Games with high entry barriers

[ScouserInExile]

I fancied the latest Kingdom Hearts game and thought it might be fun to play it with my kids. Then I discovered that you need to play half a dozen others (might be a slight exaggeration) to understand the basics of the story, so dropped that notion. I understand it's a sequel, but you should be able to drop in at any point and get at least a vague motion of what's going on. 

 

I'll echo the "fighting games" thing mentioned above. I consider myself a thoroughly average gamer and I really enjoy the Injustice and Mortal Kombat games but I fairly rapidly hit a wall with them where I just don't have the ability to perform the actions required to "get good" at them, especially when it comes to playing online. 

[df0]

Not entry, but entry to end game content.

 

Path of Exile. An excellent Diablo-esque Free to Play game well worth your time. Has enough production value and content to warrant a 60 dollar asking price. About half a year ago I finished the storyline + all side quests and unlocked the end game which is good Diablo-like fashion means doing stuff over and over gradually increasing the difficulty. Higher difficulty equals better loot.

 

Here's the barrier part: there's many different things to do, everything has a different approach, currencies are unique to certain end game content. I can delve, do Elders, do Maps, do some sort of Research whatever that is. And I have literally no clue what does what. In Diablo is obvious: you run dungeons and the difficulty level is accompanied by a brief text: =50% chance for epic loot, enemies are 200% stronger, 150% chance for whatever. Got it, thanks.

 

I can not do end game stuff right now because I severely lack survivability. So I need to work on that. Supposedly the number 1 priority is to increase Resistance, but that comes from gear. Gear I do not have. So I gotta either buy it from the in-game marketplace or find it in game. Gear I buy or find has a different socket and colour layout which means I can not use my skills. I can reforge sockets and colours but that requires a currency I might run out of. When I by some miracle find the good gear there's a big chance it provides less of everything but Resistance because of the lower level dungeons I have to run if I want to survive.

 

About an hour ago I booted it up, just to see why I gave up in the first place. Swiftly I remembered. I am utterly lost at the end game.

 

[Nick R]

6 hours ago, ScouserInExile said:

I fancied the latest Kingdom Hearts game and thought it might be fun to play it with my kids. Then I discovered that you need to play half a dozen others (might be a slight exaggeration) to understand the basics of the story, so dropped that notion. I understand it's a sequel, but you should be able to drop in at any point and get at least a vague motion of what's going on. 

 

Honestly, they're not that complicated. A while ago @Harsin posted a handy summary of all you need to know:

 

 

[therearerules]

Crusader Kings 2. I watched hours of Youtube tutorials and even put hours into it myself. Still had no idea what was going on or what I was meant to be doing. It makes Civ look like Frogger.

[Festoon]

Civ VI, which I just got fro free on the Epic Store.

 

I've only ever played the original Civ for about two hours but I just find even the tutorial endless and confusing. Does anyone know a good way into the series?

[chris on the moon]

Yeah, civ revelations is a stripped down civ that's a great introduction to the series.

 

Edit: it's called civilization revolution,  not revelations. Civilization revolution revelation realisation.

[matt0]

36 minutes ago, Festoon said:

Civ VI, which I just got fro free on the Epic Store.

 

I've only ever played the original Civ for about two hours but I just find even the tutorial endless and confusing. Does anyone know a good way into the series?

 

Have you tried constantly playing Civ games since 1992 while slowly becoming more and more dissatisfied with them for reasons you can't quite identify?

[therearerules]

4 hours ago, Festoon said:

Civ VI, which I just got fro free on the Epic Store.

 

I've only ever played the original Civ for about two hours but I just find even the tutorial endless and confusing. Does anyone know a good way into the series?

(I know this probably isn't the thread for it but)

 

Here are some really basic pointers which should get you playing quickly, rather than better.

 

Play on a low difficulty.

When you start the AI will have dumped your settler in a place which is perfectly fine, until you know what you're doing just settle there.

You can send your initial warrior out to explore, you can attack barbarians, but I wouldn't attack anything else until later.

 

Units you can build:

Scout- good for scouting, don't want more than 1 though.

Builder- used to improve tiles (some you'll need a tech for). Builds farms and mines mainly. Can only improve 3 tiles before they're gone.

Slinger- weak unit, can be upgraded into an archer later, but not very useful

Warrior- first basic combat unit, build a couple of these to protect against barbarians

Settler- gets you another city, but you lose 1 population when built. Build one of these after a couple of the above and perhaps a monument.

 

Buildings you can build:

Monument- useful for getting early culture

Granary- not needed initally really, but as you get more people it's useful.

 

When you settle a city the AI will choose where people work. Each tile grants something (unless its flat desert or snow)- either food (grows you pop), industry (builds things), culture and science (go down those trees), faith (used to buy religious units (and others down the line)), gold (used to buy everything). These are also granted by buildings and wonders. Some tiles are luxury resources- when improved by a builder they will provide amenities to keep your people happy. Some are bonus resources, which just improve the yields on that tile (such as extra food). Some are stragic resources, when you improve these with a builder each turn you get 3 of that resource (such as coal). Some units need stragic resources to be built. Generally, just ignore choosing tiles, the AI can do that, and use builders to improve tiles with things on them.

 

Districts. This is the main change from other Civ games. As you advance down the tech tree you'll unlock districts. These can only be built if you've a high enough population (something like 1 district per 2 pop). Each district has a speciality- campuses for science, encampments for land combat etc. Some of them have 'adjacency bonuses'- if you build them next to something (like campuses next to mountains) you get a bonus. This is shown clearly on the map screen, and you want this number to be as high as possible. After you've built a district it will have unique buildings you can build in it.

 

Science and culture have respective trees. Science is all good- better buildings, improvements, powers etc. Culture is also all good, but unlocks governments and policies. Governments give you inherent bonuses, but more importantly more space for policy cards. Policy cards are in 4 flavours- military, economic, diplomatic and wild. Each one can only go in it's spot (anything can go in wild). If in doubt for culture choices just scroll to political philosophy and select that, and after that exploration. The AI will then beeline to those and give you powerful governments.

 

Combat is as simple as marching your troops into the computers. If you are weak they will declare war on you. Walls are a must for defending, they can't be bought and have to be built. Generally the superior teched units will win. If you see a scout with an exclamation mark at your city the barbarians have found you. Get some troops to follow it back to its base and kill it.

 

Great people- throughout the game you will recruit great people by accumulating great people points. Generals and admirals just need to be near troops for their bonus to work, artists and writers need buildings in theatre squares to produce works, everyone else just use them in their district.

 

Housing- the more people in a city the more houses they need. If housing is full it takes loads more food to grow your population. If you settle next to fresh water you get more housing.

 

Diplomacy- with the base game I think it's just a matter of trading with each civ as and when. Just try selling them stuff.

 

Religion- don't worry about this.

 

Wonders- take up an entire hex, the AI will often beat you to them, but on lower difficulties you can get them if you want them. I'd play without them at first until you've got to grips with the game.

 

I think that's it. At the start of the game you can't travel on water, and mountains will also block your travel.

 

Edit- City States! There are some solitary cities with no leaders. They can’t settle any other cities, and just mind their own business. Roughly every 100 turns you’ll get envoys to send to these states. This will get you bonuses, and if you have more envoys than any other civ, and at least 3, you become the suzerain. This means you get a special bonus, access to their strategic resources, and can pay to borrow their troops for 30 turns.

 

[Flanders]

Online shooters for me, which I know is ludicrous given how popular they are. But I find the barriers to be numerous:

- Extremely high skill levels relative to my increasingly aged reflexes and capabilities 

- Good weapons and abilities locked behind hours of grind.

- The best abilities like kill streaks etc are only accessible to the best players.

- The larger size of many maps (eg Battlefield but also all the battle royale games) makes it hard to become familiar with them. 

- Weird jank that means you hardly ever get to see some maps on rotation (Battlefield again). 

- Endless jargon and fluff. Care packages, battle passes, seasons - I don’t understand what any of these things mean. I just want to shoot the mans. Plz halp.

 

Modern online shooters seem to offer great reward if you’re willing or able to devote hundreds of hours to them. I occasionally will have a two week blast of Battlefield or Destiny but it always peters out because the grind gets too wearing and a more rewarding single player game will come along. 
 

Basically none of them are as good as four-player split screen Goldeneye and I’m not sure they ever can be. RCP-90s 4life.

[Festoon]

27 minutes ago, therearerules said:

(I know this probably isn't the thread for it but)

 

Here are some really basic pointers which should get you playing quickly, rather than better.

 

Play on a low difficulty.

When you start the AI will have dumped your settler in a place which is perfectly fine, until you know what you're doing just settle there.

You can send your initial warrior out to explore, you can attack barbarians, but I wouldn't attack anything else until later.

 

Units you can build:

Scout- good for scouting, don't want more than 1 though.

Builder- used to improve tiles (some you'll need a tech for). Builds farms and mines mainly. Can only improve 3 tiles before they're gone.

Slinger- weak unit, can be upgraded into an archer later, but not very useful

Warrior- first basic combat unit, build a couple of these to protect against barbarians

Settler- gets you another city, but you lose 1 population when built. Build one of these after a couple of the above and perhaps a monument.

 

Buildings you can build:

Monument- useful for getting early culture

Granary- not needed initally really, but as you get more people it's useful.

 

When you settle a city the AI will choose where people work. Each tile grants something (unless its flat desert or snow)- either food (grows you pop), industry (builds things), culture and science (go down those trees), faith (used to buy religious units (and others down the line)), gold (used to buy everything). These are also granted by buildings and wonders. Some tiles are luxury resources- when improved by a builder they will provide amenities to keep your people happy. Some are bonus resources, which just improve the yields on that tile (such as extra food). Some are stragic resources, when you improve these with a builder each turn you get 3 of that resource (such as coal). Some units need stragic resources to be built. Generally, just ignore choosing tiles, the AI can do that, and use builders to improve tiles with things on them.

 

Districts. This is the main change from other Civ games. As you advance down the tech tree you'll unlock districts. These can only be built if you've a high enough population (something like 1 district per 2 pop). Each district has a speciality- campuses for science, encampments for land combat etc. Some of them have 'adjacency bonuses'- if you build them next to something (like campuses next to mountains) you get a bonus. This is shown clearly on the map screen, and you want this number to be as high as possible. After you've built a district it will have unique buildings you can build in it.

 

Science and culture have respective trees. Science is all good- better buildings, improvements, powers etc. Culture is also all good, but unlocks governments and policies. Governments give you inherent bonuses, but more importantly more space for policy cards. Policy cards are in 4 flavours- military, economic, diplomatic and wild. Each one can only go in it's spot (anything can go in wild). If in doubt for culture choices just scroll to political philosophy and select that, and after that exploration. The AI will then beeline to those and give you powerful governments.

 

Combat is as simple as marching your troops into the computers. If you are weak they will declare war on you. Walls are a must for defending, they can't be bought and have to be built. Generally the superior teched units will win. If you see a scout with an exclamation mark at your city the barbarians have found you. Get some troops to follow it back to its base and kill it.

 

Great people- throughout the game you will recruit great people by accumulating great people points. Generals and admirals just need to be near troops for their bonus to work, artists and writers need buildings in theatre squares to produce works, everyone else just use them in their district.

 

Housing- the more people in a city the more houses they need. If housing is full it takes loads more food to grow your population.

 

Diplomacy- with the base game I think it's just a matter of trading with each civ as and when. Just try selling them stuff.

 

Religion- don't worry about this.

 

I think that's it. At the start of the game you can't travel on water, and mountains will also block your travel.

 

 

 

This is awesome, man. Thanks so much!

[therearerules]

11 minutes ago, Festoon said:

 

This is awesome, man. Thanks so much!

No problem! Put in a bit more about housing and wonders. Hope you enjoy it.

[iknowgungfu]

On 27/05/2020 at 15:26, DukeOfEarlsfield said:

The fact that a fighting game has a tutorial mode for you to learn the game is kind of the problem. IK+ is a game you could 'learn' by glancing at the inside of the cassette cover. I'm not saying all games should go back to that,  just pointing out how much accumulated knowledge there is in modern fighting games that has to be learnt by any newcomer.

 

And yes, I stuck with beat 'em ups as that's what we called them in the C64 days.

Yeah....but how did everyone know to repeatedly type in swear words or keep typing nopants?  I've always been amazed at the word of mouth effect with things like that.

[dumpster]

Persona 4 Golden.  I've never played much RPG stuff apart from Final Fantasy 7, which I never really liked because of the random battles all the time. Persona seems (eventually) to restrict the battles to the world inside the TV, with the story going on outside. I liked the sound of that, felt less random so I bought it.  I've restarted it a couple of times but honestly  I have no idea what it is.  The opening is an intro that just goes on and on. And on.  And then  when you get into the main loop of the game  I have no idea what to do. Do I go to the shopping street? Do I go to the lake? Wander around the school? Or do I just go home  and go to bed?  It doesn't make any sense to me, yet I'm sure I'd be complaining that it isn't interactive enough if it told you where to go.  I cannot see what the appeal is. Is it even a game?  The guy with the long nose in the intro makes  no sense to me, and I think he is there to help beginners by explaining what's going on!

[Oh Danny Boy]

Diablo 3, I never played any of the others, and I’ve been enjoying playing on it on my Switch. I like the whole vibe and just play it a like a hack and slash dungeon crawler. But every time I read up on it I’m like ‘whaaa???’. Everything is dense and incomprehensible and I haven’t got the faintest clue about what’s being said. It’s obviously a much more deeper game than how I’ve been experiencing it.

[imp]

There are really accessible "fighting games" like Nidhogg or Samurai Gunn that will scratch that pick up and play itch, and have way more depth than you might think on first glance.

 

Still, sometimes you wanna play rock, paper, scissors and sometimes you wanna play chess.

[SqueakyG]

I have found that quite a few Triple-A games from the current generation are just too big and complicated for what I want a videogame to be. Learning the controls and the gameplay systems feels like learning how to perform a second job.

 

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a big example. I played the first 4 or 5 hours then never went back. There are around 16 different inputs on a game controller these days (not counting analog movement), and RDR2 requires you to use all of them, in many combinations. I found myself staring at the bottom corner of the screen for most of the time, because that's where the prompt popped up to "Hold this and tap this to do this." I recall there were different button combinations for picking up a gun and for picking up a hat. I realised I wasn't going to enjoy the game.

 

I think God Of War (current gen game) could have been just as great without RPG stat systems. Don't need levels and statistics. Don't need to spend hours staring at numbers in the menus to decide whether my weapon would kill things better or worse if the rune with +2 to frost damage comes with a -1 to fire damage. It would have been exactly the same action game without stats.

 

Also games that confuse and complicate things because of all their "Game as a service" / lootbox / in-game currencies / pay-to-win / DLC nonsense. When you boot up the game the title screen is basically a market stall saying: "Look at all the extra bits you haven't bought yet!" Then the single-player experience is cluttered with collectables and currencies for a dozen different multiplayer modes.

 

I'd say this is a "barrier for entry" because you have to become accustomed to the entire complicated business model of Triple-A games in order to find the actual game behind the layers of up-sell.

[dataDave]

17 hours ago, Oh Danny Boy said:

Diablo 3, I never played any of the others, and I’ve been enjoying playing on it on my Switch. I like the whole vibe and just play it a like a hack and slash dungeon crawler. But every time I read up on it I’m like ‘whaaa???’. Everything is dense and incomprehensible and I haven’t got the faintest clue about what’s being said. It’s obviously a much more deeper game than how I’ve been experiencing it.

 

The game doesn't really start until the endgame when you focus on a particular class 'build', and begin to refine the stats for it. It goes from being a generally mindless dungeon brawler to an insta-death isometric shmup. Like Super Smash TV on cocaine and steroids.

I love the stats game. Stacking numerous 50%/75%/100%/500% damage/speed buff multipliers on top of one another. When you're up against bosses that can wipe you out in one hit you want to be able to take them down in under ten seconds.