QTE rant time

[Longstreet]

So here i am, playing crysis 3 all happy after a day of school.

Everything is going fine, things die by my hands, i don't die so much by theirs (post-human difficulty btw)

Then some big ***** comes in, all controlling dead ceph and all, which, apparently i have to kill by jamming the spacebar through my keybord.

Just a tiny problem with that.

My space bar is fucked up, because it is used so much. it works. but apparently cant cope with more than 2 beats per second in a game. Also dont got a gaming keybord, so that also slows it down a notch or 20.

Now, usually i can deal with it, since i just rebind the jump key to the right mouse button and then get it in one try. so i try that. (note here though, for me, spacebar has never worked as a QTE button for as long as i can remember)

STILL NEED TO PRESS THE BLOODY SPACEBAR. AAARGHH

So, my fellow escapists, now that i've had the pleasure of venting here, any of you got a QTE frustration story to share? Keybords that are uncooperative? Do tell, I might cheer up from your misery.

I mean, this is a place for sharing and overcoming our traumas *cough*

 

[sextus the crazy]

Fuck Battlefield 3's QTEs. You have no idea how long it took me to do the ending QTE segment in the paris mission. I'll give you a hint...

Spoiler

TOO FUCKING LONG!

God, those QTEs.

 

[Queen Michael]

You know, we do have a Games forum...

 

[mohit9206]

I too am quite annoyed by QTE's. I am currently playing the new Tomb Raider and there are a lot of QTE's to deal with and more often than not they are annoying and irritatiing. The main problem is that the game does not tell you which key to press , it just shows a symbol and expects you to press the associated key instantaneously. Its difficult to hit the correct key in the heat of the moment. Why just not say which key to press rather than showing symbols ? Same with Assassins's Creed games. Am soon going to start playing Resident Evil 6 which i also have read is quite QTE heavy. So i will have to deal with more QTE's soon. YAY !!! But seriously its annoying.There are some really cool and inventive QTE's however in Tomb Raider such as Shooting wolves in slow motion as they lunge towards you or blowing up a guy with a Grenade Launcher .

 

[SlaveNumber23]

I honestly can't remember the last game I played which had quick time events apart from Far Cry 3 and they weren't too bad in that game. So in a more positive light I thought that quick time events were implemented quite well in The Last Remnant.

Basically, the game had a turn based RPG combat system similar to that of Final Fantasy, where you spend a lot of time in combat watching your units carry out the orders you selected for them. In The Last Remnant, every time one of your units made an attack there was a chance that it would give you a simple one button quick time event, which if you completed successfully your unit would do a mini critical hit. Additionally, all your units still waiting to attack on the current turn would definitely give you a quick time event, as long as you successfully complete all of them.

This system occurred frequently enough for you to learn it and get used to it as an actual game mechanic and the controls for it remained constant throughout the entire game, instead of throwing these random quick time events at you from nowhere like other games do. Additionally, whether you completed the quick time events or not has next to no consequence, completing them gave you a noticeable boost to your damage output but you weren't punished for missing any, unlike in other games where missing a single quick time event throws a game over screen at you.

The quick time events used in this way were very fair and livened up what is generally a dull process in turn based RPG games of watching your units carry out attacks and orders.

 

[The_Echo]

I honestly don't understand the vitriol geared towards QTEs. I've never been bothered by them, myself.

Though on a conceptual level, the mid-cutscene QTEs in Resident Evil are just bullshit. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't kill you. I remember SoulCalibur III having a similar mechanic, but instead of leading to one's death upon failure, it just changed the cutscene. And I thought that was cool.

As a whole though, I'm OK with them.

 

[Ghonesis]

I once played some horrible PS2 port of Resident Evil 4 on my PC.
Couldn't get past the first QTE because I couldn't remember which keys corresponded to the buttons of a PS2 controller.
Gave up after 2 minutes. xD

 

[Tayh]

I once played some horrible PS2 port of Resident Evil 4 on my PC.
Couldn't get past the first QTE because I couldn't remember which keys corresponded to the buttons of a PS2 controller.
Gave up after 2 minutes. xD

This is pretty much my exact experience with that game.
Had to dodge boulder, game told me to press 'X'. Wasn't X.
Tried a few more times while mashing random keys. Then uninstalled it and never picked it up again.

 

[Shodan1980]

Barring maybe two fights, every time I died in Tomb Raider it was because of QTEs taking me unawares. QTEs can work, Heavy Rain was basically one long QTE but it worked for that game, but usually they're just game breaking nonsense. If I never have to hammer a button to prise open a door it'll be too soon.

The worst QTE I've had was on some lazy console port (I can't for the life of me remember what it was) and even though I was using keyboard and mouse it was asking me to QTE X-Box controller buttons (as in "Hit Fire! A Button") Rage.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I hate all QTEs without exception. I have not played any game so far with a QTE I found necessary or enjoyable. The only excuse as far as I'm concerned is having the character perform many sequential actions that could not be accomplished with regular gameplay. This applies only to scripted sequences where you don't know what the character is going to do, like a fight scene in Heavy Rain or a parkour section in a game without the controls for free running. But even then, I think it should happen with regular gameplay or not at all.

 

[w9496]

Anybody ever play Lost Planet 2? The game didn't tell you that there were QTE's, but had 3 button presses just randomly mashed into cutscenes without any warnings. They only happen 4 or 5 times throughout the entire 10 hour game, but it's still infuriating.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

QTE's killed what little bile fascination I had of Sly 4 Thieves In Time. That's all the final boss is.

This is why you don't hand over game production to the fanboys that made your HD collection.

 

[JediMB]

I liked QTEs in Shenmue.

I tolerate them in a lot of other games, but would certainly prefer more well-crafted regular gameplay in most instances.

 

[IronMit]

QTE's can be ok if they fit some sort of logical pattern.

A good QTE is one that could work without the visual aids.

For example in sword fights - you can learn that when swords clash lock, you need to hit a certain button to force your way through it. Dishonoured and maybe Revengeance have examples of this.

Even Tomb Raider; when she scrambles up wall . But then other action QTE's in that game are a complete joke.

I don't agree that the opening mechanic QTE in this video.but most other ones are pretty poor...

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I quite liked the ones in Tomb Raider... I liked the way they actually used the buttons that were relevant to that buttons usual control, I really hate it when they are just random!

Like Mercinaries 2... seriously... every time you steal a vehicle up pops a random selection of weird button combos... really!? They have nothing to do with what's happening on screen...

I also don't like having to repeatedly smash buttons so much in some games. Tomb Raider had that a bit, repeatedly smashing X or Y in certain situations. And God of War with it's R2 smashing was annoying too! I don't like them because they are pointless with no actual challenge offered... you pretty much can't lose when one appears, but your controller now hates you that bit extra!

 

[prophecy2514]

QTE's in tomb raider.

God.

They're everywhere...

 

[fix-the-spade]

I honestly don't understand the vitriol geared towards QTEs. I've never been bothered by them, myself.

Because they're boring as hell and annoying?

In some cases they work, for example dynamic reloads in Gear of War, Mass Effect's interrupts or interacting with cutscenes in Metal Gear Solid 3. Mostly however they're just lazy garbage development, rather than make a playable segment, just slap in a cutscene with one hit/miss button press for a 'playable' scripted event.

It's at it's worst in BF3, which is full of perfectly playable sections that for some reason use QTEs. Every time I got into a minute long fist fight that takes 3 random button presses I wanted to drive to DICE and give someone a slap. It's Battlefield, I have a melee button and I have a machine gun, both are more interesting than this completely scripted fight I'm sitting through.

It's pure laziness on the developer's part, they've making short films, not games, but the films pester you to press play every few seconds or they'll stop.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Usually find QTEs are crap and incredibly annoying however Cyberconnect2 somehow makes them awesome the new Tomb Raider also wasnt too bad with them a bit heavy on the start but at least they were easy and the price of failure was near non existant.

The game that made me despise them was God of War and its sequels that was the wrong way to do QTEs every non standard craeture its QTE time finish a boss with a QTE oh whats that you messed up well as a punishment we are going to take half your health and give it to the boss again and as for that 3 part Zeus battle in 3 well fuck that I was so pissed off with this game and glad when it was over no more God of War for me now.

Anyway no problem with QTEs as long as they are used and implemented well.

 

[Woodsey]

I fucking hate them, but I can't say I've seen them all that much of late. Although the Tomb Raider reboot featured an annoying amount of annoying ones in its first couple of hours. I must've replayed the 'rape controversy' one 10 fucking times because it didn't flash the button to press on screen.

 

[Nazulu]

I love a good rant, here I go.

I hate QTE's in general. One thing I completely agree with Yahtzee with is that "QTE's add to gameplay like licking the back of your teeth makes a square meal".

Pressing buttons in a certain order is slightly less fulfilling than playing a spelling game to me, since all I'm learning is the positions of each button. I don't even see how pressing X really fast just to pull a leaver (say in God of War) is fun in anyway, because pulling a leaver is as exciting and challenging as dicing up demons, right?

Another thing I bet a lot of you won't understand is QTE's is pretty much another game play style. Say in God of War again, it's shameful when most of the time I'm using the basic moves to get through most of the challenges, then built up to combo's, suddenly just to find my skills I've been learning don't mean dick against those that require certain buttons to be pressed quickly just to finish them off, or even just harm them. Doesn't everyone feel that it's more of an accomplishment when you've actually beaten the challenges with everything you've learned?

You know, we do have a Games forum...

Could you please send these messages privately so it doesn't look so out of place on the thread.