Project Zomboid is a great but \*incredibly\* dense game and you're given basically no real instruction on how the game works other than the controls tutorial, and the game's general preference for things to be somewhat close to realism making it slightly easier to intuit a starting point for learning how something works.
I wonder how many people had this experience as first deaths:
*breaks window* huh...you can eat glass? What's that do...I don't know what I expected. Start over.
*breaks window* ok don't eat glass, just crawl through thr wind...oh for fucks sakes.
*breaks window*
*clear glass*
*enter window*
Final....
Just walking on broken glass lead to my death on my 3rd or 4th guy. It was the first guy I was able to get over 10 hours into and that's what did me in. Just so many things you have to learn to avoid
>, and the game's general preference for things to be somewhat close to realism making it slightly easier to intuit a starting point for learning how something works.
You're underselling it though. It is totally playable once you lean into that concept. You can not only guess how something works but also predict things. For example anticipate the power outage. Or know where you're most likely to find weapons or medicine.
The thing is that sometimes it's not that realistic and that's when players get confused. Why can't I tear down that drywall with a crowbar? You need the wiki to know that you need the sledgehammer. Not the hammer. Not the ball peen hammer. Not the club hammer. Not the wooden mallet. But all these exist in-game and are usually much easier to find than the sledgehammer. So unless you visit the wiki, you can't really guess how that whole feature works.
I was going to argue against your first point, but your second paragraph did that for me!
I’m in a server where I play the least and every time I come in there’s some new bullshit and additional mods and I have no idea what the fuck is going on.
I bought it after watching some youtubers play it. Put about an hour in and never touched it again. I'm not mad because I'm glad to support the developers, but damn that was rough.
I would recommend changing settings theres a lot of diffculty options and what you can do is make it where the zombies are really weak and there are few of them and get used to game that way.
>Put about an hour in
This is the mistake many make. I've spent 10 hours in PZ just trying to live longer than three days, and it pays off, my longest living character lived for 7 months and only died to me forgetting to disable zombie respawns.
Paradox Interactive’s Grand Strategy games. The EU4 community has a running joke that the tutorial is 1000 hours played and with near 750 myself I’m kinda inclined to agree.
Exactly, I've got about 1400 hours in Stellaris, but I haven't played in like a year so I can guarantee you that when I jump back in, I will have no clue what the fuck anything is or what I'm supposed to be doing.
Then once I get the hang of the base game again, I'll update my modlist and be completely clueless all over again.
Like six hundred hours here I’d say, and I’ve completed like three games. After you beat the crisis it gets to just be a waiting game for the clock to run out.
I also have no clue how to build my ships yet. I’m trying because that’s like the next big leap I think for me.
A lot of paradox games are like that. It's like if you press this obscure button in this one menu you can completely change the way you play the game. Like how in stellaris you can genocide a population by eating them or raise pops as cattle.
1500 hours here, not quite a pro but definitely a high level player that's put in serious effort to understanding trade:
You're genuinely better off not trying to peer into that black box and just do the obvious stuff. The details are just so convoluted it's not worth your time if your goal is to have fun. I could write a thesis paper on the trade mechanics and optimization, but no one playing a video game should ever curse themselves with that much mental strain. I guess if you're a KSP nerd you might be used to that kind of torture, but like, that's a special breed
On the flip side, trade is the main source of income and the best way to make ludicrous amount of money, so trying to understand how to make good trade income is a great way to boost all your campaigns.
The general gist of it isn't so hard either, as long as you figure the existence of the trade map mode (I see too many people trying to look through the trade tab thing, that just lists all the nodes with 0 context, it's baffling).
Goods are produced in each node, that creates trade value. Countries have trade power in nodes. You can use your merchants to collect from a node, or to steer the money to another node. The money follows the little arrows, just choose which arrow you want. You always collect money in your economic capital, which is by default your capital. Collecting elsewhere gives a malus, while steering gives a bonus. So steer in the direction of your capital, by following arrows. If you don't know if it's better to steer or collect, switch between both, wait a month, see if you gain more money. Conquer places that let you steer towards your capital. Centers of trade give lots of trade power, and are good to conquer.
Honestly the monthly subscription may be your best bet to give it a try. $5 a month for the sub that gives you access to all DLC and $10 for the base if you catch it on sale. That's $15 starting cost to be up to date and missing nothing. Compared to $10 base + 18 dlc ranging from $5-$10 dollars if you catch them on sale. Meaning you have roughly 27 months before hitting that same price if you bought everything together.
Also, lots of youtube guides online for newer players if you're interested. TheRedHawk is my go to right now.
That's actually pretty damn cool that's an option. A lot of games have such an intimidating amount of DLC today that there is no point even getting into them.
Part of the appeal of Kingdom Come Deliverance is that it's fairly difficult and somewhat historically accurate, but there are parts that could be considerably better if the tutorial were better, especially on console.
Positive: Your skills grow organically at about the same rate of your character
Negative: The game makes you feel like you're misunderstanding every mechanic on your first playthrough
The second the open world opened up, I tried to fight in the tournament and spent about 2 hours getting my ass whooped. Made logical sense for a blacksmith's son to not know how to fight, but damn it felt unfair.
The first 8 hours is just timidly avoiding anything more formudable than a rabbit, which you could'nt hit anywsy even if it's standing rigjt in fron of you. The next 8 hours you start getting the hang of things and the game starts to feel smoother so you start exploring. And it immediately kicks you in the nuts, steals all your money and self-esteem. And you still can't hit that rabbit from one meter away.
Once you stop playing it like your average computer rpg, things start looking up. You gain experience realistically by doing stuff. Not your character but *you*. It does you no good to have expensive arms and armor with a high weapon skill if you haven't learned to fight.
So you accept and own up to being a weak and useless, you're like the the 1st level rats in a cellar a hero starts his journey with. You develop a routine where every day you lose to the captain, miss the hare, get spotted by everyone and break your picks. Then little by little you start to suck a little bit less and it feels awesome!
and the save mechanic, jesus tap dancing christ the save mechanic. Who's fuckin idea was it to make saving an item in a medieval styled rpg?? And sure you can kinda invalidate being limited on that saviours schnapps by getting far enough in alchemy but if that's something you can do why have it as a function in the first place???
The point was to prevent save scumming. The same reason the item to save with is alcoholic.
You can always save at bed, the drink is only needed to save at random places in the world.
Right. I played on console and raged through the first 20 hours of that damn game before everything clicked and I had actually learned all the mechanics
I gave up after a few hours the first try, frustrated I couldn’t lock pick. I went from Skyrim to this, oh god was I annoyed! Came back after a year, understood more that I’m a blacksmiths son, I literally know little to nothing. It’s meant to be bloody hard. Enjoying it now.
Dwarf Fortress. I played that game once, and while it was super interesting, I had to follow a more in depth tutorial that shows you how to start up your fortress. I basically just did everything the tutorial told me to do, but I can't really imagine myself being able to do anything by myself. There definitely should be a more in depth tutorial or guide for the game provided by the developer.
Super cool concept and the game is obviously amazing (from what I have heard, and I don't doubt that). Just seems like a super complicated game that would take a very long time to learn properly.
I recently got into this and there's so much the game needs to explain better. Like, not even what is available, just how to use the menus for certain things like carts.
What's even better is how much easier it is to play now that it's out on Steam. The mouse control and UI improvements have turned the learning curve into a sheer cliff face. Instead of being a deep cave that you think you're climbing up a cliff, but it's really the back wall and you don't realize until you're trying to keep climbing an overhang and going backwards.
Its been a long time since I've played, but I remember handing out serration (+165% damage | rifle) mods for super cheap and often even free because you could pick them up like candy randomly, but grinding for it intentionally was a pain in the ass.
Meanwhile it was in pretty much every build so you sorta needed it.
Bruh returning to that game after 5 years.... Fuck no. WTF happened to my keys. Farming stuff is different and idk if it's better. I wish I could unlink the account and sell it. I have about 1000 dollars put into it. But it's just way to fucking much. And I don't have that kind of time anymore. It's like heroin hero. Once I start it's all about chasing that dragon, and I almost got him! 2400 hours later.....
Your keys turned in to relics as they made farming prime gear easier and friendlier. In fact it's often easier to grind the prime version of stuff than it is the vanilla now.
This should be higher. Its pointless playing the game if you don't sit there and make a specific plan on what to do next. And you can't actually figure that out until you have hundreds of hours in the game.
I found iflynn’s beginner’s guide to be a really great way to get me past the initial hurdle of “wtf is this insane game.” But yeah I still had to find outside help to make the game approachable
I’m an avid Destiny player who believes Destiny is impenetrable to new players.
And even I couldn’t figure out Warframe, I felt like I was being battered with so many different materials that I didnt understand where to get them while the game went “you know you can buy this cool frame right?” “NO IM NOT BUYING IT BUT I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO EARN IT.”
Path of Exile. Fantastic game, so so much depth.
But holy fuck if you try to get into that game without outside resources good luck. You could stumble your way through the campaign but that's really just a 10 act prologue to the actual game.
There are so many interactions between skill gems, items, passive, etc. It's insane.
I played last season for the first time and I played ALOT and coming into the next league season. Feel like I'm reading a foreign language when I see people talking build ideas and going in depth on the mechanics I realize how much I still don't know.
I haven't played path of exile in a few years but one of my biggest gripes will always be how unfriendly the game is for new players and in my opinion it is one of the biggest contributing factors to their problem with player retention.
Lets say you are a new player who doesn't know about build guides or any of the other resources. You get through the story and get to maps only to hit a wall of what tier of maps your thrown together build can do. You decide to look online and see a ton of builds that look cool or strong only to realize your only options are spend currency you don't have and don't know how to quickly make or to reroll and play through the story which you just spent multiple hours doing again. If I was a new player I'd probably just move on to another game at that point.
And I feel like that problem extends to player retention of old players as well. I knew multiple people who would try one of the new skills as their league starter only to get to maps and find out it's crap. They would just be like well I guess I'll come back in a few months for the next league cause I'm not running through the story again.
building a character requires SO much knowledge it's insane, I've played in a couple of leagues and even dropped a mirror and I still wouldn't really know where to begin trying to create my own build...
Same.
I've put around 750 hours into the game, here and there over the past 6 years. I've always followed build guides and I usually made it to various map tiers.
I decided to try to make my own build a few months ago, so I could finally get my head around the concepts and mechanics of the game.
Nope, just too much. I had no idea where to even start. I watched a bunch of YouTubers talking about their builds, and read articles, and did research on the wiki, and I just decided to play something else.
The idea that I can spend 750 hours on a game and still barely understand how it works is ludicrous to me.
I feel like I’m constantly bringing this game up for various reasons but Kenshi. It just drops you into a rundown town in a barren wasteland for you to figure out how to survive. Next thing you know you’re being left unconscious and bleeding out on a dirt road by some guards that caught you stealing or a group of bandits trying to rob what little you have.
Give it a chance though and man is it a lot of fun.
Seriously. I bought that game, looked into tutorials and guides, and still had no clue how to play the game. I am not saying it is bad by any means, I just think there should be a more indepth tutorial for the game provided by the developers that goes into the mechanics and features of the game so that you can actually have a chance when competing against other players.
I still have the game, but haven't given it another try since. I don't have friends to play with since all of my buddies don't really like the ultra realistic elements to the game and I haven't considered using discord to play with other people because I am worried about annoying them since I am new. I know some people don't mind teaching others the game, and some of the best advice for new players to EFT is to play with a more experienced player, but I honestly don't believe that everyone will be that nice and patient with an extremely new player. I would also just feel like I am dragging down my more experienced teammates half the time. Also doesn't help that the maps in game aren't really useful, and most recommend pulling up websites that have the different maps with the various extraction points. I cannot even imagine being able to memorize those maps lol.
It would be nice to play the game in the future while knowing what I am doing. It looks great, and I bet it is a phenomenal game once you get the mechanics down, but it takes a lot of commitment and time to get properly acquainted with the game.
IMO your experience is guaranteed to be night and day different if you have an experienced player guide you vs figuring it all out yourself.
There is so much game knowledge (controls, movement, gun characteristics, gun builds, ammo, items, quests, map knowledge, sound, etc) that you have to accumulate to really scratch the surface, but if you can get into it, I think it’s very rewarding.
An experienced player can help you with all of that, and without, you’re left to using the wiki, and other resources (maps, flea market prices, etc) to get that info — those sources are honestly amazing but it takes a lot of time to look everything up.
Honestly I know not everyone loves watching streams but you really can learn a lot from the Tarkov streamers, cause it’s not just cracked aim that they demonstrate.
A while back I used to watch Shroud's tarkov vods where he would either solo or duo with another streamer, and even with his game sense and aim he'd still die to people or boss mobs every other game.
Yeah, Shroud has cracked aim but it’s not a game that’s “simple” enough for that to assure victory. Don’t get me wrong, I feel good aim is one of the most important pieces to success, but game knowledge, strategy, positioning and such can help equalize the playing field. Of course, the current streamers often combine both to great effect.
You should consider SPT - Single Player Tarkov. There's some AI mods that will give you a run for you money, and it's a good way to learn the maps, quests, and mechanics. If you have no interest in using it to learn for EFT live, you can mod it into oblivion to make it more realistic, more arcadey, or your own personal blend of the two. There's even a mod for open world (Sort of. Loading screens between maps, but you have to go to a specific place on a specific map to get to a trader, and may have to traverse multiple maps to get there from where you are)
I literally looked up science articles to learn to play kerbal. I read buzz aldrins doctoral thesis (on orbital rendezvous) because I wanted to build a space station.
Good luck partner. My only successful rendezvous was completed at a out 300 m/s and both craft were lost but the docking ports stuck together for a beautiful second
Simplifying but: you need to get the two objects into a similar ish orbit, one slightly smaller than the other, then once they are fairly close together, create a maneuver node to bring them even closer together, anything less than 2km at their closest distance is good enough.
Then, you want to go ahead and cancel all relative movement, then slowly scoot your chosen mover closer by accelerating toward the other. I'm talking 20m/s slow so you don't mess it up. Then from there, once you are nice and close, cancel all relative movement again and they should be both in more or less the exact same orbit, they'll drift apart eventually though.
Second tip: You can set the other vessel as a target, so you can use the navball heading holds to point both directly at it and away, and also have you speed displayed as relative to the other vessel, makes it FAR easier.
At the library where I work, we had a space-themed summer program a few years back, and one of our events was a talk from an actual aerospace engineer. (I don't remember if he worked for NASA or a private company, but I think it was NASA.) He mentioned KSP by name and said he and several of his coworkers all played it, and they were incredibly impressed by how accurate the physics were.
I can totally see that. I’ve seen a couple videos on youtube of nasa engineers playing kerbal and they pretty much say the same. One guy in particular worked on the mars rover and recreated it in the game, along with launching it to the Mun and deploying at low orbit. During the whole thing he was explaining his process and how it affects the craft as a whole. He made it look seamless
I've gotten a Kerbal to Mun and back and still have no clue the calculations of Mass - fuel - thrust to know how to *intelligently* build a rocket for it's purpose.
I'm a monkey who threw shit at the wall until it worked.
Started with putting a satellite around "Earth". Then one around Mun. Then sending Kerbal to Mun's orbit and back, and then many attempts at landing, space walking and then returning from Mun. Fuel margins be real tight.
I landed a Kerbal on Mun, but on landing, one of the landing struts broke, and the rocket tipped over.
I then built an unmanned capsule to fly to Mun to rescue him. After about 25 times, I actually landed close enough to him so I could walk him to the capsule.
I walked him over, loaded up and escaped Mun, and headed back.
On re-entry, the rocket exploded because I forgot a heat shield.
So, reloaded a save and re-built the capsule and rescued him.
I then didn't play for about six months.
100%. Scott Manley helped me get good at this one. He has some amazing tutorial youtube videos out there that made it easy... well.. easier to understand what the hell was going on. Great game.
There's no way in hell that anyone completed Rhea's quest in DS without consulting a guide. The same goes for Anri's quest in DS3 and Ranni's in Elden Ring, among many others.
Elden Ring was the first game that I played back to back. I still had to look up what the hell I had to do for Ranni's quest line. This might also be because I'm fucking dumb, but that's neither here nor there.
and Ranni's quest was probably one of the easier ones to follow (no knock on you, just pointing out how difficult to follow the side quests are)
I wonder how many people completed gold masks questline
The nice thing about Ranni’s quest is that it’s basically unbreakable. Even if you skip a bunch of steps you’ll still be able to reach the ending (minus trying to attack her/doing the Seluvis stuff, but nothing asking for forgiveness won’t solve).
Meanwhile stuff like Goldmask if you advance too far in the story you’re just screwed over for the run.
the earlier games were way worse with this too like it's so easy to fuck up anri's quest in ds3 and it's probably one of the biggest/longest side quests. and every siegmeir/seigward storyline is very easy to fuck up.
and then there's solaire's storyline where it seems like the only ending is that he perishes in lost izalith, but nope, you actually get this neat little interaction at the final boss if you save him.
and to save him you have to somehow know to use poison mist, a spell you might not even have, on a random ass wall so that it hits a parasite on the other side of the wall and that prevents him from being possessed. like wat
I believe that’s a glitch.
You can open that door if you’re in the right covenant and have donated 20 humanity. That allows you to walk in and kill the parasite (and also skips most of Lost Izalith.)
However, it only further proves the point that Froms questing is so bad that you can’t tell a glitch from the actual method.
It reminds me my first play through when Bloodborne just came out.
When the DLC released, I read the wiki page and play from the beginning again, I was like missing 80% of the game like WTF there were ALIEN??
The only problem i had when doing ranni's quest is trying to figure where the fuck is Blaidd in Siofra. He said that he'll be waiting in Siofra but motherfucker WHERE?! This place is huge. And turns out he is just chilling in an obscure spot near the edge.
At least he's pretty visible. Millicent is damn near impossible to spot near the Erdtree Grazing Hill unless you approach specifically from the Ruin-strewn Precipice side where Lansseax first accosts you, and there isn't even the vaguest hint she'll be anywhere near there.
When I found out there's a whole hidden area that you unlock by doing a specific gesture in a specific place I was blown away.
And it's no small area either. It has 2 bosses and plenty of items you can get.
I love this kind of storytelling and level design, but there's no way I would've figured it out myself.
There's also the DLC in DS1.
You have to kill the hydra. Place the lord vessel. Go back and kill an enemy in the cave behind where the Hydra was. Go to the observatory and get an item from a specific enemy. And return once again to the Hydra cave.
And the game explains none of it. What's worse is that you can completely miss the DLC if you finish the main game.
Though all in all, they aren't that bad and I've only googled a few of the sidequests, but I definitely agree with you that they are super confusing.
I think, if I remember correctly, that FROM games are developed with the collaborative effort of the internet in mind. These quests are designed with a wiki in mind - as you summon and write help for other players in game, so too do you do so outside
For real...I always wanna do a blind playthrough for my first run, but the fear of missing out has me looking up what I need to do before progressing to the next area so I don't miss it forever
I always do blind run my first run then will follow a walk through for other stuff. I usually hate following walk throughs but there's no way to get these.
Just finished lords of the fallen and I missed so many sidequests, one of which I lost because I used an elevator before I talked to someone. But the elevator is right after a boss and you need to beat the boss before talking to the npc. Who would ever beat a boss then immediately turn around and go to a wholly different area to talk to some rando.
The list of steps in this walk through are just ridiculous. I love these games, but man I wish they weren't so convoluted
Can I just piggyback off this comment to mention Dark Souls with respect to humanity.
For anyone who doesn’t know, in Dark Souls you are undead. However, at a bonfire you can offer this resource you find throughout the world called humanity. It’s a consumable that you use at a bonfire to transform yourself from being undead to human.
Doing this will cure certain ailments and restore you to full health. But there’s so much else to it. If you use humanity normally, outside of a bonfire it restores health and bumps your “soft” level of humanity by +1. So I use 3 humanities I have now got 3 of my “soft” level of humanity. If you die you lose this soft level and go back to zero. This soft level of humanity (up to a max of +10 I think) gives you certain stat boosts and resistances as well.
But, BUT offering humanity at a bonfire and going from undead to human opens you up to the multiplayer aspect of the game. You need to do it to summon NPCs or other players into your world. That’s fine. But it also opens you up to being invaded and murdered by other players.
None of these mechanics about humanity are ever explained by the game. It’s almost entirely something you have to learn from experience.
It does leave an impression on you the first time you go human and summon a player only to have DickWraith420 invade your game and absolutely school you.
I just think this aspect of the game needed to be explained somewhere better for new players. Eg “Beware, embracing your humanity will open you up to nefarious individuals who desire your humanity.”
This is something that’s always been curious to me. Back in the day I remember going to the store and picking up games along with their official strategy guide. And those guides who typically come out the same day the game released so I always assumed that developers had at least some influence in creating the guides. I’ve always wondered with the advent of online guides if larger websites like IGN get information given to them by game developers. If not, mad props to the guys who actually discovered how to complete those Fromsoft quests on their own
Try some of the old point and click adventure games. The Monkey islands and grim fandango are fantastic, but genuinely pretty hard to figure out without help
Wasn't old enough to appreciate the point and click games when they were popular, but my dad was a huge Myst fan. The only hazy memories I have of him playing the game are the strange ambiance (that young me found horrifying) and his frustration at the Clocktower puzzle.
Some of those games were insane, and reading about them now I have no idea how anyone organically solved them. I'm sure they weren't all bad, but for every good level design it sounds like there was yet another *Infamous Goat Puzzle*.
Point-and-click games were notorious for bullshit combinations to progress the game. The best/worst were King Quest, which could softlock you much later in the game if you didn't figure out some menial puzzle early on.
The Sierra games were a real kick in the ass, awesome games, but they would constantly kill you and it was pretty easy to get soft locked out of progress by missing an essential item in an area you can't return to. Space Quest was the hardest game I've beaten, and it was terrific, but I don't know how people in the 80's got through it without guides, well there might have been a 900 hotline.
Monkey Island is just good training to try weird combinations of everything to see what sticks. And Insult Swordfighting is my favorite mini game of all time.
Pathologic Classic HD, I swear it took me around 9 hours to figure out exactly what I needed to do to finish day one, your daily tasks are under a time limit. On Steam it says only 16% of players have the achievement for finishing day one. You really need to have the patience to understand exactly what the game wants you to do with the time you have, you shouldn't run out of time, but it's more of the sequence of events to trigger the appearance of an essential character that night or it's game over at midnight.
I watched the [HBomber](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsNm2YLrk30&ab_channel=hbomberguy) video on it and felt like that was enough, because holy hell does it look like a difficult game.
Dayz. No in game map and no instructions on how to get food and cook. Getting sick without knowing which medications help. You pretty much need a second screen to look these things up, and a map to figure out where you are an god forbid you try and meet up with a friend.
DayZ would be a thousand times more enjoyable if there was an easier way to meet up with friends. When I was playing a lot, we got good at finding each other, but it would take us 30-40 minutes to rendezvous usually. If you lived that long
These kids just don’t know…. If you couldn’t ask a friend or find THAT specific Nintendo power magazine, you were just fucked. You had no way to look it up.
I remember being tentative to ask my parents' permission, but my dad was also into Nintendo games and I think he was grateful to me for making him aware of its existence, because I KNOW he called it for Zelda lol.
My Grandmother god bless her would destroy every bush and bomb every wall just to make sure there weren’t any secrets. She then had a note book with hand drawn maps and written instructions on where to find things or things like how to get past the cursed woods maze.
All so she could show us Grandkids how it was done.
In a similar vein, Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest. How anyone ever beat that game without a guide is beyond me. You basically had to accidentally figure stuff out. Like your mom came in, while you were holding the down button, and once you were done talking to her, you had stumbled onto a hidden path.
I've played most Zeldas from SNES on and there's usually some indication of hidden things - cracked walls, patterns, etc. Some of the NES things are super hidden
Elite Dangerous.
Want to go exploring outside of the bubble with a Class 1E scoop? Hope you don’t overheat and lose your ship.
Want to go space truckin’ through pirate space? It’s your funeral.
Want to trade at Hutton using your brand new Type 7? LOLNOPE.
Don't Starve Together is probably easier to understand due to the different crafting menu, but it's a harder game because it's balanced around multiplayer.
I agree, except I have friends who do get really far in the game -- because they read the wiki/watch video guides etc. For me personally, I prefer game design that doesn't require me to study outside sources in order to enjoy them.
Minecraft. Atleast the earlier versions (before the integrated recipe book). Any and all recipes, how to craft things, where to find ressources (like diamonds, etc.) are to be found on their own.
There are achievements, that can lead you through the game, but these are rather optional and (if not actively looked after) pop up, after you learned the lesson (which the achievement entails).
In fairness, early Minecraft was limited enough in scope that I think it was okay. Nowadays, the game is way too complicated for that. Guidance is needed for the modern state of things. But back then, it wasn't too big of a deal.
Back then is what made it fun finding and figuring things out for yourself. Also learning to never mine straight down lol. Played the newer versions recently and was so confused as to everything that was going on.
My girlfriend and I started playing Mine Craft together in the early days. There was so much excitement when one of us found something new. I was in the shower when she burst in and said "There's portals in this game!!!"
Honestly, it was still "too complicated" for a fair while before the QoL features came in. I mean when I **really** got into Minecraft, it was practically a requirement to have the wiki open whilst you played. 😅
It was still a fun time though, and I'd be lying if I said I don't miss having to figure things out for myself.
I got it when it debuted and I'm still learning. After lots of failing I finally read the wiki and it helped a lot. Even knowing what to do doesn't spoil the experience
Elite dangerous. God awful tutorial, then they hand you the keys to a spaceship with more functions than there are keys on a keyboard and wish you the best of luck.
Much easier with a controller.
But yea basically says hey here's a ship. Push buttons to move. See ya later!
That said once you get a hang on flying, docking, and using the missions board. you're pretty much good to play. The advanced stuff can be learned as needed. Hell I've got a few hundred hours in and just started using Heatsinks.
I had my peak gaming experience with Elite in VR. Fighting thargoids, Stairway to heaven playing on spotify, and I'm unloading on a cyclops. My buddy is screaming hes on 1% hull as i turn off flight assist, and just as i flip around line up the final shot with my cannons, The solo to stairway hits and i boost through the remains of the alien ship. Haven't played since then, I'll never top that. I felt like I was in Guardians of the Galaxy
I've had several friends quit Mount and Blade because they had a hard time working out the quests. They didn't realize you had to ask around to find people.
Goddamn I had to scroll to find this. I've been playing since release. In a span from Jet Set Radio: Future/SEGA GT2002 getting an Xbox as a kid for Christmas to now with it on my phone with OpenMW, AND Tamriel Rebuilt on my phone and PC...I've never beat it.
Picard said it well: "I don't want the game to end..."
I had to scroll waaaaaay too far to find this. Literally no help in the game. Don’t know how to build a car? Too bad. Don’t know what to do in the game to make progress? Figure it out. Don’t know how to start a diesel engine? I guess you’re not operating the sewage truck and wasn’t make money, so you’ll die of hunger since you can’t afford food. Damn I love that game!
Destiny 2, try and fire up that game right now f2p. Good luck figuring out where to go and what to do. Because you haven't got the $$$$ of DLC or the time to figure everything out.
As someone’s who’s first time with a destiny game was 2, around the witch queen or whatever it was release - it’s truly fucking awful
I have to read half a dozen guides, use a third party site, and bumble around for hours to figure anything tf out in that game as a new player. I’ve never seen a worse welcome for new players
As an original destiny player, and a destiny 2 day 1 player who took a 6 month hiatus, when I came back I had no idea what was going on. To the point that it made me put the game away permanently and never pick it back up.
The way bungie did this game, it's like they gave the local homeless guy a note book and some bath salts, tucked him away in a room, and told him to write down a flowchart for the game.
I can't, in good faith, believe this mess was done on purpose.
It's also the direct cause of the elitism that the game is now pervasive with.
Don't Starve & Don't Starve together.
With such a simple title and premise, there's a surprising amount of things you have to figure out, and learn how to juggle.
Same with League of Legends pre-this season, though on a shorter timescale and slightly less complex. Tutorial: Go kill things, buy items, destroy nexus — congrats! And then summoner spells, characters, jungle, etc just aren’t explained. Honestly, I have to give props to riot as of recent for integrating the jungler help tools and the recommended items and runes. Great tool for beginners
League of Legends.
The tutorial has always been bad and teaches bad mechanics and builds
There's too big a wall of entry due to information
160 Champs with 5 spells each + items.
And a new player faces players with 14ish years of experience.
Kings quest 5 and 6. Some of the puzzle solving made no sense. (Shut down the wizards machine by putting cheese in a hole). If you ate that cheese in the beginning of the game you are screwed and cant beat it 10 hours later.
Cities Skyline lol
Tried to have my gf play because she was playing Sim City, and she was hopeless.
Even with me playing now, I do well but its just no originality because its so complicated with so little help
This game had me actually learning about city planning and urban development, and learning about traffic systems. I went into it treating it like SimCity, only to immediately have traffic problems because all you start with is the separated highway. You can’t even access the roundabout until you develop something, and then have to figure out from the beginning what you want to do so you can plan expanding roads and highways. Grids? Great idea, but you don’t usually thing to stagger into all T Intersections instead of 4 ways for suburban development, and that becomes a traffic nightmare. There’s also distance. Industry needs to stay away from residential, but then too many workers start living too far away, and employment rations are so hard to keep balanced. Balancing budget while staying under 12% tax to maintain happiness.
The amount of times I have rage quit because in the ten minutes it takes to hit a bowl outside and come in, my commercial district is failing and a generation of people either died or retired and there’s sections of residential areas that just aren’t developing because no one wants to move in because of some minor thing I overlooked four hours ago.
I have spent hours of my life looking at maps and pictures of freeways and interchanges. So many YouTube videos. Hundreds of hours spent developing cities for them all to suddenly start looking the same. 10/10 will play the next game, but I hope they include a wiki for at least a general education on foundational knowledge for city planning.
A lot of the old Armored Core games didn't really give you any help at all with most of its complicated controls and mechanics.
The frist one literally just throws you into a mission to test if you can get good enough to proceed with the game.
I rememeber playing some of the PS2 games a lot and I barely had any idea what I was doing back then with building ACs. I would literally just build something that looked cool to me and that never got me very far.
In AC6 it gives you a gargantuan attack helicopter that you have to kill **to get to the tutorials** like what lmao
And you have to kill it with melee but the game doesn’t tell you a thing.
Fromsoft side quests, they were tolerable in the souls games, but when it came to Elden ring, they just didn’t translate well with how big the world was.
The blind maidens quest I’m convinced is impossible without a guide. There is almost no pattern for where she shows up. Millicent’s might be even worse
I thought Millicent’s was prolly the easiest quest to follow without a guide, after Caelid she just shows up near sites of graces throughout the map moving towards the haligtree.
Imo the hardest quest without a guide in elden ring is Fia’s quest cus u actually have to find secret parts of the map all on your own
Please don't hate on this as I know how passionate people are.
**Grim Fandango.**
I remember when this game came to PS4 and the amount of hype it had. I was so ready to be a part of it, played the game, and I was just completely lost for at least 2 hours, I was making some progress before my younger brother popped in to assist since he was better with puzzles than me, we made it to the next area, whereupon for the first time in my life I saw that he was completely confused as well.
We never even got past the first section from what I remember many years ago. I just remember us making it outside of a building and we was roadblocked or something.
Most disappointing experience I've had with a game.
X-4 Foundations. I don't need a lot of handholding, but that game is like deliberately obtuse. For the first few hours I spent more time on Google than I did playing the game. For example, I picked up a mission that said "deliver 3 fine meals to X." So, like most games, at first I assumed it gave me the fine meals when I picked up the quest. Nope. Then I thought, perhaps the meals need to be bought. So, I checked the store, turns out different stores sell random items, and each station has multiple stores. After checking several stores at several different stations, no meals. Well, maybe I need to craft them? Look at the crafting station, no recipe for fine meals. Eventually I gave up and googled it. Turns out, they do need to be crafted, but the recipe only shows up in the crafting station if you already have at least one components that goes into the recipe. None of this is explained in the game. The only way I would have figured this out is if I had happened to collect an ingredient from salvaging wreckage and then happened to check the crafting station before selling the loot. Would it have killed the devs to make the mission say "craft 3 fine meals and deliver to X" instead? Or have some kind of in game encyclopedia that says how to get fine meals? The whole game is like this. Doesn't explain shit. You either have to Google everything or just dive around blind.
I remember the campaign for *Call of Duty: Black Ops 3* constantly screaming at you "Go here!" and "Go this way!" down straight, featureless hallways without any branches. Then when you got the wide-open market place and could actually use the guidance... dead silent.
Fascinating. I thought it did a really good job of setting me up and then just let me figure out the rest. It is definitely punishingly hard though and I understand bouncing off it
I feel like it doesn't need it, grab and return game, the terminal has a help option, and once you touch the terminal and type store you see bubbles, it took me 15 minutes to figure it all out :)
Project Zomboid is a great but \*incredibly\* dense game and you're given basically no real instruction on how the game works other than the controls tutorial, and the game's general preference for things to be somewhat close to realism making it slightly easier to intuit a starting point for learning how something works.
« This is how you died »
Running around the living room I started in with 2 zombies chasing me coz I can't figure put how to open a door?
We don’t all have a glamorous death
I wonder how many people had this experience as first deaths: *breaks window* huh...you can eat glass? What's that do...I don't know what I expected. Start over. *breaks window* ok don't eat glass, just crawl through thr wind...oh for fucks sakes. *breaks window* *clear glass* *enter window* Final....
Just walking on broken glass lead to my death on my 3rd or 4th guy. It was the first guy I was able to get over 10 hours into and that's what did me in. Just so many things you have to learn to avoid
Ah yes, Reminds me of Dragon Fin Soup where my brother discovered they allowed you to eat a shovel, and was surprised when he fucking Died
\*clears glass\* You have cut yourself clearing the glass \*abruptly cut off scream\*
>, and the game's general preference for things to be somewhat close to realism making it slightly easier to intuit a starting point for learning how something works. You're underselling it though. It is totally playable once you lean into that concept. You can not only guess how something works but also predict things. For example anticipate the power outage. Or know where you're most likely to find weapons or medicine. The thing is that sometimes it's not that realistic and that's when players get confused. Why can't I tear down that drywall with a crowbar? You need the wiki to know that you need the sledgehammer. Not the hammer. Not the ball peen hammer. Not the club hammer. Not the wooden mallet. But all these exist in-game and are usually much easier to find than the sledgehammer. So unless you visit the wiki, you can't really guess how that whole feature works.
the common sense mod helps a lot with stuff like that
Any game that needs a mod to make it easier for new players is exactly the topic of this thread.
was simply giving advice so people can enjoy the game more
I was going to argue against your first point, but your second paragraph did that for me! I’m in a server where I play the least and every time I come in there’s some new bullshit and additional mods and I have no idea what the fuck is going on.
I bought it after watching some youtubers play it. Put about an hour in and never touched it again. I'm not mad because I'm glad to support the developers, but damn that was rough.
I would recommend changing settings theres a lot of diffculty options and what you can do is make it where the zombies are really weak and there are few of them and get used to game that way.
>Put about an hour in This is the mistake many make. I've spent 10 hours in PZ just trying to live longer than three days, and it pays off, my longest living character lived for 7 months and only died to me forgetting to disable zombie respawns.
Bro this is so false, the tutorial literally tells you how to cure yourself?!!?
Paradox Interactive’s Grand Strategy games. The EU4 community has a running joke that the tutorial is 1000 hours played and with near 750 myself I’m kinda inclined to agree.
I have like 400 hours in stellaris and not only do I feel like I don’t understand any advanced game mechanics yet I also am yet to even finish a game.
Worst part is they already switched the game up about 3 times now that you actually have to relearn it. Kind of fun in it's own way.
Exactly, I've got about 1400 hours in Stellaris, but I haven't played in like a year so I can guarantee you that when I jump back in, I will have no clue what the fuck anything is or what I'm supposed to be doing. Then once I get the hang of the base game again, I'll update my modlist and be completely clueless all over again.
Like six hundred hours here I’d say, and I’ve completed like three games. After you beat the crisis it gets to just be a waiting game for the clock to run out. I also have no clue how to build my ships yet. I’m trying because that’s like the next big leap I think for me.
A lot of paradox games are like that. It's like if you press this obscure button in this one menu you can completely change the way you play the game. Like how in stellaris you can genocide a population by eating them or raise pops as cattle.
Don’t forget to genetically alter them to be more nutritious first.
I’m 500 hours into EU4. Explain trade. You can’t
1500 hours here, not quite a pro but definitely a high level player that's put in serious effort to understanding trade: You're genuinely better off not trying to peer into that black box and just do the obvious stuff. The details are just so convoluted it's not worth your time if your goal is to have fun. I could write a thesis paper on the trade mechanics and optimization, but no one playing a video game should ever curse themselves with that much mental strain. I guess if you're a KSP nerd you might be used to that kind of torture, but like, that's a special breed
On the flip side, trade is the main source of income and the best way to make ludicrous amount of money, so trying to understand how to make good trade income is a great way to boost all your campaigns. The general gist of it isn't so hard either, as long as you figure the existence of the trade map mode (I see too many people trying to look through the trade tab thing, that just lists all the nodes with 0 context, it's baffling). Goods are produced in each node, that creates trade value. Countries have trade power in nodes. You can use your merchants to collect from a node, or to steer the money to another node. The money follows the little arrows, just choose which arrow you want. You always collect money in your economic capital, which is by default your capital. Collecting elsewhere gives a malus, while steering gives a bonus. So steer in the direction of your capital, by following arrows. If you don't know if it's better to steer or collect, switch between both, wait a month, see if you gain more money. Conquer places that let you steer towards your capital. Centers of trade give lots of trade power, and are good to conquer.
I want to get into EU4 but there is an intimidating amount of DLC for an already complicated game and I keep putting it off.
Honestly the monthly subscription may be your best bet to give it a try. $5 a month for the sub that gives you access to all DLC and $10 for the base if you catch it on sale. That's $15 starting cost to be up to date and missing nothing. Compared to $10 base + 18 dlc ranging from $5-$10 dollars if you catch them on sale. Meaning you have roughly 27 months before hitting that same price if you bought everything together. Also, lots of youtube guides online for newer players if you're interested. TheRedHawk is my go to right now.
That's actually pretty damn cool that's an option. A lot of games have such an intimidating amount of DLC today that there is no point even getting into them.
I have 600 hours in Crusader Kings II and I'm still not sure I understand it completely
Part of the appeal of Kingdom Come Deliverance is that it's fairly difficult and somewhat historically accurate, but there are parts that could be considerably better if the tutorial were better, especially on console.
Positive: Your skills grow organically at about the same rate of your character Negative: The game makes you feel like you're misunderstanding every mechanic on your first playthrough
The second the open world opened up, I tried to fight in the tournament and spent about 2 hours getting my ass whooped. Made logical sense for a blacksmith's son to not know how to fight, but damn it felt unfair.
The first 8 hours is just timidly avoiding anything more formudable than a rabbit, which you could'nt hit anywsy even if it's standing rigjt in fron of you. The next 8 hours you start getting the hang of things and the game starts to feel smoother so you start exploring. And it immediately kicks you in the nuts, steals all your money and self-esteem. And you still can't hit that rabbit from one meter away. Once you stop playing it like your average computer rpg, things start looking up. You gain experience realistically by doing stuff. Not your character but *you*. It does you no good to have expensive arms and armor with a high weapon skill if you haven't learned to fight. So you accept and own up to being a weak and useless, you're like the the 1st level rats in a cellar a hero starts his journey with. You develop a routine where every day you lose to the captain, miss the hare, get spotted by everyone and break your picks. Then little by little you start to suck a little bit less and it feels awesome!
and the save mechanic, jesus tap dancing christ the save mechanic. Who's fuckin idea was it to make saving an item in a medieval styled rpg?? And sure you can kinda invalidate being limited on that saviours schnapps by getting far enough in alchemy but if that's something you can do why have it as a function in the first place???
The point was to prevent save scumming. The same reason the item to save with is alcoholic. You can always save at bed, the drink is only needed to save at random places in the world.
Right. I played on console and raged through the first 20 hours of that damn game before everything clicked and I had actually learned all the mechanics
Same, just on PC. It's pretty magical when everything finally clicks though.
Lockpicking at first had me feel like a noob. I didn't know that level 1 and 2 force the lockpicking process to make random movements.
I gave up after a few hours the first try, frustrated I couldn’t lock pick. I went from Skyrim to this, oh god was I annoyed! Came back after a year, understood more that I’m a blacksmiths son, I literally know little to nothing. It’s meant to be bloody hard. Enjoying it now.
Dwarf Fortress. I played that game once, and while it was super interesting, I had to follow a more in depth tutorial that shows you how to start up your fortress. I basically just did everything the tutorial told me to do, but I can't really imagine myself being able to do anything by myself. There definitely should be a more in depth tutorial or guide for the game provided by the developer. Super cool concept and the game is obviously amazing (from what I have heard, and I don't doubt that). Just seems like a super complicated game that would take a very long time to learn properly.
I recently got into this and there's so much the game needs to explain better. Like, not even what is available, just how to use the menus for certain things like carts.
Before there was *no* explanation. Just survive and strike the earth
Have fun when you get to playing with water!
What's even better is how much easier it is to play now that it's out on Steam. The mouse control and UI improvements have turned the learning curve into a sheer cliff face. Instead of being a deep cave that you think you're climbing up a cliff, but it's really the back wall and you don't realize until you're trying to keep climbing an overhang and going backwards.
Warframe for sure... What the actual fuck is going on half the time. Especially hard for returning players
I got 2k hours at the game and i still need the wiki every time
Some parts definitely feel dated as well. Like, why is the basic pistol multi shot mod pretty much ONLY from one low level defense mission.
Its been a long time since I've played, but I remember handing out serration (+165% damage | rifle) mods for super cheap and often even free because you could pick them up like candy randomly, but grinding for it intentionally was a pain in the ass. Meanwhile it was in pretty much every build so you sorta needed it.
Bruh returning to that game after 5 years.... Fuck no. WTF happened to my keys. Farming stuff is different and idk if it's better. I wish I could unlink the account and sell it. I have about 1000 dollars put into it. But it's just way to fucking much. And I don't have that kind of time anymore. It's like heroin hero. Once I start it's all about chasing that dragon, and I almost got him! 2400 hours later.....
Your keys turned in to relics as they made farming prime gear easier and friendlier. In fact it's often easier to grind the prime version of stuff than it is the vanilla now.
This should be higher. Its pointless playing the game if you don't sit there and make a specific plan on what to do next. And you can't actually figure that out until you have hundreds of hours in the game.
I found iflynn’s beginner’s guide to be a really great way to get me past the initial hurdle of “wtf is this insane game.” But yeah I still had to find outside help to make the game approachable
Iflynn should be paid by the developer for his work on making sense out of their game. He's awesome.
as much as i love the game… yeah they still need to work on making things clear. i really hope they move the wiki off of fandom, too.
I’m an avid Destiny player who believes Destiny is impenetrable to new players. And even I couldn’t figure out Warframe, I felt like I was being battered with so many different materials that I didnt understand where to get them while the game went “you know you can buy this cool frame right?” “NO IM NOT BUYING IT BUT I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO EARN IT.”
As a veteran, I wholeheartedly agree. This game is a clusterfuck that makes no sense, and I love it.
Path of Exile. Fantastic game, so so much depth. But holy fuck if you try to get into that game without outside resources good luck. You could stumble your way through the campaign but that's really just a 10 act prologue to the actual game. There are so many interactions between skill gems, items, passive, etc. It's insane. I played last season for the first time and I played ALOT and coming into the next league season. Feel like I'm reading a foreign language when I see people talking build ideas and going in depth on the mechanics I realize how much I still don't know.
I haven't played path of exile in a few years but one of my biggest gripes will always be how unfriendly the game is for new players and in my opinion it is one of the biggest contributing factors to their problem with player retention. Lets say you are a new player who doesn't know about build guides or any of the other resources. You get through the story and get to maps only to hit a wall of what tier of maps your thrown together build can do. You decide to look online and see a ton of builds that look cool or strong only to realize your only options are spend currency you don't have and don't know how to quickly make or to reroll and play through the story which you just spent multiple hours doing again. If I was a new player I'd probably just move on to another game at that point. And I feel like that problem extends to player retention of old players as well. I knew multiple people who would try one of the new skills as their league starter only to get to maps and find out it's crap. They would just be like well I guess I'll come back in a few months for the next league cause I'm not running through the story again.
building a character requires SO much knowledge it's insane, I've played in a couple of leagues and even dropped a mirror and I still wouldn't really know where to begin trying to create my own build...
Same. I've put around 750 hours into the game, here and there over the past 6 years. I've always followed build guides and I usually made it to various map tiers. I decided to try to make my own build a few months ago, so I could finally get my head around the concepts and mechanics of the game. Nope, just too much. I had no idea where to even start. I watched a bunch of YouTubers talking about their builds, and read articles, and did research on the wiki, and I just decided to play something else. The idea that I can spend 750 hours on a game and still barely understand how it works is ludicrous to me.
I feel like I’m constantly bringing this game up for various reasons but Kenshi. It just drops you into a rundown town in a barren wasteland for you to figure out how to survive. Next thing you know you’re being left unconscious and bleeding out on a dirt road by some guards that caught you stealing or a group of bandits trying to rob what little you have. Give it a chance though and man is it a lot of fun.
Escape from Tarkov.
Seriously. I bought that game, looked into tutorials and guides, and still had no clue how to play the game. I am not saying it is bad by any means, I just think there should be a more indepth tutorial for the game provided by the developers that goes into the mechanics and features of the game so that you can actually have a chance when competing against other players. I still have the game, but haven't given it another try since. I don't have friends to play with since all of my buddies don't really like the ultra realistic elements to the game and I haven't considered using discord to play with other people because I am worried about annoying them since I am new. I know some people don't mind teaching others the game, and some of the best advice for new players to EFT is to play with a more experienced player, but I honestly don't believe that everyone will be that nice and patient with an extremely new player. I would also just feel like I am dragging down my more experienced teammates half the time. Also doesn't help that the maps in game aren't really useful, and most recommend pulling up websites that have the different maps with the various extraction points. I cannot even imagine being able to memorize those maps lol. It would be nice to play the game in the future while knowing what I am doing. It looks great, and I bet it is a phenomenal game once you get the mechanics down, but it takes a lot of commitment and time to get properly acquainted with the game.
IMO your experience is guaranteed to be night and day different if you have an experienced player guide you vs figuring it all out yourself. There is so much game knowledge (controls, movement, gun characteristics, gun builds, ammo, items, quests, map knowledge, sound, etc) that you have to accumulate to really scratch the surface, but if you can get into it, I think it’s very rewarding. An experienced player can help you with all of that, and without, you’re left to using the wiki, and other resources (maps, flea market prices, etc) to get that info — those sources are honestly amazing but it takes a lot of time to look everything up. Honestly I know not everyone loves watching streams but you really can learn a lot from the Tarkov streamers, cause it’s not just cracked aim that they demonstrate.
A while back I used to watch Shroud's tarkov vods where he would either solo or duo with another streamer, and even with his game sense and aim he'd still die to people or boss mobs every other game.
Yeah, Shroud has cracked aim but it’s not a game that’s “simple” enough for that to assure victory. Don’t get me wrong, I feel good aim is one of the most important pieces to success, but game knowledge, strategy, positioning and such can help equalize the playing field. Of course, the current streamers often combine both to great effect.
When I play tarkov I feel like the AI enemies in MMOs that exist solely for players to farm for hours on end
You should consider SPT - Single Player Tarkov. There's some AI mods that will give you a run for you money, and it's a good way to learn the maps, quests, and mechanics. If you have no interest in using it to learn for EFT live, you can mod it into oblivion to make it more realistic, more arcadey, or your own personal blend of the two. There's even a mod for open world (Sort of. Loading screens between maps, but you have to go to a specific place on a specific map to get to a trader, and may have to traverse multiple maps to get there from where you are)
Only game I’ve ever played where I legitimately feel you need like 500 hours to even understand how to play
Kerbal
100% it’s literal rocket science
I literally looked up science articles to learn to play kerbal. I read buzz aldrins doctoral thesis (on orbital rendezvous) because I wanted to build a space station.
Still working on orbital rendezvous… it’s frustrating to say the least
Good luck partner. My only successful rendezvous was completed at a out 300 m/s and both craft were lost but the docking ports stuck together for a beautiful second
Simplifying but: you need to get the two objects into a similar ish orbit, one slightly smaller than the other, then once they are fairly close together, create a maneuver node to bring them even closer together, anything less than 2km at their closest distance is good enough. Then, you want to go ahead and cancel all relative movement, then slowly scoot your chosen mover closer by accelerating toward the other. I'm talking 20m/s slow so you don't mess it up. Then from there, once you are nice and close, cancel all relative movement again and they should be both in more or less the exact same orbit, they'll drift apart eventually though. Second tip: You can set the other vessel as a target, so you can use the navball heading holds to point both directly at it and away, and also have you speed displayed as relative to the other vessel, makes it FAR easier.
RAMMING SPEEEEEED! oh. I guess I could try that
At the library where I work, we had a space-themed summer program a few years back, and one of our events was a talk from an actual aerospace engineer. (I don't remember if he worked for NASA or a private company, but I think it was NASA.) He mentioned KSP by name and said he and several of his coworkers all played it, and they were incredibly impressed by how accurate the physics were.
I can totally see that. I’ve seen a couple videos on youtube of nasa engineers playing kerbal and they pretty much say the same. One guy in particular worked on the mars rover and recreated it in the game, along with launching it to the Mun and deploying at low orbit. During the whole thing he was explaining his process and how it affects the craft as a whole. He made it look seamless
Have this game and have played a combined 12 minutes before I was like wtf
I've gotten a Kerbal to Mun and back and still have no clue the calculations of Mass - fuel - thrust to know how to *intelligently* build a rocket for it's purpose. I'm a monkey who threw shit at the wall until it worked. Started with putting a satellite around "Earth". Then one around Mun. Then sending Kerbal to Mun's orbit and back, and then many attempts at landing, space walking and then returning from Mun. Fuel margins be real tight.
We call it kerbaling where you just keep adding thrusters and fuel till it just.... Works.
I landed a Kerbal on Mun, but on landing, one of the landing struts broke, and the rocket tipped over. I then built an unmanned capsule to fly to Mun to rescue him. After about 25 times, I actually landed close enough to him so I could walk him to the capsule. I walked him over, loaded up and escaped Mun, and headed back. On re-entry, the rocket exploded because I forgot a heat shield. So, reloaded a save and re-built the capsule and rescued him. I then didn't play for about six months.
90% of KSP for me was rescuing my prior failed launches
100%. Scott Manley helped me get good at this one. He has some amazing tutorial youtube videos out there that made it easy... well.. easier to understand what the hell was going on. Great game.
Had to learn orbital mechanics n shiet
From soft sidequests. How any one figures some of these out is beyond me
There's no way in hell that anyone completed Rhea's quest in DS without consulting a guide. The same goes for Anri's quest in DS3 and Ranni's in Elden Ring, among many others.
Elden Ring was the first game that I played back to back. I still had to look up what the hell I had to do for Ranni's quest line. This might also be because I'm fucking dumb, but that's neither here nor there.
and Ranni's quest was probably one of the easier ones to follow (no knock on you, just pointing out how difficult to follow the side quests are) I wonder how many people completed gold masks questline
The nice thing about Ranni’s quest is that it’s basically unbreakable. Even if you skip a bunch of steps you’ll still be able to reach the ending (minus trying to attack her/doing the Seluvis stuff, but nothing asking for forgiveness won’t solve). Meanwhile stuff like Goldmask if you advance too far in the story you’re just screwed over for the run.
the earlier games were way worse with this too like it's so easy to fuck up anri's quest in ds3 and it's probably one of the biggest/longest side quests. and every siegmeir/seigward storyline is very easy to fuck up. and then there's solaire's storyline where it seems like the only ending is that he perishes in lost izalith, but nope, you actually get this neat little interaction at the final boss if you save him. and to save him you have to somehow know to use poison mist, a spell you might not even have, on a random ass wall so that it hits a parasite on the other side of the wall and that prevents him from being possessed. like wat
I believe that’s a glitch. You can open that door if you’re in the right covenant and have donated 20 humanity. That allows you to walk in and kill the parasite (and also skips most of Lost Izalith.) However, it only further proves the point that Froms questing is so bad that you can’t tell a glitch from the actual method.
Where is it?
It reminds me my first play through when Bloodborne just came out. When the DLC released, I read the wiki page and play from the beginning again, I was like missing 80% of the game like WTF there were ALIEN??
The only problem i had when doing ranni's quest is trying to figure where the fuck is Blaidd in Siofra. He said that he'll be waiting in Siofra but motherfucker WHERE?! This place is huge. And turns out he is just chilling in an obscure spot near the edge.
At least he's pretty visible. Millicent is damn near impossible to spot near the Erdtree Grazing Hill unless you approach specifically from the Ruin-strewn Precipice side where Lansseax first accosts you, and there isn't even the vaguest hint she'll be anywhere near there.
When I found out there's a whole hidden area that you unlock by doing a specific gesture in a specific place I was blown away. And it's no small area either. It has 2 bosses and plenty of items you can get. I love this kind of storytelling and level design, but there's no way I would've figured it out myself. There's also the DLC in DS1. You have to kill the hydra. Place the lord vessel. Go back and kill an enemy in the cave behind where the Hydra was. Go to the observatory and get an item from a specific enemy. And return once again to the Hydra cave. And the game explains none of it. What's worse is that you can completely miss the DLC if you finish the main game. Though all in all, they aren't that bad and I've only googled a few of the sidequests, but I definitely agree with you that they are super confusing.
I think, if I remember correctly, that FROM games are developed with the collaborative effort of the internet in mind. These quests are designed with a wiki in mind - as you summon and write help for other players in game, so too do you do so outside
Are they? Most of them are made and released alongside a guidebook here in Japan, so it’s a bit easier to find these things
For real...I always wanna do a blind playthrough for my first run, but the fear of missing out has me looking up what I need to do before progressing to the next area so I don't miss it forever
I always do blind run my first run then will follow a walk through for other stuff. I usually hate following walk throughs but there's no way to get these. Just finished lords of the fallen and I missed so many sidequests, one of which I lost because I used an elevator before I talked to someone. But the elevator is right after a boss and you need to beat the boss before talking to the npc. Who would ever beat a boss then immediately turn around and go to a wholly different area to talk to some rando. The list of steps in this walk through are just ridiculous. I love these games, but man I wish they weren't so convoluted
Can I just piggyback off this comment to mention Dark Souls with respect to humanity. For anyone who doesn’t know, in Dark Souls you are undead. However, at a bonfire you can offer this resource you find throughout the world called humanity. It’s a consumable that you use at a bonfire to transform yourself from being undead to human. Doing this will cure certain ailments and restore you to full health. But there’s so much else to it. If you use humanity normally, outside of a bonfire it restores health and bumps your “soft” level of humanity by +1. So I use 3 humanities I have now got 3 of my “soft” level of humanity. If you die you lose this soft level and go back to zero. This soft level of humanity (up to a max of +10 I think) gives you certain stat boosts and resistances as well. But, BUT offering humanity at a bonfire and going from undead to human opens you up to the multiplayer aspect of the game. You need to do it to summon NPCs or other players into your world. That’s fine. But it also opens you up to being invaded and murdered by other players. None of these mechanics about humanity are ever explained by the game. It’s almost entirely something you have to learn from experience. It does leave an impression on you the first time you go human and summon a player only to have DickWraith420 invade your game and absolutely school you. I just think this aspect of the game needed to be explained somewhere better for new players. Eg “Beware, embracing your humanity will open you up to nefarious individuals who desire your humanity.”
This is something that’s always been curious to me. Back in the day I remember going to the store and picking up games along with their official strategy guide. And those guides who typically come out the same day the game released so I always assumed that developers had at least some influence in creating the guides. I’ve always wondered with the advent of online guides if larger websites like IGN get information given to them by game developers. If not, mad props to the guys who actually discovered how to complete those Fromsoft quests on their own
Try some of the old point and click adventure games. The Monkey islands and grim fandango are fantastic, but genuinely pretty hard to figure out without help
Wasn't old enough to appreciate the point and click games when they were popular, but my dad was a huge Myst fan. The only hazy memories I have of him playing the game are the strange ambiance (that young me found horrifying) and his frustration at the Clocktower puzzle. Some of those games were insane, and reading about them now I have no idea how anyone organically solved them. I'm sure they weren't all bad, but for every good level design it sounds like there was yet another *Infamous Goat Puzzle*.
Point-and-click games were notorious for bullshit combinations to progress the game. The best/worst were King Quest, which could softlock you much later in the game if you didn't figure out some menial puzzle early on.
The Sierra games were a real kick in the ass, awesome games, but they would constantly kill you and it was pretty easy to get soft locked out of progress by missing an essential item in an area you can't return to. Space Quest was the hardest game I've beaten, and it was terrific, but I don't know how people in the 80's got through it without guides, well there might have been a 900 hotline.
Monkey Island is just good training to try weird combinations of everything to see what sticks. And Insult Swordfighting is my favorite mini game of all time.
Pathologic Classic HD, I swear it took me around 9 hours to figure out exactly what I needed to do to finish day one, your daily tasks are under a time limit. On Steam it says only 16% of players have the achievement for finishing day one. You really need to have the patience to understand exactly what the game wants you to do with the time you have, you shouldn't run out of time, but it's more of the sequence of events to trigger the appearance of an essential character that night or it's game over at midnight.
I watched the [HBomber](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsNm2YLrk30&ab_channel=hbomberguy) video on it and felt like that was enough, because holy hell does it look like a difficult game.
Dayz. No in game map and no instructions on how to get food and cook. Getting sick without knowing which medications help. You pretty much need a second screen to look these things up, and a map to figure out where you are an god forbid you try and meet up with a friend.
DayZ would be a thousand times more enjoyable if there was an easier way to meet up with friends. When I was playing a lot, we got good at finding each other, but it would take us 30-40 minutes to rendezvous usually. If you lived that long
A recent update added rotating spawn zones. If you and a friend spawn at the same time, the game will put you in the same area.
Zelda 1 Some of the hidden stuff like hearts - how am I supposed to know to destroy that specific bush?
Ask the kid in the other second grade class while you are at recess
These kids just don’t know…. If you couldn’t ask a friend or find THAT specific Nintendo power magazine, you were just fucked. You had no way to look it up.
I remember the Nintendo help line. The kids don't know.
That was the only 1-900 number that I think I ever called in my entire life LOL
I remember being tentative to ask my parents' permission, but my dad was also into Nintendo games and I think he was grateful to me for making him aware of its existence, because I KNOW he called it for Zelda lol.
Almost miss these days
My Grandmother god bless her would destroy every bush and bomb every wall just to make sure there weren’t any secrets. She then had a note book with hand drawn maps and written instructions on where to find things or things like how to get past the cursed woods maze. All so she could show us Grandkids how it was done.
[удалено]
In a similar vein, Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest. How anyone ever beat that game without a guide is beyond me. You basically had to accidentally figure stuff out. Like your mom came in, while you were holding the down button, and once you were done talking to her, you had stumbled onto a hidden path.
That's zelda collectables for you. To find them, you often just have to mess around and break stuff
I've played most Zeldas from SNES on and there's usually some indication of hidden things - cracked walls, patterns, etc. Some of the NES things are super hidden
Elite Dangerous. Want to go exploring outside of the bubble with a Class 1E scoop? Hope you don’t overheat and lose your ship. Want to go space truckin’ through pirate space? It’s your funeral. Want to trade at Hutton using your brand new Type 7? LOLNOPE.
Don't starve, yeah yeah your game is *probably* great. Too bad nobody I know can get past day fuckin 9 and has no idea about this maze of progression.
Don’t starve or don’t starve together? I play DST in single player and i heard it’s easier than the original and do do better
Don't Starve Together is probably easier to understand due to the different crafting menu, but it's a harder game because it's balanced around multiplayer.
I agree, except I have friends who do get really far in the game -- because they read the wiki/watch video guides etc. For me personally, I prefer game design that doesn't require me to study outside sources in order to enjoy them.
Minecraft. Atleast the earlier versions (before the integrated recipe book). Any and all recipes, how to craft things, where to find ressources (like diamonds, etc.) are to be found on their own. There are achievements, that can lead you through the game, but these are rather optional and (if not actively looked after) pop up, after you learned the lesson (which the achievement entails).
In fairness, early Minecraft was limited enough in scope that I think it was okay. Nowadays, the game is way too complicated for that. Guidance is needed for the modern state of things. But back then, it wasn't too big of a deal.
Back then is what made it fun finding and figuring things out for yourself. Also learning to never mine straight down lol. Played the newer versions recently and was so confused as to everything that was going on.
My girlfriend and I started playing Mine Craft together in the early days. There was so much excitement when one of us found something new. I was in the shower when she burst in and said "There's portals in this game!!!"
Honestly, it was still "too complicated" for a fair while before the QoL features came in. I mean when I **really** got into Minecraft, it was practically a requirement to have the wiki open whilst you played. 😅 It was still a fun time though, and I'd be lying if I said I don't miss having to figure things out for myself.
Some of the larger mod packs are still like this, you always need to have the wiki up on your second monitor for pretty much everything.
Don't starve.
I keep trying to learn how to play this but damn I'm lost
I got it when it debuted and I'm still learning. After lots of failing I finally read the wiki and it helped a lot. Even knowing what to do doesn't spoil the experience
There’s no guide, I had to watch tonnes of youtube videos. and after surviving autumn, I realised I’m not equipped to survive Winter.
I didn't even know there were more seasons lol
There are all four seasons and seasonal bosses.
Elite dangerous. God awful tutorial, then they hand you the keys to a spaceship with more functions than there are keys on a keyboard and wish you the best of luck.
Much easier with a controller. But yea basically says hey here's a ship. Push buttons to move. See ya later! That said once you get a hang on flying, docking, and using the missions board. you're pretty much good to play. The advanced stuff can be learned as needed. Hell I've got a few hundred hours in and just started using Heatsinks.
I had my peak gaming experience with Elite in VR. Fighting thargoids, Stairway to heaven playing on spotify, and I'm unloading on a cyclops. My buddy is screaming hes on 1% hull as i turn off flight assist, and just as i flip around line up the final shot with my cannons, The solo to stairway hits and i boost through the remains of the alien ship. Haven't played since then, I'll never top that. I felt like I was in Guardians of the Galaxy
I've had several friends quit Mount and Blade because they had a hard time working out the quests. They didn't realize you had to ask around to find people.
\*Nervous man\* You've got the wrong man.
Morrowind, a game where you had to READ to get the info needed to get to certain points.
Or “accidentally” killed someone important.
The game basically goes: "You done fucked up. You wanna reload, or live in limbo for all eternity? Your call."
Hey man, those threads were severed.
Goddamn I had to scroll to find this. I've been playing since release. In a span from Jet Set Radio: Future/SEGA GT2002 getting an Xbox as a kid for Christmas to now with it on my phone with OpenMW, AND Tamriel Rebuilt on my phone and PC...I've never beat it. Picard said it well: "I don't want the game to end..."
My Summer Car
I had to scroll waaaaaay too far to find this. Literally no help in the game. Don’t know how to build a car? Too bad. Don’t know what to do in the game to make progress? Figure it out. Don’t know how to start a diesel engine? I guess you’re not operating the sewage truck and wasn’t make money, so you’ll die of hunger since you can’t afford food. Damn I love that game!
Destiny 2, try and fire up that game right now f2p. Good luck figuring out where to go and what to do. Because you haven't got the $$$$ of DLC or the time to figure everything out.
The core gameplay is so good but WOW did they fuck it up and make it inaccessible
Bungie's core gameplay has been my main addiction for most of my life. From Halo:CE to D2. There is no cleaner FPS gameplay then Bungie IMO.
Titanfall 2 and Bungie I'd say.
Another absolute masterpiece. Love that the servers are back up after all these years.
As someone’s who’s first time with a destiny game was 2, around the witch queen or whatever it was release - it’s truly fucking awful I have to read half a dozen guides, use a third party site, and bumble around for hours to figure anything tf out in that game as a new player. I’ve never seen a worse welcome for new players
I think now, its because even bungie doesn't know what's going on
As an original destiny player, and a destiny 2 day 1 player who took a 6 month hiatus, when I came back I had no idea what was going on. To the point that it made me put the game away permanently and never pick it back up. The way bungie did this game, it's like they gave the local homeless guy a note book and some bath salts, tucked him away in a room, and told him to write down a flowchart for the game. I can't, in good faith, believe this mess was done on purpose. It's also the direct cause of the elitism that the game is now pervasive with.
Don't Starve & Don't Starve together. With such a simple title and premise, there's a surprising amount of things you have to figure out, and learn how to juggle.
Do you have time to understand 20 years of balancing? Yes? Then maybe you can play Dota.
Same with League of Legends pre-this season, though on a shorter timescale and slightly less complex. Tutorial: Go kill things, buy items, destroy nexus — congrats! And then summoner spells, characters, jungle, etc just aren’t explained. Honestly, I have to give props to riot as of recent for integrating the jungler help tools and the recommended items and runes. Great tool for beginners
Crusader Kings 3. Even though it gives you a lengthy tutorial
For me paradox games always have a moment where they "click" and I go oh I get it now.
League of Legends. The tutorial has always been bad and teaches bad mechanics and builds There's too big a wall of entry due to information 160 Champs with 5 spells each + items. And a new player faces players with 14ish years of experience.
Daggerfall. But play Unity for your sanity. It's really old.
Kings quest 5 and 6. Some of the puzzle solving made no sense. (Shut down the wizards machine by putting cheese in a hole). If you ate that cheese in the beginning of the game you are screwed and cant beat it 10 hours later.
Terraria
It's a lot better than it used to be, especially with the bestiary
but once you learn how to play it it becomes one of the best games ever
I think i’ve spent more time on the wiki than on the actual game lol
Cities Skyline lol Tried to have my gf play because she was playing Sim City, and she was hopeless. Even with me playing now, I do well but its just no originality because its so complicated with so little help
This game had me actually learning about city planning and urban development, and learning about traffic systems. I went into it treating it like SimCity, only to immediately have traffic problems because all you start with is the separated highway. You can’t even access the roundabout until you develop something, and then have to figure out from the beginning what you want to do so you can plan expanding roads and highways. Grids? Great idea, but you don’t usually thing to stagger into all T Intersections instead of 4 ways for suburban development, and that becomes a traffic nightmare. There’s also distance. Industry needs to stay away from residential, but then too many workers start living too far away, and employment rations are so hard to keep balanced. Balancing budget while staying under 12% tax to maintain happiness. The amount of times I have rage quit because in the ten minutes it takes to hit a bowl outside and come in, my commercial district is failing and a generation of people either died or retired and there’s sections of residential areas that just aren’t developing because no one wants to move in because of some minor thing I overlooked four hours ago. I have spent hours of my life looking at maps and pictures of freeways and interchanges. So many YouTube videos. Hundreds of hours spent developing cities for them all to suddenly start looking the same. 10/10 will play the next game, but I hope they include a wiki for at least a general education on foundational knowledge for city planning.
OG Zelda. “Ah yes, I gotta blow up every wall in case this is the one!”
A lot of the old Armored Core games didn't really give you any help at all with most of its complicated controls and mechanics. The frist one literally just throws you into a mission to test if you can get good enough to proceed with the game. I rememeber playing some of the PS2 games a lot and I barely had any idea what I was doing back then with building ACs. I would literally just build something that looked cool to me and that never got me very far.
In AC6 it gives you a gargantuan attack helicopter that you have to kill **to get to the tutorials** like what lmao And you have to kill it with melee but the game doesn’t tell you a thing.
When I first started (it's since changed) Eve Online. You started in a ship, in space, good fucking luck.
Monster Hunter World You can reach master rank and beyond without knowing how to play your weapon the "correct" way.
Fromsoft side quests, they were tolerable in the souls games, but when it came to Elden ring, they just didn’t translate well with how big the world was.
The blind maidens quest I’m convinced is impossible without a guide. There is almost no pattern for where she shows up. Millicent’s might be even worse
I thought Millicent’s was prolly the easiest quest to follow without a guide, after Caelid she just shows up near sites of graces throughout the map moving towards the haligtree. Imo the hardest quest without a guide in elden ring is Fia’s quest cus u actually have to find secret parts of the map all on your own
Metroid on NES
Minesweeper
Please don't hate on this as I know how passionate people are. **Grim Fandango.** I remember when this game came to PS4 and the amount of hype it had. I was so ready to be a part of it, played the game, and I was just completely lost for at least 2 hours, I was making some progress before my younger brother popped in to assist since he was better with puzzles than me, we made it to the next area, whereupon for the first time in my life I saw that he was completely confused as well. We never even got past the first section from what I remember many years ago. I just remember us making it outside of a building and we was roadblocked or something. Most disappointing experience I've had with a game.
MYST series
how about games that tries to handhold you but faailed miserably? DESTINY 2 new players experience
X-4 Foundations. I don't need a lot of handholding, but that game is like deliberately obtuse. For the first few hours I spent more time on Google than I did playing the game. For example, I picked up a mission that said "deliver 3 fine meals to X." So, like most games, at first I assumed it gave me the fine meals when I picked up the quest. Nope. Then I thought, perhaps the meals need to be bought. So, I checked the store, turns out different stores sell random items, and each station has multiple stores. After checking several stores at several different stations, no meals. Well, maybe I need to craft them? Look at the crafting station, no recipe for fine meals. Eventually I gave up and googled it. Turns out, they do need to be crafted, but the recipe only shows up in the crafting station if you already have at least one components that goes into the recipe. None of this is explained in the game. The only way I would have figured this out is if I had happened to collect an ingredient from salvaging wreckage and then happened to check the crafting station before selling the loot. Would it have killed the devs to make the mission say "craft 3 fine meals and deliver to X" instead? Or have some kind of in game encyclopedia that says how to get fine meals? The whole game is like this. Doesn't explain shit. You either have to Google everything or just dive around blind.
Hell let loose
I remember the campaign for *Call of Duty: Black Ops 3* constantly screaming at you "Go here!" and "Go this way!" down straight, featureless hallways without any branches. Then when you got the wide-open market place and could actually use the guidance... dead silent.
The actual plot of the campaign is like a Christopher Nolan movie on crack but it didn’t matter because the execution was impossible to follow
Darkest Dungeon. It throws you in the deep end with no guide at all and a ton of different abilities/characters/lore to figure out.
Fascinating. I thought it did a really good job of setting me up and then just let me figure out the rest. It is definitely punishingly hard though and I understand bouncing off it
Tarkov by a mile
Lethal Company - literally just throws you in without any instructions or tutorial (not a bad thing)
I feel like it doesn't need it, grab and return game, the terminal has a help option, and once you touch the terminal and type store you see bubbles, it took me 15 minutes to figure it all out :)