FUN VS. SATISFACTION

If a game isn't consistently engaging and latching the player onto the experience, I don't think it'll work out great. You could have the best ending in the world, but it wouldn't work out as well if you lose half your players at the second arc.

Better to have a game that is a enjoyable ride the entire dozen+ hours, rather than a slog that makes you really happy at the last hour. I personally can't beat through the repetition of Bravely Default's latter arc and decided to just watch the rest, unfortunately. Too many other games I need to beat through...

Dude, I'm going to hide tag that spoiler at the least. This is a site where people play games and it's still a relatively new-ish release. At least make the effort not to be a jerk about spoiling things for people...

There are many ways you could have avoided the spoiler. Say... something like this:

You have a job given by someone that is basically 'wake the crystals', but you are forced to redo the job over and over again in order to eventually progress the plot.

You are given the choice to either end the job early by doing one thing or doing the proper thing and going through all the processes to complete the full ending. Either way you get to proceed the plot but one allows for a sort-of short-cut to the plot but the long way is more satisfying.

See, now that wasn't hard, gave the general idea and didn't provide major spoilers to a game that people are still playing.

Seriously, be a little thoughtful about stuff like this. If there's a specific baddie, call them a villain or another non-specific word. If there's a certain event, say exactly that - 'specific event'. Just because you don't feel like expending effort doesn't mean you have to spoil the plot for everyone.

And yeah, I'm more annoyed than I would be because I was playing that game again (just picked it back up after a few months of not playing) and had no idea of the plot point you posted. Thanks for the ruin. I don't feel like playing it now that I know what's going to happen next. There's no point. I just hope not too many others got spoiled at the same time. :|


As to your question about allowing for early endings or plot changes that allow you to bypass certain other parts of the story, it's an interesting concept. I've used something like this is a boss battle in one of my games, where an evil fairy (>.<; ) will change the way the battle ends depending on what you do/what happens in the battle.
For example, if a certain character is charmed by the fairy, his girlfriend unleashes her hidden potential and causes a beat-down on the fairy's ass and ends the battle early. If the fairy beats said girlfriend, her mother enters a pseudo-rage that enables much magical power. If the fairy gets scorned by a certain attack, she will enter an enraged state and destroy the party completely. If enough time passes without any of these things triggering, an outside party (NPC) will end the battle and chase the fairy off.

Granted, not exactly the same, but it allows for variation to the plot and gives the battle a more organic feel - as though what is happening in the battle actually effects the characters more than just by HP/MP loss.

That said, I'd never try to deliberately frustrate my players for long times by forcing them to do the same shit over and over again. From what I have heard from other players of BD, they tended to stop playing the second time they had to collect the McGuffins (as it were) and hated being forced to do the same thing again. I can't imagine having to do it over and over and over. I get that the plot point makes it relevant but for something that took so long to do on the first try, it feels like padding (unless they switched things up a bit and made enough changes to make the game feel fresh the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc time through. Otherwise that's just bad game design and I can see people preferring to opt for the fast way out, just so they can get it over with.

Satisfaction has to balance the pain of the journey to get to that point. Suikoden II did this quite well with the Luca Blight fight. Here's this guy who constantly hunts you down and kills a lot of people. He is a thorn in your side through-out the game, getting in your way. The thing is, he's an interesting character and the way they let you deal with him is unique - it makes for quite the impression and I'm not joking when I say his is one of the best boss battles I have ever played.

(The fact that he was a villain that was seen quite a bit of since you first met him and was kept as a constant threat through the game until his end, makes him a great villain. You can't help but want the guy dead and when you get that chance, it happens on such an epic scale... well, let's just say the pay-off is very much worth the frustration of having him chomping at your feet for all that time.)

The pay-off needs to eclipse the annoyance or it's just not worth the effort. So when dealing with satisfaction, make sure it's very damn satisfying to get to that point. Don't make it a slog to get there, though - most people will not want to do that (or will just edit your game to skip all that shit - not gonna lie: I've done that a few times.)

Fun, though. Fun is it's own reward. If you make a game fun, people will like it. Part of fun is satisfaction. You enjoy the game, it was fun, it was satisfying. I don't think the idea is a battle between the two, because part of fun is the satisfaction factor.