Poll: Has any one comment ever immediately killed your desire to buy a game?

[C14N]

Female Protagonist: Hold off your pitchforks and let me explain. This one doesn't "Kill" my interest in a game so much as it just makes me roll my eyes. On the one hand, I fully understand complaints levelled at the sausage-fest nature of mainstream gaming characters and a game attempting to break that formula has every right to proudly tout its alternative-protagonist as a major selling point. Moreover, I completely empathise with people who want a more immersive game that caters to their personal identity: a lack of character-creation and customization is often a huge turn-off for me personally. But as a cynical bastard, I can't help but feel that Indie developers on Steam cunningly use it as a pre-emptive method of escaping criticism, along such advertising tags as "Atmospheric", "Story-driven" and "Great soundtrack" (mmmm, subjective!). Do I want all games that dare challenge the glorious patriarchy cast into oubliettes for their outrageous independence? Not at all. But it's just a warning sign that I probably won't be interested in a title.

It's weird that your knee-jerk response to a female lead is that it's pandering, but not for a male lead. It seems similar to the view a lot of people hold on characters whose race isn't relevant to the story where casting a black actor is considered lousy, liberal, tokenism while casting them white doesn't warrant a second thought. Why can't people just treat a woman or minority the exact same way they treat the default white man? Until that happens, this stuff will never just fade away.

 

[C14N]

What? Where have you been? Civ players haven't been hating Civ 5 since Gods and Kings came out. And what is BB?

I'm aware of this, but they're wrong. Civ 4 was the high water mark for the series, the simplified controls of 5 was just lacking, wiht Gods and Kings only making it passable at best. And BB was a typo, it should have been BE, for Beyond Earth, which is effectively Civilization 6, but really is more like 5.5 without most of the features of 5 and the community actually is able to understand that it is, in fact, a bad game. Guess the developers figured that people tolerated 5 being a graphical upgrade and mechanical downgrade from 4, so they'd do it again with Beyond Earth.

Your original post said "though most players wouldn't realize it until BB made it clear as day" as though people suddenly came around and starting disliking Civ 5 when BE came out. I'm just saying that didn't happen. Civ 5 still has a thriving community and I'm pretty sure it hasn't dropped out of Steam's top 10 most active games in years. I'm not a fan of BE but honestly that's more to do with the tech tree than anything else, the game seemed more complicated than Civ 5 in general. It seems to have been a bit of a flop in comparison to 5 but as you say, it's really just Civ 5.5 so people aren't all about to leave Civ 5 to play it.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

"Always online DRM"
"Bullet Hell shooter"
"Bad Port"
"Flash Game"
anything ever relating to the avalanche of no effort "baby stomach surgery" knockoff games.
"Mobile port"
"App Store"
"Cloud gaming"

Anything including one or above of those words is bad in my book. Putting them all together would probably crash the entire gaming industry.

 

[savageoblivi0n]

Nope, I have enough faith in my own tastes to determine whether I'll enjoy a game or not based off of seeing it in action, and considering every game release will have two camps of screaming ninnies either declaring it "The best thing since sliced bread!" or "The worst thing since god created the universe! (as it made a lot of people unhappy and is generally considered a bad idea)" I don't put a lot of stock in things I hear about games on the internet. Does this mean every once in a while I fall upon a dud? Eh, sure, such is life, not everything is going to be what you think it is. Do I care that I fall upon a dud now and then? Let's ask Mr. Ducreux...

Spoiler

Welp, another case closed... AWWWAAYYYYYYY!!!

 

[FillerDmon]

Huh. Apparently while I may have been a little over-emotional, my experience is in fact not that outside the norm at all. I feel better now.

 

[Saltyk]

Sure. Watch_Dogs looked amazing. Then, I learned it was being made by Ubisoft.
"Well, I guess that game will have a pointless cliffhanger ending to milk it into a franchise rather than have a self contained story. Guess I can save that $60."

As for the FFVII remake, I'm waiting for more info. We've had next to no actual information on what that means. I'm certainly wanting clarification. I also want to know more about the combat system and the materia system.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why that fills some people with dread. But I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water just yet. Some of what they said suggests that Midgar alone could be huge and allow the player to explore areas they never saw before. That sort of thing certainly intrigues me. Done right, this could be a good thing for fans. Done poorly, it could be exactly what people fear.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

"Halo 5 will have no splitscreen."

-

Crafting

There is only ONE game so far that has ever done crafting in a way I don't find restrictive, boring, and a time-sink, and that is Minecraft.

-

Announcing DLC for a game... That doesn't fix any of its major problems whatsoever.

 

[distortedreality]

'Console X Exclusive' does it for me every time. Even if the exclusivity expires at some point, it takes a lot for me to get interest back.

 

[RawSteelUT]

A comment? Never. A feature certainly will, and EA isn't what you'd call my favorite publisher, but it takes more than any one comment to kill something.

Now videos, that's a different story. If the FF7 Remake a featureless Aeris for the first ten seconds of her appearance in the intro, then we have a problem.

 

[RebornKusabi]

Absolutely.

When I heard MGS 5... Scuse me, MGS V had no story and only focused on sandbox gameplay that was done in many many many games before it, I was immediately uninterested. I played Metal Gear for story and cutscenes, it's my soap opera and hearing it had none of that, seemingly due to the negative reception of 4 and Peace Walker by fair weather fans bothered me.

I ended up renting it at a Redbox for three nights to see if that was wrong and sadly, it was correct. I sent it back and played Destiny and FF14, both games that ironically focus purely on gameplay with actual narrative and cutscenes, something MGS V should have done!

 

[Dragonlayer]

Female Protagonist: Hold off your pitchforks and let me explain. This one doesn't "Kill" my interest in a game so much as it just makes me roll my eyes. On the one hand, I fully understand complaints levelled at the sausage-fest nature of mainstream gaming characters and a game attempting to break that formula has every right to proudly tout its alternative-protagonist as a major selling point. Moreover, I completely empathise with people who want a more immersive game that caters to their personal identity: a lack of character-creation and customization is often a huge turn-off for me personally. But as a cynical bastard, I can't help but feel that Indie developers on Steam cunningly use it as a pre-emptive method of escaping criticism, along such advertising tags as "Atmospheric", "Story-driven" and "Great soundtrack" (mmmm, subjective!). Do I want all games that dare challenge the glorious patriarchy cast into oubliettes for their outrageous independence? Not at all. But it's just a warning sign that I probably won't be interested in a title.

It's weird that your knee-jerk response to a female lead is that it's pandering, but not for a male lead. It seems similar to the view a lot of people hold on characters whose race isn't relevant to the story where casting a black actor is considered lousy, liberal, tokenism while casting them white doesn't warrant a second thought. Why can't people just treat a woman or minority the exact same way they treat the default white man? Until that happens, this stuff will never just fade away.

I do treat female and minority characters the same way I treat the default template - when they aren't pushed out the advertising door as a major selling point, one so important it takes up space alongside gameplay and genre description. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't up in arms on the TellTale forums because both seasons of The Walking Dead contained playable black *and* female characters, nor did I start a petition to have Claire renamed and regendered to "Carl", because those games were superb. But a great deal of that superbness came from the fact that they promised and delivered more then just a diverse protagonist. A game that ticks off the check-boxes of my interests and happens to have non-white non-main characters will have my, well, interest, but a game that sells itself first and foremost on the premise of female protagonists and such uselessly vague terms like "Rich Story Driven Atmospheric Indie Experience"? That sets off my cynicism alarms.

 

[Death Carr]

Exclusively on [insert console name here]
Timed exclusive
Delayed PC release
Native controller support (usually means keyboard+mouse controls are an afterthought)
No Co-op mode

Basically anything that gimps pc players or my ability to play games with my best friend

 

[Dragonlayer]

Female Protagonist: Hold off your pitchforks and let me explain. This one doesn't "Kill" my interest in a game so much as it just makes me roll my eyes. On the one hand, I fully understand complaints levelled at the sausage-fest nature of mainstream gaming characters and a game attempting to break that formula has every right to proudly tout its alternative-protagonist as a major selling point. Moreover, I completely empathise with people who want a more immersive game that caters to their personal identity: a lack of character-creation and customization is often a huge turn-off for me personally. But as a cynical bastard, I can't help but feel that Indie developers on Steam cunningly use it as a pre-emptive method of escaping criticism, along such advertising tags as "Atmospheric", "Story-driven" and "Great soundtrack" (mmmm, subjective!). Do I want all games that dare challenge the glorious patriarchy cast into oubliettes for their outrageous independence? Not at all. But it's just a warning sign that I probably won't be interested in a title.

I don't know if that part applies. Not only they'll get the accusations of pandering the enemy. But their protagonist will be pretty much escrutinised to find every flaw that can be used to call her a sex object. Of course if their only sales-pitch is "we have a woman in our game", I'll roll my eyes as well...

The Tomb Raider's developer comment about how "the players will want to care for and protect Lara" had that effect on me.

That's a fair point, as for one glorious moment I had forgotten about the level of scrutiny applied to these bloody things, so perhaps I need to reword my opinion. "Female Protagonist" in itself does not make me froth with chauvinistic rage, but "Female Protagonist" by itself makes my eyes spin: it's the difference between being intrigued by The Cat Lady and passing over The Path, because one looks like a really engaging horror story and one looks like a traipse through the tra-la-la-la lands of pretentious "art".

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Yup. Was a time when if I wanted to try a game, I'd just go ahead and get it. I think the first time I got put off by single-comment news was Battlefield 3, being "always-online". That, and subsequent "always-online" such as Diablo 3.

Now it's spanned a few more, such as microtransactions in a full priced game, or where it was apparent content was stripped out for an immediate sale of planned DLC. Battlefront is one of those in recent releases.

I nearly bought Arkham Knight for PC as well, sheesh that was a close call, but I wouldn't attribute that to a single comment, more to several news releases and comments made on forums revealing how horribly it ran for so many.

 

[likalaruku]

So, I'm looking through my frequently checked websites, and I'm checking the escapist.

I see Final Fantasy 7's going to be on the Unreal Engine. I have no idea what that means, but I'm otherwise always hype for Final Fantasy 7 news.

I check the link, and I see a note that Final Fantasy 7 is going to be multi-part.

And my FF7 boner goes from Ultima Weapon to Wendy's Plastic Spoon.

Someone told Jim Sterling that Square Enix plans to make all future games episodic, & that they're using Star Wars & FF7 to get people used to it, because they know they'll sell.

 

[C14N]

I do treat female and minority characters the same way I treat the default template - when they aren't pushed out the advertising door as a major selling point, one so important it takes up space alongside gameplay and genre description. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't up in arms on the TellTale forums because both seasons of The Walking Dead contained playable black *and* female characters, nor did I start a petition to have Claire renamed and regendered to "Carl", because those games were superb. But a great deal of that superbness came from the fact that they promised and delivered more then just a diverse protagonist. A game that ticks off the check-boxes of my interests and happens to have non-white non-main characters will have my, well, interest, but a game that sells itself first and foremost on the premise of female protagonists and such uselessly vague terms like "Rich Story Driven Atmospheric Indie Experience"? That sets off my cynicism alarms.

Well what games would you consider examples of pushing the whole "we're special because our character is female" marketing?

 

[infohippie]

Most definitely.

Any variation on the phrase "no offline/singleplayer mode" will do it.

Yep, absolutely this.

Also, "Needs controller", or "Poor mouse and keyboard controls".

 

[C14N]

Sure. Watch_Dogs looked amazing. Then, I learned it was being made by Ubisoft.
"Well, I guess that game will have a pointless cliffhanger ending to milk it into a franchise rather than have a self contained story. Guess I can save that $60."

"Being made by Ubisoft" is kind of one of mine too. I'm pretty tired of wandering around a boring overworld with 10 million uninteresting checklists (or "sidequests") and where I know the plot is going to be made contrived enough to go on indefinitely. It's not a deal breaker because I'm sure the pattern will break some day but it's definitely a turn off.

 

[Nazulu]

Oh yeah! All the usual suspects have been mentioned. Online only, Must go through Uplay, yadda yadda. I have some just for me though:
Like when I heard that Super Smash Brothers for Wii U was drawing inspiration from Brawl, the shit one with so many game play issues and where everyone feels nerfed! Yeah, couldn't wait for that.

Before StarCraft 2 was released and they said they were going to split the race campaigns into 3 separate expansions, while explaining that it would "make them more epic". I'm sorry Blizzard South, but I'm just not retarded enough to believe such bullshit.

And just seeing the covers of Metroid: Other M that they were showing off before it's release said enough for me.