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Thread: How Videogames Are Really Played
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2019-08-19, 11:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
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- Bristol, UK
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
I don't think the question (if there was one), makes any sense.
I've played many games over the years, some of them I didn't like much, some I've replayed dozens of times, one or eight? I've actually completed.
I would totally loathe most short games.The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2019-08-20, 03:06 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2009
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- Germany
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
The real question is how much time you get for your money.
60€ for a 20 hour game would look pretty overpriced to me, unless it's a game I find worth replaying multiple times.
Of course it takes much longer to play through a game when you're really bad at it. Like it took me 90 hours to play through Sekiro. But it must be a really good game when you keep playing that long regardless, so I also consider that good value for money.We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2019-08-20, 03:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
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2019-08-20, 03:33 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Achievement statistics aren't always reliable either. For example, in Subnautica something like half the player base never got the achievement for leaving the lifepod. Because most of them played and left the lifepod before the achievements were in place. Or in DoS2 I played with a mod to make the game more difficult and achievements were disabled as a result. These are just examples, but you get the overall point.
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2019-08-20, 04:27 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Speaking personally, that exact factor is why I own very few DVDs. I only have stuff that I'm likely to watch repeatedly (Indiana Jones, Futurama, etc) and which I cannot readily get on streaming services (so for anime I have the Slayers DVDs but will likely never own a single Naruto DVD).
If it's something I'm only going to watch once, I rent. I just watched Highlander for the first time a couple days ago, and that was only because my father expressed interest as well. We had good fun snarking at it for a couple hours for a few bucks, no need to spend a bunch on a DVD.
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2019-08-20, 04:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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- Denmark
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2019-08-20, 07:33 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2010
- Location
- Back forty.
- Gender
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Huh. Interesting thread.
For me games fall into 4 categories
1) game looks good so I bought it but haven’t gotten around to playing it
2) game looks good, bought it, played it but didn’t like it so stopped playing it
3) game looks good, bought it, played it, liked it, finished it
4) game is hella cheap so I bought it
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2019-08-20, 09:10 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2007
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Oh, that makes more sense. I thought you were talking about comparing averages between games.
Eh, not really. I'd rather spend 15 bucks for a 10 hour "This is great! Who came up with this stuff?" game rather than a 60 hour "eh, it was playable, I guess" game.
"Experience quality" times "playing time" over "cost" would be the thing, if the first one were calculable in any form.
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2019-08-20, 12:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2013
- Location
- Bristol, UK
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Basically, no. I don't pay much for movies or TV, and don't spend much of my time watching them. For a single movie my cap is £4, for TV serials they have to be good, and there have to be a lot of disks.
I still find the games I play better value (more hours) for (the) money. There are games I buy which turn out to be mistakes, and I loathe those with a passion, I am very careful to only buy games I think I will like and which I think will play on my system (Win 7, decent GPU, average CPU).The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2019-08-21, 12:27 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
I have a good job which leaves me with more money than free time...but even so I find myself looking more towards games that give more time for their money. I'd rather pay 60 for a good game that lasts 100 hours than pay 60 for an excellent game that lasts 20. Of course, there's a middle ground.
I don't think time played is a very reliable statistic either. My steam library is full of titles that would tell you I've played them for hundreds of hours when in reality I tried them for a bit, minimized them to do something else, and just left them running for a few days before I went back to them or closed them.
The biggest example I can think of is Dota 2 which says I have 1800 hours. In reality I have about 300 games played over the course of 6 or 7 years, so maybe 300 hours.
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2019-08-21, 01:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2014
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
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2019-08-21, 07:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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2019-08-22, 07:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2018
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2019-08-22, 08:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2007
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Once I had estimated something like +20% extra alt tab time for myself, so 300 to 1800 is pretty outrageous to me as well.
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2019-08-22, 08:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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- Corvallis, OR
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Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
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NIH System PDF Up to date main-branch build version.
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2019-08-22, 08:30 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2005
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- Over there!
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Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Time is also an investment as well as a reward in cases like this.
2hrs+£15 is fine, whereas 20hrs+£60 might not be, because if you need to spend 20hrs to get the experience you have paid more per hour. Its like those cases where I get told that the game gets good 10hrs in. 10hrs is a large investment on top of my title price, and I won't be enjoying myself for all of that time. The better a game (and thus the lower % of my time I am not having fun) the "cheaper" it is to me in terms of social investment.GNU Terry Pratchett
My DMing advice.
Hong Kong
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2019-08-25, 03:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2010
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Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
For me I do come back to those games later. Like the past couple of weeks I took a break from MMOs, and sat down to play through some of my backlog such as Resident Evil 7, Stanley Parable and Spec Ops the Line, all of which I finally beat after literally years of dodging spoilers.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2019-08-25, 05:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2013
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- Germany
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Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
I completely agree. I even go as far and say that many games should not be open world just because its en vogue. I do not care about your flipping Riddler trophies, Arkham Asylum, just let me experience the story.
It is just padding to make people feel better after completing them. In a similar vein, I LOATHE the cycle that MMOs have taken and I pride ESO/Guild Wars 1+2 on their design. An expansion should not mean yet another 5 or 10 pointless levels of uninspired levelling. Yes, I assume you want to tell a story through your questing, yes arbitrary number increasement is inherent to most if not all roleplaying games. But please let the stuff make a BIT of sense in universe.
If you have mained a character through all expansions, he or she SHOULD be more powerful than a random schmuck toon that came to the expansion continent from powergrinding an instance. Your character has bested the legion, has stopped the Eternal Throne or thwarted Molag Bal. The next best lightning enchanted sword should not be better than the demon lord's personal vorpal sword.
(Many things also apply to the acts of classic RPGs. You have quested for the Masamune to wield against Magus, an epic sword with a rich backstory, an equipment that you had to work for. You should not replace it with a random demonslaying sword, or worse. Oddly enough almost all demonic minions are nearly immune to swords and only take damage from magic. Good job questing for your sword, Glenn, not sheath it and cast Aquaga.)Last edited by Spore; 2019-08-25 at 05:29 PM.
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2019-08-26, 12:47 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
What's the solution though? You can't just get rid of the progression entirely, and not every fight in an entire expansion can be more epic than everything that came before it. You don't want to make dozens of hours of content where the player rolls through with no challenge either. Sure, in theory you have a steady climax until the end game, but it doesn't work for MMOs. Even Guild Wars and other similar games are guilty of this.
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2019-08-26, 01:27 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2014
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- Tulips Cheese & Rock&Roll
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Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
I do have a bunch of DVD's, but most of them are second hand. The majority probably cost 1 euro a piece.
At that price it compares pretty well to the games I play. If I play for an hour per euro spent it was a good investment. I don't play games that much, but between liking smaller titles, not having a PC that runs the latest and greatest anyway and buying stuff from bundlesites I now have a huge library that still largely fits that criterium.
The downside is that the less I pay, the less goes to the developers, so I do make exceptions for stuff I think I'll really like and that can use the support. Then again, those titles usually log enough playtime to statisfy the rule as well.Last edited by Lvl 2 Expert; 2019-08-26 at 01:29 AM.
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2019-08-26, 02:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2013
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- Germany
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2019-08-26, 06:44 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2014
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Yeah, with stellar anecdote like that you'll have to forgive me if I don't find your argument at all compelling. I too alt tab out of games to do things sometimes but never in an order you've suggested. I don't just leave my games running when I go to sleep. I don't even leave my computer on generally when I turn in for the night. I don't think many others do either. I obviously don't know how you'd even manage to get those numbers, let alone have them to present to you, but time played versus some random achievement benchmark that
A. May not even register.
B. May not even exist (how do you know how people are playing Mario Odyssey? Nintendo don't do achievements)
C. Pools only a single platform
tells you either just as much or more because it actual charts the time the game is up rather than an arbitrary point. Finding the average down time versus play time would be even better still, but I'll take better over best.
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2019-08-26, 10:07 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
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2019-08-26, 10:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2010
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- Back forty.
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Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
And then you have people like me who intentionally leave games on overnight in order to auto grind.
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2019-08-26, 11:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
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Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Not all--in fact, I'd argue *most*--games don't really benefit from that, though. It's mainly certain RPGs and stuff like Factorio and modded Minecraft where you'll gain stuff by leaving it running. I suppose you could argue that even a game like Just Cause 4 does give you some additional Chaos if you just leave it running, but frankly you gain chaos so fast in that game you're really not likely to need that.
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2019-08-26, 12:38 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
In fact, I got turned off by Guild wars due to you hitting level 20 pretty much instantly. Those numbers going up so I feel more powerful is a thing that I like to have in a game, as long as it isn't used as an excuse for not providing more interesting forms of progression. It really bugged me that I hit max level very early on, and if I'm recalling correctly there wasn't a gear grind either? It was just unlocking new skills to allow new combos and such. Whatever the exact case was (I haven't played the game in 15 years) I found my will to continue with the game nonexistent despite otherwise finding the game system quite interesting. Guild wars 2 swung back too far in the other direction and became WoW.
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2019-08-26, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2016
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- Canterlot, Equestria
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Re: How Videogames Are Really Played
Um...no? As soon as you complete the tutorial, literally every innkeeper in the game will tell you about Aventus Arentino and how he's trying to contact the Dark Brotherhood. When you go to Windhelm, one of the first things the guards will tell you about is that Aventus Arentino is trying to contact the Dark Brotherhood. When you walk by Aventus's house, a cut scene will play where two NPCs talk to each other about how Aventus Arentino is trying to contact the Dark Brotherhood. If you talk to the Dunmer woman after the cut scene, she will further clarify that Aventus Arentino is trying to contact the Dark Brotherhood. If you enter Aventus's house, you'll find him performing the ritual to contact the Dark Brotherhood. And when you talk to him, he will explicitly say that this is a mission for the Dark Brotherhood.
If after all that, someone still doesn't know how to join the Dark Brotherhood, then they're probably too dumb to breathe. The game completely hits you over the head with it. On my first play through of the game, when I got to Riverwood, I didn't even know how many factions the game had, but I still knew how to join the Dark Brotherhood.Princess Celestia's Homebrew Corner
Old classes, new classes, and more!
Thanks to AsteriskAmp for the avatar!
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2019-08-26, 01:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2018
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2019-08-26, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2016
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2019-08-26, 01:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2018