Can games be too long?

[orderoftheflame]

Why? It should be.

Just the same way people complain when Multiplayer isnt up to scratch.

You do realise.. games are made to a budget and a time frame right?

I'm sure in a perfect fairy land every game would have perfect MP and SP and infinite dev time and budget. In the real world, you have spend the time you have.

Sacrificing the MP on a title like BF3 to please a handful of SP gamers that aren't the target market would be suicide for the franchise.

 

[Dauthi]

You do realise.. games are made to a budget and a time frame right?

I'm sure in a perfect fairy land every game would have perfect MP and SP and infinite dev time and budget. In the real world, you have spend the time you have.

Sacrificing the MP on a title like BF3 to please a handful of SP gamers that aren't the target market would be suicide for the franchise.

I think his point is if your gonna do it do it properly or not at all. The vast majority of CoD and BF3 barely touch the single player hell reduce the price of the game and have it as a day1 dlc or seperate products.

On the original topic thou yes they can portal is a short game and rightly so i think if it was 12-16 hours it would have been tired by then.

 

[SheepBeast]

Sorry but multiplayer aspects of games are not the Main Part. They're bonuses, extras.Call of duty, Battlefield. All of them have fantastic multiplayer sides, which are expanding and they are a massive part of the game, and some people do only play multiplayer. BUT the single player should always be a main focus.

Unless of course its an online game, Like warhawk or MAG..

... what.

It's up to the devs to decide what makes up the main part of their game, not you. It's blatantly obvious to everyone except you that for series such as CoD and Battlefield the singleplayer is just a side offering to the main course, which is the multiplayer. As someone said, some BF games didn't even have a singleplayer. There are plenty of games which are MP only, and plenty which are SP only. Many have both but usually focus on one or the other.

It's just stupid to say that "single player should always be a main focus".

I think his point is if your gonna do it do it properly or not at all. The vast majority of CoD and BF3 barely touch the single player hell reduce the price of the game and have it as a day1 dlc or seperate products

Why reduce the price? The multiplayer of MW3 has ~200 hours of gameplay if you go to prestige 10. That's similar to Skyrim. And inb4 "but prestiging is just repeating the same thing again and again". I've watched a lot of Skyrim, much of the side quests are generic repetition too.

 

[Pighardia]

I think that the only game I have ever played which I found too long was Assassins Creed 2. I played it through on release and found it excellent. A few years later I played it with the 2 dlc missing chapters and it really dragged, but that was completely down to the dlc which I thought was poorly executed.

Played over 100 hours of Skyrim and didn't think it was too long at all.

 

[Dauthi]

I think his point is if your gonna do it do it properly or not at all. The vast majority of CoD and BF3 barely touch the single player hell reduce the price of the game and have it as a day1 dlc or seperate products.

Why reduce the price? The multiplayer of MW3 has ~200 hours of gameplay if you go to prestige 10. That's similar to Skyrim. And inb4 "but prestiging is just repeating the same thing again and again". I've watched a lot of Skyrim, much of the side quests are generic repetition too.

ok have it your way pay full price for the multiplayer then pay extra for single player if it makes you happy

 

[SheepBeast]

You're still missing the point. Skyrim is single player only. MW3 is (pretty much) multiplayer only. They take similar amounts of time to complete and they cost the same. This seems fair enough to me.

I could say "they should reduce the price of skyrim because it doesn't have any multiplayer", equivalent to what you're saying about CoD. Do you think Skyrim should be cheaper? No.

Hopefully you now see my point.

 

[Shamikebab]

You're still missing the point. Skyrim is single player only. MW3 is (pretty much) multiplayer only. They take similar amounts of time to complete and they cost the same. This seems fair enough to me.

I could say "they should reduce the price of skyrim because it doesn't have any multiplayer", equivalent to what you're saying about CoD. Do you think Skyrim should be cheaper? No.

Hopefully you now see my point.

No.

Skyrim has no multiplayer at all therefore it is aimed solely at single player gamers.

COD has single player and multiplayer components therefore it is aimed at both. If you want single player but not multiplayer then you are getting a 5-6 hour game for 40-45 quid.

 

[Supercow]

Completely depends on the pacing of the game and the type of game.
Skyrim kept me hooked until I completed the main story line, some shorter games like Black ops SP was like pulling teeth to get it completed.

 

[orderoftheflame]

No.

Skyrim has no multiplayer at all therefore it is aimed solely at single player gamers.

COD has single player and multiplayer components therefore it is aimed at both. If you want single player but not multiplayer then you are getting a 5-6 hour game for 40-45 quid.

Unfortunately, the cost of making a game is irrelevant to length of game when it comes to multi-player vs single player. (Obviously if you pour more money in, it can be longer).

10 (or so) multi-player maps in cod will take less time to make than a set of single player campaign environments. The SP campaign will also incur costs regarding voice acting, story writing, making the cut-scenes, etc. Multiplayer is a good way to get lots of hours of content into a game cheaply, and getting the user to do the same thing over and over means you have less to develop (Skyrim does this well, most the quests are variations on the same).

In a perfect world, you'd have publishers selling the SP and MP separately and splitting the cost of them. You really think they're going to do that though?

 

[Shamikebab]

Unfortunately, the cost of making a game is irrelevant to length of game when it comes to multi-player vs single player. (Obviously if you pour more money in, it can be longer).

10 (or so) multi-player maps in cod will take less time to make than a set of single player campaign environments. The SP campaign will also incur costs regarding voice acting, story writing, making the cut-scenes, etc. Multiplayer is a good way to get lots of hours of content into a game cheaply, and getting the user to do the same thing over and over means you have less to develop (Skyrim does this well, most the quests are variations on the same).

In a perfect world, you'd have publishers selling the SP and MP separately and splitting the cost of them. You really think they're going to do that though?

Yeah I realise that sadly, I wonder how many sales they lose by people just renting the game for the single player. In the case of COD I doubt they'll care with the amount of sales they have but for lower profile games it could make a big difference.

 

[RoboSprog]

I think in Skyrim it can be possible to become too long, as you say it still feels like I've barely done anything even though I've done most quests and I'm level 7
60 something...

If you're level 7, you haven't done most quests.
I got to level 24 and I still had tons of quests to do, and had barely touched main quest.

 

[Xinn]

I'm happy with 10-20 hours for a regular run of the mill game. Anything less and I can't justify paying full price for it on release.

RPG's are a different kettle of fish, I'll quite happily put 50-100 hours in to a decent one and over 100 on something that really grips me.

I don't like how some games (cough COD cough) can justify only having a ~4-6 hour single player campaign, even if the main focus is the MP.

 

[exhashdotdot]

Length is very relative. Just like with books, you get some good short books (Of Mice and Men -> Shadow of the Colossus) and you get some good long books (Catch 22 -> Final Fantasy VII).

The difference being, no matter how much Bioware might try to convince you others, games are still games and are not movies. Most modern games are narratives split up with gameplay sections - unless it's a good game like Demon's Souls, Shadow of the Colossus or Silent Hill 2 which has gameplay and narrative intertwined.

A game with lasting power which isn't clever enough to combine gameplay and narrative into one, needs to balance narrative and gameplay. This is why games like Uncharted are so praised, because it's small bits of both for 10 hours. Whereas people might criticise MGS4 for being 90% narrative and 10% story.

My conclusion: If a game is long, it needs to make sure it's consistently high quality and not drawn out. This is why Final Fantasy VII is so good, whereas Skyrim is so weak - Skyrim might be the bigger game technically, but everything is less quality and detailed.

For short games, there's absolutely no excuse for a short, bad quality single player - this is why Call of Duty is so terrible.

An example of the worst of both worlds is Final Fantasy XIII (surprise, i'm ragging on it again). That's got the worst combination of the two. Poorly written, drawn out dialogue and uninspired, boring gameplay makes for a dull 40 hour game nobody would want to play again.

 

[manic111]

6-8 hours is the target for game makers as they know people lose interest after that. Personally myself I like 12ish hours in a normal SP game.

RPGs don't interest me and I got bored of mass effect after about 8 hours. I just do not ever get games where you level up and every thing levels up anyway

Sounds like me. 8-10 is my optimum I think, any longer and I usually lose interest, except games which are competitive (ie Fifa).

There are a couple of exceptions, but even the Final Fantasy games and Mass Effect bored me before I finished them. I think the last game I completed was Deus Ex Human Revolutions, although I haven't had much time to play anything since then.

 

[bakes0310]

I want my rpg to be big and epic, i completed Dragon Age Origins (second time now) yesturday it took me 35hrs to do all the quests and i feel thats the shortest a rpg should be really, but it was still quality throughout for me.