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Get your ballots in if you haven't already.
I think it's interesting that when we think about the "balance" between optional and mandatory content, a lot of us seem to immediately spring towards assessing the
quality of that content rather than the
quantity. In other words, yea, it doesn't matter what that "balance" is as long as the optional content is good.
At the same time, though, if we had a hypothetical RPG where
all of the optional and mandatory content was good - in other words, all killer no filler across the board - is there still some unspoken "sweet spot" for how much optional content there should be? If we think about striking a balance between mandatory and optional content, we can certainly say that that balance is irrelevant as long as all of the content is good - but, at the same time, we might also say that there's a point where even
good optional content so overwhelms the main campaign that it starts to detract from the storytelling.
For example, look at Final Fantasy VII's endgame. A lot of people have joked over the years that Meteor is about to destroy the planet and yet Cloud can go Chocobo breeding, Weapon hunting, etc. with impunity. In storytelling terms, the characters are racing to save the world; in gameplay terms, there is possibly more optional content available than at any other point before in the game. Do we care that this optional content is now potentially straining our suspension of disbelief? Even if all of the optional content is
good, there might still be an argument that there shouldn't be so much of it, as it detracts from the urgency that the central narrative is trying to convey.
One way to keep all of that content, but not have it potentially overwhelm the player and work against the narrative's flow, is to limit the amount of that optional content that the player can do. Set a timer or something, and the player then has to pick and choose what they can finish before they need to proceed with the main story. I actually love it when games do this, as it makes me feel like my decisions about what content to do are more meaningful. However I've found that a lot of people are very averse to feeling like they're either a) being pressured with time constraints, or b) having to pick and choose between what optional content to do, instead of being able to do it all.
