Gaming

I hate RNG-heavy progression that discourages playing the actual game.

Path of Exile had terrible loot droprates and gamble crafting when I last played in Ritual League. Starting a league = poring YouTube for safe league starter builds to follow step by step. Gearing up = only picking up currency and buying items from other players on a website. Making $$$ = flipping items (buy low sell high) in hideout (personal town).

Path of Champions (PvE gamemode in Legends of Runeterra) drops shards and fragments to unlock new champions and relics that add a passive effect. Drops are random and not duplicate protected. Champions need 2 star upgrades totalling their unlock cost to feel playable. Optimal progression = speedrunning dailies/weeklies, 2-starring meta champs, and logging out.

Death penalties. Any game that seriously penalizes you for dying is just so frustrating for me. I understand that there has to be some form of reason to not die but please, at worst just reload an earlier save for me (and make sure you have frequent autosaves too).

If I lose all my items on death I'm just reloading a save. If I have to respawn at a checkpoint ten thousand years away I'm going to be very mad. If I have to listen to someone monologue to me every time I die I'm refunding your game.

Story, specifically cutscenes, especially if they're unskippable. Everything I need to know should simply be presented in the HUD or in the menu/options/inventory/etc. It's fine that there /is/ a story but at least give me the option of skipping it entirely and playing the actual game.

Combo attacks - I'm not coordinated to hit the buttons in order fast enough. I tried Black Desert when it was free and this was the dealbreaker for me, though it wasn't the only thing that bugged me about the game.

Stealth. I hate hiding and creeping around waiting for an NPC to move. It's like, "oh, you want to play the game? How about not playing the game instead?" Infuriating.

The bit in a certain DOS game where a demon respawns lower level demons... If you know, you know.

Disclaimer: not always

Character stats, commonly called "RPG elements".

In games with low enough detail that I have to use my imagination, it makes sense to have a character constitution 10 increase to 15 and take 50% less damage from blunt weapons. It works perfectly in Rimworld, ADOM, Terraria and the like because you can't completely see what's happening, so when your character does low damage your imagination has room for him to hit badly or be partially blocked.

But in games with modern graphics and animations, it feels... off. An attack animation that shows someone swinging a sharp steel battleaxe perfectly and connecting with bare flesh at momentum, deals... no damage because the wielder has low strength and axe skill, while the target has a high armor value.

3D 3rd person platforming. Any flavour of it. It consistently either sucks (souls games) or is just plain boring (the uncharted series). I'm sure there are some games where it's done reasonably well (probably some sonic or mario game), but I've never seen that.

Open worlds with markers. It takes every feel of exploration from me and changes the open world part of the game to really long and boring interactive loading screen through which I must pass between (very often) very linear missions.

Stamina, why can't i just keep running forever!! Even worst in open world games.

QuickTime events. I started replaying RE4 original. Did not miss them.

Do this to get that to get this to get that One example is the Minecraft tech tree. Abosultely no choice whatsoever. I don't ever need to make a choice. Obviously Minecraft is now begining to take steps to sort this out. But it's been over 10 years and the system is ingrained into people's minds

crafting dear god I hate crafting if I ever find the person that introduced crafting into the triple a formula...

Escort missions and weapons breaking without a reasonably easy way to get/make more (glaring at you, Dead Island...)

Currently?
Having cool abilities tied to NPC companions.

And I'm pretty sure (nearly?) everyone knows why and what I'm talking about.

1. Slow, boring climbing sections that add nothing to the game and just pad out playtime. I'm looking at you, God of War (2018).

2. Lives systems. Luckily modern games never use it anymore, but every now and then I play an older game and wow, losing 30+ minutes of progress just because you died a few times SUCKS.

Perhaps forced online with no way to self host.

Crafting with survival elements, one button stealth attacks, random loot with stats in story games.

Not a gameplay mechanic but constant fucking talking mains and npcs

Swimming/diving, it usually has terrible controls. My prime example is Witcher 3, swimming with Geralt feels like steering a freighter while underwater enemies can quickly move in all directions.

Also I generally don't like platforming, but that's just me.

I really don't like random bullet spread. Especially when it becomes more random if your character is moving.

Someone already sort of mentioned this, but I don't usually like crafting and building stuff. So games like minecraft and animal crossing new horizons are out. For the latter, greatly prefer new leaf.

The bane of my existence in any pvp game is crowd control mechanics.

In general, I hate every player skill in pvp games which take away the opponent's ability to play.

Repeateable procedural quests. I feel like this explains it all.

Endless monologues and dialogue-dependent quests. Tell me what to do once, then be happily surprised when it's done. I don't need to know why it's important to uncle Sandy to find the green gate key, he can say "Thanks!" later if I want to talk to him at all.