I love game mechanics that reward thinking or tactical decisions rather than rewarding how much time you spend grinding this or that. I do like having some kind of character progression - and that usually comes with grinding. But I hate it when the only challenge of a game is just how many hours you can sink into it. I much prefer when there are hard skill walls that you can't pass until you really got genuinely better at the game.

I hate generic boring quests that feel like they came straight out of a story generator. It's ok to have a few of them. But a hundred of them.. You play one, you played them all.. No incentive to do them. I much prefer a game that has only 10 hours of content but very solid content with well- designed narrative and places ; rather than 2 hours of human-made content and 48 hours of generated maps and quests.

One of the best games I have ever played is Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. That game has such an insane combat and a great narrative - I just couldn't put it down, I finished it in just one or two weeks because it was so good! And at the end I felt an emptiness, like when you've just finished watching an excellent serie and wonder what to do next.