# 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:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Agent\_Foxtrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/81 "2011-02-15T17:37:35Z")
Going on the laments in this thread that you can’t pick up fallen mobs’ equipment: I never understood why you couldn’t steal an enemy soldier’s uniform and just stroll right through the enemy base. The Metal Gear Solid series in particular handles this in a very strange way: [ul] [li]All weapons are coded to each person’s DNA. Fair enough. That explains why you can’t pick up items.[/li][li]However, you can’t just take a uniform off of a fallen soldier _unless_ you’re specifically told to by someone else (this happens once every MGS game). Eiither that, or you must find a uniform in a soldier’s locker.[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/82 "2011-02-15T18:11:45Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > She is not! I love Civ, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about fighting and stuff. I just want to do what it says on the tin - build a civilization that will stand the test of time! :hijack: I’m still playing Medieval 2:Total War and I wish they would split off the strategic military AI difficulty from the economic difficulty and political difficulty. Sometimes I want to grow peacefully (like you two do in Civ,) but when I do decide to go to war I don’t want to fight a bunch of dumbasses. But I get a choice between a super-easy game and one in which your economy hardly grows and opponents will go to war with you at the drop of a hat. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/83 "2011-02-15T19:59:58Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Because- and I mean this is the nicest possibly way- you’re probably the only person who’s ever wanted to play _Civilisation_ like this more than once. 😉 > [@Zsofia](#): > > She is not! I love Civ, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about fighting and stuff. I just want to do what it says on the tin - build a civilization that will stand the test of time! Definitely not! ZSofia is definitely not the only one. The fighting mechanic in Civ is stupid to me and completely counter-intuitive, and I Do Not Like. I never liked fighting much in that game. I just want to build a beautiful civilization and have cities that are all happy and producing wonderful things… And they put it in Civ 4. That means, at the time of Civ 4, they thought it was a valid addition. Just Civ 5 killed it. Water on the camera always throws me off, too, Telperien. Or people bumping into the camera, gods forbid. ---
**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:** [February 15, 2011, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/84 "2011-02-15T20:34:41Z")
> [@](#): > > Got another one > > In FPS games, there’s usually a bunch of pre-made maps for online or deathmatch play. I don’t understand why half of these games don’t allow you to practice by yourself on these maps and/or have built in bots In a similar vein, _Myth II_ has multiplayer maps, and it has single player maps against AI opponents that work exactly the same way as the multiplayer maps, but you can’t play one as the other. Or rather, you can, but you have to first open the map in the level editor and change one setting. Why couldn’t they have just made that setting changeable from the game menu? It would have taken about five minutes of coding. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/85 "2011-02-15T21:12:42Z")
Oh, here’s one, but I understand it, though I don’t like it: that so many games only have multiplayer over an Internet connection or some other way. I know why they do it: it’s to sell multiple copies. But I want to play with my SO in the same house! [Cracked.com](http://Cracked.com) said it best - paraphrased, when a guy’s girlfriend comes over what is he going to do, play Modern Warfare in his room or play on the Wii with her? Which one gets him closer to touching her? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/86 "2011-02-15T21:35:51Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > :hijack: I’m still playing Medieval 2:Total War and I wish they would split off the strategic military AI difficulty from the economic difficulty and political difficulty. Sometimes I want to grow peacefully (like you two do in Civ,) but when I do decide to go to war I don’t want to fight a bunch of dumbasses. But I get a choice between a super-easy game and one in which your economy hardly grows and opponents will go to war with you at the drop of a hat. Huh ? I’m pretty sure MTW2 is the one that introduced the split difficulty slider: campaign difficulty and combat difficulty. The first is mostly an AI modifier (i.e. how much do the other AIs act like rabid mongooses on PCP) and gives the AI players free gold each turn at the higher settings, while the other only gives the AI soldiers combat bonuses in battles. I usually play on medium campaign diff and very hard battles which is challenging without being frickin’ annoying. You still get betrayed seemingly at random once you rise to the top, but as \*Dominions \*taught me, that’s quite realistic 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/87 "2011-02-15T21:59:39Z")
I didn’t mean the military AI in the combat portion, I meant the military AI in the campaign portion. Or maybe it just seems smarter on Hard or higher on the campaign portion because it has so much more stuff to work with. Unless I’m playing Very Hard, they usually don’t even bother to build much in the way of siege equipment to assault me for several turns, and even then sometimes take a pass on it for a couple more turns. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2011, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/88 "2011-02-15T22:24:02Z")
Oh, OK then. That said, from having pored over the AI files a lot back in the day I’m doubtful difficulty influences AI spending policies. It’s most likely just that they’re broke - most mods give the AIs a much bigger “king’s purse” (ie automatic gold per turn) for that very reason. You can quite easily do that by hand without changing anything else, it’s just a line in the campaign .ini file. Might have to unpack the game’s files first though, I admit it’s been a while since I fudged around in MTW’s gears. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2011, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/89 "2011-02-16T02:06:29Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Unless the games you play are very badly coded, you do not have to pick every single piece of loot. Promise. Sorry, you’re forgetting about obsessive compulsive gamers. I can’t let this sharp tooth in the corpse of the wolf-like animal. I just have to bring it back to town to sell it (even if I already owns 2 millions gold coins) or stuff it in some container in the basement of my house ( even when there’s already a dozen others), in case I would someday for some reason need a sharp tooth. (By the way, I prefer it that way. I don’t like games where you can’t pick up the stuff used by the ennemy, because it seems unrealistic) ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2011, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538/90 "2011-02-16T03:09:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I did something like that, too, except that I never even got close enough to use my party’s own attacks. I just stayed outside of his radius of awareness and cast the skeletons. He never stopped to think, hey, these skeletons are appearing out of nowhere, there’s probably someone nearby summoning them, I should find who it is and kill them. Yeah the awareness thing was a big flaw of BG2. You could kill the dragon by hitting his wing with AOE, but if you didn’t hit his head he never noticed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/features-in-video-games-that-youve-never-understood/559538.md?page=4)