Who is "struggling" to play a PC game?

willhub

willhub

willhub

Caporegime
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When I turn on my laptop, I've got the choice of

Cities: Skylines
GTA V
Forza Horizon 4
Battlefield V
Unravled 2
Farcry 5
Kingdom Come Deliverance
Vampyr
Day of daylight of whatever it's called (zombie game)
Forza 7
Final Fantasy XV
Crash Bandicoot
State of Decay 2
Saint's row 4/5
Alien Isolation
UT
Fortnite
Just Cause 3
Rise of Tomb Raider
Half Life 2
Team Fortress 2
Counter Strike

And probably more but I can't remember them, the thing is, what do you play!?!?!? I normally default to Cites: Skylines, and the amount of choice I just end up not bothering looking at anything else.

Does anyone else have this dilemma?
 
I do - one thing I find these days after so many years of PC gaming I have low to no tolerance for games that are at all clunky to play especially if they don't have a good range of mouse options, efficient key input/bindings, etc. so if I have to deal with that at all I more often than not just don't even bother with a game any more :(

I just default to 1-2 games I know I can just jump into and play even though I have newer games sitting there either unplayed or I've only scratched the first hour or less of.
 
I've also had no motivation to play anything in particular. More of a general lack of interest, though, I think, than not being able to decide between alternatives.

I've also found that when I do manage to play something I find myself giving up at some point due to gnawing apathy, which never happened before.

Dark Souls III I was really enjoying, until with just half the Ringed City and the final story boss to go I just suddenly could not be bothered any more.

I took several months off gaming and then started quite enjoying Quantum Break after reinstalling it. But I got to the final battle last week and just found I couldn't be faffed going through with it. Maybe I just need another short break, but this never used to happen with games. I used to finish everything, even if I didn't think it was top-notch.

I do have eight Steam games currently installed, but I've not loaded any of them apart from Quantum Break even once.
 
willhub said:
Day of daylight of whatever it's called (zombie game)
Click to expand...

Dead by daylight?

I struggle with this as well. 1st world problems.

I think I've always been a bit single minded in the games I play but lately I default to Overwatch or don't play at all. I have over 500 steam games installed and I've never played most of them because when i do have the time and motivation to play, I don't want to risk it on something unfamiliar.
 
I go through this every year but this year has been the longest. I was playing Destiny 2 for several hours a day then we had that heatwave hit us and I've barely played anything since. I tried my hand at Monster Hunter world but got bored and I've played a few rounds of BF4 but that's it!
 
Have a shed load of games but I mostly play FTL, COH, Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and Dying Light.

Other games I sometimes have an extended session on but always seem to fall back on the above.
 
I have been stuck in the "Cba playing anything" mood for months now. With well over 500 games on just Steam I feel I have to much choice which doesn't help the situation but I think it is also to do with work as I'm on a PC most of the day. Plus age and other pending hobbies.

May be one day I will get back in to gaming but for now my PC just gets used for watching Youtube/Movies etc...
 
Because new big releases are mostly crap, EA butchering something, buggy Ubisoft or Bethesda stripping the life and soul out of it... and everything else is weird bedroom indie stuff that might as well have been released in 1998.
 
I've gone back to Mass Effect 3 after 5 years. It's 6.5 years old now. After my post the other day about nobody playing, there does seem to be a small bunch of regulars who have stuck with it so there are matches to play after all. I am not interested in anything new at the moment, struggling to finish Uncharted 4 on the PS4 frankly.
 
I am though recently had a good stint of Rimworld which was the first game in years that pulled me in. Sadly after about a month of playing that when time permitted I’m now bored of it.
 
I go through phases of not playing much. I came out of the last one when I discovered BF3 and since then I've kept myself entertained, mainly with BF4 and more recently Assetto Corsa.

Sometimes I can have too many games, the eye-candy appeal is strong. The trick is to find just a couple that I really enjoy.
 
I'd bet that this is just like most other examples similar to this, a common case of too-many-games-itis. It's essentially just analysis paralysis, and has been a phenomenon I've observed since I started playing games, however it's more noticeable in modern times for multiple reasons. First of all, there are simply more games available, which is down to growth of the industry and as time goes on with PC being a continuing platform, the entire back catalogue remains available. Not only are there more games available now, but with the advent of Steam and affordable mass storage, we can have quick and easy access to a huge library, most of which we can keep installed "just in case". Exacerbating it all is the the multiplayer/online/open world nature of modern games, which - in contrast to older titles - means that typically there are many more decisions involved in how to even play a game, and a much less defined "completion" point at which the game is moved on from.

The solution? Discipline yourself, and don't play another game until you're satisfied you've played one of the games enough that you can happily move on from it for good. This is a little less plausible for solely multiplayer titles.
 
Relatable topic! We were just discussing this on Teamspeak the other night. We're a bunch of gamers mostly in our 30s now. There were 5 main points we had in common;

  1. Too many choices! There has never been this many games trying to grab your attention. Its an overload and makes it hard to decide what to buy/ install/ play. It used to be the case there was always one or two big games everyone would be playing everyday. That you could login and play with your mates. These days people are really divided and mostly doing their own thing and as a result we've lost that social element that many/most of us grew up with playing games with friends.
  2. e-sports games have completely changed the way developers think about games these days. Many games are balanced around the current meta of top pro players and it ruins the game for casual players. Overwatch is a great example of this. They have tweaked so many heroes and added so many shields its basically impossible to kill another team of equal skill without using the current team composition and ultimate combinations used by the top players. Many e-sports games are destroying old favourite genres (Real Time Strategy being the best example) in order to make the game easier to follow for an audience in a tournament setting.
  3. Time. This is probably the main issue. I can't imagine a point in the last 50 years were people seem to have so little free time. Especially that most precious time were you can login at the same time every week and play with your online gaming buddies without interruptions. Many us face the sad reality we spend more time travelling to and from work then gaming.
  4. The hot summer. The crazy long hot summer changed a lot of peoples routines. It was too hot to stay inside gaming. Many went and found other things to enjoy outside. Its taking a bit of adjustment to getting back to wanting to sit in front of the computer again.
  5. Frustrating social tools. Battlefield V is the latest with this problem. They reduce the Squad size from 5 in Battlefield One to 4 in Battlefield V and now you suddenly have to leave out one of your gaming friends?! Would be OK if they could at least join the same team, but its often a miracle they even get on the same server queuing at exactly the same moment.
 
I went through a phase of just 'cba'. That even happened with GTA V and the Witcher 3, two games that I revisited later and played for many enjoyable hours. Cities Skylines really gripped me off the bat, but now I've got my first 70k+ population city that's pretty well polished, I'm not feeling very motivated to expand it further.

FF XV is a game I've just started, and am suddenly feeling a bit apathetic about. It's easier to default to quick 'dopamine hit' games, which for me is something like Hearthstone or an indie game like FTL.

I believe it being hardware upgrade time is also demotivating to get into new AAA games, as it seems like something to put off until I've got a tasty upgrade I'm due.

Of course free time is a huge factor. It's difficult to invest in something you know is going to eat up a lot of it. I even have difficulty investing in watching a movie, preferring instead to default to watching recorded shows that are an hour or less.
 
willhub said:
Does anyone else have this dilemma?
Click to expand...

Absolutely. There's a few factors at play for me...
  1. I can't replay as it's like watching a movie I've seen before, what's the point?
  2. I don't seem to have the patience for a change in genre - example is XCOM - I fancy getting into it, but the developer just seems to expect that I know what to do.
  3. Studios like Bethesda are churning out the same format on tired old engines - it's just not fresh.
  4. I'm sick of paying £40+ for a buggy mess (Kingdom Come, Assassin's Creed) and it's putting me off buying any new releases.
 
I have exactly this problem with the oculus rift. On the one hand it is the single most impressive piece of technology I've ever seen, and on the other, I just can't be bothered with it.

Slowly plodding through AC Origins and it's OK, but I know mostly I'm sticking with it because it offends me less than other games I've tried recently. i.e. I don't have to think too hard and I don't feel like I'm having to battle with the controls, it's just easy play.
 
strumpusplunket said:
I've also found that when I do manage to play something I find myself giving up at some point due to gnawing apathy, which never happened before.
Click to expand...

I totally relate to this. I always find the prospect of sitting at my PC to play a game far more exciting than actually doing it. So often I start a game up and quit after 10 mins because I just cannot be bothered.
 
Firejack said:
e-sports games have completely changed the way developers think about games these days. Many games are balanced around the current meta of top pro players and it ruins the game for casual players. Overwatch is a great example of this. They have tweaked so many heroes and added so many shields its basically impossible to kill another team of equal skill without using the current team composition and ultimate combinations used by the top players. Many e-sports games are destroying old favourite genres (Real Time Strategy being the best example) in order to make the game easier to follow for an audience in a tournament setting.
Click to expand...

Even in games that aren't e-sport centric there is a lot of pandering to the high profile "top" players - I hate it when someone comes up with an innovate way that wins out against them and then they concoct some insincere argument about how it is cheap/unbalanced or whatever and the developer panders to them and nerfs it.

Also too many players who want to be able to win without actually putting the effort in which annoyingly developers often pander to.
 
My 12 year old step son, I've got hundreds (literally) of games on my PC including Battlefield V - Origin Premium which I bought primarily for him - yet he sits at my PC and says hes bored and has "nothing to play" and then sits and watches endless hours of Youtube video's of gaming as opposed to playing them!!!

Me, I default to GTA V, FSX and Battlefield V which I'm really enjoying although my favorite is still Battlefield 2 by a very long way.

I really should sell my rig or at least ditch my 1080ti Amp Extreme for something like a 980ti as frankly I just don't really use my PC to justify having such a card - I use a 43" TV as a 4K screen but tend to run my games at a lower resolution to get higher fps rates (and quite frankly it looks just as good) for the vast majority of my PC useage these days a basic laptop (which I already have) would more than suffice my needs alas.

Love gaming, but work / life gets in the way and justifying what I have is increasingly difficult, on the other hand though, a second 1080ti in SLI is something that really appeals to me despite all of the above!! :o :p :D
 
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