The worst one I've experienced is EVE Online. They had such an extensive character creation system, and I spent ages posting for the player icon, only to be staring at tables and icons.
I kinda went in to it sorta blind. At the time there was development on features that lets you walk around space stations. Also I just kinda got lost in the process and got way too in to it for some reason lol
Haha, totally fair! Eve Online is just kind of famous for being a “spreadsheet simulator”. I’m sure that’s at least partly unfair but again, never played it!
A highly customizable table is the core of how you pilot your ship. It’s an overview that gives you a list of everything you’ve set it up to show in space around you, as well as a bunch of columns with information on said objects. Some of it is obvious and straight forward, like distance, but goes down into the minutia like transversal velocity. You can set up a bunch of presets for checking on different things.
Logistics and economy are huge parts of the game that you could mostly ignore (though at some point you’re going to open the market which is exactly as detailed and dorky as you imagine) which will prompt you to make your own actual spreadsheets at some point. Though funnily, in the 10ish years I played I never made a spreadsheet despite being notorious for doing it in other games.
There is just a ton of math and potentially useful data accessible to the player that you might want to use at some point.
My potentially hot take is the spreadsheet UI is the best, all MMOs should do it, and the worst parts of Eve’s UI are the parts that aren’t spreadsheets.
It's a open sandbox where there are a lot of "careers" or playstyles you can pick from. The most popular one would be joining a player corporation (guild) and fight against other corps for territory. There are miners who mine astroids for resources and sell it for money. Others use said raw materials and set up factories to refine it into different products. You can be a space trucker and haul them, or you can even be a space pirate and attack and loot said truckers. Of course there are more traditional dungeon raid esque PvE with your corp.
The (in)famous thing about EVE is that it's a space spreadsheet simulator. (It's not completely unfounded as there's an official EVE Online add on for Excel, but unless you're doing space business you don't really need it. I never did). The learning curve is also pretty steep. But it's pretty fun, and the harshness of space does create some great space friends. As they always say, the best ship in EVE is Friendship.
Yeah when people say that, they’re talking abt AAA. 2/3 of these are indie games.People are sick of corposlop. Indie games are the only games we have left, with some exceptions.
The launch trailer is pretty good, though I honestly feel like the actual graphics at launch turned out better than the trailer showed.
In short, on one side of the war it’s Starship Troopers. On the other side, it’s the Terminator Wars. There is a developer assigned to act as a DM of sorts, and they influence the way the war unfolds while the entire community fights to achieve the goals of said war.
The game is both very fun and very challenging. It has a good balance of making you feel completely badass one moment, and then absolutely humbling you moments later. The missions can get very intense at a moment’s notice. I’ve also had a pretty good time playing with randoms, and toxicity is incredibly rare (I have yet to encounter any, myself).
Yes, though the devs have stated that replacing it is something that they’re considering as there’s still been issues with cheaters and I think they said 2 out of every 150 players were having gameplay problems directly related to the anticheat. I don’t expect to see kernel level anticheat go away completely, but I hope that they’ll at least replace it with something less nasty like Easy Anti-Cheat.
Everyone compares the game to starship troopers and Terminator but I haven’t seen anyone mention that the game loop is literally left4dead. I guess everyone forgot about those games.
I could see that, with the horde shooter aspect; but you can’t call in airstrikes and orbital bombardments on top of the horde (and your friends). The missions in L4D are also linear, compared to the open area/extract method of HD2.
Helldivers is a game where you play in a squad of 1-4 (solo, friends, or it’ll pair you with randoms) to drop down to planets and try to survive against bugs or automatons while completing some objectives.
The galaxy map is dynamic, with aliens pushing from multiple directions toward “Super Earth”, and the more the entire community fights on planets, the more they’re pushed back. Planets can be liberated, or we can lose them (RIP Malevelon Creek). It’s chaotic and fun, and basically “Starship Troopers the video game”.
I love PvE of small teams against monsters way more than PvP. (Mostly because I get railed in PvP because there’s not enough time in my day to get that good).
It’s a “glorious chaos” kind of game. The developers made a wide variety of explosive weapons on purpose so that things got chaotic. There is no (and never will be) PvP mode strictly speaking, but friendly fire is always on and cannot be turned off. Teammates will kill each other accidentally all the time, but there’s little penalty for dying, they just call you right back in. Seems kinda grindy to me to get to level 10 where you start to unlock much better weapons.
If you enjoy the game, it doesn’t feel too grindy. I highly recommend playing with friends if possible. Killing each other on “accident” is incredibly fun.
You don’t ever have to deal with the bugs if you don’t want to. There’s an entire second war going on with the Automatons, and the devs have clearly left themselves room for at least 2 more factions. I guess the first game had another faction of aliens that isn’t in the game yet.
But I get it if the bugs are enough to put you off getting it, I had to essentially solo part of Elden Ring in co-op for a buddy because the hands in that game trigger his arachnophobia.
Helldivers is a game where you play in a squad of 1-4 (solo, friends, or it’ll pair you with randoms) to drop down to planets and try to survive against bugs or automatons while completing some objectives.
DRG can be hard but you can basically control every important combat variable. Helldivers gets super chaotic which makes for some really funny/awesome/desperate moments
Yeah, same here. I love both games but DRG satisfies my need to execute/show off with perfect maneuvers and optimize the hell out of every movement or action (both as an individual inside a team, and as a team when everyone coordinates on more “important” stuff).
Whereas helldivers is basically designed so you can definitely “play well” and have more impact, but also, unless you’re some god gamer, some stuff is gonna go completely sideways sometimes. Which also means that impactful suicidal plays can absolutely be valid !
Thanks. I looked into it to see if it’s playable on the Steam Deck, since a lot of online games aren’t due to anti cheat software. Looks like it is playable, so I’ll see how people like playing it on the steam deck and see about picking it up.
one of the main reasons i stopped playing MMOs is that everyone takes end game stuff super seriously and i just don’t find it fun to be lectured on what i’m doing wrong and which meta build i should follow instead :(
Same, it’s why I avoid games where raiding is the endgame, I’m not studying a boss on youtube before I fight it, there’s no fun in that and this is the only genre where people do it.
This, when I was last doing the story in FFXIV I had a few dungeons that were like that, nobody seems to understand that I enjoy working out the mechanics through pain and doubt a lot, perpetual 170 ping from playing on na servers helps with the suffering too.
Problem solving and overcoming challenges through your own determination and skill is really rewarding! I wish there were online communities for people like us! lol i mean i guess there probably are I just don’t know about them
There are casual guilds out there in most games where everyone smokes weed and doesn’t really care how well the raid goes as long as everyone is chill and having fun. Harder to find, though, most guilds are full of tween turbo Chad officer’s that adhere to DKP until it’s something they want for their buddy, or alt, or they can sell for a lot.
Man, one time I joined the public (pvp) raid of a well known crazy guild. Pretty sure that at least the leader had taken some stuff. The shit-talk was hilarious and they didn’t care what happened. One of the most memorable raids I had the privilege being a part of.
Figuring out how to solve one of the early raids in Destiny 2 was some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing a video game. Unfortunately it’s hard to get even my friends to want to go into a raid without knowing how to clear it as fast as possible. I get it, we don’t have as much time to play games as we used to, but man does it suck the fun out of things. Why even bother playing at that point?
I had a friend who would get deep into MMOs and kept trying to convince me to join. When I eventually said OK to giving one a go his next move was sending me a textbook sized guide on game’s meta. Having to start studying to play a game was a step too far for me.
oof I’ve had friends who liked to do research on the games they played and learn how to do things externally before coming into the game and doing the things, but if they ever expected me to do that homework I would probably have felt the same as you. I get that it must be fun for them to give themselves that homework (otherwise they wouldn’t do it right? lol) but for me I have fun by exploring, learning on my own, and overcoming challenges on my own. The only way my friends like that ever spoiled anything for me was by telling me how things worked before I had figured it out on my own or giving me items that they had learned how to get externally before I knew how it was possible etc
For me the main reason I ever played MMOs was that they seemed like an easy genre to play with friends and to find new friends in, and I did both a lot. But I just didn’t know at first that in most MMOs the main thing to do for most people is all the post-game activities lol. My fav things to do in games are usually to explore and learn the lore, which in my experience aren’t things many MMO players care much about. The last MMO I got really into was GW2, and I had helped build a guild that didn’t mind casual players, but even in that guild I couldn’t really participate in end game content because they’d still get frustrated if I didn’t follow the meta strictly. I ended up being “that guild lady” who ran overworld event trains, sometimes dungeons, and sometimes pvp, cuz everyone else who had the rank to run community schedule stuff usually only ran Fractals and Raids and I generally didn’t feel welcome in those categories since I didn’t stick to the meta. That’s not to say I didn’t like the guild, I met a lot of good friends in it and the community was overall really sweet and welcoming, it’s just that despite being essentially one of the founding members and one of the highest ranking members I still couldn’t even participate in most of the content we did without being lectured about doing it “wrong.” And after a while I just got bored and lost interest in playing it (I mean there were other reasons too but that was a big part of it), and haven’t had the motivation to really try any other MMOs since then :/ (GW2 is still probly my fav MMO though, it had a really good story and a lot of cute mounts and pets, I personally especially liked the POF expansion which had a couple big existential moments imo. But after a while it’s like well I know the story pretty well and I know the world really well so because of how I like to play games there’s just not much more for me to do anymore (thanks for coming to my TED talk))
I’ve been idly considering jumping back in, I was more or less up to date in late 2020 but there’s been what, 2 expacs since I last played, getting the gryphon mount was fun.
Yeah, End of Dragons came out in 2022 and Secrets of the Obscure came out in 2023. End of Dragons had just come out right when I was putting the game down
i’ve thought about picking it back up now and then too, but nowadays i’m mostly couch-gaming with a controller, and to my knowledge GW2 doesn’t have controller support. And finding a new guild and everything sounds overwhelming to me right now lol. The only “online” game I currently actively play is No Man’s Sky, which is probably much better suited to my general preferred playstyle. But I have no idea how to go about finding player civilizations to join lol. I also recently got Helldivers 2 to play with my bf, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of game that would be my usual cup of tea so idk how likely I’ll be to find friends/communities through it. I also recently got Sea of Thieves but so far I’ve been too shy to actually play it >.<
but you should totally play GW2 again if you want to, imo it is definitely the best MMO i ever played
Aerith is my favourite character in the remake and nobody else comes close, I hate that I’d be seriously tempted to get this DLC. I’d pay to have her Mikiri counter the blow and shove that sword back up his ass.
Hell I dread the event so much, I don’t even know if I want to buy Rebirth: I could just pretend it ends at the first part.
Not all of us came from stable backgrounds. My father lost everything we owned when I was in the Army because he couldn’t stop gambling and didn’t pay our storage unit… My entire fucking Magic the Gathering collection. I had power 9 and a full duel lands set, many many decks. Not to mention all my consoles and games.
Well, yes, I have a gaming PC as well. (and a steam deck) It just ain’t the same without the OG controller. Need to get a USB one eventually but I’m poor.
I do still have some of my original carts as well. Same with a bunch of NES carts I got from my previous job. Been eyeing those modern consoles that work with NES carts because that would be nice to have in the living room.
Ahhh beetle adventure racing! Brings back memories. I found a legit “cheat” way to play by doing something like turning and then clicking handbrake? A few times and it would take super sharp turns depending on how many times you click handbrake no matter the speed you were going. Allowed be to beat the game and unlock all cars pretty easily.
Starfield. People played for 700 hours then wrote a bad review then play for another 300 hours . Bro if you put 1000 hours into a game there was obviously something you liked about it.
Your comment got me curious, so I did some digging. Unfortunately Steam caps out filtering reviews at “above 100”, so I couldn’t find a way to get data on the difference between 100-200 hour players vs 500-1000 hour players for example. But I broke it down by 0-24 hours, 25-49 hours, 50-99 hours, and 100+ hours to see the results.
Unsurprisingly, folks who played it for less than 25 hours liked it the least, with an average of 50% positive reviews. This is also the largest sample size by far, accounting for 51,686 of the roughly 140,000 reviews.
More surprisingly however, the next three data sets (25-49, 50-99, and 100+), order themselves naturally from “most positive sentiment to least”. Essentially, the longer you play it after 25 hours, the more likely you are to rate it negatively.
Breaking it down:
0-24 hours: 50% positive reviews out of 51,686 players.
25-49 hours: 69% positive reviews out of 34.644 players
50-99 hours: 64% positive reviews out of 30,775 players
100+ hours: 61% positive reviews out of 22,800 players.
Oh, and because I just reread your comment, I checked out the 1-10 hour players as well, and your guess there was accurate. 40% positive reviews out of the 27,316 players in that range.
And given that there were more negative reviews in the 0-24 hour range than reviews from people who even played it for more than 100 hours, I would say you were mostly right about the guess that players who played it for a very extensive time and reviewed it negatively were a minority. Even if that minority was made up of about 8,900 reviews, or roughly 6.3%.
While this is far from a “definitive scientific test”, the data on Steam seems to indicate that among people who liked the game enough to put significant time into it, the more they played, the less likely they were to rate it positively.
I upvote things I like, and don’t want to be one of those people who comment “THIS!”, but you did proper research and it didn’t get the acknowledgement it deserved.
It’s a great example. Starfield (like other BGS games) does a lot of things well that few other games do at all. So it’s frustrating when they put out a game that is pretty mediocre outside those few strengths, and also your only real option for scratching those particular itches.
To be fair, starfield could be simply addicting, and addicting doesn’t mean a player can’t find the game underwhelming. I spent a lot of time on cookie clicker and in retrospective it was boring, but I kept playing because the numbers were going up. What saved me was clearing my browser’s cookies (lol) and loosing my progress.
I want to like Rimworld so much, but without mods it’s unplayable, and with them the game stops being fun. Rimworld misses something, I I can’t put my finger on it.
She died doing what she loved - building an intricately smoothed Elf caravan killbox, decoratively carved with masterwork pictures of dead trees.
Tragically her lover pulled the lever while she was still inside.
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