El Bandito, on 17 October 2018 - 08:12 PM, said:
No you should not have to do side quests in games to progress smoothly--they are SIDE quests for a reason. Optional. Bonus.
More importantly most of those side quests in AC:O are very repetitive. Reminds me of Far Cry 4, where there are abundant things to explore and do but due to their repetitive nature the side quests had actually served to turn me away from the game itself. I was so disgusted by just how many outposts I need to clear, and how many hostages I need to rescue, how many secrets I need to find, so I said "**** it" to the game after playing for a week, and stopped playing it for half a year. And after I picked it up again, I only played main quests just to finish the story.
Odyssey is just like Far Cry 4 in the sense that their side quests are mind numbingly repetitive, except in Odyssey you HAVE to play those side quests to progress through the main quest smoothly, while in FC4 side quests are completely optional.
Look, I'd love to spend hours and hours of time doing side quests if they are interesting. Which is why I did 99% of The Witcher 3's side quests cause that game had done its side quests right, and I got hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of it. And The Witcher 3 did not cut its cosmetics that are already in game to sell it twice to us--it in fact gave the players FREE costume DLCs. The Witcher 3 also did not use boosters because you could progress through the main story without feeling horribly out levelled. Which doesn't matter cause its side quests were much much more engaging than Odyssey in the first place. THAT's a game I am willing to support again, and again, not this latest BS scheme full of a game Ubisoft is sucking the players' money with.
I know I won't buy any cosmetics or boosters from a full priced Ubisoft game, or from any other full priced games cause I know better, but neither you, nor I are their main milking machines. There are certain vulnerable demographics Ubicrap is aiming for, and they will get their shitloads of extra money from their sleazy practices. Which is why out of disgust I refuse to support them.
Oh, and If you haven't played TW3, then I 100% recommend it.
Every adventure game I've played since the 80s has pretty much required you to do side quests to level up if you don't want insane hard-level fights on the main quest. That's good game design - you want a game to be immersive and players to level up as they progress and put effort into leveling up, that's why you bothered to have mechanics around attributes, skills and gear progression. Most games since long before any sort of microtransactions had far more dull 'go do this to level up between main missions' content. Just then that was the way the game worked, nobody cared. Microtransactions add a sense of malevolence to what is, in truth, a fundamental piece of any RPG game - you don't want it to play like a chute and hand-hold the player through the story. You want to encourage exploration and adventure. However you don't want that to be *too* powerful so someone ruins the story by maxing up on their own. You also don't want to spend too much on stuff that isn't main story related or that you can't be sure players will get into, or you're not maximizing your investment.
I'm at almost 80 hours into Odyssey and am barely half way into the main quest because the side quests are a lot of fun. The exploring piece is fun. Admittedly I'm a huge nerd on ancient Greece, this era (Peloponnesian War) especially and the architecture, clothing and decoration is amazing. There's a ton of incredible side-quests with awesome little ties to the history of the region. In typical Ubisoft fashion I'm irritated with the main plot because I'm not allowed to do anything really smart like, say, talk to some key people and say the stuff they actually need to hear.
I also have an insiders view. Worked in the gaming industry for a long time. To me, I see the conflict inherent in the game between board, developers and publishers. You've got the money people saying 'games that invest 1/10th this much in the setting and mechanics make X amount, so we need to make 10x that amount in profit to be worth the investment'. You have publishers saying 'why not just cut that area out and add it as DLC later? I mean we're already mostly done with it but we can get to market by Y date if we cut now and DLC the rest, and make more money'. If you're not going into those meetings with pepper spray and a taser and blackmail material.
Yes, microtransactions are horrible. I've said it a million times. That's being driven by the people who spend money on them though and also by the rising costs of game design. The studio to make a good game like Odyssey has risen from a dozen or less to 50-100 and you're only getting about 30% of the money your game makes, the rest goes to licensing for Sony, Microsoft and Steam. Combine that with the whales who buy bad mech packs for nostalgia and spend $80/month on Candy Crush and stupid **** like that.
I've run into some just awesome little historical jewels in Odyssey, ffs they showed the shellfish farms used to create the purple dye Kythira. I just might buy some Helix credits for that alone. I do not feel the need to get XP/money boosts; that seems like a stupid waste. You level up fast enough already just playing the game and like any RPG the leveling *is* a big part of the game. Shortcutting that just cheats yourself.
I love the Witcher 3 design. I just never found Geralt super engaging though unfortunately and haven't beaten it, also not a big fan of the mechanics. I play on PC and its always felt very clumsy to me. Also the 'go here, unlock this' approach to RPGs is its own flavor. Some like it, some don't. I'm a bit more of a sandbox fan.
In any case, I think it says a lot about MWO that a thread discussing the recent patch has turned into a debate about another game.
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Now I can spam even more triple H-PPC alpha's!
