I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
Literally any open world survival game.
ARK
Valheim
Rust
No Man’s Sky
Grounded
The entire fucking genre is tired and tedious. Exploration is the best part of the game, but you spend 90% of the time base building, researching upgrades to your base, gathering more stone/wood/BS to improve your base, optimising the layout of your base, crafting automation to produce MORE stone/wood/BS to further improve your base. And all this with a cumbersome inventory or weight management system.
And they always look like absolute crap. It’s either clean sci-fi structures that stick out like a sore thumb, or shoddy ramshackle buildings that look like they were slapped together by an ambitious crack head. So you spend hours placing decorations (that you also have to research and gather materials for) just for it to look kind of ok.
I fucking hate base building.
Apart from the “inventory management simulator” aspect I like it if the technology grind is meaningful and engaging.
Have you tried the Subnautica games? Maybe these are more to your liking.
I might catch some hate for this, but I’m gonna throw minecraft in there too. I never liked it. I mean I get why people like it, but for me the whole playing a game that’s like a second job as my time off from my first job never appealed to me. Tediousness can be addictive to certain people, which is why WoW was so popular.
Your problem is with yourself, I’m afraid.
You can play Minecraft however you want. I once just travelled in a straight a line as possible for as far as possible, sometimes building mine cart tracks, sometime glass tunnels underwater, lighting beacons along way. I´d stop every once in a while to farm wheat, chicken, and eggs, and then I’d keep moving. The real dopamine hits came in discovering caverns, so many beautiful caverns.
(If anyone’s interest in similar voxel-based games for free, Luanti is an excellent and moddable open source project.)
I had a problem with Dwarf Fortress because I´d played it long enough with the goal of surviving, so I´d build a fort and seal all the possible entrances so no fun could get in. What I couldn’t design out (vampires), I modded out. It is quite accomplishment to keep a fort up and running and attracting goblins every season, and you find projects to keep you busy and happy, but it does get boring after a bit. Ultimately I couldn’t emotionally handle losing all my effort because I´d consciously fail to foreclose a risk, so I haven´t gone back to it.
Consider looking at these games not as games, but as windows into your soul.
Edit: Damn replied to the wrong comment again. @BlackRoseAmongThorns@slrpnk.net
Sure, but i need -some- content. Can’t just be caves with a toothless zombie poking its head out every so often. If you want just beautiful scenery and no actual gameplay might as well go play “Prologue: Go Wayback”
I love exploration games where wanderlust is the main hook, but even I need more than Minecraft offered on that front. It needs some unexpected things to show up periodically to keep it fresh and dispell the procedural stink.
What are some of your game recommendations for exploration+?
I remember playing Elite back in ray-tracing days and getting really excited when I found some missions that tied together in a thoughtful way, though I think the rest of the universe was basically procedural.
Saw a video recently making an argument about how Minecraft is designed with automation in mind, not in a good way, as in it expects you to make an automatic farm for too many resources, which makes exploration redundant.
The person who made the video made a modpack to revamp the game, instead I’m going to recommend another game i like, and hope you’ll like too, as it respects your time more, even though progression is slow.
Vintage Story, a hardcore survival, it makes you take more time when progressing, but everything is more meaningful and has more intent.
As an example, you can make things out of clay, not by simply putting it in a crafting grid, but by molding a few voxels at a time, so you’re most likely to use it to pass the time, if there is need to wait for something to cook/smelt. Same goes to smithing, and cooking, it makes doing chores more fun, you don’t have to hurry to complete the game, just progress a few steps at a time, this makes exploration a core part of the game, and mandatory.
It’s made with love, and i think that too is very important.
I absolutely love Vintage Story, but I dunno if it’s the best suggestion for someone who doesn’t like games that can feel like a life simulator. If watching pies rise isn’t your thing, you’re really gonna hate when you look away for a few seconds and come back to burnt pie. XD
I didn’t have that take away from the above comment, so that’s fair enough, i just thought the way it slows you down feels better than how other games do it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I haven’t played Minecraft, but the Minecraft vs Vintage Story videos I’ve seen made it clear I picked the right one for me. I laugh when I die and I love how much work it takes to put a ceramic tile roof on your house.
I get the hate, single player can be really tedious in those games. I do really like getting a group together to run through it, but that’s the main reason I enjoy those games.