And why not - but surely you get that others may have a different perspective and preference right? :)

By discussing why we like things, we may influence others to try those things. I enjoy avoiding story-driven games because they're controling and lack replay value, and I'm recommending this as something you may like to try too.

Or does recommending a negative not really work?

Recommending to stay away from something is a valid recommendation in my mind :-). I may not agree, and in this case I don't, but I appreciate the spirit in which it's given.

Disco elysium, deus ex, cyberpunk 2077 have tremendous replay value to me in various ways. The story, for me, builds the flavour and the world, gets excited and invested, so that I want to replay and spend time in that game. It's not tough mutually exclusive from also enjoying games purely for their mechanics.

> I enjoy avoiding story-driven games because they... lack replay value

I don't agree at all that this is true. I've greatly enjoyed replaying story-driven games much as I would enjoy rereading a book I enjoy. Much like with a good book, there is enjoyment to be had in immersing yourself in that world again, spending time with the characters you grew to like, and noticing things about the work that you didn't spot the first time around.

I replayed Cyberpunk 2077 four times because it is fun to play, not because I cared about immersing myself in the world or spending time with the characters

Yeah, Keanu as Silverhand is fun

But by the fourth time through the game when you hit those Relic Malfunctions that are long and drawn out and trigger long and unskippable talking scenes, I was pretty ready for a game option that was "Get rid of all of this and let me play without interruptions"

I would have loved a quest system in that game that would randomly assign a building in the city to have a random enemy type inside it and an objective to handle, so I could just play

I love that game. I think it is very fun. I like trying out different builds and weapons. I would probably play it more but the idea of starting a new game is not appealing. I don't want to slog through the first few hours of the game again until after the failed heist just to get the game world to open up

Sure, I probably played Arcanum (2001) five or six times. But I spent the years from about 1999 to 2006 playing Angband and Sid Meier's Alpha C. That's the kind of difference in replay value. And the only reason I played Arcanum more than once is that the different characters offered different gameplay, e.g. "this time let's be an explosives expert," or "this time let's be a really charismatic gnome".

Arcanum was good story stacked on mostly poor gameplay. It wanted to be a steam punk fallout and the story/setting carried out through what was otherwise pretty shitty gameplay.

I tend to agree that I liked the idea of the gameplay more than the way it actually worked out. I remember things such as: a pet dog you could add to your party who would steal all the experience points for himself; a skills system where in theory you could mix magic and technology, but in practice they interfered and more than negated any benefit of being creative with it; and a graveyard where zombies would spawn endlessly so that you could grind them for XP for as long as you could bear it.

I guess the atmosphere sells me on games. That's a whole other thing. I note "/setting".

Yeah it doesn't really work.

Why is that though?

"You know this thing you like? Have you tried not liking it? Yeah, it's because I don't like it, and I just really think everyone should give disliking it a fair shot, even if they've tried it and think they like it, that just might be because they haven't really made an effort to dislike it"

ETA: Or, to make it simpler, most people are more interested in finding things they might like than in finding ways to no longer enjoy things they already like.

I guess so, but the two come as a package, don't they? "Don't watch that, watch this," where the reason for being pro-this is also the reason for being anti-that.

> I love reading and I love stories, but to me the appeal of videogames is to play.

I enjoy both. I wouldn't want a video game which has no interesting gameplay, but neither am I very drawn to games which are pure game and don't bother to have an interesting story. They are at least better than the former, and can even be good (Doom for example), but IMO can't reach the heights of games which are fun to play and have an interesting story.

Not a fan of the first 3 Mass Effect games? They would feel pretty shallow without the storyline that made you care about the characters

Mass Effect is actually one of the game series that convinced me that video game stories aren't really worth it. Taken as a series, Mass Effect is a pretty bad story with wildly inconsistent writing quality. Taken as individual games they are all pretty good for different reasons, but they don't really form a coherent whole trilogy. I didn't bother playing Andromeda

Mass Effect 1 had the worst gameplay, honestly. The shooting mechanics weren't good, the RPG mechanics felt tacked on. It did have the best story and most developed lore and characters though, but they aren't good enough for me to ever want to replay it

2 had the best gameplay imo, but ths story took a nosedive. Some of the characters are alright, but overall it's a really bad story here

3 was probably the middle ground between them. The story picked up a bunch of the hanging plot threads from 1 that 2 wound up ignoring. It also changed the gameplay a bit from 2 in ways that weren't good imo

I used to think this sort of thing was the pinnacle of video games. Now I prefer playing stuff like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls, where the story is not the focus, but the gameplay is very fun and dynamic

Witcher is the best AAA implementation of a great story driving an otherwise decent game. I actually think that cyberpunk was weak mostly because they focused on Star power and the story was meh.

Witcher 1 might have the best story ever written but I'll never know because the gameplay is tedious

Witcher 2 was a serviceable game with a serviceable story

Witcher 3 was a vast sprawling story with gameplay that got old fast and it made the story a slog to get through. I had to force myself to finish it

I played Cyberpunk four times in a row just because it is so damn fun to actually play and try out different builds and approaches to completing the missions

W1 had a tighter story. W2 expanded the world and w3 world is so huge it’s easy to lose the main story line. What I loved is that every individual sub story was well written and really made the world come to life. Cyberpunks world is a mismash of different sci fi themes and not consistent, the gameplay is good but the story is a bit cringe.

I cannot imagine weighting story and writing higher than gameplay when judging the quality of a videogame

Every videogame journalist who writes about games from a "ludonarrative" perspective just comes across as someone who failed to get into writing about movies

I have one criteria: is the game fun to play

I can put up with a lot of cringe in a story if the game is fun

After all, cutscenes and dialog are almost always skippable. Gameplay isn't

I'll take Dark Souls minimalist storytelling or Cyberpunk's cringe storytelling but fun gameplay over any kind of game with mid gameplay and amazing writing

Edit:

I guess what I'm really saying is that for me, a good story and characters is icing, but games must be fun first. A bad game with good writing is still a bad game. A good game with bad writing is still a good game

I do not understand why people place so much emphasis on non-gameplay elements when judging a game. Watch a show or read a book instead if story is your main concern

A good story is relatively cheap and can make up for other issues in the game. If starfield had decent writing it could have been a b/c tier game dispite lackluster gameplay. The players imagination would have helped fill in the gaps