Patient Gamers

The Witcher 3 is just an RPG minigame you can play between rounds of Gwent.

Not me, but there’s a great example of this in chess.

There’s an opening called the Bongcloud. You move the pawn in front of your king out for your first move, and then for your second move you move your king up a square. It’s memed as being the strongest opening possible, but it’s actually almost the worst 2 opening moves you can possibly make. Because modern chess does have a large online component and the current best players are young and like memes, it has been played in tournaments, which means that if you play it in an up to date chess programme the programme will name it as the Bongcloud.

A lot of people seem to think that it’s called the Bongcloud because you’d have to be stoned to play it. But almost all chess openings are named after one of three things: a person, a place, or an animal. In this case, the Bongcloud is named after a person - Lenny Bongcloud.

Lenny Bongcloud is a now-inactive user of chess.com. He would always open with the moves described above. That’s because, unbeknownst to them, Lenny wasn’t playing the same game as his opponents. They were trying to checkmate him. He was trying to walk his king to the opposite side of the board as quickly as possible. If he gets checkmated, he loses. If he gets his king to the other side of the board he counts it as a victory and resigns.

So, yeah. One of the oldest known games in the world has an opening the “official” name of which comes from a jokey alias adopted by someone who was deliberately playing the game wrong.

Any game that has a fishing mechanic will be used as a fishing game.

Stellaris. I cheat and mod to put my empire in the middle of the galaxy and have extremely overpowered player-only technologies. Then I just explore the galaxy and guide the AI; usually picking a favorite and try to help them grow e.g. a peaceful uplifted species in a very hostile galaxy. I've also done this in multiplayer where I played a bit of a Game Master role. Built a quest line as part of my custom mod that had lore and let players slowly discover me and the galactic core (cut off from the hyperlane network; this was all custom scripted before mods like the birchworld existed on the workshop)

When I was a kid I would play driver 3 but I hated the driving part and would mostly walk. I also played a skateboard game and ditch the board, dress up like a spy or specops guy, and run around roleplaying various scenarios in my imagination (because I didn't have any games at the time that would let me stealth or run on rooftops, which is all I wanted)

I spend a solid amount of time in RDR2 camping. I’ll go to town, gather some supplies, and head out in a random direction with no map.

Gather food as I go, hunt for game as I find it, craft supplies, and live off the land.

You can take multiple in-game days to get places and even better is choosing a mountain or similar in the distance and making that your destination.

You still come across plenty of side missions with this approach because of how much is going on in that game, but it feels quite genuine when you do.

GTAV. I don't care for the story or the shooting aspect, I just love to drive or walk around. I can't do either irl, so I love it when games give me the option.

Going back a while - Monster Truck Madness 2 was a great game of exploration if you just drove off in a random direction rather than doing that silly racing stuff :-)

The maps were big, and there was no time limit, so you could just go and do your own thing ... a favourite made-up mini-game was sliding around a frozen lake on the winter map.

Just Cause 3

I fire it up just to drive aound / grapple-hook float for an hour or more

Quake / Quake World was really the epitome of "not how it was intended to be played". It introduced zigzag, wallhug and bunny jump through some clever exploitation of game mechanics, and completely changed its game play plus that of future fps games of the time. And people would just come up with stupid maps where you could do fps-parkour. I often did it myself for hours on end, just jumping around a map alone or with friends while chatting or listening to music.

A very short demo of how crazy it could get, speed indicator top right. 320 was the default movement speed.

In Rust you can host your own server, and if you do that on your own local network with nobody else connected, then you have a very large world, with only like a couple of things that can kill you, and you can have a very fun, laid-back, relaxing, you know, builder, simulator, survival thing.

And also Skyrim. I have been trying to complete every single side quest and every single add-on side quest that I can, while basically not advancing the game at all. My current game is easily 40 hours in, and I only recently defeated the first dragon that you can kill as part of the main quest.

Back in the early Sim days (~97?), I lived with a bunch of friends in a duplex and shared one house computer (always on, seeding, etc.) that had a perpetual session running. Any housemate at any time could pop down to check on their Sims, some more than others. Me, though? Not at all.

It took them months to talk me into it, and even then I gave in, exasperated. So, I decided to be the weird house. Started with a second floor on stilts/pillars and made the first floor a hedge garden & statuary promenade with a pool out back. At first, it was funny to see the random burglars have no idea what to do with a front door that opened directly to stairs —and that's only if they found the front door before wandering into the hedge maze. IIRC, they despawn eventually (environmental effect, not actual Sims), but I didn't expect the neighbors to wander over and into that maze...

Quite a while went by before I logged in again to check on my crime family, and it was really only inspired by a few housemates complaining the game was losing their Sims or something. When I looked in on my house, I soon found their Sims... A couple of them had yet to succumb to their neglect, but most died of starvation and/or fire inside the unintentional maze under my house.

Oops 😅🥹

I enjoyed playing Baldur's gate 3 as a rogue, playing it like a assassin's creed game. Nothing but stealth attacks and running away. Never get into a full combat if possible.

Not me but my friend. In any game that has a crafting component they will hone in, ignore the story, and just play the crafting. If it has a marketplace they will sell their creations and basically become an NPC shopkeeper for other people.

New Super Mario Bros. (For the Nintendo DS), in the multiplayer battle mode.

There is a multiplayer mode where you fight over collecting stars in 6 different maps, using the main game’s mechanics and powerups.

In one of these maps, there are bullet bill launchers. One of the powerups is a mini mushroom that makes you tiny, and when you are tiny you just harmlessly bounce of enemies when you jump on them instead of killing them. That lets you ride the bullet bill, repeatedly bouncing off it. The multiplayer maps loop, so you do this indefinitely, and every time you get back to the launcher, it will add another bullet to your train.

My brother and I would deliberately avoid collecting stars, and instead try to make the longest bullet train and try to stay in the air as long as possible.

I've never finished FF7 because there is a snowboarding mini game that gave me SSX vibes so good I put like 15 hours into it and then stopped playing FF7. No idea what happens in the story but man that Bits and Chitz style mega arcade was fun.

Picking up taxi passengers in GTA V is fun. Especially when I drive them off a cliff.

I love just driving around doing nothing in Cyberpunk 2077.

No Mans Sky exclusively in creative mode.

I don't care for getting resources or any of that. I just want to build stuff and explore. it would be 10x better if they made building regular ships as easy as the new ones and that's my only gripe, having to sit in a station to wait for a ship to show up with a part you want. It's an incredibly idiotic system for creative mode.

I was never a fan of how StarCraft 1 is supposed to be played.

It had a map editor that allowed scripting and people used it to make tons of other games inside of StarCraft like tower defense games, drawing party games like you would see decades later on mobile, and RPGs of every franchise imaginable. There's literally thousands of unique games out there on archive websites.

In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, I used a mod to allow unlimited saving. I will do the same for the second game if I ever find time to play it.

Playing the Tony hawk pro skater demo and trying to hurt ourselves as badly as possible.

I love factory games. I have over a thousand hours in Factorio.

I've almost entirely avoided trains. I just build conveyer belts everywhere. Huge long world-spanning conveyer belts. I just dont like having to think about trains, when conveyer belts are so simple to use.

I won't do the main quest in Starfield. I don't want any special powers, and those Foundation guys are lame. I'm like level 58 and I've never found an artifact. I do enjoy killing people and stealing ships tho. Miner character, exclusively Cutter, Arc Welder, and Rivet Gun.

I won't stick the chip in my head in Cyberpunk. Nope. I know its got a virus on it. Just seems like a really really bad idea. That leaves me stuck in the first part of the game, because you can't break out of it anymore since the patches. I might mod it someday. (Any mod suggestions are welcome, plz!)

Sorta along the same lines, but, I love how differently my husband and I play Rust. He's on his official server doing what the game is meant for, and I'm just on my pVE building a villa/farm.

We need the farm update on console. I need pies and chickens. With the jungle update, my Lenovo Go can no longer handle Rust at all, so I'm back on console. It's missing some of my favorite features for farm build. I want to chase a chicken for that elusive egg fresh after wipe! And the flowers! Oh...

I grew up with Zelda Ocarina of Time, so now every time I feel like playing it I use a randomiser to put all the items in random locations. It makes every playthrough more unique and interesting.

I've never completed the main quest line in any Elder Scrolls game.

The majority of my playtime in Oblivion was spent breaking into NPC houses and stealing their shit. I'd stalk targets based on who had the most valuables in their pockets when I'd see them wandering in the cities. I basically played the game as a stealing simulator, only ever completing the Thieves guild quest line and the Dark Brotherhood line when I wanted to be add some murder to my thieving.

I don't think this is uncommon with the Elder Scrolls games.

This probably isn't what you mean, but I usually only make like, 3 or 4 military units in Civ 6 and play entirely peaceful, zero war games. And yes I play on deity difficult

Yes! Action RPGs and I ignore all the RPG because, despite my thorough research, I've been bamboozled by COMBO MAD videos.

Fuck you, NieR:Automata—I'm not collecting 5 mushroom and 3 pyrite or whatever else you want me to collect. I paid for an action game and I'm getting one!

In Battlezone II single player, there is a custom map called "Moon 2000" that I love. It is a huge, open lunar crater, with a big flat ledge around the outside. It is difficult to get your recycler up onto the ledge, but I will take the time to do it. Then, I build a huge, sprawling base up in a flat corner. Absolutely surrounded with defenses. To the computer, an impenetrable fortress. To me, an experimental playground.

I have an area that I take enemy ships i have sniped the pilots out of, where I perform weapons and explosives testing. I have a whole series of nav points set up where I can go out and hunt for more enemy ships, and I can direct my tugs to come pick them up and take them back to base entirely by keyboard (they are dumb and will get stuck if you send them directly to base). It's not a matter of beating the computer. That could be done easily. It's purely the joy of collecting samples for my research. I have taken my findings, and have deployed them against my brother.

We would typically play X-Mod 3.3. That adds nuclear silos. We, as gentlemen, have an agreement not to use them. Same with APCs. However, naquada bombs were still fair game. Those have a 30 second timer, and give you a notification that shows their exact location so you do have a chance to destroy them. One thing I found that I was only able to use once, was my discovery that the X-Mod probe Droid could have its forcefield replaced with a naquada bomb. So, I made 50. Had to make 50 naquada bombs, too. It took forever. But, finally it was time to attack. The probes are so small and fast, they didn't show up on his radar until it was too late. Their small size and speed helped most slip through his defenses. Suddenly, upwards of 30 naquada bomb notifications flood his screen. I can imagine the confusion then shock he must have felt. The horror that even if he destroyed one per second, it still wouldn't be enough. One was enough to take out his recycler. The bombs went off. Almost all of them. It was a good sized base, with healthy defenses. The bombs detonated in quick succession, leveling it entirely.

That tactic was immediately outlawed. But I discovered other deadly weapon combos to unleash on him. I still have and play the same save game of my test site, decades later. For what was intended to be like, a 30 minute battle against the computer.

I make custom maps in Civilization that essentially turn it into a tower defense

Not sure if this counts, because I'm not sure if there is a wrong way to play Fallout. I am going through New Vegas again, but for the first time in years. Completely disregarding the main storyline. Just wandering the Mojave, helping people as I go. Like David Carradine in Kung Fu. Mostly trying to do things peacefully, and gain as much karma as I can. Completely opposite of how I normally play Falmouth game. I need all that karma to offset how many people I've eaten, which is tremendous. Don't die around my character if you want an open casket. I gave myself lockpick and science skills via the command line, because this playthrough is about my interest in where the storyline take me, not about grinding to be able to open a lock.

I used to just drive around in GTA: Vice City with an appropriate 80s soundtrack.

Edit: drop some recommendations if you're of a mind for "appropriate 80s soundtrack". Note: Crockett's Theme and In The Air Tonight are already locked in the playlist.

The Bongcloud chess story reminded me of the StarCraft 2 player printf. Theoretically it is intended play, but he will start every single game with a cannon rush.

A cannon rush is when you attack your enemy's base with immobile cannons that are actually meant to be used defensively. When the enemy doesn't know that they are being cannon rushed it can be devastating, especially for inexperienced players. But when you halfway know what you're doing and spot it quickly enough it is easy to defend.

But printf plays at a level where he's not likely to encounter inexperienced opponents. And anyone who has any interest in the game is very likely to know who printf is. And he never hides his identity and he always opens with a cannon rush. And he's still super successful with it.

He's played it so often with so many variations he can probably (maybe he does) teach the top players a few things about that strategy. And although it's always the same it's still interesting to watch him play.

Speaking of Hitman, my buddy said Hitman has a club level that is somewhat popular as a place to chill

In osrs there is a PvP mini game "soul wars" that I love playing absolutely incorrectly.

I follow teammates around and rapidly use kits on them to heal them, use weapon specs to stun whoever they're fighting, that kind of thing. I don't usually try to attack anyone.

While osrs does have some healing mechanics and spells, almost no one uses them, which I find really sad.

I'm fact, in soul wars they actually blocked the healing spells from working at all, a fact I learnt only after getting level 94 to cast them.

After all these years, no one had ever tried I guess, I had to have a friend edit the wiki so no one else would be surprised.

Anyway, a friend looked me up and apparently I was pretty high in the high scores for someone who doesn't kill anyone.

Back when I first played Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, I spent way too much time atop some stairs and jump-kicking an orc down, who'd ragdoll down, get up then come back up, only to get another jump kick to the face. I spent several minutes laughing

When I was ~7 years old, I had a Nascar 94 demo for PC, my main mode of play was running the wrong way and crashing as hard as I could on another car, watching all the pieces flying was fun

I also wonder whether there's a "wrong" way to play dorf fortress, since I've tried a lot of stupid shit (it's only stupid if it doesn't work, so...)

Lastly, there's Skyrim with, uh, specific mods

I doubt it. I can say I played a ridiculous amount of blitzball in final fantasy 10. Like I very well may have spent more time playing blitzball than the main game.

I just remembered another one - the original Car and Driver game (way before Need for Speed 1) was a vector 3D affair that ran at full speed on a 386.

One of the courses was the San Dimas Mall parking lot - I worked out that I could use the "drop camera" command in one spot, and then it became a radio control car simulator since the 'dropped' camera followed the car being driven :-)

When I regularly played Need for Speed: Most Wanted (the old one from the 2000s), I often intentionally didn't escape the cops at low wanted levels in order to get to higher wanted levels. Not sure this counts because it's basically what you have to do if you want to have fun in this game...

Recently I've been playing a lot of EA FC 25, and when I'm already clearly winning (or losing), I usually commit a lot of fouls just because I can.