Seeing discussions around Nioh, and previously on Crosscode.
For Nioh, and other loot heavy games like Diablo, Path of Exile, and Borderlands, tons and tons of RNG loot flooding my inventory is super annoying. Like, I know I can and should just trash/sell/break-down all non-rare items, but the constant pings and busywork of it all just stresses me out and makes me anxious.
Same think with rampant sidequests. Lots of openworld games do this, arguably most open world games. But Crosscode specifically was a game I liked the gameplay of a lot, but dropped because of constant sidequests.
And for both of these, I know its dumb on a certain level to just drop games for 'optional' mechanics. Like, the obvious thing to do in Crosscode was just skip sidequesting and focus on beating the game. But just, something about doing that, about not playing '''optimally''' or w/e I just hate. And since I play games to have fun and de-stress, I just stop playing those games instead, and have learned to just skip games that look cool, but have some of these 'features' that I know will stress me out and be a fun killer.
Is this relatable to anyone here?
Yeah 100%. Past few years I fell way into Japanese RPGs > Western RPGs because it just gets overwhelming. In a lot of the better JRPGs, all side quests feel like they exist for a purpose. If you get a new weapon, its a BIG deal (usually only one or two new weapons per "section" of the game per character). Played through the entire Trails series during covid explicitly because loot RPGs were turning me off.
Very very relatable to me. In general, I refuse to play games that have RNG loot now. I refuse to play Ubisoft style open worlds for the same reasons you fell off CrossCode (and is the exact reason I fell off CrossCode, a game I enjoyed).
I don't think I can play another big Western AAA open world game. Everyone loves ghost of Tsushima but I was so bored by that one, just wave after wave of easy enemies with boring loot.
Got through the first island. When I saw the second (bigger) island open up, I quit the game and haven't touched it since.
CrossCode is a bit of an odd case because it was developed in order alongside early access, so the early-game sidequests are some of the first content developed for the game and it shows. This unintentionally trains the player to ignore sidequests, but the mid-late game sidequests were developed after feedback that the sidequests were boring, so nearly every sidequest from the third area onwards (after most people have just stopped doing them) has some sort of optional boss with unique mechanics, a mini-dungeon or some other type of setpiece/minigame. Great for people involved in the process, but the blind playthrough experience results in many people just missing a lot of content because of course you're going to assume the sidequests in the first area are more or less representative of the rest of the game.