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 feel like play time per money spent mattered when most people were buying offline games at full price but to me it hasn’t been relevant for a long time. I might pay full price for a game that is incredible for 5-10 hours but a game that is mediocre for 100 hours I wouldn’t even play for free.
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! :)
Out of those I’ve devoted a ton of time to rimworld and oxygen not included, are any of the others on your list similar, or others you’d recommend for someone who likes them? I tried dwarf fortress but I found it to be… not my bag. I didn’t get very far into it tho.
(I do like mods, so that’s an ok requirement)
I tend to like games that have lots of “levers” to play with and spend time figuring out, so I think that tends to be the unifying factor in the above games.
I don’t know of anything really comparable to Oxygen Not Included in terms of all the physics and stuff. I’d like something like it too (especially since Tencent bought ONI and now has some locked graphics for some in-game items that you can only get by enabling data-harvesting and then playing the game for a given amount of time, which I’m not willing to do. They don’t have an option to just buy that content. At least it’s optional.)
For Rimworld and Oygen Not Included, both are real-time colony sims. Of those, the closest stuff on my list is probably:
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Dwarf Fortress (note that the commercial Steam build looks quite different from the classic version, has graphics and a mouse-oriented UI and revamped the UI and such, which may-or-may-not matter to you; if the learning curve being steep is an issue, that makes it a tad gentler). Rimworld is, in many ways, a simplified Dwarf Fortress in a sci-fi setting and without a Z-axis.
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Kenshi. Not a colony sim. You control a free-roaming squad (or squads) in an post-apocalyptic open world. That’s actually a bit like Rimworld. However, you can set up one or more outposts and set up automated production there. It’s getting a bit long in the tooth, and the early game is very difficult, as your character is weak and outclassed by almost everything. Focus is more on the characters, and less on the outpost-building – that’s more of a late-game goal. I find it to be pretty easy to go back and play more of. There’s a sequel in the works that’ll hopefully look prettier. Not really any other game I’m aware of in quite the same genre.
The other things on my list don’t really deal with building.
Oxygen Not Included has automated production. If you’re willing to go outside “colony sim”, there is a genre of “factory-building games” where one controls maybe a single character or base element and just tries to create a world of automated production stuff, maybe with tower defense elements. I’d probably recommend Satisfactory if you want 3D and a first-person view. I like it, but in my book, it doesn’t really compare with the games that I’ve racked up a ton of time on, winds up feeling a bit samey after a while, looks like I have thirty-some hours. Mindustry is a free and open-source factory builder that you can grab off F-Droid for Android to play on-the-go; that and Shattered Pixel Dungeon are probably my open-source Android favorite games. Dyson Sphere Program has outstanding ratings, but I have not gotten around to playing it.
There are a few colony sim games sort of like Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress. I tried them, and none of them grabbed me as well as they did, but if you want to look at them:
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Rise to Ruins is a colony sim and does have combat, but less focus on individual characters than Rimworld. I don’t like it mostly because the game is not really designed to be winnable, which I find frustrating. There’s growing “corruption” coming in from the edges of the map, and the aim is to try to last as long as possible before becoming overwhelmed; you can flee from it to other colonies. Technically, there are some ways to defeat the corruption, but not really how the game is intended to be played.
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Prison Architect. This has somewhat-similar graphics to Rimworld. You build and manage a prison. It’s not a bad game, but it doesn’t really have the open-world scope of Rimworld.
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Timberborn. This was in fairly Early Access the last time I spent much time on it, so I’m kind of out-of-date, and it looks like it’s still in EA. Doesn’t have the combat elements from Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress.
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Gnomoria is kind of like a much-simplified Dwarf Fortress. It didn’t really grab me, but maybe it’s your cup of tea.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that out for me! I appreciate it and I’ll look into some of those!
Have a great day, friend!
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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.
To be fair, while paradox games like Stellaris or the crusader kings games you mentioned, certainly have a lot of replayability (I don’t really care much for CK myself but have over 1000 hours on both Stellaris and EU4), they’re not great examples for where cheaper games by smaller companies offer more than expensive ones from bigger ones. Partly because paradox is fairly sizable and well known these days, but mostly because those games are quite expensive, just split into numerous expansions that come out over time. One can opt out of getting them, sure, but they’re where a lot of the different options that bring the replayability come from.
I’m right there with you. I absolutely hate Paradox’s DLC policy and I’m guessing they lose a ton of paying clients the moment they hit the store page and get a 200-500€ price tag for the full experience, or even over 100€ for just the best hits for a really old game. I know they have mouths to feed, but i really don’t like the way they do it and how they abuse their position of niche games nobody else makes. Nevertheless, even though you may choose not to purchase their expansions, you still have extremely healthy modding communities to carry you over.
Still, i wasn’t coming so much from the angle that it’s a smaller company providing better value than larger companies, rather showing to the OP that there are non multiplayer games that easily can provide over 500 hours of entertainment regarding the slighly off topic matter presented on the latter part of their comment. Of note is the fact that they don’t use grinding mechanics to do it, for the most part (x series can be a little grindy in some aspects, but not overly), which is the mark of how incompetent devs try to get more “entertainment” hours out of their games.
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.
Factorio, stardew, civ vi are my top 3.
FTL for me
Factorio, eu4, stellaris, satisfactory, slay the spire, etc
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
XIV, but I never engage with other players aside from solo queue for dungeons etc
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.
It kills me the the Jedi games, TLoU2, GoW games, they’re fun but they’re what, max 30 hours to beat? And they’re trying to up the price to 80?
Red dead 2 deserves 80. Cyberpunk in its current state could deserve 80. Both are around 100-120 hour games and I’ve replayed them multiple times. 30 hour games by proportion deserve a quarter of the price.
Never will understand people equating monetary value with how long they spend time with a game. Quality /= quantity or else Ubisoft and gacha games would be the best games of all time.
Obviously quality of gameplay matters, but point is that you need to take into account hours of gameplay, not just treat the game as a single unit, if you want to have a useful sense of what kind of value you’re getting, since the amount of fun gameplay you get from a game isn’t some sort of fixed quantity per game – it colossally varies.
If the way one rates a game is to simply use the price of the game, and disregard how much you’re going to play the thing, then what you incentivize developers to do is either (a) produce games coming out with enormous amounts of DLC, as Paradox does, if you don’t count DLC price, (b) short games sold in “chapter” format, where someone buys multiple games to play what really amounts to one “game”, (c) games with in-app purchases, data-harvesting or some form of way to generate an in-game revenue stream, or simply (d) short, small games.
I have a lot of games that I could grind for many hours — but I haven’t done so, never will do so, because I’ve lost interest; they’re no longer providing fun gameplay. I’ve gotten my hours out of the game, though that number is decoupled from the number of hours to complete the game. I have other games that I’ve played to completion a number of times, and some games — particularly roguelikes/roguelites — which aim for extreme replayability. The hours matter, but it’s not the hours to complete the game that’s relevant, but the hours I’m interested in playing the game and have fun with it.
For some genres, this doesn’t vary all that much. Adventure games, I think, are a pretty good example of a genre where a player has to keep consuming new art and audio and writing and all that. They aren’t usually all that replayable, though there are certainly adventure games that are significantly shorter or longer. But you won’t be likely to find an adventure game that has ten, much less a hundred times as much reasonable gameplay as another adventure game.
But there are other genres, like roguelikes, where I don’t really need new content from an artist to keep being thrown my way for the game to continue to provide fun gameplay. There, the hours of fun gameplay in a game can become absolutely enormous, vary by orders of magnitude across games in the genre and relative to games in other genres.
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.
We (the gaming community) say this every time, but microtransactions and lootboxes have spread like viruses because gamers are buying them.
I hate predatory pricing on principle, but whale votes count for a lot more.
Those systems are literally designed to be psychologically addictive and prey on those weakest to such tactics. It’s not stupidity; it’s literal brain washing via Pavlovian response.
Basic human psychology has been weaponized against us, and they’ve been getting better at it faster than we’re getting better at resisting it, for decades.
I don’t think I’ve ever bought a microtransaction or cosmetic. I’m doing my part!
*Ok, i think I paid like $5 into warframe after 200 hours, and I used some fake money from google surveys on pokemon go, so I’m not entirely without sin.
Hey I spent a little money on Warframe. Shit’s free and fun.
Octavia is my girl.
(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….)
Honestly itch.io has plenty of free indie gems that can last me just as long as throwing $80 at a AAA game. I’d rather donate/tip after the fact for genuine well-crafted experiences
I absolutely love Manic Miners (the fan remake of the old Rock Raiders game). The customization so you can make your own mining crew, all the old-school parts that are in the game, everything about it is fantastic.
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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.
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.
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.
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’m over the massive, over-produced games. I looked at the price of the new Indiana Jones game (AUD119), and even though I loved Machine Games’ previous work, I noped out. These days, I’m mostly reverting to simple arcade games more akin to the early era of gaming I grew up on. Shotgun Cop Man, from the people that made My Friend Pedro, just came out. It was $13. Finished it in one sitting, but I’ll probably play it multiple times. Much better investment.
Indie games and small publisher titles are my bread and butter. They keep the spirit and innovation that I grew up with alive.
