In-game play time and suggestions

Hello!  :D  

I've been working on my Demo (which is almost ready) but today I noticed that it takes almost 2h of gameplay to actually proceed through the first 4 storyline quests, which I think it's too much. Mainly because they all happen in the first city and it's surroundings.

After putting my mind into it for a while, I concluded that I have too many random encounters ocurring between quests, because the maps of the surroundings are too big. I first thought about reducing the encounter rate (easy) but I was happy with the encounter rate relation with the exp curve of the game so far so I had this idea:

How about removing encounters from road tiles only? This way it could help the player to escape a though situation where he would like to have no more encounters and run for an Inn to heal himself and also speed up a bit the timemark avoiding some encounters...

I would like to know what do you think of this idea and if you have any other ideas on how to reduce this time mark?

Thanks  :)  

 

I think having the ability to go back through an area without having to fight every inch of the way is a good thing - particularly as there will come a point when the encounters become easy, but still unavoidable.  That combination equals tedious.

The fact that all 4 quests happen in the same general area isn't automatically a problem.  The main question is - are those quests interesting?  Are you building character development and story line along with them?  If you answer 'yes' to these, then you don't have a problem (unless your maps are awful and the player gets sick of seeing them).  As for them taking 2 hours, that's not outrageous for a demo.  The demo for both my games last about 1:30 if you do everything; considerably less, of course, if you don't.  And they are for commercial games.  You don't say whether your game is intended to be commercial or not.  If not, then even less reason to worry about it lasting 2 hours.  Think of it as letting the player get a good feel for what the whole game will be like.

Removing (or greatly reducing) encounters from road tiles is fine if you don't consider the possibility of dying in random battles to be a significant part of the challenge or engagement of your game.  (Then again, if they are not challenging or engaging on their own, then I feel it's always worth asking yourself why you have random battles in the first place and making sure you have a good answer.)

In just a few words, what are the obejctives of the four quests that the game starts out with right now?  I'd like to hear them so I could give you better advice.  Are they more like errands, or do they feel like essential storyline components that involve the protagonists getting wrapped up in a story that they otherwise wouldn't have known or cared about?  If at least three of them feel essential, you can probably keep them all without losing player interest.  If more than one feels like a traditional "errand" quest, you'll want to get rid of the extras, and (if you're getting rid of more than one) consider adding in an objective that feels very urgent and immediate that will tie the protagonists to the story, like being attacked, or seeing someone they love threatened, or waking up in the middle of the night to a commotion that they truly didn't expect.

Answering your questions by topics:  :p

• The game is non-commercial;
• The 4 quests are Storyline quests that show the development of the character until the moment where the true quest of the game shows itself;
• The quests are interesting and important to the development of the character and the game;
• I see Random Encounters as a part of the challenge, despite not being of very great importance. I look at them as a way of making the game more challenging when the player goes on with the game. With time, I'm also planning that random encounter mobs drop specific items that will be needed for quests, so I don't want to get rid of them.

With that being said, I still think that travelling through my maps with random encounters everywhere and anywhere is too much.

This is an ordinary road map on my game. The player will have to travel at least 2 times on the demo from the lowest left corner road near the castle to the highest right corner exit. It's too many random encounters along these journeys since it takes about 160 steps or more to go from one point to the other...

For this reason, I'm really thinking about making the stone road tiles encounter free, keeping the dirt roads with encounters. This way I hope it will be easy to distinguish where will you be safe and where you will not. And putting stone roads in every map ofc (that one on the print screen doesn't have ^^")