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[ProgenitorCastle]

Hey GAF, I've noticed that in several games that start off promising with great gameplay, graphics, music, level design, etc. sometimes fall off in the later half of the game or towards the end of them, because of gating mechanics. Sometimes, you need x amount of collectibles to proceed to unlock later locked levels, or a certain amount of XP. It's really frustrating to start games with promising progression but then that pesky gating forces the player to go back to previous levels and grind through them to get said collectibles or XP to unlock the remaining final levels. It's really frustrating to deal with because it feels like forced padding on otherwise great games. I would have replayed them once I you know, beat the game, on my own. I don't need the game to force me to replay earlier levels in order to unlock final levels. Bleh.

 

[Knightime_X]

Every souls game ever made.
::runs::

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

Assassins Creed: Odyssey...the thread. A good game that could have been superb if they had basic understanding of level scaling. They would have missions that's ike 5 levels apart in the story.

 

[jaysius]

Tunic has a REALLY NASTY fucking gate, it really doesn't deserve the hype because of the shitty gimpped backtrack quest that happens mid-late game.

 

[March Climber]

Every souls game ever made.
::runs::

You should try Demon's Souls. It's the most streamlined fun romp of a souls game and doesn't outstay it's welcome, so you don't have that brick wall effect with the difficulty.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Every souls game ever made.
::runs::

I'm running away from Elden Ring after 30 hours.

Assassins Creed: Odyssey...the thread. A good game that could have been superb if they had basic understanding of level scaling. They would have missions that's ike 5 levels apart in the story.

I ran to Odyssey after abandoning Elden Ring. F my gaming life.
I guess I will just stick to the Indy stuff for now.

 

[joedan]

Jet Force Gemini for the N64. Was having a ton of fun with that game back in the day then reached a point deep in the game where they said that I needed to go back to the beginning of the game and collect all the tribals. Completely disheartening. Never bothered to go back and never played the game since.

 

[Swift_Star]

Every assassin’s creed after origins.

 

[KàIRóS]

TLoZ: Wind Waker:
I seriously hate the part when you have to gather the triforce fragments and you have to go all over the ocean, it seriously kills the flow of the game.

Castlevania: SOTN:
I know many like the whole inverted castle stuff and even go as far as to say it's genius level design but to me it was just glorified backtracking

Bravely Default:
It's kinda spoilery to say but basically it has a looooot of backtracking on the second half

I'm also tempted to say Nier Automata but I'm gonna get so much hate xD I'll just be fair and say that the multi playthroughs are indeed one of the reasons why it's narrative is so genius, but I didn't like going through the game multiple times tbh.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

Real life

 

[kunonabi]

Alone in the Dark for the X360. I love the game but the final area can only be accessed after burning down a crap ton of evil trees strewn across the game's large map. Which might not be the worst thing if you're taking them out as you go but the game doesn't really let know this until you get to the end. I just said to hell with it and used the fast forward feature.

 

[Jennings]

The Civilization series, when the first 80% of the game goes nice and smooth and then the last 20% of the game suddenly balloons into a 10-hour ordeal while you painstakingly micromanage your units and cities and mop up dipshit civs running all over the map with no possible chance at victory.

 

[TheInfamousKira]

End game collectathons may as well be trademarked by Nintendo, and they always stall momentum, even if the tasks themselves aren't too bad.

Mandatory Wind Waker, Metroid Prime 1 and 2 listings

 

[Fahdis]

Robocop vs. The Terminator, starting mid game the difficulty ramped up significantly.

Street Fighter II and III, after the 4th Character, difficulty always ramped up.

Assassin's Creed Origin and Forth.

 

[MISTER INVEIGLER]

Still at the end boss of Elden Ring, even though I breezed through the rest of the game.

 

[Kiddo Cabbusses]

Castlevania: SOTN:
I know many like the whole inverted castle stuff and even go as far as to say it's genius level design but to me it was just glorified backtracking

I'd call it padding and "literal asset flipping," but calling it "backtracking" is not entirely accurate because the layout requires differences in navigation and the enemies/bosses and items are also changed around in most of the areas. Also, you're no longer exactly forced anywhere once you get into the backwards castle, as you basically just have to figure out Dracula's location and kill him to end the game at that point.

The amount of extra steps you need to take to GET to the inverted castle (the legit way, at least) is way more akin to a progress-killing backtrack grind than the castle itself.

Anyway, this thread can basically be summed up with "old MMORPGs", nearly every single one of them pushed the limits of what acceptable lengths of time to grind out EXP or farm items could be. I quickly tired of the genre when I reached a point where I felt like it was impossible for my characters to grow at the pace I was playing them.

 

[DonF]

I feel like the original ni no Kuni has this. Or at least that's happened to me.
After a couple.of hours my character does almost no damage. I thought maybe there is a mechanic I didn't get or something. Ended up dropping the game after all my fights were running away all the time to get cheap shot from time to time. Also the timing for crits is almost non existent.

 

[Fahdis]

Forgot this (still salty after all these years since I did it legit):

 

[Thanati]

Mass effect andromeda. Whoever designed those crappy mini-games, I want to force them to play them for hours on end, Clockwork Orange style.

 

[.Pennywise]

Mobile Gaming: The Thread

 

[Clear]

Can't say I see this as a "problem" particularly.

It seems like a variant of the old "game doesn't respect my time" argument. To me, you either enjoy playing something or you don't, and so it seems fair as a designer to want to give the best rewards to people who really like playing the game a lot.

I mean, I guess if you want an extreme example of this approach Yoko Taro's stuff is layer-up-layer of this type of mechanic. You play through and get an ending, but if you carry on you get extra content and ultimately a final ending. You have to work at it with a completionist mindset if you want to get the complete experience.

The opposite approach is streamlining everything down to a "golden path", the upside of which is you can allocate every resource to satisfy the most casual players. And, of course, reviewers - which is why in the early/mid 2000's this got pretty popular.

Personally, if I really like a game, I'm delighted to discover there's more of it. The inverted castle in SOTN, all the extensions/path-variants in the original RE2, and of course all of Yoko's Drakengard/Nier titles.

 

[BadBurger]

Horizon: Forbidden West if one really wants to pursue legendary gear and upgrade their gear. Have to earn tokens in dumb challenges, and/or go hunting and pecking around the world for components. The game is easy enough to largely ignore upgrades and zip through the story, but it makes part of what I enjoy about these open world adventure games feel boring and frustrating. The first game didn't have this issue, it seems pointless that they introduced it in the sequel.

 

[Doom85]

Jet Force Gemini for the N64. Was having a ton of fun with that game back in the day then reached a point deep in the game where they said that I needed to go back to the beginning of the game and collect all the tribals. Completely disheartening. Never bothered to go back and never played the game since.

I got lucky and also asked for the strategy guide for Christmas without even knowing about this part when I put it on my Christmas list. Made the whole experience way easier. There are some cool new areas and secrets to discover during this portion of the game, like this eerily dark spaceship IIRC.

 

[Three]

Felt a little like this in Persona 5 with the stats. There was nothing really interesting in upping your charm or knowledge. Maxed everything before starting NG+ but now I feel I have to just wait for certain days to do things in the compendium that could have been available from the start. Why couldn't I keep my eternal lockpick too.

 

[Chukhopops]

Surprised there’s no mention of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. The game is full of blocks that force you to play characters in a specific order, stop the climax of a specific story, etc. Sometimes it makes sense to keep certain things hidden but other times it feels a bit random.

Also you need to do 100% of the story in order to do the final battle.

Still an absolutely fantastic game of course.

 

[SpokkX]

Level gating is the DESIGN of Ass Creed since they became witcher copies

 

[Ryuji Goda]

Trials Rising

 

[Fredrik]

You should try Demon's Souls. It's the most streamlined fun romp of a souls game and doesn't outstay it's welcome, so you don't have that brick wall effect with the difficulty.

Lol try imagine how it is if you’re not among the git gud crowd…

There are gates everywhere. It’s honestly one of the games I’ve done the most dumb and repetitive grinding in; enter a level to slay a couple blue knights, exit, enter again, over and over and over again. Then enter another level, slay a wizard that does summons to collect souls from both the wizard and the summons, exit, enter again, over and over again. Or die and replay the same whole level to reclaim lost souls, over and over again.
I haven’t finished it yet. It has most certainly overstayed it’s welcome for me.

Elden Ring is fine though, since there is so much to explore you can ”grind” by going to new areas. I’ve still done some grinding when I’m too close to be able to level up and don’t want to lose the runes at a bad place. It’s not something I enjoy but so far I haven’t had to do it so much that it kills my enjoyment of the game.

When reading the OP I’m thinking of Super Mario 3D World, where you need to go back to earlier levels to collect more stars to unlock the later levels. And I agree, there is nothing fun about that.

 

[Exede]

This was Brütal Legend for me

 

[PropellerEar]

Gate I don't want to pass, this shit belongs to WoW or other online crap.

Collect 10 lizard foreskins

 

[ParaSeoul]

Every souls game ever made.
::runs::

Most of them get easier towards the end except elden ring which decides to be cheap and add about 10 hours of padding.

 

[Brigandier]

Assassins Creed: Odyssey...the thread. A good game that could have been superb if they had basic understanding of level scaling. They would have missions that's ike 5 levels apart in the story.

That game was full of design choices made purposely to promote lootcrate purchasing.

Don't like the sudden level jumps?? We got these EXP crates!!!!

Don't like how your weapons and armour always need upgrading for absurd amounts of materials?? We got these material crates!!

Fuck Ubisoft and blatant abuse of lootcrates.

 

[tommib]

You’re all a bunch of sissies. Isn’t this videogame design-101? Don’t we all get satisfaction by opening doors and areas that made us toughen up and grind or come up with solutions? We need all games to be a digestible roller-coaster situation with no spikes and diversions?

I get it that some end-games can go on for too long but that satisfaction of finally finishing them is quite the thing.


They’re end games for a reason. Not everyone will finish them. It’s an endurance test. Just drop the game and move to something else.

 

[kenshinx]

yakuza like a dragon. like in the middle of the game the difficulty just spikes right up so youre almost forced to grind to keep up

 

[FunkMiller]

Every souls game ever made.
::runs::

Er… the barriers are more at the beginning than anything. Taurus Demon. Father Gascoigne. Chained Ogre. Etc.

Souls games are always upfront about how difficult they are, and how much work is required. If you get far into them and are still surprised by gating, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Elden Ring is really the only one that takes a huge spike in its later stages.

 

[Bragr]

You’re all a bunch of sissies. Isn’t this videogame design-101? Don’t we all get satisfaction by opening doors and areas that made us toughen up and grind or come up with solutions? We need all games to be a digestible roller-coaster situation with no spikes and diversions?

I get it that some end-games can go on for too long but that satisfaction of finally finishing them is quite the thing.


They’re end games for a reason. Not everyone will finish them. It’s an endurance test. Just drop the game and move to something else.

You are completely misunderstanding the thread.

An endurance test? when you watch movies, do you only watch the black and white ones because everyone who watches color movies is a pussy? that's how you sound with this mentality.

 

[tommib]

You are completely misunderstanding the thread.

An endurance test? when you watch movies, do you only watch the black and white ones because everyone who watches color movies is a pussy? that's how you sound with this mentality.

Videogames aren’t movies (stupid comparison is stupid) and yes, black and white films are normally so much better than colour cinema. They had real artists back in the day.

 

[Bragr]

Videogames aren’t movies (stupid comparison is stupid) and yes, black and white films are normally so much better than colour cinema. They had real artists back in the day.

I didn't compare movies to games. I made a mockery of your attitude.

Perhaps you should consider that you might be out of touch with modern games (and movies) and that's why you can't see the forest for the trees. I would also imagine that you actually don't play that many modern games.

 

[Kikorin]

Gears 5. Amazing first 2 hours, then when it become "open world" starts to get super boring until the ending missions.

Re-Core. I couldn't ever finish the game because to access the final FINAL boss you have to waste ages collecting random trash. Sad because if they didn't had to rush the game out, would have been really good. I enjoyed it until the end anyway, then I simply watched the real ending on Youtube.

 

[Wohc]

Days Gone. Reputation grinding for progress sucks.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

AC origins and AC odyssey.
Valhalla doesn't really have level gating.

 

[hemo memo]

Felt a little like this in Persona 5 with the stats. There was nothing really interesting in upping your charm or knowledge. Maxed everything before starting NG+ but now I feel I have to just wait for certain days to do things in the compendium that could have been available from the start. Why couldn't I keep my eternal lockpick too.

It does carry over in Royal.

 

[CitizenZ]

Well, that would account for 99.9999% of every game I have ever played. I am also including 'filler' levels which are there to just add time to the game.

 

[ToadMan]

 

[SSfox]

Evil Within

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Classic JRPGs (Dragon Quest did this at least up to snd including DQ8) and Rare’s collectathon games are the prime examples of this.
Also Ghosts ‘n Goblins, replaying all the levels would be somewhat OK but being forced to have a specific (and mightily impractical) weapon is ass.

 

[Shmunter]

Assassins Creed: Odyssey...the thread. A good game that could have been superb if they had basic understanding of level scaling. They would have missions that's ike 5 levels apart in the story.

Origins does this too, playing right now. But maybe it’s not as high.

 

[Shmunter]

AC origins and AC odyssey.
Valhalla doesn't really have level gating.

So you can mainline Valhalla without forced grind?

 

[Roufianos]

yakuza like a dragon. like in the middle of the game the difficulty just spikes right up so youre almost forced to grind to keep up

Came to say this. Hit an insane difficulty spike and ended up quiting.

 

[kubricks]

Every souls game ever made.
::runs::

But but but ... git gud.
Wait, Let me conveniently forgot about grinding for the black knight Halbert for days....

BOTW starts off promising, gate by boredom later on.
::run::

Serious answer, all gacha game really.
Instead of making me spent money I just quit instead.