Roll and move. Skip your turn.

Exponentially growing requirements that out pace rewards. I don't want to spend 10 hours grinding just to level up.

One of the worst game mechanics ever found in a game was where the enemy got harder as you gained levels. The same enemy. It basically defeated the value of having more levels. I think it was Oblivion ~~Skyrim~~ where I found this, particularly annoying.

Not the worst, but I'm annoyed by invisible walls. Just give me a reason why I can't be there.

Lootboxes

A multiplayer game that pits you against lousy AI bots with human looking names for your first "games' so you feel like you know how to play and makes the game seem fair and fun.

Then after you're comfortable, you get pitted against a lobby of 12-year-olds who haven't seen daylight since birth who annihilate you and curse you out on coms.

"Here's a rare weapon dropped by this boss! But wait, you need to be at least level 30 to use it, and you're still on level 2."

I went out of my way to repeatedly grind and kill this late game boss during early game, just give me my reward for not following the stupid linear progression

Achievements.

I want to enjoy the game, not artificial milestones for bragging rights.

Health as a resource

press ▲ to jump. shit button. it's x.

Any game that forces snap to center cameras. No one should ever have to fight against the controls in a game.

(Looking at you No Man’s Sky)

Puzzles that are entirely music based with no visual cues.

They're bad enough for me as just a guy with no rhythm or note recognition, but also just fuck deaf people I guess?

Fragile world-spanning deliveries.

Silksong has me screaming over them, 10 - 20 minutes of walking and one too many smacks at the end ruins it. And then there's the one that's also timed!

But to be fair, most of Silksong gets me yelling at the TV on the regular! I love it and hate it!

Deliberately ableist bullshit. Like no pause or an over reliance on quick time events.

Survival crafting. I spend my real life days trying to keep up on sheltering and feeding myself. I don’t want to “relax” by punching trees to make a fire to cook a bird I punched to death.

The pervasiveness of this in every game has limited the content I engage with the last 10 or so years. Everyone started chasing that Minecraft money and now it’s Ubi-fied into just about every mainstream title.

I don’t want to forge new weapons. I want to find them in a chest or earn them by killing a boss. I have bounced off of so many games the moment they ask me to learn a system of crafting. Keep that in it’s own genre and stop padding games out with repetitive busy work.

Stat/EXP loss on death.

Unskippable cut scenes, especially before a boss. I want to play on hard difficulty, which means I WILL die to bosses. Do not force me to watch that shit 5+ times or I'm out like trout.

You know when you are in the middle of a game's story and then you get caught or something wjd the enemy takes all your gear and you have to find your gear or fight to get it back? No screw that. So annoying.

And I'm the kind of player that does all sise quests before doing the main story so I can be OP and plow through the story. Just let me do that and don't take what I worked hard to get.

Escort Missions. Especially when pathfinding AI was terrible.

Quick Time Events in a game that it isn't the focus. Halo 4 had exactly two quick time events. One in the first level and one in the last level.

The worst game mechanic is artificial difficulty where enemies aren't challenging. Instead, they are just damage sponges.

Fishing

Limited inventory space in an otherwise unrealistic RPG.

You're telling me I can carry six two-handed weapons and 500lbs of gold, but seven is just too much?! Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

Specifically, this especially sucks when the inventory is a grid, like in the Diablo series, or Grim Dawn, or WoW, FFXIV or... many other MMOs.

especially when you can spend real money to alleviate the artificial limitation they fucking designed in to the game.

It's so unnecessary and these days absolutely makes me instantly not care to continue playing. FUCK artificial limitations that don't have clear, valid reasons.

I'm here to play a game, not Inventory Management Simulator 33.45

2 sets of teeth, the first only lasting 1/9 of your life and the second being 8/9. 2/9, 7/9 would be much better or just 2/9, 4/9, 6/9.

Oh, hair falling out and all your joints hurting for 5/9 of your life kinda blows as well.

Pay to win.

I've got a time-traveling kick in the nuts prepared for whoever invented wall-humping for unmarked secrets. I first remember this from Wolfenstein 3D but I'm not sure if it existed before then.

Ante, Magic the Gathering

Hold w to crawl forward

Relationship mechanics. If I give someone a pumpkin twice a week, they’re just going to be confused and pissed.

Games with inventories where they treat a single gem or a flower petal as occupying the same space in your rucksack as a pair of boots.

Guys, we go back to Ultima 7 with the key ring, the problem was solved along fucking time ago. Stop being lazy and have gem sacks, crafting bags, keyrings, etc for small items.

Permanently loosing a treasure that you can only get once because your pocket is full.

Button-mashing events. (The Rapid-fire kind)

I thought about my answer, since many mechanics I don't like can have good implementations, or at the very least are a sort of lesser of two evils kind of thing.

What I can't stand are tactical or RPG games with realtime or turn based combat option toggles. I play many games with one or the other and enjoy them, but when I play a game with both that can be toggled in options I always feel like neither setting feels perfectly right. The balance is always off no matter what. Understandable with game devs having to double the amount of work for creating combat and tuning items and it ends up feeling a little soggy every time.