Some hopefully constructive suggestion about looting (with poll)

Post any and all ideas about improving or changes to the Twitch channel.
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An_exile_on_main_st
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Joined: Tue Aug 22, 2017 11:30 pm
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Wed Aug 23, 2017 12:40 am

There are a lot of things I really, really like about Cohh's stream, from his positive and wholesome approach to gaming to his fine selection of gaming titles. However, while perhaps this is a minority opinion, just speaking for myself at least, something that makes me enjoy and watch the stream significantly less than I otherwise would is the exhaustive way Cohh searches for loot and explores the environment, e.g. in his Prey and Dishonored 2 runs.

What I mean is, while in the abstract a 100%, totally methodical, approach to game exploration sounds commendable, in practice I find that it quickly becomes dull and really feels like it makes game/story progress move at a glacial pace. (Again, speaking only at least for myself.) Instead of finding tons of awesome secrets behind every corner, it often seems like going over every square inch of the game turns into a search for a needle in a haystack. Sometimes there actually is a cool bit of lore or some good loot in a corner, but considerably more often it seems like, wow, what a surprise, turns out the only thing of note in that bathroom that it took 3 minutes to search top to bottom was $2.

At least for me, what I like watching when I watch Cohh or any other streamer is progress through the game's objectives/story and mastering the core challenges created by the game's mechanics. To me, that's a lot more interesting than turning over every nook and cranny to find minor bits of loot that aren't really necessary to progress comfortably through the game.

And while theoretically those things aren't in conflict, when watching the stream or VODs I find that the ratio of time spent looting/jumping around/flushing toilets to time spent completing objectives is high enough that it really drains one's patience.

I guess, and I may well be wrong about this, the way I see it is, a lot of games are designed to be played with with the idea of "go from point/objective A to B, and if you see something interesting on the way, stop to check it out." But I feel like the stream often goes like "go from square inch 1 of the level to square 2 to...square inch n, and if you happen to run into a story objective on the way stop to do that." And, while again I could be wrong, to me it seems like many of the games Cohh plays aren't designed to really frequently reward that kind of approach, because the designers probably don't expect most players to thoroughly comb over every level in its entirety.

So what I'm saying is, I'd watch the stream much more often if there was at least a slight streamlining of the 100% completion/exploration goal. Obviously, pure speedruns can be as boring to watch/play as (if not indeed worse than) pure perfectionism, but I think that a balance between the two extremes titled towards perfectionism is best, and might attract more viewers.

Obviously, Cohh has spent a fair bit of time working on an approach to streaming that people like watching, so perhaps this is too much of a fundamental change to reasonably expect to occur. But just in case other people share some of these sentiments, I'm including a poll.

Finally, I just want to reiterate that I really, really like Cohh's stream overall (I wouldn't have written this if I didn't), and appreciate all the good work he puts in. (Also, ironically I may have been too exhaustive/long-winded in my attempt to explain why I wish that the stream was less exhaustive.)
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