Hello all, As we all grow old we get more responsibilities, bills, more interests, and ultimately less time. I hear over and over from parents, adults, students and post secondary students, that say they just don't have the time to play a 100 plus hour game, nor time for a 50 to 60 hour plus game.
Fast travel in games can help a lot with having little time to play a long game. So many times have we played games with horrible fast travel points. Far Cry 2 stands out to me as one that suffered from this. The fast travel points were laid out like the 5 dots on a die. To use the fast travel points you would have to go to 1 of the 5 points just to fast travel to another. For an open world game having to travel from one side to the other often, really started to take its toll on time and enjoyment, until ultimately the travel got boring and ultimately the game, thus the game was dropped. While games like Fallout are littered with unique areas, that once found you can fast travel to from anywhere outside. This becomes a huge time saver, letting the player experience more of the game before they get board or an external factor distracts them from the game.
Developers can add extra modes/options to games to help those who have less time on their hands finish the game faster without changing the difficulty, but just the pace of the game would change. Like adding more fast travel points can help make a 60 hour game 50 hours or even less, essentially letting the player make the game more of a linear experience, going straight from point A to B, with no distractions, but have all the options of playing a fully open world game.
To pair with this I think games that have you level up could use a modifier to make gaining EXP faster, reducing the need to grind nearly as much. Also helping speed up a game. Many games have required the player to be a specific level before proceeding to another area or to be able to beat an enemy. Often this means you have to grind out battles or side quests to gain the levels to proceed. This adds a lot of play time to a game, time that is not fun but more like work. Changing the EXP gain rate could remedy this, making the game more fun, and will keep the players playing, letting players progress faster.
An example of a game that calls for a lot of grinding is Pokemon. (Although part of the charm of Pokemon is grinding; growing, training, bonding, and making your own story with your Pokemon, not everyone enjoys the grind though.) You have a huge number of Pokemon to capture and train, this takes time, a lot of time. If you are the kind of person that likes to make all your Pokemon level 100 it can take a lot of time to slowly level individual Pokemon up. Later in the game they give you this wonderful item called EXP Share, you just equip it to another Pokemon and they gain EXP even if they don’t fight, helping level the Pokemon up at the same time. Especially helpful when you use a high level Pokemon to battle other high level Pokemon to raise a much lower levelled Pokemon’s EXP.
Another helpful thing games can use is an increased game speed option. This would only work for turn based or strategy games, like Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, etc. I have witnessed people play games using an emulator with a much higher speed, just to combat the grinding, although, I must say I have done the same and it is very helpful. Again back to Pokemon, I have seen people play at a much higher speed rate, making their starter Pokemon evolve in 10 minutes rather than a couple hours or more. There is the game Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge back on the Game boy advanced that used an auto play feature to help speed the game along. There was next to no interaction for the player during a battle other than press “A” to move to the next text box. The auto play feature meant you didn’t have to press a button but just watch the battle play out and trigger 1 of your 2 extra battle chips when you feel the need. This lead to a much faster game play and more entertaining.
Maps can be confusing and cluttered in some games, especially when you start to get a ton of challenges and side quest. One thing that is helpful is when the developers allow you to filter these, and only see by category. This can be a helpful way to stop distractions from taking you away from the main quest. Not being able to see them on the map stops you from realizing something may just be around the corner and then find yourself an hour into a side quest.
I played this wonderful game on the Playstation 2 called Dual Hearts, sadly it is pretty much an unknown game. The game handled combat as a free roam hack and slash, but spawned in the enemies around you like random encounters. Usually when you have a game that has random encounters you would have a loading screen, the battle screen (which even if you wanted to run it would take time to be able to hit run and pray it works) and then another loading screen. To me this can be very boring and breaks the flow of the game, many times I find myself frustrated because I’m being slowed down, and takes forever to get somewhere or finish a task. Luckily because Dual Hearts is a free roam game you can just run away, not having to deal with loading screens, or having the flow of the game disrupted. Eventually the enemies would just disappear after a while or if you ran too far away. This was nice because if I didn’t want to combat the enemies I could just continue on with what I was doing and not be slowed down.
Many times critically acclaimed games like Horizon Zero Dawn and The Witcher 3 get passed up for something shorter. Adding more options such as fast travel points, increased game speed (like the final fantasy remake, Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age), increased EXP rates, more loot drops, or even a filter to hide the missions, in order to hide distractions from the main quest. By mixing these kind of options, that you can toggle on or off, would help sell your game to those with little time. Another good side is because they are just options not everyone will need them and people may not always play with those options on, making a more customizable playing experience, this also lets the player make a better experience for themselves.
The point is not to make a easier or a more linear game, but to make it more accessible and customizable for people with little time. The point is to give options to streamline a game for those who need it. You aren’t restricting people, because it’s still all there, you're just letting people play it the way they want to.
Have a wonderful day/evening!! Talk to you in the next post!