There have been many concepts and mechanics that have been thrown on the dustbin of gaming history over the years, and more than a few current ones that should probably be feeling nervous, but one thing that's managed to survive to the present day is the concept of '100% completion'. Probably because every other game is a sandbox now, it being much easier to just make a whole bunch of disconnected content and throw it into a big bin than it is to come up with an actual structure.
So you know what 100% completion is: it's the secondary objective for after you've finished the story end but still have a day or so left on the rental period, the obligation to find all the secrets and complete all the optional objectives, like finding all the missile and health expansions in Super Metroid. It's just extra gameplay for those who have the time for it. But is it? Yes, it is.
But is it? I've been wondering if the philosophy of 100% completion has changed over time. I wonder if it's become less about additional challenge to prove one's absolute mastery, and more about simply filling a bar. I've considered some of the optional activities in many recent games, such as acquiring collectibles in the Ubisoft sandbox game (for there is now only one Ubisoft sandbox game that wears many different masks), and tried to consider such things through the filter of my three-leg game design theory: Context, Challenge and Catharsis. And I've been forced to conclude that some of this completionist gameplay doesn't fit comfortably under any of the three.
Finding hidden documents offers Context, optional missions provide Challenge, and while the game probably won't tell you to run over zebras it's certainly an option and it provides Catharsis, but I can't see where, say, finding all the flags and feathers in Assassin's Creed fits, or even treasure chests if there's nothing you specifically need to buy. You could argue that they pose an exploration or observation challenge, but that is immediately removed if icons indicating the pickups are placed on the map. Which is probably unavoidable, because these sandboxes tend to be so large that searching every nook and cranny with no guidance just wouldn't be entertaining, but all the collectibles side quest is at that point is going down a list. You know exactly where it is, you stand on it to pick it up, you move onto the next. There's nothing fun about it. The only benefit one gains is the satisfaction of knowing you have achieved 100% completion.
So no longer is 100% completion the territory of extra gameplay that was considered too difficult to be placed in the critical path, and left optional in order to benefit advanced players without alienating the broad audience. Now it's just a measure to keep players occupied for as long as possible with hollow busywork. Achieving 100% doesn't reflect the player's mastery or skill, just their having logged more time in than anyone else, and having the necessary patience to effectively do nothing but follow directions.
It was Evolve that brought this up in my mind. Not because it has collect-athon side quests; the game is so rooted in padding a single core game mechanic out into something that can pass for a whole game that it doesn't even have a 'side' on which quests could be mounted, it's a great big smooth bouncy ball so slick that not even blu-tack will attach. No, Evolve made me think about gameplay being reduced to filling a bar because the only real sense of progress the game offers is from literally filling a bar.
As is de rigeur for multiplayer games most of your time is spent replaying the same handful of missions. No broader progress is made from completing those in themselves. Instead, you are awarded points for actions you perform in the course of those missions, and that is what levels you up and creates the sense of progress. To progress enough with the first monster to unlock the second playable monster, for example, you have to clock up enough damage caused with each of the monster's attacks.
But that's not a challenge or a meaningful achievement. The game is indifferent as to what ends up being the recipient of the damage, you could get the points by whanging bits of pavement at dozy alien cows for half an hour. To say nothing of the other progress bar that's there for more generalized leveling, for which you receive a string of participation awards at the end of every match. I'm fairly certain you could sit under a bridge flicking your belly button for an entire round of Evolve and still get some points at the end of it. Again, it's not a record of achievement, it's a record of how much time you were willing to give the game.
Around 2002 a joke game was released called Progress Quest. It was described as a 'zero player game'. All that happened was that an RPG character sheet would be created and the experience points would increment by themselves, randomly selecting upgrades as milestones were passed. It was intended as a parody of EverQuest, which just goes to show how dated my frames of reference are, but I think it's been proved remarkably prophetic by the state of triple-A games today. Where rewards are handed out for actions equally as meaningless as leaving the computer turned on for long periods of time. It speaks to a trend in mainstream culture generally, that a work actually engaging the audience seems to be a lesser priority than just being able to distract them for the allotted runtime.
I know video games are constantly evolving, and by all means, if you're happy to accept a game's hearty congratulations for essentially doing nothing but blowing a raspberry and tossing your head from side to side like you're motorboating a big pair of invisible titties then forget I said anything. Maybe I'm just bitter because it means I have to come up with a fourth C-word to add to the three-leg theory, turning it into more of a four-leg barstool arrangement. Context, Challenge, Catharsis, and Clutter. Or Cocking About. Or perhaps, more appropriately, Condescension.
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
SHHHH! there are badge hunters here. They'll kill you.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
At least provide proper attribution if you're going to copy someone's article.
The original article: [url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/13573-Filling-the-Bar-The-Meaningless-Progress-of-a-Games-Completionis]Why Completing All Objectives And Finding All Secrets Are Meaningless[/url]
- - - - -
[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
i forgot ty darth fez
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
"Meaning" is assigned by the player, not by the developer.
Therefore, it is only meaningless to the extent the player is condescending toward or disdainful of the game.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My author page at Amazon: https://amzn.to/2MPvkRX
My novelty shirts: https://amzn.to/31Sld32
[url=http://progressquest.com/]Progress Quest[/url] link.
Download it.
Install it.
Start it running.
Leave the computer on.
Not recommended for wireless devices because of battery life reasons.
Only thing I have to say in reference to the (pirated?) article is ... [i]One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure[/i].
Just because YOU don't enjoy filling a bar, doesn't mean no one else does. For quite a lot of people, "because it was THERE" is sufficient motivation to do things (up to and including winning [url=http://www.darwinawards.com/]Darwin Awards[/url] in real life).
And Greyhawk is right that the "value" placed upon activities performed within a game is determined by the Player ... [i]after[/i] the Developers implement it.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Does a game need to provide anything other than some variation of satisfaction?
Your opinion is noted. I'm willing to leave everyone's determination of "fun" up to the individual player. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Yeah I'd have to say there is a lot of room for personal interpretation here. I know that one CoT dev has said that "who cares?" about doing the complete opposite of 100% completion. Specifically, that blitzing through the game at a breakneck pace with no regard for the story just to level up is ok because it's "fun". Double shrug.
Well, dont forget, when you get your Friends to play with you, which have different priorities, then you cant ALWAYS have the Leader drag everyone by the ear around, just to collect these things. Most will leave to do something they deem to be more interesting. :)
This was one reason I never Truly ran with an SG per-say... just was apart of it. And found myself joining PUG after PUG after PUG. i might as well have joined a Kennel SG. ;D
Me too, but I never begrudged anyone else liking other content. I was perfectly happy with no SG doing mostly solo with occasional PUG's and duoing with RL family. Can't see why not have it all available to people.
To this day I have no idea what bars I filled or didn't fill except for the accolades that improved performance. But if someone else spent and so presumably enjoyed hours of methodically filling every bar, that's just more players and more success for the game that I want to make sure stays turned on.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
like Izzy say which have different priorities for me i want to be the monster against players that react appropriately to being pinned against a cliff and systematically double-fisted in every hole - panicking and fucking up and all blaming each other in the chatroom afterwards, tee-hee.
i agree u
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
Ah. You're going to be the player who's doing 'academic research' in PvP zones?
Where have we seen this before?
Lay your hands on me
While I'm bleeding dry
Break on through blue skies
And take it high
Disclaimer: the following is spoken on a strictly personal basis, as a past and potential player, not as a dev.
What ZP has failed to catch on particularly well, or rather has failed to distinguish, is that there are in fact folks who value it. They do so for a variety of reasons, but those actually don't much matter.
As a point of comparison: being able to level up isn't a measure of achievement in most games at this point -- primarily because, as it turns out, a lot of people appear to prefer games that aren't quite so punitive about things like dying as most of the older games were. Doesn't mean there isn't an audience for it, but they always say "vote with your dollars", and the people, they do appear to have spoken. So it, too, is really just a matter of how much time you're willing to spend.
The trick to it is remarkably simple, however: the purpose of a game *is* to occupy time. That is not, in itself, a bad thing. However, in order to be a *good* game, the things occupying that time have to be fun for the people playing it. And as anyone who has been around any game forum for more than a few minutes can probably attest to, there is a tremendous variety in what people find fun.
So it comes back to the only sane answer really being "if any significant number of folks enjoy it, then it is worth putting in if it makes any sense at all" -- *however* there is a tremendous caveat to that. It *has* to be optional, as well. Badges, in this sense, actually worked remarkably well (and remember CoH was one of the first games to do them at all). There were entire groups devoted to it, and what was probably an even larger segment of the population that couldn't care less. The one thing that might have been somewhat 'iffy" was the handful of badges that gave a concrete and significant boost to your stats. I can easily see how folks might have felt that one was effectively required, and that isn't a good thing.
But it is just one meta-game out of probably a dozen or more. Most people really liked maybe 3-4 of them, disliked a couple intensely, and the rest they'd just shrug about. And the KS did have a specific commitment to not locking things behind "you *have* to do it this way, or go without". If the project pulls it off, then folks can avoid playing the meta-games they don't like, and not lose out, so who cares if someone else likes have 1250 badges?
[ Aside: the market was an example of where this failed, badly; folks who didn't like that meta-game pretty much got hosed on it, but more importantly, it *couldn't* be avoided for most of the really powerful things, at least not until the Freedom release -- and by then, it was so badly out of joint that it seems likely there was simply no way to recover it sanely without a hard reset. ]
Now, there's a separate question, of what makes for a *good* collections meta-game... but that is, well, a separate question.
[hr]
[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I'd say the term 'meaningless', as Greyhawk says, is one to be attributed by the players on hand, and not a factual blanket term we can truly judge things by.
It is true, it is possible to have Context become meaningless if it's written poorly, one prime example being an optional quest that one can do in Dragon Ball Xenoverse, in which you have to protect Bardock from Freiza, so he can die in a cutscene by Freiza, just as history intended.
Catharsis only becomes meaningless when one fails to achieve that feeling, since you're really playing a game to enjoy yourself, so it is impossible to be 'pointlessly entertained'. If we're going by the three Cs of Yahtzee's design, then a game that fails to deliver on Catharsis fails as a game altogether, but then that's another kettle of fish altogether.
As for Challenge, then 100% completion can present some form of challenge, but that depends on how it is presented, and if you have a game that simply plays itself, as seen in ProgressQuest, then you have no challenge. It has been mentioned, however, that these self-playing games can actually provide some kind of enjoyment and distraction, as seen with Cookie Clicker.
I will say up front, that I am not a 100% kind of guy. I don't think there has been any game I have actively wanted to get everything in, but rather, I wanted to complete the game's core story, or in the case of MMOs, get to max level and RP in the setting, should it entertain me. I can see the value in it, however, and why people will obsessively play these games. There's a sense of satisfaction and pride when you know you have well and truly conquered a game.
I'd say the problem lies in how necessary it is to do 100%. If a game demands you do absolutely everything to get the 'true ending' then you are asking players to put more time and effort into a game that, at this point, they might be emotionally done with, and it leaves you with a kind of sour feeling that you have been denied your prize. However, if the game can be very easily completed to totality, then you have a game with an inherent lack of re-playability.
Players come in all shapes and sizes, and it's impossible to accommodate absolutely everyone into a single gaming experience, and I feel that declaring 100% completion in any game to be completely meaningless is a somewhat unfair generalisation.
A lot of things to like here, that's for sure. I think Game Theory made an excellent trilogy of videos on game trends and what sells, and possibly holds an answer as to why, if at all, 100% completion in most modern games isn't as intensely worked on as it used to be.
I wouldn't say the accolades were inherently a problem, as the four that governed the Auto-powers you gained didn't provide the biggest of boosts and were a dawdle to acquire, and for the most part I don't think I saw even dedicated badgers use the other accolade powers other than, perhaps, flaunting them to show that they have them, but I can see how their presentation might have made some players think of them as a vital thing to their build.
The market was a bit of an issue, I can't deny that. I will admit to pouring real money in an effort to acquire the needed components of my current project. I suppose, however, that by making such things easier to get a hold of, the veteran player base might lose that challenge that made them so proud to begin with (when they made getting to the cap easier in WoW, I remember the game's vets being particularly upset about that.)
I would say a collections meta-game might need to look back at old collectathon games, and how they spaced challenges to acquire the things you collect. In an RPG sense, one needs to find the right balance of the item's scarcity and the effort one would have to go through to get to the point that you could possibly find that item.
I do a DnD Podcast, which can be listened to here.
Additionally, I write up my sessions of a Teen Heroes game here.
I for one will seek every single badge and objective.
Different people play differently. I for instance do not Alt and play with a group of people who generally do not Alt. We complete objectives as a team whenever possible.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
"Because it's THERE."
'nuff said.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I think having minor boosts attached to a couple badges was a nice way of encouraging folks to try out the whole badging concept. I wasn't a real badger till the last couple years, but I did tend to go for the Atlas accolade on most characters from the start. It was a sort of 'taster' for me that eventually transformed into a hobby-within-a-hobby.
As for the market, I always felt is was a nice, useful option for dealing with stuff but I never felt it was a requirement. I know some people played it quite intensely, but for me it was just a utility.
Spurn all ye kindle.
What is meaningless and meaningful is subjective to the player. Eliminating these aspects will only drive away a portion of the playerbase that likes them. I am a lore nut and somewhat of a completionist so that wouldn't be good for me
Formerly known as Bleddyn
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WCqnt88Umk]Do you want to be a hero?[/url]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/nyktoss-character-cove] My characters [/url]
Sometimes it isn't about difficulty or challenge. Sometimes it isn't about "gotta catch 'em all". Sometimes it's just about the "Huh" or "Oh, hey".
Maybe I'm not the type to aim for the 99th percentile (or even the 90th percentile) with my character. Maybe I don't have the time or I'm just not in the mood for this, that, or the other content (even if I do want that one Incarnate slot or power, today it may feel like too much of a grind to work on it). So, instead, I float about the place and I work on collected a few badges or I work toward an achievement, probably smacking a few ne'er-do-wells upside the head along the way (or knocking over an armored truck 'cause, hey, it was there). Maybe I'll even stumble across a badge or a part of an achievement I didn't realize was there.
And I can do that. Because it's there.
- - - - -
[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
im fans dark soul and dark soul 2 i agree u on lore
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
Well, the original article certainly fulfills the 'Condescension' requirement. A shorter version of the same article might read 'I don't enjoy it, so I can't understand why anyone else does'.
Why do I collect badges, or fly to far points of the map, or spend an hour making an alternate costume? Because I feel like it. Because it entertains me. And that's reason enough.
Wwwhhhhaaaaattttt!!!! No wall of text? Who are you and what have you done with Redlynne?
-AlienMafia (Justice Server)
Main: Thorns 13xx Badges
/em guffaw
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
that which is meaningless to one is important to another. with very little work this 'idea' could be applied to everything...including the real world.
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Everything is meaningless
Nothing has meaning except the meaning we give it
Ecc_1:2 Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
"The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow,
a poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale. Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,.
Signifying nothing. "
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
You do realize that there are people on the forums who are not Christian, themightypaladin? Please have the courtesy not to define universal or game principles according to your principles.
Dude what is your problem?
I said a bunch of stuff about nothing having meaning
My quotes were drawn from several sources
The first quote I'm pretty sure is from an atheist.
the second from Jewish Scripture
and the third from William Shakespeare
I made no attempt to define universal or game principles as you say.
Furthermore, I was in no way disrespectful to anyone else's beliefs (unlike you) so I have just as much right to express my views on this sight as anyone else of any beliefs or none. No matter where those views might have come from.
That was just out of line man.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Gonna have to agree with Pally. It was a quote. Hell, comics have quoted such sources.