Tanukitsune

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

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I only quit like one game a year and if I do I'm not going back. I have to really really hate a game to quit it.

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I'm pretty sure many of us have posted here about reluctantly quitting a game before, practically begging for help because we really don't want to quit.  I've done before before a few times.

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I like it when this thread turns me around, although it usually happens slowly. Rarely within a few posts, more like just planting a seed of doubt about my quitting.

Quitting is rarely permanent, but I also quit games at the drop of a hat, because fuck playing things I'm not enjoying.

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I just quit Dragon Age Inquisition after about 5 hours. I wasn't even paying attention to the story, just going from quest marker to quest marker doing stuff without paying attention. I then thought, what am I doing?

 

It was weird because I don't think I went into that game expecting to enjoy it, but I played through every origin story and every possible permutation in Dragon Age Origins.  I guess I'm just in a different place in my life now? 

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 I guess I'm just in a different place in my life now? 

 

It's also just a different (and kinda bad) game.

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Most of the time when I quit a game it's not because I actively stop playing it but I just never get back to it.  Something will come up and I'll just forget about it until I realize I have no more interest in going back.  The break usually makes me think of what I liked/disliked about the game and if I decide that I didn't enjoy it I won't return.  While this thread has never caused me to change my mind about a game I quit, it has on occasion made me replay a game I did finish that someone else quit.

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Indeed, this happens to me more often as time goes on, especially with the more puzzle-oriented games (once you get to a point where there's a more significant amount of Thinking needed to solve problems, it's easier to get distracted - hence SpaceChem sitting still with the last 3 levels still unfinished, and TIS-100 heading that way for me).  It's much rarer for that to happen for me with a non-puzzle oriented game, but it's hard for me to tell if this is an actual trend, as I also tend to have avoided a lot of modern games with very long play times (the Dragon Ages, The Witchers etc of the modern era), so it might just be that I complete them before I would have forgotten to play them. (I'm more likely to actually quit those kinds of games because I actually dislike them.)

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Pillars of Eternity crashed over a hundred times for me, and I think it's finally crashed its last.  Here's what I just posted in the official forums:

 

This reminded me that i quit Pillars of Enternity a while ago. The reason as i recall it was twofold. First was that none of the stories, either in the sidequests or mainquest ever intereseted me, it semed like it was such standard fantasy fair. Secondly my mind really did not gel with the combat. It seemed like you really needed to dig in to the math to make interesting strategic decisions. It´s a shame too because i really wanted to like the game.

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This reminded me that i quit Pillars of Enternity a while ago. The reason as i recall it was twofold. First was that none of the stories, either in the sidequests or mainquest ever intereseted me, it semed like it was such standard fantasy fair. Secondly my mind really did not gel with the combat. It seemed like you really needed to dig in to the math to make interesting strategic decisions. It´s a shame too because i really wanted to like the game.

 

As someone who digs the hell out of math, I still found the gameplay boring and empty of strategic decisions (though I spent a long time designing various parties). You get into many fights per rest, so the 1/rest powers don't come up often, the 1/fight powers don't tend to be interesting (the vast majority of them having the optimal strategy of "use as soon as situation permits"), and after that you're down to just issuing attack orders then watching your party trade basic attacks with the badguys until someone falls over. The only "strategy" I employed was a strategy for mitigating the impact of the godawful pathfinding (that pathing was so bad, I still feel the need to harp on it).

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I'm a liar.  I gave Pillars of Eternity one more chance and beat it tonight.

 

I enjoyed the story; I only like high fantasy when it connects its lore and worldbuilding to its characters, and Obsidian did an OK job of that.

 

Ninety-Three, that is an accurate description of combat in this game, though this time I got to say: "Hmmm, it's the final fight; let me finally use all of the priest's different spells!"

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Did the game ever introduce a time mechanic that would have punished you from going back to town after every fight to rest? If not, I'm curious to try a party of six wizards who fire off all their neat dailies every fight to spice up the combat.

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I ragequit and deleted Fallout Shelter this morning.  I hit the point where I started getting Deathclaw invasions.  They apparently have a chance to show or be attracted when you open your vault door.  In the span of about an hour and a half of play time I:

 

Brought home some explorers, spawned a Deathclaw invasion, which proceeded to ravage my base.  Cost me a couple of grand to resurrect, fucked up my power and food production, chewed through my stims.  So I got all that back up, and sent a couple of my explorers back out aaaaaand, fucking Deathclaw invasion.  Cost me another couple of grand in resurrections, fucked up my power, food and water production and chewed through most of my stims.  Recovered from that, basically out of money now, sent out the rest of my explorers aaaaaaaand, ANOTHER FUCKING DEATHCLAW INVASION.  Ended up with fucked up productions, no stims, no money and multiple dead bodies around the base, which make people in the same room very unhappy.

 

Dealing with chaos and successfully recovering is actually kind of fun, but to have that kind of shit happen that quickly, that many times in a row was just infuriating to the point where I couldn't bother with recovering. 

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I keep trying Fallout Shelter every time I hear the segment on the show. I end up quitting about 5 minutes after the tutorial because I can't be bothered to do all the bullshit busy work it wants me to do. 

I don't really see what "game" there is in Fallout Shelter, but Chris always makes it sound so much fun. 

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Gave up on Sleeping Dogs last night. I think the execution of the city was top-notch and it felt really cool to drive around and appreciate the feel of Hong Kong. However, I didn't enjoy anything else about the game, especially the writing. I understand it was supposed to be emulating a kung-fu action movie, but it just made everything feel totally meaningless. All of the story missions were the same boring stuff and the combat was a bit too formulaic and slow to keep me going. I'm surprised I played it for the three hours I did. It sucks because I thought they really had something there with the world and they just didn't execute on any other part of the game. 

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I was excited to get some use from my old flight stick and throttle, things did not go as planned.

 

Ace Combat Assault Horizon: After spending about half an hour trying to get the flight stick controls set up I downloaded a external tool to get the assignment working, still won't detect my throttle thought. Then I discovered that enemy squadron leaders get unlimited flares making missiles useless against them. I guess you are supposed to use the stupid air duel system but one enemy kept escaping right away making him un-killable.

 

Tom Clancy's: HAWX 2: This game is legitimately broken it just gets stuck in a new game -> loading screen -> main menu loop.

The only other arcade style fight sim I have seen on steam is HAWX 1, but after the issues with 2 I don't know if I want to risk it. Might have to get some space games to fly in.

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I keep trying Fallout Shelter every time I hear the segment on the show. I end up quitting about 5 minutes after the tutorial because I can't be bothered to do all the bullshit busy work it wants me to do. 

I don't really see what "game" there is in Fallout Shelter, but Chris always makes it sound so much fun. 

 

I think it's most interesting when some emergent narratives happen, but that's the kind of thing that really depends on your own imagination, and not every game will tap into that for every person. 

 

I ended up quitting it AGAIN this weekend.  After talking to the lady about her game, we realized there must be a hard trigger on Deathclaws showing up based on either population or base size.  She's played more total hours than I have, but has grown very, very conservatively, and has still not seen a Deathclaw invasion. So I re-installed and decided I would get just shy of what I thought the trigger was and just work on exploring and leveling people up for awhile.  Got to that point last night, had some interesting characters and little narrative things going, was really digging it aaaaaand, my phone battery died which corrupted my save file. 

 

So yeah, not going to re-install and go through the hassle of rebuilding a base for the third time. 

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I love emergent narrative. Xcom (and pretty much every tactical rpg) has it in shed loads, but they have other stuff too.

I guess I need more than just emergent narrative, and I loathe mobile game design. It always just feels like a chore to me.

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I didn't care for it either, and then it started constantly crashing on my iPad so I just left it behind.

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I love emergent narrative. Xcom (and pretty much every tactical rpg) has it in shed loads, but they have other stuff too.

I guess I need more than just emergent narrative, and I loathe mobile game design. It always just feels like a chore to me.

 

I agree in a lot of ways.  On my game that got corrupted, I had a buy named Billy Graham who I sent into the wastes as an unequipped level 1 to die, because fuck Billy Graham.  Then the fucker turned around and managed to pick up a plasma pistol, a nice outfit and eventually brought back an additional 4 items, which was just crazy.    Figuring that was a sign from god, I started renaming all my Explorers the Believers and turned them into a little cult following Billy Graham into the Wasteland day after day. 

 

That was neat enough to justify the experience of messing around with it.

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I wish the game had more opportunity for emergent narratives, but I feel like the design pushes against that quite a bit. It's hard for me to get interested in individual character interactions when there are so many characters, and I'm only at 50-some population.

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I wish the game had more opportunity for emergent narratives, but I feel like the design pushes against that quite a bit. It's hard for me to get interested in individual character interactions when there are so many characters, and I'm only at 50-some population.

 

I mean, that's the problem with a lot of sandbox management games. Crusader Kings 2 has its sweet spot as a multi-title duke or a mid-level king during maybe the first century of play, at least for me, because my attention works best handling between six and ten vassals at the head of lineages with under two dozen members. Small enough that you know everyone's name, large enough that they interact with each other regularly. The problem, like with Fallout Shelter, seems to be that the path of least resistance for playing the game is to expand: the core mechanisms for doing so are the clearest and best supported, and expansion insulates you as the player against negative events that cause frustration and wasted time, even if those events tend to be the "interesting" part of the game. The biggest flaw with both games is that playing them gradually draws the fun out of them. With Crusader Kings 2, the solution might be a bit more straightforward (I've seen mods showing Bisson's estimated three- to five-generation die-out for noble patrilines to be a better model for fertility, for example), but it's definitely an issue faced by all sandbox management games, I think.

 

I'm going to use this opportunity to suggest King of Dragon Pass again. It's on Steam now, too, and I think it's quite volatile for a sandbox-type game, which is refreshing.

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The Adventures of Van Helsing

This is one of those times I'm glad I got something for $5. I was always excited by the presentation layer of this game, but had heard more than once that it was a lackluster Diablo style game. Turns out it's not lackluster - but it is clunky as hell to play. And the difficulty is not scaled well at all.This is one of those things I'll try to get back to in the future, maybe, but not for a while.

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sounds like you haven't reached the tower defense part yet

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Tower defense? Wow, I think I'm glad this game was my first Steam refund, it doesn't sound like it gets any better.

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Broken Age (Part 2)

 

I couldn't take any more of the fussy rewiring puzzles, so I just watched the last act on YouTube.

 

Which was probably for the best, because if I had gotten that ending after doing two more fussy rewiring puzzles, I would have been even angrier.

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