Thanks, that was sincere question and I enjoyed reading your answer.

Sublustris wrote:

Thanks, that was sincere question and I enjoyed reading your answer.

If that is the case I have deleted another of my posts, since I might have jumped to conclusion and totally misread your motive. My apologize for that.

I am glad that you enjoyed the reply and again I apologize for jumping into any wrong conclusion. It is always ok to question, if the motive for the question has no hidden passive aggressive personal agenda, but born out of real curiosity. I welcome that and I do like to question things myself. In fact someone once told me "if one is used to being questioned oneself, it often leads to oneself questioning others and things in general", or something to that effect. :)

Sublustris wrote:

No offense taken. To my knowledge, you've joined G2G "shortly" before Humankind release, and I don't remember seeing you comment much on their other games. Nor did you comment about them anything in your initial reply here. Your profile badges show that you do own all their games, but not a single tracked achievement. Hence my conclusion you probably do not play them, or do not play much, maybe because you've received them for free. In my view that was a reasonable assumption, that led to my genuine question out of curiosity and proved to be wrong. No more, no less. I do enjoy hearing why people prefer one developer's game over the other - that just highlights everything good about all their games.

And I too feel fatigue from prolonged game sessions, unlike in my youth. Nowadays I may feel too exhausted to even start short ones at the end of work days. I think for me and most people that is just combination of age and distraction with avalanche of life issues. Yet I still enjoy playing. Just prefer time periods to be more controlled and mixed with other distractions.

You are absolutely correct in your observation as to when I joined G2G. However I knew about and had heard about some of Amplitudes games prior to that. I think I even owned Endless Legend before I joined here, but I'm not 100% sure. I have some emory of having played it for at least a few hours before, but again having played games now for over several decades (more or less my entire life, since they became available even only in arcades) it is easy to mix them up and confuse some with another. I often have to search to remember ther names of some older games, if I don't want to go into my closets or storage to dig out the old boxes. Sometimes it's easier to just search a bit online to rememberr their names and go "oh yeah that was the one". As for not being signed up earlier, is that I have always tried to keep my online footprint to a minimum. Still not a fan of this whole "games as service" thing. Yes, for MMO RPG's it is a must of course to play on their servers. for other stuff I only sign up on sites when I have felt it was truly necessary. For example I can easily have played a game for years and years without ever having signed up on that game companys forums. 

As for achievements, I have not been that into it in the past. Never been much for competing and having achievements to show off. Never really saw any purpose to them, just as I never saw any purpose of the trading cards. I didn't even bother to find out what they were for really. They seemed pretty useless to me. I actually often played my games offline when possible. However in recent times, I have found it a fun side thing to engage a bit more in that (still not 100% into it, but a bit more). Even considering to replay all of HoMM III campaign to get the achievements on steam. I don't even really know 100% why, as to my own motives (what part of my pshychology it has triggered), but I guess I'm looking for new ways to motivate myself to play. Setting up new goals as inspiration maybe. I have even started dabbling a bit in collecting the steam cards for games to earn badges, but already grown a bit tired of it (after a short period trying it out), since it's mostly pay to get the remaining ones, or spend way too much time and effort in some barter market on steam. I do have all the "free" cards earned from time spent in Amplitude games though and bought all the ones for Humankind after I had earned the "free" ones from gametime. So In have all the Humankind badges on steam, but don't really see any point to them now that I have them. They won't even show up here and my steam account is mostly set to private anywway. I do waht i do for my own enjoyment mostly, not to earn some badges and such to show off on my accounts. I did get a bit inot G2G badges and so in the beginning on these forums too, but that only alsted for a while. Now I'm not that bothered anymore. Agaian my gaol is to have fun playing and not to gather badges.

That being said, I am a bit curious as to why the Humankind in-game achievements are not tied to here like it seems the Endless Space ones are? Lack of interest from players to utiulize that system? I don't know. Even buying the latest expansion didn't even move my G2G Humankind badge progress bar, so obviously that is not even the way to raise it further. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, or maybe it's due to me playing offline a lot, or the losing connection to Amplifier. Not that it is something that has bothered me a lot. I haven't even bothered to raise any thread about it, but I'm still a bit curious, but a low curiosity or priority on my list.

I'm not in any way shape or form trying to come off as being all knowing about Amplitudes games in general. People like you and others have way more experience in most of their games than I do. That is probably why I rarely mention them. I find others better suited to do write about them, having way more knowledge than me on Endless Space series and Endless Legend or Dungeon of The Endless. I do not want to post stuff that totally wrong and misleading to anyone trying to learn those games. Even if I have played a game for say 8, 10 or even 20-30 hours, or so, does not make me an expert in a game. Especially not complex games like ES2. Sure I can have a superficial opinion about it and probably know by then if it is a game in my taste or not, but not much more than that. Dungeon of the Endless I really struggled to even understand what it was about or the aim of it was. I have never ever played a rogue like game to my knowledge before (if that is what it's even labeled as). Maybe I have, but not realizing it is one, but that just shows how much I know about that unique genre. Basically nothing at all, so then I should not write about it, since my sharing of knowledge on that game would be worth very little. I just played it for a bit, felt I got nowhere, felt i wasn't having much fun and then never played it again.

Humankind however I find I have a fairly good grasp on, but that has taken me 800 hrs between open beta, closed alpha/beta, semi open alpha/beta etc. Then another (is it soon 300 hrs, I can't remember and not logged into steam atm) of playing Humankind after release. That 300 hrs playtime is gathered pretty recently too, since due to personal life I have been off from gaming in general for quite some time. Being sad that I missed the whole release of Humankind after having waited for it for quite some time and spent so much time testing it. My whole Steam Replay for 2022 was a blank except for the last 1 1/2 month of 2022 due to that. Then during about half of Novemenver and December very busy. Actually a lot of various acheivements in various games during that time. Still funny to see that the majority of games I played said was over 8 years old. It just shows I guess what type of games I like. For example Civ V 12+ years old game now) over Civ VI any day. HoMM III over Civ VII any day of the week. A few newer games as well of course. 

Actually most of those older games I even played before steam and with no online launcher at all. It's just in recent years I have started to re-buy them on GOG, Steam, Ubisoft etc to play them again, since many of the old ones on disks is a lot of hassle to get to run after win 10 and some I can not get to run at all. While the versions of them on GOG, Ubisoft and steam will run on win 10 (hopefully on win 11 too, once I have to move over to that on my gaming rigs, currently I'm stayiong on win 10 on my gaming rigs). Also after my old Vista and XP machines decided to quit working, that is the only option I have to play them these days. I miss being able to run my old Vista and XP machines beside my newer machines (offline of course). Just to play old games. But one after another they just decided to go into repair mode after boot-up and eventually blue screewn of death. Almost as if it was built in to make those older windows O/S to stop working, but I don't want to be some conspiracy theorist with a tin-foil hat, so I try to avoid to entertain that train of thought (if and when i can).

In other cases I have sometimes (rarely but still) bought a game on steam, to later realize I already had it in it's physical box, but never gotten around to install it. There was a period in my life when I bought a lot of games, more than I had time to play. Nowdays I am way more picky and choosy as to what games I buy and play. I'm more and more turning into playing a few games a lot, than playing a lot of games a little. Quality over quantity. Although I do still try out some games for a few hours and then realize they did not engage me as much as I would have liked. I rarely, or actually, I have never used Steam refund. I ususally need more than 2 hrs to tell if a game is to my liking or not. At least a little bit more than just 2 hrs, but more and more I rely on Let's Play videos on YouTube to even come to the decison to even buy and give a game a try. Usually by watching someone else play a game for a maybe 3-4 hrs is enough for me to make a decision to buy it, or not. Sometimes I can also see in just a 10-15 minutes if it's not my style at all. Like if it's a regular RTS, or some Action FPS game. 

Yeah, it's funny how some things about us change over time, while other things stays exactly the same. Also how others percieve us. Some things we progress and leave behind I have sometimes get bashed over by so called "friends" that "you have changed", "You're not the same" on (as if they want to hold me back). While also some things I am just the same in, I can also get bashed for not progressing and evolving. Seems some "friends" only tries to find reasons to bash you for anything really. It's like you can not win. lol It's why I care less and less with age what they think and just do what suits me and not them. Losing many so called "friends" in the process, but if all they are there to do is to make you feel like crap and hold you back then why keep them around anyway? I have some rare friends who are not like that. For them I can compromise and we take turns in chosing what movie to watch together even if most often we like the same. They never really demand anything but are just there to hang with you as they enjoy the company and not want something from you all the time, other than just your company. They don't make you feel used. Those friends seem to be very rare though.

I am like you in that I mix more and more. I even try to revive some old hobbies like plastic model kit building. Starting by consuming a lot of videos on the subject. Trying to catch up on all new techniques. Like adding electronics and led lights to sci-fi models and all that. Simpy painting and gluing is not enough anymore. Even doing some weathering which I already barely started exeprimenting with as a kid back in the late 70's and early 80's is not enough anymore. Time to build all those models stored away in my basement, which I never finished back in the 80's. It is a bigger barrier of a hobby to get into these days than back then. Needing to buy an airbrush, compressor etc. Make some sort of air-brush booth with fans to suck out the fumes etc. Knowing which air-brush to buy. How to take care of it and clean it. Tons of tools and various sorts of colours, various sorts of glues, but I do watch a lot of videos on that topic atm.

I also tend get tired faster of course (I definetly blame age on that one). Thinking of doing more fishing again. Make use of my rods and such and not just let them sit and gather dust. However gaming and streaming movies is the easier route, so that still takes up most of my hobby time still. Streaming movies definetly being the easiest lazy way to pass time. It is also the one giving me the least feeling of rewarding time spent. It often feels like a waste of time really. I often zoom out on a serie during the second episode (or halfway through the first). Very few I find really engaging these days. However what else to do on a rainy, windy cold mid-week evening? I was looking forward to Willow, but the qulity of it made me think of Hercules or Xena back in the 90's and unfortunetly I lost interest already after one epeisode. The latest installment of GoT I like though. Also Andor. While Obi-wan was mostly "meh" and Boba Fett pretty bad, apart from maybe 2 episodes which was more Mando than Boba Fett really. I did enjoy the latest series from the creators of "Dark". It's called "1899" I think, but that has now been cancelled and will get no season 2. *sigh*

Oh well, enough rambling by me. Nice talking with you and just like you I enjoy reading about what others enjoy (or not), what games and why, what movies they watch, what music they listen to, or hobbies they have and why they like them etc. Who knows, maybe I will even stumble upon something they writre about that can improve my enjoyment. Find something new to enjoy. Win win. :)

Edit: Actually it says 380.7 hrs of gameplay in Humankind since release. I logged into steam a bit later and checked. I think the steam played time of Humankind is fairly accurate to my actual played time (as opposed to many other games I've played, where I have often played offline). Since lately I have tried to be more online on steam while playing. Especially since Humankind has the feature to be connected to what's now called Amplifier (something I never even thought of looking for in el or es, I don't even know if they have that feature) to unlock actual in-game things to create an AI persona, unlock various AI opponents, various tatoos and stuff. Not just some achievements to have on steam which have no real purpose for the game itself. So it has been a bit of an incentive for me to stay online more. Plus of course the 800 hrs during various phases/stages of OpenDev (mostly opendev builds since I felt those were very important to test), closed alpha/beta testing etc. Not that all that is really important, but I just like to give correct information. The important thing to me is to have fun and enjoying playing a game. Even now, after all that playtime in Humankind, I still discover new small tricks and things. Not to mention that with various updates/patches some things chane and you have to learn yet more things or new tweaks to your playstyle. The more I play the more I realize how good it is and how some system can seem a bit simple if only scratching on the surface, but when digging into them a bit deeper, the way they are interwined with each other is really cool. The sum becomes larger than it's parts.