My Beef With Farming, In all games.

I think I get what your saying rikus. Maybe.

This topic seems to be kind of like music, people like what they like.

Personally, I think most aspects of how a person plays a video games revolves around dopamine. Whether the person is aware of it or not.

As for doing things even though it drives them crazy.. Pretty much the same thing. Could be the thrill of the hunt, the reward of the effort.. The struggle itself.. (Yeah, masochism could likely be a thing in this aspect ) I figure these fall into the same category as the dopamine comment I made above. (Consciously or not.)
I've got a buddy who literally hunts dopamine in games. Absolutely loves getting punished in Tarkov because it makes the victories that much sweeter. I understand it. But, at the same time... I don't understand it. I play it a different way completely. Makes for some interesting coop sessions though!

Some things I figure may be reasons that don't fall into that category are;
Fear (of falling behind, missing out, messing up/dying, ect.)
Confidence. High, like being convinced they have the horseshoe. Or low like they may feel they need a boost to approach the content ahead.
Peer pressure.

It could be a innate or developed form of enjoyment, an addiction, or a quirk. In the end, this could also be a completely unknowable thing depending on the individual themselves.

However, like music, there may be some things one will just never be able to understand about what drives another person to do or like something. Sometimes a person can hear a song and not really like it but can understand someone could like it, or the talent involved.
For example, I am not personally a fan of speed runs, but I can see the talent and thought behind the few I've seen. I can understand why people like to do/watch them.

Other times.. A song may register to someone as completely intolerable at all, or even painful! Meanwhile, a person down the street is in absolute bliss listening to it.
An extreme-ish example for me would be putting cigarettes out on ones arm. I just can't stand this. I could do it, but I'd hate it for a multitude of reasons.. Yet an old acquaintance of mine quite literally hit a state complete and utter bliss doing so.

Head scratcher sometimes for sure though, peoples decisions.

Live and let live, I suppose. Just Burger King the game your playing!
Or at least that's what I've been trying to do with my time gaming.

As it sounds like you already do play the game your way, you're set. There will always be people who just can't do that, for whatever reason(s).

GooberGirl wrote: 11 months ago

putting cigarettes out on ones arm

no. this is a torture method for getting info out of prisoners.

as you know, you can bang your head against the wall and feel a relief for not being in pain anymore, quite blissful.
this latter sentence is being used to describe how to quit smoking for addicts.

Ok?

When I wrote that I kind of had the thought of trying crushing out 100's and 100's of Trav runs non-stop hours on end, or something along those lines. Some people seem to really enjoy that. It would break me. To me it's quite extreme. There seems to be quite a few games with pop in do X in so many seconds and then reload and repeat that have a chance to give a serious benefit or loot. Some are pretty rough to the point where it makes Trav runs sound exciting to me. Like vendor farming for hours for something that is an extremely low chance.
The mountain glitch you mention sounded extremely repetitive and that is what brought it to mind.

Since you mentioned it, I bet some of these things could likely break some people into giving up info if used as a torture tactic.

I'm a bit sleepy and I kind of read this as more of a "Here's my feeling/stance on this." with a curious of peoples input and their interpretation vibe of the whole hardcore farming tactic/aspect that can be found in a lot of games. So I took a moment.

Reading now, it's coming across more as a statement or vent. So, my bad.

I haven't played Elden Ring yet but I played Dark Souls 3 a lot. I never really had to farm there. Obviously there were moments of struggle but there were always some options to consider other than farming. Exploring and looking for gear and upgrade materials, trying different items and of course the best solution - to git gud (sorry, I couldn't resist). I think farming can only harm the overall experience here.

Now Diablo is a different story. You can't beat Diablo naked and armed with a

Dagger. You need better items to get stronger. And to get better items you need to farm. Farming is unavoidable part of that game. And there's fun in that too. There's that strike of dopamine when you see that orange text of a rune on the Ground and the thrill while identifying items.
I'm not a fun of doing gazillion Trav runs myself, but I guess I wouldn't be playing D2R if I didn't enjoy farming to some extent.