"Faffing About" Creed...

[Superior Mind]

A lot of "faffing about" seems to be added to increase gameplay time rather than add to it's quality or content. I consider the Big Daddy section in Bioshock in the time after the twist revelation and before the final fight to be simply gameplay lengthening schite. It's been a while since I played it but why did we have to babysit the Little Sisters again? Why did we even need to be grotesquely twisted into becoming a Big Daddy anyway, I know the idea of getting that big dril was tempting but we didn't even get that. I can forgive it for the "oh no a roof's collapsed" gameplay but not for the unneccesary "Become a Big Daddy" bit.

Out of all I've played Assassin's Creed still takes the prize for faffing about. The discovery quests were okay but repeditive and at times nonsensicle, the rescuing of civillians was fun enough but the scaling of those fucking towers and "Eagle Eye"ing it before leaping down again... fucking annoying. And for some of those climbs it took fucking ages too.

 

[GuerrillaClock]

Normally, if someone asks me to get something, I go to that location, pick up the item and give it to them. It's simple, and it's great in real life. But who wants to do that in a game? I know I don't. Faffing about, as you put it, can be immensely satisfying when done right, as in Metroid Prime or Bioshock, where the atmosphere and structure is designed to make you sweat, and trhen jump for joy when you finally achieve your goals.

 

[duchaked]

Despite the title, this thread has little to nothing to do with the game Assassin's Creed. It has to do with a much deeper issue, one that haunts gaming itself.

Have you ever felt that a lot of games are making us do a lot of "faffing about" to advance the story/plot/or game itself? That is to say, the characters in game make you go here, then you hear part of the story, then go bak there, then hear more story, then go somewhere else to finally get the original item/etc. you were trying to get in the first place. Sometimes the characters make you go across town or even to different towns if they're feeling really vindictive, when really, this all could've been solved by talking to 1, maybe 2 people at most.

Is this really a good gameplay mechanic? Is it good for story telling? Or is it just a game-lengthening scheme? I wanna hear thoughts and I want some examples of games that do this if you can.

Off the top of my head, Legend of Zelda games seem to be the prime target for my abuse.

Anyone else?

The legend of Zelda is a great example of kind of a lack of plot, doing dungeon upon dungeon to ultimately do what? Save the princess!
But, let's face it... The Zelda formula's wearing a bit thin.
I'm not looking forward to the next one on DS, and Twilight Princess bored me (granted I've only gotten like 10 hours into it, but if I'm not enjoying it by now, maybe I'm not going to?)
I understand that TP has received praise from alot of fans, I'm not saying it's a bad game.
I think what I'm trying to say in this extremely drawn out convoluded post is, I'm sick of Zelda games.
I never bothered finishing Phantom Hourglass. Got near the end and just got bored.
Wasn't a fan of the touch only configuration of the game, and the drawing a circle to roll was really tedious and annoying.
I'm just over Zelda.

so far I've only played OoT and WW (need to try TP) so I guess as long as I don't dive into the handheld stuff it shouldn't get old for a while...but that's just me I guess
but I agree that the dungeon formula has gotten to me several times (like taking a 8 month break from WW cuz the next dungeon looked like a pain...)

 

[Sven und EIN HUND]

Basically every sandbox game. And also sin's creed (which some, but not me, would consider as a sandbox game). Go to this city, assassinate this man after talking to x informers and saving x civilians from x amount of guards. Do the same thing again. Go back into the real world as Desmond. Do the whole thing again, this time in a different city assassinating a different man.................................................................... In short = :S

 

[Kelbear]

A sidequest is a perfectly fine way to extend the life of a game. It broadens the game's world. However, the sidequest needs to be impactful, not just screwing around looking for a cat in a tree. In fallout 3, you could end up nuking a city off the face of the world. That's an interesting sidequest to explore, it "mattered" within the context of the game.

But "collect 20 _______" is just a waste of time. A time-sink tool.

 

[Octorok]

I was about to mention Fallout 3, which does this a bit in quite a few quests, then I backtracked. It makes sense. Why should anyone in this destroyed world give away information so valuable that they could get something done for it? At the start of the Oblivion main quest there is a shit ton of this. "Go there, then here, then save us, then talk to that dude over there." "You.. you serious? He's right there you know." "Yes." "I see."

But instead of being insane, in Fallout it would make sense that people would try and get something off you, as you have the means that other's do not. You can't pay Talon Company to fetch your violin with music.

Although that reminds me of something - why in God's name do I have to do these quests? Blackhawk does not exist until I give her some music paper? Bullcrap. I know it would make the game easier and shorter if you could get the good loot from the start of the quest, but it makes no sense.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

I don't mind some faffing about, so long as while you are doing it the game keeps you on your toes and makes everything just feel awesome - basically, you're always doing something, with a minimum of repetition.

 

[KeyMaster45]

Despite the title, this thread has little to nothing to do with the game Assassin's Creed. It has to do with a much deeper issue, one that haunts gaming itself.

Have you ever felt that a lot of games are making us do a lot of "faffing about" to advance the story/plot/or game itself? That is to say, the characters in game make you go here, then you hear part of the story, then go bak there, then hear more story, then go somewhere else to finally get the original item/etc. you were trying to get in the first place. Sometimes the characters make you go across town or even to different towns if they're feeling really vindictive, when really, this all could've been solved by talking to 1, maybe 2 people at most.

Is this really a good gameplay mechanic? Is it good for story telling? Or is it just a game-lengthening scheme? I wanna hear thoughts and I want some examples of games that do this if you can.

Off the top of my head, Legend of Zelda games seem to be the prime target for my abuse.

Anyone else?

Ah the infamous "travel 10 miles to gain progress of 10 feet" conundrum. Despite God of War's linear gameplay they pulled off the greatest example of this in GoW2.

You get to a point where there's this wall that spits fire and a ledge you need to cross, now naturally you'd only notice this if you did some exploring before you marched off into to those very scary looking marshes they point you towards. Long story short, 5 or 12 puzzles, countless zombies, 3 mini bosses, and 2 actual bosses later you've got the golden fleece. Oh but ho ho whats this? A mysterious spiral stair case that descends from the ceiling, I wonder where it goes? Holy U-turns Batman! We're right back where we started at this wall which spits fire!

That's right that lovely jaunt through swampy hell was for the sole purpose of snagging the golden fleece to break down a single wall so you could advance further. Not that I didn't have fun on that merry jaunt, but it does somewhat lessen the epic-ness of your troubles to think that it was all for the fleece.

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

Saints Row 2 encouraged you to faff about. That's why it's such a great game. You actually get told how well you faffed about, how long you faffed about for, and get achievements for it. What more could you want?

 

[high_castle]

The thing is, games aren't literature. They're a completely different medium. And while it might not make sense in a book or even a film for there to be so much "faffing about" in order to advance the plot, a game actually wants you to play it. Which means there needs to be some excuse for all the wandering and killing you're going to do.

The best games will at least try to make it plausible for you to be doing so much wandering and marauding. Mass Effect, for instance, had you trying to collect evidence against Saren, and then trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together to figure out his next move. That being the main storyline, of course. All the side quests mostly exist as faffing about, with your reasons for pursuing them being you either have a messiah complex and need to help everyone, or you're a greedy bastard who will do anything for money. (I say this in jest; I loved the game, but there really isn't a ton of justification for pursuing every single side quest when you could better spend your time saving the galaxy).

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

"faffing about" is good, as long as it feels as if it makes a diffrence and isn't just a way to make you do more repetitive actions in order to squeeze out more playing time. Morrowind has some of these moments where you just go "No, I am not going to do this quest tonight" simply because someone in Ebonheart (South western tip) tells you to talk to someone in Khuul (northern tip) who in turns asks you to retrieve something from a cave near the Shrine of Azura (south eastern tip) and then go back to Khuul with the item. To get your reward, go back to Ebonheart. That is a good example of pointless "faffing around". But compare to Baldur's Gate II, where it somewhat made sense and made it feel important. You spent a lot of time in BG2 backtracking, exploring areas that were only nominally tied to the quest at hand (Umar Hills, Windspear Hills) but drew you into the atmosphere. That is good "faffing", beacuse it makes sense and creates an atmosphere.

It isn't always bad. But lazy inclusion of it into games makes it bad.

 

[Daedalus1942]

The legend of Zelda is a great example of kind of a lack of plot, doing dungeon upon dungeon to ultimately do what? Save the princess!
But, let's face it... The Zelda formula's wearing a bit thin.
I'm not looking forward to the next one on DS, and Twilight Princess bored me (granted I've only gotten like 10 hours into it, but if I'm not enjoying it by now, maybe I'm not going to?)
I understand that TP has received praise from alot of fans, I'm not saying it's a bad game.
I think what I'm trying to say in this extremely drawn out convoluded post is, I'm sick of Zelda games.
I never bothered finishing Phantom Hourglass. Got near the end and just got bored.
Wasn't a fan of the touch only configuration of the game, and the drawing a circle to roll was really tedious and annoying.
I'm just over Zelda.

I feel much the same about the (for the most part) FPS formula. So the plot may be different, it doesn't change the fact you're just killing enemies and trying to complete mission objectives and its usually the same kind of objectives. Kill this, destroy that, protect this, rescue that.

Mind you, I get the same feeling with many of the genres these days. 3D platforming has all but died out (excluding the likes of Mario of course), RTS games don't really feel as though they're evolving to me. I just have to hope that RPGs and puzzle games will get better and more varied or I may stop buying new games altogether.

I wish more games like little big planet would be created. Platforming in 3d doesn't work (unless it's got good camera angles).

 

[SquirrelPants]

Saints Row 2 kind of annoys me in that it requires you to do all sorts of driving tricks and killing people in spectacular ways and...eurgh. You have to do all that to advance the story, which is okay, I guess, but if people want to do that kind of stuff, they're gonna do it. Sometimes I just want to play a goddamn story.

 

[CK76]

I often electively faff about in AC type titles. I do get bugged a bit when it is forced on me excessively to faff.

Reading that...I feel sort of dirty.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Despite the title, this thread has little to nothing to do with the game Assassin's Creed. It has to do with a much deeper issue, one that haunts gaming itself.

Have you ever felt that a lot of games are making us do a lot of "faffing about" to advance the story/plot/or game itself? That is to say, the characters in game make you go here, then you hear part of the story, then go bak there, then hear more story, then go somewhere else to finally get the original item/etc. you were trying to get in the first place. Sometimes the characters make you go across town or even to different towns if they're feeling really vindictive, when really, this all could've been solved by talking to 1, maybe 2 people at most.

Is this really a good gameplay mechanic? Is it good for story telling? Or is it just a game-lengthening scheme? I wanna hear thoughts and I want some examples of games that do this if you can.

Off the top of my head, Legend of Zelda games seem to be the prime target for my abuse.

Anyone else?

A lot of that "faffing about" is usually... you know... the gameplay part of the game. The reason Yahtzee was making fun of Assassin's Creed is because it's a game called "Assassin" where your character is an Assassin, yet there's very little "assassinating" to be done.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

depends if the faffing about is fun or not. It usually does nothing for the story r whatever, but if it's fun I couldn't give a shit less.

 

[Doc Shaftoe]

One of the more recent games that had some faffing about segments was Batman: Arkham Asylum. But I think that the faffing bit was well done, because NOT ONLY did you get achievements for it, you also got a story bit for it, AND you got to do it as Batman, which is just awesome.

One of the other games where this was (sort of) done well is ODST. The faffing part of "go-here do-this" is central to the story, although I wish it was more of a "go-find-the-evidence-yourself-kiddo" type thing instead of following waypoints. Then again, it IS a Halo game.

One of the games that suffered massively from this was, I think, FarCry 2. The ONLY thing you did in that game was kill people. That's it. And you had to go BACK AND FORTH AND BACK AND FORTH AND BACK AND FORTH all the time. I never even managed to beat that game it was so boring.

I'm still looking forward to Assassin's Creed II, even if it IS probably going to be "Faffing about in Renaissance Italy Creed"

 

[tsb247]

Sounds like World of Warcraft [...] the game in itself is the greatest grindfest since the invention of the pepper mill.

I LOVE that analogy! It's so true!

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Sounds like World of Warcraft [...] the game in itself is the greatest grindfest since the invention of the pepper mill.

I LOVE that analogy! It's so true!

Ignorance is bliss, as they say. WoW is renowned for being one of the LEAST grind-heavy MMOs out there.

 

[PrinceoN]

Despite the title, this thread has little to nothing to do with the game Assassin's Creed. It has to do with a much deeper issue, one that haunts gaming itself.

Have you ever felt that a lot of games are making us do a lot of "faffing about" to advance the story/plot/or game itself? That is to say, the characters in game make you go here, then you hear part of the story, then go bak there, then hear more story, then go somewhere else to finally get the original item/etc. you were trying to get in the first place. Sometimes the characters make you go across town or even to different towns if they're feeling really vindictive, when really, this all could've been solved by talking to 1, maybe 2 people at most.

Is this really a good gameplay mechanic? Is it good for story telling? Or is it just a game-lengthening scheme? I wanna hear thoughts and I want some examples of games that do this if you can.

Off the top of my head, Legend of Zelda games seem to be the prime target for my abuse.

Anyone else?

A lot of that "faffing about" is usually... you know... the gameplay part of the game. The reason Yahtzee was making fun of Assassin's Creed is because it's a game called "Assassin" where your character is an Assassin, yet there's very little "assassinating" to be done.

its ok if the faffing about enhances gameplay, say in things like BioShock or something like that, where yes, the game requires you to do more things that you shouldnt have had to do anyway, but in making you do extra things, you get to kill splicers and gain plasmids/weapons/upgrades along the way. im against faffing in games like LoZ, where a lot of it is just going from town to town sometimes in search of strange artifacts with little to no meaning in the story other than "the character asked for it, so go get it. cause theyre not ganna get it themselves." i wasnt really making fun of AC