What does it take to ruin a game for you?

Tarcolt

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I know I often get a new game with high hopes, usually because I've done some research or a friend highly recommended it, but occasionally it just lets me down in a way I couldn't have predicted, or its really good up until a point.

So I ask, what does it take for you guys to go off a game.

Bad graphics, poor controls, constant crashes, annoying mechanics, poor character development, limited scope or maybe other people?
 

ninja666

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Usually what ruins the game for me is the abscence of what I'm told to expect from it - when I'm told to expect good writing and it's not good, when I'm to expect satisfying gameplay and there's none etc.

Other than that, bad controls also ruin it for me.
 

Story

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Poor controls. Right off the bat if I don't like the way my character navigates I won't play the game,
I stopped playing Monster Hunter Tri Ulimate and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass because of this.
 

sanquin

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When a game dev's promises don't match the actual contents of the game:
I call it lying, but yea. When a game promises to for instance have awesome NPC AI, and it turns out it's actually simple or even stupid for instance. I hate that, and I'll immediately feel let down. My will to play will soon disappear after that too, usually. Though I have to say, this is usually only in more extreme cases. A small difference between promise and product, I can take.

Poor feedback between controls and character movement:
Basically when controls feel clunky as hell. This problem almost made me lose interest in DA:I for PC, until I started playing it with my controller instead of mouse/keyboard.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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A game has to either control like ass and/or be bugged as hell to be ruined. Both were true of Mercenaries 2.
 

baddude1337

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When I hear about DLC before I hear about the game or games that launch with mountains of DLC content. I'm not against the idea of DLC, but the way it is used in this age of gaming is ludicrous. Games like Borderlands 2, Rome 2 Total War are examples of ludicrous DLC.

On a similar note, games that launch in a very buggy or near broken state. Happens more often these days with developers able to fall back on patches, but if you game needs countless patches to fix, it should have been held back for more testing. The fact AAA publishers like Ubisoft are doing this with releasing broken big budget games combined with their DLC practices is the absolute worst thing in the modern gaming industry IMO.

Poor controls was mentioned, and I have to agree with that. As I mainly game on my laptop now though it's less of an issue as most have rebind-able keys.

Lastly, poor performance. It's kind of not a games fault (unless it's really badly optimised) but a game getting too low of a frame-rate is pretty off-putting.
 

Casual Shinji

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Bad enemy placements/the inability to anticipate enemy attacks.

Max Payne 3 suffered from this horrendously (among other things). Enemies were such a crack shot that the second you caught sight of one, they would've already fired a shot taking away half your health.
 

Eclipse Dragon

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An unexpected escort mission.

Otherwise, the game would have to be broken (as in buggy, unresponsive ext),
or blatantly not as advertised.

In regard to poor controls, Lair jumps immediately to mind, even after the game was patched, the controls were only bearable.
 

happyninja42

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inu-kun said:
Bad storytelling, I'm pretty patient with games but writing that makes me feel like I'm an idiot pisses me off, I'd rather have no story.
Same here. If I'm playing a game, and the quality of writing is so bad, that I feel like I'm watching an episode of MST 3K, and feel compelled to mock it, then it will turn me off from the game. That's what happened to me with the Tomb Raider reboot. The writing was so terrible, the character tropes were so cliched, the parade of male characters dying to save Lara over and over got tiresome. And the fact that in some cases, the only reason certain events happened were because the game took control away from me to show me a cutscene, pissed me off.

Specifically, there is a scene where she is trying to go rescue a downed pilot, and when she gets to him, she sees a badguy with a shield, slooooowly approaching the pilot. The bad guy has his back to her, unaware she's there, and several seconds pass before the guy shoots the pilot. Lara gasps in shock, the bad guy turns around, and then I get control back to fight him. Now this wasn't the first time you fight these badguys with shields, so this wasn't an introduction cutscene. And when I was coming up on the scene, I was getting ready to shoot him int eh back, but the game stole control from me, because the guy was scripted to die. When I could've easily killed that guy and saved the pilot. But nope, we've got to have more tragic deaths for Lara to overcome. Fuck that game and it's terrible, B movie writing.

Yes I have some issues with that game. xD I really wanted to like it, but the game made that impossible.

I'll forgive a lot of bad graphics or gameplay (to a point), if the story is good, but bad writing can just die in a fire.
 

Ishal

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- When it puts story over gameplay, and the gameplay actually suffers because of it. (note that doesn't happen all the time)
- When it clearly wasn't finished, due to reasons of pushing it out early or just shoddy design.
- When I get bored of it, for whatever reason.
- When there are clear game breaking bugs such as corrupted save files or bugs that hinder advancement in the game.

Other than that there is one other, but I wouldn't say it makes me stop playing it. It can, but it's easier to ignore. When games try to be political and send a message, but at the cost of something else. Spec Ops did this.
 

Alcarohtare

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For me a game needs a story to keep me interested. Even if I ignore the story to do other things (Skyrim and Oblivion for example) I still need a reason to be there. This is why I have always enjoyed Fallout 3 over New Vegas - I felt more involved in the main quest.No story means the game has to be amazing elsewhere to keep me going...
 

Bob_McMillan

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Kinda ashamed to admit this but... Difficulty. I stopped playing Deus Ex, Battlefield 3, and Rainbow Six because dying more than a dozen times in the first level isn't anywhere near fun.

Another would be too much realism. Syndicate was a 'meh' enough game, but the motion blur, weapon sway, all the weird little movements your character would make, and the basically one color levels strained my eyes and made me quit the game.
 

happyninja42

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Bob_McMillan said:
Kinda ashamed to admit this but... Difficulty. I stopped playing Deus Ex, Battlefield 3, and Rainbow Six because dying more than a dozen times in the first level isn't anywhere near fun.

Another would be too much realism. Syndicate was a 'meh' enough game, but the motion blur, weapon sway, all the weird little movements your character would make, and the basically one color levels strained my eyes and made me quit the game.
That one's usually easy to fix thankfully, as most games have easier difficulties than the default "Normal"
 

SquallTheBlade

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Happyninja42 said:
inu-kun said:
Bad storytelling, I'm pretty patient with games but writing that makes me feel like I'm an idiot pisses me off, I'd rather have no story.
Same here. If I'm playing a game, and the quality of writing is so bad, that I feel like I'm watching an episode of MST 3K, and feel compelled to mock it, then it will turn me off from the game. That's what happened to me with the Tomb Raider reboot. The writing was so terrible, the character tropes were so cliched, the parade of male characters dying to save Lara over and over got tiresome.

I'll forgive a lot of bad graphics or gameplay (to a point), if the story is good, but bad writing can just die in a fire.
So you guys wouldn't play a game solely on it's gameplay? It has to have good story to back it up?
 

babinro

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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 :p
 

SquallTheBlade

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babinro said:
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 :p
Why don't you start making it then? If you are looking for funding you could try kickstarter. I'm sure there are people who would like that kind of RPG too.
 

Veldel

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Straight up bad controls it don't matter how good your game is if your game plays like crap.

I can live with bar story depending on game

Graphics don't mean shit for me so they can be worse possible but if game controls suck I won't stay on it.
 

Random Argument Man

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When a game just expect you to guess your objective without giving you explanations or clues on how to do it. Makes it very frustrating that I absolutely need to rely on a walkthrough to finish a game.

I also don't like redundant storyline. My main problem with Lufia 2 was that you couldn't progress to the next area without doing the side story of the week. My main problem with Breath of Fire 2 was that you needed to get one thing to get another thing so you can get another thing. Sometimes, you need to move on with your story.