It's been a while, but I'm back to using Completionator again. I'm in the process of updating my collection and want to add all my completions from the last couple of years. Additionally, I plan to keep it up to date with my progress on the games I'm currently playing.

I have a question for all of you: How do you use the completion feature?

I came across AX's Guide to Completions, and if I understood correctly, he suggests using "Core (+A Few Extras)" as a completion status for finishing the main story of a game. Let's say I spent 10 hours doing that.

However, if I go back to the game later to finish more content or 100% it, he suggests using the "Completionated" type while adding the time from the main story completion as well. So, if I spent 5 more hours on this, I should put 15 hours in total.

Now, I'm not sure if this is the best way to use completions. Having two completions for the same game could be understood as playing the entire game twice, and the total time would be incorrect as well (25 hours instead of 15).

Personally, I enjoy open-world and sandbox games, and my usual approach is to complete the main story, mark the game as finished, and then return later to play the missing content and achieve 100% completion. Sometimes I even come back more than a year later to do it.

Has anyone else faced a similar situation? How do you manage completions in cases like these? Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

You can find the AX article here:
https://www.completionator.com/Article/View/12

Unless completionating the game requires me to restart and do a whole new playthrough, I would just edit the original playthrough and add the extra time spent to get 100% to the original time for an accurate total on the single playthrough regardless of how long a hiatus there was between play sessions. Also change it from Core + Extra to Completionated.

I do it like you described. When I play the first time to the credits it's Core + Few, when I return and finished more of the game I start a new playhrough and add the time for Core + few to a combined time to Core+lots of extras. Same procedure for completionated.

So in short I combine them again and again. My reasoning is that this represents better how long it took to arrive at that stage. Say I pick up a new game and I look at the completions for a rough estimate to how much time I need to reserve from my freetime. So why not enter multiple playhroughs for different stages to get a more precise average timings.

Sorry for the delay. I had to much work the last few days and barelly had time to play and to come back here.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.

@dhobo
I don't think this way is bad, but the problem here would be the finish date.
Let's say I finished GTA 3, just the main campaign in 2022. A total of 10 games finished in 2022 and lets say 100 hours played. 10 hours per game.
Then in 2023 I go back to GTA 3 and do all the remaining activities up to 100% the game. Then I update the the earlier playthrough with more 10 hours and to Completionated but don't change the finish date.
Now I still have 10 finished games in 2022 but the played time which was 100 hours will show as 110 hours. And I will have no history of playing the GTA 3 on 2023.
And if I also change the completion date, then I will have a history of finishing 100% of GTA 3 for 20 hours in 2023 but now I would have 9 games finished in 2022 and 90 hours played.
See what I mean?

@SnowWulf
I like the separated Playthroughs idea better. This way I would have history for playing the game both in 2022 and 2023.
My only problem is that when using the above example, If I do a second playthrough in 2023 for the remaining activities and reach 100% my profile will show I have Completionated the game in 2023 which I understad as playing the game from start to finish, while I just played secondary activities. Also this would be misleading for the time counter in the website as the website would understand I spend 10 hours to do 100% from start to finish.