Missable items and other frustrating things in RPGs

[Bob423 52]

Rant time!

 

Please do not put missable items in your games. I want to be able to reach the final boss before I even try to 100% everything. Starting a new game just to get some cool equipment isn't worth it. That's one of my biggest issues with FF7 tbh.

If you're going to have a missable item, it should be something you can get an infinite amount of anyway, at least by the end of the game. And every single piece of equipment that isn't infinite should NOT be sellable at all. Just setting the sell value to 1 to discourage selling it isn't enough. I used to blindly sell things in RPGs I wasn't using until I sold a few things I shouldn't have. Really annoying that that's even possible.

And unrevisitable locations should be kept to a minimum. The only reason a location should be unrevisitable is if it's destroyed or the protagonist's goal throughout the game is to go back there. And if the unrevisitable location had an item that's not in infinite supply by the end of the game, or if the destruction of the location prevents a side quest from being started or completed, then there's a problem.
And giving bosses stealable items that can't be obtained any other way (unless you can re-fight bosses) is stupid too.
 

Anyone else agree with this?

RPGs also need to have boss rematches so you can fight stronger versions of bosses as many times as you want for awesome loot.

And if dungeons, especially the "final" ones, could all have shortcuts that lead straight to the final boss if the player has already gotten to it once, that would be great.

Save points should be right next to bosses and I shouldn't have to backtrack through all of Northern Crater to get to the airship >.>

And Xenosaga Ep. 2 and 3 are even worse. Ep. 1 is a little better, but still frustrating.

 

And now some examples...

 

 

In Xenosaga Episode 1, the best grinding spot is deep inside a dungeon about halfway through the game. It's easy to leave, but there's no quick way to get there. There are a couple shortcuts in the final dungeon, but it's still annoying trying to get to the final boss if you've already done it and no "take me home" button like there is when revisiting old dungeons since, in those games, they're simulations.

Ep. 2 is annoying anyway and picking the game up after having not played it for a while is really hard since you'll probably have forgotten every enemy's weakness and get your ass kicked by everything.

Ep. 3's best grinding spot is right outside the final dungeon, which isn't that big of a deal, but it's a boring trek back to the ship and an annoying one to the final boss with the strongest enemies in the game in the way that can still be a challenge when you're level 65...not to mention when in that wonderful grinding spot, the fights are pretty stupid since you're not even using your characters, just your mechs. Luckily the enemies are really weak, but it's still stupid.

 

FF7's best grinding spot is partway through the final dungeon, which for some reason gives you 1 save point that you can place anywhere, but can't pick up and getting back to the airship is annoying with all the random encounters. At least in Xenosaga, there are no random encounters and some enemies can be easily avoided.

 

FFX's best grinding spot is luckily the only place worth being in the post-game, it's easy to get no encounters equipment, and the final dungeon has enough save points, so no real problems there...except I hate that part where you have to collect 10 crystals before fighting the final boss.

 

Kingdom Hearts does it well since you can just kinda spawn at most save points and leave a world from them too.

 

Pokemon actually does this stuff correctly.

Can save anywhere, can use dig or an escape rope to get out of caves quickly, can revisit any location, and no item is lost forever. And one of a kind items are rare and usually just key items anyway.

 

This stuff doesn't only apply to RPGs though...

In Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, after getting to Ganondorf, his castle just becomes "run up the stairs, knock on the door, wreck his shit"

But in Metroid Prime, getting through that final area of the game is a huge pain, especially considering the closest save point to the final boss is at the start of the, relatively short, but still equally frustrating, final dungeon.

 

 

 

I understand the need to add a challenge, but sometimes the developer's idea of a challenge seems to be "as annoying as possible."

[Polraudio 122]

I personally disagree more than i agree.

 

Disagree:

I disagree because this isnt really the case anymore since games are being made more and more dumb/linear so you dont really run into this problem.

Its good to have missable items because it feels more rewarding when you find them and it also adds more reasons to play the game again.

Same goes for missable side quests. Sure it sucks but thats how life is. Miss an opportunity to get something good its your own fault for not paying more attention or thinking it will be there when you come back.

 

In the end missable stuff only helps the game in the long run. Especially if you have party members that you can only get at certain points in the game.

Good example on how this is done is in the star ocean series. If you just play through the story and dont go and explore you are missing 90% of the games content. If you dont go to explore and miss all the missable stuff its your own fault.

 

Agree:

I do agree that its dumb because you miss out on lots of stuff that you cant get again. The main reason i agree is because im very inefficient at finding the wrong path. Every time i try to find the wrong path to get extra items i end up going the right way 99% of the time and not able to go back because i just found the boss and the area is no longer accessible after that part.

[dolarmak 23]

I'm with Polraudio on this. Tho some times its annoying that you miss a few items or special quests it adds to the replay-ability of the game. My approach is play the game once without any help or guides to find that stuff, then in my 2nd play through grab a guide that shows me what interesting stuff you can get. 

 

Personally i think more maze-like levels is better cause i hate the linearity in games these days, and if you miss stuff oh well, better luck next time. 

[zahraa 26]

Well I kinda agree with pol. It's a method that game developers use to reward the curious players or make the lazy ones re-play the game. Though I never ever re-play a game to finish some special side quests because I find it very boring. So I think there should be a balance, Of course you should not punish a player because they want to follow the main story only, You should not disappoint them just because they don't want to explore more. On the other side, You should make sure adventurous players will be rewarded too. That's why I have only a few of these missable items and quest in my game, To make sure both curious and lazy players are satisfied lol

 

RPGs also need to have boss rematches so you can fight stronger versions of bosses as many times as you want for awesome loot.

I don't really like the idea...When the boss is defeated, He's defeated! It doesn't make sense to fight again...

 

 

 

Save points should be right next to bosses and I shouldn't have to backtrack through all of Northern Crater to get to the airship >.

 

of course, I think everyone agrees on this 

 

I understand the need to add a challenge, but sometimes the developer's idea of a challenge seems to be "as annoying as possible."

lol it reminds me of a sentence I read in a level design book. It was something like, "Players are not your enemies!" and sometimes I really need to remind myself that it's right

Edited September 21, 2015 by zahraa

[Bob423 52]

I don't really like the idea...When the boss is defeated, He's defeated! It doesn't make sense to fight again...

Well you wouldn't fight it in the exact same spot. It would be in some kind of rematch arena and it would be a lot stronger than before so it can still be a challenge after you've completed the main story. There's a sort of...plot device in the games I'm working on that allows certain bosses to show up again in the Tower of Ordeals on some of the boss floors, which are every 10 floors. The enemies get stronger as you go up, starting around level 60, and getting close to level 99 at the top.

 

In Secrets of Grindea, you can refight some bosses in the Arena for extra loot since they all drop items that only they have, but don't have a 100% chance to drop anything.

 

In Kingdom Hearts 2 FM, you can have rematches with every member of Organization XIII to get rare synthesis materials and if you beat them all, you get...well a stupid crown, but it's something.

---

 

Maybe I should've said, "don't put tons of missable items in your games." I personally feel like FF7 has too many and that most of the side quests are way too easy to miss. If you just go straight for the story, you miss a ton of stuff. Unless you know where everything is, you have to look around the entire world after every little tiny story event and if you say the wrong thing or fail something, you can lose a valuable item really easily with no second chances. And bosses that don't have a 100% chance to drop something awesome, or have something really useful that you can steal, should let you fight them as many times as you want in some kind of arena.

Nearly every boss in Xenosaga has a rare item you can steal from them, but there's no way to fight them again, so there's at least 1 missable item for almost every boss. Plus, the skill you need to steal will take some grinding to get if you want it for every boss fight that drops something.

In FF7, only some bosses have steal-able items, but you get steal materia pretty early. It's discouraging though, when you need to steal like 200 times to get anything from any enemy if they have anything and most of them don't have anything useful. The only bosses that seem to have anything useful to steal are the Turks though, so I guess that's fine...

 

 

Save points should be right next to bosses and I shouldn't have to backtrack through all of Northern Crater to get to the airship

The reason I say this is that too many bosses seem to have enemies between them and the nearest save point. It's annoying...SEYMOUR

 

edit: And another thing...

I want to be able to explore when I want to, not when the game wants me to. I feel like if I don't go exploring at the right times in some games, I miss important things.

[Flytrap 1]

Please do not put missable items in your games...

Anyone else agree with this?

 

...boss rematches...

 

FF7...

 

...random encounters...

 

FFX...

 

Kingdom Hearts...

 

Pokemon...

 

I understand the need to add a challenge, but sometimes the developer's idea of a challenge seems to be "as annoying as possible."

I'm going to itemize my replies because you all write a bunch.

 

1.) Yes, I agree to an extent, I hate when I'm forced to replay an entire game just to obtain an item that clearly wasn't essential, but would've made encounters easier, though, like a true fence-sitter, its easy to sympathize with the opposing side and agree that the feature adds a degree of challenge to almost any game that tends to be favored by fans of their respective franchises.

 

2.) I absolutely loved Majora's Mask's version of boss rematches, it was very fun and, well, I mainly used it to train as the Goron since that fucker was impossible to control. However, I don't think this should be applied to every game as a blanket rule, since a lot of games are heavily story-reliant, and refighting a boss or even having the option to refight a boss would detract from the realism or immersion of the game. Why would you feel good about beating Volvagia and saving the Goron's when you can just challenge him again and again? Though in some games, like Borderlands, it's fun to challenge boss characters over and over, not only for awesome loot but for the shittons of exp they give you and to brag to your friends that you killed some giant Skaag in under two minutes, solo.

 

3.) I'll be honest, FF7 eluded me as a kid, I only played it once when I was like, 16 because I bought the classic version online for the PS3. I never went back and played it again, nor did I really investigate much of the side plots, it just didn't appeal to me mostly because of the unbelievably annoying random battle encounters. Though, I did notice they tended to leave a lot of really good items in the wayside whenever you hit some invisible checkpoint and entire cities became lost to you.

 

4.) I hate random encounters, it's often the reason I don't play or buy a game. The very concept is annoying to me. You're getting interested in the story and just when its getting good, they tell you "Oh, you have to go to this town for the next cutscene, it's on the other side of the country,[/i] have fun getting raped by the thousands of endless mobs you have no way of repelling." Especially when there are missable items at hand, if I found out that there's some secret cave with a million gold hidden somewhere in it, or some badass item, but I have to climb up a skyscraper mountain to get to it, I typically go "Meh, I'll get it later." and never do.

 

5.) FFX had a lot of cool hidden things in it but I never really came across anything I couldn't go back and get after beating SIn. 

 

6.) Kingdom Hearts had a BUNCH of missable stuff, but most of it was trash you could find later on. The only thing that stands out to me in particular is perhaps one of the keychains, I think you're able to miss getting a certain keyblade if you don't find the keychain hidden in Hollow Bastion. (Or whatever the last level was called, haven't played that in a while.) I don't exactly weep over missing a Megaether or some Synthesis ingredient I'll never use.

 

7.) I agree with the Pokemon thing, they have next to no missable items you can't simply go back and get later, then again, the last Pokemon game I played was emerald...

 

 

...games are being made more and more dumb/linear so you dont really run into this problem.

 

Its good to have missable items because it feels more rewarding when you find them and it also adds more reasons to play the game again.

 

Same goes for missable side quests.

1.) They really are, it's sad how much influence production companies have in recent games' development. Most of these sequel series' games are horrible. (Battlefield, CoD, Halo, basically every new FPS and Third Person Shooter that has come out in the last five years.) I used to get so excited at the concept of my favorite production company making a new game, nowadays I'm so jaded I don't even buy games, I pirate them to test them out and will buy them if I like them.

 

That got a little sidetracked. I agree with Polraudio, franchise games rarely have this problem anymore, they dumb it down so casuals can play games too.

 

2.) I kind of disagree... I'm torn though, I've had features like that inspire me to run through a game I've played, again, with the sole purpose of obtaining the items I've missed out on. (Resident Evil being one that comes to mind) Though even though I've done that, I sort of wish they didn't include those rare little easter eggs and just had them be boss or puzzle rewards instead of forcing me to play through six hours of boring tutorial crap again.

 

3.) Generally, I've found most sidequests can always be completed. The only ones that come to mind that have a limited window of opportunity are maybe some of the smaller events in the Harvest Moon series (since they have an internal clock that pushed your playtime forward whether you want it to go or not.) 

 

...i hate the linearity in games these days, and if you miss stuff oh well, better luck next time. 

Aptly stated.

 

I don't really like the idea...When the boss is defeated, He's defeated! It doesn't make sense to fight again...

 

"Players are not your enemies!" and sometimes I really need to remind myself that it's right

1.) I agree wholeheartedly, I fully endorse the idea of bosses only having one life. Although! I like tantalizing players with the idea of multiple choice stuff, especially when it comes to bosses so they have multiple ways to die, and if you kill him a certain way, you have to play over again (or play him in the next difficulty) to see an alternative ending. It might make me sound like a hypocrite, but whatever. :)

 

2.) I've found this to ring true so many times while designing events and games. There was a time when I literally designed every small event and encounter to basically impede the players progression without halting it. The point of a game is to enjoy it, right? And who doesn't like a challenge?

 

And another thing...

I want to be able to explore when I want to, not when the game wants me to. I feel like if I don't go exploring at the right times in some games, I miss important things.

I totally agree! In almost every game, I've developed an instinct to find the checkpoint just to avoid it so I can run around and look for all the little goodies I've missed. Games have made me weary of using keys and opening doors! It could mean the death of some hidden treasures! Though, I suppose that's the whole point of the thread.