Extra Punctuation: Pokemon 100 Percenters Are Mad

[Ubermetalhed]

I 100 percented Final Fantasy 10.

Thing is I can't remember if I enjoyed doing so, I guess I must have blanked the trauma from my memory.

Oh God, you did the lightning dodging minigame and everything? You have my apologies.

Yeh I did. I remember coming home one day having not played on it for a few months, knocking on the ps2 and just going into some kind of lightning dodging trance.

What scares me is the fact I did all the blitzball stuff and collected 10 of every monster in the game for the monster arena and I don't remember doing any of it.

 

[Mr Binary]

I don't understand how some people can stand leaving things un-finished though. I mean, I just recently finished collecting all of the current Pokemon. I understand Yahtzee's point though, it does kind of feel like work. I however, like see the percent rise as I complete these things, that is how I get some fun out of it. Not to mention you feel proud when you tell someone you complete everything possible. Until they say it was a waste of time and walk away that is, haha. Even after that though, you have to collect the right amount of IVs, EVs and Natures for each Pokemon.

 

[Lord_Seth]

I will never understand 100%ers, but you do bring up a valid point that we are not rewarding these people for tasks they'll end up doing anyway. People who madly play your game the most obsessively should get the rewards for it, right? A game like Donkey Kong 64 would give you special and amusing endings and extras for finding every single thing the game had to offer. Why doesn't Pokemon offer some kind of fourth wall breaking rave party where you hang out with the biggest socialites in town, all named after the developers, and give them a good ass kicking for allowing them to waste precious time you could be spending treating a girl, nurturing your sick mother, or playing a better game? Give them something worthwhile at least.

One issue with rewards for 100% completion is that you don't want to make them too good or it'll frustrate all the people who don't want to manage it. Sonic Adventure 2 had it about right, I think...A-ranking all of the missions (and completing a few other things) would allow you to play a cool 3D version of the first level of the first Sonic game. Nothing too amazing, but still fun and a reward. Of course, it helped that for the most part I thought getting all the medals was fun.

The only games I think I really 100%'d were Banjo-Kazooie (because that got you some power-ups), Donkey Kong Country 2&3 (because without doing that you couldn't fight the real final boss), and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (because of the above reason, plus it was kinda cool).

Also, as others have pointed out, Pokemon's phased out the "Gotta Catch Em All" portion. Some people might still be trying for it, but they've been stressing that progressively less.

 

[DTWolfwood]

id be a 100percenter convert if said solution was in place. Yes for sure.

So far im trying to get all the Grand Campaign Steam Achievements for Shogun 2. Not sure y, but im still having fun doing it.

p.s. Anyone have gotten Legendary Force Achievement yet? Cause i actually had a force composed solely of Heroes and my General winning 3 different battles and it didn't give me the achievement

 

[mrdude2010]

i got the 202 pokemon from ruby and that alone took me over 100 hours, i'd rather not repeat the experience. to be fair, i did obsessively complete side quests in KOTOR and Fallout, but htat was because i was interested in hearing the story involved with that quest

 

[radioactive lemur]

I don't understand why Yahtzee thinks football is the basis, or even a significant part of UK culture. The UK has only 2 football teams and both suck. They would get destroyed by even the crappiest American college team. I mean seriously, if your entire culture is based around these guys, it`s a pretty shitty culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Monarchs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Claymores

 

[dexeron]

The Gold Skultullas quest was obnoxious, and I never did finish it. Same for the flags/feathers in the Assasain's Creed titles. Some games make getting 100% fun, and give great rewards. For others, it's just too much work.

I tolerate Pokemon because beyond it's absurdity and 100%ishness, it's always been (at its core) a surprisingly solid entry-level JRPG. It's a game that allows younger children to get into the mechanic of turn-based role playing without the steep learning curve of the better titles in the genre. The idea of having a massive collection of people, of whom you can only select 6 at a time, is just like Suikoden, and after starting on the Pokemon series, I'm proud to say I got my son into the first Suikoden on the PS2, and he loved it (especially the home base/castle mechanic.) He still plays Pokemon games, but as an RPG, to get to the end of the game and beat it (meaning the final champion) rather than to get 100%.

And I have to admit, the damn Poke-critters are just plain cute. I know I shouldn't like them, but I CAN'T HELP IT. I like Pikachu, ok? Admitting I have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery, right? Right?

 

[LadyMint]

"And that's why Pokemon is evil. Not only is it shameless in its exploitation of mad people, but instead of apologizing, they add another 150 things for them to collect every few years. That's like watching an insane man trying to count the grains of sand on a beach, and instead of picking him up and taking him to a place where he can be safe and warm, you empty another truckful of sand on his head and tell him he missed a spot."


Truer words were never spoken and this is exactly why I stopped playing Pokemon. I'm a 100 Percenter who loves going for every last piece of something-or-other in a game. As a young gamer it was terrible, because I would obsess over every last incredibly difficult achievement. Now that I'm older I do a better job of determining if something is really worth it, but it took me a while to get to that point. Some games just plain taunt you with their shiny badges of completion, and I will readily admit that I am obsessive-compulsive about getting those shiny virtual badges of nothingness.

I dunno if Legend of Zelda should be lumped in the same category as Pokemon in this, though. Although LoZ's 100% completion is optional, it's never been insanely improbable to obtain like it is in Pokemon or some of the games with ridiculous achievements. LoZ games don't close the window of opportunity on getting their optional upgrades, even if it means going back through a dungeon to snatch a heartpiece or golden bug you missed the first time around. You don't have to wait an entire real-life year for a heartpiece to show up, like the seasonal items in games such as WoW or Animal Crossing. I can get LoZ's extra stuff in the course of normal gameplay instead of setting aside time for it. As far as my personal obsessive-compulsive collecting goes, the LoZ series feeds it much more reasonably than other games in my collection.

 

[blindthrall]

Yahtzee made a Preacher reference. I'll admit to hundred-percenting in Red Dead Redemption and Vice City, just because it's a challenge to do that in a Rockstar game. I fucking hate that knife-pokey finger game in RDR.

 

[theriddlen]

I've never understood the fascination with Pokemon and Mario. For me, these are two overrated, overused, long time dead franchises that Nintendo has been using to milk their customers.

 

[ark123]

One should be more careful of one's usage of the word "mad". Mad is usually a word associated with schizophrenics and psychotics in general. Obsessive people are not mad, they're ill.

 

[xqxm]

Is Extra Punctuation currently adhering to a minimum quota of homosexuality in the articles?

You feel offended?

Why would i? Everyone has a right to write what they want.

I was just wondering, since there seems to be a lot of references to fudge-packing procedure lately.

 

[xdiesp]

Is Extra Punctuation currently adhering to a minimum quota of homosexuality in the articles?

You feel offended?

Why would i? Everyone has a right to write what they want.

I was just wondering, since there seems to be a lot of references to fudge-packing procedure lately.

Yahtzee is british, remember.

 

[Captain Booyah]

WE'RE ALL MAD HERE! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

More OT: Whilst I agree that catching every single Pokemon in existence is excessive (I mean, there's over six hundred of the buggers? What?), I also have to confess that I am a shameless achievement whore: and even worse, I was one of the saddos that went out of their way specifically to collect every single flag in AssCreed, simply for a bit of a blip and a message on my screen at the end. Funnily enough, I don't recall enjoying one minute of it.

So -- to a degree -- I am a 100%-er, and this article pretty much nailed it. There is indeed a kind of inexplicable urge to just...complete everything, fun or not. At least I admit to needing a good, hard slap across the face for ever pandering to the AssCreed thing, though. That mechanic really should fuck right off and never return.

Ever.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I have a lot of games that I totally love, but not a single one of them will I actually go out of my way to get something after I've already beaten the game.

I actually felt ripped-off after having beaten Super Mario Galaxy just because I'd already beaten Bowser's last form and only got like half of the stars in the game. But I felt no incentive to keep playing 'cause I'd already beaten the last boss.

My problem is, though, that I always try to collect everything but then I stop once I beat the game or shortly after I beat the game and never look back.

Lol. This is on it's 8th page now, so there's a chance this has been pointed out before. (Perhaps even several times.)

The 'reward' for getting 120 stars in SMG is... Being able to play through the whole thing all over again as luigi, from the very beginning.

And, what's the reward for 120 stars collected twice? The opportunity to get star 121, which gives you two photos, one for getting it as luigi, one for getting it as mario.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is perhaps an even bigger insult, considering the 'reward' for getting all 242 stars is a photo... of 242 stars on a black background. >_<

 

[deleted+75193]

DELETED

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

"Zelda Wind Waker had a curious example. Its psychotic 100-percenter quest was to take a photo of every character, monster and boss in the game and take them to a guy who makes them into figurines. Now, the camera you had could only store three photos at a time, and the figurine guy was on an isolated island in a game notorious for its lengthy travel time. On top of that, some characters, especially bosses, would offer extremely few opportunities to take a happy snap, and you'd only know if the photo you took was actually usable once you gave it to the guy."

Yahtzee you are correct
i played and beat wind waker but never cared to do that quest but i did every thing else other then the tringle thing that require a wire to connect to a game boy. if ever replay it i will never search every island again

when ever i play Pokemon i never care to catch them all since the goal seem stupid

in the end am 100% completionist at times as long as the that thing i am going is not a pain in ass to do and if i like the game.
if it a pain in the ass to do i am more of a 90% completionist

 

[Hunter15]

i like the game and collecting the little bastards but even im not that stupid to waste my life collecting bits of data i just stuck with my darkari cause hes awesome and cool and demonic looking

 

[NeoShinGundam]

I personally have a lot of problem with this. Once I start a game, I HAVE to finish it so completely that there's literally nothing left I could do with it. Partly it's out of curiosity "If I stop now, how can I know what I've missed seeing?" Partly it is out of OCD. I usually can't stop until I own every mobile suit in a Gundam game, or finished every sidequest in an RPG (I'm a total XP-whore).

This is one of the major reasons I've been rethinking my game purchases and pruning down my library to only the games I know I'll enjoy for all 50/60/100+ hours.