Poll: Worst game-lengthening scheme.

[Lord RPGs]

Pointless mandatory difficulty spikes that you cannot be prepared for in any way, and that MUST be completed in order to progress in game. I spent well over an hour struggling on Max Payne 1 with those stupid "Nightmare" sequences in which you do a platforming sequence for some reason across a path of blood, which is just barely wide enough to stand on, and if you move even slightly off it, you start the whole thing again and hear a baby screaming. Being told in A Dance With Rogues that, after sneaking around the entire game, I now have to fight a black dragon with my equipment designed to let me sneak, and I can't go grinding because you don't get experience for fighting, but instead for sneaking/picking locks/disarming traps/ect.

Please, game designers. Think about what you're doing, and cut the (undealable) difficulty spikes. And grinding too. If your player has to grind, you've usually paced the game wrong.

 

[Prosis]

I think backtracking. It works ONLY if there are numerous shortcuts to breeze through the level on the second way through. Like, some sort of item or something.

Games where you have to go back into the level and do it again, wasting time on game material you've already experienced, just to pick up some random item/thing is incredibly annoying.

Probably the best example (IMO) of the horrors of backtracking would be the shrine of Kadaan from Star Ocean 3. I don't care how much you love the game, returning to that shrine was horrific. This was one of the largest dungeons in the game, consisting of numerous identical, boring rooms. You had to to go through each and every room, and find the one path that you didn't explore/wasn't available to you earlier in the game.

Also, on the second runthrough, many of the random encounters have a dodge-or-die move. Which sucks, since your teammates (controlled by the AI) are not nearly smart enough to dodge it. This only lengthens the time necessary to get through the dungeon, AGAIN.

 

[TheLoveableMuffin]

Collectables in games that are in ridiculous places. I mean they are nice when they add to the world or story, and most are easy to find sometimes but they don't half get on my tits when I apparently haven't completed the game 100% because I haven't found one measy shiny item hidden in god knows where.

 

[Kavachi]

Generic side quests.

Mass Effect and Oblivion are two of the worst offenders I can think of, with filler quests that are clearly exactly that since they are so superficial in contrast to the main storyline. I stopped doing ME's side quests once I realised that just about every one of them would involve nothing more than driving around a generic planet for a bit, then entering a generic base to shoot some generic enemies.

I agree with Mass Effect (luckily ME2 kinda solved it), that was horrible and I never did any side quests. But I'm not so sure what you mean with Oblivion?

Personally I enjoyed the game by doing all the side quests and just traveling around not doing the main quest. I sought an inn on one of my first days in Oblivion and it got hijacked by bandits and I had nothing more than 3 arrows for my bow and a knife I wasnt trained in (was one of the most exciting quests). The Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild sidequests were also awesome, and once I stumbled upon a village in which everyone is invisible. What did you find repetitive in Oblivion?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Putting in people to kill seems to me the most abused game-lengthening schemes. Simply because it's used by 90% of games and it's unnecessary.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

I hated Assassin's Creed 2's little "Find all of our hidden shit in the cities to beat the game".

It was repetitive and dull, and there wasn't enough Assassinating to be had.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

Army Of Two The 40th Day. Shit blows up. A lot. Did we mention shit blows up? And that you have to stop and watch it?

I swear. Every single cutscene that had buildings exploding....You know how there's always that one awkward friend who keeps a joke going for way longer than it ever should have been and it starts to get really tiring and annoying?

Yeah, that's how it was in The 40th Day.

Also, Far Cry 2. "OMG CAN APPROACH SITUATION IN ANY WAY I WANT". Yes, but if you don't manage to find a car, may god have mercy on your soul as you're forced to run across the entire effing continent of Africa to get to your mission. It took me hours just to finish a few missions for this reason.

 

[Phishfood]

I guess in order it would be:

Tiresome backtracking
Endless grinding
Endless fetching (assuming its skipable, if its not skipable lump it with backtracking)
Unskipable cutscenes - this one is most subjective, if the cutscenes are good and its my first playthtough I won't even notice its not skipable. If the cutscenes are bad and its my 5th playthrough this is a problem.

 

[veloper]

I agree with backtrakcing.

Atleast with grinding and fetch quest you are atleast playing the game and facing some kind of challenge or opposition, even if it's easy.
Backtracking is just a boring trip from B to A. Even a cutscene may atleast show something eventful, unlike backtracking. Unskippable cutscenes come second though.

 

[Sixcess]

I agree with Mass Effect (luckily ME2 kinda solved it), that was horrible and I never did any side quests. But I'm not so sure what you mean with Oblivion?

Personally I enjoyed the game by doing all the side quests and just traveling around not doing the main quest. I sought an inn on one of my first days in Oblivion and it got hijacked by bandits and I had nothing more than 3 arrows for my bow and a knife I wasnt trained in (was one of the most exciting quests). The Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild sidequests were also awesome, and once I stumbled upon a village in which everyone is invisible. What did you find repetitive in Oblivion?

Possibly I should have said grind rather than side quests. I was thinking of the dungeons. The first couple were interesting because it was new to me, but it didn't take long to get a strong sense of deja vu each time I wandered into one to kill some bandits.

 

[Johann610]

At least with cutscenes I can sit back and munch, maybe. The endless grind is a waste of carpal tunnel syndrome as well, and really, I don't think so much of it as playing, because when the keystrokes / mouse strokes are the same over and Over and OVer and *OVER*, it becomes more exercise in boredom than a game.
The biggest Issue I have with it is that this is usually the point where the credit-card incentive box drops down and says "for $5, you could skip this...shall you?" Breaking immersion to remind me that yes, the time I would WASTE grinding through this would cost me less in terms of life than the WORK it would take me to earn $5. So another company gets my CC info, and the immersion has to be re-built.

 

[Naeo]

Well I'm torn between a handful of things, but for me the worst is probably "your objective is way the fuck over there and you have to walk the whole damn way." In other words, padding length via distance and making you run all over the damn game world just to do some small task.

Unskippable cutscenes are pretty damn awful too, though. Fetch quests and grinding I don't so much mind, but I did play a lot of MMORPGs as a kid (specifically Runescape, which is pretty grindtastic at almost all hours of the day when you're not questing or just being social).

 

[Noala]

Being the COD franchise...

Probably making you fight an insane boss with tons of health is the worst way to lengthen a game, as it also might make players rage-quit never to play the game again.

 

[Fredvdp]

Slow moving characters. This is often done in MMORPGs so that players would spend more time in the game and as a result pay more subscription money.

 

[DanielBrown]

Tiresome backtracking is what bothers me the most. Worst offender I can think of right now is Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom. So much backtracking and standing around, waiting for it to become night...
Hated that game so much.

 

[Thomas Rembrandt]

Send in the next wave!

Spawning in wave after wave of enemies like they did in Dragon Age 2 is easily the most annoying thing an RPG can do for me. Filler combat is bad as it is (DA:Origins had it in spades) but removing any possibility for planning out tactics is just FUCKING WITH YOUR PLAYER BASE.

Hate it.

 

[Aircross]

Whatever the planet scanning in Mass Effect 2 falls under.

Seriously, I cannot fathom how some playtesters at Bioware thought that mini-game was okay. Sure the Mako was wonky, but Bioware could have improved that mechanic rather than take it out altogether.

I think that would fall under fetch quests.

Yeah, scanning slowed down the game way too much.

 

[Mallefunction]

Unskippable Cutscenes

I like to watch cutscenes.... I do!... The first time I play a game, but when I'm on my fifth or sixth playthrough I wanna skip that boring conversation and shoot/stab/blow up or whatever I'm supposed to be doing!

Same. I actually enjoy most cutscenes unless they are ridiculously long (like with most Japanese games where they can be 10 minutes on average).

OP: My vote goes toward backtracking. As a gamer, I like to find EVERY nook before leaving an area because I don't want to backtrack. I find it annoying if an overall linear game forces me to run back and forth between areas (especially difficult to navigate ones like underground tunnels and such where you rarely have a proper map, everything looks the same, and there are multiple tunnels where some have a dead end). If I want to go back to an area, I will and I often do, but I hate it when I go into an area and see chests I can't open just because they are being saved for LATER in the game when I have to do a particular mission.

A good example would be ACII where you never really have to go back to any of the cities once you've done the story missions within those areas (outside of your villa which you'll occasionally need to come back to) but you have the option of going back to each of those cities to mess around in.