Crispy™ How often do you stop playing an RPG and then start over?

[Jenkem]

Like I did this with POE because halfway through act 2 I was tired of it and the combat was shit so I stopped.. didn't pick it up again until 3.0 was out and had a good time. I just restarted at that point because I didn't remember what happened. Did the same thing with Tides of NumaNuma where I played for like 2.5 hours and then gave up because it was shit but then a few months later started over because I was really bored...

Sometimes it's just because I don't like my build or party and will just restart if I've only played a couple hours... How often do you just stop playing an RPG and why? I wonder if this is a common thing because even Obsidian mentioned this during POE2's campaign re: Berath's Blessings..

I feel like I do this more often than not, tbqh...

 

[Sentinel]

Still do it everytime I install MotB and intend on playing through it. End up dropping it because of the camera and UI.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I will never understand people who restart the save because their party sucks. I've never done that in my entire life and I've probably beaten close to a 100 RPGs.

Figuring the mechanics as you go, learning from your mistakes and finding ways to adapt and survive in an unpredictable world , where you don't have all the data on what is an optimal build? That to me is an essence of good RPG gameplay. Restarting because the game is too hard is weak shit. Man up and push on, or put the slider down.

 

[the_shadow]

I will never understand people who restart the save because their party sucks. I've never done that in my entire life and I've probably beaten close to a 100 RPGs.

Figuring the mechanics as you go, learning from your mistakes and finding ways to adapt and survive in an unpredictable world , where you don't have all the data on what is an optimal build? That to me is an essence of good RPG gameplay. Restarting because the game is too hard is weak shit. Man up and push on, or put the slider down.

LOL. I guess that explains why you've completed almost 100 RPGs, and I've probably only completed 10. I'm guaranteed to restart an RPG once I've played through about 1/4 of the way through . It's usually not due to difficulty, but because:

1. I missed something that's now closed off to me (eg. items, quests, factions).

2. I want to try different party/skill combinations

3. I've learnt something new about the game's mechanics/strategy and want to test it from the beginning. Usually once I've overcome the learning curve I want to restart anyway so I can play optimally from the beginning.

I usually invest a lot of time into games and give them lots of replays.

 

[One Stoned Bastard]

Pretty much all the time. I've become too cynical to like things.

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

im a compulsive re-starter

havent finished a game since stalker:soc; and even then it was after 400 hours of tooling around

christ, how long ago was that... shit, maybe 2012?

 

[frajaq]

When I realize I still don't understand the game mechanics correctly and have been doing retarded/inefficient shit from the start

 

[flushfire]

Not very often, because I know I will get bored redoing my progress no matter how good the game is. I spend a lot of time during character creation though, to the point that sometimes I'm not able to play the game for the first day I'm supposed to.

 

[Humanophage]

Oh, plenty of times. In fact, that was my general pattern early on - that happened with Baldur's Gate 1, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale 2, Jagged Alliance 2, Arcanum, Fallout 2, and a bunch of others. For example, on my first playthrough of P:T in 2000, I could not get to Ravel, did all the side quests I could find, and then just stopped playing. I returned to it in force a year and a half later on. Turns out the pre-Ravel stuff was the best part anyway. On my first BG1 run, I got to Chapter 6, but then my enthusiasm waned, and I was distracted by Heroes of Might and Magic III. Often, I would get fed up with the mechanics, such as boring combat as a high-charisma character in Arcanum, or it would feel like there is simply more of the same stuff except even longer and with more micromanagement, as in JA2 (enemies taking over a minute each turn). One additional reason was that my games were pirated, so sometimes the bugs would make me annoyed with the game.

Since my English improved at a rather rapid pace, I could appreciate the writing and understand what is going on much more thoroughly during my second attempt. It was primitive in 1999, but by 2005, I was near-fluent. I would usually restart about a year later or more, so I would have forgotten many of the details anyway. I seldom replay a game that I finished, however, and usually not to the very end.

 

[aweigh]

the win screen is so final that reaching it before having squeezed absolutely every possible ounce of mechanical interaction out of the game holds little interest to me, and what usually happens during this process is that something else will attract my attention and thus the win screen never gets reached, despite the hundreds of hours played.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

It's not a CRPG if you didn't restart 3 hours in

 

[mondblut]

When I realize that my party is 2.38% suboptimal.

 

[mondblut]

I will never understand people who restart the save because their party sucks. I've never done that in my entire life and I've probably beaten close to a 100 RPGs.

After putting the slider down, I reckon.

Figuring the mechanics as you go, learning from your mistakes and finding ways to adapt and survive in an unpredictable world , where you don't have all the data on what is an optimal build? That to me is an essence of good RPG gameplay.

Good RPG gameplay is when you can't survive with suboptimal build. Anything else is "story mode". Because figuring out optimal build is what the genre is all about.

 

[c2007]

Pretty much most of the time lately.

Nothing has been gripping enough for me to stay interested for long. Granted, I haven't been trying too hard, as work gets in the way constantly these days.

I have several "RPG's" in various save-states going currently. PS:T, TW2, TW3, KotOR, The Last of Us (PS3), and perhaps one or two more. In some cases, time is the enemy, and in others interest and quality of action. Basically life has turned me into a fucking casual casualty.

 

[Morkar Left]

I have to say that it's actually the good ones I restart a couple of times. Mostly because they are the complex ones I guess. It takes a bit of time to really get their systems. And then it's a blast. I usually do a full run with mostly everything such an rpg has to offer. It pays of to take your time at the beginning. And in the good ones restarting was always fun.
Bad ones and mediocre ones I don't restart. Either I play through them once (rarely) or I abandon them midterm.

 

[Saduj]

I only restart a game if making poor build choices is going to make progressing almost impossible. Rare games like Underrail or Dungeon Rats. Not going to restart Wasteland 2 to max out initiative because it doesn't really matter.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Good RPG gameplay is when you can't survive with suboptimal build.

I can't survive therefore the game must be to easy. Sound logic you got there.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Way too often.

 

[Farewell into the night]

I try to play from the start to an end.

 

[Tigranes]

Good RPG gameplay is when you can't survive with suboptimal build.

I can't survive therefore the game must be to easy. Sound logic you got there.

It is, actually. But try learning "to vs. too" first.

I restart sometimes, but it's more down to whether I enjoy the current party. And some of that is tied with optimising, but there are times when you realise you just don't enjoy playing this class to play through till the end.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Good RPG gameplay is when you can't survive with suboptimal build.

I can't survive therefore the game must be to easy. Sound logic you got there.

It is, actually. But try learning "to vs. too" first.

I restart sometimes, but it's more down to whether I enjoy the current party. And some of that is tied with optimising, but there are times when you realise you just don't enjoy playing this class to play through till the end.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. The part of enjoyment for me is making not-enjoyable party work. For example I absolutely hated my PC monk in Pillars, but I kept trying different ways to use him until it worked well enough and pushed on to the end.

 

[Zombra]

I will often restart once I understand how things actually work. Then I can reframe the experience to match what I wanted to see happen in the first place. Like if I wanted a character to be a great burglar so I optimized him for Lockpicking, but then I found out that Climbing is the skill you really use the most for breaking & entering, I might start over and rebuild accordingly.

 

[Tacgnol]

I will often restart once I understand how things actually work. Then I can reframe the experience to match what I wanted to see happen in the first place. Like if I wanted a character to be a great burglar so I optimized him for Lockpicking, but then I found out that Climbing is the skill you really use the most for breaking & entering, I might start over and rebuild accordingly.

Pretty much the same with me.

I usually make an initial party/character, and then end up restarting a little ways in after I understand how the skills/abilities work a bit better. On occasion, I dislike the initial party and feel like trying something different.

 

[Lacrymas]

I did it more as a kid, I was enthralled by the shiny spell effects and wanted to see what different classes do. Now I only do it if the character I've made turns out to be more boring than I had anticipated.

 

[Tigranes]

Good RPG gameplay is when you can't survive with suboptimal build.

I can't survive therefore the game must be to easy. Sound logic you got there.

It is, actually. But try learning "to vs. too" first.

I restart sometimes, but it's more down to whether I enjoy the current party. And some of that is tied with optimising, but there are times when you realise you just don't enjoy playing this class to play through till the end.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. The part of enjoyment for me is making not-enjoyable party work. For example I absolutely hated my PC monk in Pillars, but I kept trying different ways to use him until it worked well enough and pushed on to the end.

Oh, sure. I mean, if you're having to struggle to make this monk work, and learn more about the systems while doing so, I'd say that's a good example of how things should pan out.

A bad example is where your monk is built idiotically but you never even realise because the game is so easy you can steamroll anyway.

There are so many examples of people who beat a party-based RPG, and don't even realise what defences are targeted by what spells and how you can buff/debuff againt specific threats, or that one of their spells is bugged and is not really doing much damage, etc. because the game is easy enough that you can buttonmash and win.

I'll never forget waiting for KOTOR back in the days when Bioware was still defined by BG2, and the moment when I realised I could literally leave the desk half the time and let the battles play themselves out.