80 hours in and I'm nowhere near, I'm more likely to spin up a new character than to finish the thing

NO direct relationship? maybe it’s not 1:1 but surely there is some kind of direct relationship.

But you'll see similar rates of players finishing the game that have far shorter runtimes. 100 hours is about how long it takes to finish the game, after all, and that percentage lines up quite well with the achievements for finishing the game. Engagement is a horrible metric for a game like Elden Ring that isn't trying to keep you hooked with anything except a game you like playing; no battle pass, no dailies, no events, etc. I'll bet A Dance With Dragons has far better engagement metrics than The Return of the King, but it's a stupid metric regardless, because they're books.

Almost 200hrs 260 hrs in (i double checked haha), level 150, and im maybe 3/4 done. I was never interested in soul like games before, or video games in general, but something about the open world experience in elden ring just pulled me in. I honestly couldnt tell you most of the story or the boss names, but god damn it was and still is a fucking blast grinding out the fights to figure out the mechanics.

100 hours is nothing in video game time

Hands-down the best AAA title (in both content and value) in years.

That's quite a lot for a SP game. Most games I'll get 10-30 hours, 40-50 if I really like it. There are some outliers where I get hundreds of hours, but must games will be in that range.

Depends on your definition of "direct."

I've played around 1k hours of Europa Universalis IV and I've never completed a campaign (gotten to the last year in the game), because I find I've completed my goals about halfway or two thirds of the way through the time line. The same goes for most Civ games, I just quit and restart once I know I've won.

I imagine Elden Ring is similar for many people, they play a character for a couple dozen hours and restart with a new character.

311 hours and 100% achievements here

This game in particular, I could see taking a lot of people (maybe not an average number of people but a big chunk) 100 hours just to complete without even doing side stuff because they get stuck on a boss for several hours at a time, every time.

It being a good game and giving the best feeling after beating something you're stuck on for a while just pushes people to keep going until they finish the whole thing.

Depends on your preferences, I guess. I enjoyed Baldur's Gate 3 a lot more.

What are Dota 2 players with over 10k hours?

Perhaps. But if a boss is too hard, I also see a lot of people starting over to redo the earlier bosses with a different build. I've done that a fair amount on other games.

I've played 4 hours and it just feels okay to me.

Are there any suggestions to help me find better engagement? Class suggestions for new players or anything like that?

In my opinion I think the most important thing is to figure out what kind of weapon you want to use. Whenever I play a Souls game I gravitate towards the biggest sword I can get (which is great for Elden Ring because you can get the best massive sword in the base game right at the start if you know where to go, without killing a single enemy). Lots of beginners tend towards dexterity weapons such as katanas. Rivers of blood and moonveil used to be the meta builds, but even after several nerfs they’re still very good. Magic can be ridiculously overpowered but I find it to be the least fun, at least for me.

Increasing HP early on is very important. Level up enough to have minimum stats for whatever gear you want, then level vigor exclusively until at least 30. Even then, continue to level it up occasionally. I think 60 is the soft cap where after that the levels have diminishing returns, so end goal should be 60 vigor.

I’ve got lots of hours in the game and got all achievements on multiple accounts so feel free to ask any more questions you have.

That's a lot of value per dollar, even if you bought it at full price

And it's beeen

the ruin

of many a poor boy

And God

I know

I'm one

Hands-down one of the best AAA titles ever made, full stop. I don't think anything will come close to it in the near future.

I personally ruined that statistic. 15 minutes and noped out for the rest of eternity

I don't like the idea of time spent as a value proposition. One of the reasons UBI games are trash is because they measure "engagement" as satisfaction and bloat their games with repetitive and dull scavenger hunts. They waste your time.

Some of the best games are short and have little replay value. The Portal games come to mind.