What games have you played due to FOMO?

IntentionallyAnon , 9 months ago

Valorant, Fortnite

TimTheEnchanter , 9 months ago

A lot of the Zelda games, for me. I tried Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask and they were not my thing. A lot of people raved about those games but I couldn’t get into them. Then there were a couple on the DS that I couldn’t get into, either.

But then I found Wind Waker and absolutely loved it, and then loved Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (so far), too!

Grrbrr , 9 months ago

Umm. It sounds more like that you are just trying out new things and genres and finding that it’s not always a hit with you. That’s healthy.

CorrodedCranium OP , 9 months ago

When you put it like that yeah but I was forcing myself through games I wasn’t necessarily enjoying.

derin , 9 months ago

It’s okay to stop playing a game after you’ve played enough of it to understand it isn’t for you.

I think I had about 10~12 hours played of Diablo 4 before I noticed it wasn’t for me and stopped. Still enjoyed what little I played of it, but wasn’t motivated to continue.

KoboldCoterie , 9 months ago

That’s not really FOMO. FOMO would be like, pre-ordering a special edition of a game you aren’t even sure about wanting for $90 because there’s a “Preorder-Only” in-game perk and you just have to have, or falling for those “Limited Time Only” microtransactions in FTP games.

CorrodedCranium OP , 9 months ago

I guess I meant it more so in the fear of missing out on something culturally relevant. Whether it’s a modern multiplayer game like Destiny 2 or a classic that is frequently referenced like Half Life. Not being able to be part of the conversation when it’s brought up

KoboldCoterie , 9 months ago

I guess I can see where you’re coming from. Kind of the fear of missing out on being a part of the gaming zeitgeist.

Dragonmind , 9 months ago

There’s an important moment where you have to ask yourself…

“Is this story so bad I’m not invested in it anymore?”

“Is the gameplay bothering me so much that it feels bad or unfun to me?”

If the answer is yes to both of those, you may feel free to drop the game with full confidence you’re not gonna play it again.

CorrodedCranium OP , 9 months ago

I get what you are saying but a lot of the time it’s just a mediocre experience and I’m not necessarily disliking it. More indifferent than anything. Occasionally a game has made a pretty solid turn around in the last act

gaael , 9 months ago

Yeah, I’ve got the same thing with playing previous games in the series. This summer I’ve tried playing BG1 and then BG2 prior to BG3’s release - and I did not go very far (did not like the UI).

nueonetwo , 9 months ago

I think the last game I bought out of fomo was the og COD WM2 on 360. I didn’t have much money for games until like two years ago so I really only bought what I knew and only took a chance on games I knew were hyped and looked like something I was into (ie Skyrim).

I don’t really care about what’s new if it doesn’t interest me. Bought BG3 cause it got a lot of hype and I’ve airways wanted to get into DnD and this looked like a good way. Don’t think I’m going to buy Starfield, at least not at release.

squid , 9 months ago

None, fomo is a bullshit marketing word

napalminjello , 9 months ago

Wow, so edgy and cool. But come-on, certainly there's a game you've tried out because of all the hype around it

squid , 9 months ago

If you think its cool then follow suite youll find yourself better off. When I was younger I’d bought trash games as friends where playing online, I don’t do hype any more, if anything when I see a large marketing push I question the monitory input that’s been diverted from the development

lukas , 9 months ago

Fear of missing out is a feeling, not a bs marketing buzzword.

RxBrad , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

I bought every FromSoft game up to DS3 during various sales because I’d heard unanimously how amazing they were.

Then I eventually played Bloodborne. Haaaaaated it. Never touched any of the other games I bought, and never plan to.

ampersandrew , 9 months ago

For what it's worth, I'd say Bloodborne is like Dark Souls but with less variety. There are a bunch of play styles you can utilize in Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but Bloodborne really only lets you use one.

deksesuma , 9 months ago

What did you hate about it? That series is great for the people it clicks with and fans are very vocal about it, so I totally understand.

I went the opposite direction in that it took Bloodborne for the series to click with me. The other games (this was pre DS3) didn’t resonate until after Bloodborne.

RxBrad , 9 months ago

I guess I sucked at it. I played for 10-12 hours and didn’t beat a single boss. Graveyard Werewolf Dude and Weird Bridge Monster would just wreck me on the rare occasion I could actually make it to them.

After giving up, I learned online that shooting your gun is not actually a range weapon, but it’s meant to parry. Stuff like that – unintuitive mechanics you’d only know about if you were nuts-deep in “the community” – I have little patience for.

And mostly, I’m not playing videogames to prove myself to anyone. I want to have fun – not torture myself.

deksesuma , 9 months ago

All fair criticisms. It’s not for everyone.

I don’t understand why people like Animal Crossing so much as it seems very dull to me, but I can’t hate on anyone for liking it either.

The variety is what makes gaming great.

Cethin , 9 months ago

One thing to know about FromSoft games if you ever try again is they really want you to pay attention. They don’t baby you with telling you what to do, but there are hints all around. For the bird on the bridge you can use fire for a ton of damage (molotovs are dropped by enemies in the area). I’m pretty sure item descriptions tell you, but also it tells you in the environment. In the street going towards that bridge there’s a beast tied to a post that’s being burned, for example.

The games really aren’t that hard (except Sekiro), but they do ask you to participate. You have a lot of options to make them easier though, like using their weaknesses that are normally told to you, or summoning other players, or leveling up, or many other tools.

regalia , 9 months ago

That’s not what fomo means. I have a bad case of FOMO right now with Genshin Impact. I genuinely like the game, but it forces me to login twice a day with the resin system (basically energy that accumulates over time), otherwise it caps and I lose progress. Also a lot of their content is in the form of limited time events. They do this for the obvious reason of it being extremely profitable. This is why you should be very cautious about getting into live service games.

ramble81 , 9 months ago

Welp, I was interested in trying GI until reading this.

regalia , 9 months ago

Yeah it’s a legitimately a really good game and still has a huge amount of permanent content, but that’s the nature of live service games. They need that constant engagement to survive. A game like Baulders gate, you buy it and the devs are paid regardless of how much or how little you play, not really the case with live service.

Oh and GI is gacha which isn’t good either. But then they do cool stuff like make a really good card game in game that’s completely free with zero paid stuff, and even hold irl tourneys with big prize pools.

OpenStars , 9 months ago

The only live service game I have and likely will ever allow myself to play is Another Eden, ostensibly a mobile gacha but unlike any others in that genre (and yet... not entirely if you know what I mean:-D - it is less predatory than any modern game that allows in-app purchases that I've ever even heard of but that aspect is not entirely absent from it). It hits the JRPG nostalgia feel for being a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger and Cross, made by some of the same developers actually, and the artwork and music especially are just gorgeous.:-D

And ironically, many people complain bitterly that they want it to be more like GI, with a pity system. Never mind that the gacha can be irrelevant here as you can do everything purely with the free characters (and more effort, especially JP-style i.e. heavy grinding), the FOMO salt is real, and I see now that games are just giving the people what they want, regardless of whether that's good for them or not. On the one hand it keeps further game development going, and people are free to spend how they please, while on the other there are horror stories of people dropping hundreds or even thousands of dollars (I think even USD $ currency), while having little to show for it in the end.

Predatory is predatory, and while on the one hand I'd love to check out GI someday, on the other I just don't think I could stand the gacha elements in it. It warps and twists EVERYTHING it touches, e.g. increasing pressure to make waifu/husbando portraits that objectify both women and men in it, and leads to content that looks visually appealing but in Another Eden at least, has not been tested and is not "fun" to play.

The funny part is that originally I had to choose between GI and AE, and I am so glad that I went the way that I did. Although probably better to avoid any such gacha at all in the future.:-|

regalia , 9 months ago

To be fair, a pity system should definitely be a thing if there’s any sort of gamba. That way there’s at least a hard limit on what you can waste your money on until it’s guaranteed. I at least find GI characters not to be too predatory, you mostly pull them for fun. In fact some of the best characters are the starting 4 stars lol, and you pull cuz you like the character a lot. They really develop the characters a lot, and if you’ve seen any comic cons or anime conventions, you’ll see an insane amount of Genshin cosplays cuz they suck you in by really loving the characters. The gameplay is honestly so easy you absolutely don’t need a good character, and it’s actually incredibly balanced. The earliest characters released are actually still S tier because they fucked up the balance a bit with them so the new characters are still good but more niche focused, so everything is still relevant.

The only hard content is what’s called the spiral abyss, which is a completely optional dungeon that rotates every 2 weeks and 100% clearing it gives you like 5 free gacha rolls, so people really just use it to bench mark characters since nothing else in the game is remotely challenging, nor is there any pvp aspect or anything.

But yeah, also Gacha and live service games tend to be a drug, once they have you hooked it’s hard to quit. Sunk cost fallacy is real hard to overcome in gacha games.

OpenStars , 9 months ago

I mean... you are not wrong, but to put on my debate hat (for the funsies:-D) I suppose the counter-argument is that since they made it so that the ga(t)cha system is itself irrelevant (at least, in the earlier days of the game, before Power Creep became rampant), they seemed to feel like that was the way to keep the game "balanced". It might also go over better in Japan than the more Western world where people might less like this idea of something that is unattainable. Oh, and one REALLY crucial detail is that you can straight-up exchange irl cash for any particular character that you want (well, any OLDER one, while the absolute newest ones are only available by the gambling approach that offers no such guarantees). Those sales only come every so often each year, but with them you can have your guarantee - and e.g. if you pull your desired character in the meantime, then you can select someone else, whoever you want in the list. Also iirc (some of?) the paid banners offer a "guaranteed 5-star", though it lacks GI's system where (eventually) it is the particular 5-star that you pulled for. There is also a second, subscription system where you pay to support the game each month and get increased basically stamina-style rewards, and you select 7 characters where you are guaranteed to get one of those.

So there is a "pity", technically, just not available at all for F2P, and instead comes in the form of a P2W purchase opportunity.

I heard that GI was really bad, but also that was like several years ago, and it has been cleaned up significantly since then. And some banners much worse than others - particularly weapons ones iirc? - where like you get this 5-star weapon and then nobody who can use it. Ofc this is biased, listening to the stories of people who decided to leave it, rather than stay and git gud:-).

It does look gorgeous though, which is kinda weird for a mobile game imho but so long as processing power can keep up...

meteokr , 9 months ago

You really don’t “need” to login twice a day. A single extra domain/boss drop isn’t going to completely make or break any content in the game. Even spiral abyss is only 2ish extra gacha pulls if you are really pushing it. Which again, won’t make or break any content in the game.

A huge amount of the event stuff is totally skippable, some minor lore here and there can be watched on YouTube, there are sometimes event weapons, but the majority of those aren’t even that much better than other permanently avaible ones, and certainly not over weapon banners.

I’ve been playing GI for almost a year, and it has been an absolute blast. I do the content I care about, skip stuff I dont. Its a fantastically fun game, that I can pop in go hunting for chests for an hour or two, maybe do some event minigames for pulls. If you have low self control and cannot bare to be 5% less effective in combat where you one shot everything with a single burst then it might not be a game you want to play, but for casual playing around and exploring the world fighting random monsters for happy treasure chest sounds, it has been an absolute delight.

ampersandrew , 9 months ago

Overwatch was basically the only way I could socialize with my friends for a while, even though nothing about it really spoke to me. I thought for sure the allure would wear off with my friends quickly, but they stuck with it for a long, long time, until after it became Overwatch 2, though the sentiment had turned on it before that.

I’ve also been stuck in the mentality of if I want to play a game in a series I need to play the prior games.

I do this too. I just played through Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 before starting 3, and I already know there's at least one recurring character who will show up in this new one; it's that kind of thing that makes me want to see what came before. However, if I was playing Armored Core 6 right now (which I'm not, but if I find the time, maybe I will), I won't be compelled to play the earlier games in the series. I tried Armored Core 4 back in the day, and the story is as much as "you're a mercenary; shoot stuff". Not a whole lot lost there, and that means that the sequel is more of an upgrade to the software than it is a totally different chapter in a continuing story.

Thrickles , 9 months ago

Breath of the Wild. My first Zelda game. Not one single regret.

deksesuma , 9 months ago

My first was the original game on NES.

I don’t hate Breath of the Wild (or Tears) but I don’t think the series needed to go in that direction.

MadMenace , 9 months ago

I thought BotW was quite like the original, with how open and non-linear it is.

BudgieMania , 9 months ago

I think a handful apply for me, but the biggest case is probably WoW Classic. It felt like a can't miss, lightning in a bottle kind of moment, so I absolutely had to be there. I'm glad I did, as it reminded me both why I love the game so much, as well as why I don't play it anymore.

brsrklf , 9 months ago

Those aren’t really FOMO in my opinion, more like being curious about what the praise was about. It’s trying new stuff, and rather healthy I’d say, even if you realize some of those really weren’t for you in the end. Yeah, I had quite a few of those too.

To me, FOMO would be anxiety about stuff that you really can miss “forever” and regret afterwhile.

In games, it’s weaponized with artificially limited stuff because whoever is pulling the string wants you to fear a missed opportunity and make an impulse decision.

It’s stuff like preorder “bonuses” you will never have another chance to get otherwise, time-limited content, battlepasses, daily rewards etc.

One of the most pathetic recent example I can think of being Nintendo making the translation of a 1990 Famicom game available only for a couple months. “Quick, buy Fire Emblem now, before it disappears forever!!!”

CorrodedCranium OP , 9 months ago

Even then I’d argue the lines are blurred with so many online marketplaces going down and how secondhand games have exponentially increased in price.

As far as I’m concerned emulation is the solution to this but I could see it being a hurdle for those that do want to play them legitimately

Newtra , 9 months ago

Mass Effect Andromeda. The reviews convinced me I’d hate it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of possibly missing some lore after I loved the first 3 so much. Turns out it was actually pretty good.

No Man’s Sky. It looked slow and grindy but people kept hyping it up. I caved, and forced myself to play 20 hours trying to find the good bits. I never found them.

Notnotmike , 9 months ago

I think the hate for Andromeda was a little overblown. I enjoyed the heck out of the game, regardless of any weird facial expressions! It of course was never going to live up to the original trilogy but it stood out on its own in a lot of positive ways

CorrodedCranium OP , 9 months ago

No Man’s Sky. It looked slow and grindy but people kept hyping it up. I caved, and forced myself to play 20 hours trying to find the good bits. I never found them.

That’s a game I tried as well but I feel like I set myself up for failure by trying to see everything the beginning of the game had to offer versus exploring naturally.

the_third , 9 months ago

Right? ME Andromeda felt really good for me, with the bases becoming more and more human friendly. I quite liked it.

Omegamanthethird , 9 months ago

Flying around in VR in space in NMS is amazing. I think I lost interest because of the unnecessarily cumbersome crafting and item management though.

sparklepower , 9 months ago

stardew valley and the stanley parable. no regrets :)

Kolanaki , 9 months ago

Only multiplayer games, since a single player game is usually available forever someway or another. Multiplayer games live and die based on popularity. No players = no game. And the longer the game is around, the fewer players it generally has so I like to get in right when they come out if I’m interested at all.

CorrodedCranium OP , 9 months ago

There’s no single player game you played because your friends were hyping it up?

essellburns , 9 months ago

Nope. That’s a young person’s game

ShranTheWaterPoloFan , 9 months ago

I’m not young and I still will play a game because it’s suggested to me. If everyone tells me a particular game/movie/book/restaurant is amazing, I’m going to try it.

Taking the advice of others and trying new things isn’t a sign of inexperience.

essellburns , 9 months ago

Yes it is. Evidence is against you on this point when we’re talking about population level behaviours, individuals vary of course which includes you

Not that experienced people are less able to consider other opinions, simply that when we’re younger we depend more on volatile social acceptance metrics combined with having had less time to firmly establish our own preferences.

ShranTheWaterPoloFan , 9 months ago

Taking suggestions for new media isn’t a sign of youth. Imagine having a friend recommend a book and saying “I’m no callow youth! I’ll select my own media thank you!”

Elevator7009 , 9 months ago

Yeah, but deciding not to do so after hearing the specific advice is not necessarily a sign of being a head-in-the-ground ass. Especially if it’s just a video game recommendation.

Also, is the person making a recommendation based on what they know of my tastes, or because they want to gush about something they enjoy? I’m happy to hear the latter, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I will like it. If you love spicy food, I’ll gladly listen to you talk about it, but I’m going to ignore your recommendation to try it because I know things about myself, one of which is “I have no spice tolerance”.

ShranTheWaterPoloFan , 9 months ago

There is value in trying things outside your comfort zone. It’s the only way to grow, or find new things you like.

Kolanaki , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

What friends?

Seriously: I’ve had friends talk me into getting stuff; but not from a fear of missing out. My friends were never really gamers. Half the shit they recommended to me I was already into or didn’t give a single fuck about lol