You stop enjoying new RPGs around age 30+

[Mr. Magniloquent]

There is a body of research that suggests that after your mid 20s, your brain begin to prioritize efficient retrieval of existing knowledge over acquisition of new knowledge. Hormones signal blood flow to different parts of the brain, which impacts emotional responsiveness to "the new". This is well known phenomena. Couple this with a generation of normalization bias to what you grew up with, and you have explanation of why everything after your own generation is crap.

For me it's not new games, it's all gaming in general. I love the idea of gaming, but when I fire one up, the fascination and addictive interest that once held me isn't there. There have loads of great new games. D:OS, Everspace, Exanima, Shadow Warrior reboot, Satellite Reign, Shadow Tactics, X-Com reboots, Chaos Reborn, Dead Space (I & II), and many more. I guess many of those wouldn't be considered new anymore, but no matter. I was no longer an adolescent when I played them. Gaming is still enjoyable which is why I continue to do it, don't get me wrong. It's just the "je ne sais qui" isn't often there anymore, even for good titles.

I'm ok with that though. While it never held me back from any other social or constructive activity when I was younger, the kind of addiction that Baldur's Gate, Age of Empires, Starcraft, Diablo, and Betrayal at Krondor and others provoked out of me were intense. Now it's an actual hobby, rather than a vice.

 

[thesheeep]

Then this guy comes along and starts sniffing his own farts, talking like he's Mr. Miyagi or some shit.

The funny thing is his lecture about what a waste of time games are, because they are "unproductive" (and how supposedly important productivity is), just to hand out links to an "online philosophy club"

I wonder if developers realize now that there's no point in trying and that's what's changed most substantially in today's games. Maybe the effort, which always fails, to simulate tabletop created something important in those older games.

I definitely think that is a part of the problem.
Nowadays, what many define as "RPG", is little more than an action game with sprinkles of RPG.
Which means that physical player skill becomes the primary source to determine if something happens successfully. This is of course entirely opposite to the tabletop roots and proper definition of RPG, where mental player skills are the determining factor (in building a character, combat strategies, etc.).

As old devs tried to recreate tabletop experience, they almost automatically got that part right, at least.

I do think, btw, that it is theoretically possible to recreate the tabletop experience (minus the social aspect) in a game.
You "just" have to create a world in which everything the ruleset allows you to do is actually doable, combined with total freedom.
Creating such a game would of course be so time consuming that it becomes impossible in practice.

 

[pomenitul]

I can't vouch for games, but there's so much music out there that if you think it's all shit compared to the pearls of yesteryear, you're not trying hard enough. Do your research, branch out of your comfort zone – and I'm not talking about accepting the mainstream, I'm saying you need to stop being a pussy and dig deeper, beyond Spotify's self-perpetuating algorithms – until you find a sound you didn't even know was possible. And then another, and another, and another. Lazy fucks who claim to care about culture will garner no sympathy from me.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Less time for bullshit. Good games I have time for but there aren't a lot of good RPGs in recent years.

Underrail, Grimoire are the two new ones I most thoroughly enjoyed and played.

I have been playing a fuckton of Rocket League and DCS flying Harrier, A10 and Hornet missions.

 

[Roqua]

i toyed with this idea and decided against it initially. As of now it might be interesting without biasing responses. I dont expect it to prove anything however.

I'm not sure which to pick. I don't drive a Harley but like new titles as long as they are crpgs, but I like way more new games than AoD and Underrail.

 

[Serus]

I didn't play nor plan to play Witcher, action-rpg is not my thing in general. I bought and disliked Witcher 1 back in the day, that's enough Witcher for me. I only liked the combat system in DOS (and disliked the rest of the game) and I enjoyed Dork Souls for 10~15 hours but it's a genre of games I never really liked much, even when I was 20.

On the other hand I liked a lot more than just AoD and Underrail (though those 2 are clearly among the best CRPG made in the last few years) so that option is not good. I enjoyed greatly Battle Brothers and Cataclysm DDA (the former is borderline crpg at best, the latter a roguelike but still) and enjoyed to a degree: Blackguards 1, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, M&M X, Lords of Xulima and possibly a few more I can't remember right now. I also played and enjoyed some old games like Fallout: Tactics for the first time in the last few years. Old games but new to me. Oh, and as guilty pleasure I enjoy some diablo2-clones, in the past years it was mostly Path of Exile and Grim Dawn.

All the above titles I played and enjoyed well past my 30th anniversary, I'm closer to 40 now. And I do have trouble enjoying anything at all in the last year or two - but that's a psychiatric condition called anhedonia, unrelated to any specific kind of entertainment and not a normal state of being for any person at any age.

Which option should I chose in the poll lukaszek ?

 

[thesheeep]

All the above titles I played and enjoyed well past my 30th anniversary, I'm closer to 40 now. And I do have trouble enjoying anything at all in the last year or two - but that's a psychiatric condition called anhedonia, unrelated to any specific kind of entertainment and not a normal state of being for any person at any age.

That sucks, man.
But it also makes you even more at home here, doesn't it?

 

[Master]

I can't vouch for games, but

They suck, trust me.

 

[HansDampf]

My first reaction to this was that it's bullshit, because obviously I'm not just replaying my personal Top10 over and over again but I'm actually seeking out, playing, and liking new games all the time. But then, when I look at those games, most of them happen to fit into two categories: 1) Old games from the 90s or early 00s I've never played before. 2) New games with oldschool elements (Shadow Tactics, Prey, Shadowrun, Hollow Knight...). When I end up putting a game from the first category into my Top10, no one can dismiss this as pure nostalgia. But maybe I am nostalgic for the overall oldschool style of game design. Or is it just a preference, a matter of taste that has nothing to do with nostalgia? It's hard to say. My tastes have also changed over time. 15 years ago I couldn't even get into CRPGs. They were way too complicated, too much reading, too many numbers. When I enjoy games like Fallout or Baldur's Gate now, what has that to do with nostalgia? I don't know.
I hate that word btw. It usually serves no purpose other than to kill discussions and to be disrespectful. "You just prefer X over Y because nostalgia." Translation: "You just like X because you are old." Stfu! I don't even feel over 30.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Cyberarmy]

>30, new games are bad/worse, same as movies, and music, and my age is not related

 

[Plisken]

no, the new shit is mostly objectively more awful. You know this because millennials get forced to play an old school classic out of boredom or internet speed being tanked and all of the sudden they're like what the fuck is this arcane magicka

further supporting the idea that games objectively had a golden age, is games from BEFORE that are actually shit and nobody plays them aside from the "im too cool for school" LARPing faggots on here who really try to convince you they actually still spend a meaningful amount of time enjoying titles from the 80s, fuck off.

 

[L'Montes]

I'm over 30, and I like at least some newer titles. I liked all the Souls games. I thought the Witcher was basically good. I've enjoyed the Pillars of Eternity games, for what they were.

Sure, Mass Effect became an abortion in it's last release, Fallout 4 was unmitigated garbage, etc., but I'm not so jaded as to hate all newer games.

I fucking hate Harleys though, so I didn't vote.

 

[Storyfag]

It's not that you stop enjoying new stuff, it's that finding new stuff that is enjoyable becomes more and more difficult. "90% of everything is shit" turned into "99% of everything is shit".

 

[thesheeep]

I fucking hate Harleys though, so I didn't vote.

Yeah, that Harley reference I don't get.
Maybe it is an American thing to buy a Harley and do X? No idea...

 

[Harry Easter]

[...] Am I getting old too fast?

Nah, that's normal.Try something different instead or give it a rest for a while, then come back.

And if you like oldschool-stuff: Star Wolves 1 was quite fun back then. Or you can give one of the Original Sins by Larian a try.

 

[Viata]

Whoever did this poll is completely ignoring people that are exactly 30 years old. Should go back to school.

 

[Serus]

Whoever did this poll is completely ignoring people that are exactly 30 years old. Should go back to school.

He also believes that deterministic sytems > rng based systems.

 

[L'Montes]

I fucking hate Harleys though, so I didn't vote.

Yeah, that Harley reference I don't get.
Maybe it is an American thing to buy a Harley and do X? No idea...

My parents got Harleys when they were going through a mid-life crisis (I guess?) this was... like 20 years ago now. That makes it feel like a dated reference to me, but I'm not sure what the alternative for the hardcore gaming set would be. Getting really into 3D Printing?

I feel like I've enjoyed "games" continuously throughout my life. I feel like the differences tend to be more along the lines of having less patience for bullshit, grinding, etc. now. If a game honestly expects me to grind for 3 hours to damage a boss, I might've done that when I was younger. Now I'm more likely to open Cheat Engine. I care about the content that has effort put into it, not the time-padding stuff. That said, re-skinning the Tower of Hanoi for the 100th time doesn't constitute good content either.

Being more particular about games now seems more like a product of having less time than anything else. How you approach RPGs when you're a teen with nothing but jerking off, watching re-runs, or playing games to do is bound to be a bit different.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Serus]

Which option should I chose in the poll lukaszek ?

we all like old games in here. We all like old games in new clothes(underrail).
(...)

This phrase is meaningless. You said: "hurr, durr, herp, derp".
Underrail is as "new game" as DOS is.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Serus]

Which option should I chose in the poll lukaszek ?

we all like old games in here. We all like old games in new clothes(underrail).
(...)

This phrase is meaningless. You said: "hurr, durr, herp, derp".
Underrail is as "new game" as DOS is.

no. Like i said previously: if metallica released new album and you were to enjoy it, it wouldnt make you a teenager. Nor you would say that you are listening to new music.
Same with underrail: it is nostalgia driven title for fallout fans. For topic of this thread its important to differentiate such. DOS is its own league and you wont say that its 'spiritual successor' or something like that.

That's just an opinion that you failed to substantiate in any way so far. Underrail in many way is nothing like Fallout. The fact it has a few similarities doesn't make a title "not new". It's not a clone of some older title - certainly not of one I know, certainly not Fallout. It does it's own thing building on the traditions of the genre. Not unlike DOS.

Your comparison is a logical fail - Styg is not an old developer who makes another game exactly as he did before. If you really want one that fits, it would be like a new music band created a new album in a genre that existed for some time but added its own flavour and its own ideas. You know, the way like it is supposed to work.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Mustawd]

harley was reference to midlife crisis(fun fact, top target for that company are accountants like mustawd. )

I chose becoming a manwhore instead of getting a Harley.

 

[Zombra]