Valheim.

I love it so much. Especially starting a server with friends. The exploration and possibilities are endless. So many designs for buildings to try, looking for a new spot to put a base, etc.

I fucking hate the swamp and mistlands. Both feel like you run out of stamina continually. At least in the swamps once you’re geared to that tier you handle the combat. In mistlands you go out exploring, can’t see shit, have 3 seekers and a soldier come running at you from all directions, and a gjall drop in from above you. Even if you’ve got all the magic set fully upgraded it’s just ball ache waiting for stamina and eitr to refill. Also the last 2 bosses are a pain. I still haven’t killed the mistlands boss.

In addition, I hate farming resources for building. It’s fine when you are building your first house, but then it becomes extremely boring.

But if any of my friends are like “yo, gonna do a Valheim run to get ready for Ashlands,” I’m in.

Apex Legends. The core mechanics and gunplay feel amazing and the highs of BR gameplay made for some of my favourite moments in gaming. I spent over 1500 hours in this game, long after my friends gave up because it’s that good.

And yet I haven’t played it more than a few hours since 2021. Oh, I’ve tried, I even had a 12 hour checkup on it with the old squad a month ago to give it a fair shot. In this session we encountered collision bugs that caused player death, weapon swap bugs, healing selection bugs, inconsistent movement (inb4 “player error rawr grr”, whatever), UI bugs that put us in the wrong gamemode, and probably more that I forgot. Many of these issues have been in the game since season 0, 5 years ago, yet they still pop up every session. Plus, the matchmaking gets worse and worse every season, especially so for solo play. Without fail, our below average, rusty Plat-ranked asses repeatedly got matched against Predator teams with 4k/20 badges to get stomped.

Each nuisance may be small, but compound them together and add years of them not being addressed, and you’ve ruined my favourite game. By focusing solely on the content output instead of the core game, they’ve sacrificed the game’s integrity and I fail to truly enjoy myself any longer. After several years of on and off, I sadly don’t see myself comung back anymore.

Satisfactory. I love this game. I hate the fact that it chews up so much game time. This blows CIV games out of the water for the “one more turn” effect for me.

But I was cruising the other place one day, and saw a user with the flair “it’s not a game, it’s a hobby”. And that changed a lot of my attitude towards this game. Now I treat it like an overly complex model train builder.