Topic: Unnecessary Padding and Stretched out games

I never really bother with Trophies or Achievement. I only have 1 platinum (Infamous 2nd Son) and about 2/3 games on Xbox that I managed all the achievements (mostly freebies like doritos games). I have finished far more than this as far as I am concerned - beat the story, played all I wanted. I have 100% a number of campaigns - things like the Arkham games, both the latest Tomb Raiders etc but didn't collect all the 'trophies'.

I will try and get them but won't go out of my way to get them and certainly won't play aspects I don't enjoy just to get them - for example MP based ones if I don't like the MP.

A game is finished when I say it is - not when my trophies/achievements say it is!!! 100% completing a story is 'finished'!

@themcnoisy: Lol - thanks. I want to get my daughter into games as she gets older but you are right, NOTHING that I like will ever be liked by her on principal. Already established that with films and music!

@Tasuki: @BAMozzy: I like trophies - but I also have a touch of ocd (ordering stuff like cds, games, doing things in a set order everyday etc) so for me I want the platinum. I can easily give up on a game if it becomes too hard. But when something is doable like one piece warriors 3 my head wont let me put it down. On xbox I have 44 completed games and like you bam Doritos Crash Course was one of them, brilliant game. I do wish I wasn't bothered by them, but I'm always checking.

I need checking in to the priory lol.

@BAMozzy: Completely agree with you man. Also due to how many games and systems I have if I continued getting trophies and all that other filler stuff I would have a backlog even bigger then I do.

Pointless collectibles put in to games to pad them out. So many games have them these days. What a waste of time! Just seems so lazy to me. Either make the collectibles worth while and interesting or do something more imaginative with the game.

I'm as time goes on, more and more games are suffering from bloated game design, Dragon Age:Inquisition would have been a much better game imo if it had been halved in length, as it is it gets quite repititive and boring about halfway or three quarters through. The experience would have been much more satisfying if it had been cut in half and made tighter. I'd argue even Witcher 3, as great as it is, suffers from bloat with regards to treasure spots, the sheet number of them dilutes they're value instantly I feel whereas had they been limited to say 15/20 spots with more valuable loot in them they would have been much more enticing. Rpgs in general are the worst offenders of bloating out their games

@themcnoisy: True! I definitely don't mind RPG elements in games, or even RPGs for that matter. I just don't have the time for these huge games anymore. Frankly most of them are RPGs. Occasionally I'll find some free time, but I hate it when I cannot finish a game or when the game drags on for too long.

@LieutenantFatman: @Octane: @Hego: So what's the worst collectibles you have tried to collect?

For me it has to be the birds in gta 4.

@themcnoisy: Might be the blast shards in infamous. At least they had a purpose I suppose. But finding every last one, what am I, a super hero cleaner?

But then there are a lot of games with missable collectibles. As much as I love the truly excellent Witcher 3. Making the first collectible Gwent card missable was particularly harsh.

This topic is basically Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

@themcnoisy: purple engrams that are actually usefull, also frickin helium filaments and such, ugh, why.

@themcnoisy: Has to be the Shards from Dragon Age: Inquisition, I collected all the damn things over several large maps before receiving the most anti-climatic and crap loot I've found in a game! Like I was way too over-leveled to use any of the loot, and this stuff was supposed to be end-game! Truly awful stuff

@Hego: Hated Dragon Age inquisition precisely because of how bloated it was. I have quite a few platinums but I only platinum games I enjoy playing (i.e. are enjoyable enough to make the grinding towards platinum less of an issue). I was really excited for DA:I and I tend to compulsively do as many side-quests as possible in RPGs to get a good feel of the world (and live in it a little) but DA:I ruined it for me. I'm a few trophies from platinum but I just cannot be bothered to do it as the memory of it being such a chore to do side-quests (which weren't interesting), having to micro-manage missions that didn't do much to the overall experience just put me off completely (as did DA2). Loved the Witcher as even treasure spots had monsters I could test myself on and side-quests were a nice distraction.
@johncalmc: True but playing around with different approaches has always kept me going in MGSV