That was a random and very conservative estimate. However keep in mind that this is a game with a small budget. You're more likely to get a longer game by keeping your pledge high.

 

EDIT: For the record, I cast my vote for the 20-50 hours mark. 40 or so would be ideal for me.

D'accord. I'm just surprised that anyone is actually expecting more than that.

 

An rPG that is less than 50hrs long is not, in my mind, an rpg.

Well, I hope you can donate a lot of money, then.

An rPG that is less than 50hrs long is not, in my mind, an rpg.

By this metric, how many RPGs would you say have been released? Well, outside of JRPGs I guess.

Generally speaking, I despise counting hours. Exceptions are to be made when the rest of the game is so unenjoyable that you've started a bullet list of complaints, because why not?

 

Quality over quantity. I don't want padding. I can appreciate that Obsidian wants to make the world feel more alive, so we will have lower quality/easy quests. But I hope it doesn't get to be like DA2 and ME3 where some guy tells you to go X, you go there find whatever, go back and get a reward dropped on you with barely a sentence exchanged. It has to feel that someone actually tried here.

 

I'd rather my cheap fed-ex quests where along the lines "if you're going to Townsville, please deliver this letter to my lover" and when you get there you find out the lover is a member of the wizard cabal and he's consorting with the enemy, so you have the option to expose him or keep it secret. As opposed to "go find me a farm plow"->"thanks"->CHA-CHING. Make it an opportunity to flesh out the world or an excuse to direct you to new locations, not just extra coin for checking cracks or wasting time.

I honestly don't mind what length the game is, quality over quantity should be the aim, though I should add that I feel a good RPG should take at least 30+ hours to complete on the first go as long as you don't end up adding lots of filler combat (Dragon Age I'm looking at you).

 

I would say to the developers though that I'm not scared of long games. Don't feel you have to keep it short and sweet just because the 'industry' thinks you should. If you have the ideas to make a game last 100+ hours like you did with Fallout New Vegas then bring it on!

By this metric, how many RPGs would you say have been released? Well, outside of JRPGs I guess.

Any Bethesday one, BG/BG2, PS:T, Arcanum, DA:O, DA2, Drakensang, Witcher/2, Might and Magic games, NWN games... need i go on?

Several of those took me less than 50 hours to complete.

I'd like to see about 60 hours of gameplay in the vanilla game and have expansion hit down the road for a total of probably 100 hours of official gameplay. I think 100 hours in the base game is a bit too much to ask for, but anything less than 60 will make me sad.