Game mechanics that were hyped up and then barely used

[FarZa17]

Do people actually use the slider in Guitar Hero controller?
The people/devs mentioned this new slider feature on the guitar neck as an improvement.

However, I don't really use this feature much in a game and since I usually just play on medium songs, many of the songs don't really have that long sliding part, the one that has continuous long frets notes. If anything that can make it useful is to strum it in silent because the strum bar is quite loud, but even I don't really use for that regularly as well. Maybe people who played guitar for real or just happen practiced and become good with slider, are the ones that find it useful, but not for me.

 

[Shelbyville Milhouse]

WB Games has a patent on it that expires in 2036 and I believe they said it was going to be used in the Wonder Woman game that Monolith is doing.

US20160279522A1 - Nemesis characters, nemesis forts, social vendettas and followers in computer games - Google Patents

Methods for managing non-player characters and power centers in a computer game are based on character hierarchies and individualized correspondences between each character's traits or rank and events that involve other non-player characters or objects. Players may share power centers, character...

patents.google.com

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That still means it hasn't been used in 5 years tho even in other WB games

 

[Spring-Loaded]

That still means it hasn't been used in 5 years tho even in other WB games

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It was advertised for those two games though, it does work as advertised, and was a big part of the games though

The thread isn't really about stuff that wasn't a big deal across the whole industry, just stuff that wasn't a big deal I'm the game it was advertised for.

 

[Shelbyville Milhouse]

It was advertised for those two games though, it does work as advertised, and was a big part of the games though

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Never played the second but as I said, I barely experienced it in the first

 

[Caeda]

So Silent Hill: Shattered Memories had this HUGE brag of an adaptive game, where it would psychologically profile you as you played, seeing what you spent more time staring at, what things you interacted with first, and then custom tailor the game to be your own personal nightmare. Then it was just, "we changed this character's shirt and made this monster a different shade of blue."

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Right, Shattered Memories is actually my favorite in the franchise, but it had the potential to do so much more. I'd love to see a more fleshed out return to the gameplay concepts in the future!

 

[JT60564]

I know Dark Souls 3 had some mechanics like placeable bonfires and day/night stuff that got cut for release. Maybe it wasn't hyped but some of it I think was at least teased to the gaming press.

 

[eddiemunstr]

The Thing that game had some type of fear/trust system going on. Felt like some BS in the end as everyone kept turning and then it most felt scripted to the story towards the end.
Not really hyped but I believe it was mentioned a lot in previews from whatever magazines I read back then.

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Glad I read the rest of the posts here, I was getting ready to post about this game. I also remember them hyping it up that you wouldnt know who was the thing and would have to regularly test people to be safe. Then when the game came out it ended up mostly being a lie. You could test someone and they pass and moments later turn because it was scripted.

 

[Fudgepuppy]

They made kind of a big deal about the melee attack in Mass Effect 3 with the hologram blade, but then since most people played soldier and you shouldn't be getting too close, it was just not ever really used.

 

[Lukemia SL]

Glad I read the rest of the posts here, I was getting ready to post about this game. I also remember them hyping it up that you wouldnt know who was the thing and would have to regularly test people to be safe. Then when the game came out it ended up mostly being a lie. You could test someone and they pass and moments later turn because it was scripted.

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Exactly that's when the game had revealed it was all smoke and mirrors.

The fact that even when testing a negative person had them still turn really ruined the one part that excited me the most about it.
There has to be a game that does this kind of mechanic justice. It's what I want Dead Space 4 to be like.

 

[nihilence]

True Colors
You use it once or twice. Other than that, it's nice to know what ice cream people liked.

 

[iag]

Don't know if it's a valid one, but I remember when Mario Kart 8 was shown, I was pretty hyped by the tracks having both sides rideable with the antigravity thing. It's featured on the game but I was expecting something more extreme. Maybe they thought it would be bad and would cause people to feel sick so they toned it down?

 

[sappyday]

Not really a mechanic but The Last of Us part 2 prerelease made it seem like there was gonna be more combat encounters with infected and humans at the same time. But besides maybe two moments, all encounters are either just humans or just infected

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Not really a mechanic but The Last of Us part 2 prerelease made it seem like there was gonna be more combat encounters with infected and humans at the same time. But besides maybe two moments, all encounters are either just humans or just infected

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They had none in the first game, like 1 maybe 2 in the Left Behind DLC, and then maybe 3-4 in TLOU2. They're the coolest encounters, but they need this to be more common, for god's sake

 

[sappyday]

True Colors
You use it once or twice. Other than that, it's nice to know what ice cream people liked.

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yea, it really felt like the game forgot it had those powers and what made 1 and 2 unique. You could have taken the power out of the game and still have had the same story, while 1 and 2 the power the characters have is a driving force.

True Colors was very underwhelming imo, especially since they charged $60 off the bat

They had none in the first game, like 1 maybe 2 in the Left Behind DLC, and then maybe 3-4 in TLOU2. They're the coolest encounters, but they need this to be more common, for god's sake

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I can only recall the moment you're in the underground subway as Ellie, and then the one moment in the end where you can free a locked infected and let it wreck the humans. I'm sure there is another one I'm forgetting too.

 

[McNum]

They made kind of a big deal about the melee attack in Mass Effect 3 with the hologram blade, but then since most people played soldier and you shouldn't be getting too close, it was just not ever really used.

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Only class that really loved this was the Vanguard. And, well, Vanguard players are nuts. I should know, I play Vanguard.

Though it was kind of funny to have a fight that lasted well over a minute and then hit the reload button after the last enemy was down, only for nothing to happen. Guns are for people who aren't bullets!

 

[Alienous]

This would barely count as 'hyped' but the dialogue choices in Uncharted 4.

I do remember a gameplay demo that highlighted it, but in the game it happens five(?) times across 15 hours, and it doesn't impact how the other character responds. It's like they just couldn't pick an ad-lib and built a system around it.

 

[DanGo]

This is a little broad but I'd point to the flexibility and planning that could supposedly go into defeating the Visionaries in Deathloop, when it ultimately came down to a single linear path to killing them all in one run.

 

[Nali]

Serious Sam 4's extensive development hell left the final game with a bad case of this. The two things the marketing really hyped up as being changes to the formula were huge, expansive maps you'd need a vehicle to reasonably traverse, and giant hordes of up to 100,000 enemies you'd wind up fighting out on those massive fields. The final game has one wide open map, the same one from all the prerelease footage, and one instance of a massive horde at the very end of the game on its own little dedicated map, which wound up being more of a glorified setpiece than anything. The rest of the game is pretty classic Sam, presumably because Croteam eventually realized their new ideas weren't feasible to implement a whole game's worth of and also not fun.

 

[Deleted member 93062]

The portals in Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart. Thought there would be so many more gameplay implications for it tbh however a lot of it wasn't even interactable and was more for visuals like a FMV.

 

[Teeth]

They had none in the first game, like 1 maybe 2 in the Left Behind DLC, and then maybe 3-4 in TLOU2. They're the coolest encounters, but they need this to be more common, for god's sake

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I'd love to hear from an encounter designer at ND about this; my guess - they are incredibly hard to balance to not just have one side obliterate the other with no player involvement or not having the (easily observable) enemies either constantly miss each other or have infinite(ish) health and tear at each other for hours while the player sits back and watches the charade.

Or otherwise, how to balance a level of aggression between player and enemy factions for the different enemy factions. How does an enemy faction choose who to target? The other enemies or the player? If it's "any" or "whomever aggressed on me" then the player can just sit back and watch them kill each other. If they prioritize player then it probably feels a bit wonky to have both sides come for you if they see you.

They probably just end up, most of the time, just being really easy or really hard fights, too lopsided to balance without some other kind of gimmick forcing the player into the fray (which is basically how LoU2 does it).

 

[Aaronrules380]

Don't know if it's a valid one, but I remember when Mario Kart 8 was shown, I was pretty hyped by the tracks having both sides rideable with the antigravity thing. It's featured on the game but I was expecting something more extreme. Maybe they thought it would be bad and would cause people to feel sick so they toned it down?

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To be fair, mechanically the antigravity does change how racing works since collisions with obstacles and other racers now becomes a chance for a speed boost and thus desirable rather than something to avoid, so even if the visual spectacle isn't taken full advantage of in most stages it does affect the gameplay still

 

[Turnabout Sisters]

Do people actually use the slider in Guitar Hero controller?
The people/devs mentioned this new slider feature on the guitar neck as an improvement.

However, I don't really use this feature much in a game and since I usually just play on medium songs, many of the songs don't really have that long sliding part, the one that has continuous long frets notes. If anything that can make it useful is to strum it in silent because the strum bar is quite loud, but even I don't really use for that regularly as well. Maybe people who played guitar for real or just happen practiced and become good with slider, are the ones that find it useful, but not for me.

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I think the logic was partially that they saw skilled players using two-handed fretting technique and wanted to bring that to a wider audience. Tapping in GH1-3 has a crazy high skill floor, but it was this necessary technique that looked cool by coincidence.

I don't think that wider audience really *wanted* to tap though. By the nature of the game, most people are struggling to pass and concentrating really hard on hitting those main buttons and that's challenging enough. And the fact that it mimics a real guitar technique is probably too obscure to convince people to want to try it.

Anyway the real actual boring reason is that some executive pointed at the then-new RB guitar's high-neck solo buttons and ordered a cheap gimmick to be added to compete.

 

[Deleted member 13798]

I don't know if "hyped up" is appropriate but Shadow of the Tomb Raider was full of this.

I appreciate that they focused more on exploration this time but I always found the combat in the new games satisfying, and in the third game the entire point of weapon and combat skill upgrades was basically useless since you really were not engaging in fire fights all that often. I barely remember any.

And they touted this neat new camo mechanic where you could basically cover yourself in mud like Arnold fighting the Predator, and ambush enemies but I used it like once.

 

[MoonlitBow]

I know Dark Souls 3 had some mechanics like placeable bonfires and day/night stuff that got cut for release. Maybe it wasn't hyped but some of it I think was at least teased to the gaming press.

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I remember a lot of criticism about Dark Souls 3 was too many bonfires and I always wondered if part of that was because that system didn't turn out the way they expected and got scrapped. I'm guessing you were supposed to place bonfires yourself and bosses would act as fixed bonfire locations but the system got removed and they just placed bonfires throughout the levels while still keeping the bosses creating bonfire mechanic.

 

[Pyramid Head]

I don't know if "hyped up" is appropriate but Shadow of the Tomb Raider was full of this.

I appreciate that they focused more on exploration this time but I always found the combat in the new games satisfying, and in the third game the entire point of weapon and combat skill upgrades was basically useless since you really were not engaging in fire fights all that often. I barely remember any.

And they touted this neat new camo mechanic where you could basically cover yourself in mud like Arnold fighting the Predator, and ambush enemies but I used it like once.

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It really didn't help that enemy 'encounters' were literally constrained to walled off areas, which barely ever had a 'mud pit' before them, and that upon entering half of them, the encounter will begin with a cutscene having Lara blunder into the situation (even though you as the player already knew what was coming) and all enemies alerted to your presence and firing on your location.
Although I preferred most aspects of Shadow to the rest of the trilogy, they fucked up by segregating the combat.

Bloober were really hyping up their patented 'dual world' rendering gimmick running up to the release of The Medium, and less that it isn't used in the game, it's more that it's just absolutely nothing.
The mechanic never gets any deeper than the same old, 'corridor is blocked in dimension 'X', switch to dimension 'Y' at designated crossing point to pass, then back to 'X' that we've seen in a million games before, only, sometimes the screen will show both dimensions at once, for no other reason than to kill your frame rate.

 

[Zekes]

Braindances in Cyberpunk. 2077

 

[Sande]

I'd love to hear from an encounter designer at ND about this; my guess - they are incredibly hard to balance to not just have one side obliterate the other with no player involvement or not having the (easily observable) enemies either constantly miss each other or have infinite(ish) health and tear at each other for hours while the player sits back and watches the charade.

Or otherwise, how to balance a level of aggression between player and enemy factions for the different enemy factions. How does an enemy faction choose who to target? The other enemies or the player? If it's "any" or "whomever aggressed on me" then the player can just sit back and watch them kill each other. If they prioritize player then it probably feels a bit wonky to have both sides come for you if they see you.

They probably just end up, most of the time, just being really easy or really hard fights, too lopsided to balance without some other kind of gimmick forcing the player into the fray (which is basically how LoU2 does it).

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Yeah, the issue of just sitting back is really difficult to solve. I assume that's why the enemies are super passive in TLOU2 if they don't see the player. Infected vs. human fights tend to end up as a yakety sax chase unless the infected have overwhelming numbers and in human vs. human fights they just take potshots from cover doing basically zero damage.

Scenarios in the last stretch of the game were the most interesting in that regard. You were actually incentivized to leverage the chained infected in creative ways, because if you just released them, they'd die accomplishing nothing and alerting the enemies.

 

[Leafshield]

Rampage (the tower defence-type missions) in Monster Hunter Rise was advertised as being a major mechanic as it's tied into the story, but ultimately gets used a handful of times in a very long game. Which most players are probably happy with as pressing a button to set up and control a turret is not just as interesting as standard MH combat.

The 3D aspect of Super Mario 3D Land gets used in a few perspective-puzzle rooms and that's about it. To be honest, the use of 3D on the entire console can easily be skipped and it's the nominative defining feature.

 

[Hoggle]

The Thing that game had some type of fear/trust system going on. Felt like some BS in the end as everyone kept turning and then it most felt scripted to the story towards the end.
Not really hyped but I believe it was mentioned a lot in previews from whatever magazines I read back then.

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I remember using a blood test on a side I was sure was a Thing and it coming back clear, and then literally a few seconds later he turned in a cutscenes type fashion. I stopped playing it then but I should have kept on going. Otherwise it was a pretty cool game. I'd appreciate it more now as I'm a bigger fan of the movie.

 

[Deleted member 13798]

Braindances in Cyberpunk. 2077

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This feature was clearly cut, and exists in like 3 scripted instances for the plot- you can buy braindances in-game but can't use them. Really this thread could be mostly Cyberpunk- a lot of things in the game are either not as advertised or basically useless in practice.

 

[Bold One]

Did Drivatars ever take off in Forza?

 

[Savinowned]

That first (PSX?) showing of Uncharted 4 where Nate had a dialogue select moment was pretty wild. I don't think they talked it up but I expected a little more than like 2 of those choices, and maybe a choice that affected something even slightly to the story

 

[panda-zebra]

Only time I think I've crafted anything meaningful in 140 hours of Elden Ring was to make 99 more cheesy arrows, so probably that. I've got dozens upon dozens of things I have no idea what they do, loads of recipes for stuff I'll never use, just this huge inventory of clutter that makes it difficult to find the odd thing I might want. It's a million miles from something like Horizon FW where I can engage in meaningful, dynamic and challenging combat and craft things on the fly via half decent quick access functionality, and the way the game lets me target and recover useful gear from the machines is nifty stuff.

Days Gone hyped up the massive hordes in its reveal, but if I recall there were no moments like that in the game and maybe 1 horde that even came close to that size

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Maybe you didn't finish the whole game or explore the wider surrounds of the world? There were some huge hordes to deal with in the latter half of my playthrough, but maybe you can skip some of that if you mainline the game's story, I dunno.

Recently the Glaive archetype in Destiny 2. It's a predominantly melee weapon that doesn't count as a melee attack, so doesn't synergize with any melee related perks and abilities.

It's mind bogglingly stupid.

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Not unusual for something new and potentially exciting in Destiny to disappoint. A hybrid weapon sounded great in theory, I assumed it was just teething problems and it'd all get hooked up after a week or so, but nope, "working as intended" as their old saying goes... Destiny in a nutshell for me.

People say "we're so powerful now", and in some ways they're right to say so, but the game has never truly felt that way except when it's broken - and unsurprisingly that's when it's been the most fun to engage with, when it's opperating outside the very strict bounds it confines itself to. Hope they learn a few lessons here for their next game if they intend to appeal to a wider audience and create more of a casual-friendly, fun experience... the current effort to reward curve for the wider gameplay loop is super steep then just falls off a cliff; doesn't take long to realise the more you put in the less you get back and you're just left scraping that barrel for fractions of fractions and RNG luck. Wears thin.

 

[shadowman16]

Did Drivatars ever take off in Forza?

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They continue to be used in every game, and I have always enjoyed racing against them, even if its purely a cosmetic thing, I like racing against people on my friends list over faceless CPU characters.

 

[Bold One]

They continue to be used in every game, and I have always enjoyed racing against them, even if its purely a cosmetic thing, I like racing against people on my friends list over faceless CPU characters.

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Can't tell if this is sarcasm.

 

[shadowman16]

Can't tell if this is sarcasm.

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Its not. I honestly answered your question. I find it more fun racing and trying to beat my friends and brother, even if its just a CPU drivatar with their gamertag, over just CPU racer#1.

Anyway, the answer to your question is: "Yes". There, no sarcasm.

 

[roguebubble]

They made kind of a big deal about the melee attack in Mass Effect 3 with the hologram blade, but then since most people played soldier and you shouldn't be getting too close, it was just not ever really used.

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In the multiplayer there are some builds that are melee focused so at least the omniblade lead to that

 

[Bold One]

Its not. I honestly answered your question. I find it more fun racing and trying to beat my friends and brother, even if its just a CPU drivatar with their gamertag, over just CPU racer#1.

Anyway, the answer to your question is: "Yes". There, no sarcasm.

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oh, right understood.

 

[Mandelbo]

The torch in Dark Souls 2. Being forced to choose between a having shield/offhand weapon or being able to see properly was a big change that got loads of attention pre-release, but it's mostly gutted in the final game because of the graphics getting pared back. There are still a couple of areas in the game where using the torch is a good idea, although nowhere near to the extent that it was in those original previews.

The oddest thing is that the final game still has sconces and lanterns you can light in areas that are clearly bright enough already, and the inventory menu has a big section dedicated to a torch timer that shows you how much longer you can use the torch for, as if it's something they expected you'd need to check a lot. Definitely feels like a change which was made at the last minute.

 

[Nessus]

Insomniac's Spider-Man used QTE's as one recent game off the top of my head. They're still around even if not as common.

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Some of the worst QTEs in any game I've played.

No idea why, but I just couldn't get the timing at all. I normally don't have any problem with QTEs, but with Spider-Man I'd think I was doing them correctly and then abruptly fail and have to start over.

After like 5 or 6 tries on the second major QTE sequence I ended up just turning them off (glad that was an option).

Metroid Dread also has what are effectively QTEs.

 

[BubblegumNemesis]

Racing games using "AI" versions of real players.

 

[Menchin]

The new glaive weapon archetype in Destiny 2, they overhyped it way too much for all the ways they gimped its usefulness

Having said that, I found the purple glaive you get from the campaign oddly good in PvP. I don't know if people just don't expect anybody to use it but the lunge on it seems insane and I can typically kill people before they get the chance to switch to their shotguns and 1 tap me

 

[Lukemia SL]

I remember using a blood test on a side I was sure was a Thing and it coming back clear, and then literally a few seconds later he turned in a cutscenes type fashion. I stopped playing it then but I should have kept on going. Otherwise it was a pretty cool game. I'd appreciate it more now as I'm a bigger fan of the movie.

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It was pretty decent for the time. The more you played it though the more the side characters you tested felt more like an RNG instead of actually following the logic of how the Thing itself works.

 

[kurahador]

So Silent Hill: Shattered Memories had this HUGE brag of an adaptive game, where it would psychologically profile you as you played, seeing what you spent more time staring at, what things you interacted with first, and then custom tailor the game to be your own personal nightmare. Then it was just, "we changed this character's shirt and made this monster a different shade of blue."

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It also changed some character behaviour which I thought was cool. Love the game.

 

[eso76]

Did Drivatars ever take off in Forza?

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Racing games using "AI" versions of real players.

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They have been used in every Forza since (both Motorsport and Horizon too).
I think there's no way to tell how much drivatars driving reflects the player's though.

A friend told me my drivatar is always seen ramming other cars like a psycho, so maybe!

Then again, every virtual driver does, so maybe not.

Then again again, every human driver does, too, so maybe.


Can't believe QTEs were mentioned. They're still everywhere. And each time I am surprised they are Shenmue influence.

 

[JT60564]

Some of the worst QTEs in any game I've played.

No idea why, but I just couldn't get the timing at all. I normally don't have any problem with QTEs, but with Spider-Man I'd think I was doing them correctly and then abruptly fail and have to start over.

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[ned_ballad]

Smash Bros Ultimate: Stage Morph

It was used in tons of prerelease promotion, introduced as a big feature and then in-game it's just a random option in the rules menu and isn't used by any single player content nor can it be used online

 

[Rei no Otaku]

They made kind of a big deal about the melee attack in Mass Effect 3 with the hologram blade, but then since most people played soldier and you shouldn't be getting too close, it was just not ever really used.

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As a vanguard I used melee constantly. Nothing better than charging into a group of enemies, using nova, then meleeing anyone left.