Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.
I’m gonna come out swinging: not even a game, but two entire fucking genres:
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Battle royales. I am like 90% convinced that gamers have been tricked by some dark psychology that has somehow convinced them that these games are worth playing. I don’t know whether it’s because the quality of FPS games has been so low for so long that today’s gamers have never really played a properly fun shooter or what. Battle royales are 75% downtime. You spend so long fucking around parachuting in to the map, walking around, collecting stuff, bla bla bla, interspersed by just a few moments of action, and when you get killed it usually doesn’t feel fair, it’s because a whole other team showed up right as you were already fighting someone else and put you in a nearly impossible situation.
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MOBA games are just RTS games with the best bits taken out.
Battle Royales: there are pros and cons to the format over traditional FPS. The real story here is that Fortnite in particular also frequently comes out with tons of fun and ridiculous weapons and items which is something that other companies don’t really do.
Ie: chrome that lets you turn into a fast moving blob, a katana with a charge dash range so big that it’s considered a mobility item, a handheld napalm cannon
I would respect your opinion if you presented it as an opinion, but your comment just reads as a condescending statement towards gamers who enjoy those genres. I don’t play either of those genres either, but I respect that people do enjoy them.
I would respect your opinion about my opinion if you presented it as an opinion about my opinion…
Of course it’s just my opinion. I respect people who enjoy those games absolutely, 100%. No disrespect at all. I didn’t even say anything negative about MOBAs except the fact that I didn’t personally enjoy them. You’re taking this way too personally.
Oh yeah, for sure, 100%. I know that this is incredibly opinions based. Every time I play a MOBA, I just think how much more fun I’d have playing an RTS!
RTS games are currently in a big slump (nobody’s really making them, and the player base on the ones that exist has seriously dried up) because most people only like half the game.
The people who love the micro end up going to MOBAs like League or Smite. The people who love the macro end up going to 4X/Grand Strategy like Stellaris or Crusader Kings. The market of people who equally enjoy both aspects is pretty small. Like, I’ll never buy a bag of Chex mix again, now that I know I can get a whole bag of just rye chips.
To make the scene even more anemic, the skill cap right now is so high. I know several people (including me) who tried to get into Starcraft 2, only for their first random opponent to be a person with 20,000 APM who thinks a match lasting longer than two and a half minutes is a slog. It’s not even possible to learn from your mistakes when you get stomped that hard, that fast. But the single-player part does nothing to prepare you (other than maybe letting you figure out what the buttons do), and it’s going to happen just about every time (because the only people still playing are the people who have been playing for a decade or more).
the quality of FPS games has been so low for so long that today’s gamers have never really played a properly fun shooter
Black Mesa?
I was thinking more like Unreal Tournament 1999 kind of thing. Black Mesa was a decent game though, but I didn’t play any multiplayer.
Battle Royals - for me, it’s about how the consequences heighten the tension, and how the threat of getting unceremoniously smashed back to the lobby heightens the victories.
Playing with friends makes the the whole experience fun. If you drop and have some downtime ‘just’ gearing up, you can chat and hang out and goof around. Then when shit kicks off, it’s just so much more impactful (imo) than a game where you’ve just died and respawned a bunch already and you can do the same again. The teamwork and communication has to be next level and it feels so damn good to win a round, especially when you’ve been on the back foot and had to claw your way out of tough fights.
No mind tricks, not fussed about loot boxes and skins, just awesome memories from when we where playing enough to get almost half decent at it.
…and now I’m missing Apex Legends, might reinstall and remember that my friends don’t play it any more
Hahaha ummm yeah as for your last sentence, I finally got around to getting a diagnosis for adult adhd recently and yes, having that focus naturally demanded of your brain by something you actually enjoy doing is definitely soothing. Kinda explains all of the activities I’ve always been drawn to (intense games, sim racing, rock climbing, skydiving etc)
For me it’s pretty much any competitive multiplayer game. I don’t dislike the games, I usually dislike the communities. That was one of the big things that turned me away from Overwatch (the first one) for example, the gameplay was fun but I just wish I could choose who I was playing with.
Needless to say, I stick with singleplayer games these days, or at least less competitive multiplayer games. Games with good local multiplayer, like SSBU, are also pretty fun when I can get a group together.
Are you a more eloquent me? This is exactly what I feel about both Battle Royales and MOBAs. How and why? I just don’t see it. I have friends who enjoy both genres and I’ve talked to them many times and asked them to explain why they find it fun. I still don’t get it. Dark psychology indeed. That’s the only thing that explains it for me.
Totally agree with point #1. I was a staunch supporter of Fortnite when it was a zombie defense base building game. Then everybody latched on to the battle royale and I hated it, and every battle royale that hopped on the bandwagon afterwards.
Spend 20-30 minutes collecting loot just to win or lose it all in a sudden burst of conflict… shit gives me hypertension
That downtime in a battle royale creates a really fun tension. Unfortunately, it does feel like dominant strategies emerge in that genre a little too easily, and then they become repetitive, so you don’t get that early feeling with the game for more than a few weeks.
MOBAs can take many forms, and a lot of them don’t look anything like an RTS, but they do usually give you the good parts of leveling up and becoming more powerful in an RPG over the course of about a half hour.
I have never played a MOBA but some quick sessions of Vainglory in an old iPhone… If that counts.
I can see the charm in the genre I guess… But battle royals? Hell no, you wrote it damn perfectly… It is a huge waste of time, whether it is for the grinding mechanics, or the camping mechanics, or the unfair situations, but that tension does well for streaming guys, I think that is why the genre got so popular? Like those brainless games that you see on social media like Facebook about driving trailers in messy roads or those Five Nights at Freddie’s kinds of games?
I highly disagree with the 2nd point
I hate RTS because there are so much going on everywhere at the same time that I just can’t handle it. You gotta master your production while scouting while repelling raids while strategizing to see what kind of army the opponent is building while exploring the tech tree and… damn how did they just send an army of 50 fellas??
MOBAs allow me to fully focus on the moment and whatever I’m doing instead of being perpetually late on the actions that need doing
Imo theoretical #RTS development just stopped after StarCraft and total annihilation.
Sup com is my favorite but nobody really tried to reimagine what “RTS” should mean.
Not like COD -> Doom(2016) did for fps.
So both perspectives are valid and deal with unsolved problems that are unfortunately just hard and not profitable to solve.
I didn’t say that you’re wrong or lying at all! Like, MOBAs aren’t for me but otherwise I have no problems with them. But for Battle Royales, yeah, I said that I thought that they trick people, like they’re intentionally really manipulative. For example, loot boxes - they’re fun, but manipulative. Know what I mean?
I think people just like the competitive-ness of a battle royale. People like to win and nothing says “winner” more like being the last survivor out of 100, you know?
The binding of Isaac. You just do the same thing the whole game. You shoot stuff, and gather stupid RNG items. That’s it, such a boring game
Vampire Survivor.
I began playing it after so much praise from all over the place and it just uses predatory tactics to hook the gamer. I only had fun with the game for maybe a day or so but overall clocked in many more hours of hate-playing. The only good thing is that the developer (who’s background is developing gambling games) does not use those tactics for microtransactions.
Once I deleted the game, I was never even tempted to go back.
(who’s background is developing gambling games)
Sure, he worked in the sector, but that’s because he couldn’t find better jobs. What you’re implying here is really unfair, especially considering there aren’t even any microtransactions in the game. As far as I know, he just made a game that he felt was fun.
Here’s a big question though
What’s the difference between predatory tactics to hook people into a game, and “normal” gameplay, whatever that is? If neither cost any money or have microtransactions in any way?
Is Diablo 2 using predatory mechanics? Is Counter Strike? Is Factorio?
Games are artificial constructs. If you deconstruct them entirely, unless they got some story to tell as the center point of the game, their mechanics and goals are entirely artificial and constructed to get you to keep playing, be engaged, and have fun, whatever that means and implies.
Because, well, in the end, games do not have a grand purpose. Their purpose is entertainment(or be art, but not all games have that goal). And so if vampire survivors keep you engaged and enjoy the game… Is that really that much different to other games? Another example to this are idle/incremental games, as a pure distillation of what games are. Are they predatory? Is there really much difference from the very core of other, more “proper”, games?
A game can offer an experience that leaves the player feeling satisfied or at least content with how they spent their time. There is a large space of possible interactive experiences that extend far beyond the simple dichotomy of fun vs educational or productive.
A game can certainly be considered predatory if it exploits psychological vulnerabilities to hook someone on engaging gameplay that gives the player very little in return in terms of fulfillment or mental recovery. Whether or not it takes the opportunity to swindle the player on top of that is a matter of degree in severity. Wasting a player’s time (or worse, induce stress or other harmful mental states for no good reason) is not a particularly nice thing to do.
Really? I guess you could consider the game’s visual flair to be predatory that way but I always felt that stuff was a joke because it doesn’t have microtransactions
I’m not seeing how anything in the game could be considered predatory in the slightest…super confused on this.
Predatory usually implies that you’re being lured in to buy something, but the game has no microtransactions. At its worst the mobile version (which is free) has the option to watch an ad to get 1 revive per run. Don’t watch the ad? The game is the same as the console/PC version.
I think the lights, sounds, slaughtering massive hordes of enemies with overwhelming damage, and constant dopamine rush from them could certainly be predatory in nature if they were used to bait you into buying microtransactions, but that’s not the case here. I see where they’re coming from, but I can’t necessarily agree.
SimCity 2013 or whatever the full online one was.
It was bugs and lies all the way to the bottom of it.
What else was bad besides the bugs? I specifically tried to exclude games that were unfun because of bugs.
Oh I totally misread the question. My bad.
Answering the actual question. Any game that spams me with dark patterns bullshit is immediately unfun.
Oh here’s your daily login reward! Ready for your dailies? Oh just fuck right off.
Agreed. Given how many people are sucked in by dark patterns, I’m very pleased there’s a contingent who is actively turned off by them, who refuses to reward that kind of design. I’ll let it go in a game that seems otherwise quality, but it does count against you in the “are you an actual game or just freemium/predatory bullshit” assessment.
Noita, it’s the most sadistic “normal” game that i’ve ever played, barring those troll game that’s meant to be rage inducing. It’s a good game, but dang this game is bloody hard it become unfun the more i play as i couldn’t make any progress.
Maybe i’ll give it another try in the future 🤔
Download the mod that allows you to infinite respawns, and explore the outer bounds of the game. I really don’t understand the point of the roguelike nature of the game, except to purposely put itself into meme/streamer culture as one of the hardest games ever made.
It’s a fuckton better than spending four hours of prep on a run, securing all of the buffs, HP, and weapons to try to figure out some deep lore in some complicated area, only to die to a single pink pixel of Polymorphine. Roguelikes are meant for short and quick playthroughs, not hours-long doomed runs.
Yeah, i get games like binding of isaac or risk of rain 2 that the first level i can already know whether this run is gonna be shit/fun/sure-win, or game like rogue legacy where i can slowly upgrade my stats, this one i feels like i can be ultra careful but i can still get destroyed instantly without it being my fault. It’s what makes me give up
I’m really into games centering around magic or being a wizard. Noita regularly got recommended on r/gamingsuggestions for that kind of thing. I think it might have also gotten recommended for some other kinds of things I browsed r/gamingsuggestions looking for, like deep mechanics or having lots of different ways to solve problems. And the idea of spell creation, which Noita has, really appeals to me.
I’ve also heard of how infuriating this game can be, and I know I don’t like roguelikes or roguelites, so I didn’t pick it up.
I get you and you’re 100% allowed to not like Noita, but Noita is one of my favorite games ever and if anyone here hasn’t played it, please do.
Noita is deeper than you think. 100% perfect game IMO.
