quick time events

I might have written about this before. I can't remember. But after two years of articles, I guess repeating myself occasionally is inevitable.

Quick-time events (QTE) should not appear in world-focused and character-focused games, as they often do.

The moment the buttons appear on the screen ("Press B! Press X! Press B!"), those commands completely dominate the player's attention. Everything else on screen, as well as any immersion in the world established by previous experiences, is shoved to the periphery and probably forgotten entirely. Climbing a giant monster by QTE, for example, is essentially a series of small cutscenes perforated by button-mashing mini-games.

QTE are arcade gameplay. They have no place in an RPG.