Fair enough - semantics. Some people have fun doing this, some don’t. You seem to be part of the second group, no problem with that.

Your initial question was „how do people play those games?“ and „being part of the games online community and/or using the communities resources to play the game“ is one answer. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I am currently into Monster Hunter Rise. It does not exactly do the best job of explaining ingame what „30% Affinity“ on a weapon means. So I looked it up. That was fun to me.

In the end I guess it’s your imperative to research games before you buy them. If they don’t fit your play style, don’t buy them. You don’t mean to say that no one should enjoy „complex“ games, are you?!?

But see, for some people and some genres, the fiddling and trying and testing and redoing IS the actual gameplay.

BG3 is a good example, Factorio came up in this thread as well. And from a certain perspective BG3 is as much of a playground as Tears of the Kingdom. The latter hides the numbers from you, the former invites you to play with them.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I for example can’t seem to get into story driven single player games such as God of War or Farcry. The constant tutorialising drives me nuts…

More people need to try Starsector. It’s so goddamn good.

How would I go about getting this running on the SteamDeck? Is the .net requirement a dealbreaker?

Was my first thought too.

Not a shooter or a space RTS, but proper prime directive star trekking. Honestly I don’t even know what you would DO in the game. But I can imagine the UI clearly, so there is that…

Maybe somewhat like to old 90s point and click adventure games, only in 2023?!? I don’t know. I want it though.

Help me here. Never got it, still don’t get it. Please explain like I’m 5.

„Robinsons Requiem“, available on GoG.

It’s a survival horror first person rpg with a semi realistic health system. It’s creepy and hard and so goddamn good. I’m am actually surprised that it gets mentioned so rarely because I would not know of any other earlier game with those now so ubiquitous survival mechanics.

Neptunes kiss.

To get you started on your self-curated list of feeds, you could have a look at https://ooh.directory/

I think it’s neat to not only have the big and obvious sites in your feedreader that push dozens of items per day, but also some assorted small and cozy blogs that tickle your interests.

What is the current state on SteamOS as a desktop replacement? My understanding is that the currently downloadable version is only the SteamDeck version and not suitable as a Windows replacement for the desktop.

The ads. Jesus. The ads that are dark design pattern close to normal posts. Ugh.

Squad always got me with its sound design. Nothing too fancy, just guns and explosions. But they DO sound amazing.

I love Factorio, but my brain is to smooth for 3D production hell. It’s really funny to me how fast I get to „what the hell was I thinking“ in Satisfactory.

Textbook example from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention

„…forcibly transferring children out of the group…“

Haven’t seen the presentation yesterday, but read a snippet somewhere that it’ll be a mobile game. Do we know the platforms already?

Radlands has become a staple for quick and entertaining rounds in my household.

I got burned with the Stardew Valley board game - it’s very cute, but also not a great game. And for my non-designer brain it’s way easier to translate Stardew into a boardgame than Terraria. I will definitely wait out some reviews and the BGG forums…

So, uhm… how DO you make them?^^

It’s a bit „old man yells at cloud.jpg“, but I don’t like that we as the target audience have accepted MT in full price titles like we did. I remember a time where a fancy cosmetic was rewarded in game for some feat and not outright bought. I remember when your initial purchase got you the whole nine yards.

And I feel that „its only cosmetics“ misses the point - looking cool IS a major part of fun gameplay for (some/many/most) people.

But yeah, that train has sailed a long time ago. I know…

Ready or Not and Ground Branch are the obvious choices.

The Stalker: Anomaly mod pack is also quite hard, less so because of tactics and more so because of bullshit. But its free.

Wildcard: Ghost Recon: Wildlands. On default difficulty its a stupid popcorn shooter, but if you crank all the difficulty settings up (they call it „advanced mode“ IIRC) it becomes really fun. Most people like to shit on the typical Ubisoft formula in Breakpoint and Wildlands, but I enjoyed my time with both.

If you are not married to 1st person, Zero Sievert and Doorkickers are worth a look too.

And maybe also something like ARMA3?