Pacing in video games

[the-pi-guy]

Pacing gets used as a point of comparison a lot. "This game has great pacing", people frequently talk about Uncharted 2 in that light. "This game has terrible pacing", I've recently seen more people talk about God of War in that respect.

But I think it's a very abstract concept. And I think it's probably one of the most subjective aspects of entertainment. A lot of people seem to agree about when graphics are good or bad, but I don't think as many people agree about pacing for specific games.

I think one of the issues with talking about pacing is that the player expectation is a factor. If you expect something to be happening faster, then pacing feels overly slow.

What are your thoughts on pacing?
What games do you feel have particularly good or bad pacing?

[kitler53]

I think "good pacing" is kind of a double negative situation,.. the absence of anything that overstayed it's welcome.  

[Legend]

It's really complicated in games since everyone has a different objective experience. People take breaks at different times, people have different issues with difficulty, and people engage with the content in different ways ( e.g. explore vs rush forward).

Really hard to manage in a linear game. More open games can give the player options, such as a fishing mini game to take a break or a hard gauntlet for a quick challenge.

Also games really really need to set player expectations accordingly. There's nothing worse than caring about some objective/goal and being excited to reach it, only for a "distraction" to be forced on you. I think gow ragnarok and tlou2 were pretty bad at this.

[the-pi-guy]

Also games really really need to set player expectations accordingly. There's nothing worse than caring about some objective/goal and being excited to reach it, only for a "distraction" to be forced on you. I think gow ragnarok and tlou2 were pretty bad at this.

I didn't feel as bad about Ragnarok, but on TLOU2:

Spoiler for Hidden:

<br><br>The player expectation one was a major factor for how I felt bad about the pacing. <br><br>I really didn&#39;t expect that the game would go through Abby&#39;s time period and have it have basically the same amount of depth as Ellie&#39;s. <br><br>I feel like most books/movies/TV shows would show snippets and then try to get back to the &quot;main&quot; story, but that&#39;s obviously not what TLOU wanted to do. &nbsp;<br>