Why Completing All Objectives And Finding All Secrets Are Meaningless

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Why Completing All Objectives And Finding All Secrets Are Meaningless

Yahtzee laments the need to fulfill all secondary objectives and find all the secrets in the game for some meaningless achievement or reward.

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[Neurotic Void Melody]

Meaningless points? Hmm, indeed you should try playing Forza Horizon 2. I kid you not, it rewards you straight away, for just accelerating and turning. God forbid that you drift with some use of the actual handbrake, it'll blow its yearly load! All while saying things like "Awesome!" and "Rad!" Or whatever it thinks my language is these days. It's trying to please me too much. Suspicious, if you ask me. Which you won't, but i'm bloody well telling you anyway!
It reminded me of a friend i had once that complimented me on almost everything, in a manner that a low self-esteeming person would find incredibly distrustful.
What sweeties are they after? Are they planning my demise? I shan't take my eyes off them for one second!

So if you feel incapable of anything, and just want some effortless praise; Forza Horizon 2, people!
(Perhaps an off-topic rant)

 

[Tony2077]

i personally like the extras if you want to think there meaningless meh

 

[Atmos Duality]

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 might as well go full-hipster on this one: I have been using that same example to describe the growing trend of of busywork in popular games for YEARS now. It's stunning how many people seem to claim to PREFER the busywork approach, to the point where I've questioned if gaming has just left me behind.

Anyway, I get this and agree completely.

Finding all of the Hidden Packages in GTA3 might be tedious for future playthroughs, but I still prefer how it was handled there compared to something like Saints Row 4.
Why? GTA3's packages provided the player with powerful replenishing bonuses.
Most of which you normally wouldn't get until much later in the main story if you got all the packages available.

Contrast that to, say, Saints Row 4, where if you want 100% completion you have to engage in collecting all sorts of stuff.
The burden is lessened by the inclusion of super powers, and trivialized by the inclusion of an upgrade available roughly 40% into the game that just reveals all the stuff you're missing on the map.

But with the challenge of locating these things eliminated, the process is less fun and more of a chore.
The game almost seems aware of this, with the character shouting "WHOO!" and "YEAH!" for every 3-4 blue data fragments you pick up (adding to the tedium so much that I just muted my game outright while doing my collect-a-thons).

 

[Thanatos2k]

This is connected to achievement whoring.

Making achievement 100% completion the same as collecting all the knick-knacks in the game (which basically every single game does now) just turns the achievements into the same checklist, not actual challenges.

However, going by your Three-C's analysis, getting 100% in a game and the game basically telling you "You've done everything" is Cathartic. This is why DLC is such garbage. You're literally told - "You can't get 100% in this game unless you pay more" and that is enraging to the completionist.

 

[loa]

It all depends on what is hidden for example dust: an elysian tail had completely worthless, unrewarding secret chests that contain things like redundant healing items which all, well, do the same thing that is healing you for different ammounts of health or crafting materials that have been dropped all over the place tenfold from the enemies you fought trying to get to the chest so you will either keep hunting for secrets out of principle because they're there and you're determined/obsessive compulsive or just stop bothering which is probably what most people do.
Secrets in this game don't really add anything other than busywork to it and you don't lose much by ignoring them.

Now binding of isaac on the other hand makes you want to get all the secret items not only out of principle because they're there so you can "100%" the game, but as a necessity if only to have the maximum ammount of options available, to get the most out of your limited resources so that the randomness has less room to screw you over.
Also almost all items will vastly alter your playstyle and look keeping the game fresh for a long while.
That is a game that has done secrets well. Meaningful ones that add to the game. Define it even.

I think secondary objectives are only worthwhile if they give you meaningful options that enrich the gameplay like in starcraft 2 where you can collect bonus objective in almost every mission and you really want to have all of them because they unlock game changing upgrades for your units and buildings.
If it's just 10 coins in a box that you can spend on items you already have and every standard enemy which you can farm because they spawn endlessly anyway drops 5 coins when defeated, that's not enticing, not worthwhile, not good game design.

Another case is to be made for dark souls in which finding all of its secrets is a community driven metagame in itself so I guess what I'm trying to say is secrets done well aren't meaningless and can rejuvenate games replayability and elevate them far beyond the sum of their parts.

 

[Coreless]

To me the only games that I really care about secondary objectives are RTS/Strategy games and RPGs. A good RTS or RPG developer will use them appropriately to convey additional story elements or to give unique rewards but outside of those genres they are usually just used to give an achievement or for just filler.

 

[Zjarcal]

Finding all of the Hidden Packages in GTA3 might be tedious for future playthroughs, but I still prefer how it was handled there compared to something like Saints Row 4.
Why? GTA3's packages provided the player with powerful replenishing bonuses.
Most of which you normally wouldn't get until much later in the main story if you got all the packages available.

Contrast that to, say, Saints Row 4, where if you want 100% completion you have to engage in collecting all sorts of stuff.
The burden is lessened by the inclusion of super powers, and trivialized by the inclusion of an upgrade available roughly 40% into the game that just reveals all the stuff you're missing on the map.

But with the challenge of locating these things eliminated, the process is less fun and more of a chore.
The game almost seems aware of this, with the character shouting "WHOO!" and "YEAH!" for every 3-4 blue data fragments you pick up (adding to the tedium so much that I just muted my game outright while doing my collect-a-thons).

They weren't meaningless though, since they served as the currency for the super power upgrades. I'd find that roughly as useful as the hidden package bonuses from GTA 3.

It's the shit that has absolutely zero benefit to the player that I really dislike, which is the case with a lot of the collectibles in AC games. The animus fragments in Black Flag for instance, there was literally NOTHING to be gained from them, ugh.

So yeah, pretty much completely agree with this article.

 

[Atmos Duality]

They weren't meaningless though, since they served as the currency for the super power upgrades. I'd find that roughly as useful as the hidden package bonuses from GTA 3.

Well, I'll put it this way: I'd rather collect 100 packages with some thought and care placed into their positions to get my bonuses, rather than bounce around the damn city for hours collecting 1000 pieces of "blue shit", most of which are just sitting out in the open and mindlessly strewn about.

 

[Evonisia]

I agree, seeing as I've just come from Saints Row IV's audio log collection. The audio logs themselves are fine, but the abundance of clusters just makes it absurd that the game asks you to collect as many as you can. You don't even need that many to get a whole bunch of upgrades as well, which is simply odd. The Zinyak statues are even more odd, given the mediocre XP gain you get from them.

Gosh that monster looks a lot like a Lost Planet 3 monster.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I have disagreed with dear Yahtzee on this point since his Mass Effect 1 review, where he said he didn't do any of the side missions because it was meaningless, but then complained that everything felt empty and there wasn't a lot to do. I think his quip was about a "Make the Game better" planet in the next system over. And I thought it just missed the entire point altogether. Was there one specific this is the single best side quest ever quest?

No, but all of the quests combined allowed for great immersion. Just as you can't have a well defined character after a single line of dialogue, you can't have a well defined, immersive game just by playing through the main story as fast as possible.

Truly Yahtzee, you have no right to complain about side quests being a whole load of just stuff to do if you're also going to complain about a perceived shallowness in characters and lack of immersion in the story.

 

[Aerotrain]

I've always resented collect-a-thons but hey if people like them more power to them. For me, the additional "padding" content would be something like a challenge that's already present in the game (a platforming/parkour section, an enemy, a stealth run, etc.) but made extremely hard and challenging, eschewing the accessibility concerns that developers rightfully consider for the remainder of the game. These challenges would be completely optional and wouldn't even need to give you additional insight into the plot or anything (although it'd be nice). The reward could indeed be just feathers or some other inane item but they'd mean something to you. They'd mean that you spent your time with the game, yes, but you did it trying to hone your skills in order to master its mechanics to such an extent that you won the very tough optional challenges the game presented to you. It wouldn't be just a feather, it'd be a feather in your cap.

All in all, in the grand scheme of things, both are equally pointless, I guess, but at least you'd be spending your time practicing to master the game's core gameplay to a higher level instead of just mindlessly following directions towards the next X in your map. That seems much more appealing to me. In the end, I think the ease of implementing collect-a-thons will see them being a common fixture for a long, long time though.

 

[Zakarath]

100%ing has a point when it isn't just doing the same copy-pasted content a billion times. Like in the PS2-era Ratchet & Clank games (haven't played the later ones), there were only a handful of secret collectibles and achievements, but they were actually challenges you had to actually work hard to get. They generally asked for a demonstration of mastery over the game (Difficult jumps, trick shots, a keen eye for secret areas, beating a boss without taking damage, etc.), rather than just a massive time investment. And they rewarded you with a bunch of really cool behind-the-scenes commentary and content that didn't quite make the cut.

In my opinion, that's what 100%ing a game should be about, not asking you fulfill a billionty MMORPG fetch quests to get a pat on the head as thanks for proving that you have more time and patience than god.

 

[Signa]

I fully agree with the article. The problem is finding which type of collect-a-thons your game is. I'm pretty compulsive when it comes to completion, so I will probably try to do it either way. I wish I didn't try so hard in games like Jak and Daxter, because I really wasted a lot of time in it.

On the flip side, Majora's Mask basically was about doing the collections, so I missed a TON of content the first time I played through the game.

 

[Vivi22]

No, but all of the quests combined allowed for great immersion.

Not sure what leads you to that conclusion. It's been a long time since I played Mass Effect but I don't recall anything particularly useful or interesting coming out of its side quests. It really did just feel like a whole bunch of go here, kill them, collect these nonsense to me.

Then again, I don't think Mass Effect was particularly well written or interesting to begin with. It had it's moments, but the thing was by and large just a game about hitting all the marks on a cliched sci-fi checklist.

But the thing is, the vast majority of games aren't any better these days. Is there any challenge in collecting all of the feathers in Assassin's Creed 2? Only if not shooting yourself in the head to escape the tedium constitutes a challenge. But that sort of fetch questing nonsense with no challenge or tangible benefit to it is what 99% of AAA games consider a good sidequest these days and they're absolutely 100% wrong.

Let me breed gold chocobo's so I can explore new parts of the world, discover powerful abilities, and kill really tough bosses instead thanks.

 

[baba44713]

Yep, Ubisoft's way of handling collectables pisses me off too. Here, gather a bunch of crap. Here, I'll tell you exactly where they are. Now go fetch.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Ah, good ol' Progress Quest. I fire up the smartphone version every now and then for a chuckle. Gotta love some of those randomized enemy names ("Executing a passing Enchanted Motorcycle Voodoo Monk").

It's pretty sad that the parody is even more pertinent now than it was back then.

 

[Darth_Payn]

This is nothing new. Remember the classic id Software FPS's? Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, and Quake? Those levels were loaded with hidden rooms, with weapons and health and treasure, and at the end of each level, the game told you how much of the enemies you killed and secrets you found, making you feel like a big thicky bo-bo for not finding them all.

 

[pearcinator]

I love games like Majora's Mask that offers a fantastic reward for acquiring all of the masks (no easy feat) as you get the awesome Fierce Deity Mask which destroys Majora in seconds! Sure, getting all heart pieces, items and stray fairies are also required for 100% completion but masks are t he most important. You haven't finished Majora's Mask until you get the Fierce Deity Mask in my opinion!

 

[happyninja42]

i personally like the extras if you want to think there meaningless meh

Liking them has no bearing on whether or not they are meaningless. If you like them, fine, go ahead, but considering that many of the 100% achievement related stuff is basically just filler, with no real impact on the game at all, they are, by definition, meaningless.

If the achievement doesn't change the outcome of the game in some way, it has no meaning, and is just there for you to do.

Which again, that's fine. Plenty of people enjoy that stuff, I'm not one of them personally, but I don't have a problem if people do enjoy that completionist style of play. Some people like to collect things, like cards for games, or comic books, or any number of other achivement/collection-esque activities. To me this is just game aspects designed for that type of player.

I've never bothered with 100% achievements, and I probably never will, simply because I'm not playing the game to try and go through some list of challenges. I play games for the fun of the story and the game mechanics. That's all. But, again, many other gamers want more than that in their games.

I wouldn't shed a tear if the meaningless achievement stuff was forever purged from gaming, but I also don't lose any sleep over the fact that it's likely here to stay. I just stop playing the game at that point. xD