this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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Anybody have any games they really liked on a first play through and then fell out of love with it later on? I'm going through it right now with the city builder game Workers and Resources. I've got 26 hours in it on Steam. Most of those hours came years ago when I first tried the game. I had a good grasp of it then naturally hopped off it when something else caught my eye. Every time I try it now I just can't get past how janky it is. It truly is Eurojank the city builder game.

My biggest issue is relearning the build order. Set up a village, import some power, setup water, build a bus depot. I think I've got all the boxes checked off for what I'm supposed to do but nothing happens. Busses take no workers to the coal plant. Everything is still on warning that I'm missing resources. Then I get into the weeds and can't find what's wrong. I give up. This is the last few times I tried the game. I'm prone to jumping off a game if it's too complex but knowing I used to have this one down and it's all different now has me really souring on it.

That's the shame of it. I know I liked the game at one point but there's been too much time between first seriously getting to know the game and it's systems and now. It's the probably the only city builder I've ever played that's not a pick up and play type game. This is my genre of choice going back to SC2000. This one stings.

Anybody else have anything like this happen to them?

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[–] fortnitefinn@sh.itjust.works 1 points 20 minutes ago* (last edited 20 minutes ago)

Probably Overwatch and PUBG.

Both games started out with huge potential, and then proceeded to squander all of it as time went on.

Overwatch was kind of doomed from the beginning. The 6 player limit is really oppressive and makes the game feel more like 'work' than 'fun.' As time went on, the game became less fun because MMR meant you were always playing with people around your skill level. Some people like that. I don't. I want to see myself getting better by having more fun killing others who aren't on my level. I don't care about some symbol that says I'm in a higher league or whatever. Then they decided to drop the player count down to 5 and I literally haven't been back since.

PUBG just went in the completely wrong direction. It's like they knew the right answers, and specifically chose the wrong ones. 8-man squads, TDM, 50v50 wars; that's really where the game shined. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to play any of that with any consistency.

I'd wager the main reasons these games failed (for me) is that they don't allow people to host their own servers. Valve never got to make retarded decisions with TF2 because they always had to compete with a playerbase that could tweak the game to suit their needs.

TF2 still holds up to this day. As it turns out, having fun in games is more fun than taking them seriously.

[–] Ilixtze@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 hour ago

I really liked the start and middle of that playstation 4 amazing spiderman game, and then i remebered why i never like open world games. Just so much mindless busywork.

[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 12 hours ago

I fell out of love with Team Fortress 2 after they murdered the art style with the cosmetics and extra weapons.

I didn't realize it at the time but later on I fell further out of love with it for its role in normalizing lootboxes. In retrospect we should have shut that shit down as hard as horse armor was. Tribes: Ascend and TF2 were patient 0 and 1 in the pandemic. It was seen as acceptable at the time since the games were free, but we didn't anticipate the broader effects it would have.

[–] shelf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 14 hours ago

I still like team fortress 2 but after 6000+ hours of actual playtime I'm not in love with it anymore.

[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 6 points 16 hours ago

Ive lost the kind of romanticism i had for gaming as a kid, so I dont really fall in love with games anymore. Im also generally self aware enough to stop playing before I start hating a game. I may get sick of a genre, leave it be and return in 5 years.

Reading the title of this post though, the first game that came to mind was gta. Last time I played gta V was on the 360 when I 100% the campaign and I didn't really feel the same way as I did for IV. You might say I fell out of love with gta, as a franchise. This after having playednand loved all of them in the 15 years before V launched.

[–] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 11 points 21 hours ago

For me it was Warframe. I adore the style of the game and it's lore. The gameplay and variety of the different weapons and characters gave me a lot of fun playtime. But the way RNG is used and how timed special missions are abusing dark patterns became more and more clear, the longer I played.

And at a certain point I realized the addiction it nurtured in me and I had to stop cold turkey and never touched it again afterwards.

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world 8 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

fallout new vegas just bores me to sleep now. literally, I've fallen asleep playing it more than any other game

[–] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 3 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Im forcing my way through 4. I loved 3 and NV and maybe I'm just too old or timestrapped to truly enjoy it, but it feels like an obligation more than a game.

[–] Bluefruit@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

For me personally, fallout 4 requires mods to be enjoyable. I enjoyed skyrim without mods but fallout 4 did a terrible job with dialogue options which is always the first mod I add.

Other things like the unofficial patch, better settlement building mods, etc. just help make the game playable.

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago

its a great game but most people cant shake the fact that its not like 3 or new vegas. it plays more like mass effect/borderlands hybrid

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 9 points 22 hours ago

Generally just online games where the changes are enough that they don't play the same way that I enjoyed them. Counterstrike, WoW, Overwatch, and others all did reworks that ruined the gameplay I enjoyed.

Older single player games aren't as fun because they are clunky compared to newer games, like Neverwinter Nights compared to Baldur's Gate 3. But I didn't fall out of love, just don't enjoy interacting with their controls.

[–] BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 7 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

The Forest. Man, I had a fantastic time in that game. Solo, and co-op. But after I beat it with a buddy, and we used the end-game artifact to create an excellent trap and base, it basically lost its appeal. The fun is in the struggle.

[–] WhoIsTheDrizzle@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

I bounced so far off that game. The constant endless hordes of enemies just made it an annoying tower defense

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 6 points 21 hours ago

I've tried to get back into binding of Isaac. I love it still, but I can't get into it like I once did. I spent probably a solid 3-4 years playing little but it and civ, and it's not like I wasn't gaming much, I was a shut in using rounds of boi as my reward for steps in homework. I'd say at least 600 of my logged hours were already playing it.

I think it's largely that I've fallen out of it and already passed my skill peak but still know enough to not be excited to find new things. 11 years ago I was 20, disassociating, single, and didn't really have any friends in college yet. I had all the reflexes I'd ever have, the most free time until retirement outside unemployment (and even then, I exercise, socialize, and spend a lot of time with my wife even when unemployed now), and the energy to throw myself deep into a game that I could just lose myself in. These days gaming is a few competitive hours after work or a Saturday.

[–] orenj@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 21 hours ago

World of Warcraft. It was a magical, formative game for me as a kid who had just got his own PC. When eventually I had to stop paying subs because I was a poor teenager with no income, i always yearned to go back, and mostly played on private servers. When I finally got both the time and money to revisit... bizzard was in their cosby suite era, and the game kinda sucked ass. It felt gross and i havent been back since.

[–] arudesalad@piefed.ca 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I love elite: dangerous and there's still so much I haven't done but it's all as deep as a puddle, after 300 hours it started to get boring. (makes sense) I planned to take a break and come back to it but then they tried to add p2w microtransactions (they went back on it from backlash) and now the company behind it has replaced the ceo who cared about the game with a marketing guy and that's made me lose interest in it entirely.

[–] ieGod@lemmy.zip 2 points 21 hours ago

That reminds me I need to login and transfer some funds to my fleet carrier, if it hasn't already defaulted. Love the game but shallow depth for sure :(

[–] Nelots@piefed.zip 28 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Alright, here's a long one. Overwatch.

I've never been a fan of PvP games, but hero shooters might be my one exception. Even then, I almost exclusively play support because I prefer helping my team to fighting the enemy. But the better I got at the game, the more I realized support was just the damage role but you also attack your team sometimes. A Lucio with only 1,000 damage or with 80% healing uptime by the end is a bad Lucio. I guess what I was looking for was a healer role, not a support role.

This pushed me more and more into just playing my favorite character, Mercy, because she kinda lives in her own world and rarely interacts with the enemy team. Her movement is fun, and I genuinely enjoy playing her. So I'd be more than happy to pick OW back up as a Mercy one-trick, but that brings up several other problems.

First of all she's straight up ass in high-level play. Which is fine I guess, I don't need to play comp, but the more consistent matchmaking than what shows up in quickplay was appreciated. Secondly, people expect you to switch if things aren't going well... the game's been called counter-watch for a reason. This is also fair enough, I understand my team shouldn't need to baby me if I'm hard-countered, but like... I don't want to. At this point I'm here to play Mercy, not OW, so I'd rather just lose than switch. Which can make me a useless teammate.

The biggest issue though is their expensive and greedy monetization and abusive use of FOMO. Anybody that has played the game before knows Mercy is one of a few characters that gets beautiful limited-time skins every season, because they sell extremely well. Most of them cost $20, and some can only be bought in $45+ bundles. Unfortunately I'm a sucker for pretty Mercy cosmetics and struggle to stop myself from buying a lot of them. So I stopped playing entirely, because hating myself for spending $20 on pretty Mercy skin #37 is bad for my health and wallet.

[–] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 5 points 1 day ago

Witch Mercy was absolutely the end of my time with OW. The tilt I went on to get it was unhealthy to the extreme. I just uninstalled the game immediately after getting it, it was so not worth it.

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[–] EgoNo4@lemmy.world 31 points 1 day ago (15 children)

Skyrim has aged REALLY poorly.

[–] fortnitefinn@sh.itjust.works 1 points 18 minutes ago

No it hasn't.

It's actually on it's way to achieve "Classic" status.

[–] Discosaurus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

"Really poorly" is a tad hyperbolic. The game certainly has aged and you can tell how paper thin many of the gameplay features are. But, I think the core gameplay is still pretty solid and you definitely do have an assortment of options in how you approach objectives and plenty of freedom in exploring the world

[–] joshthewaster@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I just started skyrim for the first time in December. Stealth archer obviously and then a mage character. I've been surprised how much fun it is. Clearly lacks depth in a lot of areas but damn there is a lot of it. Definitely think I missed out on playing it when it was released.

[–] fortnitefinn@sh.itjust.works 1 points 17 minutes ago

Skyrim is great.

Losers with poor taste will tend to hate on it because it's popular and they think "game x" should have more recognition.

[–] Cheems@lemmy.world 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I mean so have most games from 2011. There are definitely exceptions but the vast majority aren't like we thought they were at the time

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago

How many other games from 2011 just got re-re-re-released on the Switch 2 for a full $60, though?

[–] JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social 10 points 1 day ago

Without mods I can kinda see it. With mods I still enjoy it a lot.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 35 points 1 day ago (3 children)

After 1300+ hours in Elden Ring, I have come to hate a lot of the enemy designs. So many things teleport or slide to you so you can't maintain good spacing, have combos that never end or can be started up ad infinitum with no openings, have hitboxes that do not match the visuals of what's going on, or have so many effects happening all the time you can't even see what is going on.

I've began to wonder if ER stretched their imagination of what could make a difficult challenge because it often feels very unfair compared to all the prior games.

[–] JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Damn, that's a long time to figure that out. Did you feel that way early on and work around it, or did you have that realization 1200 hours in?

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 25 points 1 day ago

It's like a bell curve. First you don't know but can still feel the unfairness. Then you manage to win and think "maybe it is fair, I just haven't learned enough," and then you learn more and go back to thinking "this shit is unfair AF."

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[–] Goodeye8@piefed.social 20 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Counter-strike. I remember it being a casual experience back in the 1.6 days and even in the earlier days of CSGO, but at one point competitive play took over. Eventually to be decent you had to know lineups, executes, economy, common angles etc.

I don't think it's a bad thing. I love watching competitive CS and think for viewers it's one of the best esports games to watch, but I can't get back into CS without having it take over my life.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I started on 1.3, and eventually version-up'd my way to css and played probably thousands of hours around 2007ish with an ex good friend of mine. Then tf2 came out and everybody moved over to that.

But then valve decided hats and new items and weapons and REAL MONEY needed to get involved. Oh and also cs would tell release go, but by that time, cs was visibly full of hackers. I know because I went like a year with my friend playing with hacks with each other until we got bored of it, so I know the mindset and mental process. I still remember the first time loading up in dust 1 and seeing my friend see me through a wall in... Oh jeez I don't even remember the name of the area anymore. Like upper tunnel where everybody clashes? Anyway, seeing each other through that was like looking into a mirror for the first time... But yeah, tf2. Tf2 got boring when it became a sloggy grind that never had any stable balance and it was pretty obvious valve was engineering rage as a way to keep people engaged. You know, with the kill-cams and stuff. It's undeniable.

But then the years passed and csgo apparently got better. I had long since moved on and decided I didn't like go from the start.

And then, cs2 comes out, and I'm gonna be honest, I REALLY like the visual style of cs2. But I remember playing in csgo after valve copied league and really focused matchmaking, which to me was a huge misstep, because cs is(was) not that type of game. And I didn't care for csgo one bit. They took all the worst parts of 1.6 and css and put them together, and I was just done. I needed innovation.

And so, now, I just played cs2 for about a dozen hours for the first time this past week.... And.... Boy do I have thoughts.

I'm not going to go into them. There's too many.

But just one main one is that I'm really sad that cs has stagnated to the point of now relying on gambling and either deathmatch or matchmaking. There are a very small handful of custom servers like climbing and surf, but MOST of that stuff is absolutely dead. Even matchmaking is dead as shit. It's all skinvesting (dude. Fuck paid skins and that ENTIRE industry across ALL games).

I looked for a community server that was mostly default settings and just had a million maps where a handful of players (6-20) could just fart around in, but that type of actual community just doesn't exist anymore. The game got too fragmented by valve trying to oversimplify and remove the server browser, but inadvertently made it super messy. And the fucking ui is godawful. It's flashy and sometimes even responsive, the console and game both have some extremely good improvements. But.... It's just attracted the most sweaty tryhard seriouspants people.

It's my home game, where I came from, my roots. But Jesus. They turned it into a Borg.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Same with R6 Siege

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[–] xep@discuss.online 10 points 1 day ago

World of Warcraft. Was addicted for the first hundred hours but then was disillusioned really quickly.

[–] TastyWheat@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Destiny 2.

Started playing it shortly after launch, then they completely fucked it up. Stuck around for a few years playing with friends from time to time, but the latest Diet Star Wars expansion completely killed any vestige of enthusiasm I had for it. Refunded it after two hours when I realised it...just wasn't fun.

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[–] Smoogs@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Almost anything i found had a chore based quest with shit loot after finishing a campaign.

Eg: destiny2 and dying light2 DL2 was a great campaign and fun mechnics while i enjoyed some of the quests after until i ran into the sprint ones and then it kept force injecting this feature to compete with the person you’re finishing the quest with which just felt gross and overall detracted from the drama and fantasy like it was trying to inject a mario cart feature that was misplaced.

[–] TalkingFlower@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Hearts of Iron 2

When I realised Aurora 4x, a free space 4x game with an ugly UI, does ground trooper even more in-depth than a specialised WWII game, it starts to feel like a toy; there's just no contest between these two when it comes to complexity in terms of moment-to-moment decision making.

[–] DeepThought42@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

Fallout 4 is the first to come to mind. The story was all too predictable and the options for resolving the story were far too limited in my mind.

spoilerI mean, they basically hand control of the Institute to the player's character (assuming you play nice with Father at the onset), but give you no actual control over the Institute. Why not give the player the ability to steer the Institute away from their evil ways and direct them to helping what's left of humanity on the surface as well as doing right by the synths rather than being forced to choose between two equally bleak and frankly disappointing outcomes? It just felt like such a kick in the nuts after playing for hundreds of hours (I spent waaaay too much time building elaborate settlements) only to find that whatever you do your going to have to hurt a lot of people.
Besides the story issues and the usual Bethesda jank, was just how clunky the settlement building process was. In addition, I had a major issue preventing me from doing pretty much any of the Brotherhood of Steel missions besides the basic ones offered by the BoS solders holding out in the police station.

I was also pissed at how no matter how good your perimeter defenses were hostiles always spawned inside the settlements when you weren't present at the start of a raid. Tall walls/fences + dozens of automated turrets of various types all arranged carefully with overlapping fields of fire as well as traps were apparently still not enough to keep motley group of poorly equipped raiders from pillaging and ransacking my settlements repeatedly.

I've played other Fallout games repeatedly, but I have no interest in playing Fallout 4 again.

[–] it_depends_man@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

I could write a book on eve online. That one is insidious. The hook is that you dream of getting the upgrade, which takes real world time to get, both in farming and in "skill training" time that's passive and works while you're offline but measured in real world time and can only be boosted but still takes months to do. So you sit there and think "oh boy it'll be so cool when I finally can do X" and then you get it and it's pretty much the same you were doing before, but bigger numbers.

It also got community and then you have friends and don't to leave your friendgroup

And the devs? Deliver banger shows that show what they're planning. Planning being sort of the catch, because in the nearly 15 years I've been watching what they're doing, they did things I would call "correct", one which they reverted (because the players were running away) and the other which they nerfed.


More recently skilksong. All the elements for a fantastic game are there, art, especially the music are unbelievable. But upgrade system, the placing of where you can get them, what they actually do, some of the resources and currencies. That part just sucks.

And for some reason, the game and the community ship the main character and a mass murdering psychopath? Just wild.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

I don’t think it’s a full hate train, since it’s a game that defined my early childhood, but Half-Life 2 had more flaws than I’d initially admit.

Some I’d the things you need to pick up on to enjoy the levels are not readily apparent in the moment. The gravity gun obscures your view, leading many people to get objects trapped against bits and bobs. They only introduced the intelligent save system in Episode 2, meaning many players get stuck just before a big fight at 20 hp.

The story, while often environmental, relies very much on Lost-style mysterious elements; not just relating to the G-man but the resistance’s ready acceptance of Gordon’s reappearance. Most crucially, what little further development we’ve gotten on it suggests Valve never really had concrete ideas for a conclusion, or even an answer for people’s burning questions.

Tap for spoilerThis even goes so far as to create a time travel retcon in Half-Life: Alyx to undo a character death that may have only happened to up the “drama” levels.

[–] nogooduser@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Cyberpunk 2077. I played that game all the way through three times but lost the love for it when they completely reworked the talents for the DLC. I just couldn’t get back into it after that.

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