Brosephs, it's as simple as this: If people are not interested in playing the game as it was designed to be played, slapping a time-sensitive condition on certain objectives to coerce the player into doing what the designer wants IS objectively bad game design.
Since we're on the topic of Bethesda, and we're already talking about Skyrim, I'll just dive right in. First of all, I think at this point it is fairly well known that in the past I have not been the biggest fan of Skyrim (although I've certainly got my fun out of it). IMO, in an open world game, you MUST sacrifice a certain sense of urgency to the realm of suspension of disbelief so that player can enjoy the world. Why the hell would you design the massive and interesting landscape and then not encourage the player to explore it? The TES main quests have always been relatively linear and don't necessarily give you the grand tour of the place. To combat that, a big design choice is usually not having the world "activate" in certain ways until you get further down the quest.
Out of all the games, I think Oblivion does it best, you're unleashed on the world with a task to go deliver a piece of jewelry to a far away place. It's a small enough job and distant enough journey--AND THE OBLIVION GATES DONT APPEAR UNTIL LATER, but even then, the chaos and mystery of it gives you ample room to do what you want--that you feel like it's OKAY to explore, which is the whole point, is it not? Morrowind isn't terrible, and the first guy you talk to in the main quest tree is basically like, "Yo homie you weak af, go train." though if you're not careful you can fall into the main quest very quickly. Skyrim... well I'm not a fan of you doing your own thing and then this dragon which you didn't really have much to do with is suddenly molesting you in the town square. I think THAT breaks my immersion.
Of course, at this point in time, it's just kind of a poorly kept secret that any TES main quest is optional. Shit, I've had Skyrim for 7 years and STILL haven't beaten the main quest. I'm not saying that's good game design, but you're not punished for playing how you want to play. You want to beat up kids and explore dwemer ruins all day? You're free to do so.
On the other hand, you have a game like LoZ: BoTW. You get dropped into this crazy open-ended tutorial which ends with a chubby ghost basically saying, "IDK, figure it out dude... and take this wicked hang glider I made." Damn. After countless hours, I'm starting to notice the box that I'm in, but holy shit, does BoTW get you going. Not only do you have a main quest which takes you to tons of dope places, traveling to these places is almost more fun than doing the quest! And if you fall down a hill you suddenly realized you've found this hidden gem you had no idea was there. Is there a sense of urgency? Mmm, I think they still had to sacrifice a little bit in that Zelda is like "Yo bitch, it's been 100 years, stop fucking around and come save me already." (hyperbole for laughs) but other than that, it's clear that you have time to do all things that you want to do, you're meant to do all the awesome side things, and that when you do get around to the main quest, it's still awesome as shit and didn't stop making sense because you spent a month building a house and selling your soul to a rock.
And then you have the exact opposite. Fucking survival games. Now, these boys get a bit of a free pass because the core game mechanic is literally "find this stuff in x amount of time to keep you alive", the fun of it is in going to stupid lengths to get that moldy cheese you need to make it another step. But when you graft those survival elements onto a game like Minecraft? Fucking disaster IMO. Having been around MC from day one, it was so much more fun when all you did was build stuff. That's the core mechanic: building stuff. And it's FUN! And then you say hey, you can't build stuff right now, you need to farm so you don't die, which will highly inconvenience you in your return to building. What!? That would be like saying, "Sure. You COULD make whatever you want with these legos, but the real meat of LEGO experience is in managing your lego figures with in-built tamagotchis every hour to make sure they don't die." Uh... No dude, I just wanna make some cool stuff and maybe do cool stuff with it.
Timers, man. They're tragic. They ruin games. First of all, it's just kind of part of the Gamer's Contract (like the Social Contract) that you're essentially allowed to play at your pace and the game's not going to fuck with you for doing that. The very nature of failure and death in video games demands it. It's a shitty thing to do to punish the player for losing. Part of the fun of modern video games is failing, rewinding a couple of minutes and then doing it again, but this time like a fucking boss. So when you have a time limit that's actually forcing you to move faster than you would, it really takes away from the cinematic feel of things--you're more concerned with getting this thing done rather than doing it in fucking style. Alternatively, if you're having a great run, and then lose because of the time limit, especially if it's close, it's a huge kick in the pants on what felt like you doing a good job.
We all have to deal with time limits in real life, out of necessity, but there's really nothing fun about them there either.
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Topic: Gaming Pet Peeves (Read 526063 times)