| Zkuq said: I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and my conclusion is very clear: no, devs don't respect our time even nearly enough. I don't mind long games either, but when it's Assassin's Creed: Valhalla with mostly similar content you feel like you've already seen too much of by the time you've played through half the game, you know the devs just don't respect your time at all. That's the worst offender I've personally played, but sadly disrespecting player time is way too common these days. Way too often it's all about addicting the player and adding filler content so you can brag about how much content your game has, and way too rarely it's a suitably designed playthrough with lots of optional content for those that want it (or just skipping the extra content altogether, if not enough people care about it). 40-50 hours already feels like a lot, and anything more than that just for a typical playthough (including side content typical to a regular playthrough) is generally just way too much. If anything, 'content' for more than 50 hours of gameplay is probably often poor design. If it's actual gameplay that doesn't get old even after 50 hours despite going through the same content a lot, that's good design, at least in some ways, but 50+ hours of 'unique' content most likely isn't, at least based on my limited experience. tl;dr: No, devs don't respect our time, and I'm fed up with it. |
Exactly, also @firebush03 you two have it. 40 -50 hours is the upper limit even for some games that are a 10 unless the game is so blazingly good that it can hook you very deeply and has a beyond great core gameplay and/or narrative hooks and a gameplay loop that is exceptional like Elden Ring, like The Witcher 3, like Stellar Blade. Some manage it on core gameplay alone like Destiny but for games that don't have that X factor like Assassins cred games or the like, they really would benifet from reducing hours, perhaps they'd even be able to achieve that X factor by focusing on a more concise experience and have more time and recourses to work on the stuff that matters, I hear Assassins Creed Mirage is one of the good ones.
Can you imagine playing a survival horror for 50 hours? Or a Doom or COD... nope. Lies of P is the main one I point to, if this game had ended at 70% of they way through and not made the end game content so frustratingly difficult, I'd have rated it highly but in pursuing that last 30% or 10-12 hours and the way they designed the content to slow you down and prevent you from progressing cause they clearly wanted to elongate the game, it fell so drastically for me, like from a 9 to a 6. Same with Metaphor, game was an easy 10 up until the latter half and then that last stretch of mind numbingly drawn out and again, they designed the final encounter in a way that made the side content a nessesity. I pity the people who got to the end of Metaphor and didn't do the side content cause they'd probably have to restart the entire game to finish it.
Last edited by LegitHyperbole - on 08 January 2025
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