Has anyone ever been in a game and found themselves saying, there is too much to do, I can't possibly play this game?

How much is too much or is it never too much.

Can you prioritize what you want to excel at and the rest accept mediocrity letting someone else excel at that portion if they choose that as their priority.

How do completionists deal with too much content or does it just encourage them to spend time on alts spreading out talents that must be specialized to a single character.

As a sideline on the topic, do you consider daily/weekly/monthly tracking systems content themselves? I expect they might get brought up so it makes sense to include them on the table.

Originally posted by Quirhid
Yes. When the quality suffers.

I don't feel they can have to much content... but I must also agree with Quirhid. 

Originally posted by Cephus404
If the quality is bad, that isn't because they have too much content, it's because the quality is bad.  It doesn't matter how much content you have if your standards are low.

You're basing this on some imaginary project with unlimited time and resources?

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Cephus404
If the quality is bad, that isn't because they have too much content, it's because the quality is bad.  It doesn't matter how much content you have if your standards are low.

You're basing this on some imaginary project with unlimited time and resources?

No, I'm saying that if you're willing to put out substandard content, it doesn't matter how much of it you have, it's still substandard.

I think some games do, but that's mainly  because of the way my playtime has changed. When I was in junior high, I couldn't get enough. The more to do the better! FFXI had an insane amount of content to do when I played it, and I was always wanting to do the next "thing" in the game. A single quest took me almost a month to accomplish, and there were many more like it.

I'd never even consider playing a game like that now.

Looking at time as a resource was a meaningless concept to me back then. I'd spend hours playing and do everything there was to do in a game. As an adult,  I prefer games that have content that is doable in the course of an hour or so a night. I'm the guy that the more recent themeparks are perfect for.

I'll go ahead and preemptively say that I'm sure players like me are the reason the genre was dumbed down or the reason it's dying or whatever.

Don't get me wrong, I love games with a ton of content like FFXI, but games like that have far too much for me to do to get caught up and participate in current content. I don't want to play an MMO to be floundering around in mid-game forever.

when i played vanguard i thought exactly the same thing at first.they had god knows how many starting areas because of the size of the game.someone once said to me (cant remember who) that there was enough content in vanguard to last 3 yrs on one char..wether or not that is correct i dont know.but you have 55lvls of adventuring,55lvls of diplomacy,and 55 lvls of crafting..on top of that the magnitude of dungeons,mount quests,raids et etc.but rather than being put off by this i always knew if i did an alt i would start somewhere completely new  and it was always quests i had never done before or a dungeon.and i still aint managed to do everything up to today.

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Cephus404
If the quality is bad, that isn't because they have too much content, it's because the quality is bad.  It doesn't matter how much content you have if your standards are low.

You're basing this on some imaginary project with unlimited time and resources?

No, I'm saying that if you're willing to put out substandard content, it doesn't matter how much of it you have, it's still substandard.

I get where you are coming from Ceph :)

My feeling that it's not the amount of content that's potentiolly ever an issue, but the diversity. If the the variety is there, no, there can actually never be too much (talking about themepark games).

But... if it isn't and what you have built is just the same thing over and over, then sure. There is no point of offering me 50000 instances in which I kill rats. It may be content, sure, but it is boring.

Look at a game like EQ2 for instance- It has a ton of content, but it is diverse, interesting to learn, and (imo) fun. It has depth and breadth. Sometimes it can be boggling to look at what there is to get done, especially if you are a house person or whatever and want to keep up with the festival events, but once you get your head around it and realise it's about the marathon and not the sprint it all looks achievable.

I guess the only guys that 'too much' content would be an issue for in a more general sense would be the 'beat a game in a month' people and the 'play 5 games at the same time' people, both of which I have little in common playstyle wise in MMORPGs and so tend to not listen to much.

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Cephus404
If the quality is bad, that isn't because they have too much content, it's because the quality is bad.  It doesn't matter how much content you have if your standards are low.

You're basing this on some imaginary project with unlimited time and resources?

No, I'm saying that if you're willing to put out substandard content, it doesn't matter how much of it you have, it's still substandard.

If you only have X amount of time to make Y amount of areas, content included, and due to time constraints you cannot complete it on a level to your satisfaction, do you refuse to release the content? Apply extension to your deadline? What?

People are too narrow minded on these boards. No thinking of long term, only what can happen now. This is same way our mmo's have turned into over the years.

Too much content? Never. Unless you just plan to play your game for a week then swap over to another one. I have been playing EQ2 since 2004, and still havent hit maxed out characters just because i take time to smell the roses and explore. Dont need to rush through everything like these newer themeparks.

Too much bad content........yes. Too many changes over time destroying your game and fun....... yes.

Tools to make content and replay value is always a plus.I am always for player created content, scavenger hunts, pvp events, an so much more i have seen done in other games.

More good content that will occupy my time........more the merrier.

You can never have too much content, but you can have too much boring content.  Adding systems in just for the sake of having the system but not developing it a point where its fun to interact with said system is a waste.

I too, am older/married/children, but dont like the expedited fashion games are made today.  I still want the slow progression - just make it fun. World of Warcraft has shown me its possible, it just needs to be evolved and expanded.

Looking forward to ArcheAge... 

at one point in half life I came across a big door (closed) and behind a bullet-proof window a scientist said "good, you're here, I'll open the door for you". There was a big huge shining button on the pannel in front of him.

zombie came from the ventilation shaft, killed him.

next many hours and several bossfights were spent in the game. I had long forgotten about the event mentioned in first paragraph. Then out of the ventilation shaft I enter ... the room behind the bullet-proof glass. And I push the button. and the door opens.

And I think...REALLY ? All...this...time ... because he was too busy to talk instead of push the damn button and got killed ? WHY???? It's not ... UUUUGGGGHHHHHH

Voted no, at least not a new game.  It takes huge teams years to complete content that last average players 3 months or locusts a few weeks.  I'd venture to say that my opinion is that too much is physically impossible without a 100 million dollar budget, extremely high productivity, and excellent management (not that we see this in MMO devs today).

On the other side, a mature game with several expansions already released could get close to "too much".  WoW would be close to this but they streamlined content to increase consumption speed.  I'm guessing original EQ as well, but I've never played it.

Originally posted by Robokapp

 

Then out of the ventilation shaft I enter ... the room behind the bullet-proof glass. And I push the button. and the door opens.

I remember that one.  Yeah, that ventilation shaft was a pig.  Wasn't the entrance in some meat locker or something?

Great game.  Best SP I've ever played.  So freakin' amazing that it runs on a P3 500 with no GPU.

looking at 'features' in terms of content for a sndbox since...'content' is a concept that doesn't make sense, I'd say a game like EVE can loosely qualify because it grows and grows and everything stays relevant.

I've been playing since 2009. If someone says "red hound on gate" I have to open the market to figure out what a hound is.

90% of ships I still don't recognise by name. All the cheetah, panther, hound, wolf, lion animal ships, I have no idea which is which. I think there's no lion but there's a jaguar?

Originally posted by XAPGames

Originally posted by Robokapp

 

Then out of the ventilation shaft I enter ... the room behind the bullet-proof glass. And I push the button. and the door opens.

 

I remember that one.  Yeah, that ventilation shaft was a pig.  Wasn't the entrance in some meat locker or something?

 

Great game.  Best SP I've ever played.  So freakin' amazing that it runs on a P3 500 with no GPU.

 

yes sir. with two zombies eating a guy on a table and lots of blood from the original scientist in the shaft and on the walls.

HL1 was the only game i beat on max difficulty. Lots of saving and loading but it still counts, damn it. :D

having play

ed it a billion times, having it memorized, I could never beat it in one single day. And I tried. many times.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Cephus404

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Cephus404
If the quality is bad, that isn't because they have too much content, it's because the quality is bad.  It doesn't matter how much content you have if your standards are low.

You're basing this on some imaginary project with unlimited time and resources?

No, I'm saying that if you're willing to put out substandard content, it doesn't matter how much of it you have, it's still substandard.

If you only have X amount of time to make Y amount of areas, content included, and due to time constraints you cannot complete it on a level to your satisfaction, do you refuse to release the content? Apply extension to your deadline? What?

No, you just hire more people.  The question is not how much time it takes to make quality content, but if it is possible, regardless of time or employees, to have too much content.  I contend that you cannot have too much content, but that if your standartds are not high, any content, from the least amount to the most amount, will probably be bad anyhow.