Intentionally Wasting The Players Time!

[Drathnoxis]

I'm fuming right now and everybody needs to hear about it!

Okay, so in Dark Souls the bonfire placement is generally pretty terrible, usually placing the bonfire halfway across the world from the boss you are trying to fight. This alone is irritating, because it's never difficult to just run past all the enemies straight to the boss when you know where you are going, but it's not the worst. I can forgive that though, because I can kind of understand why they wouldn't want to stick a bonfire before every boss, or litter the land with them. What I absolutely cannot forgive is--

Spoiler: Optional boss spoilers for Dark Souls

--The Dark Sun Gwyndolin fight. There is a bonfire literally outside the boss door, and the game goes out of it's way to make sure you can't use it!

When you kill Gwynevere the fire keeper in the area comes to get revenge forcing you to kill her, this makes it so you can't warp from the main bonfire in Anor Londo. This is important because every time you die to Gwyndolin, you always start at that bonfire no matter what bonfire you last rested at. It doesn't matter if you use a homeward bone or rest in Firelink, you always spawn at the dead fire in Anor Londo. This is breaking the established rules of how bonfires work for no other reason than to irritate the player! So if you have trouble with the boss you have to make the extremely tedious journey through the church, over the precarious walkway in the attic, you have to wait for the excruciatingly slow staircase to twist up a level, stop for no reason, then come up another level to you, and then you have to make it go back down, again and again and again!

-end of spoilers-

Who could possibly find that fun? It takes about 5 minutes to make the journey back to the boss, when by all rights you should start at the bonfire right outside the boss's door! There's no other reason for it other than intentionally wasting the players time!

Ugh, why do developers do this, it's so frustrating! Anybody else have any grievances against games that go out of their way to waste your time?

 

[barbzilla]

Honestly I will quit playing a game I spent good money on if I feel it is wasting my time.... Unfortunately this applies to just about every single darn F2P game ever, as they all seem to want to make me do 10 million errands in order to gain the level, upgraded weapon, heart and organs protecty thingy, or sometimes just because when all I really wanted to do in the first place was continue on with the main story line that I have been playing since the word go. Nope, can't do that though, you need to waste X amount of hours doing random crap first. Dragon Age Inquisition and The Witcher 3 both did this to me, and I have yet to finish either, after about 40-60 hours in both games, I just said to hell with them.

 

[CritialGaming]

The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age games are good examples of games that just waste player time. Sometimes it is fun, like in the Witcher and can be overlooked. Other times, it can't.

Dark Souls however...Dark Souls fucking hates you. It doesn't give a shit about you, your time, or your anger. So saying that is wastes your time is simply fuel to Dark Souls. Overcome your problem, or dont, Dark Souls doesn't care. So why should you. If the game has broken you, then walk away. If you are still determined then you might eventually earn the right to call yourself undead.

 

[CaitSeith]

To be fair, that doesn't happens if you don't kill "you know who" first. It certainly serves to reaffirm the point that you committed a serious crime and you're no longer welcome.

OT: The prize for unecesary time wasting...

Spoiler: I vote Braid secret star in The Cloud Bridge level. That's literally a time waster...

I vote Braid secret star in The Cloud Bridge level. That's literally a time waster:

Wait over an hour for a cloud to come from the right side of the level to where it's reachable, jump on it and wait for another 10-20 minutes to reach the left side of the level.

Damn you, Jonathan Blow!

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Dark Souls?! A time sink?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. That's like saying EA withheld features from the Sims 4 to sell them as DLC packages later. Simple, utter madness!

But I will say one game I remember wasting loads of time was Starcraft Brood Wars. Just stupidly big levels, with stupid amounts of enemy units and very few resources scattered. I remember slowly moving my siege tanks up a pixel at a time for hours because I couldn't afford a full on confrontation because all the minerals were gone and I only had those few tanks left!

 

[Dizchu]

In Myst you have to pick up two pages from every world and bring them back to the library in the hub world. Sounds fine, right? For some daft reason you can't pick up both at once so you actually have to take the page, go back and take the other one.

But it gets worse. In one of the worlds you must exit via a tedious transit-system maze puzzle. You must do this twice. Whyyyyyyyyy?

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'm pretty sure MMORPGs in generally should just be called Time Wasting Simulators. It's all:

"Here, run around this mostly pointless space while we throw enemies with randomly dropped items at you. Better hope you don't have to collect 25 of the rarest of those drops. You'll be here for hours! Actually, come to think of it, we need your subscription money, so here's a quest to do that. But you could complete it for the measly price of $0.99. And now that you've done that, you get to collect 50 of those items. Auto-complete the quest for a mere $0.99! What value!"

OK, that's a little extreme (in most cases), but when you have a genre where most of the games survive on subscriptions and microtransactions, there's bound to be design decisions meant to keep people playing fro too long (subscription) or getting them to spend lots of little bits of money.

 

[Foolery]

Xenoblade Chronicles X is pretty bad for bullshit fetch quests. Like that quest to fix a coffee machine. The grind is excessive. Just give me the damn mech and quit teasing me with the promise of more interesting stuff later on. I haven't finished Witcher 3 either, and honestly the urgency and pacing of the story is really lost when you spend days, if not weeks, fiddling around with side-quests. Yeah, I'll get right on tracking down Ciri, after I kill monster X, Y, and Z, oh maybe another scavenger hunt or 5. At least the side stories are entertaining.

Oh and another game that is massive sink time is Hyrule Warriors. Want those sweet costumes and character unlocks? Welcome to grind city, or if you're lucky enough, use the rupee glitch.

 

[Reed Spacer]

Unskippable tutorials.

*Here's how to do this*

"I've played the game five times already; you don't need to keep telling me."

*And here's how this is done*

"I know; that's how I took out the last boss. Shut up, already."

*And you use this attack by doing...*

"*****, I WILL END YOU."

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Okay, I was reading your post and something was bugging me, so I looked it up. Did you not unlock the elevator shortcut? Because you are taking the long way to the fight every time. You should be able to call that slow spinning elevator up to the edge of the bridge, and then just ride it down to the fight. Like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHSY1mG999M

As for why you're respawning there, you did just kind of desecrate the entire city. Plus you killed that Keeper. Odds are that's going to mess some things up, seeing as Bonfires are linked to their Keepers.

On topic: I hate, hate farming for items. Oh? You want that trophy for having all weapons? Okay, you only need to get this item from this enemy that only drops it once every thousand times. Good luck! Screw you, developers.

 

[DementedSheep]

I'm getting pissed off at GW2 for doing this. Wasn't this game suppose to be light on grind gated content and reserve the grinding for skins? Why then am I having to grind XP for masteries to get around the map? It would be fine if you just had to do specific things once for points but adding an XP gate and making it that you can only earn XP towards it in 4 specific maps? I get that they want players to do the meta events, especially since they are part of the main plot, but why try to force you into doing them over and over again?
Hmm maybe I'll do some map completion, oh I can't complete this map because I don't have leyline mastery (which has no purpose outside of being able to get to a few places).
Well this scavenger hunt idea for ascended gear sounds interesting, lets see what I have to do for that. Oh only 2 of these are actually skill challenges to complete, the rest of it is grinding fucking masteries, getting currency for a specific map (ie: do the meta) and praying to the RNG gods for a drop from some trash mobs (which is account bound so you can't even buy it).
Well I've done this meta event 20 times now, maybe I'll go do some of the side events for it I haven't done yet...oh it's arbitrary locked off with a poison cloud that I need the poison mastery to survive in.
Some of these "adventure" mini games look fun and they do give me XP towards the masteries, oh I have to do some events to unlock this one...and now all of them are locked for the next 40 minutes while the meta is on.
I need this item, where do I get it? oh it's sold by a merchant that is only available for a short time after the meta is successfully completed. Well it's too far along for any successful servers to still have spots open so I guess I'll wait for a reset, then hope I land on server with a low percentage of stupid or AFK leeching players and participate in the hour+ event chain to complete the meta so I can access him. Hope I don't DC on the last boss and then be unable to get back in because the server is full again!
Some of the mastery gating for the storyline doesn't even make sense. Quick! Take that super important egg that Mordremoth is after to our fortress so we can protect it and you can get back to trying to save your friends! BUT FIRST you need lean our written language, no I'm not going to just translate it for you.


Not related to GW2 (although it has those as well). Any unskippable cut-scene, especially before hard fights, causes me an unreasonable amount of rage. There is no reason for it.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Okay, I was reading your post and something was bugging me, so I looked it up. Did you not unlock the elevator shortcut? Because you are taking the long way to the fight every time. You should be able to call that slow spinning elevator up to the edge of the bridge, and then just ride it down to the fight. Like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHSY1mG999M

As for why you're respawning there, you did just kind of desecrate the entire city. Plus you killed that Keeper. Odds are that's going to mess some things up, seeing as Bonfires are linked to their Keepers.

There is no elevator shortcut, you need to lower the bridge to get to the boss and there is no way to raise it from the side you spawn on. Your choices are then to either go through the church or go find a different bonfire and warp to the boss, both are tedious.

I'd be fine with the desecration resulting in some sort of punishment for the player, but this doesn't even make any sense in the world and isn't even a good punishment, it just makes the game boring. You just spawn at a dead bonfire, that shouldn't even be possible and there is no other indications that anybody, in world, is doing it on purpose. It would almost seem to be a bug if it wasn't exactly the kind of thing the developer would do if they didn't want you to spawn outside the boss room.

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

Drawing magic in Final Fantasy VIII.
It's like they wanted you to get pissed off.

Spoiler: Oh the horror

 

[sXeth]

Drawing magic in Final Fantasy VIII.
It's like they wanted you to get pissed off.

Spoiler: Oh the horror

To be fair, you don't need to use magic almost ever in that game. The handful of spells for relatively optimal junctions to stats are easily refinable from items. It could be explained better (the game doesn't really go out of its way to mention refining, likely as part of the FF7-onward push to sell strategy guides), but standing there Drawing a full stock in one battle is insane min-maxing only relevant to doing extreme challenges like low-level runs.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Can I just bring up not 'readying' in multiplayer lobbies? The number of times I've been stuck in a pre-game lobby in which 19 out of 20 people have 'readied up' but because the last person in the lobby hasn't hit 'continue' the entire damn lobby has to wait for the 90 second timer to run down rather than just getting on with the next match. I know this complaint is player orientated rather than dev related but it still falls under wasting folks' time.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

In the XCOM 2 you can skip great deal of loading time from the mission to the base(doesn't work other way arount) by pressing tab twice.

I have no idea why this step is necessary. It is like they intentionally created a step that wastes time for absolutely no reason at all.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

The desert scene in Uncharted 3.

One, it does not hold up graphically like Among Thieves. Two, its is completely pointless and really boring.

 

[BrawlMan]

QTEs. Watching the same stupid dumb "cinematic" sequence until you get all button prompts right is the top most annoying thing in the world. This also includes trial and error sliding down or running away facing the camera sections.

Forced stealth sections take their part of the cake too. Forced stealth is always shitty stealth that's absolutely no fun to play. No freedom of actions, no proper tools, a trial and error time waster.
True stealth does not stop when you are spotted, it gets fun. If you can't put it into your game, don't do stealth at all.

Unskippable tutorials.

*Here's how to do this*

"I've played the game five times already; you don't need to keep telling me."

*And here's how this is done*

"I know; that's how I took out the last boss. Shut up, already."

*And you use this attack by doing...*

"*****, I WILL END YOU."

Oh, the "try walking" sequence! In worst cases with pop up dialog windows that immediately interrupt the action you were supposed to be doing. Those are dreadful.

I made a topic about forced walking sections a while back. You got other great examples as well.

Devil May Cry 1 forced you to do platforming segment to get your 2nd weapon, Irfrit, on your first playthrough. And anyone who has played the first game know platforming is not that game's strong suit, nor most of the other DMCs either.

And speaking of forced platforming section, anything from the Double Dragon NES games.

The respect meter from GTA2 and Saints Row 1 & 2. I can't stand either. There is a reason why Rockstar abandoned this mechanic: it's forced, archaic, and only there for the 100% obsessive completionists. The only decent thing about this mechanic was that it was easy to exploit. The respect meter for SR was just plain awful, and made quick after 5 hours into the first game. SR 2 was a little better about it, but I they were still tedious time wasters.

The entree fees in No More Heroes. Fuck'em.

Spoiler

Sylvia was scamming you the entire time. That just makes me hate the character even more.

Yes they were part of the plot, but it was obvious that without the entry fees the game would have been shorter. I would have preferred it that way; a fun, short game is better than a long grinding fest full of padding. Thank God Suda51 & Grasshopper dropped it like a hot potato in Desperate Struggle.

Grinding in any Dynasty Warriors type games. Koei-Tecmo, why do keep doing this? You alleviated this problem in some of your spin-off games by leveling up low-level characters to whichever character had the highest level with money you collected in-game by beating missions. Hyrule Warriors & One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 both have the system, yet KT doesn't even bother doing this for Samurai Warriors or Dynasty Warriors, their main franchises. When 9 comes out, I might consider purchasing the game, if your lazy asses ever bother to use that same system in the main entries. That does double for Mareves as well on the EDF series.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I agree with the OP. I respect Dark Souls for being a tightly controlled, challenging game. Atmosphere, story, combat, simply top notch. But the fucking trudging back through places is a very cheap way of making a game difficult and testing your patience. I just don't enjoy it, and believe it is a waste of player's time. Fortunately, the rest of the game held up enough for me to slog through it regardless of this.

Another game which forces you to do that, and which didn't hold up in other aspects for me are the Dead Rising games. Very cheap boss fights, and the controls are just clunky enough that you feel you aren't getting a fair go when you get taken down.

Basically the only other time it's stopped me from playing, or should I say re-playing a game, is unskippable cutscenes. Most recent to memory, I tried to play Max Payne 3 again, and my save got corrupted 3 chapters from the end. I tried to reload someone else's save, and had to relaunch the game so many time to test it out because of all the #$*^&%$ing Rock Star social club bullshit.

After the 3rd or 4th time waiting for that intro sequence to let me into the freaking starting menu, I just uninstalled it and never looked back.

 

[Jandau]

Darkest Dungeon. The game's mechanics are intentionally set up to waste as much of your time as possible, which is a shame because the game is pretty great otherwise.

What am I referring to? Why, the grind. And the grind to grind. And the grind needed to grind for the grind. DD is a game where you send groups of adventurers into various monster-infested locations to retrieve treasure and gain experience, all to prepare them for the final dungeon. The leveling and outfitting is pretty slow, additionally compounded by the fact that every adventurer needs some downtime. This means you need a sizeable roster to work with. Now, if one of your characters dies, he stays dead. This means you need to train up a replacement and all the effort that went into him just went down the drain. Fair enough, you might say, just bring in a new guy.

But it's not that simple - higher level characters outright refuse to undertake low level missions, and low level characters can't handle higher level ones. So you need a full low level party. But the number of adventurers you can have at any time is quite limited, so you either need to dismiss existing characters (throwing even more time and resources down to drain) or you need to upgrade your roster size. Upgrading takes a ton of resources that you need to grind for.

So to replace one character, you need to grind disproportionately. But let's say you tough it out and beat the final dungeon. You're done, right? Nope! You need to beat it a total of 3-4 times. And the kicker? You can't use any characters that previously entered it. So you can't just use your winning team again, no no no no no. You need a new set of fully leveled, geared and prepared adventurers. Did I mention all the grind and the limited roster size?

It's a great game, but the level of soul-crushing grind it demands just isn't worth it...