Comment by beenBoutIT | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beenBoutIT | Hacker News Reader

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The formula is something like the longer a game is the less linear it needs to be to have a high replay value.

'The Last of Us' is incredibly long and among the best linear non open-world games ever made. That said, it's entirely linear and the thought of sinking such a massive amount of time into a game that's effectively a very long movie give it a very low replayability factor.

Likewise, Skyrim is a massive open world game that's incredibly linear and repetitive, giving it a low replayability factor.

Rockstar has several very long open world games that have massive replay value and don't get stale with repeat playthroughs. On the flip side, if you haven't played through 2 or 3 times you've generally missed a decent amount of content. GTA San Andreas, RDR2 and GTA V all fall into this rare category of long games that are highly replayable.

With open world games the key to high replayability seems to be NPC AI quality and providing different outcomes for different actions and the order in which you do things in-game. Allowing you to do lots of missions in whatever order you choose goes a long way to breaking up any feeling that you're watching a movie.

Replayability isn’t the only metric for open world games though, a bigger part is “Is the open world interesting enough to invest time in outside of the main plot?”

You might spend 20 hours playing through a main story, and another 200 running around doing other stuff without ever actually starting over in a new game.

> Likewise, Skyrim is a massive open world game that's incredibly linear and repetitive, giving it a low replayability factor.

I may not be the biggest Skyrim fan in the world but this is just patently false from my experience. I know tons of people who've played through Skyrim multiple different times with different playstyles and allegiances.

> GTA San Andreas, RDR2 and GTA V all fall into this rare category of long games that are highly replayable.

I can't say I've ever felt the need to reply any Rockstar games so much as continue playing them. The story missions are tedious compared to just messing around exploring the open world.

Interesting examples you have there. The Last of Us is 10-15 hours long: Short by full-price standards. There's 100 hour games out there, many made in Japan. The issue with replayability is that the story is better than the gameplay, and few want to go through said gameplay twice.

Skyrim is a game that, shockingly, people still play today. There's players with 1500 hours. It's not my cup of tea either, but putting it as an example of a non-replayable game is more than a little dubious. Especially when GTA V and RDR2 have basically the same practical problem, yet you find them highly replayable somehow.

What a game needs to be replayable is a fun gameplay loop that is enjoyable when the novelty of story has worn out. Even simple gameplay loops like the one of Hades can make the gave very replayable. If you like, say, the gameplay of Spiderman for the PS4(another game longer than Last Of Us), playing it again will still be fun anyway. If you are going in it for the story only, it will not. Very few games spend the effort on making all the little decisions have relevant story consequences: Basically all you ever get is illusion of choice. It's the fighting, driving, shooting, or strategizing that has to be so fun that doing it for 100+ hours can be rewarding to some people.

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