I'm getting lazy in video games

Following my previous post about Tales of Arise, I would like to share a feeling that’s growing with the time. I’m getting lazy in video games.

What does it mean ? Since some years, I always set the difficulty to “Easy” or “Story”. Mostly because I don’t want to struggle or being stressed or pissed off by a too much difficult gameplay or mechanics. And more recently, I usually enjoy when some gameplay parts are fully automated, especially when it’s the most repetitive ones.

That was the case with almost every games I’ve played recently : the “remastered” old Playstation’s Final Fantasy which included a “cheat mode” making the characters invulnerable and enabling auto combats, also Chrono Cross, Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Arise where you can set every characters to auto combat (in Arise, I was just triggering the “Boost Strike” effect which wasn’t automated). And now I’ve started Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and seen there is also an auto combat mode.

Is that because I’m a bad player ? Oh maybe yes, but I don’t have anything to prove.

I’m playing video games since the end of the 90’s when I had first the Amstrad CPC 6128 and later the SNES (Super Famicom), then the Nintendo 64, Playstation, my first PC, etc. I’ve spent hours in front of a lot of more or less difficult games, at a time where you couldn’t set the difficulty level in most of then, had my share of anger crisis with the platform games (yes Mario, I’m talking about you, you fat ass with soap in place of feet) or even in some RPG, and I don’t talk about the shoot them up. I’ve also played a lot on Age of Empires which was available as a demo in the Microsoft Windows 98 installation disk.

I’ve also spent a lot of time with MMORPG where the only interest was to bash mobs and exp your character. My first one was Priston Tales, a South Korean game released in 2001 and it looks like it still exists. I’ve played at the English beta but I’ve quickly stopped because the game was hard, repetitive and boring. My first real experience in MMORPG was World of Warcraft, started in 2005 and I’ve played until 2009. While a lot of players preferred to read the boss guides, on my side I’ve enjoyed trying and discovering the boss pattern in game. WoW could have some difficulty level, but most of its complexity came from what kind of player you could encounter in your team and your character construction. A good pick-up team can make the game very easy, has a bad team would be hardcore. And today that’s still how I play to Final Fantasy XIV where you can have a very good raid alliance team, or a bad one. And I still prefer discovering the game patterns myself than reading a guide.

So, I think I had my share of difficulties in video games with the years and now I prefer to enjoy them as an entertainment and not a challenge (I’ve enough of that with my work). Maybe the Mobile games also helped to install this laziness as they can also be fully automated. I’m mainly playing Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle despite not being a fan of the franchise, but its a well balanced gatcha game that don’t ask to pay for anything every 5 minutes. I’ve also played some Final Fantasy mobile games but they were too much complicated and time-consuming. And also too much frustrating to force you buying paid boosters packs.

I’ve also had my share of repetitive farming. If I’ve played a lot on my recent games with “automated” mode, that’s because farming monsters for hours doesn’t entertain me anymore (yep, I could do it for a day some years ago). One recent example is Monster Hunter Stories 2, I was bored by the fights that were repetitive and very long. In Tales of Arise I could farm without being bored because the characters were fighting automatically, so I could do something else during that time.

Today, what do I expect from video games ? For RPG, mostly the story and the exploration. That’s what I prefer, repetitive fights bores me. I think the perfect example would be Zelda Breath of the Wild : you have to explore, following a background story helping yourself to recall what happened and why Link has been plunged into a deep sleep. You can explore everything, you don’t have to follow the pre-established direction, your only goal is to defeat Ganon and figure out how to. The game had some difficult parts why powerful enemies and the weather condition could make the exploration very hard, but that’s something I really like. And today, when I’ve started Xenoblade Chronicles 3, that’s the felling I had too with big maps to explore, hidden things to find, and a story to follow at your own speed.