SEGA's tendency to fail to give goals to minigames

[retsa2b]

I was going to save this for a post-game writeup on what I liked and disliked about Gaiden, but just like with other topics I've been mulling over, I feel it's probably for the best if I get my thoughts out there ASAP. There's always a non-zero chance that somebody at SEGA will spot this and effect a positive change in Infinite Wealth.

One of the most important components of RGG games is the various checklists the games eventually present to the player. Sort of like expanded categories of achievements. While I'm sure most players don't bother to take the time to do everything in every list, for those of us who live for getting the most out of these games, these checklists are essential. SEGA has taken the time to handcraft challenges for players to meet. It gives an all-important sense of legitimacy and purpose to actually playing through all the minigames and whatnot.

In the absence of the checklists, what is a player to do? Invent little goals in their head, and pat themselves on the back for "winning" those goals? Headcanon sucks. It's a good thing that's unnecessary. It's a good thing these games do more than simply dump a bunch of minigames on the player and leave it entirely up to them as to whether or not to give a crap.

At least, that's how it is for MOST of these games' content.

In another thread, there was some discussion over how SEGA has been deliberately toning down the challenge and comprehensiveness of these lists of goals. In past games, you might have a goal of reaching 5,000,000 points in Out Run, which actually takes some effort. In current games, the goal is to simply play Out Run 5 times or whatever.

Remember what I said about the difference between legitimizing the minigames and just dumping them on the player and leaving it up to them to play them or not? This is the worst extreme. It sucks.

In Gaiden we have, for the first time, a series of Sega Master System / Mark III games. You can even collect more. The emulation even has a reasonably good CRT filter rather than the usual pure square pixels look of a raw, careless emulator. It's acceptably well done.

SO WHY DID SEGA GIVE ME ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO BOTHER WITH IT!?

For all intents and purposes, I may as well just play the games on my emulator of choice. In fact I would rather do that! There are no goals. Turning the machine on simply doesn't count.

I want SEGA to learn this lesson before Infinite Wealth drops. I want every single minigame in Infinite Wealth to have goals set aside for it. Fantasy Zone arcade game? It better challenge me to hit a million points or whatever, and not just be sitting there like a lump with absolutely no point in existing. Pachinko? There better be goals for going nuts on every different machine available. Cabaret? Better be goals for befriending every girl. You get the picture.

WHY NOT!? Does it take months to add a couple of entries to the checklist? Of course it doesn't! Are players going to gripe about having more reasons to do things in the game? No! It's so ridiculously easy to give purpose to these minigames, and, evidently, just as easy to fail this utterly.

Stop failing, SEGA. Please.

[TheShadowHatter]

Bro...wtf are you talking about? the checklist thing you're talking about is literally in the game. Maybe you think it's not because you expect it to be in the pause menu or something but it's part of the Akame Network options. You have your same goals like every other Yakuza game like getting 1st place in Mahjong tables and such. WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

"I was going to save this for a post-game writeup on what I liked and disliked about Gaiden"

You should have saved this for the post-game...maybe then you would have noticed it and not went on a weird essay rant that is completely meaningless considering what you're demanding is in the game.

[Scorpion]

what am I reading

[Valk]

Originally posted by TheShadowHatter:

Bro...wtf are you talking about? the checklist thing you're talking about is literally in the game. Maybe you think it's not because you expect it to be in the pause menu or something but it's part of the Akame Network options. You have your same goals like every other Yakuza game like getting 1st place in Mahjong tables and such. WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

"I was going to save this for a post-game writeup on what I liked and disliked about Gaiden"

You should have saved this for the post-game...maybe then you would have noticed it and not went on a weird essay rant that is completely meaningless considering what you're demanding is in the game.

The checklist exists, but is DRASTICALLY toned down.
Majority of stuff in Gaiden is simply "do the thing x times" rather than "achieve something challenging".
They are absolutely not the same goals as always.

Mahjong used to be "win total" "win with specific hands". Now its just "win total".

Arcade fighting games used to be "beat the secret boss", now its just "win total"

Arcade racing games used to be "win tournaments" and "beat score", now its just "play total".

Pool used to be "beat each mode on each difficulty" and "beat all one shot challenge", now its just "win total" and "beat the first 2 challenges".

Shogi used to be "puzzle shogi" and "win shogi", now its "puzzle shogi" and "finish shogi win or lose".

Pocket circuit used to be collect all parts and beat all rivals. Now its collect most parts and beat most rivals.

This goes on and applies to pretty much everything except casino and homeless gambling games. Not to mention how there's absolutely 0 reward for doing any of the checklist now. You get far more akame points than is needed simply from just doing the quests and the things you'd get automaticlaly just from playing the games (eg walk distance, talk to people). Remember how you needed to complete the entire list if you wanted infinite sprint AND the golden gun in kiwami?

People can ♥♥♥♥ on completionists all they want, but people are allowed to enjoy the games however they want. Fact is though, the completion list was quite literally a thing *for completionists*. They don't need to nerf it to hell for the sake of people who won't bother to 100% it in the first place.

I personally didn't even 100% games prior to playing yakuza, and literally ONLY interacted with things like koi koi and mahjong *because* there was a completion list task for them. And these two games went on to be two of my fave games in the whole series. Had there been no reward for completing them, I never would have bothered to learn them. And before people start saying "wow you have no desire to play without a goal thats depressing", if you're the kind of person who ALSO goes around saying things like "I hate mahjong and dont want to learn it", then just imagine how much you'd want to bother with mahjong if there's absolutely no reward for it. Or shogi. Or koi koi. And so on.

Also should point out: They're specifically pointing to the master system games. There is a total of 3 checklist goals related to the master system. These goals consist of "collect and start the master system games". They do not consist of individual goals for each game, something that the series absolutely used to do. EVERY minigame in the games would have multiple checklist items. The master system has TWELVE games within it, and not a single goal tied to any individual game. To say "you're complaining about something not being in the game when it actually is in the game" in regards to this is just false. It is not in the game.

[TheShadowHatter]

Mahjong isn't "win X times total" it's literally "get 1st place at X table" so you're objectively wrong on that and possibly more (I'm not going back into the game I already 100% achievement it so I don't care enough to go back to prove a point)

I'm not reading all of that because the main point of my post was that OP said it doesn't exist when it literally does. Idk why you're moving the goalpost for him but I never made any arguments you're making I'm just pointing out OP got really butthurt about a checklist not being in the game when it literally is.

[Valk]

Originally posted by TheShadowHatter:

Mahjong isn't "win X times total" it's literally "get 1st place at X table" so you're objectively wrong on that and possibly more (I'm not going back into the game I already 100% achievement it so I don't care enough to go back to prove a point)

I'm not reading all of that because the main point of my post was that OP said it doesn't exist when it literally does. Idk why you're moving the goalpost for him but I never made any arguments you're making I'm just pointing out OP got really butthurt about a checklist not being in the game when it literally is.

It is win x times total. Win once at table 1. Win once at table 2. Win once at table 3. Win once at table 4. Go out 10 times. This is to say NOTHING of the nine gates tile. This is not the same as "Go out with Riichi Ippatsu" "Go out with a 6 han hand" "Go out with all pairs" and "Go out with Tsumo" which were all ONTOP of the goals that gaiden has.

And frankly, "Im not reading your post but I'm going to reply to it anyway" is a terrible way to make a post. Seems like you read about as much of the original post frankly, otherwise you'd understand that what I said is entirely relevant to it.

OP said there's no checklist for master system games. There is no checklist for master system games.
OP said the goals of the checklist have been reduced in challenge. The goals of the checklist have indeed almost entirely shifted to "do thing x times".
OP said that for the people who enjoy completionism, the checklists in their old form are essential, which they absolutely are.

Or did you just refuse to read anything other than "There's no checklist in" and "the game".

[TheShadowHatter]

Yeah win ONCE isn't "win X times total" it literally is "get 1st place at each table" which is different because you could win individual games, but that's not what it's asking you to do it's asking you to get FIRST PLACE in a Mahjong table which means you have to accumulate enough points (whether you win or your opponents points fall below yours). Again you're objectively wrong about this and no amount of semantics is going to change that.

I don't care whether you think my post is terrible or not because the point was you were already wrong about one thing so I wasn't going to waste time reading the rest when I can just assume you're wrong about other things, and also because I wasn't here to argue but point out OP is wrong because the checklist exists.

notice how OP's post was made 12 hours ago and mine was done 11 hours ago but both our posts are edited 10 hours ago? seems pretty easy to surmise that he saw my post and edited it to clarify better. I read the original post, did you?

[Valk]

Originally posted by TheShadowHatter:

Yeah win ONCE isn't "win X times total" it literally is "get 1st place at each table" which is different because you could win individual games, but that's not what it's asking you to do it's asking you to get FIRST PLACE in a Mahjong table which means you have to accumulate enough points (whether you win or your opponents points fall below yours). Again you're objectively wrong about this and no amount of semantics is going to change that.

I don't care whether you think my post is terrible or not because the point was you were already wrong about one thing so I wasn't going to waste time reading the rest when I can just assume you're wrong about other things, and also because I wasn't here to argue but point out OP is wrong because the checklist exists.

notice how OP's post was made 12 hours ago and mine was done 11 hours ago but both our posts are edited 10 hours ago? seems pretty easy to surmise that he saw my post and edited it to clarify better. I read the original post, did you?

AGAIN. It simply wants you to *win* games. It doesn't care how much you win by, it doesn't matter what you go out with. It doesn't matter if you use the cheat items to win. As I've stated in both posts: THIS IS NOT THE SAME as "win with x condition", such as a specific hand type, a specific method of going out, or with a specific score of hand. And as stated before aswell: this condition WAS ONTOP OF THOSE.

And yet again: The OP was NOT wrong about the existence of the checklist.
THERE IS NO CHECKLIST FOR THE MASTER SYSTEM. OP said that the existing checklist was basically dumbed down, and that a checklist did not exist at all for the master system.

[retsa2b]

I'm thinking that if SEGA is dead set on pu--yfooting the challenge list because they're afraid of putting off their larger (and now significantly Western) audience, they need to meet completionists halfway, and the most obvious way I think they could accomplish this is by expanding upon the approach they've started taking with some of the minigames.

Quick example: UFO Catcher.

In Gaiden, the "challenge" list does not mandate that the player catches every single available prize. This is of course not only a giant step backwards from how this was handled in past games, but it's also quite curious, as it's not as though UFO Catcher is a challenging game. At worst, it takes a little time—and that's kind of the whole da-- point of timesink minigames that are designed to be played organically, in passing.

But be that as it may, Gaiden still does maintain the complete list of all the available prizes, and continues to tally all of them, long after the comically undemanding "challenge" has been surpassed.

In my opinion, this is a somewhat fair compromise.

What SEGA is doing here is being kind of sneaky about what counts as completion. Even though the concerns they have which led them to toning down challenges are entirely misguided, you could say that assuming there are poor-sport players out there who feel like the game should hand them all the accolades on a silver platter, then those very idiots are precisely the sort of people who would completely overlook the fact that there are in-game sub-lists that they're not completing. Sub-lists like UFO Catcher's prize list.

I would of course be happier if SEGA would stop assuming that they need to cater to hypothetical spoilsports so blatantly. But the fact that they're retaining the vestiges of what used to be a good system is at least encouraging.

Now, as I said before, they just need to expand this. To everything.

Case-in-point: The Sega Master System games.

In this case, the by-the-books "completion" for a given SMS game would be something like "Hurr Durr Turn the Machine On and Play the First Level." That would put a checkmark next to the game, fair and square. But the sub-list for the game would have "Play the First Level" as merely the first in a list: "Play the Second Level"; "Play the Third Level"; "Beat the Game"; "Get 1,000,000 points." Real challenges that exhaust the game's potential.

The mythical spoilsport would be satisfied that they "completed the challenge" by playing the game for 2 seconds; the true completionists would be satisfied that there are handcrafted, true goals that they can attend to if they so choose. Obviously not as fulfilling as having those challenges rubber-stamped by making their completion necessary in order to fulfill the broader game's list of goals, but something.

Like I said, SEGA is already doing this for some of the minigames. They now just need to run with it.

And before anyone opines that this is simply not an acceptable compromise because it steals too much away from what should be honest to goodness challenges: Yes, absolutely—I agree. But SEGA seems determined. I'm only trying to find an answer that doesn't permanently relegate minigames to "why the he-- bother at all?" status.