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Play the Game, Skip the Story: Difference between revisions
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** People cared about the stories long before that since SNK constantly pulls out fan favorites for arbitrary reasons, like Joe in XI. It's the reason the Dream Match games, 98 and 2002, where the story is ignored in favor of who would make a fun fighter, are the most popular.
* And ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'', obviously. It has a convoluted and (probably deliberately) ludicrous backstory incorporating numerous gods, planar beings, rivaling clans of robot ninjas, etc. Most of the players probably don't realize which characters are the good guys, not least because [[Face Heel Revolving Door|many of them swap allegiances constantly.]]
** The beat-'em-up [[Spin-Off]] ''[[Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks]]'' gets this reaction from the fanbase of ''Mortal Kombat'' anyway. The gameplay is solid, but the story is filled with continuity errors, characters getting killed off for no reason other than getting in the protagonists' way, and [[Out-of-Character Moment|out of character moments]]. Kung Lao gets hit with this the hardest, as the game is basically one long [[Out-of-Character Moment]] for him.
** ... until [[Mortal Kombat 9]] turned things around with a long, detailed, and very popular story mode.
* In ''[[Street Fighter]]'' all characters do have their motivations, but most of them are pretty simple. "This evil dude, Bison, killed your friend/father/classmate/whatever, and you want revenge".
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** When the story was being paid attention to, it was a good story... until ''Soul Calibur V'', where there is a short 20 episode story mode (with less fights than chapters), and half the cast only appears briefly, or worse, not at all. It seems the devs just gave up and decided to enforce this trope.
* Notably ''averted'' in ''[[Guilty Gear]]''; despite being a competitive fighter, Guilty Gear's quirky characters, bizarre plot, and odd aesthetic have all served to endear it to fans.
** Its [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[
* The problem started when it became standard practice for [[Cutting Off the Branches|one character's ending per game to be]] "[[Canon]]". That means that all but two or three characters' stories are ''completely irrelevant''. It's tough to care about Julia Chang's environmental crusades or E.Honda's attempts to popularize sumo when there's zippo chance of seeing any resolution. The best way to make players care is to present each character's story as a ''part'' of the big picture, something ''[[
** ''Guilty Gear'' solved the same problem by having several plotlines going at once. Everyone runs into everyone in the course of their storylines, but while some endings are canon and some aren't, there is no overriding "BIG CANON" ending, and typically elements from all endings are considered at least semi-canon.
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** The same thing can happen in ''[[The Lord of the Rings Online]]''. Some group quests vital to the main storyline requires you to talk to [[NPC]]s to get the quest going, but the first one who gets there can activate the NPC without the rest of the group getting a chance to read whatever plot information that NPC were willing to share. One example is in Moria, where the players are heading into a dungeon to find a powerful axe, and ends up fighting the Watcher in the Water. If one person gets there before the rest and activates the Watcher, it's not impossible that players don't realize they just saved a NPC who was taken by the Watcher and presumed dead earlier in the storyline, until they actually talk to him again. Lately the game has been steering away from this, making most of the main storyline solo-playable so that people can enjoy the story in their own pace.
** ''[[World of Warcraft]]''. The quest writers intentionally try to keep the quest descriptions brief because people will just ignore them anyways. Even in Cataclysm, which made all the zones have their own unique story arcs, many of which even tie into later zones or even end-game content, a lot of quests are just ignored since people level up alts with heirlooms and barnstorm through the zones. Unless they're Thousand Needles, which people stopped and enjoyed their ride through.
* ''[[
* ''[[Maple Story]]'' has a story long and detailed enough for an [[Archive Panic]]. Problem? Almost ''all'' of the players who can actually do the quests to find out the storyline are a ton of [[Munchkin]]s. The game's [[Backstory]] is so easily ignored that there are some players who ''don't even know it exists.''
* ''[[Air Rivals|Ace Online]]'' has a relatively long and interesting plot spanning all 3 episodes, from the colonists starting Bygeniou City (BCU) in Episode One, to the machinations of the Shrines and Phillons and the defection of Arlington City (ANI) in Episode Two (which introduced the Nation Wars mechanic), to the new frontiers and the breaking of an uneasy truce between ANI and BCU in Episode Three. Most players just pick a nation with their friends and go warring/mobhunting, ignoring walls and walls of political cloak-and-dagger text in the mission briefings.
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=== Real Time Strategy ===
* [[Blizzard Entertainment]]. All their modern franchises (''[[Diablo]]'', ''[[
** On ''[[Diablo]] II'', multiplayer mode ''skips'' cutscenes, which doesn't help.
*** Only if you do not have them installed. You can skip them at will or watch.
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=== Tabletop Games ===
* This often happens with Tabletop games, ''[[Dungeons
** This can also extend to the actual game sessions of roleplaying games, much to the frustration of Game Masters with players who are only interested in hacking-and-slashing and not the Game Master's campaign storyline or even actual ''role-playing''.
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