[Ramble warning.]
You guys have been helpful any time I had questions. And the game was fun for enough of the playthrough. But I just… am starting to enjoy it less and less. Looking ahead down the road, the path isn’t fun, and just turns me off from wanting to load the game up. In fact, I just got one-shot by a telestomp and I Alt F4’d.
Infinite scaling is fine. In fact, it can be fun.
It can be fun to get through a level, high intensity, butt clenching battles, trying not to get hit, maneuvering around, dishing out damage when you can, etc. This is what I loved about D3, was the greater rift leaderboard pushing.
What’s not fun is a telestomp attack that one-shots you.
It can be fun making a character. Planning it all out is half the fun, god knows I’ve spent hours on PoB when I played PoE. Figuring out what skills you enjoy the look & feel of, then figuring out how to make them play well.
What’s not fun is bricking all the stash tabs you hoarded over the course of the last month or two. Or trying to make LP0’s or 1’s something other than 0’s and 1’s. Or merging into an LP2 and getting the absolute worst thing you could have, and needing to start the month+ process all over again, all for a temporary, intermediate-at-best placeholder item.
Maybe ARPG’s just aren’t for me??? I don’t feel like they’ve always been like this. Diablo 2, the obvious reference point of the genre because it’s a timeless classic, didn’t feel like this to me. And I’ve played Remastered recently, so I know it’s not “nostalgia.” Top-end PvP gear is pretty obnoxious, but it’s not necessary, and so D2 indeed does not feel like it had all of this artificial “engagement milking.”
Marvel Heroes, to me, was the greatest ARPG ever made. And it absolutely did not have this issue. I stayed engaged in that game for years upon years, because I had so many characters to try out, with depth to try to master, and various different ways to test myself, all while getting to enjoy the play of the characters. (And the interactions between the Marvel characters made the world really feel alive. Seriously, this game was beyond S tier. But anyway…)
If you see what you wanna do… and it looks fun and great, and you’re not even sure if it’s gonna work, but you can’t wait to try it out…
https://i.imgur.com/IRn1ouK.jpeg
But then there’s this giant WALL blocking you off…
Do you really feel motivated to climb it??? Or, perhaps, more likely… you just push through it anyway, despite it being there, rather than because it’s there.
As you collect all your items and throw them into Stash Tab 576, are you really thinking to yourself, “I love this so much”? As you lose 25 forge from a single craft and the item bricks at 0 before you could even get a t5 on it, are you really saying, “thank god for this shot of disappointment, that way when my craft goes well someday, that shot of dopamine will be amplified”? Have we, collectively, as gamers, really become crazed addicts like that??? I watched a video earlier today, some LE streamer was crafting on a weapon. He lost 25 forge on first craft, went from 40 to 15, and he was like, “RIP, this is bricked.” But he kept going just to try, and he Hoped like 7 times in a row with some crits, and got 3 affixes finished.
… And the comments were like, “I love this game’s crafting, it’s so satisfying when you pop off!”
And I read that like… what??? It was so weird to me, how people accept and even PRAISE such game mechanics that, to me, are an obnoxious obstacle in the way of actually playing the game. But I guess in this gamble-stream generation of gamers, they LOVE it? It’s so weird to me.
Am I in the minority here??? Maybe I certainly am, here in the LE forums itself, but… I dunno, man. Games just aren’t what they used to be… to me, anyway. Do I need a new hobby, now, at the age of 37? Has this one changed too much?
To me, the designs like what I’ve talked about feel like cheap engagement tactics. Like, needless game time extensions. Instead of letting the player get to what they want, and risk them achieving everything too fast and then quitting because of it, they want to try to stretch it out by any means necessary. And so it’s weird to me when those stretch tactics get praised! And I wish companies stopped trying to over-analyze these types of things, and just made a game as good as they could, with ZERO thoughts or notions about how to milk some more money out of it. Especially because, for me, those game time tactics turn me off from a game, and end up becoming why I no longer play it entirely… rather than I keep playing through it, forcing myself to come out the other end, thus extending my game time by however long the mechanic is designed to add.
… Okay. I think I’m starting to go in a circle now, so I suppose I’ve said my piece. I guess it’s back to Marvel Rivals for me. Even though, over there, they throw bot games at you if you lose Quick Matches, while hiding that information from you, because it makes you feel better to stomp a victory and - dun dun dun - it keeps you engaged and extends your game time… (I just can’t escape it, can I?)
Remember when an insanely great game was crammed into a 64 bit cartridge, and had no battle passes and required no patches or content updates?