[General Discussion] RPGs, a sprint or a marathon?

RPG's are normally rather long games. A modern rpg will generally try to cram in a good 10 hours or so minimum of storyline then you have side quests to do and character development and before you know it, it's three months later and you've still not finished the thing. The rather open-ended nature of most rpgs however means that people tend to play them at different speeds. I reckon there are three main types of rpg player, although most of us are probably a combination of a couple at least:

Some people will stick hard to the story, rushing from main objective to main objective, rarely deviating until it's done. They might do some levelling if they need to to beat a boss but generally, as little time as possible is wasted and they get the whole thing finished in the fastest possible time. They're not overly concerned with getting the ultimate weapons or building the best character, they just want to know what happens. People like this probably would only use an FAQ if they got stuck on one particular point. Either that or they'd use a walk through right from the off and follow it to the letter. We'll call these people the sprinters.

Some people like to power-game their way through. Always fighting the toughest possible monsters to maximise their level progression, these people want to build the most powerful character possible with all the best gear. This inevitably takes a while as the levelling up is time consuming and there are often intricate quests needed to get the best gear. I'm inclined to suggest that these people are the most likely to read message boards or FAQs before they start to play the game to find out how best to max out their character. By the time they finish the game, the last boss is largely pointless as their team is so hard it's just not a contest but for these players, it's not about beating the game, it's about kicking the living fuck out the game and standing triumphant over it's bloody corpse. I'm not sure there's a running analogy that fits this but we'll go with middle distance, like 800m. Focused, requires power and determination but takes a bit longer than pure sprinting. Actually, this kind of player might never even finish the game, prefering to just continually seek for something better to equip their character with, especially in the case of more Western, random loot drop type rpgs rather than jprgs which are more likely to have a "best" set of equipment.

Finally, there are people who just like to explore the game world and see everything it has to offer. Wondering aimlessly about, they'll take on every side quest possible and fight the same monsters over and over to see if they drop anything different the 200th time you kill them. Whilst their characters will eventually become powerful from all the killing and quest rewards, theirs will be a much slower advance as they're fighting more lower level enemies. Also they're more likely to experiment with different gear and skills before settling on what they like. This person will probably have a look at an FAQ later on in the game, to see if there's anything they missed. This person will probably take a long, long time to finish the game and might even never finish it at all, getting bored before the end. These are the marathon runners.

Of course these are just my idea but I think they fit quite well. I guess it's three different things you can get out of a game, the story (For sprinters), the combat system (For middle distance types) or the game world (For marathoners).

Personally, I tend to start games as a marathon runner, wandering aimlessly, doing as much as possible and not worrying about levelling up or what have you. With some games I'll later become more of a middle distance type when I realise that I've picked up a lot of the really decent gear and my team are pretty tough but by that point I've normally spent twice as long getting to my current level as a true power gamer would have. I also often don't finish rpgs because I get bored (And aren't ever that bothered by the story).

So what kind of rpg gamer are you? I started this thread after looking at the Sacred 2 leaderboards and on the lvl/kills board, I'm way, way down because I've killed thousands of monsters and not really levelled up much, having spent a good 50 odd hours to not quite finish off the elven region (The first of about 9 chapters I think). I'm just enjoying wandering around the place doing all teh silly little side quests and I'm really not bothered about creating some kind of uber-warrior, just so long as he's tough enough to not get killed I'm happy.

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Tritoch, that's almost exactly ho wI play rpgs these days.

Mass Effect did have a few side quests in that you could visit all the identi-kit planets and there were always a few people with odd tasks for you to do on the story planets. I never bother getting all my characters up to max level although I did near-max the team's stats in Last Remnant (So I could beat the Fallen, was a bit of an overkill frankly, he went down in about five turns) and I have an old Suikoden save game somewhere on a memory card where every single playable character in the castle is at least level 63, has the best armour available equipped and a fully sharpened weapon.

A thread on GameFAQs suggests that you can get through Sacred 2's story in about 8 hours. I've taken 50% to complete about 10% and I'm only level 30. Likewise it took me a good 15 hours to finish Too Human the first time (Not that it's really an rpg) since I spent a long time exploring every last nook and cranny and choosing gear and stuff, although once I was done with the story I powered my way to level 50.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

See, I tend to get every item in the game, all the secret characters and take down the secret bosses. I sometimes max out characters, but its rarely my end goal. I do it because I want to make sure i haven't missed a single ounce of the story, so I guess I'm sprinting through a long distance run?

Maybe. Fuck you and your metaphors, English.

That's just OCD mate, I don't think there's an Olympic event for that yet.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.