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Letting go of the checklist: Zombra says you shouldn't do everything in RPGs

Prime Junta

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Hardcore min-maxing can almost be as bad as hardcore LARPing in the right circumstances.

Hardcore minmaxing is simply taking great care to reverse-engineer the game system and then follow the incentives it gives wherever they take you. That's just playing to win, no more, no less. If playing a game to win is bad, then I'm not sure what manner of playing a game is supposed to be good.

(N.b.: yes there are games that don't have clear win conditions, minmaxing obviously doesn't apply there, usual caveats apply, yadda yadda yadda.)
 

Zombra

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That's just playing to win, no more, no less.
Not really ... most RPGs are easily "winnable" without searching every trash can and killing every rat. The Shadowrun games absolutely are, for example; and the option to not "do it all" is absolutely intentional to their design. Often in gaming, in fact, doing every side quest etc. will mean you are comically overlevelled for the final battle, effectively ruining the endgame. Min-maxing isn't actually playing to win; it's simply playing to min-max, entirely for its own sake.

I don't insist that min-maxing is "wrong" or "bad", if the player makes a conscious decision that optimizing number stacks is their primary source of enjoyment; I understand that appeal and I get why it's fun sometimes. I do object to its worship and I do wish that its worshipers would recognize their compulsive niche for what it is. And I find it continually amazing that anyone persistently objects to trying to enjoy RPGs any other way, as if no other way can exist. Because you see I have tried it both ways, so I know other ways exist, and in my experience the increase in enjoyment and player agency is substantial when I deny the almighty Experience Point's authority over my behavior.
 
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Prime Junta

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Not really ... most RPGs are perfectly "winnable" without searching every trash can and killing every rat.

It's not only about winning, it's how well you play and how strongly you win. Germany didn't stop playing when they were 4-0 against Brazil in the world cup finals.
 

Zombra

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Not really ... most RPGs are perfectly "winnable" without searching every trash can and killing every rat.
It's not only about winning, it's how well you play and how strongly you win. Germany didn't stop playing when they were 4-0 against Brazil in the world cup finals.
Sure, but that's not playing to win; it's playing to optimize. Two very different things. My whole point is that optimizing is unnecessary.
 

passerby

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It is unnecessary, but some find it fun and the whole point of a game part of an rpg experience.
Especially if a game is so bsb and easy, that optimising is the only thing left, to make you at least mildly intelectually engaged.

I personally give up on rpg gameplay some time ago and play for the story immersion, while trying to keep my optimisation ocd in check.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
While I agree with Zombra's point of view generally, I also believe that CRPGs most of the time lack the "urgency" required to drive the player to act "logically" and skip side content that wouldn't interest his character.
As Roxor said, in 99% of the games you have infinite time and no one is pressuring you to move faster... So why not do every menial bullshit sidequest if you can?

And this is getting worse as CRPGs start becoming more "open world".
I'd really love to see an RPG that has some form of time limit again. Even if it's a quite long one like in Fallout.
It was something that was at least driving the player to proceed the main story
 

Infinitron

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Relevant - my posts from 2015 about "filler quests" and "filler loot":

I don’t understand this train of thought: “These stupid quests are all over the game, but they are skippable”. I heard the same excuses about the filler loot in W2. It doesn’t matter whether you can choose to ignore the quests or most of the filler content. The exploration of the world, with all its filler content, was intended as one of the core elements of the gameplay. The fact that it is a chore shows that there is a deep flaw in the game.

There's a qualitative difference between quests and loot.

It can be argued that "filler loot" exists in the world not for the purpose of you taking every single bit of it, but to serve as a kind of "residual resource" which you partake of only as necessary, like resources in a strategy game, a survival game, or a procedurally generated roguelike.

"Filler quests" are harder to justify, because they incorporate actual plot and lore content, which a player of a story-driven RPG should want to see as much of as possible.

I think that in oldschool games that had a more abstract representation of things, it was more common for the player to treat randomly generated loot not as something that needs to be sucked dry out of the world, but more as a kind of residual resource to be selectively "foraged" as necessary.

You do see this in modern open world games as well. For example, a non-completionist player in Fallout 3 might realize he's low on money at some point, and go on a selective "scavenging expedition" in D.C. to get some loot and sell it. After he's done that, he goes back to non-completionist mode, following the main quest and not looting everything he sees.

I do agree that this is a somewhat "casual"/non-hardcore way of playing RPGs, but it is a valid way of playing, and something that "filler loot" can support.
 

Ash

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My recommendation would be to stop playing shit games that has plenty optional content that is often considered to be garbage. If a game is failing to deliver good optional content to a consistent enough level, it's probably shit overall and not worth your time to begin with.
 

CryptRat

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Often in gaming, in fact, doing every side quest etc. will mean you are comically overlevelled for the final battle, effectively ruining the endgame.
But that's part of the problem, what you describe is anticlimatic because side content must be about your mage becoming an archmage and finding some spell or the best axe to become able to beat the endgame, not about kitten. If you don't solve much of it then you're not strong enough and that's the point, becoming strong enough to beat the endgame is and must be more satisfying than reaching the endgame ; otherwise, I mean if reaching the endgame is the only goal, and it works too, then there's no need for side content at all.
 

Zenith

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So let's say you kill the inner completionist and finish a game. If you somewhat liked the game, and you know there is still a bunch of content you haven't seen, why would you drop it and switch over to another? Just restart this one again. If one is also bitchy enough about their entertainment to be voluntarily posting on codex, not hating every second of it is already reason enough to suck a game dry, no? Between restarting and doing most things in one go, there's a difference balance-wise (depending on a game, might be huge, but might be insignificant), but not much psychologically.

Then again, I never* finish 10hr+ games I don't like "out of spite" or because I've "already invested 10hrs, might as well", so maybe if you do, the advice will come useful.
*well, not since Gothic 3
 

Tigranes

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I don't know where this originally came from, but Zombra is so fucking right, and in the Elex thread I talked about the vacuum cleaner mentality where people feel like they have to check every room, open every chest, talk to every NPC. It's something that especially hardcore RPG players get used to and then it feels so strange or niggling to not do it - but it is something that really really adds a lot of unnecessary boredom and pointless crap to your own enjoyment.

E.g. In the Witcher 2, there's an early section where there's fighting going on - the La Valette Castle grounds, I believe. And there's like a dozen houses you can enter. Every singe one has a bit of loading screen, and the stupid accelerating movement animations make navigation inside tiny houses annoying, and there are a million tiny little containers to loot all of them with like two pieces of soiled cloth. I remember going into each one of those houses and looting everything and talking to every dumb villager, and being really annoyed. And then, I realised, why am I doing this? It's a fucking castle on fire, move on.

One line of counterargument is, but I'll never know if I'm missing something really important. I don't know if it's just shit flavour text & soft toilet paper until I get there. You're right. So just think rationally about the tradeoffs. You can spend the entire game checking 400 houses - or you can check 10 as fancy strikes you. Do you think you will miss 20% of the quests in the game? No, especially not in modern RPGs. You're going to miss about five small quests and like three interesting items. Are those things worth the hours of time and frustration and boredom spread out over your playthrough? If yes, then more power to you. It's not worth it to me. I'd rather move on, play more games, or even replay this one if it's good.

Another line of argument is, but the game forces me to open every fucking barrel because there's all these little herbs and crafting ingredients and 10 XP for talking to a villager about his sex life and otherwise I'm gimping myself. Yeah, so again, actually sit down and think about whether that's worth it. Is it worthwhile to reload 8 times until you can kill that bandit before he fires any shots, just so you can loot 5 extra arrows from his body? Or to reload and try all the dialogue options until you get 300 gold instead of 250 for the reward? Usually you're going to find that you spend 5 frustrating hours early on going out of your way to collect every single Iron Ore because that's going to give you a Sword with 18 damage instead of 16 at Level 3 and feel good about yourself... except in that same time, I could just have moved on, levelled up, and got myself a New Sword with 25 damage.

(The question of what devs should do is a whole different one. Obviously, whether I talk to 80 NPCs or 2, a badly written game is a badly written game. Devs need to stop writing shit sob stories all over the place or encourage players to loot 1000 barrels, that doesn't change at all. What does change is how much of your life you're wasting enjoying yourself when you play a game you like, or how much of your life you're wasting not enjoying yourself. If the game is shit all round, drop it, stop forcing yourself to complete it because of achievos or some other retarded reason. If the game is great but has some shit stuff, skip that shit, no, you're not fucked and your player isn't fucked because you skip a cutscene or don't loot that body.)
 

DavidBVal

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"No, MY way of enjoying games is the right one!"

It's true that, story-wise, it makes little sense to do sidequests and vacuum-cleaner exploration. The hero is focused on saving the world and won't care about killing rats in a basement or recovering some prized bauble for a farmer. Nor he cares about hearing the story of the kingdom. Yet, that's how you make an RPG last more than 12 hours. The problem is when you feel the optional content is alienated from your objectives as a player; when done wrong, side quests and optional areas don't feel fun, nor particularly interesting or even useful, so you feel yourself making a choice of perfectionism vs enjoyment. When this happens over a 10% of the content, it's alright, Zombra's point is valid: let it go. When this happens over a relevant portion of a game, it's simply poorly designed. The creators have failed to excite the player's curiosity, greed, or whatever other drive to know/explore.
 

undecaf

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
So, Zombra , I agree with what you've said here, but does it also mean that all this highminded talk about roleplaying and knowingly skipping content also applies to savescumming those pesky locked containers in a game where there's an RNG skilltest for opening it? It's about the same thing afterall, avoiding compulsive completionism and letting go. :P
 

Tigranes

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DavidBVal it's not either-or. A game can be well designed and yet a player might choose to skip some of the menial labour. A game can be poorly designed, but the player might strategically find ways to extract some enjoyment out of it. Either way, 'letting it go' is just more efficient for the player - and either way, shitty content from devs is not excusable.

So, Zombra , I agree with what you've said here, but does it also mean that all this highminded talk about roleplaying and knowingly skipping content also applies to savescumming those pesky locked containers in a game where there's an RNG skilltest for opening it? It's about the same thing afterall, avoiding compulsive completionism and letting go. :P

I don't oppose savescumming because it's 'degenerate' play or whatever, I think it's just usually silly because it's so boring and destroys any sense of coherent gameplay. Why do you really need whatever's in that chest? Why do you effectively want to be able to open more chests than you're entitled via your skill level? Why is it fun to sit there reloading all day long? If I thought the game was great but I really hate how lockpicking is chance-based, I'd just cheat myself some lockpicking and move on - or ignore some of the chests, and probably never miss the extra goodies.
 

undecaf

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
I don't oppose savescumming because it's 'degenerate' play or whatever, I think it's just usually silly because it's so boring and destroys any sense of coherent gameplay. Why do you really need whatever's in that chest? Why do you effectively want to be able to open more chests than you're entitled via your skill level? Why is it fun to sit there reloading all day long? If I thought the game was great but I really hate how lockpicking is chance-based, I'd just cheat myself some lockpicking and move on - or ignore some of the chests, and probably never miss the extra goodies.

Yeah, I agree. I don't savescum and I don't care if someone else does, but I do far prefer RNG skilltests over hard thresholds. Zombs apparently had harder time with that, at least with WL 2 (and 3 if it ends up having RNG lockpicking). There were quite a few debates over retaining vs getting rid of the RNG on those boards.
 
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ot really ... most RPGs are easily "winnable" without searching every trash can and killing every rat.

This win sounds like loosing to me. Is this some kind of moral victory?

Often in gaming, in fact, doing every side quest etc. will mean you are comically overlevelled for the final battle

That's called easy game.

And I find it continually amazing that anyone persistently objects to trying to enjoy RPGs any other way, as if no other way can exist

It's like trying to convince heterosexual to try gay sex. Won't work.

Because you see I have tried it both ways

In the light of my previous remark, your comment sounds funny:)
 

Declinator

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First time I played Baldur's Gate 2 I did it the Zombra way.
I did pretty much exactly the minimum I needed to proceed. Then I faced a boss (near the end) that regenerated faster than I could damage it with my woefully underleveled characters who had used every cheap trick in the book to reach that point.
I have never played a game in that manner again and the second time I played BG2 I minmaxed the shit out of it (was much more fun by the way)
 

Tigranes

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Nobody argues for doing the 'minimum', this is so dumb it hardly needs to be said
 

coldcrow

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Positive reinforcement trap. When games (this is not limited to rpgs) become piles upon piles of positive modifiers and rewards, the expected behaviour is to do everything. This is bad design. Tavern example: Game is Ironman mode (or checkpoint), you talk to the wrong dude, cause you didn't bother to examine and get trashed in the resulting brawl.
Bring back negative stuff, lots of it. Mainstream RPG devs should take some advice from Roguelikes.
 

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