All those "Fluffy" Games

[aozgolo]

In many games we often are given extra content that in no way impacts the core gameplay mechanics or the overall plot of the game. In certain places this has a way of dividing a gamer community between those upset that developer resources are "wasted" on non-essential additions when core game mechanics could still use some attention, and those who enjoy all the extras.

Game "Fluff" can run the gambit from non-combat pets, achievement systems, in-game lore codexes, mini-games, collectibles, easter eggs, costumes, and so much more. The only real defining trait crossing them all is their necessity. Most all of this content could be cut from a game and not impact it's overall quality of gameplay mechanics or story missions.

Personally, I'm not only a fan of fluff, but it's become almost a critical thing for me. I find I am drawn the most towards games that offer a full experience that lets me really play how I want and isn't limited to just "a story" because we have tons of other media for that. I want a fully realized world to explore.

What I want to know is other people's opinion about "Fluff" in games. What kind of fluff is your favorite? Which ones do you hate? Do you feel there can ever be too much fluff in a game? How much does the "fluffiness" of a game contribute to your overall buying decisions?

Let's drop all this silly talk about core gameplay mechanics, quality story writing, graphical and audio fidelity, performance, and just focus on all the little (or sometimes not so little) things in games that don't often make the taglines on the back of the box.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I like achievements that give a token reward for an interesting playthrough. I mean, it's not like those ideas don't come to the player on their own, but it's nice for suggestions to be there.

In particular I'm thinking about the few in Dishonored, or 'The One Free Bullet' from Half Life 2 Episode 1.

If we're gon' have achievements, that's what I'd like to see.

In game? I guess I go for alla dem good things; anything that creates the impression of a world that lives beyond the player.

 

[Vern5]

Vern's Favorite fluff: Survival mechanics, romance options, and in-game economies that are generally independent of player.

Fluff that I could take or leave: Crafting, achievements, and collectibles.

Fluff that makes me visibly ill: Random mini-games, codices, costume DLC, and grinding of any kind.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Normally I ask the question: Does this help or hinder the core of the game?

For instance, take the codex from Mass Effect. For the most part, it helps us build a better understanding of the world, its characters, its history, and its unique aspects. Sure, reading the codex isn't necessary to come to a basic understanding of anything brought up in mandatory dialogue, but it can help you come to a better understanding of what is going on. Other entries, though, really don't help you understanding anything you'll see in the game, but they really don't hinder the game at all, and perhaps some people enjoy reading about combat strategies that they'll never see in the game, or perhaps it helps bring the world alive more to some people. As a result, I don't think the codex is really a bad thing, and at most you could just remove a few entries.

But then we can look at Assassin's Creed 2's "treasure hunting". As I'm sure most people remember, you can search the world for treasure chests, all of which have some money in them. All it takes is buying a few maps to locate all of them, and once located, it isn't particularly challenging to reach them. However, they will overload your wallet very quickly, making any sort of management of your money in the game pointless, especially when you consider that other more challenging, more core side-missions will give you money and that you get some money from the villa anyways. In the end, you can have millions of gold with nothing to spend it on. All it is a pointless collecting idea that doesn't help the game at all but may even hinder it in some cases. Granted, you could say that more ideas broke the economics of that game, not just the treasure hunting, but it still felt like a poor way of allowing the player to get money.

Overall, though, I take it on a case-by-case basis. Even with "pointless" mini-games, I often ask if it did add anything to the game. Does it give you money that is hard to come by? Is it based on mechanics that are core to the experience rather than a mechanic designed solely for the mini-game? It's those kind of questions that I ask, and it really comes down to a case-by-case basis.

As for achievements: I really don't care. I know there comes a point where achievements are just a cheap way to keep someone playing your game, but at the same time, I know from experience that they can help you learn things about the game you otherwise wouldn't have tried, and you may end up finding greater enjoyment in the game as a result. Again, it is really a case-by-case deal.

 

[Saelune]

I love achievements. They are goals to strive for. Any gamer who thinks they are pointless....seem to forget they are playing a game. Why are you playing if not to achieve goals?

Most of what you said don't seem like the bad fluff. Mini-games can be. The biggest fluff though is multi-player, or single-player, depending on the game. If CoD just made the game multi-player, it would be fine. If Alan Wake added multiplayer, it would suffer.

 

[Something Amyss]

For instance, take the codex from Mass Effect. For the most part, it helps us build a better understanding of the world, its characters, its history, and its unique aspects.

And it's clear this was done not to add pointless content, but out of a loving team who crafted a large world. And they didn't just exposition dump it all on us in dialgoue boxes. If you wanted everything, you'd hunt it down.

If this is fluff, it's fluff I can live with, as it makes the world a bigger, deeper, more 'real' place.

I dislike when someone pads out a game, but this isn't doing that.

i thought fluff was more about "cute" and annoying sidekicks that should function as a comic relief, but are a massive pain in the ass and kind of embarrassing..

'Fluff' often is used interchangeably with padding. In writing, I've been accused of being too succinct and been encouraged to 'fluff' out articles and reviews. It can mean cutesy, saccharine or embarrassing stuff, but doesn't automatically mean that.

I'm more prone to think of things like backtracking or 'reverse' levels to lazily add play time as fluff over cutesy stuff.

 

[aozgolo]

I definitely loved Mass Effect's codex, as well I also enjoyed the bestiary and world commentary in Final Fantasy XII to the point that I distinctly hunted down the required number of enemies to unlock all the extra entries.

I don't necessarily think of any "extra content" as bad. I understand people can get frustrated though if the game has too much content and is too poorly designed. I played an indie MMORPG for a few years called Darkfall Online which had some rather severe game issues and a VERY vocal community who were not happy when they released patches that did things like graphical overhauls or new mounts instead of fix glaring problems (though in their defense, art assets do NOT tie up programming and bug fixing resources for dev studios.)

The Elder Scrolls is well known for it's level of content, and to some people it suffered because of this with so many bugs rearing their heads early on. Despite that though, I don't think anyone would really be happy with "less".

I'm aware there's plenty of gamers out there who don't bother with extra content or being a "completionist" but for myself and many others, those extra things give an added bonus to a game, and help convince a purchase. When I play a Grand Theft Auto title, it sure isn't for the story, in fact if not for huge chunks of the world being behind a story mission gate, I often wouldn't bother with it at all. Rockstar has done quite well with making each new GTA installment have more fluff in it than the last, with their latest entry spawning several robust and notably incomplete "100 things you can do" lists.

Even classic games back in the NES era had their hidden secrets and extra fluff. I remember Kirby's Adventure on NES would even give you visual cues on the level doors to show if you had found all the secrets in it or not.

The Extra fluff is perhaps what I loved the most about Legend of Mana for PS1. If you take away the sidequests, the monster corral, the weapon, armor & instrument crafting, the orchard, the golem building, encyclopedias, etc. then you are left with an admittedly fairly generic action RPG-lite with not much substance to it, but the sheer amount of extra content that so seamlessly integrates itself with the full experience of the game made it a very great experience for me.

 

[skywolfblue]

So long as a little effort is put into it to make it fun rather then tedious.

For example, in Assassin's Creed, all the little collectibles, are usually put in interesting locations. Some are on top of scenic buildings, and require you to jump off an even higher building and parachute down. You get to see the city from angles you didn't before.

For minigames, I'd point to the "Vikings" arcade game in Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, or all the minigames (cards, horseshoes, taming horses, wild game hunting, treasure hunting, etc) from Red Dead Redemption as good examples. They're small, enjoyable bits.
The flip side of this would be Mass Effect 1's salvage skill, "press several buttons on prompt with the most uninteresting pop up ever.", or Bioshock 1's hacking or crafting, terrible, just terribly tedious and not fun at all.

 

[TehCookie]

I love extras but not padding. I love sidequests that flesh out the world or characters and optional minigames that break up the gameplay. I hate it when devs think they have to show you the whole game when you play it, I love discovering hidden easter eggs or collectables. Achievements are the worst kind of extras because they add nothing besides a message in the corner.

When it's fluff like backtracking or grinding where the devs are making the game longer without adding any content I hate it.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

I think that all the fluff is a good thing and the only difference is whether it's done well or not. It doesn't necessarily need to strengthen the core gameplay, in fact sometimes it offers a fun distraction from a game that can otherwise seem monotonous.

I would have loved to see a gambling mini game in Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 & 2. The opportunity was staring them in the face but they didn't take it. It doesn't have anything to do with shooting and the game would have been a lot better for it. They did take the opportunity in Far Cry 3, though it's often used to highlight just how seedy everyone on the island is.

 

[lacktheknack]

Obviously, it depends on the game. I really like Fable's live-like-real-life fluff, I like it more than the actual plotline. Starcraft, however, would lose a lot if it added much fluff.

I should add that one of the more anticipated projects in the works, Star Citizen, has insane amounts of "fluff" in it (nearly all of its stretch goals are fluff), but people seem pretty happy with where it's going.

 

[TheRiddler]

OK, here's the thing. A lot of games that I like have some fluff in them. But fluff's not necessarily good or bad.

Portal, for example, was incredible because it was as streamlined as possible. An incredibly cool mechanic, innovative puzzles and dark, witty humor. That's all it gave us, because anything more would have been unnecessary. Very little fluff had been added, and very little could be. And I loved it for that. Fluff, in these cases, doesn't work.

On the other hand, games GTA V and Skyrim take pride in their fluff, and deliver a ton of it. And it's to their benefit. Fluff really does help here, because these are vast, expansive worlds, and you've got to provide stuff to do.

So I like fluff, but only in games where the fluff is kind of the point.

 

[Nemusus]

Normally I ask the question: Does this help or hinder the core of the game?



But then we can look at Assassin's Creed 2's "treasure hunting". As I'm sure most people remember, you can search the world for treasure chests, all of which have some money in them. All it takes is buying a few maps to locate all of them, and once located, it isn't particularly challenging to reach them. However, they will overload your wallet very quickly, making any sort of management of your money in the game pointless, especially when you consider that other more challenging, more core side-missions will give you money and that you get some money from the villa anyways. In the end, you can have millions of gold with nothing to spend it on. All it is a pointless collecting idea that doesn't help the game at all but may even hinder it in some cases. Granted, you could say that more ideas broke the economics of that game, not just the treasure hunting, but it still felt like a poor way of allowing the player to get money.

I didn't mind that part, poorly designed as it was, mainly because I ended up never looting the damn things anyway. Far, far, FAR worse was the part where they told you, right before the epic confrontation with the evil bad dude, that you had to go back across all the freaking towns and cities to pick up the collectable maps, which, for all anyone knew beforehand, were entirely optional goodies. On the other hand, I liked the chain of sidequests where you got to go around pillaging tombs for keys to the epic unstoppable assassin armor.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Normally I ask the question: Does this help or hinder the core of the game?



But then we can look at Assassin's Creed 2's "treasure hunting". As I'm sure most people remember, you can search the world for treasure chests, all of which have some money in them. All it takes is buying a few maps to locate all of them, and once located, it isn't particularly challenging to reach them. However, they will overload your wallet very quickly, making any sort of management of your money in the game pointless, especially when you consider that other more challenging, more core side-missions will give you money and that you get some money from the villa anyways. In the end, you can have millions of gold with nothing to spend it on. All it is a pointless collecting idea that doesn't help the game at all but may even hinder it in some cases. Granted, you could say that more ideas broke the economics of that game, not just the treasure hunting, but it still felt like a poor way of allowing the player to get money.

I didn't mind that part, poorly designed as it was, mainly because I ended up never looting the damn things anyway. Far, far, FAR worse was the part where they told you, right before the epic confrontation with the evil bad dude, that you had to go back across all the freaking towns and cities to pick up the collectable maps, which, for all anyone knew beforehand, were entirely optional goodies. On the other hand, I liked the chain of sidequests where you got to go around pillaging tombs for keys to the epic unstoppable assassin armor.

I actually got lucky on that because my brother told me beforehand that I needed to find all the maps, so I became obsessed with finding them throughout the game. I think I had them all before the monk stole the piece of eden. If not, I only had one left, and I had a decent idea of which city it was in.

 

[FoolKiller]

Normally In the end, you can have millions of gold with nothing to spend it on.

This has been a blight on gaming economy forever. Unless you have more and more things to buy there is a tipping point from where you have too little money and have to grind, to too much money so you never care.

The worst economy ever is Borderlands. The best equipment is always just a random drop. The money serves no purpose except maybe to buy a better shield immediately.


I hate multiplayer shoehorned in.
I hate multiplayer achievements because it affects multiplayer.
I hate collectibles that serve no purpose. If I have to collect, reward me for it.

 

[Qvar]

I'm resisting the urge to sing the title with "All the single ladies" rythm...

Personally I love all the kind of "fluf". Minigames, collectables (I have to really like the game, tho), easter eggs... Maybe achievements are so cheap and meaningless this days that they've fallen a bit out of favor, yet I still try to get some along the way in the games I care for (see Fallout: New Vegas), or all of them if I just am in love with it (See Skyrim).

Easter eggs must be well placed to not break the inmerssion, but many may be very rewarding and fun.
I like specially minigames that are ingrained into the game lore, such as Caravan and the other casino games in Fallout NV, archery games of OoT... On the other hand games that your character just happen to find laying around with no relationship with the plot have always felt a bit weird to me.

 

[Fireaxe]

Depends on the style of fluff, Deus Ex: Human Revolution had great fluff.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Normally In the end, you can have millions of gold with nothing to spend it on.

This has been a blight on gaming economy forever. Unless you have more and more things to buy there is a tipping point from where you have too little money and have to grind, to too much money so you never care.

The worst economy ever is Borderlands. The best equipment is always just a random drop. The money serves no purpose except maybe to buy a better shield immediately.

There are ways to mitigate the problem, though.

For starters, you can consider when the tipping point comes in relation to the end of the game. If it comes halfway through the game, then the player spends half the game invested in the economy and the other half not caring, and few things are worse than going from caring to not caring. However, if it comes near the end or during some "free play" after the ending, then the relative time the player spends without care is drastically lower. For all you know, it might come at a time where they invested in other things to the point that worrying about the economy would just ruin the mood of that moment. The problem with AC2 is that it comes about a quarter to one-half the way through the game, so most of the game is spent not caring at all about the economy. I didn't play much of Boarderlands, but I understand that it has the same problem, albeit it starts earlier.

Second is to make it clear that the grinding is not necessary. For instance, you could establish in an RPG that having the next best weapon won't really matter, just that it will make the next boss slightly easier, but it's still beatable with your current equipment. At the same time, you could also make the player understand that they can get the item without having to rely on buying it, as they may just come across it in the next dungeon. Of course, always finding it is just as bad, but keeping the player guessing will make them consider buying only the most important items and not worrying about grinding for all of them. Once again, games like AC2 and Boarderlands don't consider this at all, and while no game is perfect at this, I noticed it more in AC2.

Finally, you could just make the economy a brutal part of the game where the player is always just hoping to have enough money. Of course, this really only works in games where management of resources is a key part to the experience. On a less brutal note, you could offer interesting yet very expensive items at points throughout the game that, while not necessary, can destroy the player's wallet if they choose to buy it. If nothing else, it offers an interesting way for players wanting to get re-invested in the economy a nice way of setting themselves back a lot while players who don't want to worry about it can just not buy it, or they can put off buying it until they are ready to set themselves back.

Now, I understand the actual balancing of an economy is much harder than understanding ways to balancing it, but when games like AC2 and Boarderlands blatantly disregard all of that, it does irk me more than other games that at least seem to try. The reason I chose AC2 is that it had very easy features to identify that magnified the problem. Can't speak as much for Boarderlands as, again, I didn't play it that much.

 

[Frankster]

Fluff I like: Expanded gameplay and story options.
Using the xcom 2012 remake as an example since I'm playing its expansion, I felt the vanilla game at its release was far too barebones and needed fluff, which the expansion adds. Now if only they can do the same for the end game...

Mod support, in games like skyrim this is what makes 90% of the game to me, I view the vanilla game as a starter pack to which you must add your own options to before game becomes playable. I view those who play vanilla skyrim like a victorian philantropist might view street urchins at christmas.

Coop. I don't care how poorly implemented, being able to play with a friend online even if its just controlling some npc is a social function I enjoy when it's possible. My fav half life game? The ps2 version with coop campaign xD

Fluff I don't like:
Achievements, they are just pointless and I've grown to despise seeing them pop up for doing inconsequential things or just playing the game (congratz, you finished the tutorial, 20 gamer points!). I sometimes have nightmaric visions of a dystopian future where gaming is accepted as a medium a little too much and peeps become judged based on their gaming score, leading to people playing the game in pointless ways all to increase their epeen so they could be part of the cool gamer kids club.

Less crazily, I'm not too fond of nickle diming DLC where you gotta buy individual weapons or scenarios, I just want to buy the game in 1 complete package, not buy something then realize I'm missing a lot of pieces.