Anyone else frustrated at requirements needed to 'fully complete' games?

jwhalley

jwhalley

jwhalley

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26 Jun 2007
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185
Hi guys,

Just a forewarning, that this isn't a rant/whine. I was just interested to see if anyone here ever got frustrated like me at some of the requirements games put in to 'fully complete' them. (ps if TLDR, just press back now :p)

Let me explain, i've played games like most here for many many years, and i'm sure like a number here i'm a bit of a completionist when it comes to games. After completing games, i like to get all the unlockables, do all the extra stuff so that i've 100% completed the game.

However recently, i've noticed the requirements needed to achieve such tasks seem to,more and more often, be turned into a grind rather than a fun gaming experience. For example, these are the game i'm currently playing.

CoD4: After the single player mode there's the online mode, which is great and has 55 levels where you rank up, unlock weapons and accomplish achievements. However after you've hit 55, to carry on it resets you to 1, takes all your weapons away and resets your achievements. You have to get to 55 ten times to reach the highest rank. Getting their once is great, but the rest just seems like a pointless grind.

MGS4. Played the game, loved it, but to fully complete it you need to collect all the emblems. Some of these are good. ie doing it on a higher difficulty etc, however many are just completing the game meeting certain requirements which can most quickly be achieved by grinding through the game multiple times on easy. Yes multiple emblems can be unlocked per run, but it still requires many many run-throughs adhering certain rules to get them all. Again it seems more of a grind.

Burnout Paradise. After completing the game by getting the 'Burnout Licence' which is when the credits roll, I was expecting to have to complete the races not yet done and do the time challanges etc to fully complete it, but it resets every single race and forces you to do all 115+ again. On top of that whilst finding all the super jumps etc is fun, having to find 400 barriers to crash through is just tedious and again grindy.

All these games are great games which have playability long past completion without the need for these completely long winded obstacles put in place to delay you 'fully completing' the game.

As a result they leave me frustrated when i look at my games collection knowing that whilst i've completed all these games i'm not even close to 'fully completing' them and probably never will due to the greatly extended time committment needed to go from completion to full comlpletion. I know games have always have some degree of this in, but it just seems to be getting excesive as of late.

Anyone else ever frustrated by this?
 
so would it suit you better if they took out these features? its each to their own i suppose, if we are talking xbox achievements then i agree to a point. Im a completionist also and i love getting 1000 / 1000 on my games, i have shot all the pigeons on gta 4 and done all stunt jumps yet i still cannot get a 1000 on this game because it has some ridiculous online requirements.
 
I don't really see it as there being requirements to fully complete a game but goals in order to experience the game more fully - some of the emblems in mgs4 require you to play the game in different ways in different play-throughs and might be seen as a bonus for people looking for that bit extra to get out of the game.

On the other hand, I'm not looking forward to everything I have to do to fully complete Burnout Paradise - partly because there is so much that has to be done with 2 or more players (and when people log out halfway through a challenge & re-set it, it gets frustrating a little bit :p). I'm pretty glad the ps3 version of Burnout has a feature where you can export your save data and upload here to find the locations of missing discoveries *very handy* :)

I get your point but I see achievements, trophies & other features of things to do as a way to prolong the gaming experience and as optional - just that little extra challenge once the main game is done.

I think there are lots of people who get bored of games nowadays that they forget about them after a few plays and games need those extra challenges to get people back. But frustrating at times too, I agree to a point :)
 
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Wow, lots of quick responses.

In response to the comments made such a:_

"If I enjoy the game then I have no problem grinding."
"I get your point but I see achievements, trophies & other features of things to do as a way to prolong the gaming experience and as optional - just that little extra challenge once the main game is done."
"its each to their own i suppose"

Whilst I do understand that these are there in an attempt to extend the gameplay experience and that if you enjoy the game you don't mind doing them, each of these games listed is a great game. If you took out some of the silly requirements like shoot 200 pigeons, crash through 400 barriers, people would still play the game, as there's still plenty of other things to do (such as online).

In fact if you actually asked people who killed all 200 pigeons, they wouldnt say that was their choice of gameplay experience, and would much rather be doing something else in game or online, but purely did it for the sake of the acheivement.

I like the idea of achievements and for extras after completion of the game. Beating the time/crash scores, finding superjumps in burnout is great, certain emblems in MGS are great, but I just wish they would take out those 'achievements' which could be classed as a mindless grind as people would still play, but be doing fun stuff as opposed to searching street after street for that last pigeon/barrier.

Edit:-
As a quick follow up, thought i'd suggest how i'd go about these achievements (using burnout as an example)
1) After getting burnout licence a player will have completed around 50-100 of the events in the city. To get full completion they would need to complete all the events they have not yet completed rather than having to do them all.
2) Time attacks / crash scores - left the same. Whilst they can be a little repetitive at times they are a different experience to the main events and go towards owning the city
3) Super Jumps - Remain as they are. Who doesnt want to find the coolest places where the biggest jumps/stunts in the game can be performed
4) Billboards (and the same goes for ipod songs in mgs, idols in uncharted etc etc). Rather than having them so that you have to look under every rock in game to find them have an option to display them on your mini-map/radar, so that the challange becomes more of exactly how to get to them rather than aimlessly going around finding them
5) 400 Barriers - remove it. Is there anyone who actually wants to go around finding these. Most will just get a faq. It's simple mindless grind

Some structure like this, would make the achievements more appealing, give players plenty to do and even after this was done, there's still a load of gameplay experience (online, beating best times/stunt runs etc). I think most would prefer to be spending their time this way rather than finingin billboard 399/400.
 
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jwhalley said:
In fact if you actually asked people who killed all 200 pigeons, they wouldnt say that was their choice of gameplay experience, and would much rather be doing something else in game or online, but purely did it for the sake of the acheivement.

[...] but I just wish they would take out those 'achievements' which could be classed as a mindless grind as people would still play, but be doing fun stuff as opposed to searching street after street for that last pigeon/barrier.
Click to expand...

I agree that some requirements are not fun and the reality is, I probably wouldn't do them except on maybe a succession of very rainy days (or go out and get wet). I think perhaps it's a question of balance, a progression beyond the core game that's adds an extra level of appeal to different audiences of a single product, or maybe developers just still learning what additional content makes for a great experience that is different to the main game for many people.

I personally think developers are still learning and need to research what are the best ways to extend a game, which is cool (I think standing still may aswell be moving backwards in the game industry right now).
 
Exactly cb, i agree balance is the key. There should be things to do after completion of a game, but developers need to ask themselves when they put something in, will players actually enjoy doing this or will they simply do it because it's there.

Maybe it is a case of learning, but some such as pigeons/billboards are just absurd. Ask ten people if they actually want to do this and that should be plenty of research for them.
 
challenges > grind.

game developers should really take a look at what they put into it to extend the game :/
 
It's part of why achievements suck. Developers are lazy and seem to lack imagination when coming up with a lot of them. I really liked Halo 3's ones though, none of them were a grind and a lot were fun to try and get.
 
Dont know about you guys, but i would like to see Single player acheivements and Multiplayer acheivements seperated. Many people love to complete a game, but have no interest in Multiplayer or the Multiplayer maybe just bad or feel tacked on like in "The Darkness"
 
Buzza said:
Dont know about you guys, but i would like to see Single player acheivements and Multiplayer acheivements seperated. Many people love to complete a game, but have no interest in Multiplayer or the Multiplayer maybe just bad or feel tacked on like in "The Darkness"
Click to expand...
The Darkness multi-player sucked, it was laggy as hell and no one played it, mayeb a few at the time of release, now no one is on it. The single-player game was pretty cool though.
 
Bah no game should feel like a chore to complete! (it should be a fun experence)

What really gets me is to make a game longer most have started giving you "trophies", take super smas brothers mele, once you've unlocked all the characters (yeah its an old game but i just got it and am really not that impressed).

i say games should be made better with longer story lines and/or harder game play (im thinking back to the old point and clicks, zelda and the pretty hard far cry).

Ooo also thanks for the heads up on burnout paridise (the latest i own is 3 and think ill be leaving it at that)
 
jwhalley said:
Edit:-
As a quick follow up, thought i'd suggest how i'd go about these achievements (using burnout as an example)
1) After getting burnout licence a player will have completed around 50-100 of the events in the city. To get full completion they would need to complete all the events they have not yet completed rather than having to do them all.
2) Time attacks / crash scores - left the same. Whilst they can be a little repetitive at times they are a different experience to the main events and go towards owning the city
3) Super Jumps - Remain as they are. Who doesnt want to find the coolest places where the biggest jumps/stunts in the game can be performed
4) Billboards (and the same goes for ipod songs in mgs, idols in uncharted etc etc). Rather than having them so that you have to look under every rock in game to find them have an option to display them on your mini-map/radar, so that the challange becomes more of exactly how to get to them rather than aimlessly going around finding them
5) 400 Barriers - remove it. Is there anyone who actually wants to go around finding these. Most will just get a faq. It's simple mindless grind

Some structure like this, would make the achievements more appealing, give players plenty to do and even after this was done, there's still a load of gameplay experience (online, beating best times/stunt runs etc). I think most would prefer to be spending their time this way rather than finingin billboard 399/400.
Click to expand...

I like some of your ideas :), although I decided not to specifically hunt down all the 400 barriers in Burnout Paradise until recently, by which time I'd found 390 - each time I went through a new barrier it was rewarding to get a message letting me know I'd found or done something new in the game.

The idea of find those last 10 barriers is not something I enjoyed, which is why I used the free tool provided on Criterion's website (see link in the yellow text above) - they should really incorporate this into the game for the ps3 and 360 - the billboards, when I do them, are gonna be hard enough without having to find them :)

I suppose it comes down to the question of whether achievements & trophies etc should all be easy and easily achievable by all or whether there should be a few that only hardcore fans of a particular game are going to invest the time & effort into. I actually prefer the former to a point, gaming should be fun & accessible for all but I am particularly proud (if that's the word for it) to have got some of the harder trophies in SSHD (which really do require some dedication). What I didn't like was one of the trophies was multiplayer (not online either) which would require an extra investment in hardware (second controller) and (if it wasn't actually so easy) an extra person with an interest in that particular game to be able to help you.

Perhaps there should be a barrier (in the case of your examples - a puzzle aspect of how to find something that shows up on a mini-radar) to prevent you from easily getting an achievement / trophy etc but it should be a fun one in all cases, getting it should be intuitive and rewarding :)
 
I can agree with the op, I've only just this week gotten into guitar hero - purchased aerosmith - finished medium career and omfg how long it is going to take to get good at hard?! I'm going to get GH3 soon too and achievements on that are just stupid.

GTA is another annoyance for me in that they've just chucked loads in to make people play the game more, and I really hate the fact that all the multiplayer achievements are ranked! I hate it when developers make their online achievements ranked, making most of them difficult to get. I have to say I'm a completionist when it comes to games but when it comes to some games it really p***** me off!
 
One thing that does annoy me a little about achievements is that it seems it makes developers think they don't have to give you a "reward" for doing that task. For example in the previous GTA games, you unlocked free weapons for getting packages. You actually got something new to play with when you get near 100% completion. In GTA4 you get pretty much bugger all. The achievements are for the most part all you get.
 
i don't like killing streak challenges as everyone boosts them but smashing 400 gates in burnout paradise wasn't difficult. it was just a matter of exploring every area in the city. as for doing all the jumps and shoting 100 pigeons in gta 4 is completely crap and i would never do it unless i was really deperate but i don't see why. they could have used achievement points for something moderately challenging instead of annoying the hell out of gamers with that crap. i can't see any fun in looking at the pigeon map on pc and going to areas to shoot 100 pigeons in the game. i would never sweat for that
 
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