What are some of your favorite time sinkers?

[RCBH928]

Share with us games that are your favorite immersive and time sinkers on the PC .Two rules though: 1- no open ended games with no objective like Simcity and 2-no games considered "time sinkers" because most of the time you had to grind to level up or backtrack and travel between areas.

[Anapan]

The Diablo series has and will eat a lot of my time. I enjoy the loot collection and gear customization. I've been playing the first again now that I figured out how to play it on Android using Diabloweb.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Strategy games with long potential playtimes are ones I've been into for years now, and I'll just fall into them for like a month at a time every once in a while

Civ 5, Crusaders Kings II, Bloodbowl: Legendary Edition, and most recently Hearts of Iron 4 (specifically the Kaiserreich mod) have all taken up cumulatively more than 2000 hours of my time according to my screen library X3

[RCBH928]

I have played Diablo II recently, was fun, but I have not played the LoD expansion. Maybe I should

I hear good things about Factorio, but not sure if it has an objective or just a SimCity like game.

[marurun]

What about games where you CAN level up or grind for loot, but that is optional and not required?

[RCBH928]

What about games where you CAN level up or grind for loot, but that is optional and not required?

Well if you choose to, then those games are OK. I noticed 2 philosophies by game creators:

1)Grind until you level up so you can move forward in the game (I do not prefer this system)

2)The game path itself will eventually upgrade you enough to move forward in the game.

The second type is how Dark Souls work, as you play you get bonuses and leveling up enough for you to go through the game. Of course, if you choose to, you can spend 5 or 10 hours just grinding and leveling up even further. I didn't play it, but was told WoW is one of the worse when it comes to grinding. You just spend a lot of time repetitively walking around and killing enemies trying to level up and gain experience.

[isiolia]

I didn't play it, but was told WoW is one of the worse when it comes to grinding. You just spend a lot of time repetitively walking around and killing enemies trying to level up and gain experience.

Eh, yes and no. WoW in particular was never that bad relative to preceding games anyway.

To back up... MMOs tend to soften the XP curve over time. One of the design considerations for the genre is keeping the playerbase busy - people who have nothing to do aren't going to stay subscribed, right? So, it's not in the developer's best interests to have players hitting the level cap in a week and waiting around for content additions. As more content is added via patches and expansions, there's less of a reason to make those early stages take a long time. Instead, new characters can get fast-tracked to current content, where most of the people to potentially play with are doing things.

At that point though, it can really become a matter of what you, as a player, want to get out of the game. Obviously, sure, some parts of MMOs are designed to be played in perpetuity. However, typically, that's endgame grinding raids to max out gear or stats, and not really necessary to explore the game world, do the vast majority of the quests, see whatever storylines are present, socialize, and so on.

Well if you choose to, then those games are OK. I noticed 2 philosophies by game creators:

1)Grind until you level up so you can move forward in the game (I do not prefer this system)

2)The game path itself will eventually upgrade you enough to move forward in the game.

Dark Souls falls a little outside of those, in that you can technically beat it without leveling up (SL1 run) and progress serves more to make it easier. For most of us, it also makes actually playing through it realistic, but, you don't get to the point where you've literally got a stat deficit you can't overcome.

WoW did get tuned more around leveling via questing though. Outside of Classic, you probably aren't just grinding XP on basic kills, though you would in more sandbox style MMOs like EQ or FFXI. To me, it's still a little different than needing to grind in an old JRPG or something, but it can be a bit less compelling than following quest chains.

[RCBH928]

I didn't play it, but was told WoW is one of the worse when it comes to grinding. You just spend a lot of time repetitively walking around and killing enemies trying to level up and gain experience.

Eh, yes and no. WoW in particular was never that bad relative to preceding games anyway.

To back up... MMOs tend to soften the XP curve over time. One of the design considerations for the genre is keeping the playerbase busy - people who have nothing to do aren't going to stay subscribed, right? So, it's not in the developer's best interests to have players hitting the level cap in a week and waiting around for content additions. As more content is added via patches and expansions, there's less of a reason to make those early stages take a long time. Instead, new characters can get fast-tracked to current content, where most of the people to potentially play with are doing things.

At that point though, it can really become a matter of what you, as a player, want to get out of the game. Obviously, sure, some parts of MMOs are designed to be played in perpetuity. However, typically, that's endgame grinding raids to max out gear or stats, and not really necessary to explore the game world, do the vast majority of the quests, see whatever storylines are present, socialize, and so on.

Well if you choose to, then those games are OK. I noticed 2 philosophies by game creators:

1)Grind until you level up so you can move forward in the game (I do not prefer this system)

2)The game path itself will eventually upgrade you enough to move forward in the game.

Dark Souls falls a little outside of those, in that you can technically beat it without leveling up (SL1 run) and progress serves more to make it easier. For most of us, it also makes actually playing through it realistic, but, you don't get to the point where you've literally got a stat deficit you can't overcome.

WoW did get tuned more around leveling via questing though. Outside of Classic, you probably aren't just grinding XP on basic kills, though you would in more sandbox style MMOs like EQ or FFXI. To me, it's still a little different than needing to grind in an old JRPG or something, but it can be a bit less compelling than following quest chains.

Well, maybe you don't need it but for the average player it will give you the nice level up you need to face later enemies in the game, but for sure you don't have to go repetitively kill random enemies repetitively for couple of hours just to grow "stronger" so you can go through the next level which is a type of gameplay I don't favor, not sure if any one actually enjoys this.

[isiolia]

Well, maybe you don't need it but for the average player it will give you the nice level up you need to face later enemies in the game, but for sure you don't have to go repetitively kill random enemies repetitively for couple of hours just to grow "stronger" so you can go through the next level which is a type of gameplay I don't favor, not sure if any one actually enjoys this.

I'd say it really depends on the overall design and implementation, particularly given the theme of the thread. Plenty of games incorporate that sort of core loop to keep people playing for months/years on end. That sort of genre is quite popular, particularly in "lighter" form than old-school MMOs - stuff like Diablo, Destiny, and so on. The looter-shooter genre remains popular. The focus shifts more to being about building up character(s), or better tackling the grind or raids involved in doing so. Similar to more formal MMOs - I have close to 28,000 hours logged on my main FFXI account. It hardly takes that to do the story/etc. So I'd say it can be enjoyable, even if only as part of seeing the results of previous grinding.

It's a different thing when the grind is a detour you have to take. For a more linear run to roll the credits, there's certainly a balance to strike for progression. Some games fall to the other side. For instance, you'll be quite overpowered by the end of Dragon Age Inquisition if you actually take the time to do a lot of sidequests.


Dark Souls manages to avoid a lot of the problems there by putting a lot of value on skill in addition to stats. It enables it to be more organic - players end up grinding a lot of XP if they're trying and failing a lot. Keep dying to the same enemies, and you're collecting souls from them over and over again, letting you pack on more stats to offset (lack of) skill. Obviously, you can opt not to apply the souls that way, but most would.

Similarly, you may end up leveling up more if exploring (or lost) - I wound up a bit overleveled in Bloodstained purely due to wandering around looking for things I missed.

If you strictly needed more stats to connect hits/do damage, or needed to be able to absorb hits instead of skillfully dodge/parry them, then Dark Souls wouldn't be as flexible as it is. Instead, you can elect to level up only as much as you want/need to.

[RCBH928]

I'd say it really depends on the overall design and implementation, particularly given the theme of the thread. Plenty of games incorporate that sort of core loop to keep people playing for months/years on end. That sort of genre is quite popular, particularly in "lighter" form than old-school MMOs - stuff like Diablo, Destiny, and so on. The looter-shooter genre remains popular. The focus shifts more to being about building up character(s), or better tackling the grind or raids involved in doing so. Similar to more formal MMOs - I have close to 28,000 hours logged on my main FFXI account. It hardly takes that to do the story/etc. So I'd say it can be enjoyable, even if only as part of seeing the results of previous grinding.
.

You are right, but there are games that are not based on that "loop". Some example are Civ5, Skyrim, I would say GTA style games, many RTS. I heard Baldur Gate can suck you in too. Other games can be like fighting games where unlocking all characters. I played Diablo II, I didn't find myself grinding too much.

28K hours?! thats 3 years of straight play time