Side Content

How come games skimp out on side content so much nowadays?

My favorite side-mechanics in games were the Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure 2 and the magic rings in the Oracle Zelda games. Both had a decent amount of work put into them, moreso the Chao Garden to the point that lots of people bought the game again just for the Garden alone.

It seems like nowadays games have the campaign (maybe) and multiplayer and that's it, with nothing left to explore or do. Or is all the side content I mentioned earlier just being twisted into loot crates and skin unlocks instead of fleshed out side mechanics?

It's because they want to shit out their product as quickly as possible. These fucks today don't even fix bugs in games. Just gotta throw it out there and make that profit.
It is truly a sad time to live in.

because four ears are retarded

All the better to hear you with

Gotta save room for that DLC goy

I cried. You won't see me cry over lost skins or loot crates.

AAA-games have set formula to go with which forbids side-content or in case of games like Skyrim/other sanbox games solely focus on it in the exhance having dull and barebones main mission/plot/game.

Also voice acting, m-m-muh polygons, textures and such shit making it harder to just throw some extra npc's here and there with some slight palette swap to serve as questgiver for epic side-content or such and writers just being plain shit while codemonkeys are soulless husks thanks to shitty wages and being overworked to produce shit.

Its probably because they think "Why bother, most players probably wont make it to the end or even discover this shit. It's sad because even games like CoD4 on the fucking wii had a reason for finding collectables because they unlocked things like paintball mode and slow mode cheats.

Witcher 3 had plenty (some would say too many) side quests, on top of Gwent. New Vegas had Caravan on top of many side quests.

Interestingly enough, about the only thing FO4 did well was the inclusion of PipBoy games (in the vein of System Shock). It even had a fairly elaborate text RPG with art and everything. It's the only notable game, besides the Pitfall copy, but they put it in there without really having to.

On the topic of System Shock, the first game had a Wing Commander minigame with 10+ missions, on top of several other games, SS2 had an Ultima clone.

Parasite Eve had a post finale endgame dungeon you had to beat to unlock the "true" ending. Might and Magic 7 introduced a fully featured TCG, where different taverns had different rules. Ehrgeiz had a dungeon crawling side game that was arguably more fun than the fighting portion.

There's a shitload more, I simply love games that go out of their way to put it extra content just because they can.

Like the magic rings in Oracle. It was never in any other games and never was after that, and if it wasn't in it wouldn't have changed much, but the inclusion of it gave it a lot more reason to explore, find the good soil for Gasha Seeds, explore some more, come back and get a mystery prize, the rings all had different cool abilities that were just fun. They put it in because it was fun and different.

I'm convinced they wanted to make an Action RPG but fucked up super bad and just made it a fighting game instead.

I wish more games did that.

The ones I know that do it are

Anyone know of more of these?

Digimon World 3
I know New Vegas had Caravan but that's not quite the same.

Knew I had missed one.

It's close enough. Part of the experience is hunting down different cards from different decks.

Remember when beating the game on hard / under certain circumstances unlocked a new character? I miss that.

bloodborne had some decent side content, but games these days are less about capitalizing on having tons of content to keep someone occupied and focus more instead on having a few solid core game play modes. The idea is to get you to buy the game and interest you in any future DLC.

I'm not 100% happy with either option, it's cool to get some gallery mode or some secondary game in the base game, but they are often far less refined or satisfying. At the same time, it's great to see the core game get expanded with full new levels and chunks of game play, some new ideas. Even then, it does limit some of the potential for neat if not a bit gimmicky spin off elements.

Have you played MGS5 or AC: Unity?

Those games are replete with side content. By my reckoning at least.

Notch is sitting on top of his 2 billion doing nothing, not helping the vidya industry recover.

I wish I had bought 1 million bitcoins back in 2009. I could have had 1 billion and use that to fix Holla Forums and Holla Forums.

I used to load up KOTOR or FFVIII just to play cards. good fucking times.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
__ :^) __

Pokemon was a victim of this too, but they've seemed to have learned their lesson with Gen VII.

Side content has gone the way of the dodo. It disappeared around the time "That one very different level you wish you could play again without having to restart the whole game" disappeared too

You are lucky if they offer some kind of side-game with that content some years later to be bundled with the main game in a Steam sale or something

RTS games used to have skirmishes and mini campaigns.

It would take more then 2 Billion Dollars to restore VIDYA.

Or more aptly, it would take less, one of the issues is the amount of money (Mainly for Marketing) is making it nonviable to risk anything but the most cookie cutter going out ASAP.

There's an interview I saw once that was done with of the lead devs for Saints Row 4, I think. The question revolved around why the city of Steelport was so small and bland, with nothing in it to see or do. The dev basically said that they decided not to bother fleshing out the city or side content because, why create assets that nobody is going to see when you can front load all of it into the story?

I feel like that attitude has become very pervasive throughout the industry. Nobody wants to create assets that might go unseen by the majority of players, so they skimp on it.

i want to play lirus side content. meaning her butthole