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Games that have ZERO respect for the player's time

I

Iva Demilcol

Member
MattKeil said:
It's basically a synonym for "grind" with a slightly more flexible application. It's a perfectly useful criticism, and I don't see how it's pretentious at all.
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When you complain that you have to explore in a game where exploration is the most fundamental of its mechanics I think the criticism is kind of unfair. If in a game about exploration you're rewarded by nothing I could totally understand the negativity towards it, but Metroid and Souls games usually reward you with weapons, shortcuts, quests or even story bits for getting lost, if you don't want to understand that, then I can totally question your reasons for choosing to play a game like that instead of acknowledge your criticism.


And about the pause thing in Souls games: It takes less than a second to pause the game vs pressing start in other games. Not being able to leave the game until you're about to piss yourself says more about you than the games themselves.
 
G

Griss

Member
HylianTom said:
My first thought was Hyrule Warriors, for those who are completionists. The game is insane, making you play essentially the same set of challenges over and over again.

And when you think you're done, another menu of insane challenges is revealed. One of the last challenges in the game is on this menu; it contains a mode where you play as a giant cucco, with a weak-as-hell pecking attack. Before you can tackle the challenges, you have to grind for hours to level your giant cucco up so that you have a chance of surviving and completing the checklist.

1b4.gif


Insane.
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We have a winner. Never felt as offended by an otherwise good game wasting my time as I did with this one. It actually ruined the entire game for me.
 
D

Dolobill

Member
Divinity Original Sin. I played for over 20 hours and barely accomplished anything due to having essentially no quest log and that slow-as-molasses walking speed.
 
G

gogojira

Member
Just finished Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Definitely Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Traversing the same fucking terrain ping-ponging back and forth through the same boring strips of the city mission to mission. It's the worst. What a massive step back for the now dead franchise.
 
S

Snagret

Member
Griss said:
We have a winner. Never felt as offended by an otherwise good game wasting my time as I did with this one. It actually ruined the entire game for me.
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Yep, the combat was fun at first and I enjoyed the fanservice, but once it became clear how much time the game would eventually be expecting me to put in I had to bow out.
 
G

Gigarator

Member
Kyoufu said:
Final Fantasy XI.
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Definitely this, I played it at a time where I had no commitments in life and therefore had all the time in the world and still felt like it was impossible to get things done sometimes. I can't imagine what I'd have got done if I was holding down a job back then.
 
H

Hero Prinny

Member
The only time that i ever felt like a game did not respect my time was with dragon age 3, forcing you to waste time on their filler quests to continue the main story to make the game feel longer than it actually is. Its why da:i is imo one of the worst games ive ever played
 
L

lukeskymac

Member
Edea said:
Any game where you can't pause.

Imagine you are in a tough boss battle for example in Dark Souls 3. Now you have to go to the bathroom otherwise you will literally shit your pants. But you can't pause!
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Noobcraft said:
Dark Souls
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Noobcraft said:
Can't pause.
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This is the laziest excuse. Don't try to do anything important if you don't think you're prepared for it, in-game or otherwise. This is a series where you can stock up on items that teleport you to a safe place, for crying out loud!
 
D

Dragon1893

Member
Cipher Peon said:
Getting lost is by far the worst experience I could have in a game. I have so little free time for gaming and every time I play a game, I'd like to make any significant progress I can.

Seeing the small hours I budgeted for video games to be thrown in the dumpster because I ran in circles lost for the entirety of it sounds like the most disrespectful approach to my time I can possibly have.
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Though I don't have any experience with the Metroid franchise in particular, this is the most frustrating thing for me as well.
Not being able to pause is also stupid and it's a shame one of my favorite franchises does it, whatever dumb reason you have for that, it's not more important than the player's real life compromises.

To be fair to Souls, exiting the game will result in a save state, though I've had to quit in the middle of boss fights more than once.
 
M

Manmademan

Member
blly155 said:
i know but still if you wanted it and didn't use a guide then I have no idea how you'd figure it out. so it's a waste of time. there are other points in the game where things are hidden. not much is explained. i know some people like their games like that but it seems impossible to me.
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that's the point. its there to sell guides or to give people on message boards things to figure out. It's not meant as something for casual fans to be able to find. If a guide hadn't told you it existed you wouldn't miss it, and would go about the rest of your day just fine. It's not going to break the game, its just an "oh, cool" moment for people that want to go out of their way.

every JRPG ever made is exactly like this, and many other games as well. Though some of them are worse than others. Castlevania II still gets shit on for requiring a random action to progress that the game doesn't explain, and in fact lies and misleads you to try and do something else entirely.

This isn't a complaint exclusive to the souls games.
 
J

Jazzem

Member
As much as I adore Trails in the Sky FC (and what I've played of SC), the slow battle animation speed is absurd...thank goodness for cheat engine + speed up/down hotkeys!
 
C

Cipher Peon

Banned
Dragon1893 said:
Though I don't have any experience with the Metroid franchise in particular, this is the most frustrating thing for me as well.
Not being able to pause is also stupid and it's a shame one of my favorite franchises does it, whatever dumb reason you have for that, it's not more important than the player's real life compromises.
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It's cool that I don't feel like the only one.

As much as I love the Souls series, I won't defend it for that and agree 100% with what you said. It doesn't actively bother me because I get so sucked into the games, but it's more of the principle of the matter. The philosophy of it bothers me than it actively impacting me in action.
 
N

Noobcraft

Member
SlipperyFishes said:
At that point the conceit of the game systems falls apart if you can pause. The game is always saving so if you pause, quit and resume you can jump back in.

No pause is a non issue for the experience it provides.
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If you play in offline mode, you should be able to pause. In online mode I get it, just like any other multiplayer game, it's not reasonable to be able to pause. But the fact that invaders can linger in your world for a long time looking for you, and the game doesn't even let you quit in those instances, doesn't respect those who occasionally have to leave. I had one instance in DS3 where I had to leave my house but I couldn't save and quit my game because somebody invaded me and couldn't find me. Add insult to injury when the game penalizes you for quitting to the dashboard.
 
Maximus P

Maximus P

Member
Most recently Fifa 17 ultimate team.

The only online game mode that has any sort of decent reward requires you to play 40 games over a weekend. When u consider that it takes around 1 hour to complete 3 games (and I'm being generous) that's over 13 hours of game play against some of the most un-sportsman like win-at-all-costs players you've ever come across in any online game ever.

I tried it once. Never again.
 
S

Son Of D

Member
Kingdom Hearts on PS2. Unskippable cutscenes, especially annoying before difficult bosses. Thankfully the remaster fixed that and allowed them to be skipped.

njs15 said:
Drives me nuts when there are trophies within games that are blatant timesinks. In FFX, for example, you have to complete *every* sphere grid. Serves no other purpose as you can get through everything with three characters, and takes hours of grinding.

F1 2015 had multiple "drive 50 laps on this track in a specific mode" trophies that were pointless.
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Rock Band 2 had a trophy which was clear every song in a continuous playlist without failing a song or pausing the game. The playlist had 80+ songs. Fail near the end and you have to try it again.
 
M

Mathieran

Banned
-Mutsukki- said:
I mean, honestly all people saying Souls games makes me wonder why do they even play videogames at all. Games ARE a time waster by nature, so what's even the point then? Do you play games so you can fulfill some arbitrary checklist of games you have to beat? So you want it to be super fast paced so you can get to your "reward" quickly?

I dunno, I always felt games were more about the experience and the challenge than just finishing them. I'm honestly confused by this kind of critiscism
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Including a pause button doesn't negate the challenge or experience. I guess that's my only real criticism. If I die and lose my souls, and have to get back to the boss due to my failure I'm okay with it. But dying because my kid needs me (or any reason, really) and then losing all that progress on top of it is kind of ridiculous.

Any game should let me pause at any time. It doesn't detract from the experience. I really like Bloodborne but it is hard to boot it up knowing that stepping away for something important can cost me 20 or more minutes of work is hard to justify considering my play sessions usually are less than an hour.


Edit: I only mean offline. I understand not being able to pause online
 
A

Alex_Mexico

Member
Recently? MGSV TPP for sure.

Fucking Kojima deserves all the criticism thrown his way for thinking we needed to see that loading and unloading of the helicopter sequence everytime we had to deploy or extract from a mission (which happens all the fucking time).

Add to that making you repeat tougher versions of past missions to pad out Chapter 2 and you have a game that does not respect your time.
 
D

DrArchon

Member
For players experienced with the series, I think the Monster Hunter games do an awful job of respecting your time right at the start. No matter how many games you've played or how many hours you've put into each one of them, it's always the same slog through the same shitty quests. "Kill 10 Jaggi", "Gather 20 Unique Mushrooms", "Get 5 Kelbi Horns", etc. It's terrible if you aren't new to the series.

I think Monster Hunter Generations is where this really got to me, because if you talk to you housekeeper, he'll give you a bunch of free items if you have a Monster Hunter 4U save fille. And as soon as I saw that I just said to myself "If you can tell that I've played Monster Hunter 4U then why are you making me go through these garbage starter quests?!"

Gah!
 
G

Garlador

Member
K.Jack said:
I need to get the fuck out of the Hinterlands!
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That's what EVERYONE told me. "Get out of the Hinterlands!"

... They never bothered to tell me that everyone else was JUST LIKE the Hinterlands...

lukeskymac said:
This is the laziest excuse. Don't try to do anything important if you don't think you're prepared for it, in-game or otherwise. This is a series where you can stock up on items that teleport you to a safe place, for crying out loud!
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I hate this reasoning.

Life happens. I get phone calls. My wife needs my attention. A package arrives at the door. Folks need to use the bathroom. The kids are acting up. Etc.

Any game that demands that you schedule your whole life around it for an hour or two with no lenience whatsoever isn't exactly game design I'm fond of. We get older, and our schedules fill up. I'm not the jobless teenager I was back the glory days of save points and Xenogears's slow-scrolling text.

As much as I do like games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, I'd be lying if I said their inability to let me even pause the game to handle life issues has rubbed me the wrong way more times than I care to share.
 
S

SomedayTheFire

Member
Iva Demilcol said:
When you complain that you have to explore in a game where exploration is the most fundamental of its mechanics I think the criticism is kind of unfair. If in a game about exploration you're rewarded by nothing I could totally understand the negativity towards it, but Metroid and Souls games usually reward you with weapons, shortcuts, quests or even story bits for getting lost, if you don't want to understand that, then I can totally question your reasons for choosing to play a game like that instead of acknowledge your criticism.


And about the pause thing in Souls games: It takes less than a second to pause the game vs pressing start in other games. Not being able to leave the game until you're about to piss yourself says more about you than the games themselves.
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Fuck people with IBS, right?

I swear you Souls fans are so touchy. And I like the games.
 
Shang

Shang

Member
Love it, but Smash Bros 4. A million bajillion trophies, and you can get repeats. The challenges are more tiring than anything. Play everything with every character, etc.
 
C

CommandThrower

Member
Edea said:
Any game where you can't pause.

Imagine you are in a tough boss battle for example in Dark Souls 3. Now you have to go to the bathroom otherwise you will literally shit your pants. But you can't pause!
Click to expand...

This is the main reason why I haven't played Dark Souls, and probably never will.

I need the ability to pause the game I play.
 
C

cpp_is_king

Member
RedZaraki said:
So that made me think: What other games out there have zero respect for the player's time?
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We could just as easily ask what games out there have zero respect for the player's money (i.e. you pay $60 and get a 4 hour game that has no replayability).

CommandThrower said:
This is the main reason why I haven't played Dark Souls, and probably never will.

I need the ability to pause the game I play.
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Just turn the game off, there's almost no loading time and you resume right where you left off. If it's a boss fight, then.. go to the bathroom beforehand?
 
I

ImaLemming

Member
The Neverhood has that bit where you spend five minutes plodding down 40 screens of text on a wall to get one item you need to finish the game, then another five minutes plodding all the way back. Not to mention all the running back and forth across the world because the teleporters weren't as expansive as they should have been.

And then there's D, making you spin a wheel for ten minutes.
 
kunonabi

kunonabi

Member
Xenoblade chronicles x once you start going for 100%

Those play awards and bunny suits are absolutely brutal. It's a shame because the pacing was perfect throughout the main story.
 
D

Dragon1893

Member
Cipher Peon said:
It's cool that I don't feel like the only one.

As much as I love the Souls series, I won't defend it for that and agree 100% with what you said. It doesn't actively bother me because I get so sucked into the games, but it's more of the principle of the matter. The philosophy of it bothers me than it actively impacting me in action.
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Yeah, though like I said in my edit, it's mostly an issue during bosses, though like you said the philosophy is the issue.

Jazzem said:
As much as I adore Trails in the Sky FC (and what I've played of SC), the slow battle animation speed is absurd...thank goodness for cheat engine + speed up/down hotkeys!
Click to expand...

The reason I stopped playing Lunar Silver Star Harmony. I can't believe how slow the battles are. Combined with the fact that there's so little variety in the abilities you can use made it the most boring battle system I've ever experienced, the animations take for fucking ever, it's a shame such an easy thing to fix ruined the game for me.
The amount of your time the game wastes by making you watch those longwinded animations hundreds of times make it the worst offender for me.
 
W

Wildschwein

Member
I was up til 5am polishing off Dragon Ball Xenoverse. I really enjoyed it overall, but that was an 8 hour game that had to have taken me close to 30. If you dare to want to unlock a specific ability you're expected to run the same side quest over and over. Many of these will only drop from a specific opponent. Sometimes that specific opponent only had a chance to spawn after you complete optional objectives, and still, just a chance.

So you're depending on multiple RNG factors for a lot of drops. I think I spent a good three or four hours repeating a single mission. And the item I got there actually made a huge difference in my playstyle, so I would hardly call this ignorable.

I hear the sequel fixed this so I can only complains so much.
 
C

CommandThrower

Member
cpp_is_king said:
Just turn the game off, there's almost no loading time and you resume right where you left off. If it's a boss fight, then.. go to the bathroom beforehand?
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It's not entirely bathroom related. My current living situation has me being needed to help out family members at the drop of a hat. I tend to not play online games very often for this reason, also.

Until that situation changes, I need the ability to pause a game.
 
N

nailbombxx

Member
Souls games don't have pause buttons for a couple of reasons. The most obvious one is that the online multiplayer and single player is supposed to be seamless, and that's how the game is meant to be played. You can get invaded randomly or summon people to help. But what if you just wanna play online? Well, it would sort of ruin the tension if you could just pause the game midstream during a boss battle and change your entire loadout and select every item you need without having to worry about taking damage.
 
D

dezzy8

Member
I'd say league of legends or paragon. 30-40 minute matches with some being even longer. Being stuck playing one character per match so it takes days to be good with multiple characters. It's even worse when you are in a match for 40 minutes only to lose and not receive the rewards that you want from winning. MOBA is such a shit game genre. It's only beneficial for people with tons of free time.
 
M

Maiar_m

Member
Persona 4 Golden. The school and social life stuff (that I understand some people love) made me feel like the game was really not mindful of the time I had to play it and preferred I do menial tasks rather than solve stuff.
 
T

TheGamingBox

Banned
nailbombxx said:
Souls games don't have pause buttons for a couple of reasons. The most obvious one is that the online multiplayer and single player is supposed to be seamless, and that's how the game is meant to be played. You can get invaded randomly or summon people to help. But what if you just wanna play online? Well, it would sort of ruin the tension if you could just pause the game midstream during a boss battle and change your entire loadout and select every item you need without having to worry about taking damage.
Click to expand...

you can have a pause option that doesnt open the menu
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
The only monster hunter game I ever played, Monster Hunter 3 ultimate, feels like a solid 70-100 hours game stretched to be hundreds of hours long with ridiculous grinding and time wasting game mechanis.

- Grinding: Because you can't just make a cool armour from defeating a boss. No, you have to kill it like 15 times because you need 6 of the items it has a 30% chance of droping if you destroy its horn.

- Resources for the sake of resources: Cool now you have 6 of the item but wait, you also need minerals and insects and fish and other random shit (different stuff, mind you, for every part of the armour). So now you have to go mine for minerals and catch bugs in a way that adds literally NOTHING to the game other than some more game time.

- You have money? Can't use that, we need resources:
So here is a crazy idea: You take jobs to hunt down monsters, you complete those jobs and get rewarded with items and money. You use that money to upgrade your base of operations.
But no, the game doesn't want your money. It wants "resources" you get by going out into the wild to kill random monsters. So get ready to go kill mosters outside of missions (monsters you have no interest to kill) so you can get "resoucres" which you need to upgrade the village.

- Crafting yet more stuff:
So some monsters are weak to different types of traps and gadgets. That's a pretty cool idea, it makes what you bring into battle sometimes more important than the level and power of you gear.
Oh but geat ready to craft the shit you need because no one is selling it. Have fun farming more minerals and insects.

- Potions and stuff? More crafting!
Why replenish your potions after a battle if we can have you farming and combining them. It takes a few minutes after every battle, so if we battle hundreds of times we can add a few hours of "content" to the game!!!.
Oh also the whole farm/cultivating thing also "needs resources". Beause we really need you to waste some more time getting them




A real shame. Because the core gamplay is awesome
 
G

Gunstar Ikari

Unconfirmed Member
No More Heroes 1

I'm not sure what's worse: the money grind required to advance in the rankings, or the open hub world created solely for the sake of having an open hub world.

[edit] Also, JRPGs with slow-ass battle animations that can't be sped up or skipped (unless you disable animations altogether) are the bane of my existence.
 
E

ephemeral

Member
Animal Crossing, no doubt. Want to donate items to the museum? Prepare to waste 20 secs of your life listening to the same thing for the 100th time. Entering or exiting a shop? No thanks. Picking up the same item for the 20th time? Still have to read the same painful text.

999: the text scrolls so slow I almost panic when reading it. Why not give us the option to speed it up? I'm not illiterate.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
-Mutsukki- said:
Then this has nothing to do about with "wasting your time". It's about the game having no pause button, which is something else entirely. Yeah that situation sucks but what can you do, they had to compromise that for the online functionality it has. You can always just save and quit.
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Yeah, progress lost because my kids needed me or the phone rang is wasted time.

And they didn't have to compromise for shit, there's no reason for there to be no pause button in offline mode. It's a deliberate design choice to be "hardcore."
 
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