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Notes -
I'm firmly in the camp of core gameplay loops being very important. But I, like many others am not very consistent with what I like when I try to categorize stuff. I know that I don't care about story in (most) games but I like vignettes.
For example I think for whatever reason it's just fun to move and fight in Spider-Man but the open world POI stuff does nothing for me in general and many missions are just go somewhere and fight people. Whereas I also really liked The Witcher 3 which I don't think has a good core loop and fighting system. (Also not a good main story) but just being in that world and going to different small towns and solving their monster problem was great.
That's singleplayer. In multiplayer it is only gameplay. I could play Quake 3, Counter Strike and Rocket League for 10 years and still like it. But due to life reasons I don't want to play multiplayer anymore, except at Old school LAN parties with the people in the same room. Which I do once a year.
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