As always with RPGs... How long?

[macmanos2002]

Hello all!

ready to jump into this adventure.
I always enjoy a good RPG, and i love pixels and everything, if the game is good.

My main question in all these kind of games is , how long to get to the end of the story??
not by rushing, but with also completing side quests etc.
The 40 - 50+ hour mark is a MUST in order to enjoy an adventure RPG game, since those kind of games are not roguelikes with endless replayability.

Thanks in advance!

[.//slayer]

The question is valid, but I believe it's already been answered in the pinned FAQ: 25 hours for a first-time playthrough by the dev's estimate + replay value.

[Grandmaster of Pwn]

no reason to report the op for stating his preference. personally however most games that are longer than 20 hours dont hold my interest long enough for me to finish (couple of exceptions like bg3/witcher etc.). i hope that this game wont be much over 15 hours

[ScreennameTaken]

Been playing for 10.5 hours according to steam and it feels like i'm not even close to the middle.

[colma]

The dev mentioned on Twitter that it takes anywhere around 20-40 hours. Personally, I've been playing for 20h and it feels like I'm somewhere in the middle, maybe ~60%, so I think that's accurate.

[Ndaeluu]

"Wow, I just finished XYZ game. What a game. It was great, really loved every minute until it ended after 25 hours. Now I don't care about how great the content was. IT SUCKS!!!!" I've never understood this mentality. But hey, you do you man...

[Yaldabaoth]

I just finished in 15.7h, probably wasted an hour or so letting the game run, 100%ed the game.

[fourfourtwo79]

Troll or not: No wonder that C/RPGs are padded to hell, Owlcat Games taking the cake with their copypaste mob combat. Everybody outside of BG3 is being on a budget, but expected to churn out AT LEAST 40/50 hour games. This expectation is real.

I'd rather have a game of 15-20 hours that surprises me all the way through than a 100 hours shoestring budget "epic" full of repetition, copypaste encounter design and filler.

No wonder that so few are following the Bloodlines/Fallout route too -- trying to go-all in on reactivity and making every character play unique eats into campaign length immediately. In Bloodlines, a class such as the Malkavian even has altogether different dialogue... and multiple solutions to really open-ended quests also take a lot of time to implement.

[.//slayer]

Originally posted by fourfourtwo79:

Troll or not: No wonder that C/RPGs are padded to hell, Owlcat Games taking the cake with their copypaste mob combat. Everybody outside of BG3 is being on a budget, but expected to churn out AT LEAST 40/50 hour games. This expectation is real.

I'd rather have a game of 15-20 hours that surprises me all the way through than a 100 hours shoestring budget "epic" full of repetition, copypaste encounter design and filler.

I much prefer Owlcat's approach, because if the combat is enjoyable (and in Pathfinder, it is absolutely top-notch), then I do want to spend 200 hours on it, progressively getting more complex rather than starting a new playthrough and going through mostly the same story content again and again to hopefully see minor changes.

That's the problem with reactivity - unless the devs are willing to invest in entirely new chapters, like in Witcher 2, you are still stuck with the same content for the better part of the game.

[fourfourtwo79]

Originally posted by .//slayer:

[
I much prefer Owlcat's approach, because if the combat is enjoyable (and in Pathfinder, it is absolutely top-notch), then I do want to spend 200 hours on it, progressively getting more complex rather than starting a new playthrough and going through mostly the same story content again and again to hopefully see minor changes.

Each to their own. BUt I've never seen encounter design as repetive and mediocre as theirs in any Infinty Engine type of game. It's quanity over quality. Even Icewind Dale did it better a quarter of a century ago. Having destructible goblin war drums in the sequel calling reinforcements / explosive barrels and ambushes. Owlcat can do setpieces, but mostly it's like: Here's another mob. Buff up and have a go at it. And they're mostly copypaste rather than interesting hand-crafted tactical scenarios. For games as combat heavy as theirs, that really wears me down after a while. Else they wouldn't be able to churn out massive 100+ campaigns though plus numerous DLCs in but ~five years though. To quote Eric Fenstermaker of formerly Obsidian: "Balancing campaign length and gameplay polish on a budget is a zero-sum trade-off."

This isn't meant to be a post against "epics". But a) few devs have the budget to do one. And b) shorter games re fine also. Btw, with reacitivity, it's not about the destination, e.g. completely different branches. But the little steps -- and being able to actually role-play and making choices. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM1yR7WYqgM&

Anyway, I just picked this up. Looks decent! :-)

[FireShark]

39 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds long. Don't buy it.

[Morbus47]

I'd much rather have a longer game full of side-quests and things to explore and do than play an RPG on rails. That's what I look for in RPGs - tons of stuff to do and lots of replayability. I get SKALD is made by one (or few) developer(s), but I just want a long drawn out experience, because it's about the character building and team compositions for me. Don't care about how amazing the story, visuals, etc are.. if the game has ♥♥♥♥ gameplay, then it's a ♥♥♥♥ game period.

[rwars]

If you are enjoying yourself with a game, the length doesn't matter too much. As far as value goes. If I get an hour out of each dollar I spend, it’s worth it to me.

[fourfourtwo79]

Originally posted by Morbus47:

I'd much rather have a longer game full of side-quests and things to explore and do than play an RPG on rails. That's what I look for in RPGs - tons of stuff to do and lots of replayability. I get SKALD is made by one (or few) developer(s), but I just want a long drawn out experience, because it's about the character building and team compositions for me. Don't care about how amazing the story, visuals, etc are.. if the game has ♥♥♥♥ gameplay, then it's a ♥♥♥♥ game period.

That's why CRPGs get away with all their filler and trickery: Desperately trying to do the next LOTR trilogy when this side of Baldur's Gate 3 they have the budget for an episode of Xena - Warrior Princess at best. So it may be filler, but at least it's 100 hours of filler, ten outta ten. You're never going to read this about Owlcat's Pathfinder games or Wasteland 2:

"Every battle is handcrafted. There are no random encounters, things are set up with different goals and predicaments so there is always some kind of challenge and you don't feel like you are doing the same fights over and over. For instance at one point your Thief gets caught alone behind enemy lines. At another point you need to destroy a few objects, because until you do reinforcements will keep spawning."

Great gameplay is all about quality, rather than inherently about how many weeks of your life you can kiss goodbye. But devs are getting away with it. In particular as to CRPGS -- and even JRPGs with their mindless random trash mob combat harking right back to classic 8/16bit games, early Final Fantasy included.

[Jotun]

Originally posted by Morbus47:

I'd much rather have a longer game full of side-quests and things to explore and do than play an RPG on rails. That's what I look for in RPGs - tons of stuff to do and lots of replayability. I get SKALD is made by one (or few) developer(s), but I just want a long drawn out experience, because it's about the character building and team compositions for me. Don't care about how amazing the story, visuals, etc are.. if the game has ♥♥♥♥ gameplay, then it's a ♥♥♥♥ game period.

Can I interest you in some Underrail?

[etalian]

I'd almost appreciate how this game is offering a short campaign (10 -15 hours) for a reasonable price of $15.

I find many of the newer releases like BG3 to be great but the game is so massive I don't have much desire to ever replay it due to big time investment.

Same thing about Owlcat games which I've never finished one to the end.