Things that you will NEVER include in your game, or hope to never see in another's.

[Helel]

We've all played those games, where a certain aspect irked us to no extremes, even to the point of making us throw our controllers against the wall and weep like a little babe without the comfort of a mother.

Well, at least I have. Once. Maybe.

As Freud said, our experiences from our childhood shape our adulthood, and so too do our earlier gaming experiences shape what we consider to be our ideal game. We all have 'dream' systems--things which we wish to include in our projects or wish to find in other's, whether it's character development, gameplay, or otherwise.

HOWEVER, this topic is not about that. As the lengthy title suggests, we are here to discuss THINGS THAT YOU WILL NEVER, EVER, NOT IN A MILLION YEARS INCLUDE IN YOUR GAME (or hope to find in another person's), and for a bit of an added bonus, ways to counteract these from appearing in games.

tl;dr: Let's talk about our gaming phobias.

I'll start this off with the most obvious:

• Random Ecounters - Unless the battle system is quite fun or the rewards are good, I will do everything in my power to escape or avoid random encounters. Under levelled? Don't give a damn, just want out of the dungeon. It's worse when there's an encounter around every TWO STEPS OH GOD. At that point, I usually just load up a cheat code that disables random encounters. =)
  
  There are several methods to solve this, namely:
  
  * Visible on-screen encounters (ie. enemy sprite walking toward the actor, etc.)
  
  * No non-scripted encounters (battles from story progression only)
  
  * No encounters whatsoever (Yeah..)
  
  ..
  
  
• Main character death = game over. Playing the Persona series, it really grates my nerves to be met with the game over sign whenever some enemies decide to have fun and gang up on the MC... Particularly when instant death spells are fairly common.
  
  As for death itself, I honestly don't mind it as long as reviving items are easy to find in proportion to the frequency of expected deaths. (If instadeath is common in the game, please please make that Life spell cheap or let revival items be bought/found easily)
  
  ..
  
  
• Unskippable Cutscenes - Especially before boss battles. As if losing to a boss isn't frustrating enough, being met with the same old cutscene over and over, over and over again is torturous.
  
  How to solve this in RMXP:
  
  * I don't know if this will work, but run a parallel process that checks if a certain button is being pressed. If it is, set a switch on that skips the cutscene to the main event/afterwards.
  
  ..
  
  
• Useless Status Effects - Basically when status effects are so worthless that no one in their right mind would use them when they could be spamming Ultima to hell and back again.
  
  Some ways to avoid this:
  
  * Increase encounter difficulty - If winning a battle constitutes pushing 'a' and occasionally using a magic spell, then try to increase the battle's difficulty. Of course, with increased difficulty should come decreased frequency of said battles.
  
  * Increase infliction rate - If, say, Poison's infliction rate is around 80%, then more people will obviously be inclined to use it.
  
  * Increase Scope - Or if the infliction rate is rather low, increase the skill's scope to include more than one target to make up for the lack of accuracy.

... Alright. This topic will certainly be handy for any people looking for some direction in the development of their game.... I guess.

[Archeia]

Mine would be Random Encounters definitely, unless I want to go nostalgic-ish. But even so :/
Also unskippable cutscenes, I always provide a "skip scene" at the beginning before the scene starts so the player who watched it before can just skip right through it. Useless status effects are definitely on my list, I don't like it when there's 223421412 status effects when they provide little to the gameplay :|

One other thing is that...Main character death = game over, I guess it depends, personally I liked this about p4 haha, it made me more cautious and at least I'm controlling everyone, UNLIKE PERSONA 3 with MARIN FUCKING KARIN.

And...ALMIGHTY SPELLS. I don't like it when you made the perfect party members and suddenly the game cheats the difficulty by adding those, UNBLOCKABLE BUT NO WEAKNESS OR STR BUT SPAM ALMIGHTY SPELLS IS ANNOYYYIINNNGG.

Also puzzles, as much as possible, I don't want them in my games, I hate them but this is opinion related, as long as they're not in the main story and just solely in minigames, I don't really mind. Most of the time, I'm one of those GOGOGOGO people.

Basically, typical list :p

[Alpha-Mad]

I'd really have to agree with both of you. Random Encounters get really annoying really fast. There's got to be a better way. In my game personally, I'm using Atoa's chrono trigger battle which means no random battles. Every event is scripted beforehand.
Unskippable cutscenes I think are fine if the cutscene is less than 3 minutes READING. That means if it takes 3 minutes to read, it would take roughly 1 minute to skip it. Hey, its your fault you got pwnd by that boss suck it up
Useless status effects yes! I remember final fantasy 3 (6) when I would spend all that time getting ever spell because I wanted everyone to have everything. I'll be honest, with the exception of Regen, I didn't use any of the status effects. One RM game that did a good job with them was MotW. You need to actually use the status effects against certain bosses or enemies. Plus, the ones you do use, are extremely effective and actually make a difference.
Finally, the almighty spells are annoying. It adds no spunk to the battle. The only almighty spells should maybe be overdrives, because they are earned. Leave ultima at home or at least give some sort of punishment like a resting period or once per battle type of thing.

[Jaberwocky]

Auto-fullscreen at start. :|
A fullscreen toggle ingame would be fine, as long as the default setting is windowed.

I love having all my open windows resized to 640x480 and moved to the upper-left corner :/

[fgsfds]

Agreed, full screen at start is the most annoying thing ever, it lags up my laptop a bit, when the game is relevant to my interest, then it's full screen-worthy. Other then that, pitiful games or demos isn't worth 100% of my attention that required full screening.

[jubhub731]

Unlike most people i LIKE random encounters for me it seems to increase the fun of gameplay most games with it are some of the most fun .

[bacon]

Random Encounters: They can be useful and I honestly dont mind them as long as they are not appearing every few seconds. A great way to do this is to have a bar or something. As you walk and walk, the bar increases. When the bar is full, a battle will initiate.

Main Character Death: It adds strategy to the game. I know it might seem annoying and when the character dies you are like WTF, but doing so adds a whole new layer to battle. One wrong move may be your last and you had to think about move you would do and what to wear in order to protect you.

I think overall battles should be hard. It shouldnt be easy if you re at the reqired level, it should be easy when you are at an over-required level. Many people think by making a monster with more HP and strength, that makes the battle harder. That is a lie. Monsters should require strategy to figure out a weakness and attack that. Monsters should have a unique personality. For example, a huge monster that causes alot of damage and has a decent amount of HP paired off with two monsters that use sleep spells is hard, because you cant attack it. That adds strategy to battles, and many miss that point completely.

Unskippable Scenes: I can agree with you on this one, they are annoying when you cannot skip. Yet they are also punishment if you lose a battle.

Useless Status Effects: Status effects are not useful. Things like paralysis, poison, sleep, charm, and confusion along wit ha slew of other status effects add depth to the game. Poison should be 20% of the persons health, which means i n five turns, the enemy will die. That is alot of HP, believe it or not. A great incentive tohave players use status effects is to have an attack with it as well, much like an elementalist from FFT. One spell a player can use is to slow the player and cause water damage.

[fgsfds]

Random Encounters: I don't mind it as well, but it's a pain when they appear ever 3 step. I would like to point out that if there's variety of enemies, with all different strength and weakness, then it should force you to get on your feet if the game itself have different party members that each of their own are good at certain enemies.
The battles should be moderate, and the enemies grows/change throughout your level to keep in par with your stats.

Main character death: (Random note: I wonder if the allies are AI control built with a bit if intelligence..) But yeah, it add's a bit a spice, forcing on keeping yourself (MC) alive. It will make you think more about yourself then your party members.

Unskippable Scene: There's a script that let's you retry battle if I'm correct but dunno if it can do during the 'event' fight, if the creator if the game is nice, then (s)he include it, I know I will most likely include it if there was a small feature built to it.
(I wish I was a scripter, I'd make this kind of tool..)

[Alpha-Mad]

I was thinking to myself earlier today and I'd kind of like to add another one. I don't like the "young hero setting out for an adventure" story. Mind you, this can work only in the most cliche of circumstances (and sometimes be good) but most of the time it is an instant gamestopper for me.
I just don't think a 16 year old would be running off on an adventure. Sorry.

[Rusty]

Male main character who under 18 year is big no no for me. Especially when they said " Justice always win"
Arrrgh i don't want to see it in any game.

Note: I don't mind Random Encounter as long you have choice to increase or reduce the encounter, like potion in tales series.