Length of videogames - can the devs stop making filler now?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

6 hour long games: are you having fun for those entire 6 hours? Portal is 6 hours tops but it's fun all the way through. The Order 1886? No. Same thing with 100 hour long games. Is it 100 hours of mostly fun all the way through like Trails of Cold Steel? Or is it 100 hours of mostly bs padding like the Witcher 3? Usually it's the later.

I would rather see the filler be cut down until a game is mostly great for its whole duration. If it's a 20 hour long great game, then I'll be satisfied. I don't need 20 hours of great with 80 hours of mediocre like The Last Remnant. I would have rather just had the 20 great hours period.

Are we still in an era where companies say "consumers won't buy our game unless it has 60+ hours of content so therefore our games must be 60+ hours long regardless of the actual quality" now? Can we just get games that are as long as they need to be, have enough good quests that the developers thought of, and aren't stuffed with mediocre filler?

[Oyster Sauce]

Is it 100 hours of mostly fun all the way through like Trails of Cold Steel? Or is it 100 hours of mostly bs padding like the Witcher 3? Usually it's the later.

0% chance that Trails game isn't chock-full of filler. You just like it because it's anime. And that's good! Fill games with tons of extra content that the target audience will enjoy.

[jdcp]

"consumers won't buy our game unless it has 60+ hours of content so therefore our games must be 60+ hours long regardless of the actual quality"

Yah, were still there, don't think we'll ever move from here in the foreseable future.

Most people want to get the most out of a 70 dollar product, sadly, that translates to a **** ton of padding.

Fill games with tons of extra content that the target audience will enjoy

It depends, really, depends on a lot. I'm on the dark here because I haven't played the trails series but:

If anyone knows better to criticize the filling of hollow experiences with padding it's anime fans

[WhiteShark]

Is it 100 hours of mostly fun all the way through like Trails of Cold Steel? Or is it 100 hours of mostly bs padding like the Witcher 3? Usually it's the later.

0% chance that Trails game isn't chock-full of filler. You just like it because it's anime. And that's good! Fill games with tons of extra content that the target audience will enjoy.

I guess we need to define our terms, for I'm having a hard time seeing how content that entertains the target audience can be considered filler.

[WhiteShark]

A journalist would call all the gameplay between cutscenes 'filler'.

[rusty_shackleford]

The amount of games with genuine filler is small.
Technomancer is an example of a game with actual filler, because it requires you to backtrack repeatedly thru areas you've already been with respawning monsters.
Dailies in MMOs are filler content.

[Norfleet]

6 hour long games: are you having fun for those entire 6 hours?

See, I generally don't bother with a game that's merely 6 hours long, because I'm not a child. A 6 hour 2026 game, after you adjust for inflation, would be about a 15 minute game to me.

[Norfleet]

Most people want to get the most out of a 70 dollar product, sadly, that translates to a **** ton of padding.

If you want to get the most out of something, you're better off attacking the denominator than the numerator.

[jdcp]

A journalist would call all the gameplay between cutscenes 'filler'.

It depends the game, a telltale (rip bozos lol) game? yeah.

GoW? nah.

If you want to get the most out of something, you're better off attacking the denominator than the numerator.

Explain lol, pretty please

Dailies in MMOs are filler content.

MMOs are a completely different thing though, the main part of the experience is meeting people, the filler is just side stuff to do just in case you need more activities to do if you meet a new pal and gotta do something that isn't just standing around a hub typing all day. Dailies are just to keep you engaged too and in case your friends did em already then you just find new people that also need to complete them.

Then again they're mostly games whose progression is based on a loop that's pure filler, grinding, etc. That would be bad in other games, but I insist this is not what people play them for, so it's understandable.

[Norfleet]

If you want to get the most out of something, you're better off attacking the denominator than the numerator.

Explain lol, pretty please

[Tweed]

Good Filler - Pokeyman: Breed pokemans to get those perfect IVs and play eugenics so you can OHKO everything.

Bad Filler - Portal Fantasy: Capture 10,000 of the exact same type of creature you already have and then break them down into components, hoping to God that you get the ones you need to upgrade your not-mans into their next evolution.

The first form of filler can be ignored or engaged with while playing the game, the second requires you to stop playing the game altogether until RNG favors you.

[Tangerine]

Is it 100 hours of mostly fun all the way through like Trails of Cold Steel?

I've seen clips of one of those games (I don't remember which. The one with the cops) and its pacing is atrocious. Conversations are much longer than they need to be because characters take forever to get to the point, so I'd consider that content to be filler. It's my primary criticism of post-cartridge JRPGs; they got lots of disk space and decided to fill it with 15+ minute chunks of characters talking instead of doing.

[rusty_shackleford]

One man's unnecessarily long dialogue is another man's lore exposition

[J1M]

One man's unnecessarily long dialogue is another man's lore exposition

Nope. In Japanese games it's literally the same information being repeated a second time, often almost verbatim in the same conversation.

[J1M]

6 hour long games: are you having fun for those entire 6 hours? Portal is 6 hours tops but it's fun all the way through. The Order 1886? No. Same thing with 100 hour long games. Is it 100 hours of mostly fun all the way through like Trails of Cold Steel? Or is it 100 hours of mostly bs padding like the Witcher 3? Usually it's the later.

I would rather see the filler be cut down until a game is mostly great for its whole duration. If it's a 20 hour long great game, then I'll be satisfied. I don't need 20 hours of great with 80 hours of mediocre like The Last Remnant. I would have rather just had the 20 great hours period.

Are we still in an era where companies say "consumers won't buy our game unless it has 60+ hours of content so therefore our games must be 60+ hours long regardless of the actual quality" now? Can we just get games that are as long as they need to be, have enough good quests that the developers thought of, and aren't stuffed with mediocre filler?

Bad news! It's the opposite. Now even more filler is needed for the game pass subscription model and the rent-by-hour GPU streaming.

[Oyster Sauce]

One man's unnecessarily long dialogue is another man's lore exposition

Nope. In Japanese games it's literally the same information being repeated a second time, often almost verbatim in the same conversation.

Metal... Gear?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aizuchi

[rusty_shackleford]

One man's unnecessarily long dialogue is another man's lore exposition

Nope. In Japanese games it's literally the same information being repeated a second time, often almost verbatim in the same conversation.

If @Val the Moofia Boss likes it and the series has enough appeal to get regular entries, then it serves some purpose even if we can't understand it.
Likewise, what Val considers to be 'filler' is probably a large part in his own blindspot of what others consider to be fun.

As I posted prior, I think there's very little actual filler in games, just content that is for a certain target. e.g., Yakuza games have a ton of minigames and I hated them, but @aweigh seemed to love the minigames.

[Vaako]

Comes down to the gameplay and progression really. Recently played Octopath traveler 0 grinded 1-2hours maybe and then I was overleveled 15-30 levels for the rest of the game. But I also did everything optional before doing the mainquest. Think I continued the lvl 25 mainquest when my characters were like level 70 and I had already clocked 100hours into the save game. I wasnt bored during the site content but **** the mainquest in this game, writing for 12 year olds and so many gameplay interruptions with dialogue. I skipped every dialogue once the lvl 30 mainquest started. Did lots of townbuilding/optimizing the arena. Was all fun but sadly the switch emulators crashed a lot. Stopped playing shortly before the same endboss they always throw at you in the octopath series (dont like that one anyway where they split the teams). But had a lot of fun for 120 hours. After that I tried AC Blackflag for the first time once I had the diving bell and all important elite upgrades for the ship I got bored and didnt continue the mainquest and deinstalled. Ubisoft games are just really boring and generic. And I couldnt care less for their stories, maybe played Blackflag for 20 hours max.

[rusty_shackleford]

Octopath traveler 0

is this cracked?

[Vaako]

Octopath traveler 0

is this cracked?

Only with switch emulator yet. Normal pc should still have denuvo, maybe they drop it in 6months. I would recommend waiting for the PC version. Had to restart every 2 hours towards the end or game would crash. And had like 5 tries against one optional boss because the game crashed mid fight there too for some reason.

[WhiteShark]

Pokemon and games like it have egregious filler if you want to use a particular mon. I love RPGs that let me tinker freely with my party composition and builds, but mon collectors typically require you to level up new mons before you can use them, which requires mindless grinding. Yes, yes, some people enjoy grinding for its own sake, but I don't think we need to account for the brain damaged in our definition of filler.

[Norfleet]

I think the issue is more your SHORT ATTENTION SPAN, WhiteSquare. Every game we've ever played, you immediately quit.

[rusty_shackleford]

Pokemon and games like it have egregious filler if you want to use a particular mon.

Then it's not filler. If you don't need to actually do it, then it's just optional content. Likewise, if you can just skip dialogue, it's not filler.

[WhiteShark]

Pokemon and games like it have egregious filler if you want to use a particular mon.

Then it's not filler. If you don't need to actually do it, then it's just optional content. Likewise, if you can just skip dialogue, it's not filler.

You could probably also beat Mass Effect without putting points into any of your skills. Does that make the skill system filler?

[rusty_shackleford]

Pokemon and games like it have egregious filler if you want to use a particular mon.

Then it's not filler. If you don't need to actually do it, then it's just optional content. Likewise, if you can just skip dialogue, it's not filler.

You could probably also beat Mass Effect without putting points into any of your skills. Does that make the skill system filler?

1. No, because it doesn't take much time or effort to interact with.
2. You not being aware of Dean Takahash's Mass Effect review makes this post extremely funny.

[WhiteShark]

No, because it doesn't take much time or effort to interact with.

Irrelevant. You said that if you don't need to do it to beat the game, it's filler.

Anyway, I don't think dialogue's being skippable makes it ipso facto not filler, either. These things have to be considered in light of whether the developer intended for the player to engage with them or not. You can beat Pokemon without using anything but your starter, but, if that's how the dev intended the game to be played, there wouldn't be an elaborate catching and breeding system.

[rusty_shackleford]

You said that if you don't need to do it to beat the game, it's filler.

No, I said it's optional. Anything you aren't required to interact with is arguably optional, with skills in an RPG being at the very far end of "optional" as it's a core mechanic that you technically aren't required to interact with.
I gave an example earlier of non-optional filler content: Backtracking in Technomancer. You are required to repeatedly backtrack to the first city of the game probably dozens of times during the main quests. This was almost certainly done just to pad out the game.

[Stack of Turtles]

I think something can't possibly be filler if it's not mandatory, because implicitly, something is only filler if you're complaining about having to waste time doing it — and if you're complaining about wasting time doing something optional, then it may be time for the nursing home.

[Norfleet]

2. You not being aware of Dean Takahash's Mass Effect review makes this post extremely funny.

Isn't that the guy who failed hilariously at Buckethead?

[Norfleet]

You could probably also beat Mass Effect without putting points into any of your skills. Does that make the skill system filler?

Honestly, yes. Skill systems are generally filler where the functionality of the skill is degraded or locked out until you buy it back. Take Deus Ex. Would anything actually be lost if all of the core skills just worked correctly out of the gate? The skill system is functionally a meaningless filler where you pretend to be involved in something. The game was already designed from the standpoint of skills that function correctly. Then they were degraded and resold to you piece by piece so you can feel involved. It's the IKEA philosophy of gameplay, where you're supposed to somehow feel more attached to furniture because you had to put it back together yourself. I won't deny that this clearly works on SOME people (read: IDIOTS), but it does not work on me, I see right through it.