Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

[ariskany_evan]

Quitting Antichamber.  Gave it a solid hour and a half.  Loved what I played!  The exploration and level design was super fun.  It was super good.

 

I was miffed once I found the block picker-upper.  Had been hoping this could be an input-less experience.  Once I had to start picking up tiny blocks and placing them on things to jump over things, my interest started to plummet.  I explored a bunch, pretty much until the timer in the hub room ran down, secretly hoping that the game would end, that there was no proper ending, just an attempt to get as "far" as possible in the time limit.  Alas!

 

The sound design was so nice.  I loved being in the world.  Just got to a point where every room I returned to felt like a dead end, so I'm happy to have stopped while I was still feeling good about it.

[Ninety-Three]

I'm quitting Bravely Default. I'm twelve hours in, which sounds like a lot, but it's a JRPG so I'm halfway through chapter 2 of 8. What made me quit was that I suddenly realized how bland the combat was. No matter what the enemy was, combat consisted of "White Mage heals whenever the party gets damaged, everyone else DPSs using the same attack every time." I had hoped the Brave system might add a little more depth, but all it did was change the standard JRPG attack chain from "Attack, attack, attack, attack" to "Default, Default, Default, Brave, Attack*4". Once I realized that the enemy could do literally anything short of one-shot a party member without interrupting my rote attack patterns, I completely lost interest.

 

Maybe I've been spoiled by Zeboyd (the people behind Cthulhu Saves the World, and Rainslick Precipice 3 and 4), who figured out how to solve not only the problem of "Repeat the same attack (chain) until someone dies", but also how to avoid the problem where dedicated healers can completely counteract incoming damage, making fights unlosable. The more I think about it, the less I can imagine playing an oldschool "Attack, enemy attacks, heal, repeat" JRPG.

[Irishjohn]

I plugged into the Wildstar Beta and was bored senseless quite quickly. I very much wanted to get down to the actual planet. I've heard good things about Wildstar but have mostly ignored actual information on it. I booted up the game, and...

 

I know this is an old chestnut, but come on. Please don't build in an hour or two of me learning to play your game when your game is essentially WOW anyway, a game that I got sick of playing years ago. It sucks on the dev side I'm sure, because you don't include this stuff and people bitch that core mechanics weren't clear. I guess my biggest issue is that Wildstar didn't show me why it's going to be fun quickly enough. I assumed I must be done with MMOs, and that's partly true, but since quitting the Wildstar beta (a few days ago) I've mucked around in Guild Wars 2 a bit (though it's hard to find your feet again, and I might actually be done with all the questing and whatnot) and even enjoyed a bit of Rift.

 

Rift.

 

So I feel a little bad about it and I can't help but wonder if I'm missing something amazing, but I'm out on Wildstar. Maybe I'll give the Neverwinter MMO a go, I heard it was fun. Mostly it was difficult for me to put any time into Wildstar because they're going to run on a subscription model. I really wonder if that's the way to go from what little I've played.

[Dewar]

Neverwinter is pretty heavily monitized, much in the style of Star Trek Online. If you can get past that, there's a decent game there though. Not as good as Rift though. I loved Rift, but I just can't get back into it the last couple of times I played. Also, Secret World. I'm a sucker for any game that doesn't have a strict 1-60 level grind, but I'm pretty much an MMO tourist these days.

[Twig]

That's pretty disappointing to hear. Wildstar was pretty much the last Great Hope I had for the WoW-style MMO. GW2 didn't do it for me at all. Never tried Rift or Neverwinter. Though, you didn't even make it through the tutorial, so... maybe I'll still give it a shot?!???!

 

I always wanted to get into The Secret World, but I hate playing MMOs like a single-player game and no one wanted to play with me, so I never did. Shame.

 

Anyway...

[N1njaSquirrel]

Quitting Antichamber.  Gave it a solid hour and a half.  Loved what I played!  The exploration and level design was super fun.  It was super good.

 

I was miffed once I found the block picker-upper.  Had been hoping this could be an input-less experience.  Once I had to start picking up tiny blocks and placing them on things to jump over things, my interest started to plummet.  I explored a bunch, pretty much until the timer in the hub room ran down, secretly hoping that the game would end, that there was no proper ending, just an attempt to get as "far" as possible in the time limit.  Alas!

 

The sound design was so nice.  I loved being in the world.  Just got to a point where every room I returned to felt like a dead end, so I'm happy to have stopped while I was still feeling good about it.

 

So there's like a whole lot more past the block picker upper. There's upgrades and it gets pretty crazy. There's also more to it than just to use it to jump over things. The creator spent a lot of time on that gun, trying to get it all working and such. Especially with the upgrades to it later.

 

Also look at the map, it's a pretty good indicator as to where to take you next.

 

All I'm saying is that it's a shame to quit just as the puzzles start getting good.

[Merus]

Played through a bunch of the Wildstar beta as well, and found myself losing interest around level 13. How badly it chugged when loading areas didn't help. I liked how varied the interactions were, it's great to see, but I'm absolutely fucking done with having to fight other players for quest mobs, particularly with the 'challenge' system where in certain areas you have to kill as many creatures as possible in a limited time, and every kill someone else makes just makes it that much harder. It is one of those things that you didn't realise you hated until you see people do it better.

[ariskany_evan]

So there's like a whole lot more past the block picker upper. There's upgrades and it gets pretty crazy. There's also more to it than just to use it to jump over things. The creator spent a lot of time on that gun, trying to get it all working and such. Especially with the upgrades to it later.

 

Also look at the map, it's a pretty good indicator as to where to take you next.

 

All I'm saying is that it's a shame to quit just as the puzzles start getting good.

 

There was something about coming to an obstacle that was tall enough that can't be jumped over, but short enough that I can easily imagine climbing over (if the game allowed for that kind of input verbiage) that felt so inelegant.  The solution was equally inelegant:

 

pick up a tiny blue block with a recently acquired tool and attach that blue block to the obstacle. Jump onto the tiny, minuscule block, then jump over the obstacle.  My feet must be teensy-tiny, and my leg-strength out of this world!

 

Prior to that I had just been wandering around, exploring the space, marveling at the twists and turns and surprises.  It's a beautiful game to experience in first person, but as soon as that tool was chunked onto my screen, the immersion crumbled.  The acquisition of a fixed object on my screen in a world that is all about disorientation seemed antithetical to what I wanted out of the game.  I didn't want to master the space, which is where it seemed I was being pushed.

 

"The Don't Look Down" room fall could have been so much more effective if the tool wasn't there.  Or when you're confronted with white space filling up your entire screen, it's a lot less disorienting when there's a fixed object in view. It centers my gaze; I now see the game through the tool.  Everything I come across needs to be clicked on with both mouse buttons to make sure the tool doesn't do anything.

 

And again, totally happy and positive on this game.  It just feinted in a way that told me the rest of my time wouldn't equal up to the joy of the first hour and half.

[melmer]

I guess I've quit call of juarez gunslinger. I can't believe they ditched the cover mechanic from that last game... No wait, the last one was that present day cartel one that reviewed poorly, the one before that. Anyway, they got rid of it so instead of being able to peek over and around cover you just stand out in the open and get shot a lot.

It looked pretty but at the same time was kinda hard to look at. Super colourful and bright, it was hard for my eyeballs to take it all in sometimes. overbearing.

A kinda pointless perks/upgrade system that makes next to no difference. Is that a new trend now? The new wolfenstein is the same. Got to have an upgrade system! But don't want to make the player feel underpowered or weak at the beginning of the game and don't want to make them overpowered at the end so just chuck in a load of utterly unnoticeable perks. Reload 0.5 secs faster SWEET!

A man narrated it.... It wasn't as good as bastion.

You know what would be a fun distraction. A first person pixel art Sunset riders, it would look like Doom but with cowboys and all the original sound effects and music from the arcade

[Tanukitsune]

I really tried to give Wizardry 8 a chance... I completed a whole dungeon and beat some hard bosses and was doing so well, only to completely get lost and lose interest the moment I arrived at the city.

 

The fact that the enemies respawned and got stronger with you didn't help either.

[Cordeos]

I recently quit playing RAGE because its a boring linear shooter. I also quit Dishonored because it has too many annoying side quests that are "optional". Maybe I should just beat the main questline and ignore everything else.

[Ucantalas]

...there were sidequests in Dishonored?

[Twig]

...there were sidequests in Dishonored?

I was... going to ask the same thing. I played ALL of that game, and I don't remember anything significantly sidequesty. There were rewards here and there for exploring a level thoroughly, but for the most part levels were just straightforward "do this thing please". Unless my memory is completely terrible.

 

Which, well, let's be honest, it is.

[PrimeDerektive]

I plugged into the Wildstar Beta and was bored senseless quite quickly. I very much wanted to get down to the actual planet. I've heard good things about Wildstar but have mostly ignored actual information on it. I booted up the game, and...

 

I know this is an old chestnut, but come on. Please don't build in an hour or two of me learning to play your game when your game is essentially WOW anyway, a game that I got sick of playing years ago. It sucks on the dev side I'm sure, because you don't include this stuff and people bitch that core mechanics weren't clear. I guess my biggest issue is that Wildstar didn't show me why it's going to be fun quickly enough. I assumed I must be done with MMOs, and that's partly true, but since quitting the Wildstar beta (a few days ago) I've mucked around in Guild Wars 2 a bit (though it's hard to find your feet again, and I might actually be done with all the questing and whatnot) and even enjoyed a bit of Rift.

 

 

Oh man I totally felt the same way. That intro was 110 minutes longer than it needed to be for how derivative the game is. Like you all I wanted to do was get to the surface, and by the time I did I was burned out. Uninstalled.

 

I think I quit Dark Souls 2. I'm 45 hours in, just got to the Shrine of Amana and I think I'm just burned out. I took a few days off and now when I try going back to it just feels alien to me. 

[Ucantalas]

I was... going to ask the same thing. I played ALL of that game, and I don't remember anything significantly sidequesty. There were rewards here and there for exploring a level thoroughly, but for the most part levels were just straightforward "do this thing please". Unless my memory is completely terrible.

 

Which, well, let's be honest, it is.

I honestly wasn't sure because, when I went through Dishonored, I basically just went straight from objective to objective, not really exploring (except in cases where I needed to find a path to get to my objective) and just running point to point. I would feel like I kind of missed out if there were sidequests I had skipped so completely that I didn't know they existed as a whole.

[Noyb]

I gave up on Contact, a DS action-RPG after about halfway through. Heard it was boring but it had some involvement by Suda51, who made boring fetch quests into a surreal, masochistic, often hilarious artform in Flower Sun & Rain. Not so compelling here with needlessly large dungeons, repetitive combat, weak writing. It only gets worse as it goes along, with nominal puzzles that require you to backtrack to change clothes (classes) to unlock doors, and a food crafting system that takes more time to use than just grinding for money to buy basic healing potions. The plot has a few interesting concepts from watching some later bits in an LP, but I can't recommend the execution.

You play as yourself controlling a sentient high-res character via your DS at the request of a low-fi professor who's after a collection of sparkly macguffins. It does some neat things to drive home the separation of Player and Player Character -- giving them separate names, letting you play with the professor's cat while the player is sleeping, an ending that alludes to the ethical problems of the physical and emotional pain you've put this poor kid through for the sake of winning the game. Cute concept, but the moment to moment writing and gameplay didn't grab me.

[Twig]

I actually liked Contact a lot, but I'm unsurprised that you don't because most people didn't. It's been way too long since I played it for me to expound on why I liked it. I just remember being happy after I finished it.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I was... going to ask the same thing. I played ALL of that game, and I don't remember anything significantly sidequesty. There were rewards here and there for exploring a level thoroughly, but for the most part levels were just straightforward "do this thing please". Unless my memory is completely terrible.

 

Which, well, let's be honest, it is.

 

I do remember in one of the first quests where you're infiltrating some town place. There's a very obvious direct way to go with multiple paths, but if you go down a road to the side you can find an old woman in a house, and if you help get rid of some aggressive people banging on her door she asks you to go collect a macguffin. I can't remember if it's directly labelled as a side quest but it essentially is since it's a totally optional objective set.

[Twig]

You're right. That was fun though so I think I just put it all on the same level in my mind.

[Tanukitsune]

For the first time, I kinda rage quit a game, it was more a "this is futile and a waste of time", but I guess this will be the closest to me rage quitting a game.

 

The game is called "Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi" a game where the castle is always the same, but the item location changes...

 

For once, I was able to rescue a doctor to heal the wounded priest who gave me a chalice for holy water, which meant I could now finally take on a boss that had another hostage to rescue. He died quickly and then... turned into bats. I'm stuck until I kill all the bats because the boss locked me in with a key, but the bats have random patterns and even if I had a ranged weapon if would be futile with their random pattern and quick speed.

 

It's so stupid because they die in one hit, but hitting them is so frustrating and you are playing on a time limit... Or maybe the key is somewhere around there and I can't find it, I've spent way too much time doing both things and failing. I give up... 

[Griddlelol]

Fuck! I don't want to but I'm quitting Persona 4: Golden. I love everything about it, the music, the art, the narrative. I just don't like the game. The combat isn't interesting enough to keep me playing more than 50 hours. Going through what I think to be one of the last dungeons feels like a long boring slog. I practically force myself to play for 10 minutes then put it down for days. 

 

Feel incredibly guilty, but I think I'm just going to watch the endings on youtube. I think my experiment with JRPGs has been a failure. I just can't like them. Western (or Western inspired - looking at you Souls series) are just so ingrained in what I think an RPG should be. Also they tend to focus more on combat and forging your own story. Rather than playing as an established character with simple mechanics.

Oh - and WRPGs tend to be a hell of a lot shorter. 

 

Sorry Japan, your RPGs aren't for me. I don't get it. I love Pokemon.

[prettyunsmart]

Fuck! I don't want to but I'm quitting Persona 4: Golden. I love everything about it, the music, the art, the narrative. I just don't like the game. The combat isn't interesting enough to keep me playing more than 50 hours. Going through what I think to be one of the last dungeons feels like a long boring slog. I practically force myself to play for 10 minutes then put it down for days. 

 

Feel incredibly guilty, but I think I'm just going to watch the endings on youtube. I think my experiment with JRPGs has been a failure. I just can't like them. Western (or Western inspired - looking at you Souls series) are just so ingrained in what I think an RPG should be. Also they tend to focus more on combat and forging your own story. Rather than playing as an established character with simple mechanics.

Oh - and WRPGs tend to be a hell of a lot shorter. 

 

Sorry Japan, your RPGs aren't for me. I don't get it. I love Pokemon.

 

I tried to play Persona 4 when it came out too, and I had the same problem. Later, I ended up watching most of the game on the Giant Bomb Endurance run. It took a while, but I think it was ultimately a better way for me to experience the story stuff without having to play with a combat system that I didn't really enjoy.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I ended up getting right up to the actually final not a fake out boss fight in non golden Persona 4 and it took me a few tries but I eventually beat it... 's first form and then discovered there was a whole new one. Given that I had occasionally been dieing in the dungeon leading up to the final fight I ditched it then to watch the ending on Youtube. (which was actually kind of pointless, it was a 10 minute wrap up thing containing just stuff I expected). I was particularly irritated with the fact that only the main character needs to die for it to be game over, and the fact that when an enemy hits an elemental weakness attacking one of your party they get an extra attack.

 

Mostly though I was annoyed cause I liked the game overall, even a tweaked combat system would've been enjoyable, but the way it was I kept getting frustrated in a game where I didn't specifically want to be challenged, I basically wanted a visual novel with some gameplay between chapters really.

[Dewar]

Especially fun feature about the main character dying and that ending the game. There's an enemy in one of the dungeons that casts an instant death spell the moment that combat starts. It usually succeeds, so it's down to a 1/3 chance of instant game over when you fight those guys, unless to equip a personal that's resistant to death.

[Griddlelol]

Yup the main character dying causing a game over is a pain in the ass.

I made the huge mistake of putting it on hard. Some of the bosses are brutal on hard and they remove the weaknesses that they have on the other difficulties. My own hubris didn't help the experience, but I don't think it would have overall changed my view of the game. I'm more angry at myself for not being able to complete it. Especially after 50 hours.