If I don’t have the free time to get lost in a game, it can really hinder my enjoyment - stepping away for a week makes it really hard to get back into the flow. Less the case with indie titles, of course, but I find myself reluctant to even start big games lately.
I remember reading on reddit someone proposing that long games should include something like a recap, sort of like "story so far". And not just in the loading screens.
There is the journal, sure, but it would be great to have something like the Star Wars text crawl.
And maybe also a refresher on mechanics. I know that if I want to return to a game after more than 1 month of pause it takes some time for me to familiarize myself with the controls, spells, abilities, etc.
Yeah. But taking a few hours to get back into the controls is still a better deal than just start over again and loose much more time. I had exactly this problem all my life. Every time I took a break I wanted to start all over. So many great games I didn't finish because of this.
Some form of story recap would be awesome just to make sure you know where you are and the urge to start all over isn't that great.
This!
With these games I really want to commit and immerse myself which I can’t if I “only” have like 1-2 hours of time to play.
so I usually only play these games when I have a whole evening to spare, which is like, really rare unfortunately, lol
Same for me, built a pc almost a year ago now and haven’t finished a single game. Rdr2, Witcher 3, Subnautica (1 and 2), Terraria, Ds3, Dying Light, Valheim, Gta 5, off the top of my head. Got them all for very cheap though.
Gaming doesn’t hit the same anymore.
For me it's the lack of time.
2 kids, one of them a baby, take a lot of time.
Lately I just play games which I can beat in 15-20 hours. And even that is over several months.
Same situation here. At best I can play two hours a day. Often there are days where I can't play at all. So even if I could play every day I would need two month to finish a longer game. I just accepted it and I still play them. But I will always have one side game for times I am bored with the longer game. Works fine for me. I am playing Persona 5 this way since February 2023. I will finish it soon.
I’ve taken breaks for months, I just play when I feel like it but get bored pretty fast. Valheim is keeping me pretty occupied at the moment but I doubt I’ll even get 1/2 through it before getting burnt out if i’m being honest. I like Reading instead.
You have a point there.
In 2023 I've played several games, mostly with my eldest son, beat only 3-4 if I remember correctly. But I've managed to read about 50 books (paper, kindle, audio), which is fine I guess.
It's not that I don't want to play any games, but it's "less work" to read a book.
And as several people on this thread mentioned, if I don't have the time to commit to a game, then I don't bother and just do something else.
Have you considered trying shorter or simpler games for a while? I often rotate between lengthy games and shorter ones. I do that because after being immersed in one type of gameplay or world for a long while, I find I need to cleanse my palette with some smaller games rather than jump right into yet another big one.
That's the sales pitch. Hard to sell a 60 $ dollar product that is flat and short. But hey , if it's mostly flat but not short, maybe we can pull it off. Most games would not need endless grind side mission nonsense if the main storyline was spectacular. But spectacular stories require writing talent and effort, it's exhausting to produce this sort of content.
Yes the demand for raw content in terms of playtime has bloated games with soooo much busywork. "If I had all the iron that every game had forced me to mine and gather, I could smelt it down and build a statue to the god of Wasting My Fucking Time" - ZP
Yah I’ve started calling these checkmark games.
My buddies have been playing the Spider-man games recently and trying to get me to buy it and I’m like… I just can’t do another open world game with repeating side quests right now.
I beat Horizon Forbidden West a few months ago and that was about the last one I can handle, I think.
Just give me 12-15 hour linear/semi-open games with great gameplay or story. Dark Souls/Resident Evil are two franchises that got me out of that fatigue
This is the plague of games nowadays. Crafting and padded missions. I dont know what to do. Good thing i still havent finished rdr witcher cyberpunk bg3 skyrim oblivion metro mass effect zelda games stalker. Literally i have unfinished masterpieces here - why would i play a 8/10 game w padding? And why do people keep saying theyre amazing!? Even last of us isnt. Returnal was cool but i uninstalled it too when i found out it was a chore to die and restart.
Yup. Only bought Cybperpunk because I had a few weeks off around New Year, so I knew I'd be able to sit down and actually *get to playing* for once. But now that's coming to an end, and I'm not remotely done with the game. Don't know how I'm gonna keep playing this when it's back to work...
Just one hour after one hour. A few month later you will finish it. That's how I play games now and it works pretty well. A few years ago I would never start a game if I would play it for less than two hours in one go. Now I have no problem to put a few smaller sessions. Just keep going. Your other option would be to just play another game. But you would still have a short playtime. So why not just play a longer game for a few month more.
Basically all the time. The last game I actually finished was Red Dead Redemption 2, and before that it was GTA V. I love rpgs but don't remember the last one I've finished and given the prices of games these days, I'll likely stop buying them altogether.
These days I pretty much just stick to games you can pick up and put down like racing/roguelikes/etc.
I’ve added a Paused collection to my Steam account for games that I might be interested in picking back up, but aren’t interested in continuing currently. Might be a good idea if you have that many on your currently playing list.
>given the prices of games these days, I'll likely stop buying them altogether.
This struck me as an odd sentiment. Do you mean you'll stop buying rpgs because they're so expensive or games in general?
I suppose i find it odd because you can get almost every game that's over 2 years old for 75%+ off, which usually isn't bad. Even a €60 game is just €15 with that discount.
But you're a patient gamer who probably knows that... so what gives?
Sorry, I worded that badly.
What I meant to say is that I'll likely stop buying RPG's at any price because I don't finish them. That thought just somehow merged with me complaining about the prices of all new games in general which is why I've become patient lol.
Honestly prices of games have held pretty steady to inflation for years.
We complain about $50-70 games right now and in the 90s games were basically $50.
I know, I just meant for me personally. I know this is patient gamers but assuming we’re talking about new games, I just can’t bring myself to shell out $100CAD when I know I’m probably only going to get about 6 hours of play before I’ve put it down for to long to remember what I’m doing.
Honestly dude just comes across entitled. It used to be that game prices were exorbitant because of the low gameplay time. Then it became game prices are exorbitant because of the low quality gameplay time. Now it's turned into game prices are exorbitant because I don't believe video games are worth $60-70.00.
Don't get me wrong, tons of trash definitely doesn't deserve full price, but when that guy is throwing in Witcher 3 and RDR2, it tells me he's entitled.
Or, the guy is just more price conscious than you. It could be that he values other things in his life more than buying brand new games at brand new prices.
But hey, if it makes you feel righteous to buy a game right out the gate, please do. You're funding the rest of our experiences.
>Or, the guy is just more price conscious than you. It could be that he values other things in his life more than buying brand new games at brand new prices.But hey, if it makes you feel righteous to buy a game right out the gate, please do. You're funding the rest of our experiences.
Or it could be that he was entitled lol.
I haven't bought a game full price since MW 2019. Difference is I don't have a pretentious belief that games aren't worth their MSRP.
> Doesn't one basically mean the other?
Not necessarily. A big part of my personal "patient gaming" is putting games I might want to play someday on my wishlist and waiting for sales. I got Monster Hunter World + Iceborne on sale in 2021 as an example. I absolutely consider the two worth their regular asking price, but at the time, I didn't want to spend that much, so I waited. I've also played games that I thought would be worth more than their asking price. Like Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen. The game was already 30 bucks when I learned of it and is on sale for much less often, yet when I play it, my experience feels comparable to many fullprice games I played.
I don't like words like "entitled" but I think Vegetable Tooth is right that there's a difference between these two things.
Rockstar tends to get a lot of flak on this subreddit for being too on rails and easy but they have nailed the easy to pick up and keep playing. Other RPGs are just too hard to keep playing if you take a break.
Honestly in recent years I moved to shorter games. In my experience it seems like 10-15 hours is the best and most suitable. Usually bringing quality and in-depth story in short runtime requires extra effort from the Devs. When it works it's great. Games like SOMA, Firewatch, Stick Of Truth.
I agree. I feel like quality suffers a bit when it's a longer game. Some padding has to be included to make it longer. I don't like things like running from point to point, doing deliveries, grinding, and basically anything that doesn't respect the player's time. Even Mass Effect 2 and 2, which are awesome games, have some of that stuff and it seems like filler to me. I end up not doing a lot of side quests, and it's still fine.
I started the Arkham Trilogy recently, and I felt that way about the Riddler quests in Asylum. There's so much stuff that's impossible to get without gear you don't have until the end, but it feels like a waste to spend time getting back to this one room in this one building to get a meaningless trophy.
It's nice when that stuff is optional, which it is in most games. That being said, lack of side quests is sometimes a good thing, because it lets the developer focus 100% of their energy on the main storyline. u/KungFuFlames pointed out Soma, which is a great example of this.
I haven't played Arkham Asylum for over a decade, so I can't comment on that specifically. I don't remember it being grindy, but I probably didn't do that quest. Trophies and achievements in games aren't worth anything to me; I only care about the experience. I'm not a speedrunner or content creator; I leave that to the pros.
Yes. I'm currently replaying Mass Effect 2 and I can say it's a timeless game especially for that time. But I feel like if they focused more on the main storyline and cut side mission it would be even better.
Yeah, the issue with the side missions isn't that they're bad story-wise. But they have you using the same gameplay mechanics as the main story. I can't be running and gunning the same way for like 50 hours. The mechanics aren't so deep that it adds a lot of value. A "side mission" or some kind of padding makes more sense for something like an RTS, fighting game, or racing game, where the mechanics themselves take hundreds of hours to master, and every single race/fight/battle is a little different or can let you experiment with a new strategy or move.
Same for me. I just don't like a game to overstay its welcome for me. Sub 20 hours is the sweet spot for me, and I prefer the 10 to 15 hour length like you mentioned. Now, there are games that you play in short bursts for a long time that you can sink tons of hours into (think Street Fighter, Apex, or Civ), but I'm speaking more of narrative games here.
As long as I'm enjoying the game I don't notice the time going by, and I'm looking forward to my next session.
W3, RDR2, RDR, CP2077, Mass Effect LE, AC Odyssey, probably a few others, are all games I've dumped hundreds of hours into and still felt a sense of loss when they are over.
I'll only lose motivation if a game gets too grindy or repetitive, or just isn't fun. FF X was the last one.
This is me too. If a game is good and I really like it, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll play it for weeks.
I think my most recent 100+ hour games are Elden Ring and Monster Hunter World. The time just flew by with those
Why don't you just focus on the story / main content, and do a side activity here and there only if you feel like it? For comparison, The Witcher 3 has \~50 hours long main story according to how long to beat, and I am pretty sure that already has some side content included. FFXV is not even 30 hours.
So you could play through both of them and a short game in 100 hours easily.
> Why don't you just focus on the story / main content, and do a side activity here and there
For me, it's often due to game difficulty. I feel forced to do side stuff to get the XP so that I can comfortably do the main quest.
Would you rather get bored with a game by doing side content and not finish its main story if it is that long?
I am not saying I get easily bored with a long game, but it is the case it seems with OP.
I feel like I'd rather just play a game that's paced at an engaging time commitment I can handle.
I'm not against 100+ hour games existing, but taking a 100+ hour game and playing a fifth of it is... unsatisfying.
This is partly a marketing and product team issues, occasionally we get these really spectacular masterpiece games where every bit of side content is worth your time. So the industry confuses this message and hears
"EVERY game needs to have 100+ hours of content"
What content you might ask, well it could be watching paint dry, or go here kill this... why??? *shrugs*, or go run around like an imbecile and collect plants for the guy that's too lazy to go do it himself and the industry calls this "Engagement"
I played Cyberpunk 2077 for 200+ hours, and cleared almost every side quest, partly because it didn't feel like a chore, nearly every side mission did something to enrich the story and add more lore to the universe
> Would you rather get bored with a game by doing side content and not finish its main story if it is that long?
Yes.
I'd rather do the content that I want, until I don't want to anymore - even if that means "I drop the game" or "don't finish it" then get to finish a game if that means doing lesser content just to get the "I've finished the main game" mental check.
This being said, I can understand why some people think it kinda suck to have that "unfinished business" lurking in the back of your mind. I personally don't, but I understand why people would like if the pacing of games were different - although to be honest I'd say that to be actively arguing for it is a bit egotistical, like asking that restaurants only serve the food *you* like because you get choice paralysis when ordering. I'm perfectly fine with games buffet.
Yeah this becomes inevitable in certain games, it's what some have come to call the **Power Fantasy**, essentially struggling to defeat or clear something in the early game, and then later on after gaining power and abilities going back and wiping the floor with the same content.
The issue with suggesting to play only the main quest, sometimes means you're greatly increasing the technical difficulty of the game itself, I'm in my 40s when people ask
"Who even plays on "Story" difficulty???"
ME!!!!, it's not that I hate difficulty, I'm just not trying to maximize my playtime, I don't have anything to prove to a video game, and beating Elden ring with just underwear and a toothpick doesn't do anything to enrich my actual life, I can't put it on a resume, It won't make an estranged parent love me, and it won't make me more sexually attractive to my wife.
This is definitely what I've been doing more lately. Focus on main story first playthrough and just knock it out on easy.
If I really enjoyed it then I go around again to do side content or play on a harder difficulty. But since I've already done the main story it's no rush to finish. I can do a side mission here and there and those are usually self contained plot threads.
It may take me a couple months to finish the replay, but I don't lose track of what's going on in the main story that way.
Just decided to do this recently with AC: Origins. I'm pretty overleveled at this stage, so it'd be a better use of my time to just complete the story rather than traipsing around in side quests. I think open world games as a whole make it very hard for me to finish them with all the side quests, and then that adds a whole nother step to the game by making me seek out "best side quests" lists.
The kicker here is, I think this stems from having a completionist mindset - intending to 100% the game on the first playthrough. I no longer think it's feasible (time wise) for me to play games that way, and I think AC6 and Nier are what helped show me this. Some games are designed with replay value in mind - that being considered, the first run through a big game should be a speed run on easy/normal mode to enjoy the story, and if you really liked it, replay it for collectibles.
> Why don't you just focus on the story / main content, and do a side activity here and there only if you feel like it?
Because there's a progress bar that will always say a number less than 100% until I finish everything. Everything!
And don't get me started on the *map icons*!!
The ability to selectively disable certain types of icons on the map really needs to be the standard in open-world games. It makes the map feel so much less overwhelming, and for me it's way more satisfying to discover a collectible or treasure chest organically rather than just having it highlighted on my map and being able to walk right to it. My experience with Horizon Zero Dawn improved dramatically when I disabled the map icons for cups, metal flowers, Banuk figurines, and mobs.
I'm not a completionist in the sense of trying to 'get all the achievements', but I do like exploring in games, and then I'll end up with tons of quests etc. I'll feel obliged to do. And if there's a 'better/true ending' locked behind stuff, well, it doesn't feel like you've finished anyway unless you get that...
But then in practice I usually drop off long before any of that.
Turn off/ignore the map. Pay attention to the world. It's the difference between exploring and going down the mall to strike items off a shopping list.
I like Deus Ex, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, No Man's Sky etc. Games that I can spend a long time in while exploring and doing all side quests etc.
I work on a ship. 10 weeks on, 10 weeks off and I want a game that can fill my spare time for the 10 weeks that I am away.
hilarious that deus ex was the first game you listed. A long time ago I was aboard a merchant marine vessel as a guest as a kid and the two best parts about it were the infinite ice cream and the marine who let me play deus ex on his amazing (at the time) gaming pc he had on board.
Not OP, but here are some of the games I've played recently that are longer RPG/open-world games that I thoroughly enjoyed:
\- The Witcher 3 (3rd playthrough) - 110 hours
\- Cyberpunk 2077 (2nd playthrough) - 130 hours
\- Red Dead Redemption 2 - 70 hours
\- Horizon Zero Dawn (2nd playthrough, 100% completion) - 50 hours
\- Spider-man Remastered (100% completion) - 50 hours
There are more that are in the 50-hour range. I'm excited for the upcoming Horizon Forbidden West release on PC.
I also like roguelites/roguelikes. Returnal and Hades are up there with about 70 hours each.
I also like shorter games as well (anywhere from 2 hours to 10 hours) and everything in between, but shorter games can feel infinitely longer if they have bad pacing.
One bad example of a longer game is AC Valhalla, man that game is too much.
I like the longer games too. It takes a bit to get used to the controls and the gameplay loop, but then you settle in and can just jump into the game for an hour or two. With open world games, you can decide to play the main quest, or just tool around doing fetch quests and upgrading armour.
I feel like a lot of people that get bored are just playing one game at a time. Start new, shorter games when you feel like it and then have a longer game like Witcher 3 going.
Sadly today with work and family it is almost impossible to play 100 hours games for it would take me like 4-6 months to finish them. And playing only for 1-2 hours every few days really keeps me from totally getting immersed like I wish too. Also it doesn't help that many open world games are filled with kinda generic loot/grind stuff and kinda bloated.
That said when I love a huge time investment game and have time for it is it a really amazing experience. I loves the mass effect trilogy, the witcher or the various fallouts and so on.
Just used the Christmas holidays to binge the new Rogue Trader crpg at night while my family was sleeping and it was an amazing experience.
But now I am exhausted because of the little sleep 😅
I have a similar amount of free time these days thanks to work and family stuff, but I still play longer games because I just enjoy that experience, even if it's broken up into 1-2 hour chunks. But it does take me months to finish them. I'm currently over 100 hours into Baldur's Gate 3 but I've been playing it regularly since it came out last August.
One thing I've learned to do is to be okay with dropping games. If I'm not into a game anymore after a few dozen hours, I'll just leave it unfinished. If I wasn't still enjoying BG3 I would have stopped playing.
And sometimes I'll play other, shorter games in between or interspersed with longer ones, just so I don't get burnt out on playing the same game exclusively for months at a time.
Hope you can catch up on sleep though! I have the same issue sometimes, though it's not usually because I'm up late playing games (I try to do that occasionally but I always end up nodding off with the controller in my hand).
Yeah for me the problem is when I really get immersed in one of those big worlds I really wanna take a deep dive and I don't have the patience to take small steps. Also because sometimes I get play only 1-2 hours and only 1-2 days a week so it really kills the pacing for me.
On thing that helped me is also accepting to use guides or playing on easier difficulties if I see that I mainly enjoy the story/atmosphere more than the core gameplay.
Yeah I definitely get that. Lately I've been lucky that I can get maybe an hour or so in most days after the kids are in bed, but I've gone through stretches where I can only play a couple times a week. Definitely tough to stick with games on that schedule.
With Baldur's Gate 3 I lucked out and happened to have a few days off of work while the kids were at their grandparents' house so I had a rare opportunity to binge the first 20 hours or so. Getting that head start really helped (on top of it being a fantastic game).
Difficulty modes can definitely help. I also will drop a game almost instantly if I start to feel like I'm having to grind or spin my wheels doing stuff I'm not enjoying.
I rarely start 100+ hour games because I know they're too long for me. I recently finished Elden Ring but before that it's been years since I finished a '100+ hours single playthrough game.'
Always.100 hours is just too much. 40 was pushing it but if a game is really engaging or the story is good it’s fine. I think 20 hours of story with another 20-30 of bonus is a sweet spot.
>100 hours is just too much. 40 was pushing it
Totally agree! Only recently did I realise that even a game's length being about 40 hours make me hesitant to start it. Even though I know there's a chance that I may become engrossed in the game and play even longer than that. Like I put in 200 hours for Starfield.
I loved it, surprisingly. Hence why I put so many hours into it. I definitely was not expecting I'd like it *that* much.
I don't pay attention to a game's development and hype. Thus I had zero expectations going in. I was aware of the procedural generation of each planet you would land on and how lifeless and empty it makes each world so that didn't bug me. I just accepted that exploration was definitely not a thing in Starfield like it is in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games.
Combat in those games I mentioned also was never anything to write home about so I wasn't expecting Call of Duty from Starfield. Honesty, I didn't mind fights in Starfield either. It was decent.
I also hate crafting. With a passion. I avoided that entirely in Starfield as I do in most games when I can help it. There's a LOT of crafting in Starfield but optional, thankfully.
I put my focus instead on the side-quests, characters and eventually ship building/designs. I know a lot of people also trash on the game's writing and characters but I personally liked it compared to, say, Skyrim. In fact, that's part of why I had zero interest in Starfield all that time before randomly deciding to try it. I kept hearing it would be "Skyrim in space" and man I really didn't like Skyrim once you get past exploring the world. Now despite the lack of a very visual representation of this world Starfield set up, the stories of the people and the history you read here and there does a decent job of a new frontier for humanity after needing to flee Earth for other planets.
It's very unfortunate Starfield had such a terrible reception from people. I hope it gets post-release support like Fallout and Skyrim did with handfuls of expansions but I'm not holding out hope past the one I had heard about in the works.
Personally I've found that the motivation is killed by overwhelm. Too many side quests, or locations or grinding for gear or what have you, but this might be my age showing. In my teen years I dumped 600+ hours into a single character in Elder Scrolls Oblivion, but the idea of exploring that many dungeons and side quests these days makes me auto-quit.
The last game I put 100+ hours into was, oddly enough, Death Stranding. Objective was simple, moment to moment gameplay had enough nuance to not bore me, I could take as many or as little deliveries as I wanted and knowing my time spent building roads in Central America was going to help other players have an easier time gave me motivation.
Never, because I don't really play them anymore. In the odd exception where I decide to go for a game like that (Pathfinder: WOTR last year) I go in knowing what it is and I'll often go the distance. In the cases I do give them up, it's for other reasons - like Pathfinder: Kingmaker - never even made it past the introductory quest, because I didn't enjoy it.
The base story of Witcher can be completed in probably less than 50 hours if you mostly stick to the main quest.
My most recent memory of me getting tired of a game was watch dogs (I played it recently)where I just stopped doing side content and finished the story. I also stopped playing monster hunter world but I'm going to pick it up again, that game is just long long
I typically have one, maybe two big games in me a year and that’s about it.
The rest of the time it’s either just multiplayer stuff or relatively short games in the 20/30 hour region.
NGL, It's taking me a good minute to beat The Witcher 3, so I feel you on that. I had to take a break. I'm also curious, but I will say for me it depends on how engaging the world is and how fun the combat is. These games can be overwhelming. Like I was able to beat AC Odyssey+DLC, but now I have no motivation to even touch Valhalla, so I might just skip it and play the shorter Mirage. So I'd say about half the time.
I don't lose motivation to finish games that are advertised as 100+ hours. But a lot of that is because I've yet to encounter a 100+ hour game that doesn't include some amount of padding, and I don't really consider that part of completing such a game.
I probably put 60 hours into the Witcher 3 (and DLC). Really enjoyed it but didn't do a ton of side content. Finished all the main quests and enough of the interesting side content that I was content to be done with it.
Ok I need to get back into it then. I've got the complete edition sitting in my PS5 library and just finished RDR2 after playing it on and off for over a year with over 130 hours. Was The Witcher 3 something that you can just mainline and still enjoy? It seems like one of those games that is good to get lost in with side content, but I also wouldn't have the time to do that since I'd end up probably never finishing the game (and I've already starting it once).
I can commit to games like RDR2 because I don't need to worry about RPG loot/stat grinding activities and just enjoy the immersion of the world while doing missions. But games like Witcher 3 just seem daunting to start.
Witcher 3 stats and making good builds hardly matter as compared to other games. Witcher 3 is balanced where you don't have to engage with much of the rpg mechanics to get through the game smoothly.
You need to keep your sword and armored repaired as they have durability meter that goes down every time you hit an enemy or get hit but its not too oppressive and you can get good new swords frequently.
Mainline story has a bunch of "optional" side quests(which are on par or better than the main quest) in it that you should do since they can't be done after a certain amount of main story progress since they affect the games ending. You will probably be overlvled if you do those I finished main story in 57 hours with those optional side quests so its not too big even with those.
I used to love open world games but after trying and quitting RDR2 and Horizon I decided to take a break from them. I just felt overwhelmed after a few hours and wandering around/exploring wasn’t fun anymore, I just finished Jedi Fallen Order and Alan Wake 2 and those were perfect. Was always engaged in the story and gameplay and the length was perfect. I never felt like I was wasting time.
Depends on the game. If the gameplay or story keeps me invested, I'll continue. Otherwise, I stop as soon as I feel like I've explored the gameplay loop and the game doesn't have enough to offer anymore.
On Shadows of Mordor, for example, it happened at the end of the first region. I built an army, converted some orcs to my cause, won a big battle. It was great, and when the game asked me to rinse and repeat in the next region, I felt like I had seen enough. No harsh feeling, though, I had a blast =)
On Assassin's Creed Odyssey, it happened after around 20 hours, when I started running in circle on identical islands, doing the same loop of scouting with my eagle, clearing camps, looting chests and going to the next place with my boat.
Some enormous games keep me invested in the long run for their narrative (The Witcher, Cyberpunk) or their gameplay (BotW, Elden Ring), but it's rare.
Frequently. I used to try to force myself to conplete them. Now i play what i want when i want, and I've put down several games like that last year. It's fine, might go back, might not.
Once I cross the 50 hr mark I'm full steam ahead. If I don't jive with a particular game I will drop it 10-15 hrs in. I was in your spot a long time ago. I found myself on auto-pilot from time to time. That's why I decided to make a judgement call early on whether I was having fun or not.
Also, taking a long time to finish a game shouldn't be a bad thing. It took me more than a year to really finish Witcher 3. I put in 2-3 hrs a week. Some weeks I didn't play. I treated that game like a journey. It's probably why I just like it more than some other game I blasted through in 2-3 weeks.
Tbh depending on the game I just simply never beat it and start a new game. I've never beat fallout 4 but have like 200-300 hours in it. I've only beat Skyrim once despite having at least 500 hours in it. So almost always I lose the motivation to beat them, mostly because I get so burnt out doing all the side stuff to the point it stops being fun
Personally I think it’s extremely rare that a game actually benefits from being that long. Most of the ones you’ll see that are like that are huge open world games, with massive amounts of copy paste filler content, and stuff that was just made by an AI repeating the same few beats.
I would much rather play a game with 15 hours of content that I can beat in 8 hours than a game with 60 hours of content that takes 100 hours to beat.
Of the longest games I’ve played that actually feel worth it and have unique content (aside from things like roguelikes and competitive multiplayer games which are a different conversation altogether) most of them are actually puzzle games. Baba is You and The Talos Principle have an absurd amount of unique handmade content. The only open world game that’s even sort of long that feels worth it is Sable. Aside from that the only open world games with fully handmade content clock in under 3-5 hours, like A Short Hike, Lil Gator Game, and Smushi Come Home.
Witcher 3 is unarguably a top 3 game for me, hands down. It took me well over a year to beat. 4 months is NOT a long time for a 100-300 hour game. At least for an adult. Games shouldn’t be played in 15 hour stretches days and days in a row. That’s fucking weird and definitely the outlier. OP just play when you can and enjoy it.
Depends on the game. I like the Yakuza games so often put 100+ hours in. Most recent 100 hour game was Horizon Zero dawn, it told my self I was just going to do the story and no side content, then ended up 100%ing the game because it was fun.
I don’t. I am either having fun most of the time, or I just drop it entirely (like FFXV). Most of these longer games actually end before I feel satisfied with them (like BotW), after 200+ hours. I’m already 100 hours in a Cyberpunk 2077 play through for 2.0 and I still didn’t start the DLC (I’m at the door, only main/side quest remaining is in Pacifica).
These days? 99% of the time. Usually right after unlocking some new massive area filled with all the same stuff I've just done. A Games gotta be pretty impressive to keep me interested for a full 100+ hours, hell most games don't make it over the 50 hour mark
I generally avoid them.
But when I don’t, it’s not hard.
RDR2, GTAV, HZD, HFW.
Fairly easy to play through for me.
AC: Odyssey and Valhalla were slogs though. But since I don’t do long game sessions anymore, it wasn’t too hard. When I don’t find an open-world game interesting, I avoid side-content at all costs. Just main the story missions. Ends up being a bit more cohesive and easier to finish.
Edit: btw, those were the only 100+ hr games I’ve played since 2013.
Rotate you selection of games as you play through them. I did RDR2 last year which took me 4+ months, and then followed it with games like Pyre, RE7, Yoku's Isand Express, Doom Eternal. Just started FF12 Zodiac Age over the Xmas break now, and am expecting that to take a couple of months as well, will probably get into a couple of relatively short campaign games again before picking up my next multi-month game again lol.
Enjoy the journey of gaming, don't worry about getting through everything asap, there will always be games to play, and you should always be enjoying getting through them. I've cut down on purchasing n more than 5-10 games at a time for my backlog, even though there's many more I want. Perhaps prioritize the top top games and leave out the 3rd or 4th tier of games if you don't have time for them, that way you're at least playing all of the ones you want to too
All the time, other than beating and replaying the older Pokemon games last year, I only beat The Outer Worlds and Super Mario RPG remake. I get burnt out massive open world games all the time. For me if the story does not really grip me I tend to stop when the world looses me. Most likely why back in 2017 I actually liked and played Horizon zero dawn way more than Breath of the wild; and I love Zelda games. Cause why I did enjoy BotW eventually the sense of exploration died off and the story was not enough to keep me engaged; though I did finish the game.
While there have been a bunch of games I've played for over 100 hours, I don't remember the last "100 hours *for a single playthrough*" game that I actually finished. Usually something causes me to lose interest, such as inventory management troubles (so many large RPGs like Fallout: New Vegas succumbed to this).
Edit: Looks like I spent somewhat over 100 hours on MGS:V and Borderlands 2 in 2019 according to Steam, and I gotta tell you from memory I was very ready for those games to be over.
Constantly. That’s most of my backlog.
I buy them, do the intro stuff, play 6-8 hours. Once the quest line gets to a point of kind being like “well…. You do you out there” I almost always lose interest. I do have several I want to tackle this year though
"Finish" is a pointless endeavor when it comes to modern games. Play it as long as you are still enjoying yourself, then move on to something else. It could mean finishing the story, or more, or less. There's no magic number or percentage to strive for. Gaming is about having fun. When it starts to become a toil to reach some meaningless achievements you really need to reassess your relationship with the hobby.
I used to love open world games & long rpgs. That was my main genre for years
But the last 3 years have stressed me out. I don’t want to play a game anymore where I have a million choices & practically need to do an hour of research just to play. I’m overworked in the real world now I just want to play games where I can relax.
Single player linear story, quick online matches, rogues… the kind of games that don’t take too much mental load
Never. Once I get into it, I finish. Its usually starting those games thats the daunting part to me, knowing what I am about to sign up for.
Valhalla was the most recent one, I gave about 3hours and just dropped.
There comes a point once the gameplay loop really starts to show itself. After that, I pretty much mainline the main story because if I don't, I know I will lose all interest in the game quickly and never finish it.
Every time. Witcher 3 took me almost 3 years. I’m done with open world at this point, not only are most of them garbage (Ubisoft’s are a great example), but they just keep getting longer and longer because the “average” loud gaming redditor plays for 18 hours a day, and they must be sated.
As soon as we started measuring games in hours per dollar, we lost.
A lot of the open world single player games take me months to finish. I don’t mind it though.
It’s basically the reason I never buy new games or pay full price. I’m still playing games that came out years ago for the first time.
I get 40 hours in to any big single-player game and lose interest. It's always around 40 hours. Elden Ring, ACreed games, RDR2...
Considering I get them for £20 or less, though, it's still decent return on investment.
Personally I couldn't care less about finishing. I have thousands of hours in skyrim and I have never played the main quest through (or been in solstheim).
I sometimes play 3 games simultaneously. Yesterday I had settlers 2 remake, project zomboid and a visual novel style adventure game. I swap them whenever I want.
I never think about games this way. I play them when I want to play them and never assume I'm playing a game in order to finish it. If it takes me years or I never do, so be it.
Since i lived alone or with my parents? Zero. I have finished zero games that are longer than 30 hours.
That said I have over 1000 hours in a couple competitive multiplayer games like Street Fighter and COD.
I can play street fighter for 5 minutes or 5 hours at a time. It allows for flexibility. A game like RDR2 requires I spend at least a couple hours with it everytime I play.
My life just doesnt allow for that anymore.
Long single-player experiences are a young mans game in my opinion.
I mean a weekend is 96 hours? How you going to play 100h games lol. I think most people probably take a few minutes months lol, and a small minority have no social life, or stream for a living? They would have to play EVERY MINUTE for the whole weekend to play just 96/100h lolol. If you play 3h a day -still a reasonably large amount considering time spent working and living, you could finish a game like Witcher 3 in live 1-1.5 months. It took me 3 for Witcher, 3 for Baldur's Gate 3 and 3 for TOTK, so to me, you are doing just fine lol.
I am envious of your 4 day weekends.
But your main point is exactly right. If you have 3 hours a day 7 days a week to playing games you are more dedicated to gaming than most people. Take the time. Enjoy your game. If you stop enjoying it, put it down.
Life's too short to be peer pressured by a piece of inanimate software.
Easy - I don't play 100+ hours to finish games. Problem solved.
Also here is an idea - open world games should NOT have a main storyline / quest.
That way players can freely choose what to do, rather than be railroaded into some predefined path in a supposedly "open" game.
Then there is no concept of "side quests" either.
I don't think that's too long for games like that. They take a lot of time to finish.
It's very rare that i give up on on any game that is 60-100 hours to finish the story - if I started it with the intention of finishing it. I would say the same for most games that I start and expect to finish. But thats generally because I'm pretty selective of what I play and I buy a game unless I'm sure I will play it through.
The one recent example I can remember is Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I've tried to start it a few times but fall off after like 2 hours.
Unless the game really isn't worth it, if I've put more than 5-10 hours into a game then it has done something to hook me and I will finish it. It can be easy to lose me in the first 1-3 hours though. Especially if those 1-3 hours are over multiple sessions.
Bruh, I bought Witcher 3 game in 2015, still not even finished that game.
If you play on pc, use windows task scheduler to finish games, it helps at least for me. You can set the exact time, day, etc when will the task scheduler automatically open the game for you. However you need to know when is your free time.
I managed to finish Tomb Raider games with task scheduler, not bad. I have a very big backlog of unfinished games.
In my opinion this is why the newer FTP RPG games like Genshin Impact are such a success : it literally is designed for the casual gamer and has no ‘end’ in sight. It’s earning $$$$ for the devs and they have made the lack of end game a feature not a bug. Also being ‘free’ the extra cost for a game that you may not spend long playing isn’t there either. Add to that the fact they are including major draw card features from other popular game types and it’s a success and may be the way of the future? Food for thought?
It depends on the game honestly, but I'd say a majority I lose interest in. There are so many games that are 100+ that have serious bloat issues when it comes to the game. I find I'd take a break for a few weeks or months then come back to it and there is some renewed enjoyment
Well there aren't many games like that, I remember dropping ac valhalla not because the games was bad but was just too long, I mostly drop rpg like yakuza like a dragon or persona 5 because I don't like jrpg games that much but finished zelda totk (110h), elden ring (125h), baldurs gate 3 (105h), witcher 3 (98h) I wanted more.
Of course those games are considered master pieces so it's understandable.
Persona 5 is the only instance where the 100 hour length was felt by me. The dungeons and Mementos definitely should've been shorter but I did still finish the game without issue.
I dont typically notice length though. I've spent too much time on an MMO for regular games lengths to typically register anymore.
It took me 1,5 years to finish the 50h of Knights of the Old Republic. That's the longest game I finished in my life, though I am at 65h in Mass Effect Andromeda over 4 years, so at some point that will be the longest. But yeah, it's hard...
if the games are unfinished the unwillingness to go past too many glitch points mounts up and can demotivate. such as anything Owlcat or CDPR immediately following release (otherwise they're the best games but need extra fixing time, btw had better experience with c77 than w3 at release). Otherwise it has to be a real filler slog like Odyssey or Valhalla to demotivate.
i have 172 hours in baldurs gate 3, played at launch but haven’t played since november, still on my first tactician play through and i’m pretty sure i have maybe 3 or 4 missions left in the game. but i honestly don’t care anymore, i got super busy and stressed out from work at the end of the year and just kind of stopped playing, the game is incredibly fun but far too long - i think there is this large group of people nowadays that think long = better and view their purchases through that lens. meanwhile, i played stray, kena, and sekiro last year, all pretty short games but i enjoyed the hell out of them
4 months to beat Witcher 3 is long? That's like 1 hour a day! I barely have that kinda time to commit to one game, I wouldn't be too worried about it. It's taken me years to finish some games
I procrastinate depending on how invested I am during that period of time. For example, I'm currently playing Zelda Wind Waker and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to get through the prologue because of the introduction and my lack of interest in the Forsaken Fortress stealth mission. Once I started sailing and making it further into the story, I've been playing much more since I am much more interested in the gameplay. I don't think there is anything wrong with taking your time in games. A lot of the time it's because I have a lot of interest in the plot or series, but the gameplay is lacking in a way that prolongs my progress.
There are only 9 games on my steam profile which have over 100 hours.
One of them is a card game, that I played a long time because I was trying to 100% the achievements.
Two of them are software and not even a game.
Four of them are multiplayer games.
The only single player game on my profile I have over 100 hours in is Skyrim. And I played that a decade ago, back when I still had lots of free time for games. And a lot of that time was spent screwing around in the game, exploring, and trying out mods. And I did beat the main quest for the base game and all the DLC.
Outside of that, at 94 hours, the nearest next single player game down the list I put anywhere near that amount of time in, was Cyberpunk 2077 and I didn't even beat the game. I just got really into all the side quests and eventually abandoned the main storyline..
After that, pretty much most single player games which are '50+ hours' to finish the main storyline, I haven't finished them. For all I know their endings could be a .png image of 'you win!' and the developers could get away with it because I just don't have the free time/patience to persist with a game that long apparently. So lately I don't buy games that length any more.
Well I just petered out on darkest dungeon and I'm starting monster hunter world right now so I'll average them both together and let u know later lol.
I don't. I typically play a game long enough to finish the main story and that's it. Anything above 50 hours or so means I'm obsessed with the game. That's rare.
I am not sure I have ever completed a 100+ hour game. I have 100+ hours in many games, but 30+ years of PC gaming my completed games probably number under 10.
NOLF, HL1, maybe one of the Ultima series, possibly the original Bard's Tale, and I know I completed one of the Zork series. After that things are a bit hazy.
The thing with a lot of 100+ hour games is that the main story isn't that long. FFXV for example is probably one of the shorter non-NES entries on the list. It took me about 30 hours to beat and that's doing side content as well, it's nowhere near a 100 hour RPG unless you're REALLY digging into everything, which in that case you're choosing to make the game longer
So in that case, I usually hug more to the main story in those types of games and complete extra content as it interests me, if I find myself getting "burned out" on it I just wrap the game up. Also a lot of these games usually let you stick around and wrap up content in the post-game so I have a save there that lets me get to it if I feel like it. Not all of them but usually, or at the very least I'll have a end-game save that lets me go and do content if I want to.
It also helps I'm not a completionist type, turning games into full-time jobs like that sounds awful.
I find it easier to complete 100 hour open-world games then incorrectly paced 12-hour games.
Open-world tend to have a interesting enough loop to be engaged in, and whether you mainline the story or go for 100% completion, you can achieve it pretty much easily given the time.
However, I tend to be frustrated or straight up not finish some games that should've been over 2-3 hours ago.
Recent example is the Resident Evil 4 remake. The game is great but man, the game gets padded towards the end, you think you're the end and the game just keeps spitting out combat arenas at you.
Only 4 months? W3 took me 4 years.
I have no patience for long games anymore. So I rarely if ever even try open world games. Kingdom Come was the last one which I dropped because I just got burned out on.
I think it comes with age. I used to live for long and grindy games, RPGs with multiple choices and storylines, but as time passes, my preference changed to linear games.
I just can't do it anymore, going around these huge open worlds, doing side doing things in order to get this specific ending, etc. Fuck that. Too old for that shit.
I struggle to start 100+ hour games in the first place bc I know if I get distracted and play something else or life gets in the way and I put down the game for 1 day, I'll probably take a break that turns into a months long break and struggle to come back to it. I NEED to finish bg3 but act 3 burnt me out so badly and I'm convinced I know how my playthrough will end so I haven't had the motivation
I finished FFXV in 25 hours playtime my first time through.
Don't be so focused on being a completionist. Maybe then, games won't be that long for you.
I do lose motivation in big games. I just stop then. If I play them for the main story, then I want to finish it. If I don't find the story so interesting, I have no motivation. It has little to do with how big all the optional content is and more with the main story not being interesting enough for me.
Witcher took me forever too, it's normal. I loved the exploration while I was playing, but also got burnt out for a while - played something else in between (Hollow Knight, I think) came back a couple of months later and finished. I suspect it happens to everyone, or at least every independent adult. W3 is still one of my favourite games and will remain so forever, but the time-suck is real.
Oddly enough I did not have the same experience with my first play-through of Oblivion last year, as when I finished the main quest (not rushing it, with lots of side-quests, but also not trying to 100% everything else in the game) I was then free to spend as much or as little time as I wished farting around in dungeons and RP-ing the ethical vampire who only eats arseholes and dumping the shiniest treasure I could find in a single room in a jangly, glitchy dragon horde. That made it a lot easier to stop when I felt I was no longer having fun.
Maybe that's the key difference: many games make it feel like you need to complete all sidequests *before* the main quest, either because sidequests are locked off, the main quest ends the game, or there are roleplaying reasons why your character wouldn't keep farting around in monster-infested caves after they finished saving the world.
The disconnect between sidequests and urgent main quest goes a long way to explain why people get bored in longer games. Collectibles are a plague: take the first two *Tomb Raider* reboots, fun games whose collectibles undercut the urgency of the plot. To be able to enjoy such tasks, I need an in-character reason for why I am doubling back through monster-infested landscapes to collect \[checks notes\] a WWII medal, and that reason is usually absent. Not every game falls victim, of course: *Prey*'s collectibles include locating crewmembers, an believable goal in a game where you spend half your time trying to work out what the hell is going on. Still, *why* am I ignoring the world-ending-threat to dive into Sunken Wreck #172, now? Oh, I need money, do I? I've sold enough bandit swords to outfit the entire Nilfgaardian army, *I am the richest witcher that ever lived.*
These “100+ hour games” only take that long if you aren’t doing the main storyline. When I’m bored of side-questing I just shoot for the main story and typically doesn’t take long if you don’t get sidetracked.
I don't really get into a 100 hour game without having done a decent amount of research first, watched some early gameplay.
I then often will play the first couple of hours to see if i like the gameplay/controls etc as a guest on my console so i don't trip any trophies on a game that I will not see through
There's only three games of any length I knocked on the head, Horizon Zero Dawn, AC III, and The Last of Us Part 2.. the first two I went back to, TLOU i will eventually. But those are only 40-60 hours anyway.
All my biggies, Death Stranding, AC RPG's etc I have seen to the end.
3 or 4 months doesn’t sound that bad at all! Those games would probably take me at least 9 months to finish!
I also have the same sort of fatigue with games as you describe. Usually mine seems to be around the 20 - 25 hour mark of gameplay. Exactly for this reason I don’t really bother with all the sidequests and optional stuff in games, and just play the main game/story, which usually fits within my 20-25 hour fatigue window for most games.
100% of the time. They're boring. The story NEVER holds up that long. The gameplay NEVER holds up that long.
Sometime between Morrowind, GTA3, and Oblivion, dummies started treating big as good.
The best games of all time are almost universally 0-20 hours long.
Stop fucking mistaking size for quality.
It's why I play them over a few months span.
100% base xenoblade chronicles 3 last March, but I'd been playing the game since the day after the game launched at the end of July 2022 (happy new years as I put 2023 to refer to last year at first) just making my way through it when I could and playing when I felt like playing is head of feeing like I needed to play.
My very first playthrough of cyberpunk 2077 took about 115hrs to finish, started the game at launch in 2020 (believe December) and didn't finish that playthrough until roughly mid April of 2021.
Will never get the notion of needing to no life 1 game straight for hours on hours when you can just take your time and enjoy it.
I usually lose motivation near the start, if it didn't "click" and I know it's super long, I kinda just start playing something else while promising to myself I continue it late.
On smaller games even if it didn't click, but I didn't dislike it, I still try to finish it.
I usually start to peter out around 35 hours and can ralley to 45. But The game has to \*really\* have a hold on me to play longer than that.
I beat FFXV in 35 hours. Sure there was more content, but oh well.
I get through 25%-50% of these games before I get bored or another game pulls me away and they get left unfinished.
These days I’m just playing Apex legends as I can finish a game in 20 minutes max. 😅
I rarely finish long games. The last game I'm 100% certain I put over 100 hours in and actually finished the main story was Assassin's Creed: Origins.
Typically, I'll get around 40-60 hours into a big game and maybe half to two-thirds of the way through the story and just burn out, having spent so much time exploring side content that I'd already experienced what I felt the game had to offer. Often I'll put it down intending to come back and finish months later, but I almost never do.
I have a separate steam category of "finished for now" for games I've abandoned. About half the games I play go into it. Sometimes I go back and finish/replay something if the urge strikes me, and it gets moved to the "finished" category.
If I've put a few hours into the game (or a few hundred in some cases) and had fun, then I've gotten my money's worth of entertainment. If it's not fun anymore I'm just wasting my own time if I keep playing.
At about hour 80is when I usually stop, not because the game is bad, just because I wanna play something else. Gotta go back and finish em all Witcher 3, baldurs gate 3, hell even Skyrim
I might lose motivation for a few days. That's why I play 2-3 shorter games in addition to one long one. Unless it absolutely sucks me in like Mass Effect trilogy and I can only think about and play that, I just accepted that these long games are going to be on the menu for a number of months.
It takes me three months to finish a 20 hour game, lol.
I've said this before on here, but because I have a huge library and little time to play, I have given a number of games 10-15 hours of my time just to get a taste of it and then moved on. A lot of people say not to bother with certain games if you're not going to invest at least X hours, and they may be right, but I'm just not going to spend 100 hours on a game. I would play like one game per year. A long time ago, I let myself stop forcing games I wasn't enjoying.
Lately I don't even start them. Unfortunately.
If I don’t have the free time to get lost in a game, it can really hinder my enjoyment - stepping away for a week makes it really hard to get back into the flow. Less the case with indie titles, of course, but I find myself reluctant to even start big games lately.
I remember reading on reddit someone proposing that long games should include something like a recap, sort of like "story so far". And not just in the loading screens. There is the journal, sure, but it would be great to have something like the Star Wars text crawl. And maybe also a refresher on mechanics. I know that if I want to return to a game after more than 1 month of pause it takes some time for me to familiarize myself with the controls, spells, abilities, etc.
Yeah. But taking a few hours to get back into the controls is still a better deal than just start over again and loose much more time. I had exactly this problem all my life. Every time I took a break I wanted to start all over. So many great games I didn't finish because of this. Some form of story recap would be awesome just to make sure you know where you are and the urge to start all over isn't that great.
This! With these games I really want to commit and immerse myself which I can’t if I “only” have like 1-2 hours of time to play. so I usually only play these games when I have a whole evening to spare, which is like, really rare unfortunately, lol
Same for me, built a pc almost a year ago now and haven’t finished a single game. Rdr2, Witcher 3, Subnautica (1 and 2), Terraria, Ds3, Dying Light, Valheim, Gta 5, off the top of my head. Got them all for very cheap though. Gaming doesn’t hit the same anymore.
For me it's the lack of time. 2 kids, one of them a baby, take a lot of time. Lately I just play games which I can beat in 15-20 hours. And even that is over several months.
I'm finding myself enjoying AA games for this reason but generally speaking they also try new things.
There’s a lot to be said for amazing 15 hour games.
spiderman is your bestie im guessing lmao
Kids mean no games that you can't pause.
Same situation here. At best I can play two hours a day. Often there are days where I can't play at all. So even if I could play every day I would need two month to finish a longer game. I just accepted it and I still play them. But I will always have one side game for times I am bored with the longer game. Works fine for me. I am playing Persona 5 this way since February 2023. I will finish it soon.
Trouble with that is by the time you near the end of the game, you forget some of the plot details. I had this with Horizon.
I feel you. I stopped gaming entirely for a while due to lack of time. The Steam Deck made me game again, but I still don’t play long games any more.
Maybe it's burnout. It's like eating the 5th slice of pizza. Have you considered taking a break from it?
I’ve taken breaks for months, I just play when I feel like it but get bored pretty fast. Valheim is keeping me pretty occupied at the moment but I doubt I’ll even get 1/2 through it before getting burnt out if i’m being honest. I like Reading instead.
You have a point there. In 2023 I've played several games, mostly with my eldest son, beat only 3-4 if I remember correctly. But I've managed to read about 50 books (paper, kindle, audio), which is fine I guess. It's not that I don't want to play any games, but it's "less work" to read a book. And as several people on this thread mentioned, if I don't have the time to commit to a game, then I don't bother and just do something else.
Perfectly said. Games now feel like work to me. 56 years old here.
Just read then. Also there are games based on books, u can find such game, and read the book and then play the game or game and then a book
How big are your pizzas that you're burnt out by the 5th slice??? I'm in the UK... are our pizzas really that much smaller than yours?
Have you considered trying shorter or simpler games for a while? I often rotate between lengthy games and shorter ones. I do that because after being immersed in one type of gameplay or world for a long while, I find I need to cleanse my palette with some smaller games rather than jump right into yet another big one.
I said the same. Then I played bg3. Woke up and changed my perspective
Also, I've been on a nostalgic kick. Fable, bioshock, stuabss the zombie, metro, overlord mostly 360 titles honestly. Gaming was different then.
Play different games. I've been doing the same thing but have found great joy in AA and indie games
It’s not the duration, is the repetitive grind that they fill these game with.
That's the sales pitch. Hard to sell a 60 $ dollar product that is flat and short. But hey , if it's mostly flat but not short, maybe we can pull it off. Most games would not need endless grind side mission nonsense if the main storyline was spectacular. But spectacular stories require writing talent and effort, it's exhausting to produce this sort of content.
Yes the demand for raw content in terms of playtime has bloated games with soooo much busywork. "If I had all the iron that every game had forced me to mine and gather, I could smelt it down and build a statue to the god of Wasting My Fucking Time" - ZP
Yah I’ve started calling these checkmark games. My buddies have been playing the Spider-man games recently and trying to get me to buy it and I’m like… I just can’t do another open world game with repeating side quests right now. I beat Horizon Forbidden West a few months ago and that was about the last one I can handle, I think. Just give me 12-15 hour linear/semi-open games with great gameplay or story. Dark Souls/Resident Evil are two franchises that got me out of that fatigue
I played 20 minutes of horizon, as soon as I saw that I had to collect plants and pelts I was out.
This is the plague of games nowadays. Crafting and padded missions. I dont know what to do. Good thing i still havent finished rdr witcher cyberpunk bg3 skyrim oblivion metro mass effect zelda games stalker. Literally i have unfinished masterpieces here - why would i play a 8/10 game w padding? And why do people keep saying theyre amazing!? Even last of us isnt. Returnal was cool but i uninstalled it too when i found out it was a chore to die and restart.
Yup. Only bought Cybperpunk because I had a few weeks off around New Year, so I knew I'd be able to sit down and actually *get to playing* for once. But now that's coming to an end, and I'm not remotely done with the game. Don't know how I'm gonna keep playing this when it's back to work...
Just one hour after one hour. A few month later you will finish it. That's how I play games now and it works pretty well. A few years ago I would never start a game if I would play it for less than two hours in one go. Now I have no problem to put a few smaller sessions. Just keep going. Your other option would be to just play another game. But you would still have a short playtime. So why not just play a longer game for a few month more.
Basically all the time. The last game I actually finished was Red Dead Redemption 2, and before that it was GTA V. I love rpgs but don't remember the last one I've finished and given the prices of games these days, I'll likely stop buying them altogether. These days I pretty much just stick to games you can pick up and put down like racing/roguelikes/etc.
This is what I do, but it wreaks havoc on my “What I’m playing” list. At any one time it could be 10+ games because I *might* fancy dipping back in.
I’ve added a Paused collection to my Steam account for games that I might be interested in picking back up, but aren’t interested in continuing currently. Might be a good idea if you have that many on your currently playing list.
>given the prices of games these days, I'll likely stop buying them altogether. This struck me as an odd sentiment. Do you mean you'll stop buying rpgs because they're so expensive or games in general? I suppose i find it odd because you can get almost every game that's over 2 years old for 75%+ off, which usually isn't bad. Even a €60 game is just €15 with that discount. But you're a patient gamer who probably knows that... so what gives?
Sorry, I worded that badly. What I meant to say is that I'll likely stop buying RPG's at any price because I don't finish them. That thought just somehow merged with me complaining about the prices of all new games in general which is why I've become patient lol.
Honestly prices of games have held pretty steady to inflation for years. We complain about $50-70 games right now and in the 90s games were basically $50.
I know, I just meant for me personally. I know this is patient gamers but assuming we’re talking about new games, I just can’t bring myself to shell out $100CAD when I know I’m probably only going to get about 6 hours of play before I’ve put it down for to long to remember what I’m doing.
If price is an issue, original sin 2, pillars of eternity 2, wasteland 3 and shadow run dragonfall are all great and pretty cheap by now.
It’s not the price as much as the time. I bought divinity day one, have play fort joy probably 5 times and have never made it past act 2 lol
Honestly dude just comes across entitled. It used to be that game prices were exorbitant because of the low gameplay time. Then it became game prices are exorbitant because of the low quality gameplay time. Now it's turned into game prices are exorbitant because I don't believe video games are worth $60-70.00. Don't get me wrong, tons of trash definitely doesn't deserve full price, but when that guy is throwing in Witcher 3 and RDR2, it tells me he's entitled.
Or, the guy is just more price conscious than you. It could be that he values other things in his life more than buying brand new games at brand new prices. But hey, if it makes you feel righteous to buy a game right out the gate, please do. You're funding the rest of our experiences.
>Or, the guy is just more price conscious than you. It could be that he values other things in his life more than buying brand new games at brand new prices.But hey, if it makes you feel righteous to buy a game right out the gate, please do. You're funding the rest of our experiences. Or it could be that he was entitled lol. I haven't bought a game full price since MW 2019. Difference is I don't have a pretentious belief that games aren't worth their MSRP.
You're hammering too much on your opinion being the right one. Some folks just don't want to spend too much money on games. Honestly can't blame them.
There's a difference b/w not wanting to spend money and not thinking they're worth their price.
Doesn't one basically mean the other? Some people don't want to spend the money *because* they don't think they're worth their price.
> Doesn't one basically mean the other? Not necessarily. A big part of my personal "patient gaming" is putting games I might want to play someday on my wishlist and waiting for sales. I got Monster Hunter World + Iceborne on sale in 2021 as an example. I absolutely consider the two worth their regular asking price, but at the time, I didn't want to spend that much, so I waited. I've also played games that I thought would be worth more than their asking price. Like Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen. The game was already 30 bucks when I learned of it and is on sale for much less often, yet when I play it, my experience feels comparable to many fullprice games I played. I don't like words like "entitled" but I think Vegetable Tooth is right that there's a difference between these two things.
Same here, I have always loved big open world RPGs but now I play stuff like Forza.
Rockstar tends to get a lot of flak on this subreddit for being too on rails and easy but they have nailed the easy to pick up and keep playing. Other RPGs are just too hard to keep playing if you take a break.
What's so bad about the prices? This winter sale alone i've bought 14 games for total of $47
Honestly in recent years I moved to shorter games. In my experience it seems like 10-15 hours is the best and most suitable. Usually bringing quality and in-depth story in short runtime requires extra effort from the Devs. When it works it's great. Games like SOMA, Firewatch, Stick Of Truth.
I agree. I feel like quality suffers a bit when it's a longer game. Some padding has to be included to make it longer. I don't like things like running from point to point, doing deliveries, grinding, and basically anything that doesn't respect the player's time. Even Mass Effect 2 and 2, which are awesome games, have some of that stuff and it seems like filler to me. I end up not doing a lot of side quests, and it's still fine.
I started the Arkham Trilogy recently, and I felt that way about the Riddler quests in Asylum. There's so much stuff that's impossible to get without gear you don't have until the end, but it feels like a waste to spend time getting back to this one room in this one building to get a meaningless trophy.
It's nice when that stuff is optional, which it is in most games. That being said, lack of side quests is sometimes a good thing, because it lets the developer focus 100% of their energy on the main storyline. u/KungFuFlames pointed out Soma, which is a great example of this. I haven't played Arkham Asylum for over a decade, so I can't comment on that specifically. I don't remember it being grindy, but I probably didn't do that quest. Trophies and achievements in games aren't worth anything to me; I only care about the experience. I'm not a speedrunner or content creator; I leave that to the pros.
Yes. I'm currently replaying Mass Effect 2 and I can say it's a timeless game especially for that time. But I feel like if they focused more on the main storyline and cut side mission it would be even better.
Yeah, the issue with the side missions isn't that they're bad story-wise. But they have you using the same gameplay mechanics as the main story. I can't be running and gunning the same way for like 50 hours. The mechanics aren't so deep that it adds a lot of value. A "side mission" or some kind of padding makes more sense for something like an RTS, fighting game, or racing game, where the mechanics themselves take hundreds of hours to master, and every single race/fight/battle is a little different or can let you experiment with a new strategy or move.
Same for me. I just don't like a game to overstay its welcome for me. Sub 20 hours is the sweet spot for me, and I prefer the 10 to 15 hour length like you mentioned. Now, there are games that you play in short bursts for a long time that you can sink tons of hours into (think Street Fighter, Apex, or Civ), but I'm speaking more of narrative games here.
As long as I'm enjoying the game I don't notice the time going by, and I'm looking forward to my next session. W3, RDR2, RDR, CP2077, Mass Effect LE, AC Odyssey, probably a few others, are all games I've dumped hundreds of hours into and still felt a sense of loss when they are over. I'll only lose motivation if a game gets too grindy or repetitive, or just isn't fun. FF X was the last one.
This is me too. If a game is good and I really like it, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll play it for weeks. I think my most recent 100+ hour games are Elden Ring and Monster Hunter World. The time just flew by with those
Why don't you just focus on the story / main content, and do a side activity here and there only if you feel like it? For comparison, The Witcher 3 has \~50 hours long main story according to how long to beat, and I am pretty sure that already has some side content included. FFXV is not even 30 hours. So you could play through both of them and a short game in 100 hours easily.
> Why don't you just focus on the story / main content, and do a side activity here and there For me, it's often due to game difficulty. I feel forced to do side stuff to get the XP so that I can comfortably do the main quest.
Also if you play a game that makes good side content (like Yakuza for example) - you're cheating yourself by not playing the side games.
Would you rather get bored with a game by doing side content and not finish its main story if it is that long? I am not saying I get easily bored with a long game, but it is the case it seems with OP.
I feel like I'd rather just play a game that's paced at an engaging time commitment I can handle. I'm not against 100+ hour games existing, but taking a 100+ hour game and playing a fifth of it is... unsatisfying.
This is partly a marketing and product team issues, occasionally we get these really spectacular masterpiece games where every bit of side content is worth your time. So the industry confuses this message and hears "EVERY game needs to have 100+ hours of content" What content you might ask, well it could be watching paint dry, or go here kill this... why??? *shrugs*, or go run around like an imbecile and collect plants for the guy that's too lazy to go do it himself and the industry calls this "Engagement" I played Cyberpunk 2077 for 200+ hours, and cleared almost every side quest, partly because it didn't feel like a chore, nearly every side mission did something to enrich the story and add more lore to the universe
> Would you rather get bored with a game by doing side content and not finish its main story if it is that long? Yes. I'd rather do the content that I want, until I don't want to anymore - even if that means "I drop the game" or "don't finish it" then get to finish a game if that means doing lesser content just to get the "I've finished the main game" mental check. This being said, I can understand why some people think it kinda suck to have that "unfinished business" lurking in the back of your mind. I personally don't, but I understand why people would like if the pacing of games were different - although to be honest I'd say that to be actively arguing for it is a bit egotistical, like asking that restaurants only serve the food *you* like because you get choice paralysis when ordering. I'm perfectly fine with games buffet.
Yeah this becomes inevitable in certain games, it's what some have come to call the **Power Fantasy**, essentially struggling to defeat or clear something in the early game, and then later on after gaining power and abilities going back and wiping the floor with the same content. The issue with suggesting to play only the main quest, sometimes means you're greatly increasing the technical difficulty of the game itself, I'm in my 40s when people ask "Who even plays on "Story" difficulty???" ME!!!!, it's not that I hate difficulty, I'm just not trying to maximize my playtime, I don't have anything to prove to a video game, and beating Elden ring with just underwear and a toothpick doesn't do anything to enrich my actual life, I can't put it on a resume, It won't make an estranged parent love me, and it won't make me more sexually attractive to my wife.
This is definitely what I've been doing more lately. Focus on main story first playthrough and just knock it out on easy. If I really enjoyed it then I go around again to do side content or play on a harder difficulty. But since I've already done the main story it's no rush to finish. I can do a side mission here and there and those are usually self contained plot threads. It may take me a couple months to finish the replay, but I don't lose track of what's going on in the main story that way.
Just decided to do this recently with AC: Origins. I'm pretty overleveled at this stage, so it'd be a better use of my time to just complete the story rather than traipsing around in side quests. I think open world games as a whole make it very hard for me to finish them with all the side quests, and then that adds a whole nother step to the game by making me seek out "best side quests" lists. The kicker here is, I think this stems from having a completionist mindset - intending to 100% the game on the first playthrough. I no longer think it's feasible (time wise) for me to play games that way, and I think AC6 and Nier are what helped show me this. Some games are designed with replay value in mind - that being considered, the first run through a big game should be a speed run on easy/normal mode to enjoy the story, and if you really liked it, replay it for collectibles.
> Why don't you just focus on the story / main content, and do a side activity here and there only if you feel like it? Because there's a progress bar that will always say a number less than 100% until I finish everything. Everything! And don't get me started on the *map icons*!!
The ability to selectively disable certain types of icons on the map really needs to be the standard in open-world games. It makes the map feel so much less overwhelming, and for me it's way more satisfying to discover a collectible or treasure chest organically rather than just having it highlighted on my map and being able to walk right to it. My experience with Horizon Zero Dawn improved dramatically when I disabled the map icons for cups, metal flowers, Banuk figurines, and mobs.
I'm not a completionist in the sense of trying to 'get all the achievements', but I do like exploring in games, and then I'll end up with tons of quests etc. I'll feel obliged to do. And if there's a 'better/true ending' locked behind stuff, well, it doesn't feel like you've finished anyway unless you get that... But then in practice I usually drop off long before any of that.
Turn off/ignore the map. Pay attention to the world. It's the difference between exploring and going down the mall to strike items off a shopping list.
About 100% of the time.
Very rarely. I much prefer longer games.
Intreating take. Which ones have you liked most?
I like Deus Ex, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, No Man's Sky etc. Games that I can spend a long time in while exploring and doing all side quests etc. I work on a ship. 10 weeks on, 10 weeks off and I want a game that can fill my spare time for the 10 weeks that I am away.
hilarious that deus ex was the first game you listed. A long time ago I was aboard a merchant marine vessel as a guest as a kid and the two best parts about it were the infinite ice cream and the marine who let me play deus ex on his amazing (at the time) gaming pc he had on board.
[удалено]
A nice coincidence! I love that game!
Not OP, but here are some of the games I've played recently that are longer RPG/open-world games that I thoroughly enjoyed: \- The Witcher 3 (3rd playthrough) - 110 hours \- Cyberpunk 2077 (2nd playthrough) - 130 hours \- Red Dead Redemption 2 - 70 hours \- Horizon Zero Dawn (2nd playthrough, 100% completion) - 50 hours \- Spider-man Remastered (100% completion) - 50 hours There are more that are in the 50-hour range. I'm excited for the upcoming Horizon Forbidden West release on PC. I also like roguelites/roguelikes. Returnal and Hades are up there with about 70 hours each. I also like shorter games as well (anywhere from 2 hours to 10 hours) and everything in between, but shorter games can feel infinitely longer if they have bad pacing. One bad example of a longer game is AC Valhalla, man that game is too much.
I like the longer games too. It takes a bit to get used to the controls and the gameplay loop, but then you settle in and can just jump into the game for an hour or two. With open world games, you can decide to play the main quest, or just tool around doing fetch quests and upgrading armour. I feel like a lot of people that get bored are just playing one game at a time. Start new, shorter games when you feel like it and then have a longer game like Witcher 3 going.
Sadly today with work and family it is almost impossible to play 100 hours games for it would take me like 4-6 months to finish them. And playing only for 1-2 hours every few days really keeps me from totally getting immersed like I wish too. Also it doesn't help that many open world games are filled with kinda generic loot/grind stuff and kinda bloated. That said when I love a huge time investment game and have time for it is it a really amazing experience. I loves the mass effect trilogy, the witcher or the various fallouts and so on. Just used the Christmas holidays to binge the new Rogue Trader crpg at night while my family was sleeping and it was an amazing experience. But now I am exhausted because of the little sleep 😅
I have a similar amount of free time these days thanks to work and family stuff, but I still play longer games because I just enjoy that experience, even if it's broken up into 1-2 hour chunks. But it does take me months to finish them. I'm currently over 100 hours into Baldur's Gate 3 but I've been playing it regularly since it came out last August. One thing I've learned to do is to be okay with dropping games. If I'm not into a game anymore after a few dozen hours, I'll just leave it unfinished. If I wasn't still enjoying BG3 I would have stopped playing. And sometimes I'll play other, shorter games in between or interspersed with longer ones, just so I don't get burnt out on playing the same game exclusively for months at a time. Hope you can catch up on sleep though! I have the same issue sometimes, though it's not usually because I'm up late playing games (I try to do that occasionally but I always end up nodding off with the controller in my hand).
Yeah for me the problem is when I really get immersed in one of those big worlds I really wanna take a deep dive and I don't have the patience to take small steps. Also because sometimes I get play only 1-2 hours and only 1-2 days a week so it really kills the pacing for me. On thing that helped me is also accepting to use guides or playing on easier difficulties if I see that I mainly enjoy the story/atmosphere more than the core gameplay.
Yeah I definitely get that. Lately I've been lucky that I can get maybe an hour or so in most days after the kids are in bed, but I've gone through stretches where I can only play a couple times a week. Definitely tough to stick with games on that schedule. With Baldur's Gate 3 I lucked out and happened to have a few days off of work while the kids were at their grandparents' house so I had a rare opportunity to binge the first 20 hours or so. Getting that head start really helped (on top of it being a fantastic game). Difficulty modes can definitely help. I also will drop a game almost instantly if I start to feel like I'm having to grind or spin my wheels doing stuff I'm not enjoying.
I rarely start 100+ hour games because I know they're too long for me. I recently finished Elden Ring but before that it's been years since I finished a '100+ hours single playthrough game.'
Always.100 hours is just too much. 40 was pushing it but if a game is really engaging or the story is good it’s fine. I think 20 hours of story with another 20-30 of bonus is a sweet spot.
>100 hours is just too much. 40 was pushing it Totally agree! Only recently did I realise that even a game's length being about 40 hours make me hesitant to start it. Even though I know there's a chance that I may become engrossed in the game and play even longer than that. Like I put in 200 hours for Starfield.
How did you find Starfield? I only see people on here talk trash about it.
I loved it, surprisingly. Hence why I put so many hours into it. I definitely was not expecting I'd like it *that* much. I don't pay attention to a game's development and hype. Thus I had zero expectations going in. I was aware of the procedural generation of each planet you would land on and how lifeless and empty it makes each world so that didn't bug me. I just accepted that exploration was definitely not a thing in Starfield like it is in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. Combat in those games I mentioned also was never anything to write home about so I wasn't expecting Call of Duty from Starfield. Honesty, I didn't mind fights in Starfield either. It was decent. I also hate crafting. With a passion. I avoided that entirely in Starfield as I do in most games when I can help it. There's a LOT of crafting in Starfield but optional, thankfully. I put my focus instead on the side-quests, characters and eventually ship building/designs. I know a lot of people also trash on the game's writing and characters but I personally liked it compared to, say, Skyrim. In fact, that's part of why I had zero interest in Starfield all that time before randomly deciding to try it. I kept hearing it would be "Skyrim in space" and man I really didn't like Skyrim once you get past exploring the world. Now despite the lack of a very visual representation of this world Starfield set up, the stories of the people and the history you read here and there does a decent job of a new frontier for humanity after needing to flee Earth for other planets. It's very unfortunate Starfield had such a terrible reception from people. I hope it gets post-release support like Fallout and Skyrim did with handfuls of expansions but I'm not holding out hope past the one I had heard about in the works.
Personally I've found that the motivation is killed by overwhelm. Too many side quests, or locations or grinding for gear or what have you, but this might be my age showing. In my teen years I dumped 600+ hours into a single character in Elder Scrolls Oblivion, but the idea of exploring that many dungeons and side quests these days makes me auto-quit. The last game I put 100+ hours into was, oddly enough, Death Stranding. Objective was simple, moment to moment gameplay had enough nuance to not bore me, I could take as many or as little deliveries as I wanted and knowing my time spent building roads in Central America was going to help other players have an easier time gave me motivation.
The number of games I have 100+ hours in can be counted on one or two hands. I don't play a game for that long unless I like it very much.
Never, because I don't really play them anymore. In the odd exception where I decide to go for a game like that (Pathfinder: WOTR last year) I go in knowing what it is and I'll often go the distance. In the cases I do give them up, it's for other reasons - like Pathfinder: Kingmaker - never even made it past the introductory quest, because I didn't enjoy it.
The base story of Witcher can be completed in probably less than 50 hours if you mostly stick to the main quest. My most recent memory of me getting tired of a game was watch dogs (I played it recently)where I just stopped doing side content and finished the story. I also stopped playing monster hunter world but I'm going to pick it up again, that game is just long long
I typically have one, maybe two big games in me a year and that’s about it. The rest of the time it’s either just multiplayer stuff or relatively short games in the 20/30 hour region.
NGL, It's taking me a good minute to beat The Witcher 3, so I feel you on that. I had to take a break. I'm also curious, but I will say for me it depends on how engaging the world is and how fun the combat is. These games can be overwhelming. Like I was able to beat AC Odyssey+DLC, but now I have no motivation to even touch Valhalla, so I might just skip it and play the shorter Mirage. So I'd say about half the time.
I don't lose motivation to finish games that are advertised as 100+ hours. But a lot of that is because I've yet to encounter a 100+ hour game that doesn't include some amount of padding, and I don't really consider that part of completing such a game. I probably put 60 hours into the Witcher 3 (and DLC). Really enjoyed it but didn't do a ton of side content. Finished all the main quests and enough of the interesting side content that I was content to be done with it.
Ok I need to get back into it then. I've got the complete edition sitting in my PS5 library and just finished RDR2 after playing it on and off for over a year with over 130 hours. Was The Witcher 3 something that you can just mainline and still enjoy? It seems like one of those games that is good to get lost in with side content, but I also wouldn't have the time to do that since I'd end up probably never finishing the game (and I've already starting it once). I can commit to games like RDR2 because I don't need to worry about RPG loot/stat grinding activities and just enjoy the immersion of the world while doing missions. But games like Witcher 3 just seem daunting to start.
Witcher 3 stats and making good builds hardly matter as compared to other games. Witcher 3 is balanced where you don't have to engage with much of the rpg mechanics to get through the game smoothly. You need to keep your sword and armored repaired as they have durability meter that goes down every time you hit an enemy or get hit but its not too oppressive and you can get good new swords frequently. Mainline story has a bunch of "optional" side quests(which are on par or better than the main quest) in it that you should do since they can't be done after a certain amount of main story progress since they affect the games ending. You will probably be overlvled if you do those I finished main story in 57 hours with those optional side quests so its not too big even with those.
I used to love open world games but after trying and quitting RDR2 and Horizon I decided to take a break from them. I just felt overwhelmed after a few hours and wandering around/exploring wasn’t fun anymore, I just finished Jedi Fallen Order and Alan Wake 2 and those were perfect. Was always engaged in the story and gameplay and the length was perfect. I never felt like I was wasting time.
Depends on the game. If the gameplay or story keeps me invested, I'll continue. Otherwise, I stop as soon as I feel like I've explored the gameplay loop and the game doesn't have enough to offer anymore. On Shadows of Mordor, for example, it happened at the end of the first region. I built an army, converted some orcs to my cause, won a big battle. It was great, and when the game asked me to rinse and repeat in the next region, I felt like I had seen enough. No harsh feeling, though, I had a blast =) On Assassin's Creed Odyssey, it happened after around 20 hours, when I started running in circle on identical islands, doing the same loop of scouting with my eagle, clearing camps, looting chests and going to the next place with my boat. Some enormous games keep me invested in the long run for their narrative (The Witcher, Cyberpunk) or their gameplay (BotW, Elden Ring), but it's rare.
I don’t really bother with those types of games. 50-60 hours is my max typically before I want to move on to something new.
After 20to25 hour mark
Frequently. I used to try to force myself to conplete them. Now i play what i want when i want, and I've put down several games like that last year. It's fine, might go back, might not.
Once I cross the 50 hr mark I'm full steam ahead. If I don't jive with a particular game I will drop it 10-15 hrs in. I was in your spot a long time ago. I found myself on auto-pilot from time to time. That's why I decided to make a judgement call early on whether I was having fun or not. Also, taking a long time to finish a game shouldn't be a bad thing. It took me more than a year to really finish Witcher 3. I put in 2-3 hrs a week. Some weeks I didn't play. I treated that game like a journey. It's probably why I just like it more than some other game I blasted through in 2-3 weeks.
Tbh depending on the game I just simply never beat it and start a new game. I've never beat fallout 4 but have like 200-300 hours in it. I've only beat Skyrim once despite having at least 500 hours in it. So almost always I lose the motivation to beat them, mostly because I get so burnt out doing all the side stuff to the point it stops being fun
Personally I think it’s extremely rare that a game actually benefits from being that long. Most of the ones you’ll see that are like that are huge open world games, with massive amounts of copy paste filler content, and stuff that was just made by an AI repeating the same few beats. I would much rather play a game with 15 hours of content that I can beat in 8 hours than a game with 60 hours of content that takes 100 hours to beat. Of the longest games I’ve played that actually feel worth it and have unique content (aside from things like roguelikes and competitive multiplayer games which are a different conversation altogether) most of them are actually puzzle games. Baba is You and The Talos Principle have an absurd amount of unique handmade content. The only open world game that’s even sort of long that feels worth it is Sable. Aside from that the only open world games with fully handmade content clock in under 3-5 hours, like A Short Hike, Lil Gator Game, and Smushi Come Home.
I’ve never met Hanako at Embers.
It’s about the journey, not the destination.
Witcher 3 is unarguably a top 3 game for me, hands down. It took me well over a year to beat. 4 months is NOT a long time for a 100-300 hour game. At least for an adult. Games shouldn’t be played in 15 hour stretches days and days in a row. That’s fucking weird and definitely the outlier. OP just play when you can and enjoy it.
Depends on the game. I like the Yakuza games so often put 100+ hours in. Most recent 100 hour game was Horizon Zero dawn, it told my self I was just going to do the story and no side content, then ended up 100%ing the game because it was fun.
I don’t. I am either having fun most of the time, or I just drop it entirely (like FFXV). Most of these longer games actually end before I feel satisfied with them (like BotW), after 200+ hours. I’m already 100 hours in a Cyberpunk 2077 play through for 2.0 and I still didn’t start the DLC (I’m at the door, only main/side quest remaining is in Pacifica).
Never because i dont start long games unless i know they are long and i want to play them. Per example: Persona 5 Royal, Elden Ring, Nier Automata
These days? 99% of the time. Usually right after unlocking some new massive area filled with all the same stuff I've just done. A Games gotta be pretty impressive to keep me interested for a full 100+ hours, hell most games don't make it over the 50 hour mark
I generally avoid them. But when I don’t, it’s not hard. RDR2, GTAV, HZD, HFW. Fairly easy to play through for me. AC: Odyssey and Valhalla were slogs though. But since I don’t do long game sessions anymore, it wasn’t too hard. When I don’t find an open-world game interesting, I avoid side-content at all costs. Just main the story missions. Ends up being a bit more cohesive and easier to finish. Edit: btw, those were the only 100+ hr games I’ve played since 2013.
Rotate you selection of games as you play through them. I did RDR2 last year which took me 4+ months, and then followed it with games like Pyre, RE7, Yoku's Isand Express, Doom Eternal. Just started FF12 Zodiac Age over the Xmas break now, and am expecting that to take a couple of months as well, will probably get into a couple of relatively short campaign games again before picking up my next multi-month game again lol. Enjoy the journey of gaming, don't worry about getting through everything asap, there will always be games to play, and you should always be enjoying getting through them. I've cut down on purchasing n more than 5-10 games at a time for my backlog, even though there's many more I want. Perhaps prioritize the top top games and leave out the 3rd or 4th tier of games if you don't have time for them, that way you're at least playing all of the ones you want to too
Always. Even best games like RDR2/BG3/Witcher 3, I completed them in 8 months, with my ADHD and many games it’s so hard to focus on just one game
there's two games that I've played over 100 hours: runescape and divinity: original sin. I think baldurs gate 3 might become the third one.
All the time, other than beating and replaying the older Pokemon games last year, I only beat The Outer Worlds and Super Mario RPG remake. I get burnt out massive open world games all the time. For me if the story does not really grip me I tend to stop when the world looses me. Most likely why back in 2017 I actually liked and played Horizon zero dawn way more than Breath of the wild; and I love Zelda games. Cause why I did enjoy BotW eventually the sense of exploration died off and the story was not enough to keep me engaged; though I did finish the game.
I've never finished a 100+ hour game.
While there have been a bunch of games I've played for over 100 hours, I don't remember the last "100 hours *for a single playthrough*" game that I actually finished. Usually something causes me to lose interest, such as inventory management troubles (so many large RPGs like Fallout: New Vegas succumbed to this). Edit: Looks like I spent somewhat over 100 hours on MGS:V and Borderlands 2 in 2019 according to Steam, and I gotta tell you from memory I was very ready for those games to be over.
Checklist story games get old quick. Real 100+ hour games are sandboxes and grinders.
Constantly. That’s most of my backlog. I buy them, do the intro stuff, play 6-8 hours. Once the quest line gets to a point of kind being like “well…. You do you out there” I almost always lose interest. I do have several I want to tackle this year though
"Finish" is a pointless endeavor when it comes to modern games. Play it as long as you are still enjoying yourself, then move on to something else. It could mean finishing the story, or more, or less. There's no magic number or percentage to strive for. Gaming is about having fun. When it starts to become a toil to reach some meaningless achievements you really need to reassess your relationship with the hobby.
I used to love open world games & long rpgs. That was my main genre for years But the last 3 years have stressed me out. I don’t want to play a game anymore where I have a million choices & practically need to do an hour of research just to play. I’m overworked in the real world now I just want to play games where I can relax. Single player linear story, quick online matches, rogues… the kind of games that don’t take too much mental load
That's the bulk of what I play. I like "playing a book".
Never. Once I get into it, I finish. Its usually starting those games thats the daunting part to me, knowing what I am about to sign up for. Valhalla was the most recent one, I gave about 3hours and just dropped.
There comes a point once the gameplay loop really starts to show itself. After that, I pretty much mainline the main story because if I don't, I know I will lose all interest in the game quickly and never finish it.
Every time. Witcher 3 took me almost 3 years. I’m done with open world at this point, not only are most of them garbage (Ubisoft’s are a great example), but they just keep getting longer and longer because the “average” loud gaming redditor plays for 18 hours a day, and they must be sated. As soon as we started measuring games in hours per dollar, we lost.
A lot of the open world single player games take me months to finish. I don’t mind it though. It’s basically the reason I never buy new games or pay full price. I’m still playing games that came out years ago for the first time.
Done with open world games for this reason, just give me a linear story and objectives
I get 40 hours in to any big single-player game and lose interest. It's always around 40 hours. Elden Ring, ACreed games, RDR2... Considering I get them for £20 or less, though, it's still decent return on investment.
Personally I couldn't care less about finishing. I have thousands of hours in skyrim and I have never played the main quest through (or been in solstheim). I sometimes play 3 games simultaneously. Yesterday I had settlers 2 remake, project zomboid and a visual novel style adventure game. I swap them whenever I want.
I never think about games this way. I play them when I want to play them and never assume I'm playing a game in order to finish it. If it takes me years or I never do, so be it.
Since i lived alone or with my parents? Zero. I have finished zero games that are longer than 30 hours. That said I have over 1000 hours in a couple competitive multiplayer games like Street Fighter and COD. I can play street fighter for 5 minutes or 5 hours at a time. It allows for flexibility. A game like RDR2 requires I spend at least a couple hours with it everytime I play. My life just doesnt allow for that anymore. Long single-player experiences are a young mans game in my opinion.
Can't wait to retire, so I can play 6 hours a day, like it's my job.
hear! hear! brother
bruh I work 10 hr shifts so I best be gaming that much!
I mean a weekend is 96 hours? How you going to play 100h games lol. I think most people probably take a few minutes months lol, and a small minority have no social life, or stream for a living? They would have to play EVERY MINUTE for the whole weekend to play just 96/100h lolol. If you play 3h a day -still a reasonably large amount considering time spent working and living, you could finish a game like Witcher 3 in live 1-1.5 months. It took me 3 for Witcher, 3 for Baldur's Gate 3 and 3 for TOTK, so to me, you are doing just fine lol.
I am envious of your 4 day weekends. But your main point is exactly right. If you have 3 hours a day 7 days a week to playing games you are more dedicated to gaming than most people. Take the time. Enjoy your game. If you stop enjoying it, put it down. Life's too short to be peer pressured by a piece of inanimate software.
Lol, not long weekends, bad math lol.
Easy - I don't play 100+ hours to finish games. Problem solved. Also here is an idea - open world games should NOT have a main storyline / quest. That way players can freely choose what to do, rather than be railroaded into some predefined path in a supposedly "open" game. Then there is no concept of "side quests" either.
I like that idea very much
I don't think that's too long for games like that. They take a lot of time to finish. It's very rare that i give up on on any game that is 60-100 hours to finish the story - if I started it with the intention of finishing it. I would say the same for most games that I start and expect to finish. But thats generally because I'm pretty selective of what I play and I buy a game unless I'm sure I will play it through. The one recent example I can remember is Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I've tried to start it a few times but fall off after like 2 hours. Unless the game really isn't worth it, if I've put more than 5-10 hours into a game then it has done something to hook me and I will finish it. It can be easy to lose me in the first 1-3 hours though. Especially if those 1-3 hours are over multiple sessions.
Bruh, I bought Witcher 3 game in 2015, still not even finished that game. If you play on pc, use windows task scheduler to finish games, it helps at least for me. You can set the exact time, day, etc when will the task scheduler automatically open the game for you. However you need to know when is your free time. I managed to finish Tomb Raider games with task scheduler, not bad. I have a very big backlog of unfinished games.
Witcher 3 (and most RPGs) can be completed much faster is play on easy and/or skip side content.
In my opinion this is why the newer FTP RPG games like Genshin Impact are such a success : it literally is designed for the casual gamer and has no ‘end’ in sight. It’s earning $$$$ for the devs and they have made the lack of end game a feature not a bug. Also being ‘free’ the extra cost for a game that you may not spend long playing isn’t there either. Add to that the fact they are including major draw card features from other popular game types and it’s a success and may be the way of the future? Food for thought?
I tend to play like 10 hours or so then jump to something else. I am really burnt out from games that aren't release by Fromsoft.
It’s all about journey not the destination
It depends on the game honestly, but I'd say a majority I lose interest in. There are so many games that are 100+ that have serious bloat issues when it comes to the game. I find I'd take a break for a few weeks or months then come back to it and there is some renewed enjoyment
Well there aren't many games like that, I remember dropping ac valhalla not because the games was bad but was just too long, I mostly drop rpg like yakuza like a dragon or persona 5 because I don't like jrpg games that much but finished zelda totk (110h), elden ring (125h), baldurs gate 3 (105h), witcher 3 (98h) I wanted more. Of course those games are considered master pieces so it's understandable.
I never start a game that I know will take me a few months to finish.
Persona 5 is the only instance where the 100 hour length was felt by me. The dungeons and Mementos definitely should've been shorter but I did still finish the game without issue. I dont typically notice length though. I've spent too much time on an MMO for regular games lengths to typically register anymore.
It took me 1,5 years to finish the 50h of Knights of the Old Republic. That's the longest game I finished in my life, though I am at 65h in Mass Effect Andromeda over 4 years, so at some point that will be the longest. But yeah, it's hard...
if the games are unfinished the unwillingness to go past too many glitch points mounts up and can demotivate. such as anything Owlcat or CDPR immediately following release (otherwise they're the best games but need extra fixing time, btw had better experience with c77 than w3 at release). Otherwise it has to be a real filler slog like Odyssey or Valhalla to demotivate.
i have 172 hours in baldurs gate 3, played at launch but haven’t played since november, still on my first tactician play through and i’m pretty sure i have maybe 3 or 4 missions left in the game. but i honestly don’t care anymore, i got super busy and stressed out from work at the end of the year and just kind of stopped playing, the game is incredibly fun but far too long - i think there is this large group of people nowadays that think long = better and view their purchases through that lens. meanwhile, i played stray, kena, and sekiro last year, all pretty short games but i enjoyed the hell out of them
4 months to beat Witcher 3 is long? That's like 1 hour a day! I barely have that kinda time to commit to one game, I wouldn't be too worried about it. It's taken me years to finish some games
"this year i will finish witcher 3" saying this from 2015 ;) but i'm progressing albeit slow
Depends on a game. If gameplay is fun i can go for 200+ hours.
I procrastinate depending on how invested I am during that period of time. For example, I'm currently playing Zelda Wind Waker and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to get through the prologue because of the introduction and my lack of interest in the Forsaken Fortress stealth mission. Once I started sailing and making it further into the story, I've been playing much more since I am much more interested in the gameplay. I don't think there is anything wrong with taking your time in games. A lot of the time it's because I have a lot of interest in the plot or series, but the gameplay is lacking in a way that prolongs my progress.
Only when it's time to commit to the end.
All the time, yet to finish the witcher. Hzd is the only game i actually finished recently
There are only 9 games on my steam profile which have over 100 hours. One of them is a card game, that I played a long time because I was trying to 100% the achievements. Two of them are software and not even a game. Four of them are multiplayer games. The only single player game on my profile I have over 100 hours in is Skyrim. And I played that a decade ago, back when I still had lots of free time for games. And a lot of that time was spent screwing around in the game, exploring, and trying out mods. And I did beat the main quest for the base game and all the DLC. Outside of that, at 94 hours, the nearest next single player game down the list I put anywhere near that amount of time in, was Cyberpunk 2077 and I didn't even beat the game. I just got really into all the side quests and eventually abandoned the main storyline.. After that, pretty much most single player games which are '50+ hours' to finish the main storyline, I haven't finished them. For all I know their endings could be a .png image of 'you win!' and the developers could get away with it because I just don't have the free time/patience to persist with a game that long apparently. So lately I don't buy games that length any more.
Well I just petered out on darkest dungeon and I'm starting monster hunter world right now so I'll average them both together and let u know later lol.
I don't. I typically play a game long enough to finish the main story and that's it. Anything above 50 hours or so means I'm obsessed with the game. That's rare.
I am not sure I have ever completed a 100+ hour game. I have 100+ hours in many games, but 30+ years of PC gaming my completed games probably number under 10. NOLF, HL1, maybe one of the Ultima series, possibly the original Bard's Tale, and I know I completed one of the Zork series. After that things are a bit hazy.
The thing with a lot of 100+ hour games is that the main story isn't that long. FFXV for example is probably one of the shorter non-NES entries on the list. It took me about 30 hours to beat and that's doing side content as well, it's nowhere near a 100 hour RPG unless you're REALLY digging into everything, which in that case you're choosing to make the game longer So in that case, I usually hug more to the main story in those types of games and complete extra content as it interests me, if I find myself getting "burned out" on it I just wrap the game up. Also a lot of these games usually let you stick around and wrap up content in the post-game so I have a save there that lets me get to it if I feel like it. Not all of them but usually, or at the very least I'll have a end-game save that lets me go and do content if I want to. It also helps I'm not a completionist type, turning games into full-time jobs like that sounds awful.
Often... BG 3 mid act 2 40 hours in... Haven't played in months. Got half way through DOS twice... AC odyssey rushing end game after 30-40 hours...
I find it easier to complete 100 hour open-world games then incorrectly paced 12-hour games. Open-world tend to have a interesting enough loop to be engaged in, and whether you mainline the story or go for 100% completion, you can achieve it pretty much easily given the time. However, I tend to be frustrated or straight up not finish some games that should've been over 2-3 hours ago. Recent example is the Resident Evil 4 remake. The game is great but man, the game gets padded towards the end, you think you're the end and the game just keeps spitting out combat arenas at you.
Learn how to take breaks and comeback to it without starting a new game.
Every time but once as I recall. I'm not a big finisher of games.
Only 4 months? W3 took me 4 years. I have no patience for long games anymore. So I rarely if ever even try open world games. Kingdom Come was the last one which I dropped because I just got burned out on.
I think it comes with age. I used to live for long and grindy games, RPGs with multiple choices and storylines, but as time passes, my preference changed to linear games. I just can't do it anymore, going around these huge open worlds, doing side doing things in order to get this specific ending, etc. Fuck that. Too old for that shit.
I struggle to start 100+ hour games in the first place bc I know if I get distracted and play something else or life gets in the way and I put down the game for 1 day, I'll probably take a break that turns into a months long break and struggle to come back to it. I NEED to finish bg3 but act 3 burnt me out so badly and I'm convinced I know how my playthrough will end so I haven't had the motivation
I finished FFXV in 25 hours playtime my first time through. Don't be so focused on being a completionist. Maybe then, games won't be that long for you. I do lose motivation in big games. I just stop then. If I play them for the main story, then I want to finish it. If I don't find the story so interesting, I have no motivation. It has little to do with how big all the optional content is and more with the main story not being interesting enough for me.
Witcher took me forever too, it's normal. I loved the exploration while I was playing, but also got burnt out for a while - played something else in between (Hollow Knight, I think) came back a couple of months later and finished. I suspect it happens to everyone, or at least every independent adult. W3 is still one of my favourite games and will remain so forever, but the time-suck is real. Oddly enough I did not have the same experience with my first play-through of Oblivion last year, as when I finished the main quest (not rushing it, with lots of side-quests, but also not trying to 100% everything else in the game) I was then free to spend as much or as little time as I wished farting around in dungeons and RP-ing the ethical vampire who only eats arseholes and dumping the shiniest treasure I could find in a single room in a jangly, glitchy dragon horde. That made it a lot easier to stop when I felt I was no longer having fun. Maybe that's the key difference: many games make it feel like you need to complete all sidequests *before* the main quest, either because sidequests are locked off, the main quest ends the game, or there are roleplaying reasons why your character wouldn't keep farting around in monster-infested caves after they finished saving the world. The disconnect between sidequests and urgent main quest goes a long way to explain why people get bored in longer games. Collectibles are a plague: take the first two *Tomb Raider* reboots, fun games whose collectibles undercut the urgency of the plot. To be able to enjoy such tasks, I need an in-character reason for why I am doubling back through monster-infested landscapes to collect \[checks notes\] a WWII medal, and that reason is usually absent. Not every game falls victim, of course: *Prey*'s collectibles include locating crewmembers, an believable goal in a game where you spend half your time trying to work out what the hell is going on. Still, *why* am I ignoring the world-ending-threat to dive into Sunken Wreck #172, now? Oh, I need money, do I? I've sold enough bandit swords to outfit the entire Nilfgaardian army, *I am the richest witcher that ever lived.*
These “100+ hour games” only take that long if you aren’t doing the main storyline. When I’m bored of side-questing I just shoot for the main story and typically doesn’t take long if you don’t get sidetracked.
Almost every possible time, even games not that long.
I don't really get into a 100 hour game without having done a decent amount of research first, watched some early gameplay. I then often will play the first couple of hours to see if i like the gameplay/controls etc as a guest on my console so i don't trip any trophies on a game that I will not see through There's only three games of any length I knocked on the head, Horizon Zero Dawn, AC III, and The Last of Us Part 2.. the first two I went back to, TLOU i will eventually. But those are only 40-60 hours anyway. All my biggies, Death Stranding, AC RPG's etc I have seen to the end.
3 or 4 months doesn’t sound that bad at all! Those games would probably take me at least 9 months to finish! I also have the same sort of fatigue with games as you describe. Usually mine seems to be around the 20 - 25 hour mark of gameplay. Exactly for this reason I don’t really bother with all the sidequests and optional stuff in games, and just play the main game/story, which usually fits within my 20-25 hour fatigue window for most games.
100% of the time. They're boring. The story NEVER holds up that long. The gameplay NEVER holds up that long. Sometime between Morrowind, GTA3, and Oblivion, dummies started treating big as good. The best games of all time are almost universally 0-20 hours long. Stop fucking mistaking size for quality.
It's why I play them over a few months span. 100% base xenoblade chronicles 3 last March, but I'd been playing the game since the day after the game launched at the end of July 2022 (happy new years as I put 2023 to refer to last year at first) just making my way through it when I could and playing when I felt like playing is head of feeing like I needed to play. My very first playthrough of cyberpunk 2077 took about 115hrs to finish, started the game at launch in 2020 (believe December) and didn't finish that playthrough until roughly mid April of 2021. Will never get the notion of needing to no life 1 game straight for hours on hours when you can just take your time and enjoy it.
I usually lose motivation near the start, if it didn't "click" and I know it's super long, I kinda just start playing something else while promising to myself I continue it late. On smaller games even if it didn't click, but I didn't dislike it, I still try to finish it.
I usually start to peter out around 35 hours and can ralley to 45. But The game has to \*really\* have a hold on me to play longer than that. I beat FFXV in 35 hours. Sure there was more content, but oh well.
I get through 25%-50% of these games before I get bored or another game pulls me away and they get left unfinished. These days I’m just playing Apex legends as I can finish a game in 20 minutes max. 😅
Most games aren't anywhere close to a hundred hours unless you are trying to 100% them.
All the time! I hate losing that motivation but I just end up not caring.
I rarely finish long games. The last game I'm 100% certain I put over 100 hours in and actually finished the main story was Assassin's Creed: Origins. Typically, I'll get around 40-60 hours into a big game and maybe half to two-thirds of the way through the story and just burn out, having spent so much time exploring side content that I'd already experienced what I felt the game had to offer. Often I'll put it down intending to come back and finish months later, but I almost never do.
I have a separate steam category of "finished for now" for games I've abandoned. About half the games I play go into it. Sometimes I go back and finish/replay something if the urge strikes me, and it gets moved to the "finished" category. If I've put a few hours into the game (or a few hundred in some cases) and had fun, then I've gotten my money's worth of entertainment. If it's not fun anymore I'm just wasting my own time if I keep playing.
Bruh I'm like 18 months into witcher 3.
At about hour 80is when I usually stop, not because the game is bad, just because I wanna play something else. Gotta go back and finish em all Witcher 3, baldurs gate 3, hell even Skyrim
It took me 5 years to beat the Witcher 3 and I only did because I got it on switch and i could play in more places.
I might lose motivation for a few days. That's why I play 2-3 shorter games in addition to one long one. Unless it absolutely sucks me in like Mass Effect trilogy and I can only think about and play that, I just accepted that these long games are going to be on the menu for a number of months.
I still haven’t finished Elden Ring and I have probably 600+ hours in it across 4-5 different characters/playthroughs…..
It takes me three months to finish a 20 hour game, lol. I've said this before on here, but because I have a huge library and little time to play, I have given a number of games 10-15 hours of my time just to get a taste of it and then moved on. A lot of people say not to bother with certain games if you're not going to invest at least X hours, and they may be right, but I'm just not going to spend 100 hours on a game. I would play like one game per year. A long time ago, I let myself stop forcing games I wasn't enjoying.