But I admit that I have trouble to understanding why players don't finish their games. The only games I haven't finished are the games I didn't like. So a longer story for a game that I don't like, frankly I really don't care (don't care about everything about those games in fact...)
Best example, KCD, rather well rated, but only 3% of players have finish it... So disappointing
I don't know what KCD is, but I guess a big factor might be sales, people buy stuff from discounts, like Steam sales and Xbox has these seasonal events as well. I got the Division and the Watchdogs that way, they were dirt cheap and I didn't finish either of them and I'm not going to. It's taking calculated risks. I went to look if those series would be anything for me and they don't so I don't need to bother with the sequels or anything with their formula. Finishing those games wouldn't gain me anything, but would be just time wasted for something I don't like, why would I do that.
Impulse buying is probably huge factor. I have games I have never played nor I will. Years ago I was still playing on PC it was another Steam sale announcements on some tech site and I used to log in Steam and it was like "
that looks interesting, good user feedback too, I buy that, I don't have time to play it now but maybe later." Then one year I logged in and watched dozens of games in my library I had never played and realized that I didn't care any of them, 10 - 15 years younger me perhaps. So among other reasons, sometimes it may happen that we keep doing something for a while, without realizing it's actually something we have mentally unsubscribed years ago. Marketing exploits that, especially sales and games are there with everything else "Buy now or you may miss out!" and some of us end up buying stuff we never knew we needed and maybe we really didn't. Haha.
To keep this on topic, marketing, how it tries to get us,
to get us. I can see quite a few ways to pad game length, opportunities in the Night City like there was this debacle that kept going first couple of months after launch. It was about how there's nothing to do and every food vendor, meaning every kiosk, stall and table should be interactive for content and immersion. For me, considering how packed some areas are, it looked like V walks few steps -
dialogue prompt - walk few steps -
dialogue prompt ... and so on and then some scenarios like say Woman of La Mancha and players V wouldn't happen to be in the best of terms with Tyger Claws, certain area is packed with stalls, then on Xbox it's X for reload / enter dialogue / select quickhack and B for exit dialogue and crouch. So how to fix that, have less kiosks and stalls and alike and then it's that world is empty.
For story content, there are tempting things there. For Militech, it's not only for get more inside information, but faster as the fact that they really aren't any better than Arasaka doens't necessarily open for players who don't do NCDP missions and read the shards, so it could actually work as a shortcut, further Meredith Stout / Gilchrist easily appears as huge opportunities as game really communicates huge things through characters. But that would be quite delicate thing to not to undermine any of the endings or create situation where it would seem logical for V to look help from them and then there's Silverhand, it would be odd if he wouldn't appear.
Like I wrote tempting but maybe it really is us, who tend to get us.
