What gameplay systems or game mechanics do you enjoy?

I do enjoy game mechanics that interact in emergent ways that weren't fully planned out by the developer in games like Dwarf Fortress.

Inventory Tetris

Roguelikes and roguelites tend to be my favorite. Ones where each run is new and you can toy with different builds and usually get pretty OP toward the end (or get cut down early because luck wasn't in your favor or you made a mistake).

Among plenty of the other things mentioned, I enjoy “diagetic interfaces”. Ways of interacting with a game’s systems that stay grounded in the reality of the setting of the world. Dead Space is a prime example, but I’ve been enjoying a lot of the crafting in Vintage Story for this reason. The smithing in particular has had me hooked for a while. Hammering out my armor and weapons voxel by voxel made finally suiting up and feeling ready to take on a boss that much more satisfying.

Parry and riposte mechanics make me happy. Idk why exactly, but something about timing a parry and making the enemy entirely helpless for the followup is just great.

I love anything with a tech tree or a skill tree or items that improve based on usage. The ratchet and clank games have such a great mix of all of those things, I end up spending a bunch of time just leveling up the guns!

Puzzles, traditional or unique, as well as physics and spatial-heavy thinking.

More floaty, less realistic platforming. Thugs like double jump, or somehow your character has less gravity when they jump, stuff like that. Stuff like that. As a general platformer lover, I really enjoy more fictional cannot be done IRL physics in games.

I like most game mechanics to some extent. Creativity in combining game mechanics is key to making an outstanding game imo.

However, I don’t like things that force a time limit. I play games as an escape. I don’t like feeling stressed by a clock while I’m off the clock. These can be literal timed missions or things like a food/water meter. Escort missions also suck for similar reasons.

I think difficulty in a game should come from overcoming a foe, traversing harsh terrain, or solving a puzzle. If the game is hard because I have to stop what I’m doing to feed myself, or I have to rush to complete an objective on a timer, it just becomes work.

Intricate character building with multi-class synergies. Is. My. Shiiiiiit!

Small wonder I love BG3 and Owlcat's Pathfinder games.

Peaceful exploration

I like systems that allow for outrageous combos, whether unintentionally or by design. Roguelikes and roguelites usually have them, but it's almost entirely luck based. Dynasty Warriors 8 allows for plenty of OP combos if you manage the right weapon attributes. Skyrim and its broken as fuck perfectly balanced enchanting + alchemy (or Morrowind's even more perfectly balanced permanent fortify attribute magic)

Not a game mechanics maybe but more of an engine thing i guess. I just love simulations. Good VR combat physics, elemental stuff like water, fire, smoke, crumbling stuff. I love a world that feels dynamic but not necessarily realistic that makes sense of itself.

I'm an absolute sucker for a hidden traitor mechanic. Boardgames like Battlestar Galactica, Werewolf, and Secret Hitler (the latter of which might be my absolute favourite board game). More recently I've just started playing Among Us (I never got into it during its ~2020 peak) which is the first time I've seen the hidden traitor translated well into video games (unless you count that one minigame from Jackbox Games).

Save anywhere

I don't know the name of it, but I really enjoy the sort of gameplay where you roll up to an enemy compound or something, and then you just sort of chip away at it and cause chaos until it all falls apart.

The sort of thing you'd do in Farcry, where you'd snipe some dudes, plant traps, shoot the tiger cage so the tiger would get out and eat people etc.

The controls for the Skate games, especially 3, are great.

It's easier to say what I don't like. Open worlds and crafting mechanics, they are just so boring

You know what I miss? The Ultimate Alliance games from the PS2 era. Isometric view. Build a four-person team of Marvel characters. Some team combinations grant group buffs, like having all four members of the Fantastic Four will increase your XP gain. Equip your characters. Pick from an array of comic canon costumes, each with their own abilities. Some combinations of equipment or costumes will also grant bonuses like having everyone wear their Age of Apocalypse costume.

The whole thing is an action RPG where you play through some big comic book crisis. Lots of opportunity for villain and hero interaction. Cool cinematics.

It's a rock-solid platform, but I don't feel like I see it used nearly enough. I remember playing an Ultimate Alliance on 360 and it just wasn't as good; smaller roster, fewer costumes, less interesting in general, despite the better graphics.

I vaguely recall hearing something about one on the Switch and that Midnight Sons was a bit similar... but then again I don't recall hearing much else about those games except for their existence, so they can't have done very well.

Enemy ai that's not stupid

I like strategy games that allow you to design your own units such as Warzone 2100 where you select different components to get different functionality or Endless Space 2 where you pick a ship hull type and then assign different modules to adjust the combat stats or add special abilities. The production cost of the unit changes with your selections in whatever the base game currency is and/or requirements for specific resources.

This gives the player the freedom to adjust their forces to fit their play style, their economic situation or to accomplish specific objectives or strategies. It also breaks the rock/paper/scissors aspects of unit combat in more simplistic games and creates far more complex unit interactions, and the potential to win with clever design rather than just numbers of units.

Roguelikes with the potential for broken builds.
Sometimes you find the perfect combo on your run and become an unstoppable force, but it doesn't ruin the game because you finish your god-like run and next run you try to find another overpowered build.

Detailed completionist checklists.

If I have cleared an area, I want to have it reflected in an overview screen.

If I'm missing an item, I want to know which enemy drops it, where I can find it, or how I can craft it.

If I need to pull out my phone to check a wiki, then the game has failed me.

There's something to be said for exploration games, and in those cases, the details should be obscured until the player has cleared 90% of the area, or gotten past the boss (or something like this).

I love fluid movement. Doing things in a state machine is usually the way to go in 2d platformers, which is what I mainly make. I like when your character can move around without issue, so double jump, sliding, rolling, attacking etc.

Games with high mobility mechanics like titanfall, echo point nova, doom eternal, destiny 2 strand hunters.

Survival mechanics like S.T.A.L.K.E.R and New Vegas, dont give a damn for building mechanics though unless its simplified down to a simple upgrade system like Skyrim Hearthsfire DLC.

Hard to learn complex mechanics in simulation, such as target management analysis in dangerous waters, any of the jobs in space station 13, eve online

I've only realized it recently that I'm obsessed with simulator games. Eurot Truck Simulator 2, Software Inc, Minecraft? Rollercoaster Tycoon, etc.

I'm a sucker for crafting and breeding systems that allow you to customise equipment and/or characters. But it's really hard to find good implementations of the idea, most have some obvious flaw:

• Pokémon (breeding) - in early games RNG plays too much of a role, so it's hard to get what you want. Late games don't fix this, instead they allow you to skip the process altogether (see: hyper training).
• Niche - the breeding part of the game is actually really good, a shame that the rest of the game is a slop. For example gathering food gets a PITA once you got too many nichelings, and yet you want them to support your breeding pairs.
• RimWorld (Biotech; germline genes) - arbitrary restrictions that must be lifted through the usage of mods.
• RimWorld (crafting) - now we're talking. If you pay close attention to which materials you're using for which tasks, it pays off in the long run. There's some luck involved, but you can get perfect (legendary) stuff fairly often if you know what you're doing.
• Leaf Blower Revolution (leaf crafting) - the game encourages you to craft a lot of leaves and salvage most of them. That's fine, it's easy to get cheese anyway. The problem is the sheer amount of beer that you need to get the properties that you want in each leaf.
• Monster Breeder (old Flash game) - the game is a bugfest, and the lack of any sorting system makes you have a hard time even knowing which monster you should be breeding with which.
• Minecraft (tools and weapons) - vanilla has a really dumb system that doesn't fit well in a game that encourages hoarding piles of materials into chests. The mod Tinkers' Construct fixes this, and makes the system next to ideal.

Plus a lot more that I didn't mention. Sorry for the wall of text.

I've very rarely disliked "prepping". For example building boss arenas in Terraria or setting up my equipment for a hunt in Monster Hunter or learning about the monsters in Witcher 3. Anything that lets me prepare for future encounters is a system I enjoy, even if it's only superficial.

I hate it only when it's turned into somekind of a survival element that exists solely for the purpose of resource management. For example I hated hunger and water in Subnautica. From a certain point forward those two things become just mindless busywork because when you plant it in your base it just grows and whenever you need to fill up you just go to your base and eat and drink and there's no upside nor a real downside to those two mechanics.

I'm currently a big fan of the 'trading' enemies and then planning your attacks system in Sniper Elite.

All the stuff mentioned here with jiggle physics

I really like Zelda and Ys style ARPGs. Specifically, rare and impactful loot, and little reliance on skill levels, but rather skill aquisition. Both approach it very differently, and later Ys games fall into more traditional RPG mechanics (e.g. farm money/exp, buy gear, etc), so I'm more talking about Ys 1, 2, and Origin, as well as pre-BOTW Zelda games.

Basically, I love this gameplay loop:

1. Enter dungeon/level and fight baddies
2. Find important item/ability
3. Use important item/ability to defeat monsters
4. Fight boss, using a mix of important item and learning movesets
5. Repeat 1-4 several times, with plot mixed in
6. Fight final boss using a mix of everything acquired

Ys and Zelda do this in very different ways, and I absolutely love the level cap in Ys 1 to enforce playing smarter instead of grinding. You can never really get OP, even if you try (except Ys 2, which I don't like much).

Unfortunately, "ARPG" has been twisted to mean Diablo-like, which is heavy on loot and ability trees instead of puzzles and exploration, and future Ys games go that direction as well.

This isn't really specific to mechanics or systems, but I'll like pretty much any mechanic or system that lends itself well to that gameplay loop.

Dynamic skill leveling: maybe it's not an actual stat with a number you can watch go up as you keep using a particular play style, but I like when games let you and your gear get stronger together the more you use them.

I really REALLY enjoy boss invulnerability phases.

I'm not sure if this counts as gameplay mechanics or rather narrative structure, but games like Outer Wilds, Fez, Tunic, where the exploration and discovery of the game is the end goal of playing the game, not just getting to the game's end state.

I'm not sure if there's an accepted term for these games, but I've always thought of them as "archaeology" games. There's a bunch of stuff, both plot and gameplay, that is hidden (sometimes in plain sight), until you discover it and find out what meaning it carries.

Broadly speaking, I enjoy stealth in games as long as it's implemented correctly and doesn't break the game or function poorly and leave you at a disadvantage. Despite the many qualms I have with tlou2, the added mechanic of going prone and all the upgrades associated with stealth was quite fun—and, of course, the functionality of the bow and arrow, and how you can conserve ammo. Parsing an area with dogs and navigating their heightened scent through long grass and deciding when to pick off certain enemies or ninja though is tremendously fun for me.

Desperados III and Shadow Tactics are two other stealth games that I love that use a design similar to The Commandos series. You can navigate through their detailed environments deciphering a path through on your own, using whichever abilities your party has to your advantage. I think the ninja/feudal Japan game world fits better with Shadow Tactics (I also prefer the characters) but Desperados III has just as good, if not better level design.

To add a somewhat weird one, I'll say a good save feature. Saving with an ink ribbon in RE was so freaking awesome—especially in regards to how it adds a level of complexity to item management. Another cool example that doesn't add anything to gameplay but was neat: ICO and how you save your game with Yorda on the couch. So wholesome; I can hear the music in my head, even.

E: Also, Demon's Souls' character and world tendency mechanics were so incredibly imaginative. The fact that you can unknowingly die too many times in human form, turn an area into black world tendency, and get eviscerated by black phantoms for seemingly no reason is wildly brutal and awesome.

I love the histogram system from Zachtronics' games. I find it much more useful to see my score compared to the proportion of people who got a similar score, than a leaderboard rank that doesn't mean much.

I'm not that excited by deep skill trees or crafting or inventory management, lately i enjoy good movement, music, exploration, and story.

The movement in destiny 2 felt really good, similar games have it where you get momentum, dives, floating with warlock, etc. I think Titanfall 2 and borderlands 3 zane had similar really good feeling movement.

The exploration in pre planes EverQuest was great, fast travel limited to certain classes and levels, risky but faster travel routes in kunark, groups in overworld and dungeon areas, dangerous places to get to with high reward for the risk. Elder scrolls, dark souls/elden ring, and Zelda breath of the wild had similar feelings for me.

With a few exceptions all the games I have played in the last 10 years have one thing in common - open world. Then again I have mostly played only Dayz/Arma, Rust and Space Engineers.

I really like the resource/inventory systems of survival horror games. Often they can force interesting decisions as long as your current state doesn’t starve you of options.

• I can’t pick up shit! Well, I’m not using these three things so maybe I should box them. Or, I could use up some ammo on nearby enemies.
• I’m low on healing items! But I have a lot of ammo. Maybe I could stop conserving nuke launcher rounds to trivialize the next few rooms of giant zombies; try a bit more of this other weapon I don’t use much and stow my normal pistol.
• I’m low on ammo! But, I’ve been saving a hundred healing items. Maybe I can practice tanking past enemies and see just how much it will affect me.
• I’m okay on ammo but these enemies keep coming. But…I think if I make it to this area, it will give me a stationary healing spot. So I’ll just conserve ammo and take hits on the way.
• I’ve been poisoned! But there’s gonna be a bunch of other poisonous enemies before I get through this area. Maybe I can ignore it until I’m through.

I think I’d even like to find more games that focus on that sort of item management without being so horror-focused; helping you feel excited for saving an inventory spot or prioritizing the right things. It’s especially cool when you’re finding ways to shift risk in the right directions based on what you can afford losing. Example in Back 4 Blood: There are tools/resources that retain/add more “possible downs” for a survivor, which may mean you can put off healing for a long time and keep picking each other off the floor. One game has a death prevention item that you can only hold one of; so you’re encouraged to “get killed” before you find another one.

Builds. Build builds builds. Whether its slowly tailoring your class to a build, or roguelike unlocking items and abilities to build around each run. It's why I like things such as Diablo, PoE, Last Epoch, Binding of Isaac, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, etc.

Its also why I was severely disappointed with ArcheAge. And unhappy when I returned to GW2 to find my world bossing combat medic off-meta bleed Warrior pretty much useless. Used to tank boss AoEs to revive downed people using healing shouts and increased revival speed. They nerfed and removed the revival speed node from Warrior and the build lost half it's function.