Re: Oh, Randy (Borderlands 4 edition)

On 23/05/2025 17:17, Zaghadka wrote:

Procedurally generated open world grinds have 30 hours of real gameplay,
IMO. Elite: Dangerous for instance. Or TES. Some people get unlimited
play out of that, I get about 30-40 hours and then I'm bored. Often to
the exclusion of the story quest. Which is plenty. But it's not because
the game is actually full of content. Skyrim's map is pretty tiny, for
instance, and E:Dangerous is 90% empty space.
 

I spent many enjoyable hours in FO:3/NV and Skyrim just exploring the different stories. I think it works, for me at least, as it doesn't feel as though you're grinding but instead every gameplay session you discover something new and make what feels like progress.

Civ, otoh, I play and play and play. I have over a thousand hours in Civ
V (with considerable help from my wife). I have 100 in Civ VI, on my own.
I never counted the hours in earlier versions. But that's a different
experience. You can get a lot of mileage out of something like "Monopoly"
or "Parcheesi." A game where your approach to random starts is more
important than actual content gives many hours to the player. It's like
you're procedurally generating the game yourself.
 So "large" games are mostly a gimmick to me. Nobody puts the actual time
in. I was shocked at the 15 hour, story driven single-player FPS when it
first happened, but it really is the sweet spot, as demonstrated by the
original Half Life. FarCry is not the sweet spot, unless you really like
ambushing things over and over again only to have them respawn.
 

The sweet spot for me is anywhere between 10-25hrs depending on what type of game it is with action type games being at the lower end and story driven games at the higher end.
The tipping point is when I realise I'm no longer really enjoying the game so I'm now playing it just to complete it. If the game doesn't have a strong story then I'd probably just give up at that point.

If I get 60+ hours out of a game, it's probably due to interesting play,
not the size of the content, and very few games truly provide the content
to begin with.
 

That's the problem I have with the longer games. They mostly feel like they've been padded out just because the dev's think that they need to do that otherwise people will complain about value for money. It was one of the complaints about the Outer Worlds as you might typically spend a 'mere' 25hrs to complete it. For me it was almost perfect as I felt I'd seen all the game had to offer including the ending.