(it's been changed now) The 8 hour ending needs to be changed, fast

[Commenter]

I'm not going to delete this post or anything for both historical and discussion purposes, but they've changed the 8 hour wait to 2.5 hours. Reasonable enough for me.

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I'm confident in saying that nobody likes this. I don't know how the devs thought this was a good idea. I don't know what the game was like in early access, but I assume this wasn't in there, because I think everyone would've said to shorten it. The game just released, so it's entirely possible they're going to update it, but as far as I know they haven't addressed it despite all the posts saying it's horrible. Nothing on their Twitter, nothing on these forums, no review replies.

That's not to say I dislike the concept entirely, but the execution was horrible. They could've made the wait only last through the credits scrolling, and I think everyone would've been happy with that. I was willing to sit through them the first time at the start of the game, not realizing I could get away with skipping them. Another idea: if they had taken a OneShot approach where you can mess with some file and it makes the timer like 5 minutes, you hack the system and use their processing power to convert your clicky hard drive into an ssd i dunno, that might've been pretty neat. Hell, even just having the timer keep going while the game is closed would've been better. Even if you HAVE to keep the 8 hour wait while the game's open, let us keep running through that void of deletedness so we can play tree dude and find little secrets or something.

The four thoughts I've seen about this are:

1. Just use Cheat Engine
While a good workaround for anyone who wants to get around it now, it's *not* a solution for the core issue that it exists at all. The idea of hacking the game and stuff fits with the lore and such, but there's nothing that officially hints at that. If that was the intent, they should've done it OneShot style like I mentioned above. Plus, a name like "Cheat Engine" is gonna scare some people off, even if it's unjustified and it won't get you banned from anything. And that's all ignoring the existence of console players.

2. Just leave the game open while you go to work
It's the Year of the Covid. Most people are working from home, and people not working probably need a mindless red guy killing distraction.

3. Just leave the game open while you sleep
That's fair and all, but it's using 100% of my GPU and ~20% of my CPU. Makes it feel like a bitcoin mining scheme or something. I doubt it is (doubt that'd even be profitable), I think this was just genuinely not thought through, but it certainly drives up a power bill. If we're gonna burn off some power, shouldn't we do it on Folding@Home or something? I'm pretty sure it's mostly eating power because it's not frame locked, and I tried limiting the FPS with Radeon Chill, but it didn't wanna work. I don't think console players could cap the game like that either.

4. Whining about it reinforces the plot of "there is no more" and "you're an addict"
Sure. Doesn't make it good writing/design. Doesn't mean they couldn't have made it more interesting than just "go leave your computer alone for 8 hours while we cycle through a few file names over and over".

Don't get me wrong, I really like this game. In fact, I enjoyed it a lot! I can see why some don't like it over the original, but it's a unique twist full of new mechanics that I quite enjoy. I think I completed pretty much everything it had to offer me before the 8 hour wait I'm at now, except for proving my worth in all the endless levels and node 100. If the wait wasn't there, I'd probably still be playing it instead of writing this.

But this is unacceptable. They need to get out an update to the game that fixes this, before even more people get to the ending. Update doesn't need anything else, put all efforts into making this better and release that as its own patch. I think right now we're at the semi-calm where most people aren't that far in the game, but once enough time has passed, this is gonna be the kinda thing that gets people's anger gears driving. Especially when people start actually buying it, I think everyone playing right now got it for free. Me personally? Even though I just wrote a long post about it, I'm not upset about it, I'm probably bored enough to literally just sit there for the whole 8 hours and watch it go down. But there's quite a few people with way less patience than me. One of the posts in this forum is called "8 Hours. Its a Scam!" after all.

[Chibbity]

Considering it's a niche game, and that only like less than 1% of players are ever going to actually beat it...it seems like a really small issue?

Besides, it's the ending, you've finished the game; if you don't want to wait you can uninstall it and move on. Sure you get a couple of unlocks after, but nothing so crazy and great you need to experience it if you're just a casual fan.

Think of it like a final test for only the most faithful, hardcore of players.

[Commenter]

That's true, not many people are going to reach it, and this game's demographic is "people who played the original Superhot and want more of it". But it's still poor design regardless. It's something that's gonna piss people off if they wanted to play more of it and got told "either leave the game up for a stupidly long time or go away". You don't really get a heads up before making the game unplayable for 8 hours. A big point in a lot of the negative reviews (outside of the game being totally different from the first game) is "despite what i like about this game, because the ending is an 8 hour wait, I can't recommend it". If you ask me, the final test should be Node 100.

[mimizukari]

hell it might be one of those COVID GPU schemes where it uses your GPU for 8 hours to contribute to coronavirus research, lmao. even borderlands 3 is doing that nowadays.

[Commenter]

That's what I was talking about when I said "If we're gonna burn off some power, shouldn't we do it on Folding@Home or something?" (which i already do at light settings when im not doing something intensive)

[Trivvy™]

Oh man, I thought you were talking about Node 100 taking 8 hours to complete or something. I've reached the "give up" node, but I'm doing everything before it first (sans the infinite node, because it's incompletable obviously). I figured completing Node 100 would reveal a "true ending" of sorts.

Without spoiling it, does completing node 100 give any juicy l o r e?

[Commenter]

Nah, it theoretically could if you played veeeeeeeeery slowly, but I'm talking about a mandatory 8 hour wait after you give up. Can't say what happens when you complete Node 100, furthest I got was ~25 levels in and then I died, so I decided to just move on for the time being. But I think I saw skimming through this forum that there's a lore bit when you complete it, like the other .mem files.

[geebee]

I like it. But you obviously have a counter argument for any reasoning, so why even make a topic? You need validation/agreement that badly?

[Trivvy™]

Originally posted by geebee:

I like it. But you obviously have a counter argument for any reasoning, so why even make a topic? You need validation/agreement that badly?

I guess no one should ever post their opinions on anything ever, then.

[Artstu]

I feel you've completely ignored the fact the game had asked you time and time again if you wanted to give up everything for the ending. It told you it was going to cost everything to find more superhot content. So when you blindly told the game you would give up the cores, the mods and then your ability to play you should have known it wasn't going to be like, 'oh haha thx for losing your powers, here have them back.' In my mind the ending was perfect. You were warned and you kept going. The player deserves what was coming.

[Commenter]

Originally posted by geebee:

I like it. But you obviously have a counter argument for any reasoning, so why even make a topic? You need validation/agreement that badly?

Like I said, I don't think the concept is bad. I think the execution could be better, and that's the point of my post. I genuinely like this game, and I don't want it to be dragged down by this. That's why I brought up alternate ideas as well. If you agree, awesome! If you disagree, then awesome! Bring up why, so the developers know what we want. This is the discussion forum, after all.

Originally posted by Artstu:

I feel you've completely ignored the fact the game had asked you time and time again if you wanted to give up everything for the ending. It told you it was going to cost everything to find more superhot content. So when you blindly told the game you would give up the cores, the mods and then your ability to play you should have known it wasn't going to be like, 'oh haha thx for losing your powers, here have them back.' In my mind the ending was perfect. You were warned and you kept going. The player deserves what was coming.

That's true, it fits well into the story. But the problem is: nobody cares about that, they're pissed off anyway, and I don't think they wanted to piss people off that much. I think if it was done at least a little differently, nobody would complain. Even just making it just "you can't play the game for 8 hours" instead of "you need the game open for 8 hours". Hell, expand it to 24 or 48 hours, as long as you don't need to keep the game open running your computer hot and artificially boosting your playtime. I kinda like the idea of having to get through Node 100 to get cores/hacks back too, instead of it being a random thing on the side you can just skip past.

[Nyxll Arnana]

Woah woah woah, people are actually agreeing with the 8 hour thing?

[Tat011]

Originally posted by xG Nyxll Arnana:

Woah woah woah, people are actually agreeing with the 8 hour thing?

You know rule 34? The same thing happens with opinions.

[OS]

I haven't played all the way through MCD yet but if anyone wants to die by waiting, I suggest a game called Left On Read. After you complete the main story, you unlock 'Realistic Mode' where you have to wait on and off of the gameplay mechanics for over 60 hours of waiting to get the steam achievement for it. It's free lmao.

[Nyxll Arnana]

Originally posted by Tat011:

Originally posted by xG Nyxll Arnana:

Woah woah woah, people are actually agreeing with the 8 hour thing?

You know rule 34? The same thing happens with opinions.

Let me reword this.
People are agreeing with this, and defending this when it is so rediculous even with the context, when those exact same people will outright attack AAA companies for doing the same thing.

[Waddlebeard]

I'm just starting the 8hr thing now. I honestly don't feel it to be a problem. I can go do other things while i wait. And, I think that's kinda the point of it. The point being that you can't just sit there all day playing an addictive game. At some point, you have to face your responsibilities, and do other things regardless of how long you'd like to sit there playing the game.

If we could just do what we want when we want, nothing that needed to get done would get done. From a gameplay perspective, it's a terrible mechanic. But it's not about being a gameplay mechanic, it's about making a point.