Reverse Progression

[Guitarmasterx7]

So films and shows generally don't do this, or maybe it only pisses me off when it's in a videogame because I feel like it directly wastes my time, but I hate when games have me getting farther and farther away from my goal as I put time into achieving it.

For example, the game tells me I need to kill a dragon, but first I need some special sword. So I go to the only blacksmith who can forge it and he needs a certain kind of rare ore.

An hour later I find myself negotiating a deed so a man will give me a horse to return to the child he stole it from so she will tell me who knows where the key to the dungeon is so I can get the key so I can go to the dungeon so I can get the magic scepter so I can open the gate to the other dimension so I can get the otherworldly ore to bring to the blacksmith so he can make me the sword so that I can finally kill the dragon.

Does this not bother people enough to complain about it? When I put work into moving forward and then find myself having to go one step back from where I am I usually feel discouraged and end up turning off the game until later when I have the patience to deal with it.

 

[BrotherRool]

This bothers me so much! The guys from South Park talked about writing stories and using 'but' instead of 'and' and 'then'. So the kids want to save the supermarket but an evil old lady casts a spell on them which they try to remove but...

And it's great for films and books and TV but it is one of the greatest sins in a gaming story. It makes everything feel like padding. Generally in a game you can't be making the player do something they don't want to do without great ire, you've got to lead them into it, not set up a bajillion plot gates.

It really puts me off games (I mean plot gate is a negative word). I almost didn't get past the first chapter of Witcher 1 because they have a ridiculous amount of plot gates all stacking on top of each other.

Shamus Young once wrote how irritating it was to have a two hour quest in Neverwinter Nights 2, just to get through a door.
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=945


Instead of plots gates, you need constant progress. You enter town and you need to find information on what to do next. You track down an informant and he gives you information which you use to realise that X is causing problems for you, so you take X out and he gives you a lead to the next step...

The trick is you should have a long term goal, and then everything else your immediate goal is the next step which leads you onto something else. You can't have a situation where you've got a medium term goal and you have to expend huge amounts of effort to get past it

 

[DoPo]

Does this not bother people enough to complain about it?

People have been complaining for so long they started having a laugh about it. And they'd been doing it for so long, that the jokes are...well, they are still funny, but they've been around for a long time. It's annoying but it's also padding out time, so...dunno. Doesn't break even but it does have its pros and cons.

 

[scorptatious]

I remember watching an LP of a game, I believe it was called Lufia 2, there was this one segment where you needed to help these guys build a bridge, but you needed certain materials. After you got those materials, the guy building the bridge asks you to go up to a higher ledge, which is only accessible by going out, and then around the island and through another part of the dungeon to get to just to watch him do his work and make sure he doesn't mess up.

I think I may have missed a few details, but that was pretty much the gist of it. And I was baffled by how contrived that part of the game was.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

Sandbox games do this a lot. It helps create some kind of linearity within a game designed to be open ended. It's only annoying if the gameplay is annoying IMO.

 

[Lazy]

The Witcher does this a lot, and it gets pretty irritating at times. A quest to get information on a shadowy organization quickly becomes an out of control spiral of tangentially related quests you need to complete in order to make any progress and it gets very difficult to keep track of.

These sorts of plot gates tend to make me forget what I was even trying to do in the first place, and that absolutely kills a game's story for me. Once I lose sight of the ultimate goal, my interest follows suit.