Just some off the top of my head: Destiny, Deep Rock Galactic, Overwatch, and most recently Baldur’s Gate.

I received BG3 as a gift. I installed and loaded up the game and the first thing I was prompted to do is to create a character. There are like 12 different classes with 14 different abilities and 10 ability classes. The game does not explain any of this. I went to watch a tutorial online to try and wrap my head around all of this. The first tutorial just assumed you knew a bunch of stuff already. The second one I found was great but it was 1.5 hours long. There is no in-game tutorial I could find.

I just get very bored very quickly of analyzing character traits and I absolutely loathe inventory management (looking at you Borderlands). Often times my inventory fills up and then I end up just selling stuff that I have no idea what it does and later realizing it’s an incredibly valuable item/resource and now I have to find more.

So my question is this: Do you guys really spend hours of your day just researching on the internet how to play these games? Or do you just jump in and wing it? Or does each game just build on top of working knowledge of previous similar games?

E: General consensus seems to be all of the above. Good to know!

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Personally I just hop in an wing it. In the case of baldurs gate I already understood most classes and races because of DND but in general when it comes to games like that yeah I just wing it and hope for the best

    • MaggiWuerze@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      This is it basically. Especially for the first time you don’t really need to minmax anything and still have a good time.

  • muhyb@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    For BG3, don’t search something about it, just start and play. You don’t need to know anything prior, however it’s a role-playing game so play accordingly what kind of character you created. You can save-scumming if you want if some desicion you made leads to something bad, though they all the part of the game. Just play and experience.

    For games like Overwatch, it isn’t complicated at all. It just requires you to play it constantly and learn counter measures just by playing. Learning them is the fun part, overthinking about them not so much.

    To be fair when I see “complex game” part, I was kinda expexting some advanced building games, something like Factorio, maybe RimWorld.

    Anyway, also you don’t have to like any games even if they are overwhelmingly positive titles. Just find what you like and dig in.

    • Moonguide@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      I don’t know I’d qualify Rimworld as complicated, honestly. It has more moving parts than The Sims, sure, but it is nowhere near how complicated EU4 seems (I haven’t played it, it scares me, but CK is another good example).

    • key@lemmy.keychat.org
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      11 months ago

      Hey now factorio isn’t complex, just play it a lot and you’ll pick it up… I’m 2000 hours in and managed to finish a game in only 70 hours! I’m thiiiiis close to making train lines without constant crashes. Pretty soon I’ll feel ready to add in Bob’s mods to the mix. It’s… Simple…

  • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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    11 months ago

    A lot of these games are working off of an assumed learned collective memory.

    Think of movies, and their tropes. How do you understand that when a movie cuts to black for a second, and then suddenly shows a new location, that we did not just teleport? That the black cut indicates the end of a scene, and the start of a new one?

    Think of how many games assume you know which button pauses, which opens the menu, which buttons move the character and which ones make you jump. Now, add another layer of controls. And another.

    BG3 is also working with an assumed collective memory from DnD. Assuming you already learned about class vs race, and cantrips vs lvl spells, and turn order, etc.

    It sucks when you miss large games that establish these things, but its also how art forms evolve. Games just dont yet have a way to easily re-teach them.

    • frank@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, if you’ve played DnD 5E I’d say you’re already well on the way to knowing how BG3 works technically. If not, it’s prolly a bit of a learning curve but the game does start soooorta slow at level 1, though 4 characters is a lot. Look up some common archetypes!

    • helenslunch@feddit.nlOP
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      11 months ago

      Think of how many games assume you know which button pauses, which opens the menu, which buttons move the character and which ones make you jump.

      Button bindings are almost always listed in the settings menu. And many games WILL explain those controls, usually with an option to toggle them on/off.

      • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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        11 months ago

        Often, yes, but not always, and thats only become a recent trend.

        And just as many games dont, or only explain where their controls differ from the cultural expectations.

        It applies to mechanics too, but thats harder to talk about without actual examples in front of you, and I dont have any good contrast examples off the top of my head

  • limeaide@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    I recently started playing Divinity Original Sin 2, and I went through this problem as well until I changed the way I approached the game.

    I just let go of trying to make the most optimized decisions and instead just make the decision I, or my character would make (if I’m role playing).

    I just realized that no matter what decision I make, it will still lead me to finish the game. If I really want to, later I can go back and play it again to see more of the game. Only if I like my first play-through though.

  • sulunia@lemmy.eco.br
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    11 months ago

    I just wing it at first, and figure stuff out as I go, even in online stuff. BG3 in particular, by the end of chapter 2 you’ll be pretty familiarized with mechanics. Inventory management is here, but worth doing sometimes. I just unload stuff from main character into someone else in the party.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nlOP
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      11 months ago

      I’m worried that if I “just wing it” it’s going to make things very difficult as my character will be super weak.

      • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
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        11 months ago

        BG3 handles failure better than almost any game I’ve ever played. Fuck around, find out. Be free of your need to always win and just play the game however you want.

        Worst case you start over with a totally different character.

        Playing out all the possibilities is half the fun!

      • ampersandrew@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Nah, BG3 rewards you for just doing more stuff. If you keep doing the things you find as you explore, you’ll level up plenty. They also let you respec more or less any time you want after the first couple of hours.

      • kurcatovium@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Tell that to my TES: Oblivion character I picked only non combat skills as primary. Everything was fine when exploring landscape and forests, leveling peacefuly my alchemy, alteration or stealth and lockpicking. It was nice. Until I got to first oblivion gate and found out level scaling is a thing. Then I was f’d up pretty hard. Needless to say I never finished the game because of this.

        • Skua@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          Oblivion’s levelling system was beyond fucked. The optimal way to play in terms of power is to pick primary skills that you know you won’t use and then go out of your way to only level those once you’ve levelled other things enough to get maximum value out of the level up. Or, alternatively, just never sleep so that you never level up and play the entire game at level one.

          • kurcatovium@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            Sad part is I did really like Oblivion world, but that level/power scaling was absolute shitshow that completely ruined it for me.

          • Nepenthe@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            It can be a little stressful even for me. And yes, the inventory management is atrocious btw, it’s a common complaint.

            Like someone else mentioned, you can always pay a little to respec if you find out a character doesn’t have the stats to do what you’re wanting/what they’re built to do. That does require gold, and it is something that needs to be read up on and ultimately taken for a test ride to see if it’s even fun for you. That many options can feel really daunting.

            But I think with enough cleverness, the game can be won with almost anything. Just last night, I watched a playthrough of a guy who had challenged himself to beat the game without killing anyone or manipulating anyone else to kill them for him, and he did it.

            Whole game. The only NPC he had no way around personally harming could still be knocked out and left alive. He tricked the end boss into murdering itself through careful use of explosive barrels and he himself never fired a shot — a super cheesy fighting tactic common enough that the term “barrelmancy” is a thing.

            I’m not gonna say there won’t be reloads, but there are a multitude of ways to handle most if not all altercations. Some things can be talked out of, or allies sought to help.

            If not, it could be a huge, horrible fight taken head-on for the awful fun of it, or you could sneak up and thunderwave them into a hole and be done with it. Covertly poison the lot. Command them to drop their own weapon and then take it, and giggle while they flail their fists at you. Cast light on the guy with a sun sensitivity and laugh harder at their own personal hell.

            You could sneak around back and take the high ground, triggering the battle by firing the first shot from a vantage point the enemy will take 4 rounds to reach through strategically placed magical spikes.

            I passed one particularly worrying trial by just turning the most powerful opponent into a sheep until every other enemy was dead and I could gang up on them. Cleared another fight sitting entirely in the rafters where they had trouble hitting me, and shoved them to their death when one found a way up.

            Going straight into a battle is the most expected way to do it, but there are usually shenanigans that can be played, is what I’m saying. Accept with grace the attempts that don’t work. If the rules of engagement seem unfair, change the rules.

            If it helps any, the game does also reward xp fairly generously. Just reaching new/hidden areas grants a little bit, to say nothing of side quests.

            That guy I was talking about, the one that finished with zero kills, ended the game at level 10. The level cap is 12. That was all just wandering around, doing stuff that didn’t require fighting.

            Know which stat each class mainly uses and focus on that. Do not make the mages wear armor, it is not a happy fun experience. Beyond that, be clever and moderately lucky with your cleverness. You’ll be fine.

            It’s a lot to get used to and does take time to be familiar with all your options, but I started out not very far above where you sound like you are. You do get used to it if you take your time, and I’m certain most people would be overjoyed to help.

      • Helix 🧬@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        it’s going to make things very difficult as my character will be super weak.

        Who cares? That’s a challenge.

        • helenslunch@feddit.nlOP
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          11 months ago

          I mean there are “challenges” where you die 3 or 4x and there are “challenges” where you die 12-20x and the closer I get to that high end, the more likely I am to become frustrated and bored and quit.

          • Helix 🧬@feddit.de
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            11 months ago

            That’s why after dying 3-4x I will do a quick research on how to die less. There’s a limit to my trial and error in games.

  • KNova@links.dartboard.social
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    11 months ago

    I’m curious why you think Deep Rock Galactic is complex. It’s one of the most “pick up and play” friendly games, I think, that I own.

    • steb@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Exactly. I’d be reluctant to try any of the other games that OP names because I “don’t have the time” and yet I have 200+ hours in DRG.

        • Skua@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          Obviously if you don’t enjoy it then that’s 100% valid, but at least in terms of understanding what to do it’s totally okay to play DRG without understanding anything beyond “shoot bugs and do whatever thing mission control most recently asked you to do”. There’s no need to play at a higher hazard if you don’t yet know or just don’t care to know about how to set up your weapons for maximum effectiveness or how to counter each type of bug and so on. Just play at whatever hazard you find fun and try things out until you find what you enjoy. There’s no class or weapon that is non-functional without some other component. No wrong choices, so to speak. They’re all just degrees of better and worse at any given job, and if you try something out on a mission and it doesn’t work then the absolute worst possible penalty is just that you fail that mission and only get a little bit of xp and cash instead of a bigger amount.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nlOP
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      11 months ago

      I don’t remember. According to my history I last played Feb 2022 and for a total of 7 hours. I just remember why I quit.

  • HatchetHaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    11 months ago

    Here’s a fun thing you can do: just stop thinking about stats and make a character you’d like to bang, then just ooga booga it.

    Baldur’s Gate 3 may be very daunting at first, even with its genius tooltip system, so I just went straight into it with a Dragonborn barbarian with no real thought put into it other than “he’s hot and totes my new fursona”. You’d be surprised at how far you get and how much you pick up naturally over the next 80 hours of gameplay.

    That being said, it’s still not for everyone, as much as it tries to be, and if even Overwatch is too complex for you already, it might just be that the evolving game design in the industry is becoming more misaligned with your tastes, and that gamers are becoming more and more serious about the video games they play.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nlOP
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      11 months ago

      just stop thinking about stats and make a character you’d like to bang, then just ooga booga it.

      Haha I mentioned this elsewhere but that’s kinda what I did. Just picked random everything. I just feel like I’m going to get my ass kicked in the first altercation with a weak-ass character and be stuck there permanently.

      • Feydaikin@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        Don’t worry too much about it. It’s part of the Role-Playing charm.

        After my own first couple of playthroughs with “serious characters” I just started screwing around with fun builds.

        The “Double Chaos” sorceror is fun and stupid way to complete the game. Sometimes I’m a doomsday machine in battle, others times I’m a sheep…

      • bipmi@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        Unless you do obviously dumb things, like not doing anything at all and letting the enemies hit you, you literally could not fail at baldurs gate on default difficulty. I actually find it way too easy to succeed and far too forgiving. You could genuinely go through the whole game with your “picked random everything” character. Youll get your ass kicked a few times, but youll never get stuck anywhere. The only part thats complex is the story IMO. There are dozens of alternative endings and secret story bits and hidden interactions between characters. Almost every quest, no matter how small, has multiple endings. You could probably sink 1000 hours into BG3 without going through most of the story content.