When did you stop playing games for fun.

ariatras

In the past, I've been really vocal against things like DPS meters, the topic of this thread is one of the reasons why.

It all started when I was in primary school. I first learned about noughts and crosses (tic tac toe)I had fun with it until the game was "solved" after that I simply stopped finding it fun, because you always draw.

Now, this is a far cry from the complexity of games nowadays, but it does carry over.
Classic WoW for example. When I first started, it was all new, everyone was a noob. Ultimate and efficient levelling paths weren't a thing, set gear progression wasn't a thing, for it was still difficult in some cases to gauge BiS items. Especially for melee.

I started classic again about a year and a half ago, picked a class I had never played back then, the opposite faction (so no knowledge of quests) and just didn't look up things, it made it more enjoyable to me, for sure. But seeing the effect of things (i.e. numerical damage numbers) caused me to figure out by large what was optimal. And as much as I enjoy optimising things. (Fleet compositions in Stellaris for example) Not so much in my MMOs. MMOs don't usually allow me to go for wacky builds, if they are even available. Because, if players get all the information, they will start to demand certain optimisations. And often things like dispel, crowd-control, buffs or other things that don't damage aren't quantified.

So in short, the moment games and their playerbase start going for hyper optimisation is when I stop having fun. I play different genres of different games for different reasons. A platformer I might like to optimise. RPGs and MMO-RPGs I play for immersion and the social aspect, the latter of which seems incredibly incompatible with the focus on cookie-cutter and optimalisation.

Wandering Mist

You know it's funny, I used to never play games for fun. There was a time where I was extremely competitive, back when I did progression raiding and hardcore grinding in LoL to reach Diamond rank.

Now though, I honestly can't be bothered. Maybe I'm just showing my age but I prefer to take things slower, more relaxed. Nowadays I only play games for fun. The moment I stop having fun, I stop playing.

Uboon

I started playing games only for fun. Then I realised there were win conditions and losing was not fun. So I started grinding for power & progression and that was fun. Until games trapped me in longer and longer grinds that killed the fun. So I thought I'll just play the game my own way in my own time and have fun. But then I couldn't competitively play some content and that didn't feel fun at all. So I joined a decent guild and contributed in fun group challenges. But guilds move on, and I was left alone, sitting under a tree for the last 10 minutes of life in game. Funny how it goes really.