Pet Peeves with Games?
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That's a quirk of the medium I've learned to accept. Some games do it well by having chunks of "on-rails" bits and others of "free-roam" based on what's happening in the story so that it makes more sense.
You're completely right of course, but I'll say it bugs me too at times. I was always able to forgive it but as we got more advanced visually it bugged me more. Then finally in Oblivion it was too much for me. I still love and respect the game, but it actively bugs me there are portals around the world that are just waiting for me to decide I want to fight. I know it's dumb, but it is what it is.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
I've often wondered why some more advanced games like Elder Scrolls don't keep track of dramatic actions in some way and offer them up to you when you leave the game for a while. A "previously..." kind of element. Big budget action games too, like from Rockstar.
Obviously they just don't think it's worth the work, but I do wonder if it would affect completion rates.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
When games have a designated button to show interactive elements in the environment
This just screams "we don't know how to make an uncluttered game"
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
Broadly, where the optimal path is the boring or tedious path.
Imagine an action game where you fight monsters and get coins for defeating them. Coins can be exchanged to buy new moves, advance the plot, and so on. Basic game loop.
Now imagine that you get triple coins if you wear the red shirt when fighting red monsters. Every time you see a red monster, you could go into the menu, into equipment, into body armor, swap on the red shirt, exit all the menus, and kill the monster. Then repeat all that for blue shirt and blue monsters.
This is a made up example but some games do shit like that, where you have to do something tedious for a big payoff.
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I've often wondered why some more advanced games like Elder Scrolls don't keep track of dramatic actions in some way and offer them up to you when you leave the game for a while. A "previously..." kind of element. Big budget action games too, like from Rockstar.
Obviously they just don't think it's worth the work, but I do wonder if it would affect completion rates.
Death Stranding 2 offers this feature. Useful, since the story is kookydooks.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
Since Steam implemented the notes feature, I can remember what to do, like if I don't have time to explore a place but the game already marked visited simply because I went there, etc.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
My major pet peeves with games is that features available in a game are often absent in a sequel, or revamped for no reason. Unless a game receives critical reception these days, I often buy games that have been released a year ago to increase the chance they get fixed with patches.
Example: the notorious Civilization series.
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I've often wondered why some more advanced games like Elder Scrolls don't keep track of dramatic actions in some way and offer them up to you when you leave the game for a while. A "previously..." kind of element. Big budget action games too, like from Rockstar.
Obviously they just don't think it's worth the work, but I do wonder if it would affect completion rates.
With games like Elder Scrolls, they have the quest log that usually keeps track of things you have done.
But I have seen a couple games, not a lot, that have a thing very much like a "Last time on..." with dialogue/cutscenes telling you what the story is thus far that you either can optionally select from a menu OR, that just play as the loading screen whenever you load the game up instead of just a spinning widget and a static image/screen.
It definitely should be used more. I probably would not start an entire new game just because I stopped half-way through and didn't remember jack shit when I go to play again.
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Broadly, where the optimal path is the boring or tedious path.
Imagine an action game where you fight monsters and get coins for defeating them. Coins can be exchanged to buy new moves, advance the plot, and so on. Basic game loop.
Now imagine that you get triple coins if you wear the red shirt when fighting red monsters. Every time you see a red monster, you could go into the menu, into equipment, into body armor, swap on the red shirt, exit all the menus, and kill the monster. Then repeat all that for blue shirt and blue monsters.
This is a made up example but some games do shit like that, where you have to do something tedious for a big payoff.
Your example sounds like Ikaruga if it were deliberately designed to be annoying.
...We probably shouldn't give any mobile game developers any ideas.
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
Purposely obtuse mechanics for the sake of "difficulty."
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Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I'm in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that's something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
Lack of gameplay options and cheats. I've never thought a game was worse because it had cheats. Quite the contrary.
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Death Stranding 2 offers this feature. Useful, since the story is kookydooks.
I started the first one and really liked the little walking I did in the first hour and a half, but I just tapped out after that because of the ratio of cutscene to game. ... I should play them.
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Yes, but in the case of some games, the save data is shared.
I don't have a Pokémon game on Switch, so I can't speak to it directly.
On Animal Crossing, the first player goes through an orientation scene at the airport where they are told they won an island getaway package. They create their character, and then they choose an island shape from four randomly generated choices. Once all that's done, you fly to the island and get to see the airport colour (this matters to some people), the native fruit (determines what recipes you can make, and some have preferences), and who your starter animal villagers (always a Big Sister personality female and a Jock personality male) will be. Sometimes you don't like one of those, so you reset. I had to reset seven times to get an island I wanted (blue airport, oranges, and I forget who my starters were now — they have both moved away).
So anyway, the second player does not get the orientation and the island picker. Instead, their orientation has them joining the first player's island. The first player will always be the "Island Representative" and this is the only player Tom Nook (the racoon "boss" of the island, so to speak) will talk to about upgrades for the island and features you can unlock by completing simple quests. The other player(s) will have access to these once the "island representative" has unlocked them, but if they required learning a recipe, the other players will NOT be given that recipe. They can find it randomly in a message bottle on the beach, shot down from a balloon by a slingshot, or from a villager who is crafting something. Or, they can get it from another player, such as a hacked player running a treasure island where you can get ALL the recipes.
Case in point: My wife's island. My wife bought the Switch for Animal Crossing, then decided she did not like Animal Crossing (it IS kind of a slow and pointless "chill" game), so she stopped playing. She unlocked a couple things, but I could not unlock anything else. So she agreed to let me delete her island and start a new one.
Case in point 2: My island. I've been playing my own island since May. EVERYTHING is unlocked. So she can start a new character, move onto my island, and have access to all the features. There may be a few things she can't craft because she doesn't have the recipe, and the game is less likely to spawn a recipe the island rep got for free (it's considered lower priority).
Sorry for the long reply, just wanted to clarify how it actually works. This is intentional: for "personal" games like Pokémon and Animal Crossing, Nintendo fully expects the second player to buy their own Switch and their own copy of the game. Once you've done that, you're both island reps on your own islands, and you can visit each other over a local connection (no paid Nintendo Switch Online account required!). Now this is where it's super important to make sure your second island does not have the same native fruit. There are five fruits (orange, apple, cherry, peach, and pear) and you will always have a native fruit, your fruit trees only grow this. You will have a secondary fruit your "mom" will send you and other villagers will gift you, and mystery islands have a low percentage chance of spawning. Once you figure out what those two are, you want to make sure the second island doesn't use either as its native... and hope its secondary isn't the same either. Then, you can trade fruits, and now you have access to four. You'll need to trade with at least two other players to get access to all five fruits. (There are also coconuts but everyone is guaranteed to get those.)
i can confirm that pokémon is normal and lets you have multiple switch accounts with one save each on one console. which is actually a big improvement, because pokémon never let you have multiple saves on one cartridge, so on older consoles you did have to buy multiple cartridges! (thankfully you could share the console because the save was on the cartridge, not the console)
on switch, animal crossing is the only game i can think of where there’s only one save per console. and even then, i think they added save slots in the latest update
5 years later… meh. better late than never i guess.
