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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''[[Mario Kart|Blue Shells]] Ruin Everything''
|''[[Boxer Hockey]]'', [http://boxerhockey.fireball20xl.com/example.php?id{{=}}037_blue_shells.jpg Episode 97].}}
A sub trope for [[The Scrappy]]. It describes a game play mechanic in an ''otherwise'' fun/enjoyable game that generates a sizable hatedom. Perhaps it's out of character to the game, its quality is lower than the rest of the game, or it really exposes the problems in the game. Often the cause of [[Scrappy Level]] if in a video game. Also related to [[Unexpected Gameplay Change]] and [[Gameplay Roulette]]. Gameplay tactics do not count unless it's the exploitation of glitches and hacks. Otherwise, that's just abuse of an otherwise fair and good mechanic that causes the game to be played in a way that it's not supposed to. [[That One Boss]] is only related to this if a boss villain's status under that trope is solely because of a Scrappy game play mechanic.
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For a sometimes overlapping [[Sister Trope]], see [[That One Rule]].
{{examples}}▼
Not to be confused with a [[Wrench Wench]] character who nobody likes.
▲{{examples|suf=s}}
== General ==▼
*
* Likewise, any website that uses a # at the end of the URL or other foul cheatery to effectively disable your browser's "Back" button, requiring you either click-and-hold to manually select a previous site, quickly click and hope you outrun the
** Specifically unnecessary "#" (unless the browser is adapted to this bad practice) makes cache-friendly refresh more of a bother: if you click on the address bar and press "Enter" without changing it, the browser tries to send you to a named anchor, because that's how "#" is supposed to be used. same goes for sticking generic named anchor on every page a few lines below the start of page and automatically linking all the pages with it.
* Ads on [[YouTube]]. Not only do they play the same ones over and over whenever you watch another video of the same series/genre, but the more annoying ads can't be skipped. Sometimes the ads even jam the video.▼
** Also, most shows on TV have a script designed in a way that a scene ends when a commercial break is supposed to occur. Commercials on YouTube have been known to come on when a character or host is still talking, in the middle of a ''sentence''.
** Even worse, they often ask you to "rate" the ads, to give them a "thumb's up" or "thumb's down". It is doubtful anyone has given many "thumb's ups" to any before hitting the "skip ad" option.
* Any game (looking at you, Evergrace II) where all the characters you play have a shared life bar. This leads to frustrating moments, especially if some of the characters you control are played by the computer!▼
* Motion control on the PS3. Having to suddenly jerk the controller around runs counter to most gamers' instincts, and its detection is inconsistent and random, but first-party titles continue to shoehorn it in because it is a system feature and ''must be showcased''.▼
** Every console with motion sensing ([[PlayStation 2]] with Eyetoy, [[
** It's not just motion sensing. The analog buttons on the [[PlayStation 2]] had the same issue, such as in MGS2 where pushing the look button hard in a locker caused you to bang Raiden's head into the locker door and alert the guards.▼
** Flower did it well.▼
* To some, [[Press X to Not Die|Quick Time Events]] are a horrible implementation that interrupt the gameplay at the most inappropriate times just to activate a glorified cutscene. [[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee]] may have something to do with it, since it is one of his pet peeves.▼
* [[Tank Controls]] are severely divided by two factions. On one side, those who believe tank controls are a challenging feature; and on the other, people who believe tank controls are a lumbering dinosaur that should be long obsolete thanks to much more refined controls. The latter hates them for feeling clunky and making the character act all sluggish especially when trying to escape the thing that's trying to kill them.▼
== Action/Action Adventure ==
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** The Spirit Flute duets have a small hatedom due to the item's incredibly finicky and picky nature.
* ''[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link]]'':
** On the NES had a scrappy mechanic that absolutely made no sense when compared to the other Zelda games, even the first one. The game used a lives system and if you happened to run out, it was back to the very start (Zelda's palace) which meant a ''very long'' trek back to where you were before you died and believe me, the majority of the dungeons were worlds apart from each other. But at least the last dungeon, which is the farthest from the starting, lets you continue from the beginning of that dungeon (and this mercy is only to work around technical limitations with how the final dungeon is stored separately from everything else).
** All experience goes back down to zero when you get Game Over. 20 EXP away from a level up? Too bad, it's all a waste, [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|should have gone to an easier area to grind that last bit]]. And those big EXP pick-ups you grabbed during this time? Oh, they're not coming back. And this isn't even taking into consideration the large number of enemies who steal EXP whenever they hit you. They can't drain levels from you, but if you've collected 200 EXP and are 100 away from a level, getting hit enough will force you down to 0/300 EXP to the next level. Basically, in order to level up efficiently, you have to make sure you're not anywhere near EXP drainers (and they're annoyingly common). Maybe even worse: after getting a Game Over any extra lives you've picked up (and there aren't oo many of them) are [[Lost Forever]].
* ''[[Skyward Sword]]'':
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** There's also treasure. When you pick up a new type of treasure, you get the usual animation of Link holding it up and a text box announcing what it is, followed by your tally of that item going up by one. All well and good, except that this aspect resets ''every time you start up the game;'' anything you haven't picked up ''in the current game session'' triggers the time-consuming cutscene all over again because, evidently, [[Viewers are Morons|you are woefully incapable]] of remembering what a bird feather is between game sessions.
** This game also inexplicably did away with adjustable text speed, uses a ridiculously slow speed as the default, ''and'' has more text-exposition than any other Zelda game, so be prepared to sit through many lines of tedious text, often text you've been force-read dozens of times already, every time you buy anything or talk to anyone for any other reason. Plot-relevant text is even slower. Holding down the A button speeds it up a tiny bit, but not nearly enough to prevent boring an average-speed reader to death.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Ōkami|Okami]]'' has the digging minigame. It is a timed event which requires you to dig by using your brush powers to remove certain obstacles while you [[Escort Mission|escort a companion]] whose life mission it seems [[Too Dumb to Live|is to walk into every time reducing object possible.]] Add to this that on the Wii version, the brush controls only work half the time. Also, certain actions such as blowing your companion over gaps or shooting them up with water spouts only work if your timing is absolutely dead on, and even then he will tend to walk right off the edge you just popped him up on, making you start again. Thankfully, there's only two times it's necessary and they're the easiest ones.
* ''[[Ōkamiden|Okamiden]]'' has its own, which is both simpler and far more pervasive: Ink doesn't regenerate. This will cause you an enormous amount of pain during certain boss fights, particularly [[That One Boss|King Fury]].
* The Information Gathering missions from the first ''[[Assassin's Creed (video game)|Assassin's Creed I]]'' game, so much that the first order of business for ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'' was taking them out and replacing them with a more natural mission system.
* The follower system in ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood]]'' and ''[[Assassin's Creed: Revelations]]'' have gotten a fair share of flack for making gameplay too easy.
* Den Defense from ''[[Assassin's Creed: Revelations]]'' is an [[Unexpected Gameplay Change]] complete with a poor interface and zig-zagging difficulty. One of the first things confirmed for ''[[Assassin's Creed III]]'' was that Den Defense would be cut.
* ''[[Mega Man X]]'':
** Ride Chaser levels (X4 and X5 especially). Walls that block you come out of nowhere, the damn things aren't very responsive anyway, and maybe a second to respond to changing terrain, bottomless pits, and the aforementioned walls. Significantly less scrappy in X8, but still annoying.
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** You can't mention that move without bringing up the fact that the "Up" button is used to grab ropes as well. If you're in the habit of holding "Up" when jumping along horizontal ropes situated over spike pits and whatnot, a single enemy in your path can make you accidentally trigger Zero's diving attack, sending you back to whatever obscenely-placed checkpoint you're forced back to.
** Even worse, for the Anniversary Collection, the developers were planning on changing the controls for the attack to prevent the above issues from happening, but they were barred thanks to the existence of the ''[[Video Game Remake|Maverick Hunter X]]'' game; yes, because they were expecting to build a series out of it, and change the controls when they got to ''that'' game, the Anniversary Collection version of ''X6'' got gypped out of having this particular scrappy mechanic taken out. '''''[[Big "What?"|WHAT?!]]'''''
** ''X5'' had random Reploids in a few levels, who were meant to be hostages and could be rescued simply by touching them, as they reward you with an extra life and a (usually minor) health refill. This was their only use, and in a game where you get unlimited continues anyway, their helpfulness was a little questionable. Altogether, though, not too scrappy. X6 put sixteen of these hostage Reploids in each level, and [[Guide Dang It|some of them give you upgrades with no in-level indication of who gives what--or indeed, anything]]. That's... annoying. ''X6'' also introduced these [[Goddamn Bats]] called Nightmares (the floating tentacled things that drop souls required to use the aforementioned upgrades on a character, in itself another
** ''X6'' flip-flopped a little on the subject of how easy it should be to thwart a Nightmare from possessing a hostage. On one hand, any hostage within range would draw the Nightmare's undivided attention, and you could shoot them in the back as they slowly flew toward the hostage if you were feeling that risky. On the other hand, some Nightmares are very cruelly placed, to the point where one Nightmare in particular is ''directly on top of a hostage Reploid.'' [[Luck-Based Mission|Yes, this means you could lose a Reploid before you can even see him.]]
** ''X7'' would have been bad enough even if its targeting system worked as intended.
* ''[[Devil May Cry]] 4'':
** The Devil Bringer Nero uses annoys some fans of the series in that it is overpowered and that combat becomes more of a one-hit ''[[God of War]]'' button pressing sequence rather than dishing out the combos... but the problem with Nero is that his move list is limited and thus to deal major damage you usually have to use the Devil Bringer.
** Which count as a
* ''[[Dynasty Warriors]] 6'':
** It introduced a new combat engine, Renbu (which means "Endless Dance"), which [[Meaningful Name|no longer limited attacks to a simple string of striking attacks as they could go on infinitely at any time]] (Including the newly implemented string of charge attacks). As your Renbu level increased, more attacks (striking and charge) are added to your attack string. However, the only way to increase your Renbu level is by constantly attacking enemies (raising your chain counter), but that's not the worse of it. Your Renbu gauge can decrease by either not raising (or starting) your chain counter (Making this very frustrating in escort missions) or by taking heavy damage from enemy attacks.
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** The tightrope walk sections in ''[[Tomb Raider]] Chronicles'' would count too. Lara can easily fall off if you fail to regain her balance and crossing is sometimes based on luck. Since Lara losing her balance is randomized, you could wind up spending more time readjusting than actual tightrope walking.
** The poison mechanic in ''Tomb Raider III'' and ''The Last Revelation''. Once you were poisoned, you'd gradually lose health and the only way to cure it was by using your vital health kits. What made this worse was most enemies that could poison you either traveled in groups or were hidden from view.
* ''Super [[Metroid]]'' had an infamous [[Wall Jump]], which required the player to roll-jump towards a wall and hit the opposite direction on the control pad, before pressing the jump button a millisecond later. This took ''hours'' to perfect and was needed to escape [[That One Level|a certain area]], and to [[
** The Shinespark jump from Super Metroid allowed Samus to store energy from the Speed Booster and use it to make a super-jump. It was a difficult but manageable technique that wasn't used very much. Someone on the development team must have loved the jump and thought this was a shame, so it's used ''way too often'' in Zero Mission, which wouldn't be so bad if these jumps didn't require the player to stop the jump and re-store the energy. Admittedly, this is only for optional powerups, but 100% completionists will quickly learn to loathe the Shinespark.
* ''[[Metroid Prime]]'':
** The first two games are good games, with just an unfortunate implementation of a [[Fake Longevity|Scavenger hunt]] toward the end. The first Prime game isn't all that bad, since you can collect the required artifacts throughout the game, with only one unavailable until the endgame (And even then, it's only located two rooms away from the spot where the endgame really starts). The second game is ''horrible'': you must have the Dark Visor to begin acquiring the
** The third game has it too (GFS ''Valhalla'' and the Energy Cells). They just integrated it more skillfully with the main adventure, and you don't ''need'' all of the Cells to complete the game. In addition, a simple speed trick on the Valhalla allows you to skip two more cells in the Aurora Chamber; if you're just looking for bare-bones completion, you needn't go out of your way at all for Corruption's scavenger hunt.
** It should be noted that while you can snag a few of Prime 2's artifacts as soon as you get the Dark Visor, about 2/3s of the way through the game, if you're going for a full logbook you can't get ''a single one'' before snagging the Light Suit and visiting the room in Dark Aether where the artifacts must eventually be taken at least once, or else you'll miss out on one Lore scan per artifact obtained for a total of nine.
** Even ''Metroid'' '''''hacks''''' have been known to imitate the Prime series' scavenger hunts. Super Metroid Redesign sends you in search of twelve well-hidden Chozo guardians, some of which are inaccessible until the right conditions obtain. The worst is a tube in Maridia which, unlike all other tubes of that design, can't be broken by Power Bombs; instead, it breaks when you defeat Ridley (halfway across the planet).
** While ''[[Metroid: Other M]]'' wisely stowed away with the idea of a third-act scavenger hunt, it introduced the Concentration-based health system. In every other Metroid game, enemies would drop health (and missile) boosts when you killed them, keeping you topped up on-the-go. Other M does away with this completely; the ONLY ways in other M to restore your health at all are through save stations (which function here as recharge rooms as well, similar to those in the Chozo Ruins and Mothership in Zero Mission), and through a new technique called Concentration. At any time, you can point your Wii remote upwards and hold A to replenish your missiles fully, but with health it's trickier: you can only restore health when you're so low that a few more hits will kill you, and to do it you need to perform the technique while standing still and unable to defend yourself for a few seconds. Now, where are you most likely to run your health low enough to be allowed to use this technique? In heated battles where the enemy won't exactly sit around while you're trying to heal. And even then, it only gives back 99 units of health at first - you can find upgrades that increase how much you can get back, but you need to go out of your way for them. It turns the entire game into a [[Nintendo Hard]] endurance test. Though, I suppose we should have expected something like this from the same development team that brought us [[Sarcasm Mode|such fair and reasonable entities]] as [[Dead or Alive|ALPHA-152]].
** Other M's "[[Pixel Hunt
* ''[[Crash Bandicoot]] Warped'':
** It has the fruit bazooka, which sucks most of the challenge out of the game. Too many enemies up ahead? No problem, [[Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him|just shoot them]] from a distance. In its defense, you don't get the launcher until you're 4/5ths through the standard game, and the gems may have been too tedious without it.
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** The fruit bazooka in ''Wrath of Cortex'' is arguably '''worse''' than ''Warped'''s; it's just as overpowered, but it has some sort of lock-on thing which doesn't even work half the time, and the aiming is absolutely dreadful.
** Coco, while opinions of the character itself vary, her playable appearances in the games tend to act as a weaker (ie. less fun) variant of Crash. In ''Warped'' she is limited to a few vehicle levels (the majority of which Crash himself can utilize in this or previous titles) her actual on foot 'platforming' being limited to walking (slowly) all of five steps to Pura and the level's exit. In ''Wrath Of Cortex'' she can play through whole levels, however she has a far more limited number of abilities and attacks compared to Crash, making her respective levels somewhat more tedious. It doesn't help that, unlike the fruit bazooka, you ''have'' to use her. Either way she sadly isn't giving [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Tails]] or [[Super Mario Bros.|Luigi]] a run for their money.
* Aerial levels in ''[[Drakengard]]'' are, sadly, half the game. They start off all right, but then the enemies gain homing attacks. ''Every last one of the enemies'', that is. You have homing shots yourself (albeit weaker than non-homing) and a magic-attack "bomb," but in order to gain [[
* ''[[Battletoads]]'':
** The 2 player mode is cruel enough to force both players to restart a section if either one runs out of lives. Most of the time, the surviving player will be low on lives and be the one to run out next time. [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]] and [[A Day in the Limelight|Kyle Justin]] ranted about this long before reaching the eleventh stage, which has an out-and-out bug that makes it impossible in 2 player.
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== Adventure ==
* The vegetable picking in ''[[Putt-Putt]] Enters the Race''. First off, it's a puzzle designed like a gigantic maze. What makes it annoying is that some foods take ''ages'' just to get to, and once you make it to them, you have to retrace your steps, so that needlessly doubles the amount of time it takes. To make matters worse, you have to be right next to the vegetable in order to get it or get ready to [[Stop Helping Me!|be told you can't pick it over and over again.]] It doesn't help at all that the movements cannot be skipped at all, unlike the rest of the game.
* Instead of the classic [[The Many Deaths of You|wrong-choices-mean-death approach]], ''[[Time Hollow]]'' makes Game Overs possible with a health meter. It can only be refilled by wandering the game looking for "chrons" and watching an unskippable cutscene each time you find one. But you're unlikely to even need this, as you only lose health for "digging" in the wrong place, and most of the digging puzzles are very
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** All of those "glitches" were either known physics exploits that the developers were aware of and chose to leave in the game, or fully functioning, legitimate techniques that intentionally added by the developers into the original Nintendo 64 Smash and carried over to it's sequel. Furthermore, many characters in SSBM actually 'needed' the extra speed and agility these techniques provided in order to keep up with the likes of Marth, Fox, and Sheik. The lack of these moves coupled with the removal of hitstun (which enabled combos) is actually seen as a large scrappy mechanic in and of itself for many players, because a lot of their favorite characters were utterly nerfed as the result.
** ''Brawl'''s random multiplayer. You're pitted against 1-3 anonymous opponents, and when someone quits, they're taken over by a CPU. Without notifying you. Most annoyingly, this feature was even touted on the official website. Unless you know the AI well enough, you'll never know whether your match was spent entirely with living, breathing humans or that awesome finish you pulled off in the final moments of the match was against the CPU.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Smackdown vs. Raw]]'':
** Since the 2006 edition, gender restrictions have been placed (no more intergender matches). In SvR2K10, a new match type was introduced: Mixed Tag where it was the only way to have intergender matches. The problem with the match is that if a man and woman are legal in the ring one of them has a five count to make a tag or it's automatic DQ. Worse, and not just in this match but in '''''any''''' match, the men get disqualified for hitting the women even if it's by accident [[Double Standard|while the women, on the other hand, are allowed to attack them as much as they please (If countered, they'll win automatically be DQ).]] Unfortunate indeed, but this is a reflection of the current "rules" in the WWE, which is sort of the point of Smackdown vs Raw. Thanks to PG and other things men cannot hit women and the five count is an accurate reflection of tag rules, as it has to be girl on girl and thus if the others tag it means that you also tagged.
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* In Deadliest warrior the stamina bar embodied this trope to the max, even heavily armored warriors like Knights and Spartans could have their blocking ability momentarily disabled or their arm broken due to their shield being punched but not to being shot by a Blunderbuss.
** Even more so: one hit kills with ranged weapons.
▲== General ==
▲* An internet example. It's happened to you before, where you accidentally roll your cursor over an ad and it expands to take up 95% of the screen. Almost always happens when you're reading what it covers. Or it starts making noise.
▲* Likewise, any website that uses a # at the end of the URL or other foul cheatery to effectively disable your browser's "Back" button, requiring you either click-and-hold to manually select a previous site, quickly click and hope you outrun the [[Scrappy Mechanic]], or ''[[Rage Quit|close the browser window in disgust]]''.
▲* Ads on [[YouTube]]. Not only do they play the same ones over and over whenever you watch another video of the same series/genre, but the more annoying ads can't be skipped. Sometimes the ads even jam the video.
▲* Any game (looking at you, Evergrace II) where all the characters you play have a shared life bar. This leads to frustrating moments, especially if some of the characters you control are played by the computer!
▲* Motion control on the PS3. Having to suddenly jerk the controller around runs counter to most gamers' instincts, and its detection is inconsistent and random, but first-party titles continue to shoehorn it in because it is a system feature and ''must be showcased''.
▲** Every console with motion sensing ([[PlayStation 2]] with Eyetoy, [[PlayStation 3]] with Sixaxis and the Wii's Remote to name some) seem to have developers who love to "utilize" it in an entirely half-assed way that's simply a less functional version of traditional controls than rely on it as their selling gimmick.
▲** It's not just motion sensing. The analog buttons on the [[PlayStation 2]] had the same issue, such as in MGS2 where pushing the look button hard in a locker caused you to bang Raiden's head into the locker door and alert the guards.
▲** Flower did it well.
▲* To some, [[Press X to Not Die|Quick Time Events]] are a horrible implementation that interrupt the gameplay at the most inappropriate times just to activate a glorified cutscene. [[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee]] may have something to do with it, since it is one of his pet peeves.
▲* [[Tank Controls]] are severely divided by two factions. On one side, those who believe tank controls are a challenging feature; and on the other, people who believe tank controls are a lumbering dinosaur that should be long obsolete thanks to much more refined controls. The latter hates them for feeling clunky and making the character act all sluggish especially when trying to escape the thing that's trying to kill them.
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** Very few players even ''have'' a large interest in PvP, and most of those people are on one server.
** And due to the lack of interest in [[PvP]], the classes are largely unbalance. Paladins have a large inherent advantage against melees (especially PLD/RDM) and a skilled Red Mage can beat pretty much any class.
* For a long time in ''[[City of Heroes]]'', when a team completed a mission that multiple members had assigned, only the character whose mish had been selected by the team leader got completion credit from the contact. A minor thing, until you get to the Hollows and all the contacts are linear in the zone story arc, so every hero of the same approximate level is doing the same missions from the same contact. Nothing like a
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'':
** A perfect example would be the [[Wrath Of The Lich King]] xpac's Heroic or [[Hard Mode]] system, which separated ALL raid content into Heroic/Regular varieties, giving each variety its own separate lockout, and then separating FURTHER into 10man/25man varieties, meaning each active raiding guild could hit all relevant raiding content ''four times per week'', once 10, once 25, once 10 hm, once 25 hm. The exact same content slogged through ''four times'' each week. Raid rewards were based not only on individual boss-kill drops, but also on special tokens garnered per boss-kill - meaning in order to remain competitive, each raid was not so much ''allowed'' to hit this content four times per week as ''forced'' to. There are no words for how tedious and hated this system was, as it caused content to become old and tiresome ''four times as quickly'' and was, thankfully, phased out in the very next major content patch.
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** "Ronin". In a Normal run after ascension (which the game heavily suggests you take), you cannot gain any outside help for 1,000 turns. In theory, this is to make the game more fun and challenging by making the player have to rebuild from scratch (with what they have in Hagnk's as a buffer) instead of just getting everything from their friends. In practice, having to do the early levels over without even being able to tap into the Clan meat generators, Flea Market, or Mall is just plain ''boring'' and takes forever (most players can only do about seventy turns a day). Players griping about how many turns of Ronin they have left are common sights in chat.
* ''[[Lusternia]]'' has a few:
** The [[Sanity Meter]] gradually erodes when time is spent on [[Death World|The Astral Plane]] or inside [[Cosmic Horror|Muud]]. Initially just causing [[Reality Is Out to Lunch|amusingly nonsensical hallucinations]], it rapidly worsens into full blown insanity, represented by approximately 50% of your commands being cancelled out or replaced with others. This wouldn't be so bad if Astral and Muud weren't the two best places to [[Level Grinding|grind]] for high-levelled players outside of Aetherspace (which itself qualifies as a
** The Envoy system is also not great. The idea is to have representatives from each [[Character Class System|class]] liaise with the administration to preserve [[Competitive Balance]]. But [[Humans Are
* ''[[
** The way people are paired up in the Fist of Guthix minigame. Level 10s playing against level 100s is an all too common sight.
** In dungeoneering, "You can't light a fire here." You do not know the reason why a fire cannot be lit there. You still drop the logs even if you cannot light a fire there. However, logs will not be dropped out of DG when you can't light a fire.
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== Party/Casual Game ==
* ''[[Mario Party]]'':
** Chance Time, for its [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/01/29/ tendency to screw over more skilled players with forced redistribution of coins and stars]. On that same note, among more skilled players, and especially [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys]], luck/excessive chance is ''always'' the Scrappy (one of the few things where it's possible for them to agree with [[Scrub
** "Rotating the Control Stick" minigames too, as seen above. Hard enough for many, they ended up causing various blisters, other painful side effects, damaged the sticks, and ended up eliminated from future ''[[Mario Party]]'' games.
** The cheating AI in general. [[It Gets Worse]] as the series progresses to boot.
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== Platform Game ==
* ''[[Super Mario World (video game)|Super Mario World]]'', ''[[New Super Mario Bros.]]'' and ''[[New Super Mario Bros. Wii]]''.
** Those God forsaken block platforms/Trains/Snakes. You know, from Roy's Castle, Larry's Castle (Mario World),The Seventh Castle, The Second Tower of World 8 (''New Super Mario Bros'') and Lemmy's Castle (NSMB Wii). They go pretty fast, through lots of dangerous obstacles, above bottomless pits and lava, and take the most convoluted paths imaginable as if the game designers felt extra malicious and wanted to punish the player. [[He's Back|They're back]] in ''[[Super Mario Galaxy 2]]''.
** Coin trails in ''[[Super Mario World (video game)|Super Mario World]]''. You know, the ones directed by the D Pad and where you have to hit a P Switch to turn into temporary blocks.
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** [[Not Quite Flight|Fluzzard]]. Full stop. First of all, [[Waggle]] is in full effect - the bird is very annoying to control. Secondly, it is also something of a [[Replacement Scrappy]], of both the Red Star and Manta (which, though sometimes just as irritating, was generally fun to use). Finally, [[Unexpected Gameplay Change|one must wonder why exactly something that involves no platforming whatsoever is even included in a platformer]].
** Then there's the Comet Medals and Green Stars in the Fluzzard levels. You know those rings you went past? You have to go through them all, then catch the medal in mid air at high speed. One of said rings requires about a 90-degree sharp turn into a tunnel from the other side of the level. And Green Stars? They're extremely easy to miss even when Fluzzard is directed straight at them.
** The worst part is that the Fluzzard levels are almost identical to the [https://web.archive.org/web/20130801121115/http://www.zeldawiki.org/Fruit_Pop_Flight_Challenge Fruit Pop Flight Challenge] from ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess]].'' However, the Fluzzard levels are outclassed by far by the minigame from a game that came out four years earlier. In the Zelda minigame, the game involves actual flight, more mobility, and works off of the Wii's pointer function instead of inaccurate waggle controls. Why they couldn't have simply copied the mechanics whole cloth and come out with a much less frustrating mechanic is anybody's guess.
** The spring. In what just might be the worst Mario powerup ever, movement is very wobbly, you can't stand still while you're wearing it, and you have to have pinpoint precise timing in order to execute a high jump.
** Also, when you die in the original Galaxy, you're [[But Thou Must!|
* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'':
** Mach Speed sections in ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (2006
** On the plus side, however, Sonic's death animations from when he runs into practically anything appears to be a hilarious, gravity defying break dance.
** Hunting and fishing in ''[[Sonic Adventure]]'' (''especially'' fishing), though the quality of these games is subjective to begin with.
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** They also appear in Circus Park in [[Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)|Shadow the Hedgehog]] but they are completely automatic, which cold you screw you up even further.
** In ''[[Sonic Heroes]]'', the pinball sections of Casino Park can be very frustrating to navigate through, as your movement is very unpredictable. What's even ''more'' frustrating that there is a [[Timed Mission]].
** Also from ''Heroes'', life meters for [[
** Thanks to the incompetence of the dev team, we have the "stop on a dime every time" no inertia physics engine of ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 4]]''. Among other things (like being able to continuously "walk" up slopes without slipping), the moment you let go of the D-Pad while in motion, you immediately come to a stop. While this could be a good thing, when trying to avoid flying into a pit, the problem is that ''it works even while you're in the air'', meaning if you don't manually keep Sonic moving in the direction a spring or a jump takes him, he'll suddenly stop in midair and drop like a stone as if he just slammed into an [[Invisible Wall]]. Considering that almost all Sonic games in the past never had this issue, this can make the game nigh-unplayable for a multitude of Sonic fans, and is in fact one of the most complained-about parts of the game.
** What really makes this bad is it robs you of the ability to curl into a ball and safely coast through levels, in addition to making it impossible to build up momentum on slopes to let the game treat you to a high speed section. You can hold down the D-pad while rolling to maintain some momentum, but having to do this all the time taxes the thumbs and can make the game ''physically painful'' to play.
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* ''Pixeljunk Eden'', such a beautiful game, but:
** Want to explore the beautiful, almost-abstract art levels? You can't. The whole thing is on a [[Nintendo Hard|strict]] [[Timed Mission|timer.]]
** The drop attack is mapped to the [[
** [[Back Tracking|For full completion, you must visit each level 5 times.]]
* ''[[Donkey Kong Country Returns]]'':
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** Eliminator mode in the various games is almost universally imbalanced, requiring mostly luck to get the right weapons and not so much player skill. The weapons were balanced for regular racing, so many didn't even do damage or very little, and some were grossly overpowered in a game mode where you didn't have to bother with speed. Wip3out was the worst offender since almost nothing did any noticable damage except for Energy Drain and Plasma Bolt, both a one-hit kill. It got better in later titles, but then participating in this mode became required to beat the game.
** Shooting a competing ship in the first ''Wipeout'' game would cause it to stall and you to crash into it. This was changed in the sequel so that shooting a ship would flip it up, enabling you to pass underneath. The frustration factor was cranked up again in the [[Sequel Escalation|degraded sequel]] ''Wip3out'' which reduced the flip duration so you would probably collide with the target anyway unless you fired at point blank range. And on a killing blow the disintegrating ship would stay at ground level and grind to a halt, bringing you to a very frustrating stop if you were unable to move out of the way quickly. And there was the [[Some Kind of Force Field|Force Wall]] weapon which covered half of the track ahead of you and bounced opponents backwards... [[Pinball Projectile|in your face]], catapulting you back at high speed. Add to this the chance to blow yourself up if the target deployed a [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|last second]] Reflector and it becomes clear that using weapons on opponents you don't particularly care about (ie. everyone but the opponent in first place) was more likely to hurt you than to help you.
* ''[[Initial D Arcade Stage]] 4'' sets arbitrary "speed limits" on turns. If you go over this speed limit, depending on whether you're playing version 1.2 or 1.5, then either your steering will lock up, causing you to crash into the outer wall unless you execute a "brake cancel" technique, or you will oversteer like hell. And if you hit a wall or suffer said understeer, your acceleration is permanently gimped and can only be fixed with brake cancelling. Which is done on a ''straightaway''. But that's not where the problems end. To get to the tuning shop, you have to eject your card three times. Not continue three times, you have to pick "NO" at the continue screen for it to count. This means that if you're playing several rounds in a row, then you'll be wasting chances to tune up your car if you continue each
* ''Burnout: Revenge!'' gave us "Traffic Checking". The idea being that your car can shunt small vehicles that are stationary/going the same way you are, out of the way. The problem however was that this also gave you boost. Normally boost was rewarded for risky driving, but Traffic Checking had no risk attached to it, unless you couldn't tell the back of a car from the back of a bus. Naturally smart players would change their strategy from trying to stay in oncoming where possible, to driving going the right way and shunting cars about in the process.
* ''[[Mario Kart]]'':
** The Blue Shells, Lightning Bolts and POWs. All of them all but undodgeable and all of them far too commonly occurring given their power (particularly in the Wii offering, due to the greater number of racers). This shifting baseline has caused what used to be items that occurred twice in a 4 race circuit to appearing in concurrent pickups. They can be mostly cut out in Mario Kart Wii by choosing the "strategic" item set, but only for local
** The weird thing is that most people assume that the mechanic that gave the trailing racers better items debuted in ''MK64''. [[Older Than They Think|It didn't]]. It was actually a feature in ''Super Mario Kart'', but only for the players since computers didn't use items at all. All ''64'' did was allow the computer racers to use items rather than their predictable and avoidable attacks. Oh, and as for ''Wii'', Red Shells are a valid item drop for even ''first place'', with Mushrooms being given to second place.
** Note that anything can be avoided while using a [[Invincibility Power-Up|Super Star]] (nearly impossible to get if blue shells are really a recurring problem for you), or going through one of the "boom tubes" (only in certain races), and POW blocks can be dodged by timing a jump just right (of course, [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|the computer almost always does on 150cc]]) or ([[Guide Dang It|in an undocumented feature...]]) by shaking the wheel as if doing a stunt the moment before it hits, which is hard to control (which, again, the computer almost always manages on 150cc). Also, blue shells could be blocked in Super Mario 64 if you had a blue shell trailing behind you (generally only possible via the Boo or on the tracks that had boxes with guaranteed blue shells), or evaded in the DS and Wii outings, if you had either exact timing and used a mushroom or even more ridiculous timing when drift boosting which allowed you to outrun the explosion just as the Blue Shell reared up to dive down at you. On the Wii you could even dodge them by using the boost granted after a stunt which led to some extremely lucky players evading blue shells by doing a jump in a quater pipe.
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* The PS1 port of ''[[Dance Dance Revolution]]'' [[Fan Nickname|1st Mix]] brings us Arrange Mode, which is essentially the same as normal mode, with one key difference: if you step on a panel when you aren't supposed to, instead of nothing happening, you instead get an "OUCH!!" judgment, which drains your [[Life Meter]] even moreso than a Miss. So if you have a crappy pad, or you like [[Self-Imposed Challenge|freestyling]], or you step on panels when nothing's happening to keep the beat...
* Minigames in the ''[[Patapon]]'' series. The main gameplay uses player-entered rhythm based musical sequences that call for a variety of attacks, and then ''every single'' minigame is a call-repeat rhythm game that uses a single button (or TWO for a minigame in ''Patapon 2''). These minigames are sometimes the only way to get top level weapons.
* Spinners in ''[[Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan]]'' and ''[[Elite Beat Agents]]'' are what set the dedicated players apart. Partway or at the very end of a song, you're meant to stop tapping beats and instead draw really fast circles on your DS screen while a timer counts down. Do well and you'll gain tons of bonus points - do poorly and you'll lose a sizable portion of your health meter. Towards the end of the harder difficulties, the spinners get so demanding that no matter how flawless a player's rhythm is, they'll live or die based solely on the dexterity of their wrist. Naturally, those who fail to meet the expectations of the later spinners will quickly grow to hate them since they alone make the final songs near-unbeatable or at least impossible to score a Perfect on, putting the higher ranks out of reach.
* ''DJMAX Technika's'' unlock system. On completing certain missions in Platinum Crew mode, you'll unlock a song (or in the case of one mission, a course)...but you can only use that unlocked song or course 3 times before you have to unlock it again. Thankfully, this is being revised for ''Technika 2'' where you gain unlocks by simply going onto the Platinum Crew website and purchasing the unlocks once using your in-game currency. The one flipside to this is that unlocks are fairly expensive, especially for the more difficult songs.
* ''[[Beatmania IIDX]] 17 Sirius'':
** Backspin Scratches, in which you continously spin the turntable in one direction until the end of the note, then spin it the other way at the very end. It's awkward to keep spinning the turntable, and even moreso to spin it back at the end, especially if there are key notes between the start and the end of the scratching.
** [[DJ Hero]] fans share your pain. Scratch up-up-
* ''[[Rock Band]]'':
** A bug in drumming called "squeezing", which is a scrappy for those anal about the scoring. If you hit the crash on a fill a little early, and then in the next split-second hit what would have been there if the fill wasn't in the way, you get the points for the hitting those notes. This means you have to memorize what to hit and finish fills a little awkwardly for extra points. Usually not enough to make a difference unless both players are doing perfect, but can cause a rift between [[Scrub
** Drum fills in general are slightly controversial among [[Rock Band]] players, in that choosing not to trigger Overdrive can allow drummers to coast through parts of songs that might otherwise prove deviously hard. It does hurt your score to do this though, and it's basically a useless strategy in Rock Band 3, where no-fail mode does not disqualify.
* ''[[Vocaloid|Project Diva]]'':
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== Role Playing Games ==
* The item system in ''[[Parasite Eve]] 2''. Unlike other RPGs were you can access all your items at any time, Parasite Eve 2 made it where only items attached to your armor is what you can access during a battle. So if you attached 4 healing items, used them all up in a fight and need to get more, you're out of luck. Attaching items to your armor didn't free up any space in your main inventory.
* ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'':
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* ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]''
** Demyx fight. It's an otherwise enjoyable little battle until you have a small amount of time to defeat some spawned enemies... And not doing it in time is an instant game over... And there's only two viable tactics which can take them out... Which might be completely unavailable to you if you've just used certain combat options.
** In addition, the first game's Gummi ship sections were widely hated for being slow-paced and boring, which the developers [[Rescued
** The 3D control scheme was also featured partially in Neverland when you gain the power of flight, but you get it at the end and it's not neccessary to progress, perse. The fact that you can lock onto enemies, chests, and key items and automatically swim to their location made it moderately more tolerable. Then, in [[Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days|358/2 Days]], they bring the 3D mechanic back [[Damn You, Muscle Memory!|with messed up buttons]] but don't retain the lock-on shortcut - making fighting in mid-air incredibly irritating at best (and building a chain damn near impossible), considering how often flying enemies change their positions.
** The stealth missions in [[Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days|Days]], just the stealth missions. When following Pete, you have to ensure that he remains in your field of vision, while you avoid going into his (which are [[Color Coded for Your Convenience]]). This would be fine if a) [[Camera Screw|the camera didn't hate you with a vengeance]] and b) if your partner didn't stand aimlessly so that he could get caught. Also, when segments of this mechanic are implanted into Beast's Castle, it gets rather tedious when you have to avoid being caught by either Lumière or Cogsworth. What really puts the cherry on top of this massive disaster is that even if you try to glide over them, [[Face Palm|THEY STILL SEE YOU]].
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** Also the Escort Missions. Not only do you have escort mission after escort mission in the game, in some instances the people you're trying to escort will actually ''attack you''. To make it worse if even one of those idiots dies it's a game over.
* Players of [[Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne|Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne]] despise a certain part of the Labyrinth of Amala. Unless [[Trial and Error Gameplay|you know how to traverse a certain floor in]] [[Guide Dang It|a certain kalpa properly]], you will drop down onto a lower floor shrouded in red, HP-sapping gas. Thankfully the dungeon is optional, and once you beat a certain boss the gas goes away.
* ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'': Treasure chests in the game are subject to a few
** A treasure chest containing an [[Infinity+1 Sword|Infinity Plus One Spear]] gets changed to a semi-useless item if you open one of [[Guide Dang It|several normal-looking treasure chests found much earlier in the game]]. A definite [[Player Punch]] for anyone who doesn't use walkthroughs or avoids reading walkthroughs until they get stuck.
** Several treasure chests that can contain rare equipment (such as a Ribbon) have a much higher chance of ''not'' containing that cool piece of equipment. Many of them even have a chance of not even ''appearing''! Thanks for the forced [[Save Scumming]], Square!
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* ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]: Mask of the Betrayer'':
** For some people, the Spirit Eater curse. Of course, playing properly (with proper alignment), it's easy to keep the bar full with only limited need to eat soul, and lowest hunger.
** If you choose to be a [[Complete Monster]] with it however, your cravings will rapidly exceed the available supply of spirits. You can remedy this using Satiate, which often involves waiting
** Before patches, the Spirit Eater abilities shifted you either towards [[Lawful Good]] or [[Chaotic Evil]], bad news for [[Chaotic Good]], [[Lawful Evil]], or [[True Neutral]] characters.
* In many d20 and [[Dungeons
* In the ''[[Dragon Quest]]'' series, you can accidentally use up a turn by mistakenly selecting an item that has no use on the battlefield. This is especially bad in a boss fight. It actually takes a turn for the computer to tell you some smart-alec response.
* In ''[[Wizardry]]: Tale of the Forsaken Land'' the magic leveling system certainly qualifies. You make spells via some combination of two or three monster materials, which randomly drop from appropriate enemies (Thief's Blood from various level Thieves, for example). Fair enough. You can also access a special merchant halfway through the game. Sell him at least one of any material, leave the dungeon, and every time you come back you can buy an infinite quantity of that item. Here's the problem. You need to go to town to fuse materials into spell stones. You need to go to the dungeon to find or buy the materials. It is not unusual for spells to have several dozen levels before they're maxed out with each level barely improving anything individually. You can hold, at most 60 items at a time and more likely about half that number. Run through halls past weak enemies to shop, Transfer Potion to town, repeat with frequent breaks to get more Transfer Potions. Did I mention this game is rather slow paced in general, so each run is taking several minutes? Have fun spending about half your total play time on spell grinding.
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** This trope was ''Tales of the Tempest's'' greatest fail. The gameplay as a whole got criticism, but the battle system was particularly hated - terrible moving range, unfair attack range (from [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|enemies only, of course]]), and possibly the dumbest AI in the history of video gaming (elaborating - computer-controlled allies couldn't possibly be any more random. Most times they will run to the opposite side of the battlefied for ''no reason whatsoever'' and stay there for a couple of seconds before returning).
* ''[[Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World]]'':
** It has a few annoyances regarding its battle system as well. One of note is that the Stun status effect is infuriatingly common, seemingly more so than any previous Tales game. You can more or less count on being dazed an average of once per battle, and more the longer the battle lasts. Additionally, the monster capture system is somewhat convoluted and the AI settings for most monsters are very sparse compared to the human characters. Monsters can't use items, either. But wait, you can just use your favorite characters from [[Tales of Symphonia|the first game]], right? Problem solved! Except the Symphonia cast caps at level 50 and are basically useless for the [[Bonus Dungeon
** And from the same game, the Katz quests. They are not required to beat the game, but can get you a [[Disk One Nuke]] if you know what you're doing, and if you get unlucky you may need to do quite a few of these for access to the Twilight Palace (which contains some of the most [[Game Breaker|overpowered]] items ever seen in a [[Tales (series)]] game). The problem is that these quests obviously had zero effort put into them. The levels are higher than you're expected to be for that point of the game, which means you will likely have some trouble when you start out. The dialogue matches the characters as they were in the beginning of the game (which post-[[Character Development]] feels ''very'' out of place). They are [[Lost Forever]] if you don't do them all before the chapter you're in ends, at which point a bunch of new quests pop up to replace the old ones. And these quests repeat themselves from chapter to chapter. You are asked to do what is literally the exact same quest over again, for many of these quests, magnifying the above [[Character Development]] issues even further. There is one quest [[Hope Spot|where the character development is actually taken into account]]...only to have that one repeated in the next chapter, too.
*
** The strictly [[Level Scaling|scaled leveling]] mechanic attracts a large degree of hatred, particularly since the way the leveling system works punishes the player for not being a [[Munchkin]], makes exploring at low levels fairly boring (Why go look for a new dungeon in hopes of a cool item when it will have the same exact useless loot guarded by the exact same enemies?) and leads to oddities like being the champion of the arena at level 1 thanks to the fact that skills increase independently from level-ups.
** The stat mechanics are extremely wonky. If you want to increase your health, the best way to do it is to put on heavy armor and have a Mudcrab beat on you.
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** It fixes some of the issues from Fallout 3 and is better for it. Then Dead Money came around and added poison gas, speakers that make [[Your Head Asplode]], and untouchable holograms that shoot powerful lasers.
** Much less of an example for experienced RPG players (especially people familiar with Black Isle and early Bioware type [[CRP Gs]]). If you paid attention to the dialogue, leveled non-combat skills fully (rather than trying to munchkin as many skills as possible), and read the terminals. You barely had to deal with those mechanics, since they were only really noticeable on the "stupid man go straight" routes.
** Combat in ''Dead Money'' was deliberately
* ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'':
** It had the Junction System. You got a certain number of spells, and if you junctioned a spell to a given stat, the stat would increase. You could also junction to elemental and status resistance, or elemental attack. The elemental attack junction made things difficult because only a certain percentage of your attack was that elemental, so if I had (say) 20% Fire and my enemy took double damage from fire, I would only do 1.2 times the damage. (On the plus side, if my enemy absorbed fire, it would still do 60% damage.) Oh, and the spells don't always make sense; Raise gives + 30% defense to all elements. Stat junctions often make even less sense.
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* Several of the implementation systems in ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]''. [[Blatant Lies|The manual told you Terra's Morph lasted longer with every use, when it lasts longer with enemies killed but can be depleted.]] Mog's Dance and Gau's Rage make them uncontrollable, and Gau's Rages often make no sense. (A squirrel can open a hole in the ground? Okay. The mighty Intangir has a penchant for suicide? Fine. A housecat has the best physical attack in the game? Sure.) Sabin's Blitz is supposed to mimic a fighting game, but you don't flip the sequence, unlike a fighting game. Also, the rotating can be tough on a D-pad; it's used for [[Four Is Death|four]] of the moves.) Relm's Sketch mimics a monster's ability, which would be good if monsters were weak against their own abilities in this game, or if not for the fact that monsters' stats (which she of course uses) suck and they have massive HP. Sketch is effective at one thing, though - introducing [[Game Breaking Bugs]]. It might give you thousands of copies of the game's best equipment, but it might also erase all your save files. But Cyan's Bushido is the worst; good luck getting any use out of it above the fourth one, since it also means you can't control other party members until you use it.
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall]]'' :
** Jumping became a
** It gets worse on more modern computers where your jump can be more dramatic or less useful, hence inconsistent, due to the ''recalculated'' number of times the game does a collision check during movement (as a result, you'll also walk slower and enemies may not be able to move).
** One specific kind of dungeon stairs is impossible to walk up like stairs and involves such dangerous jumping or dangerous climbing to navigate.
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** ''[[Persona 4]]'' is significantly better about this, as party members can and will [[Taking the Bullet|save your character from taking a mortal blow]]...''but'', only if you're about to be hit by a single target attack. If an attack hits everyone, you're still screwed. Also you can decide to take manual control over the whole party, or often times just the person with the best healing skills. The original ''[[Persona (video game)|Persona]]'' and ''[[Persona 2]]'' are also significantly more lenient, as the main character dying doesn't end the game.
** The main character dying in ''[[Digital Devil Saga]]'' also doesn't result in a game over, it just means one less press turn to use.
* The farming in ''[[Rune Factory: Frontier]]'' isn't that different from most ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' games, and the dungeoneering aspect of the game is fun as well. The
* ''[[Baldur's Gate]]'':
** An old-school one: forcing an immediate [[Game Over]] whenever the [[Player Character]] is [[Standard Status Effects|petrified or imprisoned]]. You can have a dozen stone-to-flesh scrolls and could undo it in a heartbeat, but noooo, it's [[Game Over]] just 'cause <CHARNAME>, and only they, got turned into a statue. In game terms, they're not even dead!
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** If an enemy (only of certain types, primarily bosses and their minions although most endgame normal enemies seem to be able to do it as well) hits the ground after being juggled, they have a chance of ending the attack combo right there, with any remaining hits automatically "clunking" for zero damage. They may also have a chance of making a single counterattack. The problem comes from the fact that the enemy's weight may make hitting the ground unavoidable in the animation for certain attacks. Later game enemies also have a barrier you need to break before being able to deal any significant amount of damage to them, and the moment it breaks, the enemy is tossed high into the air regardless of their weight, screwing up the natural combo flow of whatever attack you're currently performing 95% of the time and making it that much more likely for the enemy to hit to ground. But then considering how ridiculous your combos can get, they had to give the enemies ''some'' help... not that the (usually incredibly heavy) ''bosses'' needed it.
** You get the same ability in the sequel, however you can only dodge one attack from the foe only when near death and have 50% Frontier Gauge. So it is only good for 2 characters who are about to be KOed. And Warranty on Player Forced Evasion void when enemy performs overdrive.
* The weapons in the original ''[[Dark Cloud]]''
* ''[[Ultima VII]]''. The characters needed food to survive. However, instead of automatically eating, like in the previous games, they had to be manually fed whenever they got hungry. Combined with the clever but crude inventory system, feeding the party (not getting food, but putting it in their mouths) took up more game time than combat.
* ''[[
** Their Goddamn ''traps''. Invisible tiles scattered randomly around which do horrible, horrible things when stepped on. They drain your HP and MP, turn your valuable items into joke items, warp you randomly around the level, give you status conditions, and dozens of other problems that totally aren't funny. In a genre where [[Continuing Is Painful]], there is absolutely ''no reason'' to have them; they're [[Fake Difficulty]] incarnate!
** [[Nethack|You fall into a spiked pit! The spikes were poisoned! The poison was deadly! You die...]]
** The Aegis Cave mission in [[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]] certainly counts, mainly because it's the most frustratingly tedious mission in the entire game. And, yes, it is mandatory. Basically, all you do is try to solve three word puzzles by spelling out the words ICE, ROCK, and STEEL. To do this, you have to collect stones with the correct letters on them from the Unown (Trust me, you'll run into [[Goddamn Bats|plenty of Unown]]). Unfortunately, the Unown that drops the letter you need must be randomly chosen for the list of available [[Mons]], then it has to randomly spawn, then you have to ''find it'', and then, after all that, it only drops the damn stone 1/4 of the time! Which basically means you'll be going through the same parts of the dungeon over and over and over again until you slowly lose your sanity trying to collect whichever stones you need so you can get out of the blasted cave.
* The ''[[Eye of the Beholder]]'' games and the first ''[[Lands of Lore]]'' game contain tiles that spin you around when you stand on them and require compass watching. The former game series has complicated spin tiles that turn you based on the direction you entered the tile and the latter is nice enough to have your characters verbally react to the spin each time ("Woah!").
* ''[[Final Fantasy II]]'' is basically ''made of''
** The level-up system. Namely, that it doesn't exist. What you have instead is [[Stat Grinding]]
** Getting HP boosts. The odds of receiving a boost to HP seem directly proportional to the difference in HP at battle end as compared to battle start. So, if, say, Guy is knocked into the red, but then is healed out of it, it doesn't count towards boosting his HP. But, if he loses ALL his HP and has to be revived, that also seems to reset the odds of HP stat boost. The margin of error ([[Luck-Based Mission|or just bad luck]]) here is very unforgiving.
** Fleeing monsters. Random encounters will run away from ''you.'' Remember what was said earlier about it being a good idea to artificially prolong the random encounters and/or fight yourself to increase the odds of stat boosts? Fleeing monsters simply wrecks that unless the player takes care to kill one at the start of the fight. At the least, it will shorten the fight. At the very worst, if all monsters flee before you can kill them (because either the back attack mechanic hates you or because you were attacking yourself), you get no rewards whatsoever.
** Fleeing ''from'' monsters. The odds of being able to run from a random encounter successfully are based on your agility stat. Getting boosts to that are, basically, a crapshoot. Combine this with that game having poor world map design, a ludicrous encounter rate, and [[Beef Gate
** Inn price scaling. Wherever you go, the inn will cost the same, and that cost is based on how hurt you are. Seems fair. It also costs more to heal MP than it does HP. Still seems pretty fair...then, after about the midway point of the game, it turns out that almost the only way to grind HP and MP efficiently is to go from very high HP/MP to very low HP/MP as quickly as possible. This gets spendy, ''fast''.
** This [[Stat Grinding]] business? "The more you use it, the more powerful it gets?" It doesn't just apply to your characters' stats, but also their weapon skills. The more you use any of the multiple weapon
** And that's not all! You ''also'' get to grind your spells! Every spell you get starts at level 1, and you have to grind it on ''each character'' (with the exception of [[Crutch Character]] Minwu). Even late game spells like Flare, which you don't have access to until after your library of spells includes some that are already high-level, have to be ground to at least level 10 before they are of any use whatsoever.
** Spells that are "on" or "off", like Protect, Shell, etc, generally have an abysmally low chance of connecting until they are high-level, and they only get to be high-level by being cast, futilely, over and over and over again.
** Esuna will only start getting rid of the really BAD status effects after level seven or so. Maybe.
** As you level your spells patiently, going from Fire 1 to 2 to 3 and so on, they cost more MP (a spell only ever costs as much MP as its level), become more powerful, and you lose all access to the lower-level but MP-cheaper versions of the spell. Prepare to burn double the MP strictly needed as you cast Blizzard 8 on [[Kung Fu-Proof Mook|Melee-Proof Mooks]] that would fall just as easily to Blizzard 4.
** Yes, spells get more powerful, except for Life. Life never gets stronger, just costs more MP. Bah.Good thing the Life spelltome is available fairly early in the game and is relatively cheap, so you can just trash the spell and learn it again to reset the MP cost to 1. Later ports correct this by making higher levels of Life give the target more HP when revived.
** Let's not forget the sadistic [[Let's Make a Deal|Monty Hall]] game that the game plays with you; in most dungeons, you will find a series of doors. Pick the right one, and you can proceed with your quest; pick a wrong one, and you'll not only end up in an empty dead-end room, you'll end up right in ''the middle of the room'' instead of by the door, and since you have no choice but to walk a few steps to the door and since the random encounter rate in these rooms is often pretty high, you'll end up getting attacked by monsters as you leave. Lovely.
** In the original Famicom version only, raising magic had a chance of lowering physical skills and vice versa.
* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' had two such mechanics that were thankfully acknowledged and fixed for
** The game only had one inventory with a limited number of slots, lumping together healing items, equipment, and key items. Inventory management was a pain and you either had to throw away items to make room or have the Fat Chocobo hold them for you. The DS version does not have an inventory capacity, while the PSP version greatly expands the inventory limit.
** Healing magic, for whatever reason, would only ever restore a set amount of HP outside of battle. It could take several castings of Curaga or Curaja just to completely restore your party's HP. This was changed to be based on the caster's Spirit attribute outside of battle.
** After Level 70, attribute bonuses were random, meaning that you could get a decent amount of stats for a level up, maybe one or two in a certain stat, or your attributes could even drop. This was changed in the DS version to be based on the game's new [[Powers as Programs|Augment Ability]] system, but good luck trying to figure that out without having looked at [[Guide Dang It|any guide prior]].
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** There's also the level up system, which is accessed through blue save points. To level up, you have to teleport to a church through blue flowers and reflect upon your experiences. In practice, this was not only time consuming, but it was possible at one point to [[Unwinnable By Mistake|trap yourself]] on the enemy airship, right before [[That One Boss]], with no way of leveling up.
** [[Item Crafting]] in ''Eternal Wings'' might be the worst implementation of item crafting in any game ever. To craft magnus, you insert the ingredients into a characters deck, enter battle, and use the ingredients in a certain order; doing so properly will cause the magnus crafted to appear in the loot screen after battle. What's wrong with this? What's ''right'' with this? You can only craft one magnus per battle (and considering the best magnus are made of ''other'' crafted magnus, that's a problem), it's entirely luck-based whether or not you get the magnus you need, and most, if not all, of the item combinations are never hinted at. At the very least there's a menu option that tells you combinations once you've found them, but that's small comfort after all that. The only way to efficiently do this is to go to an early game area, empty a character's deck, and put nothing but the magnus you need in.
** Ultra Rare shots. Each character has two photographs that can be taken with the camera; a standard picture that sells for pocket lint, and an 'Ultra Rare' shot that [[Randomly Drops]]. Both shots are needed for [[
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** Charging Aya's camera in ''Shoot the Bullet'' makes you move about as fast a crippled turtle. When charging the camera is ''necessary'' for most scenes, this gets old really fast.
** The Faith system in ''Mountain of Faith'', where scoring high means no deaths, and exclusively [[Normally I Would Be Dead Now|deathbombing]] (and even then, only at certain points). This wouldn't be too annoying, but extra lives are only given upon reaching high scores, essentially forcing players into a scorerun (in a fandom where the number of players who play for score can be counted on one hand) if they want more lives.
** The continue system introduced in this game in which continuing snaps you back to the beginning of the stage beside being '''incredibly frustrating''' to redo
** The weather system in ''Scarlet Weather Rhapsody'' is generally okay, but Typhoon Weather eliminates hitstun and blocking for about 45 seconds. Spring Haze Weather prevents both players from using physical attacks. River Mist Weather moves the characters back and forth, screwing up tons of combos and attacks that require certain spacing. Amusingly enough, River Mist is representative of [[Shinigami|Komachi]], the character who requires the most precise spacing to fight well, and whose in-canon power is defined as "manipulation of distance."
** ''Undefined Fantastic Object'''s UFO system is actually quite nice, but most of the UFOs change color periodically. It's not uncommon to need one more UFO in a sequence, then have it change color right before you get it, screwing up your whole plan. Since UFOs are the only way to get additional lives and bombs. Trying to collect a quickly-moving token randomly floating around the screen in the short time frame that it's the correct color doesn't exactly mix well with [[Bullet Hell]].
* ''[[Battle Garegga]]'':
** The [[Dynamic Difficulty|rank]] system. Want to keep the last two stages possible? [[Power-Up Letdown|Don't power up]] and [[Complacent Gaming Syndrome|don't trigger special option formations]]! The rank scale for enemy aggressiveness is capped in the last two stages to playable levels, in a rare show of mercy by the developers. However, if you raise the rank to extremely high levels beforehand, there is no such cap, and you are treated to [[Unwinnable|literally undodgeable patterns]], especially on the Stage 4 boss and Stage 5 midbosses.
** ''[[Darius]] Gaiden''{{'}}s rank doesn't get as retarded as ''Garegga''{{'}}s, but its implementation is worse. Each of the 7 tiers of stages has a "default rank", which the game sets to when you collect a powerup on that tier. And once you raise the rank, there is no way to decrease it. Ideally, you want to stop powering up after the 4th stage. Wait, what's that? You lost a couple lives on the last stage and took a big hit in shot power? Too bad! Either deal with it or face a [[Difficulty Spike]]!
* ''[[Dangun Feveron]]'' never shows your total score during gameplay; it's only shown at the end of each stage, as well as after getting a high score and ending your game, which wouldn't be as big of a problem if the lowest default high score of 1.2 million wasn't difficult to obtain for new players. This caused a huge problem at a recent shmup tournament where many players who couldn't get on the in-game high score table either manually calculated their scores by hand or [[Rage Quit|simply didn't bother to submit scores]].
* ''[[Guwange]]'' has you collect coins to raise your score, while shooting enemies to keep the coin collection timer from running out (at which point your coin count drops to 0). And the chain timer is more lenient than ''[[Do Don Pachi]]'''s, so chaining in this game shouldn't be as big of a pain in the ass, right? Well, here's where the game kicks you in the face: your coin count carries over between stages, meaning that in order to obtain a very good score, you need to keep your coin timer from resetting ''at all'' throughout the entire game. Have it reset halfway through the game? Time to [[Rage Quit]]!
* ''[[Heavy Weapon]]'' for the PC. Your tank aims using the mouse cursor, that's fine. The problem is that it ''also moves towards the mouse cursor'', making it annoying to dodge attacks while aiming. This makes facing enemies like [[Advancing Boss of Doom|Bulldozers]] (which move towards you and [[One-Hit Kill]] you if you brush against them) a complete pain. Thankfully, [[Pop Cap]] realized this mistake and made aiming and moving separate in the [[
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* ''[[Naval Ops]]: Warship Gunner'', the first game in the series, forced the player to travel to the edge of the map after completing mission objectives. While this rarely takes more than a few minutes, that can be a very long time when damaged and under fire.
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]''.:
** [[You Fail Economics Forever|The Dwarven Economy]] It, not to put to fine a point on it, ''doesn't work''. It's generally accepted that it's best to turn it off, and failing that never mint any coins. If nothing else, keeping track of all those little objects will slow your computer to a crawl.
** Hospitals. Don't bother putting together a trauma team: your medical staff will take their sweet-ass time even if you assign no other duties and keep them strictly limited to their hospital area. The chief med is picking his ass, claiming he has 'No Job' when there are dwarves awaiting diagnoses. All dwarves will plunder thread and cloth many times over the inventory maximum you set for the zone, and will even go far from the stockpiles sitting ready in the area, to grab the most expensive dyed silks. Meanwhile the gypsum powder, splints and crutches, of which there may be plenty, still aren't getting filled to the maximum because thread and cloth have a stranglehold on the inventory space of the numerous planted containers. If surgery and crutches aren't broken enough, many beast sicknesses will break the rest of the procedure. And without that, only one doctor can work on one patient at a time, and each stage of a multi-part procedure still takes way too long for having the necessary equipment within 20 tiles.
** The military system in and after 0.31 is extremely difficult to figure out, solely due to the interface, on top of all the bugs related to the military. DF being in such early development, however, gives hope to any and all scrappy mechanics players currently suffer from.
** Strange moods. They are often beneficial to the player, but that all depends on the whim of the [[Random Number God]]: the dwarf may be possessed, in which case he will not receive any experience. They may request some material that isn't available at the site (much like with some requests of Nobles), which results in certain death unless a trader happens to bring said material. And of course, more often than not, the resulting artifact has no practical use.
* The Commodore 64 game ''The America's Cup'', included a game mechanic that was supposed to duplicate the real-life experience of rigging a sailboat. In practice, this meant wiggling the joystick from left and right until your hand was tired. Not only was this annoying, but a very good way of ruining your joystick. Some cynics suggest this might have been why the game came bundled with many C64s sold in the mid 80s.
* ''Blazing Angels'' includes the infamous "Desert reconnaissance" level, which consists of flying around in a sandstorm looking at an all-yellow screen and listening to Morse code beeps to find the enemy. Maybe the idea was to provide a break from just flying around and shooting at
* Some of the disasters in ''[[
** Traffic congestion. There is no way around it. You can put in boulevards three spaces across everywhere, put in mass transit systems, and you will still have huge traffic issues. The game computes traffic according to how much road there is. They keep releasing Simcity games as if sorting out traffic issues was the most interesting and enjoyable part of the game. Then they make it more complicated by only letting you put in one-way streets and highway onramps with specific conditions.
** Bridges. In 3000 and Simcity 4 sometimes the game refused to put a bridge in unless the land surrounding the spot was ''perfect'', and the game refused to auto-terraform the land around it, requiring you to micromanage the land around it.
** Water structure placement in general in ''[[
** [[
* Each of the [[Nintendo DS]] editions of the ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' series have had at least one of these:
** ''DS'' and ''[[Distaff Counterpart|DS Cute]]'' had the draconian [[You Lose At Zero Trust|penalties in friendship points]] for littering. You couldn't even throw stuff away on your own farm, with no one else around, without incurring a large loss of friendship points ''across the board.'' Even with villagers that technically weren't even in town at the time. There's also the frequently recurring animal care touch-screen mini-games that are virtually required to raise your livestock's love points and produce higher quality products in any sort of timely matter. The more animals you possessed, the more of a grind the mini-games became. ''DS Cute'' actually eased up on the frequency of the mini-games.
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** On foot was made worse for ''Tony Hawk's American Wasteland'', with the addition of Parkour. In theory a good idea, in practice a '''bailproof''' way to add another 500 points and at least another three numbers to your multiplier.
** ''Tony Hawk's Underground'' allows you to drive cars. These vehicles had all the handling of a pinball in a table made of ice. Aside from the goals, use of them is redundant, as they reset back where they started in a level when you're done, meaning you can't even create a new combo line with them.
** ''Tony Hawk's Underground 2'' then gave us more
** ''Tony Hawk's Project 8'' then gave us Nail the Trick, where the analogue sticks control your feet. It was an entirely alien control scheme that stuck around into ''Tony Hawk's Proving Ground'', where it's only useful for the specific goals, and is otherwise unusable in a regular combo.
* ''Mario Super Sluggers'' has the star power mechanic, where the pitcher and the batter can use special powers to gain an advantage, such as tossing the ball really fast or hitting the ball with the bat and splitting the ball in two to confuse outfielders. To get more star power points, up to 5 max, you have to make successful strikes or successfully hit the ball without the ball being caught for an out. However, [[Mario Kart]] rears its ugly head for this mechanic where the losing team will gain more star points, thus they can effectively spam their special moves over and over again until they can catch up.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* To a certain subset of board game players, dice get this reaction. Not a specific use of them, but dice full stop. A less extreme, and significantly more common, version of this being "dice are fine, the roll and move mechanic isn't."
** One reason players of board games object to dice more than players of [[Tabletop RPG
** Some board games (''Trouble'' comes to mind) try to get around the wild dice by packing them inside a small plastic dome not much bigger than the dice. You press down to "roll." This has its own problems; you can get a numb palm with a long game of one of these.
** Others, like ''Candy Land'' and ''Sorry!'', eschew dice for a deck of specially-printed cards. Still random, but for some reason, card randomness is less hated than dice randomness.
** Many players also prefer games to be mostly or entirely choice-driven, thus placing an emphasis on skill versus luck. It's quite disconcerting to see a hardcore boardgamer [[Rage Quit|overturn a table and stalk away]] after ''winning'' a game on the luck of a draw.
* In chess, [[Tournament Play]], for many years, the [[wikipedia:Fifty-move rule|fifty move Draw rule]] counted. The rule was originally 50 moves without a capture or pawn movement and the game is a draw; note that this was not a Scrappy mechanic. Then it was found that certain positions were winnable in more than fifty moves, so the rules were patched. And then patched again. And then patched again. This changed every few years in the 80s, as more and more computer analysis was applied to chess, and more and more positions were thought winnable in more than 50 moves. Eventually, the result was sufficiently baroque that in 2001 it was decided to just leave it at 50 moves.
* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' - many, but one constant part is "cheese" - one faction ''always'' is given overpowered no-brainer strategy to lure the newbies (and invariably banned by mutual agreement in the community), until either killed by another codex or removed by edition mechanic changes or power creep.
*
** In the fifth edition, the Annihilate mission has generated a huge hatedom from Imperial Guard players because the Guard's Troops rules are incompatible with the kill points rule, making this an extreme example of [[Failure Is the Only Option]]. For example, one Troops choice for an IG player is worth as many kill points as any other race's ''entire'' army in a 500-point game.
*** "Yeah, so one kill point for the Devilfish, and one for the Drones." IG players are preaching to a blue choir on that one. There's also the 'nid Biovore when the edition first came out. Every time you fire, your enemy gets a kill point. Fortunately, most of the kill point issues with these armies were resolved through updated books and FAQs.
** The 5th edition wound allocation rules have a large hatedom as well because of the large number of Ork ([[Game Breaker|Nob Bikers]]) and Eldar (Seer Council on Jet Bikes) players that have highly varied load outs on multiwound units so you have to pump out large numbers of wounds to kill a single model because wounds can be placed on individuals rather than inflicting full wound casualties. For example, it takes 10 wounds to kill a single nob biker. Both cases are units that are very hard to kill thanks to special rules and proper equipment.
** Let's not forget the "pile in" mechanic added to 5th edition's assault rules. Previously there was a considerable amount of finesse in positioning you miniatures right which could allow a weaker squad to defeat a stronger one if you set up the assault right. Not any more...
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** Infect is a notable case. According to head designer Mark Rosewater, a lot of people like it, but those who hate it really, ''really'' hate it. Common complaints include it's too powerful (though this is debatable), it's flavourless (having been implemented mainly as an aggro blitz mechanic which is completely at odds with Phyrexia's "slow and subtle" agenda), it's too insular (since infect cards don't have much place outside of an infect deck and vice versa), and it's pointless (damage being dealt via life loss or via poison counters is still damage, and has the exact same impact on gameplay).
** Banding isn't by itself bad; it's when they started having effects that gave or removed banding. One creature is white, and requires green mana to activate its banding, a white ability! And of course there's Tolaria, which removes banding. But there was also [[Blatant Lies|may band with other legends]], which only let that creature band with other legends that had the "may band with other legends" ability. And it wasted a land play for something that couldn't be tapped for mana! Yes, banding got far too complicated far too quickly.
** Transform is the new
* Examples from ''[[Dungeons
** Inconsistency
** [[Word of God]] (Gary Gygax himself) said that he wished he hadn't included the rather cumbersome weapon type having bonuses against certain AC types (almost universally ignored mechanic), and that he only included psionics in 1st edition because a friend talked him into it (the same mechanics was introduced as optional earlier; AD&D2 fixed the ludicrous part, but now it had problems ''because'' it was optional and attached to the rest badly). 1st edition had a LOT of Scrappy Mechanics. They were just flat ignored most of the time and most DM's made houserules instead.
** Favored class/multiclass XP penalty rules from the 3rd edition. Notable for completely failing at what they were meant to do (a character that takes 1 level in 20 classes takes no hit under them, a character that takes 15 levels in one take and 5 in another DOES take a hit) and acting like a straitjacket on customization, further exotic base classes are rarely supported as favored classes, making them harder to use. Very few groups actually use them. Made worse by Humans being omni-class, whereas everyone else had a single favored class. And on top of this, prestige
** Levels limits for races other than humans. For low level games, utterly irrelevant as a balancing factor. For higher level games, OTOH, they put a giant brick wall in the way of the demihuman races being useful, because suddenly you *couldn't gain anymore levels.
*** To add insult to injury, the level limits also acted as further straightjackets on character design, since outside of the single favored class for a given race. And missed the point, because race abilities are more significant compared to class abilities at lower levels, rather than higher. Though some were so low as to be punitive even in a low level game. Eliminating them was one of the things done right in D&D3 - even several variant mechanics that replaced them for more powerful creatures, while all clunky in different ways, are ''all'' equal or better (Level Adjustment is essentially a more fine-tuned equivalent of Slow Advancement).
**
** ''Savage Species'' was an entire Scrappy Book of poorly-balanced concepts. It's one
** [[Grappling with Grappling Rules|Grappling]] in 3rd edition was considered confusing and in any event, it generally wasn't worth versus hacking a creature to death.
** [[Hit Points|Hit Point]] damage. While this is not normally a Scrappy Mechanic even when coupled with the usual [[Critical Existence Failure]] when player damage outputs are relatively low compared to enemy HP without specific and highly optimized builds but the same is not true of enemy damage output relative to your HP your options become 1: Bypass the broken mechanic by not doing HP damage, which [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards|not all classes can do]], 2: Limit yourself to one of a select handful of builds, as otherwise the enemies will survive to get a turn and thus kill you. 3: Die.
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** 3rd edition's sister product had the Wealth Check system. In theory, this means that instead of nailing down all equipment in terms of absolute cost (which was guaranteed to fall victim of [[Technology Marches On]] as the high tech gadgets of 2002 like mobile internet and sub-notebook computers became commonplace by 2009), items have a "Wealth Check DC," which is the character's Wealth modifier (provided by class and altered by some Feats) plus a d20 roll. In theory, this keeps item pricing from ever looking too ridiculous. In practice, it meant that a character's gear was essentially randomized, ''and'' that characters had to either requisition equipment on the honor system or with the GM present. In the end, most GMs ignored it because telling a player he can't play a sniper simply because he rolled a 2 on his Wealth check and now can't afford a sniper rifle ruins the game.
** The Wealth system was also broken wide open by the ''D20 Future'' splatbook. Among the things it added was a futuristic device that, while expensive, granted 1-3 Feats of the player's choice to that player. The existence of the Feat "Windfall" (+3 to Wealth checks, special caveat that it can be taken any number of times), meant that a character could repeatedly buy versions of the device that contained multiple Windfalls until his Wealth modifier was so high he could buy anything.
** Wealth's prices aren't consistent even internally. A semi-auto only G3, available for 500-700 dollars, has a wealth check requirement of 18. A M72A3 LAW, which costs the government 750 dollars in large quantities, is merely 15.
▲* Many Tabletop [[RPG|RPGs]] have you [[Grappling with Grappling Rules]].
* For ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' card game players: Missing The Timing. Basically, there are two general types of effects: Mandatory (where you ''have'' to activate it, regardless of what else is happening, at the time), and Optional (where you can ''choose'' to activate the effect or not). Thing is, rulings dictate that the Optional effect ''must'' be the last thing to happen, else it "misses the timing" and doesn't get to activate. This can be anything from activating in the middle of a card chain (and not being the last chain link to resolve), to being used as a cost to activate another card, to ''being tributed to summon another monster''. You cannot believe the amount of otherwise-powerful cards that get thwarted simply because their effects say "you ''can'' do X", instead of "you do X".
** To explain. If a card says "If", even if the effect if optional, you can use it any time after the event, because it grants the ability from that point on. But if the card says "When" then you are only granted the ability to do the optional effect at that specific time. The problem is that the timing rules can and will block you from activating the effect at that time, because something else needs to resolve first. Because the rules force something else to happen before you can use the effect the opportunity is gone, and you have thus missed the timing. What's so annoying is the name of the rule implies that you could have used the effect, and you missed the chance. However the opposite is usually true. There was no way to prevent the timing form being missed!
** Inverted with Yu-Gi-Oh! video games, where this rule becomes a
** Back when the game first began, part of the power of cards like the Trap Hole set (which destroyed monsters on summon) was that you could block a monster from using its effect. However, because they activate when a monster is summoned and only destroy it (rather than actively negating its summon attempt), the monster is technically on the field first (this is the reason why it is impossible to destroy Jinzo, a monster which prevents traps from working for as long it's on the field, on summon with Trap Hole), so for some reason it was decided that the player should be able to use the effect of their monster regardless of whether or not it's about to be destroyed. This can result in some ludicrously powerful optional effects happening at a time when the monster should have been dead and buried, and is ''extremely annoying''.
** For the record, that is called ''Priority''. This was even lampshaded in the anime, where Jonouchi questioned the idea of "last equals first". And as of March 19, 2011 (now etched in history as [[Yu-Gi-Oh Ze Xal|the Exceed Rule Patch]]), this is now abolished and the ''Trap Hole'' cards regain their power of eliminating big threat monsters like Judgment Dragon and Dark Armed Dragon.
** There's also the "Harpie Rule", which only really affects the titular monsters, but is still fairly annoying. To wit, there are several monsters with effects that change their name to that of another monster, usually while it's face-up on the field. However, most all of the Harpie Lady monsters past the initial 2 don't specify ''where'' their effects treat their name as simply "Harpie Lady". As such, Konami has issued the ruling that these monsters are treated as having the name "Harpie Lady" ''for all intents and purposes, including deck construction''. What does that mean? Well, you can only have three copies of a specific monster in your deck at any one time, so with the other Harpie Lady monsters being treated as "Harpie Lady" all the time, instead of being able to have three copies of each one of them, you can only have three of any combination of them (for instance, you can only have either one of the original Harpie Lady and two of Harpie Lady # 1, '''or''' two of Cyber Harpie Lady, and one of Harpie Lady # 3, but not three each of Harpie Lady, Cyber Harpie Lady, Harpie Lady # 1, and Harpie Lady # 3). This severely limits the potential of a Harpie Lady deck, even more so when you consider [[What Could Have Been|all of the awesome support they have]].
** In 2006, Konami tried to introduce a new mechanic in the ''Cyberdark Impact'' set with monsters whose effects depended on what Column of the game board they were in. For instance, [https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Rampaging_Rhynos Rampaging Rhynos] gained 500 ATK when battling monsters in the same column and [https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Storm_Shooter Storm Shooter] could bounce Spell Cards that were in the same column as itself. Since most players never paid attention to what column they summoned or set cards in and there was really no rule at the time that said you couldn't move cards from one column to another, they never caught on. Although, to be fair, the concept seems to have been successfully reinvented with the debut of Link Monsters.
* ''[[Exalted]]'' had the Reactor/Perfect Spam/Lethality/Paranoia Combat/Overwhelming issue, which was a whole ''bunch'' of these. Elaborated: Reactor meant that with relentless stunting and mote regeneration Charms it was comparatively easy to come out of any given action with more motes of Essence and more Willpower than you started. These motes and WP were then spent to activate "paranoia combos", which were massive experience sinks containing every single [[
== First Person/Third Person Shooter ==
* From ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' theres the psyche gauge(due to how fast it depletes) and the stress meter(due to how fast it rises), both odd cases considering how well the stamina gauge from [[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]] was handled.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'', for many people the CURE mechanic was highly annoying. The concept itself was alright; if Snake suffered a serious injury (broken limbs, burns, gunshot wounds, ect.) you would go into the CURE screen and select the appropriate items to heal your wound, or else face a lowered healthbar. This rapidly got annoying during the late game boss fights, who can usually do a serious injury to Snake ''in a single hit'', forcing the player to constantly pause and go through the CURE screen if they wanted any chance in winning the fight.
* The sword gameplay in [[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]. Especially annoying when introduced very late (VERY LATE) in the game.
* ''[[Call of Duty: Modern Warfare|Modern Warfare]]'' and any later ''[[Call of Duty]]'':
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** Valve *again* changed the mechanic (are we sensing a theme?), that now the rate of drops is increased, but players can "craft" weapons and cosmetic rewards to build the weapons you want. However, there's still a random element even if you have all the "materials," which makes players crazy as they still just want the guns.
** And now the "Mannconomy"/Polycount update adding gearsets that provide special bonus for wearing all the parts (the most hated being the sniper becoming immune to headshots) and allowing players to buy most of the equipment in the game, including the Bragging Rights Reward hats, has just started to open a fresh can of worms.
** Also in the "Mannconomy" was the addition of crates and keys. With the random drop system, sometimes you will recieve a crate instead of a weapon (or paint/name tag/hat). You need a key to get whats inside the crate, but these keys have to be BROUGHT WITH REAL MONEY! And when you do open the crate you may get a hat, or a very rare
*** And you also run the risk of getting a weapon you already have, essentially wasting the money you spent to buy a key.
*** [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=300 Exhaustively depicted in this VGCats comic.]
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* The melee fatigue mechanic in ''[[Left 4 Dead]] 2''. It was patched into VS and Survival mode in the first game in order to keep the balance in VS and prevent people from getting medals too easily in Survival. This was fine, but the sequel has it in ''all'' modes, including campaign mode. This was most likely done to encourage players to use melee weapons, but many still hate the mechanic when you have to get away from zombies and melee shoving is just faster, or worse, you don't ''have'' melee weapons with you. Adrenaline shots get rid of the fatigue for a bit, but many choose to save it for more important scenarios.
* The "Defend the X" missions in ''[[Onslaught]]''. Just about everything else is good. It's just that they put in way too many of them into the game.
* Unified Ammo in [[Deus Ex: Invisible War|Deus Ex Invisible War]]
* The lack of a [[Hyperspace Arsenal]] in [[Duke Nukem Forever]] was just one of the ''many'' complaints against the game. Especially considering its [[Duke Nukem 3D|predecessor's]] wide range of cool weapons.
* ''[[Warhammer 40,000:
== Real Time Strategy ==
* ''[[Dawn of War]] 2'' multiplayer capturing points mechanics spawned the "[https://1d4chan.org/wiki/File:DOW2Guide.jpg magic button humping]" meme.
==
* The promotion exams of ''[[Disgaea: Hour of Darkness]]'' were terrible and exposed many of the game's balance problems. It requires the use of the student system to stand a chance in if you use healers. Moreover, if you wanted to utilize transmigration to any significant degree, you would be taking these exams ''very'' often. This system was wisely taken out in [[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories|the second]] and [[Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice|third]] games, where any character with enough mana could transmigrate to a new class if they had enough mana to do so.
** Speaking of Disgaea, the method of reaching the [[Brutal Bonus Level|Land of Carnage]] in [[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories]] wasn't much better. It sounds fair enough in
* The law system in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' generates a small hatedom. Some of the laws are really stupid and force you to have a specific class to prevent a [[Failure Is the Only Option]] scenario (we're looking at you "Damage to ?" the worst law in the game). Others, like Holy, are really vague, even banning healing spells when it should only be spells with the Holy element on their description.
** Most curative spells have been Holy-based in ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' since the dawn of time - that's why [[Revive Kills Zombie]] works. The Elementalist job has a couple of non-Holy healing techs (Earth Heal and White Flame), although the law banning Healing full stop can still scupper that. As for the Dmg2 series... well, that's what Ezel and his antilaws exist for. Failing that, Dmg2 only holds when you deliberately attack; you can still cause damage if you've got one of the Counter techs as your R-ability.
** The fact that laws often force you to read all the fine print on the laws (which are sometimes misleading), your abilities, and your weapons make it a
** There's also the problem that Dmg2 laws don't actually mean what they say. A clever player may try to circumvent the laws by disposing of their foes without actually doing damage (i.e. the Assassin's Last Breath or Rockseal abilities). Said player will be "rewarded" for his creativity with a red card and a trip to the slammer.
** The Knockback law from ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics A2]]''. Knockback means pushing a character a tile with an attack. Which means that you have to be very, very careful while doing regular attacks, where criticals push the enemy a tile away, and you have to plan when to use ''normal attacks''. It is easily one of the most hated laws in the game, though it can be easily circumvented (of the major problem laws) because almost no abilities cause knockback - and most non-magic abilities cost no MP either, but being unable to use regular attacks unless the enemy is against a wall can be annoying at times.
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** Also from A2 is the mp system. Starting from 0 mp at the beginning of a fight and getting 10 mp per turn means that most spells above intro level one spells take at least 3 turns to get enough mp to cast (the next cheapest spells cost 22 mp, which means you can't do anything until you have 30 mp after 3 turns). This makes having a spellcaster extremely boring and full of waiting. Luckily, this can be circumvented by using Ethers, abilities that restore mana (Flintlockes and Cannoneers have these abilities), or Blood Price (Viera-only), but it's still a pain in the butt.
* And then there's the original ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'', with its perma-death rule. If one of your characters is knocked out and not revived within 3-4 turns, you can say goodbye to all the time and effort you put into building them. (Well, there is a way for another character to obtain their abilities, but still.) Compounding this is the fact that there's no way to restart the battle or load from a save from within the game, so you're stuck with either having to write off whichever character bit it or reset the game and sit through the whole damn boot sequence again. Gah.
** That's 3-4 turns for that character, which is actually generally plenty of time, unless that character happened to be the only character you had with access to a Raise spell, then it's a race against time as you try to kill everything before you lose your guy. No, the real
* The ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' series has had plenty of these over the years:
** ''[[Fire Emblem Jugdral|Fire Emblem: Thracia 776]]'', apart from being [[Nintendo Hard|one of the hardest games in the series]], suffers from a fair share of Scrappy Mechanics. The Dismounting feature is the most prominent. Intended as a [[Nerf]] for mounted units as it made them fight on foot using swords during indoor levels. However it only ended up hurting Lance Knights and Axe Knights who were forced to illogically use swords when they dismounted rather then the weapons they trained their entire lives with. Worst of all, the player army was left with no indoor Lance users, keep in mind the final chapter took place indoors, and Lances were pretty much [[Vendor Trash]].
*** Many players
**
*** And finally, healing staves can miss. In a game where [[Nintendo Hard|you're going to need all the healing you can get!]]
** ''[[Fire Emblem Akaneia|Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon]]'' earned
*** The reclass system is something of a [[Base Breaker]]. Some think it adds an element of customisability to your army, while others think it [[Completley Missing The Point|Completley Misses the Point]] of every character being unique.
* The titular Dual Strike of ''[[Advance Wars: Dual Strike]]'' is considered inherently broken for its ability to take two turns (even more with use of Sami and/or Eagle) in a row, with the first player to activate their Dual Strike essentially winning by default. It's banned in most multiplayer games and not even implemented in the community remake ''Advance Wars by Web''. Even in the campaign it forces players to use a very particular strategy (use Sasha in the last slot to use her ability to drain the enemy power gauge by exploiting how on most maps the AI will only use their Dual Strike if they have it ready at the ''start'' of their turn) to prevent the AI from using it.
** The real-time limited [[Timed Mission]]s in the campaign are considered one of the ''stupidest'' additions to the game, an impressive feat given the bar set by Dual Strikes above. ''Advance Wars'' is, and has been since the original ''Famicom Wars'', a game where each turn is a "day" - despite this, [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|the time limit is explicitly given in '''minutes''']]. To make things worse, none of the maps with this gimmick are even particularly hard to clear in the allotted time (even if played cautiously as part of a no-deaths run). Even in Crystal Calamity, a [[Scrappy Level]] in its own right, the time limit is so long as to be an utter non-issue.
** In all games of the series, naval combat falls under this. Firstly, naval units are very expensive: The cheapest naval unit nominally capable of attacking costs 18,000, compared to the 7000 of a Tank, 8000 of Anti-Air, or 9000 of a Battle Copter (a trio which forms an essential [[Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors|triangle of counters]] that most of the game works around) or 1000 for infantry. Secondly, naval units don't really interact with non-naval units except for transports, being hit by air units and land based artillery, and the Cruiser being a terrible air unit counter despite that being its essentially only function (it loses to the Bomber, the unit its supposed to counter, if the more mobile Bomber gets the first strike), and the ludicrously expensive and not really worth it Battleship so there's no reason to spend the money. Thirdly, in maps with both Port and Airport access (the majority with Ports), air units do virtually everything one would want a naval unit for outside of niche uses. In [[Fan Remake]] ''Advance Wars by Web'', non-transport naval units are more often seen due to maps giving players "free" prebuilt ships on terrain that prevents them from moving (included to stop maps from being won by early infantry rushes, as the ship has to be destroyed to win) than actually being built by players.
*** ''Days of Ruin'' (AKA ''[[Market-Based Title|Dark Conflict]]'') makes what are considered several major steps in the right direction, but still not quite enough to fix the problems. The cheapest naval unit, a transport worth 6000, can meaningfully attack all naval units except submerged subs, at the cost of only being able to fire once before resupply; Cruisers actually win against air-units even if attacked first and can attack non-Battleship naval units for meaningful attack; the Carrier gets changed entirely for the better, but is still too expensive for most maps; and the Battleship becomes the only long range unit that can move and fire in a single turn. The result is that Carriers and Battleships dominate any map where a player can afford to build them, but naval combat is otherwise secondary.
== Web Tournaments ==
* The Sai[[Moe]] tournament has not one but two Scrappy Mechanics, and they make each other more Scrappy to boot. To sum it up:
** First, the seeding is completely random. So you can end with 3 very popular girls in the first match while an entire divison may be full of [[
** Second and worse, it's the rule to determine if a series is eligible to enter the contest or not. To summarize, at least 50% of your running time must have been between last year's July and the current year's June. In theory, it's to avoid having the same girls every year. However, in practice means girls from [[Twelve-Episode Anime]] with closed endings get only one shot, while [[Long Runners]] with several seasons or seasons placed in the middle of the year can get many, many chances (''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' and ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' in particular have been in FOUR years in a row), making the rule worthless. Worse, with the Random rule from above, the girls from said 12 ep anime might end paired off against a bunch of strong girls and lose in the first or second round, while the one who has been doing well for
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* The designated hitter has been a controversial mechanic since the early 1970s in baseball. The fact that the National League is ''forced'' to use this mechanic during Interleague games when they're the visiting team (and conversely, the American League has to send their pitchers up to bat when they're the visitors) doesn't exactly help things either. Mentioning the designated hitter and why it's controversial [[Internet Backdraft|draws lots of flames]], even if it's been in the league for almost 40 years.
== Casino Games ==
* "Dealer Qualifying" rules in certain casino games based on Stud Poker. How it works: If the Dealer's hand is not strong enough, (i.e. below an Ace high with a king in Caribbean Stud), all players automatically win their ante bets and their play bets are returned to them. However, antes only pay even money, whilst Play Bets, if they beat the dealer, have increased payouts for better hands. the dealer qualification rule is the Casino's ticket out of paying these higher wins. (as opposed to
== Real Life ==
''Warning: The following section is extremely silly.''
▲* "Dealer Qualifying" rules in certain casino games based on Stud Poker. How it works: If the Dealer's hand is not strong enough, (i.e. below an Ace high with a king in Caribbean Stud), all players automatically win their ante bets and their play bets are returned to them. However, antes only pay even money, whilst Play Bets, if they beat the dealer, have increased payouts for better hands. the dealer qualification rule is the Casino's ticket out of paying these higher wins. (as opposed to determaining their mathamatical edge by simply altering the payouts). Some games, like Three Card Poker, compensate by paying bonuses on the ante bets as well even if the hand loses, but the bonus is still not as large as the bonus on a play bet.
* Most languages have their share of Scrappy Mechanics, too; a particularly infamous one in English is the rule against [[wikipedia:Split infinitive|split infinitives]], which many English language guides no longer bother objecting to.
** 19th century educators loved being prescriptive, that is, establishing rules about how English ''[[Grammar Nazi|should be]]'' written/spoken. Frequently they took these rules from Greek and Latin grammar for reasons that can only be described as snobby. Modern linguists tend to be more descriptive, tracking the way the language is actually used. Thus mechanics like the split infinitive prohibition (or the ban on ending sentences with prepositions) are slowly disappearing.
*** More specifically - The [[Scrub|'ban']] (which is irrelevent for most
*** Even worse? The reason that Romance languages don't allow split infinitives is that you ''can't'' split infinitives. For example, while the infinitive "to jump" is two words in English, it's a single word (''saltare'') in Latin.
** Another one: Irregular verbs. Most people can never remember "proved" versus "proven".
** And a non-English one: gendered Nouns. Not living things that actually have gender, but words themselves that have arbitrary genders. For example, in German (an otherwise highly efficient and logical language, as one might expect), a "Skirt", translated as "Rock". The word "Auto" is masculine in Spanish, feminine in French and neuter in German, and all in three languages means the same thing ("Car").
** While "passive voice" and "active voice" are relatively common in modern languages and easily grasped, Ancient Greek has a "middle voice". While not unique, very few living languages (most notably Swedish and Fula) have it, rendering it difficult to explain to a non-native (which, of course, is 100% of modern speakers).
** The distinction between the "は" and "が" particles of Japanese regularly confound non-natives.
* Many people think that [[Killed Off for Real|death]] is a Scrappy Mechanic, seeing as how it not only permanently removes the person it happens to, but also dramatically affects ''everyone else''.
* Some people regard [[Standard Status Effects|Sleep]] as this, as they feel they could accomplish more if they had the extra X amount of hours.
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