Timed trials in video games

[jackfaire]

Look they serve no purpose they aren't based on my ability to puzzle out an answer or any actual skill set they are based on can I move my character around quickly enough to carry out a repetitive task. They take away from the game and feel like they are just there to extend game time. You got me hooked this game is fascinating but having to beat something in a preset time limit just makes me want to pack up the game and stop playing it.

[HYHYBT]

Video games in general don't serve a purpose

I understand you don't like them, but how is a time limit an illegitimate goal?

[jackfaire]

Video games in general don't serve a purpose

I understand you don't like them, but how is a time limit an illegitimate goal?

Because I play video games for the stories. I like games where it's a story telling medium. If I was in a race that would be fine. However imagine having an Easter Egg hunt where if the timer goes off before you find the next egg then you have to go stand on the porch and all of the eggs you did find are hidden again and you have to memorize the location of every one so that you can actually get them all.

Imagine doing this 5 times. Making me hunt for items that's fine i have to hunt them down and locate them that is challenging. Turning the same hunt into a timed trial makes it a frustrating form of torture that takes my attention away from trying to find them to spending my time watching the clock.

Now having to do this four times with each time becoming increasingly difficult and no explanation how this is supposed to "prove my character's strength of spirit" really it just ends up feeling like a way to pad the game play.

It's one of those things that doesn't feel like it actually moves the story forward. Like having to go talk to Character X before you can open a door even if you figure out the secret of opening the door before it's told to you.

[Mytical]

For pay per month subscription games, the timed trials are just time sinks to make it take longer to see/do everything, making people pay more money..

For other games they are so they can advertise X+ hours of gameplay!! Which is true..even though it is redoing the same task over and over and over till you get it right. I don't know about the newer ones (can't afford a ps3 to play them, no longer have a ps2) but that is one thing I liked about Final Fantasy..challenging (though grinding could get old) and no timed trials..except racing..but I liked the racing bit lol)

[SkullKing]

Video games in general don't serve a purpose

They do. Entertainment. They help people relax and socialize too. Just like any art form, like theater, movies, Books, or paintings.

As for the timed trials they are not for everyone(I also dislike them) but from a design perspective, they have two main purposes:

1: Increase difficulty: Self Explanatory really. Increase the challenge.

2: Narrative immersion: If someone has planted a timed bomb in a building and I have to find and disarm it, the possibility of taking my sweet time for it can break the immersion.

Although the predatory design uses mytical mentioned are indeed used.

[Salted Grump]

You'd despise the latest final fantasies, then, as, to be painfully blunt, they're both obscenely grindy, and 'timed' where you only have a small window of opportunity to cause damage to an enemy after pounding on it to 'stagger' it for the better part of a few minutes.

In regards to arbitrary time limits, even when done in proper context, they can be done well, or poorly. A good example is the 'Shadow Lurker' Gateway fights in darksiders; in order to unlock access to a later area, you need to complete challenges such as 'Keep 6 skeleton soldiers alive for 5 minutes' or 'kill X enemies with environmental objects (in this case, wrecked cars) un inder Y time'; where any time left on the clock once you're done (ranging from 2-4 minutes depending on how skilled you are at the game) is turned into bonus 'cash' that you can use to upgrade skills, buy weapon upgrades, etc.

A Badly-done one, in comparison, is every fight in Final Fantasy 13, where each enemy has a little gauge above their head that fills up whenever you slap them. Fill it completely and they go into 'broken' status, where, for 10-30 seconds, they're weak against everything you can throw at it.

Which means around one combat round's worth of melee-only attacks, which do the least amount of damage, and, in general, only exist to slow down the decay rate of those arbitrary little bars. Then do that 4-5 more times ~per~ fight. Then realize that, in order to actually have any chance of beating the bosses you fight at the end of each (pretty) linear path, you have to grind up to a pre-defined point because the game refuses to let you 'overlevel' by using a system that is only 'unlocked' at higher points via beating the bosses that routinely slap your shit around.

So, FF's 'arbitrary time limits' is a go-to-example of now not to use one. (not to mention there's a few fights where you have to do something utterly counter-intuitive like 'impress an enemy' in X seconds, or be instafragged, and have to watch a 5-minute cutscene, AGAIN, with no skip option, before trying that fight again.)

[jackfaire]

See time limits to me like in my character has to win a race as part of a story that being timed makes sense.

If I had to keep five soldiers alive for a certain time frame would seem bad unless it's part of the story where we are waiting for a rescue chopper.

Final Fantasy is a great example of what I consider good use of a time limit. I set a bomb in the Mako Reactor and triggered it now I have until the timer runs down to get out of there. This to me is a good use of the time trial as it is an element of the story.

Arbitrarily deciding to time trial a "spiritual quest" seems needlessly pointless having to avoid enemies while finding things that I don't know the location of is hard enough without putting it on a timer.

[Gravekeeper]

Timers for the sake of timers are an ass mechanic, yeah. God, even back in the NES days I hated any game that had any sort of level timer.

A timed event only makes sense if the story actually calls for you to be racing against the clock ( Holding out for reinforcements, escaping danger, etc ), or you're playing a game where time is a legitimate measure of skill ( Such as racing games ). If its just tossed in as an atribitrary hurdle then it breeds only resentment with your players.

As for Final Fantasy, the whole franchise lost its way both from a story and design perspective years ago. Squaresoft, like a lot of Japanese developers, is floundering with modern gaming because design innovation isn't a facet of Japanese business. Finding one thing you do well, then doing that thing well over and over is the Japanese approach to business. They're struggling with the fact that the thing they do well doesn't hold up to a modern standard anymore.

[SkullKing]

I would say they are also struggling with not doing the things they do well anymore either.

[HYHYBT]

So the problem, then, is not timed trials in general, but misuse of them.

[Mytical]

Pretty much. It makes sense to have a limited time to run away from an explosion..not so much when you have to get a package of donuts to somebody. You are not going to starve to death because you don't have your donuts in under 3 minutes

[jackfaire]

So the problem, then, is not timed trials in general, but misuse of them.

Yes which is why as I pointed out in earlier posts I am fine in a race or running from an explosion being timed but timing me for the equivalent of an Easter Egg hunt when I already have to avoid being caught is overkill.

[Salted Grump]

One thing that also works is when the time limit is only there to say 'get under this time, and we give you a bonus; take longer and you can go ahead anyhow'.

For example, as I mentioned in my previous post in this thread, Darksiders has a total of 8 mini-arenas that you have to clear in order to advance the story; 5 of them have timers, but also explicit instructions that say 'Time left on the clock is turned into extra Money'; I've deliberately let the timer run down and found that you can beat any of those mini-arenas with no time left on the clock; you just don't get the 1500+ extra loot that can normally be used to quickly boost your character early on. (It also acts as combat tutorial to show various things about the game, so it's semi-justified)

Of course, as soon as you're done the final mini-arena (less than halfway through the game), there are, literally no timers in the entire rest of the game.

[jackfaire]

Yeah the game I was playing the timer was to let the guardians hunt you down they are in stasis until you trigger one of three ways of waking them up. Given how many ghost watchers there are plus pools of "this will wake them the fuck up" the timer is like an extra fuck you. It's like if you were playing Splinter Cell and they said, "Okay get through Langley without getting caught oh and you only have 3 minutes"