Reply to Re: Epic length
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I never compared NPC conversations with teleporters. I used that to compare to Meta's maze argument. I'm not discounting dialogue in a D-Mod. It certainly adds to a D-Mod. But when you're using the length of the D-Mod as an excuse to categorize the D-Mod as Epic, when in reality half of that time is built from NPC dialogue that nohow progresses things, it shouldn't be counted. As I said, that'd be like putting two screens in a D-Mod and adding one NPC with eight hours worth of dialogue, and then the other screen would end the game. Once it ends, sure you can say the D-Mod took eight hours to complete, but was it really an eight hour long adventure? No.
Using reductio ad absurdum you can pretty much discredit any type of game content you want. We're talking real DMODs here, not hypothetical constructs. I think the consensus has always been that the playing time is the playing time for somebody playing the DMOD for the first time. Playing a DMOD for the first time includes exploring screens that don't contain anything needed for the story, it includes talking to NPC's which don't say anything needed for the story, it includes killing creatures that don't need to be killed for the story. If you play a DMOD without visiting unnecessary screens, talking to as few NPCs as possible and only killing the endbosses you basically have the bare minimum length. The consensus has long been that first time playing time should count. Changing that would basically mean reconsidering the entire classification, which would require reclassifying every DMOD according to this 'bare minimum standard'.
Not all optional dialogue counts for length, only what the average player encounters trying to beat the DMOD. Actually I agree with thenewguy here:
Of course NPC dialogue should count if it's presented realistically; It's actually a huge part of what makes epics... well, epic.
That fluff helps so much with a feeling of expansiveness. I would go even further: Any DMOD without optional dialogue is probably not a true epic. It doesn't have a world to be explored. Skull seems to only relate this to the size of the map, but dialogue is an equally valid way of exploring the world. Should any map screen that doesn't progress the story not count? In that case not a single DMOD uses 75% of the map...
How can the player tell that the dialogue isn't progressing the story? He doesn't. He has to try to talk to the NPC to find out. Not knowing up front which NPC to talk to is part of the experience.
EDIT: One thing to add here. Everybody expects an epic to have the content of an epic apart from just the length. That it has the result of hard effort in there, not the result of procedural generation or generic repetition. I already touched upon this when I talked about artificially increasing playing time. I don't think that how a DMOD feels should really be included in the ranking system as it simply isn't objective enough. I certainly don't believe that Malachi's playing time is due to such low-effort bloating (dialogue is definitely not low-effort bloating, it's a lot of work) so if it has the length, it should get the badge.
Using reductio ad absurdum you can pretty much discredit any type of game content you want. We're talking real DMODs here, not hypothetical constructs. I think the consensus has always been that the playing time is the playing time for somebody playing the DMOD for the first time. Playing a DMOD for the first time includes exploring screens that don't contain anything needed for the story, it includes talking to NPC's which don't say anything needed for the story, it includes killing creatures that don't need to be killed for the story. If you play a DMOD without visiting unnecessary screens, talking to as few NPCs as possible and only killing the endbosses you basically have the bare minimum length. The consensus has long been that first time playing time should count. Changing that would basically mean reconsidering the entire classification, which would require reclassifying every DMOD according to this 'bare minimum standard'.
Not all optional dialogue counts for length, only what the average player encounters trying to beat the DMOD. Actually I agree with thenewguy here:
Of course NPC dialogue should count if it's presented realistically; It's actually a huge part of what makes epics... well, epic.
That fluff helps so much with a feeling of expansiveness. I would go even further: Any DMOD without optional dialogue is probably not a true epic. It doesn't have a world to be explored. Skull seems to only relate this to the size of the map, but dialogue is an equally valid way of exploring the world. Should any map screen that doesn't progress the story not count? In that case not a single DMOD uses 75% of the map...
How can the player tell that the dialogue isn't progressing the story? He doesn't. He has to try to talk to the NPC to find out. Not knowing up front which NPC to talk to is part of the experience.
EDIT: One thing to add here. Everybody expects an epic to have the content of an epic apart from just the length. That it has the result of hard effort in there, not the result of procedural generation or generic repetition. I already touched upon this when I talked about artificially increasing playing time. I don't think that how a DMOD feels should really be included in the ranking system as it simply isn't objective enough. I certainly don't believe that Malachi's playing time is due to such low-effort bloating (dialogue is definitely not low-effort bloating, it's a lot of work) so if it has the length, it should get the badge.
