Clocking Out: Switching Things Up

This is a really cool read. It's expanding to see how other users interact with these things we call games, and the "read-and-respond" format adds depth and a twist.

Great addition to the column! Makes it feel much more conversational.

I would _love_ to see some more Crusader Kings content on the site, perhaps something after Kerbal is done?

I feel the exact same way about Minecraft. That game was gaining popularity when I was still in college. I couldn't afford as many games, and I had plenty of weird amounts of free time throughout the day. I only started a handful of maps because in each one, I'd start with the "build a bed, survive" and then see where my pickaxe took me. One game I built a large castle with a mining community that was ever expanding. Another game all I did was try to build an endless railway going off into the distance as far as I could by occasionally gathering resources. Multiple games I'd just walk in a direction and see what happened.

Austin just had to sneak in a Space Fish reference.

Yeah I'd be into more CK too.

The way @noblenerf plays CK is kind of how I wanted to play the mount and blade: warbands campaign, but there's always that impulse to save scum and make the best choices and min maxing that gets the best of me. :( But imagine doing it in that game! You could role play as this nord lord serving your king, fighting in tournaments and winning the heart of some lady! And you might lose a fight with an opposing lord and be taken prisoner (this is often the part where I stop the role playing and revert to a save) and then have to break out and flee for your life! .... I should play M&B Warbands again...

Edit: Also, I confused this with the Off the Clock feature, I saw Austin's tweet and was thinking "didn't he already roll out that clock article feature?"

Thank you for highlighting my post, Austin! I figured that the feeling about death was universal (in fact I recently read an article that *I think* you linked on Twitter about how a new, older, gamer has to get used to the language of games, including acclimating to the idea of death as a relatively minor thing -- that's partially what inspired my comment in the first place). I think that the length and breadth of my aversion was a slight bit larger than most others', though, and I think that most people just grow out of it naturally. But I could be wrong!

There are some really cool comments here that usually don't find their way to the comment section of video game websites, so thanks for bringing our community that opportunity, Austin. The commentariat are taking over the means of content production! Just a joke for you, there, Austin. Just a little Friday night joke for you. Just a funny thing.

Wow. Great article and reminder that there are many ways to get enjoyment out of things.

Dammit, Austin, why'd you have to link that drowning music?

I don't usually comment on things here on Giant Bomb, but all of these articles you've been putting up have been fantastic, Austin! I had stopped reading a lot of video game articles until you came to Giant Bomb. The Off The Clock series has been I fantastic read and a great look at things I should probably be playing, watching and reading. So I just wanted to say thank you for all you've done at giant bomb and for all you've done for me as a consumer of games and entertainment :)

Thanks for the shout out, Austin!

To your question about keeping a log of completed games: I have recently started doing just that, as a replacement for my previous 'Games to Play' list. The problem with that previous system was that it played havoc on my anxiety, pushing me to rush through games so that I could check them off the list and move onto the next. Since the list was ever-expanding, the unconscious drive to complete it was an impossible task, and I only ever felt stressed out. Consequently, I just wasn't enjoying gaming as much.

Shifting to a log of completed games allows me to reflect on my experiences over time without any pressure. It does mean a lot more new releases slip through the cracks, but it's worth it for the peace of mind.

Again, great work, Austin (and all commenters)!

The Sonic drowning music might be the most panic inducing sound ever made.

You've been a great addition to this site. Keep up the good work!

It seems to many people forget what makes games fun and are always looking for the next fix. I admit to having this problem because just taking a glance at my quick launch toolbar I have The Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Call of Duty Black Ops 3, Rainbow Six Siege, Dragon Quest Heroes, Just Cause 3 and probably 100s of other games that I just NEVER got around to finishing.

Yes, I would love to play through Pillars of Eternity. My 40 hour save in Divinity could use some attention. You know, I never did get around to playing the Dreamfall chapter series.

At the end of the day I fire up Assassin's Creed Syndicate and/or the Witcher 3 and I can spend hours just wandering around and ENJOYING the game. I'm not needing any of those other games. Will I finish either of these games? I'm 108 hours into the Witcher 3 and I'm only level 25 so you be the judge. I'm about 5 hours into Syndicate and I'm still in the first area of London (Whitechapel).

Reading forums and people talking about what games they are buying or trying it just seems clear to me that no one can just be happy with one game. Back in the day i played Quake for hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of hours. I played other games but I didn't need anything else. I played EverQuest from 99-2006 off and on and then WoW from 2004-2014 off and on. I mean these games completely consumed me, but they were all I needed.

What has changed over the past few years that we as gamers can't be happy with just one game? I have all these amazing games to play but I also own a Playstation 4 with Destiny and a XIM4 I just got for Christmas - but am I playing that? Nope. What am I going to play after I type up this post? Probably the witcher 3 since I really need to beat that game! But more than likely I will just go edit a video or draw in photoshop or do something else. I can't "stick" to a game anymore. I used to play 24 hour sessions now I can play 24 minutes and no matter how great looking on my top end PC the game is, or how much fun I am having - it just seems games have changed.

It's funny, the Assassin's Creed games, specifically 2, were the first games where I realized how immersive it can be to just sink in and let your character live in the game's open world, and I did probably the reverse of what most people do and carried that over from AC into TES and Fallout, and had much better experiences with those games for it. There's a player journal mod both for Oblivion and one for Skyrim that makes all the difference for it.

For Oblivion: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/15294/?

And for Skyrim: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/48375/?

There's an attempt at the same thing for Fallout: New Vegas, but apparently despite being based on the same engine, the Fallout games don't have the same in-engine text entry ability, so the logbook mod for New Vegas isn't nearly as user friendly or polished. It's still pretty dang cool and a hell of a modding accomplishment, though.

For New Vegas: http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/58447/?

REALLY roleplaying a character like this, conjuring up a personality and letting it loose while you follow it through an open world, has been both a good gaming experience for me and an incredible stress-reliever.

I didn't see the question you posed until I saw this article. I wanted to add my experience into the mix because it was pretty profound for me.

I had put something like 20 hours into Fallout 4 and wasn't feeling incredibly absorbed by it like I had with Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim. It was sort of a bummer really and it was frustrating because I just couldn't pinpoint why I wasn't incredibly jazzed about this amazingly detailed, dense, open-world laid out in front of me. I fucking love Bethesda games and this is certainly one of those! What happened to me?!?

After some thinking, I came to the conclusion that I was having too easy of a time. I tend to play these sorts of games (most games, really) with a sort of "lazy-man's" min-max strategy. I don't dig into the math or make spreadsheets, but in general I try and work out a way to always have a well-balanced character with a well-balanced inventory of shit that can pretty much handle the standard gamut of gameplay situations. 20 hours in, with a good understanding of the mechanics and an item in my inventory for every possible situation, the game just became me going through the motions. "Oh, there's a guy, better VATS and shoot his face and loot the room." "Oh, another guy, VATS and loot the room." Repeat. Repeat. Repeat forever.

I had also played something like 80 hours of Fallout 3 (which is a ridiculous amount for me) and probably just as much Skyrim, so I pretty much had my fill of that loop. It's a good fucking loop don't get me wrong! It's SO good. But I personally got so good at optimizing it, there was way less room for interesting / surprising / tense / memorable / terrifying / exciting moments to occur. I had reduced the possibility space of any that good stuff happening because if anything bad happened I could just go into a menu and press a button to make the bad thing to away and resume the most optimal "KILL LOOT RETURN" (hehe) loop.

What flipped the whole experience for me was 2 things happening roughly at the same time:

1. I decided to put *everything* in my stash and only take out certain stuff before going on adventures. Doing that made it fun to try out items I'd never even consider before. Those less-appealing healing items, alcoholic drinks (actually amazingly useful I discovered), different guns, etc. Suddenly I find myself drunk on vodka while eating squirrel on a stick during a gun battle inside an abandoned brewery. That's a real simple example but that's totally Fallout right there!
2. My friend told me to play on hard. I don't usually ever play games on hard unless the hard mode is a particularly balanced effort. In general, I don't feel like simple damage / health scaling works out to be very fair in most games. There are certainly exceptions, but in general it's an all right place to start but certainly not always a good place to end. Anyways, Fallout 4 straight up just scales shit.

BUT ACTUALLY HARD IS PERFECT! It makes encounters dangerous, tense, memorable, scary, etc. You have to watch where you walk and not accidentally corner yourself. You have to use spacing and cover. You have to play carefully and thoughtfully. Sometimes it's run or die, so I'll choose run and swear that I'll come back later with bigger guns and more friends! Mundane dungeon runs have become these amazing set pieces for this crazy sort of shit to happen. Not to mention the awesome and sometimes hilarious Legendary items you see way more of on hard.

My character is still sort of a jack-of-all-trades sort of guy, but I'm super loving the game now. Maybe next time I'll have the courage to build a character that is stacked in some stats and awful at others.

It's a weird realization to discover how fun it is to give character to characters, derp!

tl;dr Not min-maxing can sometimes be more fun than min-maxing.

I've tried to keep a games completed list, usually so that by end of the year I can actually decide what my "Game of the Year" is. But the things in my life usually kept me from playing games at all, let along maintain a list of them.

Now that I'm finished with college, I'm hoping to actually keep track of what games I've played and beaten, and to hopefully move through my backlog. I'm also hoping to record my thoughts on games and develop my critiquing skills.

This was probably my second favorite piece after your batman breakdown a few months ago. Really quality (and fairly focused) work here Austin!

I wish I had read this article before playing MGS V and Fallout 4.

I don't think I enjoyed those games nearly as much as I could have. I have only myself to blame for this.

This sounds pretty cool. I might do the same in my New Vegas playthrough.

One thing I do is avoid fast travel in Bethesda-style games. This is usually great in the beginning, but the way the games are designed makes it hard to keep up after a while. It certainly made the first ten or so hours of New Vegas great. The feeling of tracking down Benny through the desert, of visiting towns and getting to know the people there through their quests (which usually can be solved without wandering too far away from town) before moving on to the next settlement.

But then you reach New Vegas, and are given tons of quests that send you all over the map. Not fast traveling becomes a much heavier burden to bear. So I either stick to avoid fast traveling, and spend way too much time walking back and forth through the desert, seeing the same stuff over and over again, or start fast traveling and then the game's world loses much of it's identity.

Some games has a way of using fast travel which makes sense in context, like the horse carriages that are outside every major city in Skyrim. They definitely help somewhat (at least if I'm trying to roleplay), but for me they don't solve the problem completely.

I which more games were like those first hours of New Vegas, when you move from settlement to settlement, staying a handful of hours in each one before moving on. The only game that uses this structure (that I can think of at the moment) is Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and I loved that game for it. at

@steveurkel: There are still a lot of people that stick to a particular game. Look at Dota, LOL, CSGO, TF2, Minecraft, Fifa, Destiny, Starcraft, Skyrim, Madden, Call of Duty. There are people out there that will play other games but always return to that one game they play with their friends for years. I've been playing Dota 2 for 4 years now, and while i'm always interested in other games, there are nights when i group up with my Dota party to play some games. That hasn't changed for years.

What did change is the visibility of what people are talking about. You won't hear much from the people who quietly enjoy building their Minecraft world. What you will hear is how the newest game is awesome, What could be better, which micro transactions it brings, which console it runs best on etc.

This is a great feature. As you are surely aware, time constraints in life are tough, therefore it is hard for me to even find time to read through some of these longer articles, so then its impossible to go through the comments as well, even though i wish i could. I bet there are some amazing things hidden in there. And highlighting them is fantastic. I hope this will be regular.

Yo, these are awesome additions to the site, duders. Please do keep 'em coming.

@themaintank: Could you write a little about roleplaying in AC2? I went into that game thinking I would sneak around all over the place, murdering nobody except my target. But in reality, I ended up killing hundreds of guards and every assassination was a big public mess, because that's the game. What does roleplaying as Ezio actually entail? Gathering all of the family-related collectibles because he would care?

I had a pang of worry this was someone leaving the site. Thank goodness it's more of Austin being the loveablest.

I hadn't read the off the clock for this, but I'll throw out one of my own tidbits. I wasn't able to find fun in Path of Exile, a grim sphere-grid-on-coke diabloesque, even with friends. I just couldn't find the monotonous grinding meaningful, until I made a new character named THRONGOR. THRONGOR started as just another dude, but I had fun speaking as him (THRONGOR IS PLEASED!) over skype, and decided he didn't like armor and never wore it. Setting this condition on my playstyle somehow made the game a joy. I was researching the best builds for an armorless Conan impersonator and hunting down the best 2handers I could find, but still having goofy nonsense fun with my friends, playing the part of the dundering glass cannon barbarian. Engaging with THRONGOR as a character, even a very silly one, allowed me to engage with a game that doesn't necessarily reinforce roleplay as much as maximized-monster-murder-skill-calculation.

This is a wonderful article, Austin. Really nice addendum to your Off the Clock feature - highlighting some of your favourite community responses and responding to them. The Giant Bomb community is packed with a diverse range of people with different experiences and opinions, and plenty of those people have some fascinating takes on their gaming lives.

Thanks for finding yet another way to inspire thoughtful and fun discussions on the site! As ever, keep being rad and have a wonderful weekend. Hope it's as productive as possible without feeling overly stressful (a near-impossible balancing act, I know). I like the structure of this feature as a way to bookend the week; looking forward to the next instalment!

I can definitely relate to the Minecraft story - getting into that game definitely re-awakened a spark of creativity in my gaming playstyle that was perhaps being lost amongst all the incredible, ready-crafted experience we have been presented with in recent years. I'll also have to try dumping all my gear and loading up specifically for adventures next time I jump into Fallout 4 - should be an interesting mix-up from my usual hoarding and "prepare for everything" tendencies.

Say, that was a good read. I could definitely relate to a few of these, and yes, I also defend Assassin's Creed 1. Altair was a good protagonist and he actually properly developed over the course of that game, and well I really liked the world I got to explore. I like the AC2 trilogy and Black Flag as well, still haven't gotten around to the rest.

Beating games is one of those things I think affects a lot of people, heck I have a huge problem with it, and as of recent I've been trying to make it a point to beat games. I've thought about it a lot and it's definitely a combination of things. I tend to get absorbed into worlds, be they in books, movies, or games, and it's always a tough thing for me to part with something I enjoy, especially since as rare as it is for me to beat a game, it's even rarer for me to return to a game I've beaten. I often tend to start a game and play it most of the way and then just stop..

I can't tell you how many times I've started Chrono Trigger and got to the final hour, or Wind Waker, or GTA4, or oh god, Dark Souls.

I've been trying to fix that, because well, I don't like it. I love these games, and I have a library that's constantly expanding. I need to remedy the situation somehow, so I've been trying to switch how I think about games, and I've been trying to go back to games I've beaten before as well. And well, I'm keeping track of what I beat and what I don't now, and yanno, closure is great in a lot of cases, and revisiting games is also great, and I do end up with more stories to tell. Fancy that.

Glad you took the time to engage with the community and highlight it like this Austin, you are such an excellent addition to the crew.

"Rocket League is just Peach's Castle but with cars, after all."

But with the shame of that whiffed aerial leading to an opponent goal. :P

These clock-related articles are really cool.

I still get a feeling of dread playing labyrinth zone and diving into that water. I never hear the drowning sound anymore but as a child it was terrifying.

Another great article from Austin. Keep it up!

I have a feeling this feature is going to become a fan favorite.

@redhotchilimist: In the case of AC for me it was more just laying the groundwork of roleplaying in a videogame by letting the world actually be alive instead of just a series of obstacles between me and my goal more than it was actually roleplaying. It's clear just looking at the AC series that they put an inordinate amount of work into tiny details that are totally inconsequential to the actual gameplay, stuff like people sweeping the streets, having little conversations, junk falling off into the canals and floating away. In games like The Elder Scrolls series those small details are the framework that they build their entire quest systems on, the schedules people keep and the shenanigans they get into, and that attention to detail is there in AC as well, and it's the first place I noticed and appreciated the life it brings to a game world. I see all over the place the criticism that "Skyrim is wide as an ocean but shallow as a pond" and I think this comes from people playing it the same way Assassin's Creed seems to want you to play it. In Skyrim's case I think it's the fault of the player, but in Assassin's Creed it really seems like the game is trying to get you to ignore what a lush world it's set in.

@mistercrow: You've gotta play Fallout: New Vegas with Hardcore Mode activated if you haven't already. It adds weighted ammo, a hunger/thirst system, among other changes/additions, which completely change the focus of the game; it seems like a playstyle really well suited to you. The Jesawyer mod takes it a step further (it's by a developer on FNV, and basically a Director's Cut of the game) making it more difficult, but also more rewarding. Look it up and check it out--I really think you'll like it.

FNV is one of the few games that really does a great job with resource management. Done poorly it's mindless busywork, but FNV embraces it and makes it the core of the game. (So long as Hardcore Mode is activated, of course.)

@wrathofgod: Superb post, man. I can sympathise with the fear of death in games, though mine is more about loss of control--specifically in multiplayer stuff. I find it really scary (like, mortifying) to not know what will happen next, no matter how benign; I just don't wanna make a mistake or screw up or whatever... For a long time I tried avoiding it entirely or simply opting out. After all, what if they don't like my character's name, or I have a bad build, or whatever? It's only thanks to the passive, forced multiplayer in games like Dark Souls 1/2 and others that I've really adapted to such interactions--as in, embraced them. Dark Souls 2 in particular, with its invasion covenants, really got me used to the 'forced multiplayer' aspect... even if I was helping to ambush some poor sod. It turns out that facing the unknown can be just as fun as it is frustrating, and more memorable than I'd ever imagined.

So yeah, really interesting and insightful post, WrathOfGod. Thanks for sharing!

These articles are so cool... I didn't really realise how awesomely diverse Giant Bomb's community was until now. Y'all are the best.

Like Spice, the comments must flow!

@themaintank said:

Thanks for elaborating! I don't necessarily think people were talking about the world and environment when they were saying Skyrim was shallow. I belong to the tons of people who started playing Elder Scrolls when Skyrim came out, so I guess I wouldn't know, but the article series I'm reading about the franchise talks much more about how the stats, quest, class and dialogue systems have changed, mostly simplified. I never noticed those nice little details in AC(I kinda want to go back to Venice now, look for stuff floating in the canals and follow it), but I certainly wandered around immersed and involved in Skyrim for a hundred hours, which hasn't happened to me with any other open world game. Rather than laying the groundwork for roleplaying, I think getting lost in a world for a while is a seperate thing from roleplaying that Skyrim is really great at.

Completing games is over-rated. I treat each game as a new playground, have my OWN fun on my OWN terms with it, and either abandon it when I'm done... and sometimes eventually finish it in a bittersweet moment of "well, fuck, it's over".

My Magnus Opus of gaming is probably getting the SPQR achievement in CK2.

It requires you to conquer roughly half the map. The start is the hardest, and then it becomes more work and less risk over time. But transitioning from Emperor to Emperor is still quite risky when things go pearshaped.

I gave myself a special challenge too:
All land goes to my family. Now in game that is a fairly poor decision. While you do get a small bonus for being a fellow family ruler, it also means that every ruler in your Empire has claims on some of your titles, and potentially hates you to varying degrees. On top of that, everyone can always call family into wars they're in. This means that every little spat mobilized my entire Empire. If cousin A picked a fight with Uncle B 50,000 people died as half the world obeyed family obligations.

Now the AI doesn't understand such special challenges, so once you make someone a Duke he sometimes gives his land away to nonfamily, and I had to stop trying to fix that because I had way too much land. But the top level, the Dukes and later the Kings, were all family.

About 100 years I started noticing something else: This slows down the game a lot. I have a beefy PC, but my family was growing so large that the game had trouble opening the family view. It took longer and longer, as my family grew to over 500 members. But I persevered. I did it at a time the rules were a little more easy with regards to blobbing, but starting versus Muslims was harder. (Patches change CK2 a LOT)

I keep a group in my steam library called "Beaten" that I move my finished games into. It's nice to occasionally open it up and remember the good times.

What Noblenerf was saying about Crusader Kings 2 is exactly the way I wish I COULD play. But I am always about trying to have the "best" run through of a game. Even know there is more fun to be had. In Mount and Blade I tend to usually quit playing when the huge army I amassed was defeated, always realizing the true fun is probably in getting wiped out and continuing on. Collecting another large army to go take sweet revenge on the guy who killed my men and took me prisoner. Maybe I should throw cation to the wind and actually buy CK2. The segment you guys did had me in stitches, and there is probably much more to be found.

And to comment on HeyGuysWhatsUp, I actually love doing that. Just strolling around, taking in the scenery. I have full playthroughs sometimes where I do that. Fallout playthoughs with just walking. Following the rules of the road in GTA. Walking to my next objective instead of just sprinting. It allows you to see things you usually miss in your haste to get to the next "fun part". Oh and yes, thank you, I was really starting to feel like I was the only one who actually holds the first Assassins Creed in high regard. Good to know I am not alone.

And dont feel bad Austin, I also usually make a new character to pursue different avenues of play in a game. First run of Fallout 4 I was a Brotherhood member that while I sympathized with the Synths I still saw them as our common enemies and had problems with the Brotherhoods chain of command. And my second playthrough I worked for the Railroad in order to help Synths gain some semblance of a normal life, away from the Institute and out of the Brotherhoods reach.

While I cant really say I had the same problem as WrathofGod, I can definitely understand it. I have just always been the kind of guy that when I am presented with an obstacle in a game I just slam my head against it until it or I gave. Usually it was the game, sometimes it was me getting so frustrated that I finally just quit. But it was stuff like Trials and Dark Souls that showed me that slamming my head will only get me so far, and I realized that doing it over and over was actually leading to worse results. Now when I start to get anxious over the fact that I cant get past something, I take that as an opportunity to step back and see where I am approaching this incorrectly. Or at worst sleep on it and come at it fresh the next day.

Thank you very, very much for featuring my post. Ill be honest, when I saw it there I jumped up and texted my wife. It just felt good to finally be noticed, and feel like my posts actually matter. Not just falling on deaf ears. I think this is a fantastic chance for you to really reach out to the community and make them feel involved.

Sorry this was a bit of a late comment! I see that this is from a few days ago but I felt I should still post my thoughts anyways. As fate would have it a big new patch dropped for Minecraft on the consoles over the weekend. SO I spent a good chunk of my weekend checking it out. Wanted to see Star Wars but...it wasnt in the cards.

THanks again!

The name of this feature scared the crap out of me.

@noblenerf: thanks! Yeah, I've totally fallen down the hole of checking strategy guides before I make characters in games that allow that kinda stuff. I don't like making mistakes with my builds, either. I've been trying to break that habit, though.

First comment on this site for me! (Although I have been around forever now) Just wanted to say I loved reading this article! The format is really good. It was very interesting and eye opening to hear how some gamers enjoy their games. The comments on this are also all very positive and pleasant. I have never seen such a thing on any gaming website. GB really is a great community of gamers and I wish gamers were represented by people like all of you more often. Thanks GB and everyone who makes it great.

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who grew up where getting a new game was a rare occurrence that only happened on your birthday and Christmas. Because of that my friends and I had to come up with ways to expand the enjoyment of a game long past what the developer expected. Normally this involved us coming up with rules in a multiplayer game that changed it in a way that I'm sure the developers never expected and it often led to us having more fun with the game then the base content provided.

The biggest ones that stand out in my memory are Battlefront and Battlefront 2 for the PS2. In both of them the game allowed for minor control over AI units and we abused that to our enjoyment. A gamemode we named last stand involved one player going around telling the AI to follow them leading them back to the other player who was spamming hold position at a control point. After about 5 minutes the enemy would own all the other control points and our ticket count dropped to the point where the AI would not respawn which meant if anyone died they were out the rest of the round. We would then try to hold off the enemy team as they swarmed the last point with our remaining AI. It was a lot of fun and challenging.

We also didn't have Internet at the time so we bought cheat code books and using the invincibility cheat would just go to places no one was ever meant to go and just explore the maps. A number of them actually had large areas outside the play area that no one would ever see but someone still went to the effort to not just make it flat. We also discovered all sorts of weird glitch spots where the collision mesh was messed up enough that you could use it to get into weird spots like underneath the floors in one map or on top of the player clip in the sky on another.

Speedrunning often can make a bad game good by virtue of the creative ways that get found to break the entire thing to the point that the speedrun is a completely different experience than the developer intended. That new approach can be, and frequently is, a lot more fun than the vanilla path through the game.

Great read Alex. I'm totally the guy who would roleplay games like Elder Scrolls and GTA for hundreds of hours before making myself knuckle down and beat the story missions. Nice to see i'm not the only person who is more content making their own fun with imagination and a crazy sandbox, than solving the scripted challenges of the game designers.

@austin_walker have you dug back into starbound since they released that last big patch. They've introduced Settlement building (including recruiting villagers/fighters) and really improved the fighting systems. Also Pets.

@steellasagna: @austin_walker agreed. Glad some crusader king changes got into this list even if it wasn't mine. Still play to win some in that as I try to make Britannia but much for fun at times do just see what crazyness happens.