Survival crafting. That's not gameplay, that's busywork.
What?! You don't like making spears? You don't like building log palisades? You don't like doing it for the 900th game in a row?!
Counterpoint: games where you speed through the early part of the progression and get around to automating or otherwise trivializing many of the initially tedious elements are pretty cool. I'm talking about games like Scrap Mechanic or Astroneer. The core gameplay loop is going out exploring, collecting materials, bring them back to base and repeat. But by allowing you to get the basic resources automated you can focus on building setups to defend your base and produce more resources passively. It's a very satisfying form of progression.
I think Subnautica really did that loop really well. Starting out you needed to grab fish to stay alive, a bit of an investment but not super tedious, exploring gave you some farming options, more exploration let you recharge batteries, and you kinda kept going and going. It's the game that made me enjoy the genre under very specific circumstances. It gave you the feeling of needing to survive while also not tugging at your coat asking you to eat another dozen potatoes or something.
Subnautica's standout feature compared to most survival crafting is that its world is actually designed rather than randomly generated.
Would legit rather play a simulator game based on my job than touch that shit
Turn-based RPGs
I prefer turn-cringe RPGs
Open world, suvival, crafting
Games with these qualities that are actually good are marketed as RPGs or adventure games
My favorite games are FTL, Papers Please, We Love Katamari, Castlevania NES, Wild Guns and Fallout New Vegas and FZero X. I don't even know what I like.
"gacha" games. We used to call that shit loot boxes just a few years ago
MMO
Don't get me wrong, there are a few MMOs I like, but the vast majority are awful.
Anything that compares itself to stardew valley, mid game that spawned a bazillion worse knock offs where you play in a souless happy charming Cozy^(TM)^ village where everybody knows everybody and there's never any interpersonal disputes
Also horror games and open world, sandbox, survival crafting games
I upbared you because I respect having a diversity of opinions in a community but I also think your opinion on Stardew Valley is bad and wrong.
MMO - I like multiplayer games just fine, but whenever they call it “massively” multiplayer, I know it’s going to be a grindy time-sink with anemic gameplay and the requirement to join some sort of group of other players in order to progress. It’s one of the few things I have filtered on Steam because it’s a guaranteed hard pass every time.
Turn-based - This one is hard for me to admit because I’ve played lots of great turn-based games and will inevitably play more of them, but for some reason when turn-based is a key feature, my brain interprets it as being a low-budget and/or low-effort game, or that the gameplay won’t match how the game is presented. It’s not that I dislike the concept of turn-based play, but when I see “turn-based” in a description I just glaze over.
Early Access - I don’t dislike early access, but the fact that it has no specific definition bothers me a lot. There’s no way for me to tell whether the game is a complete enough experience to be worth starting, so I usually end up passing until the game gets a full release (which isn’t a bad thing, but it does mean that early access is an automatic red flag.)
There are certain genres that I’m not that interested in, like puzzle games, visual novels, hardcore simulation games, etc., but the above are things that make me think twice about a game even if it looks interesting otherwise.
I agree with early access, I got burned a fair few times getting in on hype and the pitch when I was younger. If I'm hearing good stuff I might pirate early access stuff to see if it's really for me, but I have a hard rule of passing on early access. Shit like Towns and Godus made sure I'll never really trust early access despite the success stories. (Hell even Stonehearth was a disappointment despite it actually getting a 1.0)
Damn, I like some examples of everything listed here except shady money extraction schemes.
Pay to play is my biggest dealbreaker. I'm either paying once, or paying for dlc. But I'm not paying to continue to play a game that isnt FF14
probably roguelikes with meta progression since i know the first 10 hours is gonna suck until i unlock some good abilities/items to make it tolerable
I like meta progression because I'm doodoo at video games and they help me win anyway
RTS games, namely because I can't micromanage fast compared to some esports gamer hyped up on gamefuel.
RTS games that let you issue orders while the game is paused are the only ones I'll play
The only RTS I ever liked was lego rock raiders, and that's probably because I was a child with nothing else to do.
I'm pretty terrible at RTS multiplayer but I love when they're in single player. Single player also lets the devs give you cool abilities and units that would be horribly broken in multiplayer.
soulslike
fuck off, boring ass dodgeroll grimdark cringe
Any sort of deck-building because it feels like homework
This is why I skipped every game of Gwent
"Do you want to play a hand of Caravan?"
Fuck no I don't. Let me scavenge my caps 6 at a time in peace.
MOBA. honestly i don't know why everyone's playing these. even if all the matches were not radioactive cesspools of toxicity i still don't find its gameplay loop enjoyable or fun.
“Free to Play with in game purchases”
Or the suddenly becoming popular
“Pay for a full game but still has in game purchases”
"Procedural generation"
Gaze upon my vast array of extremely similar structures/landscapes, this totally won't turn exploring the world into a boring chore.
My 3 C's for the past 6 or 7 years: crafting / card-based / competitive
I can be won over with near perfect execution though (eg Subnautica is the dreaded survival/crafting but I love it).
Card based
Soulslike (if it's 2d tho, that somehow makes it better for me though?)
Crafting
Survival
Metroidvania. I could barely get through one Castlevania, I really don't appreciate tons of backtracking.
Zombies
Crafting
Metroidvania
Retro/Arena (Boomer) Shooter - I am the exact demographic for these but I played enough of them in 1996 make something else i beg you
5v5. All the most toxic games are 5v5, whether its CSGO or League etc. I can't stand them. Though the real problem is automated matchmaking and lack of server browsers, most other pvp games have ways of mitigating the toxicity but 5v5's really just encourage it full tilt.
I really wish larger team based esport games were the ones that took off, but alas.
Horror. What is the appeal of being scared you all are weird
4X
The first X is fun and then it's miserable
'RPG' when all that means is 'levelling and loot mechanics'. Those just break verisimilitude for me for no actual benefit. I can't really buy into fantasy of somebody (especially with a somewhat established backstory of excellence) to start out as an incompetent buffoon and then in a span of a week become the greatest at everything ever. Such games also often have really poor mechanics elsewhere, often by making the game combat-heavy and not giving you a particular diversity of options when in combat (for example, BG1 and 2 martials largely just get 'hit enemy' and, maybe, 'use equipment').
This criticism applies to looter-shooters and to souls-likes. The former are at least almost always bad shooters which are made addictive via their RPG mechanics, and the latter usually have a rather one-note gameplay of dodging things by rolling, which not only feels dull but also looks very silly and breaks verisimilitude for me.
This criticism does NOT apply to Disco Elysium. I also had fun with New Vegas, which made me realise that I do like narrative parts of games, as Fallout games in general have very subpar gameplay.
'Live service'.
'Multiplayer' - I don't really care for multiplayer. Not a very competitive person. And I can entertain myself in challenging ways by picking up a math textbook and solving problems presented there, or finding problems from math olympiads and solving those. (I know, I have not yet posted the solutions in the other relevant thread - I have been too busy; I have 3 problems' solutions ready and written on paper, the geometry problem I have solved in my mind but have not written the solution yet, and the remaining problem I am yet to produce a detailed solution for.)
'Open world' - usually just means that a lot of the time one has to waste on traversing boring environments.
Story driven, cinematic
I want to play a videogame that makes me feel like I'm getting better at the mechanics not one where the mechanics are there only to progress the story
Open World means the game is probably going to be way too long for me to actually play it.
first person shooter
"hack and slash"
Roguelikes, pixel graphics, horror, card-based
2D is usually a pass, although there was such a game that I passed on for a long time (Rimworld) that ended up becoming my all time most played game.
Post-apocalyptic and zombies especially have been done to death (pardon the pun) and I just find them boring as hell.
However I adore open world survival craft and as long as a game doesn't look like total shit I'll give it a try (usually a try first just to be safe)
games
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
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