Opinion - Quality over Quantity

I think of an old game like Moebius - aka Windwalker.

Both games had style. The first game was repetitive - basically a grind to get to the next level with four levels.

Moebius 2 was a lot more streamlined and slick compared to its predecessor. It also was more indicative of its Asian theme. The problem was, it was too short. I finished it in a weekend.

When I see debates like this, it usually is a result of some developer letting it slip that their highly-anticipated game will only be 4 hours long, yet they still plan to charge you $60 not including 6 months of DLC clothing. When people ask why a 4 hour-long game will be $60, they'll try and polish the turd by using adjectives like "deep experience" or "edge of your seat action"…

The bottom line is that I'd rather have a good game that has some heft, than a very short game that promises to be amazing, as I'm usually disappointed.

Hak'n'Slash said:

When a game is over 30 hours long, I just pulled that number out of the air as an example, you're going to have repetition; there's only so much variety you can add, especially in combat.

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In an RPG, the combat should be changing pretty often. Every time you get a new spell/skill/materia/whatever it should change how the game plays a little bit. An area affect spell changes how you are trying to position everyone. A healing spell lets you take more risks. A new weapon that does damage to your character as well as the opponent means you better have that healing spell ready. A pogo stick lets you bounce up to perches that let you see into places you couldn't see before. And so on and so forth.

One sign of doom for a game is when I'm not even bothering to spend skill points. It typically means I don't see anything interesting to spend them on.

Zloth said:

One sign of doom for a game is when I'm not even bothering to spend skill points. It typically means I don't see anything interesting to spend them on.

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I should frame this quote and put it on my wall. Too true.

Zloth said:

One sign of doom for a game is when I'm not even bothering to spend skill points. It typically means I don't see anything interesting to spend them on.

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Can you be more specific? The closest thing I've had is running out of places to put them.

lostforever said:

I think whats happening here is sort of generational change. 10 years ago, there were lot less games and most of us were students etc so we had plenty of time. Now, most of got job, family etc and we have too many games so we no longer have much spare time so we now want shorter games!

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I believe this as well. I can very clearly see this in SWTOR, where a younger generation with LOTS of toime at their hands always demands things ... achievements ... which we older ones with our limited time just cannot reach, neither in PvE nor in PvP.

Lucky Day said:

Can you be more specific? The closest thing I've had is running out of places to put them.

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You mean talk more? Oh yeah. That never takes much convincing.

I was just wrapping up Middle Earth: Shadow of War and I had 13 skill points just sitting there. For the first two thirds of the game I would jump to the character screen and spend those points almost as soon as they showed up. Each point would open up something new like freezing enemies when you vault over them or the ability to ride a new kind of beast. After that point, though, there just wasn't anything there I wanted. My play style was established and nothing new was showing up that made me have to change it. So the skill points just sat there, unspent.

ELEX had it even worse. I think I was ignoring skill points half way through that game. Eventually I spent a bunch just to spend them but I don't think they changed things all that much.

Sometimes this happens when there's nothing left to spend points on but it happens more often to me when there's nothing really new being thrown at me. Maybe there's just a lot more story/sidequests than the skill designers could fill up. Maybe a few powers are overpowered and sap out the need to get new ones. All I know is that it's a bad sign. Other aspects of the game can carry me through to the end (or just my own desire to finish the thing) but every time I look at the skill screen and think "meh, I'll just save them for later," it definitely lowers the fun.