unless it''s a weapon that can get you through the game without dying or with minimal effort, then there should be a second or third chance to get it.

i don''t see a problem with one-time secrets. i think they add to the game if anything; it is special if you get it, not mandatory .

in terranigma, there is a small island (mu?)that has a pretty good weapon on it somewhere (enbo pike i think?), but the island doesn''t even exist unless you go to a certain temple near the beginning (you are required to run around to five or seven towers, and you may or may not find this temple on your way depending on if you explore at all). you cannot go back to this beginning area once you have passed all the towers, so you basically must explore to unlock an area which you can explore to get a cool weapon.

i missed it the first time through, and it didn''t ruin the game at all. of course it wasn''t an uber-weapon (which should exist), and even when i got it on the next time through, i only used it for a while before it got obsoleted by the regular bad-ass weapons.

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Original post by krez
i missed it the first time through, and it didn''t ruin the game at all. of course it wasn''t an uber-weapon (which should exist), and even when i got it on the next time through, i only used it for a while before it got obsoleted by the regular bad-ass weapons.

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If anything, that added replay value for me. Yeah, I remember that part. Mu, I think, right? There was also... uh... Atlantis? That one only led to an island where you could rest to recover your health for free.

Both were pretty useless secrets. They were very well-guarded, too. The first time I played, I looked for that missing weapon for hours. When I learned how to unlock those two islands, I immediately started a new game and couldn''t wait to get to the part where I could visit the two islands, even if it meant replaying through the game.

The point here is that Terranigma was fun; I felt I had a reason to unlock these things even if they served no serious purpose. Curiousity, for one. Playing through the game wasn''t too bad and gave me something new to look forward to. I even saw new aspects of the storyline during my second run. Would I have played through the game and seen it in a different light had there been no one-shot secrets in it? Yeah. Right.

Was it ABSOLUTELY AND FULLY VITAL that I get the pike and the healing thing? No, in fact they were nearly useless. Was this jealously-guarded secret a wise move despite being a one-shot deal? Oh yeah. Heck yeah. Made replaying the game worthwhile. It also gave me a reason to keep an eye out for other one-shot deals like that.

I think these secrets would''ve been pretty bland and uninteresting if I could''ve loaded my end-of-game save and just gone off to unlock them.

whao, you can unlock atliantis too?!?!

damn i hope my SNES still works...

(see, replay value++)

I think I see the conflict here. Having a secret with a very specific trigger may mean having to start the game all over again. I think one reason we have a little dispute here is that people feel different ways about having to replay the game. Some people like going back through the game to look for new things. I can understand that. Adventure games have taught me to examine and test everything. Speaking from experience though, I''d persoanlly rather hit everything the first time through. This isn''t so much because crps are long as it is I get bored too easily going over things I just saw. This is especially true of random battles. By the end of a crpg marathon, the last thing I want to see is another slime battle. I have to be away from a game for while before it seems fresh and interesting again.
I guess my point is that some people are more eager to replay things than others. This being a matter of taste, I don''t think you''ll ever get this resolved. Some people will want to get the secrets on the first pass so they don''t feel forced to replay just to get them, while others don''t see what the big deal is.
However, I do think it''s good to have clues for any of the juicier secrets. People don''t mind if you get a few gold for something arbitrary, but they do tend to get more annoyed at missing unique items because they didn''t do something for no apparent reason. This applies even if the secret is found anyway. I have more an appreciation for something if it''s more a prize for solving a puzzle than "just some random treasure". Sadly, many "ultimate" items end up falling into the latter category in most games. After all, how often have you found the most powerful equipment in the game just lying in some ordinary chest in one of the last dungeons.

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Original post by RuneLancer
Was it ABSOLUTELY AND FULLY VITAL that I get the pike and the healing thing? No..

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Exactly. I don''t care if i miss a crappy potion at the beginning of the game because in a cave i missed a room that has an invisible wall. And also, i don''t care if i figure out i missed something really cool YEARS back because by that point the game is, by a lot of considerations, new again so replay value doesn''t factor in.

But if i figure out i''m missing something really cool, something i would really want to have, and something that would help me in the game even though i missed it 30 hours back, that is just annoying. What if you restart and get back to that same point and realize AGAIN that you missed another secret just like that and you have to restart AGAIN? That''s annoying 2x! This is why i think this is a bad design.

I don''t understand why there are people that disagree. There are people out there that consider the ability to shoot yourself in the foot a beneficial feature of a game?

There''s such a thing as replay value. The poster two posts above made light of this: some people just want to play through the game and pretty much ditch it until nostalgia forces them to pick it up again, and some people will be willing to play through it again over and over until they know the game by heart.

The common point, however, is that if you can find everything on your first run through the game, the second run won''t hold anything new for you. Not even a "Oh, hey, cool; there was a secret passage here and I found 50 gp." Or a "Huh? You mean you CAN get Shadow in the World of Ruin if you wait until the last 10-15 seconds on the floating continent?"

Sometimes, these "secrets" amount to being nothing more than different paths you can take through the game. As with the above example; getting a "secret" party member or unlocking a "hidden" dungeon.

I''m starting to understand why gamers complain more and more about games being shorter and shorter (they do around here, that''s for sure): games lose pretty much all replay value and only remain interesting through nostalgia. "Oh hey, I loved that part when..." I remember when the (S)NES came out, people used to play through games trying to find every possible secret. Final Fantasy III was a good example of this because the second "world" was nothing more than a huge side-quest where some of the things you did in the previous "world" influenced what you got in this new world. Waiting for a party member until the last second, for instance, or even trying to keep some guy alive by feeding him fish (in what must be the most tedious part of the game...).

I''m not saying games are starting to suck more and more, but the mentality of most players is certainly taking its toll. Paying $60 for Breath of Fire II kept me occupied a whole summer, non-stop, and I never saw a reason to complain about the price being so high...

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Original post by RuneLancer
There''s such a thing as replay value. The poster two posts above made light of this: some people just want to play through the game and pretty much ditch it until nostalgia forces them to pick it up again, and some people will be willing to play through it again over and over until they know the game by heart.

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You do also realize there are peopple that buy a game and plan to only play it once because they''re not 14 years old and have a job / college every day. There''s a way to satisfy both people alright?

You want to make a billion hidden things throughout the game that the player can only get once, that''s fine by me. But if you make any of them the coolest spell or weapon or a playable character, then you piss off a lot of people that only have enough time to play the game one time.

Now can we please look at this as a game developer would? This is what this forum is about, isn''t it? I''ve just presented you with an option to make a game that satisfies both the people that plan to play through the game over and over again and the people that only want to play through it once. Think about it: what would sell more. A game that group X likes, or a game that group X and group Y likes?

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The common point, however, is that if you can find everything on your first run through the game, the second run won''t hold anything new for you.

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Who cares if the second run isn''t that new. This is a RPG not a fighting game. If you''re buying a RPG for the expected replay value, you''re expecting it from the wrong genre. If you want to think about the good qualities of a RPG, replay value is very near the bottom. And if you disagree, please give me a list of qualities a RPG can have that replay value is more important than.

You DO realize that an RPG isn''t meant to be a one-time play-through thing? Or were you being sarcastic? Your post seems to drip with it on that point, but your tone is too serious. I''m not sure I understand.

RPGs like FF don''t have good replay value? You''re complaining about games not having good replay value, yet you also complain about not being able to go through the game in one go and casting it aside afterwards? Something''s SERIOUSLY wrong with that train of thought, buddy... :/

Generly the value of the secert is finding the secert and not the item it holds. Besides if its a secert how can you be disappointed that you didn''t find it? Beside I don''t know a single game that stops you from getting the ultimate items at anytime in the endgame phase.

I think the question is why do some gamers feel it is nessary to find every little secert withing a game?

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
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