# Features in video games that you've never understood **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [November 5, 2010, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538 "2010-11-05T02:22:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/21 "2010-11-05T14:43:26Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > There’s a lot of PC games which suffer from that, and you’re right, it is annoying. > > I’ll add “Enemies with equipment you can’t have” to the list- you defeat a “standard” enemy armed with a piece of equipment you don’t have, and when you go to search them… that piece of equipment has vanished. > > Given than games are supposed to be scaled so a level 1 character won’t be able to defeat a level 99 Warrior-Mage who can cast Harbinger Of Doom at will, it just seems like a silly artificial restriction to prevent characters from acquiring weapons and armour from their fallen foes. This I totally understand, especially in games with a limited inventory system - do you REALLY want each enemy to drop five pieces of equipment that are usually inferior to the stuff you already have so that you either (1) have to leave their stuff lying around or (2) have to run back to town to sell stuff every five minutes because your inventory’s full again? Puts me in mind of the piles of fifty small iron caps you end up with in Nethack. ETA: Also, I think cooking is a sport and therefore cooking threads ought to be moved to the Game Room where I’d actually read them. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/22 "2010-11-05T14:45:32Z")
Doors you can’t ever open. The Silent Hill games are full of them. Fallout 3 is overloaded with whole buildings it is impossible to enter. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/23 "2010-11-05T14:46:42Z")
**Tom** , apparently you’re a close relationship to my WoW dwarves… Unless the games you play are very badly coded, you do not have to pick every single piece of loot. Promise. Leaving that Sharp Tooth inside that Sneaky Wolf-like Animal’s corpse will not get you fined for littering, nor will it cause the game to break down or the Bronzebeard Bros to stop talking to you. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/24 "2010-11-05T14:47:34Z")
But… it’s shiny! It sparkles! ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/25 "2010-11-05T14:48:53Z")
Here, here… _pats **Tom** ’s shoulder while using the other hand to keep her dwarven rogue away from his pockets_ ---
**Author:** ![Scuba\_Ben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Scuba\_Ben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scuba_Ben)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/26 "2010-11-05T14:53:15Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > But… it’s shiny! It sparkles! And if you zap the pile of helmets with a wand of polymorph, you might get a piece of dragon scale maille! Or, with my luck, a pile of cursed bronze plate. I swear the RNG is out to get me. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/27 "2010-11-05T14:54:58Z")
> [@Scuba\_Ben](#): > > And if you zap the pile of helmets with a wand of polymorph, you might get a piece of dragon scale maille! > > Or, with my luck, a pile of cursed bronze plate. I swear the RNG is out to get me. If you have too many things in the pile, don’t you end up with an iron golem trying to kill you? ---
**Author:** ![Scuba\_Ben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Scuba\_Ben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scuba_Ben)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/28 "2010-11-05T15:00:44Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > If you have too many things in the pile, don’t you end up with an iron golem trying to kill you? I’m not sure. I haven’t played NetHack in a while, so I don’t know what triggers a pile polying into golems. How far have you ever gotten, **Tom**? I once made it as far as the castle. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/29 "2010-11-05T15:01:56Z")
> [@Scuba\_Ben](#): > > I’m not sure. I haven’t played NetHack in a while, so I don’t know what triggers a pile polying into golems. > > How far have you ever gotten, **Tom**? I once made it as far as the castle. The same, I think. Haven’t played in forever. ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/30 "2010-11-05T15:50:37Z")
> [@statsman1982](#): > > I’m quite literally shocked that such a flaw made it through in a Rockstar-produced game. They’re usually very attentive to detail. I’ve never played RDR–is there any plausible reason why one step into water kills you?. They used rivers as a way to keep you from going to areas you weren’t supposed to go to- for example, if you could swim, you’d just swim across the river and get to Mexico way before you were supposed to. The easiest solution was to make it so that you just couldn’t swim in water at all- and that decision also meant that they could leave out all of the swimming animations and the design necessary to allow you to interact with stuff while swimming. I hated it, but I can understand why they did it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/31 "2010-11-05T16:18:43Z")
It seems to me that it would make a lot more sense to make contact with _deep_ water instant death, and just wade in shallow water. You could use the same animations as for walking, just put an opaque horizontal surface at the water level. At most, you’d have to reduce the speed a bit, but everything else would be simple. Or they could have just made water an actual barrier: Make it impossible to step into the river. Obviously, if water is that dangerous, your character is going to quickly learn to not just step into it accidentally. ---
**Author:** ![mbetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/53a042/32.png) [@mbetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbetter)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/32 "2010-11-05T16:37:59Z")
> [@Scuba\_Ben](#): > > And if you zap the pile of helmets with a wand of polymorph, you might get a piece of dragon scale maille! > > Or, with my luck, a pile of cursed bronze plate. I swear the RNG is out to get me. If I recall correctly, they nerfed polypiling big time. ---
**Author:** ![Unpronounceable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9de0a6/32.png) [@Unpronounceable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unpronounceable)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/33 "2010-11-05T18:20:46Z")
The forced-stealth segment. Sure, you may have had to kill 40,327 of these exact same mooks to get to this point in the game, but if you don’t sneak past these (gasp!) four, it’s an instant game-over. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/34 "2010-11-05T19:02:32Z")
I am really really loving **Rock Band 3** , but it looks like they’ve removed dueling guitar etc challenges. How else am I supposed to prove that I’m a Rock Band God when I can’t destroy my husband or sister is head-to-head competition? Maybe the option is still there somewhere, but I’ve been through every menu and I sure don’t see it. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/35 "2010-11-05T19:09:26Z")
> [@antonio107](#): > > But they got rid of it by GTA IV, so it seems oddly regressive to go back and introduce water death… It’s to split up the land geographically. If you can’t swim across, you can’t skip ahead. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/36 "2010-11-05T19:25:37Z")
> [@pepperlandgirl](#): > > I am really really loving **Rock Band 3** , but it looks like they’ve removed dueling guitar etc challenges. How else am I supposed to prove that I’m a Rock Band God when I can’t destroy my husband or sister is head-to-head competition? Maybe the option is still there somewhere, but I’ve been through every menu and I sure don’t see it. Speaking of Rock Band 3, how about their most lauded feature, a fully-stringed guitar which you could play along with the game? ROCK ON! Er, rock on almost six months after the game’s release. They’re tentatively expecting a March 2011 ship date for the guitar. Reviewers were talking about the stringed controller potentially revolutionizing music games. Not any more…RB3 will be all but forgotten by the time the guitar ships. I don’t know if you could call it a “feature”, but the lag time between the game and its most lauded component is definitely something I can’t understand. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/37 "2010-11-05T19:41:25Z")
I’ve never understood the tiny bits of pointless interactivity that sometimes gets sprinkled between cutscenes. Example: in **Dead Rising** , there’s a part where you and an NPC evade some zombies by ducking into another section of the mall. There’s a non-interactive cutscene that shows your escape, followed by the NPC raising the gate on the new mall section. Then, for no apparent reason, you are given control of your character again. At this point, there is literally nothing to do other than proceed under the newly-opened gate. And going into that gate causes the game to pause and go to loadscreen while it loads the new mall section. Every time I encounter something like this, I wonder: why is it necessary to have me do the pointless busywork of walking my character 10 feet? Just make “going through the gate” part of the cutscene and load the new section! The game should not require any input from me about this! ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/38 "2010-11-05T19:50:57Z")
Quick time events. Am I really the first to say it? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/39 "2010-11-05T20:34:51Z")
> [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](#): > > It’s to split up the land geographically. If you can’t swim across, you can’t skip ahead. There’s less immersion breaking ways to handle that though than having your character drop dead in shallow water like it’s acid. In GTA: San Andreas for example going where you weren’t supposed to brought a horde of cops down on you. In various fantasy & sci fi games the water is full of nasty critters; there’s a _reason_ why going into the chest deep water kills you. And of course there’s walls and drop offs. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2010, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/40 "2010-11-05T20:35:24Z")
Read Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto… Why does your character on foot have the turning radius of a car? Why do I have to pinball my way through buildings, bouncing off of furniture and smacking into door jams like a toddler in a bumper car? I honestly think their model for on foot travel is just a scaled down algorithm of their vehicle model. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538.md?page=3)