Finishing Games

McStabStab

Community Contributor
How motivated are you to get through the main storyline of a game? Are you someone who will grind one game until it’s done or do you jump between titles? Are you just waiting for that weekend where you have nothing else to do other than finally rolling the credits on something in your backlog?

Additionally, does game length affect your purchasing of new games? Will you pass on an 60-80 hour monster for a brief 10 hour playthrough?

Finally, what other things make the time spent in a title worthwhile to you? Achievements? Hours played compared to dollars spent? A library of great screenshots?

Let’s talk about the games you’re chipping, grinding, or burning through.
 
As few genres and types of games within those genres I prefer, I feel I've already limited my choices quite a bit. So I don't get too nit picky on things like campaign length. It's not that it doesn't bother me if a game is shorter than I'd prefer, but in cases like NFS The Run, I feel I'd have missed a pretty good game had I passed on it for being short.

That said, I find it hard to go back to grindy RPGs sometimes. Even ones I enjoy like AC Origins. It's just a lot of time to spend just to get to the point where you feel you can progress without dying a lot. The kind of grinding I despise most is the idiotic crap Ubi came up with when they made The Division. OMG the ridiculous amount of hours spent trying to find gear sets, then tweaking it with special powers. It doesn't even fit in a tactical shooter type game either IMO. It's better left to games with mages. Skyrim though I got into, because you could literally play it any way you want. I never once used mage powers in that game, yet beat it on Master level. Even Skyrim became too laborious for me though. I DLed a bunch of mods I had planned to play it with, but never got around to it.

As to your other questions, never been into trophies or achievements. To me they usually translate to "Meaningless filler devs throw into games to trick you into thinking you're getting more content". It's not merely about hours played or screenshots either. The meat of a good game to me is, 1. how well the AI is made, 2, how good an upgrade system for gear and weapons it has, 3, how good a story it has, and how well it's told, 4, how challenging it is, and whether each harder mode does something more than just make enemies take more damage. 5, Last but not least is good level design, including having items you can find that are useful.

So the thing for me is not how much time, but how much quality time, and un-repetitious time. A lot of time if it's too grindy and repetitious becomes more of a negative than a positive IMO. Same with trophies and achievements, if they are too easy to get and have no useful reward for getting them, they're a mere placebo.

The thing is, it doesn't have to be a super elaborate game to offer real good gameplay. The Evil Within, for instance, is one of the best survival horror games because it has sophisticated AI that are easily alerted by sight or sound of player, and even your lantern light if they don't actually see you. They will run to the last place they heard you running. They will look left and right when stopped, making it harder to sneak up behind them. They aren't always dead when dropped, and will melee you while prone at times. This means you have to get to know the game well to know whether you're wasting those matches that finish them off when prone. There's also the right and wrong way to approach them when prone, from the head when face up, and from the foot when face down. Otherwise you risk getting hacked. I also loved how the harder modes had faster, more aggressive enemies, and wall mines that were much harder to disarm for resources. Sadly though, most players don't appreciate such features enough to take the time to learn how to deal with them, which is why The Evil Within 2 was made with zombies that only react to direct sight of you. They run a short distance, then turn around a leave if they don't see you. They even put in a ridiculous cover system, from which you can do auto takedowns by just pressing a key when they're close.

Another great game was Ghost Recon Wildlands, it had a huge and very accurate map to the type of terrain Bolivia has. Ubi sold out to turning Ghost Recon into a tiered loot sci fi shooter though, complete with a fictitious setting and an enemy with a drone army.

Spec Ops The Line was another great game, with a very gripping story that was told in a unique way, by making the player feel guilty for the violence being taken part in. It was also very challenging to play on the hardest mode. You not only had to plan what weapons to carry carefully, as they carried over into the next level, but you also had to watch out for your 2 squad mates, as if they bled out after going down, you'd have to start from the last checkpoint.

Max Payne 3 is another great game. Very good story telling, level design, pretty good graphics and animations, and it's especially cool the way Max doesn't carry weapons magically like in a lot of shooters. He has actual holsters for one handed weapons, and two handed ones he always carries in his hands. This means he has to leave the big gun behind when sneaking in through a window or crawling through a tight space.

I really feel there's not a lot of great games made anymore though, especially on PC. Many of us were hopeful with the advent of the so called Next Gen consoles, that PC games would get better, since they had x86 architecture. They really haven't though.
 
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Jul 13, 2020
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I like having my experiences short and condensed. I was all about the 40+ hour rage before but nowadays I'll rather play a game that I enjoy and I'm done in 20h rather then 200h.
I did buy Cyberpunk 2077 already so yea...

I'm probably not gonna play anything else but that.
 
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McStabStab

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@Frag Maniac that’s a very thought out response. I’ve played most of the games you’ve listed and appreciate the look into what you find to be the enjoyment triggers for your time in a title.

@Dakkon I also appreciate short games, but won’t shy away from long ones. I just shy away from picking up too many long ones at once. How long is Cyberpunk 2077 supposed to be?
 
How motivated are you to get through the main storyline of a game?
It really depends on the game. Some games have that main story that just sucks you right in, while others it is the living, breathing world that is more interesting to explore, through for an example side quests.
Are you someone who will grind one game until it’s done or do you jump between titles?
I jump waaay to much between titles.
Are you just waiting for that weekend where you have nothing else to do other than finally rolling the credits on something in your backlog?
That would be ideal and ocassionaly it happens and you really get in that good flow.
Additionally, does game length affect your purchasing of new games? Will you pass on an 60-80 hour monster for a brief 10 hour playthrough?
Nah, I don't really care much about game length when purchasing, also: Abzu had only a few hours main story and still insanely good compared to some AAA games with over 100+ hours
Finally, what other things make the time spent in a title worthwhile to you? Achievements? Hours played compared to dollars spent? A library of great screenshots?
It can be tons of things; Good story, quirky characters, awesome exploring, scary scenes, blood/gore, epic loot, soundtrack, good character build/customazation, fun, sadness and so forth. Some games got a soul, some don't and it is the ones with the most exciting journey that I remember the most.
 

spvtnik1

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I will hop around. I'm notoriously bad at finishing games, but I just finished Max Payne 3 last night. And it was one of the few games I was ready to start right back up on a higher difficulty. Bravo, Rockstar, because that has only happened like one or two other times I can think of.
 
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I always start off motivated, but that quickly fizzles out on long games. I definitely prefer episodic story games now, ones that I can play an episode of every now and again and then eventually complete. If a game is too long, I find it very difficult to muster up the patience to start it. I don't even remember the last 'big open world RPG' that I completed.

Unfortunately, as priorities change in life, the type of games that you play may also change to accommodate that. When you only get an hour a day to play, if that, you want to feel like you have made progress in a game - which is why quicker/smaller games or multiplayer games are my main focus.I like that I can knock out a match or 2 of SQUAD and have a blast.

funnily enough, I have started playing Baldur's Gate - but I just know that only playing a small bit everyday (and not really any on the weekend) means that this is going to take me FOREVER to complete.
 
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I hop between games a lot, but it doesn't really impair my ability to eventually finish games. Whether I finish a game or not will be more down to how much I actually like it more than anything else. I will say that my viewpoint on game length hasn't changed considerably, but what has changed is a move to more singleplayer titles. For example, I've found that I far prefer singleplayer RPGs to MMOs despite being a WoW player for years. Honestly, it just became clear to me that it's really just an endless treadmill with very little substantive content added (especially as a casual player who isn't obsessed with endgame).

To touch a bit more on the length piece, I generally prefer games to be long and expansive. My favorite genre is open world RPGs, so naturally they tend to be long. The tricky part is finding a game that actually has the quality of content to support a lot of play time. There are plenty of games with 100s of hours of game time, but it isn't of good quality or meaningful to do. I'm currently playing through The Witcher 3 for the first time and it's incredible; this is partially because literally everything is worth doing. Side quests are not neglected filler nonsense. Further, I played Titanfall 2 for the first time recently. Incredible game and the best FPS I played in years.... but I beat in 5.5 hours. That's a really tough thing to balance when evaluating a game. It was great, but 5.5 hours is really, really, short. It's hard to even get significantly invested in the story and the characters with that kind of run time.

Overall, I think it definitely varies depending on the genre, but I generally prefer games to be very long if they are story-driven and the side content is worth doing. For games like platformers/puzzle, I more prefer the ~10hr range or so, because they can get tedious if they stretch out too long.
 
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I have a problem where I really dislike loading a save in the middle of a game if I don't really remember what I was doing.
For a game like Civilization, I pretty much have to finish a session in one go, because I won't want to load the save the next day.

Games with a good story are easier to get back into. I actually finished Mass Effect after a several months long break (and I'm happy I did).

I usually get sucked into a new game pretty easily, but I also get bored fairly easily. I can get really excited about a game, research a whole bunch, spend a few hours in it and just get bored of the gameplay loop and drop it.

Nowadays I have so little time to game available, the only game I've been able to play consistently is Angband, because I can leave it open in a browser tab and just play for a few minutes at a time in between working. I also got my wife addicted to Railway Empires, so we've been playing a little bit together, but it's not the most exciting game to watch someone else play.

The rare few free evenings I get where I can spend multiple hours gaming I've been playing various games with my friends.
 

Zloth

Community Contributor
How motivated are you to get through the main storyline of a game? Are you someone who will grind one game until it’s done or do you jump between titles? Are you just waiting for that weekend where you have nothing else to do other than finally rolling the credits on something in your backlog?
Normally just one game at a time unless that game gets really long (80+ hours), in which case I might give it a break for a few weeks. Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children is in that spot right now. (Coupled with the fact that the devs are about to add a bunch more to the game - guess I didn't wait long enough!) A few, like Witcher 3, are just so good that I'll keep going start to finish.

Additionally, does game length affect your purchasing of new games? Will you pass on an 60-80 hour monster for a brief 10 hour playthrough?
Other way around. I don't fear monsters! Except maybe EVE. But, when I retire...

Finally, what other things make the time spent in a title worthwhile to you? Achievements? Hours played compared to dollars spent? A library of great screenshots?
I'll keep an eye on achievements and will do them if they sound fun. Taking screenshots is fun so I might keep going if I think there's some nice ones at the other end of it. A good story can keep me going. Challenging, changing gameplay can keep me going, too. Trying to get my money's worth, though, not so much. I'm not going to throw good hours at a bad game just so I can tell myself I didn't waste any money.
 
Finally, what other things make the time spent in a title worthwhile to you? Achievements? Hours played compared to dollars spent? A library of great screenshots?

I've been thinking about this for a bit. I couldn't really think of anything that makes a game worthwhile to play outside of how much fun it is to play the game.

I don't really care about achievements. At best they can suggest a fun challenge, a way to play the game that's different than normal. Like for Civ V, getting the Louvre with the maximum tourist bonus.

Hours played versus dollars spent means nothing without accounting for how much fun you had during those hours, which just brings us back to how much fun the game was in general, regardless of how many hours you put in it.

And I think I have only taken a handful of screenshots on purpose in my entire life.

But then I realized there's one thing besides playing the actual game that makes playing a game worthwhile: being able to share with other gamers. And this is probably a big reason I'm playing Angband and I'm doing it in my browser, even though it can get pretty laggy at times. Because there's a chat where you can talk to other people playing the game and you can even watch them play and have them watch you play.

Judging by some of the answers on this thread, I'm not the only one for whom interaction with the community, even for single player games, can add a lot to our enjoyment of the game.
 

McStabStab

Community Contributor
But then I realized there's one thing besides playing the actual game that makes playing a game worthwhile: being able to share with other gamers. And this is probably a big reason I'm playing Angband and I'm doing it in my browser, even though it can get pretty laggy at times. Because there's a chat where you can talk to other people playing the game and you can even watch them play and have them watch you play.

Judging by some of the answers on this thread, I'm not the only one for whom interaction with the community, even for single player games, can add a lot to our enjoyment of the game.

This is a great point. I was peer pressured into buying COD Black Ops 4 by my discord friends and despite never playing a COD game before and I actually had a blast. Yeah it was an all multiplayer hodge-podge of a game, but we had a lot of fun squadding up in Zombies and Blackout. I spent way more money on that game than most titles (on day 1 nonetheless) but in the end the fun we had with it was well worth it.

Of course a game like that can't be finished because there's really no start or end point. Games like BO4 exist to do one thing to me: suck away my playtime on single player / story driven games :dizzy::dizzy::dizzy:
 
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Generally, i play one or 2 games at a time if i play any more, chances are i'll never finish any of them. Generally, i try to beat the game as much as possible, getting all the acheivements and doing as much content as possible. This is to ensure i don't have any reason to go back to the game unless i really like to play it. Difficulty wise it depends on the game FPS/open world on the highest difficulties. I might play on 2nd highest most of the time. On strategy games like RTS/4x i play on normal as i'm rubbish at them. I mostly play SP and i generally go through them once not bothering about achievements unless i get extra content/missions.



I don't have any hard rules (i can override any of my processes if and when needed) but i do have a process criteria as to which games i play:

1. Genre. if i've played an FPS, switch it up to a sandbox open world game, some indie game etc
2. When i purchased the game. Those i bought earlier should be finished first. So games i bought in 2016 take priority over something i bought this year.
3. speed at which i can complete them. An indie game might be faster to complete compared to a sprawling open world RPG. Faster to clear the indie one off the table before I sink my teeth into something larger. Think of it as a pallet cleanizer and/or appetizer to the main event.
4. Any other constraints - time based mostly. Is Path of exile league starting soon but got a spare few days? play a small game.

There are a few exceptions. I'm not immune to desire so if there is something i have to play now, i'll make time for it. last time was probably COD MW2, BF3, xcom2 or some other AAA game just to sound trendy.

Of course, weekend/days off i have a different sort of gaming regime. As i have more time on my hands (and being the fact its the weekend).

sat/sun afternoon around 1-3pm. Play a Doom2 wad. The snag is that i've run out of Doom 2 wads i want to play (and i've played a fair few) so i'm playing quake 2 instead. there is an hour session of handheld gaming before my afternoon nap or getting dinner ready. Then at night just after lights out (so after 11pm) i play my 3ds/ds or vita.

So yeah... gaming takes control of most of my life.
 

spvtnik1

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If I've purchased the game, and it has a truly dramatic storyline instead of something more sandbox or simulator or rogue-like, then that quantifies how much motivation I have at the outset. Did I pay full price or pre-order? Did I get it on a sale? Was I waiting for it to go on sale?

Will the game keep my attention well enough to get me to finish it? I prefer to be able to grind one game through, but if things are opening up I can start jumping around. I actually kind of prefer a sort of cool down period after finishing a game where I'll play something more sandbox. Some games age well, where you can play them over a range of sessions. As a result, you start to consider games by how much space they take up on your storage as well as how much time they took to download. Sure, I haven't played Red Dead Redemption 2 in like 6 months, but I'd still rather not wait 6 hours again to download it.

Finishing games is great, because it gives you talking points with people, just like movies and books and music. The point of most games it to finish them, right? I find there is a bit of a sense of accomplishment, even if the game isn't particularly difficult. Whether that is a story written by the publishers or one created by your gameplay, any good story should give you that feeling at the end.
 
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How does DLC factor into this for you people? Especially DLC that provides several extra hours of content.

I myself rarely bother to go back to a game just to play new DLC. I suppose I did with Skyrim, but then again I'm going to be replaying Skyrim every so often regardless. Same with Crusader Kings 2. I can't remember coming back to a game I considered finished just to play DLC.
 
How does DLC factor into this for you people? Especially DLC that provides several extra hours of content.

I myself rarely bother to go back to a game just to play new DLC. I suppose I did with Skyrim, but then again I'm going to be replaying Skyrim every so often regardless. Same with Crusader Kings 2. I can't remember coming back to a game I considered finished just to play DLC.

That will be a sliding scale depending on how much I enjoy the game :D
 

Zloth

Community Contributor
Because I'm so late playing games, I'll normally either buy the DLC with the game or I'll get it after I've played the game for a while. There are exceptions, though.

I came back to Skyrim to do the vampire DLC but never did get back to it for the second DLC. I came back for a second play-through of BattleTech once they got all their DLC out, too. And X:Rebirth for the Home of Light DLC. 4X games... well, those are meant to be replayed multiple times so they probably don't count.
 

McStabStab

Community Contributor
How does DLC factor into this for you people? Especially DLC that provides several extra hours of content.

I myself rarely bother to go back to a game just to play new DLC. I suppose I did with Skyrim, but then again I'm going to be replaying Skyrim every so often regardless. Same with Crusader Kings 2. I can't remember coming back to a game I considered finished just to play DLC.

DLC is usually more important to me for games that don't have a distinct end, eg. BattleTech's career mode, Cities: Skylines content packs, Endless Legend's additional factions, etc. That being said, The Witcher 3 DLC is incredibly and adds a lot to an already great game, and the free upgrades for No Man's Sky have me coming back over and over again.
 
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Sep 10, 2020
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Well, I have almost 400 hours in Skyrim, but I never finished the game (or the DLCs), so... that already tells a lot. When I was younger I was way more focused on just one title until I am finished. These days I hop a lot, although I don't like it.

I have started so many games, DA: Inquisition, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Divinity, Pathfinder Kingmaker, Witcher 3, AC: Origin, ... okay, AC got a bit boring, and KCD tilted me at some point, but all the other games I really want to play, but just can't find the time and focus on it.

Sometimes I am asking myself if my favour for MMOs changed my playstyle.
 
How does DLC factor into this for you people? Especially DLC that provides several extra hours of content.

I myself rarely bother to go back to a game just to play new DLC. I suppose I did with Skyrim, but then again I'm going to be replaying Skyrim every so often regardless. Same with Crusader Kings 2. I can't remember coming back to a game I considered finished just to play DLC.

this is the nightmare scenario when i buy games. If i know there is DLC down the line, i wait a very long time and grab the GOTY for a bargain prices. Recently season passes has made this an absolute nightmare and absolutely impossible. So... what to do? In Xcom2 case, i loved that game so much that i got the collectors edition from the start and bradford's DLC stuff was going at a cheap price it felt too good to pass up. For other games? I leave it. Would love to have bought skyrim GOTY and all expansions but i had beaten the game and thus didn't care. It kinda feels like the publishers just gave me the middle finger when i buy a GOTY and they release MORE content or the season pass doesn't guarantee i get everything. You know what? i return the favor and just don't engage in those games any more. Unless its for a rock bottom price.
 

Zloth

Community Contributor
If i know there is DLC down the line, i wait a very long time and grab the GOTY for a bargain prices. Recently season passes has made this an absolute nightmare and absolutely impossible.
?? I don't follow? A filled season pass and a GotY edition are essentially the same thing, aren't they? It's pretty rare for a season pass to get finished and not know whether or not the game is "done."
 
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?? I don't follow? A filled season pass and a GotY edition are essentially the same thing, aren't they? It's pretty rare for a season pass to get finished and not know whether or not the game is "done."

Its more a GaaS/ ubisoft/destiny issue tbh. You'd think buying the premium edition of the Division 2 would get you everything instead they release an expansion pack seperate from the main game and fleece you all over again. I got Xcom2 collectors edition and got all the DLC and then they released an expansion pack and then MORE DLC on top of that. So i feel i'm being short changed. hell, borderlands 2 GOTY doesn't give you all the content and some of the DLC wasn't included apparently.
 
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As far as buying decisions go, I look for future classics that I'll put hundreds of hours into and satisfying one or two-week experiences. I don't buy a whole lot of games for that reason.

The ideal game should have enough optional material and replayability to be worth keeping, but not so much that I get bored with it before the first completion. Good gameplay is required, but I'm interested more in story and interactive systems. I might play an arcade style game for a couple of hours the way I'd watch an action movie, but mostly I'm looking for games the way I look for books.
 

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