“I Stopped Chasing Secrets and Chests” – If it’s a game I really like, I’ll do the extra work to do this. But it all depends.
“I Don’t Force Interest in Side Content” – When I spend good money and am playing a game I really like (especially Yakuza games), I really want to see and do everything, even if it doesn’t add a whole lot. I’m generally less interested in DLC unless it’s substantial. I don’t bother buying season passes anymore (at least not up front). In the Old Times, getting one of these would grant you all future DLC and then Assassins Creed started only offering some DLC and if you wanted other DLC you had to buy it separately. Other times the content just isn’t worth it (like Alan Wake 2). I’d rather just wait and decide later than subsidize the cost up front and hope for the best.
“I Don’t Panic About Taking the ‘Wrong’ Path” – For me, it depends on if achievements are on the line or not. Some games make it easy to checkpoint and go back later to get the ‘other’ path. Others make it impossible without another full playthrough. Generally, I’ll play how I want to play, and not worry about it. If it’s a Bethesda-like where it’s very easy to checkpoint and come back later to do alternative paths, I’ll try it the other way. It’s rare that I’ll replay a game in its entirety just to get missing content, especially really long ones. With games like the Persona series that can take 100+ hours just to finish, what I might do is replay it a year later and follow a guide to make sure I get 100% just because I love the overall story that much to make that effort.
“I Stopped Forcing Roleplay” – I never got into roleplay to begin with. I like to play characters where I apply my morals and decisions wherever possible. It’s my game, my rules. In the end most “moral systems” in games are a sham anyway because in almost every case all your previous decisions mean nothing by the end where you’re presented with one final dillema that will essentially invalidate everything that came before. The only time I will actually role play is if I were to do another playthrough and want to experience things a different way. For Bioware titles for example I’ll generally choose the moral path because that’s how I would do it and I prefer the resulting world. It can be fun to go back and try it again as a complete asshole just to see what happens, but I ultimately don’t find it satisfying beyond the dark comedy it can create because the world is much shittier as a result.
“I Don’t Take the Game Too Seriously” – Yeah, I’m not afraid to exploit/cheat especially when a game is particularly wasteful of my time. Use an exploit to save me a few hours of pointless grinding? Sure. Fast travel rather than go the long way? Why not… I have limited time and don’t need hyper-realism. This was something that I found really aggravating about RDR2 – it tried so hard to present things in a realistic way, it stopped being fun. For example, in most games when you call your mount it will just appear. In RDR2 you have to wait however long it takes for your horse to get to you. If it’s really far away, you have to wait for it to get to your location, which takes a really long time. Is it realistic? Yes. Is it fun? No. In RDR2, any action like building a fire, collecting resources, or crafting an item is an arduous and slow multi-step process. It doesn’t have to be this way, but the developers decided they would rather have things be realistic versus fun. It sucks.
“I Stopped Forcing Hard Difficulty Settings” – Agreed. I’ll generally try to play using whatever mode the developers intended most people to use. I don’t like the idea of lowering the difficulty, either. But sometimes games are just really fucking hard and I don’t have the time or interest in “Getting Gud”, so I’ll drop it down because I don’t need the frustration. Prey was one such title where I eventually did this. I really liked the game and wanted to finish the story, but it got to a point where the difficulty went from a slow climb to a massive cliff and I was just running into a brick wall trying to do anything. It got much more fun when I dropped the difficulty down to easy and could enjoy the story without being killed every 2 minutes. It was still an intense story but I could enjoy it because I was concentrating on the story rather than simply trying to get from one room to another without dying 20 times.
“I Let Go of Completionism” – This one is hard for me. If it’s a game I really like, I’ll go for the dopamine hit of getting as many achievements as I can. However, if it becomes too onerous, I won’t bother. For achievements that are highly reliant on RNGs or hours of grinding, it’s just not worth it to me. Many Yakuza games are notorious for this, and as much as I love them, I can’t bring myself to get to 100% on some of them when doing so would require 40+ extra hours of investment (including completing the entire game on the hardest difficulty). For those who do this, I applaud their commitment, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
“I Stopped Hoarding Items” – Yeah, I’ve gotten better at this. I’m likely to hold on to unique items, but for most stuff, it’s just not worth it since most things aren’t really special. If I’m not playing a melee character, I’m not going to bother holding on to 100 melee weapons even if they are super awesome because I’ll never use them. Maybe I’ll hold on to a couple of really good ones in case I need to do a melee challenge or something, but otherwise it’s not worth it.
“I No Longer Look for Help Online” – I do this all the time, especially when it comes to the previous bullet point around “wrong” choices. Sometimes choices are hard so I’ll look up the consequences because I want to make sure whatever I choose leaves the world in a place I’m happy with. Even knowing “this choice doesn’t really matter” is fine. Also, sometimes I run into something so obtuse/difficult/annoying that I’ll look up help just to get past it because while I have no doubt I could have figured it out on my own, I have limited time and don’t want to screw with it. I guess it all depends. In general, I prefer to figure things out on my own, but I also know my limitations and getting help online can help increase my enjoyment.
In all, not bad tips, but as always “it depends” and I can find enjoyment from applying these rules as much as I can find enjoyment by ignoring them.
