What are some common critiques of specific games that you think are unfair or unwarranted?

[MidnightEquinox]

I'm not talking about what a game wants. I'm talking about whether there's a problem to be solved. If the argument is that weapon durability systems are required to avoid having OP weapons in games, that argument is silly because that problem has been avoided in other open world games. It's not an actual problem.

And I experimented a lot with weapons in Elden Ring so that's quite funny to me. I never felt punished for it, so I'm not sure about the whole "ER wants you to specialize". In fact, I often felt different enemies were vulnerable to different things (which is how you actually get people to experiment, btw).

The problem with an approach like BotW is that you end up with a lot of "trash" weapons that you have to use on weaker enemies while collecting the less trash weapons for other enemies. Durability is also so low that often you have to get a new weapon in the middle of a battle. I had a fight once that saw 3 weapons break. The UX for this isn't amazing, either. The whole thing is pointless busy work and means you can't freely explore because without weapons you physically can't continue (which is why most games do not make them consumables, lol). It also places a hard limit on where you can go because you can literally run out of hits. Whatever it is they meant to accomplish with this there are many better ways to do.

 

[ket]

I actually really like how big modern Assassin's Creed games are. The size of the worlds makes me feel like I'm on an adventure and it helps that I ignore a lot of the repetitive content and stick to sidequests.

 

[ThisIsBlitz21]

The so-called grind in new assassins creed games isn't much of a grind at all (that's just one of few criticisms I think are not valid about these games). I blame the stupid Jim Sterling video for a lot of it.

 

[Manu]

The so-called grind in new assassins creed games isn't much of a grind at all (that's just one of few criticisms I think are not valid about these games). I blame the stupid Jim Sterling video for a lot of it.

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I like James Stephanie but it's been obvious for a while that they're jaded/disenchanted by the state of the industry so they just go into games expecting the worst a lot of the time.

I'm not saying their reasons are invalid and the job they do reporting industry abuse and bad practices is good and necessary, but it's certainly affecting the way they go about actually engaging with the medium as a whole.

 

[Mathieran]

Horizon series needs to make melee a viable option. I'm not gonna argue that the melee is good, but it's not intended to be a focus. Ranged combat is the focus.

I never hear this argument in an FPS that the melee is bad. Most fps will give you maybe a dagger or something to finish an enemy off but usually it doesn't feel good. Or if a brawler game doesn't have decent ranged options, don't usually hear people complain about it.

I'm not sure why Horizon is supposed to have good melee.

 

[Taco_Human]

I prefer playing original releases even if the performance is worse sometimes. Gimme San Andreas on ps2, the not 3ds version of OoT, etc...

PC version are fun to play with I admin, but I just like playing the original game sometimes. Lower framerates are no big deal.

 

[Zeliard]

FFXII had the most brilliant AI management system ever and the game got shat on for "playing itself". It hurts because these days RPGs with AI-controlled party members are more common than ever and every time I see someone complain about how the party ai in a game blows I'm like, "we solved this problem back in 2006!"

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The gambit system was a goddamn work of art.

 

[Farlander]

Regarding Weapon Durability in BotW.

The problem that Weapon Durability BotW solves (or, well, tries to) is not that of preventing weapons from becoming too OP, or not that of promoting creativity. While both are affect, the problem weapon durability tries to solve is that of relevancy.

BotW is a game where you can go literally anywhere at any point, and not only that, but also come BACK to where you were to discover something you haven't. Weapon Durability makes sure that wherever you go, there's always a relevant reward waiting for you - as there's a scaling system in place that makes sure that you get better rewards with progress (i.e. if in the beginning of the game you will find a rusty sword in one of the Great Plateau shrines, but if you get back there much later you will find a Royal Sword). Enemies will also get better weapons you can take away from them. And durability serves the purpose of cycling inventory - clearing out space for those better and more durable weapons to take their place in it.

If we wouldn't have had weapon durability, then you could go to place number 1 before place 2, find something really cool there, and then the reward from place 2 would be useless because the place 1 reward never loses its relevancy.

This is a VERY ingenious solution (that is much more cost effective in relation to its potential alternative - creating shittons of unique rewards). But, there IS a problem. The ACTUAL problem of BotW durability system is the fact that weapon scaling happens ONLY with killed enemies. For which you need to, well, spend weapons.

So if a person is afraid to use weapons, then rewards don't scale, they hoard weapons that keep being trash weapons despite them playing the game for a long time. While if a person is not afraid to use weapons, they interact with the system and actually literally have no problem with durability and keep getting better and more durable weapons as they progress.

There are two solutions that could fix that problem:
1) Make things like quests, shrines, and all other types of calculatable way to progress also play a part in that reward progression scaling.
2) To lessen the initial fear of weapons breaking, make it so that every time it breaks there's a resource that falls off which can be used later on to craft some evergreen item (let's say an armor set). And also the initial durability stats of beginning weapons is probably too low, might be better to make it higher.

 

[Firmament1]

That Assassin's Creed Odyssey has outrageous level gating to force you to buy experience boosters.

In reality it has level gating because the developers want you to explore the huge world they created. Shocking, I know. But tell that to the people who want to speedrun the story and, indeed, eventually run into a wall.

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If they want players to explore, consider this approach: What if they created interesting and engaging content that makes players want to explore on their own volition?

 

[ket]

If they want players to explore, consider this approach: What if they created interesting and engaging content that makes players want to explore on their own volition?

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I think they did so i never had any issue with the leveling

 

[MidnightEquinox]

The problem that Weapon Durability BotW solves (or, well, tries to) is not that of preventing weapons from becoming too OP, or not that of promoting creativity. While both are affect, the problem weapon durability tries to solve is that of relevancy.

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Those are the main points I always heard in the defense of it. If there's no consistent point, perhaps people should stop assigning more agency to the system than there is.

BotW is a game where you can go literally anywhere at any point, and not only that, but also come BACK to where you were to discover something you haven't.

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Weapon durability literally hard-gates where you can go. I don't know if that was intended or not. But it's definitely not as open as... most open world games, honestly.

I have not really experienced getting better weapons whenever I go. Often the whole problem was that I'd get a decent weapon once in a while, and then I get trash for ages. You're not gonna get a great weapon from an enemy if you can't kill them in the first place due to your weapon being trash. Which is something I've seen many other people confirm, so people just hoard their best weapons. Hoarding items in fear they'll be wasted is one of my least favorite mechanics in video games.

If you want to see a game that managed consumable things well, see Dead Space. You will usually run out of something or other, your inventory is limited, but to me at least it never felt tedious or restrictive in an obnoxious way. Gotta decide if I want more O2 or ammo on a given level. Fun choices.

If we wouldn't have had weapon durability, then you could go to place number 1 before place 2, find something really cool there, and then the reward from place 2 would be useless because the place 1 reward never loses its relevancy.

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If we didn't have weapon durability I'd just play BotW the way I play everything else. Keep a copy of various weapons and try them out at random times to see what's my favorite and what works well against different enemies.

Currently, all BotW weapon rewards are useless anyway because they're just glorified potions. And nobody gets excited about glorified potions mate*. So if you're telling me this is the whole reason they put this mechanic in that's a colossal failure.

*exagerrating for effect

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Prey isn't Bioshock in space, that's doing Prey an incredible disservice. It drives me up the wall when people make that comparison.

 

[Farlander]

Weapon durability literally hard-gates where you can go. I don't know if that was intended or not. But it's definitely not as open as... most open world games, honestly.

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Weapon durability literally CAN'T hard-gate where you go because enemy difficulty is ALSO tied to the same progression scaling as rewards. There are only two constants - the Plateaus has the easiest enemies and Ganon's Castle the hardest (well, plus Lynels spread out in hard to reach spots there and there). The rest of the enemies across the map are scaled alongside the rewards.

Often the whole problem was that I'd get a decent weapon once in a while, and then I get trash for ages. You're not gonna get a great weapon from an enemy if you can't kill them in the first place due to your weapon being trash. Which is something I've seen many other people confirm, so people just hoard their best weapons. Hoarding items in fear they'll be wasted is one of my least favorite mechanics in video games.

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In the first quarter of the game you literally don't need anything but trash to deal with enemies because they're easily killed by them. The problem is psychological (fear to use weapons and hoarding them) which eventually CAN transform into a problem.

I did say in my post that BotW-system is not built around hoarding and that hoarding it makes the experience worse (which is why the goal should be to have better ways to promote weapon using and additional conditions to scaling - hoarding shouldn't be a thing that breaks the system while now it does that), so you're sort of just confirming the arguments there.

 

[MidnightEquinox]

Weapon durability literally CAN'T hard-gate where you go because enemy difficulty is ALSO tied to the same progression scaling as rewards.

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I don't know what this means (progression scaling?) but you can absolutely get hard-gated. I'm the sort of person who starts out somewhere, messes around, and then walks in a random direction. I went south met some lizards and literally ran out of weapons bashing them. That's a hard gate. Another time I went to a shrine. Ran out of weapons bashing some robot. Another hard gate. What can I do if I literally have no weapons left? lol No other open world game I played in recent years had anything like this, and to me it's antithetical to what open world games are. I should be able to go somewhere inappropriate and get my ass handed to me, but I should be permitted to nonetheless make the attempt. I guess I could try throwing those blue bombs or something but frankly not the gameplay I'm looking for and I found the bombs rather clunky to use.

There are many complaints that going for a boss may result in running out of nearly all your weapons. That's ridiculous.

Just sit for a minute and think about how ridiculous the phrase "I ran out of weapons" sounds. I don't know why people keep defending this. There are so many better ways to implement this it's not even funny.

Games that heavily limit your items while punishing you for using them automatically promote hoarding. BotW absolutely promotes hoarding. If that's not the intended way to play the game I'm frankly at a loss as to what way would be intended. Everyone I know who played BotW appropriated the "keep max best weapons and replace worst weapon upon finding a slightly better weapon" approach. If you don't do this you may often end up with weapons below par, then you have to go to a low level zone to build up your weapons again and it feels horrible. Nor there is any kind of stash so you can't keep a stock of weapons and switch between stocks depending on where you want to go.

I think the sort of people who don't hit this are probably playing the game in a more linear / intended way. If you strictly go low areas, medium areas, high areas, it may work OK, because your weapon stock is automatically aligned with the zone. I don't. To me open world games are about freedom. I zigzag, I'm all over the place. I like to explore. BotW is not very good at supporting that playstyle.

 

[Professor Beef]

"I shouldn't have to practice levels in Sonic in order to do well."

 

[Nocturnowl]

Sorry, the completionist is ranking mario power ups in the background for me right now, and he just put spring mario at the bottom of the entire series.
SO....

the common critique against Super Mario Galaxy's spring mushroom is BOOLSHEEEEEEET
A skill based timing power up that gives you the mother of all high jumps, when you get that rhythm down and bob n' bounce up and around the obstacles it feels so gooood. It offers a lot more to the game than like the boo mushroom or red star, it offers some of the game's most engaging actual platforming challenges.
It's hated because people didn't git gud, yes, even the guy who literally 100 percents games for a living.

Whew, this has saved me from getting into the Zelda weapon durability stuff.

 

[Farlander]

I don't know what this means (progression scaling?) but you can absolutely get hard-gated. I'm the sort of person who starts out somewhere, messes around, and then walks in a random direction. I went south met some lizards and literally ran out of weapons bashing them. That's a hard gate. Another time I went to a shrine. Ran out of weapons bashing some robot. Another hard gate. What can I do if I literally have no weapons left? lol No other open world game I played in recent years had anything like this, and to me it's antithetical to what open world games are. I should be able to go somewhere inappropriate and get my ass handed to me, but I should be permitted to nonetheless make the attempt. I guess I could try throwing those blue bombs or something but frankly not the gameplay I'm looking for and I found the bombs rather clunky to use.

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It's sad that you had this experience, but there must have been something more to it than just the aspect of durability.

I myself in my first playthrough went west to Gerudo desert (which is what people do last) and have never had ANY issues with running out of weapons, and that's considering that BotW makes a mistake of not allowing you to upgrade inventory unless you follow the main quest. A BIG mistake for a game about going anywhere, but still I had always TONS of weapons and never ran out.

Even if we take stats-wise, the shittiest sword (5 damage, 20 hits) is enough to kill two Lizalfos, and a single Lizalfos weapon that they drop even at its weakest is enough to damage 4 Lizalfos to death (so the shittiest sword that kills two at its minimum leads to 2 less shitty weapons that kill 8... and so on). This is literally math that prevents hard-gating. There are special elemental Lizalfos that have higher base health, but their area of habitat is farther down the radius from the Plateau. Engaging them first at the least would mean that you've been avoiding fights long before that. But even then to kill the special elemental Lizalfos you would need two shitty swords, which leads to a better weapon (that is if we don't consider that enemies drop their weapons before dying if you hit them repeatedly or with a charged attack), so it's difficult to see, mathematically speaking, how can you run out of weapons while exploring even if you go into an area with just the shittiest weapons.

 

[BlueStarEXSF]

Regarding Weapon Durability in BotW.

The problem that Weapon Durability BotW solves (or, well, tries to) is not that of preventing weapons from becoming too OP, or not that of promoting creativity. While both are affect, the problem weapon durability tries to solve is that of relevancy.

BotW is a game where you can go literally anywhere at any point, and not only that, but also come BACK to where you were to discover something you haven't. Weapon Durability makes sure that wherever you go, there's always a relevant reward waiting for you - as there's a scaling system in place that makes sure that you get better rewards with progress (i.e. if in the beginning of the game you will find a rusty sword in one of the Great Plateau shrines, but if you get back there much later you will find a Royal Sword). Enemies will also get better weapons you can take away from them. And durability serves the purpose of cycling inventory - clearing out space for those better and more durable weapons to take their place in it.

If we wouldn't have had weapon durability, then you could go to place number 1 before place 2, find something really cool there, and then the reward from place 2 would be useless because the place 1 reward never loses its relevancy.

This is a VERY ingenious solution (that is much more cost effective in relation to its potential alternative - creating shittons of unique rewards). But, there IS a problem. The ACTUAL problem of BotW durability system is the fact that weapon scaling happens ONLY with killed enemies. For which you need to, well, spend weapons.

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This post accurately explains why the weapon degradation system was kinda needed in BotW. It's a key element to the exploration gameplay loop because they couldn't provide enough unique rewards to encourage exploration otherwise. Players will continuously explore to replace their combat arsenal. I understand why they went that route to solving the exploration problem as it's definitely cost effective and a clever solution to a tough design problem. With that said, I personally wish they had done it some other way since it's part of the reason I bounced off BOTW 10 hours in. While I was compelled to explore, I never really discovered anything new since it always just another samey weapon. However, I want to emphasize that BOTW's gameplay systems and how they integrate into the world is really cool and impressive and absolutely worthy of praise. Since they have a strong base in BOTW (but not enough meat imo), I hope they can build on it for BOTW2 and provide better exploration rewards. Perhaps, lateral combat upgrades that changes how you approach encounters or weapons that are more useful against enemy types in the vicinity could be interesting. Ideally, it'd be something that's not a straight damage number upgrade most of the time. Anyhow, I understand it's a way harder and costlier solution to implement but hell, I really hope they do it.

 

[Crumrin]

Horizon series needs to make melee a viable option. I'm not gonna argue that the melee is good, but it's not intended to be a focus. Ranged combat is the focus.

I never hear this argument in an FPS that the melee is bad. Most fps will give you maybe a dagger or something to finish an enemy off but usually it doesn't feel good. Or if a brawler game doesn't have decent ranged options, don't usually hear people complain about it.

I'm not sure why Horizon is supposed to have good melee.

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Horizon is supposed to excel at everything, apparently. The pedantic fault-finding around that IP is just absurd.

 

[Dever]

"Doom Eternal forces you to play a certain way"

Other than forcing you to stay on the move, not really.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Sorry, the completionist is ranking mario power ups in the background for me right now, and he just put spring mario at the bottom of the entire series.
SO....

the common critique against Super Mario Galaxy's spring mushroom is BOOLSHEEEEEEET
A skill based timing power up that gives you the mother of all high jumps, when you get that rhythm down and bob n' bounce up and around the obstacles it feels so gooood. It offers a lot more to the game than like the boo mushroom or red star, it offers some of the game's most engaging actual platforming challenges.
It's hated because people didn't git gud, yes, even the guy who literally 100 percents games for a living.

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[Keldroc]

Probably the best open world vehicle in a game. 🤪

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Nope, that would be the Magnum Opus in Mad Max.

The Batmobile sucks.

 

[Servbot24]

Gathering the artifacts in both Wind Waker and Metroid Prime was a lot of fun imo.

The tank controls in Mega Man Legends feel great to me. Granted I played that game around 300 hours

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Nope, that would be the Magnum Opus in Mad Max.

The Batmobile sucks.

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You can't even attempt to provide reasoning because you are wrong

 

[Jave]

"Casual Mode and Sim Features ruined Fire Emblem"

No, it did not. If anything, it saved the series. And you can still play Fire Emblem with permadeath and ignore almost all of the Sim stuff.

 

[RandoPercy]

"SMT Nocturne is bad cause of random encounters"

I will not defend the encounter rate, it is high but Estoma exists and there is an indicator to let you know a random battle is coming.

It is not as random as people think, build a good main party and have a dedicated demon for Estoma and you are settled.

 

[Mathieran]

Horizon is supposed to excel at everything, apparently. The pedantic fault-finding around that IP is just absurd.

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it gets some weird critiques. And don't get me wrong. It's fine to critique games, and there are some legit ones to be levied at Horizon. But I see that one a lot and it irritates me because I don't think I've seen it before for another game the same way. I don't think they've ever tried to act like melee is viable and yet people insist it should be.