Just some off the top of my head: Destiny, Deep Rock Galactic, Overwatch, and most recently Baldur’s Gate.
I received BG3 as a gift. I installed and loaded up the game and the first thing I was prompted to do is to create a character. There are like 12 different classes with 14 different abilities and 10 ability classes. The game does not explain any of this. I went to watch a tutorial online to try and wrap my head around all of this. The first tutorial just assumed you knew a bunch of stuff already. The second one I found was great but it was 1.5 hours long. There is no in-game tutorial I could find.
I just get very bored very quickly of analyzing character traits and I absolutely loathe inventory management (looking at you Borderlands). Often times my inventory fills up and then I end up just selling stuff that I have no idea what it does and later realizing it’s an incredibly valuable item/resource and now I have to find more.
So my question is this: Do you guys really spend hours of your day just researching on the internet how to play these games? Or do you just jump in and wing it? Or does each game just build on top of working knowledge of previous similar games?
E: General consensus seems to be all of the above. Good to know!
Insanely deep rpgs are a bit of an issue for me as well. And I generally do love rpg games, but I feel like the good ones should ease you into decisions a bit better than dropping you into a character creator.
So it’s a mixed bag for me.
Yeah - I just jump in and wing it.
At the risk of inviting the internet’s wrath, when people talk about the difference between serious gamers and casuals, this is the sort of thing they’re talking about.
“Serious” gaming involves a particular set of skills and interests, such that the person is willing and able to just jump into some complicated new game and figure it out. And it’s not just that “serious” gamers can do that - the point is that they want to. They enjoy it. They enjoy being lost, then slowly putting the pieces together and figuring out how things work and getting better because they’ve figured it out. And they enjoy the details - learning which skills do what and which items do what, and how it all interrelates. All that stuff isn’t some chore to be avoided - it’s a lot of the point - a lot of the reason that they (we) play games.
You talk about your inventory filling up and then just selling everything, and I can’t even imagine doing that. To me, that’s not just obviously bad strategy, but entirely missing the point - like buying ingredients to make delicious food, then bringing them home and throwing them in the garbage.
You talk about your inventory filling up and then just selling everything
Uh, no, that’s not what I said at all.
My inventory is finite and at some point I have to choose what stays and what goes. Not only that but I have to sell enough things that I can continue picking up more items without leaving items on the ground in the middle of the map.
Then having to regularly stop and weigh the weapons in my inventory against the weapons on the ground and making choices I don’t even fully understand that come back to bite me in the ass later.
My point though is that you talk about all of that as if it’s some sort of chore.
To me, it’s a lot of the fun.
I rarely even get to the point of having to stop and weigh choices in my inventory, since every time I come across something new, I have to stop and check it out and try to figure out what it is and what it does and what sort of advantages or disadvantages it might have. I enjoy that. So all along the way, I’m figuring out what I want to or think I should keep and what I want to or think I can get rid of, and not because a finite inventory demands it, but because that’s part of the point of playing in the first place.
Broadly, you’re asking if other people actually invest the time and energy to sort out how to play complex games. I’m saying that we not only can and do, but that that’s a lot of the point. That whole process of sorting things out is a lot of the reason that we play in the first place.
My point though is that you talk about all of that as if it’s some sort of chore.
Repetitive gameplay is not fun for me, personally but more power to you. I’m just trying to figure out what exactly I’m missing before I invest time into this game.
I rarely even get to the point of having to stop and weigh choices in my inventory
Those are not the types of games I’m talking about. Borderlands is the worst example I can think of where you have to stop every 3 minutes because the ground is constantly just littered with weapons, each with a dozen traits that is, at no time, explained to you while playing the game.
Horizon Zero Dawn is another one.
Now obviously those games are very popular, which is precisely what I’m trying to understand.
Broadly, you’re asking if other people actually invest the time and energy to sort out how to play complex games.
No it’s not. Obviously you do, or you wouldn’t play them. What I’m asking is how you sort it out.
Perhaps this conversation would be more constructive if you told us some of the games you do like, instead of the ones you don’t.
Because I’ll tell you right now, unless you prefer interactive novels which are only arguably games, every game is based on repetitive gameplay.
Specifically, building repetitive gameplay on top of repetitive gameplay is what makes games, games.
Like with chess. You have a repetitive “chess game” loop which has many “your turn” loops inside.
What I’m asking is how you sort it out
To address this specifically, this is what the community of the game is about. It’s why wikis are created and maintained. And so the answer would change based on which game you’re talking about and your goals in that game
For borderlands specifically, a few quick heuristics you can use is to ignore all weapons of not legendary color while in lower level areas, or to stop picking up lower tier items when you don’t need the cash, or to skip everything that isn’t a shotgun because that’s the only piece you need to update
every game is based on repetitive gameplay.
I was speaking broadly but “repetitive” isn’t a binary quality, there is a spectrum.
this conversation would be more constructive if you told us some of the games you do like
Well, that would be a long list but my absolute favorite games are of a very specific nature. I don’t know if there’s a name for them. All the Devil May Crys (but especially DMC), God of War, Control, Jed: Fallen Order, etc. Basically third-person fighter games with combo attacks, a relatively clear direction (even when there are multiple available), and an easy-to-understand progressive skill tree. Anything with characteristics like “strength, charisma, durability” etc. tends to lose me very quickly because while those words have very clear and obvious meanings in the real world, it never explains what those things actually mean in the game and I find myself just upgrading them almost totally randomly.
It’s why wikis are created and maintained.
When I’m relaxing I don’t want to spend my time reading documents, personally. I never see any mention of “pick up and play-ability” in reviews and no one ever seems to complain about the complexity so I inevitably end up buying these games because gamers rave about them, playing for a few hours, and then getting bored/confused and dropping them, which ends up being a giant waste of time and money because I got zero enjoyment out of them.
Ok, then don’t play them. No one is forcing you.
You said BG3 was a gift, so it’s not costing you anything to not play something you don’t like.
Given what you’ve said, I would suggest avoiding anything with an RPG label anywhere.
For BG3, if you want to keep playing, you can skip the character creator. They have a dozen prebuilt options you can play without doing the detail work.
For inventory, you can ask your brother to handle it and send everything to camp.
But even with those, you’ll likely not enjoy BG3 because even the fighting mechanics are based around that type of complex decision making, making you pause all the time so that you can make those decisions.
It’s ok to tell your brother you don’t enjoy the gameplay. You don’t have to like it just because other people do.
My inventory is finite and at some point I have to choose what stays and what goes.
It’s not, actually. You can send anything and everything to camp and decide about it later on. This includes camp supplies/food.
I was not speaking about any specific game.
And what they’re saying is that those elements are fun to the people who play these games.
Weighing different priorities to choose the best or preferred option for the future is flexing some very serious psychological muscles. Developing strategies to do it well is these types of people’s version of practicing 3 point shots.Reading you complain about it (which is fine, it doesn’t have to be your sort of game!) is like listening to someone complain about how many times they have to throw the ball in basketball. “I just wanted to dribble and dunk, what are all of these other silly elements for? They’re just getting in the way!”
If you want a really good comparison between these types of gamers and others, look at Path of Exile versus Diablo 4. Diablo took the mass-market appeal route, and de-prioritized many of the elements that more serious gamers enjoyed.
Now Path of Exile is a free to play money printing machine, and Diablo gets headlines for how poorly it’s doing. There are many detailed analysis’ online about why, and most of the reasons come down to removing the ‘complicated’ parts you’re talking about.
And what they’re saying is that those elements are fun to the people who play these games.
In no way did I respond to that.
Weighing different priorities to choose the best or preferred option for the future is flexing some very serious psychological muscles. Developing strategies to do it well is these types of people’s version of practicing 3 point shots.
That’s all well and good but the game often doesn’t give you the knowledge required to make those choices thoughtfully. It feels like I’m expected to spend my days on internet forums and search engines just to figure out how to play the game.
If that’s the case, that’s fine, I will just avoid the game. But I feel like there should be some sort of disclaimer in the store.
Reading you complain about it
I haven’t complained about anything. I just asked a question.
That’s all well and good but the game often doesn’t give you the knowledge required to make those choices thoughtfully
This is a complaint. One that other commenters have addressed.
It’s often an intentional and critical part of the vision of the game and why people play
Elden Ring, specifically, hides information from the player on purpose, intending for them to discover things through experience.
It doesn’t hold your hand at all and is arguably one of the better games in the last decade, in no small part due to features you are referencing.
This is a complaint.
You are interpreting is as a complaint. But it is not. It is a relevant observation to the topic at hand.
intending for them to discover things through experience.
…through what experience? The experience of trawling wiki docs? Are they in the game or are they not in the game?
That particular decision was to keep them immersed in the game, and exploring.
But back to your warning label topic, what do you expect that to look like?
“E for e=mc^2”? Or “S for Seseme Street approved”?
We already have shenanigans in the rating system, this would be monumentally worse.
I am really curious what a metric for game complexity would even look like
I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 3 with Wyll as my mage, and two custom hirelings that I brought in to replace Shadowheart the cleric, and the vampire thief guy who I was really liking up until he tried to bite me. So I killed him. Also thinking about letting Gale starve to death because I’d rather sell surplus magic items. The heroic characters talked too fucking much, and I didn’t appreciate all their drama. Hirelings are quiet and they kill who I want them to kill without complaing about it.
I’m playing a half-drow elemental monk who somehow learned to play the lute and lyre. He’s black because I’m black, which is also why I wanted Wyll. I found a cowboy hat somewhere.
The best playstyle is to do whatever the fuck you want, and this is it.
I just wing it at first, and figure stuff out as I go, even in online stuff. BG3 in particular, by the end of chapter 2 you’ll be pretty familiarized with mechanics. Inventory management is here, but worth doing sometimes. I just unload stuff from main character into someone else in the party.
I’m worried that if I “just wing it” it’s going to make things very difficult as my character will be super weak.
That right there is the mindset of min/maxing. You’re halfway there already!
BG3 handles failure better than almost any game I’ve ever played. Fuck around, find out. Be free of your need to always win and just play the game however you want.
Worst case you start over with a totally different character.
Playing out all the possibilities is half the fun!
Cool, that’s reassuring, thanks
Nah, BG3 rewards you for just doing more stuff. If you keep doing the things you find as you explore, you’ll level up plenty. They also let you respec more or less any time you want after the first couple of hours.
Thank you 👍
Tell that to my TES: Oblivion character I picked only non combat skills as primary. Everything was fine when exploring landscape and forests, leveling peacefuly my alchemy, alteration or stealth and lockpicking. It was nice. Until I got to first oblivion gate and found out level scaling is a thing. Then I was f’d up pretty hard. Needless to say I never finished the game because of this.
Oblivion’s levelling system was beyond fucked. The optimal way to play in terms of power is to pick primary skills that you know you won’t use and then go out of your way to only level those once you’ve levelled other things enough to get maximum value out of the level up. Or, alternatively, just never sleep so that you never level up and play the entire game at level one.
Sad part is I did really like Oblivion world, but that level/power scaling was absolute shitshow that completely ruined it for me.
That is exactly why I’m afraid to dedicate time to games like this haha.
It can be a little stressful even for me. And yes, the inventory management is atrocious btw, it’s a common complaint.
Like someone else mentioned, you can always pay a little to respec if you find out a character doesn’t have the stats to do what you’re wanting/what they’re built to do. That does require gold, and it is something that needs to be read up on and ultimately taken for a test ride to see if it’s even fun for you. That many options can feel really daunting.
But I think with enough cleverness, the game can be won with almost anything. Just last night, I watched a playthrough of a guy who had challenged himself to beat the game without killing anyone or manipulating anyone else to kill them for him, and he did it.
Whole game. The only NPC he had no way around personally harming could still be knocked out and left alive. He tricked the end boss into murdering itself through careful use of explosive barrels and he himself never fired a shot — a super cheesy fighting tactic common enough that the term “barrelmancy” is a thing.
I’m not gonna say there won’t be reloads, but there are a multitude of ways to handle most if not all altercations. Some things can be talked out of, or allies sought to help.
If not, it could be a huge, horrible fight taken head-on for the awful fun of it, or you could sneak up and thunderwave them into a hole and be done with it. Covertly poison the lot. Command them to drop their own weapon and then take it, and giggle while they flail their fists at you. Cast light on the guy with a sun sensitivity and laugh harder at their own personal hell.
You could sneak around back and take the high ground, triggering the battle by firing the first shot from a vantage point the enemy will take 4 rounds to reach through strategically placed magical spikes.
I passed one particularly worrying trial by just turning the most powerful opponent into a sheep until every other enemy was dead and I could gang up on them. Cleared another fight sitting entirely in the rafters where they had trouble hitting me, and shoved them to their death when one found a way up.
Going straight into a battle is the most expected way to do it, but there are usually shenanigans that can be played, is what I’m saying. Accept with grace the attempts that don’t work. If the rules of engagement seem unfair, change the rules.
If it helps any, the game does also reward xp fairly generously. Just reaching new/hidden areas grants a little bit, to say nothing of side quests.
That guy I was talking about, the one that finished with zero kills, ended the game at level 10. The level cap is 12. That was all just wandering around, doing stuff that didn’t require fighting.
Know which stat each class mainly uses and focus on that. Do not make the mages wear armor, it is not a happy fun experience. Beyond that, be clever and moderately lucky with your cleverness. You’ll be fine.
It’s a lot to get used to and does take time to be familiar with all your options, but I started out not very far above where you sound like you are. You do get used to it if you take your time, and I’m certain most people would be overjoyed to help.
it’s going to make things very difficult as my character will be super weak.
Who cares? That’s a challenge.
I mean there are “challenges” where you die 3 or 4x and there are “challenges” where you die 12-20x and the closer I get to that high end, the more likely I am to become frustrated and bored and quit.
That’s why after dying 3-4x I will do a quick research on how to die less. There’s a limit to my trial and error in games.
Maybe you should check some lets plays instead of watching tutorials. Just an episode or two to get an idea of what the game is and whether it seems to be up your alley or not.
The lets player will probably explain some mechanics as they come up while they’re playing (at least in the beginning to help new viewers unfamiliar with the game) and that should be a lot easier to digest than someone purely explaining a bunch of game mechanics in one go.
What is “let’s plays/player”?
A video of someone playing the game, on somewhere like YouTube. You get to watch someone else (the “lets player”) play, and use all the mechanics.
Okay I’ll give that a shot, thanks
You could also try Twitch. Most smaller streamers are open to answering viewers’ questions (and bigger ones probably would be, too, but they just can’t because of volume.)
Reading the title i thought about titles like mech engineer or the like where you almost have to read a 50 pages manual. Not Deep Rock Galactic 0.0
Sounds to me like you just don’t want to think that hard, which is fine, I usually don’t either. Half of the time I just play Doom .wads
BG3 specifically: It’s D&D 5e, so… yeah It’s gonna be complex.
Complex systems more generally:
The best way to learn about any complex system is to bite tiny chunks out of it and ignore the rest, even if you know stuff is interconnected. You’ll never learn everything at once, so don’t try. Eventually you get bored with the little bubble you’ve carved out for yourself so you move over and learn about some other bit. You don’t even need to care about whether you’ll understand everything eventually.
BG3 is a unique example in that its built in a system many players already know and understand, AND the whole thing is so watered down that you can absolutely just wing it with a rudimentary understanding of how things function and be fine. You don’t need to min/max to enjoy the game, and if it’s too hard there are multiple difficulty levels. It’s fine to hit explorer difficulty pick a class for RP and just enjoy the game. The “GaMeR” police aren’t going to kick down your door.
The answer to the wider question is: No, I don’t. I like learning systems and I’ve practiced learning systems very rapidly. I’ve been quickly learning new systems for some 20+ years, so by now, I am just good at it. I do not spend any real length of time researching how to play these games; I load in, read and absorb what’s in front of me, and try thngs. Things that don’t work, I throw out, and I try new things. After a few iterations of this, if I am still heavily struggling I may Google some build repository so I can glance over some ideas of what other suggest work and then incorporate those ideas into my own setup, but even then, that practice is preserved for more competitive games. Games like BG3, Deep Rock, Warframe, Darktide, Inkbound, and Cassette Beasts, just to name some I’ve played in the last couple months, I’ll never look up how others build and play. This is in part because I don’t need to, and in part because crafting my own builds and finding my own solutions is a large part of the fun for me.
No need to watch tutorials on how to create a character brother. Figuring things out as you play is the fun part
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.
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. https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf
The game does not explain any of this. I went to watch a tutorial online to try and wrap my head around all of this. The first tutorial just assumed you knew a bunch of stuff already. The second one I found was great but it was 1.5 hours long. There is no in-game tutorial I could find.
Why do you need to know? Just pick one and go with it!
Deep Rock Galactic
I haven’t played much but, it’s not complicated? There’s a main lobby where you select a quest, then you go on it. It generally involved following a path and gathering/dropping off stuff with some fighting in between.
Overwatch
This one is just anticipating other people’s movement on a map, which can be chaotic but I don’t really think it’s complicated? Honestly if you’re having issues
just play Paladins insteadI would stick by 1 or 2 teammates and just focus on staying with them no matter what. Over time you’ll learn what works and doesn’t work.Destiny
Now THIS one is complicated bullshit. lol
As with any competitive game, in overwatch you are expected by other players to understand complex strategies that have evolved over time, which can be stressful for a newcomer.
It doesn’t help that many players who don’t understand the Meta aren’t afraid to chime in. Standing in front of you holding up my shield isn’t my job, learn how to use cover fool.
Dan Olson has a good video on this topic. It’s tough to get into some larger player base competitive games
Rocket League has a really great ranking system that ensures that I’m always playing with members of a similar skill level, but also always challenging myself to move up the ranks.
I really wanted to like BattleBit but couldn’t be bothered to grind to get the better weapons while constantly being slaughtered by much more experienced players with much better equipment.
I’m a casual gamer and I used to play Overwatch. There’s always the practice range or training room, I forget what it’s called. But what really got me learning all the characters was playing Mystery Heroes over and over.
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.
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.
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.
Games like Baldur’s Gate assume you have at least some DnD experience. I remember playing Neverwinter Nights for the first time long ago and being really glad I played one session of DnD before it.
The first two Baldur’s Gates sure did, but not so much BG3.
I’m not so sure. I’ve not played the first two to be able to measure between them, but I do recall thinking that if I hadn’t been so into watching videos of other peoples’ dnd campaigns, I would be so helplessly far out of my depth.
As it was, I was already struggling a little bit with which class was best for my likely playstyle. Who can use what armor, why, and what happens when they don’t. What skills go with what stats. The general info they don’t have a need to go over when you’re not the one at the table.
Those aren’t things OP would know enough about to even know they don’t know, so I’m glad they have someone helping them. I don’t consider myself anything remotely resembling intelligent and they’re starting out with less. For being easily one of the best things I’ve played in years, it would feel impossibly daunting for a noob
I’m no D&D expert myself. I got through those other two BG games with a lot of frustration (and “narrative”/god mode for the last quarter of BG2), and pretty much the only things I didn’t understand just from reading tooltips in BG3 were the numbers governing saving throw DCs and the to hit chance with certain spells.
Oh wow, okay, good to know. Well my brother has agreed to play the co-op with me and help me out. Maybe I’ll learn to love it. Just not sure I want to 😂
I have been playing with another person and we were both confused. just guessed my way through it.
