Shorter compact games vs Longer games?

[Ol' Willy]

You must be young. As far as I am concerned, a new game is like a new job. I am not gonna bother learning the ropes if I am getting dismissed in a week.

Both phases are enjoyable. At first you learn the base mechanics and underlying systems, probably getting your ass handed to you as you do so. But then, when you know enough and finally can start dominating, curbstomping the enemies that give you so much trouble before is so enjoyable. Up to the point when you know the game like the back of your hand and can breeze through it with gimmicky build at top difficulty.

But yeah, if game is shit and you won't spend a lot of time with it, it's better not to bother at all.

 

[Diggfinger]

Short and compact. Like my dick

 

[deuxhero]

I prefer shorter games with high replayability. Mutliple routes ect.

 

[Falksi]

If I'm playing anything over 20 hours long I find retro or popamole games to play alongside it to give me a breather.

30-60 hours is about right, but if it's really good I can push up to around 100.

The X-Com games are an exception. Those I can play almost forever.

Overall, I prefer tighter, more refined games though than lengthier ones.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

This indicates that there is a surplus of content that Gamers do not need or require.

"Readers don't finish books. This indicates that there is a surplus of pages that readers do not need or require."

 

[luj1]

Sometime during the Dark Age (2004-2012) RPGs began getting shorter and more streamlined. Think Mass Effect, Witcher and Bioshock.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The sweetspot is 150 hours.

 

[1111111111]

This indicates that there is a surplus of content that Gamers do not need or require.

"Readers don't finish books. This indicates that there is a surplus of pages that readers do not need or require."

Weird comparison.

Books are a completely different medium and are structured differently. The rising action is executed completely different then the hook, falling action, ending etc.

Games can be broken down into core game-play loops. In fact they are regularly showcased in small portions, or they used to be in the past. They were called demos. They contained most of the experience in the game and left you wanting more of the same or none of it.

My statement can be rephrased as "how many iterations of that game-play loop do gamers really want/need in 1 game?"

from the data shown, it seems that developers put more iterations then needed as people generally don't even get to the halfway point. This means that people are generally not experiencing that payoff generated by 'beating' a game which might have a distortion effect on how games would be... if there were less bloat (trash mobs, fetch quests, etc. as stated by many codexers in this thread).

 

[Xeon]

I have no problem with longer games and I probably prefer them to shorter ones if I am completely enjoying them but in most long games I end up getting burned out on and simply quit nowadays if I don't enjoy them right away and keep its hook on me most of the time. Not sure if its me getting older or just games becoming worse or a mix of both tho.

 

[TemplarGR]

Modern RPGs need to be :

a) Open World
b) Huge amount of side/optional/selective content
c) A short non-enforced main campaign
d) A variety of different builds and factions for replayability

In short, the Bethesda recipe.

The reason this recipe is the best, is because it allows the player to modify how much time he wants to spend in a game and how much content he wants to experience, without ever really feeling that he missed out on anything. Take for example Skyrim, Skyrim had a very short main campaign that you could really ignore if that is what you wanted. On the other hand, you could just do the main campaign and nothing else and complete the game in a few hours. Or, you could take the middle road, doing some of the optional content and then the campaign. It was up to you, the game forced nothing on you, it was YOU, the player, who decided the course of the game.

Skyrim is also replayable. There are lots of different builds to create that play differently enough, lots of cities to visit, lots of factions to join, lots of dungeons, lots of characters. It will take many tens of hours to do the unique quests of the game once, and then there are the radiant quests which although repetitive are endless. Still, just the unique non-radiant content is easily more than 80-100 hours of playtime. Adding to that the replayability of the game, and the game becomes enormous in amount of playtime without forcing this playtime upon the player, if the player is a moron storyfag he can just play the main story and then go back to his anime/hentai.

If for some reason the scope of Skyrim is not achievable by the developer, for obvious reasons, then i prefer shorter and replayable games over large games that are only worth 1 playthrough. No contest. I never understood the fascination with 80-100 hour linear slogs. It is not the 90s anymore, people buy multiple games and have huge backlogs, quality>quantity.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I don't mind the number of hours if a game is interesting, as long as these hours aren't padded due to a save system based on idiotic autosaves, checkpoints or savepoints, that force you to repeat the same battles, explorations or cutscenes several times during an average playthrough. I hate repeating things.

Now I have seen that there are also very short games, ~1 or 2 hours, i.e. like the duration of a movie, where there is the fashion to not have a save system at all. In this way few hours can be padded into several hours. At least in the movies you can stop & restore watching whenever you want.

 

[rohand]

One "compact" game I felt good about finishing was The Witcher 2, in between the longer (the way I saw it) first game and the obviously much longer Witcher 3.

 

[Lord_Potato]

The sweetspot is 150 hours.

You'll love this gorgeous rpg, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey!

 

[Butter]

I thought Disco Elysium was just about perfect at 90 hours.

 

[Lord_Potato]

I thought Disco Elysium was just about perfect at 90 hours.

Sure, 3 playthroughs are about enough to see everything in Disco.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Modern RPGs need to be :

a) Open World
b) Huge amount of side/optional/selective content
c) A short non-enforced main campaign
d) A variety of different builds and factions for replayability

You mean... like... Underrail?

 

[Lord_Potato]

When it comes to lenght of RPGs, I must say I am somewhat conflicted about the whole issue.

Among my favourite games in the genre you will find Fallout 2, Arcanum, Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout: New Vegas, Underrail, Witcher 3, Atom. Long, robust rpgs with tons of content.

However, I've also played enough bloated rpgs with more show than substance to start respecting those that do not waste my time and get streight to the point. Short, focused games can also be great, especially if you play them between the larger ones. They often offer more reactivity, player agency, real C&C and because they are short, it's more likely I'll replay them to check new pathways and opportunities. I'm thinking about titles like Cyanide's Game of Thrones, one of the best storyfag rpgs ever, highly replayable Age of Decadence and ofcourse Disco Elysium (the game is brilliant, but would be unbearable if it continued for 60 hours). I also enjoy Spiders' titles, which are usually short and brief - perhaps that's why I don't consider Greedfall as their best offering and prefer Technomancer, with a more tight story and less padding.

So I certainly prefer quality over quantity. It's just... there are rpgs that somehow manage to have it both. Not necessarily AAA titles, Underrail showed, that you can create such a game with a team of several dedicated guys.

At the end of the day, I like to mix things to avoid burnout. Turn based rpgs and action rpgs. Fantasy, historical and post-apocalyptic. Story and combat focused. Isometric and third person perspective. And finally, long and short.

I simply love the genre and still can't get enough :D

 

[Removal]

It's entirely dependent on the game's pacing and mechanics, if those are done well you can plow through 40+ hours without realizing it. If they're done poorly, that 10 hours is going to feel like 100.

 

[xuerebx]

Generally I prefer shorter games because I actually complete them rather than invest half a playthrough and then get distracted by something else. Average playing time on Steam is 33.6 hours, which is what I had in mind (looking at the games I played this year I completed them or stopped playing them around the 40 hour mark). There are outliers of course e.g. Underrail and Wizardry 8 (100 hours each).

It's not that a length of a game is an indication of quality, it just boils down to personal preference. For example, I have really enjoyed playing Grimoire (41 hours up to 22nd August) but I checked a walkthrough to get an indication of where I am in terms of progress and I was taken aback when I learned how far away from the finish line I actually am. When you get maybe 10 hours of play time a week you start taking notice of these things.

 

[Rincewind]

For me, usually the first 30 or so hours of a game are magical while you're still learning the mechanics, exploration is rewarding and dangerous, etc. Then usually quite suddenly, as if someone flicked a switch, things start going downhill pretty steeply.

One poster mentioned that the gameplay loops stay pretty much the same during the whole length of a single game, and after iteration number X things just start to get boring. It also doesn't help that the stories in most games are pretty meh, so once you're bored with the mechanics, there's little reason to keep playing.

So I guess I fall into the shorter is better camp. Right now I'm about to quit Morrowind, I really have to force myself to keep playing after about 50-60 hours. I'm at the third trial but have seen almost all settlements, can beat pretty much anybody, and I'm swimming in money... so what's the point really? The main quest is pretty unremarkable, and it just feels a like a drag. Probably I haven't seen everything the game has to offer, but the time investment/enjoyment ratio is too low for me to keep going, everything is happening so damned slowly...

Games that I played recently and found to be of the perfect length was Eye of the Beholder, Banner Saga and Grimrock 1. So yeah, I guess between 20 and 30 hours is the sweet spot for me.

It's not that I'm against long games, they just simply fail to keep up my interest. ELEX was quite good, but it took me 6 months to finish (overall I spent 110 hours on it, but in 1 month bursts with 1-2 month pauses inbetween). Same story, I was really hooked in the first 30-40 hours, it was the best thing ever, then it just got exponentially less and less fun after I could beat pretty much anybody and there was not much point in leveling up anymore.

Witcher 1 was quite alright lengthwise, maybe it could have been a bit shorter but it was almost perfect.

Divine Divinity - far too long
Nehrim - I quite liked this game and spent like 100 hours on it, but cutting the content down to 50-70% would have made it a much better game

I guess I just like to be able to finish a game in a month, in general.

 

[Rincewind]

Generally I prefer shorter games because I actually complete them rather than invest half a playthrough and then get distracted by something else. Average playing time on Steam is 33.6 hours, which is what I had in mind (looking at the games I played this year I completed them or stopped playing them around the 40 hour mark). There are outliers of course e.g. Underrail and Wizardry 8 (100 hours each).

It's not that a length of a game is an indication of quality, it just boils down to personal preference. For example, I have really enjoyed playing Grimoire (41 hours up to 22nd August) but I checked a walkthrough to get an indication of where I am in terms of progress and I was taken aback when I learned how far away from the finish line I actually am. When you get maybe 10 hours of play time a week you start taking notice of these things.

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same, just as I described above. I just like to play 8-10 hours on the weekends, usually I'm too tired for games on weekdays after work, maybe 1 hour per weekday on average.

 

[Q]

Not too long to get annoying. What many games nowadays are. You need to get quality to get quantity.

 

[Maxie]

I need a game long enough to completely forget the good and inventive early game so that I may focus my anger on the lacklustre endgame

 

[DalekFlay]

Most games are too long. As someone with a family, a job and a backlog the length of my arm it's always baffled me when people complain about length. Also, even all that aside, it's a VERY rare game that doesn't start feeling monotonous after 50 hours. Piranha Bytes manages to offer games and worlds that feel huge, but don't take forever to finish. That's the way to do it.

If you're the type who played 150 hours of Pathfinder and then immediately loaded up a new character to try a different build then good for you, but you're an amazingly small percentage of humanity.

 

[Tyranicon]

If you're the type who played 150 hours of Pathfinder and then immediately loaded up a new character to try a different build then good for you, but you're an amazingly small percentage of humanity.

But quite a large portion of RPGCodex, I'd assume.