What does it take to ruin a game for you?

[SquallTheBlade]

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?

That's not what I'm saying at all. There are plenty of games that have no story whatsoever, or minimal story, and that's fine. But if it's trying to tell a story, and telling it poorly it's going to annoy me, and make me less inclined to keep playing.

I've played plenty of games that have no story/plot, and enjoyed them, though in all honesty I usually don't continue to play them for long, as I will get bored with the repetition of it over time.

Can't you just ignore the story part? I like Tales of-series of games. Do they try to tell a story? Yes. Is the story shit? Absolutely. Is it annoying? Yes if you try to take it too seriously. But the combat is just so good that I wouldn't care about how bad the story is. I ignore the story and enjoy the gameplay.

Also isn't there a skip button in almost every game nowadays? Just hit that if the story is bad.

 

[The Raw Shark]

One thing could be when the story does something you were probably expecting it to do but then all of a sudden it goes and actually does something like that.

Like when Shadow of Mordor came along. WHY oh WHY couldn't this have just been its OWN thing?! The main thing about Lord of the Rings for alot of people is how the story goes with the lore of the world and tying in to it. That's why I can enjoy the stories of things like Dragon Age, Skyrim, Dark Alliance 2 and other Medieval based fantasy games because they act like its their own world. With Shadow of Mordor I NEVER stopped having the feeling of, "This is a damn, DAMN good game that could've been better if they didn't toss lord of the rings into it."
Here's hoping Monolith tosses the Lord of the Rings part and just starts its own I.P with the Nemesis System that doesn't make them shackle themselves to Tolkien's Lore.

Another example could be in Advanced Warfare when they try so hard to be straight faced about everything but end up acting like blithering idiots with it. Okay so Kevin Spacey is here- Oh and there he goes giving his passive-aggressive speech about my jackass friend that's dead now. Oh hey I'm trapped behind a car- OH SHIT, A GUY WITH A KNIFE- Oh hey nevermind that soldier with the exoskeleton will save me- WHY THE HELL IS SHE SOMEHOW WEAKER THAN HIM?!

Seriously? I'm not gonna throw around the sexism card on everything but that right there was the damn stupidest thing I had EVER seen. You have these hyped up exoskeletons and you can't beat the shit out of a guy with a knife? Why bother helping? I could probably QTE my way out of here, give him a wedgie and STILL have time to go home for lunch in the time you had your stupid fist fight with a person who probably wouldn't be able to take even ONE punch from the heat you're packing.

That's about it for me though.
Controls? They're just that, the controls for the game.
Graphics? As long as I can see what I'm doing and everything looks clear enough, then I'm fine.
Character Development? If a character is different from how they were before, give me a PLAUSIBLE reason. (Plausible example for me, Prince of Persia Sands of Time to Warrior Within. He's being chased around his own freaking kingdom constantly by some big evil mass of black tendrils, of course he's gonna be a bit pissed. Implausible example, Alex Mercer from Prototype 1 to Prototype 2. I'm not gonna by that after seeing a few people be mean to each other and one chick betraying him that he's going to suddenly turn in to Spaghetti Hitler, especially after he already went through all that and just shrugged it off in the first game.)

On a side note, hammering in a Multiplayer is the bane for alot of things.
From what I hear that's what Inquisition's multiplayer is, which is rather the opposite of how I felt when Mass Effect did it, so at least I got that going for me, which is nice.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

No sense of character advancement throughout the game.

There are some exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, I like to feel like my character is getting stronger as the game goes on, either acquiring new abilities, some sort of upgrade system, or beefing up their stats. Games where your character is essentially exactly the same when the game begins (except for new outfits or items) as when the game ends usually just bore me to tears, especially in extremely long games.

This is why I could never get into Red Dead Redemption or GTA IV. It never felt like my character was actually getting any better (except for his "Red Dead meter" getting slightly bigger in RDR). It just felt like all I was doing was getting slightly faster horses and slightly more powerful guns (or slightly better cars and slightly better weapons in GTA IV).

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

Poor performance. I actively refuse to play a game that doesn't run well no matter what I do. I can turn down settings on PC no problem, but if that hardly fixes the issue, then it's a bust.

Other than that, if I found out it's shorter than 8 or 9 hours, I probably won't even bother. Which is kind of backwards when I think about it, since I complain about not having enough time to play games anymore.

 

[Spider RedNight]

I actually really hate forced stealth missions. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually the Rogue/sniper if given a choice but for some reason it just really bothers me when it shoved it in my throat and I'm FORCED to start over because I was seen. It just sucks any fun I have from the game and that I just do that naturally. Assassin's Creed comes to mind (and that I KIND OF understand) but Far Cry 3 / 4 also come to mind and THAT'S what pissed me off. Mandatory sniper section? Screw that noise, I'm parachuting in there to do it my damn self. I think that's what frustrates me most; when I CHOOSE to be stealthy, there's consequences but they don't stop the game and tell me to start over, I just have to (literally) roll with the punches. Skyrim doesn't load a previous save when I fail at being stealthy, it just happens.

 

[Super Cyborg]

Personally, the main thing is if what I've been enjoying about the game has become unenjoyable. It could be many reasons, but eventually, I'm just not enjoying the game. Thankfully, I usually don't have this problem, since the games I play I always enjoy. Funnily enough, difficulty can make me want to keep going, if it's for the right reasons.

As a big JRPG player, the big thing would be story. If it's a turn based game, I like the combat, but the story a lot of the times makes me want to continue. Persona Q was constant dungeon exploring, and I was able to continue because I was invested in the story. Pokémon on the other hand, has no story, and doesn't really get me to continue on. I caught the Legendary in X, then quit because there was no point to continue. My journey had ended.

 

[Fijiman]

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.

That is why I dropped Far Cry 4

I will not argue that. I like Far Cry 4, but every time I speak with the leaders of the Golden Path I want to smack them upside the head with the butt of my gun and go join Pagan Min. At least he would be fun to hang with for more than five seconds.

That and the "hip" radio guy, but the worst was when the female leader said I was chauvinistic for not supporting her idea of doing exactly what the villain is already doing. And later accusing the male leader of being a pedophile for no other reason than him being religeous. If I could have DLC that let me play with Pagan Min and friends I'd think the game would have been more fun.

SquallTheBlade, I actually do like "Tales of-" stories, even Graces that so many people seem to hate, they are usually cliche' but I like the characters and sometimes the stories can get pretty interesting, like the whole nature of Sophie or the 2 worlds in Symphonia.

What I don't like is games that play it safe with the story but have the urge to lecture me like I never read a book.

Oh yeah, like the whole "If I were a serial killer my calling card would be taking a shit on people's foreheads!" thing. I don't mind him as much, but I still really wish that I could listen to the radio for five minutes without having to listen to him blabbering on about the same five things. And if they made that a DLC I wold buy and play the crap out of it.

 

[babinro]

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

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.

Thanks but making a game is a massive undertaking that I simply don't have the patience or genuine passion for. I'm happy to keep this strictly in the realm of a hobby for fun. I've taken programming and business courses growing up and a lot of the realities associated with game development are NOT fun.

In reality I'd probably fit in best as a game producer but I'm happy with the job I have.

 

[Bizzaro Stormy]

Expecting too much from the player. Specifically throwing in a bizarrely hard boss or section in the middle of a moderate part of the game. Basically if the game is hard from the beginning, I'm fine with that. If there is a learning curve even a steep one, I'm fine with that. If the game lets you level up your character and then throws an unfairly hard boss in your face near the beginning, and after you beat him it does it again seemingly to troll you I'm not fine with that! That's right Dynasty Warriors 4 I'm looking at you!

 

[happyninja42]

Can't you just ignore the story part?

No, I can't. If you're trying to tell me a story in the game that I'm playing, I am by default, subjected to your story. So if it's bad, it's like having to sit through a bad movie. And no matter how cool your explosions are, and how hot your female leads are, I'm still going to find your movie a piece of shit, if it's a stupid/terrible story. I'm of course comparing this theoretical game to a Michael Bay film.

I like Tales of-series of games. Do they try to tell a story? Yes. Is the story shit? Absolutely. Is it annoying? Yes if you try to take it too seriously. But the combat is just so good that I wouldn't care about how bad the story is. I ignore the story and enjoy the gameplay.

Good for you, I can't do that. Story is important to me in my entertainment. I don't generally like mindless stuff, and I want to be told a story. It's what interests me, engages me, makes me get emotional, and makes me remember the experience years later. Things without any story, or a bad story, don't have that same reaction for me. I experience them, and then forget them almost immediately.

Also isn't there a skip button in almost every game nowadays? Just hit that if the story is bad.

1. Not all games let you skip that stuff.
2. Not all of the story is restricted to cutscenes. More and more they weave the dialogue into the gameplay, forcing you to sit through sequences of dialogue before they let you have control of your character again. Or they do it while you are playing, via some character speaking to you in a headset or something.

 

[hermes]

Crashes. Specially those that are regular or easily repeatable.

There is nothing that takes me out of a gaming experience (literally) as having to reset my console/PC because the game locked it. Do it a couple of times, and I will remove it and never look back.

 

[visiblenoise]

It takes a lot, but unenthusiastic, stilted, overly slow, or just generally poor voice acting is one of the things I hate the most.

A good example is the Elder Scrolls series. Some characters made me feel like I was being read to in grade school.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Game mechanics that ruin the good parts of the game.

Case in point: The Runey system from Rune Factory Frontier. It was a dumb mechanic that forced you to take time away from the farming, socializing and dungeon crawling that makes up the core of the Rune Factory Series, and do this tedious food-chain management thing. It was just too much effort and took too much away from the good bits that it ruined things for me.

Animal Crossing demanding I play every day or the village suffers is another example. I want a game that's fun, not an added responsibility! If I want responsibilities in a game, I'll play an MMO and join a guild so at least I'm contributing something.

Oh, and making HP or MP in an RPG run out when I "run" and making "walking" agonizingly slow is another great way to make me drop your game.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

The answer to this question is something that I'm still figuring out to this day. I thought I didn't enjoy lots of repetition and poor contextualization for continuing gameplay, but I've put just about 100 hours into Soul Sacrifice and am excited about starting Delta. I didn't think it would last very long and before I knew it some hooks were in me.

I used to despise screen tearing, constantly choosing Vsync on PC despite all the negatives just so I wouldn't have to deal with it. However, I've been playing a metric assload of Titanfall on 360; a game that seems to tear every single frame that it attempts to render. The gameplay itself for that one also ties into my first example.

I think I must have changing tastes and tolerances, a couple years ago I decided to leave my comfort zone of RPGs and shmups and have discovered a lot of great experiences that I would have missed. I guess a complete deal breaker to this day would be a game assuming that I'm an idiot. Either through a completely drawn out tutorial or a patronizing story with phoned-in voice acting, I can't take it very long if the developers are assuming that I'm a 7 year old with a lobotomy.

 

[Souplex]

While their are many general things that can ruin a game for me, (Bad controls, excessive bugs, dumb story etc.) the answer that's distinctly me is that I hate it when a game that advertises itself as an RPG turns out to be a stealth game.
The only notable examples of this are currently Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dishonored.

 

[AT God]

There are a lot of things that can ruin a game but easily the one thing that can kill my chance of ever playing a game again, good or bad, is an "bad" ending.

I can think of two examples of this, first off is the probably common response, Mass Effect 3. I hated ME3's ending, even the extended one, and because of that, I have no real intention of playing the games every again. If ME4 comes out and placates my extremely specific and unreasonable demands, (i.e. retconning the last half hour of ME3) I might consider playing the original trilogy again but otherwise I have no intention of doing so again.

The other example isn't a bad ending in anyway but it is one that I personally don't want to experience again. I won't discuss the specifics as not to spoil it, bur I will probably never play Bioshock Infinite again. I loved the game and the ending, but I don't want to go through it again and therefore I probably won't play it again.

But basically a bad (or just sad/complicated) ending is an easy way to ruin a game for me. I think the "bad" ending is the better example because I have replayed Spec Ops: The Line half a dozen times and it has a fairly sad and complex ending. I think the whole Bioshock series is just weird for me since I love it so much but also really hate how hard Ken Levine makes me think about sad things.


Another shorter one is shitty controls, I can play through an otherwise good game if it has shit controls. I played through the original PC port of Resident Evil 4 entirely using the arrow keys to aim since it lacked mouse control and had horrible gamepad support. Had RE4 not been good/enjoyable though I wouldn't have played it at all. And again, I have no intention of playing through that version of the game again because I don't want to have to learn how to aim with arrow keys again. I'll probably pickup the "HD" remaster if it goes on sale on steam for 3 bucks though.

 

[babinro]

Spoiler

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

As an RPG fan myself, I feel that most of your changes would ruin an RPG for me.

What you seem to be describing just seems to either be just one big ass dungeon with random dialogue breaks, or Final Fantasy XIII, but with random shitty cutscenes every 20 minutes that dont even advance the story.

One of my favorite aspects of RPGS, J and W alike, is the continuity of the world. I love it when a world feels like a single, coherent and complete whole. Even if it doesn't feel completely real, like in most JRPGs, it still feels like a believable whole.

Ideas like "Oh, just sell your shit in the inventory screen no matter where you are," and "Just have a short cutscene the moment you do whatever the quest tells you and teleport you right back to where you were standing afterwards" just completely rob the world of a sense of continuity and be believability.

Basically, I think the game you described isn't an RPG, it's a linear action game with RPG elements and combat.

It's funny you mention that because FF13 is both spot on and terrible. It's a great example of removing a lot of the tedious grind from the experience and focusing on the gameplay while pushing forward in the world. My ideal rpg would largely emulate that feel though without enforcing the strict corridors or removing freedom of exploration.

Remember, my goal is strictly about reducing senseless backtracking/wasted time.

Perhaps the act of fast traveling to a town and then running to the same guild master for 15th time continues to enthrall you in Skyrim/Oblivion but I felt that got old REALLY quickly.

Maybe you found working with encumbrance and the decision to return to town mid-dungeon added to your RPG tactical experience. I personally felt it was a massive waste of time. In fact, buying the PC version and using the command console/mods to all but remove encumbrance improved the game experience tenfold for me without taking me out of the world. This is the kind of respect for the players free time that I'd want to infuse into a game.

 

[OpticalJunction]

Bad gameplay mechanics are #1, I just can't enjoy a game if half the time I'm struggling with the controls.

Long loading times that go over 20 seconds or so.

Bugs. Constant crashes. Minor bugs I can overlook though, but if it's obvious the game is still in "beta" stages, it ruins it for me.

Grinding in any game other than an MMO.

Games which have heavy sexist, political or racial overtones, unless they're relevant to the story somehow.

PC games that are obvious console ports, and WITHOUT the option to use a controller.

This one doesn't ruin the game for me, but it does kill replay value : Lame endings. Games that conclude without rounding anything up, or have a ridiculous and unsatisfying boss fight.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

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"

Yeeeaaahhhhh, so I was actually kinda already playing on easy...

Also, it feels like cheating to not be on Normal.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

Poor Storyline. (Looking at you Final Fantasy XIII-2&3. Tales of Graces.)
Bad gameplay/controls. (Looking at you Aliens:Isolation. Bulletstorm.)
Random, bullshit crashing. (Looking at you, every PC game ever.)