Every MMO ever honestly. It’s one of the cheapest ways to create content - a mindless time sink.
Single-player games doing this are much more rare, but I bet there are some examples…
This is how I am with pretty much any mmo games.
I’ll get through the normal level up/equipment upgrades and then to get any of the better items you have to grind for specific items that have like a fuckin 1 in 10,000 drop rate from a boss that takes a full raid party to beat and takes over an hour to finish. Oh and you need like 50 of said item and you can only run the dungeon on the 3rd Sunday of the month or some shit like that.
And this is pretty much the standard for mmo games
Me with Stardew Valley
I’ve got 2 1/2 big sheds full of kegs and i need more kegs dammit
This is why, with rare exception, I’ve stopped playing open world games.
I either quit before I finish or I stick it out and end up being sick of it by the time I’m done.
I haven’t stopped playing them but I have stopped finishing them.
I play until I feel I get my “moneys worth”? Which is a lot easier if you’re patient and then I uninstall
Maybe capitalism has broken your idea of what success and ‘doing’ is, and you need some fucking therapy.
Me playing Pokemon: All of my Pokemon have to be kept at the same level.
Me 3 weeks later: I never want to look at this game again
Tried picking up a pokemon game after a few years of not touching one. I realize that it is often a kids first pokemon game so they must be taught how the game works from the ground up but it would be really nice if there was a “I’ve been playing Pokémon for 30 years I know what a fucking pokeball is” button.
Some of the most fun is discovering the new setting and art models and special effects for the first time.
Seeing the majestic six-legged Porco-Taur charging at you through the sun-drenched savannah of King Arthur’s Burg in the Realm of WizardTopia is fun the first time it happens. And then you figure out the monster’s pattern of attack, get to know the burrow by the lake where it spawns, and can knock one of these creatures down with a few button clicks. So it’s not fun anymore.
Pick up a new game with a new style of monster and a new attack pattern that employes different abilities, and now it’s fresh and exciting again.
The new attack pattern? You guessed it.
Yet another delayed attack. Hold… Hold… Hollllld… Flinch …Swing stupid fast
Ooooo new game +
Depending on the game, this is why I install balance breaking mods or just use cheats. I play games to get away from grindy bullshit, I don’t need that in my games.
I’m with you there for games that take 100s of hours.
If it’s sub 20 hrs I’ll install QoL or time saving mods only.
I’ve got no time for grinding at my age. Single player game, some cheat engine, and skip grinding when it gets boring.
I always procrastinate on playing and when I do, I wonder why this is so much fun.
It looks so strange when I see people playing a lot of one game and what they do seems to be mastering mechanics. Everything is a stat to them, you can optimize builds etc.
It just seems like a job
They log off from their real job where they optimize something or other and hop onto a game where they optimize something else and coordinate a team etc.
It’s so weird to me.
This is a flaw in game design rather than a flaw in the player.
I fell for stuff like this for a while and now I consequently delete every game that tries to pull this shit with me. And I lost the joy in multiplayer games to be honest. I will never match the dedication of some people. And if this means I have no chance to actually enjoy it, I don’t want to bother.
It got to be a really well made game for multiplayer with a good community (and if necessary good moderation) and proper matchmaking to work. There aren’t a lot of those out there, especially not major titles. Those either use the for-profit matchmaking algorithm (putting you in games where you specifically encounter players with purchaseable items your ad profile says you may be convinced to buy, even if it’s less balanced - Fortnite uses this for example), have absolutely zero working moderation (literally every Counter-Strike) or are completely overrun with bots, cheaters and scammers (e.g. PUBG).
Beyond All Reason comes to mind, that’s genuinely a joy playing. Probably due to its FOSS nature and small but fine community. And the ELO for balancing is visible by everyone.
Nothing beats a LAN Party with friends though. That’s what Multiplayer was made for. 🥰
Reject team-based multiplayer. Play a fighting game!
Yeah, I think growing up as probably the first generation that went to LAN parties on a regular basis doesn’t really help enjoying modern multiplayer very much.
Beyond all reason is a great multiplayer environment once you get the hang of how to play.
I’ve played a couple matches but it hadn’t clicked for me yet in the same way that TA or SupCom have.
Not the fault of the game, I still just spend most of my time looking at the build icons wondering what everything does.
Anyway, nice to hear there’s some good game in there once you get past the learning curve (same as any RTS, really).
Ive been playing fortnite for a while now, the only thing you really buy are all cosmetic, and I see plenty of people using the ftp skins. There’s a shop that refreshes daily for new cosmetics, but it’s universal, not targeted, and if you’re seeing people with stuff in the shop, it’s probably because they just bought it themselves. so unless I’m missing something the fortnite comment isn’t true.
And yes I know, defending epic is not a very popular position lol, there’s definitely enough to criticize already
When battlefield 6 came out, the hour or two I could afford went a long way: we were in the trenches together figuring it out ABC having fun.
Now some players are level 2000+, rarely team work and I‘m dying when I spawn. Now it takes more than it gives.
On the plus side, that was the last game stopping me migrating to bazzite
Now some players are level 2000+, rarely team work and I‘m dying when I spawn.
Every competitive multiplayer game in the world is ruined by sweat these days. You have to dedicate your entire life to the game just to not die immediately. Oh, you don’t have every map completely memorized, including all spawn and bonus locations? To a point where you could play it blindfolded in single player? Filthy casual.
this is precisely why i gave up on multiplayer PvP games for the most part. the era of casual PvP pubs is long gone and now, if you don’t have the “play for glory” mentality, you simply can’t enjoy such games anymore. and even then, having that mentality already doesn’t sound enjoyable to me.
on the flipside, i also find myself struggling with being interested in modern PvE/co-op games as well, especially since most of them adopt the 4-player format, pretty much necessitating having friends willing to play with you for a truly fun experience. the niche of big lobby PvE games is rarely tapped, unfortunately.
this is precisely why i gave up on multiplayer PvP games for the most part. the era of casual PvP pubs is long go
And the rampant cheating. Every single game that has more than a few players will have cheaters. Rootkit-as-a-service or not, there will still be cheaters.
You can play unranked matches in games that have a ranked mode for the sweaters. Like arms race in counterstrike for example is pretty chill
On the other hand, the point of ranking and matchmaking is to match you with players of similar skill. When working optimally, you’ll end up with the appropriate ranking, play with players of the same skill, and (in 1v1/1 team vs 1 team games) win 50% of the time.
Some people whine a lot about the idea of losing 50% of the games you play, but if you actually enjoy the game and ignore the rank you have, it’s a great deal.
Well, either modern matchmaking algorithms are absolute dogshit at doing this, or there just aren’t enough low-skill players out there to be matched with. Because if you’re just a casual player, you won’t be losing 50% of games, you’ll be losing 100% of games. Even at the lowest of the lowest tiers, you’ll still be losing quickly and often if you don’t put sweat into it.
I suspect it’s because games are driving away casual players like this that they don’t have enough for matchmaking. Every player at the casual tier either quickly gives up in frustration and leaves, or stays and becomes a sweatlord themselves, continually leaving the casual tier mostly empty, which forces casual players to be matched up with higher-tier players just to find a match at all.
And that’s not even getting into ‘smurfing’ and cheating/hacking.
Well, either modern matchmaking algorithms are absolute dogshit at doing this, or there just aren’t enough low-skill players out there to be matched with. Because if you’re just a casual player, you won’t be losing 50% of games, you’ll be losing 100% of games. Even at the lowest of the lowest tiers, you’ll still be losing quickly and often if you don’t put sweat into it.
It’s mathematically not possible to maintain a 50% win rate across any group of players unless everyone has exactly the same skill level. The proof is complicated but the idea works like this:
- assume not everyone has the same skill level
- ignoring duplicates, there exists a player with the highest skill level in the group
- the highest skill level player always gets matched with players of lower skill level, winning >50% of their games as a result
- the players who play vs the highest skill player end up with less than 50% win rate, so the system gives them more matches against lower skill players to bring it up to 50%
- these lower players then have too many losses, so match them more against even lower players
- repeat the above process like dominos falling (mathematical induction) until you reach the lowest skill level player
- the lowest skill level player has no one lower to match against, so they cannot reach a 50% win rate, thus there is at least one player with below 50% win rate
So there you have it. In practice, matchmaking systems need to compromise on the skill they match people with if they can’t find enough players of the appropriate skill level. This results in a wider range of skill levels ending up in the same game when not many players are online. This can result in even more players ending up above or below 50% win rate, depending on where they stand skill wise.
I’ve seen some level 3000+ players as far back as months ago, but I think they glitched/exploited that level.
The highest legit levels I have seen are about 500 - 650 or so, 500 is when their icon turns gold.
It’s a real slog at times, but I will sometimes just do the weekly challenges and stop. Timed challenges really make the game feel like a chore.
The game feels really unbalanced as well, so many rounds it’s one team completely stomping the other and it’s not even close. Often 900 tickets to 0.
My friends and I had an evening like that as well, 3 times our team won by holding all the objectives and the game ended early. That’s no fun.
Side note, games like BF6 that cannot run in Linux are also what keep me from migrating to a Linux distro. I’d be off Windows in a second if all games ran on it no issues.
Side note, games like BF6 that cannot run in Linux are also what keep me from migrating to a Linux distro. I’d be off Windows in a second if all games ran on it no issues.
For those curious about it: People are working on it (of course Valve has vested interest in this). Unfortunately Corposcum such as Ubisoft, EA or Krafton aren’t interested unless they get complete system control for their overreaching anticheats, and hell freezes over before Linux provides kernel modules for this stuff. Even if every gaming distro would bring DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module System), that in turn basically breaks Secure Boot (Secure Boot is a Microsoft system - not Linux’ fault). Also the support by Linux devs and distro maintainers would literally be a negative number. Kernel-level anticheat is correctly considered malware.
I think Valve was experimenting with Microkernels and Virtualization or sth… but that’s a long way to go. And those other big corpos will only ever give a fuck once their Investors start seeing Linux as a truly exploitable market.
The game feels really unbalanced as well, so many rounds it’s one team completely stomping the other and it’s not even close. Often 900 tickets to 0.
It’s a miracle how a multi-billion dollar company can consistently fumble matchmaking this badly.
How does DKMS and such break secure boot? If you want to load (custom) kernel modules, just generate a key pair, sign the module yourself, import your MOK into your UEFI (once, assuming you use the same key for all your modules and also keep a backup of your reinstall your system) and secure boot will let you do that.
I’m running current NVIDIA drivers on Linux and that’s basically the setup to use them- and since that is already set up, i’d not even need to to anything specific to get it working for other things.
Note: I do not endorse kernel level anti cheat and would never load such a module, but the infrastructure for it is already there and can be used with secure boot…
I’ve had to specifically put a hard stop on my usual thought process while playing games, in an effort to get back to how I played as a kid. If I catch myself strategizing too much to the point where I’m not even playing anymore, and am just going through the motions I already planned out, I purposefully make myself do something completely against the plan just to put myself in the kinds of situations I’d be in as a dumb kid who did the wrong thing, since that was the last time I had real fun playing games. It doesn’t always work, but I do have more fun than I did earlier in my adult life.
Oh jeez, I went through a phase of enjoying Snow Runner … the base game has a nice difficulty progression, takes a long time to finish, but feels very satisfying.
So, when I got to the end I started buying expansion packs. And some of them have been lovely, but most of it just turned out to be some weird grindy slog-fest … which I had a good go at, but then burned out on the game.
I just want peaceful chugging around in forrests with my little truck, looking for lost cargo to take home :-(
Snow runner was so much fun, until it wasn’t. Somehow, they even made just exploring a slog. The mechanic was literally “deep mud everywhere.” Just give me the first map 10 different times and we’re good. A new town to explore.
