The Collectable Doodad Commandments

[Delock]

I played Enslaved and Uncharted 2 both recently, and had similar problems in each dealing with collectibles, though Uncharted 2 was kind enough not to point out that I'd missed one by making it too shiny to miss. Instead, it just always gave me this feeling that I'd missed something if I went too long without picking up something shiny on the ground. Biggest offender of number 4 however is Demon's Souls. FUCK YOU GARGOYLES! I WANT THAT DAMN ITEM BEHIND THE ALTAR! IT'S RIGHT THERE! WHY THE HELL CAN'T I PICK IT UP JUST BECAUSE I KILLED THE BOSS?!

 

[SturmDolch]

...Yes? There's demos and it's out....

Yeah, but none of the comments had the name yet they still talked about playing it :3

Looks like it's called Enslaved... Never heard of it till now, but I have been living under a rock (made of WoW, midterms, WoW, and mountains of homework. And WoW.) for the last bit.

 

[The Wooster]

Remember gentlemen, if you want to enter the competition you need to PM an entry along with a picture.

SO far we have... one entry. Man, what's the world coming to when I can't give free shit away?

 

[mjc0961]

Biggest offender of number 4 however is Demon's Souls. FUCK YOU GARGOYLES! I WANT THAT DAMN ITEM BEHIND THE ALTAR! IT'S RIGHT THERE! WHY THE HELL CAN'T I PICK IT UP JUST BECAUSE I KILLED THE BOSS?!

Uhm, you can still get that after you kill the boss. Apparently you just walk up slowly so that you activate the "pick up item" thing before you activate the gargoyles.

As for this comic, it should be required reading for all game developers. Stop being assholes with the doodads!

 

[Eric the Orange]

Hahaha. Nope. Nice try. Been to art school, no matter how you try, your art means more to you than money.

You know what happens when you assume right, it makes an ass out of you and me. But mostly you.

 

[justnotcricket]

COMMANDMENT 4. Oh, how this pissed me off when it happened. The worst part was, there was a little bit of my brain trying to tell me that it was going to happen, and I just kept exploring in the one direction, didn't I? Just had to go that little bit further, didn't I?

Then BAM! Checkpoint and I can't go back and collect the shinies. Rrrr..

Otherwise not a bad game, although the fights are a bit repetitive, especially the Dog ones.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

So glad to see that you ignored those red herrings of character development (a decent try at it, at least), platforming fun, and an interesting setting to focus on the real meat of the matter, POINTS! I look forward to you telling me how terrible New Vegas was because you missed a Nuka Cola and didn't collect all forty-thousand of them.

Welcome to the essence of gaming satire! This isn't a review, this is about stuff getting in the way of collecting doodads - with funny pictures! Don't worry. I'm sure lots of people besides you took this completely seriously.

It was a statememt of fact. The fact of the matter is, you're going to ***** about the next strip too. And the one after that. And the one after that. And I am looking forward to it, because your page views = money for me. I don't feed trolls. They feed me.

He took a joke the wrong way, I guess it's time to chew him out! He's not a troll dude. He's just a moron.

 

[GeorgW]

I discovered this comic thanks to the halloween promo, and it's great, Thanks! Also:

I look forward to you telling me how terrible New Vegas was because you missed a Nuka Cola and didn't collect all forty-thousand of them.

That's great! And I look forward to you telling me what I should make strips about.

We are going to have to work on that 'things you don't care about = things no one cares about' attitude though.

Awwwww. Punkins awtist gots his feelins huwt? Well, that's fine, mommy fanwank make it awwww better. Gosh, makes me miss art classes. If you put your work in a media that allows for instant feedback, endeavor to grow a thicker skin, and for christ's sake, don't feed the trolls. Gah.

It was a statememt of fact. The fact of the matter is, you're going to ***** about the next strip too. And the one after that. And the one after that. And I am looking forward to it, because your page views = money for me. I don't feed trolls. They feed me.

PWN

 

[Chris 'Chaos' Voce]

That ***** is soooooooo asking for it

 

[moshineko]

Sigh. No, I left art school at got a real job. Now I make $25-30/hr for talking to people

You make it sound like your job is pathetic, haha! It sounds like you're saying "i finally got a real job, i get paid for doing nothing!" If you wanna make your job sound awesome, you gotta say something like... "i make other people's life easier" or "help the less fortunate".

"real job" and "just talking to people" is kinda a contradiction, haha!

Only thing youre making it sound like is "i failed art school, i got a pathetic job and now i spend my time harrassing other successful artists." or are you just pissed "critical miss" won over your attempt at getting a comic on the escapist?

*yawn*
If you feel that "just talking to people" isn't a real job, you obviously passed over the word "interpreter" in the dictionary. If the word is too big for you, no doubt mommy will help you with it. And if talking to people that way doesn't make their lives easier, it's no-one's fault but their own.

And if you count "success" as making money off art, I feel quite sorry for you. The true pride of art is getting others to think, so the comic was successful as art. And sure I "failed" art school if realizing that paying $10k a year to do what I could do at a local gallery is failing. If so, I'm glad I failed, means I get to eat instead.

And no, I know damn well I can't get a comic going. Inspiration isn't a weekly thing for me, it hits every once in a while.

Also, can I say how tickled I am by everyone getting so pissed that I don't find this damn thing funny. It's not satire, satire mocks foolishness or folly through the use of irony and sarcasm. This comic was a complaint. I don't find complaints funny unless they are also insightful. I still maintain there was no damn reason to find all the little glowy bits in the game, and have yet to see anyone tell me different.

So, if I make a point, and no-one can come back with a rational rebuttal, I've somehow trolled and owned myself? Goddamn, I love the internet. It's like reality TV I can turn on any time I want.

 

[taltamir]

Any developer that violates any of these rules should be set of fire!

PS. is this referencing a specific game or just doodas in general? i can apply this to most games ever made... but #4 and 5 seem to be... specific...

 

[Wolcik]

Why not just drop the collecting phase all togheter? Does all games have to be the same?

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I'm a notorious loot hound. DO NOT PLAY BORDERLANDS WITH ME. Basically, if they drop when they die, it's in my inventory in seconds. Don't even know what it is. Just grabbing.

I think if we played, one of use would end up in jail for murder! I am like that too! I once played Baulders gate Dark Alliance 2 with a mate who was the same as well! That ended in near fisticuffs! Alas, we do not play games with non-shared loot anymore! I'm the same on borderlands, the other character, whoever is playing it, is off somewhere killing and playing the story, where as I am off kicking every pile of rocks, and opening every toilet! I have max ammo for all my weapons by the time I get into town at the start! I always play as the gils, and use her speed to run directly towards incoming fire in order to collect loot!

 

[SaberSpellSword]

I don't mind collectibles when they're bound to something worthwhile in game. So long as you only get an achievement for finding them all, or some bonus artwork etc then I'm good. It's when the game places an emphasis on finding them in order to gain some kind of experience point or get new loot.

Examples: Flag collecting in Assassins Creed was no problem, as I didn't miss anything by not doing it. Psychonauts, on the other hand, could fuck right off when that introduced 3/4 different things to search for, some of which require level-replaying upon receiving abilities later in the game. The only part of Prince of Persia 2008 that I didn't like was the need to replay a level collecting light-orbs so that you could unlock the next section. That was at least made ok because the game was fun to play and so damn beautiful. Plus the level changes look entirely when you complete it so replaying it to get the orbs isn't too stressing.

I've got to disagree with your idea of a worthwhile reward. when all you have to get out of it is an achievement, collecting doodads just feels pointless. I don't think having your upgrades system based on collecting doodads is the best way to go though since there are only a finite number of collectables in the game and if you don't collect them ALL then you don't get the chance to buy all the upgrades (unless if it's the developers intention for you to not be able to afford EVERY upgrade like Deus Ex: Human Revolution so that you end up with a more specialised character at the end of it. But Enslaved didn't have the right sort of upgrades for that. You need upgrades that can drastically change gameplay for that to work).

My favorite doodad rewards are either new weapons/items/costumes (particularly wacky/extra cool ones) to play with or new side missions/levels (like in AC:Revelations) that you can't get any other way other than collecting doodads.

They have to give you rewards for every so many doodads though. If you only get the reward after collecting ALL the doodads, by the time you've hit the 80%-90% collected mark things start getting really hard and frustrating and then if you manage to get to 99/100 doodads collected, it becomes almost impossible to find that last one hidden away in a nook or cranny somewhere when you have the whole entire city to search for it. However, if you don't find that last doodad, then all those hours you spent searching are wasted. It just doesn't feel worth the effort no matter how awesome the reward is for finding them.
Assassins Creed 1 only gave you an achievement and only if you collected ALL the flags in each area. I'm still stuck on 19/20 flags in Masayaf, I just gave up.

So two more commandments (that weren't necessarily in Enslaved):

THOU SHALT NOT FORCE THE PLAYER TO COLLECT EVERY DOODAD FOR DOODAD REWARDS

THOU SHALT NOT ONLY GIVE ACHIEVEMENTS/TROPHIES AS DOODAD REWARDS

 

[Therumancer]

Well, my basic opinion is that "Doodads" which I like to think of as "Macguffins" were developed as a way of encouraging people to explore the nooks and crannies of a map that deveopers built, but players might not otherwise find or see if they aren't looking for them.

The thing is that after all this time I would think someone would have come up with something a bit less annoying, especially seeing as it seems less like the doodads are set up to encourage people to play tourist, so much as to annoy people trying to get 100% as it seems they are increasingly being placed in obtuse fashions to be annoying more than anything.

I mean honestly. do we really need a collectible in a cave behind a tree off the side of a river that can only be reached with a jet-cycle? (Yes Saint's Row 3, I'm talking about you).

 

[OtherSideofSky]

I didn't notice because I was too busy fuming about the degree to which they scrapped everything good about the Journey to the West story in favor of highly inconsistent characters, neither of whom was a tenth as entertaining as the actual Sun Wukong, the monkey king.

 

[-|-]

Must check thread dates..

 

[OtherSideofSky]

That stuff was bad, but the biggest thing wrong with Enslaved is its ability to take the magical and fantastic and transform it into the generic and expected. I've never seen anyone manage to suck the fun out of something so completely as they did with Journey to the West (I had a better time slogging through the outdated Chinese of the original text, for fuck's sake).

Also, I can't believe anyone thought making Xuanzang a woman was progressive. Xuanzang breaks down into tears at the first sign of trouble, constantly berates the people who help him, never does anything useful, constantly gets kidnapped (sometimes by people who want to rape him), and never shuts up about the importance of maintaining his virginity.