Game: The Collector's Edition

[Sotha]

Think about it:

Alan Wake: collect manuscript pages. Collect coffee thermoses.

Batman Arkham City: collect Riddler rewards

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag: collect shanties, collect animus fragments, collect treasure maps, collect.... Hell, you collect Collectables to unlock new things to collect!

TDM: collect loot.

 

What's it with the collecting nowadays? Why must all the games nowadays need to have stuff to collect? For example, AC4BF tells you to collect all sort of stuff, but you never really know why. What do I need the animus fragments for? In TDM, you collect in order to get out of the level.

 

Collect them all to get a reward!

 

Is collecting really fun? For me it isn't. I don't feel great when I get yet another animus fragment, or I when solve a trivial riddle to get a Riddler Reward, or when I pick the gold pouch from the guard's belt. Often collecting is a tedium, something you do quickly to get it over with.

 

Great games like Ufo Enemy: Unknown did not need Collecting to be great!

 

I'm starting to think that Collecting is a cheap and superficial way to prolong the lifetime of the game. It is a side distraction among the main plot, the main course. The player must explore and the Collectibles reward the player for finding new areas. Could there be other ways to encourage exploration than collecting?

 

How do you feel? Is Collecting cheap, something console-like. Why do they put it into the game if it isn't really even fun? Is collecting something fundamental in us humans? Why do we tolerate it in games? How could we replace it?

[nbohr1more]

Oh, it's fun up to a certain threshold. I admit that, if I wanna collect stuff, I prefer to have some guidance both from the story

and the map itself. If you are engaged in collecting by the design of the mission rather than having it be an objective

which requires you to independently roam and stumble-upon then it can be a treat. Some games don't lend themselves to

this treatment; mostly because that is not what players wanted from the game.

 

What could motivate players to explore other than collecting? Well, I think that players are naturally motivated to explore

so I guess there is some distinction you are giving the word "explore" here as in "thoroughly examine areas for hidden

properties, passages, etc". If players are given variety from one area of a mission to another that rewards exploration and

encourages the behavior. I guess there is a grey area when we talk about exploring to find story progression. The act of

trying to find a readable, a scripted speech point, etc could be considered "collecting knowledge" which has a similar

psychology though may not scratch the same itch as having every gold statue in a collection.

[Xarg]

I'm of the opinion that it's a bit Skinner boxy, especially when it's not even entertaining or relevant to the main game to collect things, and just serves to lengthen the gameplay. I don't know about AC4, but in AC2Revelations, collecting Animus fragments unlocked more areas you could explore in the main hub area (the Animus itself, since Desmond is "lost" in the Animus), which explained a bunch about Subject 16 and his mental breakdown and "assimilation" into the Animus itself. That wasn't so bad, but things like the feathers in AC2, really served no point beyond giving you a new cloak pattern.

[Goldwell]

1 word: filler.

 

Most people want to feel like they got their $60 worth or whatever they paid so the game companies have to add in a lot of filler to make it feel that way.

 

But to be honest I don't mind it, sometimes you just want to spend extra time in an open world and these collection things can be quite fun for that.

[Oldjim]

Far Cry 3 collecting is enjoyable and part of the exploring experience

Without that you could miss a lot of the map

 

Thief 4 collecting is a total waste of time in my opinion and don't get me going on all the loot you need to find just to buy a few items

[Sir Taffsalot]

The only reason I put loot objectives into my FMs is to keep up the tradition of the original Thief games. I might start making them optional for future FMs now though.

[Bikerdude]

I don't mind collecting, just not much of it. The Riddler hunt in BMA is just rediculous.

[stumpy]

collecting things comes from the console market where collecting things would give you points and achievements then you could use those points to buy games or dlc's via the xbox live program or sony's version for the playstation. The only place I know where pc players can buy things with points is ubisoft's uplay, and its usually extra's for any game you have on there uplay game launcher.

[MurcDusen]

collecting things comes from the console market

 

That's certainly not true. Collecting stuff has been in gaming since the very start. Ever played Pacman?

Many games have collecting stuff in them. Do you not collect things in System Shock or Deus Ex? Or the original Tomb Raiders?

However, I guess OP (and you) are talking about a speficic kind of collecting. Except for TDM all games OP listed he refers to collectibles (not just collecting stuff... important difference).

Collecting things is a competely valid game mechanic. If you set up the player with a mission, it's pretty likely he needs to aqcuire certain things in it's progression.

 

Collectibles on the other hand are usually not there for progression of the main plot and instead give you optional bonusses or sometimes even just achievements.

Because of that, you can usually ignore them, so I really don't mind. What I do mind is when excessive collecting becomes mandatory. But that usually has nothing to do with collectibles and is more akin to grinding. And things like destroying military installations in Just Cause or Saboteur falls into the same category for me like grinding and farming in RPGs.

 

So really, it's not the collecting part that's annoying to me, but repetative trivial actions (yeah, I'd say blowing stuff up in JC is pretty trivial) to advance the game.

Though I have to say that *sometimes* I really enjoy some brainless grinding and collecting in games when I'm in the mood.

[MasterHelpo]

People feel extra super special when they have a collector's edition, just for the sake of it being more expensive and having marginally a little more content than the original. It's been overdone and is still being done in a retarded way, they need to give the players something more worthwhile than in-game collectibles.

[Lux]

Personally I don't understand all the collection and achievement bs in games these days. For me, Rated M for mature, doesn't mean, YAY! I walked around like an 8 year old at an Easter egg hunt and found 3/15 lost pages of the whatever.

 

I don't know if Easter egg hunts are common across all races/religions/countries, etc. but I'm sure we all have some type of experience as a kid that functioned to serve the same purpose, arouse your curiousity.

 

My issue is as an adult, I'm not curious about the same things I was as a child and I certainly don't feel a sense of reward from such things. I agree on the point of > filler.

 

I sincerely appreciate when the player isn't treated as a child and is directly rewarded for their collection of anything in the game. I.e. it needs to have a point or objective to it, at least for me.

 

SS2 was an excellent example of this, in my opinion. You collect nanites > upgrade cybernetic rig. You collect credits > spend on supplies. You collect weapons/tools > upgrade your characters ability to deal with combat/situations/traps. You collect codes > allow your character to access things needed to progress. All of these are geared toward progression. Aside from the "Game Pig" and its relevant games which is also an incentive to get your hacking skill to level 6, which was a game within a game that you as the player didn't play but your character that you played, played. So all of them were focused not on the player but on the progression of the stories main character and not the player.

 

These days it seems giving stuff not to the main character but to the actual player is a trend and for me... its emmersion breaking, not story character focused, and childish. It really makes me wonder what the rated M for mature means.

[stumpy]

the mature rating is for swearing, violence, gore, and sex related things within the game. People have been fed collecting things is good for you and the extra's you can buy with them, outside the game, that might be used in the game or for other games. So if you take away the collecting things from the game people will complain that they are not getting what they expected.