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PaperclipPerfector
2d ago
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I generally think time limits are bad in games, with a few exceptions. The fundamental problem is that it's a threat. It's a threat that, if you do poorly, you're going to have to restart the entire game from scratch. Like a final boss that, if it kills you, deletes your save file (though less volatile). I don't want to get 90% of the way through a 20 hour game only to have to start over from scratch. I rarely play games a second time unless they are exceptionally good, I'm not replaying the entirety of your game over again just because I wasn't quite good enough the first time.
The main exception I have to this is if there's meta-progression, like in Roguelites, or like Dead Rising. If you've got a 1-2 hour turn around, and I unlock new stuff every time, and the entire game is built around randomized content so it's not just the same thing again, then we're good. Or like in Dead Rising if I get stronger and it's basically a new game plus where I can solve all the problems that happened the first time around there's wayyy less risk of failing the second time around, I can take that. What I don't want is the game to tell me that the last 20 hours of play time were pointless and none of it counts for anything.
That said, I didn't have to replay Pikmin 1, because I didn't fail. If the time limit is generous enough then the majority of players don't run afoul of it. The threat looms in the background, but isn't implemented. If it's set just right then it creates stakes and pressure: the player has to act strategically and not mess up and get their party slaughtered too many times or it'll take too long to repopulate, so it feels more important to perform well. But if it's too generous then players don't feel this pressure and the time limit might as well not even exist. But Pikmin 2 was able to have a lot more content in part because of the lack of a time limit: you can keep playing the game after you "beat" it and go explore and get every last piece of treasure because there's nothing stopping you from continuing to play.
I have not yet played Pikmin 3 or 4, so I can't comment on it there, though I intend to eventually. I anticipate that the time limit in 3 will either be obnoxious if its strict, or superfluous if it's easy. There's very rarely middle ground.
IMO most roguelites would be better if everything was unlocked from the start and there was no meta-progression. None of this "Wow, looks like you're having a great run but this next area was tuned for people who've unlocked way more stuff so you're probably going to die anyway. Tough luck, I guess you should have died 20 times before having a good run."
If it's well-designed then a good run that gets cut short only due to scaling should yield a huge amount of meta-currency and reward you with faster progression. There's nothing that kills a roguelite for me faster than winning on literally the first try because of some combination of luck and the game being too easy on the base difficulty.
I think the main problem is that Roguelites are appealing to two different demographics simultaneously. There are the hardcore gamers who want to challenge their wits and skills and slam their heads into a wall over and over again until they get it: people who play Souls games and lots of multiplayer PvP and brutally unforgiving games, and Roguelites are often good at that. And then there are more RPG-leaning gamers like me who want to grind out levels and currency and overcome challenges through a combination of skill and tenacity, with the ability to fungibly trade one for the other. Skill should be rewarded, but skill and progress should both grow concurrently until the sum combination is enough, so that I can take risks without failures being a literally pointless waste of time with nothing to show for it. And also have an endlessly increasing difficulty so that through progress and rewards I can eventually tackle and overcome higher and higher challenges that used to be literally impossible from the beginning of the game. If the hardest challenge of your game can be beaten in 1 hour by a player of sufficient skill level, then once you reach that skill level the game has no replay value. But if you never reach that skill level then you can never clear the game no matter how hard you try. In my opinion. I understand that lots of people have different preferences than me. But this is the weird sort of interplay, where roguelites are (trying or accidentally? not sure) appealing to both types of players at the same time under the same label. So a lot of roguelites throw some token but short and unimportant meta-progression in there and just scale it so the hardcore players can quickly unlock everything and then balance the game under that assumption, which partially satisfies but partially annoys both types of players.
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Did you ever play Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter? That had a really cool meta progression system tied to it, but the gameplay didn't really get fun until you got dragon powers - like 15 hours in. I wish more games did stuff like that though, Dead Rising lost so much charm when it dropped the time limit (although I still enjoyed the fourth game in a mindless way.)
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