Poor pacing (grind).
This has gradually become my number one deal breaker in any game followed closely by poor controls.
What do I mean by poor pacing?
Just about anything that feels like it's actively exists to waste my time while adding little or nothing to the experience. The genres most infamous with this are MMO's and traditional RPG's.
- Does your game require me to fight through waves of monsters for 10-20 minutes to reach a quest location, have 5-20 minutes of fun and then backtrack 10-20 minutes through monsters again to cash this quest in? I'm done.
- Does your game use a mount system but then expands the maps so that your increase in speed is meaningless? I'm done.
- Does your game require a significant amount of returning to town and wading through load screens to do the same menial task over and over again? I'm done.
- Do I have to spend minutes sprawling through large towns to complete routine tasks like selling gear? I'm done.
- Do I have grind out monsters for levels in the same zone for hours in order to proceed forward? I'm done.
You'd think all of this would mean that I hate RPG's and yet that's far from the truth. I LOVE the genre...it's just bitter sweet. I frequently feel like I'm spending over 50% of my play time getting ready to have fun. Programmers need to learn to institute movie style CUTS in their game.
- Want to sell gear while in a dungeon?
CUT to shop, leave shop and CUT back to your place in the dungeon. There's ZERO reason to force backtracking on the player. Better yet, simply let us sell gear through inventory screen. It's implied that you sold it to a merchant...skip the loading screens altogether.
- Complete a quest? CUT to quest completion dialogue/scene the CUT back to your place in the world.
Why do I need to watch the character walk back to town/fast travel back to town then walk through the town to find the quest giver?
So on and so fourth.
I'd make the absolute greatest RPG game ever by the way.
It'd only be 10 hours long because of all the cuts but the experience would be amazing