The Cancer of Modern gaming that is the Quick time Events!

We all know the gig by now QTE's are more of a gimmick nowadays which ruins and takes the player away from the experience and everyone seems to hate'em and yet they keep popping in every new modern game! are they really just a gimmick?

But my first exposure to QTE was in RE3(It was before shenmuu!) where you got to choose one of 2 important actions the character was able to perform kinda of like heavy rain QTE's except the entire freaking game isn't just that anyway it seems like people blame God of war for popularizing QTE's but that's incorrect RE4 introduced this "Press random button OR DIE" button way before GOW.

and TBH it kinda fits in GOW's gameplay,for one its already a hack'n'slash so you're button mashing and UNLIKE in RE4 where i almost broke my controller because i was killed in the B.S krauser QTE even in GOW 2 where zeus is about you one hit K.O you get at least 2 seconds of time to react in the krauser QTE's you get a microsecond!

I actually know 2 games that make really good use of QTE and almost make it feel like a natural part of gameplay(something that i always wished was true about GOW) POP T2T for example has a "Speed kill" which is a QTE and you can fail it but here's the catch! there's no random button prompts instead your dagger of time slows down time just enough for you to strike and when you tap the button right when the time is stopped you get an insta-kill if you don't the prince fails... it ties in with the story of POP and it ties in seamlessly within the gameplay!

Another game which uses QTE's perfectly would be DMC4 nero's devil arm which is basically a QTE machine but unlike kratos's iconic "O" grabs you don't get random button prompts which completely breaks you from the experience instead you use it for everything in the game.. you use it to grab enemies from distance,you use it to catch enemy projectiles to throw at them etc the game doesn't slow down time and neither does give you a button prompt you are expected to do it by this point!

^^THAT is freaking amazing.. its such a shame that every modern game seems to have adopted more or less the primitive RE4 QTE into all types of action adventure games,RPG's,shooters you name it! all with the same random "Press X to not die" prompts or 'Press X to do this" totally uncreative garbage,

and In closing.. we really have to ask ourselves how did we go from this:-

To THIS:-

I dont mind QTE's.

But they're getting bad because I feel like they are being slapped onto a cutscene for the sake of having interactivity, rather than built and communicated ground up.

And it leads to moments where QTEs arent consistently communicated well, they either just pop up, dont feel necessary or dont exactly match up logically to what's happening on screen. At it's worst moments, the scene is too busy that a QTE takes the attention away from what's going on an expects you to comprehend the scene to anticipate what QTE is next.

A lazy way to make your game look good. That's basically what it is. People eat it up too. Winning without effort is apparently fun.

I really fail to see how throwing random button prompts is "fun" for anyone.. its frustrating if anything.

i don't mind the occasional one, it's when they're used as a substitute for what should be gameplay that irks me. take shadow of mordor; they are, on the whole, put to good use, like when you're attempting a last ditch escape from death or about to execute a captain, however...

I don't mind quick time events, sometimes I find them enjoyable and they can lend themselves to some very impressive things happening on-screen.

People hate them, but people keep buying the games that have them. Therefore they keep being used, since they are the easiest thing to do.

They are over done, if you use them just right in your game it can mean alot though like prying open a elevator door to escape a monster or something after getting chased trough the hallways gives extra tension, but not like the RE crap...

I giggled at the Spiderman faceplant. That needs to be in the next film and the end to the franchise.

RE4 did them well, now far cry 3.... yeah no, just no. Bossbattle qtes? PFTTT

I don't mind them. It's more about how they're done than them being bad by default.

QTE are good in some games that feels like it needs it. God of War does QTE well so I like that but however, I do know that QTE are now showing up during the final boss fights in order to win the game is now becoming a trend. Watch Dogs, Dying Light ect are now just pressing buttons to win the game.

Nero doesn't use QTE's..... his Devil Bringer is a Simple Grab Button......

As for DmC..... it has those contextual areas where you grapple specific enemies or parts of the environment..... that was Cool.....

And what's the deal with Chris Punching Boulders ? It wasn't bad at all..... go play that same section as Sheva and then you will see the most annoying use of a QTE.....

QTEs aren't inherently wrong. They're just overused and implemented poorly in many cases. God of War did em well, and Heavy Rain was designed around them so they're constantly expected. There are other examples, but I don't believe QTEs are a bad design choice as long as they're not arbitrary.

@dakan45: LOL i was about to say that RE4's krauser QTE was THE worst QTE in all of gaming... you get almost no time to react and it appears at the time when you are least expecting it to be.

@Lulu_Lulu:Nope nero does use QTE. that whole video above shows all of Nero's QTE's just because there are not "PRESS THIS BUTTON" prompt doesn't mean it isn't a QTE you still just press circle at certain enemy openings to trigger a pre-set animations that's pretty much a QTE except very well executed!

@torenojohn7:

Huh ? your idea of what a QTE is if you press a button and tge character performs an Animation ? I know thats not what you meant but thats what it sounded like you said.

@Lulu_Lulu: I think you're confusing Nero's normal grab moves with his QTE's which is performed when your enemies are weak or dizzy or in mid combat.. the only player input there is you press the button at the right moment just like all the other QTE except there is no prompt.

@torenojohn7:

You mean like when you grab The Centuar when his flames die out or when you grab The big fat Toad when his toung sticks out ?

The mechanic is identical to grabbing normal enemies...... its a longer animation..... but fundamentally its still a grab...... a very cinematic one.

I like the one where you grab The Viper's Crotch :)

I hate them. Its lazy, stupid, and boring.

Remember playing Dying Light at got to the end. Sodding quick time event came out of NOWHERE! The game had never had an interactive cut scene until that very point. Guess it was the games way of forcing an end fight on you as they knew i'll just smack him one shot with my 2600 venomous two handed sledgehammer made up of two active car batteries.

This. And QTEs may not be the best thing to do but that is all that they are: not the best means of engaging the player. They may have taken a huge dive since RE4, but that still doesn't justify people like the TC saying they are "the cancer of modern gaming." That is literally ridiculous. How do QTEs earn that title? I'll tell you what's the cancer of modern gaming, releasing games that aren't playable, NOT trivial gameplay components like QTEs. This forum is filled with people who have tunnel vision.

And how is this even remotely logical? QTEs don't have any impact on whether I buy the game. Even if the game is filled with them, like RE5, that's like, what, 0.1% of the gameplay (time)? They take 5 seconds. I'd sooner say Metal Gear Solid's cutscene fetish is more detrimental to the gameplay experience than QTEs.

I think the first time I remember QTEs as we know them today was probably Die Hard Arcade. So you can probably blame Sega for all this.

I don't mind QTEs. I can play a game like Heavy Rain and enjoy it just fine, but that's because going into a game like that, I expect the gameplay to come in the form of puzzles and player choices.

But in games like God Of War, i felt the QTEs always robbed the combat of its viscerality, because fights always ended with a scripted sequence rather than with a random act of gore determined by the player's particular choice of attack. Take, for example, Bloodrayne 2 which had an excellent dismemberment system that allowed players to sever not just limbs but pieces of limbs depending on where her blades struck the final blow...coupled with an excellent physics engine this led to some fantastically brutal kills that were completely dictated by the player's attacks.

the failure of RE5 QTEs was not taking latency into account during online co-op. Can't tell you how many times I had to repeat those sections with a friend because of lag and the ridiculously tight timing windows.

QTEs, like many game mechanics aren't inherently bad. It's just that many developers are too lazy to utilize them properly. Heavy Rain and Two Souls are good examples of QTEs done correctly. Games like 1886 are not.

you guys put too much focus on hating little things. QTE's are in no way bad since they are used in situations that otherwise wouldn't provide any kind of interactivity.

@torenojohn7: I don't know that I'd call a timed choice in RE3 the same as a QTE, but it's kind of similar. As for QTEs in general, I think they are an acceptible mechanic to use when used properly, but there are certain cardinal sins that game designers can commit when implementing them.

1) The difficulty of a QTE should be such that a player can be reasonably expected to be able to get them right on the first try if they are quick. Too often, QTEs turn into games of "Simon" where you have to die over and over to learn the proper sequence to get past it. If there's an expectation that every time you reach a QTE that you are going to have to die several times to pass it, the game (and the QTE sequence) loses its tension.

2) QTE prompts should be presented on-screen somewhere that doesn't detract from the action. In Shenmue, QTEs were a very cool way to create a "kung fu movie"-like fight with primitive hardware that was more complex and coreographed better than anything they could have accomplished in an in-game fight. Too often, cutscene QTEs front-end beautiful action sequences that the player can't afford to pay any attention to because they have to focus on waiting for the next prompt. The only person who benefits from these QTE type cutscenes are spectators. It's generally a good idea to put the prompts centrally located on the screen so the player can watch the action -and- see the prompts. Another option is to use the borders of the screen to represent the location of the fact buttons on the controller. That way you can watch the screen and understand what button you need to hit without taking your eyes off the action.

3) Not all QTE prompts should result in instance death. They are more fun when action sequences can play out differently as a result of accidentally failing one or two. Of course, successive failures can (and should) result in a "critical fail" which ends the game but getting hit once or twice shouldn't automatically end the game. Otherwise, it just becomes a "Simon Game" again where you have to enter the one sequence that doesn't result in your death.

-Byshop

One of the truest things ever said on these boards.

I wasn't talking about you. Obviously you don't have a problem with QTEs, but others do. If they think QTEs are too many and ruin the game (their opinion) they can vote with their wallet and hope others do the same. The one and only thing that makes game developers/publishers change course and put more effort into coming up with better mechanics is a drop in sales.

And how are the game designers supposed to know that the included QTEs are why you are not buying the game? Are they supposed to just assume that is why with no information?

worst game i've played with quicktime events is God of War, i never want to play this game series again having to deal with them. i don't play my ps2/ps3 enough to know where the hell the triangle,x, o, square buttons are fast enough to do this shit without a lot of frustration.

Tombraider 2013 had some of this crap, but they gave tons of time to react so it didn't ruin the game for me.

Its not like they shouldn't have some of these in some points in a game, just don't make it so its life and death if you can't find the crappy triangle button in .5 seconds.

In this age of social media, it's easy for developers to know what people are and are not liking.

"Sales went down"
"Let's figure out why. What are people saying?"
"A lot of people are saying they are sick of [insert here]"
"Let's get rid of [insert here]"

Case in point, the developers of Skylines are using "no internet connection required" as a selling point because they took notice of the fuss people made on message boards about the always online DRM that SimCity 2014 had.

@Old_Gooseberry: LOL if you find God of war's QTE's hard then you'd hate playing RE6.. that game has one of the most counter-intuitive QTE's i've ever encountered in a video game..

@Black_Knight_00: HOLY Shit.. ha ha ha what an awful actor XD ha ha ha

@Black_Knight_00: Nice. Also, there are no quick-time events in that movie, from what I hear.

"Press X to catch football"

Anyone can enjoy a good QTE except someone with an iq higher than 100 and has been gaming longer than the average person that is. Once that initial wow factor wears off of oh look pretty graphics press b utton, anyone with a brain who can see what the game is actually doing then realizes it sucks and is boring. Gaming is not what it used to be. More evidence of dumbing things down for the masses and it will never stop until these people get everything they want and create an idiocrisy which has already happened. I like money...

I didn't mind the qte's from mass effect 2 even though some gamers hated them. I don't get it because they were optional. Some of them were even pretty interesting lol.

They are very bad. They break gameplay immersion. Either allow the player to interact or not. This half ass interaction is unacceptable. Is it ok for movie watchers to press play then pause then stop randomly why watching a movie? Thats the same effect QTE have on games. There are exceptions because some games are built around the mechanic so there is no change in the flow of the game. However, these games are exceptionally rare and I can only name three. QTE are for the insanely most part not fun and intrusive. Any dev that implements this crap just cause needs a blow to the knee. Nothing to severe just non threatening blow that sends the message that they need to stop.

Yeah QTEs just rob the player of doing something more involved and interesting. One of the worst examples I can think of is in Batman Arkham Origins. The battle against Deathstroke was the easiest and most unsatisfying in the entire Arkham series because it just came down to QTEs. That character deserved a lot better.

@Pikminmaniac:

Going over the history of the series you'l notice the bosses are either big or come in numbers........ Death Stroke was neither so naturally they were stumped..... QTE's it was.

@Lulu_Lulu: LOL any kind of boss is better than a simple QTE!

@torenojohn7:

I know..... just looking out for my Bros at WB Montreal.

;)

That Spider-Man gif is gold.

Agreed. I even looked up the exact button prompts for the fight with Hoyt. One **** up and you're dead. Screw you, Ubisoft.

@gamerguru100:

Bu... but.... thats exactly the same as President Evil 4..... miss one button and you have to start over.....

I've only played RE6, but it's bullshit in any game.