u/Terry__Poppins

The genre boundaries around "ARPG" are kind of weird when you actually think about it. The standard examples are all isometric, Diablo, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, Last Epoch, Titan Quest and if you describe an ARPG to someone who plays games, they're going to picture a top-down camera with a character clicking through hordes of enemies and drowning in loot. The camera angle feels inseparable from the identity.

But then you look at something like Borderlands and it's doing pretty much the same thing from a first-person perspective. Pretty much all the mechanics and even the gameplay loop are ARPG, but since its first person the game just doesn’t come up when you think about the genre.

Meanwhile the Soulslike genre gets labeled "Action RPG" constantly and it drives me a bit insane because Dark Souls and Elden Ring share almost nothing with what ARPG actually means in practice. The way the loot works is completely different and there are no skill trees. It kind of shows you the difference between what ARPG means for us and what Action RPG could mean in the broader sense.

The genre-blending experiments are where it gets interesting though. Hellgate: London tried the 3D first/third-person ARPG hybrid back in 2007 and the core idea was actually solid even though the execution (and the business model, and the server infrastructure, and basically everything else) killed it. Nioh took the opposite approach, Soulslike combat precision but with a really nice deep loot system. You could spend hours rolling for perfect affixes on gear in Nioh 2, which isn’t something you usually get in Soulslikes, and the combat is satisfying enough that you don’t really mind the grind.

I personally still haven’t really played a compelling non isometric ARPG. Something with proper loot and a fun skill system, maybe something like Last Epoch skill trees or Grim Dawn multiclassing, with a non isometric perspective would be fun to try. But I don’t think anyone has really given it a real try so far, the ARPG systems feel kind of bland and diluted in these games most of the time.

My grandpa came over last weekend and he was looking at my PC setup and asking what all the screens were for and stuff, and I figured why not just show him. I had a few games open and he seemed kinda interested in watching so I let him sit down and try a couple things himself.

Most of them were way too much for him, like he could not figure out WASD to save his life and anything with camera controls was an immediate no. But then I put Kingdom Rush on because I figured the click to place mechanics would be simple enough, and this man got HOOKED. Like he played for like two hours straight without looking up. He kept calling the units "them little guys" and would get so hyped when a big wave got wiped out before reaching the end. He beat the first few levels on his own and only needed help when the hero abilities unlocked, just cuz he didn’t really use them until I explained. Then I fired up Blitzkrieg Express for him, that was the simplest game I had installed and he loved that too. It was like watching a kid play in some ways, he would get really excited when he caused a big explosion or chain reaction. We had a lot of fun so now I’ve decided to hook him up with my old computer (it's gathering dust anyway). So now he has a 1060 GTX and 32 gigs of ram to work with, I think it's fine for him.

The thing is he's 72 and has never played a video game in his life before this. He grew up on chess and card games so I think the strategic aspect of TD just clicked with his brain in a way that other genres definitely wouldn't, and being able to pause the game is really important, he likes to take his time. I called him the next day to tell him I would be getting him a computer so he can play at home and he sounded pretty stoked.

I want to set him up with a few more games but I want to make sure they're accessible enough that he won't get frustrated and give up. What are the absolute easiest and simplest TD games you can think of? I wanna give him more options to choose from, and slowly work him up to more complex games, I think he can handle it once he gets used to playing a bit.

So yeah I did something pretty dumb in the kitchen earlier. I set a knife down on the edge of the counter at a weird angle and it started slowly sliding off. My brain decided the absolute best move was to try and catch it before it hit the floor. Sliced my thumb and palm pretty good and ended up having to go get stitches. 

My left hand is completely bandaged up now and I can't really move it. That means using a keyboard is totally out of the question for at least a week or two.I need some good games I can play using literally nothing but my mouse so I don't go crazy out of boredom in the meantime.

My only hobby apart from gaming is juggling so I really don’t have a lot of options. Right now I've just been playing a ton of Balatro and Blitzkrieg Express, just simple casual stuff to pass the time. Balatro is just super relaxing because it’s Balatro and Blitzkrieg reminds me of Zuma back in the day, like the best era of popcap games, simple satisfying arcade game. I’ve beaten most of the challenges and I will get bored playing just two games for days, so I'm trying to figure out what else I should get. 

Not really looking to get into anything super deep, I just need some good simple games that I can waste some time on. Turn based or real time doesn’t really matter to me, though I’m thinking a lot of turn based games will be fine with just a mouse so I would love some real time recommendations as well.

I came back to League after not really touching it for almost a decade and honestly the worst thing wasn't even the new champions or the item rework that I haven’t really figured out yet. What I immediately noticed was how nobody cared about the game at all. Everyone was doing their own thing and there was no coordination whatsoever. Back when I played regularly around season 2-3, you could queue up for a normal and it felt like an actual game. People communicated, people tried, and even when you lost it was still competitive enough that the match felt worth playing. Now it feels like a complete waste of time. I hope it's just because my rank degraded and I’m being matched with idiots, but I’m not sure.

Half the lobby is clearly not paying attention, someone's always AFK by minute 3, and the skill gaps between players feel way wider than they used to be. ARAM is fine for a quick casual dopamine hit but it doesn't come close to the feeling of actually playing a proper competitive game of league. Same with the rotating modes, they're fun for maybe 2 games but they're not why I started playing League in the first place. I like to tryhard with a group and climb the ranks, but the people I used to play with have moved on from LoL mostly so I don’t have my old crew anymore.

I have been trying to find people to play with regularly but it hasn’t been easy. I have been hitting up some LFG discord servers, no luck so far. You find someone decent, play one game, they vanish forever (especially if you end up losing). Or you join a "community" server that's really just 300 people and 4 active members who only play at 2am. Finding people who are consistent, play at roughly your level, and actually want to commit to regular sessions feels pretty difficult. I had a similar problem when I need someone to play Arc with and I managed to find some peeps on Gameram, so I’m gonna try that again, not sure how popular League is on there.

How are you people actually building reliable premade groups these days? Because right now it feels like the entire game is designed to push people into solo queue and if you want the real 5v5 experience you have to find people yourself, which is probably fine for those who never stopped playing. But for me right now the friendslist is pretty empty apart from some oldheads that are a bit too high ranked to play with me (I peaked at plat, probably very rusty now)

For me the best thing about platformers is when you encounter a new area, and slowly figure out a precise string of moves to traverse it. That moment where your brain maps the route and your hands have to execute it perfectly is genuinely one of the best feelings in gaming for me. I like having time to think about my route a bit.

Celeste was probably the first to give me this feeling, at least in the earlier chapters before it ramps into some genuinely frantic stuff. The B-sides and C-sides were a bit more difficult than I would like though the level design was still brilliant. Hollow Knight also had some really nice platforming for me, I like it when you really have to use your moveset creatively to get where you wanna go. 

The closest to what I really want though is Croak, sadly just the demo that’s out right now, it's like a hand drawn platformer (Cuphead style graphics, I read that the same art team is involved in fact) with a very tight and simple moveset, and it looks HELLA promising, and not just because it’s one of like 2 games that have this kind of retro Disneylike art style. The movement is really interesting, there are only a few moves but they have so many uses and give you a lot of options, really simple to understand but takes a lot of practice to master.

What I don't want is a game that demands you do all of that at full speed with zero time to breathe. I want to methodically work through a movement challenge at my own pace and feel like I accomplished something when I finally nail it.

That said, I do  want a challenging game, just in a way that rewards thinking and precision over raw speed.

Every single game I play, no matter what it is, I end up hoarding crafting materials like some kind of digital doomsday prepper - and I've been doing it since World of Warcraft back in the day when I had entire bank alts dedicated to storing herbs and ores I was absolutely never going to use (I told myself I'd level alchemy and blacksmithing eventually, spoiler I never did). It carried over to Skyrim where I had chests full of dragon bones and ingots, the same thing happens in every ARPG I play too. I could never get myself to use my crafting mats in PoE, the situation was a bit better in Last Epoch because some of the crafting is deterministic, so it was easier to justify the expense in my mind if I knew what I would get. But generally the second something looks even remotely useful I grab it and never let go until I’m really sure I won't need it for something else, by the time I figure out the best things to craft I usually don’t even need them anymore...

The other one that's followed me through literally everything is the 'talk to every NPC before progressing' thing. Doesn't matter if it's a massive open world or some random indie game with five characters, if there's an NPC standing there with a dialogue option, I HAVE to exhaust every line before I move on, otherwise it feels like I’m missing out on something. Some games feel like they were built for playing like this tho, like I recently played Esoteric Ebb and it was so fun to see all the dialogue options and everything was so well written and funny, the time limit was the only thing stopping me from literally doing everything on my first playthrough. Probably gonna check out Zero Parades next then Hollow Home when it comes out, really digging all these narrative rpgs coming out recently, they reward my stupid habit with good dialogue instead of punishing me with random filler chatter. I've been doing it since Gothic 2 and I still can't stop myself even in games with stupid silly writing (Which I don’t mind at all, the dialogue is my favorite part anyway even if it's silly). My girlfriend was watching me play Hades 2 one time and she was like “Oh you read all of that? I just skip it” It was hard to explain to her that for me the reward for beating a run was to get to the dialogue hahaha, for her it's just an annoyance between runs I guess.

I guess sometimes these kind of OCD habits can be annoying but for me I’ve pretty much embraced them. The only one I really had to get rid of was constantly quicksaving before every fight, kind of stopped doing that when I realized how much more fun I was having playing games without a save function (Like most roguelites) so I now force myself to use savegames only when I need to stop playing, or for testing things.

I've been playing this game a ton and honestly the most fun I've been having lately is just playing with some self imposed limitations, or challenge runs if you will. I play with a buddie I met on gameram and we have really solid teamwork now, we have been playing together for months. When we first started trying to mix things up we were mostly doing naked runs for the challenge.

Well, that eventually evolved into full zero combat ghost runs and now it's basically our favorite way to play. The entire goal is just to loot and extract without ever being spotted by ARC or other players. We run the Photoelectric Cloak and Hairpins, lots of decoys and smoke grenades. There is just something incredibly tense about sitting in a bush and holding your breath while a massive patrol walks right past you. Getting out through a hatch with a full backpack without even being spotted feels way more rewarding than just shooting everything in sight. We only engage in combat if it’s absolutely necessary.

The only problem is we really want to run as a full trio but every time we get a random they kinda ruin the run. We will spend ten minutes carefully routing around enemies and then the new guy can’t help himself and shoots some guy we were sneaking past in the back of the head. They can't resist pulling the trigger which instantly reveals our location and makes it pretty hard to continue the stealth run. It really kills the vibe when you are trying to be quiet and someone just goes full Rambo (unless its a group decision)

I've been looking for a third person lately to complete the squad so I figured I would post here as well (looking on discord and gameram) just to see if anyone else actually enjoys this playstyle. Anyone else playing like this? If anyone else wants to try out some stealth runs or something like that, let me know, we are EU.

I have this bad habit of judging games based on really petty stuff and missing out on them. It just happened to me again recently and I feel so dumb for not giving these games a fair shot earlier.

I am a huge fan of They Are Billions and a friend of mine kept telling me to play Diplomacy is Not an Option. I looked at the screenshots and completely wrote it off because of the graphics. It just looked like a game for kids to me. I stubbornly refused to play it for a long time until my friend literally just gifted it to me on Steam to make me try it. Turns out the game is incredibly fun and the combat is great. The art style actually works perfectly for how many enemies are on screen at once and I ended up sinking a ton of hours into it.

This also happened to me with Dota 2. I used to play a lot of League of Legends and I did try Dota a few times, but I always quit immediately because the game felt incredibly laggy to me. It just felt like there was a delay whenever I clicked to move. Later on a friend explained to me that the game wasn't lagging at all, it just has turn rates. Your character actually has to physically turn their body around before moving in a different direction. League doesnt have this and its what makes ranged ADC so powerful, you can kite easily. Once I understood why that mechanic exists I forced myself to get used to it. League isn’t even installed on my PC anymore and I play dota every weekend with some friends, I wish I had given it a chance earlier.

So now games that I wrote off completely initially are some of my favorites, has this happened to anyone else?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I play a ton of games in this genre but honestly, wrapping up a massive campaign usually leaves me ready to just move on. Unless a game has a very specific hook I rarely stick around. But I've noticed my replay habits shift completely depending on the specific flavor of RPG.

For action RPGs you usually come back to test out a weird new build or check out a big seasonal update. I basically have a comfort rotation depending on my mood. When I want to just chill and build something weird Last Epoch is my go to. It feels like a low pressure sandbox where I can throw together a totally silly homebrew setup mainly because of the way the crafting and drops work, and a lot of builds feel viable. 

On the other darker side of action RPGs, Path of Exile is what I boot up when I want the exact opposite experience. I love hopping in there to play super optimized builds put together by people way smarter than me. I never really try to do my own builds because whenever I tried I always ended up feeling stupid since there was a community guide that did a similar thing just way better.

But for more classic RPGs the draw is totally different. It usually boils down to experiencing the stories and characters in a completely new way. I'll gladly fire up Baldur's Gate 3 or Fallout for another run just to try a pure evil playthrough and see how the world reacts to my terrible choices. 

I also don’t have to mention something like Skyrim where a massive modding community is basically the ultimate replay hook letting you completely transform the game every time you anew. It’s 100+ different game experiences for the price of one by now. Bless Todd Howard and his greed, at least it’s always backward compatible.

I also still boot up Elden Ring every now and then just to see if I can beat the game using a completely different weapon archetype, and the gameplay ends up feeling so fresh with different setups.

Wondering what makes you revisit stuff from your library. Do you guys cycle through different games depending on what you're craving or is there one specific feature that absolutely guarantees you'll be coming back for another run?

My roommate and I finished the community center in Stardew co-op a few weeks ago and it was probably the most satisfying thing we've done in a game together. Not even because of the gameplay itself, but because we'd been working toward this one shared goal the whole time. When we finally finished it, there was this actual sense of like, we did that together. Now I keep noticing that most co-op games don't really have that? Like you're playing next to each other but you're not really building anything as a team.

We tried Palia for a bit and it was cute, but it still felt like we were just doing our own individual things in the same world. Animal Crossing was the same. I love decorating, but my friends' islands were totally separate from mine and visiting was fun but temporary. What I want is something where the collaboration is baked in, where what you create together wouldn't exist without both of you contributing.

I wishlisted Loftia a while back because it looks like it has these server-wide projects where everyone contributes together, which sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. I saw that they have a playtest going on right now, so I was wondering if anyone here has gotten to try it yet? Are the community projects in the playtest, and if so, what are they like? Also I’m not sure how it works with the little islands, I hope I can pick who my neighbors are.

Since the full game isn't out yet anyway, does anyone know of any other games where you actually build something meaningful with other people? It doesn't have to be relaxing specifically, I'm just looking for that feeling of shared progress.