9 ms·

Satisfactory and Factorio do that for me. Really good games but i can barely bring myself to play them with how quickly they start making me feel like i'm worki

Satisfactory and Factorio do that for me. Really good games but i can barely bring myself to play them with how quickly they start making me feel like i'm working. Wish there was an.. easy mode, or something. Something that let me enjoy that feeling of my work - which i love - but with some simplifications to not exercise the same parts of my brain i'm trying to rest after a long days actual work hah. Who knows, maybe it would be boring :shrug:

ummwhat 5y ago
"'just enjoy it and don't think' is for those who don't understand what a joy it is to think." If you're the type of person enjoying a game that is like work but without productivity, "fun" and "mindless" are contradictory attributes. Don't fight yourself. The thinking is the enjoyable part.
RangerScience 5y ago
For Factorio: 1. Turn off biters (or turn on "peaceful mode", which mostly lets you ignore them until you want to start dealing with them) 1a. Dragon's Teeth wall design 2. Grab one of the quick start mods so you start with a backpack of construction robots 3. City blocks After that it's down (and up) to you. I've been able to play Factorio like it's I'm gardening - where I'm just chilling, poking at the puzzles - and other times I haven't been, even when I've got the biter problem resolved, and I'm doing what you described.
- animal531 5y ago
  I think for a lot of games it helps to tune them the way you want to play. For Factorio I like to turn the biters to easy mode, add some convenience mods like ranged grabbing etc. But after that I like to "speedrun" the game to see how quickly I can launch the rocket. My best time is only about 11-12 hours, so it's far off any kind of world record time, but it makes the game a lot more fun when I have a goal in mind, instead of just endlessly optimizing etc.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  I don't know, I would expect turning off biters to make the temptation for hardcore optimization much worse! They add chaos and something else to focus on and if they're making things too hard then you can adjust the difficulty.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  Thanks for the tips. > I've been able to play Factorio like I'm gardening On gardening, same advice would apply: choosing low maintenance, well fitted with the climate or “tough” species is underrated. Going only for the visual aspect will easily make gardening a second job. Except it’s an actual living thing, and it’s more pressure than the bullshit deadline we have on our projects.
  - RangerScience 5y ago
    Ayy, that's fair. The prior owners set things up very nicely, so between that and other things, most of my gardening is "optional", which makes it very very nice; and many of the plants are forgiving / masochists (vines and roses). Step 1: Learn how to trim new plant (holy crap they're algorithmic fractals!). Step 2: Start trimming new plant. Step 3: Go stare at newly-prior plant a few minutes a day, see how it's doing. 10/10 would recommend.
bseidensticker 5y ago
I used to feel that way, but eventually figured out a set of design principles that took care of the parts of the game that were stressing me out. Turning off biters, building with a main bus, making a mall for yourself, and building with extra space so you can hack easily will go a long way to reducing the "ahh I'm gonna have to redesign this whole thing" stress.
ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
Sudoku is that for me. Feels exactly like work, but perfectly balanced where is hard enough to be interesting and easy enough to be fun.
- nickcw 5y ago
  Sudoku is so one of those fiddly and error prone tasks much better performed by computer for me. I wrote a computer solver for Sudoku and that was enough for me, I feel no need to ever play again ;-)
  - ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
    That's really cool! And if you are trying just to beat the puzzle it would make sense to automate the task. I play ALOT of Sudoku and the game now for me is optimizing my own thoughts while I play. Moving from a random search and find function, to a structure queries that solve the puzzles quicker and quicker. Sort of like a rubix cube. I focus on beating my best time and making it easier and easier.
  - qazwse_ 5y ago
    I used to feel this way too, but I found sudoku varients a lot more enjoyable. If you look up the YouTube channel "Cracking the Cryptic" they have a lot of different ones.
    - ff317 5y ago
      Yes - after I got bored of regular Sudoku, I found "Killer Sudoku" and I've been playing that variant regularly for a long time. The hard puzzles (blank with no "easy" parts) in the killer variant are quite challenging, and over a span of years I've continued to gain new insights into better techniques for finding the answers. The logical chains you have to build up just to eliminate one possible number somewhere really stretch the brain! More often they're merely tough and I can solve them in one sitting in under half an hour. It's a great mental warmup in the morning with coffee, to get the brain juices going!
- 5y ago
post-it 5y ago
Whenever I play Rimworld, I turn off invasions and make all of my colonists androids [0]. I just want to build things. [0] https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1386412863 https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=13864128...
- slowmovintarget 5y ago
  Depending on what you want to build, have you tried Space Engineers? (Very different from Rimworld, though.)
  - post-it 5y ago
    I have! I love it but it's very tedious. The controls are just much clunkier than Minecraft (for example). It's been a couple years since I played it though, maybe it has improved a lot.
zelon88 5y ago
Yes with Satisfactory especially. The hard part for me is keeping track of goals. I'll start playing with the mindset of "I'm going to finish this factory" and then I'll run out of resources. So on the trip to get more resources I find 5 other things starting to go sideways so I have to start fixing that instead.
- TOMDM 5y ago
  I found that playing multiplayer made that experience much better. The smaller sidetracks are more satisfying knowing others won't have to deal with them, and if others are doing the same thing they're less frequent allowing you to tackle the larger goals more often.
kroltan 5y ago
I tried both of these and had the same response. Something that did work as "fun" for me was Infinifactory, even though thematically the game is all about it being a job, it's puzzle nature is less daunting than being a sheer optimization problem. That, and the incredible "Create Mod" for Minecraft, which gives you all sorts of mechanical gizmos. I find it more interesting because building a machine that does something is the primary focus, instead of linking machines together optimally, and the fact that your automations help you achieve the other open-ended goals of Minecraft
tejohnso 5y ago
I tried Factorio a few months ago and after my initial shock with the quality of the game being so high, I found myself falling into optimization mode. And then it quickly turned into a second job. I had to decided whether I wanted to devote time to Factorio optimization problems, or ...anything else in life. I chose life :)
- r00fus 5y ago
  Nice Trainspotting reference. Very apropos.
cridenour 5y ago
At least with Satisfactory - there is absolute no rush. No time pressure for any part of the game that I'm aware of. Now there's always something I want to be doing, but that's another problem.
the_af 5y ago
Factorio feels definitely like this to me. It's an amazing game. It felt very stimulating the first few hours. Then it became work, and now I don't think I will ever start it anymore.
flir 5y ago
When I saw the title, I thought it was going to be about Factorio. Bottlenecks never go away, they only move. That's systems engineering.
bitdestroyer 5y ago
I love both of those games but recently took on Dyson Sphere Program after it was gifted to me. I quickly put in twice as many hours as I had in Factorio. There is no combat, it's beautiful, and the blueprint system makes it less tedious. Most of the complaints I have about it are nit-picks and at $20 on Steam, it is absolutely worth the price of admission.
- mst 5y ago
  patio11 has done more than one twitter thread about enjoying Dyson Sphere Program. (it's not sort of my thing but if it's your sort of thing I suspect his endorsement is more relevant)
- scubbo 5y ago
  Huh - I tried and quit before the blueprint system was implemented. Maybe it's time to return...

ummwhat 5y ago

"'just enjoy it and don't think' is for those who don't understand what a joy it is to think." If you're the type of person enjoying a game that is like work but without productivity, "fun" and "mindless" are contradictory attributes. Don't fight yourself. The thinking is the enjoyable part.

RangerScience 5y ago

For Factorio: 1. Turn off biters (or turn on "peaceful mode", which mostly lets you ignore them until you want to start dealing with them) 1a. Dragon's Teeth wall design 2. Grab one of the quick start mods so you start with a backpack of construction robots 3. City blocks After that it's down (and up) to you. I've been able to play Factorio like it's I'm gardening - where I'm just chilling, poking at the puzzles - and other times I haven't been, even when I've got the biter problem resolved, and I'm doing what you described.

animal531 5y ago
I think for a lot of games it helps to tune them the way you want to play. For Factorio I like to turn the biters to easy mode, add some convenience mods like ranged grabbing etc. But after that I like to "speedrun" the game to see how quickly I can launch the rocket. My best time is only about 11-12 hours, so it's far off any kind of world record time, but it makes the game a lot more fun when I have a goal in mind, instead of just endlessly optimizing etc.
Dylan16807 5y ago
I don't know, I would expect turning off biters to make the temptation for hardcore optimization much worse! They add chaos and something else to focus on and if they're making things too hard then you can adjust the difficulty.
makeitdouble 5y ago
Thanks for the tips. > I've been able to play Factorio like I'm gardening On gardening, same advice would apply: choosing low maintenance, well fitted with the climate or “tough” species is underrated. Going only for the visual aspect will easily make gardening a second job. Except it’s an actual living thing, and it’s more pressure than the bullshit deadline we have on our projects.
- RangerScience 5y ago
  Ayy, that's fair. The prior owners set things up very nicely, so between that and other things, most of my gardening is "optional", which makes it very very nice; and many of the plants are forgiving / masochists (vines and roses). Step 1: Learn how to trim new plant (holy crap they're algorithmic fractals!). Step 2: Start trimming new plant. Step 3: Go stare at newly-prior plant a few minutes a day, see how it's doing. 10/10 would recommend.

bseidensticker 5y ago

I used to feel that way, but eventually figured out a set of design principles that took care of the parts of the game that were stressing me out. Turning off biters, building with a main bus, making a mall for yourself, and building with extra space so you can hack easily will go a long way to reducing the "ahh I'm gonna have to redesign this whole thing" stress.

ghostbrainalpha 5y ago

Sudoku is that for me. Feels exactly like work, but perfectly balanced where is hard enough to be interesting and easy enough to be fun.

nickcw 5y ago
Sudoku is so one of those fiddly and error prone tasks much better performed by computer for me. I wrote a computer solver for Sudoku and that was enough for me, I feel no need to ever play again ;-)
- ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
  That's really cool! And if you are trying just to beat the puzzle it would make sense to automate the task. I play ALOT of Sudoku and the game now for me is optimizing my own thoughts while I play. Moving from a random search and find function, to a structure queries that solve the puzzles quicker and quicker. Sort of like a rubix cube. I focus on beating my best time and making it easier and easier.
- qazwse_ 5y ago
  I used to feel this way too, but I found sudoku varients a lot more enjoyable. If you look up the YouTube channel "Cracking the Cryptic" they have a lot of different ones.
  - ff317 5y ago
    Yes - after I got bored of regular Sudoku, I found "Killer Sudoku" and I've been playing that variant regularly for a long time. The hard puzzles (blank with no "easy" parts) in the killer variant are quite challenging, and over a span of years I've continued to gain new insights into better techniques for finding the answers. The logical chains you have to build up just to eliminate one possible number somewhere really stretch the brain! More often they're merely tough and I can solve them in one sitting in under half an hour. It's a great mental warmup in the morning with coffee, to get the brain juices going!
5y ago

post-it 5y ago

Whenever I play Rimworld, I turn off invasions and make all of my colonists androids [0]. I just want to build things. [0] https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1386412863 https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=13864128...

slowmovintarget 5y ago
Depending on what you want to build, have you tried Space Engineers? (Very different from Rimworld, though.)
- post-it 5y ago
  I have! I love it but it's very tedious. The controls are just much clunkier than Minecraft (for example). It's been a couple years since I played it though, maybe it has improved a lot.

zelon88 5y ago

Yes with Satisfactory especially. The hard part for me is keeping track of goals. I'll start playing with the mindset of "I'm going to finish this factory" and then I'll run out of resources. So on the trip to get more resources I find 5 other things starting to go sideways so I have to start fixing that instead.

TOMDM 5y ago
I found that playing multiplayer made that experience much better. The smaller sidetracks are more satisfying knowing others won't have to deal with them, and if others are doing the same thing they're less frequent allowing you to tackle the larger goals more often.

kroltan 5y ago

I tried both of these and had the same response. Something that did work as "fun" for me was Infinifactory, even though thematically the game is all about it being a job, it's puzzle nature is less daunting than being a sheer optimization problem. That, and the incredible "Create Mod" for Minecraft, which gives you all sorts of mechanical gizmos. I find it more interesting because building a machine that does something is the primary focus, instead of linking machines together optimally, and the fact that your automations help you achieve the other open-ended goals of Minecraft

tejohnso 5y ago

I tried Factorio a few months ago and after my initial shock with the quality of the game being so high, I found myself falling into optimization mode. And then it quickly turned into a second job. I had to decided whether I wanted to devote time to Factorio optimization problems, or ...anything else in life. I chose life :)

r00fus 5y ago
Nice Trainspotting reference. Very apropos.

cridenour 5y ago

At least with Satisfactory - there is absolute no rush. No time pressure for any part of the game that I'm aware of. Now there's always something I want to be doing, but that's another problem.

the_af 5y ago

Factorio feels definitely like this to me. It's an amazing game. It felt very stimulating the first few hours. Then it became work, and now I don't think I will ever start it anymore.

flir 5y ago

When I saw the title, I thought it was going to be about Factorio. Bottlenecks never go away, they only move. That's systems engineering.

bitdestroyer 5y ago

I love both of those games but recently took on Dyson Sphere Program after it was gifted to me. I quickly put in twice as many hours as I had in Factorio. There is no combat, it's beautiful, and the blueprint system makes it less tedious. Most of the complaints I have about it are nit-picks and at $20 on Steam, it is absolutely worth the price of admission.

mst 5y ago
patio11 has done more than one twitter thread about enjoying Dyson Sphere Program. (it's not sort of my thing but if it's your sort of thing I suspect his endorsement is more relevant)
scubbo 5y ago
Huh - I tried and quit before the blueprint system was implemented. Maybe it's time to return...