OP is really just complaining about the nature of JRPGs, not games. It's like playing nothing but platformers and then going, "What's up with jumping in games? You have to do that way too much."
Not JUST RPGs, but it's a problem that's certainly more visible in them. But take MGS2 for example. Is there anything in the game to even indicate that one can take the guards' dogtags? You'd really need to be screwing around to even realize that you can get them to give them to you, and you wouldn't know there's a reward for collecting them unless you really got into it.
Or Soul Calibur III. It's already a headache to unlock everything WITH a FAQ.
Or Silent Hill 1, the UFO Ending. You'd need not only to realize that the amulet is suddenly in your inventory, but to pretty much try using it all the time to find out which places you need to use it in.
Not JUST RPGs, but it's a problem that's certainly more visible in them. But take MGS2 for example. Is there anything in the game to even indicate that one can take the guards' dogtags? You'd really need to be screwing around to even realize that you can get them to give them to you, and you wouldn't know there's a reward for collecting them unless you really got into it.
Or Soul Calibur III. It's already a headache to unlock everything WITH a FAQ.
Or Silent Hill 1, the UFO Ending. You'd need not only to realize that the amulet is suddenly in your inventory, but to pretty much try using it all the time to find out which places you need to use it in.
And plenty more examples.
"Getting them all", when hinted at in the game and/or it's manual is valid enough for me.
For example; In MGS2, the 40th page of the manual is devoted to Dog Tags. It tells you how to get them, and even that the Thermal Goggles will allow you to see who has them. That's fair game, in my opinion.
In Silent Hill (or any game, really, that adds an item to your inventory for a new game+), using that item on everything is logical enough because you don't know where or how else to use it, and the game itself is adventurous enough where this isn't out of place. Wherein doing this in Shadow of Colossus wouldn't have made sense in context of the game itself.
There are times where this is done very poorly (Final Fantasy 9's final sword for Steiner, for example), but in my opinion, those two are "legit".
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OP is really just complaining about the nature of JRPGs, not games. It's like playing nothing but platformers and then going, "What's up with jumping in games? You have to do that way too much."
It would be more like playing nothing but platformers and then going, "How the fuck was I supposed to know to jump there? I couldn't see that platform I was supposed to land on until after I fell."
Yeah, but there's still a leap between "digging into the game" and "doing fucking ridiculous bullshit repeatedly", with no in-game indication that the repeated bullshit will even yield a reward.
Again, thats on YOU if you MUST get 100% completion, its understood to me that you aren't really supposed to have all the uber weapons in those kinds of games, makes you way overpowered in my opinion. These things are extras, little super secrets that only the few who are trying to break the game or are messing around get, or for the people who want everything and just look it up in the FAQ section. I think those games weren't necessarily MEANT to be completed 100%, those things are in there as like little things where you are bored and decide to go kill a bunch of guys, just for the hell of it, and wowie... some awesome item drops! What I'm saying is that these items are more extras then things you must have, no game makes you do that for anything you need to beat the game, those are just there for the people who are messing around in the game, and get something unexpected for it.
I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again when this thread comes up for the nth + 1 time: if you've got OCD and you have to get 100% in a game, that's your problem, not the developer's problem.
So there's some ridiculously arcane thing that you'll miss if you don't do something within the first 30 minutes of a 100-hour game. Is this thing truly optional? If you don't encounter it in your playthrough of the game, will it really affect your game experience in any way other than you saying "I [did/did not] get the ___" when you finish it?
99% of gamers don't honestly give a goddamn if they get the Uber Sword, because they look rationally at the cost versus the reward, and 30 extra hours just to be able to say you did it just doesn't add up for the vast majority of people. The extra shit in the game is just there if you're in that 1% who loves the game so much that they'll appreciate the option to keep playing it even after the main objectives are completed. The developer does us a favor by putting in the extra shit.
If you've really got OCD, then get on medication. Don't flip out on Square Enix when you're the one with the issue.
I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again when this thread comes up for the nth + 1 time: if you've got OCD and you have to get 100% in a game, that's your problem, not the developer's problem.
I was just about to post this.
You know the reason why all this shit is really obtuse, hard to find, and even harder to accomplish?
BECAUSE THEY'RE SECRET.
Really, what other kind of reason were you looking for? If it were easy, you wouldn't feel any accomplishment from doing it.
There has to be a balance between "hand-holding", "suggestion", and plain old "figure it out for yourself".
This all goes into the whole "flow" model of gaming and working. If they make something way to easy to figure out, then what's the point in playing with training wheels? You're not going to enjoy it. Similarly, if you can't accomplish what you want, you're going to get frustrated.
The best games do one of two things. Either they're simple enough to play that the learning curve is very short on basics - shooters and race games fall into this; you master the basics quickly and the rest of the game is mainly improving your skill with those basic abilities, and combining them for better effectiveness. Otherwise, they give you a very basic skillset / toolset, and loose you on the world. You learn new tricks on your own, and thus feel as though you're accomplishing something unique. Whenever a developer looks at something a game player/tester is doing with their engine and is surprised by it, you know there's something special about that game - it's basic toolset can be combined in completely new ways.
FAQ's are only needed when the game has objectives that the player isn't naturally inclined to do. If your game doesn't make a player want to explore the barely-reachable corners of a map, he's not going to find those awesome easter eggs. If your game doesn't make a player want to try weird combinations of timing and apparel to get different responses from characters, he's not going to get those special items. And so the FAQ will always be necessary for tasks which the gamer is not thinking about.
On the plus side, when you get a reward for doing something you wanted to do anyways, that's the sign that the developers are thinking like their players. When Dead Rising gave me an achievement for running around in crazy outfits, something went right. When Super Mario Bros. let me find shortcut tubes for maneuvering its levels in weird ways, something went right. And when a game's rewards click with a gamer's interests, something is going very, very right.
Aside from the bugs that can occur if you use a portal to go back and do something you overlooked in an area (bugs that can effectively kill your ability to beat the game, and require you to restart from scratch), there's the possibility of advancing to the next area, seeing the cutscenes, and thinking you've furthered the plot along, but you find out later you didn't activate something you were supposed to. This puts you at a crossroads where you can either restart now, or go back, fix the problem, and hope your save file isn't bugged forcing a restart later.
And then there's the "secret" ending you get by completing obscure side missions that you are extraordinarily unlikely to find on your own without a FAQ. What's fun about that is, the "secret" ending is the canonical one, the one that Two Thrones picks up from.
Warrior Within pissed me off because it kept throwing you back into old areas. At least twice I'd hop, skip and jump around... to the place I started at. And then I'd go around again because I knew that was how you got through area X. Very annoying, compared to the much more entertaining feeling of defeating a puzzle and then moving the hell on.
I gotta say, I did a 100% on FFXII... and it was really horrible at times. I do get the idea of secret areas... but I think more games need to do what Okami did. FFXII essentially says "you're missing shit" all the time. You have X/80 monsters. You don't have Y weapon, you've got Z more hunts to go on, asshole. Okami, on the other hand, felt much more natural to try to complete, but not obsess over. So you miss out on 2 praise because you didn't circle a tree, no big. Most importantly, it lets you do a New Game+. So even the 99 beads, which I didn't get the first time around, are not reset to "haha, hope you wrote that down", they're just something you can go back and find if you want, without having to keep extra saves right before the boss or whatever.
And as far as I know, none of the Stray Beads are missable. The only things you can miss are a Dog and several praise in a spoiler area later in the game.
I have always called these type of games "gamefaqs" games and try to avoid them whenever possible. I had never played a zelda game before, and when buying a wii in november I decided to pick up Twilight Princess since no other launch title really popped at me and I wanted to play more than just sports. When I got it home, I got stuck at a part where a woman offered you a fishing rod for her baby basket, and another woman offered to sell you a slingshot if you got her cat back. I explored a bit, and saw the cat pawing at water and figured I'd need to fish something up for it, and I saw a monkey holding a baby basket out on an island, and figured I'd need to hit it with the slingshot to take it from it.
This threw me into a logic feedback loop for about an hour, and I finally looked it up on gamefaqs, and you needed to use a piece of grass to have a hawk steal the basket from the monkey for you, which flew in the face of how I thought monkey's reacted to predators, but I figured oh well, its a fluke, lets keep going.
I got the basket, got the fishing rod, and finally caught a fish after 20 minutes, which I thought was strange, but figured I would let the nonintuitiveness of the controls go as well. After catching the fish, the cat showed a great deal of interest in me, and thinking back to a previous segment in which I had herded goats, figured I would use the fish as bait and herd the cat into the catdoor of the slingshot selling ladies home.
After about 30 minutes of trying that, I went back to gamefaqs and discovered that the first fish I had caught was put into a fish scrapbook I was unaware of, and I would have to catch another fish in order to obtain the cat. I did this and played the game for a while later, turning into a wolf, seeing zelda I think, and killing some things, and put the game down for the day.
I couldn't bring myself to pick the game back up because I just flashed back to the anger I felt having to go to gamefaqs every half an hour for the intro, se I ended up regifting it to a friend for christmas.
That was the first time I bought a game without playing a demo of it, on name alone, since Deus Ex 2, I hope the lesson has stuck this time.
Edit: Not a bad game perse, but the original X-Men for the Sega Genesis.
When you had to "reset the computer" and there was a countdown. I remember thinking, "What the hell do I do?", and the time wound down, "They don't honestly expect me to reset my sega, do they?" and with seconds left on the clock I dove and reset the genesis, and the game continued!
Recently, I had to go to Game FAQs because I pretty much just hit a wall in SoTN. I could have wandered around for hours until I happened upon it, or I could have continued to enjoy myself by looking for the information I needed, which is what I did. If there is a correct decision to make in this situation, than I think I made it.
Just after getting the Soul of Wolf. How was I supposed to know about the clock room leading to Olrox's quarters? I looked for a good 20 minutes before I just said, "Screw it" and looked it up.
Counter-intuitiveness is a bigger issue in games than I ever thought it would be, JRPGs in particular. Many "ultimate weapons" require the player do something completely ridiculous, something you would never think of doing on your own. Sure, you could just skip it, but often the best weapons in the game are necessary to kill the final boss, who is always overpowered.
I have always called these type of games "gamefaqs" games and try to avoid them whenever possible. I had never played a zelda game before, and when buying a wii in november I decided to pick up Twilight Princess since no other launch title really popped at me and I wanted to play more than just sports. When I got it home, I got stuck at a part where a woman offered you a fishing rod for her baby basket, and another woman offered to sell you a slingshot if you got her cat back. I explored a bit, and saw the cat pawing at water and figured I'd need to fish something up for it, and I saw a monkey holding a baby basket out on an island, and figured I'd need to hit it with the slingshot to take it from it.
This threw me into a logic feedback loop for about an hour, and I finally looked it up on gamefaqs, and you needed to use a piece of grass to have a hawk steal the basket from the monkey for you, which flew in the face of how I thought monkey's reacted to predators, but I figured oh well, its a fluke, lets keep going.
I got the basket, got the fishing rod, and finally caught a fish after 20 minutes, which I thought was strange, but figured I would let the nonintuitiveness of the controls go as well. After catching the fish, the cat showed a great deal of interest in me, and thinking back to a previous segment in which I had herded goats, figured I would use the fish as bait and herd the cat into the catdoor of the slingshot selling ladies home.
After about 30 minutes of trying that, I went back to gamefaqs and discovered that the first fish I had caught was put into a fish scrapbook I was unaware of, and I would have to catch another fish in order to obtain the cat. I did this and played the game for a while later, turning into a wolf, seeing zelda I think, and killing some things, and put the game down for the day.
I couldn't bring myself to pick the game back up because I just flashed back to the anger I felt having to go to gamefaqs every half an hour for the intro, se I ended up regifting it to a friend for christmas.
That was the first time I bought a game without playing a demo of it, on name alone, since Deus Ex 2, I hope the lesson has stuck this time.
Edit: Not a bad game perse, but the original X-Men for the Sega Genesis.
When you had to "reset the computer" and there was a countdown. I remember thinking, "What the hell do I do?", and the time wound down, "They don't honestly expect me to reset my sega, do they?" and with seconds left on the clock I dove and reset the genesis, and the game continued!
To be fair though, Zelda is one of the most intuitive series out there and it's always struck just the right balance of giving you hints without holding your hand. And you can always go back and get anything you might have missed (except for that one thing in Minish Cap, wtf). And the tasks for 100%ing are never ridiculously repetitive in an FF way. And what the hell man, 2006 and you'd never played a Zelda? Where the fuck have you been?
Counter-intuitiveness is a bigger issue in games than I ever thought it would be, JRPGs in particular. Many "ultimate weapons" require the player do something completely ridiculous, something you would never think of doing on your own. Sure, you could just skip it, but often the best weapons in the game are necessary to kill the final boss, who is always overpowered.
That is, except when you have to beat a boss that's stronger than the final boss to get them. :P
Anyway, FFXII seems to be the worst offender with needing FAQS. I refer to a certain spear.
I've thought about this quite a bit and I disagree. There is no in game indication that you shouldn't get those chests, but there is also no in-game indication that the spear even exists,
It's on the license board.
Yeah it's on the liscense board. Now you know the spear exists.
Where does the game hint that to even have a chance of getting the spear you have to avoid a half dozen random chests scattered throughout the game? To say nothing of the fact that by the time you've gotten enough LP to see the spear on the board, you've already walked by most of the "don't touch it" chests. And I'm sorry, but I've spent the last 10 FF games (11 excepted, as I never played it) going out of my way to touch every bookshelf, clock, stove and fireplace just in case someone hid something there, now I'm suppose to ignore chests?
Really though, the reason for stupid shit like this should be obvious. It's a way for store owners to fleece another 25-30 bucks out of us completionist players who like to get everything.
I just remembered a conversation I had with a friend a while ago... it started as a conversation about the Dragon Quest series and how it's massively popular in Japan despite a near-total lack of gameplay advancements since the first installment, and how the new games STILL require insane grinding to get through. So we started wondering why the Japanese were so crazy about it, and he said something along the lines of, "People in Japan like their games to be like homework".
Not to stereotype a people from a country I've never visited, but it rang kind of true, especially considering that the convoluted repetitive sidequests are a phenomenon almost entirely confined to games made in Japan.
That's why I like CRPGs like oblivion, bauldur's gate, so on.
Even though there are secrets and powerful stuff, they usually give you hints in the game. The hardly or EVER put stuff in that is not mentioned by some NPC.
Anyway, FFXII seems to be the worst offender with needing FAQS. I refer to a certain spear.
I've thought about this quite a bit and I disagree. There is no in game indication that you shouldn't get those chests, but there is also no in-game indication that the spear even exists,
It's on the license board.
Yeah it's on the liscense board. Now you know the spear exists.
Where does the game hint that to even have a chance of getting the spear you have to avoid a half dozen random chests scattered throughout the game? To say nothing of the fact that by the time you've gotten enough LP to see the spear on the board, you've already walked by most of the "don't touch it" chests. And I'm sorry, but I've spent the last 10 FF games (11 excepted, as I never played it) going out of my way to touch every bookshelf, clock, stove and fireplace just in case someone hid something there, now I'm suppose to ignore chests?
Really though, the reason for stupid shit like this should be obvious. It's a way for store owners to fleece another 25-30 bucks out of us completionist players who like to get everything.
You said there is no indication that the spear exists, which is not true. I was simply pointing that out. I agree with you on everything else.
Oh yeah, and about Steiner's best sword in FF9 (Excalibur 2 or something, right?)
I haven't actually gotten it, in fact I've never gone and finished FF9, but as far as I've heard, you have to make it to a certain point late in the game before your in-game clock reaches a certain time... and basically you have to rush through the whole game to make that time.
That's the one exception where I will never try to get it. Because I could miss a bunch of other stuff if I rush to get it. That one was just too insane even for me.
Anyway, FFXII seems to be the worst offender with needing FAQS. I refer to a certain spear.
I've thought about this quite a bit and I disagree. There is no in game indication that you shouldn't get those chests, but there is also no in-game indication that the spear even exists,
It's on the license board.
Yeah it's on the liscense board. Now you know the spear exists.
Where does the game hint that to even have a chance of getting the spear you have to avoid a half dozen random chests scattered throughout the game? To say nothing of the fact that by the time you've gotten enough LP to see the spear on the board, you've already walked by most of the "don't touch it" chests. And I'm sorry, but I've spent the last 10 FF games (11 excepted, as I never played it) going out of my way to touch every bookshelf, clock, stove and fireplace just in case someone hid something there, now I'm suppose to ignore chests?
Really though, the reason for stupid shit like this should be obvious. It's a way for store owners to fleece another 25-30 bucks out of us completionist players who like to get everything.
But you can still get the Zodiac Spear elsewhere regardless. The chests thing is just the easy, if unintuitive, way to get it.
And how much money does Squeenix see from strategy guide sales? I doubt enough to influence game design decisions.
And how much money does Squeenix see from strategy guide sales? I doubt enough to influence game design decisions.
Isn't any amount of money enough to influence game design decisions?
Though to be fair, the people who buy guides will likely do so regardless of whether or not there's a need for them. They're really the kind of purchase you can only justify if you need the meat of it, which is the walkthrough. Everything else can be found out with a hop to the internet.
And how much money does Squeenix see from strategy guide sales? I doubt enough to influence game design decisions.
Isn't any amount of money enough to influence game design decisions?
Though to be fair, the people who buy guides will likely do so regardless of whether or not there's a need for them. They're really the kind of purchase you can only justify if you need the meat of it, which is the walkthrough. Everything else can be found out with a hop to the internet.
Not really. Someone had to program in the logic to unlock the zodiac spear if this set of conditions were met. The cost of developing this would have to be less than what they made from the guides.
Furthermore, if they wanted you to buy the guide, they would have to indicate in some way that the Zodiac Spear was hidden and not likely to come up unless you know what your doing, resulting in you deciding you need the guide. Because ZOMG I need everything.
I got the FF XII guide, but just because it was laid out beautifully and included an art book.
And how much money does Squeenix see from strategy guide sales? I doubt enough to influence game design decisions.
Isn't any amount of money enough to influence game design decisions?
Though to be fair, the people who buy guides will likely do so regardless of whether or not there's a need for them. They're really the kind of purchase you can only justify if you need the meat of it, which is the walkthrough. Everything else can be found out with a hop to the internet.
Not really. Someone had to program in the logic to unlock the zodiac spear if this set of conditions were met. The cost of developing this would have to be less than what they made from the guides.
Furthermore, if they wanted you to buy the guide, they would have to indicate in some way that the Zodiac Spear was hidden and not likely to come up unless you know what your doing, resulting in you deciding you need the guide. Because ZOMG I need everything.
I got the FF XII guide, but just because it was laid out beautifully and included an art book.
Actually, considering the price of those guides, the programming cost of putting the "freaking impossible to get" variable in there is easily covered by one or two guides sold. Now Square obviously only gets a percentage on the guides sold (the rest goes to Bradygames, the store that sold it, etc.), but say they only get a buck off every guide sold and only 10% of the people who bought FFXII bought the guide... that's already at the very least $100K in Squeenix's pocket just from that, and they basically didn't have to do anything to get that.
And how much money does Squeenix see from strategy guide sales? I doubt enough to influence game design decisions.
I never needed a FAQ or guide for Front Mission 3 & 4. These games are more linear than the FF series, but that simply means fewer/no lame-ass minigames, no repetition of boring tasks to get enough X to trade to Y for magical item Z. And no need to walk from place to place in real time.
The only useful item I found out later I could've gotten with different dialogue choices was some rad shotgun in FM4, but I really didn't need it to beat the game.
Edit: Not a bad game perse, but the original X-Men for the Sega Genesis.
When you had to "reset the computer" and there was a countdown. I remember thinking, "What the hell do I do?", and the time wound down, "They don't honestly expect me to reset my sega, do they?" and with seconds left on the clock I dove and reset the genesis, and the game continued!
I actually found that out by accident. I don't remember the specifics exactly, but I must have thought I'd done something wrong up to that point. I probably wouldn't have figured it out otherwise. Though, reaching the end and being lost as to how to defeat Magneto was just a kick in the pants. That and T2 were just beyond my gaming ability.
And you can always go back and get anything you might have missed (except for that one thing in Minish Cap, wtf).
My blood is still boiling because of the Mirror Shield in Minish Cap. I got absolutely everything, (every Kinstone fusion, every item, every heart piece, etc.) except for the damn Mirror Shield. And now I will be forever stuck at 99% completion unless I start the game over from scratch. Horrible game design in an otherwise stellar game.
And you can always go back and get anything you might have missed (except for that one thing in Minish Cap, wtf).
My blood is still boiling because of the Mirror Shield in Minish Cap. I got absolutely everything, (every Kinstone fusion, every item, every heart piece, etc.) except for the damn Mirror Shield. And now I will be forever stuck at 99% completion unless I start the game over from scratch. Horrible game design in an otherwise stellar game.
I got absolutely everything, (every Kinstone fusion, every item, every heart piece, etc.) except for the damn Mirror Shield. And now I will be forever stuck at 99% completion unless I start the game over from scratch. Horrible game design in an otherwise stellar game.
I got absolutely everything, (every Kinstone fusion, every item, every heart piece, etc.) except for the damn Mirror Shield. And now I will be forever stuck at 99% completion unless I start the game over from scratch. Horrible game design in an otherwise stellar game.
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Not JUST RPGs, but it's a problem that's certainly more visible in them. But take MGS2 for example. Is there anything in the game to even indicate that one can take the guards' dogtags? You'd really need to be screwing around to even realize that you can get them to give them to you, and you wouldn't know there's a reward for collecting them unless you really got into it.
Or Soul Calibur III. It's already a headache to unlock everything WITH a FAQ.
Or Silent Hill 1, the UFO Ending. You'd need not only to realize that the amulet is suddenly in your inventory, but to pretty much try using it all the time to find out which places you need to use it in.
And plenty more examples.
For example; In MGS2, the 40th page of the manual is devoted to Dog Tags. It tells you how to get them, and even that the Thermal Goggles will allow you to see who has them. That's fair game, in my opinion.
In Silent Hill (or any game, really, that adds an item to your inventory for a new game+), using that item on everything is logical enough because you don't know where or how else to use it, and the game itself is adventurous enough where this isn't out of place. Wherein doing this in Shadow of Colossus wouldn't have made sense in context of the game itself.
There are times where this is done very poorly (Final Fantasy 9's final sword for Steiner, for example), but in my opinion, those two are "legit".
So just like Donkey Kong Country then.
ZING!
Again, thats on YOU if you MUST get 100% completion, its understood to me that you aren't really supposed to have all the uber weapons in those kinds of games, makes you way overpowered in my opinion. These things are extras, little super secrets that only the few who are trying to break the game or are messing around get, or for the people who want everything and just look it up in the FAQ section. I think those games weren't necessarily MEANT to be completed 100%, those things are in there as like little things where you are bored and decide to go kill a bunch of guys, just for the hell of it, and wowie... some awesome item drops! What I'm saying is that these items are more extras then things you must have, no game makes you do that for anything you need to beat the game, those are just there for the people who are messing around in the game, and get something unexpected for it.
So there's some ridiculously arcane thing that you'll miss if you don't do something within the first 30 minutes of a 100-hour game. Is this thing truly optional? If you don't encounter it in your playthrough of the game, will it really affect your game experience in any way other than you saying "I [did/did not] get the ___" when you finish it?
99% of gamers don't honestly give a goddamn if they get the Uber Sword, because they look rationally at the cost versus the reward, and 30 extra hours just to be able to say you did it just doesn't add up for the vast majority of people. The extra shit in the game is just there if you're in that 1% who loves the game so much that they'll appreciate the option to keep playing it even after the main objectives are completed. The developer does us a favor by putting in the extra shit.
If you've really got OCD, then get on medication. Don't flip out on Square Enix when you're the one with the issue.
I was just about to post this.
You know the reason why all this shit is really obtuse, hard to find, and even harder to accomplish?
BECAUSE THEY'RE SECRET.
Really, what other kind of reason were you looking for? If it were easy, you wouldn't feel any accomplishment from doing it.
This all goes into the whole "flow" model of gaming and working. If they make something way to easy to figure out, then what's the point in playing with training wheels? You're not going to enjoy it. Similarly, if you can't accomplish what you want, you're going to get frustrated.
The best games do one of two things. Either they're simple enough to play that the learning curve is very short on basics - shooters and race games fall into this; you master the basics quickly and the rest of the game is mainly improving your skill with those basic abilities, and combining them for better effectiveness. Otherwise, they give you a very basic skillset / toolset, and loose you on the world. You learn new tricks on your own, and thus feel as though you're accomplishing something unique. Whenever a developer looks at something a game player/tester is doing with their engine and is surprised by it, you know there's something special about that game - it's basic toolset can be combined in completely new ways.
FAQ's are only needed when the game has objectives that the player isn't naturally inclined to do. If your game doesn't make a player want to explore the barely-reachable corners of a map, he's not going to find those awesome easter eggs. If your game doesn't make a player want to try weird combinations of timing and apparel to get different responses from characters, he's not going to get those special items. And so the FAQ will always be necessary for tasks which the gamer is not thinking about.
On the plus side, when you get a reward for doing something you wanted to do anyways, that's the sign that the developers are thinking like their players. When Dead Rising gave me an achievement for running around in crazy outfits, something went right. When Super Mario Bros. let me find shortcut tubes for maneuvering its levels in weird ways, something went right. And when a game's rewards click with a gamer's interests, something is going very, very right.
Aside from the bugs that can occur if you use a portal to go back and do something you overlooked in an area (bugs that can effectively kill your ability to beat the game, and require you to restart from scratch), there's the possibility of advancing to the next area, seeing the cutscenes, and thinking you've furthered the plot along, but you find out later you didn't activate something you were supposed to. This puts you at a crossroads where you can either restart now, or go back, fix the problem, and hope your save file isn't bugged forcing a restart later.
And then there's the "secret" ending you get by completing obscure side missions that you are extraordinarily unlikely to find on your own without a FAQ. What's fun about that is, the "secret" ending is the canonical one, the one that Two Thrones picks up from.
Yeah...
I gotta say, I did a 100% on FFXII... and it was really horrible at times. I do get the idea of secret areas... but I think more games need to do what Okami did. FFXII essentially says "you're missing shit" all the time. You have X/80 monsters. You don't have Y weapon, you've got Z more hunts to go on, asshole. Okami, on the other hand, felt much more natural to try to complete, but not obsess over. So you miss out on 2 praise because you didn't circle a tree, no big. Most importantly, it lets you do a New Game+. So even the 99 beads, which I didn't get the first time around, are not reset to "haha, hope you wrote that down", they're just something you can go back and find if you want, without having to keep extra saves right before the boss or whatever.
NNID: Glenn565
This threw me into a logic feedback loop for about an hour, and I finally looked it up on gamefaqs, and you needed to use a piece of grass to have a hawk steal the basket from the monkey for you, which flew in the face of how I thought monkey's reacted to predators, but I figured oh well, its a fluke, lets keep going.
I got the basket, got the fishing rod, and finally caught a fish after 20 minutes, which I thought was strange, but figured I would let the nonintuitiveness of the controls go as well. After catching the fish, the cat showed a great deal of interest in me, and thinking back to a previous segment in which I had herded goats, figured I would use the fish as bait and herd the cat into the catdoor of the slingshot selling ladies home.
After about 30 minutes of trying that, I went back to gamefaqs and discovered that the first fish I had caught was put into a fish scrapbook I was unaware of, and I would have to catch another fish in order to obtain the cat. I did this and played the game for a while later, turning into a wolf, seeing zelda I think, and killing some things, and put the game down for the day.
I couldn't bring myself to pick the game back up because I just flashed back to the anger I felt having to go to gamefaqs every half an hour for the intro, se I ended up regifting it to a friend for christmas.
That was the first time I bought a game without playing a demo of it, on name alone, since Deus Ex 2, I hope the lesson has stuck this time.
Edit: Not a bad game perse, but the original X-Men for the Sega Genesis.
Counter-intuitiveness is a bigger issue in games than I ever thought it would be, JRPGs in particular. Many "ultimate weapons" require the player do something completely ridiculous, something you would never think of doing on your own. Sure, you could just skip it, but often the best weapons in the game are necessary to kill the final boss, who is always overpowered.
To be fair though, Zelda is one of the most intuitive series out there and it's always struck just the right balance of giving you hints without holding your hand. And you can always go back and get anything you might have missed (except for that one thing in Minish Cap, wtf). And the tasks for 100%ing are never ridiculously repetitive in an FF way. And what the hell man, 2006 and you'd never played a Zelda? Where the fuck have you been?
That is, except when you have to beat a boss that's stronger than the final boss to get them. :P
Where does the game hint that to even have a chance of getting the spear you have to avoid a half dozen random chests scattered throughout the game? To say nothing of the fact that by the time you've gotten enough LP to see the spear on the board, you've already walked by most of the "don't touch it" chests. And I'm sorry, but I've spent the last 10 FF games (11 excepted, as I never played it) going out of my way to touch every bookshelf, clock, stove and fireplace just in case someone hid something there, now I'm suppose to ignore chests?
Really though, the reason for stupid shit like this should be obvious. It's a way for store owners to fleece another 25-30 bucks out of us completionist players who like to get everything.
Not to stereotype a people from a country I've never visited, but it rang kind of true, especially considering that the convoluted repetitive sidequests are a phenomenon almost entirely confined to games made in Japan.
Even though there are secrets and powerful stuff, they usually give you hints in the game. The hardly or EVER put stuff in that is not mentioned by some NPC.
You said there is no indication that the spear exists, which is not true. I was simply pointing that out. I agree with you on everything else.
I haven't actually gotten it, in fact I've never gone and finished FF9, but as far as I've heard, you have to make it to a certain point late in the game before your in-game clock reaches a certain time... and basically you have to rush through the whole game to make that time.
That's the one exception where I will never try to get it. Because I could miss a bunch of other stuff if I rush to get it. That one was just too insane even for me.
But you can still get the Zodiac Spear elsewhere regardless. The chests thing is just the easy, if unintuitive, way to get it.
And how much money does Squeenix see from strategy guide sales? I doubt enough to influence game design decisions.
Isn't any amount of money enough to influence game design decisions?
Though to be fair, the people who buy guides will likely do so regardless of whether or not there's a need for them. They're really the kind of purchase you can only justify if you need the meat of it, which is the walkthrough. Everything else can be found out with a hop to the internet.
Not really. Someone had to program in the logic to unlock the zodiac spear if this set of conditions were met. The cost of developing this would have to be less than what they made from the guides.
Furthermore, if they wanted you to buy the guide, they would have to indicate in some way that the Zodiac Spear was hidden and not likely to come up unless you know what your doing, resulting in you deciding you need the guide. Because ZOMG I need everything.
I got the FF XII guide, but just because it was laid out beautifully and included an art book.
Actually, considering the price of those guides, the programming cost of putting the "freaking impossible to get" variable in there is easily covered by one or two guides sold. Now Square obviously only gets a percentage on the guides sold (the rest goes to Bradygames, the store that sold it, etc.), but say they only get a buck off every guide sold and only 10% of the people who bought FFXII bought the guide... that's already at the very least $100K in Squeenix's pocket just from that, and they basically didn't have to do anything to get that.
I never needed a FAQ or guide for Front Mission 3 & 4. These games are more linear than the FF series, but that simply means fewer/no lame-ass minigames, no repetition of boring tasks to get enough X to trade to Y for magical item Z. And no need to walk from place to place in real time.
The only useful item I found out later I could've gotten with different dialogue choices was some rad shotgun in FM4, but I really didn't need it to beat the game.
What?
I'm pretty sure an NPC tells you all those things.
And really, come on.
Are you telling me you'd go to GameFAQs for every single puzzle?
I actually found that out by accident. I don't remember the specifics exactly, but I must have thought I'd done something wrong up to that point. I probably wouldn't have figured it out otherwise. Though, reaching the end and being lost as to how to defeat Magneto was just a kick in the pants. That and T2 were just beyond my gaming ability.
Your fuhrer has no prize!
I have very fond memories of this dog!