# Disliked Elements, Mechanics, and Tropes **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [May 13, 2015, 10:12am UTC](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/disliked-elements-mechanics-and-tropes/9368 "2015-05-13T10:12:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5008
**Author:** ![Omeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/choiceofgames/user_avatar/forum.choiceofgames.com/omeg/32/201348_2.png) [@Omeg](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/u/Omeg)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2024, 1:33pm UTC](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/disliked-elements-mechanics-and-tropes/9368/5008 "2024-03-06T13:33:47Z")
> [@Raul\_Lopez1](#): > > I feel like the games used to be held to a higher standard Were they? In terms of actual requirements, nothing changed for quite a while now. Hosted Games always accepted almost everything, and the official _Choice of Games_ writers have used the same design principles for many years. Or at least I think they have—any of them is free to correct me, but recent games seem to follow the [2016 design guideline](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/cog-game-design-guidelines/20028) fairly closely. As for the readers, I think they hold games to a _higher_ standard than they used to. It’s hard to play old CoG stories without thinking “yeah that wouldn’t fly today” every once in a while. For example, compare the relatively recent _Royal Affairs_ to the far older _Affairs of the Court_ and tell me they weren’t written with completely different standards in mind. The former takes care to make every gender variation of every RO feel natural in the whole of 482k word story, the latter has less than half that word count, throws in fake gender selection and then splits the story into three parts like it’s _Fallen Hero_ or something. I think it’s those changing stardards that can make the newer games feel worse. There’s a reason we don’t see Zahary Sergi on these forums anymore—writers need to try harder now than they used to, and not all of them manage terribly well. Shame, but no reason to let nostalgia blind us to how the brand evolves, and how it’s mostly for the better. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/disliked-elements-mechanics-and-tropes/9368)._