Exactly, popular games are a lot of the time just 7/10 slop. And there are many games that are actually great, but a lot of people hate like Mass Effect: Andromeda, Forspoken, DA2, DS2, Oblivion.
@@TheManinBlack9054 7/10 games arent bad, oblivion and ds2 were great games that were critically acclaimed and should not be next to fucking forspoken or andromeda.
The phrase “it’s just a game” is such a weak mindset. You are ok with what happened, losing, imperfection of a craft. When you stop getting angry after losing, you’ve lost twice. There’s always something to learn, and always room for improvement, never settle.
@@Blonder_Studio some people enjoy improving and working on themselves, which is not a bad thing at all. that's why competitive games exist in the first place
@@TheManinBlack9054 End of day, it is a game. It doesn’t translate to life experience/skill/value. You can’t flip shit over things that have little to no impact to your life. Not to say you can’t become frustrated, just don’t dwell on it or have it take over. And it is ok to be bad, that’s life, you can’t win it all.
Really love this advice. I used to take SO much pride in my OW competitive rank. One day I finished a gaming session and realized "I legit can't remember the last time got off this game in a good mood". That thought soon led to me quitting completely. Now I play fun, non-skill-based matchmaking shooters like BattleBit or TF2 community servers and couldn't be happier. Back then I thought playing games like I do now was a total waste of time; now I realize that playing games I didn't even like was the real waste.
Man, I was going to say something that maybe some people will humiliate me, which is the following, I actually prefer Valorant more than TF2, seriously, because I don't know, I don't feel comfortable playing TF2, I just I always die most of the time and I can't even kill someone and the fact that the game doesn't have a way to talk to people since I'm f2p and that discourages me In Valorant, I don't know, I feel more comfortable for some reason
I often think about a tweet from, I think Jacob Gellar? Where he basically said: "Go to a singleplayer game's subreddit, and you'll find a bunch of people having a great time, posting photo mode screenshots etc. Go to a multiplayer game's subreddit and you'll find the most miserable people ever."
I think if you ever want to try multiplayer games, you should either do the party type one you do with friends, or the chaotic ones that have 12+ players on each team. (5 vs 5 is just too sweaty)
@@EeveeRealSenpai to be clear I do play some multiplayer stuff here and there, just very rarely Most of which has been playing Titanfall 2 MP every couple weeks for the past half a year. Sadly I don't really have access to voice chat which is a big reason I don't do multiplayer.
@@EeveeRealSenpai I don't agree with that. Art is an attempt at communicating a message or set of emotions. It's not everything under the sun. My bank's phone app isn't art. Although it may contain art. Neither is the game of chess art, but you can of course buy a nice set of chess pieces that certainly are art.
@@EeveeRealSenpaiThis isn't a good definition of "art" tho. It's like saying football is art. Yes football could theoritically be considered art, but only when played by the best players in the world. The fact those people are close to a perfection and they master their art so well ! But when played by casuals, football isn't art, it's just a game.
100%. I have over 4000 hours in that game and I just get no more enjoyment when playing the game. It's just terrible with all the shitty events and endless grind.
I quit long ago for the same reason, then came back after a while and started playing low tier instead of high tier, that was massively fun, I think warthunder is most fun below 5-6 br
I have over 1000 hours in Overwatch myself. Started on release and played for about 3 years - mostly freeplay, with some comp. I followed the news and played a lot of the modes. I was genuinely having a good time. But eventually I realized I'm not enjoying my time anymore. That said, I don't regret playing it. I learned a lot how to "take things seriously", going over replays and everything, doing aim training etc. But eventually, it was not fun anymore. Here's to games that you can finish in a weekend, and remember as a great experience!
As a Titanfall 2 pilot, I just can't relate. FPS games lost their way when memorizing bullet spray patters replaced moving around and gibbing opponents with mid-air rockets.
Perhaps you regret the time you lost but don't regret your mistake, it made you wiser. "Sometimes the only way to win is to not play." A piece of advice that has many applications.
i climbed from gold to GM in overwatch and that experience was very gratifying, but KEEPING your GM badge was just a job. A completely isolating experience I’m glad I’ve given up on lol
I guess it's definitely worth spending time getting really good at a game if someone plans to engage in e-sports, or to make money from gaming in general. Otherwise, one better off treating it as a relaxing hobby and invest their time elsewhere in life
Same for me with R6 Siege. The first few months were fun but then many years later of playing it pretty much every day later, I realised I mostly just got frustrated and ended up in a bad mood from playing it. Uninstalled it and now just enjoy occasionally watching other people's highlights of the fun bits, without having to deal with any of the frustration or toxicity myself
This has been something on my mind for a few years. I realised this for the first time with Counter Strike and I learnt the lesson again with Overwatch. As a game developer it really makes you question what the end goal even is.
Many if not most games nowadays are part of the 'attention economy' model, so unfortunately the aim is in-game hours and ensuing monetisation, not fun.
Yeah, the rank shift made me drop from CS:GO too. I remember feeling like I was too good for my rank, getting a 90% winrate and not ranking up after winning many games in a row, but losing 1-2 matches and ranking down. The final straw for me was after I won 12 games in a row, then lost one game and ranked down. Five matches later, I got another loss, which brought me down to silver 1. these days I only play games with elo systems if I can actually see the numbers and math behind it, my experience with CS:GO permanently changed my outlook on competitive games in general.
Hey man, it sounds like you've been doing a lot of introspection in your recent videos. I really appreciate your vulnerability. Much respect for you and I'm very interested in your game dev journey. Keep up the good work!
I've become a big Gundam fan in recent years, so when Gundam Evolution came out I jumped on soon after release. That game's playerbase died down pretty quickly until only the very competitive players were left, which isn't for me unfortunately. But I stayed on that game's grind on and off up until it's cancellation. There were some good times, but not enough to warrant all the losses and stompings... everyone take Garbaj's advice to heart! You don't want to learn it the hard way!
I started subscribing to this ideology back in 2016-2017, when I decided to stop playing Counter-Strike competitively. I was in Master Guardian, tho I think I didn't quite make it to MGE, but I did get close. I just gave up on trying to get better and everything. But I only took the "play games to have fun" mentality REALLY SERIOUSLY around 2021-2022. Nowadays, I still play games like Fortnite, COD, Overwatch, alongside games like Project Zomboid, Vamp Survivors, Nikke, Genshin, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Gunfire Reborn, Deep Rock. I branch out, I play a lot of stuff, I don't stick with games I don't enjoy. Hell, if I know I'm not gonna enjoy something, like playing OW ranked or playing it all day every day, I just don't do it. I already have a lot to do and a lot to live up to, so wasting my precious me time on getting angry at games and being miserable instead of having fun is just not worth it. I spent a lot of money on Paladins, but I did eventually quit. I just didn't think the sunk cost outweighed me not having fun anymore. Having fun is a precious commodity. It's not worth ruining that for the sake of doing or playing something that you don't enjoy in the slightest.
I had about 150 hours in War Thunder when I had this realization. I would just sit there for hours saying "Surely the next game will be the one" and just having an absolutely awful time. After a particularly bad session I made a rule for myself that if i died to a "Gaijin moment" I would hop off and play something else. Nowadays my sessions rarely last more than an hour and I count myself among the few people who play that game and genuinely enjoy it most of the time.
This story reminds me of myself, back in 2007 - 2009. I played a lot of CoD 4, even competitive and I'd say I was pretty good at it. I solo trained every map, getting to know every "frag" location and all that. But it also caused me to no longer enjoy the game, I enjoyed winning.. but not playing, and every time our team was defeated, it made me feel bad... more than I had with any other game, which I just played casual.
Same here. I used to play CS:Source competitively a lot back in the day in community servers. Getting to know the chokepoints, nade locations, etc. was pretty fun. But I didn't enjoy it in the long-run. I guess it's definitely worth spending time getting really good at a game if someone plans to engage in e-sports, or to make money from gaming in general. Otherwise, one would be better off treating it as a casual hobby and invest their time elsewhere in life where it's more meaningful...
If you click the icon on the desktop because you feel like you have to, instead of because you want to have fun. It's time to rethink whether or not this game is worh your time. I sunk 1500 into apex, 500 of those are deserved, fun times. The rest felt like work and i don't even play ranked. Valuable lesson learned
This is why I've moved away from playing games that lack a definitive end. With live service games you either stop playing while it's still fun and remember it fondly, or more likely, play it until you hate the game and regret playing it.
kinda the same for franchises, like, my memories wit call of duty are all incredible and fun, but thats cause BO2 is the most recent one i play i know the new ones suck, so instead of letting them fuck up the memories i had with those games id rather avoid them
Similarly I started in silver (hell probably below the equivalent of that in the overwatch one season one ranked system). Through sheer addiction and a lot of hard work I made it all the way to GM1. I thought I would then push for top500 or even higher, but strangely I just stopped caring. I still play ranked, but much more casually. Nowdays I just play in masters lobbies with friends for an hour or two to have fun. The grind stopped and I don't really feel a desire to go back to it. I had a great time and met amazing people on the climb, but now I just want to play games with friends. I don't even remember the last time I solo queued any game. Who knows, maybe the urge will strike me again in a year or two. But for now I'm content just relaxing and putting all of my energy towards other things in life. Song writing, getting my physics degree, personal relationships and so on. Honestly I lost where I was going with this, but I thought you might appreciate a different perspective and a similar sentiment.
They fell but people kinda miss those, i think everybody would have played rank if the matchmaking was more fair, and the ranked communities in basically every game weren't just barrel of explosive nuclear acid...
What competitive arena shooters? I wish arena shooters like quake were still a thing, not competitively though, fuck competitive gaming biggest blight upon videogames
@@CorruptedMaterial competitive is fine when it's both independently run and independent of game balancing. tf2's competitive is really fun because it's just a bunch of people who enjoy the game playing with each other and trying to be the best. there's no ingame incentives to play competitive, there's no balancing changes that target competitive, if tf2 competitive didnt exist then the base game would not be any different. that's the kind of competitive gaming that I think really improves gaming. don't design your game to be competitive, design your game to be so fun and in-depth and unrestrictive that the players start competitive leagues all on their own.
Thanks man, I really needed this. I have been playing way too much Valorant lately and really at the end of every session I just feel more depressed than before I started. I appreciate your content, keep up the good work, and stay safe man!
Back in Overwatch I was a hell of a Mercy main. Excellent positioning, rezzing, heals, the whole package, even got to GM if I'm not mistaken. But because of my eagerness to be good at something, I pushed away 4 of my friends whom I played with. The competitiveness of Overwatch just made me push them away because I wanted to be good at something, and that cost me my friendship with them, which I miss quite a lot. Now, after Overwatch 2, I have lost my friends, have lost my rank, and have lost my skills with any kind of support really. Every time I look back at what playing Overwatch cost me, I regret getting into competitive games so much that I haven't played any other competitive multiplayer games whatsoever since.
For some reason i see my self having chosen kind of a similar path as described. I also played a lot of Overwatch and other PvP ranked shooters, but slowly moved away to less competitive and eventually singleplayer games
As someone who stopped Overwatch when it started to become a bad experience, I have to admit I regretted for a long time having stopped it, because all of my irl friends were still playing Overwatch ranked and would basically only play this for the entire time. So I played other games alone, I made "online" friends, etc. Its only recently that I stopped regretting this. After speaking with a few other people including people who had spent hours in LoL ranked, Valorant ranked or OW ranked, they were all saying that in the end, they regretted it because it wasn't worth all the sacrifices. That's when I realized that I did not really have any memories of bad experiences or video games I regret playing, and that's probably the most important thing.
I played league of legends for around 10-11 years, originally it was just messing around, coming up with off meta builds and trying to make them viable, which was pretty fun and often times worked really well, but eventually I started grinding ranked with friends and doing a few college tournaments. I didn't have a part-time job while studying, but I might as well have, from how all my spare time was league and for how shitty it made me feel, but with no pay.
What allowed me to take some distance from these games was to learn how they are actually designed. The achievements, the shiny badge, the marginally better item, the title: all of these have been crafted to give you a distant, hyped goal, for which you will be determined to grind (and thus stay on the game) for hours on end. They have not been designed for fun, but to provide the player with a perception of significant prestige or improvement if they do get it. Multiplayer games, especially free ones, revolve deeply around these mechanics to make their customers stay longer online, and thus engage more, and thus likely spend more. The principle is the same with social medias: your addiction is their profit.
I see a lot of people here saying ranked is not for them, that skill-based matchmaking is bad, that they lose enjoyment of the game because of the grind. All of these feelings and opinions exist in the Fighting Game Community, but to a much lesser extent than in FPS or MOBA communities. I always see advice in the FGC to work on oneself, to not let rank determine one's self-worth. Salty? Take a break and analyze why you got so frustrated. Getting cheesed by an opponent? Say GGs and ask for advice. Feeling stuck? Take a longer break. Straight up don't like the game? Don't play it. Anything competitive will pit you against your weaknesses, your reaction to that determines whether you enjoy the experience or not. Your feelings are valid, you ARE frustrated in that moment, but the matchmaking didn't do that. Your self-inflicted pressures did that. And that's something you can work on.
I recently started to play games with a "casual mind". Before, I used to try to be an advanced skilled player in every game, researched all the meta, all the tricks, all the strategies. Even in single Player games. It more and more felt like work instead of fun. I didn't want to be one of those casual players who are considered to be "inferior". Changing that mindset made games fun again.
Play games that make you happy. What an excellent quote to end the video! I am glad you said this, because I have about 3,000 hours in Counter-Strike and I have enjoyed every single one of them. It's my favorite game and it's always something I can come back to. I know plenty of people who have put less hours in cs and regret them all, and I think the biggest thing to remember is that if you enjoy it, you're not wasting your time
Bro so relatable. Same story with ow but I was more miserable the higher I climbed till eventually I switch to only playing qp with friends managing to sync thousands of more hours. I don't regret the fun times but defiantly regret all the time I spent grinding just to grind. Now I just try new games , mostly indies, that interest me. I like to seek out interesting designs and art to learn from and the indie scene is just full of em
hey, if you like fast paced, gory FPS games, you'll probably love: TREPANG 2 it's and indie game made by 4 people (+ voice actors etc.), and it's a really fun shooty shooty boom kaboom game :)
Same story for me, but with Rocket League. Use to enjoy the game, didn't give f about ranking, still I rose to Diamond II very quickly. Then the downfall began. Started to grind. Started to loose often and rank was almost staying the same. The game became all about grind and rank at that point and I was constantly criticizing myself for having "skill issues". It's been a few months I left the game for good and feeling much better now. Plying story based games only now.
I did this with Apex legends. Although I miss the game, I don't regret stopping. The servers, the audio issues, the server issues, the cheaters. I feel so good not having to deal with all those. I am still waiting to see if a day comes where all or atleast most of those issues are resolved.
I played CoD MW2019 to the point that I became knowledgeable about guns IRL. Was consistently getting first places in matches after a few warm up rounds. It was part of my day to day. Then Warzone came, I hated it, everything about it. Even with all the peer pressure and my youtube feed being nothing but warzone, I didn't play it, I kept playing multiplayer matches until I couldn't deal with the 25GB updates per week anymore. And when MW2 came, multiplayer looked underwhelming, lots of hackers, no reasonable prices on sales. I decided to let it go. No regrets whatsoever. I play slow paced tactical shooters now, I even got into firearms IRL. And watching this video made me think I would've been stuck on warzone or whatever BS call of duty online is nowadays. Wouldn't made the friends I made in the tactical gaming and real life gun community.
something ive noticed with quitting overwatch is the times i do come back to it, it's a lot more enjoyable because im not burnt out. take breaks from games once you stop having fun with them. it doesnt mean you can never play the game again
I used to play tons of CSGO and League about 10 years ago, but playing competitive games just for ranked ladder was driving me mad when you started loosing more rank points than you get for winning, so I dropped them. These games are built into you either play normal games and encounter complete chaos and trolling or you go ladder and you have to sweat. Still I like to mix some pvp/competitive gameplay into my game list, sinking some ships in SoT, winning races in Forza Horizon, PvP arenas in MMOs or playing some casual TFT matches. nothing beats the feeling of winning against real human opponent, as long as both sides do it for fun, not to get nicer icon on your profile
Everything you said was my experience with Genshin Impact. I remember not getting the character I wanted and being consumed with rage. I had to reflect and figure out how to step away from the game because I was too addicted.
That's how I felt about Master Duel. At first things started fun and I was just there to play and see how far I could get, but once you get to the top ranks it stops being fun and starts to become stressful. I still play MD sometimes, but when I'm playing the ladder I'm not there to climb, but instead to grind a bit for gems to build more decks. It's more fun that way.
Yep, I had my own experience with that, not to that degree, but definitely did the right decision. Played around...300 hours of Valorant before realizing "I do not enjoy this, I simply don't", uninstalled it and never looked back, felt so much better ever since.
I have 6000 hours clocked in Rust, I was definitely quite addicted. I noticed that I would get in big fits of rage especially playing a game like that due to being able to lose a lot of progress in a short amount of time. But I guess something hit me because I finally realized that for most people (unless its your livelihood), games only really serve one purpose, and its to have fun, and i was doing the complete opposite, borderline letting this game affect my life and mental health. After realizing that and thinking about it a lot i began to care much less about what was making me so addicted to Rust. Might sound silly, but the rare times that i do play Rust now i get this bitter thought about how i wasted so much time that could've been spent doing much more productive/better things. It is okay to want to improve and be good at a game if it doesn't affect you, but for me i found it best to just stop caring about trying to be good at games and now i play them leisurely.
I've completely stopped playing competitive games myself. I used to be big on Overwatch and I even got up to GM, but after that I didn't feel like I had anything left to prove and wasn't having fun for a while
It's good to see you're doing better now. Historical games are surprisingly fun. War of rights, Bannerlord, Kingdom Come Deliverance, and Enlisted are so cool because they put you in the boots of people in those historical times & places. Overwatch and fortnite are like the potato chips & soda of gaming. A quick empty addicting rush compared to the learning curve and reward of knowledge learning the game. That's partly why I like RDR2 so much is because I learned about mechanics and secrets in the game as I played.
I noticed this after playing Dota 2 for 3000 hours. Each match would take like 1 hour and at the end I would lose just because some mistakes in the early game and opponent would be OP at the end destorying everyone. I didn't play much after that, I just played the fun Aghanim event game modes. I started playing other games and mostly enjoyed playing indie games like Hollow Knight, Paradise Killer, Oneshot, Outer Wilds, Return of the Obra Dinn, etc. I always tell my friends, don't play to win, play to have fun. Sometimes they say I would have fun with winning but they don't notice they are getting frustrated 5 matches for 1 match win and it doesn't worth it. Gaming should be fun and enjoyable, you should always care about yourself in every situation!
I had a similar experience with LoL: used to play it quite a lot but at some point I just realized that competitive games are not for me as I'd mostly just get frustrated. But that being said, I had to spend those hours in it to learn to stop playing it. Thats why I have no regret. I couldn't have chosen otherwise because I didn't know.
switching between different games you actively play can be very fun. Ill play CSGO for a hundred hours, drop it for a few months, pick it up again. Same with other games i play like hunt. Balance is important.
Yeah I feel this. Multiplayer games can be a ton of fun, but that fun doesn't last forever. It's wise to recognize when your frustration starts to outweigh your fun and simply stop playing. Of course, it's easier said than done with all the predatory limited time battle passes, skins, rewards, etc... but that stuff isn't even close to being more valuable than your time. Yeah it feels bad if you come back a year later and realize you missed out on something you would have wanted, but, going back to the first point, you shouldn't be playing games that make you feel bad anyway. (I'm writing this to cement it into my own brain lol).
I miss old school MMOs for this reason. You could do hardcord pvp or pve. You could adventure, collect badges, do theme parks, craft, decorate a house, etc. But you had the choice of what to do and you did it because you wanted to. You could also just hang out with people or spend time with your guild. I feel like that magic and love for most gameplay is lost currently with only a few exceptions. You also didn't have to worry about having (x) amount of money to buy the skin you like or the best gun, whatever it is. You did it yourself.
Oh man, I played OW during the beta, it was one of the most fun times I’ve ever had in any game. I’ll never forget how excited I was when it released after following development. I don’t think it’s the same game I knew and came to love, but I still chase that initial high every once in awhile. A match here and there every once in awhile satisfies me after coming to terms that I don’t enjoy the game as much as I used to. Oh well, what can ya do
Nice video! 👍🏻 I agree, I also wasted A LOT of time on Overwatch and DbD. But on the subject of Overwatch, I still want to play Overwatch, but I don't want to play Overwatch 2. That's why I'm so excited for Marvel Rivals!
I'm glad I'm playing solo player games more. I was so caught up in Fortnite and COD a while ago, and I eventually realized I just wasn't even having fun anymore.
Long time ago (after playing Wow like crazy), I learned that I play games to relax, enjoy the time and have a good time with my friends, not to grind something, not to have a gaming job, and achive stupid thigs. I always stay away from games that requere copious amout of time to reach certain gameplay mechanics, certain content, certain badge.
In one of your recent videos ("I refuse to quit"), there was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. gameplay in the background, 5 seconds into the video I decided that's it, I'm buying the trilogy; I've been wanting to play it for such a long time. Possibly the best game I've played in the past few years, was GENUINELY fun. And the timing was perfect too, because I haven't been enjoying games as much lately. Finished SoC last week, was fucking phenomenal (aside from the vanilla bugs that costed me 4hrs). Now CS is up next and finally CoP, which I'm extremely looking forward to (also, STALKER 2 releases in a few months, holy). Thanks for having good taste in gameplay footage. I've always believed in the supremacy of single-player games. If anyone is looking for great indie games I have a few recommendations to check out: SIGNALIS, Metal: Hellsinger, Devil Daggers, HYPER DEMON, Othercide, Homebody, VA-11 HALL-A, Bloody Hell (best FREE single-player game on steam). Feel free to share recommendations.
I think it's definitely a good thing to evaluate whatever you're doing and whether you want to continue doing it. I don't think games necessarily need to be fun or enjoyable. Just like any type of art, they can provide value in different ways to different people. So if you play games to have fun or relax and you're not getting that out of the experience, it might be a good idea to take a break or stop and focus on other things, whether it's another game or something else entirely.
I had the same experience with overwatch, the first 200H or so were amazing and then the game stopped being fun, from a stale meta to an horribly toxic community to it just...being plain boring and uninteresting. It's one of the rare games where i feel this way, i still play TF2 to this day where i have 2K+ Hours and it never makes me feel like i'm not having fun.
based, tf2 never gets old, even if you arent feeling like shooting people you can just mess around in a community server and have fun. I'm sitting at 5k hours and havent regretted it.
I've played thousands of hours of LoL, mostly when I felt bored and didn't know what else to play. Not that I regret it, but could have spend the time playing other interesting stuff instead of going for the same easy repetition. There's a wonderful world of indie and unknown games out there to discover. A small and short but intense and beautiful experience is always worth it.
Related to this topic, I miss War of Rights. I ran with the 10th US Regulars and I really enjoyed the regiment-based play, though I ended up getting burnt out over time
Makes me glad to be a TF2 fan, the competitive part has been broken since forever, and you can find all kinds of characters playing (unless you find a lobby filled with bots). Sure, there are shit lobbies, but there's nothing to gain and nothing to lose, and that's pretty clear from the beginning.
I was putting 500-600 hours a year into Counter Strike a few years ago, and I dont really regret it because most of it was playing with friends. But I wont ever be grinding a game that hard, with practicing in aim train and nade line ups solo. I play about 200 hours a year now, which is like 3 to 5 games a week. Which seems a lot healthier for my stage of life now
Those video games are made to hook you and keep you addicted. If you buy into their battle pass, season pass, crate drop, ranking etc, you just end up playing by their rules.
Some games give you a lot of memories and make yourself. But games like Dota 2 or genshin after multiple thousands of hours make you loose your personality and you can literally feel you’re nobody from nowhere.
You know, this prompted me to look at my most played on steam, I have 4 games with over 100 hours, and not more than 250 hours max. The games that are at that play time I'd say were always good times, Insurgency 2 is still my most played, but I know for a fact Fallout 3, NV and the original Halo on the 360 would probably clock into the same if not more time spent, but again, I'm happy with that time. This is a good message.
I have 4,645 hours in Mount & Blade: Warband. Most of that was in multiplayer. It's been 5 years since I played it. I did rage sometimes but I don't regret playing. I loved it. It was definitely an escape from reality and not healthy I'm sure hah. I haven't played much M&B: Bannerlord though. I don't play much of anything anymore. Deaths in the family and other real life stuff happening kinda killed my desire to play games. Even when I do, I'll record footage to make a video but then I don't make a video and feel like I can't play again until I do. Nobody even watches my videos, they're mainly just for me like a gaming diary or something, but I feel obligated for some reason.
I only play games I enjoy as long I actively enjoy them. If I start to become salty at a game I start paying attention to it, if after a few days (3 ish) in a row feel like my sessions aren't really fun anymore I just take a break of that game and play something else. Then after a while (months, years) I revisit that game and have fun again for a while till that cycle repeats. But it helps preventing me hating (or regret playing) the game. I also kinda gave up on competitive games and BRs/Tarkov-likes since cheaters are becoming more and more common. Which is already a bummer for non-competing PvP (and co-op) games, but in those games it's just game ruining.
It's the games that get these big updates and balance changes/ edits, battle passes, and feature removals that make players feel this way. A good game comes from the initial design philosophy, it has to have good bones- a solid foundation, or it will leave you feeling hollow and sunken. When a game needs sweeping changes in order to stop bleeding players, it's time for everyone to look to a new game, both the company and the players should look forward to something else at that point. And that's not the same as a good game that has a single serious issue, like a bug or a hacking/bot problem. DLC is different story though. It Can be just as problematic as patches. Famous examples would be Destiny (year 1 D1 player), DBD with both bad patches and hit or miss DLC, and hearthstone with diabolical power creeping card packs. These all make excellent notes of what not to do when designing a game. I myself have mostly retired to single-player/ local-offline games myself. The games that I still think positively about are the ones I make an effort to actually keep playing. (Monster hunter, tf2, bf3, some others. Good times.)
I love overwatch and i still play it, dispite it not really being as fun as it used to be for me I've set a goal for myself to hit at least gm before i quit Overwatch and im not a quitter, however being that ive consistently played pretty much only overwatch since season 5 of ow1 ive missed out on a lot of great games, i realized this after playing through Ghost of Tsushima and 100%ing God Of War 4, so ive been forcing myself to find time to play other games, recently I've been playing sekiro as ive always wanted to get into souls like games but I've never gotten around to it, idk how far i am into the game, (I've made it through the ashina castle up until a specifc story point, and im currently checking out the area that has all the monk dudes) and while its pissed me off more times than i can count, i feel like ive actually accomplished something everytime i play unlike with overwatch and its an amazing feeling
I am the same but with cs:go played over 4k hours and never got above Gold Nova until they rebalanced the ranking system and am now back where down to the lower ranks. Ive slowly stopped playing as much, might play once in 2 weeks to a month if theres alot of other people i know playing. Started to play more casual games like TF2 and learning some 3d modelling skills in blender. Currently playing Gregtech Minecraft Modpack with some friends.
Had the same problem with Overwatch. The beta was a ton of fun, first few hundred hours were great, then my interest jumped off a cliff. In other games you just have to take a break, I've been playing CSGO/CS2 for 10 years now. When it gets frustrating (which it inevitably will) I walk away for a bit, sometimes months. This game is the only competitive shooter that will consistently regain my interest for months on end. It's a true love hate relationship
Online games are dead, not rly but they are. Most people playing CS,OW,LoL are addicted. Not saying everybody is, I still love playing CS2 on Casual. Overall I think the best fun to have with other people is on CO-OP games and less on Online-competitive ones I'm glad you're back dude!
I always like to say, "play games that you like, not games that others play"
Exactly, popular games are a lot of the time just 7/10 slop. And there are many games that are actually great, but a lot of people hate like Mass Effect: Andromeda, Forspoken, DA2, DS2, Oblivion.
@@TheManinBlack9054 7/10 games arent bad, oblivion and ds2 were great games that were critically acclaimed and should not be next to fucking forspoken or andromeda.
Amen
Well said👍
exactly.
“Games are supposed to be fun”
The phrase “it’s just a game” is such a weak mindset. You are ok with what happened, losing, imperfection of a craft. When you stop getting angry after losing, you’ve lost twice. There’s always something to learn, and always room for improvement, never settle.
@@TheManinBlack9054 how to not enjoy gaming at all
@@Blonder_Studio some people enjoy improving and working on themselves, which is not a bad thing at all. that's why competitive games exist in the first place
@@Blonder_Studio It's just a Fortnite "Ninja" Blevins meme.
@@TheManinBlack9054
End of day, it is a game. It doesn’t translate to life experience/skill/value. You can’t flip shit over things that have little to no impact to your life.
Not to say you can’t become frustrated, just don’t dwell on it or have it take over. And it is ok to be bad, that’s life, you can’t win it all.
Really love this advice. I used to take SO much pride in my OW competitive rank. One day I finished a gaming session and realized "I legit can't remember the last time got off this game in a good mood". That thought soon led to me quitting completely.
Now I play fun, non-skill-based matchmaking shooters like BattleBit or TF2 community servers and couldn't be happier.
Back then I thought playing games like I do now was a total waste of time; now I realize that playing games I didn't even like was the real waste.
Man, I was going to say something that maybe some people will humiliate me, which is the following, I actually prefer Valorant more than TF2, seriously, because I don't know, I don't feel comfortable playing TF2, I just I always die most of the time and I can't even kill someone and the fact that the game doesn't have a way to talk to people since I'm f2p and that discourages me In Valorant, I don't know, I feel more comfortable for some reason
I don't think anybody gonna flame you for that, personally I'm surprised you compared valorant to tf2 and not cs2 😅@@samuelramos421
i love battlebit i have 3000 hours in it but i recently switched to squad btw like 2800 hours of that are just recon and the rest is medic
Good on you dude :). Good wisdom and a mature mindset. I hope everyone that needs it, sees this video.
@@samuelramos421Don't worry, I also think TF2 is overrated trash.
I
in fact
do not play multiplayer games. And boy am i sometimes glad.
Yeah me too. I do try it sometimes to check out what's the buzz but i eventually quit the game after a month.
I often think about a tweet from, I think Jacob Gellar? Where he basically said:
"Go to a singleplayer game's subreddit, and you'll find a bunch of people having a great time, posting photo mode screenshots etc.
Go to a multiplayer game's subreddit and you'll find the most miserable people ever."
I think if you ever want to try multiplayer games, you should either do the party type one you do with friends, or the chaotic ones that have 12+ players on each team.
(5 vs 5 is just too sweaty)
@@EeveeRealSenpai to be clear I do play some multiplayer stuff here and there, just very rarely
Most of which has been playing Titanfall 2 MP every couple weeks for the past half a year.
Sadly I don't really have access to voice chat which is a big reason I don't do multiplayer.
@@Verchiel_ I don't think you're missing out on anything with voice chat 😂
games are just interactive pieces of art, you cant appreciate it if you dont enjoy it
Competitive multiplayer games aren't necessarily art. There's usually an artistic component to them, but they're games first and foremost.
well said
@@Visstnok art is subjective though, so all games can be considered art
@@EeveeRealSenpai I don't agree with that. Art is an attempt at communicating a message or set of emotions. It's not everything under the sun. My bank's phone app isn't art. Although it may contain art. Neither is the game of chess art, but you can of course buy a nice set of chess pieces that certainly are art.
@@EeveeRealSenpaiThis isn't a good definition of "art" tho.
It's like saying football is art. Yes football could theoritically be considered art, but only when played by the best players in the world. The fact those people are close to a perfection and they master their art so well ! But when played by casuals, football isn't art, it's just a game.
War Thunder in a nutshell. Always get off unsatisfied. Got to final tier jets and gave up before the last one.
I feel ya man
I got to top tier and went to playing mid/high tier props, with the occasional MiG-21SMT game here and there
100%. I have over 4000 hours in that game and I just get no more enjoyment when playing the game. It's just terrible with all the shitty events and endless grind.
I stopped playing that game because it made me feel like an abusive relationship.
I quit long ago for the same reason, then came back after a while and started playing low tier instead of high tier, that was massively fun, I think warthunder is most fun below 5-6 br
War Thunder is the only game I regret playing. Man that game sucks al joy out of you.
I have over 1000 hours in Overwatch myself. Started on release and played for about 3 years - mostly freeplay, with some comp. I followed the news and played a lot of the modes. I was genuinely having a good time. But eventually I realized I'm not enjoying my time anymore.
That said, I don't regret playing it. I learned a lot how to "take things seriously", going over replays and everything, doing aim training etc. But eventually, it was not fun anymore.
Here's to games that you can finish in a weekend, and remember as a great experience!
You like stealth games with guns? You could try intravenous or atleast the demo cause the full game isnt out yet.
Need For Speed Carbon. One of the shortest games in the series, and perfect for what you're describing.
As a Titanfall 2 pilot, I just can't relate. FPS games lost their way when memorizing bullet spray patters replaced moving around and gibbing opponents with mid-air rockets.
It's time to get back to the frontier pilot
Perhaps you regret the time you lost but don't regret your mistake, it made you wiser.
"Sometimes the only way to win is to not play." A piece of advice that has many applications.
2000h of being a silver takes some crazy mental resilience.
i climbed from gold to GM in overwatch and that experience was very gratifying, but KEEPING your GM badge was just a job. A completely isolating experience I’m glad I’ve given up on lol
I guess it's definitely worth spending time getting really good at a game if someone plans to engage in e-sports, or to make money from gaming in general. Otherwise, one better off treating it as a relaxing hobby and invest their time elsewhere in life
Same for me with R6 Siege. The first few months were fun but then many years later of playing it pretty much every day later, I realised I mostly just got frustrated and ended up in a bad mood from playing it. Uninstalled it and now just enjoy occasionally watching other people's highlights of the fun bits, without having to deal with any of the frustration or toxicity myself
This has been something on my mind for a few years. I realised this for the first time with Counter Strike and I learnt the lesson again with Overwatch. As a game developer it really makes you question what the end goal even is.
Many if not most games nowadays are part of the 'attention economy' model, so unfortunately the aim is in-game hours and ensuing monetisation, not fun.
those who think “finishing a game”, “clearing backlog” are the ultimate goal of gaming should watch this
It can be easy to fall into this trap. Glad to hear you've managed to get out of it, Garbaj, and good luck!
This was me with CSGO, especially after the "rank shift" that happened about a decade ago.
Yeah, the rank shift made me drop from CS:GO too. I remember feeling like I was too good for my rank, getting a 90% winrate and not ranking up after winning many games in a row, but losing 1-2 matches and ranking down. The final straw for me was after I won 12 games in a row, then lost one game and ranked down. Five matches later, I got another loss, which brought me down to silver 1. these days I only play games with elo systems if I can actually see the numbers and math behind it, my experience with CS:GO permanently changed my outlook on competitive games in general.
@evilbarrels2506 I mean, it makes sense they hide it to prevent it from getting manipulated.
@@AnonOmis1000 it already gets manipulated. People boost and smurf all the time.
@evilbarrels2506 it'd be even easier if you knew exactly what caused it to go up or down.
@@AnonOmis1000 What would this manipulation look like?
Hey man, it sounds like you've been doing a lot of introspection in your recent videos. I really appreciate your vulnerability. Much respect for you and I'm very interested in your game dev journey. Keep up the good work!
I've become a big Gundam fan in recent years, so when Gundam Evolution came out I jumped on soon after release. That game's playerbase died down pretty quickly until only the very competitive players were left, which isn't for me unfortunately. But I stayed on that game's grind on and off up until it's cancellation. There were some good times, but not enough to warrant all the losses and stompings... everyone take Garbaj's advice to heart! You don't want to learn it the hard way!
I started subscribing to this ideology back in 2016-2017, when I decided to stop playing Counter-Strike competitively. I was in Master Guardian, tho I think I didn't quite make it to MGE, but I did get close. I just gave up on trying to get better and everything. But I only took the "play games to have fun" mentality REALLY SERIOUSLY around 2021-2022.
Nowadays, I still play games like Fortnite, COD, Overwatch, alongside games like Project Zomboid, Vamp Survivors, Nikke, Genshin, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Gunfire Reborn, Deep Rock. I branch out, I play a lot of stuff, I don't stick with games I don't enjoy. Hell, if I know I'm not gonna enjoy something, like playing OW ranked or playing it all day every day, I just don't do it. I already have a lot to do and a lot to live up to, so wasting my precious me time on getting angry at games and being miserable instead of having fun is just not worth it. I spent a lot of money on Paladins, but I did eventually quit. I just didn't think the sunk cost outweighed me not having fun anymore.
Having fun is a precious commodity. It's not worth ruining that for the sake of doing or playing something that you don't enjoy in the slightest.
I had about 150 hours in War Thunder when I had this realization. I would just sit there for hours saying "Surely the next game will be the one" and just having an absolutely awful time.
After a particularly bad session I made a rule for myself that if i died to a "Gaijin moment" I would hop off and play something else. Nowadays my sessions rarely last more than an hour and I count myself among the few people who play that game and genuinely enjoy it most of the time.
This story reminds me of myself, back in 2007 - 2009. I played a lot of CoD 4, even competitive and I'd say I was pretty good at it.
I solo trained every map, getting to know every "frag" location and all that.
But it also caused me to no longer enjoy the game, I enjoyed winning.. but not playing, and every time our team was defeated, it made me feel bad... more than I had with any other game, which I just played casual.
Same here. I used to play CS:Source competitively a lot back in the day in community servers. Getting to know the chokepoints, nade locations, etc. was pretty fun. But I didn't enjoy it in the long-run.
I guess it's definitely worth spending time getting really good at a game if someone plans to engage in e-sports, or to make money from gaming in general. Otherwise, one would be better off treating it as a casual hobby and invest their time elsewhere in life where it's more meaningful...
When I got older I felt the same, 47 now and all I enjoy is a good division 2 gaming session, 5k+ hours in it so far and I don't regret any of it.
If you click the icon on the desktop because you feel like you have to, instead of because you want to have fun. It's time to rethink whether or not this game is worh your time.
I sunk 1500 into apex, 500 of those are deserved, fun times. The rest felt like work and i don't even play ranked. Valuable lesson learned
This is why I've moved away from playing games that lack a definitive end. With live service games you either stop playing while it's still fun and remember it fondly, or more likely, play it until you hate the game and regret playing it.
kinda the same for franchises, like, my memories wit call of duty are all incredible and fun, but thats cause BO2 is the most recent one i play
i know the new ones suck, so instead of letting them fuck up the memories i had with those games id rather avoid them
Similarly I started in silver (hell probably below the equivalent of that in the overwatch one season one ranked system). Through sheer addiction and a lot of hard work I made it all the way to GM1. I thought I would then push for top500 or even higher, but strangely I just stopped caring. I still play ranked, but much more casually. Nowdays I just play in masters lobbies with friends for an hour or two to have fun. The grind stopped and I don't really feel a desire to go back to it. I had a great time and met amazing people on the climb, but now I just want to play games with friends. I don't even remember the last time I solo queued any game.
Who knows, maybe the urge will strike me again in a year or two. But for now I'm content just relaxing and putting all of my energy towards other things in life. Song writing, getting my physics degree, personal relationships and so on.
Honestly I lost where I was going with this, but I thought you might appreciate a different perspective and a similar sentiment.
This is partly why I don't finish games. I play when I want to have fun, and once I've hit a point where the game isn't fun anymore, I stop playing.
The fall of competitive arena shooters in mainstream gaming will be met with thunderous applause
they already did fall. overwatch is a damn moba.
They fell but people kinda miss those, i think everybody would have played rank if the matchmaking was more fair, and the ranked communities in basically every game weren't just barrel of explosive nuclear acid...
What competitive arena shooters? I wish arena shooters like quake were still a thing, not competitively though, fuck competitive gaming biggest blight upon videogames
There are no mainstream arena shooters.
@@CorruptedMaterial competitive is fine when it's both independently run and independent of game balancing. tf2's competitive is really fun because it's just a bunch of people who enjoy the game playing with each other and trying to be the best. there's no ingame incentives to play competitive, there's no balancing changes that target competitive, if tf2 competitive didnt exist then the base game would not be any different. that's the kind of competitive gaming that I think really improves gaming. don't design your game to be competitive, design your game to be so fun and in-depth and unrestrictive that the players start competitive leagues all on their own.
Thanks man, I really needed this. I have been playing way too much Valorant lately and really at the end of every session I just feel more depressed than before I started. I appreciate your content, keep up the good work, and stay safe man!
I love ur videos man, even if its just personal stuff, its always interesting to hear your thoughts on videogames
Back in Overwatch I was a hell of a Mercy main. Excellent positioning, rezzing, heals, the whole package, even got to GM if I'm not mistaken. But because of my eagerness to be good at something, I pushed away 4 of my friends whom I played with. The competitiveness of Overwatch just made me push them away because I wanted to be good at something, and that cost me my friendship with them, which I miss quite a lot.
Now, after Overwatch 2, I have lost my friends, have lost my rank, and have lost my skills with any kind of support really. Every time I look back at what playing Overwatch cost me, I regret getting into competitive games so much that I haven't played any other competitive multiplayer games whatsoever since.
Have you tried to go back to these old friends?
For some reason i see my self having chosen kind of a similar path as described. I also played a lot of Overwatch and other PvP ranked shooters, but slowly moved away to less competitive and eventually singleplayer games
Thanks man for making this video, so many people need to think more about their video gaming experience and how it affects them
1:40 I was listening when the guy in the front line get hit and fell down, lmao
Words of wisdom. The simple fact of moving towards more single player games should help a lot. Multiplayer is too often designed to waste your time.
As someone who stopped Overwatch when it started to become a bad experience, I have to admit I regretted for a long time having stopped it, because all of my irl friends were still playing Overwatch ranked and would basically only play this for the entire time. So I played other games alone, I made "online" friends, etc.
Its only recently that I stopped regretting this. After speaking with a few other people including people who had spent hours in LoL ranked, Valorant ranked or OW ranked, they were all saying that in the end, they regretted it because it wasn't worth all the sacrifices. That's when I realized that I did not really have any memories of bad experiences or video games I regret playing, and that's probably the most important thing.
I played league of legends for around 10-11 years, originally it was just messing around, coming up with off meta builds and trying to make them viable, which was pretty fun and often times worked really well, but eventually I started grinding ranked with friends and doing a few college tournaments. I didn't have a part-time job while studying, but I might as well have, from how all my spare time was league and for how shitty it made me feel, but with no pay.
Alternatively, “don’t play games if you don’t enjoy them”
this recent style of content makes me exited to watch your videos again
Good advice. I don't like grinding so I don't have such issues, but I've seen friends fall this way before.
What allowed me to take some distance from these games was to learn how they are actually designed. The achievements, the shiny badge, the marginally better item, the title: all of these have been crafted to give you a distant, hyped goal, for which you will be determined to grind (and thus stay on the game) for hours on end. They have not been designed for fun, but to provide the player with a perception of significant prestige or improvement if they do get it. Multiplayer games, especially free ones, revolve deeply around these mechanics to make their customers stay longer online, and thus engage more, and thus likely spend more.
The principle is the same with social medias: your addiction is their profit.
i have same experiance with league. I havent played league in over a year and im feeling better than ever!
Bro I needed this. I've been playing Overwatch 2 again the last week and have just been feeling terrible after
I see a lot of people here saying ranked is not for them, that skill-based matchmaking is bad, that they lose enjoyment of the game because of the grind.
All of these feelings and opinions exist in the Fighting Game Community, but to a much lesser extent than in FPS or MOBA communities. I always see advice in the FGC to work on oneself, to not let rank determine one's self-worth.
Salty? Take a break and analyze why you got so frustrated. Getting cheesed by an opponent? Say GGs and ask for advice. Feeling stuck? Take a longer break. Straight up don't like the game? Don't play it.
Anything competitive will pit you against your weaknesses, your reaction to that determines whether you enjoy the experience or not.
Your feelings are valid, you ARE frustrated in that moment, but the matchmaking didn't do that. Your self-inflicted pressures did that. And that's something you can work on.
I recently started to play games with a "casual mind". Before, I used to try to be an advanced skilled player in every game, researched all the meta, all the tricks, all the strategies. Even in single Player games. It more and more felt like work instead of fun. I didn't want to be one of those casual players who are considered to be "inferior".
Changing that mindset made games fun again.
Play games that make you happy. What an excellent quote to end the video! I am glad you said this, because I have about 3,000 hours in Counter-Strike and I have enjoyed every single one of them. It's my favorite game and it's always something I can come back to. I know plenty of people who have put less hours in cs and regret them all, and I think the biggest thing to remember is that if you enjoy it, you're not wasting your time
Bro so relatable. Same story with ow but I was more miserable the higher I climbed till eventually I switch to only playing qp with friends managing to sync thousands of more hours. I don't regret the fun times but defiantly regret all the time I spent grinding just to grind. Now I just try new games , mostly indies, that interest me. I like to seek out interesting designs and art to learn from and the indie scene is just full of em
hey, if you like fast paced, gory FPS games, you'll probably love:
TREPANG 2
it's and indie game made by 4 people (+ voice actors etc.), and it's a really fun shooty shooty boom kaboom game :)
Love the new mic. Miss the Godot vids man
Hindsight is 20/20. It's hard to get out of your comfort zone to find something more satisfying but it's definitely rewarding when you can.
Same story for me, but with Rocket League. Use to enjoy the game, didn't give f about ranking, still I rose to Diamond II very quickly.
Then the downfall began. Started to grind. Started to loose often and rank was almost staying the same.
The game became all about grind and rank at that point and I was constantly criticizing myself for having "skill issues".
It's been a few months I left the game for good and feeling much better now. Plying story based games only now.
I did this with Apex legends. Although I miss the game, I don't regret stopping. The servers, the audio issues, the server issues, the cheaters. I feel so good not having to deal with all those. I am still waiting to see if a day comes where all or atleast most of those issues are resolved.
I played CoD MW2019 to the point that I became knowledgeable about guns IRL. Was consistently getting first places in matches after a few warm up rounds. It was part of my day to day. Then Warzone came, I hated it, everything about it. Even with all the peer pressure and my youtube feed being nothing but warzone, I didn't play it, I kept playing multiplayer matches until I couldn't deal with the 25GB updates per week anymore. And when MW2 came, multiplayer looked underwhelming, lots of hackers, no reasonable prices on sales. I decided to let it go. No regrets whatsoever. I play slow paced tactical shooters now, I even got into firearms IRL. And watching this video made me think I would've been stuck on warzone or whatever BS call of duty online is nowadays. Wouldn't made the friends I made in the tactical gaming and real life gun community.
sometimes you need to see the frustration first hand though, taking advice is hard but this is definitely good advice
something ive noticed with quitting overwatch is the times i do come back to it, it's a lot more enjoyable because im not burnt out. take breaks from games once you stop having fun with them. it doesnt mean you can never play the game again
I used to play tons of CSGO and League about 10 years ago, but playing competitive games just for ranked ladder was driving me mad when you started loosing more rank points than you get for winning, so I dropped them. These games are built into you either play normal games and encounter complete chaos and trolling or you go ladder and you have to sweat.
Still I like to mix some pvp/competitive gameplay into my game list, sinking some ships in SoT, winning races in Forza Horizon, PvP arenas in MMOs or playing some casual TFT matches. nothing beats the feeling of winning against real human opponent, as long as both sides do it for fun, not to get nicer icon on your profile
Everything you said was my experience with Genshin Impact. I remember not getting the character I wanted and being consumed with rage. I had to reflect and figure out how to step away from the game because I was too addicted.
That's how I felt about Master Duel. At first things started fun and I was just there to play and see how far I could get, but once you get to the top ranks it stops being fun and starts to become stressful. I still play MD sometimes, but when I'm playing the ladder I'm not there to climb, but instead to grind a bit for gems to build more decks. It's more fun that way.
It's so nice seeing more people enjoy War of Rights. I love that game so much
Yep, I had my own experience with that, not to that degree, but definitely did the right decision.
Played around...300 hours of Valorant before realizing "I do not enjoy this, I simply don't", uninstalled it and never looked back, felt so much better ever since.
I have 6000 hours clocked in Rust, I was definitely quite addicted. I noticed that I would get in big fits of rage especially playing a game like that due to being able to lose a lot of progress in a short amount of time. But I guess something hit me because I finally realized that for most people (unless its your livelihood), games only really serve one purpose, and its to have fun, and i was doing the complete opposite, borderline letting this game affect my life and mental health. After realizing that and thinking about it a lot i began to care much less about what was making me so addicted to Rust. Might sound silly, but the rare times that i do play Rust now i get this bitter thought about how i wasted so much time that could've been spent doing much more productive/better things. It is okay to want to improve and be good at a game if it doesn't affect you, but for me i found it best to just stop caring about trying to be good at games and now i play them leisurely.
I've completely stopped playing competitive games myself. I used to be big on Overwatch and I even got up to GM, but after that I didn't feel like I had anything left to prove and wasn't having fun for a while
It's good to see you're doing better now.
Historical games are surprisingly fun.
War of rights, Bannerlord, Kingdom Come Deliverance, and Enlisted are so cool because they put you in the boots of people in those historical times & places.
Overwatch and fortnite are like the potato chips & soda of gaming. A quick empty addicting rush compared to the learning curve and reward of knowledge learning the game.
That's partly why I like RDR2 so much is because I learned about mechanics and secrets in the game as I played.
I noticed this after playing Dota 2 for 3000 hours. Each match would take like 1 hour and at the end I would lose just because some mistakes in the early game and opponent would be OP at the end destorying everyone. I didn't play much after that, I just played the fun Aghanim event game modes. I started playing other games and mostly enjoyed playing indie games like Hollow Knight, Paradise Killer, Oneshot, Outer Wilds, Return of the Obra Dinn, etc. I always tell my friends, don't play to win, play to have fun. Sometimes they say I would have fun with winning but they don't notice they are getting frustrated 5 matches for 1 match win and it doesn't worth it. Gaming should be fun and enjoyable, you should always care about yourself in every situation!
I had a similar experience with LoL: used to play it quite a lot but at some point I just realized that competitive games are not for me as I'd mostly just get frustrated. But that being said, I had to spend those hours in it to learn to stop playing it.
Thats why I have no regret.
I couldn't have chosen otherwise because I didn't know.
switching between different games you actively play can be very fun. Ill play CSGO for a hundred hours, drop it for a few months, pick it up again. Same with other games i play like hunt. Balance is important.
Yeah I feel this. Multiplayer games can be a ton of fun, but that fun doesn't last forever. It's wise to recognize when your frustration starts to outweigh your fun and simply stop playing. Of course, it's easier said than done with all the predatory limited time battle passes, skins, rewards, etc... but that stuff isn't even close to being more valuable than your time. Yeah it feels bad if you come back a year later and realize you missed out on something you would have wanted, but, going back to the first point, you shouldn't be playing games that make you feel bad anyway.
(I'm writing this to cement it into my own brain lol).
I miss old school MMOs for this reason. You could do hardcord pvp or pve. You could adventure, collect badges, do theme parks, craft, decorate a house, etc. But you had the choice of what to do and you did it because you wanted to. You could also just hang out with people or spend time with your guild. I feel like that magic and love for most gameplay is lost currently with only a few exceptions. You also didn't have to worry about having (x) amount of money to buy the skin you like or the best gun, whatever it is. You did it yourself.
Oh man, I played OW during the beta, it was one of the most fun times I’ve ever had in any game. I’ll never forget how excited I was when it released after following development. I don’t think it’s the same game I knew and came to love, but I still chase that initial high every once in awhile. A match here and there every once in awhile satisfies me after coming to terms that I don’t enjoy the game as much as I used to. Oh well, what can ya do
Nice video! 👍🏻 I agree, I also wasted A LOT of time on Overwatch and DbD.
But on the subject of Overwatch, I still want to play Overwatch, but I don't want to play Overwatch 2. That's why I'm so excited for Marvel Rivals!
I'm glad I'm playing solo player games more. I was so caught up in Fortnite and COD a while ago, and I eventually realized I just wasn't even having fun anymore.
This is why I still play Starcraft 2 Coop. It's not new and definitely not what's popular anymore, but it is still fun.
Long time ago (after playing Wow like crazy), I learned that I play games to relax, enjoy the time and have a good time with my friends, not to grind something, not to have a gaming job, and achive stupid thigs. I always stay away from games that requere copious amout of time to reach certain gameplay mechanics, certain content, certain badge.
In one of your recent videos ("I refuse to quit"), there was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. gameplay in the background, 5 seconds into the video I decided that's it, I'm buying the trilogy; I've been wanting to play it for such a long time.
Possibly the best game I've played in the past few years, was GENUINELY fun. And the timing was perfect too, because I haven't been enjoying games as much lately.
Finished SoC last week, was fucking phenomenal (aside from the vanilla bugs that costed me 4hrs). Now CS is up next and finally CoP, which I'm extremely looking forward to (also, STALKER 2 releases in a few months, holy).
Thanks for having good taste in gameplay footage. I've always believed in the supremacy of single-player games.
If anyone is looking for great indie games I have a few recommendations to check out: SIGNALIS, Metal: Hellsinger, Devil Daggers, HYPER DEMON, Othercide, Homebody, VA-11 HALL-A, Bloody Hell (best FREE single-player game on steam). Feel free to share recommendations.
I think it's definitely a good thing to evaluate whatever you're doing and whether you want to continue doing it. I don't think games necessarily need to be fun or enjoyable. Just like any type of art, they can provide value in different ways to different people. So if you play games to have fun or relax and you're not getting that out of the experience, it might be a good idea to take a break or stop and focus on other things, whether it's another game or something else entirely.
I had the same experience with overwatch, the first 200H or so were amazing and then the game stopped being fun, from a stale meta to an horribly toxic community to it just...being plain boring and uninteresting.
It's one of the rare games where i feel this way, i still play TF2 to this day where i have 2K+ Hours and it never makes me feel like i'm not having fun.
based, tf2 never gets old, even if you arent feeling like shooting people you can just mess around in a community server and have fun. I'm sitting at 5k hours and havent regretted it.
*opens League while hearing the opening line*
I sometimes play a game not knowing that after finishing it i will cry over it for another week.
I've played thousands of hours of LoL, mostly when I felt bored and didn't know what else to play. Not that I regret it, but could have spend the time playing other interesting stuff instead of going for the same easy repetition. There's a wonderful world of indie and unknown games out there to discover. A small and short but intense and beautiful experience is always worth it.
Related to this topic, I miss War of Rights. I ran with the 10th US Regulars and I really enjoyed the regiment-based play, though I ended up getting burnt out over time
Makes me glad to be a TF2 fan, the competitive part has been broken since forever, and you can find all kinds of characters playing (unless you find a lobby filled with bots). Sure, there are shit lobbies, but there's nothing to gain and nothing to lose, and that's pretty clear from the beginning.
This title is applicable to more than just video games
I was putting 500-600 hours a year into Counter Strike a few years ago, and I dont really regret it because most of it was playing with friends. But I wont ever be grinding a game that hard, with practicing in aim train and nade line ups solo.
I play about 200 hours a year now, which is like 3 to 5 games a week. Which seems a lot healthier for my stage of life now
I wasted half a year trying to go pro in overwatch. I clocked in around 3-4k hours and it is time that i will never get back.
Thank you Garbaj :3
Those video games are made to hook you and keep you addicted. If you buy into their battle pass, season pass, crate drop, ranking etc, you just end up playing by their rules.
very good advice
Some games give you a lot of memories and make yourself. But games like Dota 2 or genshin after multiple thousands of hours make you loose your personality and you can literally feel you’re nobody from nowhere.
You know, this prompted me to look at my most played on steam, I have 4 games with over 100 hours, and not more than 250 hours max. The games that are at that play time I'd say were always good times, Insurgency 2 is still my most played, but I know for a fact Fallout 3, NV and the original Halo on the 360 would probably clock into the same if not more time spent, but again, I'm happy with that time.
This is a good message.
I have 4,645 hours in Mount & Blade: Warband. Most of that was in multiplayer. It's been 5 years since I played it. I did rage sometimes but I don't regret playing. I loved it. It was definitely an escape from reality and not healthy I'm sure hah. I haven't played much M&B: Bannerlord though. I don't play much of anything anymore. Deaths in the family and other real life stuff happening kinda killed my desire to play games. Even when I do, I'll record footage to make a video but then I don't make a video and feel like I can't play again until I do. Nobody even watches my videos, they're mainly just for me like a gaming diary or something, but I feel obligated for some reason.
Games are a delivery mechanism of transferring funds from your account to the CEO's.
Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.
Now I need a place to hide away.
I only play games I enjoy as long I actively enjoy them. If I start to become salty at a game I start paying attention to it, if after a few days (3 ish) in a row feel like my sessions aren't really fun anymore I just take a break of that game and play something else. Then after a while (months, years) I revisit that game and have fun again for a while till that cycle repeats. But it helps preventing me hating (or regret playing) the game.
I also kinda gave up on competitive games and BRs/Tarkov-likes since cheaters are becoming more and more common. Which is already a bummer for non-competing PvP (and co-op) games, but in those games it's just game ruining.
It's the games that get these big updates and balance changes/ edits, battle passes, and feature removals that make players feel this way. A good game comes from the initial design philosophy, it has to have good bones- a solid foundation, or it will leave you feeling hollow and sunken.
When a game needs sweeping changes in order to stop bleeding players, it's time for everyone to look to a new game, both the company and the players should look forward to something else at that point.
And that's not the same as a good game that has a single serious issue, like a bug or a hacking/bot problem.
DLC is different story though. It Can be just as problematic as patches. Famous examples would be Destiny (year 1 D1 player), DBD with both bad patches and hit or miss DLC, and hearthstone with diabolical power creeping card packs. These all make excellent notes of what not to do when designing a game.
I myself have mostly retired to single-player/ local-offline games myself. The games that I still think positively about are the ones I make an effort to actually keep playing.
(Monster hunter, tf2, bf3, some others. Good times.)
A wise man once said: "I go to multiplayer games to make sure there is nothing for me to do there"
i can slowly hear garbaj's voice raising and i cant wait to hear it in a month and wathc half the comments be confused
I love overwatch and i still play it, dispite it not really being as fun as it used to be for me I've set a goal for myself to hit at least gm before i quit Overwatch and im not a quitter, however being that ive consistently played pretty much only overwatch since season 5 of ow1 ive missed out on a lot of great games, i realized this after playing through Ghost of Tsushima and 100%ing God Of War 4, so ive been forcing myself to find time to play other games, recently I've been playing sekiro as ive always wanted to get into souls like games but I've never gotten around to it, idk how far i am into the game, (I've made it through the ashina castle up until a specifc story point, and im currently checking out the area that has all the monk dudes) and while its pissed me off more times than i can count, i feel like ive actually accomplished something everytime i play unlike with overwatch and its an amazing feeling
Yup. So glad to be in THE FINALS, gonna be putting 10k hrs in this one like I did with Titanfall 2.
I am the same but with cs:go played over 4k hours and never got above Gold Nova until they rebalanced the ranking system and am now back where down to the lower ranks. Ive slowly stopped playing as much, might play once in 2 weeks to a month if theres alot of other people i know playing. Started to play more casual games like TF2 and learning some 3d modelling skills in blender. Currently playing Gregtech Minecraft Modpack with some friends.
Had the same problem with Overwatch. The beta was a ton of fun, first few hundred hours were great, then my interest jumped off a cliff. In other games you just have to take a break, I've been playing CSGO/CS2 for 10 years now. When it gets frustrating (which it inevitably will) I walk away for a bit, sometimes months. This game is the only competitive shooter that will consistently regain my interest for months on end. It's a true love hate relationship
Online games are dead, not rly but they are. Most people playing CS,OW,LoL are addicted. Not saying everybody is, I still love playing CS2 on Casual. Overall I think the best fun to have with other people is on CO-OP games and less on Online-competitive ones
I'm glad you're back dude!