July 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[BeardyHat]

My friends bought Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition and got me to come play with them for about an hour last night.

I have to say, I was super bored. My friend's Brother has clearly been playing for a little while, so everyone ended-up giving me tens of thousands of gold, as well as items and then leading me around by the nose to talk to quest givers and kill monsters.

Hate to complain, but that just isn't terribly fun for me. When you remove the friction and exploration from a game, I just have zero interest in actually playing it. I know they just want to level-up and do raids or whatever, but that's got to be the least interesting aspect of a game for me; I'd rather play for weeks and struggle to level-up and get new items than just be power leveled to end game and start a grind for gear in raids, in a world I don't care about.

 

[Zed Clampet]

1.9 million is my best hand so far. I was specifically shooting for that last hand to be big, so I wasted a couple of turns.

This run was a forgone conclusion by ante 3 and just became more and more ridiculous as I got closer to the end. Sometimes you just get crazy lucky with jokers.

Needless to say, I would have much preferred the 300,000 blinds this time

 

[Pifanjr]

My friends bought Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition and got me to come play with them for about an hour last night.

I have to say, I was super bored. My friend's Brother has clearly been playing for a little while, so everyone ended-up giving me tens of thousands of gold, as well as items and then leading me around by the nose to talk to quest givers and kill monsters.

Hate to complain, but that just isn't terribly fun for me. When you remove the friction and exploration from a game, I just have zero interest in actually playing it. I know they just want to level-up and do raids or whatever, but that's got to be the least interesting aspect of a game for me; I'd rather play for weeks and struggle to level-up and get new items than just be power leveled to end game and start a grind for gear in raids, in a world I don't care about.

Yeah, that sounds terrible. My wife would love if I start playing World of Warcraft with her, but she mainly does end game dungeons now, which seem like the worst part of playing WoW to me. I know that if I were to start playing, she would do the exact same thing of giving me tons of gold and powerleveling me just so I could get to the end game the fastest, completing missing every part of the story or worldbuilding.

I should still try it out at some point though, I might enjoy it if we do it together.

 

[Zed Clampet]

@BeardyHat @Pifanjr

I wholeheartedly agree that it's the journey not the destination, but when Guido was younger, he just liked killing stuff, so I played Dying Light and Far Cry 4 by myself first and then gifted him the best weapons in the games, and he loved it. It would be very different now that he's older, of course.

If the end game is fun enough by itself, then don't make the rest of the game, but I've never seen a game where that was the case.

 

[Pifanjr]

@BeardyHat @Pifanjr

I wholeheartedly agree that it's the journey not the destination, but when Guido was younger, he just liked killing stuff, so I played Dying Light and Far Cry 4 by myself first and then gifted him the best weapons in the games, and he loved it. It would be very different now that he's older, of course.

I definitely cheated a ton when I was a kid and loved getting access to the overpowered stuff immediately. I wonder if kids in general like the power fantasy even more since most kids have so little control over their lives. Breaking the rules by cheating and becoming so powerful that you can defeat everything with ease is not something they can do in normal life very often.

If the end game is fun enough by itself, then don't make the rest of the game, but I've never seen a game where that was the case.

How would you know you've never seen a game like that? Maybe you've played a bunch of games that scrapped a whole bunch of content to make the end-game the whole game.

 

[Johnway]

So at the moment i'm playing Dreamfall chapters; the (final?) part of the longest journey/Dreamfall series. Its certainly growing on me, sure the puzzles aren't that difficult, there is a lot travelling back and forth, but theres plenty to like, namely the characters and the tough decisions to be made.

there are a few technical issues, like sinking into the floor and unable proceed, but thats resolved by restarting. There was one other situation but i don't know if it was a slip clicking onto action, but i dunno, i was still trying to identify the traitor before my character just grabbed the last guy.

We're now on chapter 3/5 we'll see how my terrible decisions have influenced my game.

 

[BeardyHat]

Yeah, that sounds terrible. My wife would love if I start playing World of Warcraft with her, but she mainly does end game dungeons now, which seem like the worst part of playing WoW to me. I know that if I were to start playing, she would do the exact same thing of giving me tons of gold and powerleveling me just so I could get to the end game the fastest, completing missing every part of the story or worldbuilding.

I should still try it out at some point though, I might enjoy it if we do it together.

This is what I'm kind of torn by. Like, maybe I should stick it out and maybe I'd have fun once I got to the end game and did stuff with my friends?

Maybe. But given that in every MMO I've played, I usually get rapidly bored of the end game, as well as the fact that my friends and I have lots of other games we can play together, it doesn't seem worth it. Not to mention, it's a pretty big time investment anyway and I'm pretty happy just playing the games I want to play by myself as time allows. Several of these friends don't have young kids and the one guy that does, his family is in another country for all of summer, so he has plenty of time.

@BeardyHat @Pifanjr

I wholeheartedly agree that it's the journey not the destination, but when Guido was younger, he just liked killing stuff, so I played Dying Light and Far Cry 4 by myself first and then gifted him the best weapons in the games, and he loved it. It would be very different now that he's older, of course.

If the end game is fun enough by itself, then don't make the rest of the game, but I've never seen a game where that was the case.

As @Pifanjr said, it's definitely a power fantasy thing with kids. First thing I'd do with any new game as a kid is find the cheat codes, running around with God mode and all the weapons. I think I must have been around 12 or 13 when I finally realized it was actually more fun for me to have some friction in the game.

But that's exactly it too about the end game. With the modern incarnation of WoW, the leveling just seems vestigial; especially given you can just buy a level boost to get to max level with decent gear. I always liked fantasizing about getting there and getting cool stuff, but I was always having the most fun when I was exploring and getting incremental upgrades. My first character I ever got to max level, I think I did one or two raids, got one piece of gear and then quit playing altogether; the only reason I go back to vanilla WoW these days is to do the leveling experience and the slow burn.

Not sure what that is, as I can see the end game definitely has some friction to it, especially if you want to raid seriously, but maybe that's just too much cooperation and work for me. I want to play games by myself generally, as I'm a service oriented person in life, making sure everyone has what they need and what they want, so it's nice to play something where I'm not obligated to anyone but myself.

 

[Pifanjr]

Not sure what that is, as I can see the end game definitely has some friction to it, especially if you want to raid seriously, but maybe that's just too much cooperation and work for me. I want to play games by myself generally, as I'm a service oriented person in life, making sure everyone has what they need and what they want, so it's nice to play something where I'm not obligated to anyone but myself.

Yeah, the main friction of the end-game content in a MMO is the drama in your guild/raiding party and the toxicity of (some of) the players you encounter when joining random groups. I sometimes get exhausted just listening to my wife talk about it. And especially at high levels there just aren't that many people you can team up with, so you can't just join a different group.

 

[Colif]

I never saw the rush to get to end game... hello? its the end of the game? Now its almost the starting point for some games... which makes me wonder, when are they adding end game+, as it really isn't the end if it keeps going.

Even in MMO I much preferred levelling up than just endless raids or dungeon runs. But then I don't like boss fights... I am weird.

Making alts and starting again was more fun than being at end. Really I haven't changed that a lot since, most games I restart before end... it does depend what happens at end. I happily "end" a play though of Torchlight 2 or Journey, as neither really ends there. Most games these days only have one difficulty though.

Raiding becomes a job, have to spend time preparing for them and (at the time I played wow), make sure to be at dungeon entrance to start raid on time. Now you just sit in some queue and get teleported there... but then no need to explore. turns entire game into a menu.

Single player has less restrictions/requirements. Play if/when you want... no need to explain where you were night before.

 

[Colif]

Some competitors in COD aren't playing the game the same way as others

COD WW2 on Gamepass isn't safe right now.