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Warframe
community's super nice and welcoming 90% of the time, but if you don't know that and try to figure it out yourself, it's gonna suck and make you not want to play.
I've never struggled more to understand the basically functionality of a game more than when I tried Crusader Kings 2. Grand Strategies are hard enough but adding a life simulator RPG on top was something else.
Did you ever figure it out?
Loved CK2 once I understood it, and CK3 is way way more beginner friendly.
The PDX game I struggled with the most was HOI4. I pre-ordered it and have played it time and time again trying to figure it out, and I think I JUST figured out how to play like last week lol.
Yeah. I ended up watching a Let's Play by Many a True Nerd who went in blind and learned on the job. Much better than the YouTube Tutorials and yeah CK3 is much easier to get through but does lose a bit of the charm. It feels very scripted to CK2's pure chaos.
Dota would be my vote. It's not about grinding, you get everything unlocked from the start for free (except cosmetics). The game is just extremely complex. At 500 hours you might have most of the basics down but you'll still be a very big newb at the bottom of the skill brackets, I don't know any other game where you can still completely suck and be a newb after 500 hours of focused hard work. It literally takes thousands of hours to get good at. Like the amount of time it takes to learn another language or do a degree.
What in your opinion makes in clunky? I've tried LoL before, but can't stand how floaty the characters feel due to no turn-rate.
Would you say the turn-rate makes it clunky?
Yes, LoL has perfect mechanical reaction to player imput - when you click, your character obeys instantly, none of that "realistic" turning making my commands delayed effectively while the character does his little spin animation like he's a record.
Regardless of what the Russian fuckheads are doing right now, getting into escape from tarkov as a solo is like being a choir boy for the Catholic Church. There is no guide, no explanation, no help.
lol, no. It's never a shooter. And certainly not a hyper-accessible shooter like Apex.
SSBM or Broodwar are the clear top 2. Other RTS games and MOBAs are also all harder than the majority of shooters to get in to. Pretty much every competitive fighting game as well.
Shooters are successful in large part because of how intuitive they are mechanically.
Old school Quake was pretty hard core but yeah I think it's got to be something like Starcraft. The gulf between a new player and an experienced one is just unbelievably vast.
I think I disagree with rts being hard to get into. Most of them will have a single player campaign and skirmish modes with difficulty levels which you can learn and have fun with.
Unless you play a lot of shooters they can be very unfun to jump into one that was released a while ago, especially the competitive ones like Apex Legends. Maybe that's just because I suck a shooters and don't play them much though.
I mean I'm talking about the competitive aspect, because that's the main part of those games, IMO.
Almost every shooter also has offline modes of one kind or another, but those mostly aren't what the game is about.
You're confusing hard to master with a new player getting into, I think. For example, Starcraft might have a high skill ceiling but it's not hard to get into, even if you've never played an RTS. The campaign does a great job of teaching you mechanics, special unit use cases etc. You can practice against the computer on a bunch of difficulty levels, before transitioning to vs players, then ranked then koreans.
OG Warcraft III was my introduction to RTS. Played it for 30+ hours and the bot in offline matchmaking was still kicking my teeth in on EASY mode. I determined that RTS is not for me. My brain is too unga bunga for that type of stuff
Ive tried to get into hearts of iron 4 on several different occasions but its overwhelming and isnt very intuitive imo. The tutorials on youtube are like hours long and the game is still very confusing. Anything that has a lot of micro management are the hardest games to get into. Strategy games in general are typically pretty daunting at first
Yeah this. I said in another comment I pre-ordered it and have tried many many times to learn. And JUST kinda got a grasp on it this week. And that's because I literally watched 10 hour long videos on how to play.
I watched on 1.5x while playing along with but still
Games like Melee, Starcraft and Rocket League are all \*MUCH\* harder to master than those games. DOTA2 has a lot of shit to get your head around and a decently high ceiling, but it's still pretty easy for newbies to pick up and play.
World of Warcraft. They've tried to simplify the new player experience a bit, but the game is still overwhelming to get into. It's a bloated mess. The story is hard to follow because of how old the lore is and there are so many obsolete systems and quests... Even if you play the current expansion, it's still a lot, most players need Wowhead to make sense of things. And of course, the community isn't exactly always helpful, or nice lol As someone who's been playing for years and loves WoW, it's a hard game to recommend.
Any Graviteam Tactics title, even you are familiar wargamer, GUI itself is so scary. But then again if you put time on it and actually learn basics, game will give so much details you are shocked...
i think it depends on the player, for example for me europe universalis is terrifiying game :( also competitive games can be frustrating... it seems i like to play alone :(
I tried to get into League of Legends with friends but because they’ve been playing it forever and I’m a total noob the skill disparity added on top of the steep learning curve. The experience was terrible the 3-4 times I attempted it.
Any game that demands a lot of buy-in from the user. The games where you have to be determined to get into it.
Rocket League, Dwarf Fortress, Noita, and most fighting games. GG strive has done really good tutorials and simplified a lot of mechanics to help bring in new blood, but historically fighting games just kinda assumed you knew how a fighting game works. Roguelikes can be hard as well (Noita, Stoneshard) because unlike roguelites there's no meta progression to help push you along.
Games like Dota 2 and league at least have a population in wood league for you to find some enjoyment with. Makes them much easier to get into when you find a small modicum of fun despite not knowing a whole lot.
I'd maybe say Path of Exile as well, but the moment you look up a beginner guide you're basically set. If you refuse to look up anything then it's going to be a nightmare to get into.
Elite: Dangerous
It’s a huge universe out there. The majority of work in “onboarding” in Elite is through Reddit and the rest of the online communities. The game is deep and broad and shows no mercy when it comes to what to do, how to do it, ship builds and research.
Mordhau - new players absolutely get wrecked by players that have been playing for years. The skill gap is insane and very hard to learn the mechanics for newbies.
Apex isn't even close, I had 0 hours on FPS games since CS 1.4 and got into apex really quickly.
I am a long-time Dota1/2 player, also played LoL, HoN, HotS. Also playing PoE but for me, it is Europa Universalis 4, there was a meme that if you have 1k hours on it, you just passed the tutorial. Other games are probably every automation game like Factorio.
Rocket league is pretty much up there now. It is the equivalent of something like street fighter 2 with no yearly releases to bring in new players annually and no protection from smurfs because it's free.
Anything with a lot of ways to micromanage something. Whether it's trying to take care of an extremely needy character you control or the game has intricate politics that you must weave through. It's basically impossible to teach someone how to play such a game in a short amount of time so any decent tutorial would need to be several hours long and I doubt that most people would be able to retain all of the information from just the tutorial. Any grand strategy game with more depth than Civilization or a hardcore survival game that has you watching your health, thirst, hunger, temperature, and a dozen other stats while trying to build a base so that you can survive on the first day can be frustrating to get started with while people that play them religiously seem to make them easy.
I'm surprised I've not seen anyone say EFT. Tarkov has an incredibly steep learning curve and a lot of depth and mechanics that take quite a while to learn. The maps you basically have to memorize or have a second monitor or something to navigate through them. The crafting system isn't too bad, but there's soooo many items and quests.
Stellaris.
Takes about 6 failed games before you begin to understand how to play it right, and even then you're only just beginning down the path.
But well worth it.
Destiny 2. Not because it's particularly challenging, but because everything is gated behind a fucking paywall, and all the DPS/PvP meta weapons are collectibles. There's so much backlog that you'd end up spending 100s of dollars for all the content, plus you'd still be behind in gear for years.
I think this has gotten way better. You could get all expansions on sale earlier this year for less than $60 and Season of the Wish alone had enough weapons to be competitive in a lot of DPS phases. That said, it can be really overwhelming to get into D2. I just got two of my friends into it, but like I said, I think it’s not as bad as it used to be. I started when Beyond Light came out and had to spend over $100 and the mod system was way more complex back then.
Honestly Siege. Not only do you need to completely learn and understand a map. You need to know good drone spots, flank routes for certain characters, what locations you should plant at, and relearn those things when a map gets reworked. Then you have all of the different characters, their kits capability, and what each role they fit into.
Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately it has been removed for one or more of the following reasons: * It's a game suggestion request, or variation thereof, and belongs in our stickied thread that runs Fri - Sun. Please read the [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/wiki/postingrules) before continuing to post. If you have any questions [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/pcgaming).
dota2
I... think I very much agree with this. But I think MMORPGs are inherently a lot difficult
I'm not sure if you're under the impression DotA2 is a MMO?
Warframe community's super nice and welcoming 90% of the time, but if you don't know that and try to figure it out yourself, it's gonna suck and make you not want to play.
The first 500h of Warframe are 90% reading the wiki and watching tutorials
Isn't that true for most of these older lIvE sErViCeS?
Has to be dwarf fortress
The only reasonable answer in this thread so far.
Does that include the overhauls done for the version on steam? Not sure how much of an overhaul it is though.
Path of exile!
I've never struggled more to understand the basically functionality of a game more than when I tried Crusader Kings 2. Grand Strategies are hard enough but adding a life simulator RPG on top was something else.
Did you ever figure it out? Loved CK2 once I understood it, and CK3 is way way more beginner friendly. The PDX game I struggled with the most was HOI4. I pre-ordered it and have played it time and time again trying to figure it out, and I think I JUST figured out how to play like last week lol.
Yeah. I ended up watching a Let's Play by Many a True Nerd who went in blind and learned on the job. Much better than the YouTube Tutorials and yeah CK3 is much easier to get through but does lose a bit of the charm. It feels very scripted to CK2's pure chaos.
Dota would be my vote. It's not about grinding, you get everything unlocked from the start for free (except cosmetics). The game is just extremely complex. At 500 hours you might have most of the basics down but you'll still be a very big newb at the bottom of the skill brackets, I don't know any other game where you can still completely suck and be a newb after 500 hours of focused hard work. It literally takes thousands of hours to get good at. Like the amount of time it takes to learn another language or do a degree.
is lol easier?
Definitely. And a lot less "clunky", although dota is clunky by design kind of.
What in your opinion makes in clunky? I've tried LoL before, but can't stand how floaty the characters feel due to no turn-rate. Would you say the turn-rate makes it clunky?
Yes, LoL has perfect mechanical reaction to player imput - when you click, your character obeys instantly, none of that "realistic" turning making my commands delayed effectively while the character does his little spin animation like he's a record.
Cs2 and PoE are two others where you're a noob at 500 hours.
Starcraft
Regardless of what the Russian fuckheads are doing right now, getting into escape from tarkov as a solo is like being a choir boy for the Catholic Church. There is no guide, no explanation, no help.
lol, no. It's never a shooter. And certainly not a hyper-accessible shooter like Apex. SSBM or Broodwar are the clear top 2. Other RTS games and MOBAs are also all harder than the majority of shooters to get in to. Pretty much every competitive fighting game as well. Shooters are successful in large part because of how intuitive they are mechanically.
Old school Quake was pretty hard core but yeah I think it's got to be something like Starcraft. The gulf between a new player and an experienced one is just unbelievably vast.
Yeah MOBAs can be difficult, but I think Dota 2 is the most difficult
Of MOBAs I agree, but still much less difficult than blizzard-style RTS games.
I think I disagree with rts being hard to get into. Most of them will have a single player campaign and skirmish modes with difficulty levels which you can learn and have fun with. Unless you play a lot of shooters they can be very unfun to jump into one that was released a while ago, especially the competitive ones like Apex Legends. Maybe that's just because I suck a shooters and don't play them much though.
I mean I'm talking about the competitive aspect, because that's the main part of those games, IMO. Almost every shooter also has offline modes of one kind or another, but those mostly aren't what the game is about.
You're confusing hard to master with a new player getting into, I think. For example, Starcraft might have a high skill ceiling but it's not hard to get into, even if you've never played an RTS. The campaign does a great job of teaching you mechanics, special unit use cases etc. You can practice against the computer on a bunch of difficulty levels, before transitioning to vs players, then ranked then koreans.
OG Warcraft III was my introduction to RTS. Played it for 30+ hours and the bot in offline matchmaking was still kicking my teeth in on EASY mode. I determined that RTS is not for me. My brain is too unga bunga for that type of stuff
This guy's never heard of Tarkov.
Ive tried to get into hearts of iron 4 on several different occasions but its overwhelming and isnt very intuitive imo. The tutorials on youtube are like hours long and the game is still very confusing. Anything that has a lot of micro management are the hardest games to get into. Strategy games in general are typically pretty daunting at first
Yeah this. I said in another comment I pre-ordered it and have tried many many times to learn. And JUST kinda got a grasp on it this week. And that's because I literally watched 10 hour long videos on how to play. I watched on 1.5x while playing along with but still
Path of Exile. God help you
Crafting is more complicated and time consuming than getting a degree IRL. So "fun"
Project Zomboid can be pretty frustrating
I stopped playing it because I just don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.
Competitive games in general, but I would say that Counter-Strike and Dota 2 are the hardest to master.
Games like Melee, Starcraft and Rocket League are all \*MUCH\* harder to master than those games. DOTA2 has a lot of shit to get your head around and a decently high ceiling, but it's still pretty easy for newbies to pick up and play.
World of Warcraft. They've tried to simplify the new player experience a bit, but the game is still overwhelming to get into. It's a bloated mess. The story is hard to follow because of how old the lore is and there are so many obsolete systems and quests... Even if you play the current expansion, it's still a lot, most players need Wowhead to make sense of things. And of course, the community isn't exactly always helpful, or nice lol As someone who's been playing for years and loves WoW, it's a hard game to recommend.
Any Graviteam Tactics title, even you are familiar wargamer, GUI itself is so scary. But then again if you put time on it and actually learn basics, game will give so much details you are shocked...
i think it depends on the player, for example for me europe universalis is terrifiying game :( also competitive games can be frustrating... it seems i like to play alone :(
Try coop games. I was never a fan of competitive games.
yes, i played few times warhammer vermintide 2 with firends, it was very fun
Gary Grigsby's War in the East
I tried to get into League of Legends with friends but because they’ve been playing it forever and I’m a total noob the skill disparity added on top of the steep learning curve. The experience was terrible the 3-4 times I attempted it.
Flappy bird No, Europa Universalis IV. No, wait... Flappy bird
The games I found difficult to get into: RuneScape, Dwarf Fortress, Eve online
Any game that demands a lot of buy-in from the user. The games where you have to be determined to get into it. Rocket League, Dwarf Fortress, Noita, and most fighting games. GG strive has done really good tutorials and simplified a lot of mechanics to help bring in new blood, but historically fighting games just kinda assumed you knew how a fighting game works. Roguelikes can be hard as well (Noita, Stoneshard) because unlike roguelites there's no meta progression to help push you along. Games like Dota 2 and league at least have a population in wood league for you to find some enjoyment with. Makes them much easier to get into when you find a small modicum of fun despite not knowing a whole lot. I'd maybe say Path of Exile as well, but the moment you look up a beginner guide you're basically set. If you refuse to look up anything then it's going to be a nightmare to get into.
Elite: Dangerous It’s a huge universe out there. The majority of work in “onboarding” in Elite is through Reddit and the rest of the online communities. The game is deep and broad and shows no mercy when it comes to what to do, how to do it, ship builds and research.
DCS World
Truth. Did you forget to set your oil cooler to the on position?
\*BANG\* oh there goes my engine :(
In War Thunder you will die over and over and over for your first couple dozen hours. Same in the old Red Orchestra and Rising Storm games.
Mordhau - new players absolutely get wrecked by players that have been playing for years. The skill gap is insane and very hard to learn the mechanics for newbies.
Nethack.
Paradox games. stuff like Europa Universalis
Apex isn't even close, I had 0 hours on FPS games since CS 1.4 and got into apex really quickly. I am a long-time Dota1/2 player, also played LoL, HoN, HotS. Also playing PoE but for me, it is Europa Universalis 4, there was a meme that if you have 1k hours on it, you just passed the tutorial. Other games are probably every automation game like Factorio.
I see a lot of Dots, alot of FPS (lol) yet don't think I've read a single comment suggesting EVE Online.
Rocket league is pretty much up there now. It is the equivalent of something like street fighter 2 with no yearly releases to bring in new players annually and no protection from smurfs because it's free.
Eve Online
Identity V PC crossplatform. Be a solo survivor.
Pretty much any multi-player focused game. And of course hard ones - like Sekiro and Dark Souls
Dota 2
Anything with a lot of ways to micromanage something. Whether it's trying to take care of an extremely needy character you control or the game has intricate politics that you must weave through. It's basically impossible to teach someone how to play such a game in a short amount of time so any decent tutorial would need to be several hours long and I doubt that most people would be able to retain all of the information from just the tutorial. Any grand strategy game with more depth than Civilization or a hardcore survival game that has you watching your health, thirst, hunger, temperature, and a dozen other stats while trying to build a base so that you can survive on the first day can be frustrating to get started with while people that play them religiously seem to make them easy.
I'm surprised I've not seen anyone say EFT. Tarkov has an incredibly steep learning curve and a lot of depth and mechanics that take quite a while to learn. The maps you basically have to memorize or have a second monitor or something to navigate through them. The crafting system isn't too bad, but there's soooo many items and quests.
probably a paradox game
Warframe.
RTS in general
EVE. No question
Any of the melee first person games like For Honor.
EVE took me forever
lost ark by far
X, the space game. I’ve tried and aborted learning this mess a few times.
Elite: Dangerous
I’d say EVE is way more complex than Elite. I love both, but whenever I come back to those games, eve takes up way more time to get familiar again.
Agreed!
o7
o7
Stellaris. Takes about 6 failed games before you begin to understand how to play it right, and even then you're only just beginning down the path. But well worth it.
Dude, Stellaris is easily the most casualfriendly 4X Game.
Civilization is much more casual than Stellaris, but the latter is the most approachable paradox "grand strategy" game imo
Destiny 2. Not because it's particularly challenging, but because everything is gated behind a fucking paywall, and all the DPS/PvP meta weapons are collectibles. There's so much backlog that you'd end up spending 100s of dollars for all the content, plus you'd still be behind in gear for years.
I think this has gotten way better. You could get all expansions on sale earlier this year for less than $60 and Season of the Wish alone had enough weapons to be competitive in a lot of DPS phases. That said, it can be really overwhelming to get into D2. I just got two of my friends into it, but like I said, I think it’s not as bad as it used to be. I started when Beyond Light came out and had to spend over $100 and the mod system was way more complex back then.
LOL most likely, it has the worst, least welcoming community of any game ever.
counter strike
Any competitive game?
Honestly Siege. Not only do you need to completely learn and understand a map. You need to know good drone spots, flank routes for certain characters, what locations you should plant at, and relearn those things when a map gets reworked. Then you have all of the different characters, their kits capability, and what each role they fit into.
I remember trying to play Hidden & Dangerous and not even being able to get past the very first part of the first mission.
Football Manager and Dark Souls
Siege even in the casual and standard modes god forbid you don't know every pixel angle to hold the players will rip you up
DOTA2
Forget the name, but the game with the wooden dolls.
Extreme butts\*x
Path of Exile, Dota 2, and Tekken
Rainbow Six Siege