What bores you the most in games?

Some of the possibilities I've listed below are contradictory, because what bores one person may be the opposite of what bores another. And what bores one person may not bore the same person when they're in the mood for a different style of gameplay.

Feel free to come up with your own new and original causes of boredom.

It goes without saying that game bugs are boring (or worse), so no need to mention them.


So are you bored by...

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Little or no interaction or conversation with characters?

Little or no interaction with the game environment?

Long conversations that have no relevance to solving puzzles and finishing the game?

Superficial conversations that only have relevance to solving puzzles or finishing the game and do nothing to help flesh out the gameworld or make the characters more real?

Being required to talk to characters in a game, when you'd rather do the puzzle solving yourself?

Being required to talk to stupid or annoying characters who can't talk or think like a normal person?

Repetitive comments by your character?

Traipsing back and forth across a large gameworld hunting for new inventory or new conversations that may have been unpredictably triggered by your last action?

Traipsing back and forth across a large gameworld hunting for new inventory or new conversations, even though you know they'd be triggered by your last action?

Having no opportunity to really explore the gameworld because it's a discontinuous series of "zap points."

Having to scan around for inventory in unlikely places in every screen you visit?

Characters that repeat the same conversations whenever you click on them?

Characters that don't repeat conversations, so that if you're called away from the game while playing you have to go back to a save and replay in order to hear what was said?

Action or timed sequences that take several repetitions to get past?

Having to stop frequently to take notes?

Card games or other gambling games inserted in the game that must be played in order to get enough money or chits to progress in the game?

Not being able to look around, either by clicks that rotate you 90

Mazes, just mazes.

Everything can potentially be a good gaming experience if done well.

As far as what aspects stand out in a game as making it truly boring:

Repetition, of anything from environments to puzzles.

Walking through huge worlds with no purpose but to extend your journey from point A to point B. (The Neverhood with its gajillion-screen long room, or even walking through the desert in Uru...

Long load times. I finished Uru and stopped about 2 minutes into the expansion pack after realizing I REALLY didn't want to go around waiting 30 seconds for every world to load, trying to find what I needed to get started.

Saying the same long, repetitive comments every time an inventory item doesn't work. A simple "Nope!" will suffice.

Slow walkers.

Repetition, of anything from environments to puzzles.

Use the box with the chicken. Nope! Use the box with the wrench. Nope! Use the box with the glove. Yay! A Box-ing Glove! Use the boxing glove with the chicken....

(Inventory puzzles are fine when they make sense. Hence Monkey Island 2 bugged me...slightly...)

Games with no music and/or sound.

Repetition, of anything....well, you get the picture.

I'm sure there are more. <img border="0" alt="[yawn]" title="" src="graemlins/yawn.gif" />

For me it's unskippable cut scenes. They drive me crazy! I'll sit there hitting every key on my keyboard hoping that one of them will work.

Oh mannnnn! I love the cut scenes.


What bores me personally would be the game as a whole if it doesn't capture my interest. <img border="0" alt="[yawn]" title="" src="graemlins/yawn.gif" />
Inferno

That's quite a list, Jenny100, and yet I've heard every one of those points being griped about at one time or another.

Having to complete an arcade or card game sequence in order to move on is aggravating rather than boring for me. I'm engaged in the action and getting tenser by the minute, especially when I'm losing! Frequent dying in a game also gets me very uptight.

I think long intro. scenes that can't be skipped and long load times can be rather mind numbing.

Reading, reading, and more reading.

Talking, talking, and more talking. (TLJ!)
Rusty

I get bored when I already figured out what to do and it won't let you because you haven't talked to someone or been somewhere that would have given you a clue to do exactly what you were trying to do in the first place.

This soured more than one game for me that otherwise was fun.

Little or no interaction with the game environment?

Jack the Ripper comes to mind. I thought the whole game was kinda boring till the end. I wanted to click on everything I saw on the streets and in the rooms. I couldnt get anything except what was important to the game. I guess I like a good pixel hunt and carrying inventory.(except ladders)

Little or no interaction or conversation with characters. I have no interest in Myst or the inumerable clones. I like conversations. I like showing everything in my inventory to characters and getting a funny response.

I like sudden, strange deaths, but then I started adventuring with Sierra's Space Quests. So walking around a jungle maze in which absolutely nothing happening, in Beyond Atlantis had me bored almost to tears.

Action and timed sequences don't bore me, they make me angry.

I lose interest in a game that has too much repetition whether it's conversations where you have to listen to them again and again or traveling back and forth constantly over the same terrain. The to and fro thing I'm talking about is the kind where you have a cut scene constantly to repeat or any more than 3 "steps" to get back and forth. I don't mind the maps where you click and you're there but my eyes glaze over after the 2nd trip on "foot".

happy trails,

Carolyn

I like cutscenes, too...the first time. But when you have to go back to an earlier point or want to replay something and are FORCED to sit through them again...well that drives me nuts.

Hi

I think practically everything boring has been covered already but it is somehow really satisfying to know that loads of other people besides me get bored by similar stuff

As you said, Jenny, we're all different, but I found several of those items you listed boring, especially games where you wander around looking for stuff that was triggered by something else, except you don't have a clue what or where it is.

One thing that wasn't mentioned: games whose characters are hard to understand, and there are no subtitles...

Use the box with the chicken. Nope! Use the box with the wrench. Nope! Use the box with the glove. Yay! A Box-ing Glove! Use the boxing glove with the chicken....
___________________~Demosthenes~________________

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! OMG! I have played so MANY of those! I actually find those types of inventory puzzles pretty comical!

________________________________________________

What bores ME the most are the following:

1. Long load times...yuk...they destroy the immersiveness too (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets comes to mind)

2. Repetitive conversations that you CANNOT skip through if you've heard them before, and characters that repeat themselves word for word TOO MUCH (it's okay once or twice, but EVERY time you talk to them??) This is the case in so MANY games that no one particular comes to mind. It's a tolerable fault, but a bit annoying at times.

3. Gameplay that is SO open-ended that you have no sense of direction or purpose...I don't like just wandering around wondering what to do next (RIVEN comes to mind)...for ME, THIS one is the WORST...I WANT A SENSE OF PURPOSE, dang it!!!

4. Myst and Myst clones (EXILE being the exception)

5. Puzzles that require a degree in bio-physics or space engineering...I am NOT, nor will I ever BE, a rocket scentist...so (OBSIDIAN and SCHIZM come to mind) please keep it at a bachelor's degree level or less (for THIS adventure/rpg'er anyway)

6. Characters that you control, but that have one gait...S-L-O-W...all characters should be able to run!

7. A clumsy and awkward interface (this will usually bore me so in the length of TIME it takes to figure it OUT...I'll usually just say the heck with it and uninstall the game)

I think you all have covered it all.

Josie

To generalize, I find the most boring everything,
what developers put into the game for the purpose of making the gameplay longer.

You will immediately know it, when you meet it because you usually lose the sense of immersion. It can be puzzle, it can be uninspiring maze, it can be an action scene. I love all of the previous mentioned as long as I feel, that they are integrated in the game. But when I have to walk 10000 screens from point B back to point A, even after I was in A million times and the game didn't allow me to pick item C until I really get to point B where person D tells me to pick C in A I immediately know how it was in developing process.

Writer 1: So I think our game is ready.
Programmer: It's ready and implemented.
Beta tester: I needed 7.5 hours to finish the game.
Programmer: hmmm, we don't have time to invent more puzzles, so what if we just move some triggers far away so player has to walk a really long way.
Writer: Ah, this is great idea.
Graphic Artist: Oh yes, and they will look at my beautiful graphic again and again and again... mwahahahaha
Writer: So the most distant places are A and B so let's move the item C from B back to A
Programmer: Ok, back to work.
Team leader: And don't forget to take out the map from the game. We don't want them to easily transport from one place to another.
Programmer: Ok.

I knew that's what was happening - Let's go get them and smack on them for a while

I suppose what bores me is awkward interfaced puzzles, inordinate pixel hunts or hot spots right on top of each other which causes endless searching.

I like reading if it can be done when you like - as in put the document or a transcript of it in your inventory - or if it is very hint/plot info laden. If it is one long dissertation to wade through - uhmmm I'll wait for the movie.

I get bored if there are no people at all or at least "sense of people" in a game. In DarkFall there were no tangible people but lots of delectible voices and characters. In Rhem I found myself running after that guy yelling but "Wait!! Who can I hang out with if you leave....come back!!!"

Yep..I think everything has been covered, the one thing I can think of that drives me crazy..A game where there are timed/difficult sequences,and you cannot save where you want, "it" saves for you..you get through the difficult part [finally] then a little later "trip over a log" and you are dead and have to do the whole thing over!!! Glynn

I HATE having to revisit places over and over again because something you need at point B needds to be used at point C , then you have to go to B again to get something for A, etc etc. It doesnt bother me so much in the detective type games ( like PostMortem, Jack the Ripper) but it bugs me in the Myst type games ( I am playing Crystal Key 2 now , and I already sick of that jetpack!)

Even in Riven and Shivers, walking, walking, walking to do a task got to me.

Titantic had the best idea, a jump map. You didn't have to walk the entire ship, you just went to the map and the map put you where you wanted to be. ;( Any other games like that?

~Dee

[kidding mode on] Well, there you are. Everybody hates adventure games. No wonder they don't sell. Let's all go play checkers. [off]

Seriously now, if you were a developer reading this thread, what would you do?

Some things you mentioned I may find annoying, but not boring. (mazes for example). I find it boring if there is little or no interaction with other characters, or if there isn't a stong story. Sometimes I can't put my finger on what I find boring, but some games just don't have that special somthing that pulls me into the story.

I don't like games with a lot of 'back & forth' movement with no real understading of what I'm doing.

Louis

I'm bored by having to go back and forth through forty-eleven screens where nothing happens to get from point A to point B. By really unlikely inventory puzzles--stuff that you'd NEVER do in real life, that has you randomly combining and/or trying inventory until something works. By repetetive, tedious conversations with characters who are supposed to be amusing but are just annoying.

Well, I personally would say, "Gee, here are a lot of dedicated gamers giving useful critique. Most of what I'm hearing is that people are bored by pointless game-extenders and unnecessary repetition. Maybe I can't make a game that will please everyone, but I can work on eliminating that aspect."

WW

Well I have not been gaming long but ......

I don't like annoying and difficult interfaces like the one in ROTS--

I don't like having to wander around and around and around in places I have already been just to see 'if' something I have done somewhere else has triggered something.

Slider puzzles--life long yuk yuk yuk (

The more interaction with the environment, the better

Cut scenes that contain info I need, but don't repeat--phones and doorbells do ring, dogs bark, kids call---

Cut scenes that can't be skipped after I have seen them 1 time-- <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/woozy.gif" />

But I love adventuring, so I'll just have to relax and enjoy.

"Louvre: The Final Curse" (aka "The Messenger") also had a map which you could jump on. A bug in that was that you could jump to areas you couldn't walk to.

Much as I enjoyed "Return to Zork" I found myself walking my socks off.

There are a few things that bore me.
1) Meaningingless long conversations with characters, as well as characters who have bizarre mannerisms that draw their speechs out endlessly (Ring).
2) Endless wandering back and forth to find the hotspot that wasn't there beforehand (I am playing Journey to the Center of the Earth right now, so this is high in my mind at present).
3) Long walks where there is no meaningful interaction (Riven, Capri, Rhem). I like the graphics as much as the next person, but when you have been over the territory for the 50th time, it loses its appeal.
4) Lack of engaging story line (Crystal Key 1). If there is no clear goal or a clear mystery as to what the goal is, then what's the point?

My 2 cents (about all I can spare)
Paul

The thing that bores/aggravates me the most is constant disk-swapping. Just finished Nancy Drew Secrets Can Kill, and everytime I went from the house to the school, I had to change disks. Once I got to the school, I didn't want to leave it!!

Boring is walking about with No clue and nothing pretty to look at... In Myst for example, you Knew you had to find coloured pages in each age, so there was a goal. Listening to repeated conversations bores me stupid, and pixel hunts!!

I forgot---Pixel hunts--those are the absolute pits!!!

But I love conversations and backstory, and reading material, etc that deepens the story---anything that pulls me in

WW said:
I love those magical numbers!

I'm not sure what's the fine line between boredom and frustration is. I usually get frustrated in pixel hunting than being bored. 3D games created a 'item in the dark corner phonomina' that makes me pull my hair. Bugs can sometimes be funny sometimes but they can be very~ bad~.

Bored... I guess having scarce gameplay creates boredom. Some lesser 'interactive' (movie, novel, etc) games seem to have scarce gameplay.

Oh, I remeber. The "Hit Enter a Thousand Times" Some games suck up a lot of gameplay time by making the players hit enter or spacebar button constantly. I don't mind long conversations but hours of gameplayplay only pressing enter really bores me. The "None-Entertaining Level Enhancement" in RPGs can be a drag too. "Extreme Screen Scanning" can be boring too. It means clicking everything one the screen in a manner simmilar to old dot-matrix printers. The clicking sound of the mouse almost makes me feel like I'm a dot-matrix printer.

There are a lot of things I find annoying or frustrating in games, but as for boring: long, long journals or notebooks to read, especially when the handwriting is hard to decipher, and then it turns out that most of what you read wasn't necessary for finishing the game.

One exception: the journals in Benoit Sokal games, because they're filled with beautiful illustrations, real works of art.

Riven & Myst(s) have the lightning bolt to zap you past the long walks once you have been thru the area once, that really helps.
A lot us have used the words frustrated, annoying, aggravating, drives me nuts, make me angry, etc.... so being bored is surely not the worst feeling to have, just the best excuse to dump the game.

My worst is sudden death or dead ends(game over), just drives me up the wall.

Conatantly moving back and forth between sites the long long way just to get anything done. Oh how I love games with maps that speeds this along.

Lady K --

welcome to my peculiar world of idiom. another one that may amuse you is "everyone and his hamster..." as in, "I get bored in a game when I have to go back and talk to everyone and his hamster for the forty-eleventh time in the hopes that SOMEONE will FINALLY say something different that will trigger the next puzzle."



WW

WW,
We usually say "everyone and his mother-in-law," but I like yours better!

Having to go back and listen to the same conversation over and over or back to places I've already been 2 or 3 times.
For ex. I just started Outcast and before I finally figured out how to save had to do the beginning 3 times! AAARGH!

Hmmm. These come to mind: Traveling hindrances - not having the lightning bolt to zap me along past terrain I've already been on, or not having a jump map. Switching disks - aaarggghhh! Also, sometimes I come up with plausible, logical solutions that don't work because they're not in keeping with what the gamemaker(s) had in mind. Oh, yes - mazes (what's the purpose there?), and timed Anything. And pretty much all the above (what everyone else said).

I'm pretty outclassed by the gamers here, so I find myself having a difficult time elucidating on all the annoyances from past games. I tend to forget the details, but I do remember that they happen... something that causes me to think twice before buying other potential glitchy games.

But then..... BAAGS!!! And all is forgotten, and I'm once again 'back in the game', bugs and all.

As I read this thread, I really thought that the term boring was not really applicable to many of the postings, nor is it to me. I can't really say that I have been bored by any game that I have played, though I have any number of times been annoyed, even angry at some of the characteristics described in the thread. One of my little irritations, which probably doesn't bother most players, is with games that when you aim in a particular direction, e.g. down a hall (particularly in a maze), it will move you ahead and then turn you to R or L when you arrive. If I head somewhere, that's where I want to go! When I arrive, then let me turn R or L.

oh, I can assure you I have truly been bored. I particularly found _The Omega Stone_ to be stultifying--all those miles over caverns. All that going back and forth and back and forth. *Snore* But anyway, I've experienced lots of moments in games where my main reaction was, "blah blah blah." That might be followed by the iritation of "just get on with it!" but the initial reaction is boredom.

WW

We all sort of wandered off the "Boring" track, didn't we? I guess I'm bored by things that are dumbed-down...and there probably ARE adventure game titles that fall into that category.

As far as *elements* of games, I'd say that mazes are extremely boring. They're not mentally stimulating - don't force me to think or to reason-out problems, and generally make my eyelids grow heavy. Yup. Mazes = "Boring" in my book.

if you've played "shadow of destiny" you have the definition of boring when you want to repeat the game to get a different ending, but can't skip the cutscnenes you've seen like 20 times already, because they're the same ones.

Sound puzzles, where I have to listen really, really closely to the sounds on my cheap, tiny speakers. I hate them. I stopped playing Schizm when I had to figure out the priest in the temple.
I know its a part of the game but I just dont like them.

to GB blackfurie,

Sound puzzles don't faze me, but mazes do!!

I hate mazes too, when you get lost and have to draw a map, i hate drawing maps, what the point of being in an adventure game if you have to draw maps...
I also hate those sequels (or expansion packs)that aren't really sequels but actually just the same as the original, with a few new characters to make it sound new, but then you have to play them coz u loved the original and they're just, well, boring.

I find mazes, mathematical puzzles, long conversations and reading documents boring; but what I hate and really hate, are long cut scenes you can't skip, followed immediately by an action or timed sequence that you know will kill you and you are going to have to restart it so many times.

Hello,I'm in the last chapter and trying to save Joy from hanging.I can't escape the demon goo.Even when I skip,there's no time to escape.I'm not fast enough to escape by hitting the escape buttons and they keep changing each time anyway.Once when I was able to reach Joy,I had seconds left to possess her but she still got hung.Is there a way to get past this somehow,or maybe ther's a different way to save her?Very frustrating indeed!