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.
I think you know what it is you enjoy, so you’ve just got to remember not to fall into that trap of “well, everyone says it’s good, so I must try it”.
The great reviews come from the people who already enjoy that kind of game. Like, reviewers on a site usually favor specific genres. If something gets a good review, you’ve got to put it into the context of whether or not it’s something the reviewer usually plays.
You’re not often going to see an RPG review by someone who mostly plays platformers.
So if an RPG is good to an RPG-enjoyer reviewer, and most of the people picking it up are already RPG fans, then good reviews are always going to be biased in favor of people who enjoy that gaming experience.
My advice?
Take a look at the tags on Steam. I know they’re user-submitted and “RPG” is on like every fucking game now, but things like “turn-based”, “tactical”, “simulation”, “crafting”, and a few others I’m forgetting will most likely be the things you’ll want to avoid (maybe there will be some exceptions here and there).
Also, wait a bit. No need to play games immediately. Play some stuff you enjoy for a year and then see if you still want to play it.
As for how and why people play these games… Just preference really. It comes down to the energy and time someone’s willing to commit. Neither a good thing or bad thing. Some find that thrilling, others find it chore. Both perspectives are perfectly valid.
Sometimes, people just enjoy them as is without getting too deep and never bother with “the meta” or whatever. Usually one of two things happens here: either they really enjoy it because they don’t have people backseat gaming them and telling them how to play and they’re finding creative ways to do things, or they find it a miserable experience because it’s just not fun if they don’t like the core mechanics.
I personally don’t have the energy for “deep complex games”, despite enjoying RPGs and immersive sims. I don’t ever bother with crafting or strategy games (although I did get into Civ V for a while, which was nice).
Over the years, I’ve learned what I like, what I don’t like, and just wait things out. Game Pass and deep sales help a lot here, actually. (Also other options, but not strictly ones people necessarily approve of for various reasons.)
I got you. Nowadays I would look at the UI of a game first before jumping in. If it looks too complicated I just pass. My job is already complicated enough, I don’t need to make myself more stressed when I just want to have fun.
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.
At the risk of inviting the internet’s wrath, when people talk about the difference between serious gamers and casuals, this is the sort of thing they’re talking about.
“Serious” gaming involves a particular set of skills and interests, such that the person is willing and able to just jump into some complicated new game and figure it out. And it’s not just that “serious” gamers can do that - the point is that they want to. They enjoy it. They enjoy being lost, then slowly putting the pieces together and figuring out how things work and getting better because they’ve figured it out. And they enjoy the details - learning which skills do what and which items do what, and how it all interrelates. All that stuff isn’t some chore to be avoided - it’s a lot of the point - a lot of the reason that they (we) play games.
You talk about your inventory filling up and then just selling everything, and I can’t even imagine doing that. To me, that’s not just obviously bad strategy, but entirely missing the point - like buying ingredients to make delicious food, then bringing them home and throwing them in the garbage.
You talk about your inventory filling up and then just selling everything
Uh, no, that’s not what I said at all.
My inventory is finite and at some point I have to choose what stays and what goes. Not only that but I have to sell enough things that I can continue picking up more items without leaving items on the ground in the middle of the map.
Then having to regularly stop and weigh the weapons in my inventory against the weapons on the ground and making choices I don’t even fully understand that come back to bite me in the ass later.
And what they're saying is that those elements are fun to the people who play these games.
Weighing different priorities to choose the best or preferred option for the future is flexing some very serious psychological muscles. Developing strategies to do it well is these types of people's version of practicing 3 point shots.
Reading you complain about it (which is fine, it doesn't have to be your sort of game!) is like listening to someone complain about how many times they have to throw the ball in basketball. "I just wanted to dribble and dunk, what are all of these other silly elements for? They're just getting in the way!"
If you want a really good comparison between these types of gamers and others, look at Path of Exile versus Diablo 4. Diablo took the mass-market appeal route, and de-prioritized many of the elements that more serious gamers enjoyed.
Now Path of Exile is a free to play money printing machine, and Diablo gets headlines for how poorly it's doing. There are many detailed analysis' online about why, and most of the reasons come down to removing the 'complicated' parts you're talking about.
And what they’re saying is that those elements are fun to the people who play these games.
In no way did I respond to that.
Weighing different priorities to choose the best or preferred option for the future is flexing some very serious psychological muscles. Developing strategies to do it well is these types of people’s version of practicing 3 point shots.
That’s all well and good but the game often doesn’t give you the knowledge required to make those choices thoughtfully. It feels like I’m expected to spend my days on internet forums and search engines just to figure out how to play the game.
If that’s the case, that’s fine, I will just avoid the game. But I feel like there should be some sort of disclaimer in the store.
Reading you complain about it
I haven’t complained about anything. I just asked a question.
My point though is that you talk about all of that as if it’s some sort of chore.
To me, it’s a lot of the fun.
I rarely even get to the point of having to stop and weigh choices in my inventory, since every time I come across something new, I have to stop and check it out and try to figure out what it is and what it does and what sort of advantages or disadvantages it might have. I enjoy that. So all along the way, I’m figuring out what I want to or think I should keep and what I want to or think I can get rid of, and not because a finite inventory demands it, but because that’s part of the point of playing in the first place.
Broadly, you’re asking if other people actually invest the time and energy to sort out how to play complex games. I’m saying that we not only can and do, but that that’s a lot of the point. That whole process of sorting things out is a lot of the reason that we play in the first place.
My point though is that you talk about all of that as if it’s some sort of chore.
Repetitive gameplay is not fun for me, personally but more power to you. I’m just trying to figure out what exactly I’m missing before I invest time into this game.
I rarely even get to the point of having to stop and weigh choices in my inventory
Those are not the types of games I’m talking about. Borderlands is the worst example I can think of where you have to stop every 3 minutes because the ground is constantly just littered with weapons, each with a dozen traits that is, at no time, explained to you while playing the game.
Horizon Zero Dawn is another one.
Now obviously those games are very popular, which is precisely what I’m trying to understand.
Broadly, you’re asking if other people actually invest the time and energy to sort out how to play complex games.
No it’s not. Obviously you do, or you wouldn’t play them. What I’m asking is how you sort it out.
Perhaps this conversation would be more constructive if you told us some of the games you do like, instead of the ones you don’t.
Because I’ll tell you right now, unless you prefer interactive novels which are only arguably games, every game is based on repetitive gameplay.
Specifically, building repetitive gameplay on top of repetitive gameplay is what makes games, games.
Like with chess. You have a repetitive “chess game” loop which has many “your turn” loops inside.
What I’m asking is how you sort it out
To address this specifically, this is what the community of the game is about. It’s why wikis are created and maintained. And so the answer would change based on which game you’re talking about and your goals in that game
For borderlands specifically, a few quick heuristics you can use is to ignore all weapons of not legendary color while in lower level areas, or to stop picking up lower tier items when you don’t need the cash, or to skip everything that isn’t a shotgun because that’s the only piece you need to update
I was speaking broadly but “repetitive” isn’t a binary quality, there is a spectrum.
this conversation would be more constructive if you told us some of the games you do like
Well, that would be a long list but my absolute favorite games are of a very specific nature. I don’t know if there’s a name for them. All the Devil May Crys (but especially DMC), God of War, Control, Jed: Fallen Order, etc. Basically third-person fighter games with combo attacks, a relatively clear direction (even when there are multiple available), and an easy-to-understand progressive skill tree. Anything with characteristics like “strength, charisma, durability” etc. tends to lose me very quickly because while those words have very clear and obvious meanings in the real world, it never explains what those things actually mean in the game and I find myself just upgrading them almost totally randomly.
It’s why wikis are created and maintained.
When I’m relaxing I don’t want to spend my time reading documents, personally. I never see any mention of “pick up and play-ability” in reviews and no one ever seems to complain about the complexity so I inevitably end up buying these games because gamers rave about them, playing for a few hours, and then getting bored/confused and dropping them, which ends up being a giant waste of time and money because I got zero enjoyment out of them.
You said BG3 was a gift, so it’s not costing you anything to not play something you don’t like.
Given what you’ve said, I would suggest avoiding anything with an RPG label anywhere.
For BG3, if you want to keep playing, you can skip the character creator. They have a dozen prebuilt options you can play without doing the detail work.
For inventory, you can ask your brother to handle it and send everything to camp.
But even with those, you’ll likely not enjoy BG3 because even the fighting mechanics are based around that type of complex decision making, making you pause all the time so that you can make those decisions.
It’s ok to tell your brother you don’t enjoy the gameplay. You don’t have to like it just because other people do.
Tinyfolks is a little indie turn-based roguelike you can compete a run of in a few hours. It’s like Darkest Dungeon except with the opposite amount of stress, and it actually only supports mouse/touchscreen!
That´s quite a list! Thank you :-) I even have a few on that list and will try them out. I did not think about The Witness, but it´s worth a try. I did not finis it on PC, but it has some really hard puzzles in it that keep you occupied for a while at the same place without the need to move around a lot.
The Hexcells series is awesome, played through all of them (of course not through all the random ones in Infinite ;-)), but might be worth to try again on the tablet. I tried Tametsi (also a puzzler), but it did not scale with the High DPI screen and was super tiny.
I had a good laugh looking at the Video on Steam. I am not sure if this will help me to wind-down, more something I might rage-quit in the middle of the night and then need a coffee to calm down again :-> But it does look pretty fun. Thanks for the suggestion :-)
Not op. I saw the good reviews and so I thought I’d give it a try. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I am very bad at that game and die all the time. I looked up other negative reviews and some people seem to agree with me that I just need more armor or something. I don’t understand all of the positive reviews and how difficult I find the game to be. I loved MW one and two and three, but I guess this one isn’t for me anymore.
You… you do realize MW5 is single-player and definitely not a “gatcha game” right? And has a pretty robust modding scene? And has a clan-based sequel coming up in a new engine?
Hmm… While it’s nothing like Outer Wilds and infamous for probably being the most obtuse video game ever created, I wonder if you’d like La Mulana? Metroidvania about being an archeologist where you sort of need to actually peice together the culture and history of the civilization you’re studying to move forward sometimes. It’s style of storytelling is closer to FromSoft (hence the obtuseness) but still.
I beat Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines for the first time on Deck. KBM controls bound to the system really did it for me and since it was a low spec game it ran flawlessly. And the game’s reputation holds up (well written and engaging but janky lol)
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