349 réponses à ce sujet

[AmstradHero]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I think all games are like that.  It's the playing that is fun, not the finishing.  Finishing is irrelevant.

I wish.  In fact, I could probably write a treatise about the phenomenae that encourage me to make 20+ characters but only "finish" 3 of them.  Assuming the game has an "ending" of some kind.

....

For some people, finishing is a VERY important measurement, if not an end in itself.

Finishing a game is a very strong indicator for how interesting a game is. If a game is engaging, then I'll want to keep playing it. I'll want to keep playing it until I've experienced what it has to offer me. I'll keep playing it until I've finished it.

If I can't finish a game, then there's something about it that isn't engaging me or causing me to want to keep playing. Finishing a game should feel like an achievement, it should feel like a culmination of all the events that have come beforehand, and it should give sufficient closure on the experience as a whole.

Yes, the journey is important, but imagine every game you've ever played now finishes with "and then they woke up and realised it was all a dream.", and try to tell me the ending is irrelevant.

[Direwolf0294]

I've always felt 20 - 40 hours is a good length for a narrative driven RPG on a single playthrough.

For a sandbox RPG it's a little harder to say how long one should be because people tend to focus on different things and it's hard to say when a sandbox game has finished. For a reasonable playthrough, which is to say completing most of the quests, exploring a far bit of the world and getting your character to a decent level, I'd say 60 - 80 hours is probably a good length of time.

None of this is counting multiple playthroughs of course, which could end up doubling or even tripling the time.

A narrative driven RPG with sandbox elements could be good. Like if DA3 was given things like player housing, huge zones to explore, lots of sidequests etc. I'd expect something like that to come in at about 50 - 60 hours. Of course if you try and extend a narrative driven RPG too long it can end up getting a lot of boring filler content, such as waves of enemies, and the main stories pacing can suffer a bit.

[Plaintiff]

If you want to get technical about it, an "epic" is actually a long narrative poem recounting the deeds and adventures of a heroic figure from history or folklore.

As an adjective, it means "grand in scope and/or scale".

Your argument is that RPGs "have" to be long because they are "epic". You're assuming that RPGs are required to be "epics", and I'm aware of no such rule. If they don't have to be epics, then they also don't have to be very long.

The length of a story has absolutely no bearing on its quality. I'd rather have a good short story than a terrible long one.

[Vitlen]

A lot of people put 200+ in Skyrim easily without DLCs so I think 200 will be great for DA3
but it`s just hope

[Ahglock]

Vitlen wrote...

A lot of people put 200+ in Skyrim easily without DLCs so I think 200 will be great for DA3
but it`s just hope

Different type of game.   Sand box games are more about exploration and discovering the world than the story.  I've put around 200 hours per plythrough into every elder scrolls game and had a blast with each hour, where as my me2 play throughs once i used gibbed to bypass the moronic scan the planet mini-game were about 25 hours.  Yet even if I had only played it once I would of considered it well worth my money since the game was awesome.  I ended up playing it closer to 20 times but hell 25 hours is still in the 2-3 $ an hour of entertainment range which is hard to match.  

[Fishy]

SteveGarbage wrote...

I HATE using playtime hours as a measure of whether an RPG is good or not. Mainly it's useless because some people play rush style and other people (like me) explore everywhere and do everything and don't skip dialogue.

But on the same side of that coin, a 100-hour game that is bloated with garbage is much much worse than a good game that only runs 40 hours.

Dragon Age 2 took me about 40 hours the first time, while DA:O took me closer to 70 or 80. But Dragon Age: Origins had more stupid sidequests (Chanter's Board, Mage's Collective, Blackstone Irregulars, Antivan Crows, Jobs for Interested Parties, etc.). But it also had more dialogue (which eats up so much time), more time walking and transferring from place to place, and more time spent browsing items and managing my companions gear every couple levels.

If a game is solid and entertaining and complete and runs 35 hours, fine. If it's really great and runs 80 hours that's great too. But I would hate to see a game packed with garbage filled just to boost the playtime - fetch quests and useless item searches and whatnot. Because then you find that the good parts of the game are only 30 or so hours anyway and the rest is just fluff.

Yes but you don`t have to do the ''fetch'' quest. A good RPG need content. It`s need content because it`s about the world opening up to you. It`s not just about the narrative and linear corridor. Do you really want every ''''stupid sidequest' removed ? I love picking another  ''fetch'' quest and end up having a surprise.. This is the thing that differentiate RPG than linear Beat em all. Any of you remember that cool quest in DA:O with the demon in Denerim ? That quest opened up if you took some time reading frigging book. Yet it`s was awesome and subtle. That what make rpg awesome. The surprise.

If every quest is super awesome perfect with ultra narrative of perfection .. That make  the game seem soo .... scripted.  Sometime I  love picking another dumb quest and kill 50 boars. because it can`t always be about saving the world no ?  That make the world seem more open .. Too much is also bad.. You need equilibrium in a good rpg.

Also it`s not like you have to do them. I just finished Dishonnored.. Great game with rpg element. But so short ... I beat the game under 7 hours and I felt I learned nothing about the world. That why it`s not a rpg.

[Travie]

I don't see why there has to be a fight between game length and replayability. Can't they coexist, with the notable exceptions for budgets?

C-can't w-we all just get along?

[AmstradHero]

simfamSP wrote...
ME3 lasted me a lot longer than ME1 and ME1 was a lot shorter than ME2. Is that the same for everybody else? Of course not.

Whoa, what? The ME games got progressively shorter in my experience. It was about 65, 55 and 45 hours as I went along the series.

SteveGarbage wrote...
Dragon Age 2 took me about 40 hours the first time, while DA:O took me closer to 70 or 80. But Dragon Age:
Origins had more stupid sidequests (Chanter's Board, Mage's Collective, Blackstone Irregulars, Antivan Crows, Jobs for Interested Parties, etc.). But it also had more dialogue (which eats up so much time), more time walking and transferring from place to place, and more time spent browsing items and managing my companions gear every couple levels.

Maybe you played a different DA2 to me, but I still got a bunch of useless fetch quests and trash gear in DA2, it's just that this time around I didn't pick it up from a board, I just acquired an item and magically knew where to take it. I thought the board quests were pretty mediocre, but they were nowhere near as bad as those. DA2 was shorter, but the filler content to good content ratio seemed roughly the same to me.

Suprez30 wrote...
I just finished Dishonnored.. Great game with rpg element. But so short ... I beat the game under 7 hours and I felt I learned nothing about the world. That why it`s not a rpg.

Defining what makes an RPG and what doesn't is an entirely different discussion, and one that you will never get people to agree on, though length has nothing to do with it.

Also, how the heck have you finished a game that hasn't even been released yet?

Modifié par AmstradHero, 10 octobre 2012 - 06:23 .

[AmstradHero]

simfamSP wrote...

Whoa, what? The ME games got progressively shorter in my experience. It was about 65, 55 and 45 hours as I went along the series.

To me, they didn't. That doesn't take away from the fact that RPGs are not required to be long. Planescape: Torment was relativley short for me; as was the first two Fallout Games. PST lasted at least 25 hours long where as FO1 took me 12.

I'm betting the time varies; as I said: length of a video game is very subjective. If vanilla DA2 took me 45 hours long (minus DLC) and vanilla DA:O took me 36 hours long (minus DLC.)

Boy do they ever.
Vanilla DA:O - 65 hours.
Vanilla DA2 - 42 hours.

[andraip]

It took me 55 hours to finish my first playthrough in DA2 (without DLC of course), and I didn't even complete every sidequest. So its fine by me.

However I see the OP's point, you could probably beat DA2 in under 5 hours, if you used a strong ranged build on casual while skipping all dialogue and cutscenes and only bothering with main quests.

[KiwiQuiche]

As long as DA3 doesn't out like ME3 with most side quests being Fed-Ex Commander.

[cephasjames]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I actually find a long game can hurt its replayability because in many cases a lot of stuff is still repeated. Which is what I love about Alpha Protocol. Doing thins in different order results in changes to the narrative.

Of course I want to have my cake and to eat it too (who doesn't), but if I have too choose a piece I'll choose replayability over length anytime.

This, for me. The more "been there, done that" moments I have for a game the less likely I am to replay it. Longer games tend to have a lot of those moments. Don't get me wrong, I really like long games, but not if they are also supposed to have replayablity. I have played all those infinity engine games once, but I just can't seem to play them all the way through a second time because there is just too much repeated from the previous play through.

[RedWulfi]

I dont get how it takes people like 50-60 hours to do dragon age origins.
I did every single quest and the whole thing only took me about 25-30 hours. Even less time on re-runs.

[The Teyrn of Whatever]

40 hours before DLC is a good amount of time. Bethesda may be able to boast that their flagship games like Skyrim contain 300 hours + of game time, but when a lot of that is spent farting around on tedious sidequests is that really something to strive towards?

Too short is also bad. 20 hours or less is far too little.

[LadyVaJedi]

I agree 20 hours is short when you spend close to $60 for a game. I hope the base game ( not including side quests and before DLC ) is 45 to 50 hours.

[robertm2]

im not sure where people are getting the whole 50 hours thing from dragon age. with all dlc and side quests usually comes to about 35 hours max for me. In fact aside from elder scrolls and fallout games the only rpgs i have played that lasted more than 50 hours would be lost odyssey, and start ocean the last hope. thats not to say i would not like it if bioware games lasted that long but none of them have even come close for me yet unless you count TOR.

actually scratch that if you count awakening then it comes to about 55 hours total. 

Modifié par robertm2, 10 octobre 2012 - 01:45 .

[AsheraII]

The problem with long games is: they can turn into a drag after a while. The creators will need to bring a LOT of variety in content within the game to keep people interrested untill the end.

I don't know how many days, if not weeks or months, I spent on Bards Tale III. It was certainly one of the greater games of that time, but it took ages just to get halfway through. I had to put it to the side for half a year before I could be bothered killing more mobs just to finish it, and very few people actually ever bothered to finish it. Most simply quit after a week and never picked it back up, or started over from scratch if they did, just to get stranded about halfway through again.

[Il Divo]

RPGs should be fun, before the point where boredom sets in. I don't accept the longer = better argument. Jade Empire took me about 20 hours to do everything and I consider it one of my favorite Bioware games. On the other hand, the length of Broken Circle and the Deep Roads had a huge impact on my overall enjoyment of DA:O. Unless you're going for a sandbox, I find that longer games (usually more than 50 hours) begin to feel overly bloated. Even then, the concept didn't work for some games (Baldur's Gate 1).

Modifié par Il Divo, 10 octobre 2012 - 02:19 .

[milena87]

Don't really care about a game's length: I care about being entertained.

I believe that story, characters and replay value (choices/consequences that matters) should have a higher priority than length.

[Welsh Inferno]

I want it to be about a 60 hour game. Quantity is equally important as quality in an rpg for me.

[HeartyMedusa]

I have felt like the games have gotten progressively short and would like them to by at least 45-50 minutes (WITHOUT the DLC). But, I don't want the quality of the game to suffer from the length of the game.