5 Things game developers won’t stop doing (That everyone hates)

Some people never learn from their mistakes - and game developers don't, either. We take a look at 5 recurring tropes in games that really need to come to an end - but probably won't any time soon.

[thedude44]

release 10% of their game as dlc.

[irepbtown]

I dont mind DLC if they are like Dice's, a whole new mode or some crazy shit like they did for Bad Company.

But then you see games that are unfinished, splash out on crap DLCs, expensive for a pile of dog poo...

Unbelievable...

[jeseth]

Announcing DLC before the game is released.

That's what I hate most... it's like a slap in the face. The devs already have stuff that should be in the game but they leave it out to bone you later!

[DeFFeR]

^ That - especially when you install the game to your HD and realize it's only 3 GB to find that the rest is ready to download day 1 for $15.

Battlefield did it right (on 360 at least with the disc size limitation) - ship two discs, one for MP one for SP and have a graphics pack waiting for you to DL if necessary.

[MsclMexican]

Release a game broken day 1.... rather than just holding it back so it is enjoyable day one.

Can someone explain the significance of 11.11.11?
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[kaveti6616]

"Can someone explain the significance of 11.11.11?"

All the digits are one. It's a good marketing tool.

[vyke3]

30%

[bahabeast]

DLC i hate it never bought one single piece in my life.

[Hufandpuf]

There's actually some quality DLC out there. ME2's Shadow Broker, Fallout 3's numerous expansions, etc.

[zero_cool]

Bethesda & quality never go together you must be joking lmfao!

Cheers Gamers & Happy Gaming!

[frostypants]

DICE's DLC for the BF games is often pretty epic. The Vietnam DLC for BFBC2 was insane...it was like a whole new game. New character models, new weapons, new vehicles, new sound, new music, new environments...

[dredgewalker]

Borderlands dlc added a lot of things to the game. Some companies get it right while some are just too greedy.

[Goozex]

If u want to blame someone for creating the "dlc" in gaming that would happen to be none other than MS.

[snipes101]

Just...dude...really...dont start that shit here.

[firefoxmccloud]

I signed in just to let you know how stupid you are.

[tack129]

Oh good grief.

[Dark_king]

Really MS is to blame for exclusive timed dlc, but dlc in general no.I would sooner blame Media Molecule they have released more DLC then anyone.Sure they didn't start it, an they do it right not separating the community and its at a good price.
The honest truth is we are the ones to blame we buy it.You can't blame the devs when most people just buy any crap dlc.You can only blame those that buy it.

[gamernova]

I saw MW3 and decided not to read haha

[latinalover]

why not?

[gamernova]

Because it is nothing I haven't already heard. Not only do they do the same crap for MW (which everyone knows at this point) but every article rehashes the previous one about how repetitive it is. So they're doing the same thing that CoD is without realizing it haha

[vortis]

I actually agree with you.

Not only that but why do these idiotic sites bash CoD all throughout the year and then turn around and give it a 9/10 and tell everyone to buy it? WTF is that?

[jeseth]

Because at its core, COD is an excellent shooter. Love it or hate it. The base of COD:MW inside these games is still virtually unmatched on consoles.

Could the game use a graphics engine update? Sure. But COD's gameplay is top notch. People like to rag on it for not "bringing anything new" but most FPS games are gradual successors over their previous installments. COD always adds new game modes and extras but it goes unnoticed because the graphics haven't changed much in a while, only slight tweaking.

Butv... at its core ... COD is an excellent FPS game (especially on consoles, BF3 is Godly on PC).

[latinalover]

this is funny "It’s bad enough you have to take out 37 henchmen by yourself, but you have to do it before they manage to shoot the idiot standing in the open looking like he just woke up with a hangover."

[Kran]

They keep saying:

"Oh the 360 is so easy to develop."
"Oh the PS3 is so hard to develop."
"Oh the PS3 and 360 are so easy to develop."
"Oh the PS3 and 360 are so hard to develop."
*Oh the Wii is too easy to develop."

OK! WE GET IT! ITS DIFFERENT PER PERSON!

[Series_IIa]

So if someone is getting interviewed they can't answer that question because it upsets the toddlers who roam N4G?

[Kran]

Well if a developer is getting interviewed about "a game" then maybe they should talk about "the game", not how easy it is to develop, because while they might find it so easy, there are people who would like to get into gaming who might "not" find it easy.

[SignifiedSix]

I've never seen anything about the 360 being hard to develop for. If that were the case, PC's would be hard to develop for...

[Kran]

It was a figure of speech...

[firefoxmccloud]

Post is too hard to comprehend.

[kneon]

Unskippable cut scenes wouldn't be such a big deal if they would put the checkpoint in the right place. What sort of idiot decides to put the checkpoint just before the cut scene? I've seen it far too often, it makes no sense. Finish the cut scene and then put a check point. That way when you die repeatedly during that boss fight you don't have to watch the same cut scene over and over and over again.

[Pintheshadows]

^This. It isn't as bad as it used to be but it should be non-existent by now.

[TheUnbiasedLion]

5 gamer articles that are overused:

I'd say this one comes in on that.

[mamotte]

"We're using the 100% of the console. This time."

[_Aarix_]

Funny how the developers say that on the 360 and pales in comparison to gears 3 and the developers said that more can be pulled from the conssole

[SilentNegotiator]

Some developers are apparently at about 300%/400% use by now. lol

[Brownghost]

What's with the these idiotic top 5 lists

[Kyosuke_Sanada]

Recently, I'd say not taking responsibility for their actions.....

[Tonester925]

1. Not listen to the FANS that want to BUY YOUR GAME! Make forums so we can talk to you and RESPOND BACK TO US.

2. Remember PS2 days when there was no DLC? You had FULL character rosters, longer games, cheat codes, games felt more FULL and felt rewarding once you beat it.

3. Taking fun and rewarding boss battles out of games.

4.RECYCLING! Madden and COD I'm looking at you.

5. NO COUCH CO-OP. So if me and my brother want to play something together we have to buy 2 PS3 consoles and 2 of each game. Nice Marketing lol

[frostypants]

Only problem with #2 is your statement only works if those PS2 games had the same amount of content as they would with DLC. I could just as easily say older games sucked because if you wanted to extend the experience, you had to wait years for a sequel.

You say PS2 games were longer. You're gonna have to back that up with some proof...

[Tonester925]

Final Fantasy X ~>
GTA San Andreas ~>
Marvel vs Capcom 2 ~>

Maybe you didnt get what I was saying or I didn't make myself clear. Because of the games FULLNESS and DEPTH, it made the games longer and people played for much longer times.

[irepbtown]

frostypants
has a point.
First of, only a few games this gen compares to the quality of games in the PS2 era. However the problem back then was once you complete the game, did everything, what next?
I'm not talking GTA SA here, that game is just perfect.

If developers TODAY think, fill the games like they did back in the day, COMPLETE the bloody game not half of it, AND THEN after several months bring in a new DLC with alot more variety, e.g take a FPS, new environment, new weapons, maybe a new mode, something unique. Bring something that will keep the gamer entertained just as much as the gamer did when they first bought the game.

Look at Bad Company 2, absolutely amazing game, some small packs here and there for a few new weapons and so on just to keep the gamers occupied. Then BAM, a whole new CO-OP mode which had never been in a Bad Company game and maps, new environment (the Vietnam pack). Devs need to look at that EVEN Dice themselves need to look at what they achieved and carry it on.

I dont hate DLCs as I look at that ^ Dice did something truly amazing. Same cant be said for COD. COD4 was the true game changer. One of the best games I've ever played. I still play it today because it's fun. And when I played it back in 07, NO game, I repeat, NO game came close to it. COD4 revolutionised first person shooters. But then the 'revolutionist' just copied the game over and over again. And COD is just, same old, same old. Also the feeling you get from COD4, you just dont get from any other COD.
Back onto DLCs, COD just repeats the process year after year. One or two new maps, and one or two old maps.

[vortis]

I'll toss in a few more...

Final Fantasy XII (despite what people say this was actually a decent game)

Gran Turismo 4 (you didn't need DLC to make this one feel "complete")

Tekken 5

Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution

Timesplitters: Future Perfect

Shadow of the Colossus

Max Payne 1 (even without mods and horrible load times this game was still highly replayable on PS2 just because it was fun that goes for the Xbox and PC version, too.

[Kyosuke_Sanada]

The funny thing is Final Fantasy X was considered pretty short (about 70 hours) compared to the other RPG's last generation. Excluding Skyrim, it's pretty hard finding any RPG game that's even in the 50 hour mark nowadays....

[Tonester925]

I was comparing it to this generations Final Fantasy games. That's what the arrow was indicating with those 3 games.

And I haven't really played any long games either. They make games "seem" longer with the competitive online ranking system.

What's you favorite RPG's this generation

[trenso1]

completely agree with 2-4. boss battles are lame and extremely easy even on hard difficulties sometimes. of this gen the hardest boss battle were from kh:BBS fighting MS with aqua on critical.

[vortis]

Makes me think about Shao Khan from Shaolin Monks on the PS2/Xbox and then it makes me think abuot Shao Khan on Mortal Kombat II...now those were boss fights.

[ZippyZapper]

"exploding barrels" it was cool when Doom and Half Life did it. Now it's in every FPS/TPS :(

[SITH]

I hate protect the idiot. Nothing makes me more angry in a game, when you must defend a stupid AI from point a to point b, c... Etc. the game always goes from good to boring at that point.

[Scribe81]

Can't stand escort missions ever since that stupid chick in Goldeneye for N64 kept getting in the line of fire and dying, I've hated, hated these and pretty much every single fakking FPS I play has an escort mission of some sort.

And of course DLC. I'd say who doesn't hate it, but then, people buy it, so developers keep making it. The only DLC I've bought were the packs for Warhawk, and the DLC for Borderlands. These were 1gb downloads which means they weren't on the disc and were the result of feedback from the gamers on what they loved about the games. I have not supported a single other game's DLC, especially Capcom. I don't think there's a company that has abused DLC worse than they have.

[bobrea]

Dumb article. Seriously vague and stupid points.

[DeeBee]

I have to agree with you. Points 1, 2 and 3 particularly stand out as stupid. Seriously how can you condemn a game that you play for 5 minutes and say it's boring. Yes WoW has a lot of the boring old repetitive quests, but there isn't an MMO now (or probably ever) that doesn't. Had the guy played for more than 5 minutes he'd have found things much better.

The "clone wars" one is laughable. Every FPS plays like ... bang, bang, dead guy, bang bang, another dead guy. Every driving game plays like, accelerate, brake, turn, accelerate. Of course the games are going to seem alike when they are in the same genre, that's kind of the point of genres LOL

Point 3 is down to, as someone already said, games being mulitplayer centric. Why waste time making a decent AI script that makes the NPC react like a human when in game it probably will be replaced by a human.

This article should be changed to "Five things (some) gamers won't stop saying that everyone hates".

[Vortex3D]

Comatose NPCs have become more common this gen than ever especially on FPS because the "AI" NPCs have been replaced by human controlled multiplayer. Remember the hype before this gen came out about improvement in AI? At least, some developers tried to do some AI in NPCs but it seems more developers have given up on trying especially on NPCs in shooters. I played COD MW3 and BF3 and the enemies AI are next to comatose AI. The NPCs are scripted with no intelligent what to do if the parameters get changed and will blindly follow the script.

The problem is not the question if there's enough hardware power. It's the matter of developers allocate enough resources to developing very good AI for the NPCs. Next is type of game like FPS. For games like COD and Battlefield, the time when AI is important for NCPs is in single player campaign. Do the developers really want to develop really good AI for the NPCs if single player campaign is considered one time playthrough and the campaign is short? The developers probably will decide it's not worth spending the efforts on the NPCs AI for a limited use.

Again, making good AI hype is starting again for next gen. My guess is when the next gen comes out with more hardware power, we are still going to see plenty of comatose NPCs games. With increase in graphics development time, tight budget to get the next games out quickly to stay alive, good AI for NPCs will be the last thing the developers can afford to do.

[vortis]

Completely agree, Vortex.

Ubisoft mentioned one of the reasons Splinter Cell Conviction wasn't on PS3 was because of the advanced AI, memory-sucking routines they were planning on using. Yet in the final game the AI in SC: Conviction were dumber than the ones in SC: Chaos Theory.

Later Ubisoft admitted that it's hard to "sell advanced AI" because it doesn't look good on a marketing sheet, hence why so many games have comatose NPCs.

So really, it boils down to marketing and marketing equates to sales. AI doesn't look good on the bottom line like graphics do so we'll probably still end up with comatose AI for next-gen, too.

[Vortex3D]

Glad you see that too.

Very true. How to do you market advanced AI on NPC? Having pretty graphics immediately get wows.

Even when marketing more recent life-like robotic, I found all they show is pre-scripted movements. And public are easily impressed thinking if the robot is life-like and pre-scripted, it must good enough. Again people just don't understand for robot to ever become "aware", they need very advanced AI, not some dumb scripted movements.

[Dark_king]

I have to say uncharted 1 and killzone 2 both had great AI on the hardest settings.It was nice to see enemies working together to force you into their sights.

[Vortex3D]

Yes, those two games do try more clever strategies in trying to force you out from hiding but it ends about there. As long I don't keep hiding at the same spot, the NCPs still don't have much AI not get stuck in the same scripted sequence. For Uncharted, the NCPs have infinite grenade, so they just keep throwing grenades at you to make you get off the hiding spot. Now, what if the NCP has limited grenades? They will probably use up all the grenades and be done.

I read the new Resident Evil Operation Racoon City has extremely dumb NPCs. Not only they are dumb shooters, they wouldn't even heal the player. That's like 180 degree from RE5 that the co-op NPC that heals you too fast. In both cases, neither NPC is design to understand when to heal you at proper time. Problem with dumb co-op NPCs is make the game challenging to play because you have to spend a lot of time taking care of your comatose NCPs.

[contra157]

Keep adding tuck yor gun run and only being able to hold two weapons it's like a cancer right now in the first person shooter world