TheRangerLOL wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 9:05 am
Kinda what koub said honestly, just do your own thing. Set your own goals, you don't need to care about what anyone else tells you to do. That's why i never play for achievements. Honestly, it's usually bad to check up on forums when you first start playing a game if you don't have any problems while playing. Too m uch meta gaming. Meta gaming is generally a
very bad thing. Too many people who think they know what they're doing when all they're really doing is just doing what someone else thinks that they know what they're doing said is good.
its kind of become a hallmark of a modern gamer to basically have no initiative of their own...... which is why theres so much dissonance generated by their desire for "Purpose"/"Meaningful gameplay"/"Progression"/"Fun". An inability to define what these things are, is partly why they get so wrapped up in the long list of things they think "aren't". And an inability to find their own way leads to the problem of quickly losing attention. This isn't limited to games either...... pretty much all of social media, consumable media, and digital entertainment is further conditioning this (either on purpose, or as a side effect of trying to keep pace others doing it on purpose).
In his case, I'd very highly recommend trying to force a mental reset. Stay away from anything that routinely "Dings" you with a highly explicit feedback loop.... which is gonna effectively exclude almost any major title made after 2010, and to a lesser extent Consoles as a platform (because achievements). Disabling Steam overlay is the only option for that platform.
The super hard part is finding games that avoid these mental traps, because is become the standard of game design in order to facilitate all kinds of routine building behaviors. The absolute hardest part is resisting the urge to go back to a Ding-game, since its basically a dopamine addiction. If you're the learn-ed type, look up game design essays from Mark Brown (Game Maker's Toolkit), Adam Millard (The Architect of Games), and related circles. Its not directly useful as a player.... but it does help you understand "why" a game does certain things, and help you recognize how its manipulating you.
This video pretty much hits home on the dissonant sensation I mentioned earlier, and almost perfectly slots into the OP's dilemma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ypOUn6rThM
(and side plug...... Kruggsmash plays Dwarf Fortress. Its a video series thats really good for helping develop altered perception; which is really useful for understanding the mind set of a sandbox environment. Not explicitly in how he plays.... but in the presentation, and how it helps you view and understand the play space. )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDX5hmt ... VYh8t11lYl
Its hard to suggest what games the OP could consider.... because I have no idea what kind of games they like. But I would suggest outright avoiding anything with RPG-lite leveling systems, stat based skill trees, or gear with visible numbers. Older, linear single player shooters would be good candidates. Things with Metroidvania type power structures (function based, rather then incremental power increases), classic RTS games, extremely narrative focused games, or a point/click adventure throwback title. Or Games with exploration elements or survival elements if you want to keep in the sandbox zone. These are notably better since it can leverage your ADD into something productive, and stimulates a lot of problem solving in your brain. I would also be a bit leery of games with comprehensive questing systems..... anything with a dotted line should be low on that list. The trouble, though, is that quest systems aren't necessarily bad.. its that far too many lead you around with awareness bubble of only 10 meters... and THATS the kind of situation you want to avoid. Ideally ones that give you a goal, but don't act as a walk through (excluding story driven ones); one that let you figure out your own solution.
After about 3 months of this, your brain relaxes a bit, and you start becoming acutely aware when a game is trying to egg you on without using organic game play reasons for it. You SHOULD also lose interest in certain types of games... and thats arguably a good thing for your mental health.
I lay all this out, because Factorio is kind of this weird animal. As far as Sandbox and Survival games go, its design is the high water mark for TechTree and Organic Progression as a game system. The mechanics are simple, but they're consistent across ALL scales game play. And "progression" that actually properly builds on top of previous efforts, rather then trivializing them out of existence. But the genius is that, at its core, your focus is only on a small area of the factory at any given time..... and your mind isn't aware of how big the factory actually is, until you have to walk back through it to figure out where some shortage is happening. Everything about it makes intuitive sense... until you hit the brick wall of the "end game dilemma". This is where most modern games tend to start spiraling out of control. When players "beat" a game.... and still expect it to continue on like it has been, but to infinity. An endless need for new quests, new stuff, new tricks.... and are only willing to put it down once it pisses them off for some arbitrary reason. Sandbox games don't even attempt at an illusion of offering this, which is why a lot of gamers don't understand it.
ugh.... now I'm just kind of rattling on. Without even needing to get into programming yourself, theres so much interesting intersections and things to be learned by studying game design and game history. Technical disciplines, Philosophy, History, Literature, Mythology, Psychology, Sociology, Logistics, Mathematics, Physics, Art, all lending contributions as either ideas, influence or processes to how many really good games are made. Being an arm chair developer has been the thing thats kept me enjoying games, despite how terrible the last decade has been overall in terms of treatment of gamers. I still talk about 2015/2016 like its the Dark ages.
