I consider any mission that starts with an unskippable cut scene, especially one that lasts several minutes, to be bad. Needlessly wasting the player’s time is unforgivable.
I consider any mission that instantly fails if you step outside an invisible and unstated boundary, especially in an open world game, to be bad. Punishing the player for creative thinking is unforgivable.
I consider any mission that presents a challenge, and then cheats to force failure when a skilled player is about to succeed, to be bad. Breaking the physics of the game world in order to artificially cancel excellent play is perhaps (barely) forgivable, but terrible game design.
So I guess I don’t get to be in your gang. But I’m glad you had a good time!
(P.S. The game world was beautiful, at least. Props to the folks at Rockstar who did that.)
Make your cut scene compelling, or at least interesting, and people will slow down and experience it willingly. Once.
Force players to slog through your cut scene whether they enjoy it or not, and you’re just being self-indulgent, ignoring the fundamental purpose of a game (entertainment) in favor of your own ego. If you want to do that, make a movie, not a game.
Forcing them to do it again after they’ve already watched it (during a subsequent play-through, or after your game crashed during the mission, or because they made a mistake and want to retry) is well beyond game designer arrogance; it’s just plain bad software design. How would you feel if you had to read and click through time-consuming new user help screens whenever you launched an app, and not just the first time you used it, but every single time?
Red Dead Redemption 2 is particularly bad in this area, as it has cut scenes as long as ten minutes, and not only forces them down the player’s throat, but also makes it impossible to save the game just afterward, so fully restarting a mission requires slogging through the cut scene again.
Note that the emphasis here is on unskippable. Cut scenes on their own are fine. Even slow ones.
I consider any mission that starts with an unskippable cut scene, especially one that lasts several minutes, to be bad. Needlessly wasting the player’s time is unforgivable.
I consider any mission that instantly fails if you step outside an invisible and unstated boundary, especially in an open world game, to be bad. Punishing the player for creative thinking is unforgivable.
I consider any mission that presents a challenge, and then cheats to force failure when a skilled player is about to succeed, to be bad. Breaking the physics of the game world in order to artificially cancel excellent play is perhaps (barely) forgivable, but terrible game design.
So I guess I don’t get to be in your gang. But I’m glad you had a good time!
(P.S. The game world was beautiful, at least. Props to the folks at Rockstar who did that.)
I disagree. That was deliberate because you were meant to slow down and experience Arthur’s life.
Make your cut scene compelling, or at least interesting, and people will slow down and experience it willingly. Once.
Force players to slog through your cut scene whether they enjoy it or not, and you’re just being self-indulgent, ignoring the fundamental purpose of a game (entertainment) in favor of your own ego. If you want to do that, make a movie, not a game.
Forcing them to do it again after they’ve already watched it (during a subsequent play-through, or after your game crashed during the mission, or because they made a mistake and want to retry) is well beyond game designer arrogance; it’s just plain bad software design. How would you feel if you had to read and click through time-consuming new user help screens whenever you launched an app, and not just the first time you used it, but every single time?
Red Dead Redemption 2 is particularly bad in this area, as it has cut scenes as long as ten minutes, and not only forces them down the player’s throat, but also makes it impossible to save the game just afterward, so fully restarting a mission requires slogging through the cut scene again.
Note that the emphasis here is on unskippable. Cut scenes on their own are fine. Even slow ones.
I don’t know of any unskippable cutscenes in RDR2. At least in the open world part of the game, I’ve been able to skip aby cutscene I’ve wanted too.