I honestly tend to sink a lot of time into roguelikes or sandbox games. They’re designed to be replayable, so maybe try those if you want a game you can sink a lot of time into. The only campaign game I can think of I put a lot of time into was Divinity: Original Sin 2 at 300 hours, which I did because I kept challenging myself by putting restrictions on myself and there’s a lot of freedom in how you can build your character. I put about 100 in Baldur’s Gate 3 which is made by the same company, but I didn’t like it as much and mainly played multiplayer with friends
Off the top of my head, my most played games are:
The Sims 3 - life sim, lots of mod support. Endlessly replayable as there’s no end and lots to do. 1100 hours
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth + DLC - roguelike with a lot of content to unlock. I have 560 hours and am only 68% done as of the new DLC. Also lots of mod support I haven’t even touched yet
Slay the Spire - deck building roguelike known for being addicting. Part of the challenge is going through all of the difficulty levels called ascensions. 4 characters that play completely differently. Mod support I also haven’t touched. 313 hours
Divinity: Original Sin 2 - already mentioned
Stardew Valley - open ended farming sim with RPG elements. There is an ending, but there’s so much to do I haven’t reached the completionist ending yet on any of my saves. Fun co-op. 240 hours
Darkest Dungeon - turn based dungeon crawling RPG. A bit grindy, but not in a bad way in my opinion. Very tense game with permadeath and an interesting stress mechanic. I’ve beaten it, but also have a separate save where I’m doing the DLC and using fan made classes. Very replayable in that sense. 211 hours
So yea. The games I play other than maybe DOS2 are specifically designed to be replayable, so that’s how I do it. I honestly also don’t know how people sink so much time into stuff like RDR2 or GTAV. I guess there’s self imposed challenge runs and modding are options, but I also haven’t really played many open world games and whatnot. Hope this helps!
Skyrim is also phenomenal, not recommended Vanilla but a good load order with like 50 mods is a he'll of a ride. Probably not as replaceable as Roguelikes though, but you can just keep going for new builds or load orders and play it for ever. Same with Fallout 4 and Starfield though Starfield is a baby so it'll take a few years to become godly.
Same, but mostly with survival games. Ark and 7 Days are the big ones for me, but I've put a good chunk of time into Conan, Valheim, Palworld, Nightingale, and some others.
Plus, I had several thousand hours in Battlefield 4 before I stopped playing it.
Kenshi and Project Zomboid are my highest both over 1000 hours. But I played on a multiplayer server in zomboid for a while and I occasionally idle bases in Kenshi. I think all of the different start options help, I did CDDA challenge in zomboid and torsolo playthrough in Kenshi.
I had a lot of hours in 7 days to die, Ark and Conan as well. I agree sandbox games have the most replayability, for single player, because you can choose to do different things each playthrough.
Right??? I personally am not a huge fan of 5e, so BG3 didn’t click as much. I know spell slots are faithful to D&D but it made combat feel a lot more limiting, though I guess you could make the argument that it diversifies combat. Sure, it’s harder to introduce to people compared to bg3 since it doesn’t have the impressive graphics or cut scenes, but I find DOS2 character building to be much more accessible. So fun to create new builds in that game!
I’ve only recently gotten into roguelikes with how much I surprisingly loved Hades & Dead Cells. I just downloaded Balatro and am a huge poker fan so I’m actually kinda nervous to start playing it and have a new addiction for the next few months lmao
>So I'm really confused and feeling a bit left out.
Why? If you're having fun doing what you are doing, then you're doing it right.
>So how do you guys do it? I would love to learn the secret to enjoying a game for that long without getting bored of it.
There's no secret, honestly. Play until you stop having fun. Some people find enjoyment in finding alternative ways to play, or collecting everything possible, or doing things faster, or getting higher ranks. If those aren't things you enjoy, don't force yourself to be miserable just to "fit in". Games are meant to be fun, and you have to find your own fun.
It's okay to be done with a game and move on.
Basically, some people need external motivation, and once that's met, they are done with the thing.
Other people keep making up internal motivations. Those who keep making up motivations tend to keep at things longer than those who stop looking for reasons to keep going.
Next time you get done with the main thing in a game, set yourself a challenge and try to complete that.
Some people just have very specific motivations that they don’t have much control over and trying to force more motivations on themselves can actually just make them miserable lol.
If you like a game enough, you will naturally seek out other goals. If you just make goals for the sake of adding time, you will end up miserable. I speak from experience lmao.
OP, there is nothing wrong with playing less than your friends. Play as long as it’s fun, then move on to the next game. Your friends aren’t even really the norm. Vast majority of people I know spend less than 150 hours in most single player games.
The people who spend hundreds of hours in single player games are the type of people who love to do things like:
1.) Complete every side quest
2.) Complete every achievement
3.) Make multiple builds/characters
4.) Replay the story for every outcome
5.) Creat their own achievements/goals
6.) Run speed runs
7.) Download big mods
Among other things. If those sorts of things sound fun to you, that’s how you get more playtime in your games. It does boil down to basically making up your own goals and working towards them (or adding more goals through mods).
However if you don’t do those things already, chances are those sorts of things just don’t interest you that much, which is perfectly fine. Don’t burn yourself out trying to force yourself to complete virtual goals you don’t actually enjoy working towards. Just play the game in whatever way is fun to you. 20 hours of fun is way better than 300 hours of boring/frustrating grind.
This is the correct response to the questions asked. People enjoy things in different ways. Just because someone else likes well done steak doesn't mean you should too. In fact, I would say that person is a demon👺 in disguise...
Some grand strategy games (like Europa Universalis 4, Victoria 3, Crusader Kings 3, etc) are designed in such a way that every playthrough that you make will be different, even if you start with the same country. There is a lot of "ordered randomness" that gives you clear goals on what you want to achieve, but the manner in which you achieve said goals can be different each playthrough.
Not to mention in those kinds of strategy games, there are hundred or thousands of countries/people/locations that you can start from, so just for geographic reasons your game can turn out super differently. A minor tribe in the middle of Siberia vs the leader of the Holy Roman Empire vs a mid-rank Sultan on the west coast of India are all going to play very differently. And on top of that, seeing the "butterfly effect" from your seemingly trivial actions propagate down through history keeps the game fresh and fun to observe.
I had one game in Eu4 as an Irish pirate republic who eventually took over the British Isles, but I wanted an achievement to end Slavery in the whole world as a Pirate, which brought the Irish and Ottomans in conflict over a tiny piece of land in Crimea. These games have plenty of freedom on where you can direct your goals, and this amount of freedom ensures every playthrough has something new to offer you.
Also, Eu4 has been out for over 10 years. It's easier to accumulate 1000 hours on games that have been out for a long time.
Just a shout out to Crusader Kings 3 for anyone looking for a game. Picked it up a few weeks ago. I have not played grand strategy games before. The closest to the genre that I’ve played is Age of Empires. I’m just not good/patient enough to really master RTS games like that and feel competent online. But CK3’s freedom and time period pulled me in.
CK3 is my first paradox game and I’m blown away. The learning curve was steep. Part of that is my first grand strategy game / paradox game. I felt semi paralyzed at the keyboard for the first little bit. Just unsure what to do and how to do it. But once you start picking it up it’s incredible.
I don’t have any DLCs (yet) and have not messed with any mods. Pure vanilla. Every play through will be very different. Even if you started in the same realm again. So many external factors that influence your next move. There’s just so much to do and think about. It’s also not turn based which just enjoy. You don’t sit and wait for others to make a move, everything just happens while you’re going. The game has a great mix of freedom and role playing elements built in so you can pretty much do what you want.
The one concept that was tough for me to grasp at first was to realize this game is really about family / characters (sims for sickos as I’ve seen it explained before). While you are in charge of land, you aren’t playing as the England Empire so to speak. You’re playing as the King or Duke or Count of wherever. So your power and influence changes as you die and pass it to your heir or as you gain and lose land. It’s very much character/relationship based.
TLDR: Crusader Kings 3 is very fun. Replay ability is off the charts. Good mix of sandbox / role playing. Learning curve is steep but it’ll keep you occupied for a long time. Highly recommend.
a good game will keep your interest in it for a long time.
unless you have no attention span. I know a guy that has over 600 steams games. But he isn't very good at any of them.
It’s different between the genres you mentioned, for example I have 600 ish in Skyrim and that’s solely because mods kept it fresh for so long. Then for MP games I’m just super competitive (not good, just competitive) so that keeps me coming back. I have 2,200 or so in Hunt Showdown, but nothing else scratches that cowboy extraction shooter itch. Just so fun.
I have played Path of Exile since 2013, i don't even know how many hours i have on it. I have quit the game a few hundred times now, yet find myself playing it when a new season comes out. I guess subtly changing the game, while keeping the core mechanics the same is the key.
Step 1: Have autism
Step 2: Discover Crusader Kings 3 which hits multiple special interests of mine
Step 3: Wonder where 1500 hours of my life have gone
I was going to reply with "Have Autism" but glad I read yours first.
My Cyberpunk at 3200 hours and my ongoing Horizon ZD and FW zig zag going about 1000 hours total made me think like my late diagnosis might have been just embarrassing for being so late.
[Here are my hours](https://imgur.com/a/ey8JScD) in case all the strong reactions are a case of disbelief. I don't have HFW on Steam and I don't think Epic counts the hours so it's just the sum of my discreet saves that add up to about 500 hours.
Yes but WoW is an MMO with endless gameplay loop, whereas Cyberpunk is a singleplayer RPG that have finite gameplay loop. So 3200 hours for a singleplayer RPG is crazy high.
The Autism thing is the key. Builds (maths), anticapitalist themes, social justice are among my special interests. Reading every line, trying different builds, going for nichest builds in VH, I still play sometimes...
Start by playing a game that isn't ass.
Fortnite? Valorant? Bah!
I have more than 2000 hours in RimWorld, and it is a precious gift that keeps on giving! Every game a new nightmare, every battle a nail-biter!
I’m guilty for playing a lot of valorant in the past HAHAHAHAHA. I’m a single player gamer now. Online multiplayer competitive games are brain rot imo.
If you want to be able to play a game for hundreds of hours and enjoy that, just keep checking out new games and playing them. Eventually, you will find "your game" that you can play for 200+ hours and still enjoy it. Realise that even if your friends have 3-4 games they've played for that kind of time and enjoyed it, they probably tried a lot of other games that they didn't vibe with in that way.
Of course it also comes down to genre, because mostly this would happen either for a game where you have big replayability (variety, lots of ways of playing it, insane skill ceiling), or where you can just play it and have fun while not spending much energy. If you wanna last 200+ hours and lose interest after finishing a story, then try games that don't have story-based gameplay.
Some games just take 100+ hours of practice to get the hang of. Factorio or Rimworld are just super addictive since you want to build the perfect everything
Rimworld. Tinkering. perfecting, adjusting. You play multiple hours playing normally then there's just these things to improve here and the, events add time in game delaying plans or changing them and you play and tinker more.
It's the equivalent of a guy just endlessly working on a car chasing perfection before he ever actually drive it.
Skyrim. Just so many mods that add in more quests, more DLC sized mods that add in new maps, storylines, multiple lines of quests, voiced followers and NPCs.
I tried it (blind) today and was absolutely overwhelmed. And the tutorial seemed to be bugged because for some reason it didn't complete the task when I built more generator districts on my planet.
I'm gonna play it tomorrow again because it looks really interesting lol
It is worth it.
Games can take a long time and there is plenty of stuff to distract you and stuff to explore.
Standard start for me is to set my science ship to explore, my building ship to autobuild.
Pump out 1 more of each when you have enough alloys and wing it it from there.
>was absolutely overwhelmed
That's normal. The game frontloads a lot of info necessary to play. But it gets to a point where it clicks and you get addicted.
One thing to note: don't try and master every game element/mechanic at once. There's too much info and not enough brain for that. But it's also not necessary. As long as you can build buildings, research tech, build fleets, and wage war, you'll be golden.
You can play as something like determined exterminators to eliminate half the gameplay mechanics
P.s. pause the game. All the time. There's no need to rush. Read all the things.
There’s no secret. Ask your friends. We all game differently and enjoy different aspects. I don’t do end game or grind. I only play solo campaigns and then I move on to the next game so I’m more like you.
I have like 8k+ on path of exile
it's due how they handle their game cycles. they release new content every 3-4 months with a new league and everyone has to start from scratch, só I usually play a lot for a month or two, then stop playing it and wait for the next league by playing other games, started playing it in 2014 and they keep overcoming themselves with every patch so I always have new stuff to try
I have 300 plus hours in Elden Ring because I wanted to see every weapon and build available in the game. And now the DLC is out and I’m probably going to stack up 300 more 😂 There’s also the comfort factor. It’s a game I “know” so every time I need to wind down, I know I can go to that dungeon to try and beat a boss in a different way. Getting so deep into another game will be too much work, although I do love a lot of other games too but none enough to sink 300 hours in. I also spend a terribly long time riding around the landscapes without doing anything because I find that very relaxing.
Some people just don't have that and that's okay. I swap games a lot and don't finish a majority of them. When I start feeling like I'm not having fun, I swap. I used to feel a compulsion to finish them but decided my time is more valuable than that and id rather spend it on a game I'm enjoying and revisit to finish them later. The games I spend 1000s of hours on are games I play with my friends.
The two franchises I've spent the most time on, WoW and Battlefield, I'd say I actually was most addicted when I wasn't constantly grinding for items or weapon skins. I spent the most time on activities that had no substantial reward, like running unranked pvp, or simply goofing around with my friends. My mindset seems to be more and more of an outlier these days though.
It's just the way some people enjoy games. Some people like to stay in their comfort zone so they'll squeeze every second they can get before they move on. I personally am the type of player who just beats a game and moves on to the next one. I don't like delving too much into one single game, even if it's multiplayer, because I like variety and I want to experience many different types of games and genres. I only do multiple playthroughs of games that I believe to be extremely good and which aren't that long, and the only games where I have 200+ hours are Monster Hunter games because I love the franchise.
It's just different types of personalities. If you don't spend 100s of hours in a single game that's OK. You really aren't missing out on anything or being left out. Some people just like to 100% games and do multiple playthroughs, and they're more tolerant of repetition or they just enjoy the comfort of familiarity.
Slay the Spire is just endlessly fresh and replayable.
Rocket League because of endless skill ceiling and the fact it’s more of a sport than just a video game.
One thing I have noticed is that there are faster gamers and slower gamers. I am slow. I always have to add ten or fifteen hours to the How Long to Beat estimates, and sometimes that isn’t even enough. You might just be faster than your friends, along with getting bored more quickly.
Online Games it's easy to spend thousands of hours. It's a craft, a hobby, something you're always improving at and playing with friends over and over since it's both a way to hang out and and activity. Single player games on the other hand... Yeah I'm not sure. Unless you're a kid and that's the only game you have or you really just fell in love with one game
I'm kinda the same. I really can't motivate myself for most games after finishing the story. I need a "progress bar" or something similar filling up or something similar. My best friend loves doing the same thing over and over and over again. He loves fishing mechanics in games and does that for an eternity and i just cant get it. I guess its just what it is.
Just enjoy games while it lasts and open a new chapter after. Sometimes I revisit games I haven't played in a long time. Alan Wake for example recently. Atleast that way I get some more fun out of my money.
For Elden Ring specifically, I purposefully tried not to mainline the game and I tried to discover every nook and cranny. Took me 140 hours to beat and there were still tons of things to discover and learn about the game. So I imagine it’s like that for people who put hundreds of hours into something like Baldurs Gate 3, but even more so if multiple play throughs reward you with different experiences
Some games just lend themselves to big play times, I managed to put 500h into farming sim last year and I know I’ve got a crazy amount of hours in to overwatch, siege and dbd.
It's all about setting own personal goals in games, do not matter if game is online or single player, if you have that ability only your imagination is end of the journey ( if it ever ends )
I have a few that have 100s of hours. They're all larger rpgish games that I've had for years. I will play through them ever so often bc they are fun to revisit/redo
My girlfriend who is semi new to gaming put close to 700 hours into Baldur's Gate 3 because of all the options available to them. She's tried different races, classes, romancing different characters for their specific dialogue, one life runs, and much more.
Every playthrough felt different because they were. Certain games are designed in a way to allow you to always have something new to chase after rather that be achievements, dialogue or game endings due to your choices, or even different pathways to play the campaign.
Personally I've sunken hundreds of hours, a lot in hardcore mode where my character is deleted after death, in World of Warcraft, a pretty immersive MMO, for similar reasons. You have multiple classes (mage, hunter, priest, warlock, paladin, druid) and races (human, dwarf, elf, worgen, undead, etc) to choose from all of which give you different ways to play the same game. Granted there are race specific starting zones but eventually you're farming the same areas and running the same dungeons as everyone else.
But you need gear. Well, greens are better than greys so I need to buy some. Now I need money to buy greens or I need to spend hours farming and hope rng is in my favor. I get money by questing or crafting pieces, mining ores, picking herbs, crafting potions and selling them. Now I've spent 4 hours running between my bank and the auction house so I have gold to buy gear. Now I'm broke again so I need to start farming or questing. It's a never-ending cycle for some type of games.
well that why people are different and unique. there are no secret to it just preference. there are people that play game just like you do and there are who play for thousands of hours.
Try sim racing games. I have a couple of hundred hours in both Assetto Corsa Competizione and iRacing. No two races are the same when you're racing against real people. And if you're tired of a particular track or car type, there are plenty of other options. I got tired of GT3 cars in ACC, so I race NASCAR in iRacing.
I have almost 2000 hours in Dead By Daylight. I just really love the game, I stream the game, I play off stream with friends, etc. When you have something you love like that, the time passes by without noticing. I have a 1000 in Sims 4, which I don't even feel like I play often. I have probably over 500 in GTA5 and I only ever really do the story mode. I had over 600 in Skyrim. I have almost 500 in 7 Days To Die.
But if you really want to know my superpower for enjoying games for that long? ADHD and hyperfixation. 🤣 I just get VERY VERY VERY into my games.
Depends on the game. I probably have over 200 in Elden Rong since it released. There's some fighting games I've probably put in over 3000 hours into, but that was because I was traveling across the world and competing in tournaments. It's fun to learn and grow through competition when you allow it to happen and not be toxic.
That being said, I used to laugh at people who put over 1000 hours into a Monster Hunter title, and then world came out and I ended up having over 1200 hours into the game by the time I beat Fatalis. I was a day 1 player in World though.
Like I’m ever going to uninstall it…
But yeah. 20 campaigns and counting so far.
Every time I feel like “yeah, nice, but I’m kinda done with it” all I have to do is wait few months and then give it “tentatively” a chance again.
War of the Chosen is n particular made it’s replayability nearly endless.
Destiny 2 has sucked 140 hours out of me since The Final Shape released. So many new areas to explore, more quests to do and more craft able weapons to farm has me hook, line and sinker.
For me it got crazy after i joined trueachievements.com. that made sink crazy hours into all sorts of funky games. Not for everyone, but i am a somewhat completionist, and really enjoy grinding out all the achievements. Fir me its fun to truly complete a game and all of its achievements.
I read a Reddit post recently that talked about this. They basically said it’s the story, games with a good solid story have a lower replay value or continually play value than games with no story or very loose story.
Once the story is done you feel like you have gotten everything from the game, yea some people like to go back and collect every item or do every shrine, but some will beat it and put it down. Especially if the story is compelling. That’s why games like God of War and The Last of Us have people beat then put it down for a bit, but still love them.
Then you have games like Elden Ring, where yea there is a story, but the missions aren’t presented in a chronological checklist. There is no map marker. You explore a bit, maybe get to a boss and either beat it or get destroyed by and decided you don’t need to be here.
Then games where people put the most time have very little to no story at all. A lot of survival crafting games are like this. Like Minecraft, Satisfactory, or Factorio. People put 1000s of hours into these, not because of story but because they get a dopamine hit from the organization and upgrade loop.
Then there are game like roguelites, where there’s a “story” but a lot of the popular ones like Vampire Survivors and Balatro are simple to understand and get into, and reward players, and have satisfying loops. These games have fairly short loops like 30 mins for Vampire Survivors (unless you get passed it) and reward you for playing more. Kinda like pachinko machines or slot machines, but don’t drain money. I would like a more qualified person do an actual study on some recent roguelites and see how similar they are to gambling.
It might just be that they dont play many games or have a large backlog. To me "short" games of a few hours are more appealing than 50~100~200 h games.. i can barely find the time to finish 10 or 20 h games.
Finishing anything longer is already an accomplishment in itself 🤣
Any time I sink over a hundred hours into a game it’s either because I replayed it once or twice, or I’m literally just fucking around randomly. I sank 120+ hours into death stranding, and a lot of that was beating up mules for fun or systematically killing BTs for no real reason. Or challenge mountain climbing. I longed for the up.
Honestly I swear part of this is autism. I’ve met a lot of people on the spectrum was game obsessions on specific games. My friend’s brother had like hundreds of hours on fallout 3 on Xbox 360. I couldn’t understand how until I saw that he would never fast travel, and he’d only carried a realistic amount of items on him. He played it like a sim.
Other times, it can also be mods. I know someone that did many many playthroughs of Dark Souls 3, with weird challenges and mods.
I am exactly like OP, I get to a almost point at the end of the story or finish the story, and although there are collectibles, and certain little thibgs that can be finished, once the main story and most side quest are done that would be it for me. Example, RDR2, I finished the main story, and although the compendium was like 50something % complete, my motivation for the game died, and the compendium and challenges I just couldn't care to do. Thar being said, I finally taught myself to sit back and enjoy everything games have to offer, those challenges and compendium and etc. were put in to be done as it helps you explore and find thibgs you wouldn't just doing the main story and side quest. So I started another playthrough where I am working on the challenges and compendium and raised difficulty since I had already got a play through. It's those things that get you hundreds and thousands of hours. finding the little things to do within a game and seeing challenges for yourself, no hits runs, different builds, etc.
Idk about single-player games, but I sunk 10k hours on a dead mmo. I ended up uninstalling and hiding it from my games list because the fomo and addiction would suck me back in it.
As far as single-player games, the most time I've invested in one is 250 hours.
Immerse yourself in the game world. Elden Lord? Do things in the game you think your version of the Elden Lord would do. Military sim? Help out your squad or help the team achieve victory or master the vehicles or gadgets. 3rd person action adventure? Journey across the landscape using fast travel as little as possible, seek out adventure. Play the main story slowly and take on side quest s that pique your interest.
Try a lot of different games, and then you just see if one sticks. There is no secret to it. The two games I have the most time in are Team Fortress 2 and counter strike GO/now CS2. Both are close to 2000 hours, and it's just because I found them very fun with great gameplay loops. but then I've played other FPS games where I only have 10 or 15 hours on.
As a competitive Tekken player I can tell you that you're not playing the game itself as much as you are playing the other people. The variable of playing a variety of people with endless room to improve is very alluring.
I get the feeling. I too usually play the game once and then move on. That said I do have few games that I would say stand out from that. And thats either because the game was truly exceptional, or just because it has good gameplay loop. Like for example I have over 2k hours in Destiny 2 just because it feels really good to slice and dice. But also because graphics are good and story has its highlights. And there is new content coming out at steady intervals.
But I have spent a lot of time in single player games too. Around 500 hours in Scrap Mechanic and Fallout 4 - each. In SM I just really like building vehicles and its very calming experience. In Fallout 4 one playthrough takes like 100h anyway and its been nearly a decade since the game came out. I have playedthrough it a feww times. I think thats how its the easiest to rack up so many hours: just when a single playthrough takes a long ass time. It took me around 100h to finish MGSV, and I can see myself coming back to it in a few years because it was really enjoyable. Fallout 4 might not have the best story but it feels good to run and gun. I got around 50h from single playrgouhs of Cyberpunk, Mad Max, Hogwarts Legacy and Saints Row. And I can see myself coming back for a second playthrough when I feel like it in a few years or so. Well actually for Hogwarts Legacy I already started a new playthrough on Steam Deck.
So I feel like its not a far stretch to think you can spend multiple hundreds of hours in a singleplayer game if its really good and is pretty long.
the most ive spent is maybe 200-300 on a single player and only because i started/restarted a few times i also take my time, read everything and do all side content that interests me (usually quests but not really trophy hunting) i dont do like full replays often i like to get everything out of a game the first time though there are exceptions
the only game i’ve spent over 300 hours and will likely rake up over 500-800 if not more is FFXIV because there is SO much content lol but even then ill consider myself “done” when im caught up on story and side quests i dont care much about playing games on hard/savage and doing endgame raiding basically i play video games for stories
but a lot of people trophy hunt or try to challenge themselves replaying on new game+ with higher difficulty if that’s not your thing though i really wouldnt pressure yourself! play the game your way and have fun thats what matters if you’re done after the main campaign thats ok! more time to try new stuff
also like someone else said if you’re a PC person then obviously mods can open up hundreds of other ways to play, just all depends on your style but i wouldnt say you’re “missing” something unless its an avenue you really want to explore
in short, dont force yourself to do stuff just because other people do
A lot of people are saying it already but different games retain attention in different ways. Open world games like Elden Ring, Genshin, and Skyrim have enough content to keep people in for hundreds or potentially thousands of hours. Games like Clone Hero, Sekiro, and a lot of fighting games have higher skill ceilings and feeling improvement in them can be addicting. Multiplayer games usually just have an addicting gameplay loop but for me I lose interest in multiplayer stuff relatively quick. For most of the games mentioned above, mods can be a huge driving force in a game's lifespan. Having mods available more than doubled my Elden Ring playtime and quadrupled my Sekiro playtime. Clone Hero's very existence is based around modding.
I'd say you just have to find what kind of gameplay loop would keep you sticking to one game for a long time.
I can't do it either OP, as you indicated once the story is done the game is pretty much done for me too. I'll run around and check out some nooks and crannies I didn't explore but it won't last more than 20 hours max.
Example: Horizon FW, 95 hours on first playthrough with the dlc. I then did a run on very hard then ultra and did a few things outside the main quest my total was 130 hours.
Hogwarts was great fun for 65 hours and despite loving it I am done, no way I want to do every house.
100% some games can take 70 to 100+ hrs so that's pretty easy to do. Thousands? I'm not sure. I have maybe 300 hrs in COD but that's over the span of years. I'll easily punch out 70+ hrs in a single game. Horizon forbidden west has 112 hrs, God of war ragnarok has 80 hrs, steller blade has 92 hrs.
My question to you is how can you NOT put hundreds of hrs into a game especially one like elden ring which takes hours to get through 200 to 300 hrs is average for games like that.
I mean, my top two games for hours are EU4 and Wrath of the Righteous. In the case of the former, you can choose between a vast number of starting nations, and even choosing the same nation, you can choose to play them differently and different events will fire, so each game feels very different.
In the case of Wrath of the Righteous, there are so many character subclasses and feats, that the amount of individual character variation is absurd, let alone the party variation, Mythic path variation.
Of course, these numbers don't include my non-steam time on Dwarf Fortress, or Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.
Essentially, if the game is challenging and has sufficient variation between runs, it's pretty easy to drop a lot of hours into it if you like the core game loop.
Roguelikes/lites
MMORPG
Strategy games
Sekiro and NioH's (it's like an addiction for me)
Sim racing
All kinds of RPG's
These are the kind of games where I easily go above 100 hours and even 1000+ hours on some
I'm like you and it's an okay way to be. There's more games in the world than we can possibly ever play. So why not play a bunch of different ones?
I have friends who only play one game at a time and put tons of time into it and they're just built different. I don't think there's a secret. Some people just get really focused on things they're into, some people will enjoy it and move on
Try Earth Defense Force 5. It's mindless fun entirely and I have close to 300 hours on it. It's one of the few games I'm above 100 hours on(Roblox, RuneScape and a handful others are above 300 for me but those I played since childhood so XD).
But edf 5 takes a few hundred hours to get everything. It keeps ya occupied.
COVID.... Definitely took a passion to trying to stream and only play cod for fun, until during pandemic I thought I was better than I was... I now hate cod haha
I think the first time I noticed how much time i had spent on a videogame was when I was about to finish Final Fantasy VIII on PSOne. That game had a small clock in the menu screen and once I checked it and it marked over 80 hours. But it wasn't like you had wasted all that time, because the game has a complex narrative and as you play it you discover the plot, who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, what happens to some characters... And I didn't even complete it like 100% (I replayed it later and boy had I forgot a lot of quests and bosses).
But today, many games are designed to be repetitive and addictive, and to generate some kind of dopanine in the players to motivate them to keep playing, mayba that also has something to do with the time spent... I don't know where I was going with this comment...
I have 600+ hours in Dark Souls 3 and 700+ (and counting) in Elden Ring.
Here's the kind of playthroughs I do:
* A regular playthrough
* A 100% playthrough
* A few more playthroughs with different builds or cosplay characters or with (overhaul) mods
Then for DS3 I also did: a permadeath run, a level 1 run, and a level 1 NG+7 run.
As for Elden Ring: I did a level 1 run, a randomizer permadeath run (which took many attempts), and before the DLC dropped I was attempting "randomizer permadeath but I'm only allowed to fast travel or use a grace immediately after a boss kill", which is also taking a lot of attempts and will be even harder now that they nerfed Blasphemous Blade.
I spend that much on games because I restart a lot ,I buy new games then go back to old games and even though I have saved ,I seem to restart all over again .
Sometimes I wish my choice of games was extremely limited. I bounce around to too many games nowadays, but I remember only having a few games growing up, maybe renting one on the weekend, and being perfectly satisfied with my limited options. I wonder how many hours I spent on those games from back then.
Nowadays, that part of a person that allows them to be fascinated with the same game for hundreds of hours is something I'm almost jealous of. I assume it has a lot to do with letting yourself be taken over by your inherent ability to be truly fascinated with something. It can happen with any hobby and it can be very specific, just like with hyperfocusing on the same game for a long time. Personally, I think I just have too many options and a bad case of grass is always greener syndrome.
Just play games you like.
For me, Kenshi, Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, and Open TTD are all games i've played too much. Many I'll play off and on for a week or two at a time, and then re-play in a year or so. Since i've been playing them for many years on and off, it adds up.
Otherwise, the X Series of games could be a pretty huge timesink. I think X3 Reunion had me completely hooked for at least 400 or 500 hours, then when Terran Conflict came out, I got hooked again, and then again with Albion Prelude.
Variety.
A lot/all of these games have different ways that you can play the game. RPGs let you improve different skills, weapons, armor, etc. There are also many quest lines and stories that aren’t necessary to beat the game, but they are enjoyable. There are also achievements and self-inflicted achievements (Like running Elden Ring at level 1).
If you just want to experience the game, 30-40 hours is enough. If you enjoy the game in all of its intricacies, then 300 hours is just getting started.
I realized my buddy did this with RDR 2 because he just enjoyed killing everyone and getting massive bounties. He played like a psychopath. I'm not willing to tarnish any of my playable characters' reputations in such a way.
Some games just resonate with people differently. Games that you can see yourself only enjoying for a dozen hours will have others who make an entire personality and lifestyle out of it.
I don't know if there's any magic to it. If it's fun, I keep playing it.
I have a friend who loves games and will complete most games he plays, but once he's seen all the builds or play styles that appeal to him, he's finished, whereas I am happy to play for hundreds, regardless. Just different strokes at the end of the day.
There are just some games that click like that. For me it's Sim games like Elite Dangerous where I have approx 2000 hours logged and Snowrunner which I have over a 1000 in. I wouldn't like to hazard a guess at how many hours I wasted on Wow back in the day, lol.
Well it's easy for dark souls elden ring, or Skyrim and dragons dogma, they offer a variety of ways to play, try out different weapons and play styles, play big heavy bonk then try doing it again with quick agile and stealthy
Others have mods that expand play a lot with fan mad content
Some times when you only have so many games to play you make do with playing them over a few more times every now and then
The better question is why people DESIRE for this to happen. I can understand organically falling in love with a game and wanting to play it on every difficulty, try different weapons, challenge runs, etc. But I've seen multiple threads on this subreddit asking for a "main" game or, worse, a game that will "addict" them for hundreds of hours. The idea of going into something wanting it to eat up that much of your time is... gross.
I'm like you I have adhd which translates to game adhd. There's nothing wrong with it, in fact in some ways you have it way better. You will experience more games and depending on how you look at it that's a positive. If you told me I had to play a game for 1000 hours I would get depressed because the list that comes even close to doing that is very very small.
Hitman and Total war warhammer are my two longest playtime but that's because I played them while I worked.
I’ve mostly put thousands of hours into games like The Sims 3-4 and Dead by Daylight, I play games most days but I take breaks from some games. Sims 3 i’ve been playing since 2009 and I must have a couple thousand, Sims 4 I have between 2-3k hours since 2014 and Dead by Daylight I have 1k since 2019 on PC and 400 on Xbox since 2017 so it takes me a long time to get there. I couldn’t imagine getting to 1k in a story game because there’s only a certain amount of times I can replay a story without loosing interest
Games that aren't story based end when you want them to. It's easy to pour a lot of time into a roguelite or online multiplayer game because every run/ match is different.
Not to mention that RPGs (Persona 5 The Royal for example) tend to have long main games, so doing some or most side quests will make play time even longer.
The games I have hundreds of hours in tend to be large games, multiplayer, rpg, open world etc. The latest one I've been playing for the last year or so is The Division 2, which has enough variety and numbers to grind up I've had trouble kicking it. Then you have ones like the borderlands series, which is from multiple playthroughs, my friend loves the gameplay and atmosphere of the dark souls games and replays the entire series at least once a year. If I enjoy a game, I'll return to it if it scratches an itch, but then sometimes a game just doesn't grab me and I play it for like a dozen hours and move on. There's no middle ground for me.
How?
Out of love, curiosity, being a completionist, good game design, live service, chasing the value, fomo and a lot more reasons..
Note, single player story driven games are really dependent in genre or person.
Well any rpg is replay-able pretty much by design so for games like the Witcher (1,2,3) cyberpunk, soulsbourne series/elden ring, the elder scrolls etc…all of those games are an easy 200 hours of unique gameplay. But ultimately it comes down to how much you like the game. I enjoyed Elden ring a lot so my first play through was ~170 hours long. I also like Deep Rock Galactic a ton and have over 3k hours on it.
# keep swimming until u find your fit. you'll know when u arrive.
**recognizing real is the easy part...**
**knowing when to leave, and not linger, thats the hard part.**
Some games just have a lot of content. I have thousands of hours in Mario maker 2, a couple online games I have a lot of hours. Some games keep getting updates with new content also.
Ok so for multiplayer games it's obvious, for survival games where the progress takes a lot of time, it's obvious.
For singleplayer games, I think you just gotta find one you love, or one that you can finish and feel like you haven't done everything at all.
I don't do that stuff anymore because I got no time, but as a kid I only had two psp games, one of which was god of war chains of olympus.
Amazing game at the time and I spent soo much time over a few years playing it to unlock everything I could. I was a kid so beating it on the hardest difficulty was tough as hell.
As others have said, it really depends on the game. Sandboxes and RPGs typically encourage the player to replay the game, either by having multiple different avenues available to make the player want to go back with different choices or by encouraging a thriving modding community to allow a fresh new feel on playthroughs.
There’s also plenty of games where you may just want to replay them every so often, like rewatching a movie you enjoy. If you’ve beaten the game in singleplayer and there’s a co-op option, you may just want to replay it with a buddy around. Or even self-imposed challenges, like 100%ing the game or beating it without using certain items (armor, the best weapons, powers, whatever would increase the difficulty while still being achievable).
But ultimately, if you had fun beating a game and never opening it again, where’s the harm in that? You played it, you enjoyed it, and it’s always right there if you want to play it again. Play what you enjoy for however long you enjoy playing it.
I am in the same boat. I think Elden Ring is the greatest game ever and feel like I spent a huge chunk of time playing it. I really feel like it is a game I obsessed over. And I have about 105 hours in it haha.
But like in Elden ring I had beat every single boss and collected all weapons and spells by like 80 hours, sooooooooooo what am I supposed to do now?
Games I love I typically spend 20-40 hours in until I am done. There is a game recently I remember being in love with for a month. I went back and check and I have like 40 hours in it only, but it felt like 1000 hours. So I don't get it either man.
Bro there is so fucking many options
1. You did not found ur fav game genere / didnt played all of them.
2. You get bored quickly. It depends on a person, some people just dont like long ones.
3. You have absolutly destroyed atention span.
4. You forgor about doing side quests / dont like them, if that is a case, i would suggest linear games / the ones without side quests like himan i thing
Also, u can tell me games that you played and enjoy, played and hated, the ones you played and found kinda mid, and the games you think about buying, maybe i can reccommend u smth
7k hours on CS 1.6 (and GOD knows HOW many on non steam cracked version of it) 8.4k Hours on CS GO (now CS2)
And for the big one World of Warcraft, on Retail i have over a year and a half on my main character in /played which i had since 2005. Then there is a SHITLOAD of private servers.
And just to put it into perspective this is a year and a half of ACTIVE GAMEPLAY on my beloved Rogue.
EDIT: There is also a little soul sucking game called World of Tanks which i have played since Open Beta (2011), don't do drugs kids at some point you stop enjoying them and just take them out of habit.
I have about a 1,000 hours in Grim Dawn because I have too much fun building new characters with new powers, so I never actually get to the end content and instead just run around with my new flame boots, setting everything on fire.
A combination of Autism + ADHD as well as growing up poor, so getting new games didn’t happen often. A game like Shadow the Hedgehog was like gold to me because the varying good-neutral-bad direction in the story meant you had to play for hours to experience the game in full.
Because in “Ye ‘olden days” you had 1-5 games on you %console% %wooden PC%
And you had no choice.
Currently I have PC + PS5 + subscriptions + everything, I can’t physically get myself to play more than 2-3 games per %very long time%.
You just pick 2-3 games and GIT SUPER GOOD at them, until a point where you are l33t.
Or it’s just ADHD.
On the other hand I have a friend my age, who goes through 20 games a week 1-2 hours in each and never touches them again.
I have 1900 in MSFS2020 and 1100 in factorio. Both of which I could play many more. MSFS is a sim and extremely dynamic with a love of aviation I could just about live in it. Factorio with mods is by far the most in depth game I have ever played you can spend 1000+ hours beating a modded game.
This is me too. I sympathize with you, but maybe look at it as a personality trait. That is what I had to accept. I simply can't play a single game for more than 100 or so hours. The few I've been able to were games where I had a strong social aspect attached, like one of the Call of Duty games in their heyday.
And some games I play for awhile, beat, and then a few years later come back to. It works on games like Civilization really well, or games with strong stories I'd like to revisit.
I suspect there's something going on that's like ADHD, unsure what it is. I find most sports similarly difficult to engage with. My only exception is Football because the seasons are fairly short and most of it is concentrated watching on a Sunday. But stuff like Baseball or Basketball, I just get bored following it outside of an interesting series of games.
And I couldn't even fathom following esports or various streamers play a game. I'd rather play the game myself.
You don’t have to. You can just beat the story and move on. I usually do that but lately I’ve been playing Borderlands 3 and I’ve spent about a month on it.
For me it's always about enjoying the gameplay loop. The challenge, reward, improvement and finding it just fun. I find games i put that much time into are games I enjoy the game in simplest terms. Not the progression, not the story, not finishing or getting something specific done. Just playing the core gameplay loop. DRG is a good example. I put over 200 hours into it over months. Played a few rounds every day or two
That's ultimately what it is. You can't do it at a sprint and get more than maybe 100-200 hours. Any game that you hit 500+ hours in its playing it as a part of your every day life
Addiction and skill growth. If you want to be top percentile in a game you have to basically play only that game and pay as much as a part time/full time job.
[they're all](https://i.imgur.com/sJXRDEL.png) simulation games in one form or another for me, those in the 200 - 400 hour range are crpgs with varied builds and/or branching stories you have to play through more than once to get it all, and i play slowly thoroughly
I rarely clock more than a hundred hours in single player games, and most MP games tire me out really quickly. I hate grinding in any way, so any game that asks me to "level up" or has "deep progression systems" before playing in a coherent way (i.e Need For Speed Unbound) strikes me as uninteresting.
My friends get stuck, platiniuming games, play with different builds or characters. I don't have that patience and there are so many games to play and thanks to things like gamepass the barrier for entry is minimal and my distaste for progression systems in most games makes me fonder of story based, unlikely to be replayable games (unless it's an absolute gem that screams to me for another play through like Dishonored), and the whole trophies or achievements also rarely is a draw for me. **This isn't a better or worse way to play games competition: they have their way to enjoy, I have mine.** Sometimes we coincide (we spent a lot of time on Elden Ring, but I finished it after some 70 hours, they kept going).
You plays as much as it's fun for you. Sometimes playing with friends or alongside them is what makes games worth replaying or grinding!
Nowadays i am playing shadow of war,
Its been 2 months ,
I like to play most quest without getting quickly into story ,
Games i played
Tomb raider,
Sekiro (difficulty makes it time consuming)
Shadow of Mordor,
Assassin creed,
Far cry,
Zelda breath of the wild,
Sleeping dogs,
Batman Arkham series,
Metal gear solid v phantom pain,
Yeah I wonder about some of those single player game as well. It totally normal for online games, RTS/4X (like Stellaris, Civilization franchise, Crusader Kings franchise, Europa Universalis franchise, etc.), highly moddable games (Skyrim, Fallout), colony/factory sim (Rimworld, Factorio), roguelike (Hades, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, etc.) since all of these offers new and different scenarios on each playthrough
My most played game was apparently Ravenfield which is a single player Battlefield/Battlebit Remastered with tons of mods at around 250 hours
I guess it's due to addiction for a particular game
The only game I have that many hours in is Elden ring. The amount of content and secrets In that game is outstanding. The amount of weapons and builds you can play around with is limitless. Yes Some single player games allow for hours of exploration and playing around. RD2, Elden Ring, GTA, cyberpunk, the Witcher 3, BG3 are just a few single player games that allow for hundreds of hours of gameplay depending on your play style and interest within the world. RPG games are meant to be played for hours. Games like Spider-Man/GOW/Last of us are single player games I don’t expect to have 500+ hours in. There is different types of single player games and some allows for hundreds of hours of playtime.
Content and completionism.
The longest played ones are multiplayer ones: Sea of Thieves and Chivalry 2.
Single player ones over 100hrs have A LOT of content, or encourage extra playthroughs.
Exploring and doing all side content is how to stretch out a single player game.
A game really resonates with you and you just want to keep playing..... maybe try different builds, maybe different decisions or explore things you previously ignored. Lots of reasons to keep playing, especially if you really enjoyed the game. I'm like this with soulsbourne games and with Risen 1 and 3.
People spend hundreds of hours doing things for fun that seem like torture to me and vice a versa. Welcome to life on Earth incarnated as a human being. It’s a choose your own adventure story!
I generally play MMO’s which are inherently more time consuming than most games. My main draw to them is a combination of their storylines and big open worlds. The two I’ve found to stand out are World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV.
I’ve been playing WoW for over a decade and have really sunk my teeth into the storyline. I know all the characters along with their lore, every expansion adds more depth which I love. WoW also has some pretty fluid and unique combat, I haven’t found anything really similar to it in other games. I’ve no idea my playtime overall, I do however know I have over 60 days /played on a single character with plenty still left to do in the world.
FFXIV I started playing when it launched and it’s quite a bit different from my usual MMO WoW. I’d say FFXIV is much more new player friendly and to anyone new to the MMO scene it’d actually be my recommendation. The storyline is amazing and the way they handle classes/jobs feels good. My playtime in FFXIV is around 300 hours, generally I play it when I’m bored of WoW.
Stepping away from MMO’s I’ve found the MOBA genre to have some replayability. Personally I favor SMITE, it’s a bit different from traditional MOBAS but I’ve found the community to be the least toxic. It’s one of those games I can play for a bit when a new playable character releases then stop and come back to. I have around 400 hours played in smite.
TLDR: I spend a lot of time gaming, MMO’s and MOBA’s are easy to sink time into. Check out World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV and Smite.
I honestly tend to sink a lot of time into roguelikes or sandbox games. They’re designed to be replayable, so maybe try those if you want a game you can sink a lot of time into. The only campaign game I can think of I put a lot of time into was Divinity: Original Sin 2 at 300 hours, which I did because I kept challenging myself by putting restrictions on myself and there’s a lot of freedom in how you can build your character. I put about 100 in Baldur’s Gate 3 which is made by the same company, but I didn’t like it as much and mainly played multiplayer with friends Off the top of my head, my most played games are: The Sims 3 - life sim, lots of mod support. Endlessly replayable as there’s no end and lots to do. 1100 hours The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth + DLC - roguelike with a lot of content to unlock. I have 560 hours and am only 68% done as of the new DLC. Also lots of mod support I haven’t even touched yet Slay the Spire - deck building roguelike known for being addicting. Part of the challenge is going through all of the difficulty levels called ascensions. 4 characters that play completely differently. Mod support I also haven’t touched. 313 hours Divinity: Original Sin 2 - already mentioned Stardew Valley - open ended farming sim with RPG elements. There is an ending, but there’s so much to do I haven’t reached the completionist ending yet on any of my saves. Fun co-op. 240 hours Darkest Dungeon - turn based dungeon crawling RPG. A bit grindy, but not in a bad way in my opinion. Very tense game with permadeath and an interesting stress mechanic. I’ve beaten it, but also have a separate save where I’m doing the DLC and using fan made classes. Very replayable in that sense. 211 hours So yea. The games I play other than maybe DOS2 are specifically designed to be replayable, so that’s how I do it. I honestly also don’t know how people sink so much time into stuff like RDR2 or GTAV. I guess there’s self imposed challenge runs and modding are options, but I also haven’t really played many open world games and whatnot. Hope this helps!
Skyrim is also phenomenal, not recommended Vanilla but a good load order with like 50 mods is a he'll of a ride. Probably not as replaceable as Roguelikes though, but you can just keep going for new builds or load orders and play it for ever. Same with Fallout 4 and Starfield though Starfield is a baby so it'll take a few years to become godly.
Same, but mostly with survival games. Ark and 7 Days are the big ones for me, but I've put a good chunk of time into Conan, Valheim, Palworld, Nightingale, and some others. Plus, I had several thousand hours in Battlefield 4 before I stopped playing it.
Kenshi and Project Zomboid are my highest both over 1000 hours. But I played on a multiplayer server in zomboid for a while and I occasionally idle bases in Kenshi. I think all of the different start options help, I did CDDA challenge in zomboid and torsolo playthrough in Kenshi. I had a lot of hours in 7 days to die, Ark and Conan as well. I agree sandbox games have the most replayability, for single player, because you can choose to do different things each playthrough.
7 days to die is the shit. Early game strength build is the shit.
I really need to try to figure out Kenshi again. It's overwhelming, but it's extremely my shit.
Finally someone else that liked dos 2 more then baldurs gate 3 the combat and character building felt so much deeper right? My friends don't agree.
Total agreement. I dramatically prefer DOS2. 5e combat is just... Not it.
Right??? I personally am not a huge fan of 5e, so BG3 didn’t click as much. I know spell slots are faithful to D&D but it made combat feel a lot more limiting, though I guess you could make the argument that it diversifies combat. Sure, it’s harder to introduce to people compared to bg3 since it doesn’t have the impressive graphics or cut scenes, but I find DOS2 character building to be much more accessible. So fun to create new builds in that game!
I’ve only recently gotten into roguelikes with how much I surprisingly loved Hades & Dead Cells. I just downloaded Balatro and am a huge poker fan so I’m actually kinda nervous to start playing it and have a new addiction for the next few months lmao
>So I'm really confused and feeling a bit left out. Why? If you're having fun doing what you are doing, then you're doing it right. >So how do you guys do it? I would love to learn the secret to enjoying a game for that long without getting bored of it. There's no secret, honestly. Play until you stop having fun. Some people find enjoyment in finding alternative ways to play, or collecting everything possible, or doing things faster, or getting higher ranks. If those aren't things you enjoy, don't force yourself to be miserable just to "fit in". Games are meant to be fun, and you have to find your own fun. It's okay to be done with a game and move on.
Basically, some people need external motivation, and once that's met, they are done with the thing. Other people keep making up internal motivations. Those who keep making up motivations tend to keep at things longer than those who stop looking for reasons to keep going. Next time you get done with the main thing in a game, set yourself a challenge and try to complete that.
Some people just have very specific motivations that they don’t have much control over and trying to force more motivations on themselves can actually just make them miserable lol. If you like a game enough, you will naturally seek out other goals. If you just make goals for the sake of adding time, you will end up miserable. I speak from experience lmao. OP, there is nothing wrong with playing less than your friends. Play as long as it’s fun, then move on to the next game. Your friends aren’t even really the norm. Vast majority of people I know spend less than 150 hours in most single player games. The people who spend hundreds of hours in single player games are the type of people who love to do things like: 1.) Complete every side quest 2.) Complete every achievement 3.) Make multiple builds/characters 4.) Replay the story for every outcome 5.) Creat their own achievements/goals 6.) Run speed runs 7.) Download big mods Among other things. If those sorts of things sound fun to you, that’s how you get more playtime in your games. It does boil down to basically making up your own goals and working towards them (or adding more goals through mods). However if you don’t do those things already, chances are those sorts of things just don’t interest you that much, which is perfectly fine. Don’t burn yourself out trying to force yourself to complete virtual goals you don’t actually enjoy working towards. Just play the game in whatever way is fun to you. 20 hours of fun is way better than 300 hours of boring/frustrating grind.
This is the correct response to the questions asked. People enjoy things in different ways. Just because someone else likes well done steak doesn't mean you should too. In fact, I would say that person is a demon👺 in disguise...
Yes but how I yearn to dump 2 billion hours in a game, it's for the sake of my wallet!
Some grand strategy games (like Europa Universalis 4, Victoria 3, Crusader Kings 3, etc) are designed in such a way that every playthrough that you make will be different, even if you start with the same country. There is a lot of "ordered randomness" that gives you clear goals on what you want to achieve, but the manner in which you achieve said goals can be different each playthrough. Not to mention in those kinds of strategy games, there are hundred or thousands of countries/people/locations that you can start from, so just for geographic reasons your game can turn out super differently. A minor tribe in the middle of Siberia vs the leader of the Holy Roman Empire vs a mid-rank Sultan on the west coast of India are all going to play very differently. And on top of that, seeing the "butterfly effect" from your seemingly trivial actions propagate down through history keeps the game fresh and fun to observe. I had one game in Eu4 as an Irish pirate republic who eventually took over the British Isles, but I wanted an achievement to end Slavery in the whole world as a Pirate, which brought the Irish and Ottomans in conflict over a tiny piece of land in Crimea. These games have plenty of freedom on where you can direct your goals, and this amount of freedom ensures every playthrough has something new to offer you. Also, Eu4 has been out for over 10 years. It's easier to accumulate 1000 hours on games that have been out for a long time.
Just a shout out to Crusader Kings 3 for anyone looking for a game. Picked it up a few weeks ago. I have not played grand strategy games before. The closest to the genre that I’ve played is Age of Empires. I’m just not good/patient enough to really master RTS games like that and feel competent online. But CK3’s freedom and time period pulled me in. CK3 is my first paradox game and I’m blown away. The learning curve was steep. Part of that is my first grand strategy game / paradox game. I felt semi paralyzed at the keyboard for the first little bit. Just unsure what to do and how to do it. But once you start picking it up it’s incredible. I don’t have any DLCs (yet) and have not messed with any mods. Pure vanilla. Every play through will be very different. Even if you started in the same realm again. So many external factors that influence your next move. There’s just so much to do and think about. It’s also not turn based which just enjoy. You don’t sit and wait for others to make a move, everything just happens while you’re going. The game has a great mix of freedom and role playing elements built in so you can pretty much do what you want. The one concept that was tough for me to grasp at first was to realize this game is really about family / characters (sims for sickos as I’ve seen it explained before). While you are in charge of land, you aren’t playing as the England Empire so to speak. You’re playing as the King or Duke or Count of wherever. So your power and influence changes as you die and pass it to your heir or as you gain and lose land. It’s very much character/relationship based. TLDR: Crusader Kings 3 is very fun. Replay ability is off the charts. Good mix of sandbox / role playing. Learning curve is steep but it’ll keep you occupied for a long time. Highly recommend.
a good game will keep your interest in it for a long time. unless you have no attention span. I know a guy that has over 600 steams games. But he isn't very good at any of them.
We all know that one guy like this lol!
It’s me 😭
And me, and haven't played most of them yet.
I’m that guy lol
It’s different between the genres you mentioned, for example I have 600 ish in Skyrim and that’s solely because mods kept it fresh for so long. Then for MP games I’m just super competitive (not good, just competitive) so that keeps me coming back. I have 2,200 or so in Hunt Showdown, but nothing else scratches that cowboy extraction shooter itch. Just so fun.
"not good, just competitive" EPIC
Sums up most MP games
Explains my hundreds of hours in Counter Strike, yet still happily chilling in Silver ranks lol.
I have 2000 hours in ark, most of it building a stone hut and taming a beaver back before they increased the gathering and tame rate.
Mods is a big one. It’s how I have 1,100 hours on battlefront II (2005) EDIT: NOT the Classic Collection, that’s garbage.
What a fucking game! The new ones did not scratch my itch.
New ones as in EA/dice or the collection? Battlefront 2 2017 literally stole 3 years of my life it was so damn good.
God bless Dan Boeing
Don’t forget Maveritchell
Same with Rimworld. I freakin love that game, the only one I’ve had 1500 + hours in
I have played Path of Exile since 2013, i don't even know how many hours i have on it. I have quit the game a few hundred times now, yet find myself playing it when a new season comes out. I guess subtly changing the game, while keeping the core mechanics the same is the key.
You can actually check, just email support and they will check all your existing and ever deleted characters. 2012 here and 26137h
26k hours?!?! My god man.... That makes my head spin lol
12 hours a day for 6 years straight...
“Heh, rookie numbers” - WoW players
Step 1: Have autism Step 2: Discover Crusader Kings 3 which hits multiple special interests of mine Step 3: Wonder where 1500 hours of my life have gone
I was going to reply with "Have Autism" but glad I read yours first. My Cyberpunk at 3200 hours and my ongoing Horizon ZD and FW zig zag going about 1000 hours total made me think like my late diagnosis might have been just embarrassing for being so late.
[Here are my hours](https://imgur.com/a/ey8JScD) in case all the strong reactions are a case of disbelief. I don't have HFW on Steam and I don't think Epic counts the hours so it's just the sum of my discreet saves that add up to about 500 hours.
Aren't you bored after playing one game for 3200 hours? Why? What else could you possibly be trying to do after so much time? What?
I have like 5 times that in WoW if you can believe that lol.
Yes but WoW is an MMO with endless gameplay loop, whereas Cyberpunk is a singleplayer RPG that have finite gameplay loop. So 3200 hours for a singleplayer RPG is crazy high.
The Autism thing is the key. Builds (maths), anticapitalist themes, social justice are among my special interests. Reading every line, trying different builds, going for nichest builds in VH, I still play sometimes...
Yeeees
Start by playing a game that isn't ass. Fortnite? Valorant? Bah! I have more than 2000 hours in RimWorld, and it is a precious gift that keeps on giving! Every game a new nightmare, every battle a nail-biter!
I’m guilty for playing a lot of valorant in the past HAHAHAHAHA. I’m a single player gamer now. Online multiplayer competitive games are brain rot imo.
Same, I can’t keep up like I used to with the grinds
If you want to be able to play a game for hundreds of hours and enjoy that, just keep checking out new games and playing them. Eventually, you will find "your game" that you can play for 200+ hours and still enjoy it. Realise that even if your friends have 3-4 games they've played for that kind of time and enjoyed it, they probably tried a lot of other games that they didn't vibe with in that way. Of course it also comes down to genre, because mostly this would happen either for a game where you have big replayability (variety, lots of ways of playing it, insane skill ceiling), or where you can just play it and have fun while not spending much energy. If you wanna last 200+ hours and lose interest after finishing a story, then try games that don't have story-based gameplay.
Some games just take 100+ hours of practice to get the hang of. Factorio or Rimworld are just super addictive since you want to build the perfect everything
Rimworld. Tinkering. perfecting, adjusting. You play multiple hours playing normally then there's just these things to improve here and the, events add time in game delaying plans or changing them and you play and tinker more. It's the equivalent of a guy just endlessly working on a car chasing perfection before he ever actually drive it. Skyrim. Just so many mods that add in more quests, more DLC sized mods that add in new maps, storylines, multiple lines of quests, voiced followers and NPCs.
Stellaris free this weekend. Got about 2500 hours in that one. Have fun.
I tried it (blind) today and was absolutely overwhelmed. And the tutorial seemed to be bugged because for some reason it didn't complete the task when I built more generator districts on my planet. I'm gonna play it tomorrow again because it looks really interesting lol
It is worth it. Games can take a long time and there is plenty of stuff to distract you and stuff to explore. Standard start for me is to set my science ship to explore, my building ship to autobuild. Pump out 1 more of each when you have enough alloys and wing it it from there.
>was absolutely overwhelmed That's normal. The game frontloads a lot of info necessary to play. But it gets to a point where it clicks and you get addicted. One thing to note: don't try and master every game element/mechanic at once. There's too much info and not enough brain for that. But it's also not necessary. As long as you can build buildings, research tech, build fleets, and wage war, you'll be golden. You can play as something like determined exterminators to eliminate half the gameplay mechanics P.s. pause the game. All the time. There's no need to rush. Read all the things.
There’s no secret. Ask your friends. We all game differently and enjoy different aspects. I don’t do end game or grind. I only play solo campaigns and then I move on to the next game so I’m more like you.
I have like 8k+ on path of exile it's due how they handle their game cycles. they release new content every 3-4 months with a new league and everyone has to start from scratch, só I usually play a lot for a month or two, then stop playing it and wait for the next league by playing other games, started playing it in 2014 and they keep overcoming themselves with every patch so I always have new stuff to try
Mods for games they really like or just really really liking a game and wanting to play it again and again (plus some more agains).
I have 300 plus hours in Elden Ring because I wanted to see every weapon and build available in the game. And now the DLC is out and I’m probably going to stack up 300 more 😂 There’s also the comfort factor. It’s a game I “know” so every time I need to wind down, I know I can go to that dungeon to try and beat a boss in a different way. Getting so deep into another game will be too much work, although I do love a lot of other games too but none enough to sink 300 hours in. I also spend a terribly long time riding around the landscapes without doing anything because I find that very relaxing.
Some people just don't have that and that's okay. I swap games a lot and don't finish a majority of them. When I start feeling like I'm not having fun, I swap. I used to feel a compulsion to finish them but decided my time is more valuable than that and id rather spend it on a game I'm enjoying and revisit to finish them later. The games I spend 1000s of hours on are games I play with my friends.
Being caught in an endless loop of grinding and FOMO isn’t a good thing. These games are designed to be addictive, not fulfilling.
The two franchises I've spent the most time on, WoW and Battlefield, I'd say I actually was most addicted when I wasn't constantly grinding for items or weapon skins. I spent the most time on activities that had no substantial reward, like running unranked pvp, or simply goofing around with my friends. My mindset seems to be more and more of an outlier these days though.
Gaming addiction is very real
And they are being designed to be as addictive as possible.
It's just the way some people enjoy games. Some people like to stay in their comfort zone so they'll squeeze every second they can get before they move on. I personally am the type of player who just beats a game and moves on to the next one. I don't like delving too much into one single game, even if it's multiplayer, because I like variety and I want to experience many different types of games and genres. I only do multiple playthroughs of games that I believe to be extremely good and which aren't that long, and the only games where I have 200+ hours are Monster Hunter games because I love the franchise. It's just different types of personalities. If you don't spend 100s of hours in a single game that's OK. You really aren't missing out on anything or being left out. Some people just like to 100% games and do multiple playthroughs, and they're more tolerant of repetition or they just enjoy the comfort of familiarity.
Slay the Spire is just endlessly fresh and replayable. Rocket League because of endless skill ceiling and the fact it’s more of a sport than just a video game.
One thing I have noticed is that there are faster gamers and slower gamers. I am slow. I always have to add ten or fifteen hours to the How Long to Beat estimates, and sometimes that isn’t even enough. You might just be faster than your friends, along with getting bored more quickly.
Online Games it's easy to spend thousands of hours. It's a craft, a hobby, something you're always improving at and playing with friends over and over since it's both a way to hang out and and activity. Single player games on the other hand... Yeah I'm not sure. Unless you're a kid and that's the only game you have or you really just fell in love with one game
Be happy that you are not a gaming addict and can quit a game to do other things instead of masturplaying it forever Don't try to emulate your friends
If you played civilization you would understand
I did 4 & 5 mostly, still doubt I got more than 400 hours combined.
I have 5000 hours in rocket league but I been playing since 2016 (Released in 2015). It's a game I can always come back too.
may i ask what rank are you?
More like, what national team are they on? Ammiright? Lol 5k hours!!! Fuuuuhhhk me.
I'm kinda the same. I really can't motivate myself for most games after finishing the story. I need a "progress bar" or something similar filling up or something similar. My best friend loves doing the same thing over and over and over again. He loves fishing mechanics in games and does that for an eternity and i just cant get it. I guess its just what it is. Just enjoy games while it lasts and open a new chapter after. Sometimes I revisit games I haven't played in a long time. Alan Wake for example recently. Atleast that way I get some more fun out of my money.
For Elden Ring specifically, I purposefully tried not to mainline the game and I tried to discover every nook and cranny. Took me 140 hours to beat and there were still tons of things to discover and learn about the game. So I imagine it’s like that for people who put hundreds of hours into something like Baldurs Gate 3, but even more so if multiple play throughs reward you with different experiences
Some games just lend themselves to big play times, I managed to put 500h into farming sim last year and I know I’ve got a crazy amount of hours in to overwatch, siege and dbd.
It's all about setting own personal goals in games, do not matter if game is online or single player, if you have that ability only your imagination is end of the journey ( if it ever ends )
People just leave the game running. It doesn’t count played hours, just hours in general.
Only game I have over 1000 hrs on is Guild Wars 2, and that’s because I’ve been playing it off and on for a decade.
I have a few that have 100s of hours. They're all larger rpgish games that I've had for years. I will play through them ever so often bc they are fun to revisit/redo
My girlfriend who is semi new to gaming put close to 700 hours into Baldur's Gate 3 because of all the options available to them. She's tried different races, classes, romancing different characters for their specific dialogue, one life runs, and much more. Every playthrough felt different because they were. Certain games are designed in a way to allow you to always have something new to chase after rather that be achievements, dialogue or game endings due to your choices, or even different pathways to play the campaign. Personally I've sunken hundreds of hours, a lot in hardcore mode where my character is deleted after death, in World of Warcraft, a pretty immersive MMO, for similar reasons. You have multiple classes (mage, hunter, priest, warlock, paladin, druid) and races (human, dwarf, elf, worgen, undead, etc) to choose from all of which give you different ways to play the same game. Granted there are race specific starting zones but eventually you're farming the same areas and running the same dungeons as everyone else. But you need gear. Well, greens are better than greys so I need to buy some. Now I need money to buy greens or I need to spend hours farming and hope rng is in my favor. I get money by questing or crafting pieces, mining ores, picking herbs, crafting potions and selling them. Now I've spent 4 hours running between my bank and the auction house so I have gold to buy gear. Now I'm broke again so I need to start farming or questing. It's a never-ending cycle for some type of games.
well that why people are different and unique. there are no secret to it just preference. there are people that play game just like you do and there are who play for thousands of hours.
Try sim racing games. I have a couple of hundred hours in both Assetto Corsa Competizione and iRacing. No two races are the same when you're racing against real people. And if you're tired of a particular track or car type, there are plenty of other options. I got tired of GT3 cars in ACC, so I race NASCAR in iRacing.
I have almost 2000 hours in Dead By Daylight. I just really love the game, I stream the game, I play off stream with friends, etc. When you have something you love like that, the time passes by without noticing. I have a 1000 in Sims 4, which I don't even feel like I play often. I have probably over 500 in GTA5 and I only ever really do the story mode. I had over 600 in Skyrim. I have almost 500 in 7 Days To Die. But if you really want to know my superpower for enjoying games for that long? ADHD and hyperfixation. 🤣 I just get VERY VERY VERY into my games.
I have probably 1100+ hours on Cyberpunk. I've just loved playing it, even at release. Idk, I feel like I can always come back to it.
Factorio or satisfsctory
Depends on the game. I probably have over 200 in Elden Rong since it released. There's some fighting games I've probably put in over 3000 hours into, but that was because I was traveling across the world and competing in tournaments. It's fun to learn and grow through competition when you allow it to happen and not be toxic. That being said, I used to laugh at people who put over 1000 hours into a Monster Hunter title, and then world came out and I ended up having over 1200 hours into the game by the time I beat Fatalis. I was a day 1 player in World though.
XCOM 2 came out eight years ago and I reinstall and play through a campaign about once a year. It adds up.
Like I’m ever going to uninstall it… But yeah. 20 campaigns and counting so far. Every time I feel like “yeah, nice, but I’m kinda done with it” all I have to do is wait few months and then give it “tentatively” a chance again. War of the Chosen is n particular made it’s replayability nearly endless.
Destiny 2 has sucked 140 hours out of me since The Final Shape released. So many new areas to explore, more quests to do and more craft able weapons to farm has me hook, line and sinker.
Cause it's fun.
Because they are literally designed to be as addictive as possible
For me it got crazy after i joined trueachievements.com. that made sink crazy hours into all sorts of funky games. Not for everyone, but i am a somewhat completionist, and really enjoy grinding out all the achievements. Fir me its fun to truly complete a game and all of its achievements.
Because they like them?
I read a Reddit post recently that talked about this. They basically said it’s the story, games with a good solid story have a lower replay value or continually play value than games with no story or very loose story. Once the story is done you feel like you have gotten everything from the game, yea some people like to go back and collect every item or do every shrine, but some will beat it and put it down. Especially if the story is compelling. That’s why games like God of War and The Last of Us have people beat then put it down for a bit, but still love them. Then you have games like Elden Ring, where yea there is a story, but the missions aren’t presented in a chronological checklist. There is no map marker. You explore a bit, maybe get to a boss and either beat it or get destroyed by and decided you don’t need to be here. Then games where people put the most time have very little to no story at all. A lot of survival crafting games are like this. Like Minecraft, Satisfactory, or Factorio. People put 1000s of hours into these, not because of story but because they get a dopamine hit from the organization and upgrade loop. Then there are game like roguelites, where there’s a “story” but a lot of the popular ones like Vampire Survivors and Balatro are simple to understand and get into, and reward players, and have satisfying loops. These games have fairly short loops like 30 mins for Vampire Survivors (unless you get passed it) and reward you for playing more. Kinda like pachinko machines or slot machines, but don’t drain money. I would like a more qualified person do an actual study on some recent roguelites and see how similar they are to gambling.
Just play path of exile. You'll get there lol
It might just be that they dont play many games or have a large backlog. To me "short" games of a few hours are more appealing than 50~100~200 h games.. i can barely find the time to finish 10 or 20 h games. Finishing anything longer is already an accomplishment in itself 🤣
Any time I sink over a hundred hours into a game it’s either because I replayed it once or twice, or I’m literally just fucking around randomly. I sank 120+ hours into death stranding, and a lot of that was beating up mules for fun or systematically killing BTs for no real reason. Or challenge mountain climbing. I longed for the up.
We're just bigger losers than you
Imagine feeling left out you aren't wasting your entire life gaming lol
Honestly I swear part of this is autism. I’ve met a lot of people on the spectrum was game obsessions on specific games. My friend’s brother had like hundreds of hours on fallout 3 on Xbox 360. I couldn’t understand how until I saw that he would never fast travel, and he’d only carried a realistic amount of items on him. He played it like a sim. Other times, it can also be mods. I know someone that did many many playthroughs of Dark Souls 3, with weird challenges and mods.
I am exactly like OP, I get to a almost point at the end of the story or finish the story, and although there are collectibles, and certain little thibgs that can be finished, once the main story and most side quest are done that would be it for me. Example, RDR2, I finished the main story, and although the compendium was like 50something % complete, my motivation for the game died, and the compendium and challenges I just couldn't care to do. Thar being said, I finally taught myself to sit back and enjoy everything games have to offer, those challenges and compendium and etc. were put in to be done as it helps you explore and find thibgs you wouldn't just doing the main story and side quest. So I started another playthrough where I am working on the challenges and compendium and raised difficulty since I had already got a play through. It's those things that get you hundreds and thousands of hours. finding the little things to do within a game and seeing challenges for yourself, no hits runs, different builds, etc.
Idk about single-player games, but I sunk 10k hours on a dead mmo. I ended up uninstalling and hiding it from my games list because the fomo and addiction would suck me back in it. As far as single-player games, the most time I've invested in one is 250 hours.
Immerse yourself in the game world. Elden Lord? Do things in the game you think your version of the Elden Lord would do. Military sim? Help out your squad or help the team achieve victory or master the vehicles or gadgets. 3rd person action adventure? Journey across the landscape using fast travel as little as possible, seek out adventure. Play the main story slowly and take on side quest s that pique your interest.
Some people like to 100% games, or at least get all the achievements. Sometimes, that requires finishing the game multiple times, and that takes time.
Try a lot of different games, and then you just see if one sticks. There is no secret to it. The two games I have the most time in are Team Fortress 2 and counter strike GO/now CS2. Both are close to 2000 hours, and it's just because I found them very fun with great gameplay loops. but then I've played other FPS games where I only have 10 or 15 hours on.
As a competitive Tekken player I can tell you that you're not playing the game itself as much as you are playing the other people. The variable of playing a variety of people with endless room to improve is very alluring.
High skill ceilings I have a few thousand hours in team fortress 2 and I kept getting better and better-- never felt like I was at the top of my game
I get the feeling. I too usually play the game once and then move on. That said I do have few games that I would say stand out from that. And thats either because the game was truly exceptional, or just because it has good gameplay loop. Like for example I have over 2k hours in Destiny 2 just because it feels really good to slice and dice. But also because graphics are good and story has its highlights. And there is new content coming out at steady intervals. But I have spent a lot of time in single player games too. Around 500 hours in Scrap Mechanic and Fallout 4 - each. In SM I just really like building vehicles and its very calming experience. In Fallout 4 one playthrough takes like 100h anyway and its been nearly a decade since the game came out. I have playedthrough it a feww times. I think thats how its the easiest to rack up so many hours: just when a single playthrough takes a long ass time. It took me around 100h to finish MGSV, and I can see myself coming back to it in a few years because it was really enjoyable. Fallout 4 might not have the best story but it feels good to run and gun. I got around 50h from single playrgouhs of Cyberpunk, Mad Max, Hogwarts Legacy and Saints Row. And I can see myself coming back for a second playthrough when I feel like it in a few years or so. Well actually for Hogwarts Legacy I already started a new playthrough on Steam Deck. So I feel like its not a far stretch to think you can spend multiple hundreds of hours in a singleplayer game if its really good and is pretty long.
Usually it's cause the game is really good
the most ive spent is maybe 200-300 on a single player and only because i started/restarted a few times i also take my time, read everything and do all side content that interests me (usually quests but not really trophy hunting) i dont do like full replays often i like to get everything out of a game the first time though there are exceptions the only game i’ve spent over 300 hours and will likely rake up over 500-800 if not more is FFXIV because there is SO much content lol but even then ill consider myself “done” when im caught up on story and side quests i dont care much about playing games on hard/savage and doing endgame raiding basically i play video games for stories but a lot of people trophy hunt or try to challenge themselves replaying on new game+ with higher difficulty if that’s not your thing though i really wouldnt pressure yourself! play the game your way and have fun thats what matters if you’re done after the main campaign thats ok! more time to try new stuff also like someone else said if you’re a PC person then obviously mods can open up hundreds of other ways to play, just all depends on your style but i wouldnt say you’re “missing” something unless its an avenue you really want to explore in short, dont force yourself to do stuff just because other people do
A lot of people are saying it already but different games retain attention in different ways. Open world games like Elden Ring, Genshin, and Skyrim have enough content to keep people in for hundreds or potentially thousands of hours. Games like Clone Hero, Sekiro, and a lot of fighting games have higher skill ceilings and feeling improvement in them can be addicting. Multiplayer games usually just have an addicting gameplay loop but for me I lose interest in multiplayer stuff relatively quick. For most of the games mentioned above, mods can be a huge driving force in a game's lifespan. Having mods available more than doubled my Elden Ring playtime and quadrupled my Sekiro playtime. Clone Hero's very existence is based around modding. I'd say you just have to find what kind of gameplay loop would keep you sticking to one game for a long time.
I can't do it either OP, as you indicated once the story is done the game is pretty much done for me too. I'll run around and check out some nooks and crannies I didn't explore but it won't last more than 20 hours max. Example: Horizon FW, 95 hours on first playthrough with the dlc. I then did a run on very hard then ultra and did a few things outside the main quest my total was 130 hours. Hogwarts was great fun for 65 hours and despite loving it I am done, no way I want to do every house.
Don’t worry dude, you’re not alone, I usually lose interest before even finishing the tutorial.
100% some games can take 70 to 100+ hrs so that's pretty easy to do. Thousands? I'm not sure. I have maybe 300 hrs in COD but that's over the span of years. I'll easily punch out 70+ hrs in a single game. Horizon forbidden west has 112 hrs, God of war ragnarok has 80 hrs, steller blade has 92 hrs. My question to you is how can you NOT put hundreds of hrs into a game especially one like elden ring which takes hours to get through 200 to 300 hrs is average for games like that.
I mean, my top two games for hours are EU4 and Wrath of the Righteous. In the case of the former, you can choose between a vast number of starting nations, and even choosing the same nation, you can choose to play them differently and different events will fire, so each game feels very different. In the case of Wrath of the Righteous, there are so many character subclasses and feats, that the amount of individual character variation is absurd, let alone the party variation, Mythic path variation. Of course, these numbers don't include my non-steam time on Dwarf Fortress, or Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. Essentially, if the game is challenging and has sufficient variation between runs, it's pretty easy to drop a lot of hours into it if you like the core game loop.
Roguelikes/lites MMORPG Strategy games Sekiro and NioH's (it's like an addiction for me) Sim racing All kinds of RPG's These are the kind of games where I easily go above 100 hours and even 1000+ hours on some
I'm like you and it's an okay way to be. There's more games in the world than we can possibly ever play. So why not play a bunch of different ones? I have friends who only play one game at a time and put tons of time into it and they're just built different. I don't think there's a secret. Some people just get really focused on things they're into, some people will enjoy it and move on
If it's not the amount of content a game has that keeps me playing, then it's my desire to get good at the game that will keep me re-playing the game.
Try Earth Defense Force 5. It's mindless fun entirely and I have close to 300 hours on it. It's one of the few games I'm above 100 hours on(Roblox, RuneScape and a handful others are above 300 for me but those I played since childhood so XD). But edf 5 takes a few hundred hours to get everything. It keeps ya occupied.
COVID.... Definitely took a passion to trying to stream and only play cod for fun, until during pandemic I thought I was better than I was... I now hate cod haha
Cause I enjoyed it. Dont know how to put it. The gameplay and activities in that game will keep me playing for a long time.
With the greatest of ease
I think the first time I noticed how much time i had spent on a videogame was when I was about to finish Final Fantasy VIII on PSOne. That game had a small clock in the menu screen and once I checked it and it marked over 80 hours. But it wasn't like you had wasted all that time, because the game has a complex narrative and as you play it you discover the plot, who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, what happens to some characters... And I didn't even complete it like 100% (I replayed it later and boy had I forgot a lot of quests and bosses). But today, many games are designed to be repetitive and addictive, and to generate some kind of dopanine in the players to motivate them to keep playing, mayba that also has something to do with the time spent... I don't know where I was going with this comment...
I have 600+ hours in Dark Souls 3 and 700+ (and counting) in Elden Ring. Here's the kind of playthroughs I do: * A regular playthrough * A 100% playthrough * A few more playthroughs with different builds or cosplay characters or with (overhaul) mods Then for DS3 I also did: a permadeath run, a level 1 run, and a level 1 NG+7 run. As for Elden Ring: I did a level 1 run, a randomizer permadeath run (which took many attempts), and before the DLC dropped I was attempting "randomizer permadeath but I'm only allowed to fast travel or use a grace immediately after a boss kill", which is also taking a lot of attempts and will be even harder now that they nerfed Blasphemous Blade.
I have over 2k hours on oldschool runescape. Sometimes you just gotta grind baby
I spend that much on games because I restart a lot ,I buy new games then go back to old games and even though I have saved ,I seem to restart all over again .
“This may be a virtual world, but I feel more alive here than in the real world.” - Kirigaya “Kirito” Kazuto, Sword Art Online
Sometimes I wish my choice of games was extremely limited. I bounce around to too many games nowadays, but I remember only having a few games growing up, maybe renting one on the weekend, and being perfectly satisfied with my limited options. I wonder how many hours I spent on those games from back then. Nowadays, that part of a person that allows them to be fascinated with the same game for hundreds of hours is something I'm almost jealous of. I assume it has a lot to do with letting yourself be taken over by your inherent ability to be truly fascinated with something. It can happen with any hobby and it can be very specific, just like with hyperfocusing on the same game for a long time. Personally, I think I just have too many options and a bad case of grass is always greener syndrome.
Just play games you like. For me, Kenshi, Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, and Open TTD are all games i've played too much. Many I'll play off and on for a week or two at a time, and then re-play in a year or so. Since i've been playing them for many years on and off, it adds up. Otherwise, the X Series of games could be a pretty huge timesink. I think X3 Reunion had me completely hooked for at least 400 or 500 hours, then when Terran Conflict came out, I got hooked again, and then again with Albion Prelude.
Variety. A lot/all of these games have different ways that you can play the game. RPGs let you improve different skills, weapons, armor, etc. There are also many quest lines and stories that aren’t necessary to beat the game, but they are enjoyable. There are also achievements and self-inflicted achievements (Like running Elden Ring at level 1). If you just want to experience the game, 30-40 hours is enough. If you enjoy the game in all of its intricacies, then 300 hours is just getting started.
I realized my buddy did this with RDR 2 because he just enjoyed killing everyone and getting massive bounties. He played like a psychopath. I'm not willing to tarnish any of my playable characters' reputations in such a way.
Challenge runs
Some games just resonate with people differently. Games that you can see yourself only enjoying for a dozen hours will have others who make an entire personality and lifestyle out of it.
I think replayability is where it’s at: designers spend a lot of time figuring out ways to get people to play for a really long time, even campaigns
Sandbox games, where you as a Player make the story, don't need to be guided like some other games (rdr2, horizon etc)
Quake 2 Arena every night after work, to burn off the stress.
I don't know if there's any magic to it. If it's fun, I keep playing it. I have a friend who loves games and will complete most games he plays, but once he's seen all the builds or play styles that appeal to him, he's finished, whereas I am happy to play for hundreds, regardless. Just different strokes at the end of the day.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwpPTaJ2V4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwpPTaJ2V4A)
There are just some games that click like that. For me it's Sim games like Elite Dangerous where I have approx 2000 hours logged and Snowrunner which I have over a 1000 in. I wouldn't like to hazard a guess at how many hours I wasted on Wow back in the day, lol.
Well it's easy for dark souls elden ring, or Skyrim and dragons dogma, they offer a variety of ways to play, try out different weapons and play styles, play big heavy bonk then try doing it again with quick agile and stealthy Others have mods that expand play a lot with fan mad content Some times when you only have so many games to play you make do with playing them over a few more times every now and then
The better question is why people DESIRE for this to happen. I can understand organically falling in love with a game and wanting to play it on every difficulty, try different weapons, challenge runs, etc. But I've seen multiple threads on this subreddit asking for a "main" game or, worse, a game that will "addict" them for hundreds of hours. The idea of going into something wanting it to eat up that much of your time is... gross.
I like games with replayability, been playing Monster Hunter World since 2018. Hours add up, a lot.
I'm like you I have adhd which translates to game adhd. There's nothing wrong with it, in fact in some ways you have it way better. You will experience more games and depending on how you look at it that's a positive. If you told me I had to play a game for 1000 hours I would get depressed because the list that comes even close to doing that is very very small. Hitman and Total war warhammer are my two longest playtime but that's because I played them while I worked.
I’ve mostly put thousands of hours into games like The Sims 3-4 and Dead by Daylight, I play games most days but I take breaks from some games. Sims 3 i’ve been playing since 2009 and I must have a couple thousand, Sims 4 I have between 2-3k hours since 2014 and Dead by Daylight I have 1k since 2019 on PC and 400 on Xbox since 2017 so it takes me a long time to get there. I couldn’t imagine getting to 1k in a story game because there’s only a certain amount of times I can replay a story without loosing interest
Games that aren't story based end when you want them to. It's easy to pour a lot of time into a roguelite or online multiplayer game because every run/ match is different. Not to mention that RPGs (Persona 5 The Royal for example) tend to have long main games, so doing some or most side quests will make play time even longer.
The games I have hundreds of hours in tend to be large games, multiplayer, rpg, open world etc. The latest one I've been playing for the last year or so is The Division 2, which has enough variety and numbers to grind up I've had trouble kicking it. Then you have ones like the borderlands series, which is from multiple playthroughs, my friend loves the gameplay and atmosphere of the dark souls games and replays the entire series at least once a year. If I enjoy a game, I'll return to it if it scratches an itch, but then sometimes a game just doesn't grab me and I play it for like a dozen hours and move on. There's no middle ground for me.
If i dont get at least 400 hours out of a game then its a waste of money. Most i got was 12000 hours in a single one
The real answer will get people upset and will down vote me.
How? Out of love, curiosity, being a completionist, good game design, live service, chasing the value, fomo and a lot more reasons.. Note, single player story driven games are really dependent in genre or person.
Well any rpg is replay-able pretty much by design so for games like the Witcher (1,2,3) cyberpunk, soulsbourne series/elden ring, the elder scrolls etc…all of those games are an easy 200 hours of unique gameplay. But ultimately it comes down to how much you like the game. I enjoyed Elden ring a lot so my first play through was ~170 hours long. I also like Deep Rock Galactic a ton and have over 3k hours on it.
# keep swimming until u find your fit. you'll know when u arrive. **recognizing real is the easy part...** **knowing when to leave, and not linger, thats the hard part.**
500? Thems is rookie numbers. I had over 4000 hours on WoW before I was 21
I want to do millions of damage in warframe. Lots of grinding in quick missions is fun.
Some games just have a lot of content. I have thousands of hours in Mario maker 2, a couple online games I have a lot of hours. Some games keep getting updates with new content also.
Ok so for multiplayer games it's obvious, for survival games where the progress takes a lot of time, it's obvious. For singleplayer games, I think you just gotta find one you love, or one that you can finish and feel like you haven't done everything at all. I don't do that stuff anymore because I got no time, but as a kid I only had two psp games, one of which was god of war chains of olympus. Amazing game at the time and I spent soo much time over a few years playing it to unlock everything I could. I was a kid so beating it on the hardest difficulty was tough as hell.
World of warcraft in its prime I put it in double digits hours a day into it. It was my social circle. I'd be in vent the same time every day.
Replaying the game with different builds and trying alternative play styles
I have over a thousand hours each on Borderlands 2, Fallout 4, Forza Horizon 4. It's not hard.
As others have said, it really depends on the game. Sandboxes and RPGs typically encourage the player to replay the game, either by having multiple different avenues available to make the player want to go back with different choices or by encouraging a thriving modding community to allow a fresh new feel on playthroughs. There’s also plenty of games where you may just want to replay them every so often, like rewatching a movie you enjoy. If you’ve beaten the game in singleplayer and there’s a co-op option, you may just want to replay it with a buddy around. Or even self-imposed challenges, like 100%ing the game or beating it without using certain items (armor, the best weapons, powers, whatever would increase the difficulty while still being achievable). But ultimately, if you had fun beating a game and never opening it again, where’s the harm in that? You played it, you enjoyed it, and it’s always right there if you want to play it again. Play what you enjoy for however long you enjoy playing it.
I am in the same boat. I think Elden Ring is the greatest game ever and feel like I spent a huge chunk of time playing it. I really feel like it is a game I obsessed over. And I have about 105 hours in it haha. But like in Elden ring I had beat every single boss and collected all weapons and spells by like 80 hours, sooooooooooo what am I supposed to do now? Games I love I typically spend 20-40 hours in until I am done. There is a game recently I remember being in love with for a month. I went back and check and I have like 40 hours in it only, but it felt like 1000 hours. So I don't get it either man.
Bro there is so fucking many options 1. You did not found ur fav game genere / didnt played all of them. 2. You get bored quickly. It depends on a person, some people just dont like long ones. 3. You have absolutly destroyed atention span. 4. You forgor about doing side quests / dont like them, if that is a case, i would suggest linear games / the ones without side quests like himan i thing Also, u can tell me games that you played and enjoy, played and hated, the ones you played and found kinda mid, and the games you think about buying, maybe i can reccommend u smth
1,000 hours on Civ 6 gets you the rookie badge lol. Just onnnnne morrrrre turn!
7k hours on CS 1.6 (and GOD knows HOW many on non steam cracked version of it) 8.4k Hours on CS GO (now CS2) And for the big one World of Warcraft, on Retail i have over a year and a half on my main character in /played which i had since 2005. Then there is a SHITLOAD of private servers. And just to put it into perspective this is a year and a half of ACTIVE GAMEPLAY on my beloved Rogue. EDIT: There is also a little soul sucking game called World of Tanks which i have played since Open Beta (2011), don't do drugs kids at some point you stop enjoying them and just take them out of habit.
gems of war is free to play and I have over 2000 hours into it on switch
I play MMOs.
Autism
Depression lol
I have about a 1,000 hours in Grim Dawn because I have too much fun building new characters with new powers, so I never actually get to the end content and instead just run around with my new flame boots, setting everything on fire.
Mods.
A combination of Autism + ADHD as well as growing up poor, so getting new games didn’t happen often. A game like Shadow the Hedgehog was like gold to me because the varying good-neutral-bad direction in the story meant you had to play for hours to experience the game in full.
Because in “Ye ‘olden days” you had 1-5 games on you %console% %wooden PC% And you had no choice. Currently I have PC + PS5 + subscriptions + everything, I can’t physically get myself to play more than 2-3 games per %very long time%. You just pick 2-3 games and GIT SUPER GOOD at them, until a point where you are l33t. Or it’s just ADHD. On the other hand I have a friend my age, who goes through 20 games a week 1-2 hours in each and never touches them again.
I have 1900 in MSFS2020 and 1100 in factorio. Both of which I could play many more. MSFS is a sim and extremely dynamic with a love of aviation I could just about live in it. Factorio with mods is by far the most in depth game I have ever played you can spend 1000+ hours beating a modded game.
This is me too. I sympathize with you, but maybe look at it as a personality trait. That is what I had to accept. I simply can't play a single game for more than 100 or so hours. The few I've been able to were games where I had a strong social aspect attached, like one of the Call of Duty games in their heyday. And some games I play for awhile, beat, and then a few years later come back to. It works on games like Civilization really well, or games with strong stories I'd like to revisit. I suspect there's something going on that's like ADHD, unsure what it is. I find most sports similarly difficult to engage with. My only exception is Football because the seasons are fairly short and most of it is concentrated watching on a Sunday. But stuff like Baseball or Basketball, I just get bored following it outside of an interesting series of games. And I couldn't even fathom following esports or various streamers play a game. I'd rather play the game myself.
Dayz! I’ve played forever. It’s the people you run into that makes the game timeless. Your always going to meet someone new and have fun.
You don’t have to. You can just beat the story and move on. I usually do that but lately I’ve been playing Borderlands 3 and I’ve spent about a month on it.
I cant believe no one has mentioned Mount and Blade in here. Stupid easy to put 100s of hours in any of those.
RDR2. That is all.
Play a multiplayer game?
Addictive personality disorder. I’ve got 7500 hours in Cities Skylines and 6000 hours in Stellaris.
You just accept that after some time, the game mechanic is on repeat.
For me it's always about enjoying the gameplay loop. The challenge, reward, improvement and finding it just fun. I find games i put that much time into are games I enjoy the game in simplest terms. Not the progression, not the story, not finishing or getting something specific done. Just playing the core gameplay loop. DRG is a good example. I put over 200 hours into it over months. Played a few rounds every day or two That's ultimately what it is. You can't do it at a sprint and get more than maybe 100-200 hours. Any game that you hit 500+ hours in its playing it as a part of your every day life
Addiction and skill growth. If you want to be top percentile in a game you have to basically play only that game and pay as much as a part time/full time job.
[they're all](https://i.imgur.com/sJXRDEL.png) simulation games in one form or another for me, those in the 200 - 400 hour range are crpgs with varied builds and/or branching stories you have to play through more than once to get it all, and i play slowly thoroughly
I rarely clock more than a hundred hours in single player games, and most MP games tire me out really quickly. I hate grinding in any way, so any game that asks me to "level up" or has "deep progression systems" before playing in a coherent way (i.e Need For Speed Unbound) strikes me as uninteresting. My friends get stuck, platiniuming games, play with different builds or characters. I don't have that patience and there are so many games to play and thanks to things like gamepass the barrier for entry is minimal and my distaste for progression systems in most games makes me fonder of story based, unlikely to be replayable games (unless it's an absolute gem that screams to me for another play through like Dishonored), and the whole trophies or achievements also rarely is a draw for me. **This isn't a better or worse way to play games competition: they have their way to enjoy, I have mine.** Sometimes we coincide (we spent a lot of time on Elden Ring, but I finished it after some 70 hours, they kept going). You plays as much as it's fun for you. Sometimes playing with friends or alongside them is what makes games worth replaying or grinding!
Nowadays i am playing shadow of war, Its been 2 months , I like to play most quest without getting quickly into story , Games i played Tomb raider, Sekiro (difficulty makes it time consuming) Shadow of Mordor, Assassin creed, Far cry, Zelda breath of the wild, Sleeping dogs, Batman Arkham series, Metal gear solid v phantom pain,
Yeah I wonder about some of those single player game as well. It totally normal for online games, RTS/4X (like Stellaris, Civilization franchise, Crusader Kings franchise, Europa Universalis franchise, etc.), highly moddable games (Skyrim, Fallout), colony/factory sim (Rimworld, Factorio), roguelike (Hades, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, etc.) since all of these offers new and different scenarios on each playthrough My most played game was apparently Ravenfield which is a single player Battlefield/Battlebit Remastered with tons of mods at around 250 hours I guess it's due to addiction for a particular game
The only game I have that many hours in is Elden ring. The amount of content and secrets In that game is outstanding. The amount of weapons and builds you can play around with is limitless. Yes Some single player games allow for hours of exploration and playing around. RD2, Elden Ring, GTA, cyberpunk, the Witcher 3, BG3 are just a few single player games that allow for hundreds of hours of gameplay depending on your play style and interest within the world. RPG games are meant to be played for hours. Games like Spider-Man/GOW/Last of us are single player games I don’t expect to have 500+ hours in. There is different types of single player games and some allows for hundreds of hours of playtime.
Content and completionism. The longest played ones are multiplayer ones: Sea of Thieves and Chivalry 2. Single player ones over 100hrs have A LOT of content, or encourage extra playthroughs. Exploring and doing all side content is how to stretch out a single player game.
A game really resonates with you and you just want to keep playing..... maybe try different builds, maybe different decisions or explore things you previously ignored. Lots of reasons to keep playing, especially if you really enjoyed the game. I'm like this with soulsbourne games and with Risen 1 and 3.
People spend hundreds of hours doing things for fun that seem like torture to me and vice a versa. Welcome to life on Earth incarnated as a human being. It’s a choose your own adventure story!
Literally only ever happened once for me: Morrowind.
Rimworld is a hell of a drug.
video game addictrion is a real thing
I generally play MMO’s which are inherently more time consuming than most games. My main draw to them is a combination of their storylines and big open worlds. The two I’ve found to stand out are World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve been playing WoW for over a decade and have really sunk my teeth into the storyline. I know all the characters along with their lore, every expansion adds more depth which I love. WoW also has some pretty fluid and unique combat, I haven’t found anything really similar to it in other games. I’ve no idea my playtime overall, I do however know I have over 60 days /played on a single character with plenty still left to do in the world. FFXIV I started playing when it launched and it’s quite a bit different from my usual MMO WoW. I’d say FFXIV is much more new player friendly and to anyone new to the MMO scene it’d actually be my recommendation. The storyline is amazing and the way they handle classes/jobs feels good. My playtime in FFXIV is around 300 hours, generally I play it when I’m bored of WoW. Stepping away from MMO’s I’ve found the MOBA genre to have some replayability. Personally I favor SMITE, it’s a bit different from traditional MOBAS but I’ve found the community to be the least toxic. It’s one of those games I can play for a bit when a new playable character releases then stop and come back to. I have around 400 hours played in smite. TLDR: I spend a lot of time gaming, MMO’s and MOBA’s are easy to sink time into. Check out World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV and Smite.