Food into people.
Found in many 4x games. Notably all Civ games, Alpha Centuri (arguably a civ game by another name) Endless Space & Endless Legend. Probably others. But not Galactic Civilizations 2 (food is a max population cap instead) and I think not in Stellaris, (a game I'm still considering whether to buy because of expansion nightmare I've read about)

The mechanism works simply, once you get enough people, it turns into one more population head. Lack of sufficient food causes you to starve till you lose a population head.

Here is my alternative to food into people/reason I am against it. Level scaling.
Often found in many open world RPGs, I hate it, and it's completely unnecessary. Just have more and less difficult areas and don't let levels and new equipment increase players power too much. What's the point of grinding levels if it just makes foes tougher too? I know there is a middle ground in this, but I feel level scaling should be avoided altogether.

No saves for you!
Two versions of this. One where you can save anytime, but only when you quite. Found in many rogue-likes as a enforced difficulty. If you copy paste the save files to get around this, they judgmentally call it "save scumming". Look, it's my game I am playing by myself, who are you to look down on me because I want to revert to a earlier save and not have hours of work go down the drain. Just implement a Ironman mode that disallows saves or whatever, but FFS, also allow saves when we want through game menu for normal games.

The second version is games with short levels, Also notably found in other rogue-likes but not just those. The game typically remembers certain things you unlock each run but the actual level progression, well just don't start playing if you can't finish it or leave your system on wasting power if you suddenly have to stop and run. I think this is mostly because of programing laziness, they simply feel they can get away with not having a proper save system since the levels are short.

I seem to be mostly alone in my disdain in these game mechanisms, other fans of these genres seem to have accepted or come to appreciate these. The most likely exception seems to be more extreme level scaling. (as it comes in degrees) So anyone else feel as I do about these game mechanisms?

I initially read your first point as "people into food", and thought "Hmm, that actually sounds like a good idea, capture a city or a planet and turn their population into food for your people" :-) Don't have much of an opinion on the "food into people" issue, since I don't play strategy games.
I agree on 2.) and mostly on 3.) (no saves kind of works in some games, but I agree it's often annoying and frustrating).

then how do you solve the problems of an open world? true, you can have areaes which are high level in any case, but if the world is arranged according to levels, then it is no longer an open world. In other words, while the world seems open, in reality it is focused on linear (level) progression. The only 'openess' you will have is the ablitity to go back and finish the low level areas you did not complete, but what's the point. And yes, there will then be a need to grind levels to be able to enter the higher level areas. Is it then not just better to make a linear, but good, RPG? Or remove levels completely, and make it open sandbox (i.e like GTA or Saints Row)

This is a problem all open world games designers struggle with.

First, area exploration should not be only for combat. A real good open world won't be just about finding enemies to kill for more stuff. A area empty of foes should still be worth checking out on it's own.

Also as I said, the difference in levels and equipment power should be much milder. This way if you go back after much time level and equipment gains, you'll still get some challenge. A level 2 and a level 50 shouldn't be a joke fight. Part of this would be a combat system that is more than just comparing attack and defense values, that involves player skill. Upgrades could expand your options for combat rather than just give you more raw power.

Also with low difference in power with level and equipment, you can go where you want right away. Especially if you add some stealth mechanisms to scout for enemies.

Master of Magic has a nice alternative to "food into people". Each race has a fixed growth ratio, and populations will grow until they reach the limit for the city (determined by its surrounding terrain). There are also two buildings that increase population growth with a flat bonus per turn, the Granary and the Farmer's Market, and an infinite "project", Housing, that increases growth speed while being worked by the city. Some spells may affect population as well.

You still need food though for maintaining your population and your units.

My first thought reading this was "stuff food into your heroes" in an RPG ;-) I'm all for letting people save whenever they want, and into different files (in games where it makes sense... saving during a race is probably silly).
I've really become sick of "checkpoints" - one slot autosaves, manual savepoints' evil more evil cousin. Go left or right? Let's go left first! *Slam* Door shuts, Checkpoint, Boss battle - I'll never know what was in that right tunnel...

I am definitely with you on the save mechanics. I have spent way too much time trying to ask for just the basic exitsave in roguelikes like risk of rain 1 and 2, where runs can last as long as your pc is not on fire from keeping all the enemies and projectiles loaded.

Somehow, this would "ruin the game" despite being 100% something that the player does not need to use.

I agree with you
I don't like these at all.

If a game wastes my time by throwing me back too much I just quit and give it a negative review :P
Who the hell wants to review the cutscenes again and again and go throu the easy part and then fail a little later and start again, if it is short it is fine but some games have these 3+ mins long not okay.

btw Stellaris has food and you can set policies which result in more food consumed ,but more food production wont increase population faster.

I dont like when I have to chose role or etc final before I know anything about the game. How the hell should I decide what I would like, same with difficulty Normal intended to be played on this, by whom a game journo or hard core competitive player?

To name a positive thing for a change, Factorio is one of the best games when it comes to exit behavior.

When saving, you stay paused in the menu, when exiting right then, you do not get asked again if you want to save.

So many games ask you if you want to save the ~3 seconds of standing still from saving and going to that menu again, because they threw you out, but factorio does not.

With frequent autosaves (with extremely well done customization) it is also not a big problem if you exit without saving.

To name another negative thing though: I recently wanted to play fictorum. The tutorial is a seperate main menu, just how I like it.

Trying to start the game without having played the tutorial, causes a message to pop up that asks you to play the tutorial "because the game is complicated and it would be better if you did)

There is no way out of this that I have found.

Ah, forgot about save only at checkpoints, but isn't that mostly a console thing? I don't think you see it nearly as much in PC games.

I highly agree with the scaling and saving.

Nothing like gaining a few levels, getting screwed by RNG and receiving no upgrades, going back to an area you already visited before and have an enemy you had no trouble with before smack you around because its stats got inflated too much.

And don't even get me started on save systems.... Any proper game should allow you to save manually (where reasonably possible). No-return, checkpoint only, single slot, wall collapses behind you, fuck you for thinking about exploration saving makes me want to puke.

Another one of my most hated things in FPS games is auto-heal. Shoot until screen goes red, hide for 5 seconds, repeat till you win the game. Fun.... NOT.

It was pretty common around the time when everything was getting lazy PC ports. Just yesterday, I had to stop playing Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood because of checkpoint only saving and auto-heal. Got sick of it by the 3rd level.

And even newer games still have this. New Dooms are the perfect example.

EDIT:
Gotta correct myself. Found out that you can save normally in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. That leaves only the auto-heal. I might continue playing the game then.

For the first part, I agree. It's one issue I have with games like Hollow Knight and Cathedral, where dying can cause you to lose money; IMO said games should always let you return to your last save instead of taking the penalty.

For the second, it depends on your definition of "short". Games like Super Meat Boy and Celeste have no need to be able to save mid-level (for SMB) or mid-room (for Celeste) simply because the rooms are so short; even Celeste Chapter 9's infamous final room is still only several minutes long, and many rooms can be cleared in a matter of seconds (and the game saves the room you were in, anyway). I think it's perfectly reasonable to have an open world where your exploration is limited by your level. The original Dragon Quest did this, for example; you fight enemies close to the start, and when you feel you're ready, you venture further and gradually explore more of the world. I think this works right well (even if level progression in DQ1 does end up getting rather slow).

It puzzles me why there aren't more (single player) RPGs that are like the original Dragon Quest in this regard, particularly since that game was quite popular in Japan and rather pivotal in CRPG history (it could be said to be the game that split JRPGs from WRPGs, even though it isn't anything like more modern JRPGs). The problem with having a combat system that involves player skill is that it makes the game no longer an RPG in my view. Also, t creates an accessibility barrier for those who can't handle action games.

I agree about upgrading expanding combat options, however.

Uh, no.

It worked fine in Might&Magic 6, for example.

And designers should struggle a bit with it (that is, the fine tuning and balancing), otherwise they are just lazy, and laziness leads to level scaling.

I don't think the player needs to be able to go anywhere they want right away and expect to survive. It's perfectly reasonable for a character in a game like Dragon Quest 1 not to be able to go to the southern part of the map and fight metal slimes right away for large amounts of XP. (With that said, note that the RNG-manipulated speedrun route does just this.) There;s some other issues here:
* Poor scripting, where a player is punished for making the an arbitrary choice or stepping on a certain spot. (I am of the opinion that games with JRPG-like structure should make the plot triggers visible; any tile that triggers a cutscene should be indicated, as well as any town person whom talking to would trigger an event.)
* The game not telegraphing what path leads onward and what path lets you explore. It would definitely help if there's some way that the game indicates that a certain path will lead to the end of the dungeon, so that first time players can decide whether to explore or just finish the dungeon.

Two examples of how games can do the second point well:
* Zelda has a compass in each dungeon; if you get it, the location of the triforce piece will be indicated on the map, so the player will have a good idea of where the boss is. (This, unfortunately, relies on the player actually *finding* said compass.) I tried playing Alwa's Legacy for a bit, and the map there will show the boss (and you can't even reach the first boss without picking up a map first).
* Hollow Knight has signposts that show where the benches (which act as checkpoints) are, as well as the locations of stag stations (which are your source of fast travel). Hollow Knight and Undertale take an interesting approach; if you die to a boss, respawn, and then go back to fight the boss, the boss's introduction will be greatly shortened.

(On the other hand, Final Fantasy X has one part where there's a 5 minute unskipable cutscene (timed from YouTube videos) followed by a 3-part boss fight where a player is likely to game over at the start of the 3rd phase on their first attempt.)

Why would anyone care about a speedrun route that utilizes what is basically cheating? I have 0 interest in speedrunning either way but this definitely strikes me as weird.