8 Recent Gaming Trends That Absolutely SUCK

Paying $70 for a broken buggy mess

Battle passes are a trend I utterly hate. Trapping the player into playing for dozens of hours to unlock a weapon/skin or pay 20 bucks to unlock it right away is already bad enough, but having that in a 60~70 usd game is just pathetic.

I remember playing a game called DARQ on steam and leaving a review. I mentioned how much I liked the ending soundtrack and like 3 hours later, they answered me with a download link to the OST. That was so sweet

For me a trend I hate seeing are the games that are either always online or digital only releases. They're a huge slap in the face toward game preservation. Ubisoft recently said that Gamers need to start getting comfortable with not owning games...

The main trend that's killing gaming for me these days is the way everything seems to be focussed on making miniscule improvements to graphics with no effort put into gameplay, world design, quest design, features and so on. The law of diminishing returns means that for each step forward, you need a much more powerful rig but we've already hit a point where the improvements just aren't noticeable enough to justify the cost. We're seeing next to no innovation or improvements when it comes to gameplay, physics, animations and so on but oh look - we've improved the way the light bounces off an object by 0.0001% and providing you spend £1000 on a new graphics card, you should still be able to hit 30fps. The overall mechanics of your average 2023 game is no better than what we were seeing 10 years ago - often, they're worse. There are less features, less variation in gameplay, less stuff to interact with...

I think one of the worst trends that was not mentioned was publishing expensive games that are essentially in beta status. I have stopped pre-ordering games because too many in recent years are nearly unplayable because the bugs are so bad. And developers know this. It goes along with the under-staffed and under-paid issues. Unfettered greed is ruining gaming along with every other industry.

My big bugbear with gaming trends is Devs finding new ingenious ways of hiding the Quit to Desktop option on PC games. It used to be as easy as Pause>QtD. but nowadays you have to go back to main menu and then find what ever sub menu they have hidden the option. Just let us PC gamers quit to desktop from the actual game like we used to be able to!

An other issue that I saw a lot in resent years is PC games calibrated for controller, trying to pass the tutorial and read press R2 to pick up item for example. And then go to the menu and there was not even a page for mouse and keyboard controls.

8:ugly game ui 7:terrible licensed games 6: developers responding to steam reviews 5: war against mods 4:soft aim hacks in multiplayer 3:terrible pc ports 2:even worse switch ports 1: mass layoffs and studio closures

The UI thing reminds me of the advertising scene in Ready Player One: "We estimate we can sell up to 80% of a player's visual field before inducing seizures."

Insomniac when someone creates a mod in their game: "That's so cool, come and work with us!" Capcom when someone mods their games: "I hope you like jail"

always liked games that incorporate the UI into game world itself. Kinda like Dead Space putting the Health on Isaac's back and ammo counter on the gun's Holo Display when Aiming.

For me it's crafting systems in LITERALLY EVERYTHING. Most of them just feel like they're shoehorned in and have zero/low impact on the core gameplay.

The attack on physical media sucks. The game companies have their “dollar bills” sights set on overdrive, so while they’re having layoffs they are also recording record profits while trying to have even more control over what we play by forcing us into subscription services or forcing us to buy digital. I grew up with gaming, and this generation will probably be my last if I can’t collect games and be able to play them in the future without a subscription.

Trend no. 6 of developers responding with either very defensive or ultra aggressive positions, and then doubling down on the content being highly criticized, isn't just restricted to the gaming sector but is something resonating across the entire entertainment industry. It seems to be emanating from the lack of self reflection, the belief that they are too big to fail and a sense of entitlement from the creators believing they can do no wrong when it comes to expressing their unique ideas and individualism.

Batman on the NES was incredible. The music is still stuck in my head to this day.

Similar to the HUD issue I'm so tired of games using Destiny menus where you slowly move a cursor around and have to hold for 3 seconds to confirm anything. I will take snappy responsive menus any day, even with the supposed risk of clicking something by accident.

What I hate the most is when a game is online when it doesn't need to be, and then when the studio wants to shut the server down, (a server that they really don't need to use) they shut the entire game down, without even giving you an offline version to play. Like DC LEGENDS. They just took that down and all the money everyone spent on it just flew away. Can't go back to see anything you've done, can't play the 1 player parts. So many games just say FU to the players. Imagine if Parker Brothers' Monopoly, just stopped selling it in 1936 and told everyone they couldn't play anymore, just because, they aren't "supporting" it. I mean it's really complete BS to do to the players.

Honestly, with all these lay offs, there better have been some serious digging to make sure they were laying off the right people. Like, I can see if a company like Google was noticing a drastic decline in quality for their platforms and they noticed which department was causing the decline, then going in and seeing who was performing the worst and letting them go after a warning or two to up their game...but if they seriously just saw the numbers not climbing as high as they wanted despite reaching their projected goal and still let go of an entire division....then that's just fucked up. Imagine thinking an entire division of tech experts was the problem when it was likely just one or two people, so now you've just ruined your own reputation as a business for a workforce.

added context: the PC port is now stabilized and these graphics for TLOU part 1 have been fixed. To mimic the effect seen in the thumbnail you would have to turn all graphic settings to their lowest setting, turn all Anti Aliasing off, turn all shadows off, turn lighting off, turn reflective details off (Reflective details makes face skin more realistic), lower the level of detail (LOD) to the lowest settings, and further etc.