Thank you Frank. And I agree.
Pacing in Gaming
- Thread starter Hikari.EXE
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+ all the writtern reviews saying Bayonetta or any action game is too short, what is so sarisfying about a game that never ends? You dont pay for games so its not "I need bang for my buck"
Ive made about 10 posts abt my visceral hate for the silent hill 2 remake, so why not 11. Its twice as long with only 3ish enemies just because games are supposed to be that...
You couldve also taken that extra time to do Born from a Wish but whatever thats less stuff to take a dump on
Biohazard 8 has this wonderful castle level then its just a boring looking mine, whats the point of that? No one's gonna go like "Oh hell yeah the mine! That corridor when nothing happened was so sick!"
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While I obviously don’t agree with the reviews here, the games mentioned in the videos might be the case where the critic liked the game a lot and wanted more content. I can understand that particular PoV. It’s usually objecting to short games as a metric that I strongly disagree with.
The example games you listed definitely illustrate how to not fill your game with mediocre content though. Uninteresting games are forever bad.
When thinking about pacing in games there's also something that always puzzled me about RPGs: why do modern players praise features that allow to speed up and skip gameplay?
A friend of mine told me that he would have never played the first final fantasy (pixel remaster) without the features that allow you disable encounters and increase exp-gain tenfold. I've seen people play all kinds of jrps with the speed hacks always turned on to "stop wasting time".
If fans of this genre always want to skip and shorten the gameplay mechanics of these games, why do they even play them and like them? Would it matter to them if all rpgs where to turned into Visual Novels where you just read the story with zero "filler"?
A friend of mine told me that he would have never played the first final fantasy (pixel remaster) without the features that allow you disable encounters and increase exp-gain tenfold. I've seen people play all kinds of jrps with the speed hacks always turned on to "stop wasting time".
If fans of this genre always want to skip and shorten the gameplay mechanics of these games, why do they even play them and like them? Would it matter to them if all rpgs where to turned into Visual Novels where you just read the story with zero "filler"?
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Old school RPGs and New school RPGs are two different things. Grinding was what we picked up the OG Final Fantasy for, and we liked it.
Not really, I play games to finish them, that's why I hate games that dosen't have an end to them, so games that overstay their welcome can drain me.
Never met a mf that want's to skip the gameplay for RPGs.
I think the most egregious experience for me was Alien: Isolation. I know it's a modern game so that's cheating but I feel it's a good example of a game that dragged out way too long, it's an amazing game, I appreciate the amount of detail, love and attention the devs obviously poured in to it but after a while it just becomes really tedious. You just want it to end. And I'm not talking about waiting for xenomorph to leave (even though the menance gauge needs work) but just generally the pacing and the story, which I can't really get in to it too much with out spoiling it. But the game should have ended at the 8 hour mark.
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A weird example would be Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo's arcade mode. My god having up to 16 fights for a single arcade run is just absurd to me, especially if you're used to the average of 8ish.
In SF 6, you can set up the ammount of fights you can have, up to 16 if I'm correct, so hey at least they give you the option now!
Maybe it's a young people thing. Don't know about you but the guys I always see doing this are barely over 20 years old.
...I'm 21, soon 22. Maybe I'm just built different idk.
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Sorry, DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE THE "SPOILERS" TAG, so I put some space, so you can stop reading if you wish...
"Bravely Default" immediately comes to mind, because...
where it seems you're near the end something happens and then you say... what? Again? Ok. But then... again?
I was annoyed and just wished to reach the end as fast as I could.
END SPOILER
Bravely Default Second Layer (always for 3ds, or whatever is titled) did the same thing but way better and shorter. I keep reading of FF13, I played it some month ago (got a xbox just for that one) and I have never been annoyed by the pacing (my opinion!). Maybe only complain is... more teleport stone would have been nice, because going from area to area for the quests in Gran Pulse involved a lot of backtracking, but apart from that I was ok with everything.
"Bravely Default" immediately comes to mind, because...
where it seems you're near the end something happens and then you say... what? Again? Ok. But then... again?
I was annoyed and just wished to reach the end as fast as I could.
END SPOILER
Bravely Default Second Layer (always for 3ds, or whatever is titled) did the same thing but way better and shorter. I keep reading of FF13, I played it some month ago (got a xbox just for that one) and I have never been annoyed by the pacing (my opinion!). Maybe only complain is... more teleport stone would have been nice, because going from area to area for the quests in Gran Pulse involved a lot of backtracking, but apart from that I was ok with everything.
I feel like a game's length is not necessarily a problem in and of itself. The problem is padding and filler. Collect 200 whatevers, do a bazillion fetchquests. Pretty much all open-world games are guilty of that. At some point it's just a chore and you're ready to simply skip all the side content and fast-track to the end of the story just so you can move on.
If you just want more thats fine, but often reviews dont get that finishing an action game once is only the beginning; you're supposed to replay it and master it over the course of months or years. They dont get that arcade mentality japs have
Speaking of which
CAPCOM I WILL SEE YOU IN HELL FOR GIVING BIOHAZARD 7 UNSKIPABBLE CUTSCENES WHAT WERE YOU THINKING
AND A LOOOONG ASS INTRO OF WALKING N TALKING
Bro
Why do they do this
Stop
Give me the option to skip the intro if its gonna be 10+ minutes, Silent Hill 1 makes you start after the intro and thats just like 3 mins
That's how I feel when I play Shredder's Revenge. Game is great, but 1h 30 for a beat em up ?
What's worst is that there are so many moments when the game makes you wait (intros and outros of the stages, bosses presentation, some part of the games, especially auto scrollers where nothing is going on, and even bosses with patterns that pretty much forces you to wait. Yes, I'm looking at you Rat King).
Edit after reading Lee_Kanker's post : I'm convinced unskipabble cutscenes is the devil taking control of the devs when they programmed this.
What's worst is that there are so many moments when the game makes you wait (intros and outros of the stages, bosses presentation, some part of the games, especially auto scrollers where nothing is going on, and even bosses with patterns that pretty much forces you to wait. Yes, I'm looking at you Rat King).
Edit after reading Lee_Kanker's post : I'm convinced unskipabble cutscenes is the devil taking control of the devs when they programmed this.
Sheesh, now im not sure abt trying it
One of my fav games is metal slug and you can finish it in half an hour if you're good
Theres also an artistry to make a short game feel like you went on a journey
Resident evil 2 you can finish in a weekend or an afternoon if you figure out everything first try but it feels so epic
It's fine at first, even though the game can be pretty long.
But after 50 hours yeah it gets annoying. After 200 hours I'm always in this place where I really want to play the game but don't wanna endure all the waiting.
I usually end up playing fight n rage or SoR 4.
I agree with you. I feel this problem scrapes the wall of a different problem. Value proposition:
People feel they haven't gotten their money's worth if a game is too short, even if the quality of those spent minutes was phenomenal. It's an incorrect perception, yes, but very prevalent ,and it has a multitude of ramifications that help define the industry today:
People don't want short games > longer games cost more money > development costs and cycles balloon > end user price balloons > people want longer games to justify paying 70$ on a game.
On the indie side it's the same. Roguelites are prevalent because with procedural and random content you can create more experiences (in theory) at a lower development cost and faster turnaround.
Yep, short but dense, It's arcade design 101. That's why I love those games,
I'd elaborate more but I summed it up nicely in another thread:
Huh, makes me wonder what's the age of the average user here. Someone should do a poll or something
It's a good point, its also why I hate games going from 20-50 to 60-80, its absurd, no wonder my normie friends mostly play through gamepass and own like 5 games
I wanna make indie roguelites illegal
I wanna see how long low budged devs can go without making one
Will they go into a catatonic state while foaming from the mouth?
Yes, and they'll proceed to make one about these things.
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I mean, take, for example, Vampire Survivors. I absolutely detest the game, it feels boring and brainless (I do enjoy roguelikes with good engagement levels, say, something like Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon or Super Hot MCD), but Vampire Survivors is just boring.
Yet, it created a deluge of games like it! why? because development stakes are low and it is good value proposition if the person gets a kick out of the loop of the game.
That's the game people think of when someone brings up Italian devs in a discussion, try to imagine of happy I am about it.
Not very, I imagine LOL.
Moderately happy ?
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