5 Modern Game Mechanics That Need to Die in 2017

Quick Time Events

Since the PS2 era, users have had to deal with a plethora of titles implementing button prompt sequences to either further the story or action. Commonly known as Quick Time Events (QTE), this gaming mechanic was an interesting novelty that worked in a few action-based titles such as God of War. While some games used them only briefly, other titles such as The Order 1886 and narrative driven games like Until Dawn effectively built all of their gameplay around this concept.

The problem is that this mechanic typically undermines the actual gameplay, resulting in players ideally watching what could be a cool cutscene only for some dumb button prompts to pop up. This not only forces players to stare at the screen in wait for a big blue X to appear but will also end up relegating any of the on-screen action or story to the background.

Cutscene Woes

Cinematics in video games are used to help convey either important story or action moments that help progress a game forward in a way that the players could not. These cutscenes can sometimes be surprisingly lengthy, with many of them offering integral background and information that the user absolutely needs to know. However, this can become troublesome if developers don’t implement a way to pause cinematics. Given it’s quite possible for someone’s attention to be pulled away while playing a video game, not having the ability to stop the cutscenes can be highly frustrating.

This only gets worse if the developers allow you to skip cutscenes instead, which can lead to many players just forgoing the cinematic entirely when they just wanted to pause it. In contrast, players should also be able to skip all cutscenes if they choose too as it can help alleviate the boredom if you’re playing a specific title multiple times.

Multiplayer Games That Aren’t Online

Couch co-op/multiplayer has always been a welcome addition to any multiplayer game. However, that isn’t an excuse to suddenly not include the ability to play online. One of the most recent offenders of this was Overcooked, a delightfully fun party game that lacked any online mechanics whatsoever. Given that many people don’t always have friends close enough to come over and play due to either work or school, or just geography, this makes using the multiplayer feature quite challenging.

Couple that with having to own multiple controllers (of which cost around $60 a pop) and playing with your friends is suddenly way more costly. We aren’t asking for the omittance of offline play, but simply give users the option to game with others across the world so they can fully enjoy the content. This would also help shut-ins like myself who dare not open the curtains to see the dreaded sun, let alone invite people over.

You Don’t Have This Content

With more and more developers releasing post-launch content via DLC, it’s not uncommon for a lot of extra expansions and modes to be available months, and sometimes years after. While there is nothing wrong with this, it becomes quite annoying when games constantly show off this new content for those who haven’t purchased the expansion.

Destiny is a prime offender of this since its hub world really doesn’t change if you do or do not have the content. What this boils down to is the locked content always looming over the consumer, as if to taunt them that they don’t have any of this new stuff. However, this also goes for titles that constantly pop up to remind you that microtransactions exist and you need to buy them. This is most common in the mobile market, as excessive pop-ups about the latest “resources” users need to purchase is fairly par for the course.

Waist High Walls

Taking cover in video games is a rather standard practice for not dying in a variety of different genres. However, nothing is more frustrating than not being able to clamor over certain terrain. Given that most games allow you to vault over a variety of items, having the edge of your map blocked off by waist high walls is an especially annoying mechanic. Seeing your powerful soldier, who up until this point had no issue jumping over things, suddenly crippled with the inability to climb is laughable at the very least.

Not only does this break the immersion of exploring the world around you, but also completely contradicts your protagonist’s in-game abilities. While most commonly associated with FPS titles like Call of Duty, larger, open world games such as Final Fantasy XV and The Witcher 3 are also guilty of doing this. There is no doubt that developers need to wall off areas of the game so players cannot access them, however, the world and boundaries need to be believable. Nothing is more frustrating than reaching an area that you know, in any other circumstance, your character could vault over, only to stopped dead in their tracks. Do you know how embarrassing it is for a master Witcher to be stopped dead in his tracks by a lowly fence?