The Ultimate Turnoff - What You Don't Want to See in a Hack

[Deokishisu]

What's your ultimate turnoff? What makes you never want to open a hack's thread again?

I was wondering what other people absolutely hate when they look at a hack, so I made this thread not just for people to express their opinions, but also so people tailor can their hacks to please more people, if they want to. So, what's your ultimate turnoff? What makes you never want to open a hack's thread again?

Mine would probably be bad grammar. I can deal with the occasional mispelled word or forgetting a period, but if a hacks filled with these mistakes, I just don't think it's a good hack. What about you guys?

EDIT:
Okay, in the interest of making this easier to head through and less... repetitive, I've decided to compile a list and tack it onto the end of this post. It's just so people can see other people's opinions and expand on them if they have something to add. I think it'll also cut down on seeing the same thing over and over. So, here it is in no particular order...

1. Grammar
- major and repeating grammar mistakes
- missing punctuation
- mispelled words
- using "internet slang" in hacks (example: "your" is spelled like "ur")

2. Mapping- tile errors
- bare and/or unoriginal maps
- maps that have obvious similarities to the originals (example: you can tell that that was once Pewter City and you just made slight changes)

3. Storyline
- The repetitive Nintendo storyline
- Underdeveloped storylines
- Storylines that fade or seem to go away during a hack
- People who have no reason to give you items or Pokemon but do so anyway
- People who are aware that they are in a game (example: the man who gives you Eevee on top of Celadon Mansion in R/G/B/Y/FR/LG)
- People who know that you have to save and force you to do so (example: the Battle Frontier receptionists who force you to save your life without a real reason.)

4. Graphics, Sprites, & Tiles
- A mix of R/S/E and FR/LG tiles and Overworlds
- Minor sprite changes (example: a person who looks almost exactly like Brock but with minor changes)
- Tiles that don't flow well together
- Unattractive or unnatural looking palettes (example: red grass which would not appear naturally due to the fact that chlorophyll absorbs red light and almost none of it is reflected back.)
- Hacks based soley on a graphic, tile, or palette changes

5. Pokemon
- Pokemon that are too strong to be found in early parts of the game (example: a wild Skarmory on the first route)
- Use of Fakemon
- Use of unrealistic or unattractive Fakemon
- Ledgendaries introduced too early or ones that can be found wild on routes
- A hack that "claims" to have shiny Pokemon but it's just a palette change

6. Miscellaneous
- straying too far from Nintendo's standards (example: extreme cases of violence, profanity, and other morally debatable topics)
- Repetitve regions (i.e. the same regions that were covered in Nintendo's games with no/minor edits)
- Remakes
- Rushed Gyms, Storylines, etc.
- Too many or too strong trainers and/or wild Pokemon
- unattractive hack threads
- hackers that put themselves and their work down (example: "I am a n00b and this is my first hack so go easy on me.)

I know I probably missed some things, but this is just a list of things I saw over and over and OVER again. I also think it represents the majority of opinions pretty well. Oh, and if I did miss something important, I'm only human.

 

[Blazichu]

Stuff that can turn me off a hack, is graphics/tiles, how empty and dull some of the maps can be and if the hack has a bad storyline(especially non-original ones).

 

[destinedjagold]

I get irritated in hacks with tile errors, though. I care less about script errors, new/old tiles or whatever, but the mapping errors really annoys me, and misuse of tiles... Also the misuse of the Movement Permissions.., causing to walk through solid stuff and invisible walls.

 

[Lady Berlitz]

For me, I'd just say grammar/spelling mistakes. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so whenever I see a huge grammar or spelling mistake, I flip.

 

[Naoshi]

Very bland and uncreative scripts like trainers giving you a pokemon for no reason and never explained why they did.
Example:
*you talk to a trainer*
Trainer: Here's a pokemon!
YOU'VE RECEIVED A POKEMON!!!!!111

Characters that are basically unoriginal recolors/edits of an existing character. (No offense to anyone. I see alot of it...Like say you see a character that looks exactly like Brock for no reason and the only difference is the shirt color and slightly different hair style! Come on...be creative.)

Sprites/Tiles clashing. Like let's say a RSE sprite in a FR/LG overworld. Wouldn't that look odd to you? Or how about 8bit sprites in any of the GBA hacks. (Unless they have a real reason why...)

Wild legendary pokemon in grasses. (And I'm not talking about pokemon that roams, I mean legendaries that are just regulars in areas...it's odd and dumb.)

Unoriginal gyms. Gyms looking exactly like the official ones, oh and the first gym using a rock type pokemon. (Seriously...this has been done 3 times already. The only game without a rock gym leader as the first is GSC.)


That's about it for now, I'll complain more later :P

 

[Bombah!]

1.Johto Starters.
I don´t know why, but I don´t like Johto...
There are a few good Hacks with Johto starters, but I wanna see smth new.

2. PIKACHU!!!
I don´t like it...

 

[EarthsVisitor]

People who hack topics and screenshots look okay, but when you go to play the game, almsot everything is exactly like the original game, except maybe a few text, and some minor changes to the map.

Bad Story Development.
Example:
So there's this hero and Team OMG is out to destroy the world and kill pokemon, and you need to kill them all!! MUFUFU.
oh.. and mine as well collect 8 badges for the hell of it.. cause I have to. Dunno what that has to do with SAVING THE WORLD.


I also don't like Fake Pokemon, unless they are really good.
And please use at least somewhat good grammar in your topic posts. It doesn't need to be perfect, but I don't like to see.
"Dur u r a pkmen mast0r hu save z the world, mi hak is supa specila"

there's more, but I'll rant about that stuff later.

 

[Cursed]

Personally, I hate it when people think that they shouldn't keep working on their hack because attention to it wavers. If they would keep working on it and actually get it done, attention would come back.

 

[Binary]

I hate hacks that are dumb,
and have a story that is wierd and groosome pals,
Else I will think that its good :)

 

[Gilgameish]

Movement permissions not done properly, and the ability to go into wild grass before you have a Pokemon, that sucks. I'm more forgiving of mapping errors. Simple as this: Don't release a Beta unless it has been throughly checked for bugs! I have great respect for Pokemon: Rockets Revenge for doing this, unless they're stalling for time ;) Just kidding

 

[Erimgard]

Bad grammar, UNLESS it's because it's someone from WAH and their English needs improving. In that case, it's bothersome, but I'm willing to be patient until a new translation comes out.
Boring/same storyline. I LOVE new stories. Playing the same thing over again. Blah
G/S/C remakes. Be original please

 

[Ivysaur]

-Games solely based on graphics (yes, I prefer Wind Waker to Ocarina). If a game's strong point is graphics, it won't interest me.
-Games featuring the story. If you can't come up with a good story, fill it up with jokes -quartz-. If you still can't do anything better, sorry, buut...
-Insanely hard games and absolutely easy games. I don't like spend hours training, nor beating the game just with the starter. Try finding a middle place between any of the official games and Shiny Gold X.
-Spelling errors. At least, amazingly noticeable spelling errors. And I hate people who can't find the difference between "Your" (possesive) and "You're" (verb).

 

[wmoor0826]

(yes, I prefer Wind Waker to Ocarina)

WHATS WRONG WITH YOU?!

lol. The worst ones are when people use the phrase, "I could care less," in a hack, every single time I hear or see that phrase it's being used wrong. When people have bad scripts, like talking to someone, looking in your party and seeing a bulbasaur. DP starters, I dont know why, but ever since RSE, I've been disapointed with starters. Ugly fakemon. People claiming there is shinies in their game, but its just pallete changes, I mean, come on, they figured out how to make actual shinies months ago. I have more A LOT more, but thats it for now.

 

[Erimgard]

-Games solely based on graphics (yes, I prefer Wind Waker to Ocarina). If a game's strong point is graphics, it won't interest me.
-Games featuring the story. If you can't come up with a good story, fill it up with jokes -quartz-. If you still can't do anything better, sorry, buut...
-Insanely hard games and absolutely easy games. I don't like spend hours training, nor beating the game just with the starter. Try finding a middle place between any of the official games and Shiny Gold X.
-Spelling errors. At least, amazingly noticeable spelling errors. And I hate people who can't find the difference between "Your" (possesive) and "You're" (verb).

I agree with most of this...but....WINDWAKER OVER OCARINA?!?! went...you cut me deep
[/offtopic]
Another pet peeve of mine is games with bad starters. Ya know, when people make the starters something like Groudon, Charizard, and Haunter. wtf? why would you do that

 

[a2h]

1. Text like this...

OMGMMG HAI PROFESSOR MLE CAN I HAZ POKEMANS? OKEIS YAY I GOTSA TOTDILESoneone

2. Text like this...

Dude... F*** you you motherf***ing son of a f***ing *****

3. Lame maps
4. Lame characters
5. MS Paint'd sprites

Can't think of anything else...

 

[Sgt. Custard]

People behaving completely differently to how they would in real life (this is a problem in the officials too) like imagine saying to your mum aged ten, "Oh I'm gonna leave home forever now with a bunch of unruly pokemon without luggage or a place to sleep and throw myself into obscenely dangerous circumstances." and then instead of making some huge fuss and forbidding you she just says, "Oh that's mice darling. OH! I forgot your PokeNav repaired there you go." Gahhh!.

I also find it annoying when complete strangers say like "Hey, I don't need this coin case anymore. You can have it." and how your rival hates you for no apparrent reason.

I also hate it that you NEVER talk: "Hello, where are you from? Pallet town? How nice."

Of course, I also find it annoying with repeated stories, "You're aged ten and you do a favour for professor (INSERT NAME OF PLANT/TREE HERE) who gives you a pokemon and you leave on a pokemon adventure to collect gym badges, beat the elite four and destroy the Evil Team (Meh?).

I agree that completely lopsided starters are stupid.

But my pet hate has to be remnants of scripts from the original game: walking into grass and Oak suddenly appears, meeting Brendan on route 103, being give the town map by your rival's sister. The list goes on. It's just so stupid, if you are able to script at all, just remove these things or the whole map if it's built in and make your own darn scripts which are invariably better than ingame ones.

 

[flygonbreloom]

I'll be honest, I don't like Fakemon or Fusions in a hack. Or spelling and grammar mistakes.

And please ignore my user names irony =P

 

[Ooka]

The main thing for me is people that hardly change the maps. I can understand if you're making a hack based in the same region but if it's supposed to be a new region and you're still walking around in Kanto you have problems.

 

[thethethethe]

The main thing that annoys me is when the beginning in a hack of a fire red rom is still the same(I don't mind if it's R/S/E because of the whole "truck" thing). With the knowledge of scripting today (and easy to use tools), general scripting has become a reasonably basic thing. A new beginning will pick up people's interest really easily because it's something they wouldn't have seen before. (That's one of the good things about remake's, it's always going to have to be full of brand new scripts)

Here are the other little things that will make me, not want to look at the hack.

• Bad Grammar
• Bad choices of Starters
• Not a fan of hacks full of Fakemon. 100 is a good number.
• Pretty bored of the whole "Stop the Evil Team"
• Legendaries being made available too early

 

[Green Charizard]

For me a big one is when they put "my first hack, sorry" in the title / description of there thread. To begin with that discourages people from opening the the thread in the first place. (No offense - but you know what to expect) For me it shows they have little confidence in their hack, for them to have to put that. Maybe if they put it in the small print at the base of thread, yes, maybe it'll stop bad comments. But in their actually title, it's really shooting themselves down, so its likely that they'll stop the hack.

I do feel guilty for it, but I have ignored hacks that have had that in their title or description.

But in hacks, it's always nice to see loads of screens, when you see one and it shows something hardly changed, your not going to look at it again...

Using R/S tiles is another one. They are so clichéd now and it's makes mapping much better if you use FR ones.

If the threads not layed out neatly, that's something else that might turn you away.

Grammar is not a big issue I don't think, look at the quality of Spanish hacks, some of them can hardly speak English, but they are incredible sometimes. But I think formal threads get more attention.