Is anyone else sick and tired of unlockable content in games?

[Rett Mikhal]

I recently purchased Soul Calibur IV for my nephew's birthday and he loves it. Today we glanced at the list of unlockable stuff, which is mostly all things that can be added to your custom characters.

The list is all over the place. You have to do everything in every game mode, sometimes 20, 100, 10,000 times. All to create a character?

Here's an idea. Offer a version of the game for one more dollar that has everything unlocked. Where do you, the game creators, get off restricting me from playing anything. I may sound like a baby asking for his bottle, but it's getting RIDICULOUS how much you have play the game before you can properly play the game.

Besides, we all know it's a big sham to prolong the number of hours you play it, as opposed to just making the game good. Don't get me wrong, Soul Calibur IV is great (though everyone has played it by now), I'm just tired of having to trudge through all this stuff.

When was the day the memo went out that said games should be work, instead of fun.

 

[BigFoot]

I don't mind unlockable content, as long as the requirements are reasonable.

Racing games have always done this with tracks and cars. Games like Uncharted 2 also the use of certain multiplayer skins once you've beaten the game, beaten it on the hardest (crushing) difficulty, gotten all the trophies... and I'm actually OK with that. Not everyone can beat a game on the hardest difficulty, so I like that fact that not everyone can use all the skins.

However, if the requirements are unreasonable, it really pisses me off.

 

[Yoda]

Unlockable content is ok, but it has to be implemented well. They shouldn't lock important things like characters with something that's too tedious or difficult. I'm not a fan at all of huge grind type tasks either. I mean, if you need to kill 10,000 of something to get a certain reward, make sure that 10,000 of something is at least in the ballpark of someone playing through the game in a reasonably thorough manner.

One where they got that wrong was Genocider achiement in Dead Rising.... Killing 50,000+ zombies sounded cool, until you realized that you were just going to have to run them over in the tunnels and plan out a circuit where you'd get to a respawned vehicle as your current one breaks down. It was just plain tedious in the end. If they made it carry across games it would be more reasonable. If they lowered it to something like 10,000 you might be inclined to vary your kills, etc...

What I REALLY hate is pre-order DLC trinkets and exclusive content collector's editions. Oh, and paid map packs are horrible because of the way they split the player base. Just make more maps to begin with, charge more for the game if you have to! But having all sorts of various permutations of map packs as the game's player base dwindles is very annoying.

 

[Hermiod]

I hate unlockables. I hate achievements and trophies too.

In my view, if you have paid for a game you should be able to access all of its content from the main menu the first time you put the disc in. It's your game, you paid for it. Left 4 Dead and its sequel do this.

Can you imagine Photoshop denying you access to certain filters until you've mastered the basic ones ? Word only letting you use certain fonts until you've typed enough words in Arial and Times New Roman ?

On Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe show there was a segment with comedian Dara O'Briain who explained this the best. He bought Rock Band, which advertised songs by The Who on the back of the box. He then had to play for hours to unlock these songs by playing songs by bands he didn't like.

It's the same with a lot of games - you don't buy a racing game to drive a Mini, you buy it to drive a Ferrari.

WWE Smackdown vs Raw's Create a Superstar system has been borked by unlockables. Not long after the latest version came out came the rapid rise of a guy named Sheamus who is not in the game. No problem, just make him in Create a Superstar, right ? No, you have to work, playing endless matches to build up his stats. In previous versions of the game, once you had done that once you could just copy him for each new guy you wanted to make and change their appearance - only this time THQ took that out. It's punishing you for wanting to use the feature they'd based their advertising around for this iteration.

 

[BigFoot]

^ What's wrong with trophies and achievements?

 

[Hermiod]

^ What's wrong with trophies and achievements?

A number of things.

- Multiplayer achievements are inaccessible to people who do not wish to play online or lack the skill to compete effectively.

- Multiplayer achievements also often cause players to become disruptive in their attempts to gain said achievement. A notable example being Pro Evolution Soccer 6 where players would attempt to get the various achievements for winning matches online by exploiting a bug in the game's pause system that would force your opponent to quit, thus giving you the win.

- Achievements often revolve around completing tasks to unlock items - so all of the problems with unlockables apply.

- They also often entail doing things that have little to do with actually progressing in the game.

- They cause players to waste time thinking up ways of easily gaining the achievement instead of enjoying the game.

Effectively, they turn gaming in to an exercise in gaining the most achievements and not having the most fun which is what it should be.

Imagine, for instance, you had achievements for watching films. The kind of mentality achievements create would result in people leaving their DVD players playing all day while they went out, just so they could have more achievements than their friends, ignoring the fact that they haven't actually watched the film or appreciated it.

There's an achievement for ensuring everyone survives the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. I ensured they survived because I cared about the characters and didn't want them to die. It's a bit sad that others just followed some guide on GameFAQs to get 1,000 points, probably skipped all the dialogue and rushed through the game.

 

[Servo]

^ What's wrong with trophies and achievements?

I don't know if this is the case for Hermiod, but I get annoyed by online-based Trophies/Achievements. A lot of them are utterly ridiculous.

I'm a pretty hardcore gamer. I own a 360, and a PS3, and I usually have 3 or 4 games on the go at once. As a result of that, I don't have time to dedicate the number of hours required to get 1million XP on Resistance 2, or get into the top 4 Honor Roll on Killzone 2.

That means I have a bunch of games that I've not been able to 100%, because of the ridiculous targets set by the devs, who expect you to play one game to death in order to achieve them.

I've always said that the online Trophies/Achievements should be optional, or at least not contribute to getting the 1000G/Platinum Trophy. Call of Duty manages to make all the Trophies/Achievements relate to the campaign/co-op, instead of having a bunch of daft XP targets, so why can't everyone else do the same?

 

[Hermiod]

^Online achievements are one of my biggest issues, yes.

 

[Rii]

The only unlockable content I can recall finding objectionable was in Starfox 64, where to access the tank and 'on foot' multiplayer modes one had to obtain kill count medals in the singleplayer campaign. The task was compounded by the fact that following 'game over' one had to restart the campaign from the very first stage; and it wasn't possible to repeat previously completed stages, i.e. the player effectively had one shot per campaign run at getting the medal for any given stage. I got medals for about half the stages in the game but never did manage to unlock either of those modes.

I have philosophical objections to cross-game Achievement systems. In practice I simply don't pay them any heed.

In my view, if you have paid for a game you should be able to access all of its content from the main menu the first time you put the disc in. It's your game, you paid for it.

Perhaps surprisingly, given my general suspicion of 'intellectual property', I have to side with the devs on this one. They can structure their artwork as they fit and consumers can decide whether or not they're willing to purchase it as it stands.

Of course the consumer, having purchased the game, is free to do anything they like to it. Not that that typically amounts to much on the console platforms.

 

[Hermiod]

Perhaps surprisingly, given my general suspicion of 'intellectual property', I have to side with the devs on this one. They can structure their artwork as they fit and consumers can decide whether or not they're willing to purchase it as it stands.

Of course the consumer, having purchased the game, is free to do anything they like to it. Not that that typically amounts to much on the console platforms.

Consumer choice is not always possible when, as I suggested above, a music game says you can play songs by The Who on the back of the box but does not mention that those songs are locked.

To make matters worse with the original Rock Band, you had to play on Medium difficulty to unlock all the songs.

 

[Rii]

Consumer choice is not always possible when, as I suggested above, a music game says you can play songs by The Who on the back of the box but does not mention that those songs are locked.

Valid point. There should probably be some kind of advertising standards thing in place there. At first glance it seems a silly thing to make unlockable too. What if you don't give a shit about The Who? What if you only give a shit about The Who? Blech.

 

[Hermiod]

^To be fair, their competitors at Activision realised this was a problem and have made all songs available to play from the start in Quick Play from Guitar Hero: World Tour onwards.

Left 4 Dead does well here because the entire game is unlocked from the start, you can jump to any chapter in any campaign. Where it falls down is on some of the Dark Carnival achievements in Left 4 Dead 2 - carrying the gnome to safety, getting high scores on various carnival games etc.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I don't mind having unlockables for relatively trivial things like character costumes and special weapons. I do think it's shitty when entire game modes (besides trivial variations on standard game modes) are locked up. Not everyone is a die-hard completist, and I get the impression the unlockables are usually geared toward those people.

 

[TheBrew]

I was pretty pissed that I couldn't just got straight to level 8-4 on Super Maria Brothers. This shit has been going on for a long time.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I was pretty pissed that I couldn't just got straight to level 8-4 on Super Maria Brothers. This shit has been going on for a long time.

That's not an "unlockable," though. That's progression in the game. I don't have too much issue with requiring the player to complete levels in a linear fashion. It's more an issue where you have to do really obscure or difficult things in order to unlock critical aspects of the game.

 

[TheBrew]

I was pretty pissed that I couldn't just got straight to level 8-4 on Super Maria Brothers. This shit has been going on for a long time.

That's not an "unlockable," though. That's progression in the game. I don't have too much issue with requiring the player to complete levels in a linear fashion. It's more an issue where you have to do really obscure or difficult things in order to unlock critical aspects of the game.

You thought that it was easy to get to level 8-4?

At the core, it's all content. How it is unlocked is up to the developer. Batman: AA required you to do certain riddles to unlock challenge mode maps; should that have been removed? How is having to play through the easier songs in RB to play the difficult ones different from starting at 1-1 in SMB?

While I do agree that unlockable content shouldn't be a grind-fest to obtain, I do not mind when the player has to actually achieve something to unlock it.

EDIT: And yes, there was a West Side Story side-scroller for the NES.

 

[Jax]

Gaming is the only product where you pay for something and don't get to use all of it at the start. Achievements aside I feel games should have an option to unlock stuff through the game or at the start as long as it doesn't directly impact on single player story eg - bonus stuff like costumes, written/art materials etc.

 

[FordSVT]

What's the real incentive to play a game like Forza for an extended period of time if every track, car, and part is available to use from square one?

I like unlockable content, as long as I can access the major game modes from the beginning. Cars, characters, special bonus weapons and hidden levels are part of the gaming experience, have been since the 16 it days. Easter eggs go back even farther, a lot farther. It's supposed to be a reward for people who do invest their time in a game. Alternately, some challenges might be too much for some players, and developers should recognize those occasions and not revolve important aspects of game play around completing them.

Achievements are a different thing altogether and should be separated from content prerequisites (even if what you have to do is often labelled an achievement these days). Some achievements are hard as hell to do, that's the way it should be sometimes. But any tasks that unlock characters, levels, and game modes should be realistic for the average player to complete.

I play WoW, I'm under no illusions that I'll ever be able to do all of the hundreds of achievements, though I do admit I have more than most. Some of them make the achievements on almost any console game seem quick and easy by comparison (the Insane title for example or the "What a long strange trip it's been" meta). Rewards for achievements include special titles, tabards and mounts, but nothing in the way of game-changing items.

More on topic, I have to spend hours levelling a character in order to access certain content. As a new gamer, I would buy the original game and two expansion packs and not see the second pack until after weeks of play time has passed. Then, one has to spend weeks gearing up to see more advanced content. There is an attitude among the player base of WoW exactly as found in the OP, "I pay for the game, gimme the gear, let me at the content now", and I think it hurts the challenge the game provides over time.

 

[Jax]

"I pay for the game, gimme the gear, let me at the content now", and I think it hurts the challenge the game provides over time.

This is why gaming has a stigma and casual players go for the stupid party theme games on the Wii. There was a TV show called Gameswipe where a Irish comedian "Dara O Brien" who loves gaming but considers himself a casual gamer because he doesn't have enough free time to play often laments how games don't offer enough choice and some people will have time for the challenges but others won't.

The one thing the gaming world thinks its good at but really isn't is choice, games are too rigid in this era when they shouldn't really be.

 

[Kelthaz]

I hate unlockable content in multiplayer games, but it works well in single player games. Collecting every DK Coin in order to access the Lost World in DKC 2 was fantastic. I love opening up bonus levels as a result of completing extra challenges. The key word here is "challenge", if the unlockable is unlocked through tedious grind I will snap the god damn game in half. I also hate unlocking costumes; I want something gameplay related.

As for achievements, I hate them. Well, I don't hate them, I just completely ignore them. It's just something for the OCD fans to go nuts over while I actually, you know, play the game.