Biggest Problems in Game Design?

[Jigen]

What do you think are some of the largest issues in game design currently?

I have to say for me personally it's story games with little to no actual game in them like Telltale games, Firewatch, ect.

[Sorain]

Honestly I think the WW2 fatigue has more to do with 95% of the games focusing on Europe. You don't see the pacific campaign (which you'd think you would see more of given most of these games are aimed at american audiences) and the Russian front. You don't see much of North Africa, which is a damn shame. WW1 hardly saw much, which was one of the reasons Battlefield 1 got some initial interest from me. Frankly I think FPS and TPS game developers should either mine history for more uncovered conflicts or to avoid any obligation to do history justice, just make things up. Give me an alternate WW1 where steam punk armored exoskeletons are a thing to overcome the trench warfare problem (instead of land dreadnoughts aka Tanks) or a nice modern style conflict on a semi-terraformed Mars colony after a civilization collapse pushed them back to 20 minutes into the future levels of tech.

[wurmalex]

The biggest issue i have with games nowadays is the fact that most games try to be more of a movie than a game. I just hate it, when you get interrupted every 5 minutes because the game wants to show you an unskippable cutscene that gets boring after the first time watching. It just interrupts the flow of the gameplay and ads nothing to the replay value.

[DarknessFX]

I think Trend Followers are the worst.

World of Warcraft is making money? Lets set all devs to build MMOs.
Overwatch is making money? So Drawn to death and Lawbreakers looks like a good idea.
LOL and DOTA are huge esports? Paragon and HOTS will do amazing too.
PUBG and Fortnite are trending? Lets make everything battle royalle.

[bdemarchi]

To launch an incomplete game with a bunch of DLCs with content that should have been in a $60 game in the first place. The amount and the severity of bugs gamers are getting is ridiculous. It is almost as if they just didn't test it at all.

That is widespread behavior in the industry and it does not seems game producers care about the backlash, too many people buy the games anyway, I am including myself in that list.

[Verhoven 69]

Making them intuitive and user friendly.

[Omen Gaming]

I think there's more than one problem with modern games but then I am not sure if some of them have always been that way and I've just been too blind to see it until recently. For a start I tend to feel games tread the same ground over and over. First and third person shooters tend to for the most part be set in either the first or second world war but there have been other conflicts that could and probably would be a good setting for a game, I personally was glad to play the first Black Ops in the Call Of Duty Series though more for the setting rather than the actual game play but that is my personal preference and sure a lot will have enjoyed it. There are other issues I have too, sandbox games where they fill the game with collectibles at the expense in some cases of stories and missions and variety in game-play.

[ConspiracyLance]

I am dying to see what Romero will do in Blackroom.

You should look up DUSK. Made me forget everything about ANYTHING since it got released 6 days ago.

[PriestTroit]

Specific to RPGs...

One thing definitely has to be the general trend towards fully voice-acted NPC because it hugely restricts the range of cool dialogue options. Take Fallout 4 or even some of my favorite games like Mass Effect for example... So many times you're restricted to so few dialogue options because the developers can't finance the huge number of awesome ideas the writers might have because it's just too expensive and time-consuming to fully voice it all. If you look at games like Morrowind or the older Fallout games which either aren't or have very limited voice acting you'll see just how many more options you have in dialogue.

Also, I think the dialogue wheel becoming popular in Bioware-type games has led to the simplification of dialogue. It's basically always clear which options are the "good" or "bad" options and only really serve to make it easy for the player to predict how NPCs will react to whichever dialogue selection. Up is basically always the "good" answer and down is pretty much always the "bad" answer. In real life and many older RPGs (even pen and paper RPGs), it's waaaay more difficult to predict how a NPC you've never met before will react to the things you say. Gone are the times when you'd have to think about what the NPC has said to you and what you know about him in order to figure out the best course of action. Modern RPG design makes it so you just don't have to think anymore. Least that's how I see it.

[Jigen]

Being a great fan of old-school shooters. I guess what disapoints me the most is the lack of interesting level design. I always loved the maze like levels of older FPS. Jedi Knight: Dark Force 2 being my favourite in this category.

While I do understand some people hate the keys/secrets hunts for a good reason. I personally miss them a lot as I find very little reasons to explore in modern FPS games.

I am dying to see what Romero will do in Blackroom.

[Jigen]

It's A issue, not THE issue. Yes, I think its unreasonable to kill off all AAA game companies for what some of them do. I think that'd be a shitty industry.

[ConspiracyLance]

Being a great fan of old-school shooters. I guess what disapoints me the most is the lack of interesting level design. I always loved the maze like levels of older FPS. Jedi Knight: Dark Force 2 being my favourite in this category.

While I do understand some people hate the keys/secrets hunts for a good reason. I personally miss them a lot as I find very little reasons to explore in modern FPS games.

[Ary]

Fetch quests or radiant quests has to be one of them. They're terrible.

[MacSalad]

This rings true. I think Anthem is going to fall victim to this. I'm sure EA is telling their shareholders that Anthem is going to make them a ton of money. What happens if it doesn't cause stock prices to soar? They'll try to find other ways to squeeze more revenue out of players.

[Ultimate Goose]

No one cares aobut UX anymore. They don't care about controls, keeping the mechanics sharp, a good UI, comprehensive options menus... they know they can just squeeze a game out and get away with it because most gamers don't care about those things.

yeah these days I think what we are seeing is a loop to trap the consumer inside of, get them on the game and get them addicted via the repetitive actions of the game, and simple enough to keep them at it for hours, the loop is injected with microtransactions, and hey presto, money making machine. Sad but true, that this process stops those points you mention from being developed further. I would like to see different hud types per game.