Am I the only one who has lost all enjoyment from games?

Funny reading this thread, started to feel the same myself. Maybe it because Battlefield 3 was such a disappointment after playing Bad Company 2.
That's why I've downloaded CSB win for Dungeon Master and am playing the Atari ST classic (which I owned back in 1988 but never completed). I've gone back to my roots as it were.
I'm taking a break from Steam, nevermind Origin for 1 game -B3.
I think gaming experience needs a radical departure from a tv screen now. Maybe the virtual reality/wear googles thing will happen of some kind and blow everything away.
 
Dungeon Master takes me back a few years. I loved that on my Amiga.

I also think that one of the previous posters got it right in saying there is less com,munity now. Back in the 90's/2000's it was exciting and there was a real community around a few small games. Maybe there is nowadays and I just don't get involved but it doesn't seem that way.
 
Yes well as far as the Battlefield 3 community goes - have you seen the forums on the Battlelog. Total disgrace, thousands of idiots constantly spam it.. turned into a free for all. The funny thing is EA got rid of forums to replace with the Battlelog one. And its not like you can ignore the forums either, every time you load the game up the game there it is The Battlelog!
 
For a long time (well several years), I basically didn't play much in the way of games at all, partly because I'd got fed up with the same sort of games being released.

What got me back into gaming was a combination of the Wii (new interface/way to play), and things like Portal (fun and new playstyle), or the indie games on Steam where small teams are putting together games with new idea/revisiting old ideas that haven't been done in years*.

If you're not having fun playing games, try something different, my tastes have changed a lot over the years and whilst I can still enjoy a lot of the games I used to like, I find I've little time or patience for badly done games, or games that (for example) require you to put in large chunks of time in a single go before you can have a rest** (I like Dead Island for example, but because it can take a long time between save points, I haven't really played it).

I'm currently enjoying playing War Thunder (online aerial combat with teams of players), Mech Warrior Online (well, when I'm playing with a team of friends), and things like Don't Starve and other indy games.
I loved Saint's Row 3 as a fun FPS/mission based game, which caught me by surprise (I bought it on a whim).

*Recettear, Terreria, Dungeons of Dredmore, Space pirates and Zombies etc.

**Partly because I tend to find it hard to have the time to play for 30-45 minutes+ at a stretch.
 
I felt exactly the same way for quite a number of months. I'd bought a new rig but was regretting spending the money as I struggled to find games that I really enjoyed.

Fortunately the final part of 2012 I found a few games that I really enjoyed (GW2, PS2, Dishonoured) but what I have done is focus a lot more time into other activities, whether this is being social IRL or simply reading a good book.

PC gaming is no longer the cornerstone of my life's entertainment/enrichment but merely a piece of it.

Also I agree with the post re the lack of community 100%.
 
I too have felt this way recently, until Planetside 2 came out, and a bunch of friend I went to school with started playing. Now I jusmp on teamspeak, and the 5 of us mount up in a sunderer and off we go for the night, a real sense of fun and togetherness, working together, looking out for your buddies etc, its really really been fun.

(Vanoobs suck and Terran can go kiss Totalbiscuits ass, Up the NC!!)
 
Im starting to lose interest in games, i play for around an hour then think there are so many other things i can do.

But there arnt, but there are :@

So i stay on the game and it annoys me, so i quit :(

The only two games i completed last year were Dishonored and Diablo III, almost completed Far Cry 3 but the mechanics were a little too repetitive :(
 
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I have not read the whole thread, but in answer to the op.

Your experience is how you feel and many factors combine to that. Certainly as you get older the magic fades. The experience is not new any more.. (how could it be?), interest, immersion, and fun evolves.
 
I have to agree on gameplay, it's all handed to you nowadays.
I remember games on the N64, no instruction just "you work it out dip****" and you didn't have the internet to back you up if you were stuck for like 5 hours, you just kept going, usually ragequit then got it in one the next day.

And when you found out something cool on a game you could amaze your friends with it. Now they'd just say you found it on youtube or they already saw it on facebook.

Todays games, they basically tell you what to do, exactly how to do it and the games aren't, logically speaking, difficult now.
Storyline is also way shorter in a lot of cases. I think it's the way things are just going, probably easier to mass market that kind of game I guess.
 
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pitchfork said:
I have to agree on gameplay, it's all handed to you nowadays.
I remember games on the N64, no instruction just "you work it out dip****" and you didn't have the internet to back you up if you were stuck for like 5 hours, you just kept going, usually ragequit then got it in one the next day.

And when you found out something cool on a game you could amaze your friends with it. Now they'd just say you found it on youtube or they already saw it on facebook.

Todays games, they basically tell you what to do, exactly how to do it and the games aren't, logically speaking, difficult now.
Storyline is also way shorter in a lot of cases. I think it's the way things are just going, probably easier to mass market that kind of game I guess.
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Can relate to this, got stuck on doom 2 a couple of times last night, just stuck 'doom 2 level X' into google and the first result was always a youtube vid walkthrough of the level. haha!

Although, I'd always run around trying to work it out for 10-15 mins before caving.
 
pitchfork said:
I have to agree on gameplay, it's all handed to you nowadays.
I remember games on the N64, no instruction just "you work it out dip****" and you didn't have the internet to back you up if you were stuck for like 5 hours, you just kept going, usually ragequit then got it in one the next day.

And when you found out something cool on a game you could amaze your friends with it. Now they'd just say you found it on youtube or they already saw it on facebook.

Todays games, they basically tell you what to do, exactly how to do it and the games aren't, logically speaking, difficult now.
Storyline is also way shorter in a lot of cases. I think it's the way things are just going, probably easier to mass market that kind of game I guess.
Click to expand...

I agree with that. One of the games on the C64, called Mercenary, was a wire based 3D game where it crashed your ship into a planet at the start. That was it. You just had to work out how to escape the planet from there by simply wandering around and exploring. While graphically it was nothing compared to today's games it was so open ended.

Another game I lost hours to was Dungeon Master on the Amiga. Again graphically it can't hold a candle to modern games but it just threw you into a massive maze and you had to work it out from there.
 
No tbh :p

i flip between games of different types when i get bored. if I get bored of all of them I go and do something else, then come back to them. I don't invest anything emotionally in games these days, partly because I'm an old(er) cynic and partly because there are more important things to worry about.
 
I used to play a lot of online games but find I barely even try these days, SOF2, CS:S, RTCW, C&C renegade was actually awesome online, and a few others. They were basically simple games with good maps and you know, skill based. COD and all the crap now with daft helicopter/drone/mortar/whatever attacks, streak kills, too fast a pace, no real skill, it all just bores me to death now. I played Cod mw online a bit, got bored fast, each new one I get bored faster, haven't even gone online for the last few.

I love single player games, story makes a game for me, and that is where single player has been falling down.

You can make a great game, and mess up just one major part of the story, which might be 30 seconds of the game but is so monumentally lazy, stupid and ruins the entire story that I can be left feeling a game was entirely worthless.

Bioshock one did that partially story and partially gameplay wise. Atmosphere/design were great even though graphical quality was quite poor, the general idea and start was fine, the plasmids were fine but with SO many RPG's they take you from difficult start, to immense super being that is untouchable.... in the first 1/4 of the game and 3/4's of the game that is too easy. But the ending was terrible, the final boss barely registered or took any effort. A fairly small part of the game ruined the rest of it, even had the rest of the game been better the complete and massive let down tarnished everything that came before it.

Far Cry 3, there are so many excellent things about it, but a few utterly cheap, stupid, overlooked parts that again tarnish everything you did to that point essentially.

I'd far far prefer they hire 5 more script writers and scale back on graphics and "fix" the story line of a game than send it out with massive gaping holes that essentially ruin the game.

I really feel like there is nothing worse than playing an almost great game, loving the world/general gameplay/general feel and a good story, then arbitrarily they go into "we ran out of money for writers" mode and there is suddenly a completely ridiculous part of the game that defies all logic and basically ruins the story.

A game that has a meh story all the way through but great gameplay doesn't wind me up nearly as much, a game that has a fantastic story then screws it up at the last second is the most irritating thing in gaming.

Mass Effect 3... the story in the first game was epic, the second game was passable if boring, the third game was far less good but the general idea of the story was still there and still excellent, then the ending, just made probably 50-60 hours of previous gameplay feel like an utter joke.........

If the ME3 ending was as epic as any part of the first game, then I'd have felt like 60 hours building up to a great ending and that every second was worthwhile, with the horrendous ending it had, I was made to feel like every second I played that led to this utterly ruinous ending... was a complete waste.

Its like anything else, build up and wait for xmas when you get there and find the present you've always wanted makes the wait worthwhile, when the present sucks, you're massively disappointed, because all that waiting and thinking about it was a waste.

Its the tiny things like that which make/break your general feel of the entire experience, rather than if the game was fun to play second to second.

COD :mw was epic, story wise and made the experience fantastic as a whole, the later cods aren't much worse in a second to second kind of way, shoot guys with guns, chases, etc, etc, but because the story was on the whole so much more stupid the experience felt completely different.

Games aren't less fun to play, but my overall experience of newer games is generally worse and worse as games get more and more stupid.
 
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AMOK on the Vic 20. Precursor to Doom 10 years before hand. Not 3D but it was a great shooty literally stick men but great character somehow

If you dont like games its because the game aint real. The more fake and contrived these games get, the worse it is.
Try something with a bit of progression to it and it makes all the difference, story or however you want to put it matters.

Half life and all that were great because they crafted it well , bioshock is doing similar. It is consistency and believability to its reality like master says, if you smack into an invisible 'gamey' wall the whole thing becomes a sham
 
I still love gaming. Granted it has become harder to get into titles as much as so many games these days are a clone of a clone of a clone and a poor console port to boot! :( However, I think part of it is state of mind. If you are looking for mentally engaging past-times then gaming is probably on the decline for you because most games are for the xbox generation - IE simple go there, do that, find this, shoot him games that spoon feed the player. To me, many games have become kind of puerile.

That said, my inner child has some affinity with just blowing **** up, and whilst it is not an engaging experience it is pretty damn fun for a while. Overall, though, I find I am more interested in games with depth and story, or where there is so much to discover and see and do that I am diverted for enough time not to get bored.

Single player titles that I have enjoyed recently have been Skyrim, Deadspace 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Dishonored (Americans take note - it is DishonoUred ;) ), Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, and for nostalgia, Classic Doom - the one that remade E1 from Doom using the Doom 3 engine!

Most of my time gaming is spent online though, with either Quake 3 (NOT QL), or Tribes Ascend. I run my own server for Q3 Threewave CTFS and we have some long time players that come every night for a couple of hours and it is good fun. I still love playing it, but it is on its last legs now and that makes me feel really sad as I think it is one of the most fun online games to play. I recently started playing Tribes Ascend, and I take a lot of enjoyment from the skill needed to play that game. It is a steep learning curve but I like that. I like the fact you have to work at it to get better and there is far more involved than simply being a good shot. Another big thing for me is hackers - I hate em, and Tribes is probably the least hacked FPS currently available. Also because of the game mechanics, mainstream types of hacks are not really all that useful due to most of the action being outdoors, and things like projectile inheritance. There are supposed to be hacks for it now, but people using them are obvious, and soon get the boot from the rest of the server :)

Community wise, to me the problem has been dilution and the fact that gaming has become so casual, and multiplayer ironically insular. For instance, when I started Tribes, there wasn't a general server browser and you just clicked "play now". You would connect to the first 28 player server with free slots in your region. Because of this, most times you never saw the same people in servers, and never got the opportunity to get any banter going. You are also personally rewarded for 'achievements' and the feel of the game in public servers is 'every man for himself'. The other thing that has spoiled the experience is voice radio messages in game. When someone gets a good kill on you, you can simply press a button and some voiced actor will say something on your behalf. It feels sterile. In Quake, although you can have binds for chat, it is usually the accepted practice to drop the console and actually type something personally. I think this helps to build player relations and a sense of community. It also expresses your personality more than simply spamming a generic voice message.

I also think maturity of players has damaged the scene. There are far to many 'kids' on games these days that have neither the maturity or mental capacity to function as they should in an online team game. When I first started Quake 3, most players where I played were adults. There were a few who were young kids, but most people were older and so the feel of the server was just different to servers now - in a good way. People played because they took enjoyment from the game. Nowadays many people play because they take enjoyment from trolling people who enjoy playing the game :rolleyes:

I also think the console market has killed PC gaming, and the kind of innovation and progress that major developers used to exhibit is now supplanted by revenue driven yawn clones. How many call of duty games are we up to now? I am tired of the PC being the 2nd class citizen for major releases, but that is just the sad truth of a console saturated market place.The Indy scene is where it is at for innovation and gameplay these days. There have been some really good titles, long may it continue. As the likes of EA get fat from over priced and under developed clones, I hope the smaller software houses start to get the recognition they deserve. Indeed there does seem a shift in PC gaming towards quirky Indie games, and community developed titles. I'm not convinced it is significant enough to make a difference, though.

Overall, I still love gaming, but I am very disillusioned with the industry and feel the online scene has lost its way and lost its core values. Or at least what I hold to be core values. Maybe I am just a dinosaur that needs to move on? :p

Or maybe the truth of the current situation does not make it right, and in fact the values I hold on to should be held on to? :confused:

When I became a little more established at Q3, there were always new players joining who didn't have a clue. Where I played there were never cries of "learn how to play noob". I remember in 1 FFA server, there probably about 8-9 of us all having a bit of fun when a newer player joined. He couldn't strafe jump and didn't know about rocket jumping so he asked for help. You know what, we all stopped, and showed the guy what to do and helped him along a bit. You just don't get that these days. In the end the guy became a regular because of the warm welcome and help.

The early noughties Q3 scene exhibited these things in the community I played in, and these are very much the core values I still hold on to:

  • Help - always offered to anyone who asked, even if doing so meant I played less myself
  • Welcome - always a warm one to new and old players alike, unless they were being dicks :D
  • Chatting - chatting in spec mode was encouraged and nurtured good server relationships
  • Sharing - of tricks, tips, do's and dont's along with settings, variables and anything else to help players get better
  • No laming - chat kills, quad damage and a whole host of lame play was discouraged
  • Fun - no whining because someone was better than me, no trolling because I was butt hurt from a good slapping (unless the person was obviously hacking - we all know the kind).
  • Teamplay - the game is not all about me, and my personal achievements come 2nd to the overall good of the team. So what if I have less kills and points? If I have been an integral part of the team victory, then I have been effective and upheld the ethos of teamplay.
  • Time and effort - its a community, so I do my part to nurture it and don't expect to always be on the take without giving back. Whether it be giving up time to referee clan matches, having positive input on forums or running a server so a small group of old school players have somewhere to play, I try to play my part in the community as best I can.
  • Cheating - just don't do it. Just because I get owned, it does not mean everyone else is hacking. Being good takes time and effort - so I invest time and effort :) One of the reasons I love Tribes is because of the vast amount of knowledge and skill you need to master just a single class. There are nine classes :p I know some people reading this will indeed be hackers themselves, so to you guys, how about trying to play honestly and honourably? You never know, you might enjoy the sense of achievement ;)

Sadly, there are no games I have played in recent years, and no communities that have shown these kinds of values. Except maybe Tribes, as I had a very warm welcome from more established players off this forum that helped me a lot - but that was mostly through Mumble and their pugs. Pub play is still very unhelpful for new players. These days if you don't know how to play the server will want to kick you, or they will ostracise you for nerfing their 'team'. Ironically they accuse you of nerfing the team, but offer no help to make you a better player which would in turn make you more helpful to the team :rolleyes:

Anyway, my wall of text is getting a bit big now, so I will sign off :p

Cheers

Buff
 
Woot, The Witcher 2 has certainly got my gaming juices flowing! Still in Chapter 1, but love running around Flotsam.
 
While I haven’t lost all enjoyment, my enjoyment certainly is damaged by lots of unnecessary problems in modern games, such as:

- Consolitis – dumbing down too many things, massive condescending “FOLLOW” signs that assume every player is too stupid to figure out even the basics.
- Not including an option to turn off all of the above consolitis eyesores in games that ruin immersion, e.g. Dishonored included options to turn off virtually all of the HUD, hints etc., when games like COD with bigger budgets don’t bother, it’s lazy, unprofessional and downright poor development.
- Loss of Control – The reason I prefer games to movies is I am in control . . . until I play a modern game where cutscenes take control away from me and I’m regularly not allowed shoot, or do anything, and instead feel powerless. Makes me want to go back and replay Half-life. Again.
- Mindless achievements – An achievement for finishing a level, no finishing the level is the achievement, achievements should be more meaningful than that, like they are in TF2. I think I actually got an achievement for starting the game in COD:MW3 and watching it for a while. Brilliant.
- Poor voice acting – you know who you are.
- Good games that are poorly ported to PC – GTA IV etc. etc. etc. 90% of the code is similar, do it properly or don’t do it at all, there are plenty of other games for us to play.
- Releasing the same game every year until we’re bored to death (COD, FIFA, Need for speed etc.)
 
InKursion said:
The main thing for me has been a significant drop in a sense of 'community'... ironically as gaming has become more and more mainstream and more and more popular, the actual sense of a cohesive 'community' has died off. Whether it was regular servers and clan-scenes in the 1.3-1.6 Steam games, or CoD1/CoD2, or whether it was the fact that everyone at some point used things like Xfire for much more than just simple chatting... it feels like the PC gaming crowd has been dispersed over many titles and many platforms. Game design reflects this, too: less and less focus on teamwork and supporting clan/league scenes, more and more focus on lone-wolf play and heaping on the achievements. Most of all this is what has killed off all the 'giant' MMO games for me, WoW being the most instructive example: from server-based communities and guildscenes to a total solitary experience, even though the game is more popular and more widely played than ever. It's a shame.

I basically think it's because PC gaming came out of the hobbyist/enthusiast closet, moving from quite a specialist and quite nerdy (not to mention expensive) activity into a more mainstream pastime. 5-10 years ago every PC game had a real hardcore core of players that would sustain it, even if the game itself had faults or bugs; small things such as design imperfections barely even mattered! Nowadays we have highly-polished games that are graphically stunning, but every single time it fails to generate a 'buzz' in the social sense.

I know there's the whole LoL/DotA2 thing, with the whole tacked-on streaming phenomenon... but something about those communities and that 'style' of game just doesn't do it for me. It's not friendly, and the whole culture of watching YouTube videos and 2 hour long streams is completely alien to me. Everyone is lured into a sense of 'participating' in the 'scene', when really all they're doing is sat back being passive backbenchers. Bring back the banter of a Day of Defeat 1.3 server!
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Well said, i started off on CSS gaming and there wre always x amount of servers which were really popular , most people knew and there were always the popular clan servers and you ended up playing with the same people no matter where you went. i remember playing on teeside server all the time for around 3-4 months along with my own clans server.

There was always a guy called butters who played on the teeside server at the time and when i went onto a friends clan server a guy called butters had joined their clan and without me even thinking it was same butters as who played on teeside.

nowadays you have your friends who you play with on mumbles and every other person is just a random.

Planetside 2 however has introduced some of this commintiy play back to me, theres so many platoons on their from PS1 who know each other and still remember the names off the first planetside. was in a tank with my mate when he stopped in road and started chatting to some random. asked who he was and he said havent spoke to him in 7 years he used to play PS1.

I think league of legends could be made so much better in terms of community. instead of just match making a game people should request a match from a team and then setup a custom match to play them. then when you find a team you enjoy playing against keep them as friends and play over and over like we used to in css.
 
I sometimes get a bit bored of gaming, recently got a new laptop that has a really decent GPU and i can now finally play Shift 2 (love racing games) with all the eye candy, that's been keeping me entertained for a while..

dishonored was another, that was really good, and been playing through the witcher 2 and metro 2033 now I can actually play those games..

When I had my Studio 1749 with a 5650, i tried to play many games, most we with low details, now i've got something a bit more decent, PC gaming has taken a whole new level for me, and I'm enjoying gaming more then ever. Its great to fire up Shift 2 and go, WOW, or Witcher 2 and look at the forest and think, can it get any better then this?

However, PC gaming can get stale, few years back I was bored of it all...
 
I think since Steam has become so good at dishing out good deals with games and its more of a must own instead of play.

I go through phases too , but people at work also influence in buying/playing games on 360/ps3 etc as its too easy. The latest one was Borderlands 2, level 44 with Axton and own the dlc too which ive not played one bit i found it too much of a chore compared to the first one.

Lotro- Been playing this on and off for 2 years now still yet to get to max level, just something not clicking making me want to keep playing though i love lotr!

But Anno 2070 has kept me very occupied for the last 2 weeks (got the expansion for xmas) still plodding with that on a daily basis.

And fell for NS2/Arma2 in steam sale
 
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