Poll: "The game gets better later on"

[DarkhoIlow]

I played FFXIII and I enjoyed it..even after the 20 hours required to play beforehand to get to the more open areas.

It really depends on the game however and if the story can grip me. I might trudge along for this only in RPG's however.

 

[Creator002]

If I'm not enjoying a game within an hour, I don't see much point in sticking the rest out. Getting better later on doesn't justify mind-numbing boredom for 2 or so hours for me.
That being said, there's probably a game or two out there that I found boring and completed, but I reckon they were less than 5 hours in length.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Depends if I can find enough other things to enjoy that can tide me over until the 'good stuff' happens.

 

[votemarvel]

I just can't push through something I'm not enjoying in order to get to good parts that might not even be there.

My gaming time is limited, so I expect the games I play to be enjoyable from the beginning.

 

[rvbnut]

If I'm not having fun in the first hour or two, I'm out. Life is too fucking short.

Same.

In my opinion if a game has to set up something that requires quite a lot of time without making the gameplay interesting throughout the rest of the process. I'm done.

I read, a lot. If I'm not playing games in my free time, I'm reading. I'll accept that books take time to set up stuff. But not games. Games are meant to be fun. Books are meant to be enjoyed. There is a difference. That difference is the interactivity. If the interactivity is not fun, then the developer has failed at game design.

 

[happyninja42]

For the most part no, but I did slog through the new Tomb Raider game, in the hopes that the story would improve. It didn't.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

I have a surprising amount of patience for things like this, especially if the game I'm trying is new to me. The only 2 games I ever put down and refused to keep playing ever, as opposed to put down and never got around to again, were Dragon Age: Origins and Zelda: Skyward Sword. I thought Dragon Age was a slog, accompanied by a dull art style, boring combat and woefully generic world. A couple of the characters were interesting, particularly Alistair and Morrigan, especially with the way they interacted with each other, but everything non-character-specific involving those two felt really stilted. As for Skyward Sword, it felt like there was nothing to the world; the surface locations are designed like mini-dungeons, rather than locations in the world, so visiting the same places continuously, over and over, after they've already been totally explored, felt like one of the worst design decisions that they could possibly make. Skyloft is the only remotely interesting area in the game. The new items (i.e. the Gust Bellows) are crappy and pretty useless aside from specific applications. The new bow is kinda cool, but the game is worse-off for not being able to lock onto and quickly fire arrows at enemies such as Keese. I could go on, but I'm starting to ramble. The fact of the matter is, it generally takes a lot of boredom to make me ditch a game before it "gets good".

I actually enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII to a degree. The aesthetics were phenomenal, with the visual and sound design being absolutely captivating. Most of the aspects of the game were sub-par, but honestly they weren't bad enough to stop me from playing, even if the corridor approach got kind of annoying after a while.

 

[Alma Mare]

I totally agree with the mindset that if a game is not being fun one might just as well drop it. If I'm not enjoying myself I should just go do something else. That said, some games are worth sticking with. The Witcher 1 has a huge pacing problem were the first act is bland as fuck until right the very end. The second act drops the pace and it really doesn't seem to pay off. From act 3 onwards it becomes sheer brilliance.

I can't fault anyone for not giving it enough of a chance, the game has it coming. However one would be missing out tremendously.

 

[happyninja42]

I totally agree with the mindset that if a game is not being fun one might just as well drop it. If I'm not enjoying myself I should just go do something else. That said, some games are worth sticking with. The Witcher 1 has a huge pacing problem were the first act is bland as fuck until right the very end. The second act drops the pace and it really doesn't seem to pay off. From act 3 onwards it becomes sheer brilliance.

I can't fault anyone for not giving it enough of a chance, the game has it coming. However one would be missing out tremendously.

Eh, I don't feel I'm missing out on anything with Witcher 1. I am exactly the type of person you are describing. I played through most of Act 1, but between the terrible voice acting, the cliche plot, the mind numbing combat, and the back and forth trekking to finish those quests around a map that is literally a giant circular race track, I stopped giving a shit about 3/4's of the way through Act 1. I don't care how good the last part is, if I have to keep playing a game that bad to get to the good part, I have no desire to see the good part.

capcha: pod bay doors

Yes capcha, that's how I felt when playing Witcher, open the pod bay doors and suck me out into vacuum, that's preferable to playing this game any longer! xD

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

well it depends on what kind game I am playing. I can mainly tolerate this idea of waiting for a game to get better later for RPG's. Some of may favorite rpg's are game that took some time to get into before I started really started to enjoy them.
there was Divine Divininty, Kotor 2, planeascape torrment, and others.

some games are worth sticking with. The Witcher 1 has a huge pacing problem were the first act is bland as fuck until right the very end. The second act drops the pace and it really doesn't seem to pay off. From act 3 onwards it becomes sheer brilliance.

I can't fault anyone for not giving it enough of a chance, the game has it coming. However one would be missing out tremendously.

I agree with you
It takes a great amount of patience to get to play thought the first 2 poorly paced acts of Witcher 1 and I would call it the most flawed game I ever managed to really like. and like wise I fully understand why people would want to give up on Witcher 1 before with out even getting to act 3 and I can not fault a person for doing so.

when I beat the game I felt the game was greater then the sum of its part to point of considering it an excellent game. after that I tried to replay withcer 1. When was faced with the prospect of having to go though the dreaded swamp in chapter 2 again my motivation to replay witcher 1 died and have played it since then.

 

[Alma Mare]

I totally agree with the mindset that if a game is not being fun one might just as well drop it. If I'm not enjoying myself I should just go do something else. That said, some games are worth sticking with. The Witcher 1 has a huge pacing problem were the first act is bland as fuck until right the very end. The second act drops the pace and it really doesn't seem to pay off. From act 3 onwards it becomes sheer brilliance.

I can't fault anyone for not giving it enough of a chance, the game has it coming. However one would be missing out tremendously.

Eh, I don't feel I'm missing out on anything with Witcher 1. I am exactly the type of person you are describing. I played through most of Act 1, but between the terrible voice acting, the cliche plot, the mind numbing combat, and the back and forth trekking to finish those quests around a map that is literally a giant circular race track, I stopped giving a shit about 3/4's of the way through Act 1. I don't care how good the last part is, if I have to keep playing a game that bad to get to the good part, I have no desire to see the good part.

capcha: pod bay doors

Yes capcha, that's how I felt when playing Witcher, open the pod bay doors and suck me out into vacuum, that's preferable to playing this game any longer! xD

Actually, the plot is anything but cliched. The way it pulls the rug from you is actually one of best things I've ever seen in these kind of rpgs. Spoiler alert: The mutagens thiefs you were chasing? No one really cares about them. Least of all you.

But again, and that's the point of this thread, no one can fault for not caring enough to find out. CDPR inexperience really showed on that.

 

[dauw]

In general, no. I have a job, girlfriend, responsibilities and a huge backlog of games. If things don't get fun relatively fast, I'm out and on to greener pastures.

Generally speaking, I feel that a game should be doing its thing right off the bat, and not wait in order to be interesting or fun to play. Doesn't matter if the projected playtime is six or six hundred hours: ain't no reason why the first five hours shouldn't be good.

 

[happyninja42]

snip

snip

Actually, the plot is anything but cliched. The way it pulls the rug from you is actually one of best things I've ever seen in these kind of rpgs. Spoiler alert: The mutagens thiefs you were chasing? No one really cares about them. Least of all you.

But again, and that's the point of this thread, no one can fault for not caring enough to find out. CDPR inexperience really showed on that.

A hero with amnesia so that he is a blank slate, and has to have the entire plot of the game explained to him so the player knows what's going on isn't cliche? And I don't know what CDPR is, or how one can be inexperienced in it.

 

[RavingSturm]

If the game spends too much time setting up the stakes, if I find the main characters to be stupidly annoying or focuses on too much mundane crap in the first couple of hours I park it/abandon it entirely depending on what other games are on offer.

 

[Schadrach]

Now sometimes people use this as shorthand for "Once you're good at the game..." but the game should be scaling up while you improve in a way that remains challenging and enjoyable. If it takes hours to get good, the game did something wrong.

To be fair, there are some games that use unusual mechanics or mechanics with weird implementations that once you "get it" makes all the difference in the world. Others have world design that doesn't hold your hand (such as Gothic, which warns you the woods and orc lands are dangerous in the early game, but doesn't stop you from going there if you feel suicidal).

 

[Alma Mare]

snip

snip

Actually, the plot is anything but cliched. The way it pulls the rug from you is actually one of best things I've ever seen in these kind of rpgs. Spoiler alert: The mutagens thiefs you were chasing? No one really cares about them. Least of all you.

But again, and that's the point of this thread, no one can fault for not caring enough to find out. CDPR inexperience really showed on that.

A hero with amnesia so that he is a blank slate, and has to have the entire plot of the game explained to him so the player knows what's going on isn't cliche? And I don't know what CDPR is, or how one can be inexperienced in it.

CDPR means CDProjekt Red (spelling?), the developer. I think Witcher 1 was one of the first, if not the first 'big' games they made, and it shows. It's really rough around the edges (even though, to their credit, it has been patched into hell and back). The pacing of the game really betrays their inexperience.

As for the plot, you don't even know the plot. Trust me. Geralt's amnesia is an afterthought. It's something he'll try to deal it when he's able to spare the time. As of the ending of Witcher 2, he's barely started to make progress.

Like the whole mutagens ordeal, it really doesn't matter that much on the game's arc. It's just a starting place, like any other (one that's convenient in this case, since Geralt is a stablished character with a HUGE backstory that would be unreasonable to dump on the player from the word go).

All things said, the game takes waay too long to show it's true colors. But they are brilliant. Write off the game as a boring slugfest through a murky settlement and an uninspired city, the first hours of the game deserve nothing less. But as for cliches, this game writes the book on how to bugger cliches. Pity it bores people way before they're able to notice it.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

I vote for the "Depends" option, although, I would add amendment "...and the supposed good waiting at the end of the work."

I have great sympathy for the attitude of "I have so little time; why would I waste it doing something I dislike."

Other other hand, if I stuck to that as an absolute rule, I'd have missed out on some of the best games (and books and movies for that matter) that I've ever experienced. It's a risk, sure, but it's one I'm generally willing to take if I have a recommendation from someone whose taste I trust.

It does suck to get burned though. I kept playing FFXIII with the mindset that the story would get really interesting and engaging later on (spoiler: it didn't! ...unless you read the Datalogs, which is just dumb).

 

[sXeth]

Ubisoft seems to be the main purveyors of this for me. They have a bizarre fondness for stretching tutorials across 2/3 of the game nowadays. I remember playing AC3 and tweeting something about "13 hours in... and here's another tutorial". Watch_Dogs was an offender as well, not just for tutorials, but most of the meat to the story and interesting characters don't start kicking in til the end of chapter 2 (which is ungodly long in itself). Though Black Flag and Far Cry 4 both featured the endless tutorials, but also just let you freely run off to do everything else instead.


I'm not completely indisposed to it, but if the gameplay and world doesn't somehow grab me, I probably won't delve into it. Trying to get me to delve into WOW by saying it gets good around level 90 (or whatever it is now) won't do much when I find the gameplay tedious and the lore to be random hodgepodge stolen from more interesting settings. FF13 similarly had little appeal, since the world was just bland tropes FF has reused to death, and gameplay was a linear path with combat you didn't even have to put input into.