discussion Story elements that make you STOP playing a game?

[ingenkata]

Some random events that I cant control, sometimes creators laziness about a character...

 

[HandholdDegen]

Unnecessary amounts of violence, mafia shit, blackmail and general edgelord cringe stuff.

I don't think it's cool. It doesn't make the story gritty or engaging. It just wastes my time and makes me question the mind of the author.

 

[jabax69]

Not really into violence or cucking

 

[Faturek]

- repetitive endless grind A little grind is not an issue and if it fits the story, but if you have to complete 2 hours of minigames or endless brainless clicks here and there to progress in the story then I'm out
- MC wimps who just get pushed around and never stand up for themselfs
- meaningless side contentent, just there to raise gametime
- Decisions that instantly end in a game over,

If you are going to include a decision option in a game, then please include one with meaning. One that advances or changes the story, be it the story or the MC's relationship with one of the other characters.​

Decisions like "open door" "yes" "no",​

Oh, bad decision, you're dead, game over, I don't need something like that.​

 

[fallfallen]

when the game has different paths and don't give you any options to unlock the other paths unless you start the game over again.

 

[MercurioC]

One story element that can make me stop playing a game is terrible humor—especially when it's trying too hard to be funny all the time. When a game relies too heavily on parody or constant jokes, it takes away from the emotional weight of the scenes. Moments that are supposed to feel serious or impactful end up falling flat because the tone is all over the place. I get that humor can add personality, but if it's overused or poorly written, it just kills the immersion for me

 

[Karamchad]

Unreasonably grinding mechanics.
I value the time spent in the game more than anything it has to offer. If the game has some strange mechanic that is constantly stopping you from progress, or purposely wasting your time chasing numbers, than I will drop it.

 

[Azraelith]

When the dev acts like they're writing the best thing ever and you can't tell because it's so disjointed it reads like a schizophrenic's diary.

 

[impisi]

Characters singing to themselves is probably one of the worst, if only because they're almost always singing along to terrible songs.

Other than that, it'd be when stories absolutely jump the shark and decide to go off on some tangent mid-game about the protagonist suddenly getting drawn into a huge overarching conspiracy or some such and all the characters getting super serious about everything when before that it was just about humble Anon Selfinsert returning home to his estranged family on his eighteenth birthday and wanting to fuck everyone in his small town community.

 

[Gamer51]

Mostly over the top violence, too much grind, and fizzling story.

 

[ChaosLoli]

You gotta have the right pacing in games. It is really easy to make a game suck with too much dialog between interesting scenes.

 

[wirtable]

There are many things, and it often just comes down to personal preferences. But one thing that has started to really annoy me lately is when the MC has a lot of inner dialogue/thoughts. I really don't want to read what the MC thinks about literally every situation he is in. Kinda falls under the "show, don't tell" rule.

 

[chuxianzi]

Most of them have a lot of boring stories

 

[Sagah]

when the game has different paths and don't give you any options to unlock the other paths unless you start the game over again.

I was about to write something else but this pretty much nails it. It's even worse if it uses some obscure engine and save system that doesn't really allow for multiple saves on different path "crossroads" or save scumming in general. At least with Renpy games I can easily make a million saves (some even allow savegame naming) and rollback choices.

 

[LcUser123]

When the choices are vague and make you pull a fallout. ie the action your character takes is so much more dramatic than the choice originally implies. Additionally, when choices or sequences are out of character or don't make sense but the dev didn't know how else to include something they hadn't planned on prior.

 

[mancuchxh]

Time gating. It's just a waste of time for everyone involved

 

[FuckedUpGirl]

I like an interesting story

"Main character arrives back home from college and fucks their mom and sister" stories are only hot the first time, and then immediately fall off exponentially

 

[Karamchad]

Censorship.
Cringe humor (endless jokes, quippy sounds, dated memes, overall 5th grade humor).

 

[User_169360]

i stop playing games when the story involves every npc being a cartoonishly evil rapist and the FeMC is just a clueless idiot just letting it happen when they have the powers to defeat the entire village single-handedly but just choose to let themselves get abused

 

[ooshlaga]

poor english is usually enough for me to stop. another thing i hate is when the mc or LIs are written by someone who obviously have never interacted with a woman.