The purpose of this thread is to discuss what you consider to be a flaw in the design of gameplay in any given game. Maybe this list will serve a purpose...but probably not.

I'll start. I'm making my way through Final Fantasy XII now and one thing I noticed is how I die at almost every first encounter of a boss battle (not "every", but "almost every".). The second time I fight them, I have a considerably better chance. It appears that skill has little to do with anything, more of picking the right strategy beforehand. And since you can't really decide the strategy without knowing what you're fighting, the first time is a huge dissadvantage. Of course, if you power level and get your chars really high, then you will typically win (without any challenge) the first time. I prefer to be under the recommended average level (if you were to look at a guide) as the challenge makes it more fun for me.

However, I am glad that I came up with a unique strategy to beat a boss in one circumstance.

I should probably mention the FFXII gambit system for clarity. The gambit system is a set of conditions followed by actions that you set up for each of your characters. Like, "foe: HP > 30%" target that enemy and do "Fire". So, a lot of the game is setting up your characters to behave in a certain way beforehand. You don't really change much in-battle, because this stops the battle and brings up the menu system and really affects the flow of battle imho. However, sometimes I will pop it open and change something really quick if absolutely necessary.

In most games dying is very much part of the gameplay. In the scenario you described, the skill is in adapting your strategy so that you can defeat the boss. In fact I'd say that "death" is vitally important to computer games in general, and is one of the main reasons why they are fun to play. You learn by making a mistake and then correcting it instead of avoiding it in the first place.

Would you like to have to read a document on every boss before attempting it? Of course not. It's much more fun to get stuck in and learn from your mistakes (which rarely applies to real life).

If something can be completed "first-time" without any prior knowledge, then it's likely to be too easy. What about later attempts? - it'll be ever less challenging then to the point of being boring.

Any "gameplay" that involves a grind, to use WoW terms. And I don't limit that to MMORPG's; things like Drawing/Stocking 5 million spells in FFVIII comes to mind too. If you can do something in 5 hours that takes a bare minimum of skill, the game shouldn't make you do it; it should just assume you're able to perform basic functions (or make it trivial in terms of time) and give you the benefit now so you can go do something fun with it sooner rather than later. This wouldn't apply to anything that might be a remotely modest challenge, of course.

I have a game where you build a track for a bead to roll on. I haven't completed the game yet, because I'm stuck with the scoring. The aim is to build as long track as possible. When you do that, the field gets crowded and your next track will be more difficult to build. You get most points in the first turn and only peanuts in the next turns. The fun is only in the first turn. If you don't get top scores in the first turn, you have no chances to do that in the following turns.

OTOH, if each new turn starts with an empty field, it's no good either. Kind of pointless to build up pieces of tracks for next turn while working on present turn. The game itself is great fun, but I haven't figured out a scoring system that wouldn't ruin the tension of continuing the game after first turn.

What about the Avion (Garuda) that guards Raithwall's tomb?

Potential Spoiler
You either have to have a certain item or a special strategy (or really high levels) to beat him. He can do several hits per your one hit and each hit does 100-200 damage. My 800+ hp guy, the highest I had was wasted within seconds, and the rest followed. Given, I did manage to escape and recover.

There's a certain item you can get that supposedly makes it easier, but I really didn't want to have to get it. So I went back in with everybody having Protect casted on them, had everybody cast "Sleep" until it fell asleep (which was difficult, because everybody thought if one person was casting sleep there's no reason for me to cast sleep, meaning I had to keep telling everyone to keep casting). There was like a 50% chance I could make it go to sleep. In the time to finally manage it, the garuda could easily have killed one of my guys. As soon as it fell to sleep, everybody focused on weak magic spells.
End Spoiler

Ultimately, I like the strategic element of the gambit system, but it's not exactly what I want in a combat system. It's obviously meant to be properly setup before a battle, rather than during a battle.

Anyway, enough of FF. The purpose of this thread is gameplay flaws in any game, FF was just my example.

Well, that is completely circumstantial, so you should be able to believe it. I could have opened Dark on I think two people's license boards, but the rest were in other directions. Plus, I didn't realize Dark was its weakness. I didn't have trouble either, I just died the first time because I didn't realize it was going to kill me so quickly. The next time I fought it I beat it relatively easily with the strategy I used above, hence the gameplay flaw I'm mentioning.

[Edit]
And to continue on that, nothing has really given me any trouble. I pretty much go into the second battle with very little challenge. So I feel if I win the first encounter it's more of luck (having the right strategy from the get-go) and if I win the second battle because it was relatively obvious how I should've done the first battle. So far, nothing has really challenged me, but I'm only about 20 hours in.

I think for funnest gameplay, I'd see all monsters leading up to a Boss who can:

• Cast 1 or 2 spells each[/*]

• Weakness for a certain element (fire, ice, etc.)[/*]

• Have different degrees of HP or Defense[/*]

Then I'd like to see the Bosses be able to cast ALL the spells encountered by the monsters that lead up to him/her (like the Boss had taught its minions how to perform them), but not "never-before seen magic spells!"

Also, for the Boss to have the HP as well as strong Defense, though nothing totally out of the league of the previous minions.

I've been playing Battlefield 1942 a bit lately. The biggest problem for me is the stubborn vehicle-stealing bots. Some bots get out as soon as I press the key to enter and then all is well, but it's not a consistent behaviour. I think bots should always give way for real players immediately, unless it's an enemy bot...

That was the first thing I did, as well as increasing the battle speed. Didn't think about that though, might explain why the garuda was so freaking fast, haha.

I enjoy making a lot of decisions really quick, choosing options mid-battle. Makes the victory all the more sweet.

FFIX has my all-around favorite end-game boss battle evar (so far). A lot of people didn't like it popping up, but I enjoyed it. The rest of the game is pretty good imho too. Leveling-wise, I typically tend to only level when I feel the need to. If I'm beating everything too easily, I'll start rushing. I enjoy it when the enemy's have a fighting chance. I have an Esper now in FFXII, and it seems a little too powerful if you ask me. Took two marks without any trouble with it.

Here's another debatable gameplay flaw: having to control the camera. I'm not a fan of moving the camera around or having to deal with it at all. I went from the camera-babysitting of ffxii to Gears of War and phew was that atrocious (considering their completely reverse of each other).

Seconded. It makes sense to give you the ability to freely look wherever you want, however, the camera needs to have some intelligence an automatically place itself optimally to match your movements. I have actually found that in FFXII when you get too close to some objects the camera tries to move above the player, however, that makes it incredibly difficult to control the player because a) it's more difficult to make sense of the players orientation; and b) the camera moves too rapidly to see what your inputs are doing... IIRC, it has only happened in town where there are no threats, but it's still annoying... I think the close-quarters camera could be improved in FFXII (but I still love the game).

I think these are a closer look at a larger, more general flaw. I don't like games that expect you to know what you can or can't do in game. When you face an obstacle in the real world you can actually access the situation and come up with possible solutions. In game, you're often faced with a single obscure possibility that you have to discover by chance (or sometimes by Google). I prefer games that give you more explicit controls that allow you to know how to defeat problems (and offer many ways of doing so).

Agreed. I don't enjoy these kinds of arcade-style battles. I prefer games that only let you carry what a reasonable character could actually carry on his/her person. When I play games that require me to empty 30+ weapons in the boss to defeat him I'm very turned off... I'm not that kind of player. I prefer strategy, stealth, and skill.

On that same topic, I dislike games that require many bullets to kill a foe. A well placed shot should drop an enemy immediately (even if he's not 'dead' yet, he should be down).

I also dislike games that make the player much more superior than the enemies. Often you can kill an enemy with 3 - 5 shots, but they need to hit you 30+ times to kill you. I think that's often brought on by the map designs and the accuracy of weapons. More realistic ballistics and more obstacles to take cover behind (and more distance between enemy and player) would give the player enough of an edge to avoid dying in a model where it only takes one well placed shot to die.

Games where you can't jump. I hate coming up on a small ledge, one that's only knee-high to my character, and not being able to get onto it, even if it's an area you can get to. Instead of jumping (or even just taking a big step) you have to walk all the way around to the small ramp.

A related problem, and one I've seen in a lot of games, is terrain that shouldn't block you but does. Here I am running around with a sword that cuts through plate armor like it's butter, and spells that can level an entire village, but I can't force my way past a Small Boulder, or some Slightly Tall Grass. WTF?

What I dislike in games:

• In hack-and-slay games, your character can miss an enemy, which is standing 10 cm in front of you. Somehow strange, because the enemy does not move away or something.

• Too strong enemys. Good example: Lionheart. It's really difficult to raise your level and your skills and the equipment is really exspensive. Well, I have no problem with that, but after days of training to reach level 6 and 5000 gold coins(that's really much in this game) to by a (*slight*) better sword and an (not much) better bodyarmor, I am killed by a little, stupid, bad equipped level 3 goblin? wtf?

• Spells that don't harm your enemys very much, but are eating the half or your "mana"

• Some weird puzzels with absolutely no hints.

• In some RPG you find/a bos drops an item/weapon which could have come in handly before you have found/the boss dropped it.

• In all RPGs you can enter a house and steal stuff while talking to the owner and no one would say a thing.

• I dislike shooters, where you are playing a special force soldier/cop/agent and you just cant control the recoil of your gun and it takes you 5 seconds to aim the gun again.(Do they pick up these guys at school and send them into battle without training or what?)

• NPCs that you have to protect, but which can't look after themselfs and always get in trouble.

I think that creatures shouldn't always lead to a boss of the same type. In my opineon, a game is more fun, when "ice creatures" are leading to ... ummm... well, to that weird-thing-boss, beacause it's a surprise. I like surprises. But that boss shouldn't bee one of those tons-of-HP-and-spells-unbeatable-with-maybe-one-weakpoint-which-you-don't-know-boss.