Are modern games becoming less replayable ?

[ray245]

Meh, that is why RTS is no fun as competitive multiplayer - or at least no RTS I've found yet.

Promode, otoh, is for the bad player about reaction times, movement, and aim, and for the skilled player about teamplay, strategy and really quick thinking when things don't go your way. (I don't play anymore, takes too much time. Somewhere I decided practicing for gaming was not my cup of java.)

Strategy games that are computerized board games, such as Flashpoint Germany which I play sometimes when I find a PBEM opponent, has the replayability of a board game.

I realize I'm probably not interested in what most people call replayability at all; I can count the number of SP campaings I've played through twice on my right-hand fingers - KOTOR (twice), Quake (numerous), SMAX (if it counts as a campaign), Railroad Tycoon 3 (ditto). Most games with a campaign, I get bored with the gameplay and quit before I finish, or cheat if the story is interesting enough.

Try the total war series, where morale, height and other advantages are taken into the equation.

Then try a team based battle if you want, the team dynamic makes the game very very fun.

[haard]

Meh, that is why RTS is no fun as competitive multiplayer - or at least no RTS I've found yet.

Promode, otoh, is for the bad player about reaction times, movement, and aim, and for the skilled player about teamplay, strategy and really quick thinking when things don't go your way. (I don't play anymore, takes too much time. Somewhere I decided practicing for gaming was not my cup of java.)

Strategy games that are computerized board games, such as Flashpoint Germany which I play sometimes when I find a PBEM opponent, has the replayability of a board game.

I realize I'm probably not interested in what most people call replayability at all; I can count the number of SP campaings I've played through twice on my right-hand fingers - KOTOR (twice), Quake (numerous), SMAX (if it counts as a campaign), Railroad Tycoon 3 (ditto). Most games with a campaign, I get bored with the gameplay and quit before I finish, or cheat if the story is interesting enough.

Try the total war series, where morale, height and other advantages are taken into the equation.

Then try a team based battle if you want, the team dynamic makes the game very very fun.

Ah, yes. Total War, my old nemesis. I do love 2V2 in any Total War game I've tried, but none of my friends play it, and when total gaming time is an hour or two a day, tops, it's hard to get good games with strangers going.
Thinking of getting M:TW 2 to see if I can conquer the world again using Italian light infantry though. I did love my green hordes.
(meanwhile, spending time playing CK:DV)

[Covenant]

One of the things about older singleplayer games is that since they were more simplistic and shorter, not only due to storage capacity but also because they were often low-budget affairs, you'd get to the fun part real fast. If the game was good--and we each have the luxury of cherrypicking those 5 or so games we love out of the past 20 years of game development--then an oldschool game was probably going to be good faster and stay good longer. Many games nowadays actually space out the gameplay conventions so you may go 50% of the game without getting the thing that you really like--especially in things like first person shooters where so much of your experience is involved with the hardware you have, or any of the other big plot-driven affairs nowadays. Knights of the Old Republic, for example, has an extended Tutorial section in both the first and second game, and you spend a great deal of the game without the level of power you want to be able to do the stuff you bought the game to do. This isn't a flaw, but it's trading gameplay space for narrative space, and it's something that I think should be avoided when possible. "New Game +" options are nice because they allow you to replay the game with the fun stuff, but ideally the game allows you to do the most fun parts of the game in the first hour of play. Considering that many games nowdays are essentially interactive movies with nearly no risk, difficulty or chance of failure... fun value is high, but it's not replayable. They're popcorn.

[Sarevok]

Lemme elaborate a bit. Everyone knows that 99 % of everything is shit and that holds true for the nostalgic gaming days of 90s as well. We just remember the good ones instead of embarrassments like Daikatana. Now the thing is there are several 90s/early 2000s games that particularly stood out to me as timeless regardless of how backdated they look. Diablo 1 is still fun in both single and LAN play. Even some gamers these days may find it addictive as I found out LANing with a few 15 year olds who normally play the latest and shiniest Need For Speed and GTA installments. Mechwarrior series is another. It never gets dull doing the missions or just dropping into the battlefield in a customized instant action skirmish. Coming forward a bit to 2000s there is Halo and Deus Ex. Everyone praise them for the story but I just found the greatest fun about them is mucking around in a level. The storyline gets old like watching a movie for 5th time. But things like sticking a plasma nade on a warthog and leaping out in last second as the hog moves towards the enemy like a makeshift carbomb; or killing a cyborg MJ12 commando by dropping a crate on him from a high rise building just keeps pulling me back. Heck forget these shenenigans just redoing Assault on the Control Room or the statue of liberty level is fun even though I am replaying them at least once a week. I just wish the new games with new graphics had this addictive quality that kept pulling you back again and again for a fix. It is true that Total War, GalCiv are extremely good games. But they are strategy games, what do I do when I am not in evil overlord mood and wish to get personal ?

[starfury]

Considering that many games nowdays are essentially interactive movies with nearly no risk, difficulty or chance of failure... fun value is high, but it's not replayable. They're popcorn.

Ever since the next-gen Things begin with the Rise of 3-D and the playstation One era, games have changed from being purely just games to as one person said as Mildy interactive Movies. mainly a reference the old NES games, where they Coined the term Nintendo Hard.

[Stark]

I hope you've got some disease that makes you type like that. I hope you've got SOME kind of excuse.

I hear NES games had a good difficulty level and weren't retardedly hard to try to eke out longevity from laughably short games that cost a pile of money anyway? PS Zelda takes like an hour and a half to finish if you disregard difficulty. OMG SO GOOD.

Frankly, anyone who can replay a level - particularly a terrible level like anything in Deus Ex - is not a normal judge of replayability. There are people who habitually replay any kind of game, and that in no way means they're 'replayable'. The description of this form of 'replayability' as 'getting personal' is a terrifying glimpse into power fantasies I wish I didn't have.

[Ohma]

I hear NES games had a good difficulty level and weren't retardedly hard to try to eke out longevity from laughably short games that cost a pile of money anyway? PS Zelda takes like an hour and a half to finish if you disregard difficulty. OMG SO GOOD.

Well duh, like that part in SMB where there are fish that kill you like, five times before you memorize the level so you can beat it. REPLAYABILITY right there!

Frankly, anyone who can replay a level - particularly a terrible level like anything in Deus Ex - is not a normal judge of replayability.

Ouch, burn, but yeah seriously, for a game where you're supposedly all sneaky and stealthy and shit there were an awful lot of areas where you were not able to sneak around to find a way to like, not get into a massive gunfight that highlighted the laughably easy to fool AI. "Oh no! An enemy, quickly! Let us all run towards him single file and then run around like twitchy idiots after we each get hit by a single knock out dart and not either sound the alarm or get noticed by our friend walking in a circle right outside!"

[Stark]

I'm horribly biased because I think Deus Ex is a fucking terrible game (oh wow choose between two upgrades per location, one pickup always found in the same place, SO NON-LINEAR) but I've always hated level scripting. The idea that someone could honestly replay the first level every single week and thus claim the game is 'replayable' is some seriously fucked up shit.

To be honest, people who think shit like 'drop crate on man = omg so new' are just the kind of people who can replay any game for tiny differences. It's likely most people in the thread are talking about replayability from the perspective of new or unseen abilities or areas, not 'I'm insane so I can play an identical level over and over'. I mean, Elite isn't very replayable, because it's got a huge world that's totally fixed and the details are basically irrelevant because nothing will change. Space Rangers is almost the same game, but almost every element of the game changes not just between games, but within games.

Replayability /= fucking around to see death animations.

[Ohma]

I'm horribly biased because I think Deus Ex is a fucking terrible game (oh wow choose between two upgrades per location, one pickup always found in the same place, SO NON-LINEAR) but I've always hated level scripting. The idea that someone could honestly replay the first level every single week and thus claim the game is 'replayable' is some seriously fucked up shit.

Indeed, I'm still technically in the middle of replaying it (I started a few months ago because I never finished it when it was new because I was like, 12 and couldn't deal with FPS stuff) but man, there is a lot of bullshit in the level design. Oh and the upgrade "options" are made even more worthless because nearly half of them are useless compared to their alternative. "Hmm, I could either get something that helps prevent me from getting hit in the face by rockets, ooor some little drone dude that uses all my energy, only floats around unless I spend like, a lot on upgrading it, and only lasts like, 12 seconds before exploding."

To be honest, people who think shit like 'drop crate on man = omg so new' are just the kind of people who can replay any game for tiny differences. It's likely most people in the thread are talking about replayability from the perspective of new or unseen abilities or areas, not 'I'm insane so I can play an identical level over and over'. I mean, Elite isn't very replayable, because it's got a huge world that's totally fixed and the details are basically irrelevant because nothing will change. Space Rangers is almost the same game, but almost every element of the game changes not just between games, but within games.

Replayability /= fucking around to see death animations.

You could substitute Freelancer for Elite there too. "WOOOO! There're like a hundred worlds...that all have the same graphic, dudes at a bar, prices for goods, equipment selection, and nationality, oh and you can never blow up space stations or anything like that, oh and there will always be pirates everywhere trying to kick your shit every few minutes. BUT WOOO BIG WORLD!"

[Stark]

Dude, that nanofactory for stupid drones IN YOUR BRAIN was my biggest wtf moment in the whole game. As a bonus I remember it was slow and on a time-limit so ...

It's worth noting that games of Elite's time-period had an excuse (in that the universe was generated procedurally to fit it on the poor storage of the time) whereas these days it's dev costs for all the art that does it. Space Rangers gets around it with unified 'spaceport' art as Freelancer etc do, but because any station can be destroyed and the war can be won or lost without you the game is 'actually' replayable in that new things will happen that wasn't scripted in a file somewhere, instead of 'wow if I shoot through this hole in the level geometry I can beat the boss'.

[Ohma]

Dude, that nanofactory for stupid drones IN YOUR BRAIN was my biggest wtf moment in the whole game. As a bonus I remember it was slow and on a time-limit so ...

Yeah, a shortass time limit and it'd use all your energy, now, maybe if it like, wasn't slow, or didn't take until its final upgrade to get weapons it might've been like, not totally useless but...
Also, yeah, the brain factory was really random, though the alternative wasn't much less crazy (eg. shoving a chaff launcher into your skull). It really seems like they couldn't come up with anything either not totally stupid for the head slot, or something that didn't render the stupid eye flashlights (or some other gameplay elephant) useless (snerk, I laughed when I read the description for that one, yeah, I'm sure that modding my eyes to produce light was much more effective than just like, giving me night vision goggles or something )

It's worth noting that games of Elite's time-period had an excuse (in that the universe was generated procedurally to fit it on the poor storage of the time) whereas these days it's dev costs for all the art that does it. Space Rangers gets around it with unified 'spaceport' art as Freelancer etc do, but because any station can be destroyed and the war can be won or lost without you the game is 'actually' replayable in that new things will happen that wasn't scripted in a file somewhere, instead of 'wow if I shoot through this hole in the level geometry I can beat the boss'.

Yeah, though it has always been kinda weird to me that Freelancer didn't even go as far as having simple things like "blow up pirate/space patrol bases/ships and pirate raids/space patrols decrease/increase" or fluctuating (even without any bearing on player actions) market prices, or hell, allowing you to start a single player game without bothering with the story, it's a shame really, because aside from the numerous backwater planets which are obviously the same since the planet screen isn't even close to being an abstraction (like in SR) the game was actually pretty damn gorgeous.

[Stark]

Lack of actual market price variation can ruin a good game - I really like EV Nova, for instance, but the economy is fixed which makes the game totally boring.

[Jaevric]

When I think of replayable games I think of stuff like Baldur's Gate I & II or NWN - games where the actual gameplay can change dramatically depending on what class you choose to play.

So, in that instance, new games can be just as replayable as the old ones. Though the sheer amount of Stuff To Do in the Baldur's Gate series is hard to match.

[Eleas]

There are different forms of replayability, though. Some types of games encourage them; some don't. Personally, though the game isn't all that non-linear, I've found Thief 1 to be rather replayable - something only enhanced when I realized that it actually unlocked new areas for each level.

That's a ploy, I know, and one with limited replayability. But it does tie into what Stark said above about most developers not bothering past fashioning a single surface layer. Looking Glass rewarded people who wanted a steeper challenge to be different, not just a matter of ratcheting up AI sensitivity and propensity for cheating, and for that I loved them.

[Stark]

Yeah, that's what Bounty mentioned days ago. The term 'replayability' is so useless someone can honestly say 'play stupid story-based RPG silliness' which I don't consider replayability at all. You can't just measure how much someone is willing to 'go back' to a game, because that's mostly subjective 'happiness' with the game - some people can even play utterly fixed games again, because they enjoyed it as a movie. That's not 'replayability'. I could replay Monkey Island all I wanted, but there's no flexibility, dynamic content, secret stuff, or whatever. I just like it.

Then again, considering Baldur's Gate a new game makes me want to cut off my own head with a bucket.

[Thanas]

Then again, considering Baldur's Gate a new game makes me want to cut off my own head with a bucket.

Oh, hush you. Baldur's Gate lives from the sheer size and epic it has.

Oh, and the very excellent modding community.

[Stark]

But it's not 'new'. If anything, it's the 90s, which I thought is what people talked about when they said 'back in the day games were xyz'.

[Jaevric]

Oh, I wasn't saying Baldur's Gate is a "new" game. It definitely isn't. I was just holding it up as an example of what I think of when I think "replayability" in a game. I don't want to think about how many times I played through BG2 as different classes or with different party makeups.

[Dooey Jo]

Back in the day we had "replayable" games like Cobra Triangle. You can play the first six or so stages over and over and over again. But if you decide to play further, and try to complete it, the game stops being fun, and starts being an exercise in trying to not throw your controller, TV and family through a window. It's so goddamned hard that it's almost impossible to finish, even if you cheat. If you would finish it, I guess you'd say "thank fuck, now I never have to play this game again".

A lot of old games are like that. The first few levels are all nice and fun and can be played many times, but once you get into the "hope you've got a million lives" territory, it's just better to turn it off and do something else.

[Covenant]

I think it's important to try to define replayability before we devolve into talking about hard games that are difficult to complete once, let along games that can be re-played.

Replay value has to deal with the amount of fun it is to repeat the same experience once you've already experienced it. So in a sense, you need to be able to beat it for it really to have replay value, unless losing the game at some point is the intended consequence, such as in Tetris or Space Invaders, where I'm not sure you can ever 'win' the game. Even in games where death is the likely outcome due to difficulty, I'd say the difference is completeness of experience. Playing and dying on the ice level, and getting a game over every single time, is not a complete experience. It's not as if you've actually decided you want to play again. You just want to finish the game once. This doesn't hold true for all games--I know I enjoyed replaying Megaman many times regardless of the fact I'd already beaten it, so the best games provide a combination of difficulty and replayability to make the final reward more rewarding and the route to it enjoyable.

Generally, replayability means that after you've had your fun playing the game to it's logical end-point you can then play it again to that point and enjoy it. I would make the distinction that games that are simply difficult or extremely long are not more replayable, they are just less playable. The whole journey needs to be fun too. Games with a lot of slog and grind are generally not high on replay, since you don't want to slog or grind once you've already spent your time and earned that reward once.

[Jade Falcon]

I've replayed some old games before. TIE Fighter was a prime example, the Gabriel Knight and The Longest Journey games as well.

However, I'll agree that there is a lot of nostalgia involved. For every great title there's a crapload of second rate sports games, bad licences and so on. After all, who can forget the hype of games like Black and White for instance. One thing is that among the older games are some gems that never got the attention they perhaps deserved. Planescape Torment while a cult hit perhaps wasn't a huge commercial one. Same with Anachranox. If you're going to look at older games however, look at some of the crazes that happened like the splurge of 'interactive movies' that swamped the market.

[Stark]

A simple comparison of BG to ME should highlight some elements of 'replayability' in that kind of RPG genre - number of possible team configurations, quest variety, influence on story, etc. ME is really a tragically linear game by comparison, but putting in the right achievements makes people play it over and over anyway.

[Dooey Jo]

Generally, replayability means that after you've had your fun playing the game to it's logical end-point you can then play it again to that point and enjoy it.

Who decides what the "logical end-point" is? If someone has fun playing a game up to a certain point, and then later has fun playing up to that same point again, isn't that a replay?

[Stark]

That' what Cov just said, smart guy.

[Thanas]

A simple comparison of BG to ME should highlight some elements of 'replayability' in that kind of RPG genre - number of possible team configurations, quest variety, influence on story, etc. ME is really a tragically linear game by comparison, but putting in the right achievements makes people play it over and over anyway.

Well, the BG saga has three different outcomes. Some mods jank that up to over 40 different outcomes iirc. Also, when you play a quest in BG, there are always at least three outcomes to it. That is what makes it interesting.

ME sucks by comparison - the story and characterization never captured me as much.