Smite, League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm. MOBAs are absolutely not for me. I’ve had so many friends try to get me to play. I try them out and just hate them all. Made me realize that it isn’t the game, it’s the whole genre I don’t like.
Exact same with me. I don't play a lot of competitive games to begin with, every now and then I might play something like Battlefield. I tried out LoL and HotS with some friends several years ago and that genre is just way too much for me. With how intense people get while playing, and how angry if you make a mistake, it just immediately saps all the fun out of it for me.
Yup, I'm the same way, I'm much more of a cooperative gamer than a competitive one, I'd much rather be working together against the environment, npcs, etc.
They just aren’t beginner friendly at all. League for instance nowadays has way too much going on for new players:
Smurfs are guaranteed at low elos.
There are so many champions in the game and so you don’t know what match ups you win or lose.
Sometimes an enemy will be super low but will kill you despite you being full health.
There are so many items that get changed all the time that it’s hard to keep up.
It’s also not obvious what enemy champions are even doing, you’ll see someone throw a ball out and you’ll have no clue what the fuck it even does.
Doesn’t help everyone expects you to understand every intricate detail of the game, so any mistake you make is met with constant berating from your own teammates
As you mentioned, League has terrible approachability.
So many of those issues can be solved by being able to click on an enemy to read what their skills do, but you can't do that. And you can't demo a hero unless you own them or they are available F2P.
New players have to read an external wiki, then try to piece together the wall of text with the ingame animation+sound. Then do it for all of the champions.
Even some of my friends with 2k+ hours in League still can't remember what some of the champions do.
You hit the nail on the head. I tried and tried to get into them. I’d say I got to the point of being just past a beginner.
But one game just had me snap, I was doing fine but missed one play or something cause I was in the wrong spot and didn’t notice some random hero on the other team did some random thing earlier. So it meant all my teammates flipped out on me. I was like dude theres 100+ totally unique heroes. With thousands and thousands of combinations of specs and abilities and items. This isn’t even a ranked game and I’m getting roasted and flamed and yelled at. Fuck that community
MOBAs in general are definitely not for me, but the thing I hated most about LoL (aside from the community) was constantly having to figure out which items I need, what to save up for, etc every time. Like I could enjoy it a fair bit more if I just set up which items I wanted in what order ahead of time and have them unlock as I level up in every game.
I generally hate MOBAs too but Heroes of the Storm somehow captured me in a way that the other mobas couldn't. I think I just couldn't wrap my head around item metas in the other games especially with just how many items there are. In hots I can just focus on trying to use skills properly and it just ended being a lot more fun for me and some of my friends, even if it's generally known as the dumbed-down moba. Every time they get me to play Smite it's obvious that I struggle a lot more, with some rare redeeming moments. I always have to look up item builds for Smite but that means someone could probably counter me easily but I don't really know how to counter-build back when I can't memorize every item in the game and don't want to waste precious game time trying to read every item description while in-game.
Dude, absolutely same. HotS is the simple MOBA compared to the rest, but that's part of its appeal. Its audience isn't tryhards who only play one game their whole life, but the rest of the genre seems to shit on the game for being more accessible to people. Oh and anyone who doesn't play it wonders why the servers are up even though Blizzard famously never shuts a game down (Overwatch was a different case).
Shame they stopped development on it, the biggest appeal for me was how quick the games were. Starting a queue in dota was an hour commitment sometimes more, hots was about 20-30 minutes.
The only multiplayer game I like that is played against other players is Rocket League. (And I don't even like football or racing games to begin with lol)
Maybe they might have changed it, but I think what also helps is the lack of a sort of team chat in the times that I've played it. So even if you do something wrong as well, you're not having your entire team constantly flaming you for it which also doesn't help the confidence. They have to fume in silence or elsewhere that you may not look at as opposed to the party chat.
Apparently there is a voice chat, though, but no one that has any sanity uses it.
Agree 100%. It sucks too, because almost all my friends are super into them and I just don't get the appeal at all. Most of the communities are unbearably toxic and the games just... Suck. I'm not much of a PvP guy anyway but the appeal of MOBAs goes straight over my head.
I knew MOBA’s weren’t for me the first time I ever tried a DOTA map back when it was still just a series of custom maps in Warcraft 3.
Made all the worse because all of the custom lobbies were flooded with DOTA maps, meaning that it was hard to find the game modes I *was* interested in.
Paragon is the only MOBA I ever enjoyed and they shut it down… guess no MOBAs for me.
I know there’s fan remakes but they’re not the same. The main one has an awful item shop rather than the RPG stat system and cards Paragon had
Survival games. I tried Ark and thought it was really cool but still struggled a lot. Even with tuning the settings to be easier I still could never really achieve much beyond build a basic house. I would always get wrecked by Dinos. I still think the genre is very cool but I’ve never found one that clicks for me.
These games are hard in a stupid way.
In Ark specifically you need the dinos to survive.
The requirement to eat and drink every 20 - 30min is anoying.
For more creative building in survival-lights I would recomrnd Valhaim and Enshrauded
Yeah for some reason wildcard was obsessed with this idea that you had to suffer to enjoy a game. At least thats what I'm convinced they think.
No one would enjoy 6 hours irl to tame a pronto
I would second valheim. You do get some base attacks, but only from enemies who's biome you've defeated the boss from. If you're not home, they won't come knocking either, which is nice.
It's pretty fun with a friend or two as well...
Ark was truly something else when it first came out. At the time, there were really only a handful of survival games out there and then BAM! Survival with Dinosaurs! I played Ark during its alpha and beta versions and holy crap it was some of the best fun I've had in a game. It was janky, it was poorly optimized, the animations sucked, the dinosaurs were dumb but I felt like I was actually on that damn island fighting for my life against a vicious world. I have some core memories from that game.
Same for me. I just don't have the time or patience for open-world survival crafting games (aside from the fact that genre seems to be a breeding ground for low-effort shovelware), though Subnautica was sufficiently different enough (and utterly terrifying due to thalassophobia) that I honestly didn't mind it.
Do you have some you’d recommend? My friends and I have really enjoyed Conan Exiles, Valheim, Grounded, Enshrouded, then the survival-adjacent genre of Factorio and Satisfactory. Ark was ok for us, not my favourite by a long shot but my friends liked it a lot
It's hard to recommend games in the Survival genre considering how different they play. A game like Enshrouded doesnt even have most survival elements and plays more like an open world RPG with building mechanics.
My personal recommendations (beyond the ones youve mentioned) are:
* Terraria. One of the greatest games ever made. Probably needs no introduction lol
* V Rising. Well polished game based on Battlerite mechanics. Smooth combat and amazing building mechanics. You can play on PvP servers, but the game is great as a coop PvE as well. You gather resources and progress by beating bosses which unlocks new recipes for gear and building.
* Raft. Cozy game where you drift on the open sea and catch stuff while progressing the story. Been a while since I played it though.
* Return to Moria. The game is clunky and with some weird gameplay decisions (like you keep unlocking new crafting and building stuff that youre never going to use), but other than that the game is surprisingly fun when played with a group of friends. More linear than open world.
Void train is sort of tangential, it's similar to Raft in some ways but otherwise very difficult to describe, I'd say just go check out the steam page and see if it looks like something you'd be interested in, the trailer is very representative of the gameplay
I think playing pubg back when it first came out ruined those games for me. My friends played it all the time and I would just hop on every once in a while. Loot loot loot, get sniped and have to sit and watch everyone else play for fifteen minutes. I don’t play any of the battle royale stuff.
What I hated was the third person perspective camera exploits. Makes no sense for a PvP stealth game to put your eyes 2 metres above you... Just hide in low stuff, and stand up to fire. No fun against anyone doing that. That and the constant cheaters.
Oh, and latency. Hear someone coming, hide in a room. They come in and you blow their head off. Then you die? and see their replay... You're just standing there for a full second after they enter the room. They needn't rush shooting you, from your end, they're still in the hallway...
No servers anywhere near New Zealand best I could tell...
For me it is just about any big map multiplayer shooter. Getting sniped from a mile away by an opponent you had no chance to see is the extreme opposite of what I want in a multiplayer shooter. The old school arena fps were perfection, with small sized, extremely week thought out maps, where every corner of the map served a purpose. Surprisingly CoD is the closest we have left to arena fps, and even CoD is trying hard to ditch the gameplay formula that made it so popular, and wants to compete in the oversaturated BR genre instead.
It's so funny to me how everyone just completely pretends that Halo Infinite doesn't even exist...how bad do you have to be running your studio to have comments like this floating around where your "AAA" is completely ignored, like you never even made it lol.
I tried PUBG, bleh.
I tried Fortnite, major BLEH (but I was hoping for the *promised* full free version with the zombie PvE mode that never came).
I tried Apex, meh (looked nice, but could never stay alive for more than 5 minutes).
I tried Rumbleverse, decent until the trolls invaded. (It was a battle royale with WWE style fighting. Yes, *was*. Game's officially dead now)
I tried Hawked, miiiiight come back to it, but it's meh. (An objective-based PvPvE where you or your team race to find a hidden treasure and extract)
Fighting games. They're fun casually with other casuals, but I'm not gonna waste time labbing. I don't need to be playing a game where people don't even have to look at the screen to combo. May as well play guitar hero at that point.
Absolutely. There’s a game called Clone Hero which is basically the GH3 engine, but completely free. There’s tens of thousands of songs and charts available, with online multiplayer and leaderboards! And you can use your GH Guitar if it can collect to your PC!
Yes but something magical happens when “both” players don’t have to look at the screen to combo. Now you can sit and watch who’s better at reading their opponent and making split second decisions while watching them play a badass game!
I've been aware that I don't really enjoy racing games and suck so much I should avoid them going back to Pole Position. I've played others since but with the same amount of boredom and lack of success.
I've thrown off the shackles of racing simulators, and leaned into more arcadey ones lately. Project cars was pretty fun with VR, a nice wheel etc. But wreckfest is good cheap fun on a controller. My toddler is quickly learning the names of all the cars, and is very insistent on what you drive, and where...
I'm also having a blast playing redout2, which is a shiny PC taxing Wipeout inspired flying racer. I'll be sad when my reflexes are too slow for it :(
I lost all Interest the moment your required to hunt the same monster over and over and over. It's 25ft tall what do you mean I only get piece of hide from it!?
It could cloth a whole village!
>It's 25ft tall what do you mean I only get piece of hide from it!?
Well you ruined most of the hide while beating it to death with your comically oversized weapons
I believe general lore in World was that you were taking your share, but the rest was to go towards general improvements around the base and encampment, like towards the other soldiers/NPCs.
Well I meant all the extra. If you get one horn from a Rathalos, then where does the other go? There's no way the claws weren't used if you didn't get them as a drop. And any other spikes/bits of skin. Like, one armor set, no matter how ornate, doesn't use a 40 ft monster's entire skin. Where does the rest go?
Yeah, some friends tried to get me into Monster Hunter: Rise and everything about it just felt wrong to me. The combat felt so damned clunky, like they were intentionally gimping you so you'd feel more accomplished when you actually manage to kill a monster or something. Hate it.
Finally deciding to dip my toe into the franchise I heard so much about, I bought 3 copies of a Monster Hunter game for me and a couple of friends because it had co-op. After going through enough of the game to unlock multiplayer, we are floored by an amazingly stupid decision the devs made. You can only go on hunts/missions with other players if you've already completed them solo first.
We collectively had a moment of "What the absolute fuck?". Why would co-op be locked behind that kind of requirement? Why wouldn't I want to experience and learn the game for the first time with my friends?
I traded in all 3 copies to Gamestop for a loss. I'm still pissed years later that it technically wasn't false advertising. Co-op was available, just in the most uninteresting way imaginable.
Wow, that is really stupid. Also I'm pretty sure that's not the case with Rise, there was an intro thing I had to do on my own but then I was able to party up with my friends and do stuff. I lasted about an hour before I was like 'Naw fuck this noise' tho.
Yeah I was a disappointed that there wasn't any real hunting. It was more Monster Beat Up. You get into a small area, hunt the monster for 3 minutes, then spend 30 minutes fighting.
See this was the opposite of my experience with monster hunter world. The tracking part was confusing and annoying as hell to me and took way too long, then by the time I found the monster I struggled to kill it in time and didn’t understand how to use my weapon efficiently so I quit
Used to love turn based JRPGs with random battles. Tried a couple newer ones like eiyuden and octopath and realized I just can't tolerate this mechanic any more
I really liked the idea of octopath, the whole playing 7 different characters and them all having their own story’s, but man I just didn’t really care for it and I don’t know why. I decently enjoyed the actual battles and the story, but it just didn’t pull me in.
God I loved those fights. I'd never played a souls game at that point, and I was playing GoW on hardest difficulty. For some reason the last 5 or 10 years I've been playing games on really hard. I'm not sure why, lol. I never used to, and I'm an elder millennial so I'm old and decrepit, but I've been going for it.
Those fights were so frustrating at first, but they basically taught me what the fun of souls like games are. Having to learn the attack patterns, hitting once or twice and getting away, dodging just right so you have time to hit. They definitely taught me how to use the side-step dodge instead of the full roll.
After those fights most of the rest of the game didn't feel hard anymore.
Compare that to Jedi Survivor, again playing on hard, and I eventually quit partially because I thought the game was unfair. I kept getting killed by these stupid frog things, lol. I had no idea what a souls like was really. I'm not saying that Survivor is a souls like, but those frogs were definitely made in that style. I beat much worse bosses and such, but I never figured out I was supposed to learn the rhythm of the frog attacks. Probably because that wasn't really part of any other fight. Fighting the Valkyries made me look back at Survivor and go "ohhhhh!" Lol.
I've done that with every From game I've played and I'm still not sure I've understood any of them. I just play it because I like the gameplay and making different builds/playstyles
Nobody really understands them, you just reach a point where the bits you do know bring the world you play in to life. The story itself isn’t really the important part, it’s how that story made the world of a specific aspect of it what it is today
Man. This is like the 3rd day in a row I've stumbled into a thread talking about FromSoft lore, lol.
I've learned it's a very sensitive topic and some people get very very mad if you say anything about Elden Ring lore being non-existent or just confusing.
I just said how confused I was by all the lore people knew when I never seemed to pick up on any story. I didn't really know why I was there or who anyone I fought was.
Apparently if you don't piece the entire lore together from item descriptions (apparently the story is written through item descriptions!?) then you're a dumb idiot who only likes explosions in games and probably never learned to read, lol.
After the first few toxic comments, I then met some very vice ER fans, so it's not all toxic, but I had no idea it was such a sensitive area. The nice ones mostly explained that you need to watch at least hours of videos to understand the lore. So, it's very obvious, but you also need to invest tens of hours outside the game to get it. Cool.
And I don't know why it keeps coming up for me this week, lol. The director of my life is being a bit heavy-handed with this storyline.
I super love DS. But there's basically no real story.. and what there is is bizarre and nonsensical. All we get is, "it's a slow apocalypse for no apparent reason; you're a zombie who can challenge the faltering, sad ruler. But whether you do or not, no idea how it really matters because almost every single person you met has already been killed or worse."
yeah that's a great yarn, FromSoft, thanks. Edge of my seat.
I was this way until Elden Ring came out.
I wanted to like the former FromSoft games, but they weren't for me. Then ER came and the world sucked me in so much I sweat and cheeses my way through it completely.
> They pretend the genre is the best since sliced bread and who doesn't agree ~~is just bad~~ just needs to Git Gud.
FTFY, GD I hate the fucking phrase.
WoW. Played a few hours and just *really* wasn't feeling it. Exploring the world seemed really cool, but any of the actual gameplay stuff you're supposed to do just seemed tedious and boring to me.
I also just always struggle with online multiplayer. Feels like too much hassle for very little social engagement.
I’m the same, always feels like they’re wasting my time, with long fetch quests or other bullshit. Prefer. A much smaller narrative focused rpg
Sadly, is increasingly unlikely that there will be another Warcraft game
I used to play a lot of WoW when I was in uni. I tried to go back to it not long ago but I realised that it's not fun without friends and setting up a LAN party of sorts.
Quests can be tedious and sometimes you will find yourself dying a bit too much, which was all alleviated when you were part of a group.
To me is the social aspect it comes with and not the game itself
Yeah. I guess most of the problem is that I can almost never get into online multiplayer in general. Having to sync your schedule, and your attention and focus with a bunch of people who aren't even there's feels like a ton of hassle for very little reward to me.
I guess if I could try MMOs at a lan party, where I'm there in the room with people, I'd be more likely to enjoy it.
I loved RTS as a kid. Now that I have the brainpower to figure out the proper build order and micro strategy I can't play without being aware of how inefficient my gameplay is. And that just saps all of the fun out of it.
For me AOE2 has always just been about making a nice little town, rofl. Unfortunately you gotta worry about AI players coming in and destroying your town, so you need to find a way to go destroy their town first.
That's why my favorite scenario out of all AOE games has always been "Rising Tide" from AOE1. A giant river splits the map in half, you can set the players on your side to be the same team, and for the most part you can just enjoy building for a while.
Back in the day when my friends and I would play C&C we'd set a time to just build and develop. Like, we wouldn't attack for 20 or 30 minutes, lol. Then we'd have some huge complex bases and a crazy army.
My buddy once thought he was hilarious and sent thousands of attack dogs at me. They were super weak, but very fast, so they could actually do a lot of damage when they were a swarm, lol. Until I realised I could just drive over them with my harvesters which the dogs couldn't damage even slightly.
Then I started playing other RTS games with my other buddy who had been playing them competitively online (back in the mid 90s) and I'd be like "ok, maybe I'll set my barracks over... here..." And as I'm placing my first one he somehow has a 100 man army just devastating the 3 buildings I'd so far managed to erect.
That's when I learned the "let's wait awhile" gameplay style wasn't how most people played, lol.
In Company of Heroes, I'd wall off half the map with anti tank traps and barbed wire so the AI could not move past or attempt to go around (it would interpret it as an unpassable wall)
I'd slowly build up my forces and base until it was time for an all or nothing offensive to the enemy base.
I recommend playing games like Star Wars empire at war where cool units are still good.
Same thing with Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2.
“Oh what’s that? He’s got a planet buster I should engage at range? Prepare boarding torpedos. Ramming speed.” Works like a charm.
I still love them, but the old ones. The mid 90s to 2000 ish is the sweet spot of complexity IMO. They are polished enough they hold up and have enough unit variety without being overwhelming.
Warcraft 2 and Red Alert 2 are basically peak RTS for me. After that it just got to be too much.
My brain is simple: my friend tries to teach me hearts of iron, my brain immediately starts panicking. Shit is incredibly stressful and it seems like writing a proper tutorial is basically impossible with how much there is to do.
My recommendation is to Just play single player and run it at 3-4 speed, pausing when you *want* to, and have a save file run for a few days
Made learning a lot easier for me
The way i learned Crusader Kings 2:
Play for 2 hours, interact with and learn a few of the systems. Restart
Play for 3 hours, interact with and learn a few more of the systems. Restart
Play for 5 hours, interact with and learn even more of the systems. Restart
So much this! I really wanted to like them. But having to micromanage everything is just so tedious. I just wanna go round and smack shit straight away without worrying about gold or wood or some other material. I want instant dopamine
Yeah I love strategy games but they need to be turn based for me. RTS feel like they need my ADHD brain to be in both high-level tactical thinking mode AND fast-paced reaction times / APM mode at the same time and I just don't find that enjoyable.
KoF 13 made me realize that as much as I \*love\* characters and sheer \*style\* of fighting games - they are just \*not\* for me. I'm not competitive, I suck at them, and can't even learn to consistently pull off basic combos and super moves. I don't even like most pvp.
Yes! The world and varied characters all seem so fun, but then they're all about super fast and precise reflexes while also reading an opponent.
I can sorta have fun with some fighters, and enjoy screwing around in Smash, but it's no fun for me playing against anyone who's serious.
Edit: I've got two replies explaining that reflexes aren't that important in fighting games. Sure, whatever, it's more than reflexes. I can't reliably execute a shoryuken in training mode. Whatever complex of knowledge, prediction, and accuracy you're expected to do in real time faster than your opponent, I'm not great at it and don't find it compelling enough to put in the hours to get better. I'll just keep being the best Smash player amongst the casuals and shitty amongst the competitives.
KoF 13 is known for being difficult among fighting games. KoF as a whole really. And it just takes time to do combos and supers in fighting games because there’s not many that games that require the same amount of timing. Fighting games can take time, but they are super rewarding because of it, and they’re more about improving at something than they are just about winning. It’s becoming more and more common nowadays for them to have simpler input options too. SF6 and Tekken have good uses of that, and SF6 has a lot of single player content including a new mode where you can run around and meet the characters and do missions and stuff and it’s very beginner friendly.
I suck at those 2D platformers like Celeste. I can have above average mechanics in other games like FPS and Mobas but I can't figure out where my little guys gonna land when I jump.
Hades. About the fifth time I had to beat Meg's ass ***again*** I was done and over it. I don't care if there are tiny story bits in between runs. I do not like roguelikes. I want real, consistent progression. Not the same fights over and over.
For me it felt like real consistent progression both in an RPG element and skill level. Leveling up your weapons and miscellaneous run boosts made each run different. Plus different boon combinations kept it fresh.
I get what you mean though. You're not wrong on the same fights over and over. Reminds me a little of old school quarter games where you only got a few lives to then see how far you could get.
THAT LAST SENTENCE.
Now I see why these games click for me. I could never figure it out and just assumed it was the leveling up nature. Nope. Like Rock Band and Guitar Hero (high score chasing), there's an aspect of the arcade that brings me into these games.
Yep, Roguelikes are the bane of my existence. I personally really enjoy the Soulslike genre which shares some characteristics with Roguelikes, but having the bonfire/lamppost/grace check points (and mostly linear progression) makes all the difference. I wish I could get into Roguelikes, but they are extremely demoralizing for me.
I suck at action but combat but I definitely get the appeal of a soulslike. If I play a pausible/turn based crpg I'll up the difficulty and treat hard fights like a puzzle. I don't mind having to reload a save five or ten times for harder boss battles.
To be honest I find losing in roguelikes less frustrating than being stuck at a hard rpg boss. But my general strategy is going full degenerate gambler. I reload immediately if I get a bad start. Often times I'll dump tweny runs for each serious attempt at a win. In many ways it's closer to playing a slot machine than a video game. For a gambling addict the reward isn't winning money. It's the adrenaline hit of rolling the dice.
Being stuck a boss without being able to figure out why has nothing to do with luck.
I enjoyed Hades, but if you ever find Returnal on sale for a good price, you should try that one. It’s not nearly as bad because there is a halfway point where you start from if you die.
Skyrim. Tried Oblivion, it didn't stick. Tried Fallout 3, didn't stick. Everyone declared Skyrim the best thing ever when it came out, tried it and it didn't stick. That's when I gave up trying. I just don't like Bethesda style RPG's for some reason.
Same. My wife has dumped over a thousand hours into Skyrim, first on the 360 and then on PC. I have a dozen games I started and never finished. Bethesda games just leave me cold.
Penny Arcade said something along the lines of, "Skyrim feels like the NPCs just grabbed their outfits out of the costume chest right before you arrived," and I think that's my problem.
I think that's why people like them and prefer them over something like cyberpunk. It's a theme park world, it's not trying to be realistic, but to give you the experience.
I love them, but I can see why people don't like them
Same with me, bought Skyrim because of the hype and did not get further than 30 hours in. My issue is the big open world however, they just make me lose so much focus. Last time I opened Skyrim I did not even remember where I was or what I was doing so just turned it off again lol
Outer wilds, not a fan of open world games in general. However games that give me too much freedom make me overwhelmed and I lose all interest in exploring because I get too anxious that I’ll miss something important.
One of the older tekken games. Muscle memory won't kick in when memorizing combos. I still tried other games like soul calibur and mortal kombat but its really not working out for me.
Definitely DBZ Fighterz did this for me. I don't personally understand why fighting games have to have to half complicated combos. Think of Smash Bros which simplified controls and how popular it is and how there is still a high level cap. As soon as I have to read a list and memorize a variation of button presses, half circle one way full circle another to do the move I want I'm out. I would find fighting games so much more enjoyable with simple combos and the skill coming down to when to use moves, which moves to use and when to use counters instead of learning combos.
Walking simulators, horror or otherwise. I get it, the art style and atmosphere is really pretty, but I play a game to interact with it. If a game can't stand on its own purely with its gameplay mechanics than just make a movie instead.
Interesting comment that just made me think that "video games" is a poor name for the medium.
I mean that, for example, you have "books" (medium) that are stories and books that are games.
The same way, "video games" is in reality just a medium, where a "player" interacts with the medium... But this interaction could be more or less the equivalent of turning a page in a book in the case of walking simulator (or visual novels).
They weirdly all fall under the term "video games" but really they should be called "electronic entertainment", of which some are: video games, visual novels, walking sims, etc.
I couldn't play that one for a different reason. The ASMR style whispering got on my fucking nerve. To each their own, but I can't stand ASMR in general.
Elden Ring. As much as I admire the quality of FromSoft games I could only make it 30 hours or so in before bowing out. It was a rewarding 30 hours, but ultimately wasn’t for me.
World of Warcraft. After years of being totally fascinated by the lore and watching the cinematic trailers, I finally played and...discover that MMORPGs have a totally static combat and if you want to get to the real story missions, first you gonna have to play a thousand silly quests.
Then I discovered I don't like MMORPGs.
Soulslikes. Tried Bloodborne, Lies of P, and at least one other and everything I peace out really early because it's just too repetitive and feels too much like work.
I gave up on cinematic adventures after getting bored in uncharted 2. I got plat in the first one, and beat the 2nd one with no plat. I never finished 3 or 4. I only tried them because my friend in games share with buys them. I didn't even bother to download the girl one or made it further than an hour in tlou.
I just don't care about story or set pieces. I just felt bored holding forward while things happen around me with no actual danger while drake yells nononononono for the 10th time with some shallow arena shooting sprinkled in. I get why others like them, the first one was fun, but that was enough for me.
Apex and destiny turned me off the live service model. They weren't necessarily bad, I just didn't feel motivated the way live service games try to do it. I don't like redoing the same content over and over for points or seasons. I like single player and want to beat the game, play whatever extra content I want then move on to the next.
Competitive FPS is a full-time job. Even taking a break will cause your skillset to regress.
Hell, last time I played and enjoyed an online FPS was Battlefield Bad Company 2. Everything after that became way too twitchy like COD.
I just want to say, thank you for all the replies. It's my birthday today, I'm drunk af celebrating and made this post because I was truly curious to what the answeres would be and y'all haven't disappointed.
I personally love every genre. I'm not a "pro gamer" and struggle at way more than I care to admit, but there's still always something that'll come out that I'll love no matter the genre. However, I understand this isn't the case for most people. Understandably so, which is why it's been really nice reading everything you've all had to say and your reasons for it. I've seen some people get down votes doe their answers and I just wanna ask, please, don't down vote someone for why a genre isn't for them. I would like for this post to be a safe place where we can give our opinions without judgment and just respect each other. It costs absolutely nothing to respect and love everyone here simply for sharing the love for gaming, no matter the genre. Have a great weekend and summer everyone!
BG3.
I love RPGs and was really excited for BG3, knowing it was turn-based, and looked forward to trying out turn-based combat. Turns out I can’t get on with it, I prefer quicker action.
Didn’t realise how much turn-based action would affect a game for me. Won’t pick up another one unfortunately.
I almost finished it because it's rare my wife enjoys a game I'm playing but I was so bored with the combat by the end I just faded on it. Doesn't help that Act 3 is not great.
Outer Wilds. It really cemented the fact that I need strong gameplay (doesn't have to be action based) to be engaged in a game. If it's just talking and walking I just can't for the most part, unless it's very linear and inoffensive.
People talk about OW like it's the second coming of Christ, but I could barely play for two hours without feeling frustrated and bored.
I did like "What remains of Edith Finch", though. But that's a very straightforward game, so as long as you're having fun with the story it flows well.
The genre is so over saturated at this point that it takes insane amounts of the perfect mix of everything to make it interesting enough to grab my attention for for than 30 minutes. The only survival crafting games that did that for me were Minecraft, Raft, Subnautica, and Valheim. The rest so far have all just been noise.
Elden Ring. I had only tried a souls type game once before and only for 20 min. I didn’t have a lot of fun so I never really tried to pick one up until people told me Elden Ring is the best intro into that kind of game. 6 hours later, some dozens of deaths, and I have had zero fun nor do I have any idea what I’m doing. The games are just not for me, but that’s fine, plenty of other genera’s out there.
Dead Cells. After playing some other roguelikes and even got to work on some games, a good friend, master of sound effects, said to me "I think you'll love this game!".
Since I respect and like his opinions a lot, I tried it. And played it for something like... 2 weeks, maybe? Then I realized that this whole mechanic of playing 4-stages-over-and-over-again really gets me bored.
After that I even tried Loop Hero, which idea is great, but I was already tired on the second loop.
There I realized that roguelikes are not for me. I didn't even get close to Hades because of it, even though I love Supergiant games.
I was so bummed when I found out it was a souls like. I love the art style and setting, but I just don’t have the time to invest in what it’s asking of me.
Stardew Valley. Constantly rated as the highest in its genre. I tried it. Tons of times. Keep giving it a chance. Most recent playthrough was 15 hours.
It’s fucking torture.
I've played it a fair amount with friends, but the energy system, the constant calendar events all with different times of day, trying to memorize what every NPC likes and where they are at various times of day... it ends up feeling really stressful to me instead of the relaxing chill game I expected. The net code is also terrible. I usually just do the mines, but I have to host or the desync is too bad to play, even on gigabit.
You're not expected to do everything at once. If you just want to fish for the first year you can that. If you want to farm, just farm. You can ignore all the villagers too as well. I usually find one lived gift per villager and give them just that on their birthday. I can see how it can be stressful though if your completing the community centre and you realise you missed growing a summer crop and it's now fall.
The game gets easier once you unlock the greenhouse, sprinklers and raise your max energy.
Hades, but just because it has been my first and only roguelike game....was fun but i just don't like doing the same thing over and over again, i'm ok with doing a boss 50 times but doing the whole thing to get there? Hell no.
First one is Nioh. I had heard of soulsborne games before but didn’t really know what that meant besides “hard”. When I got to the first boss in Nioh and couldn’t get more than like one hit in at a time before being wrecked, I just decided never to play any game in that genre again.
Second, League of Legends. The repetition of it was just too mind numbing to me.
The last single player mission in StarCraft II. The expected APM for even a single player campaign eclipsed what I was physically capable of so I kinda lost interest in ground based RTS after loving them since 99
Ark, Seven Days, and other survival sandboxes. I would enjoy them for the first couple days but then I grew bored with the open concept. I realized I preferred games that had a story or strategy more than anything.
Smite, League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm. MOBAs are absolutely not for me. I’ve had so many friends try to get me to play. I try them out and just hate them all. Made me realize that it isn’t the game, it’s the whole genre I don’t like.
Exact same with me. I don't play a lot of competitive games to begin with, every now and then I might play something like Battlefield. I tried out LoL and HotS with some friends several years ago and that genre is just way too much for me. With how intense people get while playing, and how angry if you make a mistake, it just immediately saps all the fun out of it for me.
Yup, I'm the same way, I'm much more of a cooperative gamer than a competitive one, I'd much rather be working together against the environment, npcs, etc.
Rock and Stone?
Rockity rock and stone, brother!
They just aren’t beginner friendly at all. League for instance nowadays has way too much going on for new players: Smurfs are guaranteed at low elos. There are so many champions in the game and so you don’t know what match ups you win or lose. Sometimes an enemy will be super low but will kill you despite you being full health. There are so many items that get changed all the time that it’s hard to keep up. It’s also not obvious what enemy champions are even doing, you’ll see someone throw a ball out and you’ll have no clue what the fuck it even does. Doesn’t help everyone expects you to understand every intricate detail of the game, so any mistake you make is met with constant berating from your own teammates
As you mentioned, League has terrible approachability. So many of those issues can be solved by being able to click on an enemy to read what their skills do, but you can't do that. And you can't demo a hero unless you own them or they are available F2P. New players have to read an external wiki, then try to piece together the wall of text with the ingame animation+sound. Then do it for all of the champions. Even some of my friends with 2k+ hours in League still can't remember what some of the champions do.
It's ironic because League being "MOBA for casuals" is how it was described when compared to Dota.
And that's why it stopped growing the player base to a degree Riot is finally concerned with. Their one trick pony is losingbits luster.
You hit the nail on the head. I tried and tried to get into them. I’d say I got to the point of being just past a beginner. But one game just had me snap, I was doing fine but missed one play or something cause I was in the wrong spot and didn’t notice some random hero on the other team did some random thing earlier. So it meant all my teammates flipped out on me. I was like dude theres 100+ totally unique heroes. With thousands and thousands of combinations of specs and abilities and items. This isn’t even a ranked game and I’m getting roasted and flamed and yelled at. Fuck that community
MOBAs in general are definitely not for me, but the thing I hated most about LoL (aside from the community) was constantly having to figure out which items I need, what to save up for, etc every time. Like I could enjoy it a fair bit more if I just set up which items I wanted in what order ahead of time and have them unlock as I level up in every game.
I generally hate MOBAs too but Heroes of the Storm somehow captured me in a way that the other mobas couldn't. I think I just couldn't wrap my head around item metas in the other games especially with just how many items there are. In hots I can just focus on trying to use skills properly and it just ended being a lot more fun for me and some of my friends, even if it's generally known as the dumbed-down moba. Every time they get me to play Smite it's obvious that I struggle a lot more, with some rare redeeming moments. I always have to look up item builds for Smite but that means someone could probably counter me easily but I don't really know how to counter-build back when I can't memorize every item in the game and don't want to waste precious game time trying to read every item description while in-game.
Dude, absolutely same. HotS is the simple MOBA compared to the rest, but that's part of its appeal. Its audience isn't tryhards who only play one game their whole life, but the rest of the genre seems to shit on the game for being more accessible to people. Oh and anyone who doesn't play it wonders why the servers are up even though Blizzard famously never shuts a game down (Overwatch was a different case).
Shame they stopped development on it, the biggest appeal for me was how quick the games were. Starting a queue in dota was an hour commitment sometimes more, hots was about 20-30 minutes.
This me but just all pvp modes of all games.
The only multiplayer game I like that is played against other players is Rocket League. (And I don't even like football or racing games to begin with lol)
I call them MMOBAs, the extra M stands for “miserable” because everyone who plays MOBAs are miserable people.
pokemon unite is probably the only one i can stomach playing. it being smaller in scale really really helps
Same! To me it's the simplest MOBA and because it is Pokemon I can wrapy head around what moves are good, who is fast, who is a tank etc.
Maybe they might have changed it, but I think what also helps is the lack of a sort of team chat in the times that I've played it. So even if you do something wrong as well, you're not having your entire team constantly flaming you for it which also doesn't help the confidence. They have to fume in silence or elsewhere that you may not look at as opposed to the party chat. Apparently there is a voice chat, though, but no one that has any sanity uses it.
Agree 100%. It sucks too, because almost all my friends are super into them and I just don't get the appeal at all. Most of the communities are unbearably toxic and the games just... Suck. I'm not much of a PvP guy anyway but the appeal of MOBAs goes straight over my head.
I knew MOBA’s weren’t for me the first time I ever tried a DOTA map back when it was still just a series of custom maps in Warcraft 3. Made all the worse because all of the custom lobbies were flooded with DOTA maps, meaning that it was hard to find the game modes I *was* interested in.
Paragon is the only MOBA I ever enjoyed and they shut it down… guess no MOBAs for me. I know there’s fan remakes but they’re not the same. The main one has an awful item shop rather than the RPG stat system and cards Paragon had
Survival games. I tried Ark and thought it was really cool but still struggled a lot. Even with tuning the settings to be easier I still could never really achieve much beyond build a basic house. I would always get wrecked by Dinos. I still think the genre is very cool but I’ve never found one that clicks for me.
These games are hard in a stupid way. In Ark specifically you need the dinos to survive. The requirement to eat and drink every 20 - 30min is anoying. For more creative building in survival-lights I would recomrnd Valhaim and Enshrauded
Yeah for some reason wildcard was obsessed with this idea that you had to suffer to enjoy a game. At least thats what I'm convinced they think. No one would enjoy 6 hours irl to tame a pronto
I would second valheim. You do get some base attacks, but only from enemies who's biome you've defeated the boss from. If you're not home, they won't come knocking either, which is nice. It's pretty fun with a friend or two as well...
Ark was truly something else when it first came out. At the time, there were really only a handful of survival games out there and then BAM! Survival with Dinosaurs! I played Ark during its alpha and beta versions and holy crap it was some of the best fun I've had in a game. It was janky, it was poorly optimized, the animations sucked, the dinosaurs were dumb but I felt like I was actually on that damn island fighting for my life against a vicious world. I have some core memories from that game.
Valheim is the only survival game I've ever liked. And so much fun to play with friends.
I absolutely hate survival games too, but Subnautica is one of my favourite games of all time.
Same for me. I just don't have the time or patience for open-world survival crafting games (aside from the fact that genre seems to be a breeding ground for low-effort shovelware), though Subnautica was sufficiently different enough (and utterly terrifying due to thalassophobia) that I honestly didn't mind it.
Tbf there are plenty of Survival games that are way different to ark, or incorporate systems from Ark but in a much better way (like Valheim).
Do you have some you’d recommend? My friends and I have really enjoyed Conan Exiles, Valheim, Grounded, Enshrouded, then the survival-adjacent genre of Factorio and Satisfactory. Ark was ok for us, not my favourite by a long shot but my friends liked it a lot
It's hard to recommend games in the Survival genre considering how different they play. A game like Enshrouded doesnt even have most survival elements and plays more like an open world RPG with building mechanics. My personal recommendations (beyond the ones youve mentioned) are: * Terraria. One of the greatest games ever made. Probably needs no introduction lol * V Rising. Well polished game based on Battlerite mechanics. Smooth combat and amazing building mechanics. You can play on PvP servers, but the game is great as a coop PvE as well. You gather resources and progress by beating bosses which unlocks new recipes for gear and building. * Raft. Cozy game where you drift on the open sea and catch stuff while progressing the story. Been a while since I played it though. * Return to Moria. The game is clunky and with some weird gameplay decisions (like you keep unlocking new crafting and building stuff that youre never going to use), but other than that the game is surprisingly fun when played with a group of friends. More linear than open world.
Void train is sort of tangential, it's similar to Raft in some ways but otherwise very difficult to describe, I'd say just go check out the steam page and see if it looks like something you'd be interested in, the trailer is very representative of the gameplay
I'm the same way, though I realized after trying other games like it, I just didn't like survivals much in general.
I think Dayz is really fun but it’s also super hard
Battle royales games. Tried apex legend and other battle royales games. Just don’t find them interesting ever.
I think playing pubg back when it first came out ruined those games for me. My friends played it all the time and I would just hop on every once in a while. Loot loot loot, get sniped and have to sit and watch everyone else play for fifteen minutes. I don’t play any of the battle royale stuff.
The gameplay loop for pubg was so fucking stupid yet I clocked in 500 hours in record time in that game lol...
What I hated was the third person perspective camera exploits. Makes no sense for a PvP stealth game to put your eyes 2 metres above you... Just hide in low stuff, and stand up to fire. No fun against anyone doing that. That and the constant cheaters. Oh, and latency. Hear someone coming, hide in a room. They come in and you blow their head off. Then you die? and see their replay... You're just standing there for a full second after they enter the room. They needn't rush shooting you, from your end, they're still in the hallway... No servers anywhere near New Zealand best I could tell...
I played the game exclusive in first person mode after it was added. 3rd person perspective is such a stupid thing for pvp shooters.
For me it is just about any big map multiplayer shooter. Getting sniped from a mile away by an opponent you had no chance to see is the extreme opposite of what I want in a multiplayer shooter. The old school arena fps were perfection, with small sized, extremely week thought out maps, where every corner of the map served a purpose. Surprisingly CoD is the closest we have left to arena fps, and even CoD is trying hard to ditch the gameplay formula that made it so popular, and wants to compete in the oversaturated BR genre instead.
It's so funny to me how everyone just completely pretends that Halo Infinite doesn't even exist...how bad do you have to be running your studio to have comments like this floating around where your "AAA" is completely ignored, like you never even made it lol.
Especially with halo infinite multiplayer being extraordinary. I think the issue nowadays with arena shooters is the skill gap.
I tried PUBG, bleh. I tried Fortnite, major BLEH (but I was hoping for the *promised* full free version with the zombie PvE mode that never came). I tried Apex, meh (looked nice, but could never stay alive for more than 5 minutes). I tried Rumbleverse, decent until the trolls invaded. (It was a battle royale with WWE style fighting. Yes, *was*. Game's officially dead now) I tried Hawked, miiiiight come back to it, but it's meh. (An objective-based PvPvE where you or your team race to find a hidden treasure and extract)
Fighting games. They're fun casually with other casuals, but I'm not gonna waste time labbing. I don't need to be playing a game where people don't even have to look at the screen to combo. May as well play guitar hero at that point.
Hey man Guitar Hero was awesome! don’t knock it like that lmfao
I miss guitar hero 😢... there must be a way to play it on pc right? Like hook up the controller and everything right? Please?
Absolutely. There’s a game called Clone Hero which is basically the GH3 engine, but completely free. There’s tens of thousands of songs and charts available, with online multiplayer and leaderboards! And you can use your GH Guitar if it can collect to your PC!
😲 you just made my day! 😁
Yes but something magical happens when “both” players don’t have to look at the screen to combo. Now you can sit and watch who’s better at reading their opponent and making split second decisions while watching them play a badass game!
Hardest and best part about fighting games is that everything is your fault. But it's also why wins feel so good.
I love watching my friends play fighting games but damn it's just too hard for me to get into
I've been aware that I don't really enjoy racing games and suck so much I should avoid them going back to Pole Position. I've played others since but with the same amount of boredom and lack of success.
Woah! Pole position! What a blast from the past man! Hello fellow 40+ gamer!
I've thrown off the shackles of racing simulators, and leaned into more arcadey ones lately. Project cars was pretty fun with VR, a nice wheel etc. But wreckfest is good cheap fun on a controller. My toddler is quickly learning the names of all the cars, and is very insistent on what you drive, and where... I'm also having a blast playing redout2, which is a shiny PC taxing Wipeout inspired flying racer. I'll be sad when my reflexes are too slow for it :(
I think I’ve tried to play 3 different Monster Hunter games and each one I quit just a couple of hours in.
I lost all Interest the moment your required to hunt the same monster over and over and over. It's 25ft tall what do you mean I only get piece of hide from it!? It could cloth a whole village!
>It's 25ft tall what do you mean I only get piece of hide from it!? Well you ruined most of the hide while beating it to death with your comically oversized weapons
I believe general lore in World was that you were taking your share, but the rest was to go towards general improvements around the base and encampment, like towards the other soldiers/NPCs.
The lore is every quest is only done once story wise. You can only repeat the same quests for grinding purposes but those aren't canon.
Well I meant all the extra. If you get one horn from a Rathalos, then where does the other go? There's no way the claws weren't used if you didn't get them as a drop. And any other spikes/bits of skin. Like, one armor set, no matter how ornate, doesn't use a 40 ft monster's entire skin. Where does the rest go?
Then they should bloody get out there and hunt some monsters themselves! 😂
Everything feels so damn clunky and slow
Yes, my friend loves these and I just am miserable playing them.
Agreed. However, the world and the creatures piqued my interest enough to play and enjoy Monster Hunter Stories. So, the genre swap really helped.
How is it different from others?
It’s a RPG game where you play a monster rider living with them together. You can raise a monster and they will fight with you.
cool, that's a totally different genre huh
Yeah, some friends tried to get me into Monster Hunter: Rise and everything about it just felt wrong to me. The combat felt so damned clunky, like they were intentionally gimping you so you'd feel more accomplished when you actually manage to kill a monster or something. Hate it.
Finally deciding to dip my toe into the franchise I heard so much about, I bought 3 copies of a Monster Hunter game for me and a couple of friends because it had co-op. After going through enough of the game to unlock multiplayer, we are floored by an amazingly stupid decision the devs made. You can only go on hunts/missions with other players if you've already completed them solo first. We collectively had a moment of "What the absolute fuck?". Why would co-op be locked behind that kind of requirement? Why wouldn't I want to experience and learn the game for the first time with my friends? I traded in all 3 copies to Gamestop for a loss. I'm still pissed years later that it technically wasn't false advertising. Co-op was available, just in the most uninteresting way imaginable.
Wow, that is really stupid. Also I'm pretty sure that's not the case with Rise, there was an intro thing I had to do on my own but then I was able to party up with my friends and do stuff. I lasted about an hour before I was like 'Naw fuck this noise' tho.
Yeah I was a disappointed that there wasn't any real hunting. It was more Monster Beat Up. You get into a small area, hunt the monster for 3 minutes, then spend 30 minutes fighting.
See this was the opposite of my experience with monster hunter world. The tracking part was confusing and annoying as hell to me and took way too long, then by the time I found the monster I struggled to kill it in time and didn’t understand how to use my weapon efficiently so I quit
For me, it was the weird subtitle/character audio thing. Couldn’t get over the fact my game wasn’t broken!
Used to love turn based JRPGs with random battles. Tried a couple newer ones like eiyuden and octopath and realized I just can't tolerate this mechanic any more
Yeah, that puzzles me about myself. I loved a lot of JRPGs growing up, but just can't get into them at all these days.
Back then, kids had infinite time and limited games. I think that’s the main thing.
Now: infinite games and limited time.
Bro don't get me depressed this early in the morning
I really liked the idea of octopath, the whole playing 7 different characters and them all having their own story’s, but man I just didn’t really care for it and I don’t know why. I decently enjoyed the actual battles and the story, but it just didn’t pull me in.
Weirdly I'm the other way around. Used to have no interest in turn based combat but Like a Dragon made it click for me.
Dark Souls. Any souls like really. That style of gameplay and storytelling just isn't for me.
Fighting valkyries in God of War is as close as i'll go to the genre which is still miles away.
God I loved those fights. I'd never played a souls game at that point, and I was playing GoW on hardest difficulty. For some reason the last 5 or 10 years I've been playing games on really hard. I'm not sure why, lol. I never used to, and I'm an elder millennial so I'm old and decrepit, but I've been going for it. Those fights were so frustrating at first, but they basically taught me what the fun of souls like games are. Having to learn the attack patterns, hitting once or twice and getting away, dodging just right so you have time to hit. They definitely taught me how to use the side-step dodge instead of the full roll. After those fights most of the rest of the game didn't feel hard anymore. Compare that to Jedi Survivor, again playing on hard, and I eventually quit partially because I thought the game was unfair. I kept getting killed by these stupid frog things, lol. I had no idea what a souls like was really. I'm not saying that Survivor is a souls like, but those frogs were definitely made in that style. I beat much worse bosses and such, but I never figured out I was supposed to learn the rhythm of the frog attacks. Probably because that wasn't really part of any other fight. Fighting the Valkyries made me look back at Survivor and go "ohhhhh!" Lol.
I haven't played survivor yet but if it's anything like Fallen Order I had to switch the difficulty all the way down to story to even stand a chance.
Yeah that's about where I stopped playing GoW. Finished the story just fine but some of those Valkyries can go kick rocks.
I don't mind the gameplay, but the story always seems like an absolute cluster fuck to me.
With dark souls, the trick was to play the game then go get baked whilst watching a lore video to pretend you understood anything.
I've done that with every From game I've played and I'm still not sure I've understood any of them. I just play it because I like the gameplay and making different builds/playstyles
Nobody really understands them, you just reach a point where the bits you do know bring the world you play in to life. The story itself isn’t really the important part, it’s how that story made the world of a specific aspect of it what it is today
Man. This is like the 3rd day in a row I've stumbled into a thread talking about FromSoft lore, lol. I've learned it's a very sensitive topic and some people get very very mad if you say anything about Elden Ring lore being non-existent or just confusing. I just said how confused I was by all the lore people knew when I never seemed to pick up on any story. I didn't really know why I was there or who anyone I fought was. Apparently if you don't piece the entire lore together from item descriptions (apparently the story is written through item descriptions!?) then you're a dumb idiot who only likes explosions in games and probably never learned to read, lol. After the first few toxic comments, I then met some very vice ER fans, so it's not all toxic, but I had no idea it was such a sensitive area. The nice ones mostly explained that you need to watch at least hours of videos to understand the lore. So, it's very obvious, but you also need to invest tens of hours outside the game to get it. Cool. And I don't know why it keeps coming up for me this week, lol. The director of my life is being a bit heavy-handed with this storyline.
I super love DS. But there's basically no real story.. and what there is is bizarre and nonsensical. All we get is, "it's a slow apocalypse for no apparent reason; you're a zombie who can challenge the faltering, sad ruler. But whether you do or not, no idea how it really matters because almost every single person you met has already been killed or worse." yeah that's a great yarn, FromSoft, thanks. Edge of my seat.
Best description I have ever read. I love DS also. Platinumed DS3. But perfect description.
I hate how obtuse they are, and how you can miss significant quests.
Honestly I don't even attempt to get a story out of them. I just enjoy playing the game
“significant”
I was this way until Elden Ring came out. I wanted to like the former FromSoft games, but they weren't for me. Then ER came and the world sucked me in so much I sweat and cheeses my way through it completely.
The fans of the genre don't help. They pretend the genre is the best since sliced bread and who doesn't agree is just bad.
> They pretend the genre is the best since sliced bread and who doesn't agree ~~is just bad~~ just needs to Git Gud. FTFY, GD I hate the fucking phrase.
Skill issue.
This. I grew up playing video games in the 80s. I've played enough game that are made unreasonably difficult to make them more "fun"
WoW. Played a few hours and just *really* wasn't feeling it. Exploring the world seemed really cool, but any of the actual gameplay stuff you're supposed to do just seemed tedious and boring to me. I also just always struggle with online multiplayer. Feels like too much hassle for very little social engagement.
I’m the same, always feels like they’re wasting my time, with long fetch quests or other bullshit. Prefer. A much smaller narrative focused rpg Sadly, is increasingly unlikely that there will be another Warcraft game
I used to play a lot of WoW when I was in uni. I tried to go back to it not long ago but I realised that it's not fun without friends and setting up a LAN party of sorts. Quests can be tedious and sometimes you will find yourself dying a bit too much, which was all alleviated when you were part of a group. To me is the social aspect it comes with and not the game itself
Yeah. I guess most of the problem is that I can almost never get into online multiplayer in general. Having to sync your schedule, and your attention and focus with a bunch of people who aren't even there's feels like a ton of hassle for very little reward to me. I guess if I could try MMOs at a lan party, where I'm there in the room with people, I'd be more likely to enjoy it.
I'm so sorry RTS genre. But it's you.
I loved RTS as a kid. Now that I have the brainpower to figure out the proper build order and micro strategy I can't play without being aware of how inefficient my gameplay is. And that just saps all of the fun out of it.
For me AOE2 has always just been about making a nice little town, rofl. Unfortunately you gotta worry about AI players coming in and destroying your town, so you need to find a way to go destroy their town first. That's why my favorite scenario out of all AOE games has always been "Rising Tide" from AOE1. A giant river splits the map in half, you can set the players on your side to be the same team, and for the most part you can just enjoy building for a while.
Can't you set a custom game without enemy AI? I used to do that in Warcraft 3 to get a grip of the units
Back in the day when my friends and I would play C&C we'd set a time to just build and develop. Like, we wouldn't attack for 20 or 30 minutes, lol. Then we'd have some huge complex bases and a crazy army. My buddy once thought he was hilarious and sent thousands of attack dogs at me. They were super weak, but very fast, so they could actually do a lot of damage when they were a swarm, lol. Until I realised I could just drive over them with my harvesters which the dogs couldn't damage even slightly. Then I started playing other RTS games with my other buddy who had been playing them competitively online (back in the mid 90s) and I'd be like "ok, maybe I'll set my barracks over... here..." And as I'm placing my first one he somehow has a 100 man army just devastating the 3 buildings I'd so far managed to erect. That's when I learned the "let's wait awhile" gameplay style wasn't how most people played, lol.
In Company of Heroes, I'd wall off half the map with anti tank traps and barbed wire so the AI could not move past or attempt to go around (it would interpret it as an unpassable wall) I'd slowly build up my forces and base until it was time for an all or nothing offensive to the enemy base.
Try some C&C game like ra2. Great campaigns much less APM needed for macro.
I recommend playing games like Star Wars empire at war where cool units are still good. Same thing with Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2. “Oh what’s that? He’s got a planet buster I should engage at range? Prepare boarding torpedos. Ramming speed.” Works like a charm.
Loved them growing up but whenever I try modern ones I feel like I need a phd.
I still love them, but the old ones. The mid 90s to 2000 ish is the sweet spot of complexity IMO. They are polished enough they hold up and have enough unit variety without being overwhelming. Warcraft 2 and Red Alert 2 are basically peak RTS for me. After that it just got to be too much.
My brain is simple: my friend tries to teach me hearts of iron, my brain immediately starts panicking. Shit is incredibly stressful and it seems like writing a proper tutorial is basically impossible with how much there is to do.
My recommendation is to Just play single player and run it at 3-4 speed, pausing when you *want* to, and have a save file run for a few days Made learning a lot easier for me
The way i learned Crusader Kings 2: Play for 2 hours, interact with and learn a few of the systems. Restart Play for 3 hours, interact with and learn a few more of the systems. Restart Play for 5 hours, interact with and learn even more of the systems. Restart
I wanted to be good at StarCraft, but I'm just not
So much this! I really wanted to like them. But having to micromanage everything is just so tedious. I just wanna go round and smack shit straight away without worrying about gold or wood or some other material. I want instant dopamine
Yeah I love strategy games but they need to be turn based for me. RTS feel like they need my ADHD brain to be in both high-level tactical thinking mode AND fast-paced reaction times / APM mode at the same time and I just don't find that enjoyable.
The high APM requirement just saps all the fun out of it.
KoF 13 made me realize that as much as I \*love\* characters and sheer \*style\* of fighting games - they are just \*not\* for me. I'm not competitive, I suck at them, and can't even learn to consistently pull off basic combos and super moves. I don't even like most pvp.
Yes! The world and varied characters all seem so fun, but then they're all about super fast and precise reflexes while also reading an opponent. I can sorta have fun with some fighters, and enjoy screwing around in Smash, but it's no fun for me playing against anyone who's serious. Edit: I've got two replies explaining that reflexes aren't that important in fighting games. Sure, whatever, it's more than reflexes. I can't reliably execute a shoryuken in training mode. Whatever complex of knowledge, prediction, and accuracy you're expected to do in real time faster than your opponent, I'm not great at it and don't find it compelling enough to put in the hours to get better. I'll just keep being the best Smash player amongst the casuals and shitty amongst the competitives.
KoF 13 is known for being difficult among fighting games. KoF as a whole really. And it just takes time to do combos and supers in fighting games because there’s not many that games that require the same amount of timing. Fighting games can take time, but they are super rewarding because of it, and they’re more about improving at something than they are just about winning. It’s becoming more and more common nowadays for them to have simpler input options too. SF6 and Tekken have good uses of that, and SF6 has a lot of single player content including a new mode where you can run around and meet the characters and do missions and stuff and it’s very beginner friendly.
Pro Bass Fishing 2003
That game sucked for me too. No more fishing games!
I suck at those 2D platformers like Celeste. I can have above average mechanics in other games like FPS and Mobas but I can't figure out where my little guys gonna land when I jump.
Tried Hollowknight. Yep, I just don't like metroidvanias.
Hades. About the fifth time I had to beat Meg's ass ***again*** I was done and over it. I don't care if there are tiny story bits in between runs. I do not like roguelikes. I want real, consistent progression. Not the same fights over and over.
For me it felt like real consistent progression both in an RPG element and skill level. Leveling up your weapons and miscellaneous run boosts made each run different. Plus different boon combinations kept it fresh. I get what you mean though. You're not wrong on the same fights over and over. Reminds me a little of old school quarter games where you only got a few lives to then see how far you could get.
THAT LAST SENTENCE. Now I see why these games click for me. I could never figure it out and just assumed it was the leveling up nature. Nope. Like Rock Band and Guitar Hero (high score chasing), there's an aspect of the arcade that brings me into these games.
Yep, Roguelikes are the bane of my existence. I personally really enjoy the Soulslike genre which shares some characteristics with Roguelikes, but having the bonfire/lamppost/grace check points (and mostly linear progression) makes all the difference. I wish I could get into Roguelikes, but they are extremely demoralizing for me.
I suck at action but combat but I definitely get the appeal of a soulslike. If I play a pausible/turn based crpg I'll up the difficulty and treat hard fights like a puzzle. I don't mind having to reload a save five or ten times for harder boss battles. To be honest I find losing in roguelikes less frustrating than being stuck at a hard rpg boss. But my general strategy is going full degenerate gambler. I reload immediately if I get a bad start. Often times I'll dump tweny runs for each serious attempt at a win. In many ways it's closer to playing a slot machine than a video game. For a gambling addict the reward isn't winning money. It's the adrenaline hit of rolling the dice. Being stuck a boss without being able to figure out why has nothing to do with luck.
Same! When I realized I love everything about Hades BUT the gameplay, I realized that genre is not for me.
I enjoyed Hades, but if you ever find Returnal on sale for a good price, you should try that one. It’s not nearly as bad because there is a halfway point where you start from if you die.
Skyrim. Tried Oblivion, it didn't stick. Tried Fallout 3, didn't stick. Everyone declared Skyrim the best thing ever when it came out, tried it and it didn't stick. That's when I gave up trying. I just don't like Bethesda style RPG's for some reason.
Same. My wife has dumped over a thousand hours into Skyrim, first on the 360 and then on PC. I have a dozen games I started and never finished. Bethesda games just leave me cold. Penny Arcade said something along the lines of, "Skyrim feels like the NPCs just grabbed their outfits out of the costume chest right before you arrived," and I think that's my problem.
I think that's why people like them and prefer them over something like cyberpunk. It's a theme park world, it's not trying to be realistic, but to give you the experience. I love them, but I can see why people don't like them
Not everyone. I was very disappointed in skyrim when it came out.
Same with me, bought Skyrim because of the hype and did not get further than 30 hours in. My issue is the big open world however, they just make me lose so much focus. Last time I opened Skyrim I did not even remember where I was or what I was doing so just turned it off again lol
Outer wilds, not a fan of open world games in general. However games that give me too much freedom make me overwhelmed and I lose all interest in exploring because I get too anxious that I’ll miss something important.
One of the older tekken games. Muscle memory won't kick in when memorizing combos. I still tried other games like soul calibur and mortal kombat but its really not working out for me.
Definitely DBZ Fighterz did this for me. I don't personally understand why fighting games have to have to half complicated combos. Think of Smash Bros which simplified controls and how popular it is and how there is still a high level cap. As soon as I have to read a list and memorize a variation of button presses, half circle one way full circle another to do the move I want I'm out. I would find fighting games so much more enjoyable with simple combos and the skill coming down to when to use moves, which moves to use and when to use counters instead of learning combos.
Battle Royal games. Fortnight just isn’t something I enjoy at all and similar games or even id it’s part of a game . Just not for me
Walking simulators, horror or otherwise. I get it, the art style and atmosphere is really pretty, but I play a game to interact with it. If a game can't stand on its own purely with its gameplay mechanics than just make a movie instead.
Interesting comment that just made me think that "video games" is a poor name for the medium. I mean that, for example, you have "books" (medium) that are stories and books that are games. The same way, "video games" is in reality just a medium, where a "player" interacts with the medium... But this interaction could be more or less the equivalent of turning a page in a book in the case of walking simulator (or visual novels). They weirdly all fall under the term "video games" but really they should be called "electronic entertainment", of which some are: video games, visual novels, walking sims, etc.
What Remains of Edith Fitch was the ONLY walking simulator worth my time. The rest were not.
Try stanley parable ultra deluxe.
Hellblade
I couldn't play that one for a different reason. The ASMR style whispering got on my fucking nerve. To each their own, but I can't stand ASMR in general.
Ori and the Blind Forest made me realize that platforming games are definitely not for me.
Dark Souls, I just don't like that type of gameplay.
Elden Ring. As much as I admire the quality of FromSoft games I could only make it 30 hours or so in before bowing out. It was a rewarding 30 hours, but ultimately wasn’t for me.
World of Warcraft. After years of being totally fascinated by the lore and watching the cinematic trailers, I finally played and...discover that MMORPGs have a totally static combat and if you want to get to the real story missions, first you gonna have to play a thousand silly quests. Then I discovered I don't like MMORPGs.
This thread made me realize that arena fps are so dead that nobody even thinks about them enough to even mention not liking them anymore.
Soulslikes. Tried Bloodborne, Lies of P, and at least one other and everything I peace out really early because it's just too repetitive and feels too much like work.
I gave up on cinematic adventures after getting bored in uncharted 2. I got plat in the first one, and beat the 2nd one with no plat. I never finished 3 or 4. I only tried them because my friend in games share with buys them. I didn't even bother to download the girl one or made it further than an hour in tlou. I just don't care about story or set pieces. I just felt bored holding forward while things happen around me with no actual danger while drake yells nononononono for the 10th time with some shallow arena shooting sprinkled in. I get why others like them, the first one was fun, but that was enough for me. Apex and destiny turned me off the live service model. They weren't necessarily bad, I just didn't feel motivated the way live service games try to do it. I don't like redoing the same content over and over for points or seasons. I like single player and want to beat the game, play whatever extra content I want then move on to the next.
Competitive FPS. I'm not sure whether it's because companies started to nickle and diming maps and having short support durations, but meh.
Competitive FPS is a full-time job. Even taking a break will cause your skillset to regress. Hell, last time I played and enjoyed an online FPS was Battlefield Bad Company 2. Everything after that became way too twitchy like COD.
I just want to say, thank you for all the replies. It's my birthday today, I'm drunk af celebrating and made this post because I was truly curious to what the answeres would be and y'all haven't disappointed. I personally love every genre. I'm not a "pro gamer" and struggle at way more than I care to admit, but there's still always something that'll come out that I'll love no matter the genre. However, I understand this isn't the case for most people. Understandably so, which is why it's been really nice reading everything you've all had to say and your reasons for it. I've seen some people get down votes doe their answers and I just wanna ask, please, don't down vote someone for why a genre isn't for them. I would like for this post to be a safe place where we can give our opinions without judgment and just respect each other. It costs absolutely nothing to respect and love everyone here simply for sharing the love for gaming, no matter the genre. Have a great weekend and summer everyone!
BG3. I love RPGs and was really excited for BG3, knowing it was turn-based, and looked forward to trying out turn-based combat. Turns out I can’t get on with it, I prefer quicker action. Didn’t realise how much turn-based action would affect a game for me. Won’t pick up another one unfortunately.
I almost finished it because it's rare my wife enjoys a game I'm playing but I was so bored with the combat by the end I just faded on it. Doesn't help that Act 3 is not great.
Madden. I can’t read defenses worth a damn.
Brutal legends tricked me into playing RTS games. I haven’t played one since.
Outer Wilds. It really cemented the fact that I need strong gameplay (doesn't have to be action based) to be engaged in a game. If it's just talking and walking I just can't for the most part, unless it's very linear and inoffensive. People talk about OW like it's the second coming of Christ, but I could barely play for two hours without feeling frustrated and bored. I did like "What remains of Edith Finch", though. But that's a very straightforward game, so as long as you're having fun with the story it flows well.
Grounded. I really don't like Survival-Crafting games.
The genre is so over saturated at this point that it takes insane amounts of the perfect mix of everything to make it interesting enough to grab my attention for for than 30 minutes. The only survival crafting games that did that for me were Minecraft, Raft, Subnautica, and Valheim. The rest so far have all just been noise.
Borderlands 2. I hate looter shooters
Anything online shooter but particularly Overwatch How tf people coordinate jumping and janking and shooting is beyond my meagre skills
Whatever the COD battle royal was made me realize battle royal was not for me
Hollow Knight. The design and music were amazing, but the fact that I was bored after 5 minutes told me I probably just don’t like platformers.
Breath of the wild made me realize that I just don't do well with the typical open world formula. It's really not my thing.
For me its souls like games. All of them. I just think they are tedious and boring to play.
Elden Ring. I had only tried a souls type game once before and only for 20 min. I didn’t have a lot of fun so I never really tried to pick one up until people told me Elden Ring is the best intro into that kind of game. 6 hours later, some dozens of deaths, and I have had zero fun nor do I have any idea what I’m doing. The games are just not for me, but that’s fine, plenty of other genera’s out there.
Elden Ring. The amount of time an effort required to git gud just felt daunting to me, and I’ve done grad school twice.
Dark Souls. Realized very quickly the whole Souls-bourne genre wasn't my forte
Fromsoft's Souls series
Dead Cells. After playing some other roguelikes and even got to work on some games, a good friend, master of sound effects, said to me "I think you'll love this game!". Since I respect and like his opinions a lot, I tried it. And played it for something like... 2 weeks, maybe? Then I realized that this whole mechanic of playing 4-stages-over-and-over-again really gets me bored. After that I even tried Loop Hero, which idea is great, but I was already tired on the second loop. There I realized that roguelikes are not for me. I didn't even get close to Hades because of it, even though I love Supergiant games.
Lies Of P made me realise I'm just awful at soulslike games, to the point that they're unplayable for me
I was so bummed when I found out it was a souls like. I love the art style and setting, but I just don’t have the time to invest in what it’s asking of me.
Stardew Valley. Constantly rated as the highest in its genre. I tried it. Tons of times. Keep giving it a chance. Most recent playthrough was 15 hours. It’s fucking torture.
I've played it a fair amount with friends, but the energy system, the constant calendar events all with different times of day, trying to memorize what every NPC likes and where they are at various times of day... it ends up feeling really stressful to me instead of the relaxing chill game I expected. The net code is also terrible. I usually just do the mines, but I have to host or the desync is too bad to play, even on gigabit.
You're not expected to do everything at once. If you just want to fish for the first year you can that. If you want to farm, just farm. You can ignore all the villagers too as well. I usually find one lived gift per villager and give them just that on their birthday. I can see how it can be stressful though if your completing the community centre and you realise you missed growing a summer crop and it's now fall. The game gets easier once you unlock the greenhouse, sprinklers and raise your max energy.
Hades, but just because it has been my first and only roguelike game....was fun but i just don't like doing the same thing over and over again, i'm ok with doing a boss 50 times but doing the whole thing to get there? Hell no.
Minecraft and similar games
First one is Nioh. I had heard of soulsborne games before but didn’t really know what that meant besides “hard”. When I got to the first boss in Nioh and couldn’t get more than like one hit in at a time before being wrecked, I just decided never to play any game in that genre again. Second, League of Legends. The repetition of it was just too mind numbing to me.
The last single player mission in StarCraft II. The expected APM for even a single player campaign eclipsed what I was physically capable of so I kinda lost interest in ground based RTS after loving them since 99
So which mission are you referring to? Is it All In, the last mission of Wings of Liberty, cause yeah that is certainly not the easiest.
Osu made me realize that maybe life isnt worth living
I tried both Runescape for MMOs and League of Legends for MOBA's. I don't dislike these genres. but I cannot get into them.
Apex Legends. Love the playstyle, hate the random squad mates that take it way to seriously. Squad based Battle Royale is not for me.
Ark, Seven Days, and other survival sandboxes. I would enjoy them for the first couple days but then I grew bored with the open concept. I realized I preferred games that had a story or strategy more than anything.
Dead by Daylight
Gacha games- all of them Also card based games or Deck builders are a strict no for me
Card games like Hearthstone
Any survival-building crap🥴
Elden Ring/Dark Souls game types