Asklemmy

I have spent far too long playing Magic Arena when it’s really just awful in pretty much every way you can imagine.

The economy is unbelievably broken because randomised packs are the only direct way you can use your gold to get cards, and they’ll almost never have the cards you need or in the quantities you need to have a halfway competitive deck.

Wildcards do allow you to choose to redeem them for specific cards, but they have to be of the same rarity as the wildcard and the mythic and especially rare wildcards you need so many of are always in short supply. Getting anything decent without spending real money requires a ton of grinding. I honestly wouldn’t even mind having to spend money if I could just buy the cards directly like in Magic Online, it’s much jankier but in my opinion better predecessor, but you can’t.

Probably the best part of the game is just the digital implementation of the game mechanics, but even there are some seriously annoying issues which come up not infrequently and can lose you games (like the autotapper for some reason valuing 1 life over keeping an extra colour of mana open for responses).

Overall it just feels like 95% of the time it’s just me grinding playing games with fast aggro decks I don’t even enjoy (I’m into control but it takes way longer to get your rewards that way). It’s just so so much worse than the paper game I love and I don’t think I would ever play it if it weren’t for the fact playing in paper is stupidly expensive for pretty much any 1v1 competitive format (commander is great and all and I have a couple decks, but it’s not my preferred format).

Space Engineers. Hou can do lots of cool engineering things, but the venn diagram of "fun" and "bugged beyond belief" is nearly a perfect match. If it works, it is peobably boring, like the crafting system.

Path of Exile, I loved that game and consider its high point (3.11-3.14 approx) to be the best ARPG ever made and I put a good 1200 hours into it over 2-3 years but after they kept nerfing builds and items over and over (I didn't like playing the leagues (seasons), preferred the eternal playground of standard) I was seeing my time and progress get invalidated by pointless nerfs over and over in a PVE game no less, so I had to quit playing. The company became hostile to its player base, lying about and hiding major changes to loot drops resulting in more invalidation of people's time and effort. I understand it's a free to play game but they already made the best ARPG of all time and to anyone who loves that genre this game is majorly addicting already and all they had to do was add interesting content and leave the systems they had in place alone. So I'm on to other games played more casually and more real life stuff. Fuck GGG.

SWTOR

I’ve put at least 2000 hours into this game and completed all the endgame PvE content including an NA first/world second raid achievement and made a lot of friends in the game.

It’s still a shit game with barely any new content and now Bioware has pawned off the game to some company called Broadsword that looks like it specializes in taking over dead MMORPGs

I feel like all the games I've sunken more then 50 hours into have some merit tbh. I've never really been into those super grinding or janky games that seem to be the target of the comments haha.

Temple run. I used to play it a lot back in high school, unlocked everything with gameplay only including seasonal things like Santa Claus. It was fun enough, but updates would regularily reset my game completely loosing everything I archieved and unlocked, and the developers never gave a shit about that issue. I eventually gave up on it because of that.

This godawful matching mobile game called Hello Kitty Friends.

Seriously it's the worst. But also it's mindless and cute and when I had back pain that was keeping me up all night I used to pace back and forth across my living room playing it.

Goat Simulator.

Genshin Impact. Had like 400 hours in it before quitting.

I'm glad I'm out of that grind hell now.

I don't know if I can call it garbage but probably no one in their right mind should play Hearts of Iron IV. Somehow I managed to persist through hours of bewilderment and confusion, until it all clicked, and I soon found myself unhealthily obsessed and unable to rest peacefully until glorious France had swept across half of the globe

Destiny 2.

Ah Eve Online... yeah... feels like something cool might happen but then you're 20 hours later and nothing cool has happened yet. I ran a little corp or two for a while and the main thing bringing me back was just interacting with those people. Though running a small corp sucks because nobody ever wants to help you run it or contribute, and then some cheeky fucker steals your, worthless but convenient, shared inventory and leaves.

I don't need a 2nd job and I definitely don't need to be an adult babysitter.

The Genesis Young Indiana Jones game. Played it a lot when I was a kid, because I owned very few games. Got so good at it I was able to beat the whole thing without dying. I loved that game.

Then a few days ago, James Rolfe played it in the latest AVGN episode and holy cow that game is absolute garbage. For the curious, you can check it out from 18:34: https://youtu.be/xPsN_rcEpu4

Since I haven't seen it yet, Dead by Daylight is a pay-to-win disaster that is consistently making boneheaded decisions nearly every update.

Wurm Online/Unlimited
Like...legit? I really enjoy it. Buuuuut I couldn't tell you why. The whole thing is literally a grindfest. Want to craft a cart so you can haul some logs? Better grind carpentry for two days. Want to grind carpentry? Gotta search every patch of gravel you can find for a few hours to get iron and flint so you can make the tools to be able to chop trees.

It's a slog, and yet I play it quite often.....

Dead by Daylight.

The community is absolutely toxic in a very weird way. I've played other games with famously toxic communities but in Dead by Daylight it has a strange spin. Some players heavily identify with the killer/survivor side and feel personally attacked by everything "the other side" or the developers do.

Imagine bringing Tumblr fandoms into an asynchronous and highly competitive Us VS Them game.

You will regret the day you cross ways with either an unhinged player of DbD who will stalk you throughout the internet. Or someone who streams this game and their unhinged fanbase.

Ultima Online is the only thing that I can really think of. Most things I think are garbage, were always garbage. But UO used to be so fucking awesome until EA started trying to make it more like EQ and later WoW.

That is an extremely good description of the reality of Eve. For me this would be Arma 3. Such extraordinary potential but for every 15 hours you fiddle, you get 6 minutes of peak gaming. Absolutely not worth it.

Stellaris. Extremely long games, a lot to learn.. ..and they change it. Mechanics that worked before stop working. The bad parts are added to same become a DLC, the good parts disappear or are algal paved in DLC. Overall, it just doesn't feel worth it.

I feel like most people will name salt inducing multiplayer games. So I will too. Overwatch

Elite Dangerous. I have thousands of hours in it, would not recommend. I got into it with high hopes, but the developers proved their incompetence time and time again. Doesn't stop me from playing it though, I still love the setting and the... I suppose low level gameplay? Like flying a ship and doing combat etc all feels great, but there's no higher level gameplay to make it interesting.

There are very few. Factorio is amazing and no-one should play it if they value your life. Train Simulator "Classic" will also destroy your wallet, and it isn't really that good. Horribly buggy, unoptimised, never patched or fixed.

I tend to go the other way. games I know people like, but I dislike. Far Cry 3 was the worst in the series, and I never got on with Red Dead Redemption 2, despite having 120 hours in it.

When I was about 13, I started playing this MMO called Nexus TK. I have spent what I'm sure is thousands of hours playing it. I kicked the habit for a whule, but recently re-registered to see what was going on. It's a slow responding 2D "action" MMO, and the decline in players turned it into a weird niche clique where newcomers are basically not welcome. But it's still up and running 25 years later.

You should go check it out. It's awful.

Apex Legends. Matchmaking is garbage, but when you win it’s a good high. I have way too many hours into that game. I would be well over level 1000 if it kept track

Guild Wars 2, although I don't know if people think it's garbage, just more obscure now

I had 2000+ hours in Sea of Thieves before I stopped playing. I enjoyed the multiplayer aspect - meeting new people and having long chats without big groups (max crew of 4). It also has decent pve content. But the devs did a terrible job at bug fixing and it felt like they cared more about the lore/story telling than the sandbox aspects and combat which is the core of the game.

Fallout 4. What I seem to enjoy the most out of it is resource gathering to try and build impervious settlements. But Fallout 4 is not Subsistence, or The Forest, or Subnautica. I'm not playing it properly. I don't care about the story or the characters because they are bad.

Stick with Fallout NV or 3 for good (first person) Fallout.