What ruins a great action game for you? As an action game developer, I'm genuinely curious. I know everyone has different tastes. No game can please everyone. Maybe that's exactly why I want to hear your answers. I've definitely made design decisions that sounded okay in theory… and felt... very different in practice. What's your red flag? I'd love to hear it.show more

When the game is more focused on long flashy combos rather than a challenging and interesting back and forth between the player and the enemy.

I actually like when both ideas work together. I also don't want combos to just be flashy for the sake of style. In my game bosses can enter a weakened state where they can be staggered, and good combos can extend that window. Launching enemies into the air also increases damage, though bosses will eventually break out.

All of that is nice of course as long as player has to earn those staggers, launches etc. I like how God Hand lets enemies jump out of combos and they go berserk if you keep them stunlocked for too long. It has a strong emphasis on making things harder if players can play well.

I’m not a fan when an action game clearly has a right and wrong approach in a scenario, for example DmC had those Colour coded enemies which basically determined what you were and weren’t allowed to do when fighting them

Haha I agree with you! Actually, I really like DmC. It simplified a lot of things and made it really easy to jump in and start having fun. But I do agree on the colour-coded enemies part. I really also hate that system. I personally don't like when the game clearly tells you how you're supposed to fight something. Some players have brought that up to me before as well, and it's something I've been trying to avoid in my own design.

When enemies don't really fight back and are basically punching bags more than anything else

I understand what you mean. When enemies don't really push back and just become punching bags the combat quickly loses tension. Though I assume most games wouldn't make every enemy like that, bosses especially usually need to fight back.

Forced death/lose sequences. They're a complete utter waste of time. Forced backtracking... like putting a checkpoint at the start of a gauntlet level and death means starting over. Screw that too. tl;dr = our time is valuable, don't waste it.

Forced deaths? I guess a lot of them are used for story reasons. Though maybe I misunderstood what you meant.

Basically when you get into a boss fight and no matter what, you cannot win and that enemy gets to live another day for a round 2. Or alternatively, rooms full of mobs that can oneshot you and you cannot do a thing to them.

This is very vague, but I dislike an action game where attack don't feel good to use. It's the result of countless little things that it's meaningless when not diving into details. It's the main reason why I dislike souls-like combat.

Yeah, for action games the "feel" of combat is probably the number one priority. I remember a well-known developer once saying that a game should already feel fun even before you add levels or enemies, just moving the character around should feel good. That's something I'm always chasing as well. Out of curiosity though, do Souls-like games feel bad to you because of the intentional heaviness in their combat?

Not exactly. I like the heaviness of monhunt, and I love playing a slow, and clunky class like sorceror in Dragon's Dogma. My favourite game of all time (RE4 original) use tank control. Souls-like for some reason feels like it's designed to be frustrating for the sake of it.

It's kinda cheap when dying respawns you with full health, instead of respawning you with however much health you had when you started the fight. It makes protecting your health via smart play much less important.

That's actually an interesting point. I think it probably depends on the type of game, but I can see how that design would make players think more carefully about protecting their health. Though I can also imagine some players complaining about it too.

It's all about player accountability. Health is just another resource, and the player should be the one in charge of keeping it stocked up. Defensive options become more valuable, as does opportunities to restore health. That being said it *is* important to have forgiveness.

Classic God of War did it well: When you died, it respawned you with however much health you had at the start, *plus* a tiny sliver of extra health, with each subsequent death adding another sliver. This could eventually add up to a full health bar, but only after *many* deaths.

When enemies randomly start getting hyperarmor by you progressing the game too far... That applies to both normal and boss enemies. Some games go from " I am using my entire arsenal to my advantage" to "mom said it's my turn on the Xbox" when enemy is attacking because of that

Yeah, too much hyperarmor can definitely feel frustrating. Especially when it shifts the game from using your toolkit to just waiting. But I wonder, does it feel better if the game gives you tools to break or punish it?

If the hyperarmor comes in a form of "enraged state", a way to break that early with some sort of counter would be good whether it's a specific parry timing or another stagger bar similar to Nioh games. Otherwise hyperarmor on some moves can lead to some great dynamic as well

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I really appreciate it. I totally understand how hyperarmor enemies can feel. In my game there are also some hyperarmor enemies in special high-difficulty areas that can only be taken down with certain methods. I'm still thinking about how to make that interaction more flexible though, and exploring a few different approaches. So it's really helpful to hear perspectives like this.

Honestly? If you got a mechanic set already, I would wait for feedback on that first. Because the only other thing I could think of is with the help of status effects, which I don't know if you were planning on adding into the game.

To me visual clarity and especially camera positioning but I think in your case, you dodged the bullet because those problems came primarily from over-the-shoulder or similar perspective. At this point I think it just depends on vfx and color contrast

Yeah, I totally get that feeling! I've died quite a few times in Souls games just because I got stuck in a corner and the camera went crazy. 😅 I actually had players complain about one boss staying invisible for too long before. I ended up shortening the invisibility window so it feels more like a quick ambush instead. Especially in games where players want to keep the pace fast, long invisibility phases can really slow things down.

A game having low diversity of enemies (behavior patterns, not just visually) and being overly repetitive. To clarify, I love hack n slash games. They are repetitive by nature. However, there is difference between being repetitive like DMC and repetitive like Soulstice.

I think I understand what you mean. When enemies only differ visually but behave the same, it can make encounters feel repetitive and not really change how you approach combat.

Spongy enemies *and* combat systems where the biggest show of skill is rendering an enemy helpless for a 2-minute combo It's absolutely skillful to be able to break systems like that; it is not dangerous or exciting

I get what you mean. Pure damage sponge enemies can definitely feel frustrating. But I'm curious about something. What if the enemy has a lot of health but the correct approach lets you dominate them quickly? As in the player might need a bit of experimentation to discover the best way to deal with them.

(Apologies in advance for multi-reply!) See, I *love* rewarding player ingenuity and skill. If an enemy is a slog *without* preparation/understanding/puzzling things out, but becomes a more reasonable fight *with* those things, I have the exact opposite reaction. I love that.

Another route I'd consider is that the amount of health usually isn't the problem as much as it is a general lack of enemy reactivity and variety in the fight. Enemies can have huge HP totals as long as the animations, tactics and responses don't start to feel stale or weak, IMO.

I don't know if you've heard of Binary Domain, but you should take a look and compare it to the first Gears of War. Higher difficulty GoW feels sloggy because mag-dumping a Locust to no visual or tactical effect isn't fun. It saps the power fantasy of the guns.

Meanwhile, in Binary Domain, the Terminator type enemies have a ton of health, but you're blowing away their costumes, limbs, etc.; they're twitching and reacting to being shot, which means the guns still feel good and powerful even though the enemies soak up damage.

Rogue like/lite elements, more and more Souls elements, no frame cancellation.

I can understand that. It sounds like you probably enjoy faster paced action games, something closer to DMC style combat. If that's the case you might feel more at home with my game haha!

I feel you are correct; followed

When the game has no sense of pacing. I hate action games that puts you in a walk and talk section in a bad space, like when you're in the middle of a great battle gauntlet and then they decide a hard break for a walk and talk section before the boss. Like BRO! Blueballs much?!

Haha I think I get what you mean. Do you feel the same way about puzzles as well? Some players really dislike complex puzzles being placed between combat sections.

I defer to Devil May Cry/ Bayonetta style of pacing those puzzles out. They explicitly put those types at the beginning of the mission before a u fighting starts, or on their own separate mission, so that on replays they can skip those parts.

My red flags? I need visual clarity, I hate being overstimulated, and most importantly when I press a button I need that action to happen right away or close to it. If an action game has too much input delay it's a bad action game.

I agree. In action games responsiveness is probably the number one priority.

For me its; 1. Progression 2. Variety 3. Gameplay 4. Challenge If you're missing any of these, then I usually stop playing.

That's a pretty solid list honestly. I feel like if an action game starts lacking progression or variety it quickly loses its momentum.

No weight in animation, missing sound effects (such as a character landing), lack of variety or depth in movesets, every enemy can be approached the same exact way, movesets are bland and not exciting, no mechanics that work with each other (one dimensional gameplay)

I agree with that. When the gameplay approach becomes too one dimensional it really hurts the experience. I'm also trying to explore how different bosses can encourage different approaches from the player. Ideally players should feel something like "ok this tactic clearly doesn't work here."

I think DMC does a good job at enemies and bosses being built around using a certain part of your kit. FFXVI is what you need to avoid; it hardly mattered how you approached nonboss enemies in that game, making them feel like pointless combo food between boss fights.

Boring story, repetive combat, boring enemies, clunkiness, boring mechanics. Mobs that tank through everything but stagger at the slightest movement towards you.

I understand the point about balance there. Enemies that tank everything can feel frustrating, but enemies that can be juggled endlessly without reacting can also make fights feel trivial. Finding the balance between those extremes is probably one of the hardest parts of combat design.

While it *can* be tolerable in certain games (like in classic God of War), I've never been much of a fan of QTE minigames incorporated into a fight.

I feel like modern games tend to use QTE more in cinematic moments or as a phase transition during fights. But if the whole combat is constantly interrupted by QTE it can definitely feel uncomfortable.

I feel like Bayonetta 2 did it best: It had an action command moment in the cutscene at the end of a fight (after the actual gameplay of the fight had concluded). If you hit the action command right, then you got additional halos. But if you didn't, things proceeded as normal.

The worst sorts of QTEs (Which Bayo 1 unfortunately had a few times, but Bayo 2 thankfully never does) are the ones that you would never see coming unless you played the sequence before, and that instantly kill you if you fail them.

When I can't throw hands

I’ll admit my old stamina system did exactly that… but hey, that’s history now. 😂

Gameplay friction like limited stamina or breakable weapons. Basically anything that needlessly limits or disallows player expression.

I get that. Systems that unnecessarily limit player expression can feel pretty frustrating. Luckily stamina no longer exists in my game haha.

When attacks are not correctly telegraphed

I understand. Clear telegraphs are really important in action games.

A lack of enemy balance, I don't personally think it's fair or fun to hit something 10-20 plus times that can just kill you in one or two, it's why most soulslikes bore me, where's the actual difficulty in a boss doing two fast and annoyingly timed swipes they switch up?

That makes sense. It sounds like you might prefer faster character action games, something closer to DMC style combat.

You're definitely not wrong, I have played them a lot XD I will also add though that I'm not entirely against it as a difficulty choice, heck I did hell and hell mode on DMC4 because I enjoyed it enough to after all, I just feel as a base standard it's annoying more than fun.

Top down camera (like in the video) Hard limits to abilities and builds e.g. Guardians of the Galaxy, modern Assassins Creed, Witcher 3 Loneliness or even worse, having friendly NPCs that do nothing HITSTOP

I think top down games definitely have their own audience. It feels more like a stylistic choice rather than a limitation. I'm curious what you mean about Witcher 3 though. Was it the combat system or the build restrictions that bothered you?

Build restrictions, they give a huge list of perks and only let you pick a couple, and even then it has a colour matching system so unless you want to be inefficient you get railroaded into the mutagens etc they decided are best with the colour you picked.

no reaction. if i am hitting things, it must react differently from me not hitting things.

Passive enemies, too many moves having suck to target, level up systems overtaking the skill.

I think that situation tends to appear more often in RPG style games, where leveling can sometimes outweigh player skill. Though interestingly some games like the Ys series also go pretty extreme with that. If you're under leveled you basically deal almost no damage.

Stamina meter Puzzles

Good thing the stamina meter no longer exists in my game. 😂

switching to characters that lack all the fun tools that the main character had. *Cough…nero…cough*

Haha I actually like Nero quite a bit. I think his simpler toolkit makes him more approachable for new players. Honestly when I first played Dante I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

One that I've noticed bothering me is combat feedback, both in me damaging the enemy and the enemy damaging me. If the feedback is so low that I don't even notice when I take damage, that feels bad to me. If I'm hitting an enemy and they're not reacting, that feels off

Yeah, that sounds like combat feedback. I completely agree, in action games the feeling of impact is extremely important.

If my first indication that I'm about to die is my screen suddenly turning slightly red, something has gone awry in the polish. There's a reason games with shields have a breaking sound, and visual damage indicators of some kind. Often a mistake with smaller studios I find

1. Platforming hazards when I'm trying to concentrate on a fight. I quit playing the OG Bayonetta because of this, and it impacted my experience and rating of NG4. 2. puzzles. Only exception is the Shinespark puzzles in Metroid Dread and Fusion. 3. Controls that don't feel intuitive. e.g. Counter in NG2 and Metroid Dread vs Parry in NG4, especially because the follow-up is limited to one melee button instead of two. It disrupts the flow and is not intuitive.

I get what you mean. It's not that puzzles are bad, they're just not really my thing either. I also tend to prefer when combat stays focused on combat. Simple puzzles are fine, but when they get too complex it can start to break the flow for me. Interestingly though, I once asked a friend about the combat–puzzle pacing in the newer God of War games (don't get me wrong, I still really like the newer GoW). He actually loved it and said it felt like a small breather between fights. I guess it really shows how different players value different things.

Yes well, those are very simple if I recall. It's puzzles like the ones in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Breath of the Wild that really have me wanting to just drop the game entirely. To be fair though, BotW is more RPG than action. To me, If I have to check online to solve the puzzles in a game, it's a net negative. But I fully acknowledge that some people thoroughly enjoy it. Diversity is humanity's strength, as long as we don't let it divide us.

Haha yeah, I get what you mean. Though I feel like Breath of the Wild is almost a different kind of game at that point. It's not really a pure action game anymore since puzzles are one of its core pillars.

Spongey enemies

@TimegazerS45231 Yeah this one seems to come up a lot. If enemies become too spongy it can make every combo and ability feel less meaningful.

I'm open to essentially any style of combat if it feels fun and fair. Those are fairly vague concepts, but I don't want my hits to do no stagger, where any touch from an opponent completely stops me, as an example. Pointless stats also are frustrating from the inventory side.

When you say stats, do you mean things like attributes, buffs or status effects? I feel like systems like that usually fit RPG style games better.

I mean kind of like defensive stats in Dark Souls for example, which doesn't really matter but still has complex numbers for it. Or just like having a piece of gear having .7% boost to critical chance or some such, where I won't even remember the name of that item.

the more the meta manifests, the more i get bored. conceptualization of new mechanics (or fun interpretations) seems a skill only one dev per decade has, once in his lifetime

Do you mean games starting to feel too similar to everything else on the market, or more like the gameplay itself becoming repetitive over time?

long invulnerable sequences with 1 opportunity to punish mixed with rng minions shooting or staggering you color coded/forcing you to play in a specific weapon. making 50% of a fight a QTE big dialogue transitions between or at the start you cant skip after the first time

Yeah, I feel like modern action games don't rely on QTE nearly as much anymore. Older games definitely used them a lot more.

When it emphasizes parrying over attacking.

Level scaling is my biggest pet peeve. Ok - Forced PVP / PVPVE as well as Pay to Win, lootboxes etc.

Yeah I get that. I'm not really a fan of monetization options showing up in single player games either.

@lofi_lover0930 The top 3 things that's kill an action game for me is 1. Clunky/wonky gameplay (if it's not fun I'm out) 2. Lack of moves/weapons(I don't mind using one weapon all game as long as I'm not using the same 3-4 combos) 3. Bland controls(I'm sick of mashing one button, more combos)

@lofi_lover0930 I can definitely understand that. I'm actually curious how my game would feel to you, since those are exactly the kinds of things I've been trying to avoid.

@lofi_lover0930 Demo beaten and I've got to say this is the most polished indie game I've played. The parry system is great(letting perfect dodges count as parries is chef kiss),combat was perfect so far(gonna see how weapon switching mid combo feels),and my god that 2nd boss fights, magical.

@lofi_lover0930 Haha thank you so much! Honestly I was a bit worried people might hate it when trying it, so hearing that you enjoyed it really makes me happy and motivated. I'll keep working hard to make it even better.

@lofi_lover0930 thank you for making this gem, I can't wait to buy this day 1