RPG Cast – Episode 521: “Upsell You to Unlimited Meows”
We figured it would be a short show because there’s not a lot of news this time of year. Turns out Alex, Kelley, Peter, Chris, and Anna Marie still had plenty to discuss with their now playing, your feedback, and the upcoming releases including Pokémon.
Question of the Week
Do you feel like you need to finish games or are you OK with stopping before the end if you’ve gotten all you can out of it?
Check out the show notes here!
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Yes, I would rather complete any and every game I start. I don’t play many games that I dislike enough or grow disinterested enough to stop before completing them. I also don’t like leaving things unfinished in general.
Having said that, I still haven’t finished Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, so…
I would like to remind occasional World of Warcraft players (including Chris) that the WoW anniversary event includes three mounts. If you miss the event, these mounts will likely become either impossible to obtain, or very expensive to buy on the Black Market Auction House. The Deathwing mount discussed on the podcast is fairly easy to get. The other two mounts are a wolf (for Horde) and a ram (for Alliance) from playing the special Alterac Valley PvP event.
The PvP event has been recently hotfixed, so that the best way to earn the mounts is to do various Alterac dailies over the course of several days. The good news is that completing the grind on one character of either faction will earn both mounts.
QotW: I do feel the need to finish games that I spend more than 1-2 hours playing. Looking up the game’s ending on YouTube doesn’t count.
Despite, or perhaps because of this trait, I stop playing far too many games after an hour or two. Usually I’ll shelve them and try them again later, possibly years later.
I used to feel the need to earn 100% completion on games, but not anymore. Only certain games deserve 100% completion – only the rare, special games that are so good one doesn’t want to stop playing until there’s literally nothing left to do.
Even when a game is excellent, if 100% completion requires something tedious (example: collecting 900 Korok seeds in Breath of the Wild) or abhorrent (example: laying siege to innocent cities or questing for an evil artifact weapon in Puzzle Quest) then it’s still not worth it.
Over the past year I’ve finally compiled a list of every RPG I’ve ever played. It’s ~130 games total that I’ve rolled credits on and fewer than 10 that I’ve not completed, and even most of those will be completed relatively soon. I have a need to roll credits on most anything I start unless it’s completely not worth my time, something that very rarely happens.
QOTW: I *do* feel guilty when I don’t finish a game I start. When I was younger, and had more disposable free time, I was absolutely a 100% completionist. Now, I’m just happy if I’m lucky enough to actually get to roll credits. I have “more than a handful” of games sitting on my shelf right now that are only partially completed or barely started and I feel a lot of guilt having spent that money and not finished them.
QotW: I tend to feel compelled to finish almost every game I start. I tend to try to do everything as well, every side quest, hunting for hidden items, etc, but if I haven’t got everything by the time I roll credits, I’ll call it a day. Post-game content I’ll do if I’m really into the game or it offers a worthwhile addendum to the main story (eg Dragon Quest VIII on both counts), but you can forget about New Game+.
Does gaming bring out OCD, or was it always there? Either way, the fact I want to finish games before starting another is not helpful for backlog purposes…