Thank you. It feels crazy that SO MANY PEOPLE are playing these crazy complex games. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just prefer to spend my time playing intuitive games.
I used to play Destiny 1 and I was all about it for a couple of years and I get how much fun those kind of games can be but even after all that time I was spending more time trying to figure out how to play it than I was actually playing it and eventually just burned out.
Are those games of the past? Games of all stripes still exist, just like complex games were in the past too (looking at Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 from 20 years ago which are degrees more complex than BG3 today).
That’s not so long ago for me, or in gaming history my friend lol.
I’m talking more of the NES, SNES era. (All consoles anc PC included during that same time.) They were much simpler. The most complex ones were maybe simulator type games.
Many big title games today require a full on tutorial that can go from 15 mins to 30 mins to explain all the game mechanics and gameplay, inventory systems, power-ups, etc. Then you have all the DLC, loot boxes and all the other bull shit.
Back in the 80’s-90’s you just put in the cartridge, pressed power and played. (Or typed the DOS command, ENTER, and played.) You had the full game on the get go and you could learn the game mechanics in a couple of minutes or a few rounds of playing.
There are games today that still do this and keep it simple, and those tend to the the ones that I’ll play and re-play and play again.
That’s not so long ago for me, or in gaming history my friend lol.
I’d argue 20 years ago is a while ago in gaming, no matter how old either of us is. The appeal to authority due to age aside, I only mentioned 20 years ago to draw the comparison between the game being discussed in this thread and its predecessors.
there are games today that still do this
Exactly. Hell, I’m willing to bet there’s more “plug’n’play” games being made today just because of how wide the gaming industry is now versus the NES/Atari age, and that’s even ignoring the entire catalogue of these games over decades still existing for the playing.
Well, they are still here, just sometimes in a different form. For example, shmups are still a thing – RagingBlasters is a prime example.
As far as platformers go, Shantae games are my overall favourites. Ever since debuting on GameBoy Color, I don’t think they ever strayed too far from their roots. Another honorable mention from me would be Blaster Master Zero – a remake of the original Blaster Master on NES.
I like to just jump in and wing it, learn on the fly. Actually hate playing with people who expect everyone to “have done their research”. Games do build on top of knowledge of previous ones, to an extent… but it’s figuring out the rest what gives me a thrill.
As for complicated games, I think you forgot World of Warcraft… which I can repeat to you what I told someone who called it a game “for nerds”: according to their IQ, 2% of the world population are “gifted”, there are 8 billion people, WoW had slightly over 10 million players at its peak.
In an ideal world with equal opportunities for everyone, you could expect a potential audience of 160 million “nerds”… so yeah, some games are going to be more difficult that candy crush.
But see, for some people and some genres, the fiddling and trying and testing and redoing IS the actual gameplay.
BG3 is a good example, Factorio came up in this thread as well. And from a certain perspective BG3 is as much of a playground as Tears of the Kingdom. The latter hides the numbers from you, the former invites you to play with them.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I for example can’t seem to get into story driven single player games such as God of War or Farcry. The constant tutorialising drives me nuts…
You’re not understanding what I’m saying. I’m not talking about “fiddling, trying and testing”. I’m talking about spending your time browsing web forums and wikis in a browser. That is not a part of gameplay, that is external research.
Fair enough - semantics. Some people have fun doing this, some don’t. You seem to be part of the second group, no problem with that.
Your initial question was „how do people play those games?“ and „being part of the games online community and/or using the communities resources to play the game“ is one answer. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I am currently into Monster Hunter Rise. It does not exactly do the best job of explaining ingame what „30% Affinity“ on a weapon means. So I looked it up. That was fun to me.
In the end I guess it’s your imperative to research games before you buy them. If they don’t fit your play style, don’t buy them. You don’t mean to say that no one should enjoy „complex“ games, are you?!?
Absolutely. I spent years playing Destiny and eventually got tired of researching lore on the web because that’s what you had to do. The secret missions and guns and raids are next to impossible to figure out on your own.
As for OW, I played for a while but was just instantly slaughtered. My playmate explained it was because I was X character and Y character has Z ability and I needed to switch to V character when I respawn to counter their abilities and then I realized she had spent hours researching all these character traits on the internet and that’s around the time I bailed.
My playmate explained it was because I was X character and Y character has Z ability and I needed to switch to V character when I respawn to counter their abilities
With all due respect, your playmate knew jack shit. Particularly in Overwatch, the “countering” is a combination of personal skill and situational awareness: you can win with any character against any other one, by just using the right abilities at the right time from the right place.
It’s also mainly a team based game… or used to be… so which character you pick is much less important, than knowing which synergies you can get with your teammates. That one does take time to learn, on everyone’s part, but a well synergized team can only be “countered” by another well synergized team.
For reference, I’m part blind, and some of my favorite kills are Mercy vs. Widow, or Torb’s ballistic rivet headshots across half the map vs. whoever thought they were well behind cover.
Pulling off a Junkrat mine-assisted jump and destroying Pharah on a wide outdoor map is always glorious. Love(d) doing that shit.
Then just spring a trap and blast Mercy as soon as she immediately goes to res the dead Egyptian rocket lady, because that’s what she almost always does.
Yeah, Pharah’s weak spot was holding still while ulting, easy target for everyone.
But the trap for Mercy wasn’t a guaranteed hit, I used to “main Mercy”, and the trick was that Pharah’s “corpse” started where she got killed, however high above ground, and then began falling. Mercy’s rez (and heal/boost) had a minimum engage range, but the disengage range was about twice of that, so a Mercy could fly towards the corpse midair, hit rez while passing it by, then channel rez while still slowly hovering down, sometimes even rezzing pharah midair, not having to touch the ground.
The risk to that, was if Pharah’s corpse happened to land on a roof, while Mercy kept hovering down, she would get out of range and lose the cast… but that’s what made it interesting.
I also miss that one time when they made Mercy’s ult a speed boost; best Mercy games were always while keeping her in the air as long as possible, healing everyone while jumping among them, but the speed ult made for some fun “let’s see how many can I rez in a single game”.
But really destiny and overwatch complicated??? Those games are for children
Overwatch might seem that way because of the cartoon style and the low skill floor, but the skill ceiling is somewhat higher. I haven’t met many children who would be good at predicting behavior of high-level opponents and coordinating to counter it, for example.
I don’t know that I would call it complicated, either, except in the sense that there’s often a lot to keep track of all at once. I think I’d place it somewhere in the middle.
I just pick a character class that looks interesting, make them look like me, and get going.
Figure it out as I play, and just have fun. I pretty much never watch videos or read anything about games unless I get really stuck, or have already finished the game and am curious about other playstyles.
For a first time don’t try to get the strongest character possible. It’s a time sink to do that. Usually the main campaign of games are beatable even if you screw up something. The worst that can happen is you backtracking a bit and spending time to level up before doing the next quest.
When you played the game once and got used to the mechanics you can make a 2nd char and plan it more deeply ahead if you wish. You know what mechanics you like so the prospect of finding what to invest in what is worth etc… becomes more streamlined. But you don’t have to. You can just be happy to have finished the game and call it a day.
That’s what I did for Diablo 4. After the main campaign I did not feel like venturing more into the game or making another character so I started playing another game. If you really want to 100% a game it does require a ton of time and planning but you don’t have to
This. For bg3 I started by looking up a simple question around class complexity. Landed on fighter for my first class and then only looked up specific questions I had about how something works if I wanted to consider it.
That was only to verify I understood what it was saying it did correctly.
A lot of these games are working off of an assumed learned collective memory.
Think of movies, and their tropes. How do you understand that when a movie cuts to black for a second, and then suddenly shows a new location, that we did not just teleport? That the black cut indicates the end of a scene, and the start of a new one?
Think of how many games assume you know which button pauses, which opens the menu, which buttons move the character and which ones make you jump. Now, add another layer of controls. And another.
BG3 is also working with an assumed collective memory from DnD. Assuming you already learned about class vs race, and cantrips vs lvl spells, and turn order, etc.
It sucks when you miss large games that establish these things, but its also how art forms evolve. Games just dont yet have a way to easily re-teach them.
Yeah, if you’ve played DnD 5E I’d say you’re already well on the way to knowing how BG3 works technically. If not, it’s prolly a bit of a learning curve but the game does start soooorta slow at level 1, though 4 characters is a lot. Look up some common archetypes!
Think of how many games assume you know which button pauses, which opens the menu, which buttons move the character and which ones make you jump.
Button bindings are almost always listed in the settings menu. And many games WILL explain those controls, usually with an option to toggle them on/off.
Often, yes, but not always, and thats only become a recent trend.
And just as many games dont, or only explain where their controls differ from the cultural expectations.
It applies to mechanics too, but thats harder to talk about without actual examples in front of you, and I dont have any good contrast examples off the top of my head
I recently started playing Divinity Original Sin 2, and I went through this problem as well until I changed the way I approached the game.
I just let go of trying to make the most optimized decisions and instead just make the decision I, or my character would make (if I’m role playing).
I just realized that no matter what decision I make, it will still lead me to finish the game. If I really want to, later I can go back and play it again to see more of the game. Only if I like my first play-through though.
I’ve gotten back into Minecraft lately, after not playing it at all for at least a year. I finally reached a couple major milestones, like defeating the Enderdragon and obtaining netherite scraps (still don’t have any netherite equipment yet–obtaining smithing templates is a real pain). Playing on a couple SMP servers has also motivated me to put actual effort into beautifying my bases, rather than just living in a tiny wooden shack I made on day one or two.
Yup. D2 has the worst new player experience of any game I’ve played. But at the end of the day, it’s just about knowing where the daily solo dungeon is, so you can grind Light level. Raids are complicated though, because a lot of them are like puzzles.
Stopped playing it because of how money hungry the game is.
Also all the actual good content (raids) are not explained and you need to herd some cats to do them. Which is even harder if you’re learning them.
The best time I had with destiny was when I had a clan and a couple of the more experienced players would take a bunch of newbies through. Then we could fuck around and not be completely lost.
It was always fun to go in on a brand new raid and fuck around with a few buds to figure out what are actually REALLY difficult challenges that require both skill and puzzle-solving skills. I just got burned out on it and just quit PC gaming entirely and got a Switch just because of the state of modern gaming in general.
I can’t speak for today but when I played it, it wasn’t so much “complex” as there were hidden missions (and according weapons) that are nearly impossible to find if you don’t know about them, and raids you basically have to join a group with a leader and the leader will require that you read documentation before-hand because they’re nearly impossible to figure out on your own.
The game does not explain any of this. I went to watch a tutorial online to try and wrap my head around all of this. The first tutorial just assumed you knew a bunch of stuff already. The second one I found was great but it was 1.5 hours long. There is no in-game tutorial I could find.
Why do you need to know? Just pick one and go with it!
Deep Rock Galactic
I haven’t played much but, it’s not complicated? There’s a main lobby where you select a quest, then you go on it. It generally involved following a path and gathering/dropping off stuff with some fighting in between.
Overwatch
This one is just anticipating other people’s movement on a map, which can be chaotic but I don’t really think it’s complicated? Honestly if you’re having issues just play Paladins instead I would stick by 1 or 2 teammates and just focus on staying with them no matter what. Over time you’ll learn what works and doesn’t work.
I’m a casual gamer and I used to play Overwatch. There’s always the practice range or training room, I forget what it’s called. But what really got me learning all the characters was playing Mystery Heroes over and over.
As with any competitive game, in overwatch you are expected by other players to understand complex strategies that have evolved over time, which can be stressful for a newcomer.
It doesn’t help that many players who don’t understand the Meta aren’t afraid to chime in. Standing in front of you holding up my shield isn’t my job, learn how to use cover fool.
Rocket League has a really great ranking system that ensures that I’m always playing with members of a similar skill level, but also always challenging myself to move up the ranks.
I really wanted to like BattleBit but couldn’t be bothered to grind to get the better weapons while constantly being slaughtered by much more experienced players with much better equipment.
I already was a dnd fan so I understood how character creation worked but still spent a good one and a half hour in the character creator. This is something I enjoy though.
Deep Rock is good at letting you ignore what you don’t care about. I’ve never needed a wiki for it. It’s just fun and silly co op action, with massive complexity mostly about trivial things.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne