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Strolling casually through a dungeon, hitting random encounters every few steps, with the exit, or a treasure box, just in sight and almost within reach. A lengthy cutscene that drags and drags. A battle system that lags. Leveling up for hours on end. Characters who never seem to shut up, and other characters who do little more than dot-dot-dot their way through the world. Grating background music. Graphics that insult your very eyes. Glitches that could be fixed in a few minutes of quality control. Scenes that could have been left on the cutting room floor. A boss fight that requires cheap tricks to win and resorts to even cheaper tricks to kill the party. A plot twist you saw coming a mile away.
Raise your hand if any of these sound familiar.
How does one quantify annoyance, or frustration? Delight or enjoyment? Can a number be put to a willingness to sit through repetitive combat, lazy plotwork or nonsenscial dialogue? Is there a specific, tangible point where one says, "This just isn't worth it?" or is it all circumstantial, depending on the player, the game, the time of day, the phase of the moon? Can one good thing compensate for one bad thing, or does it take two, or five, or ten good things?
Think long and hard about your favorite game. What parts did you enjoy? Were there parts you didn't, parts you felt could have been left out or improved? Are there parts you dread upon replaying, parts you speed through to get to that which you like?
It's a given that no game is perfect, not even the games held nearest and dearest to the heart. Less clear, and certainly more subjective, is whether positive aspects can help a game overcome its negatives. Is a game with a magnificent plot worth playing through if the game, itself, is tedious at best? Can a game with phenomenal gameplay or an innovative presentation compel a player to finish, despite a story that feels like a copy-and-paste job at the last second?
This is not to discuss whether gameplay or story is paramount in an RPG, but rather to raise the question of how much a player is willing to tolerate. When does leveling become too irritating or dungeons too numers for the player to continue? Is there a rule or code somewhere that says "4 steps per random encounter is tolerable, but 3 and this game's going back to where it was bought", or "psychic gimps are okay, but talking hands is going too far"?
As far as I can tell, the answer - the best answer - to that question is a firm, resounding, "it depends."
More than once I've been caught up in an otherwise mediocre game simply because, like catching a bad movie on FX on a Saturday night at just the right time, I have to know how it ends. If I have to hit the 'x' button 3,000 times in a vague facsimile of gameplay then so be it. The reverse is also true; games with wafer-thin plots and characters I couldn't care about if I were forced to have nonetheless kept me going simply by virtue of how fun the game itself was. I've found leveling perfectly fine in one game, and pure torture in another. I've enjoyed simple, cliched plots in one game and then lambasted another for being simple and cliched. I've gotten kicks out of references to real-world literature and history, and looked down upon them in only a slightly different context.
I've thought long and hard about this, and I can't reconcile these contradictory opinions without saying that there's more to it than simply comparing the good and the bad.
For a story I like, for characters I love, I will sit through the same battle screen, the same repetitive music, the same patterns in combat. I will fly around the world collecting items and boosting statistics, and I will do it again and again as needed. Yet the game makers have to meet me halfway; the game must, at worst, not get in the way. No brilliant execution of story or jaw-dropping plot twist will make me fight through a seemingly bottomless dungeon just to get to the next town, with monsters every other step and a battle system that takes its time with each encounter.
Again, the reverse is true. For a game I honestly enjoy, for engaging action, for plain old-fashioned kill-everything-that-moves fun, I'm willing to put up with the same moron bad guys spouting the same "life sucks and the world must die" philosophy and making the same mistakes they did in the last game. Stereotypical strong-silent types, brooding loners, sugary-sweet female white mages, and lone survivors from an alien race are all fine and dandy as long as they, too, don't get in the way. I'm willing to just ride out a plot that I honestly think I could out-do if I'm having a good time, but I don't want to have to shut my brain off just because I wanted to kill something with a minigun or an umbrella.
What am I willing to suffer for? It depends. How 'bout you?
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