When is a game "completed" for you?
as long as single player game or co-op which there's end in main plot or quest along story, i assuming as completed, i don't know when it comes to multiplayer game..
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"Completed", to me, means everything is done... all stories, side quests, collectibles, endings, secrets, achievements, etc. Just finishing the story I would call "beaten". I think that is pretty self-explanatory for single player games.
For multiplayer games it's a bit more difficult. If there are achievements or some kind of leaderboards, I would say I've "completed" the game when I've earned all the achievements and/or attained the leaderboard rank or high score I want. If I've played the game for awhile and won a reasonable amount of multiplayer matches, and feel like in some sense I've mastered the game, then I would call that game "beaten" or "finished".
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That's basically it, the difference between finishing and completing
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It depends on the game. Some games have absurd achievements or milestones which I just can't be bothered with, even if I really enjoyed the game. If they're reasonable then I'll go out of my way to 100% it. Last game I did that with was Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Mankind Divided is good, but there are a lot of achievements tucked away in some obscure mode that I really don't enjoy (breach) so it's made it easier for me to say "Eh, close enough". I still have a second playthrough to complete though.
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I agree. Played Braid a few weeks ago, trying to finish it. I just can't put myself through the torture the last achievement is, which is a speedrun. So I decided I am done with that game.
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Funny thing: I just played Mankind Divided and while I too loved HR and got 100% (even for the directors cut later again because the game is just awesome) this game got so many dumb achivements..for each of the augments a specific task or this shitty breach mode...
And while I thought I explored nearly everything i was still missing 12 ebooks after finishing the game (And that was a pretty big stepup too from 29 in HR to 75 in MD while both were pretty much the same lenght)
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Collectibles are rarely fun since they're explicitly padding. Achievements can be even worse (multiplayer achievements, RNG-based achievements, "have no life and do this 10,000 times" achievements -- and that's not counting the ones that are completely broken/unattainable, of course).
I consider a game complete when the game rolls credits (excluding when there's multiple characters/endings/difficulty settings, then my standards are a little higher). Anything I decide to do on top of that is gravy.
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I don't think that in most cases the "do this 10,000 times" type achievements should be thought of as "no life"... or that even secrets / collectibles should be looked down on.
I think people need to realize that some achievements reward mastery of game mechanics, while others reward exploration or playing a game a lot. Developers design games hoping that people will fall in love with them, and collectible or grind type achievements come easy to people that spend dozens of hours in the game over multiple playthroughs. Those achievements simply aren't meant for people that don't really care about the game and just want to get on to the next one because they have thousands of games in their library.
You could think of it as less a badge of skill (obviously) and more an acknowledgement of someone's fandom of that game.
That said, there are some achievements that are ridiculous, for sure.
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I'm explicitly not thinking of achievements you will get if you play the game long enough. I don't mind those, although I do consider them slightly pointless since you can't really "go" for them individually (unless you don't mind being bored out of your skull repeating that one thing to the exclusion of all others). For example, Torchlight II has an achievement for selling 50,000 items, at present held by 0.3% of all players. I doubt anyone would explicitly set out to get this particular achievement, but if you play the game long enough, you'll eventually get that achievement, almost certainly. Of course, no particular effort or skill is needed for it, but hey, that's true of a lot of achievements.
I don't like collectibles as a matter of personal preference. They're padding, and very often bad padding. As in, the game would be none the worse off without them as the core gameplay would be as enjoyable as ever, nor does getting the collectibles exercise any skill in the game itself, it's just "run around and visit all of these spots". Some games even have multiple types of collectibles like that. If I can complete a game, complete with all the sidequests, and then look at the achievements and see that I'd still have to go for a bajillion collectibles, that's no fun.
There are players who like grinding for collectibles and getting that "collected all bear asses" achievement, more power to them. I don't. Anything that's just a simple numbers game, where effort is measured solely by how much time you sunk into it, not whether you got any better at the game or figured out a puzzle or what have you, is something I find lacking as a challenge and I'll be less inclined to actually sink time into it. I'm certainly not going to hinge my definition of "completed the game" on doing those things, which is what the discussion was originally about.
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To be fair, there was nothing explicit in your original post clarifying that you were not thinking of achievements that one will get if one plays long enough.
You're right that this thread is about different perspectives on what "completed" means, and you're certainly welcome to your definition. I was not trying to get you to change it really. I was only objecting to the characterization you made of certain kinds of achievements / tasks (and presumably of people that consider those things part of their definition), which I see not infrequently around game boards / forums. It seemed a good time to publicly reflect on it.
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I'd like to stress that, even if I think certain achievements/collectibles are stupid/pointless, that doesn't reflect in any way on how I think of the people who go for them. After all, it's your game, play it however you like.
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Right. I do agree some developers have ridiculous expectations for some achievements. I was just reflecting on the broad characterization of "grind" achievements and collectible achievements made by the person I was initially replying to (which seems to be a characterization I see not infrequently around forums and the like).
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Finished a game = once the main quest is finished and credits are rolling
Completed = Absolute 100%
I seldom complete games, Because I prefer to enjoy my games without the hassle to discover everything and get annoyed by the difficulty of some things
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For games that have it, when I unlock the "finish the game on normal dificulty" achievment is normally when I consider that I'm done, although there have been many exceptions when I stick around for a few hours more.
I've also left games out of frustration or boredom and not finished them untill months/years later (around 100 of these "paused games" at the time of writing).
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In my case, "completed" means 100%.
But these days, I usually only do the main quest, all the side quests I come across and don't care about achievements on the first playthrough.
Collectables mean little to me unless they bring something substantial, like lore.
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When I reach the end / find a proper ending - so dying early and having a bad ending doesn't qualify in a visual novel. 100% is nice, but I won't push for it if the gameplay loop is unenjoyable or it requires more time than fun the game gives for me.
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Completed : Absolute 100% = Main story + Side quests + Collectibles + Achievements
Beaten : Finished main story
I usually tend to complete the game, it's satisfying, but sometime almost many times its unachievable due to various reasons.
These are the things I hate the most.
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Why don't they give the achievement for the earlier ones if you completed in later modes.
I'd consider any game that didn't do this broken. I've never played a game that required you to beat it on a lower difficulty level if you've already beaten it on a higher one, that's pointless busywork. In fact I'd be super annoyed with this because I usually start games on at least "hard" (since turning down the difficulty if you can't handle it is easier than remembering to turn it up if you're breezing through).
Including seasonal/timeline achievements. Like Played this game on Christmas 2015 or something.
I don't mind "played the game on Christmas" or even "played the game on a set of particular dates" (Calendar Man, Arkham City), but achievements that are inherently impossible to get after some time are just broken.
For the multiplayer achievements, with some luck you can team up with others also going for the achievement and roll out some multiplayer games for the explicit purpose of achievement hunting, even if the game is otherwise dead -- check the community, or achievement hunter groups. It's not cheating if there's no other way. :-P No help if they've taken down the servers, of course, but that falls under the "broken achievement" category.
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I mean, the game is completed when I've played through until the end - typically when the credits roll. If I really enjoy the game or there's a significant amount of side content I enjoyed going after but didn't finish I can continue after that or play again.
Collection quests are entirely made up to pad game content and to trigger addictive behaviors, so they are best left not only unfinished but unstarted. After all it doesn't make sense to consider it completed only when you've finished every single percent they cared to track, because if you do you might as well not consider it completed until you have moved your character to every single pixel or polygon on every map in the game. It's an equally arbitrary and pointless exercise. Or hey, if you like collection quests - throw a deck of cards into the air and then find them all. If you REALLY like collection quests, throw a handful of rice into the air and collect them all! No? Well, maybe consider that next time some game wants you to find all the hidden crap items that aren't used for anything other than keeping you busy.
But I mean if you find that fun, go for it. I have other things to do with my life so when the game stops having an actual "story" to justify my actions, I move on to something else. And of course I don't "finish" every game I play, if I run out of interest then I move on. I can always come back to it later.
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Well, to be fair, sometimes the collectibles unlock concept art. Or something else besides just the achievement, like some largely meaningless boost in stats or a rare item nobody would have a use for after beating the Dread Demon Lords of the Abyss six times with a rusty spoon, but hey. In that sense, they can be superior to a handful of rice. But just as many times they're good for absolutely nothing, other than the check mark that you got them all.
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Well I also don't care about unlocking concept art (All available online, no doubt, with a quick google), so I count those kinds of collectible quests as the same. But sure, if the collectibles give some sort of bonus then that does not necessarily fall under the same thing - then I just consider the bonus and if it isn't something I need or really want in the game then I don't bother. Finding collectibles is such a massive time-sink that anything they give in return has to be either for every item found or massive in scale to be worth it.
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Well I also don't care about unlocking concept art (All available online, no doubt, with a quick google)
But then it's not your concept art, yours to look at whenever you want. I mean, what if they take down the Internet one day, huh?
Is personalized art rewards a thing yet? If not, it should be. Like, your player tag is written somewhere in the victory screen shots. Then tie that to collectibles. There, more motivation. :-)
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The thing is the people who would be motivated by that sort of thing already are. The rest of us realize it would take thirty seconds to add the username in photoshop... or we just don't care in the first place because we don't share victory screenshots - or keep them, or care for them.
Part of the motivation for most people is the social aspect, clearly - and for many of us... we just don't care about that. The only social aspect I care for in games is when I play couch co-op with my girlfriend, or when I co-op some game with a friend while we Skype. I don't really do any games that require playing with strangers, and I have no interest in competing with strangers about who has the biggest number or the flashiest screenshot and so on.
I would love to see someone re-invent the collectibles idea by making it genuinely tie into the game and not as some completionist side quest. Give us a stacking bonus for each item we pick up in a series, make us choose between different bonuses by going to pick up different items - making it impossible to pick up all the kinds of different series in one playthrough. Give our characters a reason to care that isn't "Huh, I found a banana. I guess I'm gonna have to go look behind every hidden glitch on the map now to find more of them so I can brag to my friends."
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I really liked the way Bastion handled the weapons...where you got all of them just via playing (as far as i remember) but each one had up to 5 upgrades.
These upgrades needed you to buy some parts, collect those craftables you could find in the world and some via a challenge map that each weapon had.
And in the end you could max out all weapons if you'd wanted (though each upgrade tier had you choosing between 2different effects)
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Completed: you've done literally everything there is the achieve in the game, all the side quests, collectibles and what not. Nothing new to discover, it's over.
Beaten: Main story done, I can go for more, but I'm good
Done: Either triggered by seeing how many hours of my life I've thrown away into a clicker/idler game, when it starts feeling like too much of a routine to open it over and over, or when I just get bored and have decided I'd rather stare blankly at a wall than open that game one more time
I've been working harder on beating and completing games from my backlog but I'm guilty of just checking some games off as done after a while.
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Depends. Usually all single-player achievements, but I have a few exceptions. I did not do the 4-hour long matrix-filling chore in Deponia 4 for the one achievement, and just this weekend I deemed Deus Ex 4 finished as well, because after ten levels of Breach mode, I decided to pretend that the game mode, along with its achievements, does not exist. (Saying it is bad is a mild understatement, not to mention it physically hurt my eyes.)
As a side note, my attempt on Final Fantasy XIII-3 100% will be an interesting undertaking next year… I wonder if I'll have the patience to really grind it out.
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After completing the game, I usually move it to one of four categories:
Depending on whether I liked the game or not, I would replay it later if it's in one of the latter two categories. But it won't happen if the remaining achievements are ridiculous (like connected to grinding or superhuman skills) and/or require multiplayer. Fortunately I'm not obsessive about 100%'ing everything.
When I beat the game but still have side-quests or DLCs to do but I don't feel like it atm, I would move it to "should play again". If I don't like the game, I'd just drop it and move to "not interested".
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Generally I consider a game completed once the main quest is finished or I've done a single run. This is an easier way for me to know when to move onto the next game, unless I really enjoy playing it and want to do more. I almost never 100% a game as I usually don't like to play one game for too long and it can be tedious to do so.
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