How Have Your Gaming Habits Changed?

[Groff]

IIRC, there is a mod that combines all three games into one much like Tale of Two Wastelands for Fallout 3/NV.

Three posts above yours.

 

[danjuno]

When I was younger, I was in the whole "eww girls have cooties" phase, and I refused to play as a female character when given the choice. Now I almost always go with a female character/avatar unless I find the male alternatives much more aesthetically pleasing. Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire ruined the original Gen III design of May/Haruka that I really liked, but I went with May anyway because the male protagonist's hat is even more repulsive in 3D.

 

[Synobun]

Three posts above yours.

I have no idea how I missed this when I vividly remember reading the post right above it when the thought came to me.

Oops.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It mainly sounds like an absolute drudge :-/

It can be, when you get a lot of tanks. But cleaning and feeding takes a short time and the more tanks and fish you have, the more experience points are awarded.

After the "chores" are done, the rest of the game can proceed (well, you don't really have to clean and feed if you don't want to, but your aquarium looks disgusting and the fish all get "feed me" icons popping up in their thought balloons).

 

[Disgustipated]

I can understand the criticism for DAI, but really not for TW3 - exploration is COMPLETELY optional in it (you can stick to the MQ without doing anything else), and there is none of the fetch quests that are prevalent in Inquisition (all quests are unique and tell a story).

Hmm, it just seemed to me I needed to do a lot of side quests to get a higher level because that game was difficult. I often found myself struggling to meet the level requirement for the quest unless I did sidequests. Like I said, I still love the atmosphere. The voice acting, graphics, and writing really are fantastic. I did replay the game part way through until the end of the baron questline (which still is fantastic in a downer sort of way), but I haven't finished the game twice. Of course I could go story mode, but that seems wimpy and cheesy. I like to play games at least at normal mode, because to me, that's the way the game was meant to be played.

Funny enough I actually started a DA:I game. The game can be really fun but really frustrating at the same time. I still don't like the MMO gameplay features, and I miss the strategic combat of the first game, but combat can be fun in its own way. I actually bought all 3 major DLC, and while The Descent is lacking in story and RPG elements, it's a pretty fun dungeon crawl (I haven't gotten to the other 2 dlc yet). I realize that I've never been able to play a 2nd game in the past because the game starts off so slow, and the Hinterlands is such an annoying zone because it's so large (subsequent zones are of a more reasonable size). I think I may actually finish this game now that I'm in to it.


One other thing I want to mention about gaming habits. I'm actually glad the games that exist today didn't exist when I was a teenager and young adult. I would have had a hard time doing homework and studying with all the media that's around today. Games back in my day lacked good enough graphics to get fully involved in the story, and were also so difficult I couldn't finish at the time (I'm looking at you Wasteland and Bard's Tale games). I used to be so much more school and career minded, but now that I've reached a level of income I'm happy with, I'm not motivated to do anything else. My free time is fun time now days.

 

[dusters]

I used play a lot of mindlessly grinding games like Diablo 2 and Diablo 3/Grim Dawn, but right now I try to limit myself to games which actually are very strategically complex and are human vs human.

I could be playing chess, but that is a bit memory based (to know moves for all the main openings), so I play Faeria which is a card game, but compared to MTG or Heathstone there is very little Rng in it.

I need something to provide a challenge, but a bit fun too. I spent like 200 euros on Hearthstone and it is still decent, but to grind out to best ranks in Heathstone you need like 300 games per month and since one game is about 5-7mins, that's too much.

 

[Akka]

Hmm, it just seemed to me I needed to do a lot of side quests to get a higher level because that game was difficult. I often found myself struggling to meet the level requirement for the quest unless I did sidequests.

Actually, the VAST majority of the experience you get comes from MQ. Anything else gives really little. You might need to do a few to help for a difficult part, but not many and never the MMO crap in Inquisition - all sidequests are properly written and fit in the world (it's mostly Witcher's contracts, which are what Geralt is supposed to do a a living).

Funny enough I actually started a DA:I game. The game can be really fun but really frustrating at the same time. I still don't like the MMO gameplay features, and I miss the strategic combat of the first game, but combat can be fun in its own way.

I found combat to be absolutely abysmal in DAI (the idea of requiring to click for each strike is just absolutely cretinous and unbelievable). It's a mix of a terribad console gameplay with a terribad (and gutted) tactical one, and I really can't understand how people can find it fun. I like DAO combat and always play on Hard, but with DA2 and DAI, I try to play in hard/normal at the beginning, but become so bored with it that I end up switching to the lowest difficulty just to get over the bore and skip the fights.

 

[Kozmos]

I remember trying DAI, rolling my eyes at the weird direction the story took right from the start and like in the first two hours realizing loot can only be picked up one at a time or something similarly stupid like that and I was immediately nope, don't feel like clicking every loot for the rest of the game.

 

[Traitorfish]

I tend to play game more sporadically than I used to, almost in bursts. I'll get a game, play it most days until I'm finished or I lose interest, and then maybe not really play anything else for a few months, maybe a few of games of something like AoEII. I think this ties into what some other people have said about less patience for replaying games; the only game I've made serious efforts to replay in really the last five years have been Skyrim and Fallout 4, because there's enough diversity between character builds and story-paths to make it worthwhile.

I also feel the need to set aside a good few hours to make it worthwhile. I can't play for a half-hour anymore, it just seems like a waste of time. It has to be "I Am Playing Video Games Tonight", like a clear and defined alternative to watching a movie or going out or whatever, not just a space-filler between whatever I was doing last and whatever I'm doing now.

 

[azzaman333]

I have three different reasons for gaming at the moment

Currently my least played reason is competition. Playing to win, not screwing around. My main game for this is CS:GO.

Middle reason is social play. Playing a game with friends, RL or otherwise, and the focus is more on talking crap with each other than winning. Jackbox games and Golf With Your Friends the main two examples at the moment.

Most played reason though is distraction. I don't particularly want to think, I just want to either be distracted from RL. Autopiloting through games of Civ5 is how I've been achieving this of late.

 

[Grisu]

My gaming has changed rather massively during the last few years (kids will do that to you). Before, I mostly played games that required rather much time to play them. If I didn't have at least 1h of pure gaming time I wouldn't even start.

Nowadays I've switched to games that can be played at 15 min intervals (or even less) and then be put away for later gameing. As a result I mostly play casual games now. Some smartphone matchy matchy games as well as stuff like World of Tanks on the PC.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's actually rather surprising how little my habits have changed. I guess I've been somewhat stable in my preferences since... well, forever.
The kind of game I play might vary widely, but it's much much more dependent on what new games are actually available and interesting than any noticeable change in what I like.
And the only noticeable changes are mainly due to what is common in the market and feels formulaic (like, I loved Half-Life when it was the first linear story-driven shooter, but it's become so prevalent as a genre it doesn't interest me anymore).

Reading everyone else describing how they changed, I wonder just how much of a statistical outlier I am

I'm in a similar boat. I guess I'm slightly more likely to concentrate on 2-3 games heavily than before, but I've been like this a long time.

It was only in my late 20's/now early 30's that I started pushing up difficulty and trying to get really good at them though. It's like the process of trying to get better has become more appealing with time. My reflexes have likely declined at least a little since early 20's (were never great though), but as a gamer I'm better across the board otherwise; there's nothing a younger me could beat me at now .

I know I'm an outlier, even if maybe not among a forum population (probably even here though). Many things people like doing I just find dull. I hate the hassle of travel, and find stuff like just standing around and talking to often be boring, especially when it starts veering off into people talking about their routines, or politics, or other conversations that wind up as a re-hash. I get that talking about gaming or nuanced football strategy would be equally dull to them, but at least it's something I realize.

Just going out to dinner is similarly a time/money sink without much to think about, but is nice now and then. Watching shows and movies feels like I'm playing a story driven game with even less interaction (so the movie better be amazing). I could probably get a similar level of engagement out of near-pro level sports, but that's not exactly realistic at this point (given thyroid issues that weren't noticed/corrected for a long while, it was never really in the cards).

No matter how much I re-evaluate it from time to time, I'm basically still just rotating 2-3 games I effectively master with the occasional social interaction after work. On that note, excepting the slow days work itself isn't so bad since it actually manages some level of engagement on good days too.

Occasionally I check myself to see if I'd be interested in a major lifestyle change, but aside from hitting the gym more routinely again I can't even picture that being an enjoyable process so I guess I'm good.

 

[Hygro]

At this point I'm sticking to a few favorite franchises that do it for me. Civ, Starcraft, Zelda, GTA/Saints Row. I'll occasionally try some others but really I either want a cathartic single player run through or I want some competitive challenging multiplayer.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Civ and Star Wars Empire at War. I prefer games that i can mod easily.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

When I was in elementary school my parents only let me play 20 minutes a day. They also banned M rated games and most T rated games while I lived with them (although the time limit lifted by like 5th grade), all the way through high school. High school and college was when I played the most, primarily because WoW was the big fancy thing back then, and I was basically addicted. I'd work at McDs from 6am-2pm and then play WoW until like 1-2am and repeat the next day during the summer of '07 (man I wish I could get by on that little sleep these days). I don't play games quite as much now, although it's not so much because of responsibilities as it is other interests (writing, music), but I still log a lot of time when I get into something. I beat the newest Mass Effect in 8 days with 45 hours clocked, thanks to a weekend in which it was all I did. The last calendar year I've logged about 175 hours each in Overwatch and Diablo 3.

 

[Smellincoffee]

In high school and college I liked simulation games that involved thinking, planning, etc. After a full day at work, though, I prefer to listen to a podcast and zone out on the PC by playing more mindless games -- Pirates, Sims, Mafia 1 & 2, the GTA games, the original SW Battlefront, and so on. I've bought a couple of games that were more strategic and realized that I just don't care to sink a lot of brain time into a PC.