-hit combo (from 3 to 7 hits) by pressing the button with the right timing. But if your timing is even a smidgen too slow, you can just attack repeatedly, over and over and over again! Not only that, but all enemies (INCLUDING bosses) 'flinch' slightly when hit, andif you hit them enough times (again, including bosses) they get become dazed for about 5 seconds. Why bother with fancy maneuvers or combos when you can just stand in front of the endgame boss and whack away at them like there's no tomorrow with repeated strokes? The battle will be over before you know it and you won't have suffered even a single attack!

Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly (PS2)
- Greatest Hits my arse....
- Hellatious loading times. Who on earth has the patience to wait FIFTY SECONDS to get to the next level?
- Lame plot. Okay, that's kinda a given, but why'd they ressurect Ripto?
- Game freezes. Walk within earshot of a character and a conversation sequence ensues, right? Well, if there happens to be an enemy or other obstacle (even the terrain!) in the way, Spyro gets stuck! The only way to fix it is to reset the console. (Oh crap, another loading screen!)
- Only one boss in the game, Ripto himself.
- The battle against Ripto is broken. You can't even dodge his attacks, all you can do is simply be as fast as you can and keep hitting him.
- No hidden goodies for getting 100% of all items.

Final Fantasy 9:
- Game lags a lot during combat due to loading sequences. I'm not talking about the intro to combat, I'm talking about DURING combat. Do not under any circumstances set the ATB mode to "Active", put it on "Wait" and keep it there. Combat actions always occur in the same order the commands are entered, but there's one problem. Since the ATB timer generally keeps ticking during things like spell effects, this means that more often than not, when a long spell is cast, that every monster on the field will get their turn in while the spell is being cast. This can be addressed (somewhat) by setting the ATB mode to "Wait" and, whenever a long spell or attack is in progress, opening up a menu (like magic or items. Heck, even the target menu for the "Attack" command will do) to pause the ATB timer and wait for the sequence to finish. FF5's "Speed" spell from FF5 (wihch pauses the ATB timer for about five seconds whenever someone's turn comes up) would have really, REALLY been a good thing to have. In fact, it'd be better if the ATB timer always paused during attacks and spells. Then the lag wouldn't be an issue.
- "Slow" is not slow enough because of the lag. Who cares that you put Slow on your enemies? You just summoned Ark, and while you're waiting for the thing to finish so you can decide what to do next, your enemies' ATB timers are ticking away, and guess what? They still get their turns in ahead of you!
- Inability to target Potions on KO'd characters. However, you can still target Phoenix Downs on standing characters. WTF?
- Phoenix Downs are worthless due to the combination of the above two gripes. In order to revive someone effectively, you need to (1) have two members ready to go, (2) wait for a monster to attack, then have the first character use the Phoenix Down, (3) immediately as they start using the Phoenix Down, have the second character use a Potion or something to cure them. Otherwise, a monster might get their turn in between the Phoenix Down and potion, and chances are good they'll KO the guy you just revived. At least the Life spell restores decent HP....

Most Final fantasy games (FF7+)
- Inability to retreat individual members of your party from battles like in FF6; rather, it's either your entire party retreats or they all remain.
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[YellowPill]

"Most Final fantasy games (FF7+)
- Inability to retreat individual members of your party from battles like in FF6; rather, it's either your entire party retreats or they all remain. "

Yeah I liked the fact that in FFX-2 you could make the individual retreat.

Hmmm...bad game designs...I'll have to get back to you on that one. Have to think a bit longer.

[shadowgodess]

The only bad thing about Kingdom Hearts is the damn camera angles! AARG! I thought I was going to have a convolvsion. The rest of the game was kick ass!


Spyro games are ok, but could be alot better. The plot line went down hill after Ripto. Plot lines, I my opinon, are the most important thing in a video game. You have to stir up emotions in the players.
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[VR_Jay]

Hunter: the Reconing. 2nd level where you have to protect this little girl from hoards of zombies as try to get to the church, by way of a grave yard. What is really annoying about this level is that often you will come across a locked gate and a zombie is holding the key. but 2/3rds of the zombies don't appear until you get near them, then they rise up from the ground to attack you. This can leave you running around for a half hour trying to find the one zombie you missed that happens to be holding the key. [i]Really[/i] annoying.
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[color=black]"Your toast is burnt and no amount of scraping will remove the black stuff!" ~ Caboose, Red vs. Blue[/color]

[Stratadrake]

Actually, it's [i]hordes[/i]. But considering they pop out of the ground, I suppose it could work either way :lol:

[quote]Spyro games are ok, but could be alot better. The plot line went down hill after Ripto.[/quote]

Very much agreed; Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage was still the best.

Bad Game Design - continued:

Final Fantasy 2 (FF Origins pack):
- The learning curve on this game is unstable. Enemies vary from too weak to too strong, and the bosses are no different.


Various RPG's, including FF9:
- Every once in awhile, you'll come across an enemy that for whatever reason completely breaks the learning curve. This is caused because most monsters choose their attacks randomly (no AI) and some combinations of attacks are simply deadly.

Examples of potentially unfair monsters:
- Lamia Queen (FF2 boss). Lamia Queen has a Lv.12 Ruse spell. If she casts it repeatedly, she becomes literally impossible to strike with physical attacks for a significant portion of the battle.
- Imp (FF2 monster). Imp likes to cast Lv.16 Muddle on your entire team, and they also like to travel around in packs of 4-6 at a time. The first time you run into an group of Imps, you may as well reset the console because chances are they'll confuse your entire team and force you to watch helplessly as your team members very efficiently kill each other. I've found only [b]one[/b] item so far (a Headband) that protects against confusion (a Headband) so you can bet I put it on my most dangerous team member. The only other protection is to have pretty high Magic Defense scores (10+, I believe the scale for M.Def was 0-16) so that the Muddle attacks don't always work.
- Hill Gigas (FF2 monster). Chances are, the first few times you run into a Hill Gigas, his defense score will be simply too high for your physical weapons to do ANY damage against. Plus he hits for 300-600 per turn, a significant (if not one-hit KO) amount of damage at this point in the game. My advice: Equip the Crescent & Ancient Sword on one team member (AncientSword does "Curse", which hlves his defense power, and Sleep is always handy).
- Lamia (FF9 monster). If Lamia casts the "Might" spell repeatedly, watch out! Unless you kill her fast, she'll start inflicting one-hit KO's to your team members.


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[chux]

[quote="ReikkiMerru (Francis Bureros)"] I don't want to waste my time looking for gems when I can be hacking bad guys. [/quote]
Hmm, maybe its just me, but I like a good treasure hunt in a game. Im not one for killing endless mosters, especially hard ones
I woundlt mind a bossless game really, although I guess thered be no challenge and therefore no achievment. Maybe if it required thinking a lot...

[Stratadrake]

More:

- Platform games where you can't go back and re-play a level the way it was when you first entered.

This goes both ways, actually, it can be just as much good design as bad design.

Platform games where you can re-play most of the completed tasks include:
- Mario 64 / Mario Sunshine
- Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
- Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage

Platform games where you cannot re-play any completed tasks, include:
- Spyro series, except Ripto's Rage
- Any Legend of Zelda game except Majora's Mask
- Ratchet & Clank series
- Sly Cooper
- Jak series

The reason why I [i]don't[/i] like games where you can only complete a mission once is that, once you've completed all the tasks in a level, the level's "done". There's nothing left to [i]do[/i].

Sly Cooper for example, once you've found all the clue items in each level, unlocked the treasure, and beaten the master sprint, there's no reason to return to that level.

In the case of adventure-games like the Zelda series, if you want to show somebody that really impressive boss you just beat, you can't just return to the dungeon and the boss will be waiting there. (Except for Majora's Mask, with its Groundhog-Day style plot)

Next up on the list:

- Games that only allow you to save in one slot at a time. In other words, you can't make a copy of your old save by saving in a different slot.

Again, this is a double-edged sword, it's not always a bad thing. But there are a few games where it was an annoyance:

- Star Fox Adventures. The game seemed to wind down a little near the end (I could 'feel' the ending approaching from an hour away) and, after you've fetched the last spirit, you can't return to the main world anymore, the only area and save-points available are those in the final temple.
- Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. Dragon Quarter is the strictest game I've yet to see regarding saved games. Its save files are keyed to the memory card upon which they were saved. You can't copy them to another memory card, heck you can't even [i]move[/i] them to another memory card because they are flagged "copying prohibited"!

As a final note, Dragon Quarter is one of the rare RPG's designed for multiple playthroughs. If you beat the game, or even if you lose the game, you have the opportunity to start the game over from the beginning with the benefit of current equipment and some other stuff.
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[ReikkiMerru]

Wow Stratadrake! I didn't expect you to be so in depth. So major kudos to you . I'll get back to what some of my thoughts are but right now I don't have much time.

By the way, you what's bad game design? Enter The Matrix. I would actually be amazed if a bad guy managed to hit me.

[Stratadrake]

Another one just occured to me:

Game: Final Fantasy 9
Problem: Spell costs & MP usage

Has anybody noticed that in FF9, the higher level spells do significantly more damage than the lower level spells? For example, Fira costs only twice as much as Fire, but it does 3-4x the damage. It's simply more cost efficient.

In turn-based combat, the [b]lower[/b]-level spells are supposed to be more cost-efficient than the higher-level ones, like in FF6 and FF7. The reason for this is basically that part of the MP cost associated with a higher-level spell pays for the ability to do that much damage [i]in a single turn[/i]. That's why Fire 2, though it may only do perhaps 3x the damage of Fire 1, costs 5x as much to cast.

Sure, you can get more use out of your MP by relying on the low-level spells. But on since you can (generally) do only one spell per turn, it'll take a lot longer to get the same effect as a higher-level spell, and in a pitched battle, is there any guarantee that your team will even survive long enough to benefit from the better MP efficiency?

Say I have 25 MP, Fire 1 costs 5MP and Fire 2 costs 25MP. I'm up against a tough enemy, but he's weak to fire. If I spend all my MP on a Fire 2, I can end the battle in a single turn. On the other hand, if I spend it on Fire 1's, in three turns I'll have killed the monster off with 10MP to spare, but my character will have taken damage during the meantime, possibly enough to kill them.

So, decisions, decisions. Better MP efficiency, or the ability to hit hard and possibly end the battle real quickly? Unfortunately, in FF9, since the higher-level spells are more cost efficient, there is no decision: Just use the higher-level spells against tough enemies, and save the low-level spells only for weak enemies you can kill in a single hit.
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[ReikkiMerru]

I think a problem most prevalent in games with puzzle elements is the omission of lateral thinking.

Its like you come to a locked door. Obviously you think, "Gee, that's simple! All I have to do is find the key." It also happens to be the most boring, so the developers try to add a twist by having the player solve a ridiculously hard puzzle that would most likely require the use of a guide book. That's not fun, since that's supposed to be the essence of games. Its frustrating and hinders gameplay value. Its puzzles like these that doesn't encourage the player to think creatively, no, he has to read the designer's mind.

Think of all the ways you can do to a lock door:

1) Find the key
2) Pick the lock
3) Get a person who has the key to open it
4) Break down the door, nuke it with a grenade launcher, shoot the door knob, etc.
5) Circumvent it (if the door is blocking your path, maybe you can find an alternate route to your destination)

Deux Ex offers those opportunities, something which most games lack.

[Stratadrake]

Today's example of bad game design comes proudly -- or, not so proudly, from Final Fantasy X-2.

The category is "Broken Rules". The area is the Bevelle Via Infinito dungeon. Spoilers ahoy!

One of the greatest challenges for a design team is to find ways of making a battle difficult, yet not to the point where it becomes unfair to the player wading through. How strong should the boss's attacks be, versus how strong should the player challenging them be. It's a very difficult question.

It's very difficult to find a game (RPG's especially) where the enemies feel "just right". This is usually because of that accursed task known as "level-building". Stay in one area to slaughter the local krill, and you continue to collect experience and level up. As a result, the enemies coming forwards may be too easy.

FFX-2 is a classic example of this, since roughly 70% of the game is merely side-quests. If you proceed through all the side-quests in the game, FFX-2's difficulty curve is practically flatline. Chapter One and Two for example, are roughly 80% side-quests. By completing those side-quests and levelling up your characters, the mandatory bosses in each chapter become a joke. Their attacks simply don't hurt enough, and their HP is simply not high enough, to counter the levels you built up while out sidequesting.

This only gets worse in Chapter 3, and doesn't lighten up much in Chapters 4 and 5. Vegnagun and the final boss, aside from perhaps two powerful attacks, were a walk in the park! Easy as cake for a Lv.60 party, which is approximately where you'd wind up after completing most of the sidequests anyway.

It almost seems like the development team realized this while making FFX-2, and so to counter it, they threw in a few bosses that are almost IMPOSSIBLY HARD.

First up comes Angra Mainyu, the roaming desert fiend who randomly attacks in Chapters 1 thru 3. Eventually, in Chapter 5, you have to square off against this demon with its 300,000 HP. And it's not easy; expect to get your behind whooped a few times.

Angra Mainyu's attacks include standard spells and attacks (about 600 damage), a "Bad Breath" style status attack (best have Ribbons all around), a multi-hit status-lowering MP-draining attack, Flare (9999 damage, anyone?) and a twelve-hit special physical attack called "Perdition's Flame" that inflicts approximately 1,000 per hit, each hit targetting a random party member. Sound fearsome enough? Only high amounts of HP, like Berserker or Dark Knight, or the "Double HP" bonus on the "Tempered Will" garment grid, provide adequate defense.

Even so, with the right strategy, you can wither Angra Mainyu down and counteract or nullify most of its attacks. The Dark Knight's "Darkness" skill can cut down its two support hands pretty quickly, and Angra Mainyu itself relies on its supply of MP to inflict damage. I eventually won by draining Angra Mainyu of all its MP and then using up all of my team's MP, leaving the demon helplessly trying to absorb MP from my team while I simply continued to attack it.

So the fearsome desert boss, tougher than even Vegnagun and the final boss, is beatable.

But then there are more optional bosses. There's the guardian-dragon creature in the Farplane with merely 140,000 total HP. But its high speed, average attack power of 1,000 for a standard hit [i]and[/i] that it drains your HP to heal itself through those attacks, is just as difficult as the desert demon.

Worst among the offenders are the Via Infinito bosses. The Via Infinito starts out easy enough -- low-level monsters, and a boss on Level 20 with only 22,000 HP and a few relatively survivable attacks. But then something happens.

Along the way, you might run into an Elder Drake -- who must be related to FFX's Fafnir or something. This dragon's speed is just insane, allowing it to attack literally once every four seconds, not to mention that each attack alone hits for over 5,000 damage. In the same time it takes for your average ATB meter to fill up, the dragon can easily destroy your entire team. That's not even mentioning his flame attack which hits the entire party (but, thankfully, is fire-based and can be absorbed).

Then you get down to level 40 and fight a boss there. The boss has only 9999 HP. A joke, right? But it's an elemental class -- you know, insanely high physical defense. Your strongest physical attacks inflict, oh, about 200 damage per hit. It also has auto-reflect and its magic power is through the roof. It likes to cast Flare (9999 on one character), Berserk, and "Magic Up", but the worst part is that it'll eventually end the battle by casting Ultima (9999 to your entire party). Reflect can save you from Flare, but only Auto-Life can save you from Ultima. Worst, it uses its attacks completely at random. If you're lucky, you may get enough turns in to cause considerable damage before it chooses Ultima. Or it might attack with Ultima [i]from the start of battle[/i].

And it just gets better from there. The next boss, on floor 60, has 300,000 HP and uses physical attacks that cause -- and I am not joking -- over [b]30,000[/b] damage. Now, in a Final Fantasy game, if an attack does anything more than 10 or 20 thousand damage, then you KNOW it is designed for a guaranteed kill. Even this boss has a weakness, in that he only attacks one member at a time and his speed is relatively slow. If you can heal and revive fast enough, you can survive.

But just wait until Floor 80. The boss on this floor has a physical attack that hits for about 8,000 (seriously, if you make it this far, you should be used to seeing attacks like this). It also has a special attack that hits the entire party for about 9,000 apiece -- [b]and[/b] anybody that survives has all their stats lowered to -10. Worst of all, the boss has a "Stone Glare" attack that always succeeds, regardless of any and all protection! Stoneproof armor and Ribbons are completely worthless here, the boss's stone attack pierces them all. At least you can still recover from it, right? Better do it fast, or the boss will hit and shatter them to permanently remove them from the battle.

Enter design flaw #1. Normally, you can call in a Special Dressphere and do some serious damage, right? Well hold up there, pardner, this boss has 400,000 HP up its sleeve (in the US version -- I hear that in the original Jap. version he had only 200,000) so it's going to be a long while. The Special Dresspheres have an inherent "Ribbon" effect to block status attacks. But remember, this boss's petrify attack completely ignores status defense. It can turn even a Special Dressphere to stone. And when that happens, it's an [i]instant[/i] Game Over. Forget that it's only one member of your team and the other two are still capable of fighting, if a Special Dressphere is turned to stone, that's it you're done.

Of course, if you thought floor 80 was bad, you haven't seen nothing yet. All the bosses you encountered and defeated to get this far become [b]random[/b] encounter monsters themselves! Your only consolation is that you can still flee from random encounters. That's right; run. Run far, run fast.

Then there's the boss on floor 100. At first, it kicks off against a fiend called Paragon -- half a million HP, and all of its attacks inflicting damage in the 8,000~9,000 range. Particularly its special attack which can inflict about 12,000 across the entire party.

Provided you survive that, you have one more battle to fight, against an enemy whose sped and agility makes even the Elder Drake look like a snail in comparison. This enemy regularly hits for 1,000 to 2,000 with his physical attacks alone, but he attacks like a four-member team. In the time it takes for each of your three team members to take one turn, he's already taken five or six. And he has literally one million HP to his name. Normally, you'd want to cast Haste to double the turns your team receives, right? To even the odds?

Enter design flaw #2: "Haste [b]doesn't work[/b]. Just like how "Darkness" didn't work back in FF6, and how "Magic Defense" didn't work in FF7, here in FFX-2, Haste doesn't cause your character's ATB timers to fill up any faster. Take two equal-level characters in the same dressphere and put Haste on one, then watch as their ATB meters fill up at the [i]exact same pace[/i]. I sure hope my eyes are deceiving me here. Back in FF5 and FF7, Haste actually worked, and even with the annoying lag problems of FF9, Haste still filled up the ATB meters faster. FFX had the best implementation of Haste in the series, and the character's turns camearound twice as often. But here in FFX-2? So far, the [b]only[/b] benefit I have confirmed from the Haste effect is that the Gunner can score twice as many hits with Trigger Happy.

These are bosses that make you wonder if even the development team themselves could win those battles. Or if the developers simply designed them to be "unbeatable". Over-compensating for a game with a generally flat difficulty level, perhaps?

The problem here is that the Via Infinito breaks virtually all of the rules of combat that you spent the entire game getting used to. Enemies take you out in single hits almost regardless of your HP and defense, both of which you simply can't raise high enough to compensate. They take multiple turns in a row. They have status attacks that you CAN'T defend against.

Clearly unbalanced, they don't feel like enemies or bosses. They feel cheap. Doubtless that they're programmed using the same rules as the rest of the game, but they still feel as though they are breaking all the rules of combat.

What can you do? Is the only way to beat them to "cheat" back?

[b]QUOTE[/b] (SPOILER!!)

For example, after defeating the boss at Level 40 of the Via Infinito, you receive a rare item called "Cat Nip", an accessory with an "SOS ????" ability.  Wear it.  If that character's HP drops low, the Cat Nip produces a quartet-of-nines effect.  Every attack they make, hits for 9999.  Every healing they take, heals for 9999.  Regardless of enemy HP, regardless of enemy armor, they hit for 9999 [b]per hit[/b].  Put it on Thief Rikku, for example, who can hit twice in a row -- guaranteed 19,9998 damage per attack.  Or better yet, put it on a Gunner and use Trigger Happy -- 9999 per hit, for 8~12 hits!  100,000 damage in a single turn!  And if that wasn't cheating enough, give the gunner something with SOS Haste or Auto-Haste.  Haste doubles the number of hits they can perform with Trigger Happy!  Feel like causing 200,000 damage per turn?  Imagine what a team of three gunners, all with Cat Nip, Haste, and Lv.3 Trigger Happy could do -- nearly a million HP of damage in a single round!  No enemy could stand up to that.  Not even the "unbeatable" bosses of the Via Infinito.[/quote] You know, if there's anything to hate more than a difficult boss, it's a cheap one. I've seen cheap boss encounters before, but almost nothing that compares to these. Give me a real-time battle system any day. At least in a real-time environment you retain [i]some[/i] measure of control over your character, even against unfair or unbalanced bosses. Kingdom Hearts for example. I can't say how many times I was slaughtered at the hands of the optional bosses like Kurt Zisa in the desert, the Phantom in Neverland, the Ice Titan, or Sephiroth himself. Yet for each time they chewed my team up and spat them out, it did not feel a cheap defeat. I always knew there had to be some way I could get better and evade or defend against those attacks. I eventually defeated all four using standard abilities -- attack, move, defend, dodge, heal. There was no "cheat" tactic -- I did not have to resort to any abusive use of accessories or special moves (like FFX2's "Cat Nip") to win. _________________ Strata here: [url=http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/242293]Nanowrimo[/url] - [url=www.fanart-central.net/user-Stratadrake.php]FAC[/url] - [url=http://stratadrake.deviantart.com]dA[/url] - [url=www.furaffinity.net/user/Stratadrake/]FA[/url] [size=9]Disclaimer: Posts may contain URLs. Click [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife]at your own risk.[/url][/size]

[amerowolf]

onimusha 2. i'll be having fun smacking down undead samurais from hell one minute then i hit a door and find out i missed the key and i have to backtrack for an hour trying to find it. and the running controls are kooky. like you have to use the d-pad and face one way then press up, then face the other way and press up.

fun, yet frustrating.