The best rewards for completion tend to be just more game. If someone has gotten that far, it can be assumed that they enjoy the basic gameplay to a degree, so providing bonus levels, secret areas, and superbosses really make them feel like they're experiencing the best the game they've mastered has to offer.
Yeah but at the same time, a game gaming experience can always use newer tools to shake the gameplay a little bit.That's why things like leveling up or getting new equipment not only work as a reward for the player, they allow the level designers to give the players more game.
Yes and no. The content mill should be properly balanced and distributed for this to be a good reward. One example of it being not so good is Mario Odyssey - there's way too much to do in even the first true kingdom, long before you finish the game and unlock the doubled moon count. It starts to drain and fatigue you really quick. Sure this boils down to personal opinion for a lot of people (it always will, game design isn't a perfect science) and the game does it well too, with the extra challenging Darker and Darkest Side moon levels, but it's also a lesson in pacing.
i dont know I kinda like that in Sonic Adventure DX you get rewarded with the full Game Gear games as bonus content. Minigames that are in the same genre as the main gameplay is a nice way to add a break to the loop I feel.
Totally! They did it so well in Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Country 2. Both games had extra challenge courses you could unlock by finding all the collectibles in the main game. It feels best when it's presented as optional post-game content. It's not as fun when the game asks you to do completionist stuff just to finish the main story, like in Jet Force Gemini. If they had just framed that a little differently in a story-telling sense it would have been more fun.
I think Smash Bros is an important example for fighting games in general. One of the reasons why many fighting games don't break even in terms of sales, popularity or player base is because they lack in the single player aspect, as they don't offer an engaging campaign, unlockables, rewards or other type of content. Many titles try to appeal solely to the competitiveness and they surely offer a refined gameplay, but if you don't cater to the casual user that is not interested in battling against other players and just wants to have a fun time by themselves, then your fighting game will have a hard time trying to be commercially successful.
Yeah, I really miss when fighting games would start with only a few characters, and you had to play as many different characters to unlock them. Nowadays everything is unlocked off the bat and there’s only a garbage story mode (Tekken 7, as much as I love that game).
@@roskiart8750 I'm not trying to say this in an antagonistic way, but what golden age? As a more casual fighting game player most fighting games still seem rife with the exact same issues that put me off from playing most of them as they have for the past 10 or so years such as a lack of single player content, extremely overpriced dlc that should be included in the base game anyway, endless season passes, etc. The only aspect that has seen a legitimate improvement is netcode making playing fighting games online actually manageable and not completely awful.
Couldn't agree more. I suck at fighting games and yet I can't help but find them appealing. The moment I saw Smash Ultimate gameplay I thought "crap, I'm going to need a Switch eventually", because for once it felt like someone had made a fighting game I could enjoy. I've been burned many times by titles advertised as beginner-friendly which ended up having steep difficulty curves and barely any single player content -- looking at you, Skullgirls and Them's Fighting Herds.
@@roskiart8750 Not a Golden Age, as that's long over. It's more of a silver age currently; secondary to what its Golden Age was, but still incredible among its peers that it is still holding on. There has yet to be a true renaissance for the genre as a whole, as the genre is still trying to find its solid identity over the years outside its closed conflicting circles (Smash Bros-likes are emerging nowadays, but it's still not the status quo breaker for the genre). It's still colloquially an underground genre on the mainstream, despite the increasing interest for esports around the world. But it might not be long until something shifts the paradigm completely.
Interesting to hear Sakurai talk about how unlocking character could considered a chore but is actually quite fun, since that's something they experimented with over the years. Namely, in smash4 about 80% of the roster was unlocked from the get-go, whereas in SmashUltimate, you only start off with 8 out of ~80 characters (ignoring dlc).
I think it also helps as a form of tutorial - if you have 80 characters unlocked right away, it's gonna be overwhelming to a new player. A dozen is a lot more manageable, and each time a new fighter is unlocked the player has some time to get used to them before the next one shows up.
I far prefer what Ultimate did. It doesn't overwhelm newcomers and encourages players to pick up characters that they otherwise might overlook. It's kind of weird that stages didn't follow that logic, though.
I personally think Brawl nailed it pretty well, as far as characters are concerned. Melee had relatively few character unlocks, but many of those took a lot of time and effort to get (Mewtwo, Game & Watch). Smash 4, like said before, gave you most of the roster just to start with, while Ultimate gave you very little to start but had you unlock them *really* fast. Brawl, on the other hand, gave you a decently sized starting roster and a good number of unlocks, but gave you three different critera for each character. Fufill any, and you unlock that character. Further, the "main" method of unlocking, the Subspace Emissary, didn't just give you the character, but often forced you to play with different ones, getting you familiar with most of the cast. It was also the easiest (and often the fastest) method, simply requiring you to progress for all but the three super-hidden characters. By the time you beat Subspace for the first time, you've unlocked almost the entire cast and you have a fairly solid grasp on the game as a whole.
In Rayman Legends, your rewards for completing worlds are the music levels, where everything happens to the beat of the song. I think rewarding players who like your game with more unique gameplay they can't get anywhere else is another great incentive.
Also, when you manage to collect all the lums in a level, you get a lucky ticket which unlocks origins stages which is basically rewarding you more levels.
Here's something I learned from Xenoblade Chronicles: reward experience points for optional activities in RPGs. Experience points are something you always want (unless you're doing a challenge run or something, but Definitive Edition even has an option for that! Putting sidequest and landmark exp into a pool you only use when you want to, like in later Xenoblade games), and nothing incentivised me to do sidequests and discover landmarks more than that. Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn do something similar with their Bonus Experience system, which is awarded for fulfilling bonus objectives in chapters like keeping NPCs alive, not killing enemies who were being coerced to fight, finishing within a time limit, etc. That's one mechanic I wish they'd bring back. As for what Sakurai said about Smash, I totally agree. Levelling systems are a nightmare for competitive fighting games since they either unbalance multiplayer or have to be turned off there and therefore might as well not exist (e.g the fate of custom moves in Smash 4, which hurt Palutena a ton since she was designed around them). But I'm glad Ultimate keeps the tradition of unlocking fighters. So many games these days lack unlockables entirely, and I always felt EARNING the whole roster was part of the fun. So glad to see the Coin Launcher brought up, I always liked that since you'd often accumulate tons of useless currency when you were almost done with unlocks and letting you use it as ammo for a minigame was a fun way to get rid of it.
@@Machination_24 Xenoblade 3's DLC, Future Redeemed, letting you unlock new skills for characters through points earned via exploring and doing quests was something I'm shocked they didn't try earlier. It worked SO WELL and I hope it's in the next game.
In Xenoblade Chronicles 3 I run into a problem precisely because of that. The game gives you reward experience points that surely come handy, and you bet at first I was using the function of using those extra points in a camp to level up my characters even more. But, that represented a problem for the rank system in the game. For leveling up or unlocking classes, you need CP (class points), which you get from defeating monsters. But gaining CP is tied to your level compared to the enemy, and if you are too overleveled then you gain too few points or nothing at all, which forces you to look up for stronger monsters, which will make you even more overleveled and the problem drags on. I’m afraid that this issue was a lack of balancing the system from Monolith, a reward that nullified other aspects of the game.
@@Kenosene You can LOWER your level at camps though. So you can dial yourself back if you ever feel like you're getting too strong. (This doesn't reset your class levels)
You can also use the story as a way of rewarding the player, if you intend to have a good one. But even in games like the original Mario and Zelda, there was emphasis placed on progression towards a narrative goal (i.e. your princess is in another castle/collecting pieces of the tri-force).
Checklists can be a double edge sword because they usually keep players with idea of a reward, even if simple, if completing a list of challenges doesn't unlock something (even if simple) or show a message such as "Wow! You are in the top 5% of players who completed it. You are a Super Star now!"
There's a certain type of reward that is especially tricky to pull off. The final reward, for those who 100% complete everything. It's been a long journey, so it's gotta be something really special to make it all worth it.
Basically a question of "what do you give someone who has everything", for example, a super powerful weapon seems like a great final reward, til you realise you have nothing to use it on, better 100% rewards tend to be things like hidden endings, or cool cosmetics, or media galleries.
Tales of Zestiria supes up the difficulty of the last boss when you whoop the optional boss that's more difficult than his base difficulty. I think if you're going to give us a sword of infinity +1, something to use it on is the best reward
Do you have any favorites? Personally I like the idea of a 100 percent reward being a way to break the game. Like enabling cheats (big head, infinite hp, exploding enemies) or like a ridiculous character that has ridiculously different moves or ways to do things that aren't normal. Something someone can experiment with.
I feel like this is something most multiplayer focused games struggle to grasp. Its all about how loose your purse strings are, not what players accomplish.
This mentality does help to explain why Sakurai continues to have unlockable characters, even when everyone already knows before the game is even out what characters are in the game. As frustrating as it is for people who just want to play the game and be able to choose from all the characters from the get-go, I also like this kind of progression in something like Super Smash Bros. I really miss trophies, though; I wouldn't mind Spirits as a replacement if they actually had descriptions like the trophies did. As it stands, they're kind of a sub-part replacement.
My favorite reward in the Smash series is definitely the music in Brawl. Every time I saw a disc dropping on the stage, I was so excited to get it. And it was especially fun cause there were some instances where you could miss them. So the excitement and tension to grabbthe disc was there. And it was also very surprising when a Mew appared on screen and drop one! But if you managed to get them, it was so good to listen to the new music you unlocked immediately. Such good memories!
The game Hades comes to mind. _So many rewards. So much replay value._ You unlock a bunch of different types of resources, which allow you to unlock new weapons, new aspects of weapons, leveled up weapons, trinkets, decoration for your room, abilities, achievements (aka prophecies), harder game modes, new god powers, and the storyline's progress itself!
It's always important to plan the kinds of rewards your players will get for beating a given game, so I'll have to keep this in mind. Great wisdom as always!
In a game I'm making, the player must climb a tower and after every 10 floors, they are rewarded with not only getting healed up, but they also get to choose to either boost their max health or their attack power. But, they can only choose one.
Legends Arceus might have been underwhelming to some, but it checked many boxes for me as a field research enthusiast. Hopefully in the future, the Pokémon display more varied and unique behaviors that would be so much fun to observe. Filling out the Dex was a reward in its own right, even moreso when I don't have to buy a SEPARATE game or trade with another player to complete it.
One thing I loved about Mario Kart Wii that I hope returns in a new game is HOW they gave you rewards. Instead of just being random rewards for playing the game and collecting coins, you earn specific characters, karts, and bikes from specific accomplishments, and these accomplishments aren't JUST Grand Prix Gold Trophies. Some of them have you play Time Trials, for example, and I have found memories as a child plotting out all the staff ghosts as I tried to master those courses to unlock the Sprinter Another reward method I enjoy, for similar reasons, is achievements. These don't offer any gameplay bonuses, but it's fun seeing the developer give you a thumbs up for trying something creative I also just want to say thank you again for the Trophies in Super Smash Bros Brawl. To a young child, it was almost like visiting a museum of video gaming history, learning about the Great heroes and villains of the past, and the stories still out there for me to see for myself
On the topic of multiplayer fighters Strive gives you money which you can spend fishing to get a variety of items like cosmetics or even music and gallery art. Games like MK let you unlock costumes and colors via progression. Basic cosmetic stuff that make the game feel more personal is always a nice reward its like sticking with something long enough to make it feel like your own thing.
It makes sense why spirits were made as I can understand that trophies were probably expensive as you said. But with spirits I would really like if you added atleast a bit more depth to them outside of just equipment. Something like descriptions to each spirit as well as maybe and more ways you can use them (maybe let them be used in custom stages as display perhaps? Idk something like that which could provide more interactivity with them)
At the very least, it would be nice if they had character displays for all the player characters. With a write up on their backstory or explanations on their signature moves. Stuff like Ness learning his PSI from Paula and Poo, or Lucas borrowing the Rope Snake is really cute and makes the character feel more 'lived in'.
Kid Icarus Uprising had a great deal of awesome rewards too. You could unlock brand new powers and weapons as the game progresses, but in doing so you could discover new weapon types that play differently. And the higher the intensity, the better weapons you get and you could even unlock new stages and items in multiplayer. Also the zodiac weapons and powers were awesome
Heh he didn't brought up the custom moves from Smash 4. Those are rewards that took FOREVER to get no matter how hard you try I can see why he axed them altogether in Ultimate lol
These videos might not be the space for it, but I think I'd like to see a break down of which kinds of players find which rewards the most rewarding and why. Good video!
Mario games do this so well. The reward is the feeling you get and moving onto the next challenge or unlocking secret worlds. Using new power ups and earning extra lives is just part of the fun.
The more I see of Kirby Air Ride, the weirder I find that a racing game inspired Smash's mechanics. Though I suppose the achievements did end up coming back to Kid Icarus Uprising as well.
Good gameplay is its own reward. That said, I did enjoy unlocking the bulk of the roster in Smash Ultimate, and kind of liked it when they let you challenge Sephiroth and unlock him early for the DLC.
Well, "Ice Climbers" are always at a higher level... ^^ I really think your series is great. It is also easy to follow for people outside the industry. Did not know that about the trophies.
A difficulty with providing rewards for fighting games is that you actually don't want the unlocks to be too difficult or even required for the sake of tournaments. Like for Smash Tournaments, the organisators need to prepare many playable stations, and each of them are required to have everything unlocked. If everything's unlocked from the beginning, preparing a station is just a question of money. But if you need to unlock the characters, level them all up to max level, and unlock every single of their moves, setting up a station would also require a lot of grinding before it is ready to be used, and that makes it a lot harder for the game to grow a competitive community. Smash Ultimate strikes a good balance IMO. Sure there's lot of characters to unlock, but there's tricks to unlock them really fast, and there's nothing else that needs to be done for a game to be tournament-ready. The long-term rewards such as spirits and music tracks do not affect the competitive environment, and there's even a Story mode to enjoy unlocking characters and leveling up when playing solo or with friends. It's a good balance between time required to set up the game for tournament, and still allowing new players to look forward to unlocking stuff for a good while.
Another fantastic video from Sakurai! I think the rewards and challenges in Smash Ultimate were fantastic. There weren't any too difficult (unlike Smash for Wii U where I am still missing one track because it's locked under a near-impossible task) and the Online challenges are optional so aren't required for the important rewards. While the loss of trophies is understandable, I wish that the spirits came with the write-ups like the trophies did. They're still awesome, though.
Nintendo does not do trophies or achievements (yet), but they offer a sense of reward and an extra meta gameplay layer that makes a lot of users engage with the game longer. Especially if they are fair and cleverly done, then they can direct the players to explore the game in ways they never thought of.
It's difficult with a game that tries to promote skill growth as opposed to simple "bigger numbers" to give rewards. I'm glad you showed examples from something like Smash Bros. because those kinds of reward systems are much more difficult to construct well, especially with trying to keep ona pace or budget
In all honesty, the bit of Smash increasing characters' powers that you mentioned is my biggest issue with using Spirits outside of the Spirits Mode, as they still increase your power. With Spirit sets that I had in mind made to make some characters like especially Mii characters based on actual characters, such as Black Knight, play more faithfully to how their characters would play in Smash, you still have to deal with those characters being more powerful in general outside of the Spirits Mode rather than just having the specific playstyle modifications on a "vanilla" overall power. It would have been really cool if we could use Spirits outside of the story mode to mod playstyles without having the character themselves deal more damage than normal outside of specific conditions like specific moves being powered up.
There's still a few that let you unlock the rewards in game but it does feel like a lot of the time now its ripped from the game to be sold as paid dlc :(
I like the idea of getting new stuff to play with as a reward. In Breath of the Wild, after conquering an enemy camp, you might find a fun new weapon to try, such as a Wizzrobe wand or bomb arrows. Or in Terraria after defeating a difficult boss, you could receive a unique mount or special grappling hook.
The only games without rewards are either flash games that exist to take up 10 minutes of time at the computer lab in school or a highly intrinsic experience, which can alienate most audiences.
I know some mobile games do the character level ups in competitive, but didn’t even know some fighting games did level ups, that sounds like a nightmare… It’d be fun to experiment with other methods of extrinsic motivation.
I love giving powerful rewards in my D&D campaigns, but I don't want a player to constently be ditching their old equipment. How do you get attached to your character's vibe if they never develop one on the player's terms. (My barbarian player grew very attached to her starter War Axe, for example). So I like to give single use niche items with strong effects. Like a glass orb that can safely store and release weak spells, but will shatter on use with strong spells. My players decided to ask a powerful Druid they met to store a high level wild growth spell and late used it to seal an earthen tunnel with an impassable mass of plants.
as fun the Spirit fights were to fight, i kinda wish they kept the Text descriptions from Trophies so it would feel a tad more rewarding: You get their aid AND their story
If I were to make any Pokémon game, I make sure to put any Pokémon with Synchro in the first route when the Abilities have field effects. I will also put in Pokémon with Pickup too.
i really like when games give you cosmetic rewards, but sometimes it falls flat if they reward me with something i don't really like the appearance of...
I dont know if this is an unpopular opinion, but the checklist was my favorite out of those games. I did like just completing objectives regardless of if there was a reward or not but Brawl and beyond had way less objectives in exchange for them all getting rewards. which makes sense if other people preferred that. Another thing is that alot of fighting games have treated 'just climbing the online ladder' as your reward for playing, and hardcore players definitely get that, but for players who arent hyper-competitive, you NEED more rewards than that. its still annoying to me when ArcSys games have a story mode with no fights or anything in it and they go "yep thats all we need!" Its very easy to lose motivation to play online and when thats gone, then you got nothing
Unlocking stuff and upgrading are my favorite aspects of many games. It's one of the reasons I love early to mid 2000's street racing games like Need for Speed or Midnight Club. Even unlocking stuff in Mario Kart games if fun. Some games really don't know how to reward the player. For instance, Forza Horizon games give you a trillion rewards and it just feels meaningless and not fun. Let me work for it!
Speaking of that series, I love the reward for DQ6's Super Boss: if beaten fast enough, he's so impressed he goes on to humiliate the final boss for you x)
I don't generally like loads of unlockable content if it doesn't have an effect on gameplay. At the same time, for fighting games specifically, I like all the fighters unlocked at the start unless they're special or unique in some way, and, in general, it can be really hard to give a game unlockable content without making it necessary to get the most out of the game. See Sonic and the Secret Rings.
I once came to the conclusion that the best reward for completing a game was simply “more content.” But then, what do you reward the player with when they have completed that new content? Perhaps you could reward the player with a unique piece of armor or weapon instead? In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, you can beat a “secret boss” at the bottom of the “Pit of 100 Trials” to to get a very powerful equip item. But at that point, you’ve already beaten every other challenge in the game, so what is there left to use it on? Perhaps you could allow the player to carry this new item into a New Game+ where all the challenges are tougher, but you can face them with end-game loot. The other suggestion I have is to make the final reward a narrative payoff. For example, in The World Ends With You, you can complete bonus objectives each Day of the campaign to earn a Secret Report. These are not vital to understanding the game’s story, but they contain extra context behind certain character’s motivations which make the story feel much richer. Then, when you unlock them all, you get one final secret cutscene to really cap things off. That being said, a narrative reward like this one only works if narrative is a big part of your game. So, is there a “best way” to reward your players? Maybe, but the answer is going to change from game to game.
Payday 3 is suffering from this as we speak, so the timing on this video couldn't be more perfect. The game's XP is entirely tied to challenges, as opposed to heist completion or how many bags of loot were secured. This makes completing a heist feel pointless because you'd gain more XP by letting the heist go on and racking up more kills, which defeats the spirit of heisting.
Unfortunately, educating players with trophy descriptions can be tricky when there's errors (like in "Melee", Meta Knight's trophy said that his first game was "Kirby Super Star" instead of "Kirby's Adventure" (and his name was misspelled as "Meta-Knight" with the hyphen), and in "Brawl" King K. Rool's trophy says that he and Kaptain K. Rool, his alias in "Donkey Kong Country 2" were brothers)
I'd really like your opinion on making the player extremely powerful at the end/close to the end of a game. Making them overpowered can make the final encounters underwhelming, but waiting until the game is over can leave a feeling of disappointment, since they now have incredible power, but no enemies to use it on. How would you sugest striking a balance?
I think Nioh 2 more or less managed to achieve this - you gotta play through the game 5 times to "really" beat it, and the harder difficulties introduce both stronger enemies (like "cursed" enemies with permanent buffs) and stronger equipment to let you deal with them - you never NEED all that power if you're just good at the game, but working towards the most powerful effects felt like a very worthwhile long-term goal.
That's what there is a flaw in bakumatsu chapter in live a live. If you managed of not killing every 100 people in ode castle by defeating chapter's boss. The prisoner, Ryoma Sakamoto Will give to the Protagonist, oboromaru his sword, Yoshiyuki. Which will help in final chapter. But by the time when reach to the trial of keys and get his ultimate weapon, it will rander this weapon useless. Making it a waste of time for a lot of players who struggle to get it.
I've played a decent number of rhythm games growing up, and I know their reward systems have at time been motivating, boring or frustrating. It can really make or break a game. You don't want to force skilled players through unchallenging content or stuff they're not really interested in just so they can unlock the content they really care about, but at the same time if you don't provide rewards to the player at a consistent pace they might get bored and bounce off. It's a tough act to balance.
Sakurai: “Make playing the game feel like its own reward. :)” Destiny 2: “DON’T OVERDELIVER! FIRST TRUST, THEN RETENTION, THEN REVENUE!!!!!!” I think I know what I prefer…
To me there's such a thing as overrewarding as well. Assassins Creed Odyssey comes to mind where its a total loot volcano all the time and shifting thru it all in the menu is a chore rather than exciting
Sakurai these Planning and Game Design viddos helps me a lot to start making my own videogame thank you so much. 😊❤ PS about Super Smash Bros 3ds and Wii U, I have Super Smash Bros edition 3ds and I've buyed Super zsmash Bros Wii U for my Wii U on last week, is it worth it to play Super Smash Bros Wii U 2023? 😮
You just have to ask yourself why are they playing and give more of that. For a party game, cosmetics make sense, but a story game might just need endings and side stories.
I didn't really engage with the sticker system in brawl at all personally. I never tried to stick them to the player trophy and so I just collected a bunch of stickers that just ended up laying about. And in some RPG's I generally never bother with fusing items for gear and equipment. If there's anything to learn from that... Uhh... Glad I could help?
If leveling up fighters is bad, then unlocking fighters and power up stickers shouldn't be OK. It also might feel like the "real" game doesn't start until you've collected them all.
![Super Smash Bros. for 3DS / Wii U [Game Concepts]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DeLrIXCOUw0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Super Smash Bros. for 3DS / Wii U [Game Concepts]](/img/tr.png)
![A Fight Between Live Action and Animation [Graphics]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/luB-5GqW55Q/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Original Piece is Always Right [Audio]](/img/1.gif)
The best rewards for completion tend to be just more game. If someone has gotten that far, it can be assumed that they enjoy the basic gameplay to a degree, so providing bonus levels, secret areas, and superbosses really make them feel like they're experiencing the best the game they've mastered has to offer.
Yeah but at the same time, a game gaming experience can always use newer tools to shake the gameplay a little bit.That's why things like leveling up or getting new equipment not only work as a reward for the player, they allow the level designers to give the players more game.
Yes and no.
The content mill should be properly balanced and distributed for this to be a good reward. One example of it being not so good is Mario Odyssey - there's way too much to do in even the first true kingdom, long before you finish the game and unlock the doubled moon count. It starts to drain and fatigue you really quick. Sure this boils down to personal opinion for a lot of people (it always will, game design isn't a perfect science) and the game does it well too, with the extra challenging Darker and Darkest Side moon levels, but it's also a lesson in pacing.
HOLLOW KNIGHT
i dont know I kinda like that in Sonic Adventure DX you get rewarded with the full Game Gear games as bonus content. Minigames that are in the same genre as the main gameplay is a nice way to add a break to the loop I feel.
Totally! They did it so well in Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Country 2. Both games had extra challenge courses you could unlock by finding all the collectibles in the main game.
It feels best when it's presented as optional post-game content. It's not as fun when the game asks you to do completionist stuff just to finish the main story, like in Jet Force Gemini. If they had just framed that a little differently in a story-telling sense it would have been more fun.
Meanwhile in his very first game, the reward was a cute little dance. What more could a gamer need?
I think Smash Bros is an important example for fighting games in general. One of the reasons why many fighting games don't break even in terms of sales, popularity or player base is because they lack in the single player aspect, as they don't offer an engaging campaign, unlockables, rewards or other type of content. Many titles try to appeal solely to the competitiveness and they surely offer a refined gameplay, but if you don't cater to the casual user that is not interested in battling against other players and just wants to have a fun time by themselves, then your fighting game will have a hard time trying to be commercially successful.
Yeah, I really miss when fighting games would start with only a few characters, and you had to play as many different characters to unlock them. Nowadays everything is unlocked off the bat and there’s only a garbage story mode (Tekken 7, as much as I love that game).
The irony of saying this as the genre is starting a new golden age
@@roskiart8750 I'm not trying to say this in an antagonistic way, but what golden age? As a more casual fighting game player most fighting games still seem rife with the exact same issues that put me off from playing most of them as they have for the past 10 or so years such as a lack of single player content, extremely overpriced dlc that should be included in the base game anyway, endless season passes, etc. The only aspect that has seen a legitimate improvement is netcode making playing fighting games online actually manageable and not completely awful.
Couldn't agree more. I suck at fighting games and yet I can't help but find them appealing. The moment I saw Smash Ultimate gameplay I thought "crap, I'm going to need a Switch eventually", because for once it felt like someone had made a fighting game I could enjoy. I've been burned many times by titles advertised as beginner-friendly which ended up having steep difficulty curves and barely any single player content -- looking at you, Skullgirls and Them's Fighting Herds.
@@roskiart8750 Not a Golden Age, as that's long over. It's more of a silver age currently; secondary to what its Golden Age was, but still incredible among its peers that it is still holding on. There has yet to be a true renaissance for the genre as a whole, as the genre is still trying to find its solid identity over the years outside its closed conflicting circles (Smash Bros-likes are emerging nowadays, but it's still not the status quo breaker for the genre). It's still colloquially an underground genre on the mainstream, despite the increasing interest for esports around the world. But it might not be long until something shifts the paradigm completely.
Interesting to hear Sakurai talk about how unlocking character could considered a chore but is actually quite fun, since that's something they experimented with over the years. Namely, in smash4 about 80% of the roster was unlocked from the get-go, whereas in SmashUltimate, you only start off with 8 out of ~80 characters (ignoring dlc).
I think it also helps as a form of tutorial - if you have 80 characters unlocked right away, it's gonna be overwhelming to a new player. A dozen is a lot more manageable, and each time a new fighter is unlocked the player has some time to get used to them before the next one shows up.
I far prefer what Ultimate did. It doesn't overwhelm newcomers and encourages players to pick up characters that they otherwise might overlook. It's kind of weird that stages didn't follow that logic, though.
I personally think Brawl nailed it pretty well, as far as characters are concerned.
Melee had relatively few character unlocks, but many of those took a lot of time and effort to get (Mewtwo, Game & Watch). Smash 4, like said before, gave you most of the roster just to start with, while Ultimate gave you very little to start but had you unlock them *really* fast.
Brawl, on the other hand, gave you a decently sized starting roster and a good number of unlocks, but gave you three different critera for each character. Fufill any, and you unlock that character.
Further, the "main" method of unlocking, the Subspace Emissary, didn't just give you the character, but often forced you to play with different ones, getting you familiar with most of the cast. It was also the easiest (and often the fastest) method, simply requiring you to progress for all but the three super-hidden characters.
By the time you beat Subspace for the first time, you've unlocked almost the entire cast and you have a fairly solid grasp on the game as a whole.
In Rayman Legends, your rewards for completing worlds are the music levels, where everything happens to the beat of the song. I think rewarding players who like your game with more unique gameplay they can't get anywhere else is another great incentive.
Also, when you manage to collect all the lums in a level, you get a lucky ticket which unlocks origins stages which is basically rewarding you more levels.
And when you beat THOSE levels you get music levels remixed as chiptunes with crazy interface screw!
@@emblemblade9245 all good Examples😁
@@emblemblade9245That sounds sick!
Here's something I learned from Xenoblade Chronicles: reward experience points for optional activities in RPGs. Experience points are something you always want (unless you're doing a challenge run or something, but Definitive Edition even has an option for that! Putting sidequest and landmark exp into a pool you only use when you want to, like in later Xenoblade games), and nothing incentivised me to do sidequests and discover landmarks more than that.
Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn do something similar with their Bonus Experience system, which is awarded for fulfilling bonus objectives in chapters like keeping NPCs alive, not killing enemies who were being coerced to fight, finishing within a time limit, etc. That's one mechanic I wish they'd bring back.
As for what Sakurai said about Smash, I totally agree. Levelling systems are a nightmare for competitive fighting games since they either unbalance multiplayer or have to be turned off there and therefore might as well not exist (e.g the fate of custom moves in Smash 4, which hurt Palutena a ton since she was designed around them). But I'm glad Ultimate keeps the tradition of unlocking fighters. So many games these days lack unlockables entirely, and I always felt EARNING the whole roster was part of the fun.
So glad to see the Coin Launcher brought up, I always liked that since you'd often accumulate tons of useless currency when you were almost done with unlocks and letting you use it as ammo for a minigame was a fun way to get rid of it.
That I really love about the series as a whole, there's always some reward to grab, and each game has gotten better at it than the last.
@@Machination_24 Xenoblade 3's DLC, Future Redeemed, letting you unlock new skills for characters through points earned via exploring and doing quests was something I'm shocked they didn't try earlier. It worked SO WELL and I hope it's in the next game.
In Xenoblade Chronicles 3 I run into a problem precisely because of that. The game gives you reward experience points that surely come handy, and you bet at first I was using the function of using those extra points in a camp to level up my characters even more. But, that represented a problem for the rank system in the game. For leveling up or unlocking classes, you need CP (class points), which you get from defeating monsters. But gaining CP is tied to your level compared to the enemy, and if you are too overleveled then you gain too few points or nothing at all, which forces you to look up for stronger monsters, which will make you even more overleveled and the problem drags on. I’m afraid that this issue was a lack of balancing the system from Monolith, a reward that nullified other aspects of the game.
@@Kenosene You can LOWER your level at camps though. So you can dial yourself back if you ever feel like you're getting too strong. (This doesn't reset your class levels)
@@BigKlingy Yeah but it becomes available after you beat the game. It should have been an option way before that.
You can also use the story as a way of rewarding the player, if you intend to have a good one.
But even in games like the original Mario and Zelda, there was emphasis placed on progression towards a narrative goal (i.e. your princess is in another castle/collecting pieces of the tri-force).
Coin launcher was SO GOOD. I used to spend hours just grinding away at that thing.
Checklists can be a double edge sword because they usually keep players with idea of a reward, even if simple, if completing a list of challenges doesn't unlock something (even if simple) or show a message such as "Wow! You are in the top 5% of players who completed it. You are a Super Star now!"
There's a certain type of reward that is especially tricky to pull off. The final reward, for those who 100% complete everything. It's been a long journey, so it's gotta be something really special to make it all worth it.
Breath of the wild: best I can do is a turd
Basically a question of "what do you give someone who has everything", for example, a super powerful weapon seems like a great final reward, til you realise you have nothing to use it on, better 100% rewards tend to be things like hidden endings, or cool cosmetics, or media galleries.
Tales of Zestiria supes up the difficulty of the last boss when you whoop the optional boss that's more difficult than his base difficulty. I think if you're going to give us a sword of infinity +1, something to use it on is the best reward
Bigfoot in GTA V
Do you have any favorites? Personally I like the idea of a 100 percent reward being a way to break the game. Like enabling cheats (big head, infinite hp, exploding enemies) or like a ridiculous character that has ridiculously different moves or ways to do things that aren't normal. Something someone can experiment with.
I feel like this is something most multiplayer focused games struggle to grasp. Its all about how loose your purse strings are, not what players accomplish.
I thought getting an insane clip or a high rank is enough for most multiplayer games
This mentality does help to explain why Sakurai continues to have unlockable characters, even when everyone already knows before the game is even out what characters are in the game. As frustrating as it is for people who just want to play the game and be able to choose from all the characters from the get-go, I also like this kind of progression in something like Super Smash Bros.
I really miss trophies, though; I wouldn't mind Spirits as a replacement if they actually had descriptions like the trophies did. As it stands, they're kind of a sub-part replacement.
My favorite reward in the Smash series is definitely the music in Brawl.
Every time I saw a disc dropping on the stage, I was so excited to get it. And it was especially fun cause there were some instances where you could miss them. So the excitement and tension to grabbthe disc was there.
And it was also very surprising when a Mew appared on screen and drop one!
But if you managed to get them, it was so good to listen to the new music you unlocked immediately.
Such good memories!
The game Hades comes to mind. _So many rewards. So much replay value._ You unlock a bunch of different types of resources, which allow you to unlock new weapons, new aspects of weapons, leveled up weapons, trinkets, decoration for your room, abilities, achievements (aka prophecies), harder game modes, new god powers, and the storyline's progress itself!
hell even dying in various ways can net you some fun dialogue with characters in the hub area
It's always important to plan the kinds of rewards your players will get for beating a given game, so I'll have to keep this in mind. Great wisdom as always!
In a game I'm making, the player must climb a tower and after every 10 floors, they are rewarded with not only getting healed up, but they also get to choose to either boost their max health or their attack power. But, they can only choose one.
Interesting. Are you making it with Unity ?
@@Libops GB Studio
@@ryancurtis5425 Ok lol. Will I be able to rest your game once it's done ? :')
@@Libops If you want. Although, I have NO IDEA when it'll be done, or IF it will... 😅
Legends Arceus might have been underwhelming to some, but it checked many boxes for me as a field research enthusiast.
Hopefully in the future, the Pokémon display more varied and unique behaviors that would be so much fun to observe.
Filling out the Dex was a reward in its own right, even moreso when I don't have to buy a SEPARATE game or trade with another player to complete it.
I understand the work that was making trophies, but I'm very grateful. Collect them and read their description was great
One thing I loved about Mario Kart Wii that I hope returns in a new game is HOW they gave you rewards. Instead of just being random rewards for playing the game and collecting coins, you earn specific characters, karts, and bikes from specific accomplishments, and these accomplishments aren't JUST Grand Prix Gold Trophies. Some of them have you play Time Trials, for example, and I have found memories as a child plotting out all the staff ghosts as I tried to master those courses to unlock the Sprinter
Another reward method I enjoy, for similar reasons, is achievements. These don't offer any gameplay bonuses, but it's fun seeing the developer give you a thumbs up for trying something creative
I also just want to say thank you again for the Trophies in Super Smash Bros Brawl. To a young child, it was almost like visiting a museum of video gaming history, learning about the Great heroes and villains of the past, and the stories still out there for me to see for myself
hellsinker adds a sound test when the player completes every extra stage, it's amazing
On the topic of multiplayer fighters
Strive gives you money which you can spend fishing to get a variety of items like cosmetics or even music and gallery art. Games like MK let you unlock costumes and colors via progression. Basic cosmetic stuff that make the game feel more personal is always a nice reward its like sticking with something long enough to make it feel like your own thing.
It makes sense why spirits were made as I can understand that trophies were probably expensive as you said. But with spirits I would really like if you added atleast a bit more depth to them outside of just equipment. Something like descriptions to each spirit as well as maybe and more ways you can use them (maybe let them be used in custom stages as display perhaps? Idk something like that which could provide more interactivity with them)
At the very least, it would be nice if they had character displays for all the player characters. With a write up on their backstory or explanations on their signature moves. Stuff like Ness learning his PSI from Paula and Poo, or Lucas borrowing the Rope Snake is really cute and makes the character feel more 'lived in'.
1:28 Dear Multiversus developers, please take notes of this when you re-release the game in early 2024.
I thought the levels did not matter in Multiverse or am I wrong?
Kid Icarus Uprising had a great deal of awesome rewards too. You could unlock brand new powers and weapons as the game progresses, but in doing so you could discover new weapon types that play differently. And the higher the intensity, the better weapons you get and you could even unlock new stages and items in multiplayer.
Also the zodiac weapons and powers were awesome
Heh he didn't brought up the custom moves from Smash 4. Those are rewards that took FOREVER to get no matter how hard you try I can see why he axed them altogether in Ultimate lol
They were also random chance to get like a stupid loot box, so understandable they wouldn't do that again.
These videos might not be the space for it, but I think I'd like to see a break down of which kinds of players find which rewards the most rewarding and why. Good video!
Mario games do this so well. The reward is the feeling you get and moving onto the next challenge or unlocking secret worlds. Using new power ups and earning extra lives is just part of the fun.
Animation team did a hell of a good job this episode
The more I see of Kirby Air Ride, the weirder I find that a racing game inspired Smash's mechanics. Though I suppose the achievements did end up coming back to Kid Icarus Uprising as well.
A great lesson on how to reward the players!
Yakuza/RGG games have a fantastic reward loop. Doing any completion task rewards and it incentives to try out everything.
I love it
Good gameplay is its own reward. That said, I did enjoy unlocking the bulk of the roster in Smash Ultimate, and kind of liked it when they let you challenge Sephiroth and unlock him early for the DLC.
Well, "Ice Climbers" are always at a higher level... ^^
I really think your series is great. It is also easy to follow for people outside the industry. Did not know that about the trophies.
A difficulty with providing rewards for fighting games is that you actually don't want the unlocks to be too difficult or even required for the sake of tournaments. Like for Smash Tournaments, the organisators need to prepare many playable stations, and each of them are required to have everything unlocked. If everything's unlocked from the beginning, preparing a station is just a question of money. But if you need to unlock the characters, level them all up to max level, and unlock every single of their moves, setting up a station would also require a lot of grinding before it is ready to be used, and that makes it a lot harder for the game to grow a competitive community.
Smash Ultimate strikes a good balance IMO. Sure there's lot of characters to unlock, but there's tricks to unlock them really fast, and there's nothing else that needs to be done for a game to be tournament-ready. The long-term rewards such as spirits and music tracks do not affect the competitive environment, and there's even a Story mode to enjoy unlocking characters and leveling up when playing solo or with friends. It's a good balance between time required to set up the game for tournament, and still allowing new players to look forward to unlocking stuff for a good while.
Came for smash stayed for the very insightful information on good game design I’m always learning something new here 👍
Pretty slick to see!
Melee's trophies I loved so mmuch
And new moves as you progress! Don't forget about new moves!
All these years after and I didnt know you could put stickers under the trophy stand to power up fighters in brawl...
Only in The Subspace Emissary.
excellent advice, thanks sakurai!
Another fantastic video from Sakurai! I think the rewards and challenges in Smash Ultimate were fantastic. There weren't any too difficult (unlike Smash for Wii U where I am still missing one track because it's locked under a near-impossible task) and the Online challenges are optional so aren't required for the important rewards. While the loss of trophies is understandable, I wish that the spirits came with the write-ups like the trophies did. They're still awesome, though.
I love the call back to other videos!! Now I need to take notes on Kirby Air Ride and Kirby Adventure as well!!!
Notes Taken...
Reward those who have gone through your games challenges.
Nintendo does not do trophies or achievements (yet), but they offer a sense of reward and an extra meta gameplay layer that makes a lot of users engage with the game longer. Especially if they are fair and cleverly done, then they can direct the players to explore the game in ways they never thought of.
Coin Launcher was one of my favorite side modes ever, I spent HOURS on it
Looks like after so many years a current 2D Mario Game may explore just that in the form of badges
In via Break Time Stages
It's difficult with a game that tries to promote skill growth as opposed to simple "bigger numbers" to give rewards. I'm glad you showed examples from something like Smash Bros. because those kinds of reward systems are much more difficult to construct well, especially with trying to keep ona pace or budget
In all honesty, the bit of Smash increasing characters' powers that you mentioned is my biggest issue with using Spirits outside of the Spirits Mode, as they still increase your power. With Spirit sets that I had in mind made to make some characters like especially Mii characters based on actual characters, such as Black Knight, play more faithfully to how their characters would play in Smash, you still have to deal with those characters being more powerful in general outside of the Spirits Mode rather than just having the specific playstyle modifications on a "vanilla" overall power. It would have been really cool if we could use Spirits outside of the story mode to mod playstyles without having the character themselves deal more damage than normal outside of specific conditions like specific moves being powered up.
Let's bring back Trophies!
Man I miss the times when some games didn't had pay to win, made the rewards more worth instead of paying for then lol
There's still a few that let you unlock the rewards in game but it does feel like a lot of the time now its ripped from the game to be sold as paid dlc :(
Even worse is when rewards you pay for aren't even guaranteed.
blame john riccitiello (former ceo of EA) for proposing a plan to force their players to buy a bullet for a dollar
@@theotherky ikr! It's very bad :/
@@ruegenthedragon yea EA's weird lol, I rather play Kirby instead
The best rewards should always be hidden behind waterfalls
I like the idea of getting new stuff to play with as a reward. In Breath of the Wild, after conquering an enemy camp, you might find a fun new weapon to try, such as a Wizzrobe wand or bomb arrows. Or in Terraria after defeating a difficult boss, you could receive a unique mount or special grappling hook.
Unlocking characters is one of the most fun parts of playing fighting games. I prefer it to buying individual characters.
The only games without rewards are either flash games that exist to take up 10 minutes of time at the computer lab in school or a highly intrinsic experience, which can alienate most audiences.
I know some mobile games do the character level ups in competitive, but didn’t even know some fighting games did level ups, that sounds like a nightmare…
It’d be fun to experiment with other methods of extrinsic motivation.
I still remember the time you gave us the Triforce as a reward for treasure hunting. I admit, that one was a bit hard to find at first
I love giving powerful rewards in my D&D campaigns, but I don't want a player to constently be ditching their old equipment. How do you get attached to your character's vibe if they never develop one on the player's terms. (My barbarian player grew very attached to her starter War Axe, for example).
So I like to give single use niche items with strong effects. Like a glass orb that can safely store and release weak spells, but will shatter on use with strong spells.
My players decided to ask a powerful Druid they met to store a high level wild growth spell and late used it to seal an earthen tunnel with an impassable mass of plants.
I actually love spirits (and their battles) but I would love for them to have descriptions and the games of origin like trophies did.
as fun the Spirit fights were to fight, i kinda wish they kept the Text descriptions from Trophies so it would feel a tad more rewarding: You get their aid AND their story
2:35 I had no idea that was the purpose for stickers when I played Brawl lol
Excellent information about game rewards! Of course, Smash Ultimate is a great example for this.😄
I really needed this one, cheif!
If I were to make any Pokémon game, I make sure to put any Pokémon with Synchro in the first route when the Abilities have field effects. I will also put in Pokémon with Pickup too.
i really like when games give you cosmetic rewards, but sometimes it falls flat if they reward me with something i don't really like the appearance of...
4:12, 4:13, 4:14 arigato sakurai san for figuring that the one part out. Which I was struggling with.
I love this channel!
Got to have that carrot on the end of the stick.
I've been just doing subspace without knowing what the stickers did 😭
I dont know if this is an unpopular opinion, but the checklist was my favorite out of those games. I did like just completing objectives regardless of if there was a reward or not but Brawl and beyond had way less objectives in exchange for them all getting rewards. which makes sense if other people preferred that.
Another thing is that alot of fighting games have treated 'just climbing the online ladder' as your reward for playing, and hardcore players definitely get that, but for players who arent hyper-competitive, you NEED more rewards than that. its still annoying to me when ArcSys games have a story mode with no fights or anything in it and they go "yep thats all we need!" Its very easy to lose motivation to play online and when thats gone, then you got nothing
me and all my homies love the Challenge Board
Metroid: A Missile upgrade will do
Unlocking stuff and upgrading are my favorite aspects of many games. It's one of the reasons I love early to mid 2000's street racing games like Need for Speed or Midnight Club. Even unlocking stuff in Mario Kart games if fun. Some games really don't know how to reward the player. For instance, Forza Horizon games give you a trillion rewards and it just feels meaningless and not fun. Let me work for it!
Thanks for the tips Mr Sakurai! I'm going to add more rewards in my next game
Coin launcher was awesome! :D
In Dragon Quest, I tend to be satisfied with the massive EXP reward for taking out any form of metal slime before they run away.
Speaking of that series, I love the reward for DQ6's Super Boss: if beaten fast enough, he's so impressed he goes on to humiliate the final boss for you x)
I don't generally like loads of unlockable content if it doesn't have an effect on gameplay.
At the same time, for fighting games specifically, I like all the fighters unlocked at the start unless they're special or unique in some way, and, in general, it can be really hard to give a game unlockable content without making it necessary to get the most out of the game. See Sonic and the Secret Rings.
I once came to the conclusion that the best reward for completing a game was simply “more content.”
But then, what do you reward the player with when they have completed that new content?
Perhaps you could reward the player with a unique piece of armor or weapon instead?
In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, you can beat a “secret boss” at the bottom of the “Pit of 100 Trials” to to get a very powerful equip item.
But at that point, you’ve already beaten every other challenge in the game, so what is there left to use it on?
Perhaps you could allow the player to carry this new item into a New Game+ where all the challenges are tougher, but you can face them with end-game loot.
The other suggestion I have is to make the final reward a narrative payoff. For example, in The World Ends With You, you can complete bonus objectives each Day of the campaign to earn a Secret Report. These are not vital to understanding the game’s story, but they contain extra context behind certain character’s motivations which make the story feel much richer. Then, when you unlock them all, you get one final secret cutscene to really cap things off. That being said, a narrative reward like this one only works if narrative is a big part of your game. So, is there a “best way” to reward your players? Maybe, but the answer is going to change from game to game.
Payday 3 is suffering from this as we speak, so the timing on this video couldn't be more perfect. The game's XP is entirely tied to challenges, as opposed to heist completion or how many bags of loot were secured. This makes completing a heist feel pointless because you'd gain more XP by letting the heist go on and racking up more kills, which defeats the spirit of heisting.
Unfortunately, educating players with trophy descriptions can be tricky when there's errors (like in "Melee", Meta Knight's trophy said that his first game was "Kirby Super Star" instead of "Kirby's Adventure" (and his name was misspelled as "Meta-Knight" with the hyphen), and in "Brawl" King K. Rool's trophy says that he and Kaptain K. Rool, his alias in "Donkey Kong Country 2" were brothers)
I can understand the cost save it was to make stickers and spirits, but I personally think the absence of descriptions was the biggest loss
1:35 70-20 Wait did Sakurai watch the Denver Broncos game from last weekend? lol
I'd really like your opinion on making the player extremely powerful at the end/close to the end of a game. Making them overpowered can make the final encounters underwhelming, but waiting until the game is over can leave a feeling of disappointment, since they now have incredible power, but no enemies to use it on. How would you sugest striking a balance?
Maybe have some extra hard bonus levels / areas that are built around the new powers
I think Nioh 2 more or less managed to achieve this - you gotta play through the game 5 times to "really" beat it, and the harder difficulties introduce both stronger enemies (like "cursed" enemies with permanent buffs) and stronger equipment to let you deal with them - you never NEED all that power if you're just good at the game, but working towards the most powerful effects felt like a very worthwhile long-term goal.
That's what there is a flaw in bakumatsu chapter in live a live. If you managed of not killing every 100 people in ode castle by defeating chapter's boss. The prisoner, Ryoma Sakamoto Will give to the Protagonist, oboromaru his sword, Yoshiyuki. Which will help in final chapter. But by the time when reach to the trial of keys and get his ultimate weapon, it will rander this weapon useless. Making it a waste of time for a lot of players who struggle to get it.
0:37 IS THAT A MIITOPIA REFERENCE???
I was thinking the same thing
Miitopia fans when they see an RPG:
(no offense Miitopia is amazing but what are y'all going on about lol)
@@penitente3337 he was using the level up animation from miitopia (or at least a very similar one)
I've played a decent number of rhythm games growing up, and I know their reward systems have at time been motivating, boring or frustrating. It can really make or break a game. You don't want to force skilled players through unchallenging content or stuff they're not really interested in just so they can unlock the content they really care about, but at the same time if you don't provide rewards to the player at a consistent pace they might get bored and bounce off. It's a tough act to balance.
give them riches and treasures… golden dubloons
I miss the trophies so much!!
Sakurai: “Make playing the game feel like its own reward. :)”
Destiny 2: “DON’T OVERDELIVER! FIRST TRUST, THEN RETENTION, THEN REVENUE!!!!!!”
I think I know what I prefer…
I like RPGs since they have a nice feedback loop
3:23 smb3 ground theme
what about Tetris?
To me there's such a thing as overrewarding as well. Assassins Creed Odyssey comes to mind where its a total loot volcano all the time and shifting thru it all in the menu is a chore rather than exciting
Sakurai these Planning and Game Design viddos helps me a lot to start making my own videogame thank you so much. 😊❤
PS about Super Smash Bros 3ds and Wii U, I have Super Smash Bros edition 3ds and I've buyed Super zsmash Bros Wii U for my Wii U on last week, is it worth it to play Super Smash Bros Wii U 2023? 😮
🙌🙏
💖
You just have to ask yourself why are they playing and give more of that. For a party game, cosmetics make sense, but a story game might just need endings and side stories.
I didn't really engage with the sticker system in brawl at all personally. I never tried to stick them to the player trophy and so I just collected a bunch of stickers that just ended up laying about. And in some RPG's I generally never bother with fusing items for gear and equipment. If there's anything to learn from that... Uhh... Glad I could help?
Sin & Punishment 2 didn't need "rewards". It only needed to be objectively awesome for 3 hours straight.
i put so many hours into brawl coin launcher
If leveling up fighters is bad, then unlocking fighters and power up stickers shouldn't be OK.
It also might feel like the "real" game doesn't start until you've collected them all.