I find myself less bothered by how long an RPG takes me to complete (although I do like timesinks) than by its replayability, which is helped by multiple routes to quest completion, good character ranges, and good story. Particular winners on replayability include Fallout 2 (there's so much you miss on any one playthrough, and of course the character system allows all sorts of characters) and Deus Ex (although not a straight RPG, you could go many routes - although sneaksies was a hard path to start on!).

Or of course there's the old standby of procedural content. I'm still playing Diablo II, even though that's not an RPG so much as (to quote Shamus Young) a pinata simulator.

I get my money's worth from most of the games I buy.
 

As long as possible. Like reading a good book, when I play a good RPG I always feel compelled to sit and play it till completion, then feel sad that it is over. Replay is nice but never the same as that first play through.

If possible, try to stuff in as much content as the entire BG series including expansions. ;)

I also have less time these days but if it is good I will make time. Sleep can be sacrificed etc.
 

An Episodic RPG ~5 hours

Single Player with good replayability 15-25

Single Player without good replayability 25-40

MMORPG - N/A
 

There's definitely something to be said for keeping a game interesting throughout the long hours. While many people raved about Titan Quest saying it was the closest thing to a Diablo sequel we'd ever say, I was EPICALLY bored of that game by the time I finished it. It could have easily been 10 hours shorter without much grief.

However, generally speaking, I find that most RPGs are too short (e.g. Bioshock) rather than too long. I think the best course of action is to provide a short to medium length main story coupled with tons of side quests. I think Oblivion did this wonderfully. You could play through the main quest in Oblivion in a semi-short amount of time, however climbing to the top of all the guilds (something completely optional) added a TON of play time.

Striking the right balance is definitely difficult. I also think Deus Ex provided an amazing amount of replayability while giving us a story that was not too short and not too long.
 

20 hours is not bad. I really wouldn't go for much less than that. One side thought on that might be, a game that can be completed in 15, with 30 hours of content?

Anyway, the only RPG I have finished in a long time was a 20 hour RPG. I finished one RPG at 80 hours, but finishing became more of an obsession than an enjoyment. What was really driving that one was the story, and it was good.

I think for me, 30 - 40 hours is just about right. Because in most RPG's, once I pass 40 hours, I get curious about things and recreate the party or character and go again. This is Wizardry 7 and 8 for me. I have never finished either, but I love playing them. Character creation just feels tactical, and it is fun to see what I can do with it.
 

Way back in 2006, we had a poll on RPG length at RPGDot with 500 or so votes. A snip from the result:

"The last poll looked at the ideal length for a cRPG and the results are pretty clear: you like 'em long. Over 100 hours held first place unequivocally with over 45% of the votes. The next was 40-60 hours with 25% over 60-80 hours at 16.5%, indicating that after those that like them as long as possible, the next camp is looking for a "sweet spot". 20 - 40 hours came in at 9% and under 20 hours didn't register a single vote."


I suspect a lot of people like long games because of some subconscious dollar-per-hour value calculation but there you go.

Personally 20-30 hours is pretty good. Under 20 hours is suicidal (unless you can manage the brilliance of Fallout). As another example, Eschalon (32 hours for me) was considered short by many of our posters - but it was good enough to be very successful, anyway.
 

Eschalon was either 20 or 21 hours for me (I skipped some stuff so I could get back to work sooner). I really enjoyed it. At most I might be able to play 2 hours solid, but most of the time I am lucky to find 20-40 minutes a day. This is what is killing my ability to finish Final Fantasy Tactics. :-)
 

So how many hours should an RPG take you to complete? Your ideal RPG?

My first impulse on reading this was to substitute the word "book" for "RPG" and then point out how silly that is -- if you are telling a story and not just bogged down in game mechanics, then it ought to take long enough to tell the story, and not much longer.

And the literary comparison is not a bad one: it would be nice if the RPG genre were divided into nice neat categories like short stories, novels, and epics. Unfortunately, at some point along the line, designers became convinced that everyone wanted epics, and so every game is advertised as an epic. Worse, many short stories are artificially and painfully lengthened into epics.

However, many of the games I've liked the best have left it up to me to decide how long they take -- they offer side quests and other diversions that let me sit and explore and play that game longer than the story itself dictates. But, like code ugly, what's more important to me is the minimum session time: can I sit down and play just 20-30 minutes of a game? Or do I really need to play for at least an hour to get into it? If it takes a month or two of 20-30 minute sessions, that's fine. If I have to play through it in one or two marathon sections... not so much.
 

I often only have 20-30 mins at a time to play games and believe if there was a game which allowed you to have a satisfying session in that time while advancing the main storyline, that would be ideal. 20-30 hour games seem to have that sort of depth, but in all honesty I wish someone would combine the simple fun of Bejeweled or other casual game with an RPG. Yes, I really like Puzzle Quest, but hope for something deeper...
 

The thoughts given here are really fascinating. It sounds like, for the most part, the feeling is, "Bigger is better IF..." with various caveats.

Which makes sense. I mean, all things being equal, more is generally better.

Although - with my time constraints - it's almost like the intimidation of looking at a Robert Jordan novel. "Do I want to start this NOW when I know I am not gonna have time to finish it for the next couple of months?"
 

I generally like to see at least a $1 per hour of quality entertainment ratio. And that's pretty universal across media.

This isn't something I consciously decided at some point. It's something I generally realized about my buying habits: I'd generally only buy a CD if I was going to listen to it more than a dozen times. A DVD only if it was of a movie that I was likely to watch multiple times. And so forth.

When it comes to video games -- particularly RPGs -- I feel it necessary to stress the word "quality" because, frankly, lots of CRPGs feature about 5-10 hours of fun in a 40 hour package of grinding.

I think the dreary truth is that combat in most CRPGs is not particularly fun. And even when a game does manage to find something interesting, the grinding still manages to over stay its welcome more often than not.

An interesting thought that just occurred to me: Games with a lot of depth that can withstand being played over and over again are pretty rare. There's a spectrum between Tic-Tac-Toe (fun for a bit, but then completely mind-numbing once you know the trick of it) and Chess (a game into which people can literally devote their entire lives).

And the truth is, that for most people, even for a game like Chess most of us will get bored with it if we're asked to keep playing it over and over again for hours on end. The number of people who truly become fanatical about Chess, and could happily spend all day playing it, are far and few between.

What's my point? Well, a game like World of Warcraft is near to the end of the Tic-Tac-Toe end of the scale. There are some variations within WoW combat with new options being added in as you gain levels. But, generally, once you've figured out the optimum strategy you pretty much just spam the same commands over and over again. (WoW is actually the most fun for me when something goes wrong and you have to try to dig your way out of a hole. But, sadly, that doesn't happen very often.)

Perhaps a better example: If you said to me, "Justin, pay me $100 and I'll give you a copy of Final Fantasy VII without all the random encounters killing your will to live." I'd hand over the cash.

OTOH, if you said: "Justin, pay me $100 and I'll give you a copy of God of War without all the combat encounters." I'd turn you down. I like the combats in God of War. They're fun to play.

But I think a large part of the difference here is that, with God of War, the designers know when to change up the gameplay: Right around the time I'm getting saturated with my existing combos, they give me some new abilities to master -- changing and expanding the gameplay and keeping it fresh. They also do a good job, in general, of providing non-combat gameplay.

This turned into something of a ramble. Sorry 'bout that. ;)