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Funny that you picked TF2 as an example. From my experience with the game over the course of several years, TF2 becomes insanely addictive only after you overc

by Cyph0n 9y ago

Funny that you picked TF2 as an example. From my experience with the game over the course of several years, TF2 becomes insanely addictive only after you overcome the horrendous learning curve. This takes around 50-100 hours of pure playtime on average. Once you understand the game mechanics, how to play the classes reasonably well (fully mastering a class can take 100+ hours), how trading works, and how to play the most popular game modes (including duos, 4v4, dodgeball, bball, MGE, surf, etc.), you're basically set for life! For those who overcome the curve, the retention rate is quite high, from my experience at least. The release of Overwatch probably pulled quite a few people over though. This is primarily due to how Valve has treated the game over the years. I have over 1000 hours, my brother has twice that (at least), and I know several people I played with regularly who had 4000+. Keep in mind that the country that I was living in had an absurdly small TF2 community. I don't play anymore because: (1) I don't have a good PC, and (2) grad school sucks.

jerf 9y ago
"I have over 1000 hours, my brother has twice that (at least), and I know several people I played with regularly who had 4000+." Oh, I picked that carefully. TF2, Starcraft, Diablo, the more successful MMOs... certainly people can pour thousands into those. First, I guarantee you that for every person you can find with 1000 hours in TF2, there are dozens or possibly even hundreds of people who installed it, screwed around for a few dozen hours or fewer, and then left. So if you randomly select 10 TF2 players, even if I spot you "from the set of all people with more than 5 hours in the game", the odds that you'll come up with a set of 10 people who are ready to put 1500 hours into "one game" are actually pretty dismal. Secondly, I'd also very, very seriously question whether that constitutes "one game" in the way that this game really is one game, with one team winning, after 1500 hours. TF2 is more a series of games that last about an hour. I've played far less than 1500 hours on TF2, and I "won" and "lost" dozens of times each. MMOs may lack quite the same degree of clarity but one could probably say that "one quest" is a game, or some other larger subdivision like "all the quests in one area" or "a single raid", but generally if an MMO does have a quest that lasts for even a hundred hours it's going to be considered by the players as a long-term adjunct quest rather than "the thing I do for 100 hours". There have been enough MMOs out there that somebody might be able to cite a counterexample, but it would be rare. At the very least an MMO player playing one MMO for 1500 hours is probably going to be running multiple characters, which would be reasonably called "separate games". There may be individual Civ games that ran that long, like maybe the Eternal War: https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/ (The original post the guy doesn't claim a game time, just that he'd been playing for 10 years.) But, again, trying to get 10 such people together would be a challenge.

by Cyph0n 9y ago

jerf 9y ago

"I have over 1000 hours, my brother has twice that (at least), and I know several people I played with regularly who had 4000+." Oh, I picked that carefully. TF2, Starcraft, Diablo, the more successful MMOs... certainly people can pour thousands into those. First, I guarantee you that for every person you can find with 1000 hours in TF2, there are dozens or possibly even hundreds of people who installed it, screwed around for a few dozen hours or fewer, and then left. So if you randomly select 10 TF2 players, even if I spot you "from the set of all people with more than 5 hours in the game", the odds that you'll come up with a set of 10 people who are ready to put 1500 hours into "one game" are actually pretty dismal. Secondly, I'd also very, very seriously question whether that constitutes "one game" in the way that this game really is one game, with one team winning, after 1500 hours. TF2 is more a series of games that last about an hour. I've played far less than 1500 hours on TF2, and I "won" and "lost" dozens of times each. MMOs may lack quite the same degree of clarity but one could probably say that "one quest" is a game, or some other larger subdivision like "all the quests in one area" or "a single raid", but generally if an MMO does have a quest that lasts for even a hundred hours it's going to be considered by the players as a long-term adjunct quest rather than "the thing I do for 100 hours". There have been enough MMOs out there that somebody might be able to cite a counterexample, but it would be rare. At the very least an MMO player playing one MMO for 1500 hours is probably going to be running multiple characters, which would be reasonably called "separate games". There may be individual Civ games that ran that long, like maybe the Eternal War: https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/ (The original post the guy doesn't claim a game time, just that he'd been playing for 10 years.) But, again, trying to get 10 such people together would be a challenge.