I don’t need bigger game I just want Shakespearian spectacular quest and events, gripping storylines, and endearing character.
You could have a tiny map full of passion and I would love the game.
I do care about finishing games but not completing them. I will play the main story and some of the side quests. I am happy with games being 20-100 hours long.
I look at the RPGs I enjoyed and the ones I didn’t and I think what I want more than anything in RPGs is for them to be fleshed out and well fitting.
If the world is too big for the story it feels empty and the side quests don’t feel connected. If it’s too small, it feel cluttered. It’s a fine balance.
A lot of quests in games have a specified start and an end, and are unimaginative. It’s 2025. I’m not bringing somebody 20 orc horns for a slightly better sword. Well, I will, but I don’t want to. It just feels lazy.
I’d rather stumble across a thread woven into the world and follow it both ways to it’s logical conclusion, choosing any branches along the way.
Honestly, I think “big” works against developers if they’re trying to make something that just fits. When you look at something like BG3, the world isn’t that huge. But once you start filling out all the blanks, it takes you a long time to get through.
I think the issue is that most game’s core gameplay loops are not endlessly replayable. Lots of single player RPGs fall into the trap of being alright to progress through for maybe 20 hours, but you can quickly become so powerful that the rest of the game falls into busywork. It’s really hard to meaningfully introduce new and interesting gameplay after the 30 hour mark, but without it things become same-y.
I’d argue this is just a fault of poor game design though. There are RPGs with really well iterated gameplay loops, with a wide array of variety, that I’m happy to put 400+ hours in. Games like Baldur’s Gate 3, or Elden Ring, have a lot of freedom and variety in the way you can approach a playthrough, even allowing you to dramatically change things mid-playthrough, while still feeling mechanically satisfying to play. A 10/10 game will feel good to play forever, but a 7/10 might get boring after 15.
I quite like sandbox games so in those cases I would like it bigger, but at the same time I have no need for some main storyline to be in the game either. I want to be able to live in the world and either challenge comes just from surviving or things you find while exploring.
And I really don’t like sandbox games, so I need a really good story or really compelling gameplay, and neither needs a huge map or tons of hours.
Don’t try to please everyone. A good sandbox game doesn’t need a story, a good story game doesn’t need sandbox elements, and good gameplay can be really short.
Yeah a lot of these games that try and do a bit of everything seem to often fail to entertain anyone.
I think it really depends on the game.
An MMO or a sandbox game I can sink hours and hours into. I don’t know how many hours I’ve lost to games like Minecraft, Rimworld, etc. Even if those types of games might have “objectives”, I’m more likely to just kind of do my own thing.
And I had something like 500 days logged in with my Final Fantasy XI character. It was my default game and I kept playing because I always felt I had something to do and people to meet.
Narrative focused games? Nope. While I might enjoy playing, the narrative can feel more like a chore in a game that has too much stuff to do, especially if mechanics or areas are locked behind it. I will end up ADHD because I hit a block or feel like the game is forcing me to do the main story when I don’t want to.
I had that happen in Fallout 3 where I was just wondering around, having fun exploring and stumbling on things, and I end up finding someone I didn’t even know I needed to look for connected to my dad and suddenly I felt I was being pulled away from what I found fun.
Might be why I really liked 76 despite the hate it got/gets.
Skyrim is huge. I played it last year, going to all locations and doing main and side quests. That takes 100 hours or so.
Now I’m playing Elden Ring with SOTE, doing the same thing. I’m around 180h in and honestly I kind of want to finish by now.
So yeah, I don’t see 600 hours of playtime as a positive goal. Unless they mean expand the map but don’t keep up the content ratio. In that case, why the fuck would that be good? More travelling isn’t worth anything.
Honestly, my limit is about 80 hours, and that’s only if the store and side content is really good. An average story/RPG game should target 20-40 hours IMO.
Only if the interesting content scales with size.
I am honestly excited to what GTA6 can bring to the content map. Considering how dense some parts of GTA 5 already are.GTA V dense? I found it incredibly bare, especially coming from GTA SA.
Didn’t play it so I can’t comment on the SA part.
At least they have loads of little details in obscure placesThat describes pretty much all GTA games though. The difference with V is that it has a much bigger map, so there are a lot more areas with uninteresting details.
Maybe it’s just me but I felt like the space was for the better. Maybe it’s just the fidelity of the game that helps it vs the older gen.
Honestly, I feel like games have been getting too big. The ends of RPGs always feel like a slog these days.
Maybe it’s because every game thinks it needs a 3 act denouement. Maybe it’s because there’s 100x the games coming out now compared to when I was young and the feeling of wanting to get to the next one is rushing me. Or maybe I’m just plain getting old.
In any case, I’m ok with shorter games.
I actually might like a game that big… If it were actually a game that big. Starfield is a perfect example of pointlessly big but full of nothing. A game with the depth and complexity of some of the best cities in Bethesda games but EVERYWHERE instead of just a few select cities with barren wastes in between like a real world has might be incredible and be the last game I play for the rest of my life.
But that’s not currently possible and all we can do right now is the fake BS where everything is empty but the map is BIG.
Skyrim size was just about right. I just want a deeper stat sytem that promotes more build diversity than stealth archer (but keeping the skill tree system intact - never want to go back to the Morrowind/Oblivion systems), enemies and items that don’t level with me, more monster variety (so sick of draugr), and bring back levitation and modifiable acrobatics!
Morrowind still has the best skill system concept. “Do what you think is fun and you will level up and get better at it” is great game design.
Things that are the kernel of bad game design: Fetch quests in quantity, especially over large maps with limited fast travel points (fuck you Witcher, cyberpunk), having eleventy billion containers which just might be good to open (fuck you baldur3/divine divinity/Morrowind), or having an inventory system that makes you crave death every time you use it (same), or having an inventory system that makes you do endless, constant field checks to figure out which weapon or armor is best because you don’t have space for more than 3 things (sooo many games, but cyberpunk, deus ex, and borderlands get a big old fuck you from me).
I agree with pretty much all of your points, especially about limited inventories. In isometric arpgs in particular it drives me crazy that half the gameplay is essentially a gambling system of explosions of massive amounts of items - yet they give you virtually no room to carry it? Terrible.
But on Morrowind, I love the game with mods like MULE, but the vanilla level up system makes the stat system self-defeating. The purpose of skill-based progression is to let me play the character I want to play, and do the things I want to do, and trust that my character is going to grow accordingly. But the level up stat multiplier system forces the player to do all sorts of things other than what they want, in order to get the most out of the stat system.
It’s even worse in Oblivion because everything levels with you much more in that game, which means if you don’t do these ridiculous things to min/max, your enemies can actually become too powerful to beat!
Oh I won’t disagree that they tuned it weird…same thing for the enemies. Being defeated by an overleveled mud crab is…demeaning. and more generally I still recall putting my character in a corner, hitting q, and leaving for the day so she’d be a good runner when I got back…which is just downright dumb. But the concept at it’s core is beautiful, and I wish more games would investigate that concept until we find a really good solution.
I forgot, there’s one other super shit rpg thing that always pisses me off even though it’s literally everywhere: why do I have to pick skills before I even start playing and understand the rules? SPECIAL, stat points, attributes…whatever a game wants to call it, I want to play first before I do all the math on what is the best skill to use.
The thing about not finishing games is very true. Simply look at achievement stats. Most games have a huge drop off in achievements earned after the first 25-50% of the game, with any achievement for completing the story of the game having a super small number of players who earned it. Even games that are easy as fuck and practically play themselves!
I absolutely want a game that I can sink 1000s of hours into. I do not want a game where I get bored half way tough because the dev clearly gave up or only the first 10 are fun.
only the first 10 are fun.
Or worse, a game where everyone keeps telling you that you need to put in 100 hours before it is fun.
Not to mention if you do the 100 hours and it turns out the culture is more toxic than Warcraft raiding.
Bg3 acts after 1?
To be fair, I got bored at the start of act 3.
Oof for me act 2 was the worst. I mean act 3 also kinda phoned it in but there’s a lot more stuff to do that isn’t gray.
Same. That’s why I don’t really like The Witcher 3, but I keep coming back to Cyberpunk 2077. The Witcher 3 has a great story; but the game gets super boring and repetitive super quickly. Cyberpunk is setup more or less the same; tons of filler content that is ignorable, great main story, but I like the action more. I can skip through the story and still have fun blowing away gang bangers in a ton of different ways, as opposed to Witcher where there’s not much variety in the action and every battle is just swinging swords and using the right spells on the appropriate enemy types.
I want worlds big enough that I can suspend disbelief. True scale is too much (True Crime: Streets of LA was awful to traverse, for example) but too small and it feels like being in one of those play parks for small children. It’s a problem I’ve had with Fallout 3+, where the scale makes no sense. I don’t necessarily need the additional space to be dense with content (if it’s supposed to be a barren waste, why is it full of stuff?!).
I want to buy into these worlds, but I struggle when things feel ridiculous. Oh are you struggling for supplies? Even though there’s supplies 50m away from your settlement? Come on!
The first Red Dead Redemption hit the spot for me, as did the native settlement in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The scale isn’t actually realistic, but it’s large enough that I feel like it could be. GTA IV wasn’t bad either, but GTA V was too compact in many places for my tastes.
I suppose it’s much like the theatre. If a scene is well written it feels fine, but if the play calls attention to the limitations of the medium too much then it starts to become a bit silly.
Prey 2017 is one of my favorite games. Fantastic replay value. 5 hour long runs with each play through rewarding with a different experience for doings differently or out of order. Wish more games were like that.
Honestly one of the best games I’ve played recently is the Stanley Parable and that game is a couple of hours of poking around a quirky but literal office. Would happily buy that 60 times over one massively mediocre rpg.
