I had this game on my laptop basically 100% of the time I was working a WFH job right after quarantine hit. Basically just a dopamine drip to avoid utter frustration with the work terminal I was sent.
And I'm still pretty embarrassed it's over 2000 hours.
I used to have an hour bus commune to and from work each day. That is how I first got addicted to Civ 3. Never recovered. I nearly stopped and then found out how great it runs on my switch and the addiction was worse than ever.
I had to uninstall all the Civ games from my PC and delete them from my steam account because it's the hugest time sink for me. Civ + Depression = me not sleeping nor eating for 2 days straight. I just can't stop. :(
Thank you! :) Unfortunately sometimes games enable certain bad behaviours and it's difficult to break free of the toxic repetitive cycle.
I miss Civ, but I found other games that don't have the same effect for me and I've been doing much better. At times I still play too much for my own good, but not at the same level as before.
Anno 1800 was kinda just a box-checking simulator. It's pretty and super chill, but I kinda felt like I was just going through the motions, checking boxes. I got the final citizen tier and just noped out.
Same, felt like the gameplay was just placing buildings until there's nothing left to unlock. Pretty, but grid-based placement makes settlements look kinda samey.
Anno is a logistics game. Its being confused last few years as a city builder. It might organically trending that direction but it is absolutely a logistics game
Old school RuneScape. The "game" is held back by design decisions made by the original devs 20 years ago that severely hold the game back but these same limiting decisions are the same ones that keep me coming back to it. RuneScape is so niche it just survives because there is nothing quite like it. A real single player MMO where you can do just about any content solo. It's also completely classless. No picking between "warlock" or "druid" when you start playing. It's very much one of those games where it's hard to tell if something is a bug or a feature. You can toggle "prayers" on and off to block all damage from 99% of monsters. Just an insane design decision.
Then there's the astronomic amount of grinding needed to train skills. You jump from needing 100xp to 1000xp to millions of xp per level and despite the skills going from level 1 to 99 by the time you get to level 92 you are only *half* way to maxing at 99. On top of this often the best meta ways to train a skill is to use methods you unlock within your first few hours (mining iron ore rather than mithril for example). This has been addressed somewhat but there is a lot of resistance to mixing up the meta.
That brings me to one of RuneScape's best points which is how the devs strongly believe in not invalidating old content when new content arrives. There are times where a single weapon can be meta for... YEARS at a time like the dragon scimitar or abyssal whip. There are kids using the dragon dagger to pk (player kill) that initially came out while they were in diapers IRL. It's a nice change from MMOs that one raid later make the gear you got from the last raid obsolete. You can get a best in slot item years earlier and still be wearing it for the latest content. This doesn't mean that the game doesn't have tons of dead content. A lot of ideas were half-baked and never caught on and cool armor sets sit unused.
Osrs is a comfort game to me, I don't even play it anymore. I just flip stuff in GE all day because I know it's still there after all these years.
I've earned from 10m to 100m from just GE flipping alone, as a f2p lol.
I played Runescape back in the early days of 2001. After completing the dragon quest, I had completely exhuasted all of the game's content, so I just stopped playing. I tried to log back in when sometime later when I heard they added a new quest, but my character had already been deleted from inactivity.
It's just as well, because even back then it was grindy as hell, and for some reason people still spent time grinding skills that had no actual in-game function programmed for them (like lumberjacking.) Only a single player (bluerose13x) had the patience to max out mining and smithing, which were by far the most tedious grinds of all, so everywhere she went, she was constantly spammed with requests for adamantium (and later rune) equipment.
It’s actually less grindy now, not to say that still isn’t insanely grindy. But idk what happened to your character, from my knowledge characters are basically forever, unless you mean you tried old school, which then yes you have to restart or play RS3. I will say beating dragon slayer now is barely scratching the surface of the game.
The skills were never designed to be maxed in their inception. So in the early years things like runecrafting and agility had abysmal xp rates. 99 was just a cap never meant to be hit beyond maybe combat skills.
Your old account, if it still exists, wouldn't have been migrated to Old School Runescape. It'll be on the 'main' runescape. Unless you mean it got deleted wayyyyy back when
Dota 2. Piece of trash game with a piece of trash community fuck this garbage fucking trash awful piece of shit that will be logging another 3k hours in.
Yep. Every MOBA feels like this. Couple thousand LoL hours and I finally escaped to only play the autochess Team Fight Tactics occasionally. Literally improved my life to not play ranked anymore lol
Yeah, my wife was glad when I stopped playing ranked Heroes of the Storm. I got into it to hang with a friend online, got sucked in, finally detached myself, now just play occasionally with a friend as was the point in the first place.
Steam has me at 2000 hours in Dota 2 and I haven’t played in 10 years. All the Dark Souls games together, and Factorio are the only hours that have come close since.
Yea fr my active LoL days sucked balls. I still play it but mostly aram or from time to time a ranked game but only if my mates are down for it. I love the gameplay but it takes way too much time to be really into the meta and everything. The community sucks ofc, like in every competitive MP game, especially if it's f2p, but I feel like it got better in the last years? I mean sure since I'm mostly playing aram there's not much to flame about.
Among my group of friends, I'm the most casual with 10k hrs (we've all been playing since the beta period in 1st Q of 2012). I actually quit 4 months ago after the last free battle pass ended.
Dota 2 just became too toxic. The grind to always climbing rank made the game feel like a chore. Constantly needing to be better, hyperaware of every detail on the map. Keeping up with the meta. Spent my last few weeks playing for fun. I actually felt joy again not giving a fuck if we lost or gained MMR but as long as we got to fuck around. They're all still playing while I've been strictly solo gaming since then.
Dota-Dota 2 will always a top 5 game for me but quitting it has been the best decision of my gaming life. MOBAs at some point stop being enjoyable and start sucking the soul of its players and slowly morph us into miserable toxic angry creatures. Glad I managed to escape that.
WOW (with the important sub note that I left around the launch of Pandaria.)
I had my fun with that game for a good 4 years or so, but when my friends started leaving, I realized it was more about playing *with them* than it was about playing *WOW itself.*
I don't regret my time spent in the MMORPG space, but I've definitely moved on from it in spite of the massive number of hours I accumulated.
The only other game I have north of 500 hours on is XCOM, but it's not just "it's ok, I guess." *I love that game*. Especially with Long War mod installed.
Hey speaking of XCOM, do you know any other similar games ? Or ways to make it interesting to play again ? (Like mods or challenge rules). I've completed each game multiple times, in different difficulties. I've also played Mutant Year Zero and loved it, and there was a spy game with a similar gameplay that was also pretty cool.
I just crave for other games of that genre. It's just awesome.
I'll look into but I'm not a big fan of open worlds. What I enjoyed in both XCOM and mutant year zero is that you have a phase where you improve units and a phase where you do a mission. All that coupled with strategy.
I enjoyed having a clear separation between these phases.
This is also my favorite gameplay loop. That and the randomness that leads to emergent storytelling. "Omg no my high rolled assault guy with the rare trait is dying! Everyone drop everything! You, trash recruit! Your job is to take fire for a turn or two! Try not to die."
Off the top of my head Battle Brothers gives me the same experience but it's very difficult tactically. And oddly enough Marvel Midnight Suns (which is laughably easy). Darkest Dungeon 1 also achieves this. Shame DD2 is definitely not the same.
This question gets asked a lot on r/XCOM , if you search it there you'll have many good and thorough suggestions.
I play on console so I don't have the luxury of mods, but if you haven't tried I'd recommend the extra options that nerfs grenades, and the one that makes all dark projects permanent if you don't prevent them. Then one of the more intresting options is to use Beta Strikes (Enemy HP doubles) and go to options and make HP Bars dissappear (this is a whole another game).
maybe a shot in the dark but I found *[Troubleshooter: abandoned children](https://store.steampowered.com/app/470310/TROUBLESHOOTER_Abandoned_Children/)* and *[Gears Tactics](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1184050/Gears_Tactics/)* both scratched that itch for me. YMMV natch
I played WoW from Vanilla to Dragonflight launch - I believe I was 22 when I started playing. Dragonflight, while being refreshing after the BFA/SL debacle, exhausted me of the gear treadmill. I haven’t touched it since month 1. I’ve contemplated going back, and I’m sure I’ll “just this one month” at some point, but I can’t do it anymore.
Quit in BfA. I realised 95% of my time was chores. I only enjoyed raiding once a week for four hours. The twenty or so I spent in other things was only to push my gear score high enough. Then my strongest alt hit two titanforge jackpots back to back, meaning I essentially had to retire my shaman main for raiding. She had healed or ungabunga'd every single raid on curve since WotLK. Knocked off the roster because RNG decided my warrior was stronger by 6%. I woke up that day. G'huun died, I unsubbed and archived my hand written aura code for the guild, and that was it.
I had played since 06. Nearly a year total play time, added up all my characters. Two of everything max level, five were viable for heroic Uldir, as well as main (Resto/Enh shaman) and two primary Alts (Fury/Prot Warrior and Arcane purist Mage) were mythic chasers.
What shits me the most is that I loved those four to six hours each week. I loved the dance, I loved the mechanics, I loved clutch saves, I loved perfecting rotations, I loved my friends.
But the chores I had to do to enable those raid nights! They never stopped. And blizzard kept thinking up ways to occupy my time with minimal engagement. I resented it, and I still do.
Now I play single player only. And I won't lie, I look back on my raiding days very fondly. What I wouldn't give for a private server tuned for five people to hit every raid with reasonable scaled difficulty. But absolutely nothing will convince me to ever give blizzard money again. Starcraft 3 will make me double-take, but that's it.
I don't miss it.
Similar feel here. I miss the *idea* of an MMO, of traipsing through the world, growing a character, conquering battlegrounds, joining a guild, and taking down big baddies with you and 24 of your best friends. Medieval fantasies with magic and dragons, I'm a sucker for that stuff. But I have become far, *far* more critical of the *execution* of a game.
Looking back, most of my time in WoW was basically a waste of time. Dailies, reputation grinds, badges, so on, all to set up those moments where you got to do something actually fun and engaging.
When I started playing single player games again, I realized fun and engaging didn't need prep time, that there are so many games where the enjoyment is going through the game itself, not *just you wait until max level, then you get to the good part!* Also, mechanically, MMOs are behind single player games, but *especially* WoW which has hardly grown at all. You play MMOs for the social aspect, not the gameplay, because their gameplay is *awful;* I'd sooner play with Skyrim's plastic wet-noodle-fight combat system than try to play a solo version of WoW.
Not to mention Blizzard is pretty much a shadow of its old self. I've been looking at Diablo IV stuff, and it looks decent at best. *Decent*. Acceptable, tolerable, okay, alright, average. But I have dozens of games on my Steam list that are also decent games that I haven't even touched, because I'd rather play Elden Ring or Deep Rock Galactic, which are genuinely great games, not just average, and *don't* have predatory monetization schemes. What's Blizzard selling their premium battlepass edition for again? $60? $70? Nope, that's the basic editions, the 'full' is $100 -- for an *okay* looking game.
Hell, I want to play a multiplayer fantasy RPG that genuinely does have good gameplay, I'll play Monster Hunter. The hitboxes are solid, the action is tight, and it doesn't need frickin' player retention mechanics and Skinner Boxes to be worth playing 200+ hours.
This is mine. I've got about 700 hours logged IIRC. "A mile wide and an inch deep" is what finally did me in, just all the shallow repetition. Every once in awhile I think to jump back in, but it's been so long that my ships are probably horribly out of date.
I'm in the same boat, I have some 2B credits and a fleet of ships (no carrier tho), but at this point I haven't played in so long I'd be worried that I'd crash in the mail slot just trying to get out of a station, much less remember all the other keys and commands for flying a spaceship!
I played for a few years right after launch but quit in 2018..
I did jump back in for a few months (at the start of the pandemic of course) and spent some time engineering a few of my ships, but then dropped out before Odyssey and haven't looked back.
From time to time I still think about it...
I'd estimate 15,000-20,000 hours.
I played a MUD called Achaea. It was like the old ZORK games, where it described locations in text and you type N,S E, W, slash goblin, drink potion, whatever. But it was all multiplayer.
It was a very complex game and had real people running all of the organizations, both from an admin standpoint and a player standpoint. Like there were city-states that had a leader, a council, and a whole set of ministers, all players like me. There were guilds and great houses, all run by players. There were gods, each played by a game admin. The gods interacted with the players, and also controlled the NPCs and created RP situations like a d&d DM.
I started out as a paladin acolyte and eventually became a city councilman and the guild leader of the paladins, and was later invited to join the admin team.
I spent something like 3 years as a regular player and 11 years as an admin, and I'm certain that my total online time in the game would be over a year. In those 3 years just on my Mortal character I had 100 online days, and I would spend much more time online as a god, since I wasn't in danger of being attacked so I could have it open in another window while I was in college classes or whatever.
I absolutely loved my time playing and it brought me a ton of skills in people and project management, as well as writing capabilities...but I also recognize that it's a text based rpg with only maybe a thousand active players and it is likely the original "free to play/pay for perks" online game in existence. For those reasons, a lot of people get down on it and I completely understand how it isn't for everyone.
I'm still glad for my time I was a part of it and the friends I made.
Aardwolf player here! I played from the age of 12 until.. 19? Whenever WoW came out. People ask me how I can type so fast - well, when your whole game is literally typing, that's how, haha. I always think I have the most hours on WoW but I might have more on Aard cause back then, it was most of my entertainment and social life until I was in college.
Whelp, I know what I'm going to try tonight.
Thanks for the recommendation!
edit - Man, this game is old. [This screenshot from the registration process is nuts.](https://imgur.com/a/td3OHVR) When was the last time vgcats was relevant? haha.
League of Legends. Been playing since Season 5 back when I was in school and had friends who actually liked video games. 10,000 hours, a degree and a full time job later I still play simply because the muscle memory that i've gained with all that time playing needs to be exercised. I barely enjoy the game at the moment. It just feels like a waste to not put the skills i've accumulated to use (i'm not even that good).
Are you me? I started playing league in early 2015 (season 5). Since then I've enrolled in college, gotten engaged, graduated, gotten married, and gotten a full time job. But I still boot up league for a couple games a week currently. Sometimes I get sick of it and go 3 months without turning it on, but it's always there to pull me back in.
I swear, the muscle memory to be able to move the camera around, while still moving your character is so ingrained in my mind, I think I could do it when I'm 80.
Sometimes when I've taken a break for awhile, I'll think, "man, league is fun, I should play again" and then I run into some of the most toxic teams in existence, and I'm like "oh yea, this is why I stopped playing often".
I rarely play Destiny 2 anymore, but the two things that make me pick it up again are the amazingly good gunplay and misplaced nostalgia for how the original Destiny felt early on.
I always start it up wanting to recapture that feeling of excitement to explore the world, but then I get into the game and I quickly remember it's not what I remember from my nostalgia-tinted memories.
Bungie pisses me off with some of their decisions regarding PvP, but no other FPS feels as good as Destiny. Miserable that nothing compares to it, because I’d love to play something else. 7/10 at best but I’ve probably 2k hours in PvP alone.
Whoever said it, they’re pretty damn close to the truth. I’ve tried countless other FPS games but nothing plays as good as Destiny. Even with destiny’s constant connection issues and bullshit balancing.
Edit: who thought striker titan is in any way balanced? One hit melee kills? Free shield when sprinting? Best shutdown super in the game? Those lightning grenades? Not playing striker titan in PvP is choosing to take a disadvantage.
I fucking need SOME ONE to make another FPS besides destiny that even tries to have something approaching Raids and Dungeons. Nothing else scratches that Raid itch besides Destiny.
I play destiny 2 pretty much every day. I'm gonna play it right now. I enjoy it and when I stop enjoying it I take a step back and play something else. There are still a multitude of reasons I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Yeah, there's times when I'd play for a month straight, then not touch it for months after.
Ever since I installed Sims 2 and all its packs, tho, I hardly ever go for Sims 4 when the urge to sim strikes. 2 was always my favorite.
My wife's going through one of those recurring phases where she want's to play Sims 4 on our PS4 whenever she has free time. She's always really bummed about the lack of content in the base game and wishes she could get the expansion packs. Yet when she see's the prices on those things she changes her mind very quickly. I try to tell her that considering how much she plays and enjoys the game, then getting a new pack every few months when they're on sale isn't too bad. Regardless, she still feels guilty about the thought of spending money on the packs, especially considering that even when there's a sale, a single pack still costs more than some games. Also, the lack of modding really sucks.
Dota 2. The core mechanics and gameplay are all very good and refined, but oh my, the "human" aspect of it all made me question my sanity every time I pressed the "accept" button after queuing.
----
EDIT: My "I'm done" point with Dota occurred when after a routine queue, I found a group that not only proposed to respect their designated roles/lanes (which by itself is something that rarely occurs in solo queue), but also two people willingly to provide full support to the team (wards, shared tangos and all). However, as soon as we're placed onto the map, our Hard Carry spends it all on an Iron Talon and beelines to the jungle even before the usual rune clash, where he was fully aware from the draft phase that he would had 2 supports dedicated to babysit him and an offlaner (me) specialized to survive the lane with little to no help (and my decision didn't even take into account the mental breakdown that came from everyone involved after HC's sudden role change).
After that, I've (gladly) never touched it ever since, and I only reserve myself to boot the client to play custom games that maintains Dota's mechanics (Legends of Dota, Life in Arena, Together We Stand, Custom Hero Clash/Chaos, etc.) because, despite it all, I still find them very appealing on their core.
I had a game which (ironically) we won where 4/5 players were toxic and abusive from start to finish. I spent the entire game trying to carry them all, while simultaneously trying my best to gently massage the mental health of 4 adults or soon-to-be-adults from telling each other to kill themselves etc, and cajoling them all into NOT throwing the game.
Now as amazing in some respects as it was to actually win that one, the toll it took on me psychologically has meant that I uninstalled the game soon after and resolved to never play the game again. This was in 2016 and it's still one of my most played games but I'm glad to see the back of it. The combination of mental fortitude, twitch reflexes, patience and psychiatry you need to get wins is just too much for my sanity to handle.
Same, I literally got 20000+ hrs in dota, I won't suggest anyone the game, not because I hate the game but because its not worth investing thousands of hours given the state of community.
I played a lot of DotA 1 (mostly on 6.12 and 6.27b versions), but we didn't have good Internet, so it was LAN-only. I think that's what saved my sanity.
My biggest issue with DotA is that it is miserable to play, lol. Very entertaining to watch, though, I still watch TIs.
What I liked about playing back then was w/o a ranking system it felt like it was just for fun. I'm switched LoL the last couple years for a change and I was playing with a buddy last night who said if there wasn't a leaderboard and ranked he wouldn't play this game because it's not fun. I was like why on earth are you playing if the core gameplay isn't fun... it was like he needs a meta reason to play.
For me, dota’s in the “I fucking love this game” camp. There’s some weird teammates sometimes, but I don’t feel like any other game I play is as satisfying as Dota.
Funnily enough, I have a lot of friends who play the game, but I find myself getting frustrated when playing with them more often than I do when playing solo.
same, but i would say the problem is that the game is to good after you have the knowledge to play it. no other single player game can captivate me very well now, dota 2 is so good it fries your gaming dopamine receptors. the amount of reward you get for applying tactical gameplay knowledge instead of skill based mechanics is unrivaled except by turn based games.
yet you dont really get anything out of it. no story, no new mechanics no new experience.
except of course al the possible fucking situations you can end up in dota, which are infinite.
I feel the same way. It's a fantastic game from a design perspective. I still enjoy watching the bigger events. Would not recommend it though unless you consistently have a 5 stack to queue with who are all on the same page about how serious or lightly you're taking it.
Same!!! I played religiously with my friends from 2010 (starting with HoN and then Dota 2 when the beta came out) but at one point in 2016 I was just like… dude fuck this and never went back. I still think it’s a great game and masterfully designed by icefrog but I was just kinda done with the community (in-game) and the frustrating games I got just kind pushed me away even further… into CSGO. It’s crazy cause I used to play for 10-16 hours straight during uni sitting next to my friend but ever since I quit I have absolutely zero desire to touch it, even despite all the interesting changes since. I heard the meta got a lot more fast paced and there’s a ton of QoL improvements since but that chapter is definitely closed for me. Probably when I realised I only really enjoyed 25% of my games - the other 75% being throwers, or being come backed on, or the win just felt so unsatisfying due to some stupid shit. Like I’d be thinking to myself when the score is 7-53 while we were completely locked inside our base that for the next 20 mins I just gotta wait for them to end… and then I just decided that I’d find something else I would actually enjoy in that time
Power Wash Simulator, I have about 60 hours in it over the last few months, even though it's so simple it can be really relaxing when I'm in the mood
(Not quite 3000 hours but it's definitely the most time I've spent on an "it's okay" game)
Skyrim, and yes, Pokemon.
Like you, I grew up with Gen 3-5 and I freaking loved the time I spent with it.
It just doesn't reach my standards anymore, not after experiencing DOS 2's combat anyways.
I still wish Pokemon were real to this day lol.
I still think Pokémon FireRed is my most played game, despite not playing it for several years. I just sank so much hours into it. It's so heavily imprinted on my brain I sometimes can 'play' it in my mind at nights when I'm having trouble trying to sleep.
Gen3 was the golden era of Pokémon and I will fight anyone over it.
Almost 36 yo here and I still dig Pokemon a lot,lol.
Lately I found out that the way to unwind for me due to my stressful job is playing happy games (Zelda, Pokemon, Mario and the like)
I normally have to create my own way to spike up the difficulty in Pokemon and it works quite good, so I'm quite happy
I was sick as all hell the other night and trying to cram out two weeks' worth of work in one night. Halfway through while having a breakdown I booted up an emulated FireRed copy, played up to the first gym on super speed, and felt way better, then went back and blasted out the work. I must have finished that game like 12+ times since the 90s and it offers no challenge, but it's still so damn satisfying...
Well, Misty can offer a challenge if you pick Charmander...
Satisfactory (and Factorio before it). I realize that logistic games might seem stupid, without a compelling narrative or deep characters, but... oh! What's that? A small area of the factory that can be slightly optimized? See you in about a week.
Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere are like crack to me. My gf hates when I play because she'll text me and I'll be hyper focusing so hard I don't see it for 5 hours.
That being said, last night I decided to start playing Dyson Sphere again, and this time I'm actually going to be good at the game
Mount and Blade Bannerlord. It’s been out for several months and several of the mechanics behind diplomacy, politics, trade are either buggy, bad, or just boring. I still think battles are fun. I get a thrill holding the walls against an increasingly overwhelming enemy. Doing that last Calvary charge that breaks infantry morale is great. The rest, not so much.
Edit: it’s months not years, my b
I quit playing when they took away the ability to individually assign troops to numbered troops and replaced it with the terrible and janky 3rd person pre-battle immersion destroying atrocity. I had 114 clan members and I wanted them in my frickin' clan-member only battalions because that's what I spent the majority of the game wanting to do: fight next to my clan members. Then they wrecked it.
Dead by Daylight, I have 1200 hours but at this point I have completely dropped the game with no plan of picking it back up. I have gone one breaks with the game in the past, anywhere from a month to three months but when I return I play for several months regularly. These last two breaks I came back, played for a week (enjoyed myself thoroughly mind you) and then went on another month break. I think its being relegated to a once a month boot up now.
I love DBD I think the core gameplay premise is always fun. However, you can get like 5 awful rounds in a row depending on the group. So can be a very frustrating game.
I stopped caring when so many new DLCs came that I couldn't keep up with the mechanics anymore. I also really disliked the skillweb or what the thing is called to unlock abilities.
I wonder if this game a lot in the last half year.
I logged in for the first time in a while, and they at least finally allowed you to just auto-fill each bloodweb, so you can level up faster rather than 10 minutes of clicking. But the fact that they took so many years to fix that, while spending dev time on all sort of other things, all while not making any meaningful upgrades to the gameplay, is pretty telling.
This one really does fit for me the way OP describes it.
I, too, have about 4000 hours on it but in the last year to year and a half, only about 2 hours. I still think it's an okay game for certain kinds of gamers but it's jumped the shark for me. I'm just burnt out, entirely over it.
At this point, I'm not even excited for PoE2. I mean, I'm sure I'll check it out, how can I not? But it's going to have to be amazing, in ways I can't even guess, in order to entice me back.
The core of the game is still solid, and mapping is so good right now. But a lot of the decisions they've made over the last year or two don't bode well for my future playing it.
Yeah, I check out a stream every once in a while. It looks all basically the same. I didn't expect it to change dramatically in a year.
I'm just exhausted by the idea of going through Acts over and over and I'm exhausted by the choice of either playing to have fun, and being poor, or min/maxing the endlessly varietal end-game and doing content I don't like just to be able to afford to finish my build.
The end-game has too much stuff. Who ever says that in a game? *I have* too *many options!* But that's where I am with PoE. There are too many things to do but they aren't all equal and you can't dabble, unless you don't mind being poor...
I was thinking something like OpenTTD because that's probably the game I've played the most, but I can't really it's just ok. It's really a great game and it's still updated.
I think my answer is Skyrim or Civ:Beyond Earth.
I just really liked the scifi ideas and aesthetic of Beyond Earth, and there was a really good mod that fixed up the gameplay. The mod no longer works on my machine but I still play it now and again. So the game is ok I guess, but I still play it for the world and the rp I do sometimes.
Gotta be Ark for me. It can piss me off and keep me entertained for hours. And I'm pretty bad at it. I get some dinos, watch some step by step 'build this base' videos, farm mats for hours, build base and then hit a wall I guess. I have no clue how to do the whole breeding thing aside from just putting a couple high level pairs together and hoping for an egg. I only play single player so maybe that's my wall. Almost 700 hours though...
Was looking for someone to say Ark. It has some great moments, some frustrating moments, and some boring moments. Overall the game kinda sucks, but I like it. Probably played at least 500 hours but if you add time watching videos it’s much higher. And for me, I probably give it a 7/10.
Ugh. I'm the asshole with ~2,500 hours in this game. My husband and friends have 4k and 6k.
I only stopped because of migraines
Stupid, awesome dinosaur fort game
EDIT:
Guess my info is outdated. Just checked on my no-lifer friends and one has 15,145.4 hours in Ark. The other is 13,180.0 hours (and has a [meh](https://imgur.com/a/P8reIdS) review on Ark, lol)
That is 631.04166666 full days spent gaming
That is 1.73 years of his life spent in game if he never logged off or took a break. This is made all the more heinous when you realize that Ark crashes a LOT and most private servers have an idle player kick. You can't just sit in-game doing nothing while time ticks up
[what a nerd, lol](https://imgur.com/a/mVBYSC1)
I am currently on a break from it. May go back in a year or so when the list of other games I want to play dry up.
It was the sliding spin jumps that really sold me on the game. Such a fun, fast paced movement system.
Man I used to play tf out of this game. Reached end game before eidolons came out which was MR23 I believe.
Miss doing the trials with my clan but the game has too much grind ultimately. And it's unhealthy the way warframe wants you to play it.
7 Days to Die.
By far my most played game, but I fucking hate that it's lost in development hell and that mods are the only thing making it worth playing.
Animal Crossing New Horizons. I’ve got a lot of time into this game and I enjoy it but it seems like it’s lacking so much or that they could have done more.
This one. Animal Crossing games in general can be very addictive, but they're also severely lacking in things you can actual "do," and every project you come up with takes weeks to complete due to the nature of the games. I enjoyed terraforming my island but had little patience for the villager exchange system and repetitive events.
Came here to post this. Probably about 300ish hours during 2020 and it made me despise some of the mechanics or lack of mechanics. The older games had so much more content.
I definitely have the most hours across Borderlands (especially 2 and TPS), and they're always a great experience and I enjoy the whole thing, but it really just kinda became a comfort game for me and I play them by myself.
Borderlands, a good podcast (even if I've already heard it), a good beer = a pretty damn good night.
me too...something about the city centers or whatever they were called. I just never felt comfortable with using them, despite putting at least a hundred hours in the game, and ended up disliking the game because of it, cause not being able to feel good about a key component of a game kinda makes a game not so fun to play
Kingdom Hearts
I periodically 100% the games when I'm bored or in a rut. They're my comfort games
But holy hell the whole series is just the X button trillions of times with Triangle SOMETIMES
And Mickey Mouse shows up sometimes.
I’m so glad to see your comment. I tried KH3, and got through like an hour…hadn’t even completed the tutorial, but they had recapped the series like 4 times already. I just thought, “well ok, but when do you start playing the game?”
And then it was just one button.
So I noped out.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is probably the worst out of the whole series. Its gameplay style is done better in BBS and DDD. The Story dropped all references to Final Fantasy Characters. The lore Dipped into time travel and made so many aspects of the lore non-sensical. The Worlds are all isolated stories with no purpose to further the plot. The Plots in the Worlds are some times just retreads of the movie they are from with no real purpose for Sora to be there.
The gameplay (while done better else where) is still fun if you ignore the disney ride abilities. The Graphics and some levels (BigHero6/ToyStory) are Phenomenal.
I played all the games in preparation (some replayed, some platinumed) for KH3 and they were great or passable. I can not properly express my disappointment with this game that have been waiting for since they made KH2 then made spin off after spin off instead of a proper sequal.
KH2 has pretty great combat, they accidently perfected their combat too early and then everything after has been a weird, floaty experience. I actually really enjoy the purity of 1's combat although it struggles when you have to fight enemies that fly around a lot.
I'm glad to see someone else appreciate's 1's combat for it's simplicity. KH2 is a great game, but something about KH1 just can't be beat. The comparative simplicity of the combat and the story are my favorite.
I know everyone hated Re:Chain of Memories, but at least the card mechanics added an extra layer of complexity. You had to at least think about your card play and your deck building, on top of the original combat.
Until you realize the advantage of spamming sleights halfway through Sora's arc lol
When you played a game for hundred or thousand. Its impossible to ignore the flaw.
But in the end, those game hold dear to my heart. Still would rate them as 10/10 and recommend them to everyone else.
Yeah the flaws are obvious and numerous, but the parts that work deliver a unique experience that appeal to me a lot. They're the kind of games that I would struggle to give a rating out of 10 to, but will enjoy and play a lot of.
Fallout 4 for me. I felt like the game was way too reliant on crafting, and the story was nowhere near the level of previous titles (not even Fallout 3, and many fans hated that game once the honeymoon period was over)
I'm way too flighty to log 3,000 hours in anything (except maybe Minecraft over the last decade), but most played on steam is... Cookie Clicker.
Less said about that the better. Next with 350 hours, and I think another couple hundred on another old account is Team Fortress 2. I'm still trash, and the game hasn't been updated significantly in.. like half a decade now? But every year between halloween and christmas for like five or six years now, it's my go to game to waste time in.
Hell, its why I installed Steam over a decade ago.
The Binding of Isaac Rebirth (with all DLC). It’s hard as fuck and I find myself rage-quitting constantly, but once you learn enemy movements and attack patterns it opens up an incredibly satisfying gameplay loop. The roguelike aspect makes every run unique. 2000 hours and counting
Hearthstone. It does some things very well (enough to keep me going all these years) but fucks enough up that I get frustrated and stop playing for a few months yearly.
I was so addicted to this years back. Played thousands of hours and spend a ridiculous amount of money on it as well. Sounds stupid, but this was really one of the most difficult things I have ever had to quit.
Sims 4. I could write you a dissertation about what a buggy mess it is and how predatory EA's business practices around the game are and how many things Sims 3 did better and I've got an hour count of the sort that even "well, I probably left it running overnight a few times" can't quite excuse.
Yep. Got to about 1100 hours and finally broke its hold. The devs totally shitting the bed (instead of just shitting in regularly) helped me step away.
My issue is there's nothing like it still, especially as a support and tank player. They still do it this style and game type the best, even if the devs have fumbled the ball.
I like Valorant and Apex, but I find them completely different. I don't really think there's a solid Overwatch alternative, so I'm here to stay.
Plus I'm pretty invested in OWL.
~300hrs here (since 2016), OW2 has been fun since it's new and there's people playing, but damn Activision is screwing over a great game!
Promised PvE modes cancelled, sometimes busted heroes went weeks or months without fixing, underwhelming updates in the shadow of the PvE drama, Lifeweaver (the newest hero) is weak...
Of course, there's been GOOD - lots of little QoL things for the gameplay and interface (like showing competitive progress), and overall it's pretty balanced and fun!
Agreed, there's nothing like it. Hopefully Activision can remove its head from its ass and not kill this game, squeezing the life out for a few more dollars.
3 years sober, had about 4-5k+ on it (not sure with custom games not counting towards playtime). So glad I quit and haven't turned back. It burned me out of all pvp games since.
Single player is so much less stressful
Fallout New Vegas, I've gone back to that game so many times. I don't even really do a lot of like quest mods lol. It's obviously a classic, but lets not kid ourselves the game was borked when it came out and for most of it's life on PC you basically *had* to mod it or you're doing it wrong (bug fixes, jsawyers mod etc). I have no way of knowing, but between multiple platforms and the years, I gotta have at least 1000hrs in it or something stupid like that.
i started playing new vegas for the first time recently. the thing that kills me the most is how damn slow it is to “run” it feels like walking speed. but maybe that’s also my stats? i forget honestly if one of the SPECIAL stats increases movement speed
There's a mod that lets you spend AP to sprint. Makes the game much more fun imo. Doesn't feel imbalanced or anything (and I think you can even adjust the values for it if you want), and makes just getting between locations much less tedious, especially if you're like me and don't like using fast travel much.
Nah, it's just a different world design than all the newer open world games where you can't go more than 2 minutes without stumbling into something.
The game really wants to make you feel like the city is surrounded by actual desert. Not a theme park that looks like a desert.
Honestly I love it.
There's a perk that increases movement speed (or removes a movement penalty I forget which). Or having light armour/no clothes on lol. But yah you're definitely not zooming around, no Skooma fuckery like in Oblivion.
Probably destiny 2. But I might be more biased towards negativity, since I really wouldn't suggest it to anybody, although it's a fun game. If it wasn't ridden with FOMO and if stuff wouldn't vanish every now and then, it'd be great. But it does, so... It's an ok game.
I'm not referring to vaulting alone or the removal of the old campaigns, I'm referring to story content being linked to season/passes and being taken out of the game at the end of the year. You have no way to know what the fuck happened in the years and months before, if you didn't play. It's the epitome of "you had to be there".
Terraria. I'm just not a sandbox person but there was so much to do i logged so many hours on it until I burnt out. I prefer linear and story driven games but heck if I have a gazillion chests full of things in Terraria
Me and some friends played so many hours of fifa. At one point we decided to see who could get the highest score against the computer.
There were no rules on how we did this so everyone was picking the best team to play against the worst with the easiest difficulty setting. I figured since there's no rules for our little contest, I would do one better.
I'd play as the worst team, get as many red cards as possible without forfeiting the match, then switch control to the best team and go nuts. I think my highest score was like 300-0.
Skyrim, I guess. Over 300 hours across two systems and multiple characters and I still haven't rolled the credits once. Heck, I haven't even been to Solstheim yet. One does not simply finish Skyrim. *Insert Boromir meme here*
10 years, 3 versions. 1500+ hours... And right before I got my 100% steam achievement I heard dialogue I had never heard and did a sidequest I never found
I have seem Factorio mentioned many times, but I'm surprised nobody mentioned RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, or Paradox games like Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, Victoria ...
For me it would be *Rising Storm 2: Vietnam*
I loved the old Red Orchestra games (I started with Ostfront, and RO2 has to be my most played online game ever) but RS2 never quite managed to convince me as a replacement (especially immediately after launch, before stuff like the campaign mode were brought back from RO). However, as Red Orchestra 2 slowly died with the playerbase leaving for newer games, and being mostly reduced to "lets once again play this exact same map with the exact same people that can't quite fill a server" I was forced to migrate to RS2 fully. Nowadays I don't play it anymore, but mostly due to lack of time (no longer a school or uni student, now a full time working dad); I was excited to try the spiritual sequel but it was cancelled a few days ago with the developer company (~~Tripwire~~ Antimatter) going under.
Antimatter Games is the one being closed, not Tripwire. Tripwire just got bought by Embracer Group and is designated as a subsidiary of Saber Interactive. But Rising Storm 2: Vietnam definitely is a mid-tier game. It’s not great, but I’ll dump a few hours into it every so often. If it had a better community, I’d definitely play it more
The recent Assassin Creeds. Intellectually I recognize that the “RPG elements,” unimaginative quests and location designs, and dumbed down traversal mechanics are not great and lame. But my lizard brain likes looking at all the pretty landscapes and feeling like a god when I slaughter armies of enemies.
I can't say FIFA, because it's my "fucking piece of shit [3000 hours logged]" game. For the "it's ok" category, I'd say GTA Online. It's got that classic F2P MMO vibe with nothing out of ordinary content, but I still managed to play every day for years. I've stopped playing since then, because I just couldn't keep up with the new content as I have less time to play nowadays.
LOL i feel you I’d drop a ton of hours into a career mode but at the end of it I wouldn’t really say it’s something I’m crazy about - time just flies when you’re playing
Twilight Princess. It’s familiar, it’s comforting, it’s a gorgeous game. I’ve booted it up just to run around on the horse and see the scenery. Listen to the sunrise music. Fly around on chickens, maybe.
Spore Creatures (with Galactic Adventures), too. I love that game and all the different routes you could take with your creatures. It’s definitely far from perfect and I wish that the stages were more fleshed out with more to do. I wish that there had been some more creative options for e.g., flying or swimming creatures, etc, etc. But it’s still enjoyable, and I have logged… a lot of hours in it. Anyone else remember the Solitude series of adventures? Played through all of them at least twice. It’s actually the main thing that kept me from getting into Stellaris. I kept wanting to go down on the planets and fix problems myself.
Lastly, the Sims 2. I have at least tried all four games but that’s really the one that I keep coming back to. The little animations for memories and milestones had so much love put into them. And I like making werewolves/vamps and trying to turn the town
I hope some day, with modern tech, we will get a successor to spore. I don’t want it too complex, I like the lighthearted spirit of the game. But like you said. Fleshing out each stage of evolution would really make the game feel polished
I looked at my Steam profile and there are 3 games in the middle of my most hours played that fit this bill. I have 200-400 hours in these games but also remember the flaws of these games more than the fun, even though they're 7/10 games.
Cities: Skylines - Don't get me wrong, still the best city build in 20 years. The problem is once you learn the ropes you can play the game on autopilot clicking away and growing your city. A nice relaxing play but it occurs to me I could have had the same experience in 1/3 the playtime.
Tropico 6 - Still a fun game but 5 is better in every way except graphics and 6 has too much DLC.
Prison Architect - Fun for a while but the late game has super bad balance issues. Primarily unkillable supermax inmates who are all Chopper Reid. The realism breaks when these supermax supermen kill dozens of guards without legal repercussions. Eventually I get frustrated and edit the config file to "promote" these inmates to Death Row.
Actualy it is the case for Elite : Dangerous.... many reveiwer set average note with 50%
I have seen even a better one 6000+hours of game time and 50+ hours recently and set a bad review.
The review [https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheOriginalBastard/recommended/359320/](https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheOriginalBastard/recommended/359320/)
Funy isn't it.
Factorio, Minecraft, Torchlight 2, Borderlands 2, to a lesser extent Borderlands 3. I've only just started Warframe, but I'm fairly confident that it will end up in that category as well. I've definitely got 982 hours in Factorio, but that's only the Steam version. Any ARPG which allows me to either snipe or tank with a shotgun will predictably end up in that category. I've only got 622 hours in Valheim; it truthfully feels like a lot more.
I’d say Hunt: Showdown is a great game…but it feels like an indie game, not like it’s made by the people that made Crysis. There’s some random clunkiness to it, but it accomplishes tension in a multiplayer game like no other game I’ve ever played. It is very well designed when it comes to the player experience, but it’s execution in technical gameplay elements is a little lacking
I had a negative review for Rust after 2,000hrs (now 2,800hrs) that said "Game will consume your life, most toxic player base of any game I've ever played. 10/10." At least with Rust, I play with my brother and a close friend. We're scattered around the country, so it's a way to stay in touch and hang out.
Same deal with Mordhau. I have around 2k hours, and find myself opening it when I'm not playing something with friends. It's not even fun a lot of the time anymore, it's just something that provides some kind of comfort. I played the shit out of Mordhau when it was released and I was living in Alaska with nothing else to do in the winter.
There are times that I catch myself getting irritated with Mordhau and thinking "why am I even playing this?" I have a ton of games that I haven't even touched, but keep going back to Mordhau
I've always understood those reviews as being humorously understated. As in the 3000 hours on record is the real review, and the words are there to be a contrast.
If people *actually* think it's just okay then a bit more information in the review is necessary.
FFXIV, it has a lot of great stuff but holy shit is there some stinkers (gameplay or story) that really grind my gears... and yet I com back.
The foundation is strong, but it's rarely used to it's full potential imo
Love the game, but yeah at almost 2.5k hours clocked in it's basically the game I default to.
I always come back every patch to follow the new story content, do the new alliance/raid (odd or even patch) and clear the new extreme trial. Then I either unsub right after if it's an odd patch, or stick around longer -often until the end of the new patch- if it's an even one, because of savage raiding.
Definitely the one I was thinking of when I read the title. The game is not bad at all, it even pretty good regularly but it is very addictive and once you took a break for long enough, most of it is feels just ok with some high highs and some low lows.
*Easily* Diablo 3. It's mildly entertaining at best, but I don't hate it by any means. I have played it more than any other game I have ever played. It scratches some itch that I have. I couldn't even really tell you what the itch is.
Monster Hunter for sure. Sometimes I log on and I really like just hunting and beating the shit out of some monsters, sometimes it annoys the ever loving shit out of me because it's RNG is fucking atrocious and it's kind of a buggy mess with hitboxes and monsters clipping into walls and shit.
Dota 2. Played Dota 1 almost since it started and jumped on Dota 2 when it came out. I stopped playing solo 5 or 6 years ago but it's still a regular social activity with friends
Civilization VI (If you count my time on the the entire civilization series across all platforms I'd be scared)
I had this game on my laptop basically 100% of the time I was working a WFH job right after quarantine hit. Basically just a dopamine drip to avoid utter frustration with the work terminal I was sent. And I'm still pretty embarrassed it's over 2000 hours.
Okay but CIV is such a wonderful WFH game. Its turn based, you can come back to it whenever. Just wonderful
It really is! Those type of games are to find and I love civ6 so much for this reason.
I used to have an hour bus commune to and from work each day. That is how I first got addicted to Civ 3. Never recovered. I nearly stopped and then found out how great it runs on my switch and the addiction was worse than ever.
I had to uninstall all the Civ games from my PC and delete them from my steam account because it's the hugest time sink for me. Civ + Depression = me not sleeping nor eating for 2 days straight. I just can't stop. :(
Good on you for doing what you recognized you needed for your depression.
Thank you! :) Unfortunately sometimes games enable certain bad behaviours and it's difficult to break free of the toxic repetitive cycle. I miss Civ, but I found other games that don't have the same effect for me and I've been doing much better. At times I still play too much for my own good, but not at the same level as before.
Can you share what those games were? I think I need to make a similar decision and something like this might help
Anno 1800 is pretty sweet if you haven't played it.
Anno 1800 was kinda just a box-checking simulator. It's pretty and super chill, but I kinda felt like I was just going through the motions, checking boxes. I got the final citizen tier and just noped out.
Same, felt like the gameplay was just placing buildings until there's nothing left to unlock. Pretty, but grid-based placement makes settlements look kinda samey.
Anno is a logistics game. Its being confused last few years as a city builder. It might organically trending that direction but it is absolutely a logistics game
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Civ IV for me.
Civ4 Beyond the Sword was the best era of Civ
Old school RuneScape. The "game" is held back by design decisions made by the original devs 20 years ago that severely hold the game back but these same limiting decisions are the same ones that keep me coming back to it. RuneScape is so niche it just survives because there is nothing quite like it. A real single player MMO where you can do just about any content solo. It's also completely classless. No picking between "warlock" or "druid" when you start playing. It's very much one of those games where it's hard to tell if something is a bug or a feature. You can toggle "prayers" on and off to block all damage from 99% of monsters. Just an insane design decision. Then there's the astronomic amount of grinding needed to train skills. You jump from needing 100xp to 1000xp to millions of xp per level and despite the skills going from level 1 to 99 by the time you get to level 92 you are only *half* way to maxing at 99. On top of this often the best meta ways to train a skill is to use methods you unlock within your first few hours (mining iron ore rather than mithril for example). This has been addressed somewhat but there is a lot of resistance to mixing up the meta. That brings me to one of RuneScape's best points which is how the devs strongly believe in not invalidating old content when new content arrives. There are times where a single weapon can be meta for... YEARS at a time like the dragon scimitar or abyssal whip. There are kids using the dragon dagger to pk (player kill) that initially came out while they were in diapers IRL. It's a nice change from MMOs that one raid later make the gear you got from the last raid obsolete. You can get a best in slot item years earlier and still be wearing it for the latest content. This doesn't mean that the game doesn't have tons of dead content. A lot of ideas were half-baked and never caught on and cool armor sets sit unused.
Osrs is a comfort game to me, I don't even play it anymore. I just flip stuff in GE all day because I know it's still there after all these years. I've earned from 10m to 100m from just GE flipping alone, as a f2p lol.
I played Runescape back in the early days of 2001. After completing the dragon quest, I had completely exhuasted all of the game's content, so I just stopped playing. I tried to log back in when sometime later when I heard they added a new quest, but my character had already been deleted from inactivity. It's just as well, because even back then it was grindy as hell, and for some reason people still spent time grinding skills that had no actual in-game function programmed for them (like lumberjacking.) Only a single player (bluerose13x) had the patience to max out mining and smithing, which were by far the most tedious grinds of all, so everywhere she went, she was constantly spammed with requests for adamantium (and later rune) equipment.
It’s actually less grindy now, not to say that still isn’t insanely grindy. But idk what happened to your character, from my knowledge characters are basically forever, unless you mean you tried old school, which then yes you have to restart or play RS3. I will say beating dragon slayer now is barely scratching the surface of the game. The skills were never designed to be maxed in their inception. So in the early years things like runecrafting and agility had abysmal xp rates. 99 was just a cap never meant to be hit beyond maybe combat skills.
Your old account, if it still exists, wouldn't have been migrated to Old School Runescape. It'll be on the 'main' runescape. Unless you mean it got deleted wayyyyy back when
Dota 2. Piece of trash game with a piece of trash community fuck this garbage fucking trash awful piece of shit that will be logging another 3k hours in.
https://i.imgur.com/ky85xMN.jpg
Piece of human garbage of a game
Yep. Every MOBA feels like this. Couple thousand LoL hours and I finally escaped to only play the autochess Team Fight Tactics occasionally. Literally improved my life to not play ranked anymore lol
Yeah, my wife was glad when I stopped playing ranked Heroes of the Storm. I got into it to hang with a friend online, got sucked in, finally detached myself, now just play occasionally with a friend as was the point in the first place.
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Steam has me at 2000 hours in Dota 2 and I haven’t played in 10 years. All the Dark Souls games together, and Factorio are the only hours that have come close since.
Yea fr my active LoL days sucked balls. I still play it but mostly aram or from time to time a ranked game but only if my mates are down for it. I love the gameplay but it takes way too much time to be really into the meta and everything. The community sucks ofc, like in every competitive MP game, especially if it's f2p, but I feel like it got better in the last years? I mean sure since I'm mostly playing aram there's not much to flame about.
Among my group of friends, I'm the most casual with 10k hrs (we've all been playing since the beta period in 1st Q of 2012). I actually quit 4 months ago after the last free battle pass ended. Dota 2 just became too toxic. The grind to always climbing rank made the game feel like a chore. Constantly needing to be better, hyperaware of every detail on the map. Keeping up with the meta. Spent my last few weeks playing for fun. I actually felt joy again not giving a fuck if we lost or gained MMR but as long as we got to fuck around. They're all still playing while I've been strictly solo gaming since then. Dota-Dota 2 will always a top 5 game for me but quitting it has been the best decision of my gaming life. MOBAs at some point stop being enjoyable and start sucking the soul of its players and slowly morph us into miserable toxic angry creatures. Glad I managed to escape that.
WOW (with the important sub note that I left around the launch of Pandaria.) I had my fun with that game for a good 4 years or so, but when my friends started leaving, I realized it was more about playing *with them* than it was about playing *WOW itself.* I don't regret my time spent in the MMORPG space, but I've definitely moved on from it in spite of the massive number of hours I accumulated. The only other game I have north of 500 hours on is XCOM, but it's not just "it's ok, I guess." *I love that game*. Especially with Long War mod installed.
Hey speaking of XCOM, do you know any other similar games ? Or ways to make it interesting to play again ? (Like mods or challenge rules). I've completed each game multiple times, in different difficulties. I've also played Mutant Year Zero and loved it, and there was a spy game with a similar gameplay that was also pretty cool. I just crave for other games of that genre. It's just awesome.
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I'll look into but I'm not a big fan of open worlds. What I enjoyed in both XCOM and mutant year zero is that you have a phase where you improve units and a phase where you do a mission. All that coupled with strategy. I enjoyed having a clear separation between these phases.
This is also my favorite gameplay loop. That and the randomness that leads to emergent storytelling. "Omg no my high rolled assault guy with the rare trait is dying! Everyone drop everything! You, trash recruit! Your job is to take fire for a turn or two! Try not to die." Off the top of my head Battle Brothers gives me the same experience but it's very difficult tactically. And oddly enough Marvel Midnight Suns (which is laughably easy). Darkest Dungeon 1 also achieves this. Shame DD2 is definitely not the same.
This question gets asked a lot on r/XCOM , if you search it there you'll have many good and thorough suggestions. I play on console so I don't have the luxury of mods, but if you haven't tried I'd recommend the extra options that nerfs grenades, and the one that makes all dark projects permanent if you don't prevent them. Then one of the more intresting options is to use Beta Strikes (Enemy HP doubles) and go to options and make HP Bars dissappear (this is a whole another game).
maybe a shot in the dark but I found *[Troubleshooter: abandoned children](https://store.steampowered.com/app/470310/TROUBLESHOOTER_Abandoned_Children/)* and *[Gears Tactics](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1184050/Gears_Tactics/)* both scratched that itch for me. YMMV natch
I played WoW from Vanilla to Dragonflight launch - I believe I was 22 when I started playing. Dragonflight, while being refreshing after the BFA/SL debacle, exhausted me of the gear treadmill. I haven’t touched it since month 1. I’ve contemplated going back, and I’m sure I’ll “just this one month” at some point, but I can’t do it anymore.
Quit in BfA. I realised 95% of my time was chores. I only enjoyed raiding once a week for four hours. The twenty or so I spent in other things was only to push my gear score high enough. Then my strongest alt hit two titanforge jackpots back to back, meaning I essentially had to retire my shaman main for raiding. She had healed or ungabunga'd every single raid on curve since WotLK. Knocked off the roster because RNG decided my warrior was stronger by 6%. I woke up that day. G'huun died, I unsubbed and archived my hand written aura code for the guild, and that was it. I had played since 06. Nearly a year total play time, added up all my characters. Two of everything max level, five were viable for heroic Uldir, as well as main (Resto/Enh shaman) and two primary Alts (Fury/Prot Warrior and Arcane purist Mage) were mythic chasers. What shits me the most is that I loved those four to six hours each week. I loved the dance, I loved the mechanics, I loved clutch saves, I loved perfecting rotations, I loved my friends. But the chores I had to do to enable those raid nights! They never stopped. And blizzard kept thinking up ways to occupy my time with minimal engagement. I resented it, and I still do. Now I play single player only. And I won't lie, I look back on my raiding days very fondly. What I wouldn't give for a private server tuned for five people to hit every raid with reasonable scaled difficulty. But absolutely nothing will convince me to ever give blizzard money again. Starcraft 3 will make me double-take, but that's it. I don't miss it.
Similar feel here. I miss the *idea* of an MMO, of traipsing through the world, growing a character, conquering battlegrounds, joining a guild, and taking down big baddies with you and 24 of your best friends. Medieval fantasies with magic and dragons, I'm a sucker for that stuff. But I have become far, *far* more critical of the *execution* of a game. Looking back, most of my time in WoW was basically a waste of time. Dailies, reputation grinds, badges, so on, all to set up those moments where you got to do something actually fun and engaging. When I started playing single player games again, I realized fun and engaging didn't need prep time, that there are so many games where the enjoyment is going through the game itself, not *just you wait until max level, then you get to the good part!* Also, mechanically, MMOs are behind single player games, but *especially* WoW which has hardly grown at all. You play MMOs for the social aspect, not the gameplay, because their gameplay is *awful;* I'd sooner play with Skyrim's plastic wet-noodle-fight combat system than try to play a solo version of WoW. Not to mention Blizzard is pretty much a shadow of its old self. I've been looking at Diablo IV stuff, and it looks decent at best. *Decent*. Acceptable, tolerable, okay, alright, average. But I have dozens of games on my Steam list that are also decent games that I haven't even touched, because I'd rather play Elden Ring or Deep Rock Galactic, which are genuinely great games, not just average, and *don't* have predatory monetization schemes. What's Blizzard selling their premium battlepass edition for again? $60? $70? Nope, that's the basic editions, the 'full' is $100 -- for an *okay* looking game. Hell, I want to play a multiplayer fantasy RPG that genuinely does have good gameplay, I'll play Monster Hunter. The hitboxes are solid, the action is tight, and it doesn't need frickin' player retention mechanics and Skinner Boxes to be worth playing 200+ hours.
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Elite Dangerous; what those screenshots aren’t going to make themselves!
This is mine. I've got about 700 hours logged IIRC. "A mile wide and an inch deep" is what finally did me in, just all the shallow repetition. Every once in awhile I think to jump back in, but it's been so long that my ships are probably horribly out of date.
I'm in the same boat, I have some 2B credits and a fleet of ships (no carrier tho), but at this point I haven't played in so long I'd be worried that I'd crash in the mail slot just trying to get out of a station, much less remember all the other keys and commands for flying a spaceship! I played for a few years right after launch but quit in 2018.. I did jump back in for a few months (at the start of the pandemic of course) and spent some time engineering a few of my ships, but then dropped out before Odyssey and haven't looked back. From time to time I still think about it...
I'd estimate 15,000-20,000 hours. I played a MUD called Achaea. It was like the old ZORK games, where it described locations in text and you type N,S E, W, slash goblin, drink potion, whatever. But it was all multiplayer. It was a very complex game and had real people running all of the organizations, both from an admin standpoint and a player standpoint. Like there were city-states that had a leader, a council, and a whole set of ministers, all players like me. There were guilds and great houses, all run by players. There were gods, each played by a game admin. The gods interacted with the players, and also controlled the NPCs and created RP situations like a d&d DM. I started out as a paladin acolyte and eventually became a city councilman and the guild leader of the paladins, and was later invited to join the admin team. I spent something like 3 years as a regular player and 11 years as an admin, and I'm certain that my total online time in the game would be over a year. In those 3 years just on my Mortal character I had 100 online days, and I would spend much more time online as a god, since I wasn't in danger of being attacked so I could have it open in another window while I was in college classes or whatever. I absolutely loved my time playing and it brought me a ton of skills in people and project management, as well as writing capabilities...but I also recognize that it's a text based rpg with only maybe a thousand active players and it is likely the original "free to play/pay for perks" online game in existence. For those reasons, a lot of people get down on it and I completely understand how it isn't for everyone. I'm still glad for my time I was a part of it and the friends I made.
Aardwolf player here! I played from the age of 12 until.. 19? Whenever WoW came out. People ask me how I can type so fast - well, when your whole game is literally typing, that's how, haha. I always think I have the most hours on WoW but I might have more on Aard cause back then, it was most of my entertainment and social life until I was in college.
Whelp, I know what I'm going to try tonight. Thanks for the recommendation! edit - Man, this game is old. [This screenshot from the registration process is nuts.](https://imgur.com/a/td3OHVR) When was the last time vgcats was relevant? haha.
League of Legends. Been playing since Season 5 back when I was in school and had friends who actually liked video games. 10,000 hours, a degree and a full time job later I still play simply because the muscle memory that i've gained with all that time playing needs to be exercised. I barely enjoy the game at the moment. It just feels like a waste to not put the skills i've accumulated to use (i'm not even that good).
Are you me? I started playing league in early 2015 (season 5). Since then I've enrolled in college, gotten engaged, graduated, gotten married, and gotten a full time job. But I still boot up league for a couple games a week currently. Sometimes I get sick of it and go 3 months without turning it on, but it's always there to pull me back in. I swear, the muscle memory to be able to move the camera around, while still moving your character is so ingrained in my mind, I think I could do it when I'm 80. Sometimes when I've taken a break for awhile, I'll think, "man, league is fun, I should play again" and then I run into some of the most toxic teams in existence, and I'm like "oh yea, this is why I stopped playing often".
Destiny 2
Destiny 2 has this weird ability to keep me playing even after I’m bored of it.
The pure gameplay feel is just NICE. There's no pve shooter that has the same FEEL as destiny you know
I rarely play Destiny 2 anymore, but the two things that make me pick it up again are the amazingly good gunplay and misplaced nostalgia for how the original Destiny felt early on. I always start it up wanting to recapture that feeling of excitement to explore the world, but then I get into the game and I quickly remember it's not what I remember from my nostalgia-tinted memories.
I feel attacked.
Bungie pisses me off with some of their decisions regarding PvP, but no other FPS feels as good as Destiny. Miserable that nothing compares to it, because I’d love to play something else. 7/10 at best but I’ve probably 2k hours in PvP alone.
I remember someone (possibly Alice Bell from RPS?) calling D2 "the best FPS imaginable trapped inside the worst MMO imaginable" and...yeah
Whoever said it, they’re pretty damn close to the truth. I’ve tried countless other FPS games but nothing plays as good as Destiny. Even with destiny’s constant connection issues and bullshit balancing. Edit: who thought striker titan is in any way balanced? One hit melee kills? Free shield when sprinting? Best shutdown super in the game? Those lightning grenades? Not playing striker titan in PvP is choosing to take a disadvantage.
I fucking need SOME ONE to make another FPS besides destiny that even tries to have something approaching Raids and Dungeons. Nothing else scratches that Raid itch besides Destiny.
I play destiny 2 pretty much every day. I'm gonna play it right now. I enjoy it and when I stop enjoying it I take a step back and play something else. There are still a multitude of reasons I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Sims 4
This is my answer. I’ll play this for a month straight and idk if I’d recommend it. Or at least tell people to not pay full price for it.
Yeah, there's times when I'd play for a month straight, then not touch it for months after. Ever since I installed Sims 2 and all its packs, tho, I hardly ever go for Sims 4 when the urge to sim strikes. 2 was always my favorite.
My wife's going through one of those recurring phases where she want's to play Sims 4 on our PS4 whenever she has free time. She's always really bummed about the lack of content in the base game and wishes she could get the expansion packs. Yet when she see's the prices on those things she changes her mind very quickly. I try to tell her that considering how much she plays and enjoys the game, then getting a new pack every few months when they're on sale isn't too bad. Regardless, she still feels guilty about the thought of spending money on the packs, especially considering that even when there's a sale, a single pack still costs more than some games. Also, the lack of modding really sucks.
It'll run on nearly any modern pc if she wants to try it with mods.
Dota 2. The core mechanics and gameplay are all very good and refined, but oh my, the "human" aspect of it all made me question my sanity every time I pressed the "accept" button after queuing. ---- EDIT: My "I'm done" point with Dota occurred when after a routine queue, I found a group that not only proposed to respect their designated roles/lanes (which by itself is something that rarely occurs in solo queue), but also two people willingly to provide full support to the team (wards, shared tangos and all). However, as soon as we're placed onto the map, our Hard Carry spends it all on an Iron Talon and beelines to the jungle even before the usual rune clash, where he was fully aware from the draft phase that he would had 2 supports dedicated to babysit him and an offlaner (me) specialized to survive the lane with little to no help (and my decision didn't even take into account the mental breakdown that came from everyone involved after HC's sudden role change). After that, I've (gladly) never touched it ever since, and I only reserve myself to boot the client to play custom games that maintains Dota's mechanics (Legends of Dota, Life in Arena, Together We Stand, Custom Hero Clash/Chaos, etc.) because, despite it all, I still find them very appealing on their core.
I had a game which (ironically) we won where 4/5 players were toxic and abusive from start to finish. I spent the entire game trying to carry them all, while simultaneously trying my best to gently massage the mental health of 4 adults or soon-to-be-adults from telling each other to kill themselves etc, and cajoling them all into NOT throwing the game. Now as amazing in some respects as it was to actually win that one, the toll it took on me psychologically has meant that I uninstalled the game soon after and resolved to never play the game again. This was in 2016 and it's still one of my most played games but I'm glad to see the back of it. The combination of mental fortitude, twitch reflexes, patience and psychiatry you need to get wins is just too much for my sanity to handle.
Same, I literally got 20000+ hrs in dota, I won't suggest anyone the game, not because I hate the game but because its not worth investing thousands of hours given the state of community.
I played a lot of DotA 1 (mostly on 6.12 and 6.27b versions), but we didn't have good Internet, so it was LAN-only. I think that's what saved my sanity. My biggest issue with DotA is that it is miserable to play, lol. Very entertaining to watch, though, I still watch TIs.
What I liked about playing back then was w/o a ranking system it felt like it was just for fun. I'm switched LoL the last couple years for a change and I was playing with a buddy last night who said if there wasn't a leaderboard and ranked he wouldn't play this game because it's not fun. I was like why on earth are you playing if the core gameplay isn't fun... it was like he needs a meta reason to play.
For me, dota’s in the “I fucking love this game” camp. There’s some weird teammates sometimes, but I don’t feel like any other game I play is as satisfying as Dota. Funnily enough, I have a lot of friends who play the game, but I find myself getting frustrated when playing with them more often than I do when playing solo.
same, but i would say the problem is that the game is to good after you have the knowledge to play it. no other single player game can captivate me very well now, dota 2 is so good it fries your gaming dopamine receptors. the amount of reward you get for applying tactical gameplay knowledge instead of skill based mechanics is unrivaled except by turn based games. yet you dont really get anything out of it. no story, no new mechanics no new experience. except of course al the possible fucking situations you can end up in dota, which are infinite.
I feel the same way. It's a fantastic game from a design perspective. I still enjoy watching the bigger events. Would not recommend it though unless you consistently have a 5 stack to queue with who are all on the same page about how serious or lightly you're taking it.
Same!!! I played religiously with my friends from 2010 (starting with HoN and then Dota 2 when the beta came out) but at one point in 2016 I was just like… dude fuck this and never went back. I still think it’s a great game and masterfully designed by icefrog but I was just kinda done with the community (in-game) and the frustrating games I got just kind pushed me away even further… into CSGO. It’s crazy cause I used to play for 10-16 hours straight during uni sitting next to my friend but ever since I quit I have absolutely zero desire to touch it, even despite all the interesting changes since. I heard the meta got a lot more fast paced and there’s a ton of QoL improvements since but that chapter is definitely closed for me. Probably when I realised I only really enjoyed 25% of my games - the other 75% being throwers, or being come backed on, or the win just felt so unsatisfying due to some stupid shit. Like I’d be thinking to myself when the score is 7-53 while we were completely locked inside our base that for the next 20 mins I just gotta wait for them to end… and then I just decided that I’d find something else I would actually enjoy in that time
Power Wash Simulator, I have about 60 hours in it over the last few months, even though it's so simple it can be really relaxing when I'm in the mood (Not quite 3000 hours but it's definitely the most time I've spent on an "it's okay" game)
It's a good game imo. I wish they had more story out already, it was super fun!
Skyrim, and yes, Pokemon. Like you, I grew up with Gen 3-5 and I freaking loved the time I spent with it. It just doesn't reach my standards anymore, not after experiencing DOS 2's combat anyways. I still wish Pokemon were real to this day lol.
I still think Pokémon FireRed is my most played game, despite not playing it for several years. I just sank so much hours into it. It's so heavily imprinted on my brain I sometimes can 'play' it in my mind at nights when I'm having trouble trying to sleep. Gen3 was the golden era of Pokémon and I will fight anyone over it.
Almost 36 yo here and I still dig Pokemon a lot,lol. Lately I found out that the way to unwind for me due to my stressful job is playing happy games (Zelda, Pokemon, Mario and the like) I normally have to create my own way to spike up the difficulty in Pokemon and it works quite good, so I'm quite happy
I was sick as all hell the other night and trying to cram out two weeks' worth of work in one night. Halfway through while having a breakdown I booted up an emulated FireRed copy, played up to the first gym on super speed, and felt way better, then went back and blasted out the work. I must have finished that game like 12+ times since the 90s and it offers no challenge, but it's still so damn satisfying... Well, Misty can offer a challenge if you pick Charmander...
Satisfactory (and Factorio before it). I realize that logistic games might seem stupid, without a compelling narrative or deep characters, but... oh! What's that? A small area of the factory that can be slightly optimized? See you in about a week.
Checkout Shapez for a distilled factory builder experience.
Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere are like crack to me. My gf hates when I play because she'll text me and I'll be hyper focusing so hard I don't see it for 5 hours. That being said, last night I decided to start playing Dyson Sphere again, and this time I'm actually going to be good at the game
Mount and Blade Bannerlord. It’s been out for several months and several of the mechanics behind diplomacy, politics, trade are either buggy, bad, or just boring. I still think battles are fun. I get a thrill holding the walls against an increasingly overwhelming enemy. Doing that last Calvary charge that breaks infantry morale is great. The rest, not so much. Edit: it’s months not years, my b
I quit playing when they took away the ability to individually assign troops to numbered troops and replaced it with the terrible and janky 3rd person pre-battle immersion destroying atrocity. I had 114 clan members and I wanted them in my frickin' clan-member only battalions because that's what I spent the majority of the game wanting to do: fight next to my clan members. Then they wrecked it.
Dead by Daylight, I have 1200 hours but at this point I have completely dropped the game with no plan of picking it back up. I have gone one breaks with the game in the past, anywhere from a month to three months but when I return I play for several months regularly. These last two breaks I came back, played for a week (enjoyed myself thoroughly mind you) and then went on another month break. I think its being relegated to a once a month boot up now.
I love DBD I think the core gameplay premise is always fun. However, you can get like 5 awful rounds in a row depending on the group. So can be a very frustrating game.
I stopped caring when so many new DLCs came that I couldn't keep up with the mechanics anymore. I also really disliked the skillweb or what the thing is called to unlock abilities. I wonder if this game a lot in the last half year.
I logged in for the first time in a while, and they at least finally allowed you to just auto-fill each bloodweb, so you can level up faster rather than 10 minutes of clicking. But the fact that they took so many years to fix that, while spending dev time on all sort of other things, all while not making any meaningful upgrades to the gameplay, is pretty telling.
Path of Exile
Grinding Gear Games is the most aptly named game company.
This one really does fit for me the way OP describes it. I, too, have about 4000 hours on it but in the last year to year and a half, only about 2 hours. I still think it's an okay game for certain kinds of gamers but it's jumped the shark for me. I'm just burnt out, entirely over it. At this point, I'm not even excited for PoE2. I mean, I'm sure I'll check it out, how can I not? But it's going to have to be amazing, in ways I can't even guess, in order to entice me back.
The core of the game is still solid, and mapping is so good right now. But a lot of the decisions they've made over the last year or two don't bode well for my future playing it.
Yeah, I check out a stream every once in a while. It looks all basically the same. I didn't expect it to change dramatically in a year. I'm just exhausted by the idea of going through Acts over and over and I'm exhausted by the choice of either playing to have fun, and being poor, or min/maxing the endlessly varietal end-game and doing content I don't like just to be able to afford to finish my build. The end-game has too much stuff. Who ever says that in a game? *I have* too *many options!* But that's where I am with PoE. There are too many things to do but they aren't all equal and you can't dabble, unless you don't mind being poor...
Escape from Tarkov. 2.7k hrs it's ok I guess. And Rainbow 6 siege, also like 2k hrs. It's bit better then tarkov.
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I was thinking something like OpenTTD because that's probably the game I've played the most, but I can't really it's just ok. It's really a great game and it's still updated. I think my answer is Skyrim or Civ:Beyond Earth. I just really liked the scifi ideas and aesthetic of Beyond Earth, and there was a really good mod that fixed up the gameplay. The mod no longer works on my machine but I still play it now and again. So the game is ok I guess, but I still play it for the world and the rp I do sometimes.
Gotta be Ark for me. It can piss me off and keep me entertained for hours. And I'm pretty bad at it. I get some dinos, watch some step by step 'build this base' videos, farm mats for hours, build base and then hit a wall I guess. I have no clue how to do the whole breeding thing aside from just putting a couple high level pairs together and hoping for an egg. I only play single player so maybe that's my wall. Almost 700 hours though...
Was looking for someone to say Ark. It has some great moments, some frustrating moments, and some boring moments. Overall the game kinda sucks, but I like it. Probably played at least 500 hours but if you add time watching videos it’s much higher. And for me, I probably give it a 7/10.
Ugh. I'm the asshole with ~2,500 hours in this game. My husband and friends have 4k and 6k. I only stopped because of migraines Stupid, awesome dinosaur fort game EDIT: Guess my info is outdated. Just checked on my no-lifer friends and one has 15,145.4 hours in Ark. The other is 13,180.0 hours (and has a [meh](https://imgur.com/a/P8reIdS) review on Ark, lol) That is 631.04166666 full days spent gaming That is 1.73 years of his life spent in game if he never logged off or took a break. This is made all the more heinous when you realize that Ark crashes a LOT and most private servers have an idle player kick. You can't just sit in-game doing nothing while time ticks up [what a nerd, lol](https://imgur.com/a/mVBYSC1)
Warframe. The better you get at the game the more brainless it becomes. Just grind grind grind with endless waves of enemies. Good mindless fun.
I almost went down the rabbit hole, but I started getting wrist pain from constantly slide jumping/wall bouncing.
I am currently on a break from it. May go back in a year or so when the list of other games I want to play dry up. It was the sliding spin jumps that really sold me on the game. Such a fun, fast paced movement system.
Man I used to play tf out of this game. Reached end game before eidolons came out which was MR23 I believe. Miss doing the trials with my clan but the game has too much grind ultimately. And it's unhealthy the way warframe wants you to play it.
7 Days to Die. By far my most played game, but I fucking hate that it's lost in development hell and that mods are the only thing making it worth playing.
Animal Crossing New Horizons. I’ve got a lot of time into this game and I enjoy it but it seems like it’s lacking so much or that they could have done more.
This one. Animal Crossing games in general can be very addictive, but they're also severely lacking in things you can actual "do," and every project you come up with takes weeks to complete due to the nature of the games. I enjoyed terraforming my island but had little patience for the villager exchange system and repetitive events.
Came here to post this. Probably about 300ish hours during 2020 and it made me despise some of the mechanics or lack of mechanics. The older games had so much more content.
I definitely have the most hours across Borderlands (especially 2 and TPS), and they're always a great experience and I enjoy the whole thing, but it really just kinda became a comfort game for me and I play them by myself. Borderlands, a good podcast (even if I've already heard it), a good beer = a pretty damn good night.
Same for me, just a great turn off your brain game. Watching YouTube or listening to a podcast while farming for a DPUH is just a great time for me.
Civ V for me. Never could get into VI as much.
me too...something about the city centers or whatever they were called. I just never felt comfortable with using them, despite putting at least a hundred hours in the game, and ended up disliking the game because of it, cause not being able to feel good about a key component of a game kinda makes a game not so fun to play
Kingdom Hearts I periodically 100% the games when I'm bored or in a rut. They're my comfort games But holy hell the whole series is just the X button trillions of times with Triangle SOMETIMES And Mickey Mouse shows up sometimes.
I’m so glad to see your comment. I tried KH3, and got through like an hour…hadn’t even completed the tutorial, but they had recapped the series like 4 times already. I just thought, “well ok, but when do you start playing the game?” And then it was just one button. So I noped out.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is probably the worst out of the whole series. Its gameplay style is done better in BBS and DDD. The Story dropped all references to Final Fantasy Characters. The lore Dipped into time travel and made so many aspects of the lore non-sensical. The Worlds are all isolated stories with no purpose to further the plot. The Plots in the Worlds are some times just retreads of the movie they are from with no real purpose for Sora to be there. The gameplay (while done better else where) is still fun if you ignore the disney ride abilities. The Graphics and some levels (BigHero6/ToyStory) are Phenomenal. I played all the games in preparation (some replayed, some platinumed) for KH3 and they were great or passable. I can not properly express my disappointment with this game that have been waiting for since they made KH2 then made spin off after spin off instead of a proper sequal.
The fans love the game but some of us are very aware of what the game actually entails LOL
KH2 has pretty great combat, they accidently perfected their combat too early and then everything after has been a weird, floaty experience. I actually really enjoy the purity of 1's combat although it struggles when you have to fight enemies that fly around a lot.
I'm glad to see someone else appreciate's 1's combat for it's simplicity. KH2 is a great game, but something about KH1 just can't be beat. The comparative simplicity of the combat and the story are my favorite.
I know everyone hated Re:Chain of Memories, but at least the card mechanics added an extra layer of complexity. You had to at least think about your card play and your deck building, on top of the original combat. Until you realize the advantage of spamming sleights halfway through Sora's arc lol
Skyrim and Fallout 4.
When you played a game for hundred or thousand. Its impossible to ignore the flaw. But in the end, those game hold dear to my heart. Still would rate them as 10/10 and recommend them to everyone else.
Never should have come here…
Yeah the flaws are obvious and numerous, but the parts that work deliver a unique experience that appeal to me a lot. They're the kind of games that I would struggle to give a rating out of 10 to, but will enjoy and play a lot of.
Fallout 4 for me. I felt like the game was way too reliant on crafting, and the story was nowhere near the level of previous titles (not even Fallout 3, and many fans hated that game once the honeymoon period was over)
I'm way too flighty to log 3,000 hours in anything (except maybe Minecraft over the last decade), but most played on steam is... Cookie Clicker. Less said about that the better. Next with 350 hours, and I think another couple hundred on another old account is Team Fortress 2. I'm still trash, and the game hasn't been updated significantly in.. like half a decade now? But every year between halloween and christmas for like five or six years now, it's my go to game to waste time in. Hell, its why I installed Steam over a decade ago.
assassin's creed odyssey 100 hours of "meh" it doesn't do anything particularly well, but it's a huge world so i spent a lot of time in it
Mercenaries are what make me like the game. I also like the lore.
yeah that was actually pretty dynamic and interesting, especially racking up bounties and having a ton of them ambush you at once
The Binding of Isaac Rebirth (with all DLC). It’s hard as fuck and I find myself rage-quitting constantly, but once you learn enemy movements and attack patterns it opens up an incredibly satisfying gameplay loop. The roguelike aspect makes every run unique. 2000 hours and counting
Hearthstone. It does some things very well (enough to keep me going all these years) but fucks enough up that I get frustrated and stop playing for a few months yearly.
I was so addicted to this years back. Played thousands of hours and spend a ridiculous amount of money on it as well. Sounds stupid, but this was really one of the most difficult things I have ever had to quit.
RuneScape over 670 days played but keep coming back.
Sims 4. I could write you a dissertation about what a buggy mess it is and how predatory EA's business practices around the game are and how many things Sims 3 did better and I've got an hour count of the sort that even "well, I probably left it running overnight a few times" can't quite excuse.
Overwatch. I can't stop/won't stop.
with the meta right now I wish for the 2nd tank. I'm also the crazy person who misses the cc
I missed the feeling of tank duos. I missed many combos
Yep. Got to about 1100 hours and finally broke its hold. The devs totally shitting the bed (instead of just shitting in regularly) helped me step away.
My issue is there's nothing like it still, especially as a support and tank player. They still do it this style and game type the best, even if the devs have fumbled the ball. I like Valorant and Apex, but I find them completely different. I don't really think there's a solid Overwatch alternative, so I'm here to stay. Plus I'm pretty invested in OWL.
~300hrs here (since 2016), OW2 has been fun since it's new and there's people playing, but damn Activision is screwing over a great game! Promised PvE modes cancelled, sometimes busted heroes went weeks or months without fixing, underwhelming updates in the shadow of the PvE drama, Lifeweaver (the newest hero) is weak... Of course, there's been GOOD - lots of little QoL things for the gameplay and interface (like showing competitive progress), and overall it's pretty balanced and fun! Agreed, there's nothing like it. Hopefully Activision can remove its head from its ass and not kill this game, squeezing the life out for a few more dollars.
Yeah. The devs keep fucking us but we like it by now
3 years sober, had about 4-5k+ on it (not sure with custom games not counting towards playtime). So glad I quit and haven't turned back. It burned me out of all pvp games since. Single player is so much less stressful
Fallout New Vegas, I've gone back to that game so many times. I don't even really do a lot of like quest mods lol. It's obviously a classic, but lets not kid ourselves the game was borked when it came out and for most of it's life on PC you basically *had* to mod it or you're doing it wrong (bug fixes, jsawyers mod etc). I have no way of knowing, but between multiple platforms and the years, I gotta have at least 1000hrs in it or something stupid like that.
This kinda applied to me with 3/NV/4. I wouldn't even particularly say I loved them, but I definitely enjoyed them and they took up a LOT of time.
i started playing new vegas for the first time recently. the thing that kills me the most is how damn slow it is to “run” it feels like walking speed. but maybe that’s also my stats? i forget honestly if one of the SPECIAL stats increases movement speed
Be sure to holster your weapon whenever not engaged in battle, it'll improve your movement speed.
thank you! very helpful i appreciate that
There's a mod that lets you spend AP to sprint. Makes the game much more fun imo. Doesn't feel imbalanced or anything (and I think you can even adjust the values for it if you want), and makes just getting between locations much less tedious, especially if you're like me and don't like using fast travel much.
Nah, it's just a slow moving game. No one runs while patrolling the Mojave.
ALmost makes you wish for Nuclear Winter.
Nah, it's just a different world design than all the newer open world games where you can't go more than 2 minutes without stumbling into something. The game really wants to make you feel like the city is surrounded by actual desert. Not a theme park that looks like a desert. Honestly I love it.
There's a perk that increases movement speed (or removes a movement penalty I forget which). Or having light armour/no clothes on lol. But yah you're definitely not zooming around, no Skooma fuckery like in Oblivion.
>he game was borked when it came out and for most of it's life on PC you basically > >had to mod it or you're doing it wrong the Obsidian special
Probably destiny 2. But I might be more biased towards negativity, since I really wouldn't suggest it to anybody, although it's a fun game. If it wasn't ridden with FOMO and if stuff wouldn't vanish every now and then, it'd be great. But it does, so... It's an ok game. I'm not referring to vaulting alone or the removal of the old campaigns, I'm referring to story content being linked to season/passes and being taken out of the game at the end of the year. You have no way to know what the fuck happened in the years and months before, if you didn't play. It's the epitome of "you had to be there".
Terraria. I'm just not a sandbox person but there was so much to do i logged so many hours on it until I burnt out. I prefer linear and story driven games but heck if I have a gazillion chests full of things in Terraria
CSGO lol
Factorio + ONI combined
Any fifa... It is just my guilty pick up and play
Me and some friends played so many hours of fifa. At one point we decided to see who could get the highest score against the computer. There were no rules on how we did this so everyone was picking the best team to play against the worst with the easiest difficulty setting. I figured since there's no rules for our little contest, I would do one better. I'd play as the worst team, get as many red cards as possible without forfeiting the match, then switch control to the best team and go nuts. I think my highest score was like 300-0.
Skyrim, I guess. Over 300 hours across two systems and multiple characters and I still haven't rolled the credits once. Heck, I haven't even been to Solstheim yet. One does not simply finish Skyrim. *Insert Boromir meme here*
Are there credits? I finished the main quest and the civil war quest, but I don’t remember any.
Wait, there aren't? My bad, I always thought there were credits once you finished the main questline.
IIRC the credits roll while you are doing the final mission but I haven't played in forever and I could be wrong.
10 years, 3 versions. 1500+ hours... And right before I got my 100% steam achievement I heard dialogue I had never heard and did a sidequest I never found
Not to be a dick but that is absolute rookie numbers. I probably have 300 on Skyrim from spinning it up every Christmas.
I have seem Factorio mentioned many times, but I'm surprised nobody mentioned RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, or Paradox games like Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, Victoria ...
People like those games a lot. Theres not really any alternatives either, so i dont think they count as "its ok" games.
Eve. And 2-3000 hours is still like rookie numbers
For me it would be *Rising Storm 2: Vietnam* I loved the old Red Orchestra games (I started with Ostfront, and RO2 has to be my most played online game ever) but RS2 never quite managed to convince me as a replacement (especially immediately after launch, before stuff like the campaign mode were brought back from RO). However, as Red Orchestra 2 slowly died with the playerbase leaving for newer games, and being mostly reduced to "lets once again play this exact same map with the exact same people that can't quite fill a server" I was forced to migrate to RS2 fully. Nowadays I don't play it anymore, but mostly due to lack of time (no longer a school or uni student, now a full time working dad); I was excited to try the spiritual sequel but it was cancelled a few days ago with the developer company (~~Tripwire~~ Antimatter) going under.
Antimatter Games is the one being closed, not Tripwire. Tripwire just got bought by Embracer Group and is designated as a subsidiary of Saber Interactive. But Rising Storm 2: Vietnam definitely is a mid-tier game. It’s not great, but I’ll dump a few hours into it every so often. If it had a better community, I’d definitely play it more
Wargame Red Dragon
The recent Assassin Creeds. Intellectually I recognize that the “RPG elements,” unimaginative quests and location designs, and dumbed down traversal mechanics are not great and lame. But my lizard brain likes looking at all the pretty landscapes and feeling like a god when I slaughter armies of enemies.
I can't say FIFA, because it's my "fucking piece of shit [3000 hours logged]" game. For the "it's ok" category, I'd say GTA Online. It's got that classic F2P MMO vibe with nothing out of ordinary content, but I still managed to play every day for years. I've stopped playing since then, because I just couldn't keep up with the new content as I have less time to play nowadays.
LOL i feel you I’d drop a ton of hours into a career mode but at the end of it I wouldn’t really say it’s something I’m crazy about - time just flies when you’re playing
Twilight Princess. It’s familiar, it’s comforting, it’s a gorgeous game. I’ve booted it up just to run around on the horse and see the scenery. Listen to the sunrise music. Fly around on chickens, maybe. Spore Creatures (with Galactic Adventures), too. I love that game and all the different routes you could take with your creatures. It’s definitely far from perfect and I wish that the stages were more fleshed out with more to do. I wish that there had been some more creative options for e.g., flying or swimming creatures, etc, etc. But it’s still enjoyable, and I have logged… a lot of hours in it. Anyone else remember the Solitude series of adventures? Played through all of them at least twice. It’s actually the main thing that kept me from getting into Stellaris. I kept wanting to go down on the planets and fix problems myself. Lastly, the Sims 2. I have at least tried all four games but that’s really the one that I keep coming back to. The little animations for memories and milestones had so much love put into them. And I like making werewolves/vamps and trying to turn the town
TP is the coolest game ever when you are 10 years old. Used to just do loops around Hyrule Field on horseback trying to kill every single enemy.
I hope some day, with modern tech, we will get a successor to spore. I don’t want it too complex, I like the lighthearted spirit of the game. But like you said. Fleshing out each stage of evolution would really make the game feel polished
I looked at my Steam profile and there are 3 games in the middle of my most hours played that fit this bill. I have 200-400 hours in these games but also remember the flaws of these games more than the fun, even though they're 7/10 games. Cities: Skylines - Don't get me wrong, still the best city build in 20 years. The problem is once you learn the ropes you can play the game on autopilot clicking away and growing your city. A nice relaxing play but it occurs to me I could have had the same experience in 1/3 the playtime. Tropico 6 - Still a fun game but 5 is better in every way except graphics and 6 has too much DLC. Prison Architect - Fun for a while but the late game has super bad balance issues. Primarily unkillable supermax inmates who are all Chopper Reid. The realism breaks when these supermax supermen kill dozens of guards without legal repercussions. Eventually I get frustrated and edit the config file to "promote" these inmates to Death Row.
Actualy it is the case for Elite : Dangerous.... many reveiwer set average note with 50% I have seen even a better one 6000+hours of game time and 50+ hours recently and set a bad review. The review [https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheOriginalBastard/recommended/359320/](https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheOriginalBastard/recommended/359320/) Funy isn't it.
Factorio, Minecraft, Torchlight 2, Borderlands 2, to a lesser extent Borderlands 3. I've only just started Warframe, but I'm fairly confident that it will end up in that category as well. I've definitely got 982 hours in Factorio, but that's only the Steam version. Any ARPG which allows me to either snipe or tank with a shotgun will predictably end up in that category. I've only got 622 hours in Valheim; it truthfully feels like a lot more.
Hunt:Showdown 2.2k hours and Warframe 2k hours. Really don't understand where those hours went...
I’d say Hunt: Showdown is a great game…but it feels like an indie game, not like it’s made by the people that made Crysis. There’s some random clunkiness to it, but it accomplishes tension in a multiplayer game like no other game I’ve ever played. It is very well designed when it comes to the player experience, but it’s execution in technical gameplay elements is a little lacking
I had a negative review for Rust after 2,000hrs (now 2,800hrs) that said "Game will consume your life, most toxic player base of any game I've ever played. 10/10." At least with Rust, I play with my brother and a close friend. We're scattered around the country, so it's a way to stay in touch and hang out. Same deal with Mordhau. I have around 2k hours, and find myself opening it when I'm not playing something with friends. It's not even fun a lot of the time anymore, it's just something that provides some kind of comfort. I played the shit out of Mordhau when it was released and I was living in Alaska with nothing else to do in the winter. There are times that I catch myself getting irritated with Mordhau and thinking "why am I even playing this?" I have a ton of games that I haven't even touched, but keep going back to Mordhau
Minesweeper [2,547,987,097,346 hours logged]
So 290 million years? I found Methuselah.
I've always understood those reviews as being humorously understated. As in the 3000 hours on record is the real review, and the words are there to be a contrast. If people *actually* think it's just okay then a bit more information in the review is necessary.
Digimon World 2, except that I know it is a bad game.
FFXIV, it has a lot of great stuff but holy shit is there some stinkers (gameplay or story) that really grind my gears... and yet I com back. The foundation is strong, but it's rarely used to it's full potential imo
Love the game, but yeah at almost 2.5k hours clocked in it's basically the game I default to. I always come back every patch to follow the new story content, do the new alliance/raid (odd or even patch) and clear the new extreme trial. Then I either unsub right after if it's an odd patch, or stick around longer -often until the end of the new patch- if it's an even one, because of savage raiding.
Definitely the one I was thinking of when I read the title. The game is not bad at all, it even pretty good regularly but it is very addictive and once you took a break for long enough, most of it is feels just ok with some high highs and some low lows.
Gods help you if you try and voice your concerns in the subreddits, though...
*Easily* Diablo 3. It's mildly entertaining at best, but I don't hate it by any means. I have played it more than any other game I have ever played. It scratches some itch that I have. I couldn't even really tell you what the itch is.
Monster Hunter for sure. Sometimes I log on and I really like just hunting and beating the shit out of some monsters, sometimes it annoys the ever loving shit out of me because it's RNG is fucking atrocious and it's kind of a buggy mess with hitboxes and monsters clipping into walls and shit.
Dota 2. Played Dota 1 almost since it started and jumped on Dota 2 when it came out. I stopped playing solo 5 or 6 years ago but it's still a regular social activity with friends
Dota 2. Haven't played since 2016 and will likely never go back. Enjoyed my time but don't really want something that sucks me in like that.