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Comment by once_inc | Hacker News Reader

Crafting games in general are just tedious. I loved the concept of Subnautica or the raw brutalism of The Long Dark, but both of those games were just variations of punching tree games. It's a genre I never enjoyed, and which I too have started to avoid completely.

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Crafting games peaked with Kingdom Of Loathing [1], no-one can convince me otherwise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Loathing

I also love that game but that's hardly how I would describe it as of late. It has become more of an optimization puzzle where you try to run through the game as efficiently (which does not necessarily mean "as quickly") as possible and has gotten shockingly deep and increasingly challenging to solve, which I guess shouldn't be surprising given that it's been continually worked on for 21 years now. All that to say that maybe puzzle game devs (and aspiring comedians) have more to learn from it than survival crafting ones.

IME, most of the tedium comes from the "inventory management with a crappy UI and arbitrary limitations" minigame (really "maxigame"). It is also related to the treadmill aspect of progression being a simple repetition - craft X stuff so you can craft the better Y stuff. It bores me quickly, but I know there are people who get off on this aspect.

Conversely, the RPG treadmill of kill X mobs to get stuff that will allow you to kill Y mobs can keep my interest for a long time and I get enough enjoyment to suffer through the obnoxious RPG inventory management pain.

Between MineCraft, Ark, Satisfactory, DSP and now Palworld I bet I have 1,000 hours into tree punching games which is kind of nuts to think about. Really scratches the itch for me.

No Valheim?

I get it - you only punch the tiny trees, or just pick up branches and skip right to an axe :) But the progression / natural draw of discovering new things to craft as you touch new items is really good. And excellent procedurally generated worlds to explore.

Loved Valheim!!! Forgot about that one too.

I wish my friends enjoyed these games, as I'd have double the hours in. Playing solo does put an upper bound to how long I enjoy them.

Yeah and Valheim's multiplayer (at least for our group) kind of sidesteps the "grind" issues because we each tend to like different aspects.

I'll happily chop trees and mine all day, others like farming/animal husbandry, building, cooking, foraging, etc. All of us like exploring, boating, fighting bosses together. And we're all happy to craft/upgrade/repair our stuff.

That's the dream

Yeah Minecraft (FTB, ATM, any kitchen sink modpack really), Satisfactory, DSP, Factorio, now Palworld. Thousands of hours myself I imagine

Stay away from Factorio if you do not want to double your number

Forgot Factorio!

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