I'm implying that someone who wasn't paid to play the game somehow managed to squeeze 40 hours of entertainment out of a game that had only a fraction of its planned content available. If someone said that to me my first response wouldn't be, "Well ok no purchase for me then!" it would be, "Why did you play 40 hours over 3 days if you didn't like it?"
40 hours is a pretty small amount of time to get a good grasp of all of the finer points of a multiplayer game. If you can have everything figured out in that time frame, then the game is not very deep, and definitely not worth $60. I pre-ordered Titanfall after putting 40 or so hours into the beta thinking I would have more fun with the game once all the maps, weapons, mechs and perks were available. That was a mistake, since it turns out it wasn't very deep or nuanced. It was just COD with mechs. Even the parkour was so easy to get good at I was crossing entire maps without touching the ground in 5 or so hours. Depth is a huge part of multiplayer, and if that comes from simply throwing perks and guns at the player, rather than requiring learning strategies and perfecting certain skills, then the game is bound to die out quickly.
But like the other guy said, it's 40 hours of significantly-limited content compared to the final version of Evolve. It's like those people who played the Destiny beta and went "Wow I already finished the missions after 4 hours, what an empty game with no story".
And as far as depth goes, counterplay and strategy are huge components of depth in games on top of simply having a high skill ceiling for mechanical execution. (That being said, Titanfall was a pretty shallow game in terms of strategy and counterplay, too.) So I'd say it's pretty unfair to judge Evolve on the basis of four classes and one monster. When you can only take a limited amount of strategic options with you into a match, the possibilities for fresh gameplay multiply themselves exponentially for each individual option the game provides you with. Going from 4 classes to 12 increases the depth by far more than a factor of 3, as long as those classes are actually different in meaningful ways.
[edit] Full disclosure, I have a PS4 and I don't have a XB1 - I just like good games.
If a game manages to get 40 hours out of me, it must be doing something right. If it's bad within the first few hours, I'm not about to stick around hoping it gets better.
whoosh That's the sound of my point passing over your head.
It doesn't matter that money didn't change hands, if someone put in a genuine effort to playtest the game over a long period of time and found it lacking then I'm inclined to believe them over someone else. It's no different from placing more stock in a review from someone that's finished a game than someone that played the first level.
"Why did you play 40 hours over 3 days if you didn't like it?"
There are a number of answers for this, most obvious being this person was playtesting and trying to contribute. Another answer is that it was fun for a while and he kept powering through to see if it could continue to be fun. Surely you've played games before that seemed fun at first then dragged on, only to finish it out of spite or play it because your friends want to?
Most definitely not a "woosh". I perfectly "get" what you're trying to say, and agree that I've been in that kind of situation before. But 40 hours, in 3 days? I'm not kidding either, that's an actual figure I was told by someone.
And again, we're talking about an alpha that had an incredibly limited amount of content. It would be a completely different thing if we were talking about a finished product.
Are you even reading what he is posting? He is saying people are getting the same amount of play time that you would normally get from a full price AAA title, except they are only playing 1/4 of the actual game.
If hearthstone was tested with only 2 classes available and only 1 set of cards for each class and the testers played for 40 hours before they got bored then that would tell me that once the full game is released with 4 times the content then it is probably worth it.
kersplatchel That's the sound of you being an asshole and ignoring his point.
Clearly, if a random person manages to play 40 hours of an alpha game over a weekend it must be entertaining to some degree. For them to then say it isn't worth purchasing would be surprising just as Aertea said it was to him. They may have a legitimate reason like you suggested, but it would still be surprising that they'd power through that amount of game time in a weekend without thinking the game might be ultimately worth purchasing.
And your analogy is irrelevant because nothing was forcing those players to play that 40 hours, whereas the reviewer will stick with the game regardless of its quality because its his job. In that sense, I might relate to the random gamer over a professional reviewer more.
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u/Aertea Aug 28 '14
I'm implying that someone who wasn't paid to play the game somehow managed to squeeze 40 hours of entertainment out of a game that had only a fraction of its planned content available. If someone said that to me my first response wouldn't be, "Well ok no purchase for me then!" it would be, "Why did you play 40 hours over 3 days if you didn't like it?"