So in Pokemon, there’s a Daily Lottery where it checks the last 5 digits of all your Pokemon’s Original Trainer ID(Trainer IDs are 1-6 digit auto generated ID numbers the game makes for every player to identify them uniquely from other players. There’s actually also a SECRET ID the game generates so that two overlapping ID numbers don’t cause conflicts, but that’s another story). If the number the game generates for the lotto matches any of the Trainer ID numbers of Pokemon you have, you get a prize. Prizes go:
Last digit matches: Moo Moo Milk
Last 2 Digits match: PP Up
Last 3 Digits match: PP Max
Last 4 Digits match: Rare Candy
All digits match: Master Ball
Anyway, because of this lottery, I’ve been trading Pokemon with randos for like 3 generations now and just hoarding them to amass a giant collection of ID numbers so I can get nice prizes.
In the back of my mind, I’ve always thought: “you know, I should catalogue these and arrange them so I don’t have overlapping numbers and excess Pokemon.” I currently use up 20 boxes out of the available 30 ingame boxes just holding these traded mons, so space is at a premium. Today, something broke inside me and I finally decided to start a gigantic google sheet and just catalogue the fuckers:
Anyway, this made me wonder if any of y’all do nutso things like this outside of the game to optimize your game experience, or just for fun? Tell me about the weird spreadsheets you create for games you play! I guess the most obvious version of this is making your own paper map in an old RPG or something? Anyway, tell me!
It’s not that crazy but I used to have a printed annotated map of the sea of thieves on the wall above my computer to help me navigate faster.
Also yeah, whenever I replay Zelda 1 I tend to make a paper map, and of course I’ve got a stack of crazy papers for my ever-ongoing La Mulana blind run.
EDIT: Oh, I also had a spreadsheet for stat management in the early days of Gal Gun Returns, until I knew the stat thresholds for the girls.
For the PS3 Gran Turismo titles, I had spreadsheets with:
Event name
Average finish (and what car I used)
Best time
All prize payouts
Prize payout per second
So whenever I felt like I wanted to buy a specific car, I could just sort prize payout per second by descending and run that race over and over until I could afford it.
Wasting too much money tracking down a physical copy of the game so I can initiate the ritual of inserting the disc and pouring over the box while it loads
Pairing the game with an exquisite sparkling beverage
Having GameFAQs on the computer next to me (no joke I love pairing JRPGs with walkthroughs)
I bought 2 Sega CDs, fixed one, bought a justifier light gun and bought 3 different kinds of CDRs to successfully burn and play Snatcher in 2007.
For GranTurismo 4 I created notes to go from new save to beating the Gran Turismo World Championship in about 4 hours. Sadly my most advanced notes are on paper somewhere but here is an early digital draft that could probably be useful still:
I’m remembering now how the first Ratchet and Clank had gold weapons that cost insane amounts of bolts. There was a special trick to getting these bolts without having to do anything. If you went to a specific place in the middle of the racetrack and tilted the camera so that a certain box was off screen, you could break the box and it would reappear, full of bolts. I bought a controller with a turbo function and taped the button down.
I made a spreadsheet for Post Void to understand how the scoring works. I did this because the developer documented it incorrectly, and the numbers weren’t making sense. By inputting all of the numbers you get at the end of a run including your final score, this will calculate how many points came from each factor.
I’m not very good at the game, but I did determine that (other than time to finish a level and actually finishing the damn game) the most important factor in scoring high is accuracy, since it’s one of the few things you have complete control over. This actually means that sometimes killing fewer enemies will get you a higher score as long as it means avoiding potshots.
It also means that the true high score weapon would likely be the knife, since it can be the best combination of Fast + Accurate. Second choice is the pistol, third the Uzi, fourth the shotgun (each pellet counts against your accuracy if it does not hit an enemy).
Ideally you would hit every enemy as many times as possible in the body, then finish with a headshot. This would increase your accuracy by increasing the amount of accurate shots, then giving you the headshot bonus.
Every fighting game I create and constantly monitor ranked lists of characters I like playing. My urge to do this is so strong I feel I have no free will on the matter.
I spend a lot of time with those “character build simulators” for games like Borderlands and shit because speculative builds are often more fun then actually playing the game.
I do this when playing some JRPGs because if I sat down while playing, I’ll get bored and fall asleep lol
The Switch and its separated, wireless controllers has enabled many a strange postures to take while playing games, and I’m all the more thankful for it.
Also I’m happy to read about everyone’s extra-curricular game activities! Glad I’m not the only one!
Fighting game-related, when VF5:US came out, I started a txt file on my phone of things I wanted to improve on my Pai, which was really fun because I hadn’t done that since high school for when I was learning GGXX. Doing things like that really add another layer to the gameplay experience
i scrutinise the latest weapon dps loadout charts for destiny pretty relentlessly but i don’t consider this particularly bizarre, given the product
i will only play vidcons while on my back too but again, this is normal and indeed very sensible
i suck at this thread!
