There is no enough freedom in my games so I'm gonna ask, what are the games that grant you a lot of freedom...

There is no enough freedom in my games so I'm gonna ask, what are the games that grant you a lot of freedom? And I don't mean Minecraft-esque freedom where you are given some tools, no goal to work towards and the game expects you to have fun out of nothing.

I mean freedom of approach where you do have a goal, which might be vauge like: Get rich, but you still have one. I want a game that throws you a goal, gives you different tools and says "do it yourself".

I would also want for the game to be in a way it's own separate world with it's own economy, countries etc that you can interact with and little to none or absolutely none story elements. A good example of such games would be Port Royale 2.

Also, I already know about Dwarf Fortress.

without God freedom is just a shallow meme.
but with that said, video games are deterministic by their nature. Which is ironic that hacks like Ken Levine would use the medium to critique the concept of free will when such a thing could never truly exist within of a virtual construct built from lines of ones and zeros

They are deterministic but they can allow you to take different ways in which you can get to your destination.

sounds like you need to do something irl
seems to me like you have a clear goal (or a want, a wish), dont try to find it in a video game, do it irl, maybe it'll feel fun

I'll think about writing stuff later, I'm just looking for organic games like Port Royale 2. Or games which allow you for a wide range of options on how to complete a goal like Deus Ex. I've heard that The Guild is similar to the first example but I have no idea how true that is.

eve online back in it's hay day if you don't fall for the high sec meme

I thought this was gonna be a "freedom as in America" thread, and am a little disappointed as I had a perfect suggestion. I'm going to make it anyways because I'm enjoying it and have never seen anyone talk about it.

Helldivers is a fun couch co-op game you can get used for like $15. It was originally a DLC-fest e-shop game, but getting the physical version gets you everything and it's a pretty complete package. You and 3 friends become members of the AMERICAN version of Space Marines and travel the universe fighting degenerate human cyborgs, not-Zerg/Tyranids, and not-Protoss/Chozo/Aperture Science in the name of spreading DEMOCRACY from your home planet of SUPER EARTH.

Plenty of weapons and special abilities, lots of co-op teamwork to be had, vehicles that are actually fun to use, and objective-based gameplay that rewards you for not being a moron and picking fights with everything you see. Enemies are unlimited and you win by completing map-based objectives, so you have to be smart and sneaky to evade patrols until you get to the objective and can Go Loud. Every stage ends with having to call for extraction and hold the perimeter in pitched combat as your dropship closes distance, so there's still no lack of combat.

Special abilities range from placable assets (holy shit the auto turrets are nasty), calling in air/orbitalstrikes, summoning vehicles (including mecha), and support options like scanner drones. Grenades are complimentary. There are enough options that you can more or less build yourself into a dedicated team role, like medic or heavy weapons or whatever else. Reasonable aesthetic customization as well, as long as you like yellow/brown and don't care about not seeing your character's face ever.

I'm only about 5 hours in, but it's the best $15 I've spent on a vidya in the past couple years.

No idea how the online is, because fuck Playstation+. There seems to be some kind of implied continuous metagame of pushing the alien species back, but I don't interface with the system so I don't really know how it works.

Polite sage for unsolicited shilling.

this has a steam release right?

Elona+

No idea. My brother bought me a second DS4 as an early Christmas present, and then we had a realization that there's fucking nothing to couch co-op with anymore. I picked it up on a gamble knowing nothing about it out of a GameStop bargain bin.

Kind of took me back to being a kid and renting games out of a brick and mortar store based on the cover art.

Sure does. This last weekend was also a free weekend of it, with a massive sale.

Good stuff, it's basically Starship Troopers: The game. Also good for when you're feeling AMERICAN as fuck.

Will check that out anyways, thanks user.


Shit I forgot about that I was supposed to get into that but never did. Thanks for reminding me about that.

I'm also going to go and say that Space Station 13 really feels that way but it's also a multiplayer game. I'll say that I'm looking for singleplayer titles, but if there is someone looking for a similar thing and doesn't mind go and check it out, it's fucking great.

Are you looking for management games then?
Or something more directed like an RPG?

>There was a free weekend and massive sale probably while I was standing in the GameStop handing my money over
Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuck everything.

That would not only have allowed me to use the online for free, but enabled the other two player slots via my DS3s. Damn.

Kenshi.

Squad-based free-roaming RPG with no goals, but a lot to do. Nice postapocalyptic aesthetic, weird lore that's never explained outright. You can build cities, but you don't have to.

I would say something in between, a game that has both adventure-esque elements with management and strategy elements that allows me for different approaches to what I do. For example a game about a merchant that allows me to wage war with different factions for money, specialize in selling different stuff but also just to become a pirate or a rouge that just attacks others and sells their loot.


This looks really interesting, I'll try it out.

Path of Exile isn't bad in that regard.

Yes, there are some mistakes you can make that'll brick your character, and there are definitely best-in-slot items and cookie cutter builds, but for the average fuck like you and me, you can play it with a bunch of different approaches

Avernum 3 is best in series, fight me

In The Guild you control a family and open businesses. You can be a thief and rob other families, blacksmith and beat them up in a fight with the best armor and weapons, alchemist, etc. One interesting aspect is your family members can get into the government, including judging people, passing laws, having someone questioned in the torture chamber, etc.

Space Rangers has plenty of freedom. The plot is there are robots attacking the known universe and you have to stop them. That's it, no more instructions. You can do that by being a merchant who donates to rangers and pays for military operations, helping the military operations, having a team of rangers who attack enemy territory with you, etc. You can also ignore the problem altogether although that'll eventually get you defeated. There is RTS and text quests too, the text quests are pretty good IMO but not mandatory except when you're in jail for smuggling or piracy.

Exactly what I was looking for, thank you user.

Aren't a lot of those space games kind of like that? Elite, x3 etc. I haven't really played them myself.

You're trying way to fucking hard. OP wants videogame recommendations, not your barely on topic blathering

/cuckchan/'s the other way buddy.

It's pretty great. It's been in early access since the late 00s, because for years it was a security guard's evening projects, but it got enough sales on steam for him to develop full-time and hire some artists. The game is nearing feature completion, the map is 3/4ths done with the top right corner releasing just a month or so ago, and it's been perfectly playable for a long time.

We've got a slow general over at with a magnet link, although there's not much info in the thread for new players.

He didn't follow up on his statements though and there was nothing else to do but to agree with him and say that even then video games can offer you different ways of fulfiling your goal. There wasn't much to discuss there.

Sage for offtopic.

What you are looking for is a table top role playing game and real life friends who are like minded to play it with. You will also need a good or experienced GM to run the game in an open sandbox style of campaign.

Nothing in the digital world compares.

There is also truth to this.

Undeniably true. I genuinely miss my boss's 5e campaign.

CATA:dda

talking about freewill vs determinism in the context of video games is not off topic. The thread is about "freedom in my games". Sorry if my commentary was 2deep4U kid.

This game is shit, has some incredibly disgusting and jewish DLC, bite-sized handheld-tier maps, a nauseatingly bad camera, and a piss-poor difficulty curve. Plus, the shitty online "campaign" that in practice just locks you out of fighting certain factions for days/weeks at a time.

Just play Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop. Same type of game, better in every way (including price, since it's completely free) and has full unrestricted modding support. Doesn't fit the whole "delivering freedom to the stupid commies" theme but jesus christ is it the better game

I'll just say that you guys really should play Port Royale 2 I tried it again and it's probably my favourite pirate game as so far.

It's really fun.

Now hold on a fucking second. Just because there are a limited number of core components does not make something deterministic in any meaningful sense. All matter in our universe is made up of a limited amount of subatomic particles, and yet we're not able to predict human nature, much less the rest of the universe. Even if we lived in Newton's clockwork universe, it would still be so intricate so as to be unpredictable.

Examine the simplest time-independent game possible: Get from point A to point B. You could invent an infinite amount of paths to accomplish this. Only one of them is meaningful, the direct path from A to B; the rest do not add any significant depth to the game. This reductio ad absurdum is useful to examine the amount of meaningful determinism in a video game.

On one hand, a game like Bioshock Infinite is a point-A-to-point-B game plus enemies. You have a defined goal and defined means to accomplish it. The interactions with the enemies and the environment are the crux of the game, and there are a limited amount of meaningful dimensions to this. Walking one step forward and one step back for eternity does not add any depth, but multiple routes or weapons do. In the end, though, the amount of interaction is limited, as the enemies and the environments never change.

On the other hand, you have a game like Minecraft. There are a limited amount of enemies and block types, and the engine itself has limits as to what you can do with it, but the interaction is essentially unlimited. There are no required ends, no defined maps, and no defined enemy placement. (You could say there are a limited number of seeds and dimensions to the ingame worlds you generate, but this is not a meaningful rhetoric as you will never see 99.9999999% of the possible worlds.) Once you factor in mods and online play, the possible interactions are exponentially increased. To call this game deterministic is to inappropriately trivialize it. Extended to eternity, it's about as much fun as Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill, but so is life.

If you just mean games that offer you many different choices of playstyle, I could recommend a few. Unfortunately, I can't really suggest any that would meet the "separate world with it's own economy" part. You might want to look at some grand strategy games like civilization. Off the top of my head:
E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy
Thief: The Dark Project/The Metal Age
Tales of Maj'eyal
Morrowind
Rollercoaster Tycoon
I know most of those are pretty story-heavy, but the do offer you a lot of options when you are playing. I might also say that many platforming games fit your criteria. Example, in Super Mario 64 you can move through a course in many different paths/with different movement, and there are many romhacks that will really test your abilities if you want more challenge.

X3 Albion Prelude

Space game with a simulated economy where you're pretty much free to do what you want, from being a trader to creating your own empire.

Has mods

Well, what's a successful expert psychologist like you doing on an image board like this?

???

I can second this. Even if you don't go pirate sim, it can be a really comfy trading game as well.

You want the X series then. Give X3TC or X3AP a go, whatever you do avoid rebirth.


Pleb.

Why would you want to become a shade of red?

Pretentious piece of shit.

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I know this is Holla Forums heresy but Fallout 4 gives you lots of freedom and different ways to solve quests thanks to the detailed and large open world.

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So, sandbox with light management and combat? Since X and The Guild were already mentionned, I'll tell you some I can think of that aren't total shit
There's Patrician, made by the same people
If you want pirate themed games, there's obviously Pirates! but there's also
Age of Pirates: City of Abandonned Ships
Sea Dogs: To Each His Own
Uncharted Waters New Horizons

If you want strategy, you could look at the latest Nobunaga's Ambition, or Romance of the Three Kingdom XIII with the extension, you can play an officer under a ruler, or make your own faction. You can make relationships with other officers, get married and have kids, so you can play them when you kick the bucket. There are story event, based on the scenario/starting year and if conditions are met, but you can disable them

I feel you OP, Mount and Blade is pretty good, just look for a mod that suits your preferences and enjoy the sandbox.

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