- How would you feel if all games had a 'autopilot' mode which allowed the game to play itself for a while?
I would feel like i'm the stupidest person in the world for deciding to play that section anyway. Even stupidier for bougth that game in the first place. Why the hell not just watch on youtube then?
Besides, how you decide what is a while? You mean i can't play the entire game automatically? I tried auto pilot in final fantasy 3 remakes and few mobile mmo. It came a moment that i realize i was not really playing anything, i was just pressing ok in pop ups telling me i'm doing great.
Do you know how much i hated how nsmbu decide to offer "help" every time i died more than 3 times in some of its levels? You just died, and the game comes with a loud noise and a big button to tell you: give up already and let me help you. Every single extra time you die. Do they really think i'm that incapable? Just because i'm not good at video games, the game should not assume i hate that section.
The only part of the games that need a skip button are cutscene. Every other section of the game can be avoided in smarter ways. If you think a game mechanic is loved by ones and hated by other, make what everyone else do: offer classes. Hate Magic? Play as paladin. Hate snipers? Play as medic. A section of the game is too hard? Offer a hidden short cut for those who have reason to look for it. Is afraid a section of the game can trigger people (like fear of spiders, as example), why don't put a questionaire in the start of the game and them genarate the enemies that will show up based on that?
Every time a game decided to put a skip button in a section, its like turning to the player and saying: here's a section of game that almost everyone liked but people like you, so here's a option to you keep playing that would not make our development team think about your tastes too much.
- Is it better that players see no more of the game because of small pockets of content that they hate playing? Is skipping content so bad?
If its a small pocket, why was enough for player to give up on it? If i'm playing a good game, and come across something bad, i put up with it for some time. The time i can put with it depends on how good the game was so far. If the game was just okay, of course i not put with it for more than 10 mins, but if was great, then i can spend hours on it.
Also, i imagine that a obrigatory part of the game will not show up just once, ritgh? It will return later a number of times ritgh? so if coming across once was enough for the player to not want to bother with the game anymore, i imagine that seeing more of the game just to see it appearing again will be infuriating as hell, no?
The idea of skippable content sound more dev driven than consumer driven to me. When the consumer plays a game, they don't want to miss on anything. They go in the game hoping they can enjoy all of it. They don't want a option to skip anything, they just don't want to see anything that its not good for them.
Devs, on the other hand, not always only put stuff in a game that they think its great. Or not always put stuff toward the same goal. And if the content is skippable, it s way to avoid criticsm related to that content. "This part is bad? Well you don't have to play it so its just not for you" Its the spolletto model of gaming really: you go, try ingredient you don't know, and dont mix well together, and if the meal is bad, well, that's on you for asking for it.
There is also another possibility off some devs not trusting another dev in the same team so they don't want people juding their work because of someone else works, but thats just speculation...
The real question desingers need to ask themselves is: what is the core of my game? From them, everything else must fall in two baskets: mandatory and optional. It adds and evolve the core of the game? goes on mandatory. It is cool, but not really what the game is about? put on the optional. There is only 2 ways this can fail; first is when devs don't know what the core fo their game is; the second is when they don't know how to say what is cool and what is not. And if any of these conditions is met, doesn't matter what is skippable and what is not, the game will be bad anyway.