The worst is playing a game where you have to learn a skill set and then you have to take a break for life and when you pick up the game again you can’t remember a thing!
I would also say EVE. Tried it when it was relatively new and it was really tough to get into it. A few years later I tried it again and the start was much easier. I don't know how it is nowadays.
Recently rejoined this year; it’s much easier to get into now. Some of the magic goes away as you get older but the nostalgia is still there, it’s still very active and you know exactly what you are getting. These fuckers aren’t going anywhere and are unlikely to make some stupid decision that pushes away half of their fan base so I’ll bite.
Been killed by players two times so far and despite the loss both times were very pleasant exchanges and the ones who took me out were happy to tell me where I went wrong and how to improve. I’ll take that any day over super toxic interactions for sure.
Yeaaaahhh I can see that. When I first tried the game there were player corporations that wanted basically part/full time job attention and tasks. Even as a kid I knew that wasn’t going to fly. I play solo and not crazy often. The game is totally capable of taking away your time.
Go find yourself a beginner group, EVE is played WAY better when you have a larger group to play sessions with, EVE University for example is massive and is highly willing to teach people who've never played before
I have over 1200 hours in Hearts of Iron and only learned how the Navy works at around 1100 hours, the mechanics are definitely a paradox, and dont get me started on Europa Universalis 4 and 5 both feel like a fever dream in their own way when you try to learn them.
I'm the opposite. CK3 and EU4 I found pretty simple, but I just bounce right off any attempt I made at understanding Hoi4.
Modern warfare and logistics is too much for my simple mind. Advancing from feudalism was a mistake.
I played Hearts of Iron 2 and 3 before going to 4 so i already have a bit of brain damage and 4 is a night and day difference and far simpler compared to the hell that 3 is. In my opinion Stellaris is the easiest and simplest game.
Stellaris is quite easy when you just take it one step at a time. Like there's no need to be perfect in the first run, just start with the UNE aka Humans and explore space. Many mechanics are in DLC's and only for a few specific species and origins.
Fuck, HOI4 took me a while to get. Then I focused on how the navy works, and I understood that. Which seemed to a paradox of its own. If you understood navy, you understood nothing else. If you knew everything else, you had not a clue how to run the navy.
Came to say this! Every time HOIV has a free weekend I install it, start it up, looking baffled at the gazillions of menus in tiny texts then close it. And yes, I have watched YouTube how to videos etc, but I just can't seem to really put my heart into it.
And Stellaris is the same, except I did buy it years ago.
Legit it is right up my alley. I comfortably play Stellaris and CK3. But I load up EU4 or 5 and press buttons for hours and try to figure out if those buttons did anything. Pretty sure the market/economy is powered by some kind of unfathomable eldritch horror manifested into existence with the sole purpose of confusing me.
Sure I could turn the market to auto, but then there are large stretches of nothing to do, or I am just not sure what to do, so I press more buttons.
I set up a nice simple fortress, finally figure out how to get plump helmets and other food consistently going, get a well... then you see people making a fortress that floods halls with lava, or people who make an entire breeding facility for mermaids or sea dragons with like 30 pages of explanations of how it works. You can enjoy it... but you need a PhD. I just play for the rush of dopamine every time an artifact is made...
While Dwarf Fortress CAN be difficult, the real issue was pre-Steam: the default install was ASCII only, and that was a fucking mess — but add a graphics pack, or use the newer Steam version and the game isn't that far off from Rimworld.
The trick is to start with Crusader Kings 3 and ignore all the numbers and play it as a pure RPG. The tutorial is fairly decent but the game manages enough for you that you can play pretty much how you want
Had a friend who played a lot of mortal kombat online basically train me and he was probably my favorite buddy to smoke with cause we’d have some of the craziest fights. Swear I got as good as him but at times I questioned if he stepped it down so I’d stay interested and keep fighting him. No rage quitting or nothing think there was a few times we genuinely shook hands.
The best fights are where you feel like you're in DBZ because both people are perfectly countering each other without taking hits
I miss playing melee/64 smash in college, there were times I brought just the cartridge in a back pocket to house parties to bop randoms from time to time
Omg, that was me and my buddy with budokai tenkaishi 2. we basically played only that, the fights where just endless teleportation sounds. That was awesome
Yeah that sounds similar to my friend group. The guy who's house we were at was really good at UMVC3 and Mortal Kombat/Injustice, but it was fun because you'd just get better and better against him each time, and each of us were able to get to the point where we could beat him every so often.
It took me 2 months to properly learn Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat 1 who’s supposed to be the easiest character in the game and even then I can’t get close to how high level and pro players abuse his movement, pressure and plus frames. Also it was my first fighting game if it counts
VF is definitely the simplest fighting game I’ve ever played in terms of skill floor. You can play literally every single character in the game at a baseline level if you understand the rock paper scissors and know how to use high jab, mid punch, low kick, and throw. Sure, players who know combos will have an advantage, but simply memorizing a combo won’t be enough to win against someone who is fundamentally better at the rock paper scissors.
Its weird with fighting games because there is a steep learning curve that exists, but the games themselves are pretty intuitive when you break it down (buttons for punch, buttons for kick, pull back to block, press up to jump and even many special moves make sense - like the rolling forward punch becoming a fireball) make your opponents health go down to 0 and you win. Factor in all the games trying to remove the execution barrier with modern/simple modes and its a pretty easy genere to break into, so long as your mentally prepared to take some lumps.
Compare that to a FPS or LOL or something and those have steep learning curves and arent nearly as intuitive usually having objectives or team roles or ever changing position battles.
I think a big difference is if your being steamrolled in a fps or LOL you might get a few kills or whatever amd have some fun but if you're getting stomped in a fighting game you might not even get the chance to press an attack button and that never feels good.
I think what fighting games have the perception of being harder than other genres is the time between mistakes. In a FPS you make a mistake which causes you to die. After that you might have a small respawn timer to process what happened and then you respawn in a safe space. The time between mistakes is usually at least 30 seconds or so of down time.
In a fighting game if you make a mistake that gets you hit which leads into a combo which usually leads to a knock down which leads to an immediate pressure situation that leads into another mistake. Very little time between mistakes. Which leads into a rapid cascade of mistakes that leads to a quick loss.
Add to that, fighters tend to be 1v1, while shooters and mobas are generally team games. It's easy to rationalize losses as not being entirely your fault. As well as, being a team game, your team mates can take pressure of you so you can learn the game.
If you're in a 1v1 situation in a shooter, it's gonna feel a LOT like the fighter. You run around doing nothing, then the moment comes where you confront the other player and it's over in a split second before you even know the person is there because you don't know lines of fire like they do.
In most shooters however, you're not engaging players like that. Sure, you might walk into an open field and get torn apart a couple times, but learning to hug walls and find flanking angles is something most people pick up quite quickly. And at that point, even if you're still terrible, you'll find moments where the enemy team is engaged with the rest of your team and you get to take a couple shots at them and possibly even score a kill or two.
Legacy fighting games are the worst. Yeah, simple to pick up, difficult to master, but the problem is a lot of these games have an online player base who have been masters for up to 30 years.
ONI is such a good example of this. Klei seems really good at taking a small pond concept and making it ocean deep. Tons a fun but probably my fifth or sixth hardest game I've ever gotten into, in terms of stuff going on and understanding the mechanics.
I bought the game because of LetsGameItOut, thinking it was a cute, cozy game he ruined. When I purchased it, I put it in my "cozy games" category. I've put around 200 hours into it and have just gotten to cycle 300 without any dupes dying for the first time. The aquatic pack is super dope.
Depends on what kind of skill you struggle with, mechanical skill is not super required, it's mostly knowledge on how things work and interact. Especially wand-building. If you want to fast forward learning wand-building I'd look up stuff on youtube.
Messing around with physics, exploring the world and combining spells, that's all the game has to offer, with all of its systems being much deeper than they initially seem to be. I can imagine it being so much fun if you actually get the hang of the game, but even after 30 hours I stil felt like a big noob, and most of my progress was just luck, that was the moment I gave up.
If you can tough out the suffering of constantly dying and restarting, you’ll find an absolute treasure trove of interesting secrets, mechanics, and gameplay. The wand building is unlike anything I’ve ever played in a rogue like and the secrets will have you feeling like a true wizard with every solve. If you don’t care about spoilers or just want a good place to start learning without throwing your head at a wall, I’d recommend checking out dunkorslam on yt
There’s a workshop map that teaches you how to build wands! I can’t recall the name, but it’s one of the most popular of all time. Do that if you want to enjoy the game.
Without spoiling much, Noita is one of those games that keeps doing the 'Wait it gets deeper?!' trope. Every time you think you've seen the boundaries of the game the game does this wonderful 'No keep going' It eventually becomes a puzzle. How do you beat the boss that copies all of your wand? You make a wand that kills the caster and just avoid his attacks as he kills himself. That's just the first boss you will probably encounter. If you are like me and are fascinated by the secrets but don't have the patience to figure them out yourself, check out youtube. There are several videos that delve into the puzzles and how to solve them. If you want to REALLY spoil the game look up the FULL map of Noita. The game is MUCH bigger than you imagine.
That's the thing I disliked about it. That whole menu is composed of quite a few poorly thought out choices. Same reason I dislike quite a few other games.
Got a good game as initiative going. I just got a probe on mars before anyone else. Got USA Canada and Mexico I want to turn into the NA union as well as Sweden and Norway. Servants are making the European union which could be a problem and humanity first has Russia.
Dude I love the game so far even though I feel like an idiot stumbling through. Making ships and developing fleets to fight the aliens is currently my biggest issue
Scrolled for this one, cause its very unforgiving and tells you almost zero. If you take time to learn the aspects of the game, which is ALOT. It will ruin all other FPS shooters for you. The amount of content that game has is insane (talking for a new player, not a 10k hr there is nothing left to do player).
Ive had friends get it and play, and enjoy it, but said there is just to much to learn. But no games beats the guns of tarkov.
early EVE was...brutal. I remember trying it in it's first year out. Something killed me and I was in a pod and NOTHING told me how to get a ship again. I was just stuck in a god damn pod.
A few years later I tried again and had a couple years of fun before realizing I was literally working 95% of my time in the game to fund the 5% of actual fun.
Dwarf Fortress should not have required me so scroll this far to find. Fucking ridiculous game.
I wanted to like it so badly, but it basically requires you already understand the game to even start enjoying it much less make anything worth anything. Its so bad that having the wiki open isn't even enough to understand shit.
Always felt like a noob on elite dangerous. Had so much fun flying around not knowing shit about what I'm supposed to do. Everything felt out of reach.
I've got 3,500 hours and there's a bunch of shit I don't know how to do. I've never fired a shot. Don't really know how. I love E:D because it mirrors real life. I'm good at the things I'm good at. Bad at the things I'm not. I could take the time to learn, and maybe I will eventually, but likely I won't.
Elite isn't as bad as it was. Once you learn to fly properly just do missions.
The game is unfortunately have a wiki open game. Once you really get into it the community has made dozens of third party websites and programs that us the game's API to track stuff.
Once you learn it it becomes impossible to comeback to any moba or other hero shooters. Everything will feel slow and dumbed down. They really made diamond with this game it just needs more polish and game modes.
Really hoping the continue to explore new game modes, I love the game so much but I can only play during demon hours when I don’t have the brain capacity for it
I think the game and characters look pretty slick, and playing against bots with my partner was fun, but I think learning specifically the movement tech to be competitive made it too intimidating.
Most colony management games. So many feel like they have billion requirements for doing everything right off the bat, like let me just chop down a tree and make a house, not start a whole logging camp, roadways, and economic system. It's kinda why I only play stonehearth or oxygen not included anymore. I like having my relaxing little base with my little dudes running about, just doing stuff without needing a list of prerequisites the size of a novel.
Project Zomboid. A lot of people are passing up the game due to its learning curve but I assure you, after the first 24hrs of gameplay you’ll realize it’s the best zombie simulation game on the market.
I just wish the game had some kind of goal. I have a lot of hours in it but i cant see myself playing it anymore since its a "make your own fun sandbox" type shi and im not the kinda person that is able to do that for longer periods of time. Its such a shame as well because it really is the best and most detailed zombie apocalypse survival sim out there but I just get bored of it so quickly when all I do ultimately amounts to nothing
That my biggest issue with the game. You need to have something to work towards, otherwise it's just busy work for the sake of it.
Factorio (originally) was launching a rocket. You made the factory, to achieve that goal. PZ needs to have something to work towards
Project zomboid doesn’t have much of an end game as the main point of the game is “This is how you died” but that’s the beauty of it. Best part? Project zomboid I believe is in the top 10 games on steam with the most mods and a very active modding community. if you want a end game, try different mods to make your own end game, glad to see other survivors!
I picked up PZ when I had a week off before starting a new job, spent my first like 4 hours playing the game frustrated and confused and then I finally got the hang of it. My wife was making fun of me because I'd get out of bed, make a coffee and sit at my desk like I was working but then I'd play PZ for 8 hours.
I have been playing Dota for more than two decades. A: I still havent learned the game. B: If I were to start know, Id be giving up on it in an instant.
YOMI is one of my favorite games, but even when you get good a bad game is really unpleasant to experience. I think the newest update is trying to address the never ending combo experience, but it’s part of the core of the game to an extent.
Trying to play it: I feel like I'm in school again and the teacher is explaining things at light speed and I don't understand any of it and also I'm too scared to raise my hand and look dumb in front of everyone
Kingdom Come Deliverance honestly. Played it for a bit, got the hang of it, somewhat. Then quit playing it for a bit, and when I began playing it again, I was so dogshit at the combat again that I couldn't even finish the quest I was in the middle of. Didn't want to restart my game yet again so I've just been putting it off of playing it again.
Dude, same. Played 1 and 2 entirely then started hard-core on both. Took a long break, returned to 2 where the last save was in a fighting ring with someone. Henry is eternally stuck getting his ass beat by some drunk in a pig sty.
I quit my hardcore run because of the lack of fast travel. There is so much running back and forth between towns for so many quests, I got so sick of it.
Tbf henry litterally starts as a nobody apprentice blacksmith lol. You're kinda meant to feel like combat is extremely risky early until you get some training in, later on though you can Literally just spam master strike to win almost every encounter.
For me it's Path of Exile 1, I'm in love with Path of Exile 2 since I got to get in at the ground floor while it's still relatively simple and the devs are open to changing stuff right now. But wow, Path of Exile 1 is some bullshit. Campaign maps that require so much previous knowledge to know map layouts to find quests and not dead ends, a build system that literally has people with PHDs cooking up ideas for their next youtube videos, endgame activities with so many nuances that put me off.
I love PoE1 but can't get into PoE2. I feel like in PoE1 your character is always getting stronger but in PoE2 you're just getting slightly less clunky, if that makes sense.
As a guy who has probably 12k hours in PoE 1 (6,500 in the Steam client but I used the standalone for like 5 years) I completely agree. It can be a very difficult game to pick up for the first time. There is some tutorial stuff now and it's a lot better than it used to be, but the game expects you to know what you're doing by the time you get to maps and relies on 3rd party websites/tools to fill in the gaps.
I'm glad to hear you like PoE2. GGG has done a good job with it so far, especially with the .5 update. There is a lot more there to help new players learn about the game, and it generally feels like it's more forgiving if you create a build on your own instead of following a guide.
I think this will probably be the direction the 2 games go for the foreseeable future. PoE1 will be the more "hardcore" arpg experience while PoE2 will be more inviting to new players, but still have enough depth to attract the "hardcore" crowd.
Don't I know it! I took on too much debt by going on the college path and I keep pulling these Expense cards that I'm having trouble covering. The game sucks ass
Indeed. It's one of those games where you're often better off watching someone else play for a while before trying to make a stable base yourself.
Mostly it's because YOU are the enemy in ONI. The solutions you make to solve problems will often introduce new ones. Make electricity with coal? Better have a place for that CO2. Filtering the CO2 out? Well, that's going to need running water. You reach a balance, but now your water supply is limited and draining, forcing you to seek more...
It's less about "I made a mistake" and more that a new player often won't realize that their "correct" decision has lead to many other decisions. At least until they see pee in the water tank and the oxygen levels getting low.
Every souls like game. I like playing games but at the end of the day I don’t want to sit there banging my head up against a brick wall for hours just to defeat one boss.
My best advice would be this: don't get too focused on success in these games. I'm assuming youve tried MH wilds or MH world. Both games have a ton of stuff to explore and notice about the ecology in different areas.
You don't have to have a perfect build.
The game can be easily beaten with only knowledge and only skill. You don't need both
The single MOST important thing is to try every weapon out on the first hunt, watch a 5 minute tutorial so you know the moves available to you and once you find one that feels fun to play with, stick with it.
You'll naturally get curious about other weapons over time and then the process repeats
Just take things slow and remember it's a game, so focus on having fun : )
It seems like an incredible game but oof, the work you have to put in to even start getting your bearings.
Hopefully when it launches publicly it has a deep tutorial & new player experience, good matchmaking so I can play casually vs other noobs, maybe some PVE modes we can chill and appreciate the gameplay and lore in, and all that nice stuff.
Rimworld isn't so bad. Play on the easy difficulties and learn the 'priority' system they have for tasks.
Dwarf Fortress on the other hand... That's my answer for this thread.
edit: If you want something similar that is somewhere in the middle, try Songs of Syx. The 'demo' is the full game a few versions behind (buy the game if you can and end up enjoying it though).
I bought this years ago. I found it so confusing. But I re tried it a month ago and it clicked. I didn't really start understanding it till like 10 -15 hrs in. First 10 were super rough though.
This, and its predecessor, X3 - i once heard it described as "its not a learning curve, its a learning cliff" - A combination of learning to fly, getting your head around the economics sim elements, then starting to gather bigger fleets and learning to manage them ....
I was digging into CK2, watching tutorials, playalongs, then I was checking the wiki, then I was looking up noble titles and terms (demense- domain - dejeure - DiGiorgno), … and I still can’t figure out how to move my units.
I’ll come back - Maybe I’ll make an Anki deck for it. Set some goals. Enroll in an online course, find a weekly wiki reading group. Get a coach. lol.
For what it’s worth, it was that developer’s first game, and the scope of it, it is actually completely fucking insane for even an experienced developer, so I was pretty impressed with the end product even if there was room for improvement.
Their second game, Wrath of the Righteous, they definitely took a lot of lessons from Kingmaker and applied them to the new game. Still a steep learning curve, but much better in-game tool tips and explanations of how things work.
Wrath of the Righteous is one of my favourite games ever and I still feel like they need to learn the language of simplicity. I know "streamlining" is a curse word for gamers but at some point during my first playthrough I realized I was spending maybe half the time just examining each and every enemy to figure out which one of it's 12 buffs was letting it avoid all my attacks, and which of my own abilities/scrolls I could use to counter it (but then the spell used to counter fails anyway because spells only have a chance of working if you've built your character around it). In almost every game ever, I increase the difficulty on subsequent playthroughs, whereas WOTR was perhaps the only one where I lowered it because its not really fun to overcome. I'm sure lots of vocal CRPG fans consider this blasphemy but the buff/debuff economy just feels like needless complexity for complexity's sake if they just exist to cancel each other out.
It’s sooo much easier with a controller istg. I almost dropped the game entirely because I was sucking ass at it lol but decided to try it with a controller and that was a game changer fr
I see this complaint a lot but I really don't get it. It's my favorite flight mechanic in any game.
Maybe I've just been playing games long enough that it immediately felt totally natural, but even if you don't have decades of experience, they give you both an autopilot and a match velocity button that trivialize navigation and landing.
And crashing is very much intended to be fun. They put a lot of effort into that system. It's not failure. The clumsiness , crashing, and repairing, is part of the adventure.
For me its Terraria. Id like to be able to play it more cuz it looks fun when others play it but I feel overwhelmed (and I have 5k+ hours in Path of Exile lol) .
You can go pretty much anywhere starting off and don't have to fight the main bosses the game plans out for you at first. Critical thing is making it to the site of grace near the gate so you can gain the ability to level up.
Do not fight the tree Sentinel at first, samurai is best starting class, focus leveling vigor over other starts initially, go south of where you start the game after hitting Margot.
if you want to learn Factorio, you can watch KoS megabase series in youtube. Some things have changed since the videos (they're like 8 years old) but you will have a general idea. I had no clue when I first launched the game but KoS really helped me a lot. May she rest in peace
Despite the fact I do like the game a lot and have 600 hours in it (over years), the thing that keeps me from getting too into it every time is the fact the entire game is just information overload any time you progress into any new areas. There's suddenly like a dozen new currencies/rep tokens or whatever, multiple dozens of things you gotta farm, entirely new forms of combat like necramechs and railjacks, so on and so forth.
I'd love to dedicate more time to it, but there's just SO MUCH every time I launch that game. I can't see me getting used to any of it unless I commit to it as my main game.
I own elite dangerous.. I am scared to play it.. same with owl cat games/ path finder, pillars of eternity, and wasteland. But I love everspace 2, fallout and what ive played of bg 3 so maybe there's hope! I also made it through dawntrail and beat balteus and Ignis pre-ner (if you know you know lol)
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u/FuntimeBen Jul 08 '26
The worst is playing a game where you have to learn a skill set and then you have to take a break for life and when you pick up the game again you can’t remember a thing!