The Last Ginja wrote: I suddenly realised the armour I had spent so long getting during the triumphs was now just sitting in my vault gathering dust. I now had better armour, better guns, better shaders (lol) and realised what I'd done. Now don't get me wrong I knew the power levels were going to raise, they always do, but the need to do it just manifested. I just stopped playing it like that. I stuck it on a few weeks back just to have a look and all the new quests were sitting there to be grabbed and I found it all overwhelming and turned it off.
That's how live service games work to encourage that kind of compulsive behaviour - artificial scarcity, making the numbers come up and drip-feeding content just enough to keep you coming back. Throw lootboxes into that mix and you have a dangerous combination.
I've been through a couple of rough patches where i was unemployed for a while, so i turned to gaming as the only 'fun' thing i could do as i already had the machines and games. Weirdly these periods were both at the launches of forza horizon 3 and 4 so i played those a lot, and they kind of got me through.
With 4 though, after i was sorted and settled back into life i looked at all the limited events, mountains of cars i'd gotten but never driven, all the "do this list of things by the end of the week to get this shiny" and asked myself had i really enjoyed any of it? Coupled with the increasing coverage of lootboxes and general industry shadiness i took a long look at why i was gaming and, over christmas, essentially bootstrapped myself out of those kind of games.
The real last straw was going from assassins creed origins to yakuza 0. The former is a sprawling, massive game that does just that; offering a treadmill of content in a huge but empty area meant to keep you spending more versus a game which offers so much without asking more than the game price in return, packed into a dense but finite package and telling such a good story in the process.
Over christmas I have either sold a lot of my physical games or taken a long look at my steam library etc and uninstalled/hidden loads of games i picked up on a whim because they were cheap, not because i like them or their genre. I realised i was doing things like livery designs in forza because i wanted to do something visually creative, so i have used that money from selling stuff to get back into tabletop wargaming, which is its own money pit but at least you have a physical thing i've created/painted which can't be taken away/turned off when the next game comes along.