Stupidest Decisions In Gaming

• Entries can be an In-Universe logic failure, or stupid things you yourself have done over the course of gameplay, where it was a bad dialogue choice, or a character action.
• Feel free to challenge entries with superior ones, or by explaining the logic apparent, to the character or to the player, at the time.

I think the Crowner would have to be the various science teams from the Doom series, who decided to open a portal to Hell just because...

Second place, any iteration of Weyland-Yutani from the Aliens Vs Predator video games, deciding to keep one of the titular Aliens as a lab experiment/pet.

edited 4th Jan '15 10:42:26 AM by FOFD

>be me

>Space Pirate, stuck on Tallon VI

>capture freaky jellyfish things

>motherfucka they eat everything

>people start to feed them

>they get stronger and stronger

>they burst out and kill everyone

>mfw◊ Science Team has vapor for brains

But in seriousness if it weren't for Ridley the Space Pirates would be goddamn Team Rocket

Not a very good choice for a title. This is not a complaint thread, but it really makes it look like one.

GTAIV

Roman getting into gambling debts with the mafiya that is trying to kill him.

Stupidest decisions in gaming? I'm just going to have a look over my XBOX collection here and try to come up with a few noteworthy examples.

• Bioshock Infinite: Thinking a 1900's world that is akin to African Americans parodying the dream of the KKK is paradise. Way to go Comstock, you have an equally racist African group after you and bastardize American history.

• Call of Duty: Black Ops: George Romero discovering Nazi zombie research and think using that would make a great basis and setting for your movie. Well done, now you have Romeo Prada, Freddy Kruger, Merle Dixon and Bridgette Kelly fighting for their lives, and that girl who was in that show with Iyari Limon Doesn't Like Guns. Awesome, but still very boneheaded.

• Dead Island: Fans will know where I'm going with this, in my mind the single biggest WTF moment in the series, something I had brought up time and time again. Yep, modifying the kuru virus so it causes the outbreak is frightening considering that in light of things like swine flu or mad cow it could potentially happen. But we all know the worst decision had to be Jin insisting to help the prisoners at the police station, despite promising not to and the prisoners themselves saying to stay away. Just couldn't leave well enough alone. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

• Guitar Hero: Making a Deal with the Devil to become a rock legend. That really bites them in the ass, and even if you do escape hell (and World Tour suggests your musician dies) you still have Through The Fire And Flames to worry about. Bring about six guitars.

• Mass Effect: Where to begin? The council ignoring Saren's betrayal, evidence of the Reapers, Conrad not getting the hint then making it look like Shepard's fault, siding with Cerberus, Shepard being Genre Blind during Overlord, The Illusive Man wanting Collector tech, messing with Shepard in general, not gunning down that Asari merc who was clearly going to kill you, choosing Morinth over Samara, trying to have sex with Morinth...I think I'll leave some for other fans to rake over.

Now a couple of more player driven ones. Load up career mode on UFC or any game that allows you to pick your opponent. Think you're pretty tasty at the game and you agree to fight...say, Brock Lesnar with no time to prepare. BIG mistake, if you don't lose by KO or TKO in the first round then you should consider training up for the UFC yourself. Speaking of...

There's a UFC Trainer for Kinect that is a little more intense than the dance, party and casual games. Try doing the tyre flip or heavy bag for five minutes. Probably not as intense as the real thing but it's still a rude wake up call...if you don't do weights or go to the gym daily you're gonna have trouble moving for a while.

edited 4th Jan '15 1:38:31 PM by tsstevens

Ya know Truth, you really should not have sided with the Brutes...

edited 4th Jan '15 2:07:06 PM by MajorTom

One more, this is a biggie.

• Video Game/Fable2: Max & Sam messing around with the Necronomicon and unleashing a Banshee. This, more than even Lucian, is Sparrow's nemesis based on her comments, and I head cannon that after the game she seeks out and kills them because of how dangerous the pair are.

World of Tanks My experiences revolves around learning that X rapes Y; do NOT shoot an KV-2 unless he shoots first, then rape him; Z is crap against A; B is overpowered; but my most recent lesson is firing an high-explosive shell at an enemy tank at point-blank range in my KV-2...many LO Ls were given...

edited 5th Jan '15 12:38:43 AM by RabidTanker

Biggest one that comes to memory so far was in Mass Effect 2. Thinking you're manly enough to survive intercourse with a known sex-vampire who has shown virtually no intention of stopping the killing has gotta be one of the dumbest decisions I've seen in my long history of gaming.

That, and the ending of Fallout 3 in the purification chamber comes to mind. You've got several likely companions by that point who could survive entering there and one who's supposedly a completely obedient slave, yet absolutely NONE of them are willing to take your place and try to help save your life.

apparently, you can get your robot to do it if you have the Broken Steel expansion installed.

Yet you can have a ghoul and a super mutant as followers, both of who are 100% immune to radiation, and they are both smart enough to punch in a 3-digit number on a large keypad. Yet apparently the main character is too dumb to think of that as a solution.

Re: Mass Effect, IMO there's a good argument for the Council being indoctrinated, which would explain sooo much.

Going way back, in System Shock, hiring a hacker to disable the ethical constraints on an AI.

Deus Ex Human Revolution, getting a replacement chip from the company you already know are connected to the conspiracy that turned you into the Six Million Dollar Man in the first place.

Five Nights At Freddys, showing up for a second night on the job.

Didn't they not know the teleporter led to hell to begin with?

All of FFIV. Seriously. Pick any decision made by the main cast.

"Lets see. The cave where the last crystal is has a door which can only be unsealed with this here key. So we know the bad guy hasn't got to it. Now how about we go in there and unseal the door for no reason! We can go... look at the crystal? I dunno why we're doing this, but look, this seal ain't going to unseal itself. Now come along, Party-member-who-has-been-mind-controlled-by-our-enemy-before".

Or the villain: Step 1: Enthrall my nemesis' eldest son.

Step 2: Do nothing for several years (like 16 or so). Wait for other son of my nemesis to mature and be trained into becoming a powerful warrior of his own from initial babyhood.

Step 3: Bank on Nemesis' Son being dumber than someone who has grown up huffing paint thinner his entire life. Hope he assembles a party of like-minded geniuses.

edited 4th Jan '15 11:26:18 PM by Ghilz

You can actually get them to do it too! Assuming you have Broken Steel, of course. The game kind of gives you a hard time about it though.

Mass Effect has already been mentioned, but to me, the most epic one, despite its relatively small scale, is and forever will be Warden Kuril during Jack's recruitment mission. He actually takes more than one stupid decision, but one of them alone places him at the top.

• So, Cerberus contacts Kuril, a merc who guards a galatcic prison of sorts on a ship, to buy one of his prisoners.
• Said prisoner is (at this point at least) an extreme case of an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight, and, quoting Kuril himself, "the meanest handful of violence and hate [...] ever seen".
• Cerberus sends Shepard to get the "package".
• At that point, Shepard is :
  • An N7 Soldier, which puts him/her among the elite of humanity...
  • A Specter, which makes him/her THE greatest human soldier, ever...
  • The Savior of the Citadel, which kinda makes him/her THE greatest soldier of the cycle...
  • Who just came back from the dead
• Failure #1: Kuril thinks it is a good idea to doublecross Shepard to capture him/her while s/he is on his ship. For money.
• So, Shepard gets in the space prison, where Kuril asks him/her to leave his weapons at the entrance "for safety reasons".
• Shepard refuses, his/her teammates too
• Failure #2, aka the Epic One: Kuril thinks that his facility is "more than capable enough to handle three armed guests" and lets Shepard + two pals (including, possibly, a guy that just held off Kuril's very own merc force 'alone' for a few days on Omega) roam free in the ship with their weapons.
• Failure #3: He betrays them by asking them to surrender nicely. No sneak attack, just the hope that the guy/gal that took down a Reaper will just bow down and agree to become a prisoner.
• It goes as you can expect.
• Shepard & crew release Jack, who starts destroying the ship from the inside in her rage.
• Failure #4: Kuril forbids his guards to use lethal force against Jack. The psychotic biotic who just keeps sending them flying.
• And then, well, Shepard & co rescue Jack.

Four failures, but #2 takes the cake, hands off, in the entire trilogy.

edited 5th Jan '15 12:53:17 AM by Julep

This thread seems redundant with this one. And the title doesn't seem to be very indicative.

I thought this one was more about stupid decisions made by game characters, not game players. The title does not make it clear, I agree (or maybe I misunderstood altogether).

adding to the "Jack" mission

The fact that he told them that they were prisoners before they were in the cell

I mean he could have tried to lie and say "oh that's just a transport don't mind that"

But it's stupidity...In-Universe!

It is. It's about plot holes and characters acting like idiots, not really about us the players doing stupid stuff. Although at least one person has focused on their own Idiot Ball moments, in a game that doesn't really have the kind of decisions this thread is about.

Two from Skyrim:

1. The Blades thinking they can force the Dragonborn to kill another dragon who's actually atoning for his crimes and trying to help humanity.

2. The Dragonborn not being able to stake his or her own claim for Skyrim and possibly the Empire at large. I mean, you're a freaking Dragon's soul in the body of a human. That Civil War arc should have a chance to end with you marching on the conference with your own damn army and demanding both nations shut up and bow down before their new Emperor. Especially since you can kill both the Emperor AND Ulfric Stormcloak during sanctioned missions for different people.

Luckily both of these issues can be remedied by mods, and I view sandbox video games as less games and more "A nice demo for a superb engine" so I don't mind running to the modders for more fun, as long as I can do most of what I want without making the game unstable.

On the subject of IV's sealed cave. This may only be in the DS version, but the dwarf King says that the seal is at best a delay, and it's only a matter of time before Golbez breaks in regardless.

Anybdy who has played Lost Odyssey can understand why Tolten is The Scrappy of the game. Mack going off into the crimson forest was dumb too but consider the situation he was in + being a kid it's understandable(and admittedly he got pretty far despite being underleveled).

Now the trains? Leaving an 11 and 9 year old alone in a big city? Flat out idiot moment on the entire party's part. Though it actually worked for them in a way.

Also in Sonic Adventure 2, the rather infamous moment where Tails screws up Sonic's gambit.

Eggman: Did you really think you could fool me with that fake emerald?

Tails: So...how did you know it was a fake?

Sonic: TAILS!

Eggman: Because you just told me fox boy!!!

Considering how Tails is usually portrayed, it borderlines on an Out-of-Character Moment. But then again he's a kid and probably would do something like that.

In fact, SA 1 right after beating Eggman the first time Tails pulls out the chaos emerald for no apparent reason giving Eggman the perfect opportunity to snatch it(which he does). Even sillier is how him and Sonic just SIT there watching Eggman feed it to Chaos. Sonic Adventure is like half made of these moments lol.

edited 5th Jan '15 6:35:48 AM by Vertigo_High

I can forgive the SA 2 moment because honestly Eggman did sound like he had figured it out so Tails falling for that is understandable. That moment in SA 1 though... Yeah.

Speaking of Sonic...

Knuckles believing Eggman's lie that Sonic was after the emeralds again in Adventure 1.

He can be forgiven in 3 and Knuckles as he didn't know who Sonic, Tails, and Eggman were before that game.

A fifth one for Kuril, when cornered bragging how he could have forced Shepard into slavery. Shepard never swears but s/he reacts clearly thinking, "Oh it's on now motherfucker, it is on now."

Well, if it's about plot holes and character idiocy, then why shouldn't we close it as a complaint thread?

You can discuss these things all you want in the threads for those individual games. These general threads serve no useful function.