Mask, I no longer need to borrow your Zekrom, I managed to trade a newly hatched female Zorua for a lvl 100 one over the GTS.

[spoiler=Diploma]

 

I used to love Pokemon.

 

Then I read about all the level-up mechanics, the event pokemon, and all the other stuff that makes perfection unattainable. It right spoiled my fun, what with my obsessive completionist complex.

 

Alternately, until I took an arrow to the knee, or some such.

GTS and Wi-fi trade makes it pretty plausible to get a full Pokédex, even when you're not attending events, because even if a Pokémon requires one, there's bound to be a few guys out there who have that Pokémon and are willing to trade it for any old Pokémon with a Dream World ability or a shiny.

 

Also the multiple ways of evolution is easy as long as you look the Pokémon up on Bulbapedia before you start grinding. Quite a few times have I been grinding a Pokémon for hours using Exp. Share before finding out that it for example requires high friendship to evolve *cough* Crobat *cough*.

Really? I just beat the living heck out of things withmine in Pearl and it leveled up immediately after it evolved into a Golbat.

Really? I just beat the living heck out of things withmine in Pearl and it leveled up immediately after it evolved into a Golbat.

And grinding is surprisingly effective for friendship evolutions.

Not so much so when it's not actually partaking in the fighting though, which is why I specified using Exp. Share.

 

On that note, I miss Exp. All from Gen I, that thing used to save me a lot of time... oh who am I kidding, of course I didn't grind there, I just put Rare Candy in the sixth spot of the bag, talked to the catching tutor, flew to cinnabar and surfed up and down the east coast until I hit M or Missingno.

I never even knew that existed, so harhar, silly me.

Mather, that is exactly what spoiled my fun. Grinding, in a Pokemon game? Makes me physically ill. However, since I know everything can't be 100% perfect otherwise, I start to obsess over every little thing whether I want to or not.

 

Sucks every ounce of fun out of the game. Thank god for the Nuzlocke Challenge, or I would never be able to enjoy it again. Of course, Nuzlocke Challenges require skill, gameplay familiarity, and usually, owning one of the earlier generation games...

Sucks every ounce of fun out of the game. Thank god for the Nuzlocke Challenge, or I would never be able to enjoy it again. Of course, Nuzlocke Challenges require skill, gameplay familiarity, and usually, owning one of the earlier generation games...

More often than not, you just need blind luck, which is the best part.

 

Or the worst. Could go either way.

Ehhh, playing a game usually resolves to discovering things, beating things or setting things.

Discovering things is the easiest, you wander around until you can't find anything else...if you are lazy then many RPG games are too hard for you, since they rely on you going out to find stuff, rather than progressing through a linear tale.

Beating things is the most grindy...You push through the stuff that isn't really fun to get the one big pay off at the end. Like Nex's silly challanges, or achievements in games. Finishing the game is another example.

Finally setting things usually requires other people, since you are setting a record/challange for other people to complete/defeat. This may seem similar to beating a game, but usually you are doing something your own way because you are already pretty good at it and so want to set the record for being good at whatever it is.

 

Personally discovery is the only important part of the game. With the only reason to go for a 'completionist' streak is if it provides more information and more discoveries...elsewise it is just tedious.

Nuzlocke

Sucks every ounce of fun out of the game. Thank god for the Nuzlocke Challenge, or I would never be able to enjoy it again. Of course, Nuzlocke Challenges require skill, gameplay familiarity, and usually, owning one of the earlier generation games...

More often than not, you just need blind luck, which is the best part.

 

Or the worst. Could go either way.

Grinding works too, because if you hit lvl 30 with your starter before the first gym, you're set for a while.

 

And yeah, Archi's right. Though ironically enough, the only game I know of that has more discovery than fighting involved is RuneScape.

Also the completionist streaks can be fun to go after if they're more heavy on the thinking side than the grinding, because then they're not too boring and you've earned the right to gloat about them.

I prefer 'silly', somewhat similar to Grimrock's option to turn off the minimap and do it yourself.

 

And yeah, Resident Evil (2 specifically) was rather good on the completionist, since you have 4 different games (A and B games for two characters), and though they are broadly similar, there are just enough differences to make it interesting, and you can try to recieve a higher rank while you do the second playthrough of an A/B.

Completionism is okay. Obsessive completionism is a bother.

 

I'm the guy who has to do twenty minutes worth of backtracking just to stand in one corner and fill out the minimap all the way. This is a problem in Pokemon games since they have an improbable and unnecessary number of variables.

 

On a separate note... I almost agree with Mather. Thinking back on it, I really did enjoy travelling the game world of Runescape.

I thought it was annoying trying to remember which teleports and quest specific transportation methods that I had acquired would work for the situation the best.

I love pokemon. It's still fun for me, and I can revisit all of the older games to relive the memories I had playing those. so much fun.

Yeah, I always prefered the Quests and such to the fighting in RS. Tip It definately played a big part in me getting around =P

 

Nex, you should play Civ, the little 'Just one more move' is brilliant.

Heh. Also, I wish Xbox Live was free. I had so much fun playing CastleCrashers with random people online and I can't do that anymore.

I thought it was annoying trying to remember which teleports and quest specific transportation methods that I had acquired would work for the situation the best.

Never had that trouble, at least not after getting access to the Fairy Rings.

Though that may have something to do with the complete 3D map of Gielinor that I have lodged inside my head... well, semi-complete, Trollweiss mountains, the Wildy and Meyerditch are a bitt blurry.

I never liked the fairy rings, largely because (as far as I can remember) you still needed to carry around a staff to use them. I was more of a Gnome Glider person =P

I was more of a F2P person, so herp.

Also it became such a hassle to keep up with every single quest. I think after I finished the first Grandmaster quest, I took a break and there were five or six quests when I got back.

Yeah, I always prefered the Quests and such to the fighting in RS. Tip It definately played a big part in me getting around =P

 

Nex, you should play Civ, the little 'Just one more move' is brilliant.

I own the gold edition of Civ III, it's most of the reason that I stopped playing so many strategy games. It ate way too much of my time, I would play in no-win single nation games for a few thousand turns after unlocking all of the research tree and building every wonder of the world. While I had work to do.

 

One of the few things I remember about that game is how infuriating it was that you had to go through all of the ridiculous and costly negotiations with any nation you so much as wanted to travel the waters of, yet they did whatever the hell they wanted.

Do any of you have an Xbox? Just curious.

I don't trust Microsoft to deliver anything other than a decent OS.

 

Also I've got this really creepy smiley face made out of dried blood on my ankle from scratching myself, it's got a sly smile and looks like it's winking at me.

Do any of you have an Xbox? Just curious.

Technically. No live, though.