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?
