Perfectionism playing vidya

My autism tends to manifest as extreme perfectionism, to the point trying to play a game like Factorio drives me out of my mind despite it being a fun fairly well built game. Assuming a game isn't piss easy and requires thought to master, the more complicated a game is the less i want to play it as i dread the perfectionist episode that comes when i try to do everything perfectly in the first run through, then quit when i realize i'll need to play a game like Factorio countless times to have all the "data points" to plan out the perfect play. Any game with no ability to undo building placements or exclusive tech choices is instant suicide material.

Then there's trash like bethesda games where the entire story is just whatever you want it to end up at, it doesnt trigger the 'tism but i wanted to say that any story where you make choices and every time the thing you wanted to happen happens is garbage. Look at witcher for a better example of making choices and things happening counter to what you intended.

Oddly enough a game like dwarf fortress has enough elements of complexity, variable encounters and silly shit to bypass this problem, its easy to accept losing is fun and go at it again and again without going crazy trying to plan my forts. Also most multiplayer games bypass this issue, especially good mmos (of which there are none since UO), as there is no way to perfectly predict other people's actions unless the game is mind blowingly garbage (see the MOBA genre).

If the game is about being creative like building a city, I will restart the game every 4 hours from scratch.

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Your life will be better if you actively fight this kind of perfectionist play stuff. I noticed I had a similar habit and made a conscious effort to ignore my spaghetti, and I enjoy vidya more. Fuckups and weirdness are part of what makes things interesting. Here are the rules I use:

Mein nigger

If the player makes a choice and the story doesn't have the outcome they want, then they'll have a bad experience :-(

My best Fort in DF was one where I didn't actively help Moods.

I can see this being a good idea, thanks user.

Will be putting this into practice next game I play that this applies to, after I get over my fear of actually playing another game that could drive me to perfectionist hell. Someday.

In Fallout 3 there's a bit where Vault 101 sends out a call for you to help them. The place has gone to shit and the golden ending for this sidequest is to talk it out with the overseer and resolve shit peacefully. Thing is this is only true if the original overseer of the vault is still there. You could have easily killed the original overseer during the tutorial/escape at the beginning of the game. If you did that then there is no nonviolent resolution to the problem. You have to kill the new overseer and everyone there will hate you.

There's no way out of this. You can't even savescum like a bitch for it because the deciding moment happens at the very beginning of the game, meaning you'd effectively have to play the entire game over again. This blew my fucking mind at the time because I never expected real and logical consequences to your actions out of anything Bethesda has made post-Morrowind.

Shame that whole experience is dampened by how fucking unlikable everyone in Fallout 3 is and that you still get banished from the vault whether you solve the quest peacefully or not. Even Bethesda's high moments are full of steaming shit.

I liked the Geneforge series. Its aged only somewhat well but theres 3 or 4 major factions plus two antagonists you can side with. The good ending is you basically murder them both for being criminals to your organization, avoid harnessing the power they wanted, and by championing the faction that is most subservient to you

you are just the rat in the maze, mongoloids

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I have this problem too, and had this epiphany a while back. Can confirm it's completely correct. Do your best, but never sacrifice fun for perfection. You'll only really know if the game is worth perfecting after you've beaten it once.

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no save scumming/reloading adds a lot of fun.
Though I do make an exception when a vague choice ends up being wildly different.

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I'm a big fan of Fun and enjoy closer games regardless of outcome than outright winning. However I'll shamelessly savescum if there's a "chose one of these three options but you can't look at them first, faggot" reward to a quest. Fuck that shit.

I do this with TV and movie. Not usually video games though, that's interesting.

wow you're lucky.
I'm trying really hard to play DF with this mindset currently … but I obsess over every little detail from world gen, to choosing embark location, to setting up the team and choosing the optimal minimalist starting gear.

It's driving me crazy. I know I'm wrong but it's really difficult to just force myself to play as it comes.

I feel you. If a game has a ranking system I'll never be satisfied until I max rank it, unless it's a metroidvania.

I think the key is that DF is far and away the best "world simulation". Theres no "achievement list" and every embark is different, with a different optimal way to play so getting all perfectionist would not only be maddening but also not make better forts.

I do it in Football Manager. I get mad if the opponent even gets a scoring opportunity.

If you're smart enough to play Dwarf Fortress, you can probably get Factorio down well enough to be able to beat it (albeit painfully) in three or four tries. Although "beating it" is only about 1/4th as much fun as you can have with the game.

See, the major issue with being this way, for me, is that it makes games unreplayable. A lot of people replay RPGs multiple times, but I can't. I went though Fallout 3 only once, and I'll never play it again because my first run was good enough. With builder games like Factorio or SimCity, I'm always getting better; each time I play I'm getting better and building things bigger and prettier and more realistic.

Its not like beating the game is the real goal.

Normally I don't have that issue too often, but once modding really gets in it, especially with a unfixable game like Skyrim, this drove me completely crazy and fueled and supercharged any form of perfectionism I had. Of course, it was not enough, it was never going to be enough.

Meanwhile playing FNV with A World of Pain and other mods and I'm happy and comfy at last.

I have uncontrollable autism when it comes to character creation. Can waste hours without even realizing while doing that.
Now I'm getting into the poser thing of the latest Illusion game and holy shit, you can't do shit with that thing without a sizable fuel tank of autism.

I dont have this issue that often since I'm rarely gud enough to be a perfectionist in games.