Sekiro. I've tried many times since it came out but I am a Souls vet and I just can't play it the same way. I have no idea how to not get dogwalked by trash mobs by the time I get to Hirata...
Sekiro. I've tried many times since it came out but I am a Souls vet and I just can't play it the same way.
I have no idea how to not get dogwalked by trash mobs by the time I get to Hirata Estate. I've tried to start over a dozen times, watched YT vids, just can't make it happen.
I mean, it makes sense. You’re good at action RPGs, why would that translate to a rhythm game? ;) You’re not asking for advice, but for whatever it’s worth, Hirata is considered a mid/late-game...
I mean, it makes sense. You’re good at action RPGs, why would that translate to a rhythm game? ;)
You’re not asking for advice, but for whatever it’s worth, Hirata is considered a mid/late-game location even though you can access it early. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed if you explore it right when you first find it.
Oh, that is good to know. I thought I was kind of on a rail and there weren't other options. Now I'm wondering where else I can go. Which means I'm probably going to beat my head against it yet...
Oh, that is good to know. I thought I was kind of on a rail and there weren't other options. Now I'm wondering where else I can go. Which means I'm probably going to beat my head against it yet again soon.
This exact situation is my biggest gripe with souls like games and what ultimately keeps me from enjoying them. It feels like everything has to be looked up or else you make the game twice as...
This exact situation is my biggest gripe with souls like games and what ultimately keeps me from enjoying them. It feels like everything has to be looked up or else you make the game twice as hard.
I think every person draws a different line on where a challenge passes from fair to unfair and for me that reliance on outside information is unfair. Games can be challenging and still teach you along the way.
It's a shame because I enjoy most everything else about them. I just don't want to pull up a guide every time I play.
For what it's worth I think games can be very capable of telling players to veer away from those areas as a new player and keep it in the game as an option with good signposting. I didn't like...
For what it's worth I think games can be very capable of telling players to veer away from those areas as a new player and keep it in the game as an option with good signposting. I didn't like Mina the Hallower enough to play much more, but it was pretty clear about an intended order while keeping the map open.
Not that I disagree, though - the last thing I remember about playing DS1 was choosing to go down an elevator at a fork and getting immediately bodied by some ghosts with some kusarigama kinda weapons flailing about like sawblades. (if anyone could enlighten me on whether that was a bad idea I'd appreciate it 🙃)
The DS1 approach to telling players to veer away from a later game area is to stick some extra hard enemy type you don't have an answer to yet. Where you were in the game there were 3 major paths...
The DS1 approach to telling players to veer away from a later game area is to stick some extra hard enemy type you don't have an answer to yet.
Where you were in the game there were 3 major paths forward, but one had those ghosts you encountered and another had skeletons which are resurrected indefinitely after a few seconds.
The problem with this approach is plenty of players either overlook the 'intended' path or get stubborn about it, especially since the game has a reputation for being brutally difficult so it's not completely outside the realm of believability to have a sudden difficulty spike.
I made the same mistake and tried to plow the hirata estate as soon as I found it. I did eventually overcome it, but there is another direction you can go that is imho a little gentler...
I made the same mistake and tried to plow the hirata estate as soon as I found it. I did eventually overcome it, but there is another direction you can go that is imho a little gentler introduction to the game. Still, it doesn't get easier as you go and you can't out level many things like in the souls series, so you'll have to get the rhythm down for bosses, and if you don't enjoy doing it I wouldn't torture yourself with it.
Find your block button, and mash mash mash mash mash. Seriously though, that was the hardest game I've ever beaten. The final boss was absolutely brutal. Even the first castle boss was rough, and...
Find your block button, and mash mash mash mash mash.
Seriously though, that was the hardest game I've ever beaten. The final boss was absolutely brutal. Even the first castle boss was rough, and that was only like half way through the game.
I finally twigged on to the "mash block" early on (vs holding block) but 1) not everything can be blocked and it's not always clear what can be and what can't and what needs a special counter, and...
I finally twigged on to the "mash block" early on (vs holding block) but 1) not everything can be blocked and it's not always clear what can be and what can't and what needs a special counter, and 2) my fault is regardless I can't seem to get the timing down in any case.
I say that as someone who was an absolute Parry God in Dark Souls--Gwyn only takes 60 seconds because you only need like 3 parries total with a sufficiently upgraded weapon, which is trivial to land if you practice, and I was a beast with it in PVP. Not sure where I'm missing it here.
Good news, Sekiro is made for players who love to parry. The difference is you only get a 'riposte' if you parry until their stamina bar is drained. You can miss a few or whatever, it only grows...
Good news, Sekiro is made for players who love to parry. The difference is you only get a 'riposte' if you parry until their stamina bar is drained. You can miss a few or whatever, it only grows back slowly. Learning openings to throw in a few sword attacks inbetween parries to keep consistently draining their stamina is the goal. Gotta break the habit of dodging attacks and instead learn the rhythm of attack chains to parry.
It’s been a while since I’ve played, but if I recall correctly, virtually everything that doesn’t make a red warning symbol pop-up on the screen (with an accompanying orchestral string hit) can be...
not everything can be blocked and it's not always clear what can be and what can't and what needs a special counter
It’s been a while since I’ve played, but if I recall correctly, virtually everything that doesn’t make a red warning symbol pop-up on the screen (with an accompanying orchestral string hit) can be deflected (parried). The timing might suck or feel super unintuitive, but it should hold true for most anything. That’s not to say that there won’t be status buildups like poison, fire, etc but those are relatively rare.
I was only half joking in my other comment about it being a rhythm game. I actually hard-disagree on the stance of “mashing” the deflect button. You should never be mashing anything. Your deflects should be precise inputs in time with whatever the enemies’ swings are. Mashing will get you punished because the reset between mashes leaves you vulnerable. If you’re unsure on the timing of an enemy attack, better to try to time the deflect, but then keep the block button held in case you blocked early. Then once you figure out their timing, switch to single quick taps.
Your stamina also resets faster when you’re blocking, which is another unintuitive non-soulslike approach. The game wants you to block until an attack is about to hit, then let up and tap again to deflect. It feels super weird to get used to, but it feels so good once you get into the rhythm.
I wish I opened this post when I first saw it a couple days ago now :( Do not mash parry. You only need to hit it once and doing it multiple times is detrimental. You must learn the game. Every...
I wish I opened this post when I first saw it a couple days ago now :(
Do not mash parry. You only need to hit it once and doing it multiple times is detrimental.
You must learn the game. Every boss can be cheesed.
Except the last boss. If you do not learn the game properly, you will not be able to defeat this boss.
That boss took me a nice 69 tries the first time I beat the game. That's when the game really clicked for me. I platinumed the game (minimum three runs) and my fourth or fifth time, I beat the final boss without taking any damage at all. That was the day Elden Ring launched and a few weeks after the last time I beat the game and on a different system (I was unable to beat the game on PC after cheesing other bosses before I finally beat the game on PS5).
As other people have said, Sekiro is a rhythm/dance game masquerading as an action game. That realization is when the game actually clicked and I was able to beat the last boss within a few tries at that point. I thought it had clicked earlier, but I was wrong.
It's the best, most rewarding combat in any game ever and I'll mikiri counter anyone who says otherwise (including me before the game clicked).
I think Sekiro throws a lot of people off because there's almost no skill holdovers from other souls games. My theory of why so many people love Bloodborne is because it's close enough to be...
I think Sekiro throws a lot of people off because there's almost no skill holdovers from other souls games. My theory of why so many people love Bloodborne is because it's close enough to be familiar, lets you spec/gear into a playstyle you are most comfortable with, but it still has enough novelty to maintain its own identity. Sekiro hands you a single playstyle/build and tells you to adapt it to situations it would clearly not be suited for in any other souls game.
It's interesting because I bought Bloodborne on release in 2016 and had a similar issue, just couldn't get the feel for the different style of combat. Put it down for literally 10 years--I picked...
It's interesting because I bought Bloodborne on release in 2016 and had a similar issue, just couldn't get the feel for the different style of combat. Put it down for literally 10 years--I picked it back up this past February--and just blasted through it with a Skill build using the Saw Spear.
My hubris made me pick up Sekiro again right after that and I got completely humbled pretty much right away.
I have never won a game of Settlers of Catan, and therefore I hate it. I think I started playing like 10 years too late... Also the people I've played with had no remorse.
I have never won a game of Settlers of Catan, and therefore I hate it. I think I started playing like 10 years too late... Also the people I've played with had no remorse.
Catan is a game that is unfortunately "solved" and you can only truly enjoy it when playing against people of the same skill level as yourself. If someone knows the code and nobody else does, they...
Catan is a game that is unfortunately "solved" and you can only truly enjoy it when playing against people of the same skill level as yourself. If someone knows the code and nobody else does, they will clean up. It's like trying to play Mario kart against someone who plays far too much of it. You'll just get optimized out of the game.
That surprises me. You'd think the random map and the high amount of trade between players would make it very hard to solve. Do you happen to know the "solution"? I usually focus on the good...
That surprises me. You'd think the random map and the high amount of trade between players would make it very hard to solve.
Do you happen to know the "solution"? I usually focus on the good numbers, figuring as long as I have a high and steady income, I can trade for what I can't produce. It works sometimes, but I feel like I just as often lose to the player who built 4 cities on the number 3 or something ridiculous like that.
I can give you some good general rules to play by. Some I’ve learned through people analysing the game mathematically, but lots just based on vibes. My family and I play a dozen games per year,...
Exemplary
I can give you some good general rules to play by. Some I’ve learned through people analysing the game mathematically, but lots just based on vibes. My family and I play a dozen games per year, with or without lots of expansions, and I’m generally considered the strongest player in every game unless I get unlucky early on.
Others here have already mentioned placing your settlements on the more likely numbers, and that’s certainly part of it, but not the whole story. When planning my first few settlements and general strategy, I’ve often made slightly less optimal choices (if you were looking at raw odds for dice rolls), by using tricks to compound advantage or mitigate risk.
My first trick is that, perhaps unintuitively, if your resources arrive in a feast-and-famine (e.g. many turns with no resources, then a few turns with loads of them) you’re much better off than if they trickle in slowly but consistently. Therefore rather than diversifying my numbers to try to get some resources on every turn, I instead try to build on the same numbers, so that when my number is rolled I get a lot more, but when my number isn’t rolled I just sit there doing nothing. I suspect this is because the robber (rolling a 7 and discarding cards) punishes holding onto resources for longer, but I’m not sure.
My second trick is that ore and wheat are more valuable than brick and wood. I suspect a lot of people believe that their value is shaped by the progression of the game (e.g. bricks and wood are more valuable early game and less valuable late game) but my impression is that ore and wheat are always the best value resources, and only the relative value changes (e.g. they’re slightly more valuable early game and dramatically more valuable late game, but always more valuable).
Within my family games, I find that the first player to upgrade a city is always a strong contender at the finish line, but the first to claim longest road or the first to build an extra settlement doesn’t necessarily convert that into a win. Personally I think this effect is so strong that I will often place my first settlements on a 4/9 wheat/ore over a 6/8 brick/wood.
Additionally, if you only have access to wood and brick, you can only build roads, and maybe trade to get settlements. However if you have ore/wheat/sheep, you can build cities but also buy development cards. Development cards can move the robber (Knight cards, which both frees up your tiles, and steals resources from others), directly place roads (Road Building card), grab whatever resources you’re lacking (Year of Plenty card), or just claim what everyone else has (Monopoly card). Or just a flat victory point. They enable versatility, to grant you access to resources if you lack something important, so going all-in on these resources is much less risky than going all-in on brick and wood.
My third trick, although this is more difficult, is just to try to keep track of what resources people have, or rather what they don’t have. I don’t necessarily mean remembering every single dice roll and every single purchase that players make, that’s far too difficult to keep track of for me. I’ll never be good at card counting. However, if I hear three other players asking “does anyone have wood to trade” turn after turn, and nobody takes them up on it, I mentally note down that wood is more valuable at the moment. So if I get some, I make sure to trade stronger than 1:1 and if I need it, I will probably need to trade generously, or get lucky that I have exactly what the other players need.
This one is also important to keep an eye out for a shift in the value — I’ve often seen games where early on, everyone is in need of brick because they’re so easy to spend. So the value increases, and players are trading 2:1 to get hold of brick from another player. But then later in the game, I see other players making the mistake of thinking brick still demands a higher price, but the game has moved on from the expansion phase and instead brick has plummeted in value (from oversupply and lower demand) so the player holding all the brick thinks they have a goldmine on hand, but nobody is interested in trading with them, so they fall behind in trading for what they need because they misunderstand the value.
I hope this has helped and I haven’t just waffled too much, but if you have any follow up questions, I’d be happy to answer and share what I know! (Unless you’re going to join my family game nights, then I’ll keep my secrets to myself because I’m a bit competitive like that)
The quote are doing a lot of lifting here because its an optimizing problem and not deterministic like checkers or tic-tac-toe (both of which are mathmatically solved) Basically you need to first...
The quote are doing a lot of lifting here because its an optimizing problem and not deterministic like checkers or tic-tac-toe (both of which are mathmatically solved)
Basically you need to first prioritize your resources by getting the largest possible numbers for whatever is available. Yeah, you can get bad rolls but trying your best to just as many resources as possible so you can trade for what is important. 6 and 8 are your friends, but in reality just stay away from stuff that is either statistically too low or too high to reliably get on a 2d6.
Second is trading smartly. If you know the values of the cards in the current game (who needs what) then you can bully others for stuff you need. This is extra true for experienced players against newer players, as they will be able to mask the deal as equal, but end up practically robbing them blind.
If you can do both, you will clean up at the table. I have a similar observation with Ticket to Ride, where you just complete as many cards as reasonably possible and you will start winning as more often than not. Get greedy early on, that Seattle-New York will carry you most of the way to victory and you likely will complete it unless something goes incredibly wrong and dont be afraid to take more cards late, there usually one card in the set that is relatively painless to connect.
It isn't actually "solved" in the way that one typically says games are solved, nor is it actually solvable. See solved games for a definition of what Catan is not. However, vanilla Catan is...
It isn't actually "solved" in the way that one typically says games are solved, nor is it actually solvable. See solved games for a definition of what Catan is not. However, vanilla Catan is pretty simple in terms of game mechanics, and experienced players who know the mechanics will win more than other people. There are no guaranteed wins though; you could get on all the 6 / 8 spots and have them never roll in a game and then lose, because chance plays a significant role in individual games. But over time, if you find good spots on the board and make savvy trades, your win percentages will go up.
Don't feel bad about Catan - feel bad for Catan. There's a lot of very experienced board gamers that detest Catan for many reasons. My recommendation - suggest another board game whenever it gets...
Don't feel bad about Catan - feel bad for Catan. There's a lot of very experienced board gamers that detest Catan for many reasons.
My recommendation - suggest another board game whenever it gets brought up.
My friend owned Ninja Burger and also could never win a game. We must've played 50 times before he finally won, and then it was put away and never played again.
My friend owned Ninja Burger and also could never win a game. We must've played 50 times before he finally won, and then it was put away and never played again.
Chess. I'm bad at it because I don't like it. And it's a sort of fundamental dislike where I irrationally think less of people who play seriously and my brain turns off completely if I'm playing....
Chess. I'm bad at it because I don't like it. And it's a sort of fundamental dislike where I irrationally think less of people who play seriously and my brain turns off completely if I'm playing.
Its so bad that I don't recall ever winning a game of chess against another person. But because I play Go, board games like Scythe/Twilight Imperium and map-making for TTRPGs; people sometimes assume I must enjoy chess too. I think the dislike has to do with how much it is meta-gaming with every possible opening and response being defined and graded.
Similar thing with Counter Strike, DOTA, Smash, StarCraft and many other esports. Can't bring myself to engage fully when people have meta-ed the fun out of a game.
~ Baldesar Castiglione, Etiquette for Renaissance Gentlemen, 1528 A.D.
Signore Gaspare replied: "And what do you say about the game of chess?"
"That is certainly a refined and ingenious recreation,' said Federico, "but it seems to me to possess one defect; namely, that it is possible for it to demand too much knowledge, so that anyone who wishes to become an outstanding player must, I think, give to it as much time and study as he would to learning some noble science or performing well something or other of importance; and yet for all his pains when all is said and done all he knows is a game. Therefore as far as chess is concerned we reach what is a very rare conclusion: that mediocrity is more to be praised than excellence."
Chess bothers me because people tout it as a sign of genius, but in reality it's just memorizing patterns and using said patterns to your advantage. I respect people's ability visualize several...
Chess bothers me because people tout it as a sign of genius, but in reality it's just memorizing patterns and using said patterns to your advantage. I respect people's ability visualize several moves ahead (I can't do that) but I don't enjoy the idea that it's the game of geniuses when there are far more dynamic and interesting games out there that are way more intellectually stimulating.
I think pattern recognition is a big part of it but as you get more advanced in chess it does absolutely help your ability to visualize future actions, which can be a great mental exercise. Does...
I think pattern recognition is a big part of it but as you get more advanced in chess it does absolutely help your ability to visualize future actions, which can be a great mental exercise. Does it mean you’re smart/a genius? Absolutely not. But I do think chess is a great game to help keep your mind active and sharp, and if not playing speed chess, probably does help with attention span.
I personally love playing Go and Backgammon as the more classical games. Backgammon is a game of luck and logistics. You need to move all your pieces from one place to another down a straight(ish)...
I personally love playing Go and Backgammon as the more classical games.
Backgammon is a game of luck and logistics. You need to move all your pieces from one place to another down a straight(ish) road. You are rewarded for personal initiative and judgement over diminishing your opponent. I find it fun as a negotiation and puzzle to untangle a web of problems and its a lot more social than adversarial. (In my experience, there's not a lot of backgammon hustlers/experts going on power trips over new players) Sometimes you just get bad rolls. Other times your piece is backloged and you just need to wait it out. Creating incentives for your opponent to clear your path is a lot more efficient than holding up the entire game.
Go is a game about principles and priorities over the strict doctrine and calculus of chess. Also, depending on the scoring system, it's two very different games. If you're playing for area, you want to have as much board presence as possible, plus uncontested space around that area so that's a game of cleaver accumulation. If you play for Territory, you want to claim space at minimum cost and are rewarded for effeciency. Either way, there's no inherent value to any one piece or position outside the context of the game (granted, there is some prime real estate on the board but its not too hard to invalidate it). In my mind, because chess is so reductive, the end of a good game devolves into a slug fest for scraps and is not much fun. While the end of a good game of Go will push your analytical thinking to its limits. Also, I just find a go board exceptionally satisfying to look at by the end. It sometimes feels like a shame to reset.
I don't like Chess either, but there are two chess-like games that I like: Onitama and Hive. Both are "complete information" like Chess, but with their own spin.
I don't like Chess either, but there are two chess-like games that I like: Onitama and Hive. Both are "complete information" like Chess, but with their own spin.
I love Hive! I feel like it could eventually (d)evolve in a similar way to Chess over the long run, but it still feels fresh and rewarding to explore strategies with friends in casual games in a...
I love Hive! I feel like it could eventually (d)evolve in a similar way to Chess over the long run, but it still feels fresh and rewarding to explore strategies with friends in casual games in a way that reminds me of how I used to feel about Chess as a kid.
In case you haven't heard of it, you might appreciate Chess960 (also known as Fisher Random Chess). It shuffles the back row, so you can't just memorize positions anymore and have to actually...
In case you haven't heard of it, you might appreciate Chess960 (also known as Fisher Random Chess). It shuffles the back row, so you can't just memorize positions anymore and have to actually think about the situation on the board.
I feel very similarly. I think it stems from the fact that when I find myself playing chess, I often find myself in terrible company. The first person to teach me chess was my eldest cousin. The...
I feel very similarly. I think it stems from the fact that when I find myself playing chess, I often find myself in terrible company. The first person to teach me chess was my eldest cousin. The first person to teach me what it meant to be a sore winner was that same cousin. He liked to play against me because I'd just move pieces at random and he could see the pattern of the current board and make the next perfect move.
He was A Beautiful Mind-ing it and I was on the other side miserable and wanting to do anything else. When I learned you could lay your king down on its side and declare defeat, any time he'd set up the chess board I'd simply put my king on its side as my opening move and leave the table.
To this day I consider chess the sport of insufferable dickheads and if you like it (well, if you think it’s the superior game over all others ) then I (probably) actively think poorly of you (or an at least kinda meh about you), especially because (I assume) you'll be a gloating little prick who thinks I'm just jealous (as has been my experience with many chess nerds). I'm not jealous of your ability to memorize patterns, I'm annoyed that you think that applied pattern recognition makes you special and somehow superior to other people (or at least that your behaviors and mannerisms suggest that). There's a smugness to (most) serious (ranked) chess players that makes me want to smash the board over their head (metaphorically) and shove the queens up their nostrils base-first (hyperbolically).
Its interesting that you play Go, but don't have the same issue. Go is definitely older than chess, and might be the only potential rival for chess as far as games that have been absolutely...
Its interesting that you play Go, but don't have the same issue. Go is definitely older than chess, and might be the only potential rival for chess as far as games that have been absolutely overanalyzed and optimized in the same way.
Stealth games. All of them. I made just one attempt at getting into Hitman, never cast a second glance at Splinter Cell, almost rage quit Breath of the Wild over the Yiga base mission, stay far...
Stealth games. All of them. I made just one attempt at getting into Hitman, never cast a second glance at Splinter Cell, almost rage quit Breath of the Wild over the Yiga base mission, stay far away from any immersive sim game... I don't have the memory to remember all enemy patterns, the patience to wait for them to get into the right position, the timing to pass them or take them out unseen, or the presence to realise when I'm visible.
Agreed 100%. The absolute worst is when you've been playing and enjoying a non-stealth game for awhile and then they force a stealth sequence on you but the mechanics aren't even really there to...
Agreed 100%. The absolute worst is when you've been playing and enjoying a non-stealth game for awhile and then they force a stealth sequence on you but the mechanics aren't even really there to facilitate it. Nothing will make me rage quit harder.
I feel this very much. I was recently playing through Deliver Us the Moon and having a decent time, up until a segment where you need to sneak past a bunch of floating death spheres several hours...
I feel this very much. I was recently playing through Deliver Us the Moon and having a decent time, up until a segment where you need to sneak past a bunch of floating death spheres several hours into the game. After a few failed attempts to power through it I uninstalled it. I felt so burned I don't even want to watch a playthrough on YouTube to see what I missed.
I made it through that section of DUtM after watching another player solve it on YouTube; turns out there's no trick to it, you just gotta go for it. After seeing that it could be done, it only...
I made it through that section of DUtM after watching another player solve it on YouTube; turns out there's no trick to it, you just gotta go for it. After seeing that it could be done, it only took me another three or four tries to make it work (after like six or seven tries before looking it up, ugh. I kept getting the zappy spheres pulled up towards the respawn point, so they basically were spawncamping me).
The game as a whole was... ok, but not great and I don't think you're missing much not finishing it. I played it through with my dad, which made it more fun. I liked it enough that I'll probably pick up the sequel eventually, but only on a decent sale, and only after I've worked through some other better ones I have my eyes on first.
I absolutely loathed stealth games or sequences as I play video games to be distracted and amused, not to be challenged. Then a random Steam Sale kind of changed the game part of my life when a...
I absolutely loathed stealth games or sequences as I play video games to be distracted and amused, not to be challenged. Then a random Steam Sale kind of changed the game part of my life when a game called "Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun" was up for like 5 bucks. It got great reviews so I bought it.
I found it to be enjoyable and relatively easy, then I noticed in the achievements thingy at the end of the levels would mention something like "never alerted any enemies", and I thought how in the hell would you do that? Or more importantly why would I even care?
I finished the game but the idea that there might be another way to play it annoyed me, so I started over from scratch. I hadn't realized that I had learned a great deal during the first run. The behavior of the enemies is really simple, way less complicated than Hitman for example. As it turns out, there were all kinds of subtle level design decisions that weren't at all obvious the first play through, and because I wasn't struggling to manage the controls and stuff the second time through, it was actually enjoyable for the first time in my life to try to remain undetected instead of laying waste to everything.
I've now played through the games from that studio (sadly now defunct) probably a half-dozen times which is really rare for me, and I found that I can finally enjoy stealth games, provided the save/restore commands are really fast as they are an integral part of playing the game and it would be instantly tedious if restoring took more than a couple of seconds.
anyway if you're like me and struggled to understand how people could actually enjoy playing a stealth game, I couldn't see it until Shadow Tactics, and while I don't find games like Hitman quite as enjoyable, Shadow Tactics and the other Mimimi games did finally get me into the mindset that is required to enjoy them with almost zero frustration. And they're cheap as hell.
Ohhh that Yiga clan hideout! Between the one-hit kills and that section disabling the extra life/Mipha's Grace I'd worked hard for, and then getting yanked out of my glider in the misty forest...
Ohhh that Yiga clan hideout! Between the one-hit kills and that section disabling the extra life/Mipha's Grace I'd worked hard for, and then getting yanked out of my glider in the misty forest section I had to take a long break from the game. I don't think I ever finished it completely, and I did enjoy it over all, but those two incidents really put me off it for a while.
I learned later that there's a recommended order to do the four areas of the map, and the desert area is recommended to do last. If I recall correctly, those guards do 8 or so hearts damage, so as...
I learned later that there's a recommended order to do the four areas of the map, and the desert area is recommended to do last. If I recall correctly, those guards do 8 or so hearts damage, so as long as you have more than that, they won't be able to one-hit kill you.
I knew none of this when I played the game, so I went to the desert first...
The first time I played BotW I snuck into the Yiga clan hideout and carefully did all the stealth stuff like you're supposed to do. The second time I used a workaround that let me skip straight to...
The first time I played BotW I snuck into the Yiga clan hideout and carefully did all the stealth stuff like you're supposed to do. The second time I used a workaround that let me skip straight to the fight, something to do with I think a ladder and some kind of portal that had spikes that I could just land in that let me skip the whole thing. I just booted BotW to see how much of a detour it would be and apparently the last time I played was 2023 and I was in Hyrule castle. I don't think I've ever beat the final boss...
Same for me, I occasionally get hooked into trying one because of the theme or characters and rarely last more than 20mins. I just assume most of them want players to save and reload the game...
Same for me, I occasionally get hooked into trying one because of the theme or characters and rarely last more than 20mins. I just assume most of them want players to save and reload the game constantly until they get it right since so many of them offer no real hints while you play.
Despite my general love of other Smash games, and platform fighters in general, I cannot play Super Smash Bros Melee, much to my chagrin. I think, because I grew up on SSB Brawl and later games, I...
Despite my general love of other Smash games, and platform fighters in general, I cannot play Super Smash Bros Melee, much to my chagrin. I think, because I grew up on SSB Brawl and later games, I am far too accustomed to input buffering systems that are more forgiving compared to the precision required by Melee. I find the lack of an input buffer makes it feel like Melee always misses my inputs, or is somehow ‘sticky’. Add on that you cannot disable the ‘up’ input on the control stick being used for jump, a convention familiar in other fighting games but eschewed in modern platform fighters, I just find it really hard to control the characters in Melee. Naturally this is very dissatisfying to me as I consider myself something of a platform fighting game aficionado - I ought to be able to play the definitive game in the genre. But unfortunately I don’t have the time I once did to really dig my teeth into the game and develop the right muscle memory, so it seems Melee will remain something of a white whale for me.
I can also add on League of Legends, despite logging over 2000 hours in the lifetime of my account, I peaked Silver. Blame this on the general game design that makes growing as a player really tough, plus an off and on relationship with the game over the more than a decade I have been involved with it.
Finally I’ll also mention Valorant and Counter-Strike. I was really bummed out when a few friends of mine got really into these games and got good, as I could never have fun playing with them because I’m basically not very good at shooters.
I had 9 years in League when I dropped it, the best I got was Gold 4. In the last few years even playing with friends stopped being fun. I was a jungle main and keeping good mental in games with...
I had 9 years in League when I dropped it, the best I got was Gold 4. In the last few years even playing with friends stopped being fun. I was a jungle main and keeping good mental in games with randoms was impossible since I felt like the team punching bag, so I didn't keep up with my friends' skill levels. That resulted in me dragging the group down when we played together, and it just overall stopped being fun.
As a result, I play almost no PvP games. Anything team-based feels too close to League with everyone blaming each other; anything solo I fall behind on because I didn't play PvP FPS games and don't have the instincts for them. My single player library is big enough anyway.
I played a crazy amount of Leauge ages ago. I was a silver denizen like you, constantly striving to get better but always falling short. Then something clicked, my study paid off and I started...
I played a crazy amount of Leauge ages ago. I was a silver denizen like you, constantly striving to get better but always falling short. Then something clicked, my study paid off and I started climbing quite consistently. I found myself at the top of gold and realized that I had progressed. I've reached new heights and I am not any happier. In fact, I felt like I wasn't having fun at all despite my success. I put down the game then and there and never picked it up again.
I'll second League of Legends. Tried to get good but couldn't get past the changing metagame strategy, matchups, and specifically the mental game. I love so much about the concept but I have not...
I'll second League of Legends. Tried to get good but couldn't get past the changing metagame strategy, matchups, and specifically the mental game.
I love so much about the concept but I have not come across a game that turns normal empathetic humans into their worst selves over the course of an hour like that game does. It's like Lord of the Flies every game, a psychological unwinding that starts subtly at first before cascading into people crucifying each other for not bringing enough pink wards for STUPID AP TEEMO and his STUPID MUSHROOMS.
Try any other platform fighters. The Rivals of Aether games are great games that take a lot from Melee while also including input buffering, tech from Brawl and later, and lots more of their own...
Try any other platform fighters. The Rivals of Aether games are great games that take a lot from Melee while also including input buffering, tech from Brawl and later, and lots more of their own uniqueness.
all of them. board games, video games, card games, yard games, bar games... I've had to come to terms with this recently that I'm just plain not good at games. I enjoy them, but can't play much of...
all of them. board games, video games, card games, yard games, bar games...
I've had to come to terms with this recently that I'm just plain not good at games. I enjoy them, but can't play much of anything that's competitive because I never win.
🤝 You are not alone! It is a running joke with my friends that I am genuinely bad at games, and they're 100% right. I'll watch them play something and it's like I can see everything falling into...
🤝
You are not alone!
It is a running joke with my friends that I am genuinely bad at games, and they're 100% right. I'll watch them play something and it's like I can see everything falling into place for them: their mastery of the controls, their understanding of the mechanics, etc.
When I play, the opposite happens. I'm clumsily making my way around; I don't fully understand how everything works together. I play nearly every single game on easy/casual difficulty, if it lets me. Even then, I still sometimes have trouble.
I've actually thought a lot about why this is, and I've settled on four different complimentary theories:
I'm fairly uncoordinated.
In real life, in games, in general -- I'm clumsy. I'm whatever the opposite of "graceful" is. This is especially true when things get tense, so when the action ramps up, or there's a boss fight or whatnot, I tend to do even worse.
I've got bad working memory.
I'm amazed at people that can like, take in a lot of information, process it, and hold on to it concurrently. I'll learn a board game with my friends, and we'll be 30 minutes in and they've already mastered the mechanics and strategies, all while I'm still just trying to remember the basics of what to do and how to play. If a video game tutorial shows me something once (e.g. a special move or something) and doesn't come back to it for a bit, you'd better believe that I'm going to forget about it. I genuinely have to give myself a conscious mental narration for when I'm learning a game to try to help remind me about what options are available to me.
It's hard for me to mentally "shortcut" information.
Back when Slay the Spire came out, a friend was getting us into it so we hotseatted it and took turns playing. The group found my playthrough EXCRUCIATINGLY slow because I had to read each card each time -- even when I had already read the card multiple times before and knew what it did. All of them were very good at seeing, say, "Shiv", processing it once, and then incorporating that information into their wider understanding of the game. When "Shiv" came back up, they automatically knew and understood its use. Meanwhile, I had to sort of process all the information given to me each time in order to make an informed decision. It wasn't enough for me to just go "oh, that's a Shiv" because I had to evaluate my understanding of that card against the different cards in my hand each time, or the new enemies that I was facing, etc. The same goes for every other card. There was too much information for me to hold on to, which was why I had to "refresh" that information each time.
I think this is basically just an extension of what I talked about in #2 because I think it's also a product of my working memory. My friends can just sort of slurp up a whole bunch of info all at once and convert it into a shorthand that they can work with, whereas I have to deliberately focus on different things to make them make sense. My visual metaphor for this is they've got a desk full of papers, all facing up, and they know where everything is and how to access whatever they need immediately. Meanwhile, I've got a stack of papers, and I have to shuffle and read to even find the right one in the first place. Despite all my attempts, I'm never able to lay them all out at once like they seem to be able to do. They'll stay stacked, and I'll always have to spend time shuffling through them.
Something is up with my (family's) perception.
My husband always makes fun of me (in a loving husband sort of way) for not being able to find things. I will open the fridge to find, say, the ketchup. I know what the ketchup looks like, and where it is likely to be, and yet it will still take me some genuine effort to locate it. At other times, I'm genuinely unable to locate it. Meanwhile, if I ask him where the ketchup is, he will be able to tell me exactly where it is. From the couch. Without even looking.
My brother-in-law experiences the same thing with my sister. They have a "game" called "Can I Point at It?" where she'll ask where something is, and he'll ask the titular question, which means that the item is literally within line-of-sight. She'll then stubbornly say "no" and insist on continuing to look at it herself.
At our most recent full-family vacation, my brother was looking for a specific drink. The place we were staying in had two different fridges, so he opened the first one, didn't see it, went to the second one, didn't see it, and then asked us where it was. My husband, again, from the couch, described where it was in the first fridge. My brother went back, opened it up, and, lo and behold, there it was. I excitedly said to my husband "see, it's not just me!"
Immediately following this, my dad walked into the room and asked where my mom was. My mom was sitting on a chair literally right in front of him. I grabbed my husband's arm excitedly and again said "SEE, IT'S NOT JUST ME!" We had a good laugh, and our in-laws then bonded over their shared experiences of dealing with my biological family's bizarre inability to find things.
As this pertains to games, well, it means that what's intuitively obvious to a lot of other people isn't necessarily the case for me. Instead, I'm often oblivious. Gamers will complain about things like obvious quest markers or lighting guiding your way, and, well, the devs probably put those in because of people like me who, for some strange and unexplained reason, somehow can't see what's right in front of them.
I do tend to pick up games relatively quickly but I have friends who seem to struggle as you do and often they dread even trying anything new as they know it will be hard for them. However if I...
I do tend to pick up games relatively quickly but I have friends who seem to struggle as you do and often they dread even trying anything new as they know it will be hard for them. However if I patiently continue to play the same game with them they eventually start to figure it out and then frequently end up playing better than I do.
Does that also work for you or have you tried sticking with one game long enough know?
Generally speaking, if I stick with something I'll improve by default. Whether or not I get better than my friends is debatable though (but, of course, that's heavily dependent on the specific...
Generally speaking, if I stick with something I'll improve by default. Whether or not I get better than my friends is debatable though (but, of course, that's heavily dependent on the specific game). There are definitely some that "click" with me more than others.
A good example is Inkbound. We played this together in my multiplayer group, and I was WAY behind the curve on making sense of it. For the initial playthroughs I was just sort of confusedly tagging along.
I stuck with it though, ended up falling in love with the game and its mechanics, and thus kept playing it solo long after we stopped playing it as a group. It got to the point that I was able to confidently plow through the game on its most difficult settings by myself, which was legitimately impressive to my multiplayer group (both for the face value difficulty and also because it was me specifically doing it XD).
That said, there are some genres where I'll just hit my own skill ceiling. In FPS games, for example, I am just bad at aiming (and believe me, I've practiced!). I actually played Overwatch for years, and despite being a better-than-average Support main, I'd be absolute deadweight if I had to play DPS. Likewise, husband and I really love Wingspan, but he absolutely smokes me every time we play it. My ability to strategically plan my plays and make decisions simply cannot match his.
Mostly I just play games to relax, have fun, and engage in number-go-up/check-all-the-boxes fantasies. I'm not someone who particularly enjoys games that ask a lot of me (e.g. Soulslikes), so I tend to gravitate towards games that don't require a lot of effort or learning.
I think we all have our strengths and weaknesses. And that's also why I'm a big fan of well stuffed settings menus that give everyone the option to enjoy the game in the way that works best for...
I think we all have our strengths and weaknesses. And that's also why I'm a big fan of well stuffed settings menus that give everyone the option to enjoy the game in the way that works best for them. "Enable quest markers" seems like an easy setting to add!
Sekiro. I finished it out of pure spite, but the last boss took several hundred attempts. At that point it wasn't fun or challenging, just annoying. IMO FromSoft games will benefit greatly from a...
Sekiro. I finished it out of pure spite, but the last boss took several hundred attempts. At that point it wasn't fun or challenging, just annoying.
IMO FromSoft games will benefit greatly from a difficulty setting. Different people have different skill levels. People who are good at this kind of thing can play on the highest setting and their experience will be literally identical as now. But people like me can play on a more reasonable setting and actually have fun too.
I strongly disagree, but probably not for the reason that you expect. Games don't need to be made for everyone. They can have a specific audience, and that's absolutely fine. That's how it used to...
FromSoft games will benefit greatly from a difficulty setting
I strongly disagree, but probably not for the reason that you expect.
Games don't need to be made for everyone. They can have a specific audience, and that's absolutely fine. That's how it used to be, back when video games weren't mainstream and were generally considered to be only for nerds. Games being made to appeal to literally everyone and their mother is why the vast majority of AAA titles coming out today are shallow, soulless garbage.
If the game is so hard that it's more frustrating than fun, then don't play it.
I feel secure in saying this because I, too, struggled immensely with Sekiro. And that was especially hard for me to swallow because I've done a SL1 run of Dark Souls 3. I finished the entire game including DLC and solo'd all the bosses without ever leveling up once. I've also done a No Death run of Dark Souls 2.
I fucking love Fromsoft games, but I've never finished Sekiro. I've tried several times. The game absolutely kicks my ass. But I know that adding a meaningful difficulty slider for a game with such fine-tuned combat would be extremely difficult and would almost certainly compromise the game. So I just uninstall it and move on.
I've heard this argument before and to be honest I never understood it. I am not asking for the game to be watered down to appeal to a broader audience. The game would be 100% identical for people...
I've heard this argument before and to be honest I never understood it.
I am not asking for the game to be watered down to appeal to a broader audience. The game would be 100% identical for people who play on the high setting. Like, 1 to 1 identical.
Except multiple difficulties require more man-hours of effort to implement, test, tune and balance. Not speaking about changes to the overall game design, to preserve the player experience that...
The game would be 100% identical for people who play on the high setting. Like, 1 to 1 identical.
Except multiple difficulties require more man-hours of effort to implement, test, tune and balance. Not speaking about changes to the overall game design, to preserve the player experience that the developers are going for.
And those man-hours have to come from somewhere, hence the watering down of the experience.
P.S.: I deeply dislike anything FromSoftware released; part of it is the difficulty, part is the opaqueness. So I don’t play any of their games.
Sekiro already has "even harder" mode for NG+ where they increase the health bar of the bosses. The code is already implemented. Having a mode decreases it a bit is not that much work. Also,...
Sekiro already has "even harder" mode for NG+ where they increase the health bar of the bosses. The code is already implemented. Having a mode decreases it a bit is not that much work. Also, additional sales to people like me can easily fund hiring a couple of extra emplyees to test it.
IMO the real reason they don't have easy/normal difficulty is marketing. They want capital G Gamers to brag about being so hardcore.
Since we have so much drama about jar opening, it's like a company deliberately designing jars that are extremely difficult to open, so they can promote them as "only real man can open these!"
Sure, they are allowed to do that and it will probably work as marketing. Not everything has to be made for me. But deliberately designing things to exclude people based on their physical limitations, for no other reason but to exclude, is IMO straight up mean.
I would not say they design the games deliberately to exclude at all actually. Sekiro is a bit more of an outlier because you do have flat skill checks more often, but there are almost always...
I would not say they design the games deliberately to exclude at all actually. Sekiro is a bit more of an outlier because you do have flat skill checks more often, but there are almost always gameplay options available to you to soften the experience up. The reason they design these games the way they do, from the mouth of the designers themselves in interviews, is to foster that feeling of overcoming extreme opposition/difficulty and the resulting triumphant joy you can experience as a result. Adding a difficulty option would lessen the experience of the game as intended by the developers of the game.
This doesn't change the fact that the game might clash with limitations, and you can still feel however you like about it. I just dont agree that they are specifically designed to exclude. FromSoftware in particular has always done a good job of feeling like they actually want you to succeed, besides maybe Dark Souls 2 tipping the scales too far on the punishment scale. They are trying to foster that feeling of overcoming adversity, and they give you plenty of ways to get there. They might exclude as a byproduct, but I do not find it fair to say it is the intent of the developers.
I'm heading to work but I'll try to find the Miyazaki interview today.
Edit: took me a while, original host is down and I had to use the way back machine, but here is the interview
When the moral of the story, and the foundational creative design choice, has been to persevere in the face of untold hardship or turn mindlessly hollow when you lose sight of that goal, I think a...
When the moral of the story, and the foundational creative design choice, has been to persevere in the face of untold hardship or turn mindlessly hollow when you lose sight of that goal, I think a difficulty slider would undermine the entire ordeal. It defeats the core concept: adapt, persevere, overcome.
I personally think that players giving up and "turning hollow" makes the thing click.
From a less esoteric standpoint, developers are under no obligation to create multiple difficulties that increase the development burden significantly. Would it allow a broader audience to complete their games? Probably. Does it matter if that happened? Probably not.
They've been working with this design philosophy since before King's Field. I don't think they're interested in appealing to anyone that doesn't like this approach.
Similar to what @PancakeCats expressed, Sekiro has absolutely awful design and it's not your fault at all...until you get it and suddenly it becomes the greatest game you've ever played. I have...
Similar to what @PancakeCats expressed, Sekiro has absolutely awful design and it's not your fault at all...until you get it and suddenly it becomes the greatest game you've ever played. I have gotten so mad at that game. I even bought Ghost of Tsushima to play just because the one japanese game was making me rage so much that I needed to play the other Japanese game to relax. But then one day...https://youtu.be/cF6yPdpaKKM
Yes! This monent for me was the first fight with the claw guys who swipe rapidly. It was the first time I felt the rhythm of the combat, which I soon started to feel everywhere, and the game...
Yes! This monent for me was the first fight with the claw guys who swipe rapidly. It was the first time I felt the rhythm of the combat, which I soon started to feel everywhere, and the game clicked. In my case, I even got the satisfaction of it all clicking on two seperate occasions. I replayed it on my steam deck last year, after having originally played on mouse and keyboard around launch. I got to essentially relearn to play the game on controller, and it honestly felt like slowly getting back in the swing of an instrument. When you get the flow right, its really quite a beautiful dance.
Deadlock. I have enough MOBA sense to play and enjoy League, I liked FPSs enough to play heyday TF2 or Neon White, but this is a mix of a little too hardcore for me (who doesn't have time to keep...
Deadlock. I have enough MOBA sense to play and enjoy League, I liked FPSs enough to play heyday TF2 or Neon White, but this is a mix of a little too hardcore for me (who doesn't have time to keep up on this meta) and very dependent on some twitch FPS skills that I don't have. Playing Deadlock just makes me feel terrible. The community seems great and it is fun to play when I'm not sandbagging...
Horror games. If they're too scary I psych myself and I stop playing, lol. There's stuff with a happy medium like Resident Evil and 4 where I don't, but I really nope out of some very atmospheric stuff.
Soulsborne. I just don't have the on-the-fly reflexes, patience, or time; it's like I panic and white out every time I run into an unfamiliar scenario. Which is, y'know, all the scenarios.
F-Zero GX, but I think it's fun even when you constantly go out like a buster. I mean, who among us can really say they're good at it? Eh? Eh?
Marathon, the new one. The extraction shooter. I've not loved a game like I've loved Marathon in a long time, the story is interesting, the style points are off the charts, it feels excellent to...
Marathon, the new one. The extraction shooter. I've not loved a game like I've loved Marathon in a long time, the story is interesting, the style points are off the charts, it feels excellent to play, the characters are inspired, the weapons all feel incredible, it's generally well balanced, the movement is fun, and I avoid other players like the plague because I'll get my shit rocked every single time without fail. I'm Season Level 100, have around 90 hours in the game, and my player kills are probably under 10.
Hah, yeah, reminds me of another one I'm terrible at -- Dark and Darker. Would usually get smoked before I knew what was happening. I don't commit enough to one game to really be able to compete...
Hah, yeah, reminds me of another one I'm terrible at -- Dark and Darker. Would usually get smoked before I knew what was happening. I don't commit enough to one game to really be able to compete and I'm getting slower. I'd like to try and engage with the genre in some respect, but I keep getting put off when I do.
Marathon looks neat, but they don't allow Linux players so I'll never know how I'd feel about that one in particular.
I played a lot of Rocket League back when the community wasn't yet all horrible (I'd say before the sale to Epic and it becoming free to play). Great game but boy do I suck at it! I mean I was...
I played a lot of Rocket League back when the community wasn't yet all horrible (I'd say before the sale to Epic and it becoming free to play). Great game but boy do I suck at it! I mean I was better than a beginner, and did certain things well, but I just couldn't progress past a certain skill level, especially with aerial motion.
yeah air dribbling and predicting the ball in the air is an insane skill. I watched a pro game after playing for a year or so and had no idea the skill ceiling was so high. its actually so...
yeah air dribbling and predicting the ball in the air is an insane skill. I watched a pro game after playing for a year or so and had no idea the skill ceiling was so high. its actually so incredible to watch though.
any 2D Sonic game, I have no idea if it's my fault but they're way too fast paced, I don't have enough time to react to anything AND I can't really see what's happening on the screen since it's so...
any 2D Sonic game, I have no idea if it's my fault but they're way too fast paced, I don't have enough time to react to anything AND I can't really see what's happening on the screen since it's so fast. so it's the worst of both worlds. I actually haven't tried the 3D ones, but my experience would probably be the same
I think you're supposed to memorise the maps, not react to them. Back then we only had like 5 games available to play, so we kept playing them until we knew the maps by heart.
I think you're supposed to memorise the maps, not react to them. Back then we only had like 5 games available to play, so we kept playing them until we knew the maps by heart.
Playing a bunch of Sonic 1 and especially 2 was a core part of my formative gaming experiences. Beat them both multiple times with my neighbor. I tried playing Sonic Mania last year and I SUCKED....
Playing a bunch of Sonic 1 and especially 2 was a core part of my formative gaming experiences. Beat them both multiple times with my neighbor.
I tried playing Sonic Mania last year and I SUCKED. It looks and feels exactly like the games I remember, but I was absolutely hopeless. Granted, I only gave it about three hours, but it was embarrassing enough that I just let it be.
TF2 That hasn't stopped me putting 3500 hours in to the game over the years, but I hit my skill cap long ago and finishing in the top third in the round is about as good as I'll ever manage. And...
TF2
That hasn't stopped me putting 3500 hours in to the game over the years, but I hit my skill cap long ago and finishing in the top third in the round is about as good as I'll ever manage. And that's in casual. I can only imagine how good the players are in competitive.
It sure is a lot of fun though. Hard to believe it's almost 20 years old!
Ouch, okay so this is my #1 game in Steam hours at 2097 (second is 1735 and third is 817), and I haven't even seriously played it in over 15 years. And yeah, I'm way too long gone to ever be...
Ouch, okay so this is my #1 game in Steam hours at 2097 (second is 1735 and third is 817), and I haven't even seriously played it in over 15 years. And yeah, I'm way too long gone to ever be "good" at it again, but your comment makes me realize I could respond the same.
Grand Theft Auto Online is my most-played game, and despite having a character on PC with a level over 400 and a character on Xbox somewhere near level 200, I still cannot beat most other players...
Grand Theft Auto Online is my most-played game, and despite having a character on PC with a level over 400 and a character on Xbox somewhere near level 200, I still cannot beat most other players if they attack me. I just let them get their jollies and never fire a shot at them.
My high RP level comes from the fact that I'm really good at the solo potion, and though I let it start me in public lobbies, I usually only run the stash house mission and then bail to solo lobbies for the rest of my play time. The solo portion of the game I actually am decently good at, if I say so myself.
I was thinking of mentioning GTAO too, but for the complete opposite reason. I love a good PvP game, and my competitiveness just makes me keep pushing even when someone is clearly destroying me,...
I was thinking of mentioning GTAO too, but for the complete opposite reason. I love a good PvP game, and my competitiveness just makes me keep pushing even when someone is clearly destroying me, so I've gotten pretty good at fighting other players. But I struggle so hard with the PvE because, to me, bots are way more unpredictable than actual people. It feels like they know exactly where you are 24/7 (probably because they do) and they just do not peek unless you're completely exposed. Then suddenly five of them appear out of nowhere and shoot you at once to delete you in like 0.0005 seconds...
I’ve found that for me the best way to handle the bots in GTAO is to make sure that I’m playing with the controller and that I have aim assist turned on, which they only enable if you have a...
I’ve found that for me the best way to handle the bots in GTAO is to make sure that I’m playing with the controller and that I have aim assist turned on, which they only enable if you have a controller attached. When I’m playing on Xbox, that’s mandatory. When I’m playing on PC the controller comes in handy for driving and flying and playing the solo stuff. Aim assisted mode is disabled in public lobbies I think in XBOX, but it is enabled for missions. So I duck into cover and as soon as I pop up, I make sure that I’m holding down autolock to nail, whichever NPC I want short burst of fire and then duck back undercover. If I’m on the wing one I flick the left stick to switch targets. Drive rolling also makes you hard to hit. But yes, the NPCs have perfect aim, which is why I have no compunctions about cheesing my fights.
The other big thing is making sure that my stats are all maxed out. I only just (finally) after five years maxed out my strength that because they supply workout equipment in the mansions update and they don’t put a limit on how many workouts you can do in a row so I just sat down over three different sessions and did 100+ reps per session until I maxed out my strength stat. The strength and the health stat both make you a much harder target to kill.
Playing missions in GTAO reminds me a lot of playing retribution paladin around the Burning Curse era of World of Warcraft. In WoW you would have to drink potion after potion after potion spamming that key while you were fighting. In GTA online it’s all about eating those snacks, especially undercover.
I've been playing on PC, and I just enjoy aiming with a mouse too much for auto-aim to really be an option for me. I feel like I have a lot more control over exactly where I'm aiming and which...
I've been playing on PC, and I just enjoy aiming with a mouse too much for auto-aim to really be an option for me. I feel like I have a lot more control over exactly where I'm aiming and which target I'm going for.
I did play with a controller back in the PS3/PS4 days, though, and I remember how satisfying it was to just hold the aim button, flick the stick up, and land perfect headshots over and over.
These days I mostly use the controller for driving and navigating menus, since both feel much easier that way. Snacks are a perfect example: with a mouse, you have to precisely click through three tiny-ass buttons, while on controller you can basically just spam X (A on Xbox). Much less hassle when you're getting shot at.
They might've fixed it but it used to be that keyboard and mouse shooters got wider/less accurate spreads on all weapons than controller players to even out the skill levels a little. You can see...
They might've fixed it but it used to be that keyboard and mouse shooters got wider/less accurate spreads on all weapons than controller players to even out the skill levels a little. You can see if it's still true by going to an AmmuNation with a shooting range and trying it back and forth and see how well you do with mouse firing versus controller firing. I believe that was what caused me to permanently switch to just controller even on PC and stop fighting other players in the bargain.
Also I don't know if you know this, but you don't have to use the interaction menu to eat snacks anymore when you're on foot, they changed that back in I think '22 when the Criminal Enterprises expansion released. But you do need to use the interaction menu to snack/armor when you're in a vehicle. With KB you can hit TAB (by default, unless you rebound it) to bring up your wheel and hit C (again, by default) to consume snacks and V to equip armor.
What's nice is that it skips the eating animation, and while you don't get to choose your snacks, you also don't need to be in cover for them to work correctly now (if you ate them outside of cover for some reason they'd only recover like 5% health regardless of snack type, and now they recover their full value). But again, in a vehicle it's strictly through the interaction menu. This seriously made a lot of us a lot better at missions.
Also if you do decide to use the controller to shoot, hit R3/R Stick Down to zoom in on pretty much any weapon and get even better aim; it's a toggle, too, no holding it. This may just be for weapons with some kind of enhanced sights upgrade, but I genuinely can't remember as I only haul a few of my weapons with me and they're all modded now.
Well, so far I mostly go for headshots or explosives, so people tend to drop in one shot most of the time and the spread hasn't been much of a problem. I have definitely noticed that if I hold the...
Well, so far I mostly go for headshots or explosives, so people tend to drop in one shot most of the time and the spread hasn't been much of a problem. I have definitely noticed that if I hold the trigger for a little too long, though, the bullets start going absolutely everywhere but I thought it was a Machine guns thing rather than an actual mechanic.
With KB you can hit TAB (by default, unless you rebound it) to bring up your wheel and hit C (again, by default) to consume snacks and V to equip armor.
I actually didn't know this! I vaguely remembered something like that being added, but I wasn't very active around the time that update came out, so I never really got used to it. That's definitely useful info and I'll have to start doing that instead.
And yeah, I aim almost exclusively zoomed in already lol. I'm getting old.
Short burst fire is definitely the tactic with bots for sure. I play on a 32” TV less than three feet from my face but I still zoom in. It makes your movements more precise.
Short burst fire is definitely the tactic with bots for sure. I play on a 32” TV less than three feet from my face but I still zoom in. It makes your movements more precise.
Slay the Spire 2. Never played the first one. Didn’t think I’d like this one. Got convinced to try it and now I enjoy it. Only win about 1 out of every 20 attempts. Never made it past ascension 1....
Slay the Spire 2. Never played the first one. Didn’t think I’d like this one. Got convinced to try it and now I enjoy it. Only win about 1 out of every 20 attempts. Never made it past ascension 1. My fault because I haven’t yet built up the vast library of possible strategies/synergies one can pivot into depending on what cards the RNG grants. I see YouTubers claim a 90+% win rate despite the randomness. I guess I believe it, but that comes after hundreds of hours and a savant-like memory… neither of which I possess. Still fun, though :)
I had the same reaction to the first game, but I did get better at it each run and it feels good when you remember the tricks and finally pull out ahead. I think with Slay2 it took me a good 50...
I had the same reaction to the first game, but I did get better at it each run and it feels good when you remember the tricks and finally pull out ahead. I think with Slay2 it took me a good 50 tries to get a victory with Regent but I've definitely learned a lot since then and can usually get a win now with a decent start.
I'll start -- Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It felt like I was catapulted into a boss challenge after barely grasping the controls, getting stunted on so hard I thought it was a scripted fail. It was not....
I'll start -- Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It felt like I was catapulted into a boss challenge after barely grasping the controls, getting stunted on so hard I thought it was a scripted fail. It was not. Laughed, closed it, uninstalled, no hard feelings. I've barely played skater games, I had no skill base and I think they expected folks to have already played Jet Set Radio (Future).
Similarly, Absolute Drift. I couldn't even get through the tutorial here I struggled with the drifting so bad -- maybe the instructions could've been better, but I just couldn't execute. Laughed, closed, uninstalled, no hard feelings.
It's funny to me when I'm terrible at a game since I've played a lot and consider myself more being good at an array of genres than great at a particular one.
I also struggled with Absolute Drift, and that was really frustrating for me as I played so much Need for Speed Underground. I personally felt like the controls were off but all the reviews led me...
I also struggled with Absolute Drift, and that was really frustrating for me as I played so much Need for Speed Underground. I personally felt like the controls were off but all the reviews led me to believe it was just a skill issue.
Wipeout and BallisticNG. Wipeout is more manageable, and is fun, but I really like Zone modes more than the actual racing, the racing isn’t bad but I’m too tuned in to CTR to actually get used to...
Wipeout and BallisticNG.
Wipeout is more manageable, and is fun, but I really like Zone modes more than the actual racing, the racing isn’t bad but I’m too tuned in to CTR to actually get used to other games.
BallisticNG just throws a wrench in the Wipeout muscle memory and how I play it, I only started playing Wipeout with HD/Fury, and BallisticNG is… inspired by the PS1 games which I never played and oh god I can’t even do a good race against AI so I’m just spamming its Survival mode so that I know how to turn without hitting the walls.
Shmups(Bullet Hells mainly) in general, I collect them but don’t play them as much as you’d think my library has.
Rhythm games is not for me to judge, I consider myself maybe average at best, but I do like rhythm games minus vertical scrollers. But it could be the Dunning Kruger effect, I’m either underestimating how bad I could be, or not seeing myself as decent as I could be.
To my dismay, scrolling rhythm games. I'm okay at games that don't scroll (I played a good amount of osu!std) but scrolling games are somehow the only video games to cause me motion sickness, from...
To my dismay, scrolling rhythm games. I'm okay at games that don't scroll (I played a good amount of osu!std) but scrolling games are somehow the only video games to cause me motion sickness, from trying to follow the notes as they fall. I know you're not supposed to follow every note individually and just stare in one spot as they come down but I can't figure it out! (plus my hand-eye coordination fails if I focus too hard on where I look)
I was talking about Deadlock elsewhere in this thread. As a result of that experience, I've begun to believe I probably have a problem with anything involving heavy amounts of macro in general, particularly if it's in real-time and/or competitive on top of it. I've played most genres out there, but the large umbrella of strategy games is mostly unfamiliar to me. I've played Spore, some casual Civilization V and Crusader Kings III with buddies (in the latter of which, I ignored doing any real politics and made it my goal to bang all of my friends' spouses), maybe a tiny bit of Tooth and Tail just because it looked cool visually... that's it. I can't imagine I could ever do well in an RTS.
Also: Counter-Strike 2. It's incredibly slow, until you see someone and then the gunfight lasts half a second. I just can't get used that pacing. I don't know about the other games, though I felt the same when it was still called Global Offensive!
I have 144Hz on my laptop, but my main screen is 60Hz, so come to think of it, I have no idea if I ever tried a VSRG on a higher refresh rate, you're right. Worth trying some day!
I have 144Hz on my laptop, but my main screen is 60Hz, so come to think of it, I have no idea if I ever tried a VSRG on a higher refresh rate, you're right. Worth trying some day!
Wow, that's an interesting one. I have the opposite issue, in that I have so much trouble tracking non-scrolling rhythm games, and especially hate games with touchscreen components like Maimai or...
Wow, that's an interesting one. I have the opposite issue, in that I have so much trouble tracking non-scrolling rhythm games, and especially hate games with touchscreen components like Maimai or Crossbeats where your own arms and hands can end up blocking my vision of the field.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's probably the only game I deeply adore that I'm also nowhere close to beating. I've been playing it for like a decade and a half, so I really should have managed it...
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's probably the only game I deeply adore that I'm also nowhere close to beating. I've been playing it for like a decade and a half, so I really should have managed it by now, but, eh 🤷🏻♀️
Any and all RTSes (except maybe Kenshi, but that's not actually an RTS--just a sandbox RPG with a few borrowed elements.) I have beaten Red Alert 3 (on the easiest of easy mode) with some...
Any and all RTSes (except maybe Kenshi, but that's not actually an RTS--just a sandbox RPG with a few borrowed elements.) I have beaten Red Alert 3 (on the easiest of easy mode) with some struggle, but I just cannot handle it. At all. Civ? I'm decent at my worst and reasonably competent at my best, and I love the scope of information to consider. At my own pace. Sometimes for several minutes before hitting 'End Turn' if I'm vs. AI. Devil May Cry and other stylish action games? When I have my Steam Controller 1.0 fixed up I'm almost pro-tier, and I'm not too shabby at shooters.
But freakin' RTSes destroy me, which is a real shame because several I very much enjoy the story or feeling of (shout-out to Warcraft III, my favorite schlocky fantasy that I must admire from afar). Now if we're talking individual games? Try as I might, I'm just not good at Guilty Gear--any of them. I really want to learn fighting games in general, but Guilty Gear tops the list. Testament is such a cool look, and I really dig the thematic of the weird mutant doctor character, but I might as well be the proverbial little bro with the unplugged controller at the moment.
I am bad at most games. Adult adhd, i guess. I can’t focus on any game longer than 30 minutes. Then I think about stuff I “SHOULD BE DOING” instead. Regardless if I do them or not. I need quick...
I am bad at most games. Adult adhd, i guess. I can’t focus on any game longer than 30 minutes. Then I think about stuff I “SHOULD BE DOING” instead. Regardless if I do them or not. I need quick pick up and play experience or “save anywhere” games.
But, two trends. 1st person shooters give me motion sickness, and Minecraft. I used to try with my kids, 10 years ago. And couldn’t get into Minecraft or fully understand the appeal. Today with my young nephews, i still don’t understand the “point” of the game. But they love it, which is neat.
That's the neat part: there really isn't one, really. Minecraft is one of those rare games where you decide what the objective is. Want to build a little farm and a stable just to have a cozy...
i still don’t understand the “point” of the game.
That's the neat part: there really isn't one, really. Minecraft is one of those rare games where you decide what the objective is.
Want to build a little farm and a stable just to have a cozy place to wander around in? Go for it. Want to recreate some cool building or scene you saw somewhere? Go for it. Want to "finish" the game by beating the Ender Dragon in some weird, unique way, or figure out the fastest possible route to do it? Also go for it.
The only real limits are your knowledge, imagination, and, honestly, how much time and patience you have.
And having a partner with ADHD too, I definitely get how that last part can be a pretty big limiting factor lol. She'll come up with these absolutely insane build ideas that genuinely sound amazing, but if they require a couple stacks of blocks and more than 15 minutes of resource gathering, you can pretty much guarantee she's not doing it.
So half the time I end up gathering everything while she's off doing something else, and by the time I'm ready to actually build it, the idea has completely left her brain and she’s no longer interested. Then I just end up building the thing myself because now I'm invested in it lol.
That’s interesting. I get the appeal of it. I just don’t think I would do it. Same reason why I like the concept of “Skyrim and Oblivion” but when I try them, it just doesn’t click with me. I have...
That’s interesting. I get the appeal of it. I just don’t think I would do it. Same reason why I like the concept of “Skyrim and Oblivion” but when I try them, it just doesn’t click with me.
I have always found myself playing games with quick play sessions for the most part. Mario kart, Smash, Old school fighting game, Sports game, or JRPG (where you can save anywhere). Then I just pay in short bursts with the kids or myself and turn it off. But again, i start thinking about things “i should be doing” with my time instead. And concentrate on that.
That's totally reasonable, I sisn't really expected my words to change such habits since they haven't changed my partner's in that sense but I like sharing what's great about it in case it does...
That's totally reasonable, I sisn't really expected my words to change such habits since they haven't changed my partner's in that sense but I like sharing what's great about it in case it does help you enjoy it a little more at least :D
Define terrible... I love to play chess, and I would even argue I'm pretty good comparing to the Americans I've played. However compared to even what I consider to be a good player, I'm terrible....
Define terrible...
I love to play chess, and I would even argue I'm pretty good comparing to the Americans I've played. However compared to even what I consider to be a good player, I'm terrible. (I'm maybe 1200 ELO on a good day, I consider good at 2000 and up).
I play Magic the Gathering, and I am pretty terrible when it comes to actual winning results. I think 1v1 I'm not even 50% lifetime, and in multiplayer, I think I'm under the 25% average. Don't care tho! It's fun, scratches the brain it the right way.
I can't do anything PVP period. Bonus points for terrible-ness if it requires any sort of mouse coordination. I always knew I disliked League of Legends as a video game and played it purely as a...
I can't do anything PVP period. Bonus points for terrible-ness if it requires any sort of mouse coordination. I always knew I disliked League of Legends as a video game and played it purely as a social activity with friends, but I didn't realize just how much more I enjoy PVE - I like working with people but I just can't make a game out of predicting another human being in opposition to me.
I also can't really do build-making in general... I like having the freedom to play as I wish, but making something actually effective is not my forte. This can span anywhere between Elden Ring and any roguelike because systems synergy is just a foreign concept to me. And it's a coin toss on whether I feel the game experience will be ruined if I just look up a build to copy. I know the Fire Emblems that I've played have felt hit or miss when it comes to discussing difficulty (and resulting enjoyment); I want to engage with the combat encounters and not the build setup aspect of say Awakening and Fates, even if that aspect is just as enjoyable to many FE enjoyers I know.
Counter-Strike. I just don't have the precision and reflexes, and any game that gives such a massive advantage to the first player who is able to click on the other player's head is going to be a...
Counter-Strike. I just don't have the precision and reflexes, and any game that gives such a massive advantage to the first player who is able to click on the other player's head is going to be a game largely about clicking on heads to the detriment of other mechanics. Meanwhile, being worse at clicking heads means you'll have to wait longer between playing and actually having a chance to improve that skill.
At mid-level play a game like Quake 3 is more tactically interesting and doesn't punish players for being bad with too much downtime. Someone who is the better shot can be matched by someone who knows better what fights to pick and when to retreat to recover health and armor or find a better weapon. Someone who is more careful not to die can be matched by someone who takes more risks and dies more often but also gets more kills. Wiggling back and forth in place so as to avoid getting your head clicked is not a viable strategy when there are rockets.
Quacks (of Quedlinburg). There's a bit of skill in remembering what's in your bag, but it's mostly a push your luck game about calculating the odds of busting. Easy enough! And yet. I would...
Quacks (of Quedlinburg). There's a bit of skill in remembering what's in your bag, but it's mostly a push your luck game about calculating the odds of busting. Easy enough! And yet.
I would consistently bust on the worst odds. It's not like I was being cheeky about 50/50 shots or anything. I could consistently lose a 1/8 pull. I did it 3 times in a row one day.
Needless to say, of our board game odyssey, that I was the only one I got swept on.
Oh my god, I hate that game with a passion. I just don't feel like the parts you can control in the game are powerful enough to affect your odds of exploding, and just like you, I had a horrendous...
Oh my god, I hate that game with a passion. I just don't feel like the parts you can control in the game are powerful enough to affect your odds of exploding, and just like you, I had a horrendous streak of exploding over and over again.
It was the only board game I genuinely considered cheating at, and by that point I knew I should just stop playing it entirely and ask my group to try other games. We're now onto Terraforming Mars and I'm having an absolute blast.
Honestly, I seem to be pretty gifted at mostly any genre of video game, so I can't really relate to the plebs on this thread. Jokes aside, I definitely think I just have way more patience/tenacity...
Honestly, I seem to be pretty gifted at mostly any genre of video game, so I can't really relate to the plebs on this thread.
Jokes aside, I definitely think I just have way more patience/tenacity than the average person. If people get frusturated/annoyed at a game, I usually want to beat it just to show it can be done, and I'm usually having fun the whole way through. Sekiros final boss has been mentioned many times here, and it took myself a whole weekend to beat it myself, but I enjoyed essentially every minute of it and the process of getting better was thoroughly enjoyable.
I think if there is one genre of video games I definitely suck at is fighting games, I never really had the chance to play them as a kid when I was younger, save for a Tekken 2 demo disc that was on the PS1.
Nowadays I exclusively play single player games, but FPS, card games, auto-chess, mostly any thing that had a competitive bracket, I would usually rank semi-decently without too much effort (save for league of legends, it took me 3 years to get to Gold)
Small aside, a game that I can consider myself terrible at is Horizon Zero Dawn. I'm just NOT able to play that game. I've tried starting a fresh save file 4 different times and I just find it soooo boring, so I guess that is one game I do suck at, including the aforementioned fighting game genre.
If you're anything like me, try any luck based game and enjoy the suffering of doing everything right and still loosing just because the universe decided so. It's the only kind of game my friends...
I definitely think I just have way more patience/tenacity than the average person
If you're anything like me, try any luck based game and enjoy the suffering of doing everything right and still loosing just because the universe decided so. It's the only kind of game my friends actually enjoy playing with me because it's like a sweet revenge for them.
Hahaha, you pretty much hit it right on the dot. RNG games are not my favorite, but I still enjoy board games and games like x-com enemy unknown to an extent. Even Teamfight Tactics or DOTA Auto...
Hahaha, you pretty much hit it right on the dot. RNG games are not my favorite, but I still enjoy board games and games like x-com enemy unknown to an extent. Even Teamfight Tactics or DOTA Auto Chess has a luck element, and I already found that quite annoying and after the first season I quit playing those games after I reached Gold.
Board games are the most noticeable, yeah. Imagine playing UNO and all your cards being the same colour and as soon as you have a +2 or +4 everyone else have one so it ends up looping back to you....
Board games are the most noticeable, yeah. Imagine playing UNO and all your cards being the same colour and as soon as you have a +2 or +4 everyone else have one so it ends up looping back to you. Or in DND, your class is suposed to be super agile and your character have been training a certain skill his whole live but as soon as his destiny is in the hands of my dice he becomes the most useless character in the universe.
Any first person shooter, but especially Counter Strike (GO or 2) and Valorant. I have no aim and I play with a wireless mouse which probably doesn’t help. This hasn’t stopped me from putting...
Any first person shooter, but especially Counter Strike (GO or 2) and Valorant. I have no aim and I play with a wireless mouse which probably doesn’t help. This hasn’t stopped me from putting hundreds of hours into the games however.
Platforming games, especially 2D platformers. I'll look at them and think "man that looks fun" and then I'm missing jumps and doing terrible. I remember getting Spelunky 2 after watching...
Platforming games, especially 2D platformers. I'll look at them and think "man that looks fun" and then I'm missing jumps and doing terrible. I remember getting Spelunky 2 after watching LethalFrag play it for a bit, and I was absolutely terrible. I'll try playing a game in the genre occasionally to see if I've somehow become better at them, but with how limited my gaming time is now, I've just come to accept that I probably won't play any platformers in my limited personal gaming time. I might play some with my kids, as I recently showed them Spyro and there are other kid friendly platforming games.
I am not great at most first/third person view games that require quick reflexes or real time fighting. Eg, I like the puzzle stuff of botw etc, but the fighting parts are more annoying than...
I am not great at most first/third person view games that require quick reflexes or real time fighting.
Eg, I like the puzzle stuff of botw etc, but the fighting parts are more annoying than enjoyable.
Any non-rhythm games that require timing or accuracy or quick response. So, Minecraft is too hard for me :| even discounting the nausea from first / third person games. Basically, all of them....
Any non-rhythm games that require timing or accuracy or quick response.
So, Minecraft is too hard for me :| even discounting the nausea from first / third person games.
Basically, all of them. Some games are forgiving enough that I can farm until I'm nearly invincible in order to get through the challenges. Classic arcades I can push through with emulators (unlimited tokens + heavy save state scumming) . Guess I should be thankful rhythm games are fine as long as they don't throw in another layer of challenge like Crypt of the Necromancer/ Necrodancer
I've thought a lot about this over the years. I think in general having played so many games i'm good at pattern recognition, I usually was the first one to figure out 'how' to win and would jump...
I've thought a lot about this over the years. I think in general having played so many games i'm good at pattern recognition, I usually was the first one to figure out 'how' to win and would jump out winning early amongst most friends I had. However over time I would always fall off if anybody stuck to the game for a few months I couldn't keep up and break into high level play. I find that I have focus issues, either boredom, or even if I like the game I get some pretty bad brain drag where I don't want to think and just go down to people terrible at the game due to disinterest playing them or just exhaustion. It's funny for some of the games I was into I felt like a boss mob for skilled players, they would wake up my brain and I'd play way harder than I could normally, just enough to make them struggle to win but they would on average come out on top, just like a perfectly tuned boss should play. I am starting to think this year I might have ADHD which might contribute to this kind of on/off difficulty and am planning to try to get evaluated as an adult.
So it's been some time since I've played anything competitive and I suspect that I'm pretty slow in my late 40s, I imagine i'd be bad at anything competitive now a days. However if we are talking the breadth of like 40 years of gaming there are some absolutes for me that I'm bad at.
Driving. All things driving. I suck, suck suck. I conceptually understand what to do but damn getting through that corner right, nope. Grand tursimo 2, i have nightmares about some of the license corners. I just don't get it, if i do drive decently, it's always too conservatively, it's like too much brain effort to drive it on the edge around a track for me and I just can't do it.
Baseball. All things baseball, from rbi baseball to hard ball 3 to mlb 20xx batting just doesnt work for me. Maybe the projection or whatever it is I just have no concept of timing and batting.
Madden all years. I understand the concepts in football, but I don't know how to play this game well. There is no literature about how this black box of a game works, the community is steeped in money pay me for my secret lessons and nobody really breaks down WTF do you do to play madden well ever. I have never been able to enjoy the games much except for the times they made huge technology leaps. That was like from 4th & inches to snes maddend, to the PS2 madden, then the huge leap for dreamcast football game, which i totally forget the name, then an xbos 360 version and then I stopped caring.
Airplane dogfighting. I never got beyond turn left till you see something then shoot at it. I did find this wonderful novel about online dogfighting called 'in pursuit' I read a while back that was amazingly fascinating, so I understand now wwI / wwII dogfighting with energy management and all of that. However I did not have the joy in trying to put it into practice, so it's not something I was or could ever get decent at.
That's it for my crippling deficiencies in gaming, oh that and puzzle / word games, i'm terrible with those.
Poker. Not necessarily that I'm bad at playing it (I am), but I also don't have any desire in me to get better at it, so the rare times I get looped in to a poker game, I just stumble through it...
Poker.
Not necessarily that I'm bad at playing it (I am), but I also don't have any desire in me to get better at it, so the rare times I get looped in to a poker game, I just stumble through it and lose my money (real or imaginary) and go on with my life.
Furi. I don't jibe with the diablo-y perspective in action games, and the dash has this awkward lead time that makes it feel bad to me. Often when I find a game difficult I am willing to bang my...
Furi. I don't jivejibe with the isodiablo-y perspective in action games, and the dash has this awkward lead time that makes it feel bad to me. Often when I find a game difficult I am willing to bang my head into the wall for a while to beat it (Celeste, Slay the Spire A20, Super Hexagon, etc.), but not so here.
I'm terrible at FPS and rhytmic/fast-paced games all around. When we played coop with three of my friends ARMA 3, two of them.got like 30 kills while I and the other one got like 6 kills. I...
I'm terrible at FPS and rhytmic/fast-paced games all around.
When we played coop with three of my friends ARMA 3, two of them.got like 30 kills while I and the other one got like 6 kills. I revived the forst two quite a lot though, so one may say that I'm better in a supporting role. But CS2 doesn't have supporting roles :-) In Team Fortress 2 I played Medic or Engineer.
I wouldn't be good at Beat Saber, but that's one thing I want to change. The same goes for Taiko no Tatsuin where I could do only the basic difficulty (but I don't have any plans for that).
Deadlock. I very much like the idea of a shooter-MOBA. Unfortunately, I tend to be mid at best with FPS. Planetside 2 is the only one I ever got decent at and it took me years to get there. And...
Deadlock. I very much like the idea of a shooter-MOBA. Unfortunately, I tend to be mid at best with FPS. Planetside 2 is the only one I ever got decent at and it took me years to get there. And MOBAs? Well, this is the first one I've played. I've done a game here or there of League and DOTA, but nothing sustained.
I think it also doesn't help that I'm terrible at builds and such. Sigh.
Similar boat... I tried Deadlock for a good while because I was interested in a new movement shooter by Valve. Who wouldn't be? It's a genre I love by a developer who's games I've played a good...
Similar boat... I tried Deadlock for a good while because I was interested in a new movement shooter by Valve. Who wouldn't be? It's a genre I love by a developer who's games I've played a good amount of. I kept hearing the main turn-off people had with it was how mechanically demanding it is. I love mechanically demanding!
But I couldn't get used to MOBA. I'd tried a few before but never enjoyed them long term. This time, I gave it a serious go, tried picking up concepts of macro and whatever skills are exclusive to it. Not only did I realize I sucked at it, I also found that I did not enjoy it at all.
I've been wondering if, maybe, that dislike of macro is tied to my ADHD in some way. I'm hopelessly terrible at thinking ahead. I don't want to play a game where my success is wholly based on it. I guess I'm just incompatible with the genre.
For me, I actually enjoy the macro. I love strategy and tactics. I pretty much only played Deadlock with friends and I often had my eyes on the mini map, mentioning in Discord where the opposing...
For me, I actually enjoy the macro. I love strategy and tactics. I pretty much only played Deadlock with friends and I often had my eyes on the mini map, mentioning in Discord where the opposing players were, trying to predict where they would be, whether we should be hitting objectives or not, etc. I wasn't the shot caller, but I definitely was constantly reading the game state and trying to figure out what to do next and making suggestions. And there were definitely times we won because I was able to get my friends to get out of the solo/team fighting tunnel vision. Like forget the kills; we can win this right now if focus objectives!
Unfortunately, I'm just bad at the micro. Can't land my shots, can't build out a build (I pretty much just used public builds), I'm slow to farm, etc. Plus, the movement system in that game is crazy. I don't understand all the corner jumping and such.
Sekiro. I've tried many times since it came out but I am a Souls vet and I just can't play it the same way.
I have no idea how to not get dogwalked by trash mobs by the time I get to Hirata Estate. I've tried to start over a dozen times, watched YT vids, just can't make it happen.
I mean, it makes sense. You’re good at action RPGs, why would that translate to a rhythm game? ;)
You’re not asking for advice, but for whatever it’s worth, Hirata is considered a mid/late-game location even though you can access it early. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed if you explore it right when you first find it.
Oh, that is good to know. I thought I was kind of on a rail and there weren't other options. Now I'm wondering where else I can go. Which means I'm probably going to beat my head against it yet again soon.
This exact situation is my biggest gripe with souls like games and what ultimately keeps me from enjoying them. It feels like everything has to be looked up or else you make the game twice as hard.
I think every person draws a different line on where a challenge passes from fair to unfair and for me that reliance on outside information is unfair. Games can be challenging and still teach you along the way.
It's a shame because I enjoy most everything else about them. I just don't want to pull up a guide every time I play.
For what it's worth I think games can be very capable of telling players to veer away from those areas as a new player and keep it in the game as an option with good signposting. I didn't like Mina the Hallower enough to play much more, but it was pretty clear about an intended order while keeping the map open.
Not that I disagree, though - the last thing I remember about playing DS1 was choosing to go down an elevator at a fork and getting immediately bodied by some ghosts with some kusarigama kinda weapons flailing about like sawblades. (if anyone could enlighten me on whether that was a bad idea I'd appreciate it 🙃)
It was. That's a mid to late area. Those ghosts require special items for you to even have hit them.
The intended path is up, to the bell tower.
The DS1 approach to telling players to veer away from a later game area is to stick some extra hard enemy type you don't have an answer to yet.
Where you were in the game there were 3 major paths forward, but one had those ghosts you encountered and another had skeletons which are resurrected indefinitely after a few seconds.
The problem with this approach is plenty of players either overlook the 'intended' path or get stubborn about it, especially since the game has a reputation for being brutally difficult so it's not completely outside the realm of believability to have a sudden difficulty spike.
I made the same mistake and tried to plow the hirata estate as soon as I found it. I did eventually overcome it, but there is another direction you can go that is imho a little gentler introduction to the game. Still, it doesn't get easier as you go and you can't out level many things like in the souls series, so you'll have to get the rhythm down for bosses, and if you don't enjoy doing it I wouldn't torture yourself with it.
Find your block button, and mash mash mash mash mash.
Seriously though, that was the hardest game I've ever beaten. The final boss was absolutely brutal. Even the first castle boss was rough, and that was only like half way through the game.
I finally twigged on to the "mash block" early on (vs holding block) but 1) not everything can be blocked and it's not always clear what can be and what can't and what needs a special counter, and 2) my fault is regardless I can't seem to get the timing down in any case.
I say that as someone who was an absolute Parry God in Dark Souls--Gwyn only takes 60 seconds because you only need like 3 parries total with a sufficiently upgraded weapon, which is trivial to land if you practice, and I was a beast with it in PVP. Not sure where I'm missing it here.
Good news, Sekiro is made for players who love to parry. The difference is you only get a 'riposte' if you parry until their stamina bar is drained. You can miss a few or whatever, it only grows back slowly. Learning openings to throw in a few sword attacks inbetween parries to keep consistently draining their stamina is the goal. Gotta break the habit of dodging attacks and instead learn the rhythm of attack chains to parry.
It’s been a while since I’ve played, but if I recall correctly, virtually everything that doesn’t make a red warning symbol pop-up on the screen (with an accompanying orchestral string hit) can be deflected (parried). The timing might suck or feel super unintuitive, but it should hold true for most anything. That’s not to say that there won’t be status buildups like poison, fire, etc but those are relatively rare.
I was only half joking in my other comment about it being a rhythm game. I actually hard-disagree on the stance of “mashing” the deflect button. You should never be mashing anything. Your deflects should be precise inputs in time with whatever the enemies’ swings are. Mashing will get you punished because the reset between mashes leaves you vulnerable. If you’re unsure on the timing of an enemy attack, better to try to time the deflect, but then keep the block button held in case you blocked early. Then once you figure out their timing, switch to single quick taps.
Your stamina also resets faster when you’re blocking, which is another unintuitive non-soulslike approach. The game wants you to block until an attack is about to hit, then let up and tap again to deflect. It feels super weird to get used to, but it feels so good once you get into the rhythm.
I wish I opened this post when I first saw it a couple days ago now :(
Do not mash parry. You only need to hit it once and doing it multiple times is detrimental.
You must learn the game. Every boss can be cheesed.
Except the last boss. If you do not learn the game properly, you will not be able to defeat this boss.
That boss took me a nice 69 tries the first time I beat the game. That's when the game really clicked for me. I platinumed the game (minimum three runs) and my fourth or fifth time, I beat the final boss without taking any damage at all. That was the day Elden Ring launched and a few weeks after the last time I beat the game and on a different system (I was unable to beat the game on PC after cheesing other bosses before I finally beat the game on PS5).
As other people have said, Sekiro is a rhythm/dance game masquerading as an action game. That realization is when the game actually clicked and I was able to beat the last boss within a few tries at that point. I thought it had clicked earlier, but I was wrong.
It's the best, most rewarding combat in any game ever and I'll mikiri counter anyone who says otherwise (including me before the game clicked).
Hesitation is defeat.
I think Sekiro throws a lot of people off because there's almost no skill holdovers from other souls games. My theory of why so many people love Bloodborne is because it's close enough to be familiar, lets you spec/gear into a playstyle you are most comfortable with, but it still has enough novelty to maintain its own identity. Sekiro hands you a single playstyle/build and tells you to adapt it to situations it would clearly not be suited for in any other souls game.
It's interesting because I bought Bloodborne on release in 2016 and had a similar issue, just couldn't get the feel for the different style of combat. Put it down for literally 10 years--I picked it back up this past February--and just blasted through it with a Skill build using the Saw Spear.
My hubris made me pick up Sekiro again right after that and I got completely humbled pretty much right away.
I have never won a game of Settlers of Catan, and therefore I hate it. I think I started playing like 10 years too late... Also the people I've played with had no remorse.
Catan is a game that is unfortunately "solved" and you can only truly enjoy it when playing against people of the same skill level as yourself. If someone knows the code and nobody else does, they will clean up. It's like trying to play Mario kart against someone who plays far too much of it. You'll just get optimized out of the game.
That surprises me. You'd think the random map and the high amount of trade between players would make it very hard to solve.
Do you happen to know the "solution"? I usually focus on the good numbers, figuring as long as I have a high and steady income, I can trade for what I can't produce. It works sometimes, but I feel like I just as often lose to the player who built 4 cities on the number 3 or something ridiculous like that.
I can give you some good general rules to play by. Some I’ve learned through people analysing the game mathematically, but lots just based on vibes. My family and I play a dozen games per year, with or without lots of expansions, and I’m generally considered the strongest player in every game unless I get unlucky early on.
Others here have already mentioned placing your settlements on the more likely numbers, and that’s certainly part of it, but not the whole story. When planning my first few settlements and general strategy, I’ve often made slightly less optimal choices (if you were looking at raw odds for dice rolls), by using tricks to compound advantage or mitigate risk.
My first trick is that, perhaps unintuitively, if your resources arrive in a feast-and-famine (e.g. many turns with no resources, then a few turns with loads of them) you’re much better off than if they trickle in slowly but consistently. Therefore rather than diversifying my numbers to try to get some resources on every turn, I instead try to build on the same numbers, so that when my number is rolled I get a lot more, but when my number isn’t rolled I just sit there doing nothing. I suspect this is because the robber (rolling a 7 and discarding cards) punishes holding onto resources for longer, but I’m not sure.
My second trick is that ore and wheat are more valuable than brick and wood. I suspect a lot of people believe that their value is shaped by the progression of the game (e.g. bricks and wood are more valuable early game and less valuable late game) but my impression is that ore and wheat are always the best value resources, and only the relative value changes (e.g. they’re slightly more valuable early game and dramatically more valuable late game, but always more valuable).
Within my family games, I find that the first player to upgrade a city is always a strong contender at the finish line, but the first to claim longest road or the first to build an extra settlement doesn’t necessarily convert that into a win. Personally I think this effect is so strong that I will often place my first settlements on a 4/9 wheat/ore over a 6/8 brick/wood.
Additionally, if you only have access to wood and brick, you can only build roads, and maybe trade to get settlements. However if you have ore/wheat/sheep, you can build cities but also buy development cards. Development cards can move the robber (Knight cards, which both frees up your tiles, and steals resources from others), directly place roads (Road Building card), grab whatever resources you’re lacking (Year of Plenty card), or just claim what everyone else has (Monopoly card). Or just a flat victory point. They enable versatility, to grant you access to resources if you lack something important, so going all-in on these resources is much less risky than going all-in on brick and wood.
My third trick, although this is more difficult, is just to try to keep track of what resources people have, or rather what they don’t have. I don’t necessarily mean remembering every single dice roll and every single purchase that players make, that’s far too difficult to keep track of for me. I’ll never be good at card counting. However, if I hear three other players asking “does anyone have wood to trade” turn after turn, and nobody takes them up on it, I mentally note down that wood is more valuable at the moment. So if I get some, I make sure to trade stronger than 1:1 and if I need it, I will probably need to trade generously, or get lucky that I have exactly what the other players need.
This one is also important to keep an eye out for a shift in the value — I’ve often seen games where early on, everyone is in need of brick because they’re so easy to spend. So the value increases, and players are trading 2:1 to get hold of brick from another player. But then later in the game, I see other players making the mistake of thinking brick still demands a higher price, but the game has moved on from the expansion phase and instead brick has plummeted in value (from oversupply and lower demand) so the player holding all the brick thinks they have a goldmine on hand, but nobody is interested in trading with them, so they fall behind in trading for what they need because they misunderstand the value.
I hope this has helped and I haven’t just waffled too much, but if you have any follow up questions, I’d be happy to answer and share what I know! (Unless you’re going to join my family game nights, then I’ll keep my secrets to myself because I’m a bit competitive like that)
The quote are doing a lot of lifting here because its an optimizing problem and not deterministic like checkers or tic-tac-toe (both of which are mathmatically solved)
Basically you need to first prioritize your resources by getting the largest possible numbers for whatever is available. Yeah, you can get bad rolls but trying your best to just as many resources as possible so you can trade for what is important. 6 and 8 are your friends, but in reality just stay away from stuff that is either statistically too low or too high to reliably get on a 2d6.
Second is trading smartly. If you know the values of the cards in the current game (who needs what) then you can bully others for stuff you need. This is extra true for experienced players against newer players, as they will be able to mask the deal as equal, but end up practically robbing them blind.
If you can do both, you will clean up at the table. I have a similar observation with Ticket to Ride, where you just complete as many cards as reasonably possible and you will start winning as more often than not. Get greedy early on, that Seattle-New York will carry you most of the way to victory and you likely will complete it unless something goes incredibly wrong and dont be afraid to take more cards late, there usually one card in the set that is relatively painless to connect.
It isn't actually "solved" in the way that one typically says games are solved, nor is it actually solvable. See solved games for a definition of what Catan is not. However, vanilla Catan is pretty simple in terms of game mechanics, and experienced players who know the mechanics will win more than other people. There are no guaranteed wins though; you could get on all the 6 / 8 spots and have them never roll in a game and then lose, because chance plays a significant role in individual games. But over time, if you find good spots on the board and make savvy trades, your win percentages will go up.
Don't feel bad about Catan - feel bad for Catan. There's a lot of very experienced board gamers that detest Catan for many reasons.
My recommendation - suggest another board game whenever it gets brought up.
My friend owned Ninja Burger and also could never win a game. We must've played 50 times before he finally won, and then it was put away and never played again.
Chess. I'm bad at it because I don't like it. And it's a sort of fundamental dislike where I irrationally think less of people who play seriously and my brain turns off completely if I'm playing.
Its so bad that I don't recall ever winning a game of chess against another person. But because I play Go, board games like Scythe/Twilight Imperium and map-making for TTRPGs; people sometimes assume I must enjoy chess too. I think the dislike has to do with how much it is meta-gaming with every possible opening and response being defined and graded.
Similar thing with Counter Strike, DOTA, Smash, StarCraft and many other esports. Can't bring myself to engage fully when people have meta-ed the fun out of a game.
~ Baldesar Castiglione, Etiquette for Renaissance Gentlemen, 1528 A.D.
Baldesar Castiglione doing a better job summing up my thoughts on chess 500 years ago than I can today. Chess makes me irrationally angry.
Chess bothers me because people tout it as a sign of genius, but in reality it's just memorizing patterns and using said patterns to your advantage. I respect people's ability visualize several moves ahead (I can't do that) but I don't enjoy the idea that it's the game of geniuses when there are far more dynamic and interesting games out there that are way more intellectually stimulating.
I think pattern recognition is a big part of it but as you get more advanced in chess it does absolutely help your ability to visualize future actions, which can be a great mental exercise. Does it mean you’re smart/a genius? Absolutely not. But I do think chess is a great game to help keep your mind active and sharp, and if not playing speed chess, probably does help with attention span.
Would you kindly give some examples of the more dynamic & intellectually stimulating games you had in mind?
I personally love playing Go and Backgammon as the more classical games.
Backgammon is a game of luck and logistics. You need to move all your pieces from one place to another down a straight(ish) road. You are rewarded for personal initiative and judgement over diminishing your opponent. I find it fun as a negotiation and puzzle to untangle a web of problems and its a lot more social than adversarial. (In my experience, there's not a lot of backgammon hustlers/experts going on power trips over new players) Sometimes you just get bad rolls. Other times your piece is backloged and you just need to wait it out. Creating incentives for your opponent to clear your path is a lot more efficient than holding up the entire game.
Go is a game about principles and priorities over the strict doctrine and calculus of chess. Also, depending on the scoring system, it's two very different games. If you're playing for area, you want to have as much board presence as possible, plus uncontested space around that area so that's a game of cleaver accumulation. If you play for Territory, you want to claim space at minimum cost and are rewarded for effeciency. Either way, there's no inherent value to any one piece or position outside the context of the game (granted, there is some prime real estate on the board but its not too hard to invalidate it). In my mind, because chess is so reductive, the end of a good game devolves into a slug fest for scraps and is not much fun. While the end of a good game of Go will push your analytical thinking to its limits. Also, I just find a go board exceptionally satisfying to look at by the end. It sometimes feels like a shame to reset.
I don't like Chess either, but there are two chess-like games that I like: Onitama and Hive. Both are "complete information" like Chess, but with their own spin.
I love Hive! I feel like it could eventually (d)evolve in a similar way to Chess over the long run, but it still feels fresh and rewarding to explore strategies with friends in casual games in a way that reminds me of how I used to feel about Chess as a kid.
In case you haven't heard of it, you might appreciate Chess960 (also known as Fisher Random Chess). It shuffles the back row, so you can't just memorize positions anymore and have to actually think about the situation on the board.
I feel very similarly. I think it stems from the fact that when I find myself playing chess, I often find myself in terrible company. The first person to teach me chess was my eldest cousin. The first person to teach me what it meant to be a sore winner was that same cousin. He liked to play against me because I'd just move pieces at random and he could see the pattern of the current board and make the next perfect move.
He was A Beautiful Mind-ing it and I was on the other side miserable and wanting to do anything else. When I learned you could lay your king down on its side and declare defeat, any time he'd set up the chess board I'd simply put my king on its side as my opening move and leave the table.
To this day I consider chess the sport of insufferable dickheads and if you like it (well, if you think it’s the superior game over all others ) then I (probably) actively think poorly of you (or an at least kinda meh about you), especially because (I assume) you'll be a gloating little prick who thinks I'm just jealous (as has been my experience with many chess nerds). I'm not jealous of your ability to memorize patterns, I'm annoyed that you think that applied pattern recognition makes you special and somehow superior to other people (or at least that your behaviors and mannerisms suggest that). There's a smugness to (most) serious (ranked) chess players that makes me want to smash the board over their head (metaphorically) and shove the queens up their nostrils base-first (hyperbolically).
Apparently that's a trigger for me...
Edited to add second thoughts
Its interesting that you play Go, but don't have the same issue. Go is definitely older than chess, and might be the only potential rival for chess as far as games that have been absolutely overanalyzed and optimized in the same way.
Stealth games. All of them. I made just one attempt at getting into Hitman, never cast a second glance at Splinter Cell, almost rage quit Breath of the Wild over the Yiga base mission, stay far away from any immersive sim game... I don't have the memory to remember all enemy patterns, the patience to wait for them to get into the right position, the timing to pass them or take them out unseen, or the presence to realise when I'm visible.
Agreed 100%. The absolute worst is when you've been playing and enjoying a non-stealth game for awhile and then they force a stealth sequence on you but the mechanics aren't even really there to facilitate it. Nothing will make me rage quit harder.
I feel this very much. I was recently playing through Deliver Us the Moon and having a decent time, up until a segment where you need to sneak past a bunch of floating death spheres several hours into the game. After a few failed attempts to power through it I uninstalled it. I felt so burned I don't even want to watch a playthrough on YouTube to see what I missed.
I made it through that section of DUtM after watching another player solve it on YouTube; turns out there's no trick to it, you just gotta go for it. After seeing that it could be done, it only took me another three or four tries to make it work (after like six or seven tries before looking it up, ugh. I kept getting the zappy spheres pulled up towards the respawn point, so they basically were spawncamping me).
The game as a whole was... ok, but not great and I don't think you're missing much not finishing it. I played it through with my dad, which made it more fun. I liked it enough that I'll probably pick up the sequel eventually, but only on a decent sale, and only after I've worked through some other better ones I have my eyes on first.
I absolutely loathed stealth games or sequences as I play video games to be distracted and amused, not to be challenged. Then a random Steam Sale kind of changed the game part of my life when a game called "Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun" was up for like 5 bucks. It got great reviews so I bought it.
I found it to be enjoyable and relatively easy, then I noticed in the achievements thingy at the end of the levels would mention something like "never alerted any enemies", and I thought how in the hell would you do that? Or more importantly why would I even care?
I finished the game but the idea that there might be another way to play it annoyed me, so I started over from scratch. I hadn't realized that I had learned a great deal during the first run. The behavior of the enemies is really simple, way less complicated than Hitman for example. As it turns out, there were all kinds of subtle level design decisions that weren't at all obvious the first play through, and because I wasn't struggling to manage the controls and stuff the second time through, it was actually enjoyable for the first time in my life to try to remain undetected instead of laying waste to everything.
I've now played through the games from that studio (sadly now defunct) probably a half-dozen times which is really rare for me, and I found that I can finally enjoy stealth games, provided the save/restore commands are really fast as they are an integral part of playing the game and it would be instantly tedious if restoring took more than a couple of seconds.
anyway if you're like me and struggled to understand how people could actually enjoy playing a stealth game, I couldn't see it until Shadow Tactics, and while I don't find games like Hitman quite as enjoyable, Shadow Tactics and the other Mimimi games did finally get me into the mindset that is required to enjoy them with almost zero frustration. And they're cheap as hell.
Ohhh that Yiga clan hideout! Between the one-hit kills and that section disabling the extra life/Mipha's Grace I'd worked hard for, and then getting yanked out of my glider in the misty forest section I had to take a long break from the game. I don't think I ever finished it completely, and I did enjoy it over all, but those two incidents really put me off it for a while.
I learned later that there's a recommended order to do the four areas of the map, and the desert area is recommended to do last. If I recall correctly, those guards do 8 or so hearts damage, so as long as you have more than that, they won't be able to one-hit kill you.
I knew none of this when I played the game, so I went to the desert first...
The first time I played BotW I snuck into the Yiga clan hideout and carefully did all the stealth stuff like you're supposed to do. The second time I used a workaround that let me skip straight to the fight, something to do with I think a ladder and some kind of portal that had spikes that I could just land in that let me skip the whole thing. I just booted BotW to see how much of a detour it would be and apparently the last time I played was 2023 and I was in Hyrule castle. I don't think I've ever beat the final boss...
Same for me, I occasionally get hooked into trying one because of the theme or characters and rarely last more than 20mins. I just assume most of them want players to save and reload the game constantly until they get it right since so many of them offer no real hints while you play.
Despite my general love of other Smash games, and platform fighters in general, I cannot play Super Smash Bros Melee, much to my chagrin. I think, because I grew up on SSB Brawl and later games, I am far too accustomed to input buffering systems that are more forgiving compared to the precision required by Melee. I find the lack of an input buffer makes it feel like Melee always misses my inputs, or is somehow ‘sticky’. Add on that you cannot disable the ‘up’ input on the control stick being used for jump, a convention familiar in other fighting games but eschewed in modern platform fighters, I just find it really hard to control the characters in Melee. Naturally this is very dissatisfying to me as I consider myself something of a platform fighting game aficionado - I ought to be able to play the definitive game in the genre. But unfortunately I don’t have the time I once did to really dig my teeth into the game and develop the right muscle memory, so it seems Melee will remain something of a white whale for me.
I can also add on League of Legends, despite logging over 2000 hours in the lifetime of my account, I peaked Silver. Blame this on the general game design that makes growing as a player really tough, plus an off and on relationship with the game over the more than a decade I have been involved with it.
Finally I’ll also mention Valorant and Counter-Strike. I was really bummed out when a few friends of mine got really into these games and got good, as I could never have fun playing with them because I’m basically not very good at shooters.
I had 9 years in League when I dropped it, the best I got was Gold 4. In the last few years even playing with friends stopped being fun. I was a jungle main and keeping good mental in games with randoms was impossible since I felt like the team punching bag, so I didn't keep up with my friends' skill levels. That resulted in me dragging the group down when we played together, and it just overall stopped being fun.
As a result, I play almost no PvP games. Anything team-based feels too close to League with everyone blaming each other; anything solo I fall behind on because I didn't play PvP FPS games and don't have the instincts for them. My single player library is big enough anyway.
I lost a good friend to League that experienced something similar. He's better now, but he'll always carry the trauma of those dark days.
I played a crazy amount of Leauge ages ago. I was a silver denizen like you, constantly striving to get better but always falling short. Then something clicked, my study paid off and I started climbing quite consistently. I found myself at the top of gold and realized that I had progressed. I've reached new heights and I am not any happier. In fact, I felt like I wasn't having fun at all despite my success. I put down the game then and there and never picked it up again.
I'll second League of Legends. Tried to get good but couldn't get past the changing metagame strategy, matchups, and specifically the mental game.
I love so much about the concept but I have not come across a game that turns normal empathetic humans into their worst selves over the course of an hour like that game does. It's like Lord of the Flies every game, a psychological unwinding that starts subtly at first before cascading into people crucifying each other for not bringing enough pink wards for STUPID AP TEEMO and his STUPID MUSHROOMS.
Try any other platform fighters. The Rivals of Aether games are great games that take a lot from Melee while also including input buffering, tech from Brawl and later, and lots more of their own uniqueness.
Yep I love RoA (especially the original), one of my all time favourite and most played games!
all of them. board games, video games, card games, yard games, bar games...
I've had to come to terms with this recently that I'm just plain not good at games. I enjoy them, but can't play much of anything that's competitive because I never win.
🤝
You are not alone!
It is a running joke with my friends that I am genuinely bad at games, and they're 100% right. I'll watch them play something and it's like I can see everything falling into place for them: their mastery of the controls, their understanding of the mechanics, etc.
When I play, the opposite happens. I'm clumsily making my way around; I don't fully understand how everything works together. I play nearly every single game on easy/casual difficulty, if it lets me. Even then, I still sometimes have trouble.
I've actually thought a lot about why this is, and I've settled on four different complimentary theories:
In real life, in games, in general -- I'm clumsy. I'm whatever the opposite of "graceful" is. This is especially true when things get tense, so when the action ramps up, or there's a boss fight or whatnot, I tend to do even worse.
I'm amazed at people that can like, take in a lot of information, process it, and hold on to it concurrently. I'll learn a board game with my friends, and we'll be 30 minutes in and they've already mastered the mechanics and strategies, all while I'm still just trying to remember the basics of what to do and how to play. If a video game tutorial shows me something once (e.g. a special move or something) and doesn't come back to it for a bit, you'd better believe that I'm going to forget about it. I genuinely have to give myself a conscious mental narration for when I'm learning a game to try to help remind me about what options are available to me.
Back when Slay the Spire came out, a friend was getting us into it so we hotseatted it and took turns playing. The group found my playthrough EXCRUCIATINGLY slow because I had to read each card each time -- even when I had already read the card multiple times before and knew what it did. All of them were very good at seeing, say, "Shiv", processing it once, and then incorporating that information into their wider understanding of the game. When "Shiv" came back up, they automatically knew and understood its use. Meanwhile, I had to sort of process all the information given to me each time in order to make an informed decision. It wasn't enough for me to just go "oh, that's a Shiv" because I had to evaluate my understanding of that card against the different cards in my hand each time, or the new enemies that I was facing, etc. The same goes for every other card. There was too much information for me to hold on to, which was why I had to "refresh" that information each time.
I think this is basically just an extension of what I talked about in #2 because I think it's also a product of my working memory. My friends can just sort of slurp up a whole bunch of info all at once and convert it into a shorthand that they can work with, whereas I have to deliberately focus on different things to make them make sense. My visual metaphor for this is they've got a desk full of papers, all facing up, and they know where everything is and how to access whatever they need immediately. Meanwhile, I've got a stack of papers, and I have to shuffle and read to even find the right one in the first place. Despite all my attempts, I'm never able to lay them all out at once like they seem to be able to do. They'll stay stacked, and I'll always have to spend time shuffling through them.
My husband always makes fun of me (in a loving husband sort of way) for not being able to find things. I will open the fridge to find, say, the ketchup. I know what the ketchup looks like, and where it is likely to be, and yet it will still take me some genuine effort to locate it. At other times, I'm genuinely unable to locate it. Meanwhile, if I ask him where the ketchup is, he will be able to tell me exactly where it is. From the couch. Without even looking.
My brother-in-law experiences the same thing with my sister. They have a "game" called "Can I Point at It?" where she'll ask where something is, and he'll ask the titular question, which means that the item is literally within line-of-sight. She'll then stubbornly say "no" and insist on continuing to look at it herself.
At our most recent full-family vacation, my brother was looking for a specific drink. The place we were staying in had two different fridges, so he opened the first one, didn't see it, went to the second one, didn't see it, and then asked us where it was. My husband, again, from the couch, described where it was in the first fridge. My brother went back, opened it up, and, lo and behold, there it was. I excitedly said to my husband "see, it's not just me!"
Immediately following this, my dad walked into the room and asked where my mom was. My mom was sitting on a chair literally right in front of him. I grabbed my husband's arm excitedly and again said "SEE, IT'S NOT JUST ME!" We had a good laugh, and our in-laws then bonded over their shared experiences of dealing with my biological family's bizarre inability to find things.
As this pertains to games, well, it means that what's intuitively obvious to a lot of other people isn't necessarily the case for me. Instead, I'm often oblivious. Gamers will complain about things like obvious quest markers or lighting guiding your way, and, well, the devs probably put those in because of people like me who, for some strange and unexplained reason, somehow can't see what's right in front of them.
I do tend to pick up games relatively quickly but I have friends who seem to struggle as you do and often they dread even trying anything new as they know it will be hard for them. However if I patiently continue to play the same game with them they eventually start to figure it out and then frequently end up playing better than I do.
Does that also work for you or have you tried sticking with one game long enough know?
Generally speaking, if I stick with something I'll improve by default. Whether or not I get better than my friends is debatable though (but, of course, that's heavily dependent on the specific game). There are definitely some that "click" with me more than others.
A good example is Inkbound. We played this together in my multiplayer group, and I was WAY behind the curve on making sense of it. For the initial playthroughs I was just sort of confusedly tagging along.
I stuck with it though, ended up falling in love with the game and its mechanics, and thus kept playing it solo long after we stopped playing it as a group. It got to the point that I was able to confidently plow through the game on its most difficult settings by myself, which was legitimately impressive to my multiplayer group (both for the face value difficulty and also because it was me specifically doing it XD).
That said, there are some genres where I'll just hit my own skill ceiling. In FPS games, for example, I am just bad at aiming (and believe me, I've practiced!). I actually played Overwatch for years, and despite being a better-than-average Support main, I'd be absolute deadweight if I had to play DPS. Likewise, husband and I really love Wingspan, but he absolutely smokes me every time we play it. My ability to strategically plan my plays and make decisions simply cannot match his.
Mostly I just play games to relax, have fun, and engage in number-go-up/check-all-the-boxes fantasies. I'm not someone who particularly enjoys games that ask a lot of me (e.g. Soulslikes), so I tend to gravitate towards games that don't require a lot of effort or learning.
I think we all have our strengths and weaknesses. And that's also why I'm a big fan of well stuffed settings menus that give everyone the option to enjoy the game in the way that works best for them. "Enable quest markers" seems like an easy setting to add!
Sekiro. I finished it out of pure spite, but the last boss took several hundred attempts. At that point it wasn't fun or challenging, just annoying.
IMO FromSoft games will benefit greatly from a difficulty setting. Different people have different skill levels. People who are good at this kind of thing can play on the highest setting and their experience will be literally identical as now. But people like me can play on a more reasonable setting and actually have fun too.
Tldr; it's not my fault, poor game design;)
I strongly disagree, but probably not for the reason that you expect.
Games don't need to be made for everyone. They can have a specific audience, and that's absolutely fine. That's how it used to be, back when video games weren't mainstream and were generally considered to be only for nerds. Games being made to appeal to literally everyone and their mother is why the vast majority of AAA titles coming out today are shallow, soulless garbage.
If the game is so hard that it's more frustrating than fun, then don't play it.
I feel secure in saying this because I, too, struggled immensely with Sekiro. And that was especially hard for me to swallow because I've done a SL1 run of Dark Souls 3. I finished the entire game including DLC and solo'd all the bosses without ever leveling up once. I've also done a No Death run of Dark Souls 2.
I fucking love Fromsoft games, but I've never finished Sekiro. I've tried several times. The game absolutely kicks my ass. But I know that adding a meaningful difficulty slider for a game with such fine-tuned combat would be extremely difficult and would almost certainly compromise the game. So I just uninstall it and move on.
I've heard this argument before and to be honest I never understood it.
I am not asking for the game to be watered down to appeal to a broader audience. The game would be 100% identical for people who play on the high setting. Like, 1 to 1 identical.
Except multiple difficulties require more man-hours of effort to implement, test, tune and balance. Not speaking about changes to the overall game design, to preserve the player experience that the developers are going for.
And those man-hours have to come from somewhere, hence the watering down of the experience.
P.S.: I deeply dislike anything FromSoftware released; part of it is the difficulty, part is the opaqueness. So I don’t play any of their games.
Sekiro already has "even harder" mode for NG+ where they increase the health bar of the bosses. The code is already implemented. Having a mode decreases it a bit is not that much work. Also, additional sales to people like me can easily fund hiring a couple of extra emplyees to test it.
IMO the real reason they don't have easy/normal difficulty is marketing. They want capital G Gamers to brag about being so hardcore.
Since we have so much drama about jar opening, it's like a company deliberately designing jars that are extremely difficult to open, so they can promote them as "only real man can open these!"
Sure, they are allowed to do that and it will probably work as marketing. Not everything has to be made for me. But deliberately designing things to exclude people based on their physical limitations, for no other reason but to exclude, is IMO straight up mean.
I would not say they design the games deliberately to exclude at all actually. Sekiro is a bit more of an outlier because you do have flat skill checks more often, but there are almost always gameplay options available to you to soften the experience up. The reason they design these games the way they do, from the mouth of the designers themselves in interviews, is to foster that feeling of overcoming extreme opposition/difficulty and the resulting triumphant joy you can experience as a result. Adding a difficulty option would lessen the experience of the game as intended by the developers of the game.
This doesn't change the fact that the game might clash with limitations, and you can still feel however you like about it. I just dont agree that they are specifically designed to exclude. FromSoftware in particular has always done a good job of feeling like they actually want you to succeed, besides maybe Dark Souls 2 tipping the scales too far on the punishment scale. They are trying to foster that feeling of overcoming adversity, and they give you plenty of ways to get there. They might exclude as a byproduct, but I do not find it fair to say it is the intent of the developers.
I'm heading to work but I'll try to find the Miyazaki interview today.
Edit: took me a while, original host is down and I had to use the way back machine, but here is the interview
When the moral of the story, and the foundational creative design choice, has been to persevere in the face of untold hardship or turn mindlessly hollow when you lose sight of that goal, I think a difficulty slider would undermine the entire ordeal. It defeats the core concept: adapt, persevere, overcome.
I personally think that players giving up and "turning hollow" makes the thing click.
From a less esoteric standpoint, developers are under no obligation to create multiple difficulties that increase the development burden significantly. Would it allow a broader audience to complete their games? Probably. Does it matter if that happened? Probably not.
They've been working with this design philosophy since before King's Field. I don't think they're interested in appealing to anyone that doesn't like this approach.
Similar to what @PancakeCats expressed, Sekiro has absolutely awful design and it's not your fault at all...until you get it and suddenly it becomes the greatest game you've ever played. I have gotten so mad at that game. I even bought Ghost of Tsushima to play just because the one japanese game was making me rage so much that I needed to play the other Japanese game to relax. But then one day...https://youtu.be/cF6yPdpaKKM
Yes! This monent for me was the first fight with the claw guys who swipe rapidly. It was the first time I felt the rhythm of the combat, which I soon started to feel everywhere, and the game clicked. In my case, I even got the satisfaction of it all clicking on two seperate occasions. I replayed it on my steam deck last year, after having originally played on mouse and keyboard around launch. I got to essentially relearn to play the game on controller, and it honestly felt like slowly getting back in the swing of an instrument. When you get the flow right, its really quite a beautiful dance.
Deadlock. I have enough MOBA sense to play and enjoy League, I liked FPSs enough to play heyday TF2 or Neon White, but this is a mix of a little too hardcore for me (who doesn't have time to keep up on this meta) and very dependent on some twitch FPS skills that I don't have. Playing Deadlock just makes me feel terrible. The community seems great and it is fun to play when I'm not sandbagging...
Horror games. If they're too scary I psych myself and I stop playing, lol. There's stuff with a happy medium like Resident Evil and 4 where I don't, but I really nope out of some very atmospheric stuff.
Soulsborne. I just don't have the on-the-fly reflexes, patience, or time; it's like I panic and white out every time I run into an unfamiliar scenario. Which is, y'know, all the scenarios.
F-Zero GX, but I think it's fun even when you constantly go out like a buster. I mean, who among us can really say they're good at it? Eh? Eh?
Marathon, the new one. The extraction shooter. I've not loved a game like I've loved Marathon in a long time, the story is interesting, the style points are off the charts, it feels excellent to play, the characters are inspired, the weapons all feel incredible, it's generally well balanced, the movement is fun, and I avoid other players like the plague because I'll get my shit rocked every single time without fail. I'm Season Level 100, have around 90 hours in the game, and my player kills are probably under 10.
Hah, yeah, reminds me of another one I'm terrible at -- Dark and Darker. Would usually get smoked before I knew what was happening. I don't commit enough to one game to really be able to compete and I'm getting slower. I'd like to try and engage with the genre in some respect, but I keep getting put off when I do.
Marathon looks neat, but they don't allow Linux players so I'll never know how I'd feel about that one in particular.
I played a lot of Rocket League back when the community wasn't yet all horrible (I'd say before the sale to Epic and it becoming free to play). Great game but boy do I suck at it! I mean I was better than a beginner, and did certain things well, but I just couldn't progress past a certain skill level, especially with aerial motion.
yeah air dribbling and predicting the ball in the air is an insane skill. I watched a pro game after playing for a year or so and had no idea the skill ceiling was so high. its actually so incredible to watch though.
any 2D Sonic game, I have no idea if it's my fault but they're way too fast paced, I don't have enough time to react to anything AND I can't really see what's happening on the screen since it's so fast. so it's the worst of both worlds. I actually haven't tried the 3D ones, but my experience would probably be the same
I think you're supposed to memorise the maps, not react to them. Back then we only had like 5 games available to play, so we kept playing them until we knew the maps by heart.
Playing a bunch of Sonic 1 and especially 2 was a core part of my formative gaming experiences. Beat them both multiple times with my neighbor.
I tried playing Sonic Mania last year and I SUCKED. It looks and feels exactly like the games I remember, but I was absolutely hopeless. Granted, I only gave it about three hours, but it was embarrassing enough that I just let it be.
TF2
That hasn't stopped me putting 3500 hours in to the game over the years, but I hit my skill cap long ago and finishing in the top third in the round is about as good as I'll ever manage. And that's in casual. I can only imagine how good the players are in competitive.
It sure is a lot of fun though. Hard to believe it's almost 20 years old!
Ouch, okay so this is my #1 game in Steam hours at 2097 (second is 1735 and third is 817), and I haven't even seriously played it in over 15 years. And yeah, I'm way too long gone to ever be "good" at it again, but your comment makes me realize I could respond the same.
Grand Theft Auto Online is my most-played game, and despite having a character on PC with a level over 400 and a character on Xbox somewhere near level 200, I still cannot beat most other players if they attack me. I just let them get their jollies and never fire a shot at them.
My high RP level comes from the fact that I'm really good at the solo potion, and though I let it start me in public lobbies, I usually only run the stash house mission and then bail to solo lobbies for the rest of my play time. The solo portion of the game I actually am decently good at, if I say so myself.
I was thinking of mentioning GTAO too, but for the complete opposite reason. I love a good PvP game, and my competitiveness just makes me keep pushing even when someone is clearly destroying me, so I've gotten pretty good at fighting other players. But I struggle so hard with the PvE because, to me, bots are way more unpredictable than actual people. It feels like they know exactly where you are 24/7 (probably because they do) and they just do not peek unless you're completely exposed. Then suddenly five of them appear out of nowhere and shoot you at once to delete you in like 0.0005 seconds...
I’ve found that for me the best way to handle the bots in GTAO is to make sure that I’m playing with the controller and that I have aim assist turned on, which they only enable if you have a controller attached. When I’m playing on Xbox, that’s mandatory. When I’m playing on PC the controller comes in handy for driving and flying and playing the solo stuff. Aim assisted mode is disabled in public lobbies I think in XBOX, but it is enabled for missions. So I duck into cover and as soon as I pop up, I make sure that I’m holding down autolock to nail, whichever NPC I want short burst of fire and then duck back undercover. If I’m on the wing one I flick the left stick to switch targets. Drive rolling also makes you hard to hit. But yes, the NPCs have perfect aim, which is why I have no compunctions about cheesing my fights.
The other big thing is making sure that my stats are all maxed out. I only just (finally) after five years maxed out my strength that because they supply workout equipment in the mansions update and they don’t put a limit on how many workouts you can do in a row so I just sat down over three different sessions and did 100+ reps per session until I maxed out my strength stat. The strength and the health stat both make you a much harder target to kill.
Playing missions in GTAO reminds me a lot of playing retribution paladin around the Burning Curse era of World of Warcraft. In WoW you would have to drink potion after potion after potion spamming that key while you were fighting. In GTA online it’s all about eating those snacks, especially undercover.
I've been playing on PC, and I just enjoy aiming with a mouse too much for auto-aim to really be an option for me. I feel like I have a lot more control over exactly where I'm aiming and which target I'm going for.
I did play with a controller back in the PS3/PS4 days, though, and I remember how satisfying it was to just hold the aim button, flick the stick up, and land perfect headshots over and over.
These days I mostly use the controller for driving and navigating menus, since both feel much easier that way. Snacks are a perfect example: with a mouse, you have to precisely click through three tiny-ass buttons, while on controller you can basically just spam X (A on Xbox). Much less hassle when you're getting shot at.
They might've fixed it but it used to be that keyboard and mouse shooters got wider/less accurate spreads on all weapons than controller players to even out the skill levels a little. You can see if it's still true by going to an AmmuNation with a shooting range and trying it back and forth and see how well you do with mouse firing versus controller firing. I believe that was what caused me to permanently switch to just controller even on PC and stop fighting other players in the bargain.
Also I don't know if you know this, but you don't have to use the interaction menu to eat snacks anymore when you're on foot, they changed that back in I think '22 when the Criminal Enterprises expansion released. But you do need to use the interaction menu to snack/armor when you're in a vehicle. With KB you can hit TAB (by default, unless you rebound it) to bring up your wheel and hit C (again, by default) to consume snacks and V to equip armor.
What's nice is that it skips the eating animation, and while you don't get to choose your snacks, you also don't need to be in cover for them to work correctly now (if you ate them outside of cover for some reason they'd only recover like 5% health regardless of snack type, and now they recover their full value). But again, in a vehicle it's strictly through the interaction menu. This seriously made a lot of us a lot better at missions.
Also if you do decide to use the controller to shoot, hit R3/R Stick Down to zoom in on pretty much any weapon and get even better aim; it's a toggle, too, no holding it. This may just be for weapons with some kind of enhanced sights upgrade, but I genuinely can't remember as I only haul a few of my weapons with me and they're all modded now.
Well, so far I mostly go for headshots or explosives, so people tend to drop in one shot most of the time and the spread hasn't been much of a problem. I have definitely noticed that if I hold the trigger for a little too long, though, the bullets start going absolutely everywhere but I thought it was a Machine guns thing rather than an actual mechanic.
I actually didn't know this! I vaguely remembered something like that being added, but I wasn't very active around the time that update came out, so I never really got used to it. That's definitely useful info and I'll have to start doing that instead.
And yeah, I aim almost exclusively zoomed in already lol. I'm getting old.
Short burst fire is definitely the tactic with bots for sure. I play on a 32” TV less than three feet from my face but I still zoom in. It makes your movements more precise.
Slay the Spire 2. Never played the first one. Didn’t think I’d like this one. Got convinced to try it and now I enjoy it. Only win about 1 out of every 20 attempts. Never made it past ascension 1. My fault because I haven’t yet built up the vast library of possible strategies/synergies one can pivot into depending on what cards the RNG grants. I see YouTubers claim a 90+% win rate despite the randomness. I guess I believe it, but that comes after hundreds of hours and a savant-like memory… neither of which I possess. Still fun, though :)
I had the same reaction to the first game, but I did get better at it each run and it feels good when you remember the tricks and finally pull out ahead. I think with Slay2 it took me a good 50 tries to get a victory with Regent but I've definitely learned a lot since then and can usually get a win now with a decent start.
I'll start -- Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It felt like I was catapulted into a boss challenge after barely grasping the controls, getting stunted on so hard I thought it was a scripted fail. It was not. Laughed, closed it, uninstalled, no hard feelings. I've barely played skater games, I had no skill base and I think they expected folks to have already played Jet Set Radio (Future).
Similarly, Absolute Drift. I couldn't even get through the tutorial here I struggled with the drifting so bad -- maybe the instructions could've been better, but I just couldn't execute. Laughed, closed, uninstalled, no hard feelings.
It's funny to me when I'm terrible at a game since I've played a lot and consider myself more being good at an array of genres than great at a particular one.
I also struggled with Absolute Drift, and that was really frustrating for me as I played so much Need for Speed Underground. I personally felt like the controls were off but all the reviews led me to believe it was just a skill issue.
Wipeout and BallisticNG.
Wipeout is more manageable, and is fun, but I really like Zone modes more than the actual racing, the racing isn’t bad but I’m too tuned in to CTR to actually get used to other games.
BallisticNG just throws a wrench in the Wipeout muscle memory and how I play it, I only started playing Wipeout with HD/Fury, and BallisticNG is… inspired by the PS1 games which I never played and oh god I can’t even do a good race against AI so I’m just spamming its Survival mode so that I know how to turn without hitting the walls.
Shmups(Bullet Hells mainly) in general, I collect them but don’t play them as much as you’d think my library has.
Rhythm games is not for me to judge, I consider myself maybe average at best, but I do like rhythm games minus vertical scrollers. But it could be the Dunning Kruger effect, I’m either underestimating how bad I could be, or not seeing myself as decent as I could be.
To my dismay, scrolling rhythm games. I'm okay at games that don't scroll (I played a good amount of osu!std) but scrolling games are somehow the only video games to cause me motion sickness, from trying to follow the notes as they fall. I know you're not supposed to follow every note individually and just stare in one spot as they come down but I can't figure it out! (plus my hand-eye coordination fails if I focus too hard on where I look)
I was talking about Deadlock elsewhere in this thread. As a result of that experience, I've begun to believe I probably have a problem with anything involving heavy amounts of macro in general, particularly if it's in real-time and/or competitive on top of it. I've played most genres out there, but the large umbrella of strategy games is mostly unfamiliar to me. I've played Spore, some casual Civilization V and Crusader Kings III with buddies (in the latter of which, I ignored doing any real politics and made it my goal to bang all of my friends' spouses), maybe a tiny bit of Tooth and Tail just because it looked cool visually... that's it. I can't imagine I could ever do well in an RTS.
Also: Counter-Strike 2. It's incredibly slow, until you see someone and then the gunfight lasts half a second. I just can't get used that pacing. I don't know about the other games, though I felt the same when it was still called Global Offensive!
It can help a lot with this problem (motion sickness) when your system is capable of rendering a higher frame rate. Do you have a 144hz+ monitor?
I have 144Hz on my laptop, but my main screen is 60Hz, so come to think of it, I have no idea if I ever tried a VSRG on a higher refresh rate, you're right. Worth trying some day!
Wow, that's an interesting one. I have the opposite issue, in that I have so much trouble tracking non-scrolling rhythm games, and especially hate games with touchscreen components like Maimai or Crossbeats where your own arms and hands can end up blocking my vision of the field.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It's probably the only game I deeply adore that I'm also nowhere close to beating. I've been playing it for like a decade and a half, so I really should have managed it by now, but, eh 🤷🏻♀️
Any and all RTSes (except maybe Kenshi, but that's not actually an RTS--just a sandbox RPG with a few borrowed elements.) I have beaten Red Alert 3 (on the easiest of easy mode) with some struggle, but I just cannot handle it. At all. Civ? I'm decent at my worst and reasonably competent at my best, and I love the scope of information to consider. At my own pace. Sometimes for several minutes before hitting 'End Turn' if I'm vs. AI. Devil May Cry and other stylish action games? When I have my Steam Controller 1.0 fixed up I'm almost pro-tier, and I'm not too shabby at shooters.
But freakin' RTSes destroy me, which is a real shame because several I very much enjoy the story or feeling of (shout-out to Warcraft III, my favorite schlocky fantasy that I must admire from afar). Now if we're talking individual games? Try as I might, I'm just not good at Guilty Gear--any of them. I really want to learn fighting games in general, but Guilty Gear tops the list. Testament is such a cool look, and I really dig the thematic of the weird mutant doctor character, but I might as well be the proverbial little bro with the unplugged controller at the moment.
I am bad at most games. Adult adhd, i guess. I can’t focus on any game longer than 30 minutes. Then I think about stuff I “SHOULD BE DOING” instead. Regardless if I do them or not. I need quick pick up and play experience or “save anywhere” games.
But, two trends. 1st person shooters give me motion sickness, and Minecraft. I used to try with my kids, 10 years ago. And couldn’t get into Minecraft or fully understand the appeal. Today with my young nephews, i still don’t understand the “point” of the game. But they love it, which is neat.
That's the neat part: there really isn't one, really. Minecraft is one of those rare games where you decide what the objective is.
Want to build a little farm and a stable just to have a cozy place to wander around in? Go for it. Want to recreate some cool building or scene you saw somewhere? Go for it. Want to "finish" the game by beating the Ender Dragon in some weird, unique way, or figure out the fastest possible route to do it? Also go for it.
The only real limits are your knowledge, imagination, and, honestly, how much time and patience you have.
And having a partner with ADHD too, I definitely get how that last part can be a pretty big limiting factor lol. She'll come up with these absolutely insane build ideas that genuinely sound amazing, but if they require a couple stacks of blocks and more than 15 minutes of resource gathering, you can pretty much guarantee she's not doing it.
So half the time I end up gathering everything while she's off doing something else, and by the time I'm ready to actually build it, the idea has completely left her brain and she’s no longer interested. Then I just end up building the thing myself because now I'm invested in it lol.
That’s interesting. I get the appeal of it. I just don’t think I would do it. Same reason why I like the concept of “Skyrim and Oblivion” but when I try them, it just doesn’t click with me.
I have always found myself playing games with quick play sessions for the most part. Mario kart, Smash, Old school fighting game, Sports game, or JRPG (where you can save anywhere). Then I just pay in short bursts with the kids or myself and turn it off. But again, i start thinking about things “i should be doing” with my time instead. And concentrate on that.
That's totally reasonable, I sisn't really expected my words to change such habits since they haven't changed my partner's in that sense but I like sharing what's great about it in case it does help you enjoy it a little more at least :D
Define terrible...
I love to play chess, and I would even argue I'm pretty good comparing to the Americans I've played. However compared to even what I consider to be a good player, I'm terrible. (I'm maybe 1200 ELO on a good day, I consider good at 2000 and up).
I play Magic the Gathering, and I am pretty terrible when it comes to actual winning results. I think 1v1 I'm not even 50% lifetime, and in multiplayer, I think I'm under the 25% average. Don't care tho! It's fun, scratches the brain it the right way.
I can't do anything PVP period. Bonus points for terrible-ness if it requires any sort of mouse coordination. I always knew I disliked League of Legends as a video game and played it purely as a social activity with friends, but I didn't realize just how much more I enjoy PVE - I like working with people but I just can't make a game out of predicting another human being in opposition to me.
I also can't really do build-making in general... I like having the freedom to play as I wish, but making something actually effective is not my forte. This can span anywhere between Elden Ring and any roguelike because systems synergy is just a foreign concept to me. And it's a coin toss on whether I feel the game experience will be ruined if I just look up a build to copy. I know the Fire Emblems that I've played have felt hit or miss when it comes to discussing difficulty (and resulting enjoyment); I want to engage with the combat encounters and not the build setup aspect of say Awakening and Fates, even if that aspect is just as enjoyable to many FE enjoyers I know.
Counter-Strike. I just don't have the precision and reflexes, and any game that gives such a massive advantage to the first player who is able to click on the other player's head is going to be a game largely about clicking on heads to the detriment of other mechanics. Meanwhile, being worse at clicking heads means you'll have to wait longer between playing and actually having a chance to improve that skill.
At mid-level play a game like Quake 3 is more tactically interesting and doesn't punish players for being bad with too much downtime. Someone who is the better shot can be matched by someone who knows better what fights to pick and when to retreat to recover health and armor or find a better weapon. Someone who is more careful not to die can be matched by someone who takes more risks and dies more often but also gets more kills. Wiggling back and forth in place so as to avoid getting your head clicked is not a viable strategy when there are rockets.
Quacks (of Quedlinburg). There's a bit of skill in remembering what's in your bag, but it's mostly a push your luck game about calculating the odds of busting. Easy enough! And yet.
I would consistently bust on the worst odds. It's not like I was being cheeky about 50/50 shots or anything. I could consistently lose a 1/8 pull. I did it 3 times in a row one day.
Needless to say, of our board game odyssey, that I was the only one I got swept on.
Oh my god, I hate that game with a passion. I just don't feel like the parts you can control in the game are powerful enough to affect your odds of exploding, and just like you, I had a horrendous streak of exploding over and over again.
It was the only board game I genuinely considered cheating at, and by that point I knew I should just stop playing it entirely and ask my group to try other games. We're now onto Terraforming Mars and I'm having an absolute blast.
Just got wiped 4th time in a row in Road to Vostok on my first trip of the game to the village.
Honestly, I seem to be pretty gifted at mostly any genre of video game, so I can't really relate to the plebs on this thread.
Jokes aside, I definitely think I just have way more patience/tenacity than the average person. If people get frusturated/annoyed at a game, I usually want to beat it just to show it can be done, and I'm usually having fun the whole way through. Sekiros final boss has been mentioned many times here, and it took myself a whole weekend to beat it myself, but I enjoyed essentially every minute of it and the process of getting better was thoroughly enjoyable.
I think if there is one genre of video games I definitely suck at is fighting games, I never really had the chance to play them as a kid when I was younger, save for a Tekken 2 demo disc that was on the PS1.
Nowadays I exclusively play single player games, but FPS, card games, auto-chess, mostly any thing that had a competitive bracket, I would usually rank semi-decently without too much effort (save for league of legends, it took me 3 years to get to Gold)
Small aside, a game that I can consider myself terrible at is Horizon Zero Dawn. I'm just NOT able to play that game. I've tried starting a fresh save file 4 different times and I just find it soooo boring, so I guess that is one game I do suck at, including the aforementioned fighting game genre.
If you're anything like me, try any luck based game and enjoy the suffering of doing everything right and still loosing just because the universe decided so. It's the only kind of game my friends actually enjoy playing with me because it's like a sweet revenge for them.
Hahaha, you pretty much hit it right on the dot. RNG games are not my favorite, but I still enjoy board games and games like x-com enemy unknown to an extent. Even Teamfight Tactics or DOTA Auto Chess has a luck element, and I already found that quite annoying and after the first season I quit playing those games after I reached Gold.
Board games are the most noticeable, yeah. Imagine playing UNO and all your cards being the same colour and as soon as you have a +2 or +4 everyone else have one so it ends up looping back to you. Or in DND, your class is suposed to be super agile and your character have been training a certain skill his whole live but as soon as his destiny is in the hands of my dice he becomes the most useless character in the universe.
I'm terrible at any sort of rhythm games (I really wanted to be decent at guitar hero). Like I can't even get past beginner level stuff in them.
Any first person shooter, but especially Counter Strike (GO or 2) and Valorant. I have no aim and I play with a wireless mouse which probably doesn’t help. This hasn’t stopped me from putting hundreds of hours into the games however.
Platforming games, especially 2D platformers. I'll look at them and think "man that looks fun" and then I'm missing jumps and doing terrible. I remember getting Spelunky 2 after watching LethalFrag play it for a bit, and I was absolutely terrible. I'll try playing a game in the genre occasionally to see if I've somehow become better at them, but with how limited my gaming time is now, I've just come to accept that I probably won't play any platformers in my limited personal gaming time. I might play some with my kids, as I recently showed them Spyro and there are other kid friendly platforming games.
I am not great at most first/third person view games that require quick reflexes or real time fighting.
Eg, I like the puzzle stuff of botw etc, but the fighting parts are more annoying than enjoyable.
Any non-rhythm games that require timing or accuracy or quick response.
So, Minecraft is too hard for me :| even discounting the nausea from first / third person games.
Basically, all of them. Some games are forgiving enough that I can farm until I'm nearly invincible in order to get through the challenges. Classic arcades I can push through with emulators (unlimited tokens + heavy save state scumming) . Guess I should be thankful rhythm games are fine as long as they don't throw in another layer of challenge like Crypt of the Necromancer/ Necrodancer
I've thought a lot about this over the years. I think in general having played so many games i'm good at pattern recognition, I usually was the first one to figure out 'how' to win and would jump out winning early amongst most friends I had. However over time I would always fall off if anybody stuck to the game for a few months I couldn't keep up and break into high level play. I find that I have focus issues, either boredom, or even if I like the game I get some pretty bad brain drag where I don't want to think and just go down to people terrible at the game due to disinterest playing them or just exhaustion. It's funny for some of the games I was into I felt like a boss mob for skilled players, they would wake up my brain and I'd play way harder than I could normally, just enough to make them struggle to win but they would on average come out on top, just like a perfectly tuned boss should play. I am starting to think this year I might have ADHD which might contribute to this kind of on/off difficulty and am planning to try to get evaluated as an adult.
So it's been some time since I've played anything competitive and I suspect that I'm pretty slow in my late 40s, I imagine i'd be bad at anything competitive now a days. However if we are talking the breadth of like 40 years of gaming there are some absolutes for me that I'm bad at.
Driving. All things driving. I suck, suck suck. I conceptually understand what to do but damn getting through that corner right, nope. Grand tursimo 2, i have nightmares about some of the license corners. I just don't get it, if i do drive decently, it's always too conservatively, it's like too much brain effort to drive it on the edge around a track for me and I just can't do it.
Baseball. All things baseball, from rbi baseball to hard ball 3 to mlb 20xx batting just doesnt work for me. Maybe the projection or whatever it is I just have no concept of timing and batting.
Madden all years. I understand the concepts in football, but I don't know how to play this game well. There is no literature about how this black box of a game works, the community is steeped in money pay me for my secret lessons and nobody really breaks down WTF do you do to play madden well ever. I have never been able to enjoy the games much except for the times they made huge technology leaps. That was like from 4th & inches to snes maddend, to the PS2 madden, then the huge leap for dreamcast football game, which i totally forget the name, then an xbos 360 version and then I stopped caring.
Airplane dogfighting. I never got beyond turn left till you see something then shoot at it. I did find this wonderful novel about online dogfighting called 'in pursuit' I read a while back that was amazingly fascinating, so I understand now wwI / wwII dogfighting with energy management and all of that. However I did not have the joy in trying to put it into practice, so it's not something I was or could ever get decent at.
That's it for my crippling deficiencies in gaming, oh that and puzzle / word games, i'm terrible with those.
Poker.
Not necessarily that I'm bad at playing it (I am), but I also don't have any desire in me to get better at it, so the rare times I get looped in to a poker game, I just stumble through it and lose my money (real or imaginary) and go on with my life.
Furi. I don't
jivejibe with theisodiablo-y perspective in action games, and the dash has this awkward lead time that makes it feel bad to me. Often when I find a game difficult I am willing to bang my head into the wall for a while to beat it (Celeste, Slay the Spire A20, Super Hexagon, etc.), but not so here.I'm terrible at FPS and rhytmic/fast-paced games all around.
When we played coop with three of my friends ARMA 3, two of them.got like 30 kills while I and the other one got like 6 kills. I revived the forst two quite a lot though, so one may say that I'm better in a supporting role. But CS2 doesn't have supporting roles :-) In Team Fortress 2 I played Medic or Engineer.
I wouldn't be good at Beat Saber, but that's one thing I want to change. The same goes for Taiko no Tatsuin where I could do only the basic difficulty (but I don't have any plans for that).
Deadlock. I very much like the idea of a shooter-MOBA. Unfortunately, I tend to be mid at best with FPS. Planetside 2 is the only one I ever got decent at and it took me years to get there. And MOBAs? Well, this is the first one I've played. I've done a game here or there of League and DOTA, but nothing sustained.
I think it also doesn't help that I'm terrible at builds and such. Sigh.
Similar boat... I tried Deadlock for a good while because I was interested in a new movement shooter by Valve. Who wouldn't be? It's a genre I love by a developer who's games I've played a good amount of. I kept hearing the main turn-off people had with it was how mechanically demanding it is. I love mechanically demanding!
But I couldn't get used to MOBA. I'd tried a few before but never enjoyed them long term. This time, I gave it a serious go, tried picking up concepts of macro and whatever skills are exclusive to it. Not only did I realize I sucked at it, I also found that I did not enjoy it at all.
I've been wondering if, maybe, that dislike of macro is tied to my ADHD in some way. I'm hopelessly terrible at thinking ahead. I don't want to play a game where my success is wholly based on it. I guess I'm just incompatible with the genre.
For me, I actually enjoy the macro. I love strategy and tactics. I pretty much only played Deadlock with friends and I often had my eyes on the mini map, mentioning in Discord where the opposing players were, trying to predict where they would be, whether we should be hitting objectives or not, etc. I wasn't the shot caller, but I definitely was constantly reading the game state and trying to figure out what to do next and making suggestions. And there were definitely times we won because I was able to get my friends to get out of the solo/team fighting tunnel vision. Like forget the kills; we can win this right now if focus objectives!
Unfortunately, I'm just bad at the micro. Can't land my shots, can't build out a build (I pretty much just used public builds), I'm slow to farm, etc. Plus, the movement system in that game is crazy. I don't understand all the corner jumping and such.