It should be noted that the earliest video games were supposed to be replayed... and most of them were even back in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era. Also, books and many pieces of art style entertainment were also reread and re-enjoyed. Hell, lots of movies and shows are more appreciated when rewatched. And it's not like movies or TV shows are always instantly rewatched, they are often watched more than once. The idea of not rewatching something is actually kinda new, as also is not replaying a game.... ____________________ Also, I think it should be also noted that some games are just naturally replayable. Most of these games are often simple (Classic Mario, Tetris, Pokemon) have a lot to explore while still being simple (Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Kingdom Hearts, and Pokemon). So for these games, replayability is just par for the course and didn't need to be thought about. If a game has a lot of customization, exploration and various options, they often have more replay value naturally. Also, when the game itself is simple and not too long.... Many early 2000's video games kinda hit this trend.... People still love replaying games from the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox era and those that are earlier more than most other eras just cause the simple fun and lack of too much complexity make replaying them naturally more simple. _____________________________ And because a lot of your videos deal with Pokemon, people think of your channel as a semi-Poke channel. So it stands to reason that a huge part of your viewer base would think of replayability. The Pokemon games are simple, have a lot of exploration options and have tons of customizations and ways to actually play the games. So they are naturally replayable with each play through being different from the last. So your topic of cutscenes probably triggered the fandom because Pokemon is not only one of the most replayable games but also it's fandom is one that replays more than most other fandoms.... So when your games are so naturally replayable and are replayed so much, the lack of consideration for those replaying is probably naturally annoying to players..... And when a huge part of your viewership is a part of said fandom, you should expect opinions that will especially resonate with that fandom....
Sigh... that is unfortunately something I had forgotten about - a good number of people in this channel came for Pokemon, even though this isn't a Pokemon-specific channel. Guess its pretty hard to not end up getting tunnelled into a specific game niche.
@@GoldenOwl_Game You know... selecting a Pokemon for your personal avatar probably amplifies associacion. Btw. At that video I mentioned Black and White's unskippable tutorial... when it's RTS/god-simulator with a lot of choices, replayability is obvious and unskippable very long and obnoxious tutorial is especially irritating (especially as @TheDeathmail already mentioned „playing once” is new concept... in 90s/2000s you even replayed adventure games to see if you missed something).
Now that you point out the difference between games and other entertainment media, I've just realised the concern over replayability is what I can only call a "modern-day issue", something that came about as a result of video games becoming longer, more complex and ironically wanting to offer an experience closer to more traditional media like movies. Back in the days of arcades, I'd imagine people wouldn't have given much thought to how replayable a game can be since that aspect was basically baked into their DNA. They were designed for short sessions and their gameplay loop being based primarily on skill and finding secrets incentivised players to come back and learn all the ins and outs of the game (and so they can feed more coins to the machine, but that's besides the point).
Sorry but if the piece of art is structurally designed to drain people of as much money as possible, then that’s not at all “besides the point”. Contemporary games often being less replayable, is more a result of the different ways that games are meant to drain players of attention (games as platforms) and money (games with microtransactions).
@@annaangelic2318no the big reason why people dont replay games nowadays is the sheer amount lf game, you have to jump from one to the other all the time. Back then we had Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat not 600 differents fighting game titles. When you were done playing zelda link to the past guess what, there was no other decent zelda game to play so you just had to replay it.
I feel people conflate "you can only play once" with "experience something once". Ff 7 for example. You can only know that Someone loses their life first time around and any subsequent playthrough it changes how you see the dialogue and characters Tales of series I can think of a lot of times where knowing who will get got makes the dialogue more impactful and relevant when you learn the truth like xillia where every member of the chimeriad has secrets in the post game stories that shift your perspective Overall every game can be replayed and should be. I wouldn't want to play something once and never touch it again. Something I played many times before and get hyped for all the time is paper Mario ttyd and switch wise I've been so hyped to start it and know new bosses have been added
Some games with linear story plots can have twists, misdirection and mysteries that a reveal can completely recontextualize tons of stuff that had been very carefully built. For games like these tons of lore enthusiasts love to go back and play it again.
@@intergalactic92Which is not a reason to disallow people who do not care to skip cutscenes. People have proven time and time again that they will mash the A button to get around the story even in games that disallow skipping entirely, so being unable to skip is not even a guard against unwilling players.
@@intergalactic92wow this is dumb, what if I just want to skip some cutscenes and not other? What if there is a really boring tutorial or a bad story arc that I just want to skip? What a weird reason to stop thinking about your players...
I want games to be replayable when the gameplay is worth it. The tales of series is very replayable and the second playthrough is way more fun when you know the gameplay and get the side missions too hard to beat the first time. Same with unbeatable early bosses that you can beat the second time around. Tales of the abyss you get a whole other side of the story for example. New game plus should give you enough of your items and resources from the first playthrough. Fire emblem three houses has new game plus but it's honestly just to speed things alone to get all the house people and skills for warp and rescue to play the routes faster. Though 3 houses sucks in replay as first half of each run is so dry and similar. Fates meanwhile has three routes that are way more fun and unique as that gameplay is definitely replayable
I've replayed The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and Majora's Mask more times than I care to count at this point, purely because I love the games so much. I never cared that I couldn't skip cutscenes because I liked reading through all of the text and experiencing that amazing story all over again. Maybe I just had nothing better to do, but the games made me happy, even if they have no obvious replayability
Yes, I used music from a game (Zenless Zone Zero) that hasn't even released yet. No, I am not sponsored (although I've received and turned down offers) by Hoyoverse. I just think the game has a cool soundtrack and looks stylish AF. Looking forward to playing it on release. Some of the best games have great replay value. Though, personally, I find that replayability is more of an neat bonus rather than being an essential part of most game experiences. At the end of the day, a good game will be a good game - adding replayability to a bad game will not make it good. Sometimes, a game only needs one good playthrough, and nothing else. And that's fine. You can probably have more fun watching a streamer play Ace Attorney ("VON KARMA NO") rather than replay it yourself. I do also have a game I enjoyed replaying as a kid - I always loved replaying the Spyro 2 & 3 nonstop. Pretty sure I had that entire troublesome Trolley track memorized at one point...
I feel like replayablity is ultimately more subjective than objective and that it depends on the individual player’s engagement. I’ve seen games that offer tons of replay value through something like extra content yet some people aren’t interested and on the contrary there are games designed with little to no replay value yet some people won’t ever them down. Great video btw, all your points were very informative as usual!
IIRC reaching True Vault Hunter Mode just requires beating the base game and Ultimate Vault Hunter just requires beating True Vault Hunter's base game. You theoretically could reach the level cap - the OP levels in normal Vault hunter mode but it would take forever due to lower leveled enemies. The draw is stronger enemies and stronger loot which can then be used to fight even stronger enemies, loot is at or a little below the enemies level not the player's. That only changes when Ultimate Vault hunter mode is reached which does scale enemeis to be at or higher than the player's level plus their OP level in Borderlands 2. The Borderland series was highly influenced by Diablo 2 at least which also apparently encourages multiple playthoughs for better loot.
Another aspect about replay ability I want to stress out is that were are in an age where people rebuy games all the time. Backwards compatibility is not always given for a new console release. So gamers sometimes have to rebuy a game they played years ago on new hardware. Games are constantly being remade and remastered so there are a lot of players that have already experienced the game for the first time. You have things like a definitive edition (like Darks Souls 2 and Scholar of the First Sin). There can also be games with cross save functionality between something like a switch and a steam library where people buy a game twice. All of those example would require skipping cutscenes even when not in a proper new game plus since a gamer may have already beaten the game in other consoles.
(I'm just going to pretend I'm not currently on my 7th play-through of the Mass Effect series.) One factor, especially for younger players, is money. I couldn't afford to go out and buy a new 50$ game every other week, so games with good replayability came in handy. I think this is one of the reasons why Pokémon became so big, since the huge pool of possible teams keeps the gameplay fresh even on multiple replays. This, together with the PvP aspects, keeps the players engaged until the next game gets released. If everyone just played through the story once and then sold the game at the nearest GameStop, I doubt the Pokémon hype would've reached the same heights.
Excellent job with this video's thumbnail using a Hades parody of the "Think, Mark!" meme, but with Hades in place of Omni-Man shouting "Think, Zagreus! THINK!" to his son Zagreus in place of Mark Grayson.
I am leading a team that is making a Fire Emblem 3 Houses mod with custom characters, a new story, and a vastly different gameplay experience. Watching your videos has led to me shifting my game design philosophy as I have started to consider more psychological factors that result in impressions that different elements leave in the player. Particularly your Geeta and Cynthia/Volo videos caused me to reconsider intended difficulty and how the player is taught to engage with the difficulty. I have a general trend of introducing new mechanics in notable ways and then building more complex situations around those mechanics later. But that process wasn’t as organized as it could’ve been. Additionally, your videos caused me to consider not just individual new mechanics themselves, but I started actively thinking about what lesson I’d like to try and teach the player with each chapter with the ultimate goal of making sure the player has a fair opportunity to learn strategies that will prepare them for a very difficult late and endgame. Never would’ve thought of any of that had I not found your channel. I believe our project will be better off because of your influence. So thank you for sharing your experience and please keep making new videos! Excited to keep learning new things about game design! (Also a 3H focused video or a FE focused video in general would be cool to get your perspective on 😉)
Something that really irks me is that SV and Sword/Shield both have an option to "skip cutscenes" and has a major warning for it. But it only works on SOME of the pre rendered cutscenes, not all of them. And when players think of cutscenes, they clearly also think of mindless character dialogue, or mindful character dialogue, depends on the game. But if Pokemon is gonna make it required to replay or buy older games for competitive, we need it to be short as possible so we can go to getting those Pokemon. Like imagine if Sword and Shield let you skip dialogue cutscenes. You'd save so much time. I've had to replay it recently just to SR hunt for a 0-Speed Calyrex. Granted it was already really quick when I was spamming dialogue with ZR, LR, and A, and using a level 100 Pokemon via transferring it from the save to my main, exp candies, then send it back, but like any time saved is more encouragement to not hack
Stylish Action games are built around new game plus. Oftentimes the first playthrough is designed to slowly get you used to the mechanics, in part because your character tends to have a ton that you might need to juggle for an initial playthrough. Some of the difficulty comes from managing resources on what you unlock but the games do the "it doesn't start until the second playthrough" well. The first playthrough on normal is supposed to be like an extended tutorial, especially since as you get farther along you learn more of how the game expects you to be playing, so when you start the next playthrough with most (or all) of your moves unlocked it starts to really throw difficulty at you. They tend to be shorter games for the main campaign which is partially why this design makes sense. In Devil May Cry, for instance, your first playthrough is to teach you how your weapons work and the general patterns that enemies have. Your Son of Sparda playthrough is, "You have all the weapons, now integrate them together, and really get a handle on how to fight these guys. So then when you get to Dante Must Die, the demand is, "Okay, you know how to fight everyone, individually? Now do it with insanely tough enemies, who can DT, and you get no health pickups." When I play DMC3 on a fresh port of the game, even the Normal playthrough can get a bit tricky at times even though I've played the crap out of it, just because of the lower health/move pool you have on a new save. For someone going in on their first playthrough, it would be extremely overwhelming to begin the game on Hard mode (and we know this because of the original American release of DMC3 when the 'Normal' mode was actually Hard mode and everyone agreed it was too hard). So letting the game be designed around multiple playthroughs lets you maintain a smooth difficulty curve across runs as you get more health and DT gauge, and level up your styles, and buy more moves and gun upgrades. The game giving you repeat playthroughs is not padding, it's training for getting you to a level of skill that will make the game the most fun. In one of the most extreme examples, Assault Spy has you play through the main campaign twice - once with Asaru and once with Amelia. The writing is completely different between them but their stages are identical, until you get to the end of Amelia's story and you realize what it's building up to: character swap. Both of the characters are independently entirely fleshed out and able to fight every enemy in the game, but the game really opens up when you mix them together. One problem with this is that character swap is presented in-game as sort of like a bonus feature, when I think it really shouldn't be, because on the Extreme Difficulty it feels like the game really does give each character more distinct strengths (and what is already a fun game gets significantly more fun when you swap on those more challenging levels). It's something that you only get in the final stages of the "main story" playthrough but that makes the New Game Plus runs so much more fun.
I'm surprised there was zero mentions of the entire genre of MMOs in this video. The genre as a whole is principled on the premise that sections of the game are done over and over to overcome developer limitations. Most players are expected to run the raids over and over each week to get the drops you need to advance player power, so you're ready for the next raid. This, combined with the unskipable cutscenes that FFXIV's had in some of their fights made it a perfect shoe-in. The single most prominent recent example would probably be E8 where a minute long cutscene is placed in the middle of the fight, making it unskipable.
There are a couple other forms of replayability that were very lightly touched upon but I want to add my thoughts. the first is the Randomizer, which is found mostly in rogue likes, but have become popular mods seen throughout a lot of games, mostly from metroidvania-style games, where the world has a lot of locks. A casual playthrough would see you go through an open style map in an intended order, while randomizers will have you weave around picking up items hopefully one will get you to the next key item. Because every item is shuffled with there being some form of logic behind it, there are an astronomical amount of variations a game could have that was once a straight shot and have brought new life in games. This can be seen in a lot of newer games which have their own implementation of the randomizer, turning a map into a big puzzle to sort out and tests the player's understanding of the game world to its fullest. The other type that comes to mind is the speedrun. Metroid really popularized this in-game, with certain ending screens being locked behind beating the game under a fairly strict time limit, and in the case of the GBA titles additional screens depending on how many items you picked up on the side. By having some form of score board, in game or externally, you can see how fast you beat a game and can compare with others. It lets a player sit down and master the game's mechanics, so instead of learning a shinespark for one or two sections and that is it the player will try to utilize these abilities and skills through the course of a whole game to its fullest. Both of these add replayability to games that might not have much replayability to begin with. And these also turn single player games into a multiplayer competition or co-operation, seeing who can clear a seed faster or help eachother solve the puzzle (especially so in Archipelago style randomizers where items from one game are found in a different game by a different player), or who can beat a game faster or help eachother look into the game for any potential time saves. It builds a community into a game people love, and keeps players coming back for more even if the game is intended to be a one and done sort of deal.
Wow I did not expect you to cover Borderlands in one of your videos, but you may have just explained why I never got what all the hype was about all this time. I only ever played it on normal mode O_O
I wish the Paper Mario TTYD remake allowed cutscene skips on repeat playthroughs. There are skippable cutscenes, but they only become skippable if they are cutscenes that come right before a boss or something like that, and you died on the boss with no save point between the save and the boss. It's a nice change, but also, strange that that doesn't carry over to alternative saves
Replayability has always been important to me, partly because of budget, but also because when I find a game I really like I will play it over and over rather than risking spending time on another game I might like less. I like replaying older Pokemon games, I've replayed Ocarina of Time more times than I can count. I used to replay Dragon Age: Origins over the weekend regularly. Even games that aren't seen as good, like Gundam: Crossfire. I would replay over and over, sometimes doing weird challenge runs, other times just enjoying the game. Armored Core games having mission select after beating them and letting you enjoy previous missions with loud outs that weren't available at the time. Ghost of Tsushima both having a NG+, but also giving you the replay option on the numerous strongholds acting like a level select feature. Then there's bigger games, like Xenogears, which I have also replayed many, many times. I don't know what else to say other than I'm kind of monogamous with my games? I find one I like, and I keep playing it.
I like replaying CRPGs like Pillars of Eternity to see what roleplaying and dialogue options other kinds of characters get. Just picking options to give my new character a different personality and seeing what comes from playing a hothead instead of a diplomat makes new playthroughs fun. But making a videogame that can accommodate several different playstyles and roleplaying options takes a lot of time, effort, and a lot of playtesting.
My favorite games to come back and replay are OFF, Cave Story, and Cry of Fear, only one of those being "truly" designed to be replayed. But I still love going through a lot of the same story beats in OFF and Cave Story because I enjoy the story, and the fact that they're (comparatively) short games means that I'm always encouraged to go back and play through them again. That's also basically my design philosophy when it comes to game, making a small story mode and then expanding from there with new stories and levels in the new game plus.
You do sometimes think that it is artificially increasing the playtime. When there are branching stories I do see the benefit more, but it is tricky when it’s a very long game. I’m not 10 years old anymore, I can’t just replay my games over and over like I used to.
I love replayability for a lot of reasons, but two big ones come to mind. The first is simply that most games I grew up with rewarded replaying the game. Star Fox 64 is a favorite of mine that featured branching paths through the game, where as the player's skill grew, more levels were reachable because you now had the skill or knowledge to get there. Getting to experience new levels because I, for example, now am good enough to save an important wingman, or find the warp zone, or get enough ships destroyed, etc, was an amazing feeling. The second reason ties into my love of modding. I find it incredibly fun to curate my own experience, and it also turned out that most games where that is encouraged with few limitations, tends to be larger than life games. The Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim all come to mind, and I've spent nearly 3000 hours total across each game. Minecraft fits into this category too, and is the single most popular game in the world, I also love Pokémon because of replayability. It's very easy to justify playing a Pokémon game to myself because the Pokémon I catch and grow attached to can be traded up to the next generation, letting me always keep what I've caught. This makes these games feel larger than life as well, in that none of my progress or skills are locked within one game. Sure, I've played and beaten each game several times, but there's always new things to try out, and my reward for doing so is (digitally) tangible. Ultimately, I think the reason why replayability matters to me is because if I find a game I enjoy, I want to invest a lot of time into it. I want to go just a little nuts about it, learn its inner workings, its lore and story, meta mechanics, see what the community has done to the game. It's less like rewatching a movie you like, and more like revisiting a theme park. If the act of playing the game is fun, then having nothing new to see or do isn't always necessary, so long as the game either is varied enough, or the core gameplay is fun. There is also a conversation to be had regarding the increasing cost of games, the ever changing landscape and what game developers value vs what they used to value (where did all the "arcade-y" games go?). If you're going to spend 60 dollars on a game, most would hope you'd get more than 30 hours of gameplay out of it. And what if nobody is making the types of games you love? The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask was made on a dare by a guy who seems ashamed of what he's created, despite the fact that it's the most emotionally powerful and moving game in its entire series, with mechanics that have never been seen before or since. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was made under unimaginable crunch to save Bethesda as a company, and is one of the last remaining games that relied on text based story telling in a way that served the game perfectly, and worked to engross the player in the world and the story it wanted to tell. Pokémon Black & White (1/2) had a drop-dead gorgeous art style, with all new Pokémon, a heavy emphasis on telling a compelling story, and improving the gameplay formula with additions that players still yearn for today. And what became of these series? Majora's Mask became a black spot on the series that Nintendo doesn't care to acknowledge or take inspiration from. The sequels to Morrowind dumb down the gameplay, shift away from the story telling conventions of the past and instead make heavy use of voice acting, necessitating that less information is given to the player because now everything has to be spoken and stored on disk space. And Pokémon Black & White was superseded by the first fully 3D pokémon game, which dumbed down the difficulty tremendously, introduced one of the most loathed features (which is now no longer optional in the newest games) and whose visual art style evolved over time from something that I think didn't look all that good, to something I can barely stand to look at. Star Fox 64 expanded on the previous two games and perfected the formula, giving players one of the most fun arcade-style games I've ever played. It rewarded player choices and skills, and had interesting lore that you could read about online or in the player's guide. But after Star Fox 64, every game tried something new, with varying degrees of success. Until eventually the fanbase realized we are never going to get an earnest Star Fox game again. It will always have to be packaged with some sort of gimmick to justify its existence. Because apparently, making a fun arcadey space romp is unjustifiable in Nintendo's eyes. If I, or anyone else, wants to enjoy these games for what they are, or wants to experience games like them, you don't have a lot to choose from. That's why I keep coming back to them. There's nowhere else to really go.
I think the model where the "real game" is in ng+ can be seen as an inversion of the fact that ng+ makes lots of content for cheap. It makes the first new game a story mode and extended tutorial in which the things carrying the game are the story and the progression of power. Subsequent playthroughs are then the place where you can ramp up the difficulty for people who really engage with the gameplay and have them be able to use every tool at their disposal to beat a really meaty challenge. For example, in DMC5, the fun could be said to come from using your immense arsenal of lethal tools to not only beat but destroy and style on the demons. Despite that, you unlock a pivotal part of Nero's gameplay at the very last mission. In new game this is fine because it allows a really impactful story moment at the end of the game and a real power up feel. It's also fine since his gameplay works great for the easier enemies of that game mode even without it. It is also really overwhelming to add onto an already busy gameplay loop as the first character.
You know, replayability is what scared me off from playing Nier Automata. I've owned it for years but after hearing people talk about how "replaying is mandatory" it has gone on the permanent backburner.
The funny thing is though, you have to actual replay the game to get the whole story, in which point can you even call that "replaying"? And even then a lot of things change between playthroughs as you unlock each of the major ending of the game.
puzzle games are also kinda interesting the witness is probably the best puzzle game ive ever played, but replaying the basegame is basically impossible since half the fun is learning what the rules are but then it throws in the postgame challenge area with randomly generated puzzles and a time limit and i may or may not have spent another 30h on it
2 of my favourite games are BW2 and Metroid Fusion. I've probably played both nearly a dozen times, but they are practically on polar opposite ends of replayability from a design perspective. Even still, while pokemon has boatloads of replay value and an expansive post game. Fusion has neither, and could be agreed as having less replay value than even other metroid games like Super, Dread, or Prime, to make a few. Or for a non vg example. I've reread my fav murder mystery (no spoilers here) no less than 5 times now. And I would happily read it again. Because even though I know who the killer is, the story is still fun, and the dynamic between the 2 lead detectives is extremely compelling and entertaining. Plus the B plot is fantastic to boot (The book is "Nothing To Hide" by Allison Brennan, for those who wanna check it out)
Tbh, these two games are a good example of my personal thesis that replayability and replay value are not 1:1 the sane thing. MF is a very bitesized game if one knows what to do and feels very rewarding to hone your skills at(People generally call it a very hard game, but it is actually pretty easy for like 90+% of it, but one would only know on repeat due to how the difficulty is designed), but it does not have a solid material reason to replay, besides I guess the japanese hard node. Pokemon BW2 meanwhile does have a material reason to return through its list of extra content and random factors, but it does not really lend itself to doing so due to its stretchy RPG progression and long cutscenes. MF = Much Replayability, no replay value P: BW2 = Much replay value, no replayability
I think you largely missed the point from last video, at least as far as what I was concerned about anyway. It isn't just "replayability is important" but also "cutscenes are annoying even if they're necessary and forcing them on people sucks," and even if they are important/have necessary information it seems simple to put a "hey this one's important" warning on a confirmation popup and let it happen anyway if they're sure. New game plus isn't something I've ever personally cared about (and most games I've heard of where you carry over eauipment and ruin the difficulty curve is strange to me, sucks about borderlands I was considering getting it once I get a new computer), for me replayability is more a matter of just, enjoying things again. I can't understand the obsession lately with effectively discarding something once you've enjoyed it... Books, movies, games, tons of other media, do they just stop being fun and interesting after the first time through? I'll read watch and play through stuff dozens and dozens of times, take a break to give my attention to new things (or just get busy and/or distracted), and come back days weeks months or years later and notice details I'd missed before or forgotten about and view what I do remember from a new perspective, there's always something new to experience. To only experience it once or twice and just... get rid of a thing? Is bizarre beyond any completable explanation I could give. Would you only eat a flavor of ice cream or your favorite foods a few times and always need to change another detail if you were to ever have it again? Or stop being friends with somebody because you got to know them too well, even if your relationship was otherwise very good? I don't understand it... And aside from that, in a practical and material sense these things also cost money, they have tangible measurable value. If you could enjoy a thing more then once and choose not to, that single experience is the most expense for the least value. The more time you spend with it is more value you extract, the more that cost is divided up, the more it's been worth to you. If a game costs 30 dollars and you play it once, that's it, but if you play it twice, three times, 30? That game effectively cost you 15, 10, 1 dollar(s), for double tripple or thirty times the value. In all aspects it's worth your time to enjoy a game multiple times. In all aspects it's worth making the experience, and repeating it, as enjoyable as possible. Simple quality of life improvements like the ability to skip cutscenes should be implemented (again, where possible) regardless of that though. On another topic, I don't think it's healthy to modern game development that apparently games are being designed to be one-and-done experiences. What's the point of having any passion for a thing as a player or as a developer if you're not supposed to care about it beyond immediate gratification before chasing the next new thing? A similar this is ruining a lot of shows and movies lately, almost nothing on TV or in theaters is worth watching or investing in because it feels like all the people making them care about are keeping people around for the next subscription fee, amd with gaming getting deeper amd deeper into breaking games up into DLCs and multiple different exclusive preorder bonuses and also subscriptions... it looks bad. Replayability isn't just a matter of changes to what happens, or reacting to changes in the meta or enemy spawns/enemy behavior. Even if a fame happemed nearly 1:1 identically every time, it'd be replayable if there was quality and passion built into it. Again, I enjoyed the video, but I'm disappointed it didn't really address what I was hoping it would. Thank you for reading, if you see this, and I apologize for my tone if I came off as rude at all, I'm very passionate about my interests and I don't mean anything by it if I did.
If we use Pokemon games as examples, the gameplay really never changes, at least their stories, aside from your choice of team members and their stats. Three playthroughs of platinum where you pick a different starter each time and raise an entirely new team with no repeats to go with them are all three playthroughs of effectively the exact same game. And it's still fun each time. Even if you don't do nuzlocks or other challenges, or not use items, or anything else. The moment where giritina appears at the end of platinum is amazing to me every time it happens, it inspires some of my plot ideas for my dungeos and dragons games, both as a player and as a DM. In the "The Adventure Zone" (or TAZ) podcast, almost all of the emotional moments make tear up every listen though, and I've listened dozens of times, hours and hours multiple times over of a podcast that has no new content within the same set of episodes. And they're still fun. Why should anything be designed to be enjoyed only once? The idea of making something and needing to change it is somewhat antithetical to my thought process even, as a knee jerk reaction, because I like to think that things shouldn't need to be designed to be fun multiple times, because if you've really made something good it's probably good multiple times through without needing to work towards making that happen intentionally. It's not an unadmirable goal to have to make some details obscure or recontextualize some pieces when you revisit them, of course, putting more thought into it. Any goal to make a better, more enjoyable product is an admirable one.
Do alts count as replaying? Like B missions (of old levels). I don’t mean side quests. It could just be “A mission but with a timer” or it could be something that requires a bunch of prep from even earlier levels. Like a horror game where most of the A missions are just a simple point A to B but you just hit a dead end doing that.
I don't really care about full game replayability features or new game+. For me it just appears as a meaningless marketing argument. If I really like a game, I'll certainly replay it at some point. Even without any replayability friendly content. Just enjoying the game one more time and make good use of my game knowledge to play better is enough. On the other hand, you can give me all the new game+, secret bosses and variations you want. If I don't like the game enough, I'll be done with one playthrough. Good books and movies don't need additionnal features to be re-reeded or re-watched. It's the same with games for me. They just need to create a deep bond with their public.
I have some games I enjoy over and over again, even if the replayability isn't really too much present there. Yes, Chrono Trigger has multiple endings, but you can experience all in one new game + already if you save each time bevore going for an ending. I played that about 20 times now. And its successor Chrono Cross is also turned into double digets with my last playthrough last year. I often replay old games because I thought of new improved ways to beat them or discovered something while watching a playthrough. Now far less than 10 years ago since my time is much more limited, but it still happens sometimes. I really like games with a good story, those have a great value to play again most of the time. Or there is something like Terranigma, where the whole experience is so great that it is worth playing again and again, where you can just overlook that one flaw which is the battle system being far too easy.
i would argue that with borderlands, the normal playthrough starts to feel more like a "story" playthrough, where you just play it for the story and if it hooks the player in with the gameplay theyll start the real "game playthrough". With borderlands 3 at the end of its life the devs ended up striking a good balance i feel where you really only need to finish up that first playthrough and then everything to do with endgame unlocks and you just have to keep playing to reach the level cap and start the other fun aspects of the game
Board games are often more expensive than video games, and given the need to learn rules that necessitate players to action things a video game would do either automatically or, more often, behind the scenes, lead themselves more towards replay. You've learned the upkeep and/or rules, it's a sunk cost to not play again. Doesn't mean you can't replay video games, but comparing the two need to acknowledge this fact.
One game that should have NG+ and even has post story unlocks....DIGIMON NEXT ORDER! It could have a system save that for that user that saves field guide(DigiDex), unlocked cards, and Digimon unlocks. That way the GRINDY stuff is gained per playthrough to completion.
@@cachotognax3600 i know your type. you're, uh, very determined, aren't you? you'll never give up, even if there's, uh... absolutely NO benefit to persevering whatsoever. if i can make that clear. no matter what, you'll just keep going. not out of any desire for good or evil... but just because you think you can. and because you "can"... ... you "have to." but now, you've reached the end. there is nothing left for you now. so, uh, in my personal opinion... the most "determined" thing you can do here? is to, uh, completely give up. and... (yawn) do literally anything else.
Avoiding needless retreading of stale gameplay areas is the reason why I consider the Bonfire Ascetic in Dark Souls 2 to be the single best addition to the franchise, and why its deliberate exclusion from Dark Souls 3 felt like a personal slap in the face by Miyazaki’s dick. “Oh, you wanna have fun by going back and putting your summon sign sign down after you’ve beaten the Dancer? Tough shit; start a new save file and DO IT AGAIN FROM SCRATCH, PLEB. WE DON’T DO QUALITY OF LIFE HERE. ONLY NEEDLESS PAIN.” Working as intended, indeed 😓
Most games I like I've played through multiple times. Only if a game gives the "Finally it's over" feeling when beaten do I not feel like replaying. So me not feeling like replaying a game ever again is essentially my way of saying I did not enjoy that game. Replaying a game is a sorta passive compliment to the game.
Not specifically about replayability but rather the comments which started off this video. I believe that, and thats only a niche aplication, even cutscenes can add to replayability! Specifically if your game has an ally betraying you in the last act it can be fun to try to pick up the hints as to where they show their true nature. Example: fake tyrs betrayel (a youtuber went through a video of where he messes up the masquerade) Although that effect is very niche and wears off with the third and subsequent playthroughs.
i can not agree more with the rouge-like/light section. despite me having over 1000h in the binding of isaac you could not pay me to replay the ENTIRE game from start to where i am now again as fun as some of the characters there are, i refuse to do everything with keeper, jacob & esau and some of the B-side characters. and that is ignoring the one-hit wonder of the lost or the fact that i haven't fully completed the game since it's newest dlc yet
Share my experience replaying a game? I replay most games I enjoy. I’ll get started on a second playthrough as soon as I’ve finished the first for most JRPGs I like. It kind of helps that Tales Of games have a neat point system that gives you currency to spend on bonuses for NG+. The better you battle in the game the more points you get. Also I just really really like the story and characters of Persona 4 and 5. I’ve played 5 at least eight times now.
I've no idea how anyone can replay Persona games so many times. I enjoy them, and their story focus is really fun, but they are SO long that I can't really handle doing them more than once.
Maybe it's just my fixation speaking out, but all this talk about replayability in games that were not design with replayability in mind, I can't help but think about my history with the classic (though probably niche in this day and age), Golden Sun. As a JRPG with tons of unskipable dialogue and a story divided between two different GBA carts I doubt it was design with replaybility in mind. But that hasn't stopped me from doing so more times than I can count. While being one of my early introductions probably played a factor in it, I think there's a lot more beyond that. A big factor is that I just haven't found another series that has done that sort of blend of gameplay elements so well, made all the worst by there not being a new installment in 14 years. So if I want to experience that specific gameplay loop, I don't really got any other options. Though being a JRPG with mutiple classes and collectables it has a bit of that Pokemon vibe allowing you to go through the game with different builds through different combinations of creatures. Plus if that's not enough... lets just say I have my own ways to inject new life into the gameplay loop I love while making the parts I find tedious a lot less so.
If there's a game I like enough that I want to experience it again then I'll replay it, simple as that. Features that aid in replayability are nice, but ultimately secondary to the game just being good enough I want to replay it. Hollow Knight, for example, is rather limiited in replayability features, but that hasn't stopped me from replaying it a dozen times. Same with most Fromsoft soulslike games, and in those cases I rarely even bother with NG+ because I find the regular NG, the experience the game was balanced around, simply more enjoyable. Hell, I've ever started a new file and recompleted hades 3* times now (*I haven't gotten the "true ending", fully upgraded the mirror, or completed all the prophecies on file 3 yet), because I just find the full experience Hades was designed around to be that good.
I feel like it shouldn't be counted against the concept of New game+ that games like Borderlands butcher it and intentionally use it in the worst way possible. Even the most bog standard implementation of "keep your stats" would seemingly be better than whatever the thing you described is.
I think that every game with upgrading elements* should have New Game+. I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077 right now, and the gameplay wasn't interesting until you unlock a bunch of movement options. Three Houses really needed to keep Class Mastery through New Game+. Because it would encourage more experimentation if you had access to all the skills at the same time. Fire Emblem needs Set Mode, where you gain access to all the character's unlocks, but the levels are set to the chapter. That said, a good game has inherent replay value, no extras needed. *Which is not the same as levels.
HGSS are my favorite games. So much content, so much to do, phenomenal games to take your time with and dive into. I’ve been told they’re actually bad games because “They’re too long to replay because there’s too much content.” Like I get it, people like doing Nuzlockes, but so many Pokémon games lack stuff to do in comparison. I could understand people being upset about the level curve but too much content to replay? They aren’t even complaining about the content not being good, just that there’s too much of it. Not every Pokémon game has to be a 5 hour rush-to-the-end experience. Johto is deliberately designed to make you take your time. That’s not a flaw, that’s a feature. And hell while I’m at it, the level curve isn’t even that bad. You actually get rematches unlike RBY which has an enormous dry spell right before the Elite Four. HGSS come with the PokeWalker to help you get items and exp. And Mt. Mortar’s right there with surprisingly good exp. So yeah you do have to take your time, go off the beaten trail and explore. That used to be a positive. What happened?
I tend to replay games pretty often mostly because modern games are either super boring, uninteresting, there are so many, derivative or I just straight up don't have the platform or money to play say games. Is that simple really. Jrpg are getting more and more difficult to replay for how long they are getting.
I've found that Zelda games have pretty much no limit to their replayability. I usually end up playing Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask once every couple years ever since I was a kid. To be honest though, I'm not entirely sure why they're so replayable. Any ideas?
This is likely due to the huge majority of a Zelda game's content being optional. In practice, you only ever need to clear a few compulsory objectives to beat a Zelda game. Namely, clear the main temples and fight Ganon. But there's a huge amount of side quests and secondary content that a player is quite unlikely to see everything in a single playthrough. In a way, everything in the game only serves to make the actual compulsory final challenge easier. Do everything and there's no way any player that got that far can lose to Ganon. This philosophy even extends to BoTW and ToTK. You could beeline directly to Ganon if you want and not do anything else. This indirectly makes these games highly replayable, because a player is likely to pick a different direction and see different content on each playthrough.
I have over 20k hours in like 5 different games and barely ever play anything else. I feel like if a game is good, why would I play the inferior version? Shoutout to Tactics Ogre for being the best game ever for the past two decades
In open world games you could argue that where you cant access something yet because you havent unlocked an ability is a form of replay-ability, because it encourages you to go back to an area that you've already completed everything else
The fact that after years you can start a Three Houses discourse by stating your opinions on one character in particular says a lot about how much value a single route added. Whereas Engage...
I still stand by the opinion that Engage is a fine game. It's silly, goofy and fun, and doesn't pretend to be anything more than that. The entire Saturday morning cartoon opening pretty much shows that off well. Not every game needs to be a dramatic socio-political conflict. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with a goofy and simple story.
@@GoldenOwl_Gameagreed, and in other ways Engage really benefits from being a single route game. The designers will always have a good idea of what tools you have and how strong your units are, and thus can always challenge the player with interesting map design. No chapter (aside from a few paralogues) will be a waste because of how varied every map and its challenges is. Three Houses meanwhile has much blander maps, 90% of which are reused in other routes. Sometimes they change the layout/player-enemy placement enough to change it up (most of CF) but on most routes maps are repeated with next to no variation. The main selling point of 3H is being able to build a squad of powerful units in any way to destroy the enemy, but that also means every map has to be beatable by any set of units and classes. Combined with how much the monastery can drag on subsequent playthroughs and Three Houses is ironically a chore to replay without NG+
I wrote this paragraph half way through the video then read the title and watched the rest of it and realized he said everything I wanted to say and then some. I don't feel like deleting the comment though so press read more if you want to read my inferior comment about new game pluses. Comments are good for the UA-cam Algorithm. I feel like certain types of games that have the potential for replayability, should capitalize on it. One game that I feel like should have a new game plus and keep it is the fire emblem franchise. The recent fire emblem games have been slowly approaching more character building rather than perma-death. When I play fire emblem engage, I build several stacked characters, but when I replay the game for the build variance and perma-death, I have to start from scratch to get that character back up to the same level, and don't have time to build the other characters. Often times I wish that I could do a new game plus, but only get the character at the usual times, but I keep the skills that I inherited on the unit a playthrough prior. You can keep bond levels the same way or change it, I don't mind those being reset. I think this would bode better for the game because, in a game about building characters, access to characters that you already have built would incentivize me to use and try out characters that I wouldn't have used otherwise. I think it's better for games in general that have an aspect of replayability, to at least do something with it, even if it's something simple like multiple save slots for multiple playthroughs.
i Like a lot the shater blad repalyabialty it incorrges you to replay the gmae more then 8 thimes and you get a lot of unblace caracter like the uses hanataró and the borken byacuya so that player wich have master ever carcter can nou experimet with this operwer opitosn and usles orpisons this is aculay a fithging game. i rlbyed dozen of thimes bcroeu you have the queston how powerful a carecter is or how week cna ti be for the peoepls wich want to felea opepower bkuya is theri guy becouse he dos some unkincable things in that game live not taking damge if yoi pers a buton and just kill and other carcter and hantar dons literly nou dameng
I think a video focusing on things like rpg Mimics and the infamous Mindy haunter trade would be cool. Like why would the developers purposely fool the player when trying to make a pleasing experience.
I love the gloria and hades omniman edit, but man you can't say that water is wet as if it were fact, because it isn't. Think about it for a second, to be wet a solid has to be at least partially covered by a liquid, dissolved in it or absorbed it, water itself can't be any of those things in most circumstances because it makes othrr things be like that. (It's not bashing the vid at all, just pointing out that it is technically incorrect)
I've always been the type of person to replay games over and over. Whether it be when I was a kid replaying Pokemon Diamond again or even Ace Attorney games that I'll replay every so often to this day just because. I can't claim to understand it myself, but I love replying things.
Personally, I don't like games that do multiple endings, because they always make me think "What if I had done this differently?" but rarely make me want to replay everything up to that point just to get a different state at the end of the game. They're usually good stories, but the core mechanics underneath that story seldom make me want to go through all the effort again. These types of games are even worse when progression towards a certain end goal is gates by checks I can just fail no matter what I do (see: Baldur's Gate 3). For a game to have good replayability, it needs to have a good core gameplay loop. The core loop needs to make the player feel like their time wasn't wasted, either because they improved their stats in-game or their actual skill at playing the game. This also goes for full-game replays, because the core loop needs to be fun from the start to the end of the game. Story doesn't add replayability, because the story doesn't require skill or improves the player's character. This is even worse if storylines are gated behind player skill, because that means that players will repeatedly try one section of the game until they get that storyline instead of replaying the entire game which was the point of branching storylines. Games like Dark Souls, Mario, and Sonic, where the entire game is focused around player skill, are the type of games that have very good replayability. Other genres, like Diablo and Borderlands, also have strong replayability because they are easy to pick up and play and offer a constant stream of rewards even if those rewards are only minor improvements. Roguelikes like Hades and Rogue Legacy are, as is said in the video, not good examples of full-game replays, but there are some that style themselves completely after small runs without overarching narratives (For example: Slice & Dice). In short: The way I want to put it is that feature bloat does not make a game replayable, nor does the story of a game. A game is replayable when it doesn't waste your time with extra fluff to get to the thing that makes you want to (re)play the game.
I'm sorry but if you need a reason for why cutscenes should be skippable spelled out for you, you probably shouldn't call yourself a game designer. It's an obvious feature that should never NOT be included, and any game that doesn't allow this instantly gets dragged. There are many MANY reasons for this that anyone should be able to come up with one or two without needing to have it explained to them. Also, the fact that you didn't immediately realize that, yes, video games ARE replayable because they are games also speaks volumes.
They weren’t listing why they should be skipped, they were listing why sometimes they don’t or even can’t implement it. The thesis of all of these videos is that a game designer has a different perspective to a player. What is obvious to the player is not always obvious to the designer.
"any game that doesn't allow this instantly gets dragged" But does that instant knee-jerk reaction even make sense as a blanket reaction? For a long, plot-heavy game, it makes no sense to skip cutscenes on the first playthrough. What about subsequent playthroughs then? If a game has built-in replayability features, then cutscene skipping on at least subsequent playthroughs would be an expected feature. But what about such games with no replayability features? Well, how many players are going to play the exact same game for dozens of hours where there are no meaningful changes, such as heavy customisation, additional features or endings? Probably very few, so cutscene skipping has near zero priority. And if you play an RPG for the second time years later, you're probably not skipping cutscenes, unless you really like not knowing what you're doing or why. What about shorter, plot-heavy games? Well, even if they lack replayability features, the likelihood of an immediate replay is potentially higher, so cutscene skipping might be a higher priority to implement, but not a necessity. If a game is short or can be played without paying any attention to the plot, because you just pick up a weapon, follow the dotted line and start blasting? Sure, cutscene skip away. Personally, I think the completely un-nuanced take of "no cutscene skipping always equals bad" makes no sense as a player, and social media users just mindlessly eat up this easy ragebait used by reviewers to get engagement revenue. Having the option is nice, but not implementing it when it wouldn't make much sense isn't inherently bad.
@@HackedYoWeather Some people don't play games for the story and want to skip to the action. Doesn't matter if it's a plot-heavy game or not. Having the option to skip cut scenes is never a bad thing, and never something that can't be implemented these days. There's also those times you could have a long cutscene before a tough boss and, should you lose, being forced to rewatch the cutscene again every time just adds to the aggravation. These are two big reasons, among many other smaller reasons, as to why being able to skip cut scenes, even on a first playthrough, is more important than forcing someone to watch them. These reasons are very apparent to anyone who has played through games that don't allow cutscene skipping, which is most people. They don't need to be spelled out. And any game designer who thinks this is okay is so out of touch with their player base that they shouldn't be game designers.
@@GoeTeeksMaybe my saying "first playthrough" was bad wording; I totally get not wanting to watch the same five minute pre-boss cutscene more than once or twice in the space of an hour. That said, you're talking about a segment of gamers who are a design problem in of themselves. Let's say you're playing a game where all cutscenes are skippable from the get-go. This game is quite open in terms of exploration and has a sizeable world. You walk into a town, a cutscene starts to play, you immediately skip it, and you're plonked back into town overworld gameplay. Cool, where do you go, what are you doing, why are you doing it? In that type of situation, handling that type of player and designing how to direct them to do the thing that the cutscene was supposed to explain to them is a whole other rabbithole that sucks up development time. However, if you allow a player to skip all cutscenes from the start, not handling them with an alternate user journey would give them a bad experience. This is then keeping in mind that development resources aren't infinite. Is allowing for this and then needing to compensate for this even a good use of those limited resources? There's not a perfect, one size fits all answer, so speaking in absolutes and declaring non-compliance with that absolute as incompetence is a bit unreasonable. There's always some nuance to the question.
![Designing a Superboss, feat. Red from Pokémon [Game Designer Explains]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8FMjZHckZm0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Designing a Superboss, feat. Red from Pokémon [Game Designer Explains]](/img/tr.png)
![Why the Elite Four was Actually Easy [Game Designer Explains]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/6ibKcU8QWJA/mqdefault.jpg)
![OHKO: Instant Kill Mechanics (and why they tend to suck) [Game Designer Explains]](/img/n.gif)
It should be noted that the earliest video games were supposed to be replayed... and most of them were even back in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era.
Also, books and many pieces of art style entertainment were also reread and re-enjoyed.
Hell, lots of movies and shows are more appreciated when rewatched. And it's not like movies or TV shows are always instantly rewatched, they are often watched more than once.
The idea of not rewatching something is actually kinda new, as also is not replaying a game....
____________________
Also, I think it should be also noted that some games are just naturally replayable.
Most of these games are often simple (Classic Mario, Tetris, Pokemon) have a lot to explore while still being simple (Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Kingdom Hearts, and Pokemon).
So for these games, replayability is just par for the course and didn't need to be thought about.
If a game has a lot of customization, exploration and various options, they often have more replay value naturally.
Also, when the game itself is simple and not too long.... Many early 2000's video games kinda hit this trend....
People still love replaying games from the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox era and those that are earlier more than most other eras just cause the simple fun and lack of too much complexity make replaying them naturally more simple.
_____________________________
And because a lot of your videos deal with Pokemon, people think of your channel as a semi-Poke channel.
So it stands to reason that a huge part of your viewer base would think of replayability.
The Pokemon games are simple, have a lot of exploration options and have tons of customizations and ways to actually play the games.
So they are naturally replayable with each play through being different from the last.
So your topic of cutscenes probably triggered the fandom because Pokemon is not only one of the most replayable games but also it's fandom is one that replays more than most other fandoms....
So when your games are so naturally replayable and are replayed so much, the lack of consideration for those replaying is probably naturally annoying to players.....
And when a huge part of your viewership is a part of said fandom, you should expect opinions that will especially resonate with that fandom....
Sigh... that is unfortunately something I had forgotten about - a good number of people in this channel came for Pokemon, even though this isn't a Pokemon-specific channel.
Guess its pretty hard to not end up getting tunnelled into a specific game niche.
@@GoldenOwl_Game You know... selecting a Pokemon for your personal avatar probably amplifies associacion.
Btw. At that video I mentioned Black and White's unskippable tutorial... when it's RTS/god-simulator with a lot of choices, replayability is obvious and unskippable very long and obnoxious tutorial is especially irritating (especially as @TheDeathmail already mentioned „playing once” is new concept... in 90s/2000s you even replayed adventure games to see if you missed something).
Now that you point out the difference between games and other entertainment media, I've just realised the concern over replayability is what I can only call a "modern-day issue", something that came about as a result of video games becoming longer, more complex and ironically wanting to offer an experience closer to more traditional media like movies.
Back in the days of arcades, I'd imagine people wouldn't have given much thought to how replayable a game can be since that aspect was basically baked into their DNA. They were designed for short sessions and their gameplay loop being based primarily on skill and finding secrets incentivised players to come back and learn all the ins and outs of the game (and so they can feed more coins to the machine, but that's besides the point).
Sorry but if the piece of art is structurally designed to drain people of as much money as possible, then that’s not at all “besides the point”. Contemporary games often being less replayable, is more a result of the different ways that games are meant to drain players of attention (games as platforms) and money (games with microtransactions).
@@annaangelic2318no the big reason why people dont replay games nowadays is the sheer amount lf game, you have to jump from one to the other all the time.
Back then we had Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat not 600 differents fighting game titles.
When you were done playing zelda link to the past guess what, there was no other decent zelda game to play so you just had to replay it.
I feel people conflate "you can only play once" with "experience something once". Ff 7 for example. You can only know that Someone loses their life first time around and any subsequent playthrough it changes how you see the dialogue and characters
Tales of series I can think of a lot of times where knowing who will get got makes the dialogue more impactful and relevant when you learn the truth like xillia where every member of the chimeriad has secrets in the post game stories that shift your perspective
Overall every game can be replayed and should be. I wouldn't want to play something once and never touch it again. Something I played many times before and get hyped for all the time is paper Mario ttyd and switch wise I've been so hyped to start it and know new bosses have been added
At this point even people who have never played it know that someone dies in FF7
Some games with linear story plots can have twists, misdirection and mysteries that a reveal can completely recontextualize tons of stuff that had been very carefully built. For games like these tons of lore enthusiasts love to go back and play it again.
Which, looping back to the previous video, would be a reason you wouldn’t want to skip the cutscenes.
@@intergalactic92Which is not a reason to disallow people who do not care to skip cutscenes. People have proven time and time again that they will mash the A button to get around the story even in games that disallow skipping entirely, so being unable to skip is not even a guard against unwilling players.
@@lpfan4491 It's better for the community if those players quit the game.
@@intergalactic92wow this is dumb, what if I just want to skip some cutscenes and not other? What if there is a really boring tutorial or a bad story arc that I just want to skip? What a weird reason to stop thinking about your players...
I want games to be replayable when the gameplay is worth it. The tales of series is very replayable and the second playthrough is way more fun when you know the gameplay and get the side missions too hard to beat the first time. Same with unbeatable early bosses that you can beat the second time around. Tales of the abyss you get a whole other side of the story for example.
New game plus should give you enough of your items and resources from the first playthrough. Fire emblem three houses has new game plus but it's honestly just to speed things alone to get all the house people and skills for warp and rescue to play the routes faster. Though 3 houses sucks in replay as first half of each run is so dry and similar. Fates meanwhile has three routes that are way more fun and unique as that gameplay is definitely replayable
I've replayed The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and Majora's Mask more times than I care to count at this point, purely because I love the games so much. I never cared that I couldn't skip cutscenes because I liked reading through all of the text and experiencing that amazing story all over again. Maybe I just had nothing better to do, but the games made me happy, even if they have no obvious replayability
Yes, I used music from a game (Zenless Zone Zero) that hasn't even released yet.
No, I am not sponsored (although I've received and turned down offers) by Hoyoverse. I just think the game has a cool soundtrack and looks stylish AF. Looking forward to playing it on release.
Some of the best games have great replay value. Though, personally, I find that replayability is more of an neat bonus rather than being an essential part of most game experiences. At the end of the day, a good game will be a good game - adding replayability to a bad game will not make it good.
Sometimes, a game only needs one good playthrough, and nothing else. And that's fine. You can probably have more fun watching a streamer play Ace Attorney ("VON KARMA NO") rather than replay it yourself.
I do also have a game I enjoyed replaying as a kid - I always loved replaying the Spyro 2 & 3 nonstop. Pretty sure I had that entire troublesome Trolley track memorized at one point...
I feel like replayablity is ultimately more subjective than objective and that it depends on the individual player’s engagement.
I’ve seen games that offer tons of replay value through something like extra content yet some people aren’t interested and on the contrary there are games designed with little to no replay value yet some people won’t ever them down.
Great video btw, all your points were very informative as usual!
IIRC reaching True Vault Hunter Mode just requires beating the base game and Ultimate Vault Hunter just requires beating True Vault Hunter's base game. You theoretically could reach the level cap - the OP levels in normal Vault hunter mode but it would take forever due to lower leveled enemies. The draw is stronger enemies and stronger loot which can then be used to fight even stronger enemies, loot is at or a little below the enemies level not the player's. That only changes when Ultimate Vault hunter mode is reached which does scale enemeis to be at or higher than the player's level plus their OP level in Borderlands 2. The Borderland series was highly influenced by Diablo 2 at least which also apparently encourages multiple playthoughs for better loot.
Another aspect about replay ability I want to stress out is that were are in an age where people rebuy games all the time.
Backwards compatibility is not always given for a new console release. So gamers sometimes have to rebuy a game they played years ago on new hardware. Games are constantly being remade and remastered so there are a lot of players that have already experienced the game for the first time. You have things like a definitive edition (like Darks Souls 2 and Scholar of the First Sin). There can also be games with cross save functionality between something like a switch and a steam library where people buy a game twice. All of those example would require skipping cutscenes even when not in a proper new game plus since a gamer may have already beaten the game in other consoles.
(I'm just going to pretend I'm not currently on my 7th play-through of the Mass Effect series.)
One factor, especially for younger players, is money. I couldn't afford to go out and buy a new 50$ game every other week, so games with good replayability came in handy.
I think this is one of the reasons why Pokémon became so big, since the huge pool of possible teams keeps the gameplay fresh even on multiple replays. This, together with the PvP aspects, keeps the players engaged until the next game gets released.
If everyone just played through the story once and then sold the game at the nearest GameStop, I doubt the Pokémon hype would've reached the same heights.
Excellent job with this video's thumbnail using a Hades parody of the "Think, Mark!" meme, but with Hades in place of Omni-Man shouting "Think, Zagreus! THINK!" to his son Zagreus in place of Mark Grayson.
I am leading a team that is making a Fire Emblem 3 Houses mod with custom characters, a new story, and a vastly different gameplay experience.
Watching your videos has led to me shifting my game design philosophy as I have started to consider more psychological factors that result in impressions that different elements leave in the player.
Particularly your Geeta and Cynthia/Volo videos caused me to reconsider intended difficulty and how the player is taught to engage with the difficulty.
I have a general trend of introducing new mechanics in notable ways and then building more complex situations around those mechanics later. But that process wasn’t as organized as it could’ve been.
Additionally, your videos caused me to consider not just individual new mechanics themselves, but I started actively thinking about what lesson I’d like to try and teach the player with each chapter with the ultimate goal of making sure the player has a fair opportunity to learn strategies that will prepare them for a very difficult late and endgame.
Never would’ve thought of any of that had I not found your channel. I believe our project will be better off because of your influence. So thank you for sharing your experience and please keep making new videos! Excited to keep learning new things about game design!
(Also a 3H focused video or a FE focused video in general would be cool to get your perspective on 😉)
Haha, glad to hear that some of what I say has an impact somewhere out there. Hoping it helps in refining your own game project in some fashion!
Something that really irks me is that SV and Sword/Shield both have an option to "skip cutscenes" and has a major warning for it. But it only works on SOME of the pre rendered cutscenes, not all of them. And when players think of cutscenes, they clearly also think of mindless character dialogue, or mindful character dialogue, depends on the game.
But if Pokemon is gonna make it required to replay or buy older games for competitive, we need it to be short as possible so we can go to getting those Pokemon. Like imagine if Sword and Shield let you skip dialogue cutscenes. You'd save so much time. I've had to replay it recently just to SR hunt for a 0-Speed Calyrex. Granted it was already really quick when I was spamming dialogue with ZR, LR, and A, and using a level 100 Pokemon via transferring it from the save to my main, exp candies, then send it back, but like any time saved is more encouragement to not hack
Stylish Action games are built around new game plus. Oftentimes the first playthrough is designed to slowly get you used to the mechanics, in part because your character tends to have a ton that you might need to juggle for an initial playthrough. Some of the difficulty comes from managing resources on what you unlock but the games do the "it doesn't start until the second playthrough" well. The first playthrough on normal is supposed to be like an extended tutorial, especially since as you get farther along you learn more of how the game expects you to be playing, so when you start the next playthrough with most (or all) of your moves unlocked it starts to really throw difficulty at you.
They tend to be shorter games for the main campaign which is partially why this design makes sense. In Devil May Cry, for instance, your first playthrough is to teach you how your weapons work and the general patterns that enemies have. Your Son of Sparda playthrough is, "You have all the weapons, now integrate them together, and really get a handle on how to fight these guys. So then when you get to Dante Must Die, the demand is, "Okay, you know how to fight everyone, individually? Now do it with insanely tough enemies, who can DT, and you get no health pickups."
When I play DMC3 on a fresh port of the game, even the Normal playthrough can get a bit tricky at times even though I've played the crap out of it, just because of the lower health/move pool you have on a new save. For someone going in on their first playthrough, it would be extremely overwhelming to begin the game on Hard mode (and we know this because of the original American release of DMC3 when the 'Normal' mode was actually Hard mode and everyone agreed it was too hard). So letting the game be designed around multiple playthroughs lets you maintain a smooth difficulty curve across runs as you get more health and DT gauge, and level up your styles, and buy more moves and gun upgrades. The game giving you repeat playthroughs is not padding, it's training for getting you to a level of skill that will make the game the most fun.
In one of the most extreme examples, Assault Spy has you play through the main campaign twice - once with Asaru and once with Amelia. The writing is completely different between them but their stages are identical, until you get to the end of Amelia's story and you realize what it's building up to: character swap.
Both of the characters are independently entirely fleshed out and able to fight every enemy in the game, but the game really opens up when you mix them together. One problem with this is that character swap is presented in-game as sort of like a bonus feature, when I think it really shouldn't be, because on the Extreme Difficulty it feels like the game really does give each character more distinct strengths (and what is already a fun game gets significantly more fun when you swap on those more challenging levels). It's something that you only get in the final stages of the "main story" playthrough but that makes the New Game Plus runs so much more fun.
I'm surprised there was zero mentions of the entire genre of MMOs in this video. The genre as a whole is principled on the premise that sections of the game are done over and over to overcome developer limitations. Most players are expected to run the raids over and over each week to get the drops you need to advance player power, so you're ready for the next raid.
This, combined with the unskipable cutscenes that FFXIV's had in some of their fights made it a perfect shoe-in. The single most prominent recent example would probably be E8 where a minute long cutscene is placed in the middle of the fight, making it unskipable.
There are a couple other forms of replayability that were very lightly touched upon but I want to add my thoughts.
the first is the Randomizer, which is found mostly in rogue likes, but have become popular mods seen throughout a lot of games, mostly from metroidvania-style games, where the world has a lot of locks. A casual playthrough would see you go through an open style map in an intended order, while randomizers will have you weave around picking up items hopefully one will get you to the next key item. Because every item is shuffled with there being some form of logic behind it, there are an astronomical amount of variations a game could have that was once a straight shot and have brought new life in games. This can be seen in a lot of newer games which have their own implementation of the randomizer, turning a map into a big puzzle to sort out and tests the player's understanding of the game world to its fullest.
The other type that comes to mind is the speedrun. Metroid really popularized this in-game, with certain ending screens being locked behind beating the game under a fairly strict time limit, and in the case of the GBA titles additional screens depending on how many items you picked up on the side. By having some form of score board, in game or externally, you can see how fast you beat a game and can compare with others. It lets a player sit down and master the game's mechanics, so instead of learning a shinespark for one or two sections and that is it the player will try to utilize these abilities and skills through the course of a whole game to its fullest.
Both of these add replayability to games that might not have much replayability to begin with. And these also turn single player games into a multiplayer competition or co-operation, seeing who can clear a seed faster or help eachother solve the puzzle (especially so in Archipelago style randomizers where items from one game are found in a different game by a different player), or who can beat a game faster or help eachother look into the game for any potential time saves. It builds a community into a game people love, and keeps players coming back for more even if the game is intended to be a one and done sort of deal.
I really wish the Metroid series had new game plus I love the idea of going though again with all of items as fast as I can.
Holy crud. You're a genius!
Wow I did not expect you to cover Borderlands in one of your videos, but you may have just explained why I never got what all the hype was about all this time. I only ever played it on normal mode O_O
the way my brain's neuron's just fired off it recognized City Pop Faruzan
I wish the Paper Mario TTYD remake allowed cutscene skips on repeat playthroughs. There are skippable cutscenes, but they only become skippable if they are cutscenes that come right before a boss or something like that, and you died on the boss with no save point between the save and the boss. It's a nice change, but also, strange that that doesn't carry over to alternative saves
Replayability has always been important to me, partly because of budget, but also because when I find a game I really like I will play it over and over rather than risking spending time on another game I might like less. I like replaying older Pokemon games, I've replayed Ocarina of Time more times than I can count. I used to replay Dragon Age: Origins over the weekend regularly. Even games that aren't seen as good, like Gundam: Crossfire. I would replay over and over, sometimes doing weird challenge runs, other times just enjoying the game. Armored Core games having mission select after beating them and letting you enjoy previous missions with loud outs that weren't available at the time. Ghost of Tsushima both having a NG+, but also giving you the replay option on the numerous strongholds acting like a level select feature. Then there's bigger games, like Xenogears, which I have also replayed many, many times. I don't know what else to say other than I'm kind of monogamous with my games? I find one I like, and I keep playing it.
I like replaying CRPGs like Pillars of Eternity to see what roleplaying and dialogue options other kinds of characters get. Just picking options to give my new character a different personality and seeing what comes from playing a hothead instead of a diplomat makes new playthroughs fun. But making a videogame that can accommodate several different playstyles and roleplaying options takes a lot of time, effort, and a lot of playtesting.
My favorite games to come back and replay are OFF, Cave Story, and Cry of Fear, only one of those being "truly" designed to be replayed. But I still love going through a lot of the same story beats in OFF and Cave Story because I enjoy the story, and the fact that they're (comparatively) short games means that I'm always encouraged to go back and play through them again. That's also basically my design philosophy when it comes to game, making a small story mode and then expanding from there with new stories and levels in the new game plus.
You do sometimes think that it is artificially increasing the playtime. When there are branching stories I do see the benefit more, but it is tricky when it’s a very long game. I’m not 10 years old anymore, I can’t just replay my games over and over like I used to.
I love replayability for a lot of reasons, but two big ones come to mind. The first is simply that most games I grew up with rewarded replaying the game. Star Fox 64 is a favorite of mine that featured branching paths through the game, where as the player's skill grew, more levels were reachable because you now had the skill or knowledge to get there. Getting to experience new levels because I, for example, now am good enough to save an important wingman, or find the warp zone, or get enough ships destroyed, etc, was an amazing feeling.
The second reason ties into my love of modding. I find it incredibly fun to curate my own experience, and it also turned out that most games where that is encouraged with few limitations, tends to be larger than life games. The Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim all come to mind, and I've spent nearly 3000 hours total across each game. Minecraft fits into this category too, and is the single most popular game in the world,
I also love Pokémon because of replayability. It's very easy to justify playing a Pokémon game to myself because the Pokémon I catch and grow attached to can be traded up to the next generation, letting me always keep what I've caught. This makes these games feel larger than life as well, in that none of my progress or skills are locked within one game. Sure, I've played and beaten each game several times, but there's always new things to try out, and my reward for doing so is (digitally) tangible.
Ultimately, I think the reason why replayability matters to me is because if I find a game I enjoy, I want to invest a lot of time into it. I want to go just a little nuts about it, learn its inner workings, its lore and story, meta mechanics, see what the community has done to the game. It's less like rewatching a movie you like, and more like revisiting a theme park. If the act of playing the game is fun, then having nothing new to see or do isn't always necessary, so long as the game either is varied enough, or the core gameplay is fun.
There is also a conversation to be had regarding the increasing cost of games, the ever changing landscape and what game developers value vs what they used to value (where did all the "arcade-y" games go?). If you're going to spend 60 dollars on a game, most would hope you'd get more than 30 hours of gameplay out of it. And what if nobody is making the types of games you love?
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask was made on a dare by a guy who seems ashamed of what he's created, despite the fact that it's the most emotionally powerful and moving game in its entire series, with mechanics that have never been seen before or since.
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was made under unimaginable crunch to save Bethesda as a company, and is one of the last remaining games that relied on text based story telling in a way that served the game perfectly, and worked to engross the player in the world and the story it wanted to tell.
Pokémon Black & White (1/2) had a drop-dead gorgeous art style, with all new Pokémon, a heavy emphasis on telling a compelling story, and improving the gameplay formula with additions that players still yearn for today.
And what became of these series? Majora's Mask became a black spot on the series that Nintendo doesn't care to acknowledge or take inspiration from.
The sequels to Morrowind dumb down the gameplay, shift away from the story telling conventions of the past and instead make heavy use of voice acting, necessitating that less information is given to the player because now everything has to be spoken and stored on disk space.
And Pokémon Black & White was superseded by the first fully 3D pokémon game, which dumbed down the difficulty tremendously, introduced one of the most loathed features (which is now no longer optional in the newest games) and whose visual art style evolved over time from something that I think didn't look all that good, to something I can barely stand to look at.
Star Fox 64 expanded on the previous two games and perfected the formula, giving players one of the most fun arcade-style games I've ever played. It rewarded player choices and skills, and had interesting lore that you could read about online or in the player's guide. But after Star Fox 64, every game tried something new, with varying degrees of success. Until eventually the fanbase realized we are never going to get an earnest Star Fox game again. It will always have to be packaged with some sort of gimmick to justify its existence. Because apparently, making a fun arcadey space romp is unjustifiable in Nintendo's eyes.
If I, or anyone else, wants to enjoy these games for what they are, or wants to experience games like them, you don't have a lot to choose from. That's why I keep coming back to them. There's nowhere else to really go.
I think the model where the "real game" is in ng+ can be seen as an inversion of the fact that ng+ makes lots of content for cheap. It makes the first new game a story mode and extended tutorial in which the things carrying the game are the story and the progression of power.
Subsequent playthroughs are then the place where you can ramp up the difficulty for people who really engage with the gameplay and have them be able to use every tool at their disposal to beat a really meaty challenge.
For example, in DMC5, the fun could be said to come from using your immense arsenal of lethal tools to not only beat but destroy and style on the demons. Despite that, you unlock a pivotal part of Nero's gameplay at the very last mission.
In new game this is fine because it allows a really impactful story moment at the end of the game and a real power up feel. It's also fine since his gameplay works great for the easier enemies of that game mode even without it. It is also really overwhelming to add onto an already busy gameplay loop as the first character.
You know, replayability is what scared me off from playing Nier Automata. I've owned it for years but after hearing people talk about how "replaying is mandatory" it has gone on the permanent backburner.
The funny thing is though, you have to actual replay the game to get the whole story, in which point can you even call that "replaying"? And even then a lot of things change between playthroughs as you unlock each of the major ending of the game.
puzzle games are also kinda interesting
the witness is probably the best puzzle game ive ever played, but replaying the basegame is basically impossible since half the fun is learning what the rules are
but then it throws in the postgame challenge area with randomly generated puzzles and a time limit and i may or may not have spent another 30h on it
- : So,how many memes you are planning to add at 6:35 ?
GoldenOwl: Yes.
2 of my favourite games are BW2 and Metroid Fusion. I've probably played both nearly a dozen times, but they are practically on polar opposite ends of replayability from a design perspective.
Even still, while pokemon has boatloads of replay value and an expansive post game. Fusion has neither, and could be agreed as having less replay value than even other metroid games like Super, Dread, or Prime, to make a few.
Or for a non vg example. I've reread my fav murder mystery (no spoilers here) no less than 5 times now. And I would happily read it again. Because even though I know who the killer is, the story is still fun, and the dynamic between the 2 lead detectives is extremely compelling and entertaining. Plus the B plot is fantastic to boot (The book is "Nothing To Hide" by Allison Brennan, for those who wanna check it out)
Tbh, these two games are a good example of my personal thesis that replayability and replay value are not 1:1 the sane thing.
MF is a very bitesized game if one knows what to do and feels very rewarding to hone your skills at(People generally call it a very hard game, but it is actually pretty easy for like 90+% of it, but one would only know on repeat due to how the difficulty is designed), but it does not have a solid material reason to replay, besides I guess the japanese hard node.
Pokemon BW2 meanwhile does have a material reason to return through its list of extra content and random factors, but it does not really lend itself to doing so due to its stretchy RPG progression and long cutscenes.
MF = Much Replayability, no replay value
P: BW2 = Much replay value, no replayability
I think you largely missed the point from last video, at least as far as what I was concerned about anyway. It isn't just "replayability is important" but also "cutscenes are annoying even if they're necessary and forcing them on people sucks," and even if they are important/have necessary information it seems simple to put a "hey this one's important" warning on a confirmation popup and let it happen anyway if they're sure.
New game plus isn't something I've ever personally cared about (and most games I've heard of where you carry over eauipment and ruin the difficulty curve is strange to me, sucks about borderlands I was considering getting it once I get a new computer), for me replayability is more a matter of just, enjoying things again. I can't understand the obsession lately with effectively discarding something once you've enjoyed it... Books, movies, games, tons of other media, do they just stop being fun and interesting after the first time through? I'll read watch and play through stuff dozens and dozens of times, take a break to give my attention to new things (or just get busy and/or distracted), and come back days weeks months or years later and notice details I'd missed before or forgotten about and view what I do remember from a new perspective, there's always something new to experience. To only experience it once or twice and just... get rid of a thing? Is bizarre beyond any completable explanation I could give. Would you only eat a flavor of ice cream or your favorite foods a few times and always need to change another detail if you were to ever have it again? Or stop being friends with somebody because you got to know them too well, even if your relationship was otherwise very good? I don't understand it...
And aside from that, in a practical and material sense these things also cost money, they have tangible measurable value. If you could enjoy a thing more then once and choose not to, that single experience is the most expense for the least value. The more time you spend with it is more value you extract, the more that cost is divided up, the more it's been worth to you. If a game costs 30 dollars and you play it once, that's it, but if you play it twice, three times, 30? That game effectively cost you 15, 10, 1 dollar(s), for double tripple or thirty times the value.
In all aspects it's worth your time to enjoy a game multiple times. In all aspects it's worth making the experience, and repeating it, as enjoyable as possible. Simple quality of life improvements like the ability to skip cutscenes should be implemented (again, where possible) regardless of that though.
On another topic, I don't think it's healthy to modern game development that apparently games are being designed to be one-and-done experiences. What's the point of having any passion for a thing as a player or as a developer if you're not supposed to care about it beyond immediate gratification before chasing the next new thing? A similar this is ruining a lot of shows and movies lately, almost nothing on TV or in theaters is worth watching or investing in because it feels like all the people making them care about are keeping people around for the next subscription fee, amd with gaming getting deeper amd deeper into breaking games up into DLCs and multiple different exclusive preorder bonuses and also subscriptions... it looks bad. Replayability isn't just a matter of changes to what happens, or reacting to changes in the meta or enemy spawns/enemy behavior. Even if a fame happemed nearly 1:1 identically every time, it'd be replayable if there was quality and passion built into it.
Again, I enjoyed the video, but I'm disappointed it didn't really address what I was hoping it would. Thank you for reading, if you see this, and I apologize for my tone if I came off as rude at all, I'm very passionate about my interests and I don't mean anything by it if I did.
If we use Pokemon games as examples, the gameplay really never changes, at least their stories, aside from your choice of team members and their stats. Three playthroughs of platinum where you pick a different starter each time and raise an entirely new team with no repeats to go with them are all three playthroughs of effectively the exact same game. And it's still fun each time. Even if you don't do nuzlocks or other challenges, or not use items, or anything else. The moment where giritina appears at the end of platinum is amazing to me every time it happens, it inspires some of my plot ideas for my dungeos and dragons games, both as a player and as a DM.
In the "The Adventure Zone" (or TAZ) podcast, almost all of the emotional moments make tear up every listen though, and I've listened dozens of times, hours and hours multiple times over of a podcast that has no new content within the same set of episodes. And they're still fun.
Why should anything be designed to be enjoyed only once? The idea of making something and needing to change it is somewhat antithetical to my thought process even, as a knee jerk reaction, because I like to think that things shouldn't need to be designed to be fun multiple times, because if you've really made something good it's probably good multiple times through without needing to work towards making that happen intentionally. It's not an unadmirable goal to have to make some details obscure or recontextualize some pieces when you revisit them, of course, putting more thought into it. Any goal to make a better, more enjoyable product is an admirable one.
Do alts count as replaying? Like B missions (of old levels).
I don’t mean side quests. It could just be “A mission but with a timer” or it could be something that requires a bunch of prep from even earlier levels.
Like a horror game where most of the A missions are just a simple point A to B but you just hit a dead end doing that.
I don't really care about full game replayability features or new game+. For me it just appears as a meaningless marketing argument. If I really like a game, I'll certainly replay it at some point. Even without any replayability friendly content. Just enjoying the game one more time and make good use of my game knowledge to play better is enough. On the other hand, you can give me all the new game+, secret bosses and variations you want. If I don't like the game enough, I'll be done with one playthrough. Good books and movies don't need additionnal features to be re-reeded or re-watched. It's the same with games for me. They just need to create a deep bond with their public.
I have some games I enjoy over and over again, even if the replayability isn't really too much present there. Yes, Chrono Trigger has multiple endings, but you can experience all in one new game + already if you save each time bevore going for an ending. I played that about 20 times now. And its successor Chrono Cross is also turned into double digets with my last playthrough last year.
I often replay old games because I thought of new improved ways to beat them or discovered something while watching a playthrough. Now far less than 10 years ago since my time is much more limited, but it still happens sometimes. I really like games with a good story, those have a great value to play again most of the time. Or there is something like Terranigma, where the whole experience is so great that it is worth playing again and again, where you can just overlook that one flaw which is the battle system being far too easy.
20:50 All the more reason why I'm disappointed that Pikmin 4 does not have a New Game + mode... 😔
i would argue that with borderlands, the normal playthrough starts to feel more like a "story" playthrough, where you just play it for the story and if it hooks the player in with the gameplay theyll start the real "game playthrough". With borderlands 3 at the end of its life the devs ended up striking a good balance i feel where you really only need to finish up that first playthrough and then everything to do with endgame unlocks and you just have to keep playing to reach the level cap and start the other fun aspects of the game
Even with more pokemon in the regional dex, the newer games are even harder to replay, because there's only one savefile.
Board games are often more expensive than video games, and given the need to learn rules that necessitate players to action things a video game would do either automatically or, more often, behind the scenes, lead themselves more towards replay. You've learned the upkeep and/or rules, it's a sunk cost to not play again.
Doesn't mean you can't replay video games, but comparing the two need to acknowledge this fact.
One game that should have NG+ and even has post story unlocks....DIGIMON NEXT ORDER! It could have a system save that for that user that saves field guide(DigiDex), unlocked cards, and Digimon unlocks. That way the GRINDY stuff is gained per playthrough to completion.
To quote a goat's view on replayability: "Don't you have anything better to do?"
Actually no, in fact I'm going to replay this game again to get the ending I didn't get yet!
@@cachotognax3600
i know your type.
you're, uh, very determined, aren't you?
you'll never give up, even if there's, uh...
absolutely NO benefit to persevering whatsoever.
if i can make that clear.
no matter what, you'll just keep going.
not out of any desire for good or evil...
but just because you think you can.
and because you "can"...
... you "have to."
but now, you've reached the end.
there is nothing left for you now.
so, uh, in my personal opinion...
the most "determined" thing you can do here?
is to, uh, completely give up.
and... (yawn) do literally anything else.
Avoiding needless retreading of stale gameplay areas is the reason why I consider the Bonfire Ascetic in Dark Souls 2 to be the single best addition to the franchise, and why its deliberate exclusion from Dark Souls 3 felt like a personal slap in the face by Miyazaki’s dick. “Oh, you wanna have fun by going back and putting your summon sign sign down after you’ve beaten the Dancer? Tough shit; start a new save file and DO IT AGAIN FROM SCRATCH, PLEB. WE DON’T DO QUALITY OF LIFE HERE. ONLY NEEDLESS PAIN.” Working as intended, indeed 😓
Most games I like I've played through multiple times. Only if a game gives the "Finally it's over" feeling when beaten do I not feel like replaying. So me not feeling like replaying a game ever again is essentially my way of saying I did not enjoy that game. Replaying a game is a sorta passive compliment to the game.
Not specifically about replayability but rather the comments which started off this video.
I believe that, and thats only a niche aplication, even cutscenes can add to replayability!
Specifically if your game has an ally betraying you in the last act it can be fun to try to pick up the hints as to where they show their true nature.
Example: fake tyrs betrayel (a youtuber went through a video of where he messes up the masquerade)
Although that effect is very niche and wears off with the third and subsequent playthroughs.
i can not agree more with the rouge-like/light section.
despite me having over 1000h in the binding of isaac you could not pay me to replay the ENTIRE game from start to where i am now again
as fun as some of the characters there are, i refuse to do everything with keeper, jacob & esau and some of the B-side characters. and that is ignoring the one-hit wonder of the lost or the fact that i haven't fully completed the game since it's newest dlc yet
Share my experience replaying a game? I replay most games I enjoy. I’ll get started on a second playthrough as soon as I’ve finished the first for most JRPGs I like. It kind of helps that Tales Of games have a neat point system that gives you currency to spend on bonuses for NG+. The better you battle in the game the more points you get. Also I just really really like the story and characters of Persona 4 and 5. I’ve played 5 at least eight times now.
I've no idea how anyone can replay Persona games so many times.
I enjoy them, and their story focus is really fun, but they are SO long that I can't really handle doing them more than once.
Maybe it's just my fixation speaking out, but all this talk about replayability in games that were not design with replayability in mind, I can't help but think about my history with the classic (though probably niche in this day and age), Golden Sun.
As a JRPG with tons of unskipable dialogue and a story divided between two different GBA carts I doubt it was design with replaybility in mind. But that hasn't stopped me from doing so more times than I can count.
While being one of my early introductions probably played a factor in it, I think there's a lot more beyond that. A big factor is that I just haven't found another series that has done that sort of blend of gameplay elements so well, made all the worst by there not being a new installment in 14 years. So if I want to experience that specific gameplay loop, I don't really got any other options. Though being a JRPG with mutiple classes and collectables it has a bit of that Pokemon vibe allowing you to go through the game with different builds through different combinations of creatures.
Plus if that's not enough... lets just say I have my own ways to inject new life into the gameplay loop I love while making the parts I find tedious a lot less so.
18:29 splatoon is a. Good example
If there's a game I like enough that I want to experience it again then I'll replay it, simple as that. Features that aid in replayability are nice, but ultimately secondary to the game just being good enough I want to replay it. Hollow Knight, for example, is rather limiited in replayability features, but that hasn't stopped me from replaying it a dozen times. Same with most Fromsoft soulslike games, and in those cases I rarely even bother with NG+ because I find the regular NG, the experience the game was balanced around, simply more enjoyable. Hell, I've ever started a new file and recompleted hades 3* times now (*I haven't gotten the "true ending", fully upgraded the mirror, or completed all the prophecies on file 3 yet), because I just find the full experience Hades was designed around to be that good.
I feel like it shouldn't be counted against the concept of New game+ that games like Borderlands butcher it and intentionally use it in the worst way possible. Even the most bog standard implementation of "keep your stats" would seemingly be better than whatever the thing you described is.
I think that every game with upgrading elements* should have New Game+. I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077 right now, and the gameplay wasn't interesting until you unlock a bunch of movement options.
Three Houses really needed to keep Class Mastery through New Game+. Because it would encourage more experimentation if you had access to all the skills at the same time. Fire Emblem needs Set Mode, where you gain access to all the character's unlocks, but the levels are set to the chapter.
That said, a good game has inherent replay value, no extras needed.
*Which is not the same as levels.
Does userr-made content not count towards replayability or is it entirely a new topic?
I know I've replayed my Pokemon games multiple times with an extra parameter mixed in to make the playthrough more enjoyable.
HGSS are my favorite games. So much content, so much to do, phenomenal games to take your time with and dive into.
I’ve been told they’re actually bad games because “They’re too long to replay because there’s too much content.” Like I get it, people like doing Nuzlockes, but so many Pokémon games lack stuff to do in comparison. I could understand people being upset about the level curve but too much content to replay? They aren’t even complaining about the content not being good, just that there’s too much of it.
Not every Pokémon game has to be a 5 hour rush-to-the-end experience. Johto is deliberately designed to make you take your time. That’s not a flaw, that’s a feature.
And hell while I’m at it, the level curve isn’t even that bad. You actually get rematches unlike RBY which has an enormous dry spell right before the Elite Four. HGSS come with the PokeWalker to help you get items and exp. And Mt. Mortar’s right there with surprisingly good exp.
So yeah you do have to take your time, go off the beaten trail and explore. That used to be a positive. What happened?
U didn’t mention replayability for progression
Like when u play a Mario level and u die and the game makes u start the level ovet
… you don’t use check points?
@@adamvancleave9200well yea but sometimes it happens before u make it to one
I tend to replay games pretty often mostly because modern games are either super boring, uninteresting, there are so many, derivative or I just straight up don't have the platform or money to play say games.
Is that simple really.
Jrpg are getting more and more difficult to replay for how long they are getting.
I've found that Zelda games have pretty much no limit to their replayability. I usually end up playing Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask once every couple years ever since I was a kid. To be honest though, I'm not entirely sure why they're so replayable. Any ideas?
This is likely due to the huge majority of a Zelda game's content being optional.
In practice, you only ever need to clear a few compulsory objectives to beat a Zelda game. Namely, clear the main temples and fight Ganon. But there's a huge amount of side quests and secondary content that a player is quite unlikely to see everything in a single playthrough.
In a way, everything in the game only serves to make the actual compulsory final challenge easier. Do everything and there's no way any player that got that far can lose to Ganon.
This philosophy even extends to BoTW and ToTK. You could beeline directly to Ganon if you want and not do anything else.
This indirectly makes these games highly replayable, because a player is likely to pick a different direction and see different content on each playthrough.
As a Fire Emblem fan, I can confirm that such discussions regarding 3H do, in fact, continue even now. 😂
They also add the “FE Engage sucks when compared to 3H” to their bickering as well.
I have over 20k hours in like 5 different games and barely ever play anything else. I feel like if a game is good, why would I play the inferior version?
Shoutout to Tactics Ogre for being the best game ever for the past two decades
In open world games you could argue that where you cant access something yet because you havent unlocked an ability is a form of replay-ability, because it encourages you to go back to an area that you've already completed everything else
The fact that after years you can start a Three Houses discourse by stating your opinions on one character in particular says a lot about how much value a single route added. Whereas Engage...
I still stand by the opinion that Engage is a fine game. It's silly, goofy and fun, and doesn't pretend to be anything more than that. The entire Saturday morning cartoon opening pretty much shows that off well.
Not every game needs to be a dramatic socio-political conflict. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with a goofy and simple story.
@@GoldenOwl_Gameagreed, and in other ways Engage really benefits from being a single route game. The designers will always have a good idea of what tools you have and how strong your units are, and thus can always challenge the player with interesting map design. No chapter (aside from a few paralogues) will be a waste because of how varied every map and its challenges is. Three Houses meanwhile has much blander maps, 90% of which are reused in other routes. Sometimes they change the layout/player-enemy placement enough to change it up (most of CF) but on most routes maps are repeated with next to no variation. The main selling point of 3H is being able to build a squad of powerful units in any way to destroy the enemy, but that also means every map has to be beatable by any set of units and classes. Combined with how much the monastery can drag on subsequent playthroughs and Three Houses is ironically a chore to replay without NG+
I wrote this paragraph half way through the video then read the title and watched the rest of it and realized he said everything I wanted to say and then some.
I don't feel like deleting the comment though so press read more if you want to read my inferior comment about new game pluses.
Comments are good for the UA-cam Algorithm.
I feel like certain types of games that have the potential for replayability, should capitalize on it.
One game that I feel like should have a new game plus and keep it is the fire emblem franchise. The recent fire emblem games have been slowly approaching more character building rather than perma-death. When I play fire emblem engage, I build several stacked characters, but when I replay the game for the build variance and perma-death, I have to start from scratch to get that character back up to the same level, and don't have time to build the other characters. Often times I wish that I could do a new game plus, but only get the character at the usual times, but I keep the skills that I inherited on the unit a playthrough prior. You can keep bond levels the same way or change it, I don't mind those being reset. I think this would bode better for the game because, in a game about building characters, access to characters that you already have built would incentivize me to use and try out characters that I wouldn't have used otherwise.
I think it's better for games in general that have an aspect of replayability, to at least do something with it, even if it's something simple like multiple save slots for multiple playthroughs.
9:26 Lethal Company instantly came to my mind as you said that
i Like a lot the shater blad repalyabialty it incorrges you to replay the gmae more then 8 thimes and you get a lot of unblace caracter like the uses hanataró and the borken byacuya so that player wich have master ever carcter can nou experimet with this operwer opitosn and usles orpisons this is aculay a fithging game. i rlbyed dozen of thimes bcroeu you have the queston how powerful a carecter is or how week cna ti be for the peoepls wich want to felea opepower bkuya is theri guy becouse he dos some unkincable things in that game live not taking damge if yoi pers a buton and just kill and other carcter and hantar dons literly nou dameng
i love fire emblem three house new game plus
I think a video focusing on things like rpg Mimics and the infamous Mindy haunter trade would be cool. Like why would the developers purposely fool the player when trying to make a pleasing experience.
I love the gloria and hades omniman edit, but man you can't say that water is wet as if it were fact, because it isn't. Think about it for a second, to be wet a solid has to be at least partially covered by a liquid, dissolved in it or absorbed it, water itself can't be any of those things in most circumstances because it makes othrr things be like that. (It's not bashing the vid at all, just pointing out that it is technically incorrect)
Me when Warframe's Steel Path is "Mid Game"
I've always been the type of person to replay games over and over. Whether it be when I was a kid replaying Pokemon Diamond again or even Ace Attorney games that I'll replay every so often to this day just because. I can't claim to understand it myself, but I love replying things.
Personally, I don't like games that do multiple endings, because they always make me think "What if I had done this differently?" but rarely make me want to replay everything up to that point just to get a different state at the end of the game. They're usually good stories, but the core mechanics underneath that story seldom make me want to go through all the effort again. These types of games are even worse when progression towards a certain end goal is gates by checks I can just fail no matter what I do (see: Baldur's Gate 3).
For a game to have good replayability, it needs to have a good core gameplay loop. The core loop needs to make the player feel like their time wasn't wasted, either because they improved their stats in-game or their actual skill at playing the game. This also goes for full-game replays, because the core loop needs to be fun from the start to the end of the game. Story doesn't add replayability, because the story doesn't require skill or improves the player's character. This is even worse if storylines are gated behind player skill, because that means that players will repeatedly try one section of the game until they get that storyline instead of replaying the entire game which was the point of branching storylines.
Games like Dark Souls, Mario, and Sonic, where the entire game is focused around player skill, are the type of games that have very good replayability. Other genres, like Diablo and Borderlands, also have strong replayability because they are easy to pick up and play and offer a constant stream of rewards even if those rewards are only minor improvements. Roguelikes like Hades and Rogue Legacy are, as is said in the video, not good examples of full-game replays, but there are some that style themselves completely after small runs without overarching narratives (For example: Slice & Dice).
In short: The way I want to put it is that feature bloat does not make a game replayable, nor does the story of a game. A game is replayable when it doesn't waste your time with extra fluff to get to the thing that makes you want to (re)play the game.
I'm sorry but if you need a reason for why cutscenes should be skippable spelled out for you, you probably shouldn't call yourself a game designer. It's an obvious feature that should never NOT be included, and any game that doesn't allow this instantly gets dragged. There are many MANY reasons for this that anyone should be able to come up with one or two without needing to have it explained to them.
Also, the fact that you didn't immediately realize that, yes, video games ARE replayable because they are games also speaks volumes.
They weren’t listing why they should be skipped, they were listing why sometimes they don’t or even can’t implement it.
The thesis of all of these videos is that a game designer has a different perspective to a player. What is obvious to the player is not always obvious to the designer.
"any game that doesn't allow this instantly gets dragged"
But does that instant knee-jerk reaction even make sense as a blanket reaction?
For a long, plot-heavy game, it makes no sense to skip cutscenes on the first playthrough. What about subsequent playthroughs then? If a game has built-in replayability features, then cutscene skipping on at least subsequent playthroughs would be an expected feature. But what about such games with no replayability features? Well, how many players are going to play the exact same game for dozens of hours where there are no meaningful changes, such as heavy customisation, additional features or endings? Probably very few, so cutscene skipping has near zero priority. And if you play an RPG for the second time years later, you're probably not skipping cutscenes, unless you really like not knowing what you're doing or why.
What about shorter, plot-heavy games? Well, even if they lack replayability features, the likelihood of an immediate replay is potentially higher, so cutscene skipping might be a higher priority to implement, but not a necessity.
If a game is short or can be played without paying any attention to the plot, because you just pick up a weapon, follow the dotted line and start blasting? Sure, cutscene skip away.
Personally, I think the completely un-nuanced take of "no cutscene skipping always equals bad" makes no sense as a player, and social media users just mindlessly eat up this easy ragebait used by reviewers to get engagement revenue. Having the option is nice, but not implementing it when it wouldn't make much sense isn't inherently bad.
Dude, there is no argument here, just insult. I may not know you, but I believe you can do better.
@@HackedYoWeather Some people don't play games for the story and want to skip to the action. Doesn't matter if it's a plot-heavy game or not. Having the option to skip cut scenes is never a bad thing, and never something that can't be implemented these days. There's also those times you could have a long cutscene before a tough boss and, should you lose, being forced to rewatch the cutscene again every time just adds to the aggravation. These are two big reasons, among many other smaller reasons, as to why being able to skip cut scenes, even on a first playthrough, is more important than forcing someone to watch them. These reasons are very apparent to anyone who has played through games that don't allow cutscene skipping, which is most people. They don't need to be spelled out. And any game designer who thinks this is okay is so out of touch with their player base that they shouldn't be game designers.
@@GoeTeeksMaybe my saying "first playthrough" was bad wording; I totally get not wanting to watch the same five minute pre-boss cutscene more than once or twice in the space of an hour.
That said, you're talking about a segment of gamers who are a design problem in of themselves. Let's say you're playing a game where all cutscenes are skippable from the get-go. This game is quite open in terms of exploration and has a sizeable world. You walk into a town, a cutscene starts to play, you immediately skip it, and you're plonked back into town overworld gameplay. Cool, where do you go, what are you doing, why are you doing it?
In that type of situation, handling that type of player and designing how to direct them to do the thing that the cutscene was supposed to explain to them is a whole other rabbithole that sucks up development time. However, if you allow a player to skip all cutscenes from the start, not handling them with an alternate user journey would give them a bad experience. This is then keeping in mind that development resources aren't infinite. Is allowing for this and then needing to compensate for this even a good use of those limited resources?
There's not a perfect, one size fits all answer, so speaking in absolutes and declaring non-compliance with that absolute as incompetence is a bit unreasonable. There's always some nuance to the question.
ng+ in dark souls sucks because it removes the progression of a new game.
If a game isn't fun and replayable I have zero interest in it.
No shit, really?