YMMV / Oppressive Games

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In POWER:
  • Most US politicians choose to join either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party since they are by far the biggest parties and Unstable Equilibrium is in effect. Formerly, there was only one semi-useful Comeback Mechanic to help the small parties ^note The extra power gain, further discouraging players from choosing small parties. This has been mitigated after the government approval penalty was introduced because it hurts the big parties a lot more than the small parties, but players still tend to prefer the Democrats and Republicans.
  • When a politician needs to increase their influence, they'll use TV ads 99% of the time. While they are the most expensive way, they're still affordable, and money is plentiful anyway. Every other method comes with significant drawbacks: Rallies cost a lot of power (which is usually scarce), bragging costs senate seniority (which you only get when you're a senator, and senators who waste too much of it lose the ability to propose bills), and backslapping elites increases your reputation as a Sleazy Politician (which increases the damage done by attack ads against you). Bragging and backslapping cost as much power as TV ads, so you can't even use them to save power.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The primary system in POWER. If you get primaried in an election, you won't get to run at all — not even as a write-in candidate. This can be really annoying if you're primaried by some idiot who gets their account deleted before the election — your party won't have a candidate at all, which gives the opposing party an easy victory.