I was really looking forward to completing Mable’s research tasks. Mable is a character in Pokémon Legends: Z-A. At the start of the game, she hands you a long list of to-dos. Catch a number of Pokémon of each type, defeat certain enemies, and so on.
You complete many of Mable’s tasks naturally as you play the game. Every time you collect enough points and level up, she gives you a reward. The items are helpful for the main and side quests, and some can only be obtained from her. Of course, the very last one, which you get for reaching level 50 as a researcher, is the most valuable: a shiny charm, which drastically increases the odds of catching shiny, aka different-colored and sparkling, Pokémon.
By the time I completed everything except Mable’s last ask, I had spent around 65 hours playing the game. I noticed an oddity in the points system: I was missing 500 points to reach level 50, but the final active task only awarded 400 points to the player. The goal was to fight 500 Pokémon battles with other trainers in total. That was a lot. Thankfully, I had already fought around 440 battles.
Not too worried, I ground out the last battles. I figured maybe Mable would hand me the last 100 points herself. Eventually, the reward popped up. “You just got 400 points!” Yay! Mable popped onto my screen. “I’ve got some new tasks for you!” Okay, so there was more.
I went to the menu to check, and my jaw dropped to the floor. Now, there was again just one task outstanding. It was a follow-on to the previous one. “Fight 1,000 Pokémon battles,” it read. Reward? 2,000 points. What?!
It was a double-slap in the face: Why do I have to finish a task worth 2,000 points if I only need 100? And why does that task ask me to complete as many battles as I have in the entire game before it? Especially considering there’s now nothing else to do, and the only trainer challenges open at this point are extremely repetitive.
“I found it,” I thought. “The line to unreasonable. I guess I’ll never get that shiny charm.” I was upset for a bit, but now I think it might be for the better. Plus, there is an expansion for the game which I haven’t purchased. Maybe there’ll be more new battles down the line, after all. But I did know I was not going to spend another 10, 20 hours rinsing and repeating a completely pointless pattern simply because Nintendo felt like wasting its players’ time with a silly demand.
Most of the time, it’s hard to tell which effort will be worth it in the future. It’s usually too soon to say, and there’s always a chance what’s bad today will turn good tomorrow. But every now and then, the line to unreasonable is so clearly visible, it practically screams at you: “Stop here! Turn around, and give no more of your precious time and energy!”
Whenever that happens, be mindful. Think hard if you want to step into “needless suffering” territory. Might there be any other, secondary gains to be had? If not, don’t be afraid to run the other way. Just like I did when I saw Mable’s last task—time to get back to collecting.
