I add non-Steam games to Steam just so I can use Steam Input for controller rebinding

Unrealistic loot.

Like when you kill a wolf and get shotgun shells as loot.

But also more subtle stuff like enemies in a remote place that don't carry or have any kind of food and drink with them.

And when the enemy is clearly carrying a weapon, but it's not lootable and you get some random stuff instead.

I'm left-handed. Key rebinding has gotten better in some ways throughout the evolution of gaming, but it has recently regressed in the past few years.

I make custom layouts for every game I play. IJKL to move, Semicolon to sprint, Quote to crouch, M to interact, etc. I find many games where "I" is hard-bound to inventory, some bindings overlap keys I've bound with no way of fixing without going outside the game, some keys are unable to rebound entirely in-game, some keybindings menus require jank to actually work, some keybindings menus completely glitch out as I change entries, some games require .ini edits, some keys seem like they are working fine rebound, but completely bug out in unique ways, some games allow keys to be bound with modifiers (e.g. Shift + Mouse Button) and some don't, and so forth.

It's very frustrating. I can only imagine what people with physical disabilities and assistive devices deal with if it's this hard for me. I've tried using my right-hand for my mouse and WASD, but I get way too much pain doing so - even if I could properly learn to use a computer and game that way. I can't use WASD and my left-hand on the mouse as it is incredibly painful.

I just have to imagine this is all the case because QA is nonexistent and developers are overworked.

If the game supports voice chat in-game, then it is not ok to play background music while talking in-game. Just mute yourself and don't make us listen. It's the same as people walking around neighborhood and blasting their music from their phone as if they're the only ones with ears.

Needing to log into an online account to play a single-player game.

When a single-player game keeps pausing to tell me it can't connect to the server.

Points of no return and anything else that's permanently missable. No, I am not doing a second playthrough of a 100 hour JRPG.

Logins. I hate games with accounts. Just let me play.

unpausable cutscenes. Nothing bugs me more than getting interrupted in the middle of a cutscene and not being able to press escape to pause the cutscene. You're forced to try to split your attention between what interrupted you and the cutscene or restart and see the cutscene from the beginning again.

Extra annoyance points if escape immediately skips the cutscene without any indication it's going to.

when you can rebind movement keys (I'm an esdf player as opposed to wasd), but it does not rebind consistently. So a map is panned using wasd still, or menu browsing is, or even basic movement in a mini-game, or driving using a vehicle etc. It seems developers rarely really test anything but wasd...

Worst was cyberpunk, which always jettisoned me from the car in a super dramatic leap... on every right turn. XD

edit: also, when rebound keys are not represented correctly in tutorials or prompts.. ugh.

Not being able to pause or save at any point.

I'm a "grown-up" these days, but I grew up with games and they're part of my life, and I love them - but in the larger scale of things, they're still toys. The requirements of a pet/partner/child/phone call/doorbell will ~~always~~ nearly always outrank them.

"We don't let you pause because it's a simulation and and you can't pause real life so it means the game is more realistic" = piss off

The fact that games act like climbing doesn't exist. You reach a path blocked by a small rock that any normally able bodied human could climb and it just pisses me off.

Like Pokémon games with a rock you could easily just walk around but noooo you gotta travel to this other town to get a special item or learn a special skill to get around this thing you could easily climb over or walk around.

spongy bosses don't always mean they're challenging. I can't count how many times I've fought a boss who isn't hard or interesting but just wastes time cause they have a ton of health.

mechanics matter.

• Follow this character to the objective
• Walking
• Too slow
• Running
• Too fast

jfkajfADAHSVb

Currently, I'm replaying The Witcher 3, and the main annoyance I'm having right now is not being able to pause during timed choices (and timed choice are a whole other problem in games too).

You can pause during non-time-sensitive dialog choices, but not during timed ones. I don't know why they specifically deny pausing for those. Maybe to prevent people from pausing and thinking it out? But, some of these times sensitive choices greatly effect the story. I want to be able to think about these choices when they effect the story.

Live service games that start getting long in the tooth adding too much content.

There's plenty to hate on with Dead by Daylight, but I was at one point pretty good at it both killer and survivor. Eventually I started to feel there were too many perks and characters to keep track of and I lost interest.

I felt the same about Team Fortress 2 when they started adding new weapons. That's probably not a popular opinion but the initial updates tying weapon unlocks to achievements really soured me on the game, permanently. I stopped playing.

Putting too many game mechanics into a game, like fighting system, bonus crystals, combinations of stuff to upgrade other stuff, plus pets, minigames, repetable quests, party combinations, crosswords, and more, in a single player game especially.

And dark patterns of course.

Games that wont let you quit to desktop in game.

1. When rebinding the keys, the game wont let me save the changes unless everything has something assigned.

2. During character creation the lightning on the model is completely different what you will see in game and I end up with an ugly character (Dragon's Dogma, Saints Row 3 remaster, etc.)

Text scaling in game where text is plot critical.

Important for things like steamdeck, some marked "verified" should be downgraded to "playable" due to the text size and inability to scale it.

Quests that demand that the player finds X of an unimportant item in a world which has exactly X instances of said item. Thankfully most games nowadays will offer up more of said item than needed to complete the quest, so that one doesn’t end up scouring the map over and over again, in search of that elusive last bottle/scroll/pigeon, because nobody got time for that. And not even talking about optional collectathon quests for those who want that sort of thing, some games would have this sort of quest in the main storyline.

Too many games are "survival" games now which really means they will make you do a bunch of chores to get to the sub par shooter or adventure game the chores gate you from. No, I don't want to chop wood and get rope or whatever for the 50th game that never innovates on any of these mechanics to get to the "good part"

Also lots of fun games seem to be ruined because they are battle royales.

No save option during stealth sequences or generally in stealth-heavy games. Allow me the option to either improvise and enjoy messing up or plan and execute and test every section of a stealth route carefully without having to replay the mission a thousand times, especially when the slightest hiccup will have the whole mission going awry. If that leads to some people save-scumming their way through the entire mission, so be it. Let them play their way.

When the only difference in difficulty is either by adding more waves of enemies, or giving bosses a bajillion hitpoints.

If I already learned all the game mechanics, and the only scaling is having to repeat them a lot more, that's poor design.

I dont mean this as much for adjustable difficulty, like easy vs hard mode, but rather in game progression...

Lack of accessibility options, not unlike you.

Most games are better about this now, but subtitles, difficulty options, and the ability to turn off flashing lights are critical to the point I can’t play for long, sometimes at all without them.

WHY THE HELL ARE GAMES SO LOUD ON STARTUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????

There are others but this is one I just can't believe is a thing. It's so fucking simple to fix. Just start the volume on the lower end and if it's too quiet I can raise the volume or just give me a volume slider first thing on initial load before any sound is played and let me find the right levels with a test sound before playing any menu music or something.

Showing a long plot-explaining intro right after start, before I have a chance to get to "options" and set the resolution, subtitles, etc. I also "love" unskippable short logo videos at start. And a few screens with only "press any button to continue".

Multiple un-skippable product and company credits at the start. Show a blinking “Loading…” if that is what is going on but let me skip this stuff on the second start onward.

Games that refuse to let you change the difficulty once you begin a game. More broadly, single player games that worry too much about preserving some sort of honor associated with doing well and make it annoying to play. Like rougue likes that have no save and quit for fear of people save scumming.

I’ve got perhaps an unusual one - 99% of the time I play games with the music turned off. I just find it much more immersive and I enjoy, for example, not knowing that combat is about to start because the music’s just changed.

There are plenty of games where you can’t turn the music off. I’m not a fan of that, but I get it. The devs want you to play their game in a certain way, and turning the music off isn’t part of that. No complaints.

But then there are games which allow you to turn the music off, but all the rest of the sound has been made under the assumption that the music will be playing. The music often covers up a litany of jankiness like background sound effects not looping well. And sometimes the atmosphere sounds (say the drone of an engine in a spaceship) are also controlled by the music slider.

So, if you’re going to give the option to turn the music off, make sure that the game still sounds good without the music.