I always avoided those.

In Diablo 2 there is a "Skill Shrine" which increases everything for a few minutes, and I never used them because I didn't want to get used to be so much stronger, faster, healthier and all of a sudden lose it.


Back OT the the Thread
Ever been playing an FPS, sneaking up on a baddie, hit the wrong weapon key and end up shooting a guy an inch from you with a bazooka, killing both you and him?

Purchasing a weapon only for a direct upgrade to be sitting nearby/in the next room.

Wasting an expensive item because you had no idea what it does.

Buying equipment nobody can equip.

Picking the wrong class/level stat.

Picking the wrong party member/companion for an area.

Bringing the wrong equipment to an area. I have all wood armor in a volcano.

Forgetting about the elementals and healing a boss to full by accident.

Those damned puzzles where you have to walk on all the tiles without doubling back.

I could keep going.

Finally! maxing out the skill that defines your character, and then finding a freebie +1 skill point for that skill. Even worse when higher skill levels require more points to buy.

Giving up on a puzzle / quest and hitting up a walkthrough online, only to find - now that you know the solution - that you were just moments away from figuring it out.

In MM6, there are random barrels that when drunk give you a permanent +1 boost to a given attribute.
Later finding out that there are wells (available pretty early if you know they're there) that give you unlimited boost for any attribute, up to 16. i.e. drinking all those barrels before getting up to 16 at the well was wasteful. Aaaargh.

you are in the middle / towards the end of a very long dungeon and you have filled your inventory with nice, shiny expensive goodies. You are standing over the corpse of a miniboss with good gear, who have guarded a full treasure chest.... *sigh*

not really a game analogy, but

For women Child birth
For men passing a kidney stone

both are about an alien object passing through a very narrow opening.

For gaming
Finally getting that epic item, only to find it's bind on pickup, to a class you don't have IE Staff of BlaBla for a nightblade

Pretty much why I think RPGs should entirely dispense with limits on inventory. I mean, most of those games allow the player to carry an insane amount of stuff anyway, but there's still some limit, as if it still amde sense at that point. Like, I'm already carrying three full sets of armor, six axes, five swords, two bows, 1287 arrows, a small library of books and scrolls and twenty thousand gold coins but that one more thing is obviously too much - that would just be silly!

It's not liek it makes the game realistic at this point, the only result of that is frustration and a waste of time with inventory management. Why can't we just ignore it entirely and just have fun?

......dying to a boss where the save point is before a long and unskippable cutscene

Edit: I suppose the same could go for dying and having to endure long times.

Well, there's paper cuts.

Ever see "Jackass: The Movie"?

That is the one sequence I can't watch.

Nope, that entire genre of entertainment holds negative appeal for me.

To each his own. :P

Picking up a gold rupee when your money bag is maxed out.

playing one of those long term builder games and having your one save corrupted




or


okaying an update to a online game without looking it up first and finding that the devs had added tons of paid transactions to actions/items that had earlier been free and/or changed basic gameplay in order to increase income by players paying to get back to how it was in the earlier version

Opening a chest when you have maximum arrows/bombs only to find out that it has more arrows/bombs that were just wasted. (Happens a lot in many Zelda games.)

Similar things in many games.

Although I haven't played it, how about, from Final Fantasy 8:
Using Selphie's Slots limit break, seeing The End, and pressing "Do over" before you realized it.

(For those who aren't familiar with the game, Slots is a limit break that gives you a random spell, but has a "Do over" option if you'd rather get a different spell. The End is a spell, only available via this limit break (you can't get it normally without hacking), that is guaranteed to kill all non-undead enemies that you're fighting, including bosses (though, for the final battle, it only kills the current phase).)

That's a sign of bad game design, so I would argue this is largely the fault of the developers. (FF10 has a bad examplle of this; there is one part where there's an unskippable 5 minute cutscene (seriously, I timed it from Youtube videos), followed by a 3 phase boss fight, and the third phase opens with an attack that is likely game over for a player not expecting it.)