[The E]

Via Penny Arcades' new Penny Arcade Report site (which is a very well edited gaming news/editorial site you should really check out if you are in any way interested in meta-gaming comments), comes this wonderful article:

The Dangers of Gamer Entitlement

It's about a Bioware writer who went on record as saying that, just as there are buttons and things for gamers wishing to skip past dialogue scenes, there should be analogous ways to skip past combat for those who are interested in the story rather than the combat (God knows I wish something like that would exist for Mass Effect 1). This earned her an enormous amount of internet rage, one filled with all sorts of personal attacks, including the obligatory "This is the cancer that is killing bioware" line.

IMHO, this sort of entitlement and lack of proper reflection on the part of those making these comments is the cancer that is killing gaming discussions.

[TrashMan]

The age of internets.

Idiots, idiots everywhere.
YouTube commenters is all you need.

From rabbid, dellusional fans who are over-possesive (and obsessive) to haters of everything that isn't 100000% exactly as they envisioned it.

I'm not surprised. Sadly.

[Klaustrophobia]

i get that it's optional and shouldn't affect anything by being there, but...

doesn't it seem pretty dumb to anyone else to make a game, and throw in a button to skip the game part? 

[The E]

i get that it's optional and shouldn't affect anything by being there, but...

doesn't it seem pretty dumb to anyone else to make a game, and throw in a button to skip the game part? 

Conversely, doesn't it seem dumb to write a story and fluff it up with some random game things?

[MatthTheGeek]

I never managed to replay neither ME1 and ME2 because the gameplay is boring. If I could skip the combat, I'd probably have finished each of em half a dozen times now.

Long story short, skipping combat would increase replayability tenfold.

[Jeff Vader]

i get that it's optional and shouldn't affect anything by being there, but...

doesn't it seem pretty dumb to anyone else to make a game, and throw in a button to skip the game part?

Using some feature or another to skip certain parts of a game for some reason... sounds like cheating. Which has been in games for ages. If someone wants to "cheat" in order to progress more easily, be my guest.

[headdie]

right so its ok to skip the story but not the action?  this is something that makes me despair and lol at the same time. 

For example I know a 11yr old kid up the road and because i know the family well i am up there fairly often and the number of time me and my wife have been sat talking to the kids mum while the kid plays on his xBox and he skips strait past the cutscenes and then wonders why something happens or *****es that he dont know how to do something the game needs him to do and having played the game full well that it was all explained in the cutscene and mention it to him and get the reply "oh well the cut scenes are boring.".

and these guys are raging about skipping combat?

Also bioware is an interesting case in that their games are generally about telling stories so what are you left with by skipping the story elements? 

Lastly the current trend in achievement based rewards, well you cant get the reward if you dont play the game meaning doing the "combat" bits

[Dilmah G]

This is actually pathetic. I feel sorry for the kids who were parented by the less mature parts of the net and grow up into the interbogans that populate the dross of discussions like the one in question. God knows like everyone else here I would have LOVED a skip (awful) combat switch for ME1.

[Fury]

I never managed to replay neither ME1 and ME2 because the gameplay is boring. If I could skip the combat, I'd probably have finished each of em half a dozen times now.

Long story short, skipping combat would increase replayability tenfold.

Wat. Really? Oh well, each to their own I guess. I found gameplay to be good enough to replay ME1 and ME2 several times, including all missions I could find.

[Spoon]

It's like a whole community of darthwangs!

[Klaustrophobia]

i for one found the combat in ME1 most enjoyable (other than the bouncing of the mako), and certainly a metric ****ton better than ME2. 

[The E]

This is not a discussion about ME combat systems.

[Dilmah G]

On a slightly more/less related note, I've gotten into a discussion with a friend of mine on this. He's played the 'game shouldn't be for everyone' card RE: this and it's 'casualization' of gaming. Here we ****ing go. 

But yes. Ergh. Perhaps the sense of entitlement stems from the previous niche roots of PC gaming and the whole games for gamers by gamers thing? I don't know...just hazarding a guess or two to keep this thread on track after my potential derail.

[Darius]

Why would you want to skip the parts that don't require you to think? Or need an attention span of more than three seconds?

[MP-Ryan]

If there was ever a game that needed this feature, it was Prince of Persia:  Sands of Time for PC.  Hooooly **** was that a terrible combat system.  And no ****ing quicksave.  I finally just downloaded the checkpoints and whenever I got to the inevitable mass battle of awfulness before the next checkpoint, I just loaded the next save and carried on for the story.

I don't see anything wrong with this... other than if a significant number of players are skipping EITHER dialogue OR combat, then you haven't built your game very well.  Both should be equally compelling, and in many games the combat is equally as tedious and frustrating as the writing is in others.

[Beskargam]

I do understand the logic of being able to skip one side or the other, but It kinda rubs me the wrong way to see the skipping option. I don't separate a game into components like that. I like both parts of it and a game would feel incomplete to me (I think) without both parts. I sorta see it as, if you don't want or don't appreciate both parts then maybe this game isnt really what you are looking for and others might be more to your interest. call of duty for people who just want the action for example, or to pick a less well known one, tribes ascend. not snubbing it, because both are well polished fun games, but they in someways appeal to a different group of people and have a different experience that it offers the player than a game that is more story driven (KotOR for example). 

I wont condemn people who do want to skip sections of a game tho. to each his own. And I will point out that I appreciate story driven games most of all.

[Flipside]

I suppose it's kind of like re-reading a book but in game format, if it's a good game/story it may well be worth it, and you don't always want to have to go through the combat scenes.

Personally, I'm not sure I could think of a game that I would choose to do this with, but that doesn't automatically make it a bad idea.

I used to love the Diablo 2 cutscenes for example, much of my reason for playing that game was to watch the next bit of awesome rendered animation

[Spoon]

You might as well just watch a 'lets play' on youtube if you don't actually want to play the game.
Or go read a visual novel instead.

[Qent]

At least they're not making you pay to skip combat.

[Unknown Target]

What about the Freespace 2 system? Fail a mission 5 times in a row and you get the option to skip it. I wouldn't mind a skip combat button, a lot of times I do play the game just for the story. It's totally optional, too, so I mean I don't get the fuss.