Anything that strips the player of major agency factors. Anything that worsens your current state ingame without any warning, no indicator you could react to, basically whenever you can’t say “Oh I didn’t act in this better way and could have handled this situation differently, I see my mistake, I could have done better.”
“Flashbang! You won’t see shit for a few seconds! If you can’t visualize the environment you were just in and aim blindly, you’re completely fucked!” - I ace Resilience in PAYDAY 2 because otherwise Flashbangs have literally no other effect on me than to lower my enjoyment.
Bad AI on important npcs, like getting caught on objects in the world that would cause you to have to restart a section or worse a cutsceen you can’t skip.
Also set amount of lives that once used up you have to restart entirely.
The Tower Unite casino. Because no, i don’t want to spend 14 hours pressing space bar to gain any worthwhile units. I also don’t want to be stuck at my computer for 14 hours straight because if i even spend a minute not pressing that space bar then i will be kicked off my machine and someone else will take the jackpot that i have spent hours increasing. This is really just poor design.
When a game teaches you one idea then the final boss battle throws new stuff at you. Ex. Game has no quick time events ever, then final boss is based solely on those.
When you get stuck at a certain point at an adventure game and you’ve re-gone to every area you could but the item YOU NEED IS NOT HECKIN THERE AND AFJAOJIGQIWJOGQAEG[throws computer into the Ether]
If you’re wondering what game I’m talking about… oddly enough, it’s SpongeBob SquarePants: Lights Camera Pants for the PC. Don’t ask.