Gaming FOMO

[Ashley]

Everyone is playing Spider-Man, right?

I wasn't planning on buying it yet but over the weekend a combination of seeing everyone play it and wanting to chill out I decided to grab it. 

Made me think, have you brought any games because you are worried about missing the Zeitgeist? Or are there any games that you would have gotten, didn't for whatever reason at launch and then went "meh, it's gone". I feel like online titles may be more relevant for the latter as if the community goes it becomes less relevent, but hit me with your best shot 

[Hero-of-Time]

8 hours ago, Ashley said:

Made me think, have you brought any games because you are worried about missing the Zeitgeist? Or are there any games that you would have gotten, didn't for whatever reason at launch and then went "meh, it's gone". I feel like online titles may be more relevant for the latter as if the community goes it becomes less relevent, but hit me with your best shot 

Destiny 2. 

I dropped the first game pretty quickly and was really disappointed with it. I was pretty sure that I wouldn't pick up the second game as it looked like it was more of the same but I ended up breaking and buying it. Lots of people were hyping the game up on various forums and reviews were saying that they fixed most of the stuff that was a mess in the first game. While I thought the campaign was great, the game still felt like it had very little content to it to keep you playing and the grind wasn't really worth it.  

[drahkon]

What is a FOMO?

[Hero-of-Time]

5 minutes ago, drahkon said:

What is a FOMO?

No idea but I just tried to answer the question I best I could.  

[Mr-Paul]

11 minutes ago, drahkon said:

What is a FOMO?

Fear Of Missing Out!

[drahkon]

[Dufniall]

14 hours ago, Ashley said:

Everyone is playing Spider-Man, right?

No. But I do have FOMO. Not so much with new games, but more with weekly events, limited time unlockables and the likes. There are a lot of games nowadays that have weekly login bonuses, weekly or even daily objectives. Often they reward you with stuff like gold or extra XP and I don't care if I miss some of that (well maybe a little). But timed events with exclusive unlockables are when my FOMO kicks (or at the moment luckily kicked) in.

Some examples I can think of are for example Pokémon Go. Getting a 7 day streak at Pokéstops rewards you with a rare item. I remember getting very frustrated when one day I broke my 7 day streak on the 6th day. Lately Battlefield 1 had a bunch of exclusive skins unlockable if you played some weekly missions. I didn't really want to play the game, but this was the only time I could unlock these! Stress!

I remember a surprisingly frustrating weekend when there was a Splatfest in Splatoon 2, a special tournament in Rocket League (with exclusive unlockable items) and I think either a beta weekend of some game or an event in Battlefield 1. I could only play for a couple of hours, and I was stressed about what I had to play because it was all tied to only that weekend.

It's an issue with online games, you have to keep playing them if you don't want to fall behind or miss out on exclusives like this. But there are too many to upkeep them all. Lucky for me I got my mindset reorganized and I realize that 1) most of the items you get are purely cosmetic and nobody is really going to notice and 2) it is impossible to get it all anyway (especially now more and more games introduce season packs with even more unlockable content).

My solution is put more focus again on single player titles. There I can at least go for collecting it all on my own pace, instead of being tied to timed events. Because I think that was my problem, FOMO combined with Completionism. And it's still a struggle as I often only have half an hour to play in one session, and then it is easy to just boot up Paladins/Rocket League and play a couple of matches, instead of diving into a more meaty single player game. But in the long run I get more satisfaction out of the latter.

Edit: I was just reading this thread and I saw similar situations mentioned there about online games and their incentive of dragging you back in on a weekly/daily basis. And yeah it did have an exausting effect on me as well.

Edited September 11, 2018 by Vileplume2000

[Grazza]

I've got massive FOMO at the moment.  Spider-Man certainly is one of the games I want to play, so much so that I watched Homecoming again two nights ago!

 

But the other one is Dragon Quest XI.  I can't believe there's finally a true successor to VIII and I'm not playing it.  It's just that I don't like modern TVs - the "standard" LEDs are generally poor with motion, and I personally find the backlight too harsh.  I really want an OLED, but one that's about 40", not 55".

 

Still, I might get a PS4 and make do with my current TV, because I do really want to play them.

[Jonnas]

Generally speaking, the Zeitgeist of the moment has very little to do with my decisions when it comes to buying games. I buy what I feel like, and then dedicate some time to clearing the backlog.

6 hours ago, Vileplume2000 said:

No. But I do have FOMO. Not so much with new games, but more with weekly events, limited time unlockables and the likes. There are a lot of games nowadays that have weekly login bonuses, weekly or even daily objectives. Often they reward you with stuff like gold or extra XP and I don't care if I miss some of that (well maybe a little). But timed events with exclusive unlockables are when my FOMO kicks (or at the moment luckily kicked) in.

Good point in bringing that up.

I used to have a similar type of stress with Fire Emblem Heroes, but I didn't see it as a big problem initially (probably because their events lasted quite a while, and the fact that it was on mobile helped a lot). Eventually, the game threw so many daily events at me, I finally decided to skip a few... and it was oddly liberating. I could still do the stuff I liked, but I came to realize that there's no point in honouring commitments you never actually made with anybody.

I ended up uninstalling the game for other reasons, anyway (because raising new units and trying new builds was starting to get boring), but the FOMO itself was surprisingly easy to get rid of.

[bob]

I don't normally get FOMO, which is good because I normally tend to buy games and play them several months after the hype has died down (currently playing LA Noire).

However, I really want to play Spider-Man... I can see me breaking pretty soon...

[Agent Gibbs]

I usually get it with online multiplayers, the fear that if i don't buy it at the same time as everyone else when i do they won't play anymore or i'll be so far behind it won't be worth playing.

The fear is a reality in GTA online, star Trek Online and to a lesser extent Destiny 2, i played initially and then went off to play something else and when i've returned they have better gear, higher levels and don't want someone behind in on their games as its 'best' to have certain equipment. Certainly GTA online is the one where its most prevalent everyone has had a Deluxo, batmobile, flying bike etc for months and i've only recently made enough to get an avenger and then the deluxo. STO is a little less painful as i have several of the better ships, the problem there is gear sets that have been nerfed and new ones i don't have everyone uses now. 

Destiny 2 is more of the people don't play situation, i've only recently been on to do warmind because the PSN free version is out so more friends have started the game, but even then now the game feels pointless to me, i've not done a single raid on D2 because there was originally more of us than needed for a raid, then suddenly i was on my own.

I like the look of Fallout 72 but i've got so much to do at home before i get round the games i have, now i feel theres going to be no point ever buying it as people won't play when i can buy it

Hell i'd leave Read dead until later, but i know i'll have a GTA online situation where i'll join and everyone will have horses and carts with gatling guns, flying trains, deloreans and god knows what if i wait