The amount of options isn’t the issue.
For most 25-40€ games I buy, i can get a great experience for the next 30-50 hours.
Indie games absolutely crush the statistics, where some sub-15€ roguelikes have such insane replayability, that i’ve clocked over a thousand hours into a couple. Not to mention how incredibly creative, unique, and story rich some of them are.
Meanwhile, what used to be 60€, and is now 80€+, is some “cinematic” 20fps on console slop, that you can barely get 5 hours of real gameplay out of. I don’t wanna sit there and watch a movie with an occasional A button press. Or even worse, play something like the Assassins Creed reboot, that had 500 hours of gameplay, 490 of which is just useless collectibles around the map.
Measuring games by hours has become an increasing less useful metric to me because I already have my grinding games that I can endlessly replay. When buying new games, I’d rather get something I’ll really enjoy for a short playthrough than a long epic JRPG I can’t bring myself to actually set aside time for - even though I do really love JRPGs.
Check out Expedition 33. It feels like a love letter to jrpg but without the time commitment.
I agree, this game is a piece of art, really well made.
I watched the trailer and whats on steam about it, but it didn’t take me in, and im curently looking for an rpg to play.
Is it really completely turn based and not that action turn based abdomination jrpgs have implemented the past years? I noticed some kind of quick time events during fights, is that optional or always active?
It is turn based, something I wish FF would return to. There are quick time events for every action, it’s not absolutely necessary to do on certain difficulty, but really helps. There is a dodge and parry mechanic that you really should use to help survive.
If you are a fan of turn based rpg, you should check it out.
Quick times events and dodge and parry Events are the absolute opposite of what im looking for in a turn based rpg. I want it to be calm and where I can put down the controls at any time.
Sounds more like an action rpg with turn based elements to me. Exactly how it looked in the trailer.
Thanks though.
Sounds like how Super Mario RPG did it which was overall pretty excellent.
I haven’t played the game but if that’s true I’d still consider that well and truly turn based.
It’s absolutely turn based. You’re trying to stretch it to something it’s not. Yes, it has QTEs. That doesn’t make it an action RPG. Nothing happens by surprise. You can put your controller down and nothing will happen. Also, as the other person says, you can ignore them if you want; just set the difficulty lower.
Most of the game is just walking around exploring though, and you only enter fights when you walk into an enemy. You always know what’s going to happen when. There’s almost no surprises.
I fully agree with that. There are some games that are fully worth the price, even if the hours/$ isn’t quite there, but in most cases it’s not anymore
Would be interested to know what games you have >500 hours in. Especially if they aren’t multi-player online games.
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Fallout 4. A lot of this is going to be due to mods.
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Wargame: Red Dragon. Intended to be played multiplayer; I played it single-player. Steel Division II is a far better single-player choice if you don’t mind the different setting, as the AI is much more interesting.
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Skyrim. A lot of this is going to be due to mods.
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Fallout 76, the only entry here I actually play multiplayer (and even that to a minimal degree; that game tends to have players having pretty minimal interaction with each other unless they’re actually trying to play with each other). I would recommend playing Fallout 4 over Fallout 76 unless you specifically want multiplayer; Fallout 76 is just the closest thing to “more Fallout” short of a Fallout 5.
Not run through Steam, so no Steam stats (though available on Steam) but I’m sure that they’re way up there:
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Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. Free and open-source, though there’s a commercial build on Steam if you want to effectively donate. If not, can download from their project page.
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Dwarf Fortress. Free, though there’s a commercial build on Steam with a fancier, more-approachable UI and such.
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Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, though that’s going back a few years. Free and open-source.
Some others with a fair bit of playtime:
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Steel Division II. Primarily a multiplayer game, but I only play single-player.
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Mount & Blade: Warband. The Prophesy of Pendor mod adds a fair bit of time to this.
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Elite: Dangerous. Though I don’t remember how I accumulated that many hours. Wasn’t super-impressed with the game. Probably pretty in VR, though.
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Carrier Command 2. Primarily intended to be played multiplayer, but I play single-player.
Lots of love for Starbound, that game is underrated af.
That is a fine collection of games there! :)
RimWorld …
Minecraft, slay the spire, civilisation, atomicrops.
Balatro could have been a contender but I lost interest suddenly and unexpectedly.
spoiler
Tetris the daddy
Stellaris, civ v, oxygen not included, city skylines, x3/rebirth/4, workers and resources: soviet republic, kerbal space program, rimworld, crusader kings 2 and 3.
Basically anything civilization/city/base/colony builder is my jam and some of them have over 2000 hours over the years. I like building perfect societies and roleplay how people live in them in my head while i do it. It’s one of the ways i relax and express creativity.
Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Witcher 3, Fallout
Really any RPG you can easily get 1000 hours of play.
Well I’m not them, but for me: KSP1: 1800.8 hours. Current cost $40 = $0.02 an hour DCS: 1294.7 hours. Money spent eh $300 = $0.23 an hour Witcher 3: 1131.5 hours. Current cost: $40 = $0.03 an hour. Civ vi: 589.9 hours. Current cost: $60 = $0.10 an hour Stardew valley: 579.3 hours. current cost $15 = $0.026 an hour Fall out new Vegas: 543.6 hours. Current cost: $10 = $0.0018 an hour
Now if we add in the $2000 worth of peripherals I have to play dcs it’s cost balloons quite a bit but, it’s not terribly difficult to get high playtimes in cheap games. I would also say the cost per hour for me is double or triple what it actually is, as these are the current prices, and besides dcs I buy everything only on sale lol.
Well I’m not them, but for me: KSP1: 1800.8 hours. Current cost $40 = $0.02 an hour
My electricity costs to run the game are higher than the cost of the game itself at that point.
EDIT: Keep in mind that some of these have DLC, and if you buy them, it increases the price. Kerbal Space Program with all DLC is $70; that’s still an extremely good value at 1800.8 hours, but does bump the number up. Fallout: New Vegas has (good) DLC that I would want; all DLC would take the game to $45. Civilization VI would go to $230 (and I assume that they’re still turning out DLC). I listed Stellaris myself, along with a lot of other people. I really liked the game, and even the base game is a good game, IMHO, but in typical Paradox game fashion, if you buy all the DLC, it adds up to quite a bit — $470 currently, and they’re still turning out DLC. Someone listed DCS, I have The Sims 3 on my list, Total War: Warhammer II. All of those games have pricey DLC libraries that, if purchased in total, run multiple hundreds or over a thousand dollars (with the Total War: Warhammer series using an unusual take on this, where prior games in the series also act as DLC for the current ones). They can still be pretty cost-competitive per hour with other games, but only if the person who buys them is actually playing them a a lot.
I’ve clocked 600 hours in Kerbal Space Program, and probably high thousands to over ten thousand in Minecraft.
Peglin for me. Cheaper world games I have an insane amount of hours in.
FTL for me
Factorio, eu4, stellaris, satisfactory, slay the spire, etc
Factorio, stardew, civ vi are my top 3.
For indie and cheaper stuff specifically? The Binding of Isaac is over 1k hours between my two copies. Rimworld, Factorio, and Terraria are all close to 500h as well. If Minecraft counts as one for you, this is an outlier with roughly 4k hours since 2011.
Otherwise, I am quite into MMOs and story-rich singleplayer RPGs, so there’s a handful of them with well over several thousands of hours played too.
and Terraria are all close to 500h as well.
If you like Terraria, have you tried Starbound?
Yes. I didn’t like it nearly as much, if at all. I’ve heard mods make that game infinitely more enjoyable though, so maybe i’ll try it again some day
Terraria is the easiest one.
I wish I had more time to play other single player time sinks like Dwarf Fortress, or even BeamNG.drive.
XIV, but I never engage with other players aside from solo queue for dungeons etc
But it still spooked Wall Street, as parent company Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s shares plummeted as much as 10% following the news.
I think our economy might be predicated entirely on stupid.
Also, $80 is a lot when typical people’s buying power is decreasing. I think like half of americans can’t tank a $500 surprise bill, and they want people to blow nearly 20% of that on a video game? Fuck off, capitalists.
(Which from my perspective is very silly — what’s the difference between them making a kajillion dollars in the fall and them making a kajillion dollars in May?)
This “article” was written by a moron who doesn’t seem to know anything about the stock market. I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising for Bloomberg.
Jason Schreier is not a no-name. I would expect the guy to figure it out, if he thought about it for a moment. But yeah, the whole article seems a bit rushed…
Don’t pre order games. Don’t buy games at full price. Support indie devs.
I will buy indie games at full price, thank you very much.
I bought Schedule 1 for the full $20 last week.
I can’t stop playing. It’s too fun.
it seems I’ve bought it too. Not gonna lie, after reading the description… I have no idea what I’m getting into.
Do buy great indie games at full price to support indie devs even more (stardew, Balatro, dead cells, hollow knight, terraria, rimworld….)
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It’s ok to but indie games even if still a public beta, to support the devs. Had a great time with Factorio, Rimworld, Valheim before 1.0 release.
I’ll still buy FromSoft games at full price. But only because I know they won’t disappoint. And Yoko Taro’s games.
But in general, it would be beneficial for more people to spend less on games.
So what’s the difference for Nintendo fans that love any Mario or Zelda game, for example? I’m not trying to be an ass here, but what makes your specific “I only buy this full price” a better decision than someone else’s “I only buy this at full price”?
FromSoftware is not a multi-billion dollar company that has major influence on games pricing in the gaming industry, and when game prices jumped to $70 USD, Armored Core 6 released at $60 and Elden Ring Nightreign will release at $40.
Nintendo is not even close.
I have 170 games in my backlog and the summer sale is coming. I ain’t spending 80 bucks on one video game.
It’s funny how it’s not even quantity over quality because those 5 to 8 ~$10 to $15 games will provide high quality gameplay and storytelling.
I will continue to wait until games go on discount
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And Microsoft and the other “tRiPlE A” and “QuAdRuPlE A” publishers think they can ride on daddy Ninty’s coattails.
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I’m sure “fanboys” is true to some extent but their target audience is children and casual gamers.
There are so many people that don’t play games beyond Mario kart, animal crossing, party games, etc
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I’m not surprised over 80% were men. That aligns squarely with video gaming as a whole, as a mostly male dominated marked. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but notice that Nintendo forgot to ask this men between 20 and 40 years old whether they had children or were married. Just to put an anecdote out there, me and my cousins are all video game fans. We account as the ones who buy the most games in our family, but the entire family plays. I buy games for nieces and nephews. My cousins buy games and consoles for their own kids and for his wife. This is a big oversight to confound who buys the games with who is playing said games.
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What AAA title is worth $80? The most time I spend gaming is in a 10 year old shooter, and an indie survival game. Both of which I bought for <$20.
One you can spend at least 40 enjoyable hours on, I’d say
KCD2 Is pretty damn amazing.
Yeah and its worth the 80$ cause it takes like 80 hours to finish lol
Finish? It took me 80 hours to find my fucking dog.
… There’s an icon for him on the map…
I did take a pretty circuitous route… Kept getting distracted.
I’d say GTA VI would likely earn that for me. I’ll probably spend over 80 hours on that.
There’s plenty of jrpgs half that price point with twice the length though. Heck, even the previous GTAs have at least that length for a cheaper price, and are occasionally even cheaper now. Be patient and you’ll likely even get the game given away for free.
Length =/= quality. JRPGs specially love their bloat.
So much grinding…
Exactly
Why even suggest a different genre when the man said he will enjoy it?
I’m trying to point out that i don’t think that the length of a game shouldn’t really be indicative of the price. I have no issue with him enjoying the game or buying it.
Pointing out a game genre with more hours of gameplay for the price is a strange way to point out game length shouldn’t matter.
He was saying that £80 was worth it cause of the amount of hours. So i brought up games with similar or more hours that are cheaper. Including prior gta games…
Yes, he made a statement. And you answered a question he didn’t ask.
I’m lucky enough to own literally thousands of games. Most of which I get at a deep discount. Games like GTA and Red Dead are usually an exception where I’ll play on day one. Even though Rockstar tends to milk a title long after a release, the attention to detail is worth the price to me. I’ll still check reviews first however.
There’s plenty of jrpgs half that price point with twice the length though.
Gotta like the JRPG genre for those hours to be fun, though.
I think the last major JRPG I was willing to play to completion was Final Fantasy V.
I’ll play the occasional CRPG, but JRPGs aren’t really my cup of tea.
I made a rule that I can’t spend over $10 on a game until I’ve played through my entire backlog. I haven’t bought a game over $10 in 10 years and I’ve spent $6k on Steam since I started using it.
!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
There are so many options out there that asking for $80, or whatever the equivalent is, is just ridiculous. I really hope people stand up against this bulshit.
It sucks that waiting for a sale might only bring down to the original $50 new full price it used to be.
Just have to wait longer I guess.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
The amount of games on the PC is way to large to be buying right away.
I can wait as long as necessary – just means more time for the factory to grow. Factorio was the best value I’ve ever had out of $30.
There are very few games I would spend $80 on. Actually, at this point I don’t buy a lot of new games to begin with, I’m mostly just grinding the same old favorites now.
But for the games I really care about, I’m willing to spend on games I know will be worth it to me. I’ve waited 22 years for a sequel to Kirby Air Ride and if I have to pay $80 for it, I will pay $80 for it.
There are a few franchises that still have me day 1 even if they went to that price point (The Witcher, Persona, Trails). Those are always 80 hours minimum, though.
I pirate games first before buying. Too many games become shit past the return window on Steam. I buy every game I like.
You can return games after the 2h return window. Its just that under 2h is an automated refund
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I’ve only bought one $80 game thus far (And that was during a 30% steam sale so only $55) and from my years of experience of buying games, I can confidently say that my enjoyment in games goes down as price goes up.
Although weirdly all of the $80 games that released so far have been pretty bad so that’s strange.
I think Titanfall 2 is still on sale on steam for uh… 5 dollars.
Its got Northstar, a custom client that allows for private multiplayer servers… also works on linux, literally has its own custom proton version.
Oh and there are mods as well, guided installers, mod managers, etc, for windows and linux.
Runs great on a steam deck!
… and looks … basically the same as a shooter from 10 years later, at least at 1280 x 800?
(its built on a custom forked version of the portal 2 source engine, so it actually runs efficiently and looks good =D)
Doesn’t have a huge playerbase, but it is decent enough that you can probably find a few well populated servers, at least in NA region.
… looks like titanfall 3 got turned into an extraction shooter and then cancelled.
So anyway yeah, hilariously its time to return to tradition for enthusiasts of many old school competetive games from before the bullshit of endless battlepasses and MTX kicked into high gear… and as others have pointed out, the indie scene is full of gems.
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I just like to add that it has an oft forgotten 4 player PvE coop mode. Also low on players, but not dead, and if you’re lucky enough to have some friends you can guarantee a match. And there are usually populated Northstar servers for it as well. It’s a great mode with progression and the signature combat experience in Titan and as a pilot.
