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[-Mutsukki-]

Mobile games and most modern games are made with this in mind.

And the same people that create and complain in these threads... complain about mobile games and modern games.

I wonder if people who play games ever know what they really want after all. It really sounds more like a "smart sounding" way of saying "yeah I didn't really like this game I guess"

I guess I agree that not being able to skip cutscenes is bad though.

 

[Linkura]

Came in to say DQ7, see it was the whole point of the OP, leaving satisfied.

 

[KingBroly]

Braid and The Witness - I don't know why Johnathan Blow loves these slower than snails moving platforms.

 

[FlaygletheBagel]

Pokémon. I'm playing through Moon right now, and granted, the series has come a long way from how downright slow everything used to play. Text speed is quicker, you can finally choose to add a Pokémon to your party after catching it instead of automatically sending it to your PC and having to go get it, and a bunch of other QOL improvements.

That said, the opening sequences of these games are unbearably long and there's no way to skip them. Do we really have to sit through yet another unskippable 2-minute sequence where somebody teaches us how to catch wild Pokémon? This shit is in every game and it practically makes me want to carve my brain out of my head when every gen I see that they still don't let you skip it. There needs to be an option to skip these overlong tutorial sequences. Especially would've been nice in Sun/Moon, where the tutorial section of the game arguably takes place for well over 2-3 hours.

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

+1

All the defenders say its a deliberate design feature and necessary to the game's appeal.

Whether that is true or not is irrelevant to the question of it not respecting the player's time, which it doesn't. Save and Exit? Everytime I want to pause offline? Yeah, that's kinda proving the point. I have to exit the game anytime I want to pause it for an interruption of some time, is really a great example of not respecting the player's time.

Do fighting games not respect the player's time because they don't allow players to pause in online matches or in their original arcade setting?

 

[Rabbit Clock]

Pokemon Sun. Like just ask up front if I've played a Pokemon game before. I don't need to learn the basics for the 19th time.. The beginning of this game is unbearably slow. I almost wanna stop playing.

 

[Baldwin_the_First]

Do fighting games not respect the player's time because they don't allow players to pause in online matches or in their original arcade setting?

Did you not noticed that you can't pause the game even when you're playing offline in souls games or what? Why are you comparing it to a fighting game when playing online?

 

[Juraash]

I feel like Destiny is (or maybe was, haven't played the newest stuff) firmly in this category. I don't mind grinding but Destiny's tends to be boring and unrewarding. The raids, when new can take hours on end and literally no one in your group can get a major upgrade. The random light level gear in Oryx meant you could plow along reset after reset and wind up with worse drops than you had equipped.

At least in a standard MMO setup you knew people were getting something for the time investment, even if it wasn't you.

 

[redcrayon]

Do fighting games not respect the player's time because they don't allow players to pause in online matches or in their original arcade setting?

He's talking about offline. There's no justifiable reason you can't pause offline and have to save/quit instead. Why not have an option in the menu to either let the player pause offline, or 'no pausing for the authentic online experience'. I've got kids and sometimes I need to instantly pause a game. I don't play online often because of this, but also save/quit is a bit drastic compared to just hitting start. It just means I don't play those games. Sleep mode on portables is a godsend for me.

 

[Mentok]

As a HUGE RPG fan, I hate RPGs that add bloat for unnecessary reasons other than to advertise "Over 100 hours of adventure!" I normally skip a lot of the boring side stuff, but some games have their story/lore explained in the side stuff (grrr).

As for the Souls games, I've never cared about not being able to pause but I do think it's tedious to have to continuously run back to the boss door. It's 30 seconds of me just running past enemies to get to a fog door. I would rather there only be a bonfire at the beginning of a level and one near the boss door, than the spaced bonfires that keep a gap to the boss fight.

 

[packy34]

Optional bosses. They are not necessary to beat the game. So it's up to you to decide if you have enough time to waste.

MGSV is a real answer here.

As posted earlier, I don't agree that MGSV doesn't respect player's time. A long game isn't the same thing as one that intentionally wastes time and/or isn't fun. The missions themselves are relatively short; it can be picked up and played in short bursts. I *really* don't understand why so many people feel that MGSV wastes their time. If the gameplay wasn't fun, I'd get it.

 

[Archtreyz]

Mafia III. How is there no fast travel? I dislike games so slow with no fast travel.

 

[TheSpoiler]

As posted earlier, I don't agree that MGSV doesn't respect player's time. A long game isn't the same thing as one that intentionally wastes time and/or isn't fun. The missions themselves are relatively short; it can be picked up and played in short bursts. I *really* don't understand why so many people feel that MGSV wastes their time. If the gameplay wasn't fun, I'd get it.

The only thing I agree with is getting from mission to mission, but you don't have to hop in the chopper and can drive to each mission. The chopper rolling in is painful but only takes a minute before you get dropped off.

Otherwise you can streamline much of the processes MGSV has, and it does so for you in many cases.

 

[Shadowhaxor]

Any of the Soulsborne games.

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Did you not noticed that you can't pause the game even when you're playing offline in souls games or what? Why are you comparing it to a fighting game when playing online?

He's talking about offline. There's no justifiable reason you can't pause offline and have to save/quit instead. Why not have an option in the menu to either let the player pause offline, or 'no pausing for the authentic online experience'. I've got kids and sometimes I need to instantly pause a game. I don't play online often because of this, but also save/quit is a bit drastic compared to just hitting start. It just means I don't play those games. Sleep mode on portables is a godsend for me.

The Souls games are clearly trying to make you feel like you're playing online at all times, even if you actually aren't. That's why there are so many imitations of the game's online elements (like messages, ghosts, co-op and invading phantoms, mock invasions, etc.) So clearly the idea is that they want offline and online players to have the same experience.

 

[brawly]

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!

Sounds like you have bowel problems. Me personally I know I have to shit ahead of time, not when it's knocking on the door.

 

[hank_tree]

Braid and The Witness - I don't know why Johnathan Blow loves these slower than snails moving platforms.

Totally disagree. I can't think of a game that respects the player's time more than The Witness.

 

[Iva Demilcol]

Thank you! I love the Souls series, but can not stand the no pause and the defense force that emerges around it like it some hallmark of design to not respect players with a simple feature.

Totally disagree here:

If there's a game series that really respects players that would be DS: in most games when you die between checkpoints you lose all progress until that point, in Souls games when you die you just lose your souls, the items you get, new equipment, new weapons, shortcuts discovered, etc., all those things will remain while most traditional games will make you repeat all you did before dying. That's super respectful of my time. The lack of a proper pause button is just a minor inconvenient, but even then, the game allows you to save at any point except while fighting bosses. That's a great advantage that makes it for a lack of a dedicated pause button.

 

[redcrayon]

The Souls games are clearly trying to make you feel like you're playing online at all times, even if you actually aren't. That's why there are so many imitations of the game's online elements (like messages, ghosts, co-op and invading phantoms, mock invasions, etc.) So clearly the idea is that they want offline and online players to have the same experience.

Thats why I think there should be an option. I don't want the same experience as online players, that's why I play games offline if it means I can pause.

I love playing Monster Hunter, it's single player mode attempts to ape online as closely as it can with the tavern, quest board and npc allies these days. but if I am likely to be interrupted, I play offline so I can pause/sleep mode at my leisure. If they were disabled in single player and a lengthy boss fight rendered unpausable, it would be a worse game for it.

 

[redcrayon]

Totally disagree here:

If there's a game series that really respects players that would be DS: in most games when you die between checkpoints you lose all progress until that point, in Souls games when you die you just lose your souls, the items you get, new equipment, new weapons, shortcuts discovered, etc., all those things will remain while most traditional games will make you repeat all you did before dying. That's super respectful of my time.

Agree with all of this. For the same reason I like the way in Dragon Quest you just lose half your unbanked money if you die, rather than precious XP and equipment you've spent time fighting for.

The lack of a proper pause button is just a minor inconvenient, but even then, the game allows you to save at any point except while fighting bosses. That's a great advantage that makes it for a lack of a dedicated pause button.

I don't think it quite makes up for no pausing offline but it is still very reasonable.

 

[Chronospherics]

Thank you! I love the Souls series, but can not stand the no pause and the defense force that emerges around it like it some hallmark of design to not respect players with a simple feature.

Souls series. The inability to pause the game is horrendous and selfish. Games are a hobby, they are not the most important thing in my life. Being punished because your kid wants you or someone rings the door bell is a dumb mechanic.

If you could pause you would only be able to do it offline, if you could only pause offline, people would play offline for inconvenience. If people were mostly playing offline, then they'd miss a lot of the seemless online interactions that the developers wanted players to experience.

It might be selfish because the developers are sacrificing player convenience for the sake of retaining their vision, but they have reasonable justification to do so.

I get that people like playing these games offline but the online interactions are a big part of the experience and it doesn't make sense to offer additional incentive for players to jump offline. Less players online is a detriment to the experience of everyone that is online, and it's not unreasonable for the developers not to want to sacrifice their vision. A big part of Dark Souls is the community driven tutorialing and interactions via both pvp and co-operative play. If you play offline then you are missing out on all of this, and ultimately, not playing Souls games the way they were designed. If you want to play them offline because of particular reasons, then go for it, but don't expect additional advantages and incentives for doing so.

 

[redcrayon]

If you could pause you would only be able to do it offline, if you could only pause offline, people would play offline for inconvenience. If people were mostly playing offline, then they'd miss a lot of the seemless online interactions that the developers wanted players to experience.

It might be selfish because the developers are sacrificing player convenience for the sake of retaining their vision, but they have reasonable justification to do so.

Agree that following through with their creative vision is perfectly justified, but as someone with young children that occasionally need instant attention I still think it's a silly part of that vision to not be able to pause a lengthy boss fight when playing offline.

I get that people like playing these games offline but the online interactions are a big part of the experience and it doesn't make sense to offer additional incentive for players to jump offline. Less players online is a detriment to the experience of everyone that is online, and it's not unreasonable for the developers not to want to sacrifice their vision. A big part of Dark Souls is the community driven tutorialing and interactions via both pvp and co-operative play. If you play offline then you are missing out on all of this, and ultimately, not playing Souls games the way they were designed. If you want to play them offline because of particular reasons, then go for it, but don't expect additional advantages and incentives for doing so.

Thing is, I have little interest in ever playing online- I was never going to be part of this online pool of players experiencing the authentic vision, so it's not like I'm one less person online.

I don't think pausing is an 'additional advantage' as much as 'a rational option for people who don't care about online'. It's not like I'm suddenly a stronger player for it, I'm probably less so because I'll be diving back into a boss fight after doing something else and probably instantly die anyway! I don't see how me not having hours to play games online and asking for a mild concession to being a busy adult is me expecting unreasonable advantages.

 

[TheGamingBox]

If you could pause you would only be able to do it offline, if you could only pause offline, people would play offline for inconvenience. If people were mostly playing offline, then they'd miss a lot of the seemless online interactions that the developers wanted players to experience.

It might be selfish because the developers are sacrificing player convenience for the sake of retaining their vision, but they have reasonable justification to do so.

no they dont, infact there is no reason to not have a way to pause while online when not invaded either, watch dogs allows it, and it has a similar invading feature,

 

[SpiritSlayer]

State of Decay when it first came out.

 

[poodaddy]

I played Skyrim for nine hours yesterday and I feel like I accomplished nothing...does that count?

 

[Lux R7]

no they dont, infact there is no reason to not have a way to pause while online when not invaded either, watch dogs allows it, and it has a similar invading feature,

how does it work? The game is also paused for the invader?

 

[TheGamingBox]

how does it work? The game is also paused for the invader?

the game unpauses when you are invaded

 

[redcrayon]

I played Skyrim for nine hours yesterday and I feel like I accomplished nothing...does that count?

I think with Skyrim I would have loved an option to remove quests from my journal permanently, or even temporarily (as if I had never heard of it). I like to keep things tidy and my journal always fills up with loads of quests I'm not interested in for that character. Sure I can ignore them, but it would be nice to be able to remove stuff for characters that want to focus on particular stuff rather than write down every single overheard scrap of info. I once played as a merchant with a 40-item jobs list that involved killing demon lords and fighting bandit kings, when really I just wanted to roleplay as a travelling Hunter/herbalist! That's just me wanting to roleplay though.

 

[RexNovis]

Dragon Age Inquisition with its bullshit quest timers.

 

[achromicia]

A bit over five hours in, Pokemon Sun. Whatever happened to leaving Pallet Town and setting off on an adventure? So many cut scenes/interruptions.

This! I was trying to play with my 3 year old daughter, she got bored as at the start with all the dialogue and moving 2 inches before another cut scene.

 

[Lux R7]

the game unpauses when you are invaded

so in souls you would die even with a pause button i guess. Doesn't make much sense to me in a game in which you can exit whenever you want, saving your progress.
And if it's a boss fight you can always use an homeward bone and then exit if you don't want to die.

 

[poodaddy]

I think with Skyrim I would have loved an option to remove quests from my journal permanently, or even temporarily (as if I had never heard of it). I like to keep things tidy and my journal always fills up with loads of quests I'm not interested in for that character. Sure I can ignore them, but it would be nice to be able to remove stuff for characters that want to focus on particular stuff rather than write down every single overheard scrap of info. I once played as a merchant with a 40-item jobs list that involved killing demon lords and fighting bandit kings, when really I just wanted to roleplay as a travelling Hunter/herbalist! That's just me wanting to roleplay though.

Hey I'm right there with ya man, it's all about the role-playing for me too. I like the sound of a mod that could permanently remove the quests from your journal as I'm also a neat freak...wonder if that mod exists?

 

[Iriscomeback]

Getting all the cool, rare modules in Project Diva X takes forever. And to get them you have to play the songs over and over and over again, to then play them some more to unlock the module.

Want a specific module for Hatsune Miku? Tough shit, it's completely random.

The rest of the modules (the not rare ones) are also unlocked at random. So annoying! And then they also have the nerve to give you the abilty to unlock them using REAL money, to buy something you already paid for!

ggrrr...

 

[JNT]

Games designed around IAP. "Pay us repeatedly or we'll waste your time repeatedly".

All those roguelikes. They delete your progress when you die.

In return they provide you with a kind of tense experience that other games can't since you are playing a high stakes game where both the risk and reward go up as you progress. The thrill of the game is kind of the whole point of any game to begin with, no? As such roguelikes serve their purpose for a lot of people.

 

[Ullus]

GTA Online. Ridiculously long loading screens, level gating, insane pricing model, abysmal matchmaking and far too many disconnects.

Got 500+ hours played, and I'd bet more than half of that is just waiting around for it to load or start.

 

[March of the Crabs]

Gotta hop on the Pokemon Sun/Moon train. I really do love the game so far but it's so much more intrusive than the older games. I play in quick bursts because I'm super busy from work and school and I swear that 90% of my time is spent in shitty cutscenes. I only let it slide because the core game itself is so good.

 

[Roufianos]

MGSV - Repetitive mission objectives and re-used locations. Not to mention having to replay certain levels. A 15 hour game bloated out to 50 hours.

Pokemon Go - Drowzees and Ratattas everywhere. Took a ridiculous amount of time to make progress.

Mafia 3 - Brain dead and by the numbers missions required to unlike story missions. Joke of a game.

 

[renzolama]

ITT a lot of people think "doesn't hold you by the hand" is the same thing as "doesn't respect your time", which is basically the opposite of the truth. If your answer to this is "Souls games" I can't really take you seriously. There is almost zero filler or padding in Souls games, every little bit matters for one reason or another. If it isn't for you, or you can't fit it into your life, that's fine, but don't come with that weak bullshit that it doesn't respect your time for that reason.

MMOs and F2P games are the real answer. They just want to keep you playing as long as possible, however they can, while providing very few meaningful mechanics.

Exactly what I wanted to post but couldn't formulate so concisely. You can beat every boss in a souls game at level 1 with a spoon if you're skilled enough. It's exactly the opposite of a game that forces you go through dozens of hours of monotonous grind to meet completely arbitrary requirements for progression. The pause button argument is weird because you can quit out of the game to the main menu at any time outside of boss fights with no penalty. Beyond that, souls aren't actually even required for game progression. Anyone who plays Souls games for long enough will eventually stop caring about soul loss because skill progression is far, far more important than gear/stat progression.

I guess ultimately it will come down to how each individual perceives the game structure's and reward mechanisms. If you play it solely for the gameplay then none of the perceived progression loss will matter much to you; personally, I look forward to playing through each section every time I do so regardless of how many times I've done it and how recently. The skill/knowledge progression I'm gaining with each attempt is far more valuable to me than soul currency. But obviously that mentality is completely subjective to my own preferences, and I can see why people who treat it like a more traditional video game could be frustrated by the same mechanics.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

There are MMOs that require hundreds of hours of grinding just to make high end content available to them. I think FFXI has a famous boss fight that takes like 17 hours to beat.

In terms of single player, i would say Bravely Default is the worst offender, and thats despite the fact that it has a speed x4 option and the option to turn off encounters.

 

[Lunarwhale]

I love it so far, but Xenoblade X's mandatory quests to proceed with the main story are baffling. I completely get why some things in this game are they way they are - it's not Xenoblade, it's suppose to convey a different experience, show the slow struggles of rebuilding, etc etc - but Jesus some of these requirements were just obnoxious. They get better, but the ones for the Skell license, while a nice skill check in concept, were repetitive. I cheesed every material gathering one I could by just buying said materials with tickets.

This is to say nothing about the affinity quests, which range from "really good" to "actually just doing other shit while you wait for this rare material to maybe get mined."

The actual quality of life things they implemented are great, though, and I definitely appreciate how dense the mechanics are. There's just a fine line in this game between what elements require time investment and what just straight up waste time.

General shoutout to any game with slow-ass text speed for zero artistic reason.

 

[Norwegian_Imposter]

Mafia 3

 

[Alastor3]

Bravely Default has A LOT of recycled content which made me never finish it.

What are you Talking abo.... yeah you are right, that pendant you have to keep for 40 hours in your inventory so that it transform into a Warrior's memory for finishing a quest... But that's exactly WHY I love Baten Kaitos sooo much!!!

 

[entremet]

Absolutely Souls, but that's part of the charm and I slow burn them. I average 2 years of on and off play time to complete each.

 

[Human Trashcan]

Absolutely Souls, but that's part of the charm and I slow burn them. I average 2 years of on and off play time to complete each.

"takes a long time" = / = "doesn't respect my time"

If you feel it doesn't respect your time, why even play?

I'll grant y'all offline should have a pause feature, but not having that is a looooong way away from saying that it doesn't respect your time, especially since saving and quitting works so easily everywhere except bossfights.

But otherwise, they are literally the worst example you could possibly name. It means you either don't understand what is meant by the concept of disrespecting the player's time, or you just want them to be easier.

 

[Tangled Up in Blue]

You mean you didn't like doing the same quest 135th times to get a weapon that got outclassed after only 2 weeks?

FFXI is the only true answer in this thread. Some of you that never played it will never know and understand some of the inane crap players had to go through in that game. And don't even get me started on Mystic Weapons when they first came out. That crap was on another level altogether.

Also, 18-hour boss fights:

http://kotaku.com/5036371/final-fantasy-xi-boss-takes-at-least-18-hours-to-beat

 

[Koobion]

The biggest takeaway from this thread for me is that people have very different feelings on what is constituted as a waste of time - though it's no surprise that there's a lot of arguing about it.

Obnoxiously long tutorials and unskippable cut scenss are the worst, in my opinion. A terrible offender of the latter is Trails of Cold Steel.

 

[Screaming Meat]

no they dont, infact there is no reason to not have a way to pause while online when not invaded either, watch dogs allows it, and it has a similar invading feature,

As a busy father of one feisty little monkey, I've always been able to quit out very quickly to deal with any problems. I find it funny that so many players take issue with the lack of a dedicated, in-game pause when they can quit out and return to precisely where they were very quickly. If that isn't good enough, perhaps there isn't time to be playing such a game.

Having to quit out of the game entirely takes literally no time at all and serves pretty much the same function as an in-game pause. The main difference I see is that, once you are in the game, you are in the game and there is no in-game safety net to fall back on. Once in, you have to be 'on' at all times in DS's world and it kind of makes the experience that little bit more threatening, I think. It almost expects you to give it your full attention or to leave, and I don't see anything wrong with some games demanding that from players.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

If you could pause you would only be able to do it offline, if you could only pause offline, people would play offline for inconvenience. If people were mostly playing offline, then they'd miss a lot of the seemless online interactions that the developers wanted players to experience.

It might be selfish because the developers are sacrificing player convenience for the sake of retaining their vision, but they have reasonable justification to do so.

I get that people like playing these games offline but the online interactions are a big part of the experience and it doesn't make sense to offer additional incentive for players to jump offline. Less players online is a detriment to the experience of everyone that is online, and it's not unreasonable for the developers not to want to sacrifice their vision. A big part of Dark Souls is the community driven tutorialing and interactions via both pvp and co-operative play. If you play offline then you are missing out on all of this, and ultimately, not playing Souls games the way they were designed. If you want to play them offline because of particular reasons, then go for it, but don't expect additional advantages and incentives for doing so.

Which is why I've skipped the last few Souls games and will never play one unless they let me pause. Even though they're otherwise fantastic games. I prefer games that respects the fact that I have a life outside of video games and that I can't simply set aside two hours to play a game uninterrupted.

I have never once felt that not being able to pause the game makes it more "threatening" or whatever. It's just an additional layer of shit there to waste my time.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

The biggest takeaway from this thread for me is that people have very different feelings on what is constituted as a waste of time - though it's no surprise that there's a lot of arguing about it.

Obnoxiously long tutorials and unskippable cut scenss are the worst, in my opinion. A terrible offender of the latter is Trails of Cold Steel.

Game padding is pretty easy to spot. The game isnt long enough so they do the following

-Decrease the amount of damage you deal/increase health of enemies
-Increase the amount of enemies
-Decrease amount of XP gained
-Fill game with lots of quests with fetch quests/kill quest designs
-Force them to redo content over and over. (dailies, reused bosses, reused area's, etc)

Stuff like that.

 

[UberLevi]

Loved Dragon Age Inquisition unlike a lot of people I know, but I will agree that it was one hell of a grind to complete the game. I even skipped a couple of areas that I'd never visited because I was overleveled for them and didn't feel like I could commit the time to explore them. After 115 hours I just decided to rush the story. The game was fun and I've been wanting to replay it but man, I just don't have that kind of time for another playthrough.