The Quit Moment - Why Games Lose Players

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New Channel - Josh Strife Plays

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What was the last game you quit playing?
Why?
Chances are you ran into a well known 'quit moment'.

'The Quit Moment' is a measurable part of the pregameplay - gameplay experience where you will lose players.

Identify them, then remove them.

Thank you to the Patreon supporters and Twitch subs for keeping the channel going :)

[nadierelevante]

"Non-consensual moment of PvP"
That might be the most polite and funny way to call ganking.

[TheAnimatedJester]

I have 2 Quit moments.
1: If the game makes me feel like it requires me to treat it as a second job to enjoy it.
2: If the game's primary way of adding new content is under the peer pressure of the effects from FOMO (this mostly applies to limited time items in battle passes, and not things like new gear or cosmetics in a raid)

[Paddelui]

- When you realize you are only playing to not fall behind.
- When your character you have spent a lot of time getting geared up gets nerfed or turns out to be inferior to all the others.

[serras_]

The quit moment is the moment when the devs release yet another expansion, without fixing stuff that hasn't been touched in 5+ years and was broken when it was new.

[Skallva]

Speaking as someone who tried dabbling into MMOs multiple times, my quit moment is realising I have no friends to play them with and being too shy to ever try finding new people on my own.

[brianshea]

My current quit moment:
When the creators add a feature that shifts the balance even more in favor of the pay to win players.

[Cornbane]

Blizzard: "Everyone is quitting WoW! Quick, replace all the paintings of women with fruit!"

[llywyllngryffyn]

My Quit moment on Everquest is the most memorable to me. I had a character with pristine Faction in the City of Freeport. The guards would 'kindly consider me' in both upper and lower fFP. Basically I was so well liked that they would have asked me to date their sisters. Then one of my Guild Mates needed help with a quest for his Paladin Holy Weapon. In that quest, he had to kill Sir Lucan DeLear who was the captain of the Freeport Militia. ... Twice. Once as normal and then once again as the super Death Knight he turned into. Now, this quest was like level 55-60 and my character was a Level 42 Rogue. Not much help but I was there for my Guild mate and joined in. Little did I know that if you partake of this quest, you instantly drop to the absolute bottom on faction for the Militia. Kill On Sight. The actual damage I did to that guy over the two fights wouldn't have killed a Mid Levl Mob but that wasn't relevant. I now had to sneak through my home city like a Dark Elf just to go to the bank. That was my home port and I just suddenly took a -20, 000 Faction hit for being grouped with a guy doing a quest. That was my moment. Well, actually, the moment was right after what I learned was needed to fix the faction. I had to do a stupid repeatable quest in the Erudite capitol that involved running up and down stairs for a few minutes and delivering junk to NPCs. It gave you 1 faction and would have taken me about 3 minutes per run. I only needed to repeat this quest about 15, 000 times to get back to the point where they wouldn't KOS me. Gosh, that's only Seven Months of constant play without sleep, food, or bathroom breaks... No thanks.

[PlumPoko]

That moment when you just finished creating your character and having your feet touch the world, and then BAM! A bombardment of mechanics you can't even initiate, and an instant introduction to the cash shop.

[everwake]

Every MMO has a hamster wheel at the end. The challenge is to design that hamster wheel so that it's engaging and not just depressing daily busywork.

[dalekdalek]

My main quit-moment for 'new' MMO's: Overwhelming starting cities.

You know this moment. You've played through the tutorial section and the noob-area for a while, got slowly used to the first mechanics and the world.... the quest hub was a gathering of 5-6 huts and tents with some generic guard-guys...

And suddenly out of nowhere you get to the 'actual' main hub city. A gigantic map with a million map signals you don't recognize, a hundred players spamming their particle-effect skills, and a thousand mini-quest givers including those for whatever the current seasonal event is right now...

And suddenly you find yourself stuck in analysis paralysis and you don't have the faintest clue on what you are supposed to do now (or in what order).

Don't get me wrong, a lot of diverse content isn't a bad thing! But you can't just fucking dump that shit on a new players head three minutes after he figured out the core combat mechanics XD

[aldentepotato]

My "I quit" moment for MMOs is when I realize that logging in feels like clocking in. I didn't (still don't) have much time at the end of the day, and don't want to spend it doing the same dailies over and over and over again to get a decent set of PvP gear in order to have fun post game story. I don't want to run the same dungeon over and over and over again for the same reason.
Genshin is getting like that, I really don't want to do the same dailies over and over again, I really don't like the feeling of LOG IN NOW OR MISS THIS EVENT AND MISS OUT FOREVER ON THIS ITEM AND THIS CHARACTER, and I don't like the endless grind for character items that hardly ever give you what you're running for, let alone with the stats you want on those items.

I much rather like to play one and done games with a story (Bioshock, We Happy Few, Dark Souls), not an MMO I have to put countless hours in in order to keep up with the baseline of other players and have fun.

I do have my weak moments where I miss my blood DK in WoW, though. 😩

[CyrilHoogeboom]

I quit a lot of online games recently due to 'special events'. Instead of logging into a game and enjoy the progress I can make during a session, I'm constantly reminded of all the rewards I'm missing out on due to not willing to sacrifice all my time to that game. The few times I did manage to grind a 'special' reward ship, tank or whatever, I quitted the next session due to burn out.

[Martell]

You showing it, reminded me of my quit moment in Warframe: The endless grinding. While I'm sure there are a lot of people who enjoy it, it just wasn't fun to me, to have to play certain missions over and over again, to get certain materials, then wait for a day until my weapon is fully crafted, then realising that the weapon itself is not leveled, so I can't use it for missions that fit my level and I now have to play a bunch of low level missions to get my new weapon up to speed, so I can finally use it for the missions I originally wanted to use it for.
I get exhausted just writing this.

[merylml]

"Imagine playing an online game and suddenly you're attacked by other over-leveled players and killed" yup, that's pretty much why I never played Albion again, losing 4 days of progress it's not fun or challenging, it's a waste of time

[NovaaGrind]

My quit moment
1. Never ending gear grinding after level cap
2. Repetitive events instead of new mechanics
3. Pay to win, broken classes pvp

[Ionweopon]

My quit moment is realizing that I don't have the time i once had to play games, and my friends who do have that time get far far ahead of me in terms or progress and it feels like a chore to catchup.

[HeavyMetalMouse]

The strongest 'quit moment' I can recall experiencing in any game is the "Gotcha" moment. The moment when I am invited (or required) to make a choice of options to take, am given a list of options to select from, then select one, only to find out that my selection is 'wrong'. Not because it is a puzzle that has a right and wrong answer that I did not figure out, but because the game *lied* to me. The game said "Here are a bunch of things we made for you to enjoy doing!" and when I picked one, it smacked me and said "But not that one, it sucks!"

This could be something as simple as a useless skill eating up precious limited skill points (without any kind of respec, or a very limited respec), or as major as a class/build that is unsuitable for the style of game you're playing. It can often manifest as the game giving you options but then not giving you sufficient information about those options or the actual usefulness of them to make an informed decision. (Should I put points in Survival skill, for tracking enemies and wilderness survival? Probably not in a game that's going to be entirely urban intrigue and instanced combat! But there's no way I could have known that - Gotcha!)

Challenge the player, even lay traps for the player in the game itself - but the actual gameplay mechanics should *never* be a trap in and of themselves. The latter shows a clear disrespect for your players, their time, and their intelligence; it is a major Quit Moment.

[FoNgThOnG]

"Public opinion of your company turning bad"

Activision/Blizzard: *sweating intensifies*

[softlyspoken]

Late to this, but I think one big quit moment is the feeling of losing process. I remember playing a looter shooter, building up my equipment, getting to a build I was happy with and then levelling up, having everything match level with me and, as a result, my build was now useless. After a while, rebuilding my character every time I reached a level up just started feeling like a chore. I was not getting more powerful, the environment was matching me after all. If anything, I was getting weaker because, every time I leveld up, all the rare gear I used before turned useless and I had to replace it with more common but level appropriate new stuff