Author Topic: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?  (Read 25640 times)

Offline WolfWhiteFire

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #15 on: February 10, 2018, 05:08:46 pm »
So the enemies between me and every quest I had open would borderline one-hit-kill me.
That should never happen in Skyrim, even if you don't get armor exactly as you like it, unless you set the difficulty WAY too high in my experience. Unless you have probably around 70 levels and a certain dragon type with an insta-kill attack starts spawning.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #16 on: February 10, 2018, 09:56:36 pm »
Here's a save file, if you feel like looking at it.
But like I said, I kind of stopped caring.

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #17 on: February 11, 2018, 01:49:44 am »
As far as I remember, difficulty in Skyrim was directed at your level. Higehr level, higher challenge. the problem with that was/is that the cannot calculate your skill build into this and enemies might simply not be designed for your build and you get crushed.
So yeah, I think it is possible, because the game tries to give you a constant challenge anywhere you are instead of having different "level zones" like other RPGs in the same genre have (Gothic/Risen).

I haven't played tacoma myself yet but I also have it from the monthly bundle so I will get to that later. Maybe my experience may differ. I really wanted that game actually and I'm kinda sad now, that the game might actually not be that good as U hoped. But I will judge this myself first.
In general I weight Humble Monthly actually really high because you get good games for a good fee. I don't even care that you don't know what you get, it basically a video game surprise box, might turn good, might turn bad. I had some bad ones and I had soem really good ones. the last two were exceptionally good honestly and the next one includes Dark Souls 3 plus the first of the two DLCs. It's kinda hard to determine the money per hour because everyone might differ here where to apply it ("Which games do I play from this bundle?") Civilization from the last Bundle alone nets someone multiple hundred hours if he is really interested in that game.

If it comes to gaming times, you also have to differ between replayability and non-replayability. A lot of people judge games nowadays if they can play a game multiple times and enjoy it each time or if they would only the first time playing it. Adventure games are  agood example for the later kind, they are centered aroudn story, the game works always the same, same puzzles, smae dialogs, you cannot influence the outcome, you just play the game from the beginning to the end and help the game protagonist to reach it. These games have no replayability because you most likely will enjoy them only once. If you know all the memorable moments already, they won't have the same impact on you again (A twist. A joke. Stuff like that.). In such cases you have to view the general time it takes to complete everythign with all dialogs heard and so on.
Replayable games are most of the time either Multiplayer games or games with random generation in it. Soemthing that keeps the game fresh even after you played it multiple times. Many of them might have a "finish" condition. A Multiplayer game has simply a match to be played until one side wins. Randomly generated games migth have a level or until you die, it differs greatly in those. The time from start to finish may be the "game time" but people consider it not the true game time value because you can play it more often and still enjoy it, clocking many more hours into it.
How do you measure the gaming time then? one person migth get bored after 5 rounds, one after 10, maybe one didn't bother after the first one. In such cases it is too hard to say "This game has so many hours of playing time".

We woudl also have to adress difficulty. Difficulty differs for people. Someone like Misery can beat Bullet Hell games quite easily. I would have to take hours and hours, days, weeks, maybe even months until I would beat even one. This applies to any game. Dark Souls is a good example because it is known for it's massive difficulty spike at literally any corner. Experienced players will breeze through it anyway, shortening the game time. Players who have more problems with games like DS will have to try a lot more and rely on other tactics (grinding to make up for the lack of skill). This is really appearent in RPG games where you can circumvent skill levels with grinding. If you don't have the ability to beat a difficult boss, train so long until you can crush him with brute force.
This can also apply to other games but I think it is the most prominent in RPGs.

Now, as far as value goes, how much money was spent to create those scenarios? Should I have to pay more just because I was not skilled enough? Shoudl I pay less, because the game did me entertain me only for one round of playing? It's really hard to measure the worth of games just by time or even with time at all. At least from my side. But as I said,  I like to look up play times at least to notice how long the game woudl entertain me and if this is worth an investment.

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #18 on: February 11, 2018, 10:38:03 pm »
Difficulty slider in TES games is always only a masochism slider given the horridly broken combat and spell systems in all of them, lowest is what the game was balanced around magic and combat wise. And the game is actually still challenging on "easiest" ;p You just don't die in 1 hit... and enemy backstabs now actually KILLS them.

Either way, to me such a ratio doesn't exist. The only deciding factor is "Am I having fun within 2 hours" and if the answer is no to that, refund. If it yes, then purchase price becomes irrelevant, I own it to play it either through or until it ain't fun no more ;) And replayability is a big factor for me, but not a deciding factor for purchase.

I only ever bought (specifically, not bundles) 3 games that I wish I could have refunded and really regretted buying literally from the first minute, X Rebirth, Stronghold 3 and SOTS2

But considering I paid 19€ for Factorio and Played that 250 hours... or 20$ for KSP and played that for 250hours.. well yeah. Some games on the face seem vastly under-priced. But that's not how I think about purchases. I buy things I want nowadays, never again buying anything based on hearsay so the "value" element is really meh for me.
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Offline Misery

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #19 on: February 12, 2018, 09:36:35 pm »
I buy things I want nowadays, never again buying anything based on hearsay so the "value" element is really meh for me.

This is how I wish more people would choose their purchases.  Instead of just falling for hype and all that, or buying something because everyone else is.  Maybe the AAA side of things wouldn't be so bad if that were the case.

But nope.  Bah.

As refunds go I've refunded two things, and that's about it.  One of them was a Dark Souls game... the controls made me want to stab something... and the other was a particularly horrid port of a shmup I'm familiar with from the PS3/4.

Someone like Misery can beat Bullet Hell games quite easily.

Not really the case.

They dont get beaten easily (well, occaisionally something like Deathsmiles will happen, but that's rare).  Some dont get beaten at all.

Something like Mushihime Ultra, that took.... about a year.  I've no intention of doing THAT again.  The sequel, on the other hand, is damn near impossible.  Took a ridiculous amount of time to be able to beat stage 1 in that mode.  Stage 2 just eats me.

Or there's stuff like this nightmare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0BnfUX5tvE     I did that earlier today on a whim.... wanted to see what would happen.  That thing isn't going down anytime soon.  Completely overwhelming.

Posted that on Steam, too.  There's no way I'm NOT going to show something like that off at least a bit.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #20 on: February 14, 2018, 02:02:26 am »
How is that even possible? that woudl require to literally ignore any sidequest and just go for the main story. And while this is possible and valid to do, in my opinion it's the most aweful way to play th egame. Skyrim (any ESO game actually) is about exploring the world as you like and discovering new quests and dungeons on the way, not following strictly the plot line.

I can top that:  I think I have like 2 hours in it.

Got bored, you see.  Everyone wouldnt stop talking.  I dont need to hear your damn life story, just tell me how many rats need to be stabbed and let me get to it already!

I top that. 35 minutes before I ragequit. Dull characters, dull story, awful combat, horrible voice acting, hilariously buggy and an interface that actively tries to make me commit suicide.
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Offline Misery

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #21 on: February 14, 2018, 12:26:56 pm »
How is that even possible? that woudl require to literally ignore any sidequest and just go for the main story. And while this is possible and valid to do, in my opinion it's the most aweful way to play th egame. Skyrim (any ESO game actually) is about exploring the world as you like and discovering new quests and dungeons on the way, not following strictly the plot line.

I can top that:  I think I have like 2 hours in it.

Got bored, you see.  Everyone wouldnt stop talking.  I dont need to hear your damn life story, just tell me how many rats need to be stabbed and let me get to it already!

I top that. 35 minutes before I ragequit. Dull characters, dull story, awful combat, horrible voice acting, hilariously buggy and an interface that actively tries to make me commit suicide.

But aren't the bugs "part of the charm" or whatever that fanbase always spouts?  Seriously, Bethesda gets... quite a pass on ALOT of things in their games.  Because reasons.

Honestly, I've never seen the appeal to most of the stuff they've put out.  It's always buggy, always seems really awkward in a lot of ways, and everything is just... dull.   "I don't get it" definitely sums it up.

I've wondered, more than a few times, if "world is really big, oooohhh look how expansive it is" is the actual reason why these games get so popular.  Which might also explain the current irritating popularity of open-world games (good grief I'm tired of those... apparently they even screwed up Dynasty Warriors with that recently).

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #22 on: February 14, 2018, 01:48:29 pm »
You don't have to get it, but they are poluar for  a reason and "The world is just big and it's expensive" is not the reason.
The reason is, freedom, exploration at your own pace and many more stuff.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #23 on: February 14, 2018, 02:39:41 pm »
You don't have to get it, but they are poluar for  a reason and "The world is just big and it's expensive" is not the reason.
The reason is, freedom, exploration at your own pace and many more stuff.

But all that stuff is same-y and bland and boring and spread out painfully far away from each other.

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #24 on: February 14, 2018, 02:47:39 pm »
Except it isn't for me. Liel I said, you don#t have to udnerstand. Do I have top understand why you like X or Y?
Not everyone likes the same and that does not mean it's a bad game., it simply means you don't liek it and someone else does.

Offline Misery

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #25 on: February 14, 2018, 06:02:21 pm »
The reason is, freedom, exploration at your own pace and many more stuff.

That, however, directly plays into "the world is big and expansive".  I mean, that's what "big/expansive" means in terms of gameplay.  But, it is NOT ACTUALLY TIED TO IT.  I'll get to that in a moment.

It's not just that though.  One of the reasons I don't get it is because they spend so much time building up this world... but the actual gameplay is... some of the most clunky and non-engaging I've ever seen, period, which is just about one of the worst things I can say about a game.  I mean, character movement was slower than a dead frog in sludge.  Combat was also slow, and very awkward.  The interface was even more awkward.  "Slow & awkward" pretty much sums it all up, and in the end, for all the "freedom", you were still doing the same bloody things as in every other game... dungeons and fetch quests and boss fights... it's just that in between those, you had these really blank periods of what often felt like utterly pointless travel.  Sections where NOTHING HAPPENED.

Why not remove the "literally nothing is happening" bits and just keep the gameplay engaging THE WHOLE TIME?

I had that very same question about the recent Zelda, which I also hated.  It was BORING.  Yes, the world was pretty, blah blah blah, but as I've repeated often, you could have shrunk the game world in that by 70% and STILL kept in all of the content.  ALL of it.  The "big expansive world" is, to me, padding.  Just padding.  I compare that to the original Zelda, which STILL had a big world to explore... but the ENTIRE THING was filled with stuff to do.  They didn't make it big JUST to be able to say "look how big this is".  They made it big so that they could fit everything in it.  Literally EVERY SINGLE SCREEN in the overworld had SOMETHING to do in it.  No, I can think of two screens... exactly two.... that seemed a little pointless (I later found out they actually have secret caves in them).  That game still had the utter freedom, hell, you could even sequence-break the heck out of it.  You could end up in, say, the 7th dungeon (or is it the 8th?) immediately after getting the freaking candle.  You went through that game YOUR way.   That concept, absolutely makes sense to me.  It's actually something I actively look for and I often make choices on what to buy, based on whether or not the game in question is going to let me do things MY way.  So that concept is not part of what goes over my head here.

But that's not what "open world" games seem to *actually* be about.  They seem more about bragging rights, to get people to buy them.  As in "look how much BIGGER this seems to be than all those other games".  I mean, have you noticed that ads/articles/whatever about upcoming open-world games tend to never shut the bloody hell up about just how big the game world is?  They often talk more about that, then what you can actually DO in those worlds.   They create all of this space AND DONT USE IT ALL.

I mean, hell, the fact that "fast travel" exists in these games isn't, to me, a feature:  it's a symptom.  It says "we know the travel is bloody boring.  Here's an option to just skip it".  If a game is literally giving me the option to SKIP parts of it, that.... is a problem.


I've seen ONE open world game that I honestly think got it right.  One.  Which is Just Cause 2.   Like the original Zelda, it had this big world.... AND ACTUALLY FILLED IT WITH STUFF.   It didn't matter where you were in that game's map.  Did not matter.  No matter where you were, THERE WAS SOMETHING TO DO OR FIND (usually both).  I mean, literally everywhere.  Even the freaking ocean held stuff to do.  There were never any moments of boring travel, or nothing happening, yet it was still expansive, AND it heavily emphasized the "do it YOUR way" aspect.  Overall, they got it right:  Gameplay over spectacle.  By not making the world bigger than it needed to be, they created something that was CONSTANTLY engaging, instead of OCCAISIONALLY engaging.  And they showed that they could do this without the world shrinking too far and not being interesting to explore.  There were STILL loads of areas to see.  And all the way through, fast travel did not even ONCE feel necessary.  Not... once.  Hell, I don't know if the game even HAD that, because I never bothered to check.  It simply never had any dull or slow moments despite how freaking big that game's world was (and it was quite huge... just not UNNECESSARILY huge).  What's more, the actual gameplay was just FUN.  Combat was fun.  Driving was fun. Flying planes was fun.  The grappling hook / parachute combo was BLOODY AMAZING.  It didn't matter WHAT you were doing at any time:  It was constantly fun (and controlled very well), yet also quite varied.

In other words, that game still had the things you claim to love about Skyrim (including game length and sheer amount of content).... but it proved it could have them WITHOUT that unnecessary padding.  It proved that an open-world game CAN be done that way.  If you were in a bit of gameplay that for whatever reason seemed slow?  It wasn't because of the game design.  It was because you, the player, were actively choosing to take your time for whatever reason.  It was NEVER forced on you... but it FREQUENTLY is in games like Skyrim.

And honestly, I think LOTS of gamers don't know how or why that lack of forcing the slow sections is a good thing, because the style of design used in Skyrim, or in Ubisoft's games, or Zelda, has become the norm.  Hell, it's gone BEYOND "the norm", and instead become "the only way it's ever done".  Nobody even makes games with the open world theme that are constantly engaging beyond the "ooh this area is big, look at the bigness" aspect.  Instead, they do everything they can to distract you from the fact that, hey, nothing is happening here and you need to do some very blank travelling to get to an actual thing.


Dont get me wrong:  I dont think Skyrim is a bad game.  I dont think Zelda is a bad game. I definitely accept the fact that plenty of people love them.  But I think these games fall into one of the biggest, and nastiest trends that plagues the AAA side of the industry right now, and I think it really does hurt the experience.... but most will never see that, because they genuinely have nothing else to compare it to.  They dont get to ever see that it COULD work differently... so they think it CANT.  They think that it's REQUIRED to have that "freedom".  That's why the boring parts may not seem as boring to you... you've never seen how it COULD be done, because there's been almost no examples, and the genre is firmly entrenched in that "norm".  And players accept (and perhaps dont entirely notice) the forced boring moments as something that there is no way to design around it.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2018, 06:08:28 pm by Misery »

Offline Draco18s

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #26 on: February 14, 2018, 06:46:25 pm »
Why not remove the "literally nothing is happening" bits and just keep the gameplay engaging THE WHOLE TIME?

This. Exactly this.

And when you do run into something interesting in Skyrim, it exists in isolation. "Oh a church of druids who have a quest for you. Wait, why is this church here? What are they even doing? They're just...standing there...in the middle of the forest..."

Edit:
Open Worlds Are Rubbish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxckAE9OU8M
Bethesda's Game Design is Insulting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kRRYgf54oM
« Last Edit: February 14, 2018, 06:58:24 pm by Draco18s »

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #27 on: February 14, 2018, 07:57:27 pm »
I find the titles of the videos quite insulting. And it's called opinion for  areason but the titles... well whatever.
We can agree to disagree.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #28 on: February 14, 2018, 09:55:05 pm »
I find the titles of the videos quite insulting. And it's called opinion for  areason but the titles... well whatever.
We can agree to disagree.

We certainly can. I was merely saying "here are some other people who share my opinion."

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: What is the correct price to gameplay-hour ratio?
« Reply #29 on: February 14, 2018, 11:28:51 pm »
Like I said, a matter of taste. i could as well show people that share my opinion but the sales of the game speak for itself enough.
Some people simply don't like the genre and that's okay. It's the same with me and Isaac. isaac is a trash game for me. I hate it with my guts. This game is in my eyes really badly designed. But the game was/is succesful. It has a big fanbase. So it is popular.
But in my eyes it still will be trash.
It's the same for you with Skyrim.

 

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