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Whats the worst game mechanic? (piefed.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

One of the worst game mechanics ever found in a game was where the enemy got harder as you gained levels. The same enemy. It basically defeated the value of having more levels. I think it was Oblivion Skyrim where I found this, particularly annoying.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    OG Oblivion has the most utterly broken and unplayable version of this problem that I've seen. Every bandit wearing glass or daedric, every enemy the strongest version, eliminating all variety. And their idea of difficulty? Just make them take longer to kill. All fun dissolves into a slog.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Level scaling. It's a mechanic designers put in because they think the game needs to stay challenging, which is true but I've never agreed with level scaling as the answer.

    The least bad implementations (but still not good) at least replace low level enemies with different kinds of enemies entirely. The worst, most lazy implementations just increase existing enemy HP and damage.

    I think it is much better to have different locations or zones where different ranges of enemies spawn, with more powerful enemies tuned to the expected level of a player character for the quests in the zone.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    It’s one of the reasons that I will always cherish the old Gothic games (esp. 1 and 2). They created different biomes and regions within and hand-placed mobs which thematically fit both from their appearance and strength.

    The placements didn’t necessarily align with the player’s journey through those regions so that you always had to be on the lookout for what’s coming when exploring new areas. And it really made the difference in your power growth more viscerally apparent when you could return to the starting zone and easily defeat the mobs there, as well as those you always had to run from off the beaten path earlier.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    I think it was Skyrim where I found this

    Doubt it because the unmodded game allows you to change difficulty even in mid-game, where the novice setting will have you easy kills even at high levels and your player character gets only bruised, and the legendary setting makes enemy NPCs deadly with a couple sword hits or one-hit lightning attacks.

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