The Magic Number

[squid5580]

When dealing with collectibles or forced kills (kill X many of this specific whatever) what is the "magic number". It can't be to low since it will be to easy and it can't be to high since it just gets boring (and in the case of SpiderMan Web of Shadows they just clutter the screen). So what is your magic number. An average of what developers should shoot for when putting in collectibles.

 

[Kuchinawa212]

Hmm 3

hit the bad guy 3 times to kill him

find all 3 peices to make the part

I like 3 nice and simple

 

[The_Echo]

Depends on the game. I loved the 1000 Heartless bit from Kingdom Hearts II, so I'd say a big number.

 

[Flying-Emu]

One hundred is a good rule of thumb. One hundred of a collectible in a large environment allows it to be challenging, whereas one hundred in a smaller environment still allows a modicum of challenge without the insane grind to find everything.

 

[kiltmanfortywo]

I've had an affinity towards the number 12. It works well, like bring me 12 wolf hearts, when only 30% of them have hearts, so you have to kill alot but don't loose alot on inv space.

 

[Blackadder51]

51, its just an awesome number and it doesn't sound unreachable

 

[DrunkWithPower]

20 and 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 with lag

 

[Rand-m]

Hmm, I'm gonna give it to 3, just because it always seems to factor heavily into boss battles and trilogies and such...

Runner up is 100, because this is, ironically, my 100th post. w00t.

 

[supermaster1337]

Hmm 3

hit the bad guy 3 times to kill him

find all 3 peices to make the part

I like 3 nice and simple

I agree only because 3 is just the best number ever!! XD

 

[SimuLord]

Since five is my lucky number, I never object to its use as a goal counter. I just hope that games that rely on fetch quests don't put the items too far away from each other without either providing fast-travel or giving me a lot of interesting things to do aside from just the fetch quest ("Join the Mages Guild" and "Allies for Bruma" in Oblivion being a prime example of both.)