I love fast travel, warp gates, teleporting and anything that makes it easier and faster for me to get from Point A to Point B.
“Scenery is pretty.” Don’t care.
“Look at the extra content.” I’ll look if I want to. Don’t force it.
While I enjoy casual and relaxed games, taking forever to walk to where I want to go is neither casual nor relaxed. I wanna be where I wanna be in game and don’t pad on the gameplay hours with slow transport options.
A lot of things can cause “the mind to wander” and, frankly, I’m not a health professional but as a person who sometimes has trouble focusing I somewhat sympathize. There are times when I simply can’t sit down and enjoy myself, and there’s nothing that can be done about that. Usually times of high stress and anxiety.
But outside of those extreme cases, there’s generally a few things here and there that can help alleviate. The first, and maybe almost stupidly obvious one, is to do some of those tasks beforehand. I don’t have to stress about doing the dishes or paying the bills or returning a call if I just do it beforehand. Logging into the bank app is just 5 minutes, why worry about it otherwise.
Another is to get comfortable and shut yourself off. Leave your phone in a place you can’t reach from wherever you’re gaming (or watching a movie, or reading or studying. Your phone should actually be in a different room every time you don’t immediately need it) as well as any other electronic devices. Close the windows and doors, turn off your PC. Make it a bother to stop enjoying yourself.
Take a bathroom break (or if its in the evening, a shower+grooming) and maybe have a snack or a full meal. Have a bottle of water nearby. That crosses out basic biologic annoyances (until you need a pee break but that’s at least a healthy obstacle).
Exercise a bit. Sounds out there, but exhausting yourself physically isn’t only healthy, it also takes your mind off a lot of things. Since that’s a relatively boring activity that can also have your mind wander, have some podcasts handy, but something light and preferably with 2+ hosts so you can have several voices in your head that aren’t yours but also don’t need to follow a story or anything heavy. Going on a walk while listening to a 1 hour episode should be good enough (and something we all should do regardless of attention issues)
On the subject of podcasts, I’ve found that some games aren’t gripping enough to draw my attention or are repetitive enough that I don’t need to dedicate all of my attention to them, so I’ve dubbed them Podcast Games and do both at the same time. Roguelikes do very well in this regard, as well as management games, or anything that isn’t story heavy (or if the story blows) and where the sound isn’t exactly necessary.
And sometimes, ultimately, maybe you just aren’t really in the mood for a game. There are hobbies of mine that I enjoy, but don’t do much because I’m not “in the zone” as often, like reading or watching a TV series. So if gaming is like that for you, swap around and enjoy yourself, time spent doing something you like isn’t time wasted.
Optional: I’ve found that I’m much better at sitting down and watching a movie or a show when I have someone alongside me to chat up. Maybe having someone along to play/watch together, or simply streaming through Discord for a friend might be a solution. You’d be surprised at how many other people are also bored and would accept an invite to watch you play while chatting about their day.
Me and my spouse are getting back into Elden Ring. Created a new character and chosen a build that’s enjoyable for both of us, so we sit on a couch, passing the controller back and forth, exploring, doing quests, reading lore and praising the Erdtree. Good Times!
I would consider them a few different genres, but they are easily my favourite types of games these days. I cateogrize them in my steam list as below.
-Colony Builders: Games about building well, a colony, often from little to nothing. Often lots of You vs Environment friction, with the natural world. Tends to have a bit more focus on the individuals that comprise the colony. Examples: Rimworld (my favourite game of all time), Dwarf Fortress, Oxygen Not Included, Stranded Alien Dawn, Space Haven.
-City Builders: A bit broader in scope than a colony builder, working more on the macro level. Friction is often economic, sometimes adjusted with the natural world. Cities Skylines is kind of the prime exampe of this, but also games like Timberborn or Anno.
-Automation: Games about building a factory that…builds things automatically. Challenge tends to be logistical complexity but some games do feature combat as well. Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program (my personal favourite), Satisfactory, and Captain of Industry are the Four Horsemen of this genre to me. Techtonica is very early still but seems to have some promise as well.
For many of these games, there is a whole world of content to explore if you are interested in mods. Rimworld players regularly run hundreds of mods, my current game has about 350. Factorio has extensive overhaul mods that can take literally thousands of hours to finish in some cases (Py’s). Satisfactory has a surprisingly robust mod scene for an early access game too.
I see a pattern of games mentioned here! What do you call games like theme hospital? I’d love to skim a few recommendations for these kind of games that let you hire different employees to run parts of your business.
Polecam poszwendac sie po ciuchach, jak ma sie chwile. Od krótkich spodenek, przez spodnie, koszule, marynarkę po kapelusz lniany udało mi sie wyhaczyć. Oczywiście nie jest to jednorazowy szybki zakup, tylko loteria:) No i za całość pewnie wyszło 5 dyszek. No i może olxy i allegro?
Poproś ludzi, którzy chodzą często po lumpach (a są tacy, którzy to po prostu lubią i traktują jako hobby. Niektórzy nawet wpisują to sobie w opisie na tinderze :D), żeby Ci kupili to, czego potrzebujesz. :)
Totally agree, I don’t want to have to do research before or during playing and have to consult a build guide for every level up, just so I don’t mess up my character.
Just let me fuck around, find out and do it better all over again in my own time.
Having a character of one main class and a secondary class that could be switched at any time between any of the 9 classes.
8-slot skillbar with one heroic skill that could only come from your main class.
400+ total skills in the game.
Plenty of room for you to make your own homebrew builds, and some classic builds that were outside the box:
The assassin that used a staff (assacaster), the ranger that used necro skills to touch people to death (touch ranger), and the 55 monk, which had almost no hp but so much healing it was hard to kill.
It will always be my MMORPG because of the character design.
If "Secret World Legends" isn't already on your radar, it might be up your alley.
Haven't played GW1, but SWL has a moveset similar to what you described.
It's set in modern day, with the premise that all myths, conspiracy theories, urban legends etc are all true - and frequently need to be contained. There are three factions: STRONGLY recommend you choose Illuminati (best faction story line by a long shot).
The investigative missions will make you feel like a moron, but in a weirdly good way. SUPER satisfying to figure them out without looking up hints online.
Not a game I hear mentioned much, but man Secret World had so many great things going for it. The best quest design in a MMO* I have ever seen, and a really unique setting too. Shame it was managed so badly, in an alternate world where TSW took off and was still getting content updates, I would be thrilled.
I just bought Sun Haven to play with my girlfriend. I’m enjoying it so far, we kinda lost track of time playing lol. Though it seems like whatever job the host has, the players that join will have that job too which kinda sucks. Maybe I messed something up though. It doesn’t seem to matter much because you can kinda just ignore your job and do other things.
I love when games use as few invisible walls as possible, and don’t stop you from exploring weird places or even out of bounds. There doesn’t even have to be a reward, just the feeling of getting somewhere where you’re not supposed to be is enough. Ultrakill and Anodyne 2 both do this really well.
I also love rich, responsive, low-restriction movement mechanics, which kinda ties in with the first point. I love when games let me chain all sorts of moves together for wild bullshit midair acrobatics, zipping and bouncing and flinging myself all over the place constantly. Good examples are Ultrakill, Pseudoregalia, Sally Can’t Sleep, and Cruelty Squad. On the flipside, Demon Turf is a game I hated and dropped quickly because of how artificially and pointlessly limited the movement felt.
You might like the Serious Sam games. The developers didn’t really bother with invisible walls and so on most levels you can go in any direction until either the level geometry prevents you or until you reach the point where the developers finally gave a shit and put an invisible wall. It even rewards you for this on quite a few levels with some really well hidden secret goodies.
Finished what is available in Techtonica, so went back to Dyson Sphere Program for a bit to work on missing achievements. DSP is definitely my favourite of the Factory-Automation games at this point.
I still have a Factorio (Industrial Revolution 3) game going too, but am feeling DSP more at the moment right now.
Don’t waste my time. That’s my biggest thing in games. Death Stranding was fun but holy shit. Everything had animations. Just sooooo many. It made even the most simple tasks take so long. Why do I need to see so much when I deliver a box? Why do I need to see Sam get in a truck? It irks me so much.
I mostly play turn based JRPGs. My main gripe with any video game is excessive interacting with menus and inventories. I want to play a game, not enter submenus of submenus to change minute things. So here’s some features to combat that:
Queues: lining up research or skills to learn, so I don’t have to enter the fucking menus after every battle/minute.
Skill/Equipment sets: let me save my setups. Give me a few slots, and a warning if some part of that setup is used by another character. Heck, give me a way to save whole party setups, so I can have e.g. fire-killer team of ice-themed abilities on all characters. Or just have a standard ability set for progression and a second, temporary one for skill learning or whatnot.
Chained Echoes and FFVIIR had some good QoL improvements, but how many times do I have to shuffle materia or accessories, just because I’m leveling something? Every second encounter, because something is maxed and I have to swap it out for something else?
And Inventory management, that can make or break a game. Some of those submenus take half a minute to enter before you even do anything. Astria Ascending (I don’t recommend) was awful in that regard and guilty of everything mentioned above.
Fucking menus man… Give me some elaborate customizable skill setup slots and queues, please.
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