RPG Mechanics That Always Suck

[Emphyrio]

I'll start

Haggling

[rusty_shackleford]

dialogue trees

[WhiteShark]

Quickload.

[rusty_shackleford]

Haggling

There's a morrowind mod that overhauls the mercantile skill(which is sorta close to haggling) that I've seen praised
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/50574

his other mods are apparently quite good too btw

[Gregz]

Encumbrance

[maidenhaver]

Crafting.

[Gunnar]

Durability

[rusty_shackleford]

Encumbrance

Anytime someone mentions encumbrance, I immediately think of my first time playing Baldur's Gate and acquiring Minsc changed part of how I played due to him being able to carry heavy stuff. Made the character feel like a valuable addition to my party in a non-combat way.

Also, encourages games where you can acquire pack animals which is good. See the recent Wartales, my band had a bunch of ponies to carry their stuff.

[Gregz]

Magic Find - "increases the likelihood that a Magic, Rare, Set, Unique, or Legendary Items will drop."

[rusty_shackleford]

strengthlets seething because their choices are being reflected by gameplay

[J1M]

Crafting.

[Nemesis]

Fatigue in place of health.

[The_Mask]

1. Infinite spawns.

2. Weapon degradation without a purpose.

3. Crafting for the sake of crafting.

[rusty_shackleford]

Systems that reward you for engaging in them rather than penalizing tend to be more well received even if the end result may be the same.
e.g., people hate weapon durability but seem to like things like being able to sharpen a sword for a temporary bonus. People hate crafting, but seem to like systems that allow you to modify existing equipment.

[WhiteShark]

Systems that reward you for engaging in them rather than penalizing tend to be more well received even if the end result may be the same.
e.g., people hate weapon durability but seem to like things like being able to sharpen a sword for a temporary bonus. People hate crafting, but seem to like systems that allow you to modify existing equipment.

Games following both your examples tend to be beatable without much extra effort even if the mechanic is entirely ignored, unlike with durability and crafting.

[Gunnar]

Crafting is bad when it contributes to item bloat - the system incentivizes you to rummage for and carry around a whole bunch of junk, especially when combined with limited inventory space and encumbrance limits. Especially when you don't know what the recipes are and are expected to try combining all the junk in different ways, so you never know what to keep and what to throw away. Even when you know what to keep it still sucks because you have to swim through a bunch of crap items the whole game. This can be further exacerbated by having crafted items be weak or just as good as found items. It's also bad when it replaces hand crafted item placements. The way Baldurs Gate 2 did it is tolerable, but I still don't see why the items couldn't have just been placed somewhere to find without having to collect all the pieces. It could be okay if for example the devs want to reward you with a fire weapon, so they give you a fire rune to enchant your weapon. Another potential positive application might be that you can continue to upgrade your items throughout the game, especially if this led to unique and interesting weapon possibilities, like a 'build' for your sword. If the crafting system in a game is ignorable, then it's tacked on for the sake of crafting and it shouldn't be there at all, period.

Also, Procedural generation. It might not always be bad per se, but it's always inferior to hand crafted things.

[Gregz]

Lore dumps with lots of print.

[Tweed]

Evil routes.

[KnightoftheWind]

Fetch quests. Every quest should have a purpose beyond just going to one place then going back. There needs to be incentives to do things, and the thing you do must relate to the main story one way or the other.

[asf]

coloured items

[Ranselknulf]

Lockpicking minigames.

[wndrbr]

Encumbrance and equipment degradation are (in theory) useful mechanics that play into attrition. The problem is that the large majority of RPGs don't utilize them well.

Funnily enough, usually it's the non-RPGs that have good durability and limited inventory implementations. Classic horror games come to mind (i.e. early Resident Evil games really forced you to think which items to bring up with you when leaving the safe hideout). Lots of survival sims treat weapons and equipment as resources instead of tools, incentivizing player to use everything at their disposal. Some survival-adjacent games put durability to good use by making the experience more immersive and oppressive (i.e. poor quality guns regularly jamming in STALKER, or guns requiring cleaning in Far Cry 2). Dark Souls 2 had extremely brittle weapons, and that played well into attrition/preparation, since players had to keep a secondary weapon in case their main one gets broken.

[Acrux]

Sandbox

[Lhynn]

Pronouns on character creation.

Gender slider.

[Lich]

Saving wherever you want.

[Humbaba]

Levelling up.

It would be a lot more comfy and innovative if your guy starts out with a set selection of abilities and stats that you then have to utilise in new and exciting ways to overcome different obstacles in your path.

"Here's a ****. Get up that cliff."
"Good job. You've earned enough good boy points to earn a jetpack. Here you go. Now get up that bigger cliff."
"Good job. You've earned enough good boy points to earn a helicopter. Here you go. Now get up the biggest of cliffs."
"Good job. You've earned- (...)"

vs

"Here's a ****. Get up that cliff."
"Good job. Now here's a bigger cliff. Activate those almonds and get to work. You're not getting any more ****."

See? Much cooler. Though I will admit that seeing big numbers get bigger is fun, I think we should move past this decades old design philosophy.

[Nemesis]

Lore dumps with lots of print.

Pillars of Eternity did this to an extreme degree; so much crap I didn't need to know for the simple story.

[Norfleet]

Attaching an RPG mechanic to anything you're already doing actively in the game tends to suck. Because there's only two possible routes that I can think of:

1. Actively degrade the player's performance at that task to force the player to buy the RPG skill.

2. Function as a cheat for the player by allowing the player to bypass some or all of the task.

Therefore, any attempt to attach an RPG mechanic to a thing that is in the game as active gameplay always sucks. Example: A shooting skill in an FPS RPG. Either the FPS gameplay is purposefully degraded (massive added wobble, damage penalties), or the FPS gameplay is bypassed or cheated (VATS, bullet time, etc). The latter is obviously the lesser of the evils.

[BosanskiSeljak]

Fetch quests. Every quest should have a purpose beyond just going to one place then going back. There needs to be incentives to do things, and the thing you do must relate to the main story one way or the other.

I realized I'm very forgiving when it comes to this, because just adding a modicum of world building/contained story within a quest is enough for me (as a bare minimum).

For story/world building, though, I should clarify a bit more. In Mass Effect 2, on the Asari capitalist world, you'll overhear a Salarian talking about mating contracts or whatever. That is world building in itself, but still a fetch quest because there's no interaction, and you find it randomly then give it. There's no choices or dilemma.

However, take Mass Effect 1 as a contrast. Ignoring the copy pasted arenas (a different topic altogether), there's always a self contained story in these quests, no matter how small, a dilemma, and choice(s) at the end.

That is bare minimum for me and it's amazing how many games fail at this. Hell, I wouldn't even mind the occasional fetch quest if most followed this principle.

Witcher 1 has the "witcher contracts" which are essentially fetch quests, but at the very least it's for people you've already interacted with and there's a lore reason for why they need it. I can headcannon my way out of that if most of the other quests don't follow the same structure.

[somerandomdude]

"Main story quest"