PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now
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My games library is so huge, and I suffer from choice paralysis all the time.
You might get some use out of this Steam randomizer, I've used it before when I can't pick what to play. You can apply filters too.
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Free means you can easily get any friends to dip in and play which is a big factor.
Hmm. That's a thought. I guess that that'd mesh with them also all being multiplayer.
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Hmm. That's a thought. I guess that that'd mesh with them also all being multiplayer.
Also big up for Cataclysm: DDA. One of the greatest games ever made.
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Also big up for Cataclysm: DDA. One of the greatest games ever made.
It has one of the harshest learning curves out there, but yeah, it's very replayable and has pretty extensive game mechanics.
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I get free reducing the barrier-to-entry, but I kinda look at games in terms of "how much is the ratio of the cost to how many hours of fun gameplay that I get?"
I mean, I have some games that I briefly try, dislike, and never play again. Those are pretty expensive, almost regardless of the purchase price.
But the thing is, if it's a game that you play a lot, the purchase price becomes almost irrelevant in cost-per-hour of gameplay. I've played Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead --- well, okay, you can download that for free, but I also bought it on Steam to throw the developers some money --- and Caves of Qud a ton. The price on them is basically a rounding error. And the same is probably true for the top few games in my game library.
You could charge me probably $2000 for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and it'd still be cheaper per hour of gameplay than nearly all games that I've played, because I've spent so many hours in the thing.
If people are playing these like crazy, you'd think that the same would hold for them. That the cost for a game that you play like crazy for many years just...doesn't matter all that much, because the difference in hours played between games is so huge that it overwhelms the difference in price.
I'm old enough to have bought TF2. Played a little less than a thousand hours. Even counting a few in-game purchases, the cost per hour is very low.
But free means no barrier, you can join anytime,m and stay if you like it. Your friends can try it out too.
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You might get some use out of this Steam randomizer, I've used it before when I can't pick what to play. You can apply filters too.
w Thanks! -
It has one of the harshest learning curves out there, but yeah, it's very replayable and has pretty extensive game mechanics.
That and Dwarf Fortress; learning curve is steep but they’re rogue-likes. Death is an opportunity to have a whole other adventure and learn from your mistakes and see what RNG has in store for you this time. And there’s infinitely repeatable!
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Are they getting worse overall or are we just comparing all of the current AAA games to the best AAA of the past few decades? Or comparing the current versions of series to the high points, which might just be the first game in the series?
We definitely have a number of high quality AAA games that come out each year. Most prior years had a few high quality AAA games and a lot of mediocre or terrible ones too. It's kind of like music where the average quality over time is actually pretty consistent, but in any given year there are a lot of turds and there are certain trends that are common to those turds.
90% of every entertainment medium tends to be terrible, but when we look back we mostly remember the 10% that were good and only a few of the absolute worst to laugh at.
AAA games are legitimately worse now than before, but the gulf isn't as big as people are claiming.
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Yep.. lol I spend an embarrassing amount of time playing EverQuest 1 emulation servers.
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7.1% of the total hours spent were on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / Counter-Strike 2
6.4% were in League of Legends
6.2% were in Roblox
5.8% were in Dota 2
5.4% were in FortniteThat is a lot of people playing free-to-play competitive multiplayer games.
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World of Warcraft.
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That and Dwarf Fortress; learning curve is steep but they’re rogue-likes. Death is an opportunity to have a whole other adventure and learn from your mistakes and see what RNG has in store for you this time. And there’s infinitely repeatable!
Yeah, Dwarf Fortress too, but at least Dwarf Fortress has an extensive, well-documented wiki. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead had a not-very-up-to-date wiki at one point, but then whoever maintained it had it go down at some point in the past year, and I'd say that the game has also been constantly updated and more-dramatically-rebalanced than Dwarf Fortress, so learning to how to play involves scouring Reddit, YouTube, and Discord to try to figure out what information is current. I think that the current recommended route on the subreddit to learn how to play is to watch recent YouTube videos of some streamers playing, which is...kinda nuts. It's not uncommon that a question on the subreddit as to an authoritative answer on game mechanics is "go check the code"...
There are also some military sims I've played that are probably reasonably approachable to players who are familiar with the military hardware involved from prior to the game, but for players who aren't, they're probably in for a lot of reading and understanding mechanics, and some milsims don't bother to document that, so you really need to do outside reading beyond whatever the game documentation has.
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900 million population is more than enough.
(And that much better if they are all gamers :)) -
Realmz was out about the same time as Spiderweb Software's games (Exile series, later re-released as Avernum series). Both were popular RPGs for the Macintosh (though I believe both had Windows releases as well).
While I did play and enjoy Realmz back in the day, I personally preferred the Spiderweb Software games. More complicated interaction with the world, and I preferred the writing. Less-pretty, though the Avernum re-release was isometric and had new graphics. Have you ever tried them?
I don't know if I can recommend them in 2025, but if you're still enjoying Realmz, I figure that the Spiderweb Software stuff might also be something of interest.
EDIT: The current Steam sale, which runs for another two days, appears to have a bundle of all of their games on sale for 60% off. I didn't personally enjoy the Geneforge series as much as the Exile/Avernum series, and the Avadon series is considerably simpler, and didn't really grab me. But a lot of the games are also on sale individually, so...shrugs
EDIT2: It looks like Realmz has not seen a Steam release; thought I'd check to see if it was on Steam too.
I got that bundle at 92% off and it took me 2 years to finish. It was awesome
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Me and my friends, we would play together by each getting a character and then taking turns during combat moving each of our characters.
I might buy that bundle on just your recommendation. I never tried those but if its vaguely like Realmz, I want to try it, since I pretty much only play on my steam deck these days.
Me and my friends, we would play together by each getting a character and then taking turns during combat moving each of our characters.
Hah! That's some hardcore effort to make that game multiplayer!
I never tried those but if its vaguely like Realmz, I want to try it,
I mean, there were a bunch of RPGs in roughly that genre out in those years; IMHO, Realmz and the Exile series were the best out on the Mac.
goes poking around
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasoft
Hah! I didn't know this. Back when Jeff Vogel --- the Spiderweb Software guy --- was just starting out, Fantasoft, the company that did Realmz, published the first three Exile games too.
goes through the rest of the list
I don't think that anything else they published were RPGs, though I've played some of the non-RPG games.
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The most expensive game I've bought recently is Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries, which came out 4 years ago.
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Me and my friends, we would play together by each getting a character and then taking turns during combat moving each of our characters.
I might buy that bundle on just your recommendation. I never tried those but if its vaguely like Realmz, I want to try it, since I pretty much only play on my steam deck these days.
It looks like there were also a bunch of scenarios released for Realmz. I'm trying to remember...I definitely remember playing City of Bywater. I don't know if I've played the other scenarios, though.
If you haven't played them and can round them up, might be that you've only played about a fraction of the content out for Realmz, if what you're after is Realmz-like stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realmz
While new scenarios were released throughout the game's history, also typically packed along with the game in the next Realmz release, the game ultimately ended up with 13 official scenarios:
- City Of Bywater (developed alongside Realmz by Tim Phillips)
I've definitely played City of Bywater.
- Prelude To Pestilence (1995, Sean Sayrs)
- Assault On Giant Mountain (1995, Tim Phillips)
- Castle in The Clouds (1995, Jim Foley)
I seem to recall the above names, though I don't remember the scenario content, if I did play them. Nothing after this rings a bell at all.
- Destroy The Necronomicon (1995, Tim Phillips)
- White Dragon (1996, Jim Foley)
- Grilochs Revenge (1997, Sean Sayrs)
- Twin Sands of Time (1999, Sean Sayrs)
- Trouble in the Sword Lands (1999, Pierre H. Vachon)
- Mithril Vault (1999, Tim Phillips)
- Half Truth (2000, Nicholas T. Tyacke)
- War in the Sword Lands (2000, Pierre H. Vachon)
- Wrath of the Mind Lords (2002, Pierre H. Vachon)
EDIT: There's also apparently a pretty-inactive Realmz subreddit at /r/Realmz. No GOG Realmz release either, though. Some abandonware sites appear to have it.
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Me a fraction of a fraction of the gamer community playing only recent PCVR games and also Noita.
Any recs for person who enjoyed HL Alyx (+ community mapsets) and Ancient Dungeon VR?
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Curious what makes Realmz so replayable. BG3 has so many unique storylines and endings you’d be hard pressed to play them all. Not to mention character classes and subclasses.
So Realmz is truly open world in a way that BG3 only pretends to be. In BG3, they create the sensation of this huge diversity of endings and paths you can take, but its all pretty much a fugazi: the illusion of choice when actually only a small number of endings are possible. In BG3, the choices add "color" along the way, but they don't fundamentally change anything about the game, or what its about (like what even is the point of the game?). I have a whole essay of criticism I've developed on it, because I truly did enjoy it, but it was so.. it pointed in the direction of how much possibility it could have but didn't execute on it. Its really only an impression of what it claims to be.
There is no ending in Realmz. Its just a big open world. And as you dig, you find more, and more and it just keeps going. But there is no particular path to take. You just can go anywhere and find adventure along the way. There are a huge number of random encounters, and the combat style is basically top down tile based D&D, which BG3 is also, more or less. Then you get into some corner of the map in Realmz, and you find some cave or castle or dungeon to explore.. and it just keeps going. And going and going and going. And instead of it being one monolithic story like BG3, its a world in which many BG3's happen. The spider tower. The kobald army invasion. The castle in the clouds. The necromancers tower.
Another thing is, predictability/ "jail breaking". Modern games have this expectation that we "know" everything that is possible for an item or method or whatever. This is a big departure from early games where we would often "find out" about what is possible. In modern games when something unexpected happens, the dev's patch it and change the game. In old games when something unexpected happens.. well.. thats just part of the game. Dota is a great example of this, where basically, finding ways to break the game to come up with a new strategy was quite literally how the game was played. Its now devolved into a poor impression of itself. In realmz, I remember beating some adventure and its final wizard and getting a wand of polymorph. I used it on one of my characters and it polymorphed them into a red dragon and it killed the entire party. I highly doubt the game developers planned that as a possibility, but game development then was often about creating possibilities, not limiting them. Whenever anyone figures something like that out in BG3, they patch it and the game becomes a little more sterile, a little more boring.
Also, BG3 is just kinda... empty. Which I was really surprised by, considering how many studios create amazing, populated worlds with complex day night cycles and economies. In BG3, once you've pretty much cleared an area, thats it. Not much more to do other than advance to the next area. In Realmz, you had to watch your ass if you were really out there, because no-matter what state your party was in, a random encounter can happen at any time, and in that game, death is permanent. Also, wtf is with there not being a day night cycle in BG3? Like wth. I've got a damn vampire and they aren't weak during the day and OP af at night?
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It looks like there were also a bunch of scenarios released for Realmz. I'm trying to remember...I definitely remember playing City of Bywater. I don't know if I've played the other scenarios, though.
If you haven't played them and can round them up, might be that you've only played about a fraction of the content out for Realmz, if what you're after is Realmz-like stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realmz
While new scenarios were released throughout the game's history, also typically packed along with the game in the next Realmz release, the game ultimately ended up with 13 official scenarios:
- City Of Bywater (developed alongside Realmz by Tim Phillips)
I've definitely played City of Bywater.
- Prelude To Pestilence (1995, Sean Sayrs)
- Assault On Giant Mountain (1995, Tim Phillips)
- Castle in The Clouds (1995, Jim Foley)
I seem to recall the above names, though I don't remember the scenario content, if I did play them. Nothing after this rings a bell at all.
- Destroy The Necronomicon (1995, Tim Phillips)
- White Dragon (1996, Jim Foley)
- Grilochs Revenge (1997, Sean Sayrs)
- Twin Sands of Time (1999, Sean Sayrs)
- Trouble in the Sword Lands (1999, Pierre H. Vachon)
- Mithril Vault (1999, Tim Phillips)
- Half Truth (2000, Nicholas T. Tyacke)
- War in the Sword Lands (2000, Pierre H. Vachon)
- Wrath of the Mind Lords (2002, Pierre H. Vachon)
EDIT: There's also apparently a pretty-inactive Realmz subreddit at /r/Realmz. No GOG Realmz release either, though. Some abandonware sites appear to have it.
I’ve definitely played City of Bywater.
Prelude To Pestilence (1995, Sean Sayrs) Assault On Giant Mountain (1995, Tim Phillips) Castle in The Clouds (1995, Jim Foley)Same. I also definitely played City of Bywater, and I know I had both Assault on Giant Mountain and Castle in The Clouds (this one was giants right?)
