Bloated Limitations: I Curse You.

Just finished Assassin's Creed Revelations just a mere 20 minutes ago and as always that franchise is king in the area of "let's leave it on a cliffhanger". And it reminded me yet again of why I love that franchise, because I tend to forget that when one of the main reasons for this blog happens. So the game ended up on the back burner for a little while, mostly due to Battlefield 3 multiplayer and Skyrim. I am not entirely sure why but this time around I didn't click with the game right away and at a certain point right before the mentioned games took over I was overlooking the map of Constantine and I made a sigh of disbelief at how much crap was on that map. There were the main mission, Sofia mission, master assassin missions, contested dens, animus fragments, shops, etc. etc. If I zoomed out, I couldn't even see the city anymore. Got back in today and made a plan how to tackle this thing and made it through the game and focused on story (main, sofia, master assassin, animus fragments for Desmond's side stuff) and Ishak Pasha's memoir. Contested dens (read; Tower Defense) felt like a waste of time and I wasn't going to go crazy buying all the shops either. I realized that I was tired of micro/macro the Assassin's Creed world. But with further thinking, I've never liked too much crap in my open world games.

It was part of the reason I liked Mafia 2. I don't need an open world to be filled with crap just to "justify" the fact that they made a city, as long as the city is taken advantage of within the story, that's really all I need. And if they must put more things in there, make it things worth my time. Such as the Ishak Pasha memoir. All parts of that was good; small amount of stuff to collect, something new to see and a nice reward.

I can appreciate the idea behind the dens, and the master assassins babysitting them. But just as in San Andreas, I hated the gang warfare. Because I don't want to constantly have to interrupt enjoying the game just so I have to fight back the game itself. That's why I feel some open world games tend to get bloated in order to renew themselves. Instead of just practicing "less is more" and attributed some quality to that "less".

So, for future reference; make quality experiences and make everything you do in the game worth your time. If I wanted fetch quests with little to no payoff, I would play an MMO, there needs to be a balance between effort and reward. And when it comes to collecting things; same as before, less is better than more. And make it more worth the effort to find and collect those things. Otherwise, what's the point?

Alright, got that off my chest. Now on to something completely different.

Why does sports games these days have arbitrary limitations on what stats you can put on your created players? I remember when you could max out your dude and rule the game. What is gained from limiting my options? And before you say "how about online play?" let me just say this; in one of those Smackdown Vs Raw games you couldn't take your character online if you put on a custom tattoo. You could implement a similar system for other sports games as well. Have that arbitrary limiting number factor in, and let the player know when he's about to cross that line. And if he does, that character can't be used online.

But when it comes to me sitting by myself playing against the CPU, what does it matter? I'm only "ruining" my own enjoyment at that point, right? So why can't I be allowed to make a super human MMA figher with 99 in everything? More so than that though is the underlying question; when did limiting player options ever amount to more enjoyment?