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I'm feeling highly ambivalent about this. Maybe a little called out, even. ¬_¬
On the one hand, I agree that a lot of that stuff often can be rather annoying and unfun. On the other hand, I still do a lot of that stuff. Or, rather, don't do the things the article suggests doing.
Sometimes when I play a game, I go out of my way to avoid "hard progress" (as Pat and Woolie from the erstwhile SBFP call it) until I am damn well good and ready to progress (see also: "hall wugging"). Like, if a game clearly says "Talk to the town mayor to get your first quest" or whatever, I will often expressly avoid that guy like the absolute Black Death until I talk to every other character and explore every other house/cave/crate/bush/patch of dirt that isn't completely inaccessible first. And if I do see a chest on a ledge or something that I can't get to, I will do whatever I can within reason to try to get to that chest first, unless it becomes obvious that there's some traversal hotspot that I can't interact with simply because I yet lack the required ability or equipment to do so. If I find that I have unintentionally passed some hidden "point of no return" or even just have moved the story/plot forward before I'd exhausted all other options first (even if it turned out that I could just go back and do it later), I will often reload a save from a point before I crossed that point (and if it's a game that autosaves and doesn't allow me to do that, I will feel vexed at said game, occasionally to point of just quitting entirely).
Sometimes I care about the Golden Path (a term I first heard during my first year at DigiPen, way back in ye olde dayes of 2004), especially if it's a game that I've already played once before, but even if it's a game I'm just touching for the first time, and it's some sprawling 1000 hour epic that I'll probably only ever play though the once (if even that much), I too often get overly concerned with having the "best" playthrough, and if I miss something, it makes me feel bad, even if it's just some relatively trivial shit that doesn't matter at all in the long run. So... I too often spoil the everliving fuck out of such games by looking shit up in walkthroughs or whatever. Like, depending on what game it is, I may load up Google and search for "<game name> points of no return" or "<game name> missables" or shit like that, before I ever even start playing it at all.
Sometimes I get frozen by too many options for things (even trivial things) to do in a game. Which is why, for example, I've never made it past summer of the first year in Stardew Valley and haven't even attempted to play that game at all for over a year now... not because it's a bad game (it absolutely is not a bad game), but because there's just too much to do, it feels like. (And, of course, merely mentioning Stardew Valley at all has got me wanting to reinstall it and give it yet another try.)
I don't typically play games on the hardest difficulty setting, especially not on the first time playing it... but... I also tend to avoid the easiest difficult settings, because I don't want to play in Fisher-Price mode, either. ¬_¬ But then, sometimes, even the "normal" setting is too tough/annoying/unforgiving, and I eventually do bump it down to baby mode. If there's not a good balance between "keyboard breaking difficulty" and "so easy it puts me to sleep," then that's yet another potential reason I just give up on a game entirely. (Or if even infant mode proves to be too annoyingly tough, that's a good sign that I'm done.)
I very, very rarely care about being a completionist for a game, especially about official "achievements." The only games in which I've bothered to get all the achievements is when it's a game that I really, really liked and simply wanted to spend more time with it, like the Subnautica games. That said, even for games that I consider to be my favorites, I won't bother with the achievements if they're stupid shit like "jibble the jobble a million times" or whatever. Like, for example, in the Blackwell games, for Blackwell Unbound I haven't even attempted to get either the "smoke at least 100 cigarettes" or the "smoke less than 20 cigarettes by the end of the game" things and, for Blackwell Epiphany, the "create no more than 450 footprints" thing. (I've gotten every achievement in the other three Blackwell games, though, because they were either reasonably simple to do or else they just unlocked through the course of normally playing the games.)
In other words, I have a shit-ton of "mind goblins" (another term I first heard from Pat, which Woolie later adopted).
On the one hand, I agree that a lot of that stuff often can be rather annoying and unfun. On the other hand, I still do a lot of that stuff. Or, rather, don't do the things the article suggests doing.
Sometimes when I play a game, I go out of my way to avoid "hard progress" (as Pat and Woolie from the erstwhile SBFP call it) until I am damn well good and ready to progress (see also: "hall wugging"). Like, if a game clearly says "Talk to the town mayor to get your first quest" or whatever, I will often expressly avoid that guy like the absolute Black Death until I talk to every other character and explore every other house/cave/crate/bush/patch of dirt that isn't completely inaccessible first. And if I do see a chest on a ledge or something that I can't get to, I will do whatever I can within reason to try to get to that chest first, unless it becomes obvious that there's some traversal hotspot that I can't interact with simply because I yet lack the required ability or equipment to do so. If I find that I have unintentionally passed some hidden "point of no return" or even just have moved the story/plot forward before I'd exhausted all other options first (even if it turned out that I could just go back and do it later), I will often reload a save from a point before I crossed that point (and if it's a game that autosaves and doesn't allow me to do that, I will feel vexed at said game, occasionally to point of just quitting entirely).
Sometimes I care about the Golden Path (a term I first heard during my first year at DigiPen, way back in ye olde dayes of 2004), especially if it's a game that I've already played once before, but even if it's a game I'm just touching for the first time, and it's some sprawling 1000 hour epic that I'll probably only ever play though the once (if even that much), I too often get overly concerned with having the "best" playthrough, and if I miss something, it makes me feel bad, even if it's just some relatively trivial shit that doesn't matter at all in the long run. So... I too often spoil the everliving fuck out of such games by looking shit up in walkthroughs or whatever. Like, depending on what game it is, I may load up Google and search for "<game name> points of no return" or "<game name> missables" or shit like that, before I ever even start playing it at all.
Sometimes I get frozen by too many options for things (even trivial things) to do in a game. Which is why, for example, I've never made it past summer of the first year in Stardew Valley and haven't even attempted to play that game at all for over a year now... not because it's a bad game (it absolutely is not a bad game), but because there's just too much to do, it feels like. (And, of course, merely mentioning Stardew Valley at all has got me wanting to reinstall it and give it yet another try.)
I don't typically play games on the hardest difficulty setting, especially not on the first time playing it... but... I also tend to avoid the easiest difficult settings, because I don't want to play in Fisher-Price mode, either. ¬_¬ But then, sometimes, even the "normal" setting is too tough/annoying/unforgiving, and I eventually do bump it down to baby mode. If there's not a good balance between "keyboard breaking difficulty" and "so easy it puts me to sleep," then that's yet another potential reason I just give up on a game entirely. (Or if even infant mode proves to be too annoyingly tough, that's a good sign that I'm done.)
I very, very rarely care about being a completionist for a game, especially about official "achievements." The only games in which I've bothered to get all the achievements is when it's a game that I really, really liked and simply wanted to spend more time with it, like the Subnautica games. That said, even for games that I consider to be my favorites, I won't bother with the achievements if they're stupid shit like "jibble the jobble a million times" or whatever. Like, for example, in the Blackwell games, for Blackwell Unbound I haven't even attempted to get either the "smoke at least 100 cigarettes" or the "smoke less than 20 cigarettes by the end of the game" things and, for Blackwell Epiphany, the "create no more than 450 footprints" thing. (I've gotten every achievement in the other three Blackwell games, though, because they were either reasonably simple to do or else they just unlocked through the course of normally playing the games.)
In other words, I have a shit-ton of "mind goblins" (another term I first heard from Pat, which Woolie later adopted).
no subject
Date: 2025-07-21 02:53 am (UTC)From:I hate hate hate hall wugging.
Don't get me wrong, I do it all the time. But it's bad game design in my book: Don't give your players a choice (i.e. 'progress the plot' vs 'go literally everywhere else first') if one of them is objectively the wrong choice. And most games where hall wugging is a thing, they're explicitly encouraging the practice, rewarding you with shiny baubles every time you try. Often overly so, to the point where you're so souped up by the time you progress the plot, you're actively disappointed at how no-longer-challenging anything else is anymore.
I have played a handful of RPGs where that sort of excessive overexploring is just straight-up not rewarded. You learn pretty quickly in the early stages that going and exploring every nook and cranny and talking to every crook and nanny accomplishes next to nothing, and you just don't feel that mind goblin chewing on your brain to keep doing it for the rest of the game.
I like that. We need more of that. You can totes have an enjoyable and fulfilling game experience without padding the whole thing with a hundred plus hours of 'collectibles' and 'achievements' etc that serve only to keep you engaged, rather than entertained.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-21 07:36 am (UTC)From:My experience is that if I happen to be playing, for instance, old NES/SNES/Genesis RPGs or one of the over 1,500 RPG Maker games currently on Steam, and I check one crate or bush that happens to have a potion or dagger or 2 gold or even just flavor text in it, I then feel compelled to run around and check every crate and bush and whatever else in the game. If I'm playing a game where the first area has nothing in any of the crates or bushes, then I tend to stop checking crates and bushes by the second or third area. (But then, I've played games like that where I found out later that they hid the Ultimate Sword of God Killing or whatever in a bush in, like, the seventh town or wherever, or maybe even in the very first town, in just that one crate that was hidden behind a tree on the far edge of the map that you'd have to go way out of your way to get to.) The happy medium, at least for games like that, is probably when they do hide stuff in crates or bushes, but they put sparkles on them so that you know for sure that there's something there, so that you don't feel obligated to run around and button press on every single non-sparkly thing in the game.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-21 08:51 am (UTC)From:That's one thing that I think Tunic did really well; it's full of collectibles and stuff, which you can find by just randomly exploring, but it's also littered with actual clues as to how to find them. So if you don't want to just straight-up wander around and maybe stumble over something, you can actually pay attention and solve the puzzles as they come up and get the same reward. A bit of something that works for either play style. There were plenty of cases where I hall wugged my way right into a secret passage, only to find that there was actually an undeciphered icon on the map the whole time that I didn't even realize was there and now I know what that icon means.
It also helps when the game is such that you're not FOMO'd into getting the rewards early, before they become obsolete and/or inaccessible for some reason later on. Always frustrating when I stumble across some sort of super-secret cache of weapons or something a bit late and I've already completely outclassed everything I find by like twenty levels or so.