Garbage that Gets your Goat in Gaming

[Tankred]

I like convenience. Some of the stuff that's always been in games is dumb. If I kill everything between the entrance and exit making me walk back is dumb. I particularly like how Saints Row 3 introduced a 'warp to shore' if you fall in the water. Every game of that type needs little conveniences like that.

Goddamn, I remember encountering this in SR1 and how convenient it was at the time.

[Rosenakahara]

I like convenience. Some of the stuff that's always been in games is dumb. If I kill everything between the entrance and exit making me walk back is dumb. I particularly like how Saints Row 3 introduced a 'warp to shore' if you fall in the water. Every game of that type needs little conveniences like that.

And that's fine its a personal preference, some games don't implement backtracking well and some games just plain don't need backtracking, just like not every game needs combat for example.
Its just complaining about backtracking in any game at all ever even when backtracking is built in as an integral part of the game, my streamer friend hates all metroid games just because metroid nes had backtracking (i told her to try zero mission instead but she didn't listen)

[Shinoyami65]

^Yeah, the first game is really rough around the edges compared to Zero Mission; you do have to remember that it was created in a time when you had to use a password to retain items whenever you booted up the game. Super Metroid got around this problem by having lots of shortcuts, and giving your late-game items sufficient power to literally breeze through enemies and obstacles to ease transit when backtracking.

I do feel that Corruption had the right idea by letting Samus's ship take her to different areas, though, since it really streamlined the travel process around the planets. In MP1 hauling ass between different elevators was somewhat bearable and there were shortcuts but MP2 was a lot more complicated due to the two worlds (so you'd have to get from where you were to a portal, then from there to where you wanted to go, then back to the portal again with various enemy encounters along the way).

[Rosenakahara]

Mp1 didn't exactly have the technology to keep its massive areas and not have those elevator loadtimes. so really that was just a limitation of the system it was on.

[NemZ]

Backtracking done right... a few rules,

1) The game needs hub clusters connected by simple paths or warp gates, but preferably in such a way that their 'hubness' isn't painfully obvious. They should also be visual set pieces to give players an easy landmark to notice. A single hub is far too obvious, too many and the map will be overly confusing. The best hubs are places the player will enter and exit from multiple crossing patterns, some of which won't be at all obvious the first time they pass through such they won't even realize it was a hub until they loop back.

2) Progress should largely consist in opening up new themed areas that reqiure the use of recently aquired skills (not just to enter, but also to navigate) and award a new one upon completion. these should generally be designed as loops that start near a hub and end up with easy access back to the same hub or a different one.

3) New areas should be blocked by 'gates' of some sort. These gates should be tantalizingly placed along the route to somewhere else so that players will remember them and be able to get there again with little hassle, not off in some distant corner. Also the gate should always be at the start of the new area, not at the end of a hallway somewhat into it so that it forms a time-wasting dead end.

4) Intentional dead ends should always have a powerup of some sort in them, even if just a minor one. Exploration must always be rewarded. Often this is a good place for a challenge... the sort of thing one wants to do once and then not need to ever worry about again. It shouldn't be possible to reach a challenge until you already have the tools to overcome it.

5) Things that are hidden should be along main routes so that players have multiple chances to notice it. Putting secret rooms off in places you'd otherwise never need to go again is lame unless there's also a warp zone or something (say, as part of a loop mechanism ending a 'stage') nearby to get in and out fairly quickly if it was missed the first time around.

6) Sequence breaking should be enabled and intended... but not in such a way that it robs the players of the feeling that they're getting away with something. This means rewarding non-obvious skill usage, not hiding secret paths or creating otherwise useless areas just to make such tricks possible. It isn't at all a bad thing for the normal sequence to have areas that can be solved in variable orders either, as that gives more feeling of agency even in an initial playthrough.

[Rosenakahara]

^ Basically this, though having a single hub isn't honestly that bad, MP1 has 1 hub and that works well, same with shantae (least risky's revenge since pirates curse while still being a metroidvania is more a demons souls style one)

[NemZ]

I was mostly thinking of how lame Metroid Fusion (until the very end) and Castlevania Portrait of Ruin's main hub areas were.

[Rosenakahara]

Metroid fusion's hub i can tolerate because the individual areas for that game were actually really good for the most part, not my favourite metroid game but eh.
Portrait of ruin however........yeah i agree whole heartedly with you there, the main hubs were.......well im not sure what the main hubs were honestly.

[Monk Ed]

Backtracking done right... a few rules,

*saves to "Lessons in Game Design.rtf"*

[NemZ]

Metroid fusion's hub i can tolerate because the individual areas for that game were actually really good for the most part, not my favourite metroid game but eh.

Really? Because I just remember having to to each area multiple times, almost every time entering and leaving the same way and doing a ton of backtracking just to get back to the little hub section that linked all 7 zones together in one hallway. Between the layout and the computer ordering you around from one objective to the next (even locking doors not with weapons but just arbitrarilly!) to keep you on task. Fuck that noise.

Portrait of ruin however........yeah i agree whole heartedly with you there, the main hubs were.......well im not sure what the main hubs were honestly.

It kinda didn't have one, just a shitload of warp zone loops. Long awkward castle trails to get to the next painting but there is always a save and teleporter right nearby so once you've been there once everything in between is just pointless. The paintings each have their own warp zone loops and again just one entrance/exit, but there's almost no reason to ever revisit one and each tileset gets used twice so it can be needlessly confusing if for some reason you do.

If you must use a disconnected layout then Order of Ecclesia absolutely does it best. Each stage has at least two entry/exit points back to the free travel overworld map, but finding a new exit opens up a new area and on revisting you can jump in from any of the linkage points you like. After exploring the countryside you eventually do reach castlevania proper and while shorter it is a proper convoluted map in it's own right with multiple entrance/exit points and clearly themed substage areas, each with a separate boss. Basically it's Simon's Quest done right.

[Rosenakahara]

I think part of the reason i don't mind fusions hub world AS MUCH is because when i had a GBA i had very few games on it and fusion was one of them, i kinda grew up with it so nostalgia prevents me from outright disliking parts of it.

I really need to play order of ecclesia, don't know why i never got around to it, same with aria of sorrow, i played dawn of sorrow and liked it but never went back to aria.

[Shinoyami65]

I didn't actually think of it as much of a hub, since I mostly just spent time following the objective marker rather than backtracking so I didn't spend as much time in the elevator room as would be expected unless it was time to go to another sector for the next part of the story.

[A.T. Fish]

Backtracking done right... a few rules

I recently finished Metroid Zero Mission and I see that a lot of your rules apply to it. I liked the game a lot, but being used to Castlevania I kind of expected more boss battles. It was my first Metroid and it gave me the impression that the franchise focuses more on exploration than Castlevania, I won't have a problem if it is as good as it was in this game though. I'll play Fusion soon.

[Rosenakahara]

Yeah metroid's prime (get it) focus is on exploration, i still say the best games in the series are super metroid, metroid prime and metroid prime 3.
I wont get into arguments about which is better but metroid prime is my favourite.

[NemZ]

Zero mission violates #6, but otherwise it's pretty good. On a first playthrough you wouldn't notice, but for speedrunners and the like the sequence break opportunities are apparently quite obviously staged. They even added an otherwise pointless little hidden tunnel so that it's possible to fight Ridley before Kraid.

[Shinoyami65]

^Yeah, I used that tunnel at one point; it requires a lot of precision with the Morph Ball bombs but it's so satisfying to finally pull it off.

[Monk Ed]

Zero mission violates #6, but otherwise it's pretty good. On a first playthrough you wouldn't notice, but for speedrunners and the like the sequence break opportunities are apparently quite obviously staged. They even added an otherwise pointless little hidden tunnel so that it's possible to fight Ridley before Kraid.

Actually, that sounds awesome! I like discovering little things the developers clearly put in to facilitate experienced players having a new experience. It makes it feel like I've entered a secret club.

[Shoujo Kakumei Asuka]

Oddly specific, but really long game over screens whenever you die. You're just sitting there forever waiting for the screen to end, get out of the game, load your save file... etc.

Also, I agree with Monk Ed about shortcuts.

[NemZ]

Well, I suppose #6 might be a bit YMMV. For people really into sequence breaking and speedrunning apparently making the shortcuts intentional feels patronizing... Its not an exploit anymore, its just another intended secret.

[TehDonutKing]

I hate when people clone or Powersave Pokémon; it's like counterfeiting money or doping in a sport.