RF Generation Message Board

from Gameindustry.biz (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=24738)


What do you think? Personally I like having variety between the two. I love the 40+ hour games equally as much as the 10 hour ones. Sometimes I like to get sucked into a 100 hour story, other times I want to beat somethng in an afternoon or a day. You can't look at the sales numbers of games like Oblivion or DQ or FF and say nobody wants games like that anymore.

I only wish the prices reflected the amount of entertainment contained within. I remember when Black came out. Nice games, awesome physics, action, fun all around, but it could be beaten in like 6 hours or so. If it had been half the price it would've sold considerably better than it did.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Has logged over a month of playing time in WoW.

I like both of them. Give a variety.

Yeah we need some variety in length.  I'll agree that some games feel way to drawn out and could end a few hours earlier.  But who is going to argue that Fable shouldn't have been at least twice the length that it was? 

Edit: Clarification

Fable easily could have been at least twice the length that it was.

Short game was short, I was like "This is a hero's lifetime?!"

I like shorter games so i can actually beat them. I get bored of games real fast for the most part.

I can see why people nowadays want shorter games...the supply of games is constantly increasing.  RTS fans have tons of games to choose from, whereas back in the day when it was just emerging, there was just WarCraft and Command & Conquer (and a few cheap knockoffs, but those were easily dismissed) that had any real appeal, so a RTS fan could play both for hours on end...whereas nowadays there are tons out there, making it hard to choose which to play and hence gamers may want to play more than one or two of them (while keeping their daily/weekly/etc game-time constant). 

Fable was a short game if all you did was treat it like a hack and slash. If you took the time to find the hidden keys, solve the riddles of the demon doors, buy and sell property, do the boast quests, etc. it would take much more time.

Also, Fable: tLC added much more content to the main quest.

Granted, it's no Oblivion. But for what it is provides a good amount of entertainment.

I don't mind short games, but if it's at the expense of quality or if there's little to offer in the way of replay value, then I have an issue.

Replay value is a huge factor when judging how much you'll want to play a game. If I look at my time playing Guitar Hero 2 and compare it to how much time I've played Call of Duty 2, basically I've played GH2 a TON while I've only tested CoD2 to ensure it's in working order.

Further, how do you judge the length of a sports game? By how long it takes to play a season? Game length then becomes more subjective.

For games like Black which only offer a 6-8 hour campaign and nothing else, I can see where many gamers would opt for a rental on it unless you can own it for $10 or less. Which is where we then get into the discussion of gaming value for one's dollar.

It's really up to the individual. No one is going to say they just like one or the other.

I just hope that Dyack's commentary is not a hint that Too Human is going to be an intentionally short game.

I did like everything in Fable in like 10 hours tops. This was indeed thanks to some weird glitch that gave me unlimited money but still, it was pretty short for an epic fantasy story.

Oblivion I couldn't get into, mostly this was because I had to use a mod so that it would work on my video card but also it just got a bit boring running around alone in this giant world.

I did log a mass amount of time into Morrowind though.

Fable is a great game (I'm playing through it now for a second time), but when I initially looked at a FAQ for some tips, and saw that I was almost through half of the main quests already (I had taken my time the first time and was still only a little above 3 hours), I grew discouraged.  This time I'm taking it VERY SLOWLY, and trying to find and do everything I possibly can.

For the record however 50=100+ hour RPG's instantly turn me off, as I just don't have the time to play through them.

It's funny I was going to start a Morrowind versus Oblivion topic but then I figured most people in this forum don't seem to be into western rpg's much. IMO Morrowind is far superior to Oblivion. The fact that each of these games has a journal where you can keep track of what you've done without feeling obligated to spend all of your time on it so you don't forget anything is very handy.


As phoenix1967 has said gaming value for one's dollar is a discussion onto itself. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on it. Myself I look at it from a $/hr perspective. If I pay $60 and get 6 hours that's $10/hr, pretty steep I think, $60 for 40-100+ no prob. $20 for 6 hours well there's no problem with that too, even $40 for 6 hours if there's enough gameplay to pick it up again and play all over. It's the same thing I do with movies. If I'm only going to watch it once or twice it's not worth $20 for 1.5-3 hours.

I have a feeling Too Human will be a shorter game than expected. This is one of the problems I have with digital distribution. If a dev team knows they will release content via download soon after release then they are less likely to cram the disc.

Episodic content is a clever name for "instead of $100 for two 25-30 hour games, they'll end up paying $120 for 1 25-30 hr retail game and two 15 hr episodes". Half-Life2 anyone?

I think it really depends on the game. If you've got a near-storyless FPS, sure, a quick 10-20 hour run could work. But if you've got a really epic and awesome RPG, 100 hours is what I want. There are many games that I wish were longer (Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time, Majora's Mask, etc.), and some that could be shorter (Children of Mana is just too repetitive; or maybe I just don't like dungeon crawlers?).

I agree with the $/hour evaluation. That's why I'm holding off on some purchases until they reach the $20 mark (Viva Pinata, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Lost Planet, and CoD 3 are on that list).  I'm also in the camp of if it would cost me $6 to rent this game, why not just buy it if it's under $10 if I wanted it? And again, that dollar amount goes up if I feel the replay value is there.

From what I'm hearing about the progess of Too Human, I seriously hope that they can give us at least an 10 hour campaign. For awhile, it wasn't even on my radar as a title that I would be interested in, now my curiousity is piqued by what it may be able to offer. I just hope they don't go the cheesy "episodic content" route...

Phoenix, I think renting games is probably the dumbest move you could make. It costs me $7 if I were to rent a PS3/Wii/360 game at Hollywood Video for 5 days. Why rent something for that price when I could pick up a cheap, used PS2 game or two for that price? Makes no sense at all.

That's my point, Tondog!

Do it, board needs moar threads.

Fo sho! It's sillyness.

the longer the better.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2741

But how many of those gamefaqs people are RPG fans? Damn near all of them from my prior experience with the site.

I think the time a game takes to beat should have no bearing on the quality at all, personally. Except when I rip Gears of War for being too short.

 ;)

I used to think longer equaled better.  Figured if a game cost $50 each, which did you get more bang for your buck?  The game that can be beaten in 3 hours?  Or the game that could be beat in no less then 30 hours.  I dont know if it's old age growing on me or what, but these days I begin to grow tired with overtly long games.  True, more often they are RPG/strat related games, but it's getting out of hand.  Take a game like Disgaea 2 for an example.  Here I am with over 60 hours into it, and I'm not even half way thru getting the FIRST ending.  Not the special endings, not the most difficult of the special endings, just the damn regular one.  I played it for about a month, but sense then I've never even touched it.  Sure, it cost me $60 or so with the strat guide, and sure, I got atleast an hour per buck, but here I am over 4 months later, never beaten, and no real desire to bother finishing it.  Same could be said of Final Fantasy XII where I went and bought the thing new, played it around 70hrs total between 2 different attempts to beat it, and now I dont even want to bother with it.  Got God of War for $10, got stuck, never finished.  Maybe I am just growing old, maybe games are taking too much time.  Or, maybe dare I say, with the always present collection, I've forgoten how it is to have just one new game to play and have become so easly distracted by the mounds of other games that await me playing them.

Short version.

Long games are good but prone to personal interpitations.

The quality and type of the game must be taken into account. If it's a weird repetitive Japanese RPG it's not going to hold my interest for more than twenty minutes; UNLESS it's very well done, like FFVII was.

Do you realize what you just said there? *wrath of the Viva Pinata advocate unleashed*

There's WELL over $20 worth of gameplay in that. I'd pay $60 for it easy.

RPGs have no reason to be less than 20 hours long. How the hell are you supposed to be immersed in the world or characters or stories in that short of a time frame. Oh and Maligned Leon, you need to play some good JRPGs. Give Chrono Trigger a shot then compare it to your beloved FFVII. Or Skies of Arcadia. Oh and FF 6 and X are the ones you need to hunt down.

 :laugh: You're right about that.

I guess I've just been tied up with other games. VP is definitely on my list of games to acquire. I guess that I'm hoping that by the time I'm ready to get it, it'll drop to the $20 mark.

Oh yeah, and I don't care how long a game is. Take Super Metroid for example. It's my favorite game of all time. I can beat it in an hour and 15 minutes with 100%, and sub 1 hour easily. Why do I keep playing it religiously? The game is that ****ing good.

When I was a kid all I wanted was ridiculously long games. I wanted every RPG to be 100 hours with at least 4 different worlds, every fighting game to have at least 50 fighters, and every platform game to have 100 levels. I'm still upset that Fireteam Rogue never got released. In recent years this really has started to happen, but I can see why it can get annoying. Games do have a tendency to be a little too open ended sometimes. I like a good mixture between long and short. However I did feel like a king after finishing Dragon Warrior 7 after 127 hours and 2 years of off and on playing. There's just something really special about beating a game that takes up your life for months.

Sometimes I play a game like a weekly TV show, an hour a week until beaten. No different than say watching 10 seasons of SG-1 which would be around 150 hours itself spread over months. It works out much better with games that you can save anywhere at any time.

Time I find in games is just another variable. Short games, long games, first person, third, cel-shaded, bump mapped. Not just RPG's either. I like the fact I can play a NHL game on multiple systems in under half an hour or several hours, or play a quick race in GT or test drive 40 cars in an afternoon.


That's Morrowind to a T.   :nod:

I disagree. One day I was bored so I beat Morrowind and it was very lame and easy. I proceeded to go slaughter some people, pawn off my bags full of crappy gear, and keep running around. I downloaded more mods and messed with those...it didn't end at all....

I want a 12-disc Final Fantasy adventure.