Do you have any bad gaming habits?

Yelling my favorite word in frustration. ( it rhymes with hover tucker)

Almost forgot... what compelled me to revive this thread.

Being a former athlete, I'm very very competitive so I've always approached games with the attitude that every game is a competition between it and myself, therefore I always play at the most expert difficulty. This leads to a lot of frustration and takes away from the pace of the game. I always think it will make it more enjoyable by making me think more rather than breezing through it, but really it's just developed my other previously mentioned habit of over-analyzing numbers in everything, especially statistics... I just can't see being satisfied with myself if I play at "normal" difficulty. It's almost like a self-esteem problem as "if I'm just 'normal' the achievement of beating the games means nothing, therefore I've achieved nothing, therefore I am nothing." It's one hell of a psyche that I've developed...

Like Jeff, I can never bring myself to buy consumable items. I will always invest in something permanent in a game. Like dark souls 2 now (in fact, ESPECIALLY in dark souls 2) what with soul memory being what drives online match making, I think it's especially crazy to gimp yourself by spending souls on consumable items when it can be spent on leveling.

Resurrected this thread. My index finger sometimes slips off of R1 and i subconsciously use it to press the face buttons, also I will go back to checkpoint if i fuck up anything (in Trials especially, cant NOT do a 0 fault run).

I'm guilty of some of the ones mentioned above (specifically having to get all the collectibles, and restarting a whole level if I don't do it perfectly). Also, during the BB: Demon's Souls, I completely identified with Brad's obsession with the crystal lizards. To have a chance right in front of you at possibly getting some special item and NOT get it is unacceptable.

I'll add one more. Stubbornness. If I get killed by some lame camper in CoD, I refuse to move on until I kill them back. I can't abide that shit, and it sometimes gets me killed multiple times by the same guy. I know it can play right into their hands for me to do this, but it's extremely cathartic to "right" the wrong of what I see as a cheap tactic by taking their little spot away from them. If I can take them out with a throwing knife, oh man, it's glorious. Sometimes I try to flip the script if I think some assbag is headed right back to the camper spot I just killed them at. I refuse to just sit in their spot because then I'd be no better than they are, but I will make some loops around an area if I expect them to come back. Many predictably do just that, and if I can repeatedly prevent them from getting back to where they want to camp and ruin their whole lame plan, that's beyond satisfying. However, the times when it doesn't work out are infuriating.

@heartagram: Exact same problem here lol. I'm in the middle of like 8 games right now and any of them with a plot get shoved to the side because i don't remember the plot

I'm still on NG, almost have my fourth big soul, I have 99 Firebombs, Throwing Knives, magic bombs, life gems, 999 wood arrows/bolts, about 800 iron and poison arrows, have bought tons of stones for weapon upgrades and am still like, level 144. Co-op means you can dump souls into consumables like candy and still have way more than you need (I'm sure I've used like 300+ firebombs/throwing knives, and tons more arrows at this point in the game). I can barely find someone to summon me who isn't NG+ or Bonfire Asthetic'd now, at about 2.5M soul memory.

Anyway, for me, it's hording useful (or sometimes not useful) stuff. Be it health packs, mana replenishing things, weapons, armor, ammo, magic casts...though I've broken that with the Souls games, if not any others. I'll save the big things for bosses, but I will throw out consumables, lightning spears and great lightning spears at mobs along the way like it's going out of style, whenever I get tired of punching things to death.

Also I will do whatever I can to get rid of weight limits in some games (mostly stuff like Fallout / TES). player set.av carryweight 10000000 is the best.

Even if I don't "need" a 50th iron sword, I'm still going to take the fucking thing. I can sell it. Or put it on a wall / table for decoration, though that's usually left for unique items that I don't use. I'm still taking that damn iron sword.

I'm guilty of farming/hoarding as well. I'll sit there and grind until I get to a point where I feel like I have enough cash/stats/whatever to not hit a wall later in the game. I remember a specific example in ACIII where I repeatedly slaughtered Redcoats as Haytham Kenway and built up a stack of cash/items, only to have that go completely to waste when the game pulled the switcheroo. That was an angry moment. Recently, the best example of this is ACIV. I've got more money than I'll ever use, and "Kenway's fleet" is now nothing but the hunter Man O' Wars. Why? I have no f***ing idea.

I use walkthroughs more than I probably should.

I buy games during Steam sales with no real intention of ever playing them.

I have a problem sticking with games till the end. It's very easy for me to play a game, stop one day with full intention of going back the next and not picking it up again for the next 6 months.

oh god, this

For whatever reason I must finish games on the hard difficulty setting. Even if I don't enjoy it.

YEP

This, oh man I hate myself when I do this. Especially in a puzzle game, because that really removes the sense of satisfaction of discovering the solution.

But it's so hard to resist temptation when PC gaming and easy answers are and ALT+Tab away.

I don't finish games. In fact, more often than not, I will play a game for an hour and then not pick it up again. Ever.

If a game has modding tools, I will spend more time with mods/modding than with the game. I've never beaten Doom or Doom 2. I managed to make maps of various space stations, castles, my school, the mall, replaced the BFG with Sailor Moon's wand, and made the plasma gun into a flame thrower. The knowledge I gained from messing in DoomCad made my drafting courses and cad courses in high school super easy.

i don't think i do any of the ocd behaviours, i'm too much of a roleplayer, my habits are mostly mood dependent, I do dumb stuff like make my character walk around really carefully for ages at a time, just looking at things and making up dumb-ass rp excuses for it, and ignoring quests.

i'm really bad for getting lost, even in on-rails games, there's always sections where i'll get turned around a couple of times in a row at the exact same place.

No consumable items used during battle in JRPG's / turn based RPG's no matter how hard they may be. No exceptions.

Starting two characters in games where character choice / customization is a big part of the game, like in an MMO with a bunch of classes.

I wipe my nose on my controllers.

I always, ALWAYS, save items that I deem valuable incase I come upon some insurmountable difficulty curve and end up just finishing the game never having used them. This happens especially in survival horror games and RPG's. The amount of valuable shit I had by the time I finished DS2 was just dumb, and I'm not really thinking of playing NG+ really. Fallout games, do you think I ever use the oh so useful oh so expensive Stealth Boys before finishing those games? Pfft, I have like 8 of them on my Fallout 3 and New Vegas saves.

Another habit that started in the past couple of years is barely ever finishing games. i didn't actually finish DS2 even, I just got to the end boss and said fuck it I'm done. Lol.

The Last Of Us Spoilers ahead!!!!!!

Also, getting drunk and playing games. Obviously not good for the hand eye co-ordination issues but another thing that happened to me was, I turned on TLoU one day to find Ellie apologizing to Joel for Tess's death. I had gotten a bit too drunk the night before and had obviously played up to the checkpoint right after that cutscene and turned it off, then blacked out the memory. I guess just don't get black-out drunk is the message here really...

PS Hope I did that spoiler tag right...

In competitive situations, I take too much risks with half-thought hail marys. I apply too much offensive pressure where smart opponents can easily read and properly counter back. While the odds sometimes act in favor on my end, it doesn't work all the time so I face punishment. I do acknowledge my problem but I never take the effort of properly adapting.

My bad habit is that I usually pick too high of a difficulty mode, especially with first person shooters. This gets exacerbated by the way difficulty is handled in most games these days so normal ends up being boring and hard is just frustrating.

Never actually playing them. Been too busy.

When I start to think I'm near the end of a game I can't stop until it's over. It ruins the game for me as I get reckless rushing through it to get to the end.

I absolutely have to reload my gun whenever I get the chance. Even if I just fired one bullet, if there's any "break" whatsoever in the action, I cannot stand not having a full clip.

Also, I pretty much never use items in JRPGs until I literally have no other way to triumph. I have never not felt I wasted a turn whenever I used an item instead of attacking, using a healing spell, etc.

@benspyda: I do that with novels

Quick Saving is definitely a problem for me. Kill, F5, kill, F5, kill, F5, etc.

I do the reload after one shot thing, but I don't think that's really a bad thing. Unless it's a game with proper magazines that don't magically give you the unspent ammo back even after your character thoughtlessly tosses the old one to the ground.

Playing games for 30 minutes and then never touching them again.

For FPS games I keep on reloading when I can, and also I stop to shoot. I should not play shooters...

I tend to get tired of a game after I play it once.

being way too good at them and pwning nubs. also using controller cords for auto erotic asphyxiation.

Don't know if this is a bad habit per se, but usually in RPGs I'll grope around every single nook and cranny hammering on the X button. This happens to the point of where it feels like it's disruptive to the flow of the game. I'm always afraid that I'll miss that one super secret item that I'll need to trade in hours later to get an ultimate weapon or some such.

I think it started with Xenogears.

I dump way too many hours in sports games instead of playing any story driven games... And that bums me out.

I'm just as bad. I buy games during steam sales with full intention of playing them, but almost never do. I eventually learned my lesson.

In any game with a turn based battle system, I completely ignore any move that isn't dealing damage. This fucks me over quite a bit, but it feels like a complete waste of a move even when I know it's necessary

i've a bad habit of dissing hammy characters to their faces.

i've told commander shepard to stfu probably every other time he's opened his mouth.

@pinner458: Duder, you read my mind and posted my answer, I can completely relate. Survival horror games have heavily installed into me ammo and weapon and item conservation, and I bring that with me into all other types of games and so often never use the really fun weapon the game wanted me to use because I'm far to scared I'll need it later.

I've played Fallout 3 over and over and over for countless hours and never used the gun that shoots nukes once. I SHOULD BE USING THAT WHENEVER I CAN.

I've started playing games on the hardest difficulty modes I can now just so it feels like the conservation has meaning.

I have two horrible gaming habits. One is sitting down for a game like Diablo III and drinking. Another is grinding too much in a game like Final Fantasy V or Bravely Default. I always want all the options grinding offers.

It is kind of crazy how many of these things I have done and didn't think about how weird or unenjoyable they were.

For me personally I have a "Must Win" problem when playing the franchise mode in sports games. I will catch myself resetting games when I am losing to the point where when I was younger nothing less than a (unrealistic) perfect season was acceptable. I have gotten better over the years, I don't expect to win every game and have even (reluctantly) missed the playoffs a few times. But every once in a while when I am playing against a league bottom feeder that my team is clearly better than I will reset if I am about to lose.

I have a tendacy to distrust any game that loads you in straight away. Playing Second Son at the moment and I always stop and load my hard save after the first load in, in case it missed anything. I was the same with saints row the third.

I used to have the problem of just not using "special items" in JRPGs, but I've cured that already.

Thank god I don't have the OCD nature some of you guys do, especially when it comes to the collectibles shit. I have no problem breezing through a game and missing out on hidden stuff if I'm not 100% invested in it.

The only real problem I have I guess is that I don't have as much free time as I used to, so I end up staying up late just playing video games even on week days where I have to be at work early in the morning and I plan on going to the gym. Not very good for my body!

@viking_funeral: I do something very similar. I have no word of advice to you unfortunately friend because I haven't been able to get over my own lifelong obsessions. I thought I had move but apparently not. Hopefully you'll start caring less as time goes on if not godspeed, hell there is no one who knows better then me how stuff like that can cause so much mental distress and sleepless nights. Stay strong!

I have the bad habit of making new accounts/characters just for the sake of gimmick playthroughs, especially in online against/with other players. Had like five Dark Souls PS3 gimmick accounts but hey, when you see an invasion by TROGG and its a naked caveman with a big club, it's worth it.

If a game has multiple classes I never feel satisfied that I chose the right one, or at least feel like I'm missing something by being one class and not the other. This can be so off-putting that it'll make me want to not play the game at all because I don't have the time to play every class. The only game I didn't have this problem with was Mass Effect because I felt the Shepard is a soldier class and I was happy just being able to use any gun.

I also have an old habit from CS of constantly switching between my weapons in FPS games. I guess this would be the equivalent of APM spamming in MOBA or RTS games.

I'm insanely reluctant to use guns in horror games if they give you a melee attack, always figure I need to conserve the ammo for harder situations... Regardless of how much I actually have in my inventory or that the battle would take a fraction of the time if I'd pull the trigger -_-

I tend to hoard ammo/usable items for far too long, then the game ends. Even more so for special weapons. In MMOs and RPGs I hold on to worthless loot or used quest items.

Oh gosh several:

• As previously mentioned, I reload too often, resulting in many sticky situations.
• I play games longer than I should, losing hours of sleep due to less time and having my adrenaline up from just playing a game (depends on the game).
• I use to play a lot of games and always to completion, even if I didn't enjoy the game.
• I use to purchase a lot of games, just to play through them once. I switched over to Gamefly, and now I cancelled Gamefly and I just buy a few titles a year.

Ever since I got a mechanical keyboard I have developed this really bad habit of just pressing the caps lock key a few times to hear how it sounds. Now whenever I am typing 50% of the time I end up starting in full caps and it is annoying as shit. I literally just did it twice while typing this subconsciously. It's a tic basically. It's something I do at the end of every sentence now or when there is a pause in a game.

Holy 2 & 1/2 year old thread necro, Batman!

I think @hurricaneivan29 is up to their old tricks again. To the batcave!

Yeah, I finally had to just power through one of the main campaigns in Skyrim after playing it for 200 hours just so I could put the game to bed. I'm looking forward to what it would be like to play it with all the new mods that came out over the last couple years.

The problem has gotten a lot better. The support group meets meets every odd Wednesday, and if it's your first time, you have to fight. Whoops. I'm not supposed to talk about support club... damn it!

I make tea and forget to drink it before it gets cold.