How are you all playing these insanely complex games?

bermuda, 7 months ago

It’s just lots of experimentation. Lots of complex games are games that are not designed for you to make it through successfully on your first go. They’re designed to be complete game overs that you learn from and make it further the next time. Lots of games also have a lot of moving parts that you have to master each one individually before you can tackle the whole thing. There’s a reason Hitman speedruns are like 1 minute each level when most regular players can take well above an hour.

ono, 7 months ago

IMHO, some of the beauty of Baldur’s Gate 3 lies in the ability to start playing immediately, and discover the mechanics little by little as you go. Instead of an impenetrable wall of complexity, it gives you a world to explore while learning something new every time you play.

However, if you want to study the mechanics, you can also consult the D&D 5th edition rules. BG3 follows most of them. media.wizards.com/2018/…/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf

ag_roberston_author, 7 months ago

First of all, BG3 is built on the DnD 5th Edition system, (with some slight changes) so a lot of people who have played DnD are going to be very aware of the system and how it works. But to be honest, on the easier settings, it’s almost impossible to fail the game, you can do what ever you want.

A big tip for BG3 inventory management is to use the “Send to camp” option for items. Grab them whenever, they don’t take up inventory space.

frog, 7 months ago

For me, it’s a combination of “just jump in and wing it” and building on top of working knowledge from previous similar games. But I’m very much a “learning while doing” person, so if I tried to research how to play a game first, it’s not like the knowledge would sink in. I build up a working knowledge by jumping in and trying stuff out, and a lot of knowledge has at least some cross-compatibility between games of the same genre, even if the game mechanics are a bit different. As I play a lot of games with my partner, we’re often both learning a new game at the same time, and you’d be amazed how often we’ll have a conversation that can be summarised as “I’ve discovered how to do X. It’s like Y from game Z, except you do A instead of B.”

When the game allows for it, I always play on the easiest difficulty setting while I’m learning, as that makes the game more forgiving of mistakes. There’s no shame in playing on easy mode, even for serious gamers. :)

EvaUnit02, 7 months ago

I think Larian Games do very little to explain their rules to the player. I, too, found it incredibly frustrating when I played Divinity: Original Sin and later, DOS 2. So while I didn't carve out time from my day to learn the ins and outs of Baldur's Gate III, I did have experience with the other two games that helped me navigate it.

I adore these games but it took many hours of training for me to understand what it was I was even supposed to be doing.

mrnotoriousman, 7 months ago

DOS: 2 was fuckin hard. I'm glad Larian made BG3 more forgiving. While I enjoyed DOS it was too much effort for most of my friends to get into.

jarfil, 7 months ago

I like to just jump in and wing it, learn on the fly. Actually hate playing with people who expect everyone to “have done their research”. Games do build on top of knowledge of previous ones, to an extent… but it’s figuring out the rest what gives me a thrill.

As for complicated games, I think you forgot World of Warcraft… which I can repeat to you what I told someone who called it a game “for nerds”: according to their IQ, 2% of the world population are “gifted”, there are 8 billion people, WoW had slightly over 10 million players at its peak.

In an ideal world with equal opportunities for everyone, you could expect a potential audience of 160 million “nerds”… so yeah, some games are going to be more difficult that candy crush.

helenslunch, 7 months ago

I never played WoW but I know many people who lost years of their life to that game

some games are going to be more difficult that candy crush.

I’m not concerned about difficulty. I’m concerned about how much time I have to invest in the game outside of actual gameplay.

Biberkopf, 7 months ago

But see, for some people and some genres, the fiddling and trying and testing and redoing IS the actual gameplay.

BG3 is a good example, Factorio came up in this thread as well. And from a certain perspective BG3 is as much of a playground as Tears of the Kingdom. The latter hides the numbers from you, the former invites you to play with them.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I for example can’t seem to get into story driven single player games such as God of War or Farcry. The constant tutorialising drives me nuts…

helenslunch, 7 months ago

You’re not understanding what I’m saying. I’m not talking about “fiddling, trying and testing”. I’m talking about spending your time browsing web forums and wikis in a browser. That is not a part of gameplay, that is external research.

Biberkopf, 7 months ago

Fair enough - semantics. Some people have fun doing this, some don’t. You seem to be part of the second group, no problem with that.

Your initial question was „how do people play those games?“ and „being part of the games online community and/or using the communities resources to play the game“ is one answer. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I am currently into Monster Hunter Rise. It does not exactly do the best job of explaining ingame what „30% Affinity“ on a weapon means. So I looked it up. That was fun to me.

In the end I guess it’s your imperative to research games before you buy them. If they don’t fit your play style, don’t buy them. You don’t mean to say that no one should enjoy „complex“ games, are you?!?

helenslunch, 7 months ago

and „being part of the games online community and/or using the communities resources to play the game“ is one answer.

Thank you.

You don’t mean to say that no one should enjoy „complex“ games, are you?!?

Of course not. And I have in the past. I just don’t have that kind of time anymore.

Stillhart, 7 months ago

Personally, I find that researching games on the internet can be really fun. I get analysis paralysis pretty badly (I’m the guy who is always worried he will be out of consumables when he needs them so he never uses them in the first place!) so researching a little beforehand helps me enjoy myself more. I don’t need to min/max the fun out of a game, but knowing I’m on the right track is really good for my enjoyment levels.

And this is very much a me thing, and that’s okay. We play games to have fun so play the way that’s the most fun for you. If you don’t like doing research before you play, but the game seems to require it, then play something else. It’s okay to not like a game. (I wasn’t super into BG3… shhh! Don’t tell the internet or they will burn me alive! Good game, but not for me.)

Personally, I really like rogue-lites these days. They’re games where you are meant to replay them and every run will be randomized in some way so that each one ends up being unique. (Hades, FTL, Nova Drift, those sorts of games.) The randomness makes it so that there’s no WRONG way to play, just better or worse choices for a given run, which takes that “stress” of making a wring choice away for me.

You gotta find what floats your boat and don’t worry about the other games.

helenslunch, 7 months ago

Personally, I find that researching games on the internet can be really fun

Yeah, I don’t find that fun at all, and have no interest in such things, so I’m just trying to figure out if that’s what I need to do, because if so, I’m out, and I don’t want to start walking down that path and spend my valuable gaming time tearing my hair out because the necessary info simply doesn’t exist in the game. I just want to relax.

Honestly just being here reading all these responses and trying to figure out what “min/max” and “rogue-lites” (rogue-likes?) are is exhausting. I just want my games to have all the necessary information in the game.

Stillhart, 7 months ago

There are lots of games out there, and just like any kind of entertainment, some will hold your hand and some won’t. Everyone has different tastes, different things they want to do with their time, different amounts of time and money, and there are games that cater to all of them.

Unfortunately, the only way to tell which is which without playing it first is by doing a little research.

So it seems like you’re a little stuck, you either play a game blind and hope it’s right for you, or you look into it beforehand to figure it out before spending your money. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect but hey, you do you. Good luck!

helenslunch, 7 months ago

I get that. I just don’t know how to figure out which is which before I actually buy it.

Stillhart, 7 months ago

Well, there is a pretty large community of gamers who play games on Youtube and Twitch professionally. You could always watch someone else play it briefly to get an idea of what to expect. Once you eventually find some games you really like the style of, you will be in good shape. You can then ask for more targetted recommendations here on Lemmy, or look up reviews for games in a similar genre, or find streamers who play games you like and look through their old videos for similar games (they tend to stick to a style usually), etc.

First step, I think, is figuring out not what you don’t like, but what you DO like.

averyminya, 7 months ago

I just want my games to have all the necessary information in the game.

Something that I meant to say in my comment but slipped my mind; a lot of these games will have you learn by playing. IMO, games either show too much trying to show you everything or they don’t show you anything and have you learn the mechanics of the game and its engine.

It sounds like you are wanting some information from the game before you start it, but the game is going to do that by experience not by text, which is why so many people have said “oh that’s why we look it up online!”. They’re just doing the same thing you are, just not in the game. I understand not wanting to be in the game and then having to get taken out of it for something though.

It sounds like each game you mentioned you wanted information from the game before you started playing it, which is the same thing that everyone else has done just with the internet. Personally, I’m in the camp of jump in and go and then 40 hours in if there is still something the game hasn’t explained (or realistically, something that I skipped over) then I look it up. Otherwise, you spend all your time reading about what to expect instead of just having it happen to you.

This sounds like it might suit you as long as you give up some expectations. Like I said, from how you’re talking it sounds like you’re still trying to preload on information (like everyone else) but expecting it from the game. The game will show you eventually, you just gotta see the response from your actions and suffer the consequences!

FWIW it’s a wide range of genres out there. Games at this point are being made from decades of existing gamer techniques. There’s games like Monster Hunter where the game gives you an hour and half of learning the game and there’s still more to learn in entirely different aspects of the game (crafting weapons/armor/items and the actual attacks and monster patterns), there’s games like BG3 where there are character traits and specifics that are there for nudging you to play a certain way (where min/maxing is minimum amount of effort for maximum amount of gains - it’s not very ideal to have a strength warrior focusing on magic).

Then there’s games like Pathologic that do tell you exactly what you need to do, but the entirety of the game is made to dissuade you from playing it.

You should try Shadow Warrior. It is a first person slasher where all of your abilities are gained one by one and grow on top of each other. It tells you everything you need to know, no guesswork. Max Payne 3 is a third person shooter that is very straightforward. And Okami, a third person open-area puzzle explorer, where the game makes you think outside the box for abilities it has taught you how to use, and just a few points where you have to do an explicit objective before continuing.

Story based progression games akin to Borderlands but free from inventory and stats. No bothering with how many levels you have to get through before you can level up your abilities, just good old point A to point B action.

Tl;Dr don’t preload information from games, compile information from playing them

helenslunch, 7 months ago

You should try Shadow Warrior.

Already played this one and thoroughly enjoyed it, thanks for the suggestions!

averyminya, 7 months ago

Hey, glad I had a good guess that was already up your alley! And sorry for some of the responses - unfortunately elitism has a high correlation to certain min/max communities.

muhyb, 7 months ago

For BG3, don’t search something about it, just start and play. You don’t need to know anything prior, however it’s a role-playing game so play accordingly what kind of character you created. You can save-scumming if you want if some desicion you made leads to something bad, though they all the part of the game. Just play and experience.

For games like Overwatch, it isn’t complicated at all. It just requires you to play it constantly and learn counter measures just by playing. Learning them is the fun part, overthinking about them not so much.

To be fair when I see “complex game” part, I was kinda expexting some advanced building games, something like Factorio, maybe RimWorld.

Anyway, also you don’t have to like any games even if they are overwhelmingly positive titles. Just find what you like and dig in.

Moonguide, 7 months ago

I don’t know I’d qualify Rimworld as complicated, honestly. It has more moving parts than The Sims, sure, but it is nowhere near how complicated EU4 seems (I haven’t played it, it scares me, but CK is another good example).

GrayBackgroundMusic, 7 months ago

Counterpoint. Rimworld is complicated. EU4 is super complicated.

key, 7 months ago

Hey now factorio isn’t complex, just play it a lot and you’ll pick it up… I’m 2000 hours in and managed to finish a game in only 70 hours! I’m thiiiiis close to making train lines without constant crashes. Pretty soon I’ll feel ready to add in Bob’s mods to the mix. It’s… Simple…

KSPAtlas, 7 months ago

You should jump right into PyAE, very great easy mod idea just trust me

/s

CarlsIII, 7 months ago

Is destiny complex? When I played, it felt basically like all you do is follow the arrow and shoot everything

stewie410, 7 months ago

Its less that it’s complex, moreso that there’s basically zero onboarding.

Moonguide, 7 months ago

Yup. D2 has the worst new player experience of any game I’ve played. But at the end of the day, it’s just about knowing where the daily solo dungeon is, so you can grind Light level. Raids are complicated though, because a lot of them are like puzzles.

Stopped playing it because of how money hungry the game is.

beaumains, 7 months ago

Also all the actual good content (raids) are not explained and you need to herd some cats to do them. Which is even harder if you’re learning them.

The best time I had with destiny was when I had a clan and a couple of the more experienced players would take a bunch of newbies through. Then we could fuck around and not be completely lost.

helenslunch, 7 months ago

It was always fun to go in on a brand new raid and fuck around with a few buds to figure out what are actually REALLY difficult challenges that require both skill and puzzle-solving skills. I just got burned out on it and just quit PC gaming entirely and got a Switch just because of the state of modern gaming in general.

helenslunch, 7 months ago

I can’t speak for today but when I played it, it wasn’t so much “complex” as there were hidden missions (and according weapons) that are nearly impossible to find if you don’t know about them, and raids you basically have to join a group with a leader and the leader will require that you read documentation before-hand because they’re nearly impossible to figure out on your own.

sederx, 7 months ago

You don’t need to research anything to finish Bg3. You don’t need to understand all the things to enjoy a game. You just put it on easy and enjoy.

But really destiny and overwatch complicated??? Those games are for children

helenslunch, 7 months ago

Absolutely. I spent years playing Destiny and eventually got tired of researching lore on the web because that’s what you had to do. The secret missions and guns and raids are next to impossible to figure out on your own.

As for OW, I played for a while but was just instantly slaughtered. My playmate explained it was because I was X character and Y character has Z ability and I needed to switch to V character when I respawn to counter their abilities and then I realized she had spent hours researching all these character traits on the internet and that’s around the time I bailed.

jarfil, 7 months ago

My playmate explained it was because I was X character and Y character has Z ability and I needed to switch to V character when I respawn to counter their abilities

With all due respect, your playmate knew jack shit. Particularly in Overwatch, the “countering” is a combination of personal skill and situational awareness: you can win with any character against any other one, by just using the right abilities at the right time from the right place.

It’s also mainly a team based game… or used to be… so which character you pick is much less important, than knowing which synergies you can get with your teammates. That one does take time to learn, on everyone’s part, but a well synergized team can only be “countered” by another well synergized team.

For reference, I’m part blind, and some of my favorite kills are Mercy vs. Widow, or Torb’s ballistic rivet headshots across half the map vs. whoever thought they were well behind cover.

comicallycluttered, 7 months ago

Pulling off a Junkrat mine-assisted jump and destroying Pharah on a wide outdoor map is always glorious. Love(d) doing that shit.

Then just spring a trap and blast Mercy as soon as she immediately goes to res the dead Egyptian rocket lady, because that’s what she almost always does.

Man, I miss the good days of that game.

jarfil, 7 months ago

Yeah, Pharah’s weak spot was holding still while ulting, easy target for everyone.

But the trap for Mercy wasn’t a guaranteed hit, I used to “main Mercy”, and the trick was that Pharah’s “corpse” started where she got killed, however high above ground, and then began falling. Mercy’s rez (and heal/boost) had a minimum engage range, but the disengage range was about twice of that, so a Mercy could fly towards the corpse midair, hit rez while passing it by, then channel rez while still slowly hovering down, sometimes even rezzing pharah midair, not having to touch the ground.

The risk to that, was if Pharah’s corpse happened to land on a roof, while Mercy kept hovering down, she would get out of range and lose the cast… but that’s what made it interesting.

I also miss that one time when they made Mercy’s ult a speed boost; best Mercy games were always while keeping her in the air as long as possible, healing everyone while jumping among them, but the speed ult made for some fun “let’s see how many can I rez in a single game”.

ono, 7 months ago

But really destiny and overwatch complicated??? Those games are for children

Overwatch might seem that way because of the cartoon style and the low skill floor, but the skill ceiling is somewhat higher. I haven’t met many children who would be good at predicting behavior of high-level opponents and coordinating to counter it, for example.

I don’t know that I would call it complicated, either, except in the sense that there’s often a lot to keep track of all at once. I think I’d place it somewhere in the middle.

sederx, 7 months ago

i mean any multiplayer game is “complicated” at the highest level no matter how simple it is.

Poggervania, 7 months ago

BG3 is based on arguably the most user-friendly version of Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition (5e). Larian themselves also do a fantastic job at easing you into the mechanics via gameplay, so you can honestly jump in and just play something that sounds cool to you without worrying about having to min-max or optimize your character. The game lays out what you get on each level-up pretty well and it defaults you to being a single class, so you won’t have to worry about multi-classing unless you want to - and because it’s based on 5e, you can honestly get away with not optimizing your build that much, if even at all, and manage to do fine as long as your main damage (STR for melee, DEX for ranged and Finesse weapons)/casting stat (INT for Wizards, CHA for Bards/Sorcerers, and WIS for Clerics/Druids) is high.

Can’t speak on OW2, but with games like Deep Rock Galactic and Vermintide, I found it’s best to just play it and figure stuff out slowly from experience. A lot of it can sound complicated, but I found it’s easier to digest the complexity of the mechanics and systems a bit at a time as your experience with the game grows. Like with Vermintide, as an example, I recently started really diving in deep with Cleave, Stagger, and Frontline/Heavy Frontline/Tank property mechanics and numbers for melee weapons; you literally cannot see these things from the game’s UI, and starting out I had no idea these things even existed, and it only really matters once you start playing on the hardest difficulties, Legend and Cataclysm. If I had to figure out all that stuff early on, I would nope out of the game super quick lmao.

Moonguide, 7 months ago

5e might be easier to grasp than previous editions, and even easier to play than other TTRPGs, but even then. I started playing DnD after my second playthrough of BG3, and even having some experience with CRPGs, reading through the DM book, PHB, and all the sourcebooks I totally legally acquired, felt like trying to map a room with my eyes closed. Bg3 streamlines the math, but the complexity is still there.

Half of all the time I’ve spent as a DM has been spent devising homebrews to streamline the game further.

kandoh, 7 months ago

Sounds like you have mind goblins

helenslunch, 7 months ago

Scary

uphillbothways, 7 months ago

Complexity gives the games depth which allows them to hold interest. You can try something, figure out how to play the game that way, and then go and start a new character to figure out how to play the game another utilizing the knowledge you've gained from prior experimentation.

Some of the inventory management can be annoying at times, but again it's an opportunity to employ knowledge as a means to identify the items that aren't particularly useful to one playstyle and could be useful under another set of abilities/attributes or some set of combinations allowed by the game.

A game that only has one right answer quickly becomes a boring precision button pushing simulator to people who prefer more complexity, variety and depth in their gaming experience.

Not that one preference or the other is inherently correct, but hopefully it can be understood that different people want different things from their games.

Megaman_EXE, 7 months ago

For destiny, I have no idea. I first played D2 when it launched and that was fine, but I attempted to pick it up again a year or two later and I was immediately lost.

For overwatch I agai haven’t played in quite some time. But for multiplayer shooters like that I try to go into a casual mode or training mode first and just get a feel for everything. Eventually you get the hang of things.

For RPG’s it depends. Some games can benefit from reading up online. For example I’m playing bloodborne right now and I had no idea how I wanted to spec out my character. So I looked up what weapons and abilities are in the game and made my decision based around that. If a game features a respec option, I’ll be more likely to just go in and wing it and change things up when I need to.

helenslunch, 7 months ago

casual mode or training mode first and just get a feel for everything

These usually don’t have any explanation of the game mechanics though. Like you’d have to sit down and analyze all the character traits on some web forum in order to not get immediately slaughtered by other more experienced players, since it’s multiplayer only.

valaramech, 7 months ago

Getting repeatedly beaten in competitive multiplayer games is just kinda par for the course if you haven't learned the meta, strategies, etc. If you lack game knowledge and your opponents have that game knowledge, you will mostly lose.

If winning in the game is the only way you find enjoyment in them, then those kinds of games require significant investments of time and energy to "git good".

I say this as someone who is repeatedly shit on in every game of CoD I've ever played and will play in the future. That said, I don't gain particular enjoyment from winning alone - not that it isn't fun to win, just that I get just as much enjoyment from other aspects of the game.

It sounds to me, mostly, that these games just don't really appeal to your idea of what's fun.

argo_yamato, 7 months ago

Generally I just start playing. If the game keeps my attention and I keep playing at some point all the various character abilities, what is valuable or not and managing items just clicks. And some days I just don’t feel like figuring stuff out so I play games I am familiar with.