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A good RPG cannot be short

PorkBarrellGuy

Guest
Look That Damn "Dog", I read your name, I can see the signs. This is how it all begins. I could point out that it has an interesting way of making its combat system interact with the game world, a lot of C&C and branching choices, rewards exploration, etc. But you'll be fixated on the fact that it has cutesy Homestuck-like graphics and appeals to tumblr furries. You'll start spinning your wheels about why everything I listed is in fact "bad RPG mechanics" and respond with some bullet point list telling me why my daddy made a mistake, because entertaining the idea that you and tumblr furries both agree about anything at all goes against the survival instinct of what limited testosterone you had left when you made the enlightened act of registering an account on this site.

But deep inside your Asperger's syndrome will tingle (and don't tell me you don't have Asperger's, it rubbed off on you the moment you entered this site) and you'll slowly but surely feel a need to question the narrative, just as your mother questioned your birth. That's how it all begins. First you might play Undertale. Then you might even like, or not dislike it. But it will leave an impression. You see, one lonely night you'll type "www.tumblr.com" into your browser window, maybe just take a peek. Of course, you'll immediately shut down your computer horrified by your actions. But the lingering doubts will remain. And every night you'll wake up, entering www.tumblr.com for just a little longer. You'll start reading blogs, maybe you find something you associate with. Soon enough you'll be writing your own tumblog. It will start innocently enough, arguing with the tumblr feminists and praising communism, like your uncle taught you when he took you into that closet. Then you'll expand your operation and start posting cat pictures. And dog pictures. And wolf pictures, oh look they are so cute.

You'll get a lot of likes (or "reblogs" as they are called). Your self esteem will soar for the first time since the boy you liked got a loogie on your desk back in 7th grade. You'll start getting into it, reblogging other people's stuff, "liking" their social justice poetry, and so on. Then the fanart phase starts. You start innocently at first, "oh hey guys just practicing my art here haha," and people will love it. Your following will grow. You'll start getting feedback and reblogs. And you'll notice that your fanart that garners the most positive feedback is the type that exhibits a slightly anthropomorphic style like kittens in coats or like a big lizard breathing fire. And you'll change your style to suit. Soon enough your cats will have glasses and two feet and your lizards will have opposable thumbs. You'll start shipping them together and researching anatomy, such as how do lizard dicks look like. That's when the transformation will be complete.

But that won't even be your final form, That Damn Dog. You'll remember your roots. You'll come back here and try and convert all your buddies. We have like 19 trannies here, did you know that, That Damn Dog? This is how they come to be. This is what's going to become of you. Would you like that? I didn't think so. But it's gonna happen. Don't try to stop it. I already did. I was too late. We were all too late.

Hopw roewur ne, That Damn Dog, may furry Jesus bless your soul.

:whatho:
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
They would have been dinged for false advertising if that first statement weren't true. They're going to err on the side of being too cautious about game length, not oversell it. :M

Yeah, I remember all those games that the FTC levied fines on for false advertising in interviews. Wait... no I don't because it never happens in games, even when literally faked footage is aired and pretended to be real.
 

Freddie

Savant
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Sep 14, 2016
Messages
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Mansion
It was interesting to look stuff from Howlongtobeat and compare to my own experience.

Some of my favourites from the past appeared to be quite short:
Champions of Krynn - 18 Hours
Death Knights of Krynn - No time in database, but I recall this being a quite short game too
Fallout 1 - 16½ Hours (22 hours, all styles combined)​

Some more recent experiences:
Mass Effect - 17 Hours ( 26½ h. all Styles combined)
Shadowrun Returns - 12 Hours (13 hours, all styles combined)
Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday - 11½ h.
I'd liked WL2, other Shadowrun games, Fallout 2 and NV all right, but I don't see how game being less or more than 20 hours or whatever is determining factor for quality of my gaming experience.

Content for buck isn't that simple either. I have wanted to replay FO:NV for a quite sometime, but it's difficult to find time for that. So yeah there is lot of content that I can potentially enjoy. And then there are all those games I have bought but never started. I haven't even finished The Matrix Cubed and I started that during last summer! So I don't see game hours being good determining factor in that sense, at least for me either.

I don't know, according to database FO 3 GOTY appears to be from 30 Hours to 69½ Hours, all styles combined. I don't care what I paid for it. I care I spent perhaps 70 hours for game I waited at some point to turn out to be good, which I knew won't happen at some point. 'But there's DLC in GOTY, maybe it's better'. And hell they were shit too. I had later similar experience with Mass Effect 3 which appears to to be 24 Hours and 35 hours for all styles. Unbelievable ride, yeah. Only not in a good sense.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
Yeah, I remember all those games that the FTC levied fines on for false advertising in interviews. Wait... no I don't because it never happens in games, even when literally faked footage is aired and pretended to be real.

Dinged by the fans, not some entity.
 

Blaine

Cis-Het Oppressor
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Grab the Codex by the pussy
This was a great thread.

My favorite part was when some butthurt retard accused me of being a storyfag, as though that's the only type of player who doesn't speedrun through a game's main story and then pretend that that's the game's "length."

Videogames should just find the correct sort of genre for what story they want to tell.

Correct genre for telling a story:

23b574b5fd.jpg


Behead all storyfags.
 

Haplo

Prophet
Patron
Joined
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Messages
6,138
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Didn't read trough the thread, too long, not enough time.

But more on topic:
Mysteries of Westgate is fine. Of course, its not a standalone.
Oh, and the new Shadowruns are mighty fine games that aren't long.

I'd argue that more cRPGs outstay their welcome and their end/last half / 1/3rd becomes a boring slog you wish would end sooner. Even one of my favorite cRPGs of the new wave is guilty of this: vanilla PoE (loved the xpansion content though).
Many cRPGs would greatly benefit from major editing cuts to just leave the meaty bits.
I much prefer an immersive and consequent 10 hour adventure with a clearly defined ending that makes sense, then 20 hours followed by 10-30 hours of weariness, with a hastily scrambled, chaotic, poor ending.
 
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VentilatorOfDoom

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Staff Member
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Deutschland
tbh According to Blaine's criteria (and those of some others itt) no short RPGs exist to begin with, so it doesn't astonish that there are no good ones either.
If 99,9% of games fall into the long category it doesn't surprise that good RPGs are generally "long."

Most good movies are around ~2h, give or take. Does that mean, there can't be good short movies? Or does it merely mean that movies are made with a certain length in mind, because there's a common expectation about how long a movie should be?

Mysteries of Westgate is fine. Of course, its not a standalone.
It was good, yes. (That can be debated tho) But was it a great success? No. (That can't be debated)
See? More "proof" that short RPGs suck!

Moreover, you can side with or against the vampire, which makes the actually game length twice of what you want to make us believe (requires 2 playthrus) as we learned earlier re: AoD. So the game isn't even short!!11!!
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
The difference between games and movies is also that your skill and general knowledge of the genre can decrease the playtime as well. Unless you watch a movie at 200% speed, it's going to take the same amount of time to watch, every time. But gametime depends on other factors.

Example. As a kid playing Final Fantasy 7, a game where I had not played anything remotely like it ever to that point, the game took me 100+ hours to complete. Of course, I would explore and look for secrets, etc., and technically it didn't have 100+ hours of "content", but since the experience was so new it led to long sessions.

Now, give a modern gamer who has played 20 different RPGs that are even more complex than FF7 the game to complete, they'd likely blow through it in no time. Because they understand how it works, what the genre is about, the formula behind the game and so on. They will know where to go, have more developed "RPG Senses", know that certain attacks will hurt certain types of enemies (just based on their overall genre knowledge) and so on. Heck, simple access to the internet gives modern gamers a boost in this area, since they know a hell of a lot more than older gamers like us did 20 years ago with little or no internet.

So a lot of "stuff" goes into it. Even the shortest RPGs aren't really that short. My Chrono Trigger example still stands for me. As a kid I'm sure it took 50+ hours, easy, as I would be trying to figure out how to activate the Moon Stone, look for different secrets, explore and try to figure things out, retry boss battles and so on. But nowadays people say that game is a 20-ish hour RPG, i.e. a short one. So it's very subjective and factors in a lot of different things besides sheer "amount of content" via written words, number of quests or the size of the landmass to explore. IMO.

Knowledge in this area essentially is like playing with a strategy guide in a way. It is going to cut the playtime down the more you know (not just for the specific game in question, but the genre as a whole, too.)
 

NotAGolfer

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Land of Bier and Bratwurst
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Oh, and the new Shadowruns are mighty fine games that aren't long.
At least the first one is a steaming pile of dog shit. Didn't play the rest so far but after that one I can't bring myself to even install them anyway.
Not only was it very short, there wasn't enough meat to it either. Played like a fucking CYOA with mediocre combat sections.
Worst game I played in years and I only finished it because it was that damn short and braindead so I could do it on the side.
 

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