Rename (alt names crowner Mar 8): Waste Of Time Story

This trope is very simple: A game has a plot, but people ignore it for the multiplayer or whatever. That's a nice, easy to understand definition. Sure, its an audience reaction, so it has to stay YMMV, but its still mostly objective.

Unfortunately, the name is unnecessarily negative. I haven't seen too much natter yet, but I think it's just a matter of time. And since there's already the perfectly fine redirect Ignored Plot, I don't see why we shouldn't just swap them.

Thoughts?

I'd be in favor of this, especially since the trope doesn't require that there be anything wrong with the story.

Plot Ignored For Multiplayer is long but it might get across the whole trope better. Ignored Plot just sounds like a plot line that was started but never finished.

Does this have to be for just multiplayer games? I find plenty of single player games get their extensive stories ignored (even RPGs) because people just want to play.

edited 6th Jan '12 4:06:22 PM by DragonQuestZ

Player Ignored Plot?

Isn't this the same as Just Here for Godzilla?

It's more like that plus having an epic tale that isn't Godzilla, so those people don't care.

Seems related, certainly, but instead of being "just here for a certain aspect of the plot" it's "just here for the gameplay". (Preemptive note: that would be a terrible snowclone.)

I got a worse snowclone. "Screw The Epic Story, I Want To Play".

I think that's the same, on account of Tropes Are Flexible. In both cases, the audience doesn't care about the story, but is here for one particular thing (the big monster, the player-vs-player combat, whatever).

I think there's a pretty big difference there. Let me put it this way: With Just Here for Godzilla, you have to watch the show/play the single player game. You have to see the story. With Waste of Time Story, you can just never click on "Single Player."

On the plus side, this doesn't seem to have been listed outside of games, so I doubt there has been much if any misuse. Still, it would be nice to have a title that indicates it is a gaming trope and not about, say, a very poorly written book that is a waste of time for you to read.

Skipping All The Cutscenes?

I thought this was about ignoring the story mode completely, not just skipping the cutscenes. That sounds like a different trope.

If you skip all the cutscenes, that implies you care little about the plot.

Yes, but this can just be done in games where people don't play story mode in favour of multiplayer. It doesn't require cutscenes at all.

Just Here For The Multiplayer or Only Here For The Gameplay are my ideas for this.

@Discar: okay, maybe this is one of those "missing supertrope" situations.

No, I don't think it is. The two tropes in question have no possible overlap and are barely related. I have a hard time seeing what could be the supertrope to that.

The work having a story that people ignore. Related to e.g. Excuse Plot.

That's misuse of an Excuse Plot, and that's not part of Only Here For Godzilla. Only this trope.

How could "related to" be a misuse? Unless you think there is no actual relation to these tropes.

Because it's not related to Excuse Plot. That's a work that only has a couple of lines of plot and then is entirely game play.

Multiplayer Over Plot, or something like this?

The relation is plot importance. The difference is one is the developers find it less important, and the others is the players find it less important.