What are your favorite and least favorite gameplay elements that have become more prevalent over the last 5-10 years?

[Speevy]

Let's limit it to this time because it covers the entire lifespan of the PS4 and Xbox one, as well as the Nintendo Switch and modern PC gaming.

I remember when I was a kid and every game had basically a jump button and an attack button with the option to select power-ups sometimes, but you understood the entirety of a game's scope the moment you picked up the controller. This kind of accessible simplicity continued on consoles at least up until the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube, and was survived by developers who extoll its virtues. For me there is a deep sense of relief I feel when I pick up a controller and don't have to spend an hour learning how it works.

However, gaming has moved on without my sensibilities. I'm nearly 40 now, and games have seen refinements great and small. Some actually make games easier to control or make time-tested mechanics like climbing and shooting more natural.

It's not really fair to say anything is new because nothing is new, is it? It's just about when it came from the fringes into the mainstream.

I love the in-your-face, fluid fighting you experience in The Last of Us part 2 since you feel like you're in a desperate struggle with people rather than just using them for target practice. I like the Souls' series high-tension, high engagement, (almost) cutscene free gameplay.

What I do not love is when a game starts me out and overwhelms me with 10 different notifications of things I'm not even ready to think about yet. I also don't like when I can fail at something, like a mission because I don't see what it is. Yes, old people in here. It'll happen to you!


What are your favorite and least favorite gameplay additions which have gained popularity in recent years?

 

[nsilvias]

Journey thru vast empty fields.

 

[Speevy]

Journey thru vast empty fields.

Click to shrink...

Yes, Sony's grass campaign really paid dividends this generation.

 

[NediarPT88]

This is probably older than 10 years, but I really got tired of cover shooting in general and also making noises to lure enemies for easy stealth kills.

Also having to use something like "detective vision" to highlight stuff all the time.

 

[Bradford]

Favorite? It's hard to distill it down to one element but I really enjoy stamina and parry systems for combat, which have become more and more prevalent as third person action games get more and more popular, and people toy with the formula.


Least favorite? Fucking minimaps and waypoints. Oh and fast travel. Fuck all that noise. We've had them for forever but I feel like they have reached peak design absurdity at this point.

 

[Mollymauk]

Not sure if this falls under gameplay, but Immortals does something really clever where it lets you choose skins that are different from the armor and weapons you have equipped. So you get the buffs you want without being fug.

 

[evrythngwastakn]

worst: upgrade paths and materials for everything all the time.

I fucking *hate* it. Uncharted 4 was sublime: no skill trees, no gun mods, no perks, no bullshit. Wanna give me an new weapon or skill at a set interval? Fair enough. But why do I need to suck shit at using it until I grind away for hours to get enough macguffin tokens to upgrade it to be good? Why do I need to scour every battlefield, slowing the game pace to a halt, to find cloth and nickels and chunks of ore and pieces of wood to craft a holster for my crafted stick +2 durabilty?

 

[Richietto]

Vanity armor and what not. I know MMO's have been doing it for a long time but its felt like a far more recent thing for any other type of game.

 

[DeliciousSunnyD!]

One of my favorite gameplay elements in the last 10 years that has seen more use is first person dashing/thrusting in FPS games. I think it might have really caught on with the original Titanfall and the titan gameplay in it. Playing it at the time I remember thinking "I hope the next Halo has a thrust mechanic similar to dashes in this", then sure enough it did (yes Halo 4 had a thruster ability but it wasn't quite the same thing). DOOM Eternal really leaned into this kind of thrusting mechanic that exists on a cooldown.

Least favorite is just the general RPG-ification of so many genres where it doesn't really need to happen/exist. If you're a modern, large scale, big budget action-adventure game, it's almost a prerequisite now that your game design have RPG-lite trappings bolted onto it. God of War 2018 is a prime example of this kind of thing and its existence not really making the game any better/more interesting, and IMO it actually weakened the game overall.

 

[Chairman Yang]

Least favourite: FOMO mechanics. I despise it when games have time-limited content. Especially bad in GAAS games.

Favourite: RPG mechanics everywhere. I also like how prevalent turn-based XCOM-style combat has become.

 

[Acquiesc3]

Least favorite is crafting easily. It's a boring affair 95% of the time.

 

[Deleted member 59109]

Idk about favorite, least favorite would be how 3D platformers were kind of replaced by cinematic/realistic games that are pretty dull-looking and boring to me

 

[sheaaaa]

Not sure if this falls under gameplay, but Immortals does something really clever where it lets you choose skins that are different from the armor and weapons you have equipped. So you get the buffs you want without being fug.

Click to shrink...

This is a good one.

For my part, I'm a big fan of the roguelike/lite mechanics that sprung up after Spelunky. Of course it doesn't suit every game, and by definition there will be repetition, but there's nothing much like getting into a roguelike and feeling the sheer mystery of everything you can find out and master.

 

[texhnolyze]

RPG mechanics and gathering/crafting in virtually most AAA games that shouldn't have anything to do with them.

 

[EggmaniMN]

Favorite gameplay elements are accessibility options.

Least favorite elements mostly boil down to base building, survival, crafting, procedurally generated anything, that kind of stuff.

 

[Kujumz]

Journey thru vast empty fields.

Click to shrink...

yep. every big game is an empty and vast open world where 2 minutes worth of gameplay is recycled across its expanse. devs forgot how to write quests and npcs. collect all the shiny things that do nothing and help the same npc in the "random" world event you already did. everything feels completely inconsequential.

 

[Phendrift]

least favorite: poorly designed open worlds that are window dressing. There's a reason I haven't beaten any I've started yet besides BotW which has an actual we designed world. Reign it back in

favorite: I guess parrying is cool

 

[norealmx]

Weapon degradation. Meaning that even that hard-to-get weapon needs to be treated with care. And also means they can't sell you an overprice amount of bits that some can't resists on paying and perpetuate the... system.

 

[renegade_sylens]

Fetch quests? I am just starting my playthrough of GoT and the fetch quests at the beginning of this game seem so pointless!

 

[Bulebule]

Extremely annoying menus to navigate on consoles. I love Hitman 3's main gameplay and it's everything I have asked of from a stealth game, but holy hell menus are pain, both before starting a mission and in-mission when I need to navigate through intels/challenges. Hell, I haven't even been able to load a game instantly when booting up the game, I have to start a mission and THEN load the save. Assassin's Creed-games starting from Origins are guilty of this, but Hitman 3 takes it to whole a new level.

 

[Eugene's Axe]

This one is not prevalent but I wish more games do it from now on. In Demon Souls Remake you can make it so that your picture settings during photo mode carry to the actual game. That IMO is amazing, you can almost make your game look how you want.

 

[Ragnarok Flames]

Sprint, and 343's insistence on copying every modern shooter and killing the identity that halo used to have. just to get that CoD dollar

 

[Turin]

Favorite is the prevalence of practicality in melee combat where defense, movement and range control is as important as timing your strikes.

Least favorite is objective markers and mini maps.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

Least favourite would have to be pervasion of number stats involved in everything.
There's always an XP bar
There's always numbers going up
Might as well play a Clicker game sometimes.

 

[Zephy]

Least favourite might be the bumper button to attack. What the hell, that's like the least comfortable button to use, why not attack with the dpad while you're at it.

 

[Zolbrod]

Favorite: RPG elements in everything. Love it. Makes everything better. I'm not being sarcastic!
Least favorite: Obsession with size. Everything's getting too big. Give me smaller worlds with less empty space please.

 

[PersianPrince]

Favourite would be souls like combat, interconnected worlds and lore based Storytelling

Least favourite would be open worlds that are empty wirh nothing to do. I like open worlds, but making everything into a Ubisoft kind of game is getting old.

 

[nbnt]

I can't really think of any new positive gameplay elements that emerged during the PS4/XBO lifespan.

It's the worst generation I've had to suffer through. It was either online shit I couldn't care less about or open worlds, RPG mechanics, and crafting shoved into everything. It was the gen that killed my interest in triple A titles.

 

[Deleted member 51789]

I think skill trees have been really poorly used over the last few years - sometimes basic mechanics are locked behind them, and in nearly all of them there's no interesting progression or thematic reasons for developing your character.

Just a bunch of skills under wide description banners that are rarely linked to each other for no other reason than to give you that small hit of serotonin when you unlock something so you keep on playing.

 

[Rodney McKay]

Can't really think of any brand new or more prevalent mechanics I've really loved the last decade...

Maybe more games giving you the freedom to explore on your own more. Even more linear ones like God of War still have some side content and areas to explore with rewards for going out of your way.

I really enjoy when games just let me play without constant cutscenes or forcing me to do just the one thing the game wants me to do.

Least favorite is crafting easily. It's a boring affair 95% of the time.

Click to shrink...

I have yet to make it far enough in a single crafting\survival game for the "gathering" phase to payoff.

I like the idea of these games in theory, the loop of starting with nothing and eventually having giant spaceships or submarines sounds awesome and the kind of thing I'd love, but none of them I've tried yet have progressed fast enough for my liking.

I do think I'd like Satisfactory, videos I've watched make it seem like gathering part only takes an hour before you can start automating things and get a basic factory up and running. I'll probably get that next time it's on sale.

Least favourite might be the bumper button to attack. What the hell, that's like the least comfortable button to use, why not attack with the dpad while you're at it.

Click to shrink...

Oooh, that's a good one. I couldn't stand playing Assassin's Creed Origins with that control scheme.

Like crafting, I understand the appeal in theory: attack on triggers let's you have your thumb on the analog sticks at all times so you don't lose camera control.
But in practice, other than Dark Souls (which took me like 6 hours to get comfortable with) I just don't like how it feels to attack with the bumpers and triggers in melee combat games, and I rarely need THAT much camera control every second in most games.

Ubisoft put that in Immortals too, but I was very happy to see that the demo let you remap everything. But I'm not always comfortable manually tweaking controller settings because I feel like I can mess things up accidentally.

 

[trugs26]

I guess generally the rogue-like genre (not that it's a new genre, just feels more prevalent recently). It ruins games I'd otherwise enjoy. For example, Dead Cells is really fun. I like the movement, combat and platforming. But then it makes me "replay" sections of it (as per the rogue-like genre), which I highly dislike (seeing the same environments). I'd much prefer it if it replaced its rogue-like mechanics with a checkpoint system that'd let me play it in a more traditional way. Obviously it wouldn't be that simple, but it's an example of how a game I could've enjoyed if it were designed differently (i.e. a regular platformer or metroidvania instead of a rogue-like).

Similar can be said for other games.

But I get it. Others enjoy the genre. Just a personal preference.

 

[EarlGreyHot]

I really don't like rogue-like elements. Gaming, to me, is about forward momentum. Starting over from the beginning is shit. It feels like I wasted my time. The whole 'but you get better at the game!' is just not that rewarding imo.

 

[BeeDog]

Worst: The FOMO mechanisms in too many games, like Chairman Yang mentioned, hate it. I have a very busy personal life and cannot really control when my brief gaming sessions occur. Just let new or unlocked content be available for everyone without any artificial time constraints, damn it.

Best: The general improvements done to tracking, be it collectibles, quests, etc. I don't mind if certain games continue to be unclear about how to finish quests and so on, but I do think the base level of this type of follow-up tends to be handled very well nowadays. A godsend when you jump into the same game at a later date and want to wrap up certain activities.

 

[Sevvybgoode]

Skill trees is a weird one. On one hand you have games like Diablo and borderlands where you eagerly anticipate your next level just so you can get that skill that looks awesome. Then you have AC Valhalla where you get 2 pts at a time to get +1.6 attack or something equally banal.

Mine is floating cursors in menus. Thats fine when you're using a mouse but if I'm playing on console let me move between items in a menu using the analogue stick or dpad (again I'm looking at you Valhalla).

 

[Deleted member 86105]

Favorite: This is a weird one, but I really like the rise of the black-and-white minimalist monochrome aesthetic in indie games. I think it's a great way to stylize games, encourage creativity, and focus on the essence of gaming. And it's really nostalgic for me (I was a huge Game Boy fan back in the day). Less is more, in my opinion. Minit and Gato Roboto are modern examples of this aesthetic used to great effect.

It's still a small fraction of the total games created today, but I like that it's a burgeoning scene now, which was unthinkable in 2010. There's even a program now (GB Studio) that lets you make your own Gameboy games, and people have been releasing them on Itch.io: https://itch.io/games/tag-gameboy



Least favorite: The open world trend. It just feels so incredibly soulless. I much prefer hand-crafted over procedural generation and large maps. I INSTANTLY get taken out of the game whenever I encounter something weird that's a result of the open world. And honestly? It's also kind of boring, particularly sandbox open world games like Minecraft or Breath of the Wild.

I'm just not very imaginative or creative when I'm playing a game. I want a narrative or a tight, cohesive experience. I don't like being placed in a world and left to experiment. For me that's just a time crunch more than anything. I have a very limited amount of free time and I just want to get to the fun / story immediately.

 

[Rodney McKay]

I think skill trees have been really poorly used over the last few years - sometimes basic mechanics are locked behind them, and in nearly all of them there's no interesting progression or thematic reasons for developing your character.

Click to shrink...

Avengers was so bad about this. Every character has 3 skill trees and the entire first tree is literally just unlocking basic attacks and combos.
If i remember right, most characters don't even have a basic shield\guard break move until you unlock it.

Hulk especially felt like garbage in the first few levels you play as him since his moveset is so limited. The Hulk being taken down by a few shielded robots is just embarrassing, haha.

 

[GamerJM]

I'll give two for each.

Favorite 1: More meaningful exploration elements. I'm still not a fan of open world stuff, but I'm glad to see stuff like Immortals that takes more inspiration from Breath of the Wild than Assassin's Creed or Skyrim with a world that actually feels filled with meaningful stuff. Basically, I don't like open worlds but I think developers are getting better at using them when they do compared to the 360/PS3 era and the early PS4/X1 era. I recently played through Paradise Killer and I could even feel echoes of this there.

Favorite 2: Parrying. This was there before but it's nice to see more stuff like Sekiro and Katana Zero be built around it. It felt incredible in Third Strike and it continues to here.

Least favorite 1: Battle Royale. I'm continually baffled at this genre's enormous popularity. I don't want to play something where my chances of winning are astronomically low if I'm not any good at the game. I'd be way more interested in stuff like Apex Legends if it just had other gametypes.

Least favorite 2: Crafting. Basically makes everything an endless fetch quest when I just want to use the thing.

I was going to say class-based systems for in multiplayer for least favorite but then I realized that Overwatch is the only really, really big game I can think of from the last five years specifically with that. It was popularized with MOBAs which were a while back. FOMO is also probably the big one but it's kinda obvious.

 

[StrappingYoungLance]

I'm struggling to think of a favourite gameplay element that has become prevalent per se. I do like that since DOOM 16 we've seen some games take a more aggressive approach to combat that encourages getting in there and fighting to get your health or ammo - Bloodborne is also probably a part of that trend too.

Least favourite gameplay element: Battle Royales. I just don't enjoy the format, I'd rather play a more traditional mode where I can respawn as much as I like throughout a match. My experience with Battle Royales has been nothing but scrounging for stuff and then dying soon after encountering an opponent, and then having to do it all over again in another match. I just don't get it at all. Apex stands out as a game in the genre that does stuff that is super cool...but I just could not get over the format.

Related: Not a big fan of Battle Passes either, but I don't know that they count as gameplay elements.

 

[AmirMoosavi]

Least favourite:

This is probably older than 10 years, but I really got tired of cover shooting in general and also making noises to lure enemies for easy stealth kills.

Also having to use something like "detective vision" to highlight stuff all the time.

Click to shrink...

worst: upgrade paths and materials for everything all the time.

I fucking *hate* it. Uncharted 4 was sublime: no skill trees, no gun mods, no perks, no bullshit. Wanna give me an new weapon or skill at a set interval? Fair enough. But why do I need to suck shit at using it until I grind away for hours to get enough macguffin tokens to upgrade it to be good? Why do I need to scour every battlefield, slowing the game pace to a halt, to find cloth and nickels and chunks of ore and pieces of wood to craft a holster for my crafted stick +2 durabilty?

Click to shrink...

Least favorite is just the general RPG-ification of so many genres where it doesn't really need to happen/exist. If you're a modern, large scale, big budget action-adventure game, it's almost a prerequisite now that your game design have RPG-lite trappings bolted onto it. God of War 2018 is a prime example of this kind of thing and its existence not really making the game any better/more interesting, and IMO it actually weakened the game overall.

Click to shrink...

Least favorite is crafting easily. It's a boring affair 95% of the time.

Click to shrink...

Favourite:

One of my favorite gameplay elements in the last 10 years that has seen more use is first person dashing/thrusting in FPS games. I think it might have really caught on with the original Titanfall and the titan gameplay in it. Playing it at the time I remember thinking "I hope the next Halo has a thrust mechanic similar to dashes in this", then sure enough it did (yes Halo 4 had a thruster ability but it wasn't quite the same thing). DOOM Eternal really leaned into this kind of thrusting mechanic that exists on a cooldown.

Least favorite is just the general RPG-ification of so many genres where it doesn't really need to happen/exist. If you're a modern, large scale, big budget action-adventure game, it's almost a prerequisite now that your game design have RPG-lite trappings bolted onto it. God of War 2018 is a prime example of this kind of thing and its existence not really making the game any better/more interesting, and IMO it actually weakened the game overall.

Click to shrink...

tl;dr: I miss the days of 3D platformers like the CORE Design Tomb Raider games without having to deal with a whole load of bullshit crafting/RPG-lite/Detective Vision nonsense, but DOOM Eternal has taken FPSes to new heights which is awesome.

 

[Phendrana]

I dislike roguelikes. Not at all a fan of the loop of hopefully improving each run to eventually be able to proceed.

 

[StrappingYoungLance]

Fetch quests? I am just starting my playthrough of GoT and the fetch quests at the beginning of this game seem so pointless!

Click to shrink...

It's been 6 months but I struggle to think of prevalent fetch quests in Ghost of Tsushima? How often do you have to go and collect something and bring it back?

 

[evrythngwastakn]

It's been 6 months but I struggle to think of prevalent fetch quests in Ghost of Tsushima? How often do you have to go and collect something and bring it back?

Click to shrink...

GoT has a lot of "go to point a, hear about how the family is in danger, go to point b and kill a couple dudes, find dead family, go back to point a and tell sad guy his family is dead (or sad guy was killed in the 2 minutes you were away)" which is basically a fetch quest.

 

[sku]

Hate most of the design elements of modern open-world games. I don't want a laundry list of menial tasks with markers vomited out onto the world map. I don't want to ride a horse through a field for the 20th time. GoT was ok and only in spite of those features. Cyberpunk side content was a mess of copy-pasted jobs. Mario Odyssey leaned too far towards collect-a-thon.

I guess the fact that more games have tried to emulate the combat and design of the Souls series is good.

 

[mrmickfran]

Favorite: Fast forward in rpgs

Least favorite: Forced walking segments

 

[UraMallas]

I hate souls-like games in all forms I've played them. Including things like souls-like elements in Metroidvanias. I hate Hollow Knight, for instance.

 

[criteriondog]

Skill Trees. I almost hate them now. So many games have them and a lot of games that have them, just feel unnecessary and the things you earn would feel better obtaining them through story progression.

Or not having them at all.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

Least favorites have to be things like "detective vision" and "press button to ping the environment and show things you can pick up". Like, I get what they're going for in these, but I'm so fucking tired of it.

 

[Deleted member 52065]

My favorite design trend is the removals of lives from many games that would have depended on them in the past. Celeste and Crash 4 both do this and it makes the gameplay experience much more enjoyable for me.

 

[Jencks]

Loot systems, crafting, and RPG mechanics. I can usually tolerate 1 but most big budget games nowadays have 2 if not all 3.

 

[pbayne]

Least favourite is rpg loot sytems. Hate them with a passion. I actually do believe its a big part of why Nioh never got more popular. The only big game that did it resonably well recently was God of War of all things. Because it wasnt overly complicated and you always felt an immediate impact from having better gear.

I hate crafting in modern games too.