How are you all playing these insanely complex games?

Just some off the top of my head: Destiny, Deep Rock Galactic, Overwatch, and most recently Baldur’s Gate.

I received BG3 as a gift. I installed and loaded up the game and the first thing I was prompted to do is to create a character. There are like 12 different classes with 14 different abilities and 10 ability classes. 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.

I just get very bored very quickly of analyzing character traits and I absolutely loathe inventory management (looking at you Borderlands). Often times my inventory fills up and then I end up just selling stuff that I have no idea what it does and later realizing it’s an incredibly valuable item/resource and now I have to find more.

So my question is this: Do you guys really spend hours of your day just researching on the internet how to play these games? Or do you just jump in and wing it? Or does each game just build on top of working knowledge of previous similar games?

E: General consensus seems to be all of the above. Good to know!

sharkfucker420,
@sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml avatar

Personally I just hop in an wing it. In the case of baldurs gate I already understood most classes and races because of DND but in general when it comes to games like that yeah I just wing it and hope for the best

MaggiWuerze,

This is it basically. Especially for the first time you don’t really need to minmax anything and still have a good time.

sulunia,

I just wing it at first, and figure stuff out as I go, even in online stuff. BG3 in particular, by the end of chapter 2 you’ll be pretty familiarized with mechanics. Inventory management is here, but worth doing sometimes. I just unload stuff from main character into someone else in the party.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

I’m worried that if I “just wing it” it’s going to make things very difficult as my character will be super weak.

ampersandrew,
ampersandrew avatar

Nah, BG3 rewards you for just doing more stuff. If you keep doing the things you find as you explore, you'll level up plenty. They also let you respec more or less any time you want after the first couple of hours.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Thank you 👍

entropicdrift,
@entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

BG3 handles failure better than almost any game I’ve ever played. Fuck around, find out. Be free of your need to always win and just play the game however you want.

Worst case you start over with a totally different character.

Playing out all the possibilities is half the fun!

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Cool, that’s reassuring, thanks

kurcatovium,

Tell that to my TES: Oblivion character I picked only non combat skills as primary. Everything was fine when exploring landscape and forests, leveling peacefuly my alchemy, alteration or stealth and lockpicking. It was nice. Until I got to first oblivion gate and found out level scaling is a thing. Then I was f’d up pretty hard. Needless to say I never finished the game becailuse of this.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

That is exactly why I’m afraid to dedicate time to games like this haha.

Nepenthe,
Nepenthe avatar

It can be a little stressful even for me. And yes, the inventory management is atrocious btw, it's a common complaint.

Like someone else mentioned, you can always pay a little to respec if you find out a character doesn't have the stats to do what you're wanting/what they're built to do. That does require gold, and it is something that needs to be read up on and ultimately taken for a test ride to see if it's even fun for you. That many options can feel really daunting.

But I think with enough cleverness, the game can be won with almost anything. Just last night, I watched a playthrough of a guy who had challenged himself to beat the game without killing anyone or manipulating anyone else to kill them for him, and he did it.

Whole game. The only NPC he had no way around personally harming could still be knocked out and left alive. He tricked the end boss into murdering itself through careful use of explosive barrels and he himself never fired a shot — a super cheesy fighting tactic common enough that the term "barrelmancy" is a thing.

I'm not gonna say there won't be reloads, but there are a multitude of ways to handle most if not all altercations. Some things can be talked out of, or allies sought to help.

If not, it could be a huge, horrible fight taken head-on for the awful fun of it, or you could sneak up and thunderwave them into a hole and be done with it. Covertly poison the lot. Command them to drop their own weapon and then take it, and giggle while they flail their fists at you. Cast light on the guy with a sun sensitivity and laugh harder at their own personal hell.

You could sneak around back and take the high ground, triggering the battle by firing the first shot from a vantage point the enemy will take 4 rounds to reach through strategically placed magical spikes.

I passed one particularly worrying trial by just turning the most powerful opponent into a sheep until every other enemy was dead and I could gang up on them. Cleared another fight sitting entirely in the rafters where they had trouble hitting me, and shoved them to their death when one found a way up.

Going straight into a battle is the most expected way to do it, but there are usually shenanigans that can be played, is what I'm saying. Accept with grace the attempts that don't work. If the rules of engagement seem unfair, change the rules.

If it helps any, the game does also reward xp fairly generously. Just reaching new/hidden areas grants a little bit, to say nothing of side quests.

That guy I was talking about, the one that finished with zero kills, ended the game at level 10. The level cap is 12. That was all just wandering around, doing stuff that didn't require fighting.

Know which stat each class mainly uses and focus on that. Do not make the mages wear armor, it is not a happy fun experience. Beyond that, be clever and moderately lucky with your cleverness. You'll be fine.

It's a lot to get used to and does take time to be familiar with all your options, but I started out not very far above where you sound like you are. You do get used to it if you take your time, and I'm certain most people would be overjoyed to help.

Skua,

Oblivion's levelling system was beyond fucked. The optimal way to play in terms of power is to pick primary skills that you know you won't use and then go out of your way to only level those once you've levelled other things enough to get maximum value out of the level up. Or, alternatively, just never sleep so that you never level up and play the entire game at level one.

kurcatovium,

Sad part is I did really like Oblivion world, but that level/power scaling was absolute shitshow that completely ruined it for me.

averyminya,

That right there is the mindset of min/maxing. You’re halfway there already!

cyborganism,

I, too, miss the easy pick up and play games of the past.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

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.

sim_,

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).

cyborganism,

from 20 years ago

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.

sim_,

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.

cyborganism,

Alright. Whatever man. And thanks for making me feel old as shit.

cafuneandchill,

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.

cyborganism,

Yeah!! Blaster Master zero is on my wishlist. (I got so many games on my wishlist…)

LegionEris,

There are tons of games that don’t require that sort of knowledge base or study investment. It’s a minority that do. But you’re on Lemmy. This is a self selected community of extra thoughtful nerds. This community is more likely to be excited about games with homework than your average gaming community. I do genuinely love the research part of complex games. I like crafting builds and planning battles. I loved both Divinity Original Sin games and will love BG3 when I get there.

But sometimes I do just want a game for my hands to play while by brain takes a break. That’s why I spent most of the summer with Earth Defense Force 5, a 9/10 space insect exploding experience. Highly recommend it if you don’t want to fuck with the details.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

There are tons of games that don’t require that sort of knowledge base or study investment

Oh yeah I know that, it just seems like these type of games are super popular. My brother, who gifted me the game, loves it.

I think it may be something about my personality that just gets FOMO if I don’t know everything.

phonoodles,

You really need to put away the idea of having to min/max everything, especially in a single player game. Just make the choices as they come and if they aren’t perfectly optimal, who cares. Games are meant to be fun so if you are having fun then mission accomplished. If you still can’t shake the FOMO then yeah maybe the more complex games aren’t for you and that is okay too.

LegionEris,

Oh yeah I know that, it just seems like these type of games are super popular.

I honestly think that’s just your circle. That does not describe the majority of the gamers I know or have known. I have always been in a minority for wanting to do math in my free time and have to find places online to discuss these games because usually nobody else in my life is playing them. Most of the people I know who played BG3 did so because it is popular, and they avoided as much of the math and homework as possible. And most of them are done with it.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

I mean it’s all over headlines in the gaming community, and front page all the time in the Steam store, and all these gamers glowing about how great it is. So not necessarily “my circle” but just the gaming community as a whole.

LegionEris,

BG3 is a huge exception. It’s more popular by far than most games of the sort. And still only two of the dozen gamers I work with has played any of it, and they are both done with it.

all these gamers glowing about how great it is

Where? If you mean online, yeah, online discussion and gaming publications focus on more complex games that more serious gamers are playing. There’s just more to say about them. And news sites are gonna pay more attention to exceptions to the norm like BG3. None of the many gamers in my life are talking about it. If you’re hearing about BG3 and other huge, complex games regularly, it’s because you are spending time in spaces where and with people who care about them. Because it’s not just everywhere.

RandoCalrandian,
RandoCalrandian avatar

Aren’t most gamers technically mobile gamers? Pokémon Go has a user base most PC games only dream of

LegionEris,

Tbh I play the hell out of some Kairosoft games on mobile <_< I love watching my little guys thrive.

sim_,

I’m with you, the research is half the fun for me with complex games. But like others have said, BG3 is a great example of “choose your own” depth. You can absolutely stumble your way through the game and do just fine!

dark_stang,

Games like Baldur’s Gate assume you have at least some DnD experience. I remember playing Neverwinter Nights for the first time long ago and being really glad I played one session of DnD before it.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Oh wow, okay, good to know. Well my brother has agreed to play the co-op with me and help me out. Maybe I’ll learn to love it. Just not sure I want to 😂

ampersandrew,
ampersandrew avatar

The first two Baldur's Gates sure did, but not so much BG3.

Nepenthe,
Nepenthe avatar

I'm not so sure. I've not played the first two to be able to measure between them, but I do recall thinking that if I hadn't been so into watching videos of other peoples' dnd campaigns, I would be so helplessly far out of my depth.

As it was, I was already struggling a little bit with which class was best for my likely playstyle. Who can use what armor, why, and what happens when they don't. What skills go with what stats. The general info they don't have a need to go over when you're not the one at the table.

Those aren't things OP would know enough about to even know they don't know, so I'm glad they have someone helping them. I don't consider myself anything remotely resembling intelligent and they're starting out with less. For being easily one of the best things I've played in years, it would feel impossibly daunting for a noob

ampersandrew,
ampersandrew avatar

I'm no D&D expert myself. I got through those other two BG games with a lot of frustration (and "narrative"/god mode for the last quarter of BG2), and pretty much the only things I didn't understand just from reading tooltips in BG3 were the numbers governing saving throw DCs and the to hit chance with certain spells.

ampersandrew,
ampersandrew avatar

Baldur's Gate 3 has a lot of mechanics to it, but it does a really good job of onboarding you in most of them. On character creation, or on leveling up, or anything where the game asks you to make a decision about how you've built out your character, there are tooltips to explain the mechanics. Mouse over it if you're on mouse + keyboard, or press Select or click in the right analog stick if you're on controller (it should tell you which one). It will explain everything you need to know there. But if you'd like to breeze past the character creation screen, you can choose an origin character, which are pre-made, or you can stick to basics. Choose a Fighter with 17 Strength if you want to do melee stuff. Choose a Rogue with 17 Dexterity if you want to do ranged attacks like bows. Choose a Wizard with 17 Intelligence if you want to do magic; magic uses "spell slots" instead of mana or MP, which basically just means you can use a spell that many times. When you get the option to choose a "feat", which is approximately every 4 levels, upgrade that primary attribute until it hits 20, which is the max. Whatever that attribute is (the ones I just listed for those classes), the higher it is, the more likely you are to hit with your attacks.

The gist of it is, when you find a complicated game, you can often just engage with it on the most basic level, and then once you master that basic level, you build on it a little bit at a time. BG3 is a long game, so you've got plenty of opportunity to master what you know before building on it; rinse, repeat. I've applied this same methodology to fighting games plenty of times as well, which many people would consider to be a difficult genre to learn. We got rid of game manuals a long time ago, so complex games have had to get better and better at teaching you how to play while you're playing.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Thank you for this insightful feedback ❤️

massive_bereavement,
massive_bereavement avatar

I had the same overwhelming reaction to BG3's creation menu, but honestly, the game goes the mile to let you change everything later if you feel like it and honestly there's a "go with the flow" vibe by the fact that very few cases have instant game over conclusions.

I would say though that combat tends to be a measure twice and cut once because there's often an easy way of dealing with it, being either using the environment or exploring first another location that might give an advantage.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

I will just dive in, then!

EvaUnit02,
EvaUnit02 avatar

I love both Baldur's Gate III and fighting games but disagree. I think both are woefully inadequate at explaining their rules to players. Larian games need to not only make BGIII's rules as clear as a rulebook but also make tactics and strategies plain and clear to the user. Otherwise, it is very easy to fall back on decades of video game expectation only to realize your expectations are wrong. I had a co-op game of BG3 with a friend. My friend couldn't understand why he had to position his units anywhere. Didn't understand why inventory wasn't just immediately being teleported to a shared infinite item box. Didn't understand the basic mechanics of D&D combat (which even then, Larian changes to various degrees) Didn't understand why decisions had any meaningful consequences. Didn't even understand what he was supposed to be doing narratively despite there being a quest log and having us recap the story up to the point we were.

While fighting game tutorials have gotten better, I still have yet to experience one that explains very basic things that the FGC takes for granted. Things like health bars being identical physical lengths but representing different numerical values. Things like "waiting for your turn." Things like meter management.

Complex games are great. But complex games need to recognize that they have a larger duty to teach than simpler games. I think video game design needs to take a page out of tabletop game design and provide some analog to the tabletop rulebook: complete with not just rules but detailed explanations, sidebars, and examples of play.

ampersandrew,
ampersandrew avatar

I agree that fighting games haven't made it where they need to be yet. In fact, I've only ever found one that explains how to defend against a command grab, which is a very basic thing they should be doing better. As you agreed though, they're getting a lot closer, with a lot of intermediate steps along the way.

I disagree that the teaching tools are insufficient if they never teach you about something like positioning in Baldur's Gate. For one, you can observe that your opponents are doing so, and you can observe which things that makes easier or harder for you and why, like now it's harder for your melee character to hit them when they run away. That's way better than someone telling you about it, and it's better onboarding to not info dump all the rules at once.

EvaUnit02,
EvaUnit02 avatar

While I agree in principle, I think a game needs to make it clear when something isn't window dressing. My buddy just couldn't understand why positioning mattered. It never clicked for him because he figured RPG combat was just "swing a sword/shoot an arrow until the other guy dies". We had to explain it to him. He also never thought to explore the UI for information as to why his movement was reduced or why he was disadvantaged, despite having icons next to his character with tooltips explaining what status effects were in play. While it may seem obvious that things are happening on screen and one could deduce that something meaningful is occuring, I think if I'm honest, I can't blame my buddy for not understanding. I've fallen victim to it myself.

Sometimes we just don't, on our own, interpret information as being meaningful. Consequently, we unduly discard it before making decisions. I think it's important to be told in one form or the other when something matters. Whether that's tutorialization or otherwise, I think it's important. I think the more complicated the game, the easier it is for a player to fall in to a trap of discarding important information and subsequently becoming frustrated.

I think even something as simple as the game making its expectations clear from the start could go a long way. Something as simple as conveying to the user that they are expected to be attentive as they play.

ampersandrew, (edited )
ampersandrew avatar

We had to explain it to him.

This line strikes me as curious. Were you playing co-op together for his first time through? There are a lot of tutorials in the early game that explain so much of this stuff that you have to explicitly dismiss that they're hard to miss...unless you're in a discord call with some friends. And did you have to explain it to him, or was that just the first opportunity he had to raise the question, and you answered right away without him having time to figure it out himself? Did he ask you because he found the game difficult, or did you just tell him without him even asking because you observed that he wasn't using his movement? The opening moments of the game actually require you to use your movement in turn based combat in order to continue, and you can observe which enemies can reach you or not as you approach your objective.

If your friend really had this hard of a time learning that without trying to see how to overcome the challenge by just doing anything else besides what didn't work, it sounds like the type of person that Sony gets for their play tests that tells them they need to give an answer to a puzzle after looking at it for only a few seconds. I don't know that you can onboard that person without frustrating everyone else, other than easy mode, which BG3 does have, and it tells you what kinds of expectations it has of you on that screen.

EvaUnit02,
EvaUnit02 avatar

And did you have to explain it to him, or was that just the first opportunity he had to raise the question, and you answered right away without him having time to figure it out himself?

I suppose it was a bit of both.

It was three of us playing. I had finished the game already by the time we started. At first, we left it to him to explore the systems on his own. He got frustrated with that and would complain that we weren't telling him what to do. So, we gradually explained more and more until we just started making decisions on our own. He was still frustrated. For example, late in to Act I, he would continue to throw his cleric in to the middle of battle as a melee fighter and die. Shortly after that, we all decided to stop playing.

There are a lot of tutorials in the early game that explain so much of this stuff that you have to explicitly dismiss that they're hard to miss.

I must have missed them, then. I don't recall any tutorials explaining anything beyond the cursory "you have to be in range to attack" or "potions heal HP" type of things. In fact, I loaded up my save and perused the tutorials again. The tutorial titled "Combat" simply tells you that there's an initiative roll, combatants are listed at the top of the screen, and during a turn, a character may take an action, bonus action, and move. It's entirely unhelpful. It may as well be a fighting game tutorial which says, "use punches and kicks to defeat your opponent."

The opening moments of the game actually require you to use your movement in turn based combat in order to continue, and you can observe which enemies can reach you or not as you approach your objective.

I got through it by just running past most everyone. Sure, you can clearly see you have to move and that you have actions to take but nothing else is explained beyond that. I think that opening sequence is a great example of the lack of explanations in the game. My buddy thought he had to kill absolutely everyone on the nautiloid. We tried twice before telling him that you can continue moving past enemies. The thought never occured to him. I can't blame him, either. All you're told is that you have to connect the transponder in a certain amount of turns and narratively, there's a sense of urgency. Nothing tells you that you don't have to kill everything on the screen. That might seem painfully obvious but that's my point: things obvious to one person are not obvious to another. That doesn't make someone stupid, either. They just have different experiences and different expectations.

Nothing in the game explains that encounters are not immutable. Nothing in the game, as far as I can remember, explains the value of environmental elements and how to leverage them in combat. Nothing explains the tactical value of oil or water on the ground. Nothing explains the concept of crowd control at all. Nothing explains how to keep backline party members safe. This is all left for the player to discover.

I've been playing Larian games for a long time and I don't remember a single one of BGIII, DOS2, or DOS ever explaining these concepts. If you walk in to these games without the understanding that you are expected to be observant and play around with the game mechanics, you will have a bad time. There are innumerable posts on the Web by people frustrated with the game because they don't know what to do. My buddy is not an isolated example. People think differently.

My buddy tried fighting in melee combat as a low-level cleric. That might be a totally valid thing to do in something like Final Fantasy. My buddy thought he had to kill every enemy on the nautiloid. Maybe that's just what you do in something like Diablo. Hell, I just finished a dungeon in Star Ocean which required exactly that. (It even told me upfront that would be the expectation of the dungeon) We are taught things which influence our decision making process. Without being told otherwise, it can be hard to understand exactly what is being asked of us as players as we try to reconcile those expections with our experiences.

My buddy didn't need to be told what to do. What he needed to be told is what he can do and why he might want to do those things. In that, Larian failed him and, in my opinion as an adoring fan of their games, they have a habit of doing so.

ampersandrew,
ampersandrew avatar

I don't think you actually let your friend fail and try to figure out how to not fail, and I don't think it makes the game better when you're so afraid of letting the player fail and apply what they've learned that there aren't actually any decisions to make, like those Sony examples (God of War and Horizon's latest entries, to be specific, were the ones that caught flak for this). That's where the fun comes from.

I don't recall any tutorials explaining anything beyond the cursory "you have to be in range to attack"

And that's all you need to know in order to determine that positioning matters. They also explain opportunity attacks.

The tutorial titled "Combat" simply tells you that there's an initiative roll, combatants are listed at the top of the screen, and during a turn, a character may take an action, bonus action, and move.

Which are a few of the things you said your friend was unaware of, despite the fact that several of these things are reiterated on most of the cards for your available actions during combat.

I've been playing Larian games for a long time and I don't remember a single one of BGIII, DOS2, or DOS ever explaining these concepts.

Me neither, but even in my brief time with DOS1, I don't recall needing to be told either. I just somehow found out that poison clouds can be set on fire, and very quickly.

This is not an insult to your friend, but just because he falls into the group that didn't catch on immediately, I don't think that's indicative that the game is bad at teaching you how to play it. The Nautiloid highlights exactly where you have to go and how many turns you have to do it. If you let him fail once and try again, presumably, he'd realize that what he was doing wasn't working and notice that giant UI element telling him how many turns he had to get to his objective.

MoogleMaestro,
MoogleMaestro avatar

Insanely deep rpgs are a bit of an issue for me as well. And I generally do love rpg games, but I feel like the good ones should ease you into decisions a bit better than dropping you into a character creator.

So it's a mixed bag for me.

novakeith,

I’m curious why you think Deep Rock Galactic is complex. It’s one of the most “pick up and play” friendly games, I think, that I own.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

I don’t remember. According to my history I last played Feb 2022 and for a total of 7 hours. I just remember why I quit.

novakeith,

If you want a calm group of people to play with, DM me and we can trade Steam information (assuming you use that platform) - we typically need a 4th player anyway

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

443664174

novakeith,

Just sent you a request. KNova

steb,
steb avatar

Exactly. I'd be reluctant to try any of the other games that OP names because I "don't have the time" and yet I have 200+ hours in DRG.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Maybe I’ll find my way back to it later…

Skua,

Obviously if you don't enjoy it then that's 100% valid, but at least in terms of understanding what to do it's totally okay to play DRG without understanding anything beyond "shoot bugs and do whatever thing mission control most recently asked you to do". There's no need to play at a higher hazard if you don't yet know or just don't care to know about how to set up your weapons for maximum effectiveness or how to counter each type of bug and so on. Just play at whatever hazard you find fun and try things out until you find what you enjoy. There's no class or weapon that is non-functional without some other component. No wrong choices, so to speak. They're all just degrees of better and worse at any given job, and if you try something out on a mission and it doesn't work then the absolute worst possible penalty is just that you fail that mission and only get a little bit of xp and cash instead of a bigger amount.

Rottcodd,

Yeah - I just jump in and wing it.

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.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

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.

RandoCalrandian,
RandoCalrandian avatar

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.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

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.

RandoCalrandian,
RandoCalrandian avatar

That’s all well and good but the game often doesn’t give you the knowledge required to make those choices thoughtfully

This is a complaint. One that other commenters have addressed.

It’s often an intentional and critical part of the vision of the game and why people play

Elden Ring, specifically, hides information from the player on purpose, intending for them to discover things through experience.

It doesn’t hold your hand at all and is arguably one of the better games in the last decade, in no small part due to features you are referencing.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

This is a complaint.

You are interpreting is as a complaint. But it is not. It is a relevant observation to the topic at hand.

intending for them to discover things through experience.

…through what experience? The experience of trawling wiki docs? Are they in the game or are they not in the game?

RandoCalrandian,
RandoCalrandian avatar

That particular decision was to keep them immersed in the game, and exploring.

But back to your warning label topic, what do you expect that to look like?

“E for e=mc^2”? Or “S for Seseme Street approved”?

We already have shenanigans in the rating system, this would be monumentally worse.

I am really curious what a metric for game complexity would even look like

ag_roberston_author,
@ag_roberston_author@beehaw.org avatar

My inventory is finite and at some point I have to choose what stays and what goes.

It’s not, actually. You can send anything and everything to camp and decide about it later on. This includes camp supplies/food.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

I was not speaking about any specific game.

Rottcodd,

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.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

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.

RandoCalrandian,
RandoCalrandian avatar

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

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

every game is based on repetitive gameplay.

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.

RandoCalrandian,
RandoCalrandian avatar

Ok, then don’t play them. No one is forcing you.

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.

gullible,

Never played destiny and never will, but deep rock galactic, overwatch, and baldur’s gate all have mechanics rooted in other games. After playing a few other ability-heavy shooters with slower onboarding, OW and DRG make sense.

ulkesh,
@ulkesh@beehaw.org avatar

Experience. I’ve been playing video games for 40 years. Many of them of any given genre tend to follow a familiar formula. While I also wing it, like others have said, it usually doesn’t take long to recognize the patterns of the formula.

argo_yamato,

Generally I just start playing. If the game keeps my attention and I keep playing at some point all the various character abilities, what is valuable or not and managing items just clicks. And some days I just don’t feel like figuring stuff out so I play games I am familiar with.

Megaman_EXE,

For destiny, I have no idea. I first played D2 when it launched and that was fine, but I attempted to pick it up again a year or two later and I was immediately lost.

For overwatch I agai haven’t played in quite some time. But for multiplayer shooters like that I try to go into a casual mode or training mode first and just get a feel for everything. Eventually you get the hang of things.

For RPG’s it depends. Some games can benefit from reading up online. For example I’m playing bloodborne right now and I had no idea how I wanted to spec out my character. So I looked up what weapons and abilities are in the game and made my decision based around that. If a game features a respec option, I’ll be more likely to just go in and wing it and change things up when I need to.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

casual mode or training mode first and just get a feel for everything

These usually don’t have any explanation of the game mechanics though. Like you’d have to sit down and analyze all the character traits on some web forum in order to not get immediately slaughtered by other more experienced players, since it’s multiplayer only.

valaramech,
valaramech avatar

Getting repeatedly beaten in competitive multiplayer games is just kinda par for the course if you haven't learned the meta, strategies, etc. If you lack game knowledge and your opponents have that game knowledge, you will mostly lose.

If winning in the game is the only way you find enjoyment in them, then those kinds of games require significant investments of time and energy to "git good".

I say this as someone who is repeatedly shit on in every game of CoD I've ever played and will play in the future. That said, I don't gain particular enjoyment from winning alone - not that it isn't fun to win, just that I get just as much enjoyment from other aspects of the game.

It sounds to me, mostly, that these games just don't really appeal to your idea of what's fun.

uphillbothways,
uphillbothways avatar

Complexity gives the games depth which allows them to hold interest. You can try something, figure out how to play the game that way, and then go and start a new character to figure out how to play the game another utilizing the knowledge you've gained from prior experimentation.

Some of the inventory management can be annoying at times, but again it's an opportunity to employ knowledge as a means to identify the items that aren't particularly useful to one playstyle and could be useful under another set of abilities/attributes or some set of combinations allowed by the game.

A game that only has one right answer quickly becomes a boring precision button pushing simulator to people who prefer more complexity, variety and depth in their gaming experience.

Not that one preference or the other is inherently correct, but hopefully it can be understood that different people want different things from their games.

kandoh,

Sounds like you have mind goblins

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Scary

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