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posted by martyb on Monday January 07 2019, @07:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the Figured-it-out dept.

ArsTechnica:

Gaming was like breathing. It was the biggest part of my life as a teenager, one of my priorities as a college student, and eventually one of my most expensive “hobbies” as a young professional.

Then all of a sudden, after thousands of hours spent playing across genres and platforms, boredom hit me hard for the very first time in my early thirties. Some of my favorite games soon gave me the impression of being terribly long. I couldn’t help but notice all the repeating tropes and similarities in game design between franchises.

I figured it was just a matter of time before I found the right game to stimulate my interest again, but time continued to go by and nothing changed.

Is it that games have failed to innovate, or that real life is ultimately more engaging?


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Monday January 07 2019, @08:10PM (21 children)

    by looorg (578) on Monday January 07 2019, @08:10PM (#783345)

    Is it that games have failed to innovate, or that real life is ultimately more engaging?

    Probably a bit of both. Part of it I guess is that I can't get into many of the new games. I couldn't care less about Fortnite etc, I don't care about the "nostalgia" people either that want me to play, shitty, 8-bit remakes. I think the only fairly "new" game that I actually enjoyed was/is Slay the Spire.

    Then as sad as it it to note I can't really play the twitch shooters anymore either, the reflexes clearly are not what they used to be, also playing for to long when the games are nothing but intense keysmashers you get "the claw" hand and that hurts.

    But I really do hate the mindset of "now I'm 40+ and have to be responsible and do adult things". Fuck that! Is it better to watch football and do boring shit just cause you are old(er)? Nope. But perhaps games are like movies, I'm no longer the target audience so there are few and far between titles that I do find worthy to invest in.

    That said if time permits I still really like a Civilization5 with the Vox Populi mod running game with huge maps and epic pace. It's just rare to find the time these days.

    WOW on the other hand have gotten really old and boring as of the last (couple of) expansion(s). But it might have more to do with most of my friends stopping to play and I just don't fancy the game so much more after over a decade of playing it, or perhaps the other part of the player-base have gotten to annoying to have to deal with. It's probably a combo.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @08:22PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday January 07 2019, @08:22PM (#783349)

    >real life is ultimately more engaging?

    I tend to binge on a game for a while, but ultimately something in real life distracts me and I'll usually put the "game" down cold turkey to give more time to the new distraction. When real life lacks any adequately compelling distractions, I find another game to play.

    "Games" I have played include: Seven Cities of Gold, New House, Starcraft, Modifying my car, Diablo, Writing my own algorithmic world (Conway's Life++), Developing raw forest land for recreational use, Sim City and similar (Cities Skylines), Children, 3d Printing, etc. etc.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Sulla on Monday January 07 2019, @08:32PM (6 children)

    by Sulla (5173) on Monday January 07 2019, @08:32PM (#783357) Journal

    if time permits I still really like a Civilization5

    You poor silly deluded fellow. You do realize Civ II and IV still work on modern computers?

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
    • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 07 2019, @09:05PM (5 children)

      by looorg (578) on Monday January 07 2019, @09:05PM (#783373)

      I do, but as noted I only really like it with the Vox Populi mod and as far as I can remember it's only available for Civ5. CivII was great, CivIII was better. I never really liked Civ4, it was very weird until a few of the extra content mods arrived, also I think this was new around the time that I played a lot of WOW. Civ5 was quite bad at the start to but after, as noted, finding out about Vox Populi it became a lot better. So much so that I still can't stand a game without and I was more or less instantly turned off Civ6 -- I like some of the concepts and the graphics but I just hate the tech/social tree.

      • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:51PM (4 children)

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:51PM (#783848) Homepage Journal

        Please enlighten the ignorant -- what does Vox Populi do?

        • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday January 08 2019, @09:39PM (3 children)

          by looorg (578) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @09:39PM (#783860)

          It changes a lot of the core functions of how the game works. Making it both harder and more interesting then normal. It's probably just easier to link to the wiki then to try and spell it all out, I'll probably forget or miss something. As it stands now I don't think I could even bother to play a Civ5 game without it. It really does change everything for the better.

          http://civ-5-cbp.wikia.com/wiki/Civ5_CBP_Wikia [wikia.com]
          https://forums.civfanatics.com/tags/vox-populi/ [civfanatics.com]

          • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:22AM (2 children)

            by Sulla (5173) on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:22AM (#784359) Journal

            Does it fix the glitch that only allows you one unit per square/hex?

            --
            Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
            • (Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:03AM (1 child)

              by looorg (578) on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:03AM (#784409)

              I assume you are referring to combat units, in that case no. That is still a thing. So no stacks-of-doom moving about the board as in some of the previous versions of Civ. If not that then you can have workers/diplomats/traders in stacks and with one combat unit, ships can be on top of embarked units to. I don't really recall now which was in the non modded version or not but I think it is the same. It is a bit annoying compared to previous games that you can't cover ranged units with a melee unit on top for protection -- so you have to sort of surround them etc if you want that kind of protection.

              BTW somewhat unrelated. Did you use to play a lot of CIV4? I seem to recall someone, with your nickname, playing a lot of GOTM:s over at CF among other things.

              • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:24AM

                by Sulla (5173) on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:24AM (#784418) Journal

                Was not me as far as i know but i play CivIV extensively. Before my kids were born five years ago played several hours a day.

                --
                Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday January 07 2019, @09:20PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday January 07 2019, @09:20PM (#783380) Journal

    At first, MMORPGs were neat. The MMO part alone was once a fantastically fun novelty. No more hotseat turn taking. I started Everquest when it was new, and while I came close a few times to ditching it when a rough edge screwed me, I kept at it. You know how it used to be. You're in the middle of a fight deep in some dungeon, and you get disconnected thanks to a technical problem with your lame ISP. When you return, you find that of course you have lost the fight, died, and been resurrected miles away on the surface. But all your equipment is still deep in that dungeon on your corpse and getting back to it could be a real problem. One of the worst game play aspects of early Everquest was the ocean voyage. You had to wait for a ship, or time your arrival. Ships came only once every 15 minutes-- of real time, not game time. Then it was another 30 minutes, real time, for the ship to cross the ocean. Perhaps they thought passengers could chat with each other during that extended down time. Nope. Sensible people went AFK. If you had a lag spike any time during that voyage, you stopped moving and could easily end up in the ocean because the ship did not stop and would just sail out from under you, and there wasn't much you could do about it.

    As Everquest matured, they addressed all those issues. Nice, but the basic game play of kill monster, get experience and loot never changed, and that became unbearably boring. They did try to get a little creative with some of the quests, but the room for creativity was simply too little. In a very fundamental way, it was hardly more than multiplayer Ultima 3, published in the early 1980s and credited as the first role playing game to have a party combat system. And Ultima 3 was merely D&D, the combat and exploration part, the tedious number crunching parts, the stuff that computers excel at, on a computer. Actual role playing is still a bit beyond the so called RPG game. That only happens when the human players agree to play that way.

    Games have improved tremendously in the graphics department, but game play, not so much.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:26PM (#784238)

      Almost every MMO that hastry to stay away from the 'themepark' EQ model has failed. Who knows what it will take to get a MMO to succeed outside that genre. Even with WoW becoming a stale game and it's new expansion not doing so well, I don't see any real changes in the marketplace any time soon. The kickstarter games like Camelot will probably have a dedicated niche audience and no real mainstream success.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Monday January 07 2019, @10:03PM (7 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Monday January 07 2019, @10:03PM (#783402) Journal

    Fortnite sucks, because Fortnite sucks. It took me a while to realize it, but Fortnite and Call of Duty, etc. Generally attract the type of gamer I avoid. I.E. loud mouthed, obnoxious, and toxic players. Though perhaps, it's just me that's tired of 10 year old kids screaming obscenities into their headset. Though, I might still recommend Call of Duty: World at War. (The first one.)

    I usually bounce around genres of game, if I get bored. Mostly, I've played multiplayer games with a friend, but that friend got a wife that's a control freak. So, not playing with him anymore. We'll just say he wen't off the deep end and leave it at that. I have a steam buddy that I play 7DTD (7 Days to Die) with.

    Great games that have come out in the last few years, you may have missed.

    Best if played with a friend, but still great games:

    Terraria, hands down a great game. It may not be for everyone, but the sheer amount of depth to the game is staggering. People who call it a flat Minecraft clone have no idea what they're talking about. I've tried Minecraft and Minecraft is boring by comparison. Terraria can be as easy or hard as you want. I even got my wife to play many, many hours of that game with me. (1k+ Hours played.)

    Sanctum, the game that got me to like Tower Defense games. The first Sanctum is much better than the second, it relies a lot more on the strategy you develop in the creation of your maze and a lot less on the FPS aspects. (10 to 30 hours worth of game play to complete.)

    Dungeon Defenders, possibly the best Tower Defense game. It's a TD/FPS/RPG game. There's not that many people playing it multiplayer anymore, but it's still one of the best games of all time. (Several hundred hours played.)

    7 Days to Die, a great survival game. It's in perpetual Early Access, and they recently updated the engine. So, there's still plenty of bugs, but so far it's a really fun game. (1k+ hours played)

    Great Single Player Experiences:

    Fallout 4 / Fallout 4 VR. It's just plain fun. I've played it both ways. I've only get 30hours or so on the normal version and switched to VR instead. I heard bad things about it at the start, so I didn't play this one anywhere near launch time. I should have ignored all the bad press about it. You can literally create your own space in the Wastelands. I wish a few things were different and probably can be fixed by the right mods, but definitely a great game.
    I would say, get Fallout 4 if Scifi/Dystopian future stuff is your thing. Otherwise, if Fantasy is your thing, go for Skyrim.

    Skyrim / Skyrim VR, is great as well. I've played it both ways now, and seriously there's not much more fun that can be had. VR mage is stupid fun. You can shoot Flames from one hand and lightning from the other, what's not to love? Yes, it has story, blah, blah, blah, Crispy Fried critter is where it's at. I just wish there was an Armageddon spell like in Ultima VII.

    ( ) Insert Roller Coaster VR game / program / sim here.

    Age of Wonders 3, strategy game, like Civ. So much fun here, it's possibly the best in the series, but hampered by DRM. Also, who in their right mind makes play by email an achievement for a game . . . Other than that, it's a truly great turn based strategy game.

    X-COM / X-COM 2, the new ones. I played through the first one, but haven't really gotten to the second one. It's a great addition to the X-COM universe. (There's "multiplayer" available.)

    Mount and Blade: Warband, this is the best one. This is a "FPS" game with Bows, Swords, Maces, Lances, Knives, Crossbows, etc. I say FPS, but it's also a strategy game, and Kingdom Building Sim. Being a Trader is also a viable strategy to building yourself up. Eventually, you'll want to go smash some skulls, though. Warband is more balanced than Fire and Sword. It improves on the original, and doesn't have some of the shortcomings of "with Fire and Sword." Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword, suffers from instakillitus. They can instakill you 'cause firearms, which is a huge change / annoyance compared to Warband. After spending a couple hundred hours playing Warband, then going to a Fire and Sword, it's just not as fun at the start. Then, once you get sufficient armor, the game becomes a whole lot easier. Sure, the same can be said of Warband, but it's not like it went from Come get Some to Who's your Daddy? difficulty. (Here's hoping for Mount and Blade 2 to be more awesome.)

    There's probably others, I'm missing, but 'meh.

    You can also try out GOG, it's great for building yourself a library of games you want perpetual access to.
    Titles such as these:
    Terraria
    Sid Meier's Civilization IV (Arguably the best.)
    Sid Meier's Pirates (The newer 3D one.)
    Ultima VII (The best one. Do yourself a favor and use Exult to play it.)
    Master of Magic (Stupidly good Fantasy style Civilization clone. I still actively play this along with Civ IV. I hope they release a fixed/updated Civ II on GOG, but not holding my breath.)
    Roller Coaster Tycoon I & II (Don't forget to go ahead and download the open source project that combines the two and adds multiplayer. I believe it's called Open RCT.)
    (This is where I would have inserted Duke Nukem 3D, but the stupid publishers took it down. They did the same thing to the Steam version. I have a copy through GOG though, before they stopped selling it. They stopped selling it when they released the new "remastered" piece of junk.)
    Wolfenstein 3D (The one that started it all, more or less.)
    Blake Stone
    X-COM (The Classics, UFO Defense and Terror From the Deep. Probably 3 also, but I never got into that one.) Still play 1 & 2 from time to time.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by Kell on Monday January 07 2019, @11:39PM (1 child)

      by Kell (292) on Monday January 07 2019, @11:39PM (#783465)

      I agree with enough of your picks to say I want to try the ones that I haven't played. And you're spot on with MaB:WB. It's a hugely underrated gem of genius that most people never play deep enough to understand how addictively compelling the later stage modes can be. I've wasted as much time on it as I have on KSP (which isn't on your list, and which you really should try). I too, still fire up X-COM, the original, from time to time. I found Xenonauts to be a worthy successor in ways in which the more recent editions are not.

      --
      Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:34PM

        by Freeman (732) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:34PM (#783698) Journal

        I think I got KSP at some point, but haven't given it a real try. Xenonauts looked ok, but I think the other spiritual successor to the original is better. (I forget it's name, but there's a "gold version.")

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:20AM (1 child)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:20AM (#783545) Journal

      I quit the Ultimas after 6 proved unplayably buggy. They came out with a patch, but I didn't feel like starting over like I had to do in Ultima 5 because I entered the final dungeon without a crucial item, only to discover it couldn't be exited. Wouldn't have been a big deal, but couldn't have multiple save points either, and I saved after entering the dungeon. Oops. Heck, I didn't even solve Ultima 3 the kosher way. Got tired of the needle in the haystack problem of looking for the Mark of the Snake, and hacked the character disk to give myself the mark. Gave the Ultimas one more shot with Ultima Online, but that was a PVP killfest. 7 is the best, huh?

      I played MoM, and yeah, it's mostly a clone of Civ, with a fantasy skin. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. Played the original Civ and Civ 2 as well. The same guys who made MoM also made Master of Orion, did you miss that one? MoM is good, but MoO is better. There's a MoO2 as well.

      One of the great classics is M.U.L.E. Multiplayer alien colonization and economics game. 4 people could crowd around one Atari 800 or Commodore 64 to play it.

      In recent years, I have had to confine myself to games that I can break away from in an instant, and not come back for several hours, so that pretty well kills off arcade games, unless they have a pause key. Totally kills the MMO stuff. I really enjoyed SpaceChem, a nice puzzle game.

      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:55PM

        by Freeman (732) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:55PM (#783704) Journal

        Master of Orion should be on my GOG list, but isn't. It's a great strategy game. Though, I think Master of Orion 2 is the better one, if I remember correctly.

        Yes, Ultima VII is the pinnacle of the series. The interface is acceptable from a playability point of view even by today's standards. Multiple save points and Exult (Hobbyist engine recreation.) backports some of the features in pt2 to pt1, like the key ring, and things like that. It also makes it a breeze to setup and play on a Modern OS. Sure, GOG sort of does that already, since they preconfigure DOSBox for you, but Exult is still better. You are missing out, if you skipped Ultima VII. Ultima VIII was a disappointment and Ultima IX I never even gave a chance. I played on an Ultima Online PvE Shard (Unofficial Server), but that eventually died. After that I swore off anything with a monthly subscription. The shard was only monthly donation, for extra characters, but it was "worth it" if you were into it. Which I was.

        I may give M.U.L.E. a look.

        Give Ultima VII a try, you won't be disappointed. You can generally pick it up and put it down at a moment's notice. Yet, it has a huge and rich story, compared to 99% of the RPGs released in recent years.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by pipedwho on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:33AM (1 child)

      by pipedwho (2032) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:33AM (#783546)

      Excellent list.

      Here are some of the games that captured me over the years amongst many that I played a bit and were bored before I got anywhere near to completing them:

      On my C-64 back in the day:
      Old school arcade style that have an actual ending: Impossible Mission, Fort Apocalypse, Lode Runner, Jump Man, and many others I've long forgotten
      Old school RPG: Ultima IV, loved the music and play in that game, it was the first of those games I played.
      Text: Zork, and heaps of others that I remember the plot line but not the names of. Zork wasn't even my favourite, but it's the only one I remember the name of

      On my PC:
      Old school with graphic adventure: King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Zork Grand Inquisitor
      FPS: Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem, played others, but they were more of the same and I got bored before I finished them. I might have finished Half Life

      vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
      Modern: ----> Portal <---- this one is awesome, a 'FPS' without shooting, look it up if you haven't heard of it. (Portal 2 lost the magic of the first one)
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

      IPAD/phone:
      Oceanhorn (love this game - very much like a really well done version of Legend of Zelda (which I never played as I never had Nintendo)
      Robot Wants Kitty - platform shooter/jumper (I know it sounds lame, but some of the levels made by players are awesomely clever - most are crap though)
      A Dark Room - text adventure with some clever game dynamics
      Swordigo - another platform game with puzzles and an ending.

      You might notice the complete absence of online games. I never liked the idea of being tied to the computer in world that I could 'pause' for a break. And I much prefer adventure/quest type games in this genre. I love actual real life role playing (D&D, etc), but that is harder to get going as you need to plan ahead and coordinate a decent block of time with other players.

      My best gaming memories have been this non computer based RPGs (AD&D, Gamma World, Traveler, and MANY non-rules based DIY adventures).

      And if you missed Portal above, go look it up on Steam and give it a go. The concept of the portal gun allows a whole new class of game based problem solving that is totally different from any other FPS out there.

      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @04:01PM

        by Freeman (732) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @04:01PM (#783705) Journal

        Ah, yeah, Portal and Portal 2 are stupendously awesome. Though, possibly the most fun I've had on VR is the Portal Stories mod for Portal 2. It's literally more Portal 2 in VR. Slightly different mechanics, but stupid fun. Really short, but it gives me hope that Valve might possibly do something really fun with VR.

        King's Quest was the one series I really played much of in that style. It was quite fun. Text wise, there was Humbug, Hugo's House of Horrors, and Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (If I remember correctly, though I think I played a shareware version.).

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by Webweasel on Tuesday January 08 2019, @10:51AM

      by Webweasel (567) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @10:51AM (#783611) Homepage Journal

      You should have a look at Factorio.

      --
      Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday January 07 2019, @10:44PM (2 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Monday January 07 2019, @10:44PM (#783423)

    Vox Populi you say?

    ...googling...

    ...how have I never heard of this?! You have enlightened me and I thank you graciously!

    May I offer in return the Perfect World mod? I always play with this map type, not because it's balanced (it isn't), but because the shape of the land is just so much more realistic.

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 07 2019, @11:01PM (1 child)

      by looorg (578) on Monday January 07 2019, @11:01PM (#783432)

      You are welcome. I thought they stopped updating Perfect World and it became weird and crashy. I should look it up and try it again then. Thank you.

      • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday January 07 2019, @11:10PM

        by meustrus (4961) on Monday January 07 2019, @11:10PM (#783439)

        Obviously I haven't tried it with Vox Populi yet, but what I have installed is "PerfectWorld3". Sometimes you insta-lose on startup because the game couldn't find a place to put your capital, but that's only sometimes. For what it's worth, it's working for me with base game + Brave New World on Mac (no Gods and Kings). Unfortunately that setup may present me with some interesting difficulty in getting Vox Populi set up...

        --
        If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?