Time for another "I'm getting too old for gaming" thread

[TheSlamma]

I have moved from PC games (mostly RPG or RTS) to exclusively tablet/phone games. Need something I can sit on the couch and play with half attention while also watching TV and talking with the GF. Mostly Clash of Clans type games with a clan/social chat aspect, single player games hold no interest at all..

Tablet games to me are just rat in a maze with pellet rewards along the way.

On top of mindless zero critical thinking gameplay they also get hit with micro-transactions and wallet warriors.

 

[irishScott]

For me single-player games are like reading a book. So I find myself gravitating towards the quality ones as I get older. Right now I'm just getting into the original Starflight series from the 80s (first time I've had to read a manual for a game), courtesy of GOG.

 

[xantub]

46 here. At the moment playing Heroes of Might & Magic 5 and 7 (started 7 but decided to pause until they release the first mega patch). Also playing Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4. I also play JRPGs in my PS3 every couple of months (can't wait for Persona 5!).
So no, age has nothing to do with it.

 

[rivethead]

I'm the opposite. I don't want a multi player game. I want a nice simple single player game i can hit escape on, get up, go do something, come back, play a bit, etc.

Yes, getting old sucks (41).

This. I'm 45. Like another said, a good single player game is a lot like reading a good book.

I have no time for idiots, griefers, aimbots, cheats, etc.

 

[Silverforce11]

I like multiplayer games, used to play mostly online pvp games.

These days I play single player stuff, where I can pause anytime. Cos two small kids.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I'm the opposite. I don't want a multi player game. I want a nice simple single player game i can hit escape on, get up, go do something, come back, play a bit, etc.

Yes, getting old sucks (41).

Maybe you should post again when you get *really* old like me. But yea, I agree with you, single player for me all the way. I havent really been into games at all recently, since finishing Witcher 3, nothing has been able to grab my interest. I dont really accept the "too old for gaming" philosophy. Seems to me like when you get older, you might have time to play more games. We just need some good games that dont require fast twitch reflexes faster than a 12 year old hyped up on Mountain Dew.

P.S. I have about 20 years on the rest of you who are calling yourselves old!!! I am about to retire and might try some single player friendly MMOs when I finally do.

 

[TridenT]

Similar experience to OP. I don't know why I upgrade my machine or want a 980 Ti or any of that stuff. All I do is play CS GO or DOTA 2. And I rarely play either now too because both require huge time commitments (hard to find competitive (ff, all weapons) cs go servers, dota 2 always takes 45+ minutes per match w/ queuing up and shit)...

But even when I do get a quick match or few rounds in CS or something in, it starts to feel empty... like, why am I doing this? Why play any games? I'm not getting better at them because I don't intentionally practice or even play with the same group of people over and over...

I don't know. It all feels empty and meaningless. The joy is definitely gone from gaming. If I do it now, it's almost entirely because of escapism.

 

[DeathReborn]

Caveat to the below: I am High Functioning Autistic (178 IQ & Mensa member) which does temper my MP gaming a little.

Well I am 32 and I do at times feel too old for some things in gaming. Twitch FPS is pretty much out, MMO's just take up too much time plus going off MP games more with every year. Thankfully there's a good group of people I game with once a month all around the same age and abilities so BF4, ARMA 3 & UT2k4 etc are still playable with enjoyment still there. I work flexible hours (helps to be in charge) so getting a few hours here and there isn't an issue for me but the enjoyment factor after ~27 years of gaming is a little harder to come by.

Games like Star Citizen I am really looking forward to but I am almost entirely avoiding playing it now so I don't get fed up with it a few weeks after launch. Fallout 4 will get played in a year or so extensively, UT 4 will join the LAN stable of titles (hoping LAN support is there), SW: Battlefront will be lightly played but not massively so (unless there's a form of sniper available).

Like some others the TV is pretty much only used by me for occasional News programs or Documentaries & gaming tends to be more older titles which have good gameplay, story or both. SP > MP, Old Games > New Games.

 

[Rhezuss]

I'm 35 and realised that too. The older I get, the less I am attracted to MP gaming. But I still do it often cause it's still the best thing to just relax and play a good game.

I'm less and less attracted to MP games and tend to stay solo most of the time. I don't know if it's because of the idiots I work with/cross that just irritate me to the point of wanting to be alone or just the fact that i'm more and more a lonewolf but single player it's where it's at for me.

There's a few exceptions like Diablo 3 which I just bought on PS4 (played on PC since launch) to play with my brother and Destiny which I play with some friends that seem to have A LOT of time to lose (i'm level 7 and they are level 40 after one week, go figure...and one of them have a newborn...).

For now, Bloodborne, Mad Max and Diablo 3 are my most played games...

I even find myself turning off my PS4 when I see someone online just so I won't have to interact with them lol...(expect for close friends)...

Aging sucks in many ways...

 

[Blitzvogel]

While I think I could go back to something like BF3 in a heartbeat, I know that I'd suck at it (I did the last time I played it) because I've been out of that loop for so long. I've moved to "slower" multiplayer games like War Thunder and World of Warships that emphasize less on twitch skill and more on tactics and planning. But I think it's less an issue of slowing down and more an issue of just really enjoying the War Thunder format which also of course blends with history and war machinery, which is always fascinating. WT is addictive as hell.

I'm a sucker for playing story driven shooters in a single sitting and lately I've played most of the way through Killzone Shadowfall and today I'll be picking up The Uncharted Collection My fiancee and I have been playing through Final Fantasy X HD, which is reliving the game for me and her first time playing past the first couple hours. The PS4 is a glorified Netflix machine most of the time.

I couldn't wait for GTAV to hit the PC, but once I stopped playing it about 30% of the way through the story, I've only picked it back up just to eff around for a few minutes. I think it's an example of perhaps.....too much freedom and not enough focus when the single player story is why I play it. I really don't give a poop about the multiplayer. Going back to older PC shooters is really easy for me, especially classics like Far Cry and Metro which are so easy to pick up and waste a few hours on.

I also need to finish Psychonauts and Shadow Warrior.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I'm not near as old as a lot of people in this thread, but I still have old guy complaints about games these days. Why is everything so damn long? I've got a wife and baby; I can't dedicate 6 hours a day to video games. I just started the Witcher 3 and I'm reading all these stories about how it takes 100+ hours. Great! That means I might get to see the end of the story by spring! I realize it's petty to complain about getting a huge amount of content for less money than we used to pay for N64 cartridges, but still. At what point is it just complete overkill? And for God's sake, if you're going to lock me into a cutscene, do me a favor and give me an actual timer beforehand. Make one of the characters say it; "are you sure you're ready to proceed, Geralt? The journey should take us exactly 47 minutes and 19 seconds, and we'll have no opportunity to pause once we've begun." That's some pretty handy information to have if I'm enjoying a quick game before bed and I don't intend on staying up until midnight looking for a damn save point.

Online multiplayer has gotten annoying because there seems to be a push towards the competitive, and while that's awesome if you've got the time to dedicate to it, it's really off-putting if I might be called away at any moment for a number of reasons. Oh, the baby's fussing, guess I'll just forfeit this competitive match and get docked points in my reputation so I will no longer actually be able to join any games. I can't even play CS with my friends now because they're always running classic competitive and I can't ever set aside 45 minutes and KNOW I'll be without interruption. So it's casual multiplayer with random people screaming racial slurs that just remind me why I stopped paying for Xbox Live. Online multiplayer just makes me angry now; it reminds me of how bad I've become since I can no longer dedicate 20% of my waking hours to gaming.

All I really want from gaming is a working version of Tetris Attack playable on any device. Give me that, stick me in a corner, and I'll try not to disturb you with my peals of jubilant laughter.

 

[mmntech]

I find gamers who got their start during the 90s or earlier tend to prefer single player games and local multiplayer. That's all we had back then. Sure online multiplayer did exist in the late 90s, but it was still fairly uncommon.

I just hate how every game today has to have an online component shoehorned in. They tell us there's simply no demand for single player only experiences. Which isn't true. Problem is that AAA publishers are still so laser focused on the teenage male demographic that they forget about the rest of us.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I prefer single-player because it's more relaxing after a day of work, and because I enjoy stories and settings more than climbing a leader board. That includes mostly-solo-play MMOs (Star Trek, SWTOR).

It also requires a much lower time commitment since you don't need to train to compete with Red Bull addled teens and college students with faster reflexes and more free time.

 

[DeathReborn]

I find gamers who got their start during the 90s or earlier tend to prefer single player games and local multiplayer. That's all we had back then. Sure online multiplayer did exist in the late 90s, but it was still fairly uncommon.

I just hate how every game today has to have an online component shoehorned in. They tell us there's simply no demand for single player only experiences. Which isn't true. Problem is that AAA publishers are still so laser focused on the teenage male demographic that they forget about the rest of us.

The funny thing is I started gaming in the 80's and most of the games I played were co-op games with family or friends. I think having spent the late 90's & early 00's online when there was a lot of infantile behaviour and very little controls kinda soured me on it.

Some MP games I really enjoyed (EQ1 &2, Lineage 2, RF Online, Operation Flashpoint, Joint Ops, UT) and was quite good at them and if the modern games were anything like them I would probably still play them.

The "it must be online" or "it must have unlocks tied to online play" are 2 of my big pet hates. I quite enjoy the campaigns in BF titles despite their length but hate the lack of weaponry choices compared to MP or have to play MP to get. Mind you I also hated the Aspergo (sp?) things in the Assassins Creed series, the whole mind jump, time jump whatever stuff broke immersion for me.

 

[BSim500]

I realize it's petty to complain about getting a huge amount of content for less money than we used to pay for N64 cartridges, but still. At what point is it just complete overkill?

I believe devs haven't quite figured out that for many of us, the "game-time vs enjoyment" curve is often more bell-shaped than infinitely linear. To me 45-60hrs is the sweet spot for a big RPG - just the right length to produce a detailed main quest that actually maintains plot momentum during a few dozen relevant sidequests, whilst avoiding the pitfalls of +100-200hr games where 60-90% of it ends up feeling like pointless grindy filler than any actual plot / gameplay enhancement. The more OTT "sidequest filler" a game is crammed with, the more the sense of urgency surrounding the main plot gets devalued, plus an immersion-breaking gap between the portrayed urgency of cutscenes suggesting imminent danger only to spend the next 3 weeks picking flowers and playing postman... I'd rather play 2x 60hr golden era "tight plot" pre-EA Bioware RPG's than some 125hr attempt at an RPG/MMO hybrid that loses its pacing trying to be everything to everyone.

That's some pretty handy information to have if I'm enjoying a quick game before bed and I don't intend on staying up until midnight looking for a damn save point.

The lack of quick-saves is another thing that p*sses a lot of us off with modern games. The real reason for this trend isn't some noble attempt at "quicksave scumming prevention" as is often claimed on forums, it's because checkpoint-only save systems include replay time, whilst quicksaves typically exclude it - a development "cheat" that effectively pads out a game another typical 10-15% without adding any extra content. The side effect is the inadvertent punishment of those in busy households who regularly get interrupted and can maybe only "snatch" 10mins here, 7 mins there, etc, in short unpredictable gaming sessions for which hitting F5 is the obvious common sense fix...

 

[BSim500]

I just hate how every game today has to have an online component shoehorned in. They tell us there's simply no demand for single player only experiences. Which isn't true. Problem is that AAA publishers are still so laser focused on the teenage male demographic that they forget about the rest of us.

Agreed. Part of this "online in everything" is down to "backdoor DRM", and partly an obsession with forcing game concepts to fit a "safe formula" ("all games must be both single & multi-player, they must all now straddle genres (FPS/RPG-levelup or RPG/MMO or RTS/RPG), they must use checkpoint-only saves, regenerating health, weapon limits", blah, blah). When everything "plays" the same, it gets as stale as hell. Last 3x AAA's I bought were Bioshock Inf, Dishonored & Skyrim. It's been the Indie's and particularly the "middle-weight" devs, eg, CroTeam (The Talos Principle), Larian Studio's (Divinity Original Sin), etc, that have been getting the bulk of my money since 2012.

Some MP games I really enjoyed (EQ1 &2, Lineage 2, RF Online, Operation Flashpoint, Joint Ops, UT) and was quite good at them and if the modern games were anything like them I would probably still play them.

Operation Flashpoint gameplay was top notch especially with the HUD, friendly & enemy marker tags, extended map info & crosshair, etc, all disabled. Modern shooters which nicely point out where everyone is in pretty colors via an always visible automap are like cheat mode in comparison. Giants: Citizen Kabuto was another 'silent gem' for multi-player - it just doesn't get any better than jetpacks vs blue boobs vs Godzilla... :biggrin:

 

[Sniper82]

I don't have the patience for neither single or multiplayer like I did 15 years ago. I might finish a title or two a year(we are talking 10-13 hour single player). I might load a multiplayer game here and there but it doesn't last more than a hour or so. Current generation of kids ruin multiplayer for me from being annoying. If I go online I have to try and mute everyone. I miss the days of Quake, Quake 2, Action Quake 2, Quake 3, UT up to 2004, Battlefield 1942, original CS and CS source,TF2 even COD4 MW was good but it seemed to go down hill from there for me. I don't know if kids was just more mature back then or because most not having mics but it sure was more fun.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I'm not near as old as a lot of people in this thread, but I still have old guy complaints about games these days. Why is everything so damn long? I've got a wife and baby; I can't dedicate 6 hours a day to video games. I just started the Witcher 3 and I'm reading all these stories about how it takes 100+ hours. Great! That means I might get to see the end of the story by spring! I realize it's petty to complain about getting a huge amount of content for less money than we used to pay for N64 cartridges, but still. At what point is it just complete overkill? And for God's sake, if you're going to lock me into a cutscene, do me a favor and give me an actual timer beforehand. Make one of the characters say it; "are you sure you're ready to proceed, Geralt? The journey should take us exactly 47 minutes and 19 seconds, and we'll have no opportunity to pause once we've begun." That's some pretty handy information to have if I'm enjoying a quick game before bed and I don't intend on staying up until midnight looking for a damn save point.

Online multiplayer has gotten annoying because there seems to be a push towards the competitive, and while that's awesome if you've got the time to dedicate to it, it's really off-putting if I might be called away at any moment for a number of reasons. Oh, the baby's fussing, guess I'll just forfeit this competitive match and get docked points in my reputation so I will no longer actually be able to join any games. I can't even play CS with my friends now because they're always running classic competitive and I can't ever set aside 45 minutes and KNOW I'll be without interruption. So it's casual multiplayer with random people screaming racial slurs that just remind me why I stopped paying for Xbox Live. Online multiplayer just makes me angry now; it reminds me of how bad I've become since I can no longer dedicate 20% of my waking hours to gaming.

All I really want from gaming is a working version of Tetris Attack playable on any device. Give me that, stick me in a corner, and I'll try not to disturb you with my peals of jubilant laughter.

There are a lot of Telltale games that are episodic and each episode can be completed in a few hours. Take a look at the steam sale this weekend. They are all cheap. I was a great fan of Borderlands until the Pre-sequel came out, and had resisted the episodic Tales from the Borderlands, but I picked up all 5 episodes 2/3 off yesterday.

I also enjoyed the Sam and Max games a few years ago, playing it with my grandson who was about 12 at the time. Great humor and a few puzzles that are not too difficult. There are also a whole bunch of Walking Dead and Game of Thrones episodes as well.

 

[DaveSimmons]

The lack of quick-saves is another thing that p*sses a lot of us off with modern games. The real reason for this trend isn't some noble attempt at "quicksave scumming prevention" as is often claimed on forums, it's because checkpoint-only save systems include replay time, whilst quicksaves typically exclude it - a development "cheat" that effectively pads out a game another typical 10-15% without adding any extra content. The side effect is the inadvertent punishment of those in busy households who regularly get interrupted and can maybe only "snatch" 10mins here, 7 mins there, etc, in short unpredictable gaming sessions for which hitting F5 is the obvious common sense fix...

That's something I hate about the Borderlands games, even though I've played them for hundreds of hours. You can't play at many points for just 5 - 15 minutes because unless you complete a long sequence and reach the next checkpoint your progress will evaporate.

 

[MustangSVT]

Seems like I enjoy re-playing very old games. NES SNES era..

 

[xantub]

I'm not near as old as a lot of people in this thread, but I still have old guy complaints about games these days. Why is everything so damn long? I've got a wife and baby; I can't dedicate 6 hours a day to video games. I just started the Witcher 3 and I'm reading all these stories about how it takes 100+ hours. Great! That means I might get to see the end of the story by spring!

I haven't played Witcher 3, but most of the times when you see claims of '100+ hours' it doesn't mean that. Like in Fallout 3 and Skyrim, you can play for hundreds of hours, but I finished Fallout 3 in about 20 hours in a long weekend. Basically so-called 'open world' games are like that, you can do the main story in 20-30 hours, or you can forget the main story and just run around the map exploring. That's when you get those '100+ hours' claims.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I haven't played Witcher 3, but most of the times when you see claims of '100+ hours' it doesn't mean that. Like in Fallout 3 and Skyrim, you can play for hundreds of hours, but I finished Fallout 3 in about 20 hours in a long weekend. Basically so-called 'open world' games are like that, you can do the main story in 20-30 hours, or you can forget the main story and just run around the map exploring. That's when you get those '100+ hours' claims.

The Witcher 3 is basically a minimum of 40+ hours for just the story. And who wants to do that without getting better gear and whatnot? Fortunately the story has met with wife approval so I can play it with her around; actually, she prefers I play it with her around. Definitely increases the number of gaming hours I can get in a given week. Which is good, because frankly at the pace I'm setting, that "40 hours" is looking more like 140.

 

[Zanovar]

haha

 

[escrow4]

I haven't played Witcher 3, but most of the times when you see claims of '100+ hours' it doesn't mean that. Like in Fallout 3 and Skyrim, you can play for hundreds of hours, but I finished Fallout 3 in about 20 hours in a long weekend. Basically so-called 'open world' games are like that, you can do the main story in 20-30 hours, or you can forget the main story and just run around the map exploring. That's when you get those '100+ hours' claims.

The Witcher took me 90hrs roughly on maximum easy. Preferred 2 over it though. Too much Ciri and not enough Geralt.

 

[calyco]

I'm the opposite, I was hardcore into old MP FPS games back then. Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Counterstrike, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory - so much fun and many sleepless nights. The golden age of MP FPS to me was 2002-2008, maybe just me because I was in my 20s. After COD got modern, I pretty much stopped playing. COD, BF objectives look like too much work rather than fun. Too intense with the twitch factor, annoyances like noob cannons, spawn killing etc. The only multiplayer I do now is TF2. Like someone mentioned you might be a bit young, trust me those MP games will get old.

However I can't wait to play many SP games like new Tomb Raider, Uncharted 4, Witcher 3, Mad Max etc. I fell into that gaming slump awhile back, got bored. But I narrowed down what I like. Just upgraded to a i7 6700K and GTX 970 and gonna play catchup and wait for new releases..!