Old Man Yells at Clouds: Gains for no Effort

To explain what I mean, I shall go back to the first time I remember experiencing this, back during the game Fable 2. There was this mechanic where your properties would generate revenue based on how much time has passed. The thing is it's not even time spent in the game, it's real-world time. Ignoring the trick where you could apparently alter the system time settings to trick the system to show how long it's been, the game is giving you money to buy more shit for all the time you spent not playing the game.

A similar mechanic surfaced in the form of Bravely Default. Now I like Bravely Default quite a bit, but aside from some general issues with the town building aspect, the town is built in real time as opposed to some kind of game progress.

I will be the first to admit things like this are not a huge deal for me and are far from ruining a game for me, but I always felt like the Idea of getting ahead in a game by not investing in it always takes something away from it for me. It seems antithetical to give people a reward for not playing. If I put in the time and effort, that is when I feel I deserve to get ahead.

To expand on similar territory, I don't like a lot of the way in which Street Pass is handled, or for that matter the coins you get for walking around with your DS/3DS. Cross by someone on Bravely Default and you get new people moving into your town as workers to help you build faster. You are advantaged not by your skill at the game, your ability to manage time effectively, but by happen chance of living near other people who also play the game.

Or by using those coins you gather through walking around you can pay the guy in Shin Megami Tensei IV with those instead of instead of with Macca, the in-game currency. Once again, by doing something entirely unrelated to the game, you are gaining advantages while in the game, some of which you may not even be able to reap depending on where you happen to live.

Yes, this posting amounts to little more then an old man bitching and yelling at clouds, especially since these things are not really big enough issues to warrant changing as I have yet to see one take away from a game in any significant way, and there are people out there who enjoy it. But I am an old man at heart, and I like to bitch from time to time