Title is tongue in cheek, of course—they probably are gamers. I get that making a game is complex and full of trade-offs, and you can’t please everyone. Still, there are certain design decisions that just feel like they weren’t made by people who play games regularly.
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I’ve been streaming recently, and one thing that stands out to me is when you first boot up a game and it doesn’t have a start menu with settings.
I noticed it before, but now I really notice it. If something is wrong with the settings, sometimes that intro is unplayable or a less than optimal experience. So you have to try and skip, fix the issue, and then restart the game and try again. This seems to be more of a PC issue than a console issue, but even on consoles sometimes you need to adjust things like brightness or add subtitles
The replies here feel more like “list of game features that I do not like”
It’s interesting to try to separate those two categories. Why else would a dev do those things unless they’re out of touch with actual gaming? I mean, adding a way to skip a cut scene is definitely not a budget issue.
Probably priority? They have a tight deadline and skipping cut scenes is not a priority feature.
I have also seen game where dev deliberately ignore call for adding a skip scene button because they want their players to read the story. You can disagree with it but maybe the dev really think their cut scene is worth watching. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t play games, its just that they have high pride in their work.
I know the above is a controversial take. But I have no problem watching cut scenes if that is the dev’s intention.
I wouldn’t really say it’s the devs for most of the stuff I see that has me questioning if whoever was in charge ever played a video game before. Stupidly simply QOL things that end up being absent in a game that is ripping off another game, likely only absent because the dev team didn’t have time to work on those elements.
However, games that constantly take control away from the player like every 2-5 minutes, I have to question the designer themselves. I wanted to play a game and these kinds of games end up getting watched like a movie with how often you don’t have any control over what’s happening. And I don’t mean games like Detroit Become Human or even The Quarry (which is 100℅ an interactive movie), I mean shit like Dragon’s Dogma 2 or a lot of the newest Nintendo first party titles. It takes away controk of your character for some of the stupidest shit; like high fiving your team mates without any input from the player.
When there are several waterfalls in the game and not one has a secret behind it.
Can you bring up the pause menu at any point (including cut scenes).
I’ve always felt like a sign of a well polished game was one where the pause menu would work at any point, including during cutscenes.
The worst is when the start button instantly skips the cutscene with no confirmation/warning
Playing the metal gear collection and this immediately stood out. The cutscenes are long
Are there actually games that allow this?
I seem to remember even FF7 allowing this.
Bayonetta games do. Opens a specific pause menu with skipping option.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon does this and I’m grateful.
When you can’t tap a button to fill the text dialogue, and have to wait for each letter to individually populate for 15 speech bubbles in a row.
or even worse when you have to wait for the voiced dialogue to finish before it lets you continue.
I’ve been replaying Dragon Quest Builders 2. The game isn’t voiced, most of dialogues are classic RPG text boxes that you can speed up and skip, BUT. There are special lines of dialogue that are “voices” in a character’s head.
They are unskippable, and they’re like a dozen words each that stay on screen for about 20 seconds or more. Some of those dialogues have about 6-7 of those. It’s unbearable, and it’s genuinely the worst part of starting a game again. Hell, it was the worst part of doing it the first time, too.
Somehow English localisation created this, in Japanese the messages go a lot faster. Though even those couldn’t be skipped, because… fuck you that’s why.
I like that BG3 let’s you skip the voice dialogue but I wish there was an option to speed up the voice acting because I really love the voice acting and the story is great but I find myself spacing out during long cutscenes. I don’t want to skip them I just want them to speak quickly!
I just played through Pentiment and even on the fastest speed dialogues were painfully slow. It wouldn’t fix all the other pacing issues, but the text popping up instantly would be a huge improvement.
I loved that game and I love the setting and art, but it’s soooo much reading. And I love reading, I really do! But it began to wear me down near the end.
Quick Time Events; characters that automatically do 60 things just by holding down “forward” on the joystick; the Ubisoft logo.
Putting a QTE or a limited time choice in a long cutscene or a level segment.
Unskippable cutscenes. While I do love Soul Reaver’s storytelling, sometimes I just want to skip the damn thing and get on with the adventure.
Walking simulators. The devs just wanted to tell a story, not make a game.
If we’re complaining about bad UX, and speaking about Soul Reaver, games with no subtitle option. Or bad, unreadable subtitles that spoil 2 minutes of dialogue at once (and that one’s for you, Bioshock).
Would you kindly… 🥰
I play walking simulators and other games, I can’t agree with that one.
Top-down/twin-stick games where the aim (especially on controller) uses camera handling features, like smoothing the input or a cross-shaped deadzone.
Screenshake enabled by default, or not even an option to disable.
Long cutscenes that don’t let you save or pause when anything comes up that forces you to leave the keyboard or just focus elsewhere.
“Control” was the worst wrt this (or was it Quantum Break? Maybe both). I was just about to go to bed when it showed me a “cutscene” that went on for more than 30 minutes. Turned out later that you could actually go back to watch it again afterwards, but there was no indication of that at the time.
That would have been Quantum Break. I don’t recall Control having any one cutscene that long.
But Quantum Break did the whole video-game/TV-series hybrid media thing, and was full of “episodes” that were essentially 30-minute cutscenes.
The Steam Deck is great in that regard. Just put it to sleep.
Same with the Switch and easily one of the top features. Laundry done? Sleep mode. SO asks something? Sleep mode. Done pooing? Sleep mode.
I’m playing through Control now and haven’t encountered that (fun game btw!), so methinks it’s Quantum Break you’re thinking of.
I agree with you, though. Sometimes I have to step away for whatever reason and end up missing something because I can’t pause.
When the intro cannot be skipped after the first start.
In the same vein, when the game starts immediately without giving you a chance to configure it. Because the default configuration is always wrong.
I sure love experiencing their carefully crafted intro sequence in 4fps/windowed 480p/etc.
cry in 12 years old pc
Falcom spoiled me forever by offering a startup option to continue from last save that skips all the logos, intros, etc.
Singleplayer games with time-based farming simulator minigames you won’t complete without gaming the date\time in your system (easter eggs are welcome tho). Grindy platinum achievements well outside even a dedicated minority’s norms, just getting bigger numbers or save skamming for opposing endings. Button-mashers with an undisclosed randomization of a final result under the hood.
When the game is such a precious labour of love, so obviously cared for, and constantly improved, that there’s no way the dev has any time left for gaming.
When maxing out the damage stat just makes your game trivially easy.
Stat systems are hard and prone to optimization problems. But c’mon, you at least gotta test the glass cannon build that you know everyone’s gonna try first.
When going from point a to point b takes ages or is otherwise a pain. I get you worked hard on your world, but it losses its charm the 10th time running across it.
And don’t force me to hold/tap a button to sprint. Or worse, make me click in the left stick.
It’s not the time or distance, its the barren wasteland of no content in between A and B. I’ll hold W down for 30 minutes no problem as long as it’s interesting.
