Post Game

[Jayrodd]

So you beat the game, congrats! But now what? This may seem like such a far feature for a fan game, the game itself is hard enough to make let alone more of it. However, it sure is fun to think about, right? Besides we've all got dreams of what this glorious post game in our head is so might as well share some opinions about it!

• Discuss the importance of post game, what it provides for your game narrative
• Describe how you go about deciding post game content and what it does for the scope of development
• Find different ways games allow the player to further their experience with both renewable and nonrenewable content

 

[doof]

I tried so hard to write something in depth and meaningful, but I failed horribly so I'll just be short and sweet.

1) For me, I would say that it's moderately important. It provides some new stuff for the player to do while wrapping up the last bit of the story started in the main game.

2) Honestly, I aim to focus on wrapping up old plot points and making sure each character reaches the end of their arc when thinking of post-game. Which is kinda why I don't consider it post-game. The story is already spaced out in a way that it carries on after the E4. I'm not so much concerned about making sure players are enticed with the game for months and years down the road, but rather giving them a story that feels completed and whole.

3) I've always thought it might be fun to do some content in the style of Fallout or Skyrim DLC. Having some smaller islands or areas that you can go to that have their own stories and new Pokemon not able to be found in the main game. You'd probably need to do some fidgeting to get it to flow well with the Pokemon gameplay and mechanics, but I think it'd a fun little way to add some new stuff.

 

[kirlial]

As far as main games go, I loved the post-game in GSC, exploring the admittedly hollowed-out Kanto was lots of fun with more gyms to tackle and some problems to fix such as getting the magnet train to work. It's funny how you pass the train stations hundreds of time as you play through so it feels quite rewarding when you get to see it in action. Most of the other post-games didn't make such a big impression on me (though I've not played all the more recent games). BW2 allowed you to explore extra cities as well, I think and that was also nice. Having a tough trainer even stronger than the champion of the region is a good addition to give players an extra challenge to work towards.

These kinds of post-games actually take quite a lot of work with quite a few new maps and events, arguably too much for what's supposed to be just a little extra content once you've completed the main story but they can make the game as a whole feel richer.

I think a post-game can be comparable to having lots of side quests as they're optional but encourage exploration and give the game added depth, as well as offering the player a bit of a break from some otherwise overwhelming stream of challenges. They're not necessary to include by any stretch of the imagination but they do add to the experience. (Many optional areas and side quests can often be explored post-game as well, so they can encourage a player to continue playing after beating the main game even if you wouldn't explicitly label them as a post-game.)

 

[Aki]

I feel weird about post games. Like...I think that it's a bit of a strange concept to plan an involved post game in the first place, because it's content that exists after the story is over and the game declared itself ended. In the main series they usually keep the post game stuff to battle facilities and short stories that probably would've interrupted/sidetracked the main story, but could these really not be included in the main game? What's so unique about this content that it's both worth including in the game, but is also unimportant enough that it's just tacked onto the end?

 

[aiyinsi]

First things first: What is postgame?
The main game is the storyline. The post game is what you can do after the story. In other words what to do when the game doesn't tell you what to do anymore and no new content is revealed anymore.
Obviously you got to repeat things.

Why would I repeat things? or What is the role of post game?
I personaly think that one of the storylines tasks is to be a long tutorial inspiring the player to try different taktics to win. Although this is admittedly hard to do in Pokémon. The main role of post game is to let the player enjoy the gameplay and tactics he learned in the main storyline. Imagine Emerald wouldn't have the battle frontier. In that case you wouldn't have a challenge with your team beeing lvl 100 and all oponents down in one shot. So the post game is to keep the player challenged.

Let's talk about the main series:

The battle frontier is one solution possible post game. Half the HOENN thread mentioned it. Although it was only in one of the 5 games that play in HOENN and a lot of people who wrote comments there didn't play Emerald. So it did have quite the impact. So why isn't there any remarkeble battle frontier in the newer official Pokémon games?

Game Freak wants us to go online and play multiplayer mode. Because multiplayer mode will always be a challenge and always be diffenerent because every player has a personal play style. If you think about it most of the offline post game is to prepare players for online post game.

And it works. All the people breed their Pokémon for max IV for pvp battles. Just to be able to compete.

Sun/moon took a step further. They introduced minigames to play with other players. You can even "talk" to them.

But enough of that. I don't think multiplayer features will be beneficial to fangames because our playerbase isn't big enough.

Now to the question that is the most relevant to fangame developers: Will people play my postgame?
Let's assume our fangame has the same battle mechanics as the main series.

If we make a post game will it be able to compete with the main series when the main series has multiplayer and better graphics and AI than every fangame I saw out there?
Will people actually bother playing our post game if they can play the real one?
I don't think so.

But that's olny if our gameplay is the same as the main series. So if your game features some new gameplay consider including that into the postgame. Because that's the way for the player who enjoys the game mechanics to continue doing so while stil having a challenge.

 

[Presley]

I think that postgame is vital in a Pokemon game. I really think it should be there so that the player could continue playing without restarting the game or getting repetitive. I personally think that HGSS' post game was impeccable. You had a whole "new" region to explore and at the end you battled a previous protagonist. I believe that the combination of long content and connecting the pieces of lore made it spectacular. I also enjoyed the Delta Episode in ORAS. Therefore, it's safe to say that I really enjoy post game when it involves new content and story, not just something you repeat over and over. Obviously there's a problem with this, because it's impossible to have INFINITE new content in the game. Ways I would try to create a post game is create mission-like quests and more ways to capture new Pokemon. Basically sidequests but after you complete the game only. Overall, I just think post game is important so that if people want to, they can keep diving into fresh content in the game.

 

[Pixel Profligate]

Post game is a...weird topic for me. Now, when we say "post game," it can refer to a lot of things. Are you referring to additional story? Are you referring to the competitive side of Pokemon? Are you referring to just being able to continue the game, and keep catching Pokemon? It can be a vague term over all. For fan games, the competitive stuff doesn't matter, so I won't talk about it, but the other two can be...interesting. Now, I personally think adding in more story bits in "post game" is a no-no. If it's important enough to include, find a way to include it into the main story. If it's not important enough to include, then it doesn't need to be there at all. Now, I'm meaning things akin to the Delta Episode. That kind of "story." Because, if it's post game, chances are a lot of players will not play it at all, and do you really want all the effort you put into this story to be ultimately not experienced by most players? However, for things like extra Pokemon to catch, like the Sevii Islands who only exist so the player can catch Pokemon from Generation 2, or having a secret legendary, like Giratina in DP, or Mewtwo in more than one game, then I say go for it. Since these aren't story related, and are only there so the player can get another cool thing, it's fine. Same goes for adding in rematches with Gyms and the Elite 4. Not outright story related, so no reason to not add them in as well. If you really, really want to have more story things happen after the Elite 4, then just don't make that the end of the game. Don't have the credits play, don't say "The End," because it isn't the end, you still have more story in there.

 

[Dr. Pikachu PhD]

When I think of postgame I think less about the battle facilities (because I find them kind of boring and I'd rather just go online) and much more about exploration. Exploration is absolutely huge for me in a Pokémon game, it's one of my favorite parts, so having new maps open after the end of the story is always a huge plus. In my opinion one of the best postgames that I rarely see mentioned is DPPt's Battle Zone. This area opened up six new routes, three new town areas, a new battle area, a mini story quest involving a Team Galactic scientist, and had a legendary encounter (Heatran). It was amazing and I was so excited by it because I had this kind of hollow feeling after the Pokémon League of "Well, I guess that's it. Now it's just running around fetching legendaries." And then I arrived on the island and was surprised by that same sense of adventure that greeted me when I first started the game. It's even stated that Battle Zone inhabitants are treated like they are from a completely different region than Sinnoh, which was probably a call back to GSC's extra region without all the extra work.

I agree with some of the other comments, the story doesn't have to continue into the postgame and that's really up to the creator's preference (although even if it's not direct story content, I LOVE being able to see where story characters end up. I hate seeing them just stagnate or have them disappear altogether). But having more maps after you get The End screen is a great way to give the Pokémon world and your adventure a feeling of endlessness, even if it obviously isn't endless. Although....

I've always thought it might be fun to do some content in the style of Fallout or Skyrim DLC. Having some smaller islands or areas that you can go to that have their own stories and new Pokemon not able to be found in the main game. You'd probably need to do some fidgeting to get it to flow well with the Pokemon gameplay and mechanics, but I think it'd a fun little way to add some new stuff.

This. This is such an awesome idea and I think it totally works for Pokémon. Reminds me of Eventide Island from Zelda: BotW or their new Master Sword DLC.

 

[Phoenixsong]

For what it's worth, I'm not sure it's always "how important/unimportant is this content compared to the main story" that's the main deciding factor in a postgame. Obviously that's something to consider, and I agree there's nothing wrong with, say, saving "The End" and the credit roll until some point well past the Elite Four if that's how long it takes to get to the final parts of your story. The thing about postgame in terms of mechanics and player experience is that it's a reward for completing a (the) major task in the game/story. It's saying "Hey, congrats, you did it! Team Evilteam has been vanquished or whatever the main story's goal was! Now here's a cool advanced (for some definition of "advanced") or secret thing you can do after that!" It's another way of marking progress, imo, a way of giving something the player something to look forward to that they can't quite reach yet. Throughout the game you're "unlocking" access to new areas and new content by reaching certain milestones, so this is just one last big reward to unlock for completing one last milestone, something else to make you feel special for having completed the biggest milestone in the game. A properly-designed postgame isn't just randomly gating off half the story or some important feature. It's one last cool toy that you've earned the right play with or explore. That's "the point" as far as I can tell, which seems pretty reasonable to me. *shrug* It only gets weird if it's handled awkwardly, again coming back to the example of "why did your story arbitrarily end for a minute after the E4 when the plot clearly wasn't resolved?" and so on. Side stories that maybe riff off the main story but aren't a direct continuation of it, like the Delta Episode at least tried to be, don't bother me so much.

So yeah, imo it's more about pacing and a psychological reward for the player's success than it is "could you really not have had the Battle Frontier available/made this legendary catchable from the beginning?". Of course you could have. Of course it's (probably) technically always there. But why not use it as a tool to make me feel like I've accomplished something rather than "oh here's just Yet Another Thing that becomes accessible alongside Every Other Thing"? It's more special that way, and there's nothing wrong with wanting something to feel special even if it's not some Plot Crucial MacGuffin Arena or Legendary or whatever.

Heck, that's even how the Battle Area/Battle Frontier and mewtwo were styled in-story. You only get invited once you've proved that you're one of the best trainers in Sinnoh/Hoenn. Mewtwo's lair is only safe for the most powerful trainers to traverse. It's a reward for the player character's success as well as a reward for the player's. So as long as you set it up properly, it's perfectly reasonable that you shouldn't just be waltzing into the Battle Pyramid or Cerulean Cave with your level 21 ivysaur but rather with your championship-winning venusaur.

EDIT: Although I suppose it's fair to say that it may seem arbitrary to have the credits roll when there's any more content in the game in general, yes. At that point it's a matter of tradition more than anything else. That said, if there's a definitive end to the "main story" but you can run the Battle Frontier a million times, which is the more logical place to put the end credits?

 

[Dawn Bronze]

I'm kinda unsure about why everybody makes such a big deal about postgame. It's obviously a very important feature in games for a lot of people, but I'm just a bit baffled why so many people place such a big focus on what happens after the game is over. The game is...over. Why should there be anything more for the player to do? The way some people talk about it, it's almost as if the post game can make or break a game, and having a bad or no postgame can negate the good parts of the game's main story. This focus on the postgame really just confuses me, I think it's much more important to think about the meat of the game, the main story, rather than getting hung up on what happens after the game is finished.

This is even more important in fangames, because if we're being honest, few fan games even progress to the point where they can even have a post game because they don't have a finished main story. I sometimes see people discussing what the postgame will be like in their fangame, and once again I think it's very strange how people can focus on postgame content before they've even made much headway into the main story.

 

[Dragonite]

Wait, are we really on Week Eleven already?

Discuss the importance of post game, what it provides for your game narrative

Post game is like a bowl of ice cream: it's nice to have, but the main course is more important and not really any worse if you don't have it. With it you can do things like develop characters past what they already were, play with new characters who didn't make the cut for the main game, do extra map design that also didn't make the cut for the main game, complete the Pokédex and whatever the Battle Frontier qualifies as.

Describe how you go about deciding post game content and what it does for the scope of development

Spoiler: I've never actually been here, but I'd probably shove all "post game" stuff off to the side and worry about the main game first, the "main game" being defined as "whatever happens before the credits roll, assuming you have a traditional credits system in your game." Like I said, the main game is the main course. After I'm reasonably convinced the main game is in working order and free of bugs I'd start playing around with post game ideas and release it as supplemental updates or something.

Find different ways games allow the player to further their experience with both renewable and nonrenewable content

I'm sleepy so I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this and I'll leave it alone (for now).

 

[Taq]

Post games... Yay!

Post games can help provide to your narrative is by giving you more lore to your region and story, one example was in ORAS where you learn more about this universe's version of how Rayquaza stopped Groudon and Kyogre despite they forced you be on a long battle train at the end (I mean that they could have given you a break in-between, it's not that hard).
But anyway, another way is that they can give you more Adventures after the story, that's why I think the older games from gen 4/5 were better because they made it so you can still explore and have fun even if you are done being the champ.

For deciding content it would only work for my style which is to look at your region's inspiration and study it. For instance, my region is based Greece (I need to stop saying that), so I should take advantage of the Olympics that came from there. Another thing for deciding the post game is by looking at your story and see what's missing, is there Lore? Are The antagonists missing? Are there islands/locations you didn't use? Etc. So basically you can use it as an excuse to push some of your scrapped ideas and also to place things to your game that are missing like lore.

For ways to allow the player to further their experience you could introduce more info on what has yet to be explored, for instance I find it disppointing that in SM you can't return to ultra space which could've given more opportunities.
So you should make the things that are missing like certain locations, specific pokémon that you built up but never used, or simple one time things like a battle with someone (most likely your shameless self-insert).
So basically try to experiment and do the most abstract things you wanted to do such as hint your highly ambitious next fangame or chasing an Arceus to give it a fedora...

Just go crazy.
Anyway, those are my two cents.

 

[MadDeodorant]

I probably give Post-Game too big of a role in any gaming experience, but still, in my humble opinion, it can break or make a game.

How to do Post-Game right:
I'll almost exclusively use Pokémon games as references, so suit up for it. Firstly you have to analyze the nature of your main game. What is it? Is it a straight new IP or entry in a series? A sequel? Let's look at two sequels and one remake as examples of good post-game.
Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 - these two are direct sequels to Black and White, sort of like Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. They revamped the region for these and gave us a brand new story. However, most of these were areas we had already visited in the original BW, so they gave us a shitload of post game content.
Pokémon Gold and Silver (HGSS work too) - this is how to make a sequel. Take the previous story, add 2 years to it and expand on it. Besides exploring a whole new region, you travel back to the old one, but looking a lot different. Plus there's 16 badges, two grand plots and a final boss of such epic proportions that it should stand as the definitive Final Boss in a sequel example.
Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (the remakes specifically) - being the best games of Gen 6 in my opinion, ORAS had a fine main story and a short yet awesome post game. It tied the remakes to the original, the games to the movies and gave us an amazing OC, Zinnia.
Witcher 3 - this is the odd one out, but Witcher 3 has probably the best example of Post Game: two enormous expansions that could be games on their own and so many side quests that you'll never feel bored.

How to do Post Game wrong:
Pokémon X and Y - these just plain didn't have any significant post game. Yes the Looker thing, Kiloude City and the Battle Maison are there, but come on! These do not qualify as Post Game!
Pokémon Sun and Moon - despite how I feel about Gen 7 so far (alright, but boring), SM have very mediocre Post Game. An improvement over XY, but a huge downgrade compared to ORAS. Trying to please the competitive scene, Game Freak made SM post game almost exclusively battle related. It seems like it's just there for competitive players. There was again a Looker thing (very original), but I still feel like crap seeing that Game Freak doesn't give two shits about regular guys who had to bear with a very predictable and poorly paced main story (like me)

That is all for now, but I could go on and on about Post Game. It's very relevant to me personally and honestly makes me want to stick around (or not) with a game. In the end, my most recent memory of it will be either that X and Y had almost no extra content whatsoever or that I got a raging boner while battling Red in HGSS.

I'm so sorry for that last part.

 

[Evan]

Just to sort of throw it into summation, I'm not sure if this is a well agreed-upon concept, but for me, post-game should be like what Pokemon Emerald/Platinum/HGSS did. A battle frontier to help flesh out all the battle mechanics you may not have been able to see during the story.

I don't think narrative is necessary post-game. I feel like that's perfectly relegated to the regular game. I think post-game is best served by a sandbox style thing that can keep you busy for hours and hours and hours.