I’m not that excited by deep skill trees or crafting or inventory management, lately i enjoy good movement, music, exploration, and story.
The movement in destiny 2 felt really good, similar games have it where you get momentum, dives, floating with warlock, etc. I think Titanfall 2 and borderlands 3 zane had similar really good feeling movement.
The exploration in pre planes EverQuest was great, fast travel limited to certain classes and levels, risky but faster travel routes in kunark, groups in overworld and dungeon areas, dangerous places to get to with high reward for the risk. Elder scrolls, dark souls/elden ring, and Zelda breath of the wild had similar feelings for me.
Roguelikes with the potential for broken builds.
Sometimes you find the perfect combo on your run and become an unstoppable force, but it doesn’t ruin the game because you finish your god-like run and next run you try to find another overpowered build.I really like the resource/inventory systems of survival horror games. Often they can force interesting decisions as long as your current state doesn’t starve you of options.
- I can’t pick up shit! Well, I’m not using these three things so maybe I should box them. Or, I could use up some ammo on nearby enemies.
- I’m low on healing items! But I have a lot of ammo. Maybe I could stop conserving nuke launcher rounds to trivialize the next few rooms of giant zombies; try a bit more of this other weapon I don’t use much and stow my normal pistol.
- I’m low on ammo! But, I’ve been saving a hundred healing items. Maybe I can practice tanking past enemies and see just how much it will affect me.
- I’m okay on ammo but these enemies keep coming. But…I think if I make it to this area, it will give me a stationary healing spot. So I’ll just conserve ammo and take hits on the way.
- I’ve been poisoned! But there’s gonna be a bunch of other poisonous enemies before I get through this area. Maybe I can ignore it until I’m through.
I think I’d even like to find more games that focus on that sort of item management without being so horror-focused; helping you feel excited for saving an inventory spot or prioritizing the right things. It’s especially cool when you’re finding ways to shift risk in the right directions based on what you can afford losing. Example in Back 4 Blood: There are tools/resources that retain/add more “possible downs” for a survivor, which may mean you can put off healing for a long time and keep picking each other off the floor. One game has a death prevention item that you can only hold one of; so you’re encouraged to “get killed” before you find another one.
On the flip side, don’t do inventory management in action games! Looking at you Horizon Zero Dawn!
I’m not sure if this counts as gameplay mechanics or rather narrative structure, but games like Outer Wilds, Fez, Tunic, where the exploration and discovery of the game is the end goal of playing the game, not just getting to the game’s end state.
I’m not sure if there’s an accepted term for these games, but I’ve always thought of them as “archaeology” games. There’s a bunch of stuff, both plot and gameplay, that is hidden (sometimes in plain sight), until you discover it and find out what meaning it carries.
All the stuff mentioned here with jiggle physics
Alright, I’d rather hide this under a similarly cringey top comment, but: Clothing damage. I think it gets a pass sometimes when applied in a gender neutral way, but a lot of games now avoid it for fear of international censorship rules (and, it generates an ick factor for players that are not similarly cringey as I am)
Newness. I like a game that unfolds at a nice pace with moderate challenges. Games like Uncharted or Stray. I don’t like doing things over and over and over, so no to roguelikes or soulsborne games.
I’m even tired of open world games for the most part unless they reveal nicely and have good fast travel like Horizon. I didn’t finish the most recent GTA’s even, too much backtracking. I just want to be taken to a new place and see it unfold with some interesting but solvable challenges in between.
Open-world is fine without fast travel (or without using it heavily, anyway) if and only if traveling to the place is actually made fun with emergent gameplay. Running around a big empty map trying to figure out what the fuck you’re supposed to do isn’t fun, and I feel like the AAA studios have leaned on it as a way of artificially inflating the amount of time people spend in the game so they feel like they got their money’s worth.
If I can’t stand it in RDR/RDR2 or GTA among many others, I don’t think it’s something for me. I’m perfectly fine with going down a path with a few side paths to explore. Open worlds have gotten too pervasive and too big.
I really like Zelda and Ys style ARPGs. Specifically, rare and impactful loot, and little reliance on skill levels, but rather skill aquisition. Both approach it very differently, and later Ys games fall into more traditional RPG mechanics (e.g. farm money/exp, buy gear, etc), so I’m more talking about Ys 1, 2, and Origin, as well as pre-BOTW Zelda games.
Basically, I love this gameplay loop:
- Enter dungeon/level and fight baddies
- Find important item/ability
- Use important item/ability to defeat monsters
- Fight boss, using a mix of important item and learning movesets
- Repeat 1-4 several times, with plot mixed in
- Fight final boss using a mix of everything acquired
Ys and Zelda do this in very different ways, and I absolutely love the level cap in Ys 1 to enforce playing smarter instead of grinding. You can never really get OP, even if you try (except Ys 2, which I don’t like much).
Unfortunately, “ARPG” has been twisted to mean Diablo-like, which is heavy on loot and ability trees instead of puzzles and exploration, and future Ys games go that direction as well.
This isn’t really specific to mechanics or systems, but I’ll like pretty much any mechanic or system that lends itself well to that gameplay loop.
I really REALLY enjoy boss invulnerability phases.
Builds. Build builds builds. Whether its slowly tailoring your class to a build, or roguelike unlocking items and abilities to build around each run. It’s why I like things such as Diablo, PoE, Last Epoch, Binding of Isaac, Tales of Maj’Eyal, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, etc.
Its also why I was severely disappointed with ArcheAge. And unhappy when I returned to GW2 to find my world bossing combat medic off-meta bleed Warrior pretty much useless. Used to tank boss AoEs to revive downed people using healing shouts and increased revival speed. They nerfed and removed the revival speed node from Warrior and the build lost half it’s function.
I like most game mechanics to some extent. Creativity in combining game mechanics is key to making an outstanding game imo.
However, I don’t like things that force a time limit. I play games as an escape. I don’t like feeling stressed by a clock while I’m off the clock. These can be literal timed missions or things like a food/water meter. Escort missions also suck for similar reasons.
I think difficulty in a game should come from overcoming a foe, traversing harsh terrain, or solving a puzzle. If the game is hard because I have to stop what I’m doing to feed myself, or I have to rush to complete an objective on a timer, it just becomes work.
Same deal with making shit absurdly difficult and relying on trying over and over until you manage to do the correct timing/sequence/whatever 28934928x in a row. Games like Dark Souls or Cuphead intrigue me, but I will never ever play them again because I have shit to do in real life. Also, fuck any single player game that doesn’t have cheat codes.
Enemy ai that’s not stupid
Peaceful exploration
Save anywhere
I do enjoy game mechanics that interact in emergent ways that weren’t fully planned out by the developer in games like Dwarf Fortress.
I like systems that allow for outrageous combos, whether unintentionally or by design. Roguelikes and roguelites usually have them, but it’s almost entirely luck based. Dynasty Warriors 8 allows for plenty of OP combos if you manage the right weapon attributes. Skyrim and its
broken as fuckperfectly balanced enchanting + alchemy (or Morrowind’s even more perfectly balanced permanent fortify attribute magic)Once you wrap your head around it, Rimworld is great for stuff like that. Once you start thinking outside the lines you can perform the most outrageous war crimes for literally no reason other than your own entertainment.
Like, if an enemy sends a raiding party you can nuke half the map with nerve gas to kill them, then skin them, eat them to keep the colony growing, then load all their skins into a pod and fire it back into the enemy base. The game doesn’t encourage you to do stuff like that, but it also doesn’t stop you lol.
Or you can use the skins to make hats and trench-coats.
I’ve had plenty of experience with Dwarf Fortress, but never managed to fully weaponize magma before the FPS death killed my fortress. Using bridges to atom smash raids was always funny as hell.
I know Rimworld is a lot more expansive in some areas but, much like Factorio, is a game I’m avoiding because I don’t need yet another addiction 😅
