What's the ideal length for RPGs?

[agris]

Strongly depends on the phase of your life. If you're in school without family obligations, it's much longer.

Building a family and a career? You're going to lose the thread of even an excellent game if it takes 100 hrs to complete in 1 - 2 hr increments. Give me a solid 20 hour game and I'm more likely to finish it than an excellent 150 hour game (fuck you Underrail).

edit: I guess you could also be a loser wage slave and operate like a loadstone around your family's neck, but let's presume good things rather than bad.

 

[Silva]

0 (zero).

RPGs are shit.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Building a family and a career? You're going to lose the thread of even an excellent game if it takes 100 hrs to complete in 1 - 2 hr increments. Give me a solid 20 hour game and I'm more likely to finish it than an excellent 150 hour game (fuck you Underrail).

I keep a log of what I do in games after I found myself getting lost and having to restart due to taking breaks

 

[Sykar]

 

[Ereshkigal]

Also @Ereshkigal, what exactly are your parameters for this poll?
Are we just talking about the Main Quest? Main Quest + a significant chunk of Side Quests? Or are we talking about Completionism (regardless of how many playthroughs it takes)?

A normal first time playthrough, I guess the thing in the middle (main quest + significant chunk of SQs).

 

[JarlFrank]

10-50 hours.

Anything above that usually means there's a shitload of filler. Likely filler you're forced to endure because it's part of the main quest. Just look at Dragon Age with its endless swarms of trash mobs that drain all the fun from the game.

Fallout 1 is extremely replayable not only because it's good and offers choice & consequence, but also because it is short and doesn't force you through endless filler.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

3.66 inches seems right.

Spoiler

Get your minds out of the gutter, I'm talking about the RPG-7VL Warhead.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Should be 40+ Content and complexity need that at least.

 

[KateMicucci]

I prefer shorter RPGs because most RPGs want to lock you into playing one character who can do only like 2-3 interesting things. All of the content is horizontal, split across multiple classes and skills you can't access. Why would I want to play 100 hours as a warrior using the same 2 or 3 abilities in every fight?

But I have spent 80 hours so far in Troubleshooter, and the great thing about that game is you can respec completely your characters any time you want. Doing complete respecs whenever you want is an integral part of the game, so you can try out crazy new builds without having to start all over or hack in a respec potion.

 

[rubinstein]

Fallout 1 is extremely replayable not only because it's good and offers choice & consequence, but also because it is short and doesn't force you through endless filler.

and thats why i finished it at least 5 times, but fo2 only twice... but i still value my 40h+ fo2 attempt the most.
the only reason i finished wotr - and it took me over a month, around 120-150 hours - was, it was released during covid and there were no tasks for me during that period in my company, so i worked like 2h-4h a day. log in, say hello on a daily, appear on a meeting or two, log out. i could play almost all day long without any obligations really. these days i wouldnt really by able to beat it, as on Core it is exhausting, i would have to resort to Easy even.

no such option to pick, but i feel like 30h-50h is perfect

 

[Darth Canoli]

20-40 hours for good cRPG.

60-120 hours for great CRPG with an open world which does everything right (TB, party-based, great system, encounter design and world design, quest design, sound effects, music, etc ) )

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

Longer games fall apart in the second half.

 

[Silverfish]

10-20 is perfect. You can jump in, try a new build, see different story permutations and bounce before shit gets boring. This is why Bound By Flame and War Logs are better than GreedFall and why Alpha Protocol is Obsidian's best game period.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Nice selection of choices for the voting. I chose 200 plus. Ever since EQ I have enjoyed spending a great deal of time in a games world. Its why I enjoy Bethesda games and MMO's. I like the promise of adventure almost as much as the adventure itself. If you can complete the main story in a game in sub 20 hours thats fine. But I like to have the choice of spending a tremendous amount of hours in a games word. Exploring every dungeon and cave, doing every quest, factions etc. So a game that offers a lot of hours and is fun is what I gravitate towards. I like to look forward to spending time in a games world.

 

[Dadd]

I like the way KotC2 handles this with modules. This way you get multiple different games using the same engine. You can put many hours into it while keeping each game dense with interesting stuff.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

I like the way KotC2 handles this with modules. This way you get multiple different games using the same engine. You can put many hours into it while keeping each game dense with interesting stuff.

That's the same thing that kept wc3 going for two decades. Too bad blizzard ruined it with a shitty remake and starting to do updates that broke well loved maps.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I think it depends on what kind of RPG it is. I'd enjoy a 100 hour long roguelike or more combat focused title, but a story-focused RPG would be awful at that point. I've noticed that DM-clones tend to drag the closer you get to the 20 hour mark. 10-40 is a good sweetspot for most, longer and the game tends to have parts that just drag or pad out the game, shorter and it tends not to feel like it was worth bothering.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

30-40 hours. Anything more than that becomes tedious.

 

[Robotigan]

Depends on the RPG. Virtually any narratively focused game, RPG or not, starts to fall apart if it pushes past 20 hours. A heavily systemic game, again RPG or no, can keep the player invested for hundreds.

 

[Marat]

I like the sense of adventure a reflection on 50-60 hours of gameplay gives me. An epic journey through the game world, getting into all kinds of scrapes, making all sorts of friends, killing all sorts of enemies, having all kinds of wild adventures, becoming ridiculously overpowered and saving the world - I liked this feeling when exploring RPGs as a kid and I would like to enjoy it again sometime. Anything longer is a tenuous proposition, as all but the most brilliant of dev teams run out of steam for their creative engine in games of larger scope.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I want games to be short as possible so I can speed through and then brag about having beaten them to farm ratings

 

[perfectslumbers]

50 hours if it's a nice epic open game and 25 hours if it's a more linear game.

 

[Faarbaute]

I like them to be long and ambitious in their scope, but I don't like if that length is the result of overly formulaic design repeated over and over again. It needs some degree of variation or I'm going to tap out as soon as this becomes apparent.

 

[Jasede]

I consider 60 a little short and 120 a bit much. 80-100 is my sweet spot.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Longer games fall apart in the second half.

most games fall apart in the second half, you just don't notice it in shorter games
again this boils down to "I only play shit games", which begs the question as to why