Things That Annoy Me, But Shouldn't

When people cite video games as "obvious knowledge".

"You know how in Lethal Death Snakes of Terralta IIV for QBox 1.5.1, after you pass the Gorgons of Despair, not the ones in the red cloaks, the ones in the black cloaks, you know how there's that cave, yeah, I'm trying to describe a cave like that."

 

Somehow you don't sound sorry.

 

I bet he drives a Pinto.

 

Oh I can relate to this so much. Whispering has always made me uncomfortable, especially when I'm not included in the whispering. And I have no idea why.

People who demand I (or anyone else) clean up my language and not swear. I understand how excessive swearing can be annoying and I get that some people are generally uncomfortable with swearing. But what irritates the shit out of me is when they expect nobody in their 15 mile radius utter even the mildest of swear words lest their delicate ears burst into fire. Don't swear if you don't like to but you don't get to tell people what they can or can't say. I'll fucking swear if I fucking wanna. Fuck!

I think that's something I should be annoyed at though, but I'm still gonna included it here 'cause it just pisses me off.

 

It's going to be really hard for him to go on Ricki Lake now though...

 

It is annoying that I tell people I write Grim War Sci-fi,
and they assume I write about laser gun wielding dip-shits.
Some how using weaponry defeated by mirrors, just makes
me realize how dumb the concept/notion would be to use
such a dumb weapon in principle. (SMH+Sighs).

 

Difficulty is such a weird thing in games though.

You're certainly right that Dark Souls has enemies with exploitable patterns, but the real challenge in that game is more in learning the enemies and the game systems than it is about the actual execution within the game. The combat is fairly slow and methodical and the actual practical side of fighting isn't especially demanding, the demanding part is knowing when to attack. It's a game that's about mastery more so than a game about improvising in an unknown situation. And that's a very specific kind of difficulty.

Once you have truly mastered it then there is no real challenge, very much agreed, but that's a long process of mastery and a demanding one too. I think my first play through of Dark Souls took me over two hundred hours to get through and that wasn't even close to mastery. And even after rather a lot more time spent playing it it's still challenging to me to play, because it never lets up and you have to play well and while not a master I'm pretty good but there's still depths to plumb if I want to. I don't think I've ever managed to kill Smough first, and I've never actually been able to reliably pull off parrying. But it's still very satisfying to start a new play through and make it to the Four Kings without dying once. That's hard even knowing how everything works because you can't make a single mistake.

And in less well designed games that try to do something similar they lack the depth or variety or the challenge itself isn't so hard to master and you can become bored quite quickly because you are just swanning through the game without a problem. Especially in games where there is a high skill ceiling that you could master, but the game is still quite forgiving and will let you skate by without having to fail and improve and try again. The Surge was probably the closest to emulating the Dark Souls formula recently but that really did leave a lot to be desired in terms of variety. No-one has quite put together the pieces quite the same way as Dark Souls, and even then each of the Dark Souls games has some real flaws to it (Ceasless Discharge in DS1, really cheap traps you can't see coming in DS2, lack of unique feeling weapons in DS3).

But regardless of what exactly is to your taste in terms of difficulty, I think difficulty is important. Challenge really matters, it's what makes winning feel good. I know some people, like my girlfriend who plays every game on easy, just like pootling around the world and having fun with it. But even then you still need challenge, you need things that you have to think about, even if they are more forgiving.

For me there is definitely a sweet spot for games; I like a game with some nice crunchy complexity to it. Not too much complexity, I don't like having to play a game with it's wiki page open, but one where there is a cerebral part of the game and where you can grow your knowledge to improve your performance. I'm not so fussed about execution, I can't really be bothered to build up the specific hyper-reflexes to be good at a lot of online games the way I did when I was younger. I like a game that engages my brain throughout, so I'm not thinking about anything else, and that I can feel like I'm trying new things and seeing what works and what stuff clicks with me, and I need a good meaty challenge to want to spend the time in the game. And that does leave me often playing the same old stuff over and over.

In the past few months pretty much all I've played is Hearts Of Iron 4 (it's a world war 2 grand strategy game) and The Binding Of Isaac. Both hard games in their own way, and ones I can't claim to have mastered even after thousands of hours, but ones where I feel like I'm learning something new. I had a lot of fun playing the new Doom, it has really awesome mechanics. But it wasn't a game that I can play forever no matter how fun it was.

 

Dying. I know I said that already, but there's a twist. Dying because the game is telling you to die! There are a dozen of games that do that and it's almost forgivable, but most of the time when you gain consciousness, all your shit is gone! C'mon, Mr. Video Game, I did what you required me to do. There's no need to kick me while I'm down!!!

Currently, I'm playing Dragon Quest VII. When I encountered the first boss of the island, I got my ass handed to me. Even if I were to level up, I wouldn't be able to kill him, which is fine since it's only one time. Nope! Wrong! The second boss encounter, I'm supposed to die again! I mean, fuck off already with that bullshit...

Sigh. The stuff we gamers do to progress the story. Luckily, I get to keep all my shit when I die (except for the magic and abilities that were stolen from me).

 

When someone likes the same thing I do, but for completely different reasons. It's ridiculous, but it annoys me much more than when people like something that I think is crap - with them I'm content to live and let live, but when I like it too I get all possessive over the reasons why it's good or some nonsense.

This post brought to you by disenchantment with yet another fandom

 

Yes, there's something special about being the only person who likes The Correspondents...but where would they be if they only had this one fan?

It's unlikely they'd make a second album if the first bombed!

 

Students who are completely lost on basic concepts. Not the stuff I'm supposed to be teaching, basic, basic stuff.

Today I walked into my classroom five minutes early, as always, to find eighteen or so students sitting there in the dark.

These are 19-20 year-olds beginning the second semester of their sophomore year at university, and not one of them had the initiative to turn the lights on when entering the classroom.

Then, after the bell rang, after I took attendance, a couple more students tried to sneak into the classroom without me noticing. Which is a fine concept, except for the fact that I'd already called roll and marked them absent, which has pretty severe penalties at my institution, but if they let me know they'd arrived, they would "upgrade" to merely being late, which costs a couple participation points.

Which was explained to them two days ago.

Le Sigh ですね。

 

Could be, the drinking age is 20 here, so they might be starting* to find their alcohol boundaries.

*I've been drinking legally for twenty-five years and still make random incursions into blackout country, so it's obviously a long process...

 

Hell, a good and skill-based game doesn't even require complexity, as long as it allows the player to constantly improve through constant challenge. In fact, adding in elements of randomness, where the player cannot always react the same way and must search for new avenues to success would make for an awesome game. I loved the Borderlands games, but for how they felt like sandboxes, they didn't really play like sandboxes. there was so much ground to cover, but very little in the way of deviation, other than the constant need to find better weapons. The character's were quirky and interesting, but the quests were largely fetches for items to bring back and forth between NPCs. The rewards were generally paltry and would only be useful for a limited time until I needed to get a new and better weapon that could actually kill something of my level.

Which brings me to another annoyance with gaming, RPGs in particular: the never ending quest to loot better gear to beat the next boss. This is most irritating in games where the weapons all function the same way, such as JRPGs where many weapons, regardless of the type, only scale by power and (occasionally) elemental attributes or buffs. In fact, the only difference with most weapon types is that they are tied into the skills your class can learn with them. The skills you learn, however, are what give your character variety and utility, while the weapons are only there to increase your stats, rather that alter combat in any significant way. There was an MMORPG I used to play back in the day, called Mabinogi, in which, rather than constantly having to replace your weapons and armor, you could apply upgrades that significantly increased your combat ability or enhanced the utility of your skills. In base form, there were indeed armor and weapons that were inherently better than others, but fully upgraded, practically any weapon could be made to deal obscene damage. And there was not simply one direction to take weapon upgrades either. You could get better versions of different weapons and armor by smithing them rather than buying from a shop, or upgrading normally then furthering their potential with the use of special upgrade stones. If that didn't suit your fancy, there was an option to imbue your favorite weapon with a "spirit" which leveled up and gained strength through constant use and feeding the weapon. Certain armors had traits that protected against certain types of attacks, such as ranged or magic, and reduced stuns. If you wanted to replace a weapon or armor in this game, it was to try something new and different. Don't get me started on its skill system, which didn't lock you into a class, and allowed you to combo into different types of skills based on your playstyle.

I could rant about that game all night, but my point is that weapons in most RPGs don't feel unique, and I never feel particularly attached to a really cool item because I usually will need to replace it soon after finding it. Add to the fact that treasure hunting and looting constantly takes away from the feel of the game for me. That's another reason I have to mod Skyrim to high hell whenever I play it, because it suffered from the same problems, though it did some things much better than other games.

 

Very much agreed; execution based games are a whole other kettle of fish to your Dark Souls type difficulty. And there are a lot of them. Everything from Starcraft to DOTA to any online shooter and every fighting game; these are all moment to moment execution focused games. That doesn't mean they lack cerebral engagement, but for the vast majority of games it'll be whoever executes the game commands better who wins; whoever has the better APM or the better last hitter, the more accurate or the one with faster reflexes. And, notably, no matter how well you know the metagame or the strategy to counter your opponent, if you can't execute it very well then it just won't matter. When I was younger that's the stuff that I really liked in a game. I used to be a clanner in Counter Strike and it's lesser known brother Firearms. Looking back I genuinely don't know how I ever got so damn good, I definitely can't still do it. But as once was I used to top the scoreboard even while I was tabbing out to talk to people on MSN (yeah, this is way back). It's a different kind of game, and not a bad one, certainly. It's certainly much less accessible to the casual gamers and I can only gawp at just how impressive people can be at those games. You look at games like DiveKick that are wonderfully elegant and slimline in term of complexity but that can still offer a real challenge.

I do agree with you about loot-grindy games. I think Diablo and to some extent Borderlands (the first one) got away with it but there's plenty of really mediocre games that think that just having randomized gear makes games interesting. Diablo 2 somewhat still holds up (and it's bastard offspring Path Of Exile is certainly solid) but after Borderlands 1 it kinda got a bit old. The random guns were cool in one game, but that couldn't keep me interested in the subsequent ones. I have literally just spent ten minutes trying to figure out if I actually played Borderlands 2 or not; it seems that I did and it left that much of a mark on.

 

Walls of text on forums. Doesn't matter what topic or who is writing it, they will annoy me and remain unread.

 

People who turn problems into a pissing contest. Maybe that should bug me. I don't know.

In a support group for mental illness, there's this guy who always "one ups" people, even if it's not a true "one up."

Someone: "I'm depressed."
This Guy: "Yeah, well I'm suicidal, so I know all about depression."
Someone Else: "I'm bipolar."
This Guy: "Well I'm suicidal. At least you're not always depressed."

I get that not everyone who has a mental illness deals with it well, and there's a measure of leniency we should have. It takes time to make progress. But it's still frustrating when someone is constantly flinging their diagnoses and problems out there to measure them against yours, especially if that's not why you're talking about your problems in the first place.

If you have the same diagnosis as him, he has it worse. His medications are better or worse than yours. His ex-wife is worse than yours. His job sucks more than yours. You get the idea.

I'm not patient with that kind of thing. I'll probably look for a different support group.

 

Many years ago, my wife and her sister were talking...my wife had been ill, her sister had been iller, I'd had something else, she'd had something worse, I made up a broken arm, she'd had one too...! Fast forward 30 years (I guess) to when my wife died...daughter did CPR, ambulance on the scene PDQ, shocked her back to life. Over the next couple of days they had to shock her back 16 times; when they transferred her, the air ambulance couldn't be used 'cos if they needed to shock her back, they couldn't guarantee being able to set down, whereas on wheels you can ALWAYS stop and sod the traffic jam. Her sister visited her in intensive care (opposite the nurse's station so they could keep an eye on her), and she'd been more ill...

 

That's the kind of thing I watch out for when I meet someone new. If they always have "a bigger story," 99% of the time they're full of it. I only know one guy who can't seem to go to the gas station without running into Katy Perry or the CEO of Nintendo or R. Lee Ermy. If he says, "I went to the supermarket and it was uneventful," he's lying. If he says, "I went to the supermarket and met Stephen King and here's 26 pictures of us," that's his normal day.

 

I'm with you there.
I am good friends with someone at work, someone he knows has told me he's full of **** and talks a lot of it... so now I know that, I get really annoyed whenever he says something.
It doesn't matter who you mention, he's met them. I'm going to start mentioning really obscure people to see what happens.
Bruce Forstyth passes away - met him.
Bam Margera is in the news - met him when he came to the UK.
Numerous bands I've said I liked - met them all.

there is the off chance it may actually possibly maybe be true...? But knowing what I know already, it just seems that every single person I've mentioned, he's met.

I also wonder if he lies to impress. He's been at our place of work since he was 24, but he's mentioned that before coming here he's worked somewhere in Asia (didn't say where), somewhere in Japan separately, somewhere in Miami, ran his own business that he used to pay off £30k debt of his sisters... said he ran another business, but I know he was just helping out (the aforementioned mutual friend owns the company)...

GAH. rant over.