13 Years Later... Are Limited Continues Still Some BS or What?

[muteKi]

Speaking of the cheap-shot thing, that's the situation that led me to this. Neo Zeed in Revenge of Shinobi is a complete bullshit artist, and quite hard to take down, unless you know exactly how. Exactly how is make sure you have a POW and at least two magic uses. Use the invincibility magic and just stand in his hitbox slashing him with the sword. When the magic wears off, immediately cast it again before he hits you and you lose your POW. Do this 2-3 times and he goes down like a chump.

(To get the good ending it is possible to play this boss a bit more slowly, but you have to do regular shuriken throws into the gears at the sides of the arena. I rarely see people do this because most watching of the game I do these days are through speedruns, and to be honest it's been a while since I've played it, too.)

 

[Phantoon]

@Sarge Achievements were a mistake.

Yes, they can sod right off. I want to play some games, not follow somebody else's shopping list of pointless nonsense

 

[Lokii]

I like achievements. I don't hunt for them specifically, but I enjoy the little serotonin pop when doing this that or the other. Getting the trophy for beating Crash 4 and seeing that only 18% of players had accomplished that was interesting and made me feel even more proud of that accomplishment than I would have without the statistic.

I learned not hunt them the hard way. The only game I specifically went for 100% achievements for was Assassins' Creed 1. Doing things like throwing 200 knives 10 at a time was tedious, pointless, and artificial engagement. These days I play games how I normally would, enjoying the occasional ding and notification, but def don't peruse trophies as a goal for their own sake.

 

[ASandoval]

I like achievements. I don't hunt for them specifically, but I enjoy the little serotonin pop when doing this that or the other. Getting the trophy for beating Crash 4 and seeing that only 18% of players had accomplished that was interesting and made me feel even more proud of that accomplishment than I would have without the statistic.

I learned not hunt them the hard way. The only game I specifically went for 100% achievements for was Assassins' Creed 1. Doing things like throwing 200 knives 10 at a time was tedious, pointless, and artificial engagement. These days I play games how I normally would, enjoying the occasional ding and notification, but def don't peruse trophies as a goal for their own sake.

This but also the achievements that hint at hidden areas or goofy easter eggs? I live for those.

Otherwise I'm in the 'continues are fine for certain games' camp, which is boring, I know.

 

[Sarge]

(To get the good ending it is possible to play this boss a bit more slowly, but you have to do regular shuriken throws into the gears at the sides of the arena. I rarely see people do this because most watching of the game I do these days are through speedruns, and to be honest it's been a while since I've played it, too.)

Yeah, I remember running into this myself. I finally figured out the gears thing and things got a lot easier.

 

[JBear]

 

[Regulus]

I think achievements are fun. I don't care about gamerscore or bragging rights or anything like that -- the thing about achievements is that functionally no one cares about your achievements other than yourself. But I don't think that means they're worthless, and the idea that they are just because they don't offer tangible rewards is really reductive. "Playing video games" in general doesn't offer anything except "experiences" and achievements are just another method of delivering experiences. I don't think a largely ignorable feature should go away just because some players don't like them.

Now, limited continues? It really depends. They're just another part of the game design language. I don't think they work for most games, but some game design is functionally incompatible with unlimited continues. Most instant-respawn shoot 'em ups just don't work without some mechanism to halt progress. I don't know how many amateur reviews I've seen over the years which have completely written off tightly designed games like Ikaruga because it can be beaten in 30 minutes if you credit feed. Would it send a different message if you only had a few continues to work with? Or no continues? You could argue that the issue here is entirely within the realm of player expectation, but I'd argue that it's up to the game design to guide those expectations.

This also extends to games like ZeroRanger, where the game's artistic themes are tied to the limited continues, as is a particularly pivotal moment at the end of the game. Is it right to say "x mechanic isn't fun, so there's no reason to use x mechanic" if that mechanic is being used to server a purpose other than "fun"?


Now... how to people feel about lives systems with unlimited continues? Like the Mega Man games, for example? I really like the gameplay cycle in the classic games -- you have a few attempts to make it through the stage and clear out the boss. If you die a lot on the stage, you have fewer attempts at the boss, potentially with limited resources. If you fail, you have to make another run at the stage or look for a boss that you can beat. If you can beat a boss, you might be able to use the resources you obtained to make it through the boss you previously failed against.

On the other hand... they completely screwed this up in the later PS Mega Man X games. You have lives, but you have unlimited continues. Continuing just takes you back to the same checkpoint that dying sends you to. And you can't escape the stage without having already cleared it; the only way to leave is to lose all your lives and choose to return to the stage select. And on top of this, they hand out lives like candy. Every reploid you rescue in the stages gives you an extra life, and the stages are infested with helpless reploids. In effect, lives in Mega Man X5 are nothing more than a barrier keeping you from going back to the stage select.

It's a complete failure of game design, and is perfectly emblematic of the design quality of those games.

 

[4-So]

Yeah, I've never understood the pushback against achievements. They are 100% ignorable.

I generally use achievements if I've really enjoyed a game but I've finished it. I use achievements as I way to stay engaged with that world/narrative/experience. Otherwise, yeah, I got 25% of the trophies organically, very cool, moving along to the next thing.

 

[Kazin]

Limited continues are pointless - if you want to limit your chances to beat a game, think of a number and stop playing if you die that many times. My only real issue with achievements is that you need to be able to disable both the pop up graphic and noise that plays when you attain one if you want - since I don't care about achievements, those pop ups annoy me.

 

[dosboot]

I added a jab at achievements mostly as a joke after a rant about bad difficulty modes. I don't care about what happens to achievements, but I do actually want the trend of bad difficulty modes to go away.

 

[q 3]

Yeah, I've never understood the pushback against achievements. They are 100% ignorable.

They weren't on the OG Vita, which as a portable-only player was my first encounter with them. Sometimes they're funny or rewarding but a lot of the time the popup ruins the mood.

My suggestion: infinite continues, but every time you die Sans from Undertale zings you with a witty new insult.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Limited continues and lives are bullshit. They've been bullshit for at least 30 years, since the SNES and Genesis eras at the latest.

It's true that a lot of styles of game, especially older ones, would not work with continues, including many classic games from that era. But that's not an argument for continues; the designs that favor limited lives and continues were externalities that forced the development of games around them. i.e. those games weren't designed in such a way that made limited lives and continues a good fit; they needed limited lives and continues to be a thing, and had to design the games around that. With that externality removed, the disappearance of the design artifacts that grew around it couldn't come soon enough (and should stay that way).

That's a bit of a simplification, in that you could argue that many or most design choices have always been in response to externalities. Money isn't the only externality for that kind of design either, the limits of technology play a role; once could argue that if you don't have the memory or computing power to make a bigger game, designing your smaller one to be played more often in a different way benefits designers, producers, and players alike.

Which I'm sure are very interesting academic and technical arguments to have, but it doesn't change the fact that if I see a game made after, say, 1995 with limited lives and continues, I will probably not play it very long at all. (Honestly the same goes for the earlier ones too, in my case.)

 

[Sarcasmorator]

I don't have the goddamn time for limited continues. Sometimes limited lives. Unless a game builds on itself with each iteration (like Hades), losing progress and starting over is no fun. I had a cloud save error eat ten hours of post-game play in Control and still haven't gone back to finish the AWE add-on because I'll be short a bunch of weapons and stuff that I'd gotten.

 

[John]

I liked Gradius V's way of increasing continues, but never actually unlocked fully unlimited continues. 20 hours playing a shmup is a LONG TIME, though I did get pretty good at the first level after about 5 hours of replays. It was fine for 2004 though (and woof, that's a long time ago).

 

[ShakeWell]

In the TMNT arcade game, you continue right where you died. Limited continues serve a purpose there by keeping you from spamming your way to the end, almost counterintuitively to what you would expect of a quarter-muncher.

In the NES version, you have to restart the stage from the beginning if you continue. When you're effectively sent back to Point Zero for the stage, I don't see much difference in giving you two continues or a million, besides making you repeat earlier stuff. That I don't like.

Does the actual arcade game limit your continues? I didn't think I was that good at it, but I don't think the game has ever kicked me back to the title. (Konami arcade games of the time definitely did funny shit with continues, though, so I absolutely believe it.)

Any Touhou game would be completely trivial (if you're willing to take a bad end) if you had infinite continues.

So? I've credit fed through a ton of arcade shoot-'em-ups because MAME doesn't demand real money, but if they're good, I go back and learn them. And if you want to tempt me with something like a good ending or whatever do that, rather than tell me "no, play the first six stages 500 times so you can get 30 seconds into the seventh and immediately die before starting over from the beginning."

(To get the good ending it is possible to play this boss a bit more slowly, but you have to do regular shuriken throws into the gears at the sides of the arena. I rarely see people do this because most watching of the game I do these days are through speedruns, and to be honest it's been a while since I've played it, too.)

But why bother? The maze gives you more than ample tools to cheese him, so what's the point of not doing that?

I almost added a "roguelikes disclaimer" to the post, but yes, roguelikes are (I think obviously) different than what I'm talking about. For me no continues seems like more of an actual game design decision/mechanic than "some continues."

 

[Gaer]

Yeah, I've never understood the pushback against achievements. They are 100% ignorable.

They aren’t though. They pop up that stupid fucking notification no matter what and if there’s a way to disable that I haven’t found the fucking option so TELL ME HOW PLEASE.

 

[Sarge]

I'm pretty sure TMNT in arcade lets you quarter-spam to your heart's content. Throwing in quarters just pads your stock of lives. I've never seen a game over screen in it unless I chose to just quit.

 

[FelixSH]

They aren’t though. They pop up that stupid fucking notification no matter what and if there’s a way to disable that I haven’t found the fucking option so TELL ME HOW PLEASE.

In Steam, it's definitely possible. I disabled the notifications, because I find it really obnoxious, if they appear and disturb the mood.

Problem is, I'm not sure anymore how. I think it's in the settings, under "In-Game" - uncheck "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game". Not quite sure, but I think that should do it.

 

[Regulus]

Yeah, disabling the steam overlay will also disable achievement notifications.

 

[FelixSH]

I mean, it will also disable other things, though I don't know which. I think screenshots and maybe multiplayer functions?

It is ridicolous, that you can't just turn these notifications off. Should be easy to implement, I would think.

 

[Gaer]

What about Sony systems?

 

[Voncaster]

I learned not hunt them the hard way. The only game I specifically went for 100% achievements for was Assassins' Creed 1. Doing things like throwing 200 knives 10 at a time was tedious, pointless, and artificial engagement. These days I play games how I normally would, enjoying the occasional ding and notification, but def don't peruse trophies as a goal for their own sake.

I'm regressing. I used to play games and not care at all about trophies. Like a normal person who has some respect for their time.

Now I go for 100% trophies if its semi-plausible. I define plausible as a platinum trophy that is obtained by greater than 6% of players. I do not know what happened to me. I wish I could go back to playing games without caring about achievements.

 

[Regulus]

What about Sony systems?

I can't speak for PS5 because I don't have one, but you can disable trophy notifications for both PS3 and PS4. For PS3, it's under Settings > System Settings > Trophy Notifications. For PS4, it's Settings > Notifications > Pop-Up Notifications > Trophies.

 

[4-So]

You can also disable trophies on PS5 but I'm not on mine at the moment to check. I know it's definitely in the options, though. Might be related to just disabling all pop-ups. I'll have to check later.

 

[Gaer]

I can't speak for PS5 because I don't have one, but you can disable trophy notifications for both PS3 and PS4. For PS3, it's under Settings > System Settings > Trophy Notifications. For PS4, it's Settings > Notifications > Pop-Up Notifications > Trophies.

THANK YOU

 

[Ludendorkk]

Xbox achievement notifications are also able to be turned off

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

Does the actual arcade game limit your continues? I didn't think I was that good at it, but I don't think the game has ever kicked me back to the title. (Konami arcade games of the time definitely did funny shit with continues, though, so I absolutely believe it.)

Pretty sure it can be set to be. It's been a long time, but my dad's arcade had the machine when I was a kid, and I got a fair bit of solo time on it.

If I'm not mistaken, though, this can be circumvented by the drop-in multiplayer.

On the other subject, I'm pro-Achievement. I like it when they pop up as I play, and like others have said, I don't tend to hunt them.

...except in rare circumstances, when I really love a game, and I spot something I think I can do or want to challenge myself to get. There was one in Bionic Commando Rearmed for getting to the top of a vertical stage within a certain amount of time, and I eventually got that. Didn't get them all, though. Maybe someday, if it ever becomes backward compatible, or I get a new 360 or something.

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is probably the other exception.

 

[balder the brave]

I think the answer depends on whether you spawn at a check point or at the point of death.

Spawn at a check point - Infinite continues
Respawn at point of death - Limited continues

in the latter case, having infinite continues allows credit feeds. Of course you could limit yourself to 3 continues, but I prefer to play by the games’ rules. It’s unsatisfying you me to have to impose my own limitations. I want to overcome the same hurdle as other players and a hurdle defined by an authority.

 

[Adrenaline]

Put a number of continues option in. Default to whatever the developer wants but unlimited is an option. Everybody is happy

 

[Patrick]

I almost added a "roguelikes disclaimer" to the post, but yes, roguelikes are (I think obviously) different than what I'm talking about. For me no continues seems like more of an actual game design decision/mechanic than "some continues."

I don't see why they're different. Every decision in designing a game is an actual game design decision.

The claim that "limited continues are bs" only holds up based on other design decisions in specific games. It's not only an argument against Roguelikes, but also any future game that use limited continues in a thoughtful way. I just don't think that making absolute statements about something as varied as game design is useful.