Poll: Game features you don't care for

[Callate]

Multiplayer can be great, if it's designed that way from the ground floor. If it's tacked on in the last three months of development because some marketer insisted an otherwise single-player game had to have it, to the detriment of polishing or extending the single-player work the dev team has been working on and actually wants to be working on instead...

Yeah, I get it; everyone wants to believe their game will be the next Call of Duty. How many people do you think there are playing multiplayer Bioshock 2 or Spec Ops: The Line right now...?

Multiplayer is the most egregious offender, but any of the poll's entries can to varying degrees be superfluous, under-developed, or just plain gawd-awful. Worlds that offer extended play through use of cut-and-paste. Cooperative modes that create unbalanced and/or broken play. Games that are "replayable" because you only get to see significant content by performing nigh-impossible tasks with limited windows of opportunity to perform them. "Extra" content that amounts to recoloring a few skins and toggling a few numbers. New Game plus modes that cause the intricate balancing act of the game you just played to fall to pieces and become utterly tedious. And so on.

 

[ZforZissou]

Both Multiplayer and Co-Op just don't do it for me.

I rarely ever use multiplayer (Spec Ops: The Line, Tomb Raider, Mass Effect 3, Metro: Last Light, etc.). I can't help but feel like tacking multiplayer on a game matters to sales. Even if it does, the effect is probably not worth the effort the devs have to put into making it.

I rarely ever use co-op because either I have no friends or my friends don't generally enjoy the games I enjoy. One notable exception to this, for me, has been Borderlands 2, which one of my friends and I have been playing the SHIT out of. I can't say I would enjoy that game at all if it wasn't for the co-op.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Persistent worlds.

No doubt they're a great idea for school kids and the unemployed, but for those of us with jobs and families who can only devote between two and six hours a week to gaming it is an anathema. I love gaming, it's been a hobby of mine since the late 80's, but I have commitments. I can't spend the time gaming that I used to, and there are friends of mine who spend in a day the amount of time I can spend gaming in a week. This isn't down to a lack of interest, this is simply down to having a fuller life, and I'm kinda opposed to games that punish me for doing things other than gaming.

I hear you. A Tamagochi died on me when I was a kid and I have been traumatized by it ever since.

Ah, Tamagochi. I'm still trying to decide whether they were a game per se or simply an early form of electronic water torture.

I never owned one myself but I did have the PC equivalent: Creatures. Whoever made that 'game' was an evil genius.

 

[WOPR]

Grind... It's usually cleverly disguised as "Over 80 hours of gameplay!" or "200+ quests!"
but when it boils down to "Kill X amount of monster Y" and "Deliver package B to person C" and "Collect N of item M in area D" it just ticks me off... If you can come up with 200 original quests that aren't all the same that would be amazing. But stop saying you have 200+ when you have 3 repeated 200+ times...

...If anyone is wondering, I was gifted Borderlands 2 over summer sale, so this is too fresh in my mind...

After I ignore the quest thing I'll probably lean with "Grouchy Imp" and say presistant worlds. I'm tired of playing a game for an hour, having something to do, then come back noticing I have to do that hour again from the start because I didn't finish the full 2-3 hour section.

 

[Maledictus010]

Trophies and/or achievements are nonsense to me. Seems like a waste of developer's time, I'd rather see that time used for polish or content. Plus, it's a big immersion killer to see some stupid achievement pop-up in Steam after you've had the boss fight of your life.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Both Multiplayer and Co-Op just don't do it for me.

I rarely ever use multiplayer (Spec Ops: The Line, Tomb Raider, Mass Effect 3, Metro: Last Light, etc.)

Wha? They yanked multiplayer from Last Light to focus on the campaign.

I agree with you with tacked on multiplayer and co-op although, unless the devs pull a Valve and support it those modes end up looking like ghost towns after a few months.

 

[clippen05]

Other - Motion controls... god do I hate them. Honestly, the main reason I'm not buying an Xbox One is not because of their DRM fiasco but because of the emphasis on Kinect. I am very afraid that more and more games will try to implement Kinect and that is something I dread. I can only say I played a handful of games that didn't have sucky motion controls and they were all on the Wii. Everything I've played on the Kinect just seems like waving your arms around and the game playing itself.

 

[Dominic Crossman]

Does qte count on this thread?
I don't understand people not liking length. A short game is a game that I will not buy, but maybe rent.

 

[Tom_green_day]

I think 'replayability' is a word thrown around a lot, that doesn't really mean much. You can replay any game. Does that mean it would be fun to do so? No. Take the Mass Effect series- apart from some details, such as squad and cutscenes, each playthough is the same- the same levels, the same enemies, the same powers and weapons used mostly, and it's no fun to replay. On the other hand Black Ops, which is a short linear campaign, is the game I've done most playthroughs of on 4, because it's shorter and less complex.

 

[doodger]

If only game devs looked at forums like this(...)

Except that they don't. Game cost so much to develop that they need to add in every single little thing that might just tip the sales over. Saying you are developping a shooter with coop, dlc and multiplayer content is easier to pitch to your investors than saying you are making a single player game with "no replay value".

OT: Multiplayer added on to single player only games is my biggest problem amongst those mentionned. Spec ops:the line comes to mind: the multiplayer was farmed out to another studio for a quick cash in. Not only that, but where the single player is an epic experience on the horrors of war, the online aspect goes completely against everything the single player tried to say.

Extra content(DLC, I assume) does not annoy me as much, but it's certainly not a factor in wether a game is appealing or not.

 

[CabooseVD]

Quick time events didn't make?

 

[Poetic Nova]

Multiplayer, I rather go outside and meet with me friends rather then go online in a game with a bunch of strangers.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

Definitely unnecessary or uncalled for multiplayer (more specifically online multiplayer).

I'm so glad were off that stupid "if it doesn't have multiplayer it won't sell" bandwagon that ever developer was on a few years back and giving us plenty of great titles with single player campaigns being boggled down by their abysmal or sub par multiplayer.

 

[ZforZissou]

Both Multiplayer and Co-Op just don't do it for me.

I rarely ever use multiplayer (Spec Ops: The Line, Tomb Raider, Mass Effect 3, Metro: Last Light, etc.)

Wha? They yanked multiplayer from Last Light to focus on the campaign.

I agree with you with tacked on multiplayer and co-op although, unless the devs pull a Valve and support it those modes end up looking like ghost towns after a few months.

Oh, I didn't know that. Good on them. I just assumed it was still there, and didn't care to look.

 

[DanielBrown]

Multiplayer and co-op, unless it's an MMO where it's kind of important.
I used to play Counter-Strike daily for hours back when I was a young teenager(CS 1.5, fuck yiiis) and feel I've had my fair share of it. Besides, all the horror stories I hear today about the vocal brats makes me stay away even more.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

>Length

Hmm, depends. If you can make the game long and and varied, it's fun. Otherwise it overstays its welcome.

>Co-op

This is fine as long as the singleplayer main game DOES NOT rely on co-op.

If you're gonna make a co-op based game, make it like L4D.


>Multiplayer

I can understand multiplayer, but I hate games that rely on their multiplayer.

>Replayability
>New Game Plus

I really like these. They give a game more life to me.

>Extra Content

Depends how it's implimented. I dislike paying more money for a game I already own unless it's a huge bundle of content (expansions).

>Other

Visual customization (in multiplayer) for things you can't see. First person shooter games keep trying to have this. If I'm going to work on how my character looks I WANT to see it when I play.

For singleplayer, I can mostly deal with it for roleplaying purposes, and more often you get the option for third-person mode. But otherwise, I'm not into showing off E-Peen in TF2. If people wanted my hats, I gave them.

 

[Griffolion]

This is going to sound weird, but re-playability (alluding to single player). This specific to just me, probably, but when I play a game through once, I very rarely ever touch it again. There's only been two games in recent memory where I've been through them again, and that's MGS4 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Multiplayer is fine, since re-playability is kind of its thing, but as far as single player goes, I couldn't care less.

 

[MetalMagpie]

I don't care much for competitive multiplayer, but co-op can make pretty much any game tempting. I love gaming the most when I get to do it with my partner.

 

[MetalMagpie]

Quick time events didn't make?

According to the OP, this is a list of selling points, not game features in general. I didn't think QTEs were generally advertised on the box.

Although I could be wrong. People have considered some pretty weird things worthy of box-space (presumably when the game has no redeeming features at all).

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Quick time events didn't make?

I think Quick Time Events aren't advertised that much nowadays. Every action game has them to some degree, seeing as most actions are shoved into contextual-sensitive buttons and the game will prompt you to press them for a short period of time to succeed in whatever you're doing. Take Arkham City. Lightning bolts show up over enemies' heads whenever they're about to strike you, prompting you to press the counter button to deflect them. How is this any different from a Quick Time Event? And yet nobody would criticize Arkham City for its QTEs. They're pain (or just boring) if you base your whole game around them, as in for-every-little-thing, like RE6.