It’s refreshing seeing your list since people often blame gachas nowadays, but MMOs were the issue originally, it’s just that other genres took a lesson from MMOs so now we have way more grinding options and it gets tiresome.
Gacha games are like magicians. You know they are total bullshit and there is no “magic”, yet some people still look at it and think there is something else going on.
Total waste of money, I don’t understand how people get sucked into those things.
I finally kicked my Destiny 2 habit by installing Linux, and while I absolutely miss the gameplay and my team, I haven’t really looked back. I’m involved and interested in so many other things now. I still see the odd post that gives ma a pang of FOMO, but the thought of booting into my windows install makes me want to peel my skin off with tweezers.
Not an MMORPG by any means, but I’ve been really enjoying a “Minecraft like” called Vintage Story that is giving me the same feeling. The commodification of Minecraft has finally frustrated me enough and I’m jumping ship.
Perfect, thanks so much! I kind of thought this but wanted to make sure. I’m not super familiar with them but have always been curious. Maybe somebody has ported it to Android
Rimworld is a great Colony Sim if you love the idea of Dwarf Fortress but want a gameplay experience that’s much more accessible with a much softer learning curve.
It plays into the chaotic post apocalyptic Mad Max style hellscape fantasy really well, and does not attempt to police your morality. You can love and care for your colonists, meeting their needs and growing to know them as individual people with their own unique stories, or you can play as efficiently or sadistically as you like, throwing ethics out the window and following the Geneva Suggestions wherever you deem prudent.
The base game is good for hundreds of hours of play, and expansions bump that up to thousands of hours of fun, but it also has a very healthy modding community if that’s still not enough.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Colony Sim genre, the basic idea is that you start with a set of semi-randomized colonists on a randomized map and need to build up a functioning Colony to survive. You the player take the role of a manager or overlord and set tasks for your colonists to complete, which they then take time to carry out while you watch and plan the next set of tasks. You need to gather materials, build shelter, grow or hunt food, defend yourself from wildlife and raiders, and recruit new colonists.
Rimworld in particular has fun building mechanics with an emphasis on building power grids and heat management (air conditioning and heating to keep your colonists comfy and keep food from spoiling). It’s a lot like a top-down Oxygen Not Included, but with simpler mechanics and more focus on its (procedurally generated) story.
Neat! Thank you for taking the time to make such a comprehensive review. Sounds like it’s up my alley! I enjoyed Frostpunk and the Tropico series (as well as Banished although I thought it was sort of boring after a while).
I knew a guy who got real into it and started an “Accidental Cannibal Cult”. It was fun to listen to, if nothing else - I don’t get into those games much. Kinda like hearing EVE Online or Dwarf Fortress stories.
The colonists you are given all have character traits and there is a social aspect of the game. Colonists can start relationships, start families, break up, start social fights and end up in infirmarry… Sometimes, family members of your colonists come to your colony as raiders. All these stories forming during gameplay is the real strength of the game for me.
For example, there was this one colonist woman in one of my playthroughs. She was the tough, soldier type. She started one or two relationships in the colony but ended them. Then she tried to go back to them. It started creating some complicated feelings among the colony so I sent her to scavenge a nearby abandoned base.
Before she can leave, a band of raiders popped in. One of the raiders was her teenage son! So I start getting so invested in saving the son and bringing him back to the colony. I’m not that skilled in combat or tactics so I save the game multiple times until a trap injures the boy so his mom can snatch him without fighting. She takes him into one of the intact rooms in the ruin and patches up his wound, shares her food. (She takes him prisoner and you can keep talking to prisoners and convert them into your colonists. )
Here is a scene where raiders running around outside, raiding. And a mother and son, hunkered down in a room, trying to reconnect.
While the boy is recovering in the impromptu prison room, she gets out and shoots the raiders one by one. Rest of the raiders leave the map after losing enough members.
Mother and son talk about family, son talks about some childhood memories. Eventually, he is no longer a prisoner but a newly recruited member of the colony. Woman comes back with her son. Son turns out to be a psychopath but that’s ok. At the Rim, we love psychopaths, they do gruesome task of disposing raider corpses, for example, without getting emotional strain.
Mother stopped creating drama in the colony after son joined.
…
If you read people’s stories in the steam comments (there are a lot of war crime simulator stories, too, be warned) you may get why it’s so addictive.
Maybe its the 'tism but I never gave a shit about most microtransactiony things unless they have a “pay-to-win” element. That’s why I gave up on GTA online.
But if its just like “exclusive skins”, I could give a shit. My default skinned character can still win against a guy in a bear-suit with a golden AK and that’s really all I need. I have no particular FOMO of not winning the fashion part of the game.
I do wish games I could turn off their constant begging for my money though.
My problem with “its just cosmetic” is that it turns the entire main screen into ad space, along with loading screens and wherever else they can jam it in. I don’t play game to be advertised to.
Of course I can choose not to buy in, but if it didn’t have a psychological effect they wouldn’t be doing it.
An argument I heard, and adopted is that it’s never “just” cosmetic. Your enjoyment of the game is impacted by how you perceive your avatar. This is why fortnite skins sell so well to new players. It’s not just cosmetic to drop $20 on Cuddle Team Leader. It makes a user feel silly and increases enjoyment running around as an obvious pink mascot costume. It prolongs how long you play both by increased enjoyment, and sunk cost fallacy. In any game with cosmetics, purchases drive playtime.
Used to play games and I was so focused on gameplay, I always thought “why even have a lot of art in there”. But then you realize if the art sucks, you wouldn’t even be giving it a chance.
And this extends to skins and stuff. If it’s “just cosmetics”, that still means there is some art that is now hidden unless you throw money at your screen. And depending on how much it is, the game might be way too boring without it. So you’re still buying bits of a game after the fact. And voila, we’re back to the reasons why DLCs suck.
I cannot tell you how much better my mental health has been since I stopped playing Apex Legends, Overwatch, and Rocket League. I never had anything against the gameplay of these games but the microtransactions and battle passes were just straight up toxic. After a couple weeks you simply don’t give a shit anymore and it’s amazing. I see my roommate playing these games until 3 AM every day because he has to do his daily challenges for 4 different games. He’ll be so pissed off that he can barely speak as he powers through game after game to get them done so he can go to bed. And in hindsight, that’s probably what I used to look like back when I played those games.
He’ll be so pissed off that he can barely speak as he powers through game after game to get them done so he can go to bed.
If you want to help him get out of that, give him a burn or two every once in a while: “How are your second, third and fourth jobs coming along?” - “With all that work you do, you should ask for a raise!”
Hopefully he’ll realize he’s not playing, but working, and give up on that. Hopefully.
Apex battle passes have always given you enough credit to buy the next season’s pass. I’ve been playing since launch, I’ve completed all battle passes save for maybe 4, and I’ve spent a total of $10 on the game.
Until they start charging only money for the battle passes. I never even used 80% of the skins I got on the battle passes anyway. I just wanted them so I didn’t not have them. As someone that has over 2,000 hours in Apex, I’m so glad I jumped ship. The grass was very green on the other side.
Funny you should mention that. They attempted to do precisely this (only buy the BP with real money) a few months ago. The player base revolted, and they walked it back to the way things were.
I don’t think its so much the microtransactions as it is games with a highly competitive spirit. PvP games in particular. I don’t find myself having any negative feelings after playing a game like Zenless Zone Zero or Goddess of Victory NIKKE, but after about two matches of Dead by Daylight, a game with a notoriously toxic playerbase, I definitely feel worse than before I play, particularly if the matches do not go well for me.
Im the kind of player that doesn’t spend money unless I feel like something provides me value. Ive played ZZZ since release and haven’t spent a single cent, and NIKKE since its release and only spent $25 total. I have enough self-control to handle those games and can spot bad value in games like gacha games pretty fast. So for me it isn’t really about microtransactions, its definitely about competition with other players, and interactions with them. Playing a game of DBD, winning, and then having everyone (usually TTV streamers) call you names in chat or on their stream and report/mercilessly harrass you ( for winning in a video game, mind you) is a completly different level of toxic that I doubt many would be able to properly handle long term.
Its why I pretty much never recommend DBD to people.
Well the issue is that some people confuse a want for a need.
Wanting characters is great but the problem comes from being disappointed that you didn’t get what you want as fast as you thought you should. The true method of playing a gacha game is like running a marathon, its not a race and you take it slow. Play in your free time, down time, whatever. I don’t play those games as my main game, just as a side game. Sometimes I miss a day for the login or a special event or even a character that I really wanted but at the end of the day, its just a video game and I am not going to die without that thing or character I wanted. If I get it, its simply a bonus to the joy I get from playing the game already. I don’t play a game long if I don’t have fun with it at least more than when I don’t.
Some people don’t have self control, and I am not saying that the games are not monetized in a predatory way. But I view it no different from actual gachapon: capsule toys. You know, like a gumball machine, but the little plastic ball that has a random small toy or stickers inside. You pay, turn the knob, and you always win something, you just don’t know what. To me, I dont consider that the same as gambling like with a slot machine. That’s just my opinion, and I sure I am in the minority with that, and with my overall attitude towards gacha games in general.
Well as I said, it is my opinion and I have the self-control to be able to play and enjoy gacha games without being financially irresponsible. When I pull for a character in a gacha game, for example, I just skip the animation to go directly to the results. Not only is it faster but it also bypasses the “anticipation building” that the animation and sound effects create. I am glad you have learned for yourself how to have better mental health, but I am saying for me its not about MTX, its more about competition or competitive style games.
Don’t get me wrong, I still play competitive games. I love me some Battlefield 4, Forza Motorsport, Dead By Daylight (when the people I play against decide to not be serial harrassers), and others. Its just that I try to view it differently. Again, its only a video game and at the end of the day, I am not going to die over anything in the game, winning or losing or whatever. It can sometimes make me feel bad when I have a long losing streak or if I get harrassed, but when that happens I just turn off that game for a week or two and play something else. I don’t have to go to the extreme of uninstalling, but I can understand that some do and that’s totally fine.
Welcome to capitalism. Big gaming companies do not care about games anymore, they care about how to maximise profits. Their games are manipulative and developed together with psychologists solely to get your hard earned money at any opportunity. They got so good at it, that they are able to release pieces of software which are looking like games but actually are milking machines and no games at all.
You just have to take a step back and you will be able to easily differentiate between products of corporate greed and games.
Games once were supposed to be entertaining and even art. And there are still some, mostly indies.
May I recommend taking it a step further and going for games that have no cycle in them at all? That is, finite games that you can play and actually finish, for good. That’s what I’ve been looking for a lot lately.
Some recommendations:
The Talos Principle (puzzles with a story)
Outer Wilds (best to go in blind, read absolutely nothing about it, not even the steam description)
CrossCode (fast paced fun combat and a cool story and characters. Somewhat grindy but still finite)
Beacon Pines (short and sweet visual novel)
Chants of Sennaar (language translation game, surprisingly fun and satisfying)
Well… Without spoiling anything I would say, you are a member of an alien species on another planet. You are also an aspiring astronaut about to take your first journey into space. Let’s just say your journey is quite remarkable.
Outer Wilds is a gem of a 3D first-person indie game. Other games might have you find required items so you can progress (like Pokemon or Zelda games), but in this game it’s all about the knowledge you learn while playing (like Tunic). You explore, learn, and puzzle solve. By looking up anything about the game, or by looking up a solution to a puzzle, you essentially lock yourself out of experiencing that piece of content. It’s all about the journey.
It’s a game you can only really play once, but it is so worth it. It’s my favorite video game and I wish I could forget everything about it so I can play it again for the first time.
Chants of Sennaar is absolutely one of my favorite games. It’s one of the few games I’ve played where the mechanics of the game and the themes of the game were in perfect harmony.
Not every game needs a story or campaign you can finish to be enjoyable. Playing random skirmishes in Age of Empires 2 or Supreme Commander can be loads of fun. Civilization 5 has scenarios that I suspect most players don’t even know exist (also, you can play Unciv for free). You can pick up and put down much like you’d do to boardgames.
Then there’s “infinite” games like Cities Skyline, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, Satisfactory. It’s ok to want once and done games, but games that you want to replay when they lack any mtx or dark patterns speaks something about your enjoyment
Definitely, not disagreeing with that. I’ve played plenty of those games too. I just find that “enjoyment per hour” is actually better with shorter, finite games. But I also find myself spending a lot of time playing Civ or Stellaris haha
I dropped them all like 8 years ago. Not even the microtransaction parts for me since I never played any pay to win games and not big on caring about skins or hats. It was that any game time I had, felt like I had to play league of Legends, or I’d fall behind.
So I dropped it and have happily gone back to pretty much exclusively single player games. It’s nice.
Yeah, same for me. I like Apex. It is an Insanely fun game. But I’m the kind of guy who plays something for a bit and then something else before I may or may not come back. Apex being live service makes it that I don’t want to come back because many of the things I know about the game are no longer true. So I’m not installing it again
Yep. You take a month off from league of legends and all of a sudden 50 things have changed/rebalanced and there’s 2 new heroes to figure out.
So nice going back to gaming on my own terms. I’m replaying ffvii right now with 7th heaven mods. Been over 25 years since I played it last, and it’s still awesome, mostly.
“Valve is the savior of gaming” as they invented micro transactions and neglect as many IPs as EA and Ubisoft do, but its okay since they have so many fun sales to tie to your account.
Valve is cool some of the time, TF2 is my most played game, but the moment GabeN keels over, is the moment a lot of people are going to notice that “owning” all your games on a digital storefront was a bad idea, like when Playstation and Microsoft remove games people bought with their hard earned money.
Ads are not required to play the game. If you want to watch them, the incentive is coin. There is no battle pass or anything. It’s genuinely a fun game.
I mean, it could be very fun and perhaps even worth playing, but surely you understand that a game that on-paper doesn’t require the viewing of ads, but heavily incentivizes just that is still problematic?
It’s like one of those “free-to-play” particularly grindy MMOs, sure, you don’t have to pay, just grind the “kill 10 goblin rats in a basement quest” for 250 hours and you’ll have all the loot you need to get to level 2, but the option to pay is there if you so-choose it.
In such a case it is fairly obvious that there is not actually a choice when you are heavily incentivized towards one end.
Not really because it’s not one of those “you need to watch ads to get coins to advance” kind of games. It’s ability to enjoy without ads is still amazing. I also believe that ads in games are OK with minimal disruption, a perfect example is this game. Non intrusive, no banners, no season pass, no ads after or before a round, etc.
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It’s refreshing seeing your list since people often blame gachas nowadays, but MMOs were the issue originally, it’s just that other genres took a lesson from MMOs so now we have way more grinding options and it gets tiresome.
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Gacha games are like magicians. You know they are total bullshit and there is no “magic”, yet some people still look at it and think there is something else going on.
Total waste of money, I don’t understand how people get sucked into those things.
If everyone was following your path, micro transactions wouldn’t be there anymore.
I finally kicked my Destiny 2 habit by installing Linux, and while I absolutely miss the gameplay and my team, I haven’t really looked back. I’m involved and interested in so many other things now. I still see the odd post that gives ma a pang of FOMO, but the thought of booting into my windows install makes me want to peel my skin off with tweezers.
Not an MMORPG by any means, but I’ve been really enjoying a “Minecraft like” called Vintage Story that is giving me the same feeling. The commodification of Minecraft has finally frustrated me enough and I’m jumping ship.
0 A.D is an free open source age of strategy kind of game. Add it to your collection.
Are you able to elaborate a little bit on age of strategy?
I had huge age of empire nostalgia vibes,
My friend had the same feeling but age of mythology instead.
Neither of us played the “other” game but we both agreed the sound design in 0ad was almost identical to our different memories.
They are top down strategy games so i sort of gave it this umbrella term. “Age of … “ strategy games
Perfect, thanks so much! I kind of thought this but wanted to make sure. I’m not super familiar with them but have always been curious. Maybe somebody has ported it to Android
Just randomly browsing Lemmy and I get a whole ass game to check out for free.
I was thinking of Stardew Valley and Rimworld while reading your post, sure enough SDW was mentioned at the end :D
Sell me on rimworld! What do you like about it/what do ya like to do
Over 2000 hour of play and i never won once but had so much fun losing in some really stupid way and some tragic one too.
With the mod and dlc each new game are mostly unique
Rimworld is a great Colony Sim if you love the idea of Dwarf Fortress but want a gameplay experience that’s much more accessible with a much softer learning curve.
It plays into the chaotic post apocalyptic Mad Max style hellscape fantasy really well, and does not attempt to police your morality. You can love and care for your colonists, meeting their needs and growing to know them as individual people with their own unique stories, or you can play as efficiently or sadistically as you like, throwing ethics out the window and following the Geneva Suggestions wherever you deem prudent.
The base game is good for hundreds of hours of play, and expansions bump that up to thousands of hours of fun, but it also has a very healthy modding community if that’s still not enough.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Colony Sim genre, the basic idea is that you start with a set of semi-randomized colonists on a randomized map and need to build up a functioning Colony to survive. You the player take the role of a manager or overlord and set tasks for your colonists to complete, which they then take time to carry out while you watch and plan the next set of tasks. You need to gather materials, build shelter, grow or hunt food, defend yourself from wildlife and raiders, and recruit new colonists.
Rimworld in particular has fun building mechanics with an emphasis on building power grids and heat management (air conditioning and heating to keep your colonists comfy and keep food from spoiling). It’s a lot like a top-down Oxygen Not Included, but with simpler mechanics and more focus on its (procedurally generated) story.
Neat! Thank you for taking the time to make such a comprehensive review. Sounds like it’s up my alley! I enjoyed Frostpunk and the Tropico series (as well as Banished although I thought it was sort of boring after a while).
Ooh. I’ve heard of Frostpunk and Tropico but never played them myself. If they’re similar to Rimworld I need to check them out.
They’re similar in that they’re colony builders :)
Cannibalism is a viable option. Do you need more?
I knew a guy who got real into it and started an “Accidental Cannibal Cult”. It was fun to listen to, if nothing else - I don’t get into those games much. Kinda like hearing EVE Online or Dwarf Fortress stories.
Child labour was what got me into Frostpunk. Sold.
The colonists you are given all have character traits and there is a social aspect of the game. Colonists can start relationships, start families, break up, start social fights and end up in infirmarry… Sometimes, family members of your colonists come to your colony as raiders. All these stories forming during gameplay is the real strength of the game for me.
For example, there was this one colonist woman in one of my playthroughs. She was the tough, soldier type. She started one or two relationships in the colony but ended them. Then she tried to go back to them. It started creating some complicated feelings among the colony so I sent her to scavenge a nearby abandoned base.
Before she can leave, a band of raiders popped in. One of the raiders was her teenage son! So I start getting so invested in saving the son and bringing him back to the colony. I’m not that skilled in combat or tactics so I save the game multiple times until a trap injures the boy so his mom can snatch him without fighting. She takes him into one of the intact rooms in the ruin and patches up his wound, shares her food. (She takes him prisoner and you can keep talking to prisoners and convert them into your colonists. )
Here is a scene where raiders running around outside, raiding. And a mother and son, hunkered down in a room, trying to reconnect.
While the boy is recovering in the impromptu prison room, she gets out and shoots the raiders one by one. Rest of the raiders leave the map after losing enough members.
Mother and son talk about family, son talks about some childhood memories. Eventually, he is no longer a prisoner but a newly recruited member of the colony. Woman comes back with her son. Son turns out to be a psychopath but that’s ok. At the Rim, we love psychopaths, they do gruesome task of disposing raider corpses, for example, without getting emotional strain.
Mother stopped creating drama in the colony after son joined.
…
If you read people’s stories in the steam comments (there are a lot of war crime simulator stories, too, be warned) you may get why it’s so addictive.
Wild.
The Java edition of Minecraft is also pretty good for having no microtransactions.
And modpacks…all the modpacks! All of them turn the game into a whole new game.
Maybe its the 'tism but I never gave a shit about most microtransactiony things unless they have a “pay-to-win” element. That’s why I gave up on GTA online.
But if its just like “exclusive skins”, I could give a shit. My default skinned character can still win against a guy in a bear-suit with a golden AK and that’s really all I need. I have no particular FOMO of not winning the fashion part of the game.
I do wish games I could turn off their constant begging for my money though.
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You used to unlock cool stuff by playing the game.
They removed that whole loop of discovering cool stuff by doing cool things and replaced it with cash grubbing.
Wow still has a lot of achievement/reputation(grind) related cosmetics.
But yeh, it’s a shame that when you see a cool/unique looking mout etc that you now assume it’s paid by default.
Played Terraria recently and this concept you speak of shined in it. Almost forgot how fun discovering new things as you play the actual game was.
It is always such a satisfying feeling to loot the $999 weapon skin off your enemy dead body.
Thank you for spending on my behalf and letting me play this game as a f2p and for letting me use your rare skin.
I avoid any games that have p2w mtx but I can tolerate it somewhat if it is a PvE only or ‘single player’ like in Genshin-like games.
I dislike the practice of having mtx of any kind in pay to play games so I tend to avoid those too.
Even a bunch of competitive games it hasn’t bothered me that much unless it’s like a real big difference.
I actually enjoy taking the shitter on people that paid to be “good”, then get their asses handed to them to someone who clearly never spent a dime.
I think you meant “couldn’t”.
The “constant begging” is why I don’t even look twice at these games.
My problem with “its just cosmetic” is that it turns the entire main screen into ad space, along with loading screens and wherever else they can jam it in. I don’t play game to be advertised to.
Of course I can choose not to buy in, but if it didn’t have a psychological effect they wouldn’t be doing it.
An argument I heard, and adopted is that it’s never “just” cosmetic. Your enjoyment of the game is impacted by how you perceive your avatar. This is why fortnite skins sell so well to new players. It’s not just cosmetic to drop $20 on Cuddle Team Leader. It makes a user feel silly and increases enjoyment running around as an obvious pink mascot costume. It prolongs how long you play both by increased enjoyment, and sunk cost fallacy. In any game with cosmetics, purchases drive playtime.
Yeah I had to realize that as well at some point.
Used to play games and I was so focused on gameplay, I always thought “why even have a lot of art in there”. But then you realize if the art sucks, you wouldn’t even be giving it a chance.
And this extends to skins and stuff. If it’s “just cosmetics”, that still means there is some art that is now hidden unless you throw money at your screen. And depending on how much it is, the game might be way too boring without it. So you’re still buying bits of a game after the fact. And voila, we’re back to the reasons why DLCs suck.
I cannot tell you how much better my mental health has been since I stopped playing Apex Legends, Overwatch, and Rocket League. I never had anything against the gameplay of these games but the microtransactions and battle passes were just straight up toxic. After a couple weeks you simply don’t give a shit anymore and it’s amazing. I see my roommate playing these games until 3 AM every day because he has to do his daily challenges for 4 different games. He’ll be so pissed off that he can barely speak as he powers through game after game to get them done so he can go to bed. And in hindsight, that’s probably what I used to look like back when I played those games.
If you want to help him get out of that, give him a burn or two every once in a while: “How are your second, third and fourth jobs coming along?” - “With all that work you do, you should ask for a raise!”
Hopefully he’ll realize he’s not playing, but working, and give up on that. Hopefully.
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Apex battle passes have always given you enough credit to buy the next season’s pass. I’ve been playing since launch, I’ve completed all battle passes save for maybe 4, and I’ve spent a total of $10 on the game.
Until they start charging only money for the battle passes. I never even used 80% of the skins I got on the battle passes anyway. I just wanted them so I didn’t not have them. As someone that has over 2,000 hours in Apex, I’m so glad I jumped ship. The grass was very green on the other side.
Funny you should mention that. They attempted to do precisely this (only buy the BP with real money) a few months ago. The player base revolted, and they walked it back to the way things were.
I don’t think its so much the microtransactions as it is games with a highly competitive spirit. PvP games in particular. I don’t find myself having any negative feelings after playing a game like Zenless Zone Zero or Goddess of Victory NIKKE, but after about two matches of Dead by Daylight, a game with a notoriously toxic playerbase, I definitely feel worse than before I play, particularly if the matches do not go well for me.
Im the kind of player that doesn’t spend money unless I feel like something provides me value. Ive played ZZZ since release and haven’t spent a single cent, and NIKKE since its release and only spent $25 total. I have enough self-control to handle those games and can spot bad value in games like gacha games pretty fast. So for me it isn’t really about microtransactions, its definitely about competition with other players, and interactions with them. Playing a game of DBD, winning, and then having everyone (usually TTV streamers) call you names in chat or on their stream and report/mercilessly harrass you ( for winning in a video game, mind you) is a completly different level of toxic that I doubt many would be able to properly handle long term.
Its why I pretty much never recommend DBD to people.
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Well the issue is that some people confuse a want for a need.
Wanting characters is great but the problem comes from being disappointed that you didn’t get what you want as fast as you thought you should. The true method of playing a gacha game is like running a marathon, its not a race and you take it slow. Play in your free time, down time, whatever. I don’t play those games as my main game, just as a side game. Sometimes I miss a day for the login or a special event or even a character that I really wanted but at the end of the day, its just a video game and I am not going to die without that thing or character I wanted. If I get it, its simply a bonus to the joy I get from playing the game already. I don’t play a game long if I don’t have fun with it at least more than when I don’t.
Some people don’t have self control, and I am not saying that the games are not monetized in a predatory way. But I view it no different from actual gachapon: capsule toys. You know, like a gumball machine, but the little plastic ball that has a random small toy or stickers inside. You pay, turn the knob, and you always win something, you just don’t know what. To me, I dont consider that the same as gambling like with a slot machine. That’s just my opinion, and I sure I am in the minority with that, and with my overall attitude towards gacha games in general.
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Well as I said, it is my opinion and I have the self-control to be able to play and enjoy gacha games without being financially irresponsible. When I pull for a character in a gacha game, for example, I just skip the animation to go directly to the results. Not only is it faster but it also bypasses the “anticipation building” that the animation and sound effects create. I am glad you have learned for yourself how to have better mental health, but I am saying for me its not about MTX, its more about competition or competitive style games.
Don’t get me wrong, I still play competitive games. I love me some Battlefield 4, Forza Motorsport, Dead By Daylight (when the people I play against decide to not be serial harrassers), and others. Its just that I try to view it differently. Again, its only a video game and at the end of the day, I am not going to die over anything in the game, winning or losing or whatever. It can sometimes make me feel bad when I have a long losing streak or if I get harrassed, but when that happens I just turn off that game for a week or two and play something else. I don’t have to go to the extreme of uninstalling, but I can understand that some do and that’s totally fine.
Welcome to capitalism. Big gaming companies do not care about games anymore, they care about how to maximise profits. Their games are manipulative and developed together with psychologists solely to get your hard earned money at any opportunity. They got so good at it, that they are able to release pieces of software which are looking like games but actually are milking machines and no games at all.
You just have to take a step back and you will be able to easily differentiate between products of corporate greed and games.
Games once were supposed to be entertaining and even art. And there are still some, mostly indies.
We’ll take cash, we’ll take checks,
We’ll take credit cards, we’ll take jewelry,
We’ll take your momma’s dentures if they got gold in them!
May I recommend taking it a step further and going for games that have no cycle in them at all? That is, finite games that you can play and actually finish, for good. That’s what I’ve been looking for a lot lately.
Some recommendations:
What’s the SorteKanin description of Outer Wilds?
Well… Without spoiling anything I would say, you are a member of an alien species on another planet. You are also an aspiring astronaut about to take your first journey into space. Let’s just say your journey is quite remarkable.
I’m not them but…
Outer Wilds is a gem of a 3D first-person indie game. Other games might have you find required items so you can progress (like Pokemon or Zelda games), but in this game it’s all about the knowledge you learn while playing (like Tunic). You explore, learn, and puzzle solve. By looking up anything about the game, or by looking up a solution to a puzzle, you essentially lock yourself out of experiencing that piece of content. It’s all about the journey.
It’s a game you can only really play once, but it is so worth it. It’s my favorite video game and I wish I could forget everything about it so I can play it again for the first time.
Chants of Sennaar is absolutely one of my favorite games. It’s one of the few games I’ve played where the mechanics of the game and the themes of the game were in perfect harmony.
Not every game needs a story or campaign you can finish to be enjoyable. Playing random skirmishes in Age of Empires 2 or Supreme Commander can be loads of fun. Civilization 5 has scenarios that I suspect most players don’t even know exist (also, you can play Unciv for free). You can pick up and put down much like you’d do to boardgames.
Then there’s “infinite” games like Cities Skyline, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, Satisfactory. It’s ok to want once and done games, but games that you want to replay when they lack any mtx or dark patterns speaks something about your enjoyment
Definitely, not disagreeing with that. I’ve played plenty of those games too. I just find that “enjoyment per hour” is actually better with shorter, finite games. But I also find myself spending a lot of time playing Civ or Stellaris haha
i just started playing on Ascension wow private server.
their take on classless is so nice.
If you want to scratch a similar itch, and have not already, try Guild Wars 2.
It does have microtransactions, but only because they have no subscription fee and they are mostly cosmetic with a few rare exceptions.
It also has no FOMO except cosmetics from certain festivals, which you can also buy in the next year.
It is still the best MMO on the market IMHO, because it values your time and money compared to other games in the genre.
You know I’m a true RS fan when I say stuff like “Jagex is a shit company run by morons.”
I dropped them all like 8 years ago. Not even the microtransaction parts for me since I never played any pay to win games and not big on caring about skins or hats. It was that any game time I had, felt like I had to play league of Legends, or I’d fall behind.
So I dropped it and have happily gone back to pretty much exclusively single player games. It’s nice.
Yeah, same for me. I like Apex. It is an Insanely fun game. But I’m the kind of guy who plays something for a bit and then something else before I may or may not come back. Apex being live service makes it that I don’t want to come back because many of the things I know about the game are no longer true. So I’m not installing it again
Yep. You take a month off from league of legends and all of a sudden 50 things have changed/rebalanced and there’s 2 new heroes to figure out.
So nice going back to gaming on my own terms. I’m replaying ffvii right now with 7th heaven mods. Been over 25 years since I played it last, and it’s still awesome, mostly.
No shit. Micro transactions have completely turned me off from gaming, starting with TF2.
“Valve is the savior of gaming” as they invented micro transactions and neglect as many IPs as EA and Ubisoft do, but its okay since they have so many fun sales to tie to your account.
Valve is cool some of the time, TF2 is my most played game, but the moment GabeN keels over, is the moment a lot of people are going to notice that “owning” all your games on a digital storefront was a bad idea, like when Playstation and Microsoft remove games people bought with their hard earned money.
Recommendation: Survivor.io on mobile is freaking fun. Not really any ads either, unless you choose to watch them for more coin.
What. So are there or aren’t there
Why? Is there some sort of incentive?
So not only are there ads but you’re manipulated into watching them. That checks out for a mobile game.
Ads are not required to play the game. If you want to watch them, the incentive is coin. There is no battle pass or anything. It’s genuinely a fun game.
I mean, it could be very fun and perhaps even worth playing, but surely you understand that a game that on-paper doesn’t require the viewing of ads, but heavily incentivizes just that is still problematic?
It’s like one of those “free-to-play” particularly grindy MMOs, sure, you don’t have to pay, just grind the “kill 10 goblin rats in a basement quest” for 250 hours and you’ll have all the loot you need to get to level 2, but the option to pay is there if you so-choose it.
In such a case it is fairly obvious that there is not actually a choice when you are heavily incentivized towards one end.
Not really because it’s not one of those “you need to watch ads to get coins to advance” kind of games. It’s ability to enjoy without ads is still amazing. I also believe that ads in games are OK with minimal disruption, a perfect example is this game. Non intrusive, no banners, no season pass, no ads after or before a round, etc.
Yeah you’re gonna find this to not be a popular opinion in the non-mobile gaming spaces. I block all vidya from accessing the internet in any fashion.
I had the same confusion reading that recommendation. Seems to check all the red flags based on that sentence.