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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2729 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I have a nice new gaming PC (5000 series gpu even), yet all I've played in the last three weeks is a few playthroughs of Civilization V. With a bunch of mods it still feels new, plus there are a few civs I have never even tried. My challenge now is beating the game with civs of middling power on Immortal difficulty.

I really enjoyed my time in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 before that. Played it a bunch in the week after it launched. But I got ever so slightly put off by a sequence where you are forced to (temporarily) lose all your gear, do timed objectives and complete the mission in the one way the devs intended. I'd rather not be stuck with that Hans guy for much longer; him getting executed would have been more or less okay in my book, lol, but there you go.

Anyone else here ever get easily 'bumped out of' these very good but long games where you feel like you kinda have to invest a lot of time per session and immerse yourself? The kind where it's really fun but it's not the easiest thing to just jump back into if you've been away from them for a few weeks. I have a lot of games like that on my list. A lot. It's not that I didn't like them, some of them I loved but never finished, but I develop aversion to the thought of jumping back into their worlds after some time away.

Graphically simpler games, like isometric strategy, seems a lot easier to return to, on and off.

I've sometimes read of the distinction between "systems" and "narrative" games. Obvious really, isn't it. The one is game mechanics possibly enhanced with a bit of lore or setting or plot, the other is a narrative that you navigate via game mechanics.

I personally find it nearly impossible to play narrative games. A book I'll want to keep reading to know how the story pans out, but in a game narrative just gets in the way for me. I found Cyberpunk 2077 alright because the writing was better than average and also very light! It was mostly a game about optimizing your ability to genocide criminals in a sandbox city, with a neat little mini-story-campaign bolted to it. And that campaign came in short bursts between freeform activities, never took control away from the player for long, and had very short railroad sections. Even conversations were mercifully short and to the point. I don't remember any other game in which I found the narrative so much as tolerable. Maybe the Blue Planet mod campaign for Freespace 2.

Other than that, all I play is systems games. My tags are procedural, sandbox, multiplayer. I like 4X games because they usually just teach you the rules and then tell you you sink or swim with them, can't stand mission-based RTS campaigns, and I very much hated the recent trend towards structuring 4X games through "quests". I'll play roguelikes and shooters that put you in a sandbox and tell you to figure out how to survive against an escalating difficulty. I play multiplayer games where the guiding light is the need to outcompete other players rather than to follow a story.

Looking through my steam library, this is the clearest delineation between games I actually play and such that I do not.

Maybe you're similar. Maybe you just need to embrace systems games over narrative ones.

You've hit on something important here. I've thought of the systems vs narrative distinction at some point, but had never put it into words.

While I can appreciate systems games, I am probably more of a narrative player, having spent more time on RPGs than any other genre. I think I would feel some emptiness or lack if I just abandoned rpgs/narrative games forever.

I think where it easily becomes an issue that evokes aversion is when the narrative doesn't suit me, or when a game that is supposed to give roleplaying alternatives and freedoms does not let me play the way I want. Such as when various dialogue options do not in fact lead to different outcomes but just railroads you into one direction while giving a false appearance of choice. You're supposed to be shaping your character through choice, and then he/she is just shaped for you. Or, like in KCD2, when all my inventory was removed, I was put on a timer, and had to finish the sequence in one way that the devs had decided for me. That causes some emotional dismay in me, and probably often leads to putting the game down for a while, and because it ended on a bit of a sour note the last time I played, there's a threshold to overcome to pick it back up again. Yes, I think this must be it... It's mainly about the absence of choice and liberty. Roleplaying without getting enough agency to decide the role.

I fear you're expecting a little much from video games, then. They're not tabletop RPGs where a DM lovingly crafts your choices into an evolving narrative. They're CYOA books. And unlike books, a new narrative strand doesn't just take an extra page or a hundred of plain writing, but also requires millions of dollars spent on a very expensive and time-consuming production process (at least for anything like AAA games). The more freedom for the player, the more the budget gets stretched, and the devs can't just sacrifice game length for freedom because most players will play the game exactly once, and if it's too short they will complain and review it poorly. So freedom gets the axe instead.

Good narrative games, for all that I know, don't offer freedom but a convincing illusion of it. They will always railroad you, but let you change the order, pacing or cosmetic details of otherwise fully predetermined events. The proliferation of games that tout "multiple endings" which then come down to reaching the end of the otherwise linear game only for the player to press a button to choose which cutscene plays is not a coincidental development. Many games let you make significant choices only in parts that do not matter for the overall narrative.

Maybe I'm wrong though. Maybe it's actually possible. Let me know if you've ever played any CRPGs that offered significant narrative freedom.

There are some exceptions. Or games that are better at upholding the illusion. Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3, to an extent. Fallout New Vegas. The Witcher 2 and 3.

But I take your point. I think it's the advances in graphics towards more and more photorealism that have made me expect more from the roleplaying and gameplay too.

Anyone else here ever get easily 'bumped out of' these very good but long games where you feel like you kinda have to invest a lot of time per session and immerse yourself?

Yes. I would really really love these games (KCD1&2 are good examples) until the enjoyment fell off a cliff. My advice is ignore most side quests and focus the main story to maximise your enjoyment before burn out. And yeah, its kind of a 'where were we again?' feeling of requiring effort to get back into it that turned me off picking them back up.

It's not so much that the game itself made me burn out on it. I guess I didn't make it clear in my post, but what I'm really criticizing is my own neuroses and weaknesses of insufficient energy/capacity combined with insufficient flexibility. There's nothing about KCD2 that says I can't play it for 30-60 minutes at a time, a few times per week. It honestly doesn't have to be a "2-3 hours every day" type of deal. There are a few long cutscenes but you can always save and quit in pretty short order. The aversion is not a logical one. When it shows up simply because, for reasons unrelated to the game(s) itself, I was away from a game for a while, it's clear to me that the problem is somewhere inside my own mind. There's some emotional pain related to the concept of combining the type of gameplay you get in an RPG, with the emotional and moral decision making, with work or other more work-like things, in one block of time (e.g. an afternoon). Civ is easier to fold into a regular day, easier to relate to because it is strategy and it is isometric in perspective. More involved types of gaming evoke more of an all-or-nothing mindset for me. shrug

Anyone else here ever get easily 'bumped out of' these very good but long games where you feel like you kinda have to invest a lot of time per session and immerse yourself?

I bailed out on the first Kingdom Come game b/c of this as well as RDR2. It extremely obvious that RDR2 had a lot of work and polish put into it, but its sooo artificially slow where everything is dragged out as painfully as possible. Steam gave me a refund despite playing past their 2 hour limit as is took over 3 hours just to finish the tutorial section. A truely stunningly boring game for all the hype.

OTOH, Cyberpunk 2077 is very good now with the newish DLC and feels very easy to return to for me. There is a good quest log system and waypoints etc so you don't get to lost. CIV 7 (and CIV 6 while were at it), is out now. If you like Civ5, Civ6 is pretty much a direct upgrade. Civ7 otoh is a significant departure and reviews are mixed. Also there are all the Paradox games if you like those. I'm a big fan of the Crusader Kings games. A good simpler game is Timberborn, its a post apoc beaver colony sim.

I am of course aware of Civ 6 and 7. I don't agree that 6 is an upgrade. For me it's a downgrade. I just never liked its cartoony graphics, or the interface, or the IMO failed humor of the narrator, and didn't have fun playing it. I tried twice.

Anyone else here ever get easily 'bumped out of' these very good but long games where you feel like you kinda have to invest a lot of time per session and immerse yourself?

I've been driving my partner nuts with how much trouble I have sticking with Baldur's Gate. I don't quite understand myself here, honestly. I don't have an issue with point-and-click, I played Runescape for the better part of two decades. Long RPGs? No problem if it's a JRPG. Even if my go-to habit game (Warframe) wasn't a grindathon, I just don't get why I can't get myself to spend more than an hour at a time on BG3.

In that case, ask yourself why you should spend more time with BG3.

This is the way. At the the of the day it's a free time activity you do for fun, not a self-improvement project. If you aren't having fun, it's ok to put it down.

Agreed.

Now that I think about it there's this weird gamer specific sunk cost fallacy about the initial purchase and time investment that can make you think that you should finish it. Also not wanting a long difficult game to be able to 'beat' you through attrition.

To be fair, I do play some games as self-improvement projects. Games I sucked at, that I decided I wanted to beat anyways, and then I went and did that. Usually multiplayer games. Yeah, I beat Hunt: Showdown and Nebulous: Fleet Command. Had one good run where I dominated everyone, exhaled in satisfaction, took a screenshot framed it and hung it over the fireplace, went to write my memoirs and a steam guide, and never played the game again.

Joke. But I really do sometimes play a difficult game just to figure it out and beat it. Not "difficult" soulslikes, where the required skill is memorizing enemy placements and telegraphs, and not multiplayer games that just come down to memorizing maps and doing the sickest 360 noscope, or such in which you win by doing 300 APM...but, you know, games where you can get a little creative. Where you can actually compete with others in planning, judgement and honest-to-god tactics, and with enough unpredictability and randomization that you can't just learn every possible move for every possible situation in advance.

But then, improving yourself in those ways until you can beat others at those games is fun. It's not mutually exclusive, is all I suppose I want to say.

And then there's a million singleplayer games that I started because I don't even know why and they weren't fun and I tried to get my money's worth out of them anyways but it didn't work and the only winning move ended up being to stop playing.

Ya I find myself repeatedly drawn to games that have 30 minute to one hour play sessions. If they get much longer than that I have a good chance of dumping the game when real life forces me to quit in the middle of one of the long sections.

There is that old meme about gaming:

Young: you have skill and time but no money.

Adult: you have skill and money but no time.

Old: you have money and time, but crap skills.

I'm solidly in that adult phase right now. In many cases I've even downgraded to games that have 5-10 minute play sessions. Which often ends up being idle games, where I just check in on long running number counters and update a few things.

I enjoyed everything about the Witcher 3 except the combat, which I found absolutely terrible for capturing the core fantasy/conceit of being a superhuman warrior who could cleave ordinary humans in twain but still struggled against supernatural monsters. I fixed that, with a mod called the Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition, but even then, I never actually finished the main story. I did do all the DLCs, and the narratives were excellent.

I also drifted away from Read Dead Redemption 2. I found it interesting, but often mechanically tedious in a manner that made me double think my decision to boot it up, and I ended up never getting far.

Witcher 1 captured the superhuman warrior feeling a lot better, at least visually. Mechanically it's a rhythm game where you click at the right time, but visually, especially the group style captures it really well.

The game is very rough though, so it can be hard to get into. It's very impressive seeing the difference in budget and looks from Witcher 1 to Witcher 3.

RDR2 was pretty good, but so slow and plodding mechanically. The much praised story was middling IMO. But I did love hunting and fishing in the game. It seemed almost photoreal at the time.

The expansions were the best part of Witcher 3, so you didn't miss all that much. :)

Red Dead 2 can only be played in at least 4-5 hour sessions, in my opinion.

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