A sense of achievement and a solid endgame to work towards are essential reinforcer in goal oriented behavior. For instance, the time it takes me to go from picking a pokeball and naming my rival 'rapist' to utterly ruining said rival's shit after the elite four when he now goes by the dubious nomenclature of 'champion rapist', is virtually identical to when I first played the game.
The markers that ticked up for me were badges and pokemon level. I was not concerned with catching them all, and I only did so once, on a particularly boring transatlantic flight. While sitting next to a lady who smoked and complained that she had to sit next to a damn kid.
She made more noise than I did! Not to mention the constant coughing and trying to subtly smoke while crammed into the window seat of economy class.
Ahem.
So Gyms, I can speed up a bit on a replay by knowing what requirements each has, making sure to pick up a Butterfree to buffer my Charmander against Brock while I am in the forest. But the intermediary time between Gyms and the travel and fetch quests between cities is held up by the need to fight anyone who looks at me. Sure I could skip them, but without leveled up pokemon, the endgame became a grind fest or a painful use of revive and repel only to reach the elite four with no hope of winning.
The only difference between my first play through and subsequent ones was my awareness of how far I had progressed. True I did things a little differently, but the outcome was a similar time.
The progress bar became visible.
Jumping over to two other classics I have replayed. Super Metroid, took 14 hours to explore fully the first time I played it, and 3 hours the second time. Internet tells me that less than 1 hour is possible.
The shortened time span works greatly in its favor, replay value is up and I felt like I was playing with fast forward held down once I knew where to go next.
The other classic, Metroid Prime, felt faster on the replay, but not the same way. It was faster, a difference of 14 hours down to 8 between first an second play through. But there was a big old percentage bar sitting there on the pause screen monitoring scanning progress and exploration. I knew how fast I was progressing the first time.
I have largely opted out of modern gaming in the era extending past the PS2 and N64. I'll get there eventually, but I suspect that achievements systems, while driving people to acquire and finish bad games, will do nothing to improve replay value.
Stupid ice shriekbat.
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