Deal Breakers

[Wolf Kanno]

We've all had this happen before. You hear about this really cool game and then when go to investigate it further, you hear it has that one gameplay/story/character quirk that completely changes your excitement into general apathy. So what are some of your gaming deal breakers?

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I’m actually having trouble with thinking of any deal breakers. Only thing off the top of my head is when games have that sort of generic anime/cheap mobile game art style. I also don’t get too excited about open world games generally since I get burnt out on those pretty quick. For instance, my excitement for Breath of the Wild wasn’t very high when it came out. I ended up loving that game when I played it though.

[Slothy]

The biggest deal breakers for me these days would have to be random loot boxes and QTE's. I don't even think QTE's are all that common anymore, but still. Fuck em.

[theundeadhero]

Open World
Loot Boxes
Multi-player focused

You know, the things most big developers now think we all want.

[Spuuky]

I've really never understood how "open world" could be a dealbreaker, personally. What is it that is intrinsic to open world that is the problem, exactly?

[Wolf Kanno]

I've really never understood how "open world" could be a dealbreaker, personally. What is it that is intrinsic to open world that is the problem, exactly?

From personal experience, "open world" generally stands as short hand for sandbox game, which most lazy developers basically make a large and uninteresting map filled with tedious side content that they expect to be 85% of the experience while the 15% of actual plot is usually nothing worth writing home about. That is not to say Sandbox games are inherently bad, but more that lately it feels like developers are kind of lazy about them.

There is a difference to the way "open world" as a concept is utilized in an example like Fallout 1 versus Fallout 3. They're both the same concept of open world, but I feel we can argue that one handles the idea in a more fun and inventive way than the other.

[Slothy]

I have to agree. Open world games are never a deal breaker for me but a lot of publishers make games open world to tick off a marketing check list rather than because it makes the game better. A lot of them end up more empty than compelling and open worlds without a lot to do just bore me. Doesn't mean I stay away from them all though. If the rest of what's there is fantastic I can overlook it. I mean Just Cause 2 is one of my favourite games but its open world is little more than a place to blow up things, attach things to each other with a grappling hook, and blow stuff up while parachuting and grappling around the island. If the mechanics they give you to play around in that sandbox weren't so damn fun it'd be a pretty boring game.

[Spuuky]

I can name plenty of "open worlds" with painstakingly detailed and handcrafted worlds that are interesting to explore. The problem you have described is with bad open world games, not open world games. Just like I could name examples of bad action games, bad story-driven linear games, and bad puzzle games in addition to the good ones.

[Wolf Kanno]

I did say there wasn't anything inherently wrong with the concept and that there are good examples of the genre, the issue of why I think most people are not exactly thrilled to hear it is may stem from the genre kind of exploding last gen to the point where many people may have been burnt out by it, especially when some publishers *cough* Ubisoft *cough* were being kind of lazy and unimaginative with it. The game concept still works, but I feel fans have dealt with so many apathetic attempts at it in recent years, that they would rather just ignore it at this point and wait until a review comes in to save it from the bargain bin rather than take a chance the concept wrapped around the sandbox will be enough to keep them interested.

As for my personal feelings on open-world/sandbox titles, I love the idea of having a massive breathing world to explore, but have been disappointed in the past by how developers handle it as I'm not the type who necessarily feels a world needs to keep my constant attention with "stuff to do" as much as I just generally like to explore, and wish more emphasis was placed on that. I also prefer having focus in a main narrative/objective which is where most of these games tend to lose my interest cause often the "main point" is not anymore interesting than the dozen of "non-important" things the game gives me to do, so I quickly lose interest in resolving the game. I'm well aware that there are likely dozen upon dozen of games that fulfill these requirements, but I also have thousands of other games of different genres I can be playing as well, so I'm not exactly in a rush to find all those great gems that get it right. I've played games within the genre that do the concept well, but again, I'm not in a hurry to play the rest of the gems to change my less than stellar views of the genre either. There is sadly just not enough time in the world to play every good game that comes out.

[YoshioKST]

Developers not caring enough about the balance, or content in the game. NetherRealm games tend to have great production value, a sizable online community and decent fighting mechanics, bt their utter refusal to balance their gameplay properly, their insistence to break the roster through DLC, often making it a pay2win in the process, and their notoriously horrible animation have turned me off what should be one of my favorite game developers complete.y.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I don’t have anything wrong with open world/sandbox games necessarily, I just get burnt out quickly from them. This is especially the case if doing a lot of the same fetch quests and such. I honestly don’t know why breath of the wild was different for me, but I loved exploring the world. Just Cause 2 is another I just liked exploring and finding amusing ways to grapple stuff together. Of course, I had that game in college and played it with friends, so that was the main reason it was fun.

Either way, I just don’t get excited by that genre just because I’m rarely in the mood to play it.

[Spuuky]

I think there is a very, very sizable gap between "not excited by x" and "x is a dealbreaker."

[Scotty_ffgamer]

Of course I never said it is a deal breaker since I said I couldn’t really think of any deal breakers. It’s just one of the closest things to a deal breaker for me because I generally have no interest in any sandboxy, open world games I hear about.

I’m still struggling to think of any deal breakers though. I’ll play pretty much anything.

[Skyblade]

First person RPG combat (as seen in Earthbound, Etrian Odyssey, or most Shin Megami Tensei games). I don't even know why, but I just find this system utterly immersion breaking, and as much as I try to enjoy these games, I wind up abandoning them rather swiftly.

[Psychotic]

Terrible control schemes coupled with the inability to remap them. I've really taken a dislike to games that are heavy on the face buttons and I try to remap all the key commands to the shoulder buttons as soon as possible as it creates much less strain on my wrists.

On open worlds, I completely agree that it's now become a gimmick that games simply feel they have to have because it's the in thing, and we're seeing a lot of half-assed and generic worlds. With that said, when done right it's superb. My personal preference is for smaller open worlds that you can get to know your way around like Bully, the earlier PS2 GTA games and the first Dead Rising. Special mention to Saints Row 2 which had a city with lots of different areas like a trailer park, a university campus, casinos, etc. and so it felt really different depending on where you were.

When a game advertises a massive open world which is 25 times the size of Skyrim (hi Just Cause) that's great and all, but what's actually in your open world? How is this square kilometer any different from the one next to it? Why is it worth me traveling across the map to get there other than for repetitive quests?

[Vyk]

Teenagers being treated like veterans with years of battle experience, the strength and ability to pilot and wield upright bipedal tanks or swords bigger and heavier than they are. All while acting like either the biggest airhead or a cutthroat lone wolf Marty Stu

Even Persona had to "prove" it's worth to me because of this. Leading up there was a ton of speculation and rumor that it was going to move beyond high school and move to college. Japans obsession with high school is beyond over done at this point. It isn't just annoying to always be the same age and playing the same coming of age story, it very frequently gets immersion breaking when they try something new but still can't let go. So you play as a doctor. A 13 year old doctor. Who has to be a ridiculous prodigy to even make sense. But what government is going to let a kid practice medicine. And he still acts like an airhead instead of a genius.. (Tales of Xillia in case you're curious. One of my favorite games almost ruined)

[Spuuky]

My dealbreaker is fanservice-y anime girls.

[Black Magic Shopkeeper]

ok, this is gonna sound weird, but.... aesthetics/color palette. Worlds made up entirely of bright, over-saturated colors are jarring for me, as is a world made up entirely of pastels. So, while I would LOVE to play games like Tales Of, I'm unable to bring myself to even so much as TOUCH most of them because the color swatches make me :erm:

Alternatively, make things TOO muted and give it either too much or too little contrast, and I'll be turned off of it as well. This usually goes hand-in-hand with overdone realism. But... nowadays that's a little hard to avoid on the mainstream game market. (see trope: "Real is Brown")

I know that narrows things down for me one heck of a lot, but I know what my eyes like. And my eyes sure are picky. They need a good balance of color, and saturation, and contrast, and...and stuff.

addendum: Exceptions to my stupid preference are games like Nier/Drakengard, Lunar Eternal Blue/Silver Star Story, and FFXII. Just had to say-- I do have exceptions.

[The Captain]

BAD voice acting now has become a deal breaker. For any game to be enjoyable enough to warrant a full playthrough, I need to not want to hang myself by the 3rd cutscene because the voice acting is so over the top or just plain irritating. Luckily, I've only encountered that on a couple of games since I do my homework most of the time before I start a game but there have been some that I started and just could not finish.

Likewise, any game that doesn't have the quick travel option might be a deal breaker for me moving forward. I'm not a big level grinder, though I do love to explore. If I have to constantly go back and forth through the same area on quests and backtrack, I will lose interest.

Take care all.

[Wolf Kanno]

I forgot to mention that one of my deal breakers is tank controls. I've never played a game where they are useful and couldn't have been vastly improved with a more intuitive control scheme. I don't really know why it exists because being able to back up while still fighting is not only not as useful as it sounds in non-action games, but games like Devil May Cry and Zelda show that there are better ways to do this like having a goddamn lock on feature for weapons.

[Vermachtnis]

A bad soundtrack. Music is one of the most important parts of a game and if a game has a bad one or a lack of one, I'm done.