I like the collectible mechanics in the Ratchet & Clank games.

You can try to find the collectibles on your own, but later in the game you can buy detectors which show the ones you missed on the map.

So people can decide for themselves if they want to use these detectors or not.

Yeesh, yes. I am still surprised that I have found the last shard or whatever that was within maybe two hours of running around the map mad, pressing R3.

...could be worse. Lots, lots of worse.

The way Dragon Age: Inquisition dealt with that is a step in the direction to help players find collectibles in open worlds with a lot of visual details. It's becoming a must because finding hidden stuff would otherwise be impossible. But it became kind of chore to always have to press the scanning button.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCgc58rIuU4

There are games for everyone, you can't force one way of doing things onto all games. Some people love searching for those dumb, super-hidden collectibles.

I would prefer it if I didn't need a guide to find them though..

I agree.

There should be some in-game unlockable way to make it less tedious to find things. That unlockable thing could still be hard to obtain though.

Short example, I went out to find every last collectible in Tomb Raider 2014 because it was fun to search for them as I could find clues to their whereabouts, whereas I didn't care about finding any of them in Uncharted 4. Though it also helped that the items that could be found in Tom Raider actually had relevance to the surroundings in added to the backstory, so there was an extra incentive, while those in Uncharted are completely random and unrelated.

This (but I'm biased because I'm an R&C fanboy). I usually get like 85% of the gold bolts and other collectibles in R&C without the map-gadget, then on my first challenge mode run I sweep up what I may have missed using the map.

I agree for the most part, but I like the feeling of finding something without purposely looking for it too

A way to get some sort of mechanic late game works too to make things easier

I've found myself recently wanting to obtain some more mounts in WoW, only trouble is, finding them is a pain in the ass since the game doesn't really drop much if any hints as to what mounts there are and where you can go to find and unlock them. Same goes for other collectibles that I have to keep looking up guides for and that tbh, rips me away from the game itself.

I very rarely ever pay any mind to them, and just see as a developer's excuse to give trophies to those who play the single player components of games longer than others, so I literally just save for the last thing to do when going for a game's platinum trophy and use a guide for them. Don't really care to be honest. If I beat a game on it's hardest difficulty without help, then theres no shame in using a guide for collectibles imo

I don't know, man. I kind of liked collecting chimpokemon in South Park: Stick of Truth.