Similarly, if you’re on a quest to save the world, you do side-quests to put it off as long as possible
I’ve explicitly made note this fact, that one should do quests in exactly reverse order of importance, in every cRPG I’ve ever played. Because often making progress on major quests will change the game (lock you out of an area, say, or kill an NPC) such that you can no longer complete some minor quests if you haven’t done them already .
Modern designers have finally started to take account of this. In Mass Effect 2, you do almost all of your side-questing while you wait for your employer to gather information about the main problem. Once the party does get started, the game makes it emphatically clear that waiting any more than absolutely necessary is going to severely compromise your primary mission.
jim answered quite thoroughly. I’ll add that I was hinting mainly at the fact that the BioWare developers knew that most players would, by habit, take their sweet time no matter how many universes were at stake, and planned accordingly.
If your most trusted ally tells you “We must hurry, or we will fail!”, a veteran gamer knows to ignore him and go rescue a kitten. If a pop-up window tells you to hurry up or you will fail, you do hurry up. Some messages can only be given on this side of the fourth wall.
Yes; if you’re too slow, it kills off some minor characters who would otherwise survive. The ending to that game is quite well done. It also has you assign NPCs to tasks, and kills a character for each assignment you get wrong, including some non-obvious and unstated requirements, like you can’t put someone in charge of a squad if their backstory doesn’t mention leadership experience.
However, the early game still has the usual timing incentive problem. Side-quests fall into major and minor categories, and the clock doesn’t start ticking until you’ve done all the major ones.
I have a friend, Rit, who refuses to play cRPGs this way. Towards the end of Final Fantasy 8 (don’t expect spoilers ahead), you are supposed to do all your sidequests before rescuing a friend in trouble; by FF tradition, this should be obvious to the player since you just got free reign of the world map. Rit said, “Screw that, she’s in trouble, I’m going straight there!”
The original Fallout is an exception since it had a time limit. The world changed as time went on, regardless if you did anything and if you where slow enough (500 in game days I think) you could loose the game.
And in both of these games I had to restart because you can use a huge amount of time traveling the world map to go places, and spending game time rather than playing time makes perfect sens, especially for the Luck 10 character I was playing, until you realize you’ve lost. Star Control 2 gives you fair warning and I didn’t realize it at the time, but Fallout doesn’t and I was pretty mad about it.
Having a time limit without being deeply explicit about it is a crime against gaming.
It’s interesting that the designers hook up the formula for FF 13. You basically don’t do any sidequests until you finish the game. After defeating the final bosses it puts you at the last save point, and lets you go back and do all those sidequests you walked past earlier in the game. The incentive to play this way comes form the fact you can’t finish levelling up until you finish the game.
I’ve explicitly made note this fact, that one should do quests in exactly reverse order of importance, in every cRPG I’ve ever played. Because often making progress on major quests will change the game (lock you out of an area, say, or kill an NPC) such that you can no longer complete some minor quests if you haven’t done them already .
Modern designers have finally started to take account of this. In Mass Effect 2, you do almost all of your side-questing while you wait for your employer to gather information about the main problem. Once the party does get started, the game makes it emphatically clear that waiting any more than absolutely necessary is going to severely compromise your primary mission.
But does it actually punish you for waiting, or just threaten to? (I haven’t gotten around to playing Mass Effect 2 yet.)
jim answered quite thoroughly. I’ll add that I was hinting mainly at the fact that the BioWare developers knew that most players would, by habit, take their sweet time no matter how many universes were at stake, and planned accordingly.
If your most trusted ally tells you “We must hurry, or we will fail!”, a veteran gamer knows to ignore him and go rescue a kitten. If a pop-up window tells you to hurry up or you will fail, you do hurry up. Some messages can only be given on this side of the fourth wall.
Yes; if you’re too slow, it kills off some minor characters who would otherwise survive. The ending to that game is quite well done. It also has you assign NPCs to tasks, and kills a character for each assignment you get wrong, including some non-obvious and unstated requirements, like you can’t put someone in charge of a squad if their backstory doesn’t mention leadership experience.
However, the early game still has the usual timing incentive problem. Side-quests fall into major and minor categories, and the clock doesn’t start ticking until you’ve done all the major ones.
I have a friend, Rit, who refuses to play cRPGs this way. Towards the end of Final Fantasy 8 (don’t expect spoilers ahead), you are supposed to do all your sidequests before rescuing a friend in trouble; by FF tradition, this should be obvious to the player since you just got free reign of the world map. Rit said, “Screw that, she’s in trouble, I’m going straight there!”
The original Fallout is an exception since it had a time limit. The world changed as time went on, regardless if you did anything and if you where slow enough (500 in game days I think) you could loose the game.
Star Control II did something very similar—as time went on, the world changed, and eventually one of the villains would start their omnicidal rampage.
And in both of these games I had to restart because you can use a huge amount of time traveling the world map to go places, and spending game time rather than playing time makes perfect sens, especially for the Luck 10 character I was playing, until you realize you’ve lost. Star Control 2 gives you fair warning and I didn’t realize it at the time, but Fallout doesn’t and I was pretty mad about it.
Having a time limit without being deeply explicit about it is a crime against gaming.
Seconded.
However getting a nasty surprise like that might just help shed light on a Video game meme you didn’t even know you internalized.
Also Fallout was explicit about the time limit. The pipboy clock, as well as the manual.
It’s interesting that the designers hook up the formula for FF 13. You basically don’t do any sidequests until you finish the game. After defeating the final bosses it puts you at the last save point, and lets you go back and do all those sidequests you walked past earlier in the game. The incentive to play this way comes form the fact you can’t finish levelling up until you finish the game.