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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[–] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 2 points 2 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.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 points 2 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 1 points 2 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.

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world 1 points 2 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 1 points 27 minutes ago (1 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.

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world 2 points 18 minutes 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

[–] BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

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.

[–] Smoogs@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 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.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 3 points 3 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.

[–] Skunk@jlai.lu 2 points 4 hours ago

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. I loved everything in that tactical spaceship battle game and I play it at least once a year (modded to work on 2026 hardware).

It’s so sad they never made the second one and the other games that somewhat look alike are, meh…

Then it was KSP, Cyberpunk 2077 and recently Clair Obscur.

[–] arudesalad@piefed.ca 4 points 6 hours 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 1 points 3 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 :(

[–] xep@discuss.online 8 points 8 hours ago

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

[–] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Overwatch. Got into it several years back, before it became Overwatch 2. Nice gameplay, balanced and diverse characters, I loved it

Then comes realization thar matchmaking is fucked. Throwing someone who just installed the game into match between teams of players who have hundreds, if not thousands, hours in - that level of fucked

Then comes realization Blizzard doesn't give a fuck about lore they themselves built. WTF is these skins for Mercy that look like anime teenage girl? She is over forty, if I am not mistaken, and has seen tons of shit as battle medic - that level of not giving a fuck

So... guess I am done with the game. I gave them years to come to their senses, but no more

[–] cheat700000007@lemmy.world 1 points 13 minutes ago

Role queue was the first nail in overwatch's coffin. 2 was the final nail.

[–] nogooduser@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours 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.

[–] Nelots@piefed.zip 21 points 11 hours ago (3 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 2 points 6 hours 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.

[–] Nefara@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Same, but I got out before OW "2". I was a platinum Symmetra main in the 2.0 days and adored her. I've never done much head clicking in games and don't have the precise mouse control needed to do it well, so I really gravitated towards being able to play a fast paced pvp game as a strategic, lateral thinking problem solver. I have so many fond memories of my team-mates groaning when I picked Sym only to later sing my praises after a clutch teleport or a flick shield saved them. I collected screen shots of enemies cursing me and calling me horrible things for my devious turret placements. It was just fun.

Then came her 3.0 rework and they basically deleted her. Her new kit played nothing like my skinny legend. I think what made Overwatch originally such a viral game was how welcoming it was. It had characters for seasoned pvp fps vets but also a bunch of low skill-floor heroes that you could get your girlfriend or your dad or somebody who had never played the genre before, in and having fun and contributing. I think each subsequent update after that felt like they were steering the game away from being fun for everyone, and towards being just another head clicking game. They gave me the loud and clear message that they didn't want people like me playing.

I heard they tried walking it back, and that they added a mode in OW2 that's like "vintage" Overwatch. Unfortunately the trust is gone now and I lost touch with my community. It's nice that they realized their mistake in killing it completely but for me it's just too late.

[–] Nelots@piefed.zip 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

They added a temporary mode called Overwatch: Classic a few years ago that was basically just launch OW1. Then later on they added a permanent 6v6 open-queue (2 tanks max though) gamemode. Better than 5v5 imo, but it's nothing game-changing and it split the playerbase so I'm not sure it was worth it. Funny enough, my friends tell me they even removed the "2" from the game again and restarted back at "season 1" as of a few days ago. I guess it's no longer a sequel anymore somehow.

[–] JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I feel this one. I was a Mercy main too. I picked up Zarya as a second but couldn't really get into anybody else. Then the game just stopped being fun after a while.

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[–] EgoNo4@lemmy.world 28 points 12 hours ago (11 children)

Skyrim has aged REALLY poorly.

[–] Cheems@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

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

[–] joshthewaster@lemmy.world 18 points 12 hours ago

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.

[–] JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social 11 points 12 hours ago

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

[–] NachBarcelona@piefed.social 2 points 8 hours ago

Starting in December of 2011.

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[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 hours ago

With the exception of Warcraft 3, Pretty much every game I have ever played. There are games I played for years and others for weeks but they all get boring eventually.

[–] Goodeye8@piefed.social 17 points 12 hours 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 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours 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 6 points 11 hours ago

Same with R6 Siege

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[–] it_depends_man@lemmy.world 8 points 10 hours 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.

[–] DeepThought42@lemmy.world 12 points 11 hours 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.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 32 points 13 hours ago (2 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.

[–] potatoboy@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I also thought the ER questlines were counter intuitive. You would easily miss next steps or have no idea where to go to (at least, I did). And as such, it felt ER was designed to be played with the wiki next to it. Previous games did not really had this issue because of the more linear approach.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 10 hours ago

I mean... I had to use a guide to figure out how to access the DLC in Dark Souls 1 because it is rather convoluted compared to everything after it. So that I was prepared for. At least the biggest one (Ranni's) is pretty easy to follow... Up to a certain point. Unless you rest at that one specific site of grace after picking up the mini Ranni doll, you may never know you can speak to the doll itself. It should have had the prompt appear at every site if you had the doll and not conversed with it.

I also was always disappointed with the MP. After the kickass MP of 2 and 3, ER pulled back on everything except the convenience. I do like the effigies so you don't have to just literally stand around in a spot waiting to be summoned; but that is just about the ONLY thing I love about ER's (vanilla) multiplayer.

[–] JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social 12 points 13 hours 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 26 points 13 hours 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."

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

FFXIV. I was playing it for the story... then Dawntrail happened.

[–] TalkingFlower@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours 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.

[–] TastyWheat@lemmy.world 16 points 12 hours 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.

[–] TemplaerDude@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago

I played some destiny when it came out, but they never seemed to figure out what you should be doing in the endgame aside from making number go up. Here, do these 4 specific activities over and over and over again and hope you get a bigger number.

I never touched it again after they decided to throw content I paid for in the garbage. I understand their reasoning, I read their apology-thing and I get it. But here’s the thing, their technical debt is not my problem. It sounded to me like they should just make Destiny 3 instead of chucking content I paid for out.

[–] Mim@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 hours ago

Played Destiny 2 when it went free to play (or shortly beforehand, they gave it away a while before they went F2P on Steam).
Had a lot of fun for a while but eventually it was just… always more of the same all the time.
And nowadays they apparently don't want me playing as I switched to Linux (unless they changed their stance, don't know, I'm not keeping up with it anymore).

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

I don’t think it’s a full gate 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.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 5 points 11 hours ago

I think I would put Super Mario Maker 1 and 2 here. At least, the online run part. The course editor is fantastic, and if you know some good builders or have a way to find curated courses. it's great.

However despite how much I'd like to be able to jump into a hundred-course run of Mario platforming (believe me, I would), it's almost entirely shit. Not even entertaining shit most of the time. It's either absurd enemy spam, empty courses, trap pipes/doors that lead to either instant deaths or inescapable dead-ends, invisible blocks over pits to trip you when you jump...

And a favourite of mine, the course that would be almost impossible except there's an invisible secret shortcut to the end right at the beginning. The infamous "dev door". Because you have to be able to complete your course before you upload it, and the worst kind of trolls obviously don't want to engage with their own crap.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

The games I fall out of love with are always online games. They are the type of games I spent my most time with. By far. They give me the highest highs but also the lowest lows.

So yeah, Team Fortress 2, Minecraft, League of Legends, you name it. Not even an Ocarina of Time or a Baldur‘s Gate 3 can come close to the fun I had in these games. But I still love the latter and not the former. Not anymore.

I still play online and co-op games that I very much enjoy but one day I will feel burned out by them too.

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