From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
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Radiant quests. You can never complete the game because of this, the quests are generic and repetitive and offer nothing but "stretch the playtime".
That and mechanics like "rando dragon attacks in Skyrim" and "City is under attack" from Fallout 4. I quit F4 because I was on my way to a mission and got the "city under attack notification, and on my way to defend another city was under attack.
To yes-and this: procedural content in general. No Man's Sky is a snore-fest for me, big, empty, meaningless. Missions in Elite Dangerous and X4 are similarly pretty boring, though the former is more fun the first time around. There has to feel like there's some world-affecting point to what you're doing. IMO
Unrepairable weapons are the worst thing. There's nothing worse than finding a super cool, rare weapon and being paranoid about it breaking.
That's one of the big things that bothered my in Breath of the Wild. I wanted to go to this cool looking location and find something neat, but I knew that I'll either get a weapon that breaks in 5 hits, a seed, or an orb. Really deflated my sense of exploration when I realized this was the gameplay loop.
Escort quests. Stealth sections in games that aren't built around stealth would be close second.
Less of an issue nowadays but unclimbable knee-high walls which force you to go round. Always drove me crazy!
Game timers. I want to screw around on my time. The more time-based a game becomes, the less I enjoy it.
Sadly, the whole "rogue" genre if that counts as a mechanic. I don't enjoy replaying everything over and over again in different ways in a system where its designed one should fail eventually, so you must lose to continue. It sounds great on paper but hell it really sucks. Also, turn based stuff.
The new Gollum game was very impressive in the way it managed to implement so many of the mechanics in this thread
Pay 2 win and excessive abuse of FOMO.
E.g. for the next two weeks you can purchase/grind for [character] with a LIMITED EDITION green hat!
It would be OK if such thing was behind an achievement and allowed to be gained later.
Some companies have gotten a little sneaky with it, like Microsoft with age of empires. They make their newly released DLC civs overpowered for two months then nerf it every time.
Anything using timers, especially based on the clock. It just artificially adds playtime, and it also means I forget about them and lose track of what I was doing most the time, too.
Obligate stamina bars/circles for traversal. Just allow me to move at the speed of fun, and definitely don't make me stand still to recharge when climbing.
I think it's telling that death stranding, a game all about traversal, let's you sprint outright for as long as you want until well after your character's shoes literally fall off. The stamina bar is more a measure of abuse rather than a limit on your movement.
Offline games which require an internet for no apparent reason has to be my pet peeve
Yeah it guarantees that the game will be unplayable through legal means in a few years when it is no longer profitable to keep the servers running.
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.
Card games that get bolted on to other genres. cough genshin cough
What about open-world rpgs that get tucked onto card games? cough The Witcher 3 cough
Any sort of intense micromanagement of units, resources, etc. I've got like 16kb RAM in my brain. I can barely remember what I ate today lol.
Also, invisible walls that make absolutely no sense. Maybe just all invisible walls, really.
Enemies that scale with your level in an RPG. I would rather get completely curb stomped by rare high level enemies, so I have something to work towards. In the same vein, I don't like it when the stat gain you get from leveling ends up with you literally being unkillable by lower level enemies. Most MMOs are an offender to this, where you can just sunbathe in a group of 30 level 1 enemies and are unable to die to them.
Perhaps not specifically a mechanic, per se, but save points. I want to be able to save whenever, wherever. I don't always have time to make it to the next save point before I need to stop playing.
I'm not a big fan of fishing mechanics, they're usually shallow "press button at random signal, get a random prize" mechanics.
Also escort missions where the NPC being escorted does not understand that it should protect its own life. I don't mind repeating a mission due to my own mistakes, but I don't want to do it because some AI went potato.
In any competitive game, golden snitch mechanics. If I'm kicking ass all game, I shouldn't instantly lose for making one tiny mistake at the 11th hour.
Quick-time events but SPECIFICALLY the ones that give you way too little time to react. Like, I never mind them too much, especially the ones in the Yakuza series, but I remember there was this game on the Wii called Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings that would throw these inputs WAYY too fast at you.
People have said escort quests but I'm going to go more specific.
Escort quests WHERE THE NPC INEXPLICABLY HAS A DIFFERENT WALKING/RUNNING SPEED THAN THE PLAYER.....
non-renewable consumable items.
using consumables is hard enough, but you're telling me there's a finite number of these? forget it.
only exception is rougelikes.
Gacha. I can tolerate lootboxes but when lootboxes are the central feature, I'm out.
Quicktime events. Please make up your mind if you show me a sequence or if you want me to play. I can enjoy watching, but I don't want to feel like I am being tested for paying attention.
The beginning of the Tomb Raider remake pissed me off especially. You played a few minutes, then watched a minute of sequence, then play, watch, play, watch. One of the sequences took like 5 minutes, so I leaned back to enjoy when suddenly it flashes a heavy PRESS X in my face. I tried to quickly grab the controller but failed... too slow. I almost rage quit.
I am not playing games to get stressed out...
Hunger or thirst mechanics in anything that's not explicitly a survival game.
Squad/micro-strategy mechanics in fps games. Commanding npcs to do specific things in the middle of a gunfight isn’t fun. Bonus points if the npc ai gets in your way when you're not fighting as well.
Bad tutorials. Don't teach me the game mechanics that could be learned in-game in an environment different from the rest of the game. Also dislike sudden lore dumps after the tutorial.
Mechanics in games where they don't belong. Not every game needs skill trees, not every game needs stories or lore.
Consumables.
They either offer too little for a too short time or too much too easy.
I haven't seen a game where consumables are promoted from the get-go and are easy to use and not a hussle or completely broken.
Alaloth has a great iteration of consumables but I still wouldn't say it's fun as a standalone mechanic.
Probably simple, mindless side/fetch quests. Defeat enemies, get loot, run it back, rinse and repeat. It also is incredibly dry to watch as well as actually do yourself.
Daily quests or login rewards, things to force me to play the game, always stop playing
Loot
I hate collecting it, managing inventory, selling it, crafting it, and so on. I used to love it, but these days I much prefer a more guided experience where the only items I get are interesting. Elder Scrolls completely destroyed this whole mechanic for me because I'm a bit obsessive and would try to bring literally every plate back to town to sell.
As a corollary, I'm not a fan of dealing with shops in general. I'm fine if they exist, but I really think the game should supply you with everything you need to complete the game, and shops should be a backup plan, not a core mechanic.
Loot is great when it's unique, or at least rare. Unique weapons and lore items in Dark Souls come to mind.
But yeah, loot that just fills up your inventory (or worse, your equip load) until you go sell it is just Worse Money.
I cannot jump. Not for the life of me. I mean I do press space at the right moment, but somehow I miss, or it's just not working, I keep falling down or to my death. That's why platformers aren't for me sadly, even though I'd like to play them. I cannot do jumping puzzles in Guild Wars 2, I even struggle in Doom! Please, I'll do everything, but don't make me jump!
Stealth. I hate hiding and creeping around waiting for an NPC to move. It's like, "oh, you want to play the game? How about not playing the game instead?" Infuriating.
I feel like most games get it wrong and just make you stay in one place waiting for the enemy dude to slowly make his route as you map it in your head. It’s just boring, I don’t know.
A nice way to change that would be to give a button that gives you a “top view” map of the enemies’s movement maybe, to make it a little bit puzzle-y. Or, if you want to make it more “action-y”, give the player a way to hide or disengage by scrambling to find something in the environment that allows them to do that, when they get detected.
Stealth is just implemented in a terrible way in most modern games I feel like. Makes it not fun.
Escort missions
Cutscenes for repeated actions like in the Zelda series. Having to dig through the menu to perform simple actions.
I've never been a fan of character weapon skill being tied to the bullet not hitting where the player is aiming in first person RPGs and immersive sims. Think something like Fallout 3, where a shot with a sniper rifle can be perfectly lined up, but the bullet might veer off randomly.
I do understand and appreciate character weapon skills being tied to certain weapons encrouages distinct playstyles, but there are many other ways to implement it that don't feel as arbitrary. Tying character skill to greater reticle sway, longer time to aim down sights, longer reload times, more likely to jam or jams taking longer to clear. It accomplishes the same goal of rewarding putting points into the skill and making players feel like they are progressing, but without creating the instant frustration of missing a clearly lined up shot.
On that note, actively degrading weapons are not something I think has ever been a good idea. It's neither fun, nor is the rate of degradation ever realistic. If the goal is to make player cautious, then limiting ammunition and the availability of good weapons is a much better idea. I have no problem with weapons in different conditions existing in a game, for example: Pristine rifle, good rifle, rusty rifle, etc. That's fine, but a good rifle should never degrade into a rusty rifle in the hands of the player.
Areas of open worlds dynamically level scaling to match players is another gripe I have. Once a player notices it, it takes away the feeling of progress from leveling up. In some cases, smarter players in games have found certain areas easier to beat with low level characters. It creates a bad kind of meta-game. I much prefer worlds where every area is built with a certain player level in mind. Honestly, overleveling in RPGs and going to wreck starting bandit camps is a joy that shouldn't be taken away.
Quest systems, especially in linear games. All is does is clog up the UI, and if you need to constantly tell me what to do and where to go, is your game really designed that well?
Endless monologues and dialogue-dependent quests. Tell me what to do once, then be happily surprised when it's done. I don't need to know why it's important to uncle Sandy to find the green gate key, he can say "Thanks!" later if I want to talk to him at all.
I hate RNG-heavy progression that discourages playing the actual game.
Path of Exile had terrible loot droprates and gamble crafting when I last played in Ritual League. Starting a league = poring YouTube for safe league starter builds to follow step by step. Gearing up = only picking up currency and buying items from other players on a website. Making $$$ = flipping items (buy low sell high) in hideout (personal town).
Path of Champions (PvE gamemode in Legends of Runeterra) drops shards and fragments to unlock new champions and relics that add a passive effect. Drops are random and not duplicate protected. Champions need 2 star upgrades totalling their unlock cost to feel playable. Optimal progression = speedrunning dailies/weeklies, 2-starring meta champs, and logging out.
Stamina, why can't i just keep running forever!! Even worst in open world games.
I think elden ring had the right idea for this. If there's an enemy nearby, you use stamina. Otherwise, its infinite
Combo attacks - I'm not coordinated to hit the buttons in order fast enough. I tried Black Desert when it was free and this was the dealbreaker for me, though it wasn't the only thing that bugged me about the game.
Flowcharts for multiple endings. Let me take multiple distinct routes from the start, or make a choice at the end I can come back to. I hate going through some of the same content again and again and having to look up guides just to find the true ending (looking at you Persona).