During my family leave, I’ve gotten some time during 2.0’s sporadic sleep schedule to play a ton of games. The majority of those games features a common, popular gameplay element – set collection. You know what I’m talking about, right? It’s that optional gameplay element in which you’re invited (usually unsuccessfully) to “collect them all” or “find them all”. A few examples: Okami’s stray beads, Gears of War’s COG tags, Fallout 3’s bobbleheads, Ratchet & Clank’s golden bolts, Super Smash Bros.’s trophies, Pokemon’s… pokemon. There are also other, more subtle forms of set collection that you may not have thought about: multiplayer titles, skill sets, armor sets, crafting recipes, beastiaries, codexes (I’m looking at you, Bioware) – even Xbox/PS3 achievements/trophies can fall into this category. Since I’m a bit OCD and somewhat of a collection nut, I spot these collection opportunities rather quickly. I also tend to determine rather quickly that the vast majority of such opportunites are not worth my time investment. And I’m sure many of you have done the same thing – shelved a game without even giving a second thought to those things you left uncollected in that bygone world. There’s a reason for that – it’s because most games implement set collection badly. In this series of articles, I’d like to use personal experience from playing various games to examine how other games could improve the quality of these collection mechanics and give players more incentive to participate in these peripheral activities.
First, let’s define what comprises a “set collection mechanic” to restrict the scope of this article:
- Players must be able to complete the set: this rules out procedurally generated things (eg. Diablo/Torchlight loot) or a continually growing set of user-generated content (eg. Spore creatures or Second Life sets).
- Completion of the set should be a peripheral activity and NOT be required to progress through the game: otherwise, our examination of the player’s motivation to complete a set overlaps with other motivating factors; so this restriction prevents applying our study to things like the various mandatory devices in Zelda games – technically, it’s a set of devices that can be collected in its entirety, but (excepting upgrades to bag sizes, etc.) it MUST be completed to progress through the game; heart pieces, however, qualify as a valid set.
- The set must have some easily accessible, manifested representation in the game: in other words, the set must be an intentional collection placed by the designer; this rules out user-defined meta-sets. Such sets are contrived by individual players who have clearly already conjured up the necessary motivation to attempt collecting the set. For instance, in Animal Crossing: Wild World, I attempted to find and purchase all of the instruments in the game to make a music room – nothing in the game actually lists the set of instruments; neither are they denoted by some special icon. It’s an arbitrary set I made up for which I had already mustered the necessary motivation to collect.
Now that we’ve defined the bounding conditions, I’d like to start this series with an examination of a game I only recently had the opportunity to play: the original Assassin’s Creed (and just in time for part II!). As much as I enjoyed playing the game, I ran into a rather irksome collection mechanic – the city flags. Of all the collect-them-all mechanics I’ve experienced in games thus far, the city flags are probably the worst of the bunch (at least as far as I can remember). It didn’t take long after leaving the confines of Masyaf for me to swear off the entire collection altogether. Here’s why:
- There don’t appear to be any gameplay or narrative rewards for procuring flags except for meta-rewards (i.e. Achievements and 100% completion with the filled “Additional Memories” DNA bar). Even if such a tangible reward existed at the end of the tunnel, it’s so elusive that it doesn’t really factor into the typical player’s drive to collect the flags.
- Aside from their location, flags are indistinguishable from one another, making the experience of finding one identical each time. This was exacerbated by the fact that there are 420 of those indistinguishable things! So finding one was an altogether insignificant and homogenous (read: boring) experience.
- Flags are not particularly challenging to acquire. Reaching them is simply a matter of hidden knowledge rather than a test of skill or logic.
I’m going to take a look at each of these three points and examine how other games have remedied the problems with Assassin’s Creed’s flag-collection gameplay.
Collection Rewards
One could argue that completing an in-game collection is reward enough. That may very well be true. I think that such collections generally fall into the category in which each individual item in the set is distinct enough to provide sufficient player motivation (see the Collection Distinction section below). But in any case, it doesn’t hurt to provide some extra incentive to the player to collect a set of things. These extra incentives can typically be categorized as either a gameplay reward or a narrative reward.
Gameplay rewards consist of additional skills or abilities (or some currency toward the purchase of skills or abilities) that expand and augment the player’s gameplay experience. The most recent example that comes to mind is Brutal Legend’s bound serpents, which, when found, each provide a small amount of fire tributes that can be used to purchase upgrades at the motor forge. Furthermore, for every ten bound serpents that are freed, the player character Eddie Riggs gets an upgrade to some element of his stats.
Alternatively, collections can grant narrative rewards in several different forms. Again, Brutal Legend provides a convenient example of such a collection: the “legends” scattered across the landscape. For each one the player finds, another cutscene detailing the Brutal Legend mythos is revealed. Coincidentally, I also discovered that Halo 3: ODST contains an identical mechanic in the form of the audio logs that follow a story indirectly related to the main plotline. Yet another example of a narrative collection reward is BioShock’s audio diaries, narrated by multiple characters related to the main story. However, ODST and Brutal Legend’s narrative collections differ in that each piece of the collection is not associated with a specific piece of the narrative reward. In other words, whether you find piece A before or after piece B, you’re always going to get story reward A before story reward B. This is not true for BioShock’s narrative collection, in which specific audio logs are found in specific locations. This is an important distinction that we’ll revisit in the next section.
There is, of course, no reason why a particular collection can’t give both narrative and gameplay rewards, as is evident in Brutal Legend’s “legend” collection (which I neglected to mention also gives fire tributes for each legend discovered). Another game I’ve played recently (after putting it off long enough) is Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, in which every five pieces of treasure nets the player medal points that are used to unlock various metagame rewards (tweakable game modifiers like infinite ammo, faster run, and weapon select) and bonus content such as concept art and development videos. I’ve lumped extra-game content into the category of “narrative rewards” in that they don’t actually augment the game experience. In all of these examples, I think it’s safe to say that these various rewards can often be an effective incentive to the player to collect the entire set.
Collection Distinction
There is an important element of set collection that seems to be a no-show in many of its incarnations: distinction. Each element of a set should be easy distinguishable from each other, via its textual, iconic, or geometric representation and/or some titular or numeric label. As I’ve already observed, all of the flags in a particular area in Assassin’s Creed are identical except for where they are located. This makes collecting each and every one the exact same experience. There’s no sense of novelty in finding another one.
As I mentioned earlier, collecting a set of objects can be reward in itself – but this is generally a strong enough motivation to the player only when a distinction is made between the elements of the set. The word “collecting” carries the connotation of collecting distinct elements. How often do stamp collectors attempt to find every copy of only one type of stamp? Or how often do card collectors try to acquire every copy of one particularly rare card? While these real-world examples present collection goals that are obviously marred by real-world obstacles and impossibilities that don’t exist in the virtual space, art reflects life. And in life, the appeal of set collection is in the diversity of the set’s various elements and in how those elements complement each other. The set is a puzzle whose pieces, as they come together, become a clearer and more magnificent picture (even if that picture’s got a few missing spots).
I’ve always liked Nintendo’s first-party approach to collections. I’m specifically referring to the trophies of the Super Smash Bros. series. Each trophy is fan-service at its best – each with a unique, nostalgic 3D model of some Nintendo character, object, or setting and a short description of the subject. All of the player’s trophies are displayed together in one place, literally becoming that magnificent picture I described. It’s like looking at that Edge Magazine cover with all of the video game shoutouts. I also played The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker recently (picked it up on the cheap a long time ago and only got around to playing it a few weeks ago). In that game is a similar collection that the player can complete by using a camera to take pictures of the game’s enemies and NPC’s and showing them to a particular sculptor, who crafts figurines of the photographs’ subjects that are put on display throughout various trophy rooms. Each figurine can be viewed in three dimensions and contains a short description of the subject’s place in the game universe.
And then, of course, we come back to Pokemon. While each captured Pokemon simultaneously serves as a gameplay reward (with the new pokemon’s abilities at the player’s disposal), I would argue that the vast majority of pokemon are caught for the sake of completing a player’s Pokedex. After all, the catchphrase (at least in America… not sure if it’s translated from Japanese) is “Gotta catch ‘em all!”, right? And since the distinction between each pokemon is both visual and interactive, the drive to collect each one is that much more powerful.
Which reminds me of Endless Ocean (which I’m not ashamed to admit is one of my favorite games on the Wii). At some point in the game, the player is allowed to populate a personal aquarium with creatures that he or she had already discovered. It’s yet another fantastic Nintendo example of an interactive collection.
In fact, it appears that the common factor between these Nintendo games’ collections is the extent to which the player is allowed to appreciate his or her collection. 3D models that can be viewed from all angles, textual info and categorization, and in some cases, interactivity all contribute to the player’s connection to the collection and his or her drive to complete it. It sure beats a little check mark or a line in a book or even a little icon. And that is why, when Sony announced Playstation Home, something inside me grew giddy at the thought of 3D trophy displays. Too bad it didn’t turn out that way…
There’s also one oft overlooked property that distinction imparts to a collectible set – it allows each element in the set to be described individually. The reason this is so important is this: FAQ’s – of the GameFAQs type. Not everyone can be expected to find every single element of the set on their own. For those collectors that don’t wish to invest the required time, they should at least be able to look up the locations of the missing pieces. This is impossible to do when the individual pieces are indistinguishable from one another. This is especially problematic in Assassin’s Creed because in order to use a guide, you must use it for every single flag. Otherwise, unless you have picture-perfect memory or you’re using a video guide (which I imagine would be ridiculously lengthy), you cannot possibly know whether you’ve already found a particular flag or you’re just looking at a slightly incorrect location on a flag map because there’s no way of knowing whether you already found “flag 53″ on the map – you only know that you’ve found 178 total flags, one of which may be the anonymous “flag 53″ in question. I know this isn’t a purely ludological reason for set element distinction, but it’s a valid one nonetheless. I’m rather confident that all but the most hardcore purists fall back on external sources (strategy guides, FAQ’s) to complete a collection. I do it all the time. So even if the “distinction” in a collectible set is just a numeric label or a dull identifier (like Okami’s stray beads), it’s still an important thing to have for the sake of simplifying the collection process itself.
Collection Gameplay
It’s important to ensure that the gameplay surrounding the collecting of objects is as solid as the elements of the collection itself. I can group collection gameplay into at least three broad categories: steady-stream, challenge, and exploratory.
- Steady-stream collection: these are the sets of the type where the player gets a relatively steady stream of random elements of the set, and completing the collection becomes all about either trading for the missing elements or just investing enough into the game. Examples: Smash Bros. trophies, Culdcept Saga’s cards (or any CCG’s cards, for that matter), Treasure World’s treasures, Animal Crossing’s fossils, a good number of Free Realms’ collection components.
- Challenge collection: these are the sets whose elements take actual gameplay skill to acquire. Examples: Street Fighter IV’s multiplayer titles, Modern Warfare 2’s Spec-Ops mode stars, Braid’s stars (yeah, you might not have known about them; I sure as heck didn’t), Xbox 360 achievements and PS3 trophies.
- Exploratory collection: these are the types of sets whose elements are found by exploring the game space. Typically, you’ll find these kinds of collections in shooters and action games. Examples (there are tons of them but I’ll just name a few): Gears of War’s COG tags, Modern Warfare’s intel, ODST and Bioshock’s audio logs/diaries, Fallout 3’s bobbleheads, just about everything in Brutal Legend.
Assassin’s Creed’s flag collection can basically be classified as an exploratory collection. It is this class of collection that I believe is most often (and most disappointingly) implemented. The big problem that I’ve experienced with these collections is this: they break immersion by forcing the player to think not as the protagonist or the player character but rather as a designer.
For most of these exploratory collections, the elements are often placed with little to no narrative sense. They’re usually either strewn about randomly or hidden in obscure corners of the map that oftentimes don’t even seem accessible. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, completing such a collection is an excercise in hidden knowledge more than anything else.
When searching for elements of such collections, I almost always find myself thinking things like, This corridor doesn’t lead to anywhere meaningful – there must be something there, or, This ledge is out-of-the-way, but it’s accessible – there must be something there. The only logic behind these thought processes comes from putting myself in the designers’ shoes rather than doing what makes sense in the context of the game and the narrative. My wife can even attest to this fact as she watched me play Uncharted, exclaiming, “I smell treashuz!” whenever my designer sense started tingling. And it netted me 50 out of 60 treasures on my first run-through. I had similar moments in ODST. When a path led indoors and to some seemingly irrelevant balcony, I could usually count on finding an audio log. And there’s no reason to think this Sophie character was actually at any of those audio log locations.
Brutal Legend, however, contains a great example of an exploratory collection with at least some measure of contextual sense – the landmark viewers. They’re around landmarks! If I saw something in the world that looked like a landmark, I knew there was a landmark viewer nearby. I didn’t have to go probing the mind of some sadistic designer. Another simple way of limiting the breaking of immersion would be to give the player character some in-game way of “sensing” nearby elements of a collection – some blinking UI element or controller rumble feedback to indicate the proximity of the element. I can’t immediately think of any games that have really done this, although I’m absolutely sure someone must have. The closest example I can think of is Ocarina of Time’s use of the rumble pak to signal to the player that something was hidden nearby.
Application
So how could Assassin’s Creed have improved its flag collection gameplay? Personally, I think the most unintrusive way would have been to tie flags to labeled chunks or chapters of historical info (fictional or otherwise) about the city. Such a change wouldn’t involve adding abilities or tweaking/rebalancing character progression to accommodate gameplay rewards – and the change would fit well with the game’s prominent narrative delivery and historical setting. Of course, this would probably involve cutting the number of flags down significantly – a most welcome change. In fact, why not change the flags altogether and instead make them distinctly crafted relics in the vein of Uncharted’s treasures? They would probably fit into the world a little better that way. (Really – why are there random flags all over the place, anyway?) Along those lines, the seeding of these “relics” could be in more logical locations: at the top of notable landmarks or inside obvious places of importance rather than in the shadows of some inconspicuous alley or atop a nondescript rooftop. Furthermore, the designers can spread clues regarding the locations of those relics throughout lesser “eavesdropping” opportunities in the game. I found the eavesdropping mechanic to be rather contrived, as the player can only eavesdrop for an investigative mission. It would have been much more interesting if there were other groups of conversations on which the player could eavesdrop to get clues – much in the same way that pickpocketing is used for both investigations and for acquiring throwing knives. And, being the valuable relics that they are, some of them can be guarded by hostile templars who must be circumvented or defeated, while others can be locked away in trap-laden rooms requiring a touch of finesse and dexterity to traverse.
And for the record, I have not yet touched the second title in the series. So now someone who’s finished playing Assassin’s Creed II can tell me whether Ubisoft did, in fact, add a more compelling collection mechanic.
So that covers the shortfalls I noticed in Assassin’s Creed’s flag collection and how one might possibly improve that segment of gameplay. In my next post, I’ll be exploring the importance of community and recognition and how those things have strengthened the player’s drive to collect – especially with the most recent console generation’s emphasis on online play.
No comments:
Post a Comment