Academics needs good discipline for the most part provided you have an okay head for it.
Somebody with a very high intelligence can cruise by for a while, but they will hit a wall eventually where they need to sit down and do the boring, borderline useless or administrative stuff too. Lots of people have a hard time to find the motivation to do these parts and fail.
That's just teenagers. They will arrive eventually if Lemmy gets more popular.
I very much use the subscription feed. I don't know how alone I am with this, but I usually only subscribe to channels when I want to watch almost all videos they post.
A lot of the time if a creator gets a little bit popular they start to spam videos and that's when I unsubscribe, even if I generally like their content. I feel like I cannot ever keep up anymore so I just watch their videos sporadically from then on.
"Oh hidy-ho officer, we've had a doozy of a day..." Definitely a good watch.
For ARPGs if you feel burnt by Diablo IV, I can recommend Path of Exile. Arguably the king of the genre today.
Others mentioned Grim Dawn, which has a bit slower gameplay, but a good choice nonetheless.
If you're looking for indie ARPG, then there's Chronicon. Nice little game that I really want to go back to again.
Simple, but surprisingly addictive stickman fighting game. Although the title is a lie because you probably need two fingers to play it. I think this was the first game I went for 100% achievements.
Apparently it has a sequel which I didn't know about. Both are on sale for pretty much pocket change now too.
Good for you if that's your experience, but I cannot say the same. The difference I found is with the way those people ignore arguments and insult you.
I can talk to a person from a technical field and come out of that conversation feeling like shit because I was called all kinds of stupid indirectly.
I've been slowly playing through Vampire Survivors again with each hero only using their starting weapon. I did the lightning ring dude on the first map the last time. Only barely made it to 30 minutes with that one.
Most classic RPGs have lots of combat. What I don't see mentioned here so far is Neverwinter Nights. Especially the first expansion of the second game. Mask of the Betrayer. Lots of combat of course, but a story that your behaviour has an impact on. Search for a cookie cutter build, lower the difficulty. You can skip through the combat parts quickly that way, if you don't like them.
Also mentioning Planescape Torment again because it's weird and not so combat focused.
Quake III Arena. It came out in the 20th century, which sounds crazy to me. It was about 10 years ago I last played it or its remakes.
I got into Q3 a few years late, but there was still a fairly healthy local community for it back then. Quake 4 came out and then Quake Live, which I played for a while, but the local community was missing by then.
Sure I could still play it, but I'm guessing there aren't even enough people to fill a 5v5 capture the flag match anymore, Q3 or QL... a shame. But at least I have good memories of it.
I used to enjoy arena shooters waaay back in the day when Quake III Arena and later Quake Live had a still somewhat active playerbase so I could just randomly find games. No multiplayer games caught me since then.
Nowadays it's ARPGs (mostly Path of Exile), but I enjoyed Vampire Survivors too so I might go for that genre again.
Also I randomly get cravings for playing Elder Scrolls games. I just started my Nth Oblivion playthrough and I did it with Morrowind last year. It will be Skyrim again next year I suppose...
Oh and I have a few hundred hours in Dwarf Fortress too. And of course I played it the way it was meant to be played. With ASCII graphics!
Battle for Wesnoth is a nice and polished turn based strategy game. You need to get used to the sometimes annoying rng hit system, but it can get addicting trying to protect a favourite unit, give them the last hits so they can level up and then faceroll the map.
And that's the way it should be.
Exactly true with it not being a primary hobby for most people who game.
When I was a kid gaming wasn't as widely considered as an acceptable hobby in general, but as a kid you just didn't care what grown ups thought (games make people violent anybody?). By the time I hit university, people got shamed for it by non-gamer peers and I did a computer science degree too so it wasn't a group of non-tech people who did the shaming either. By my early twenties I learned not to talk about it and just mention gaming as a hobby if asked and never elaborate further...
I don't care much as long as level scaling is gone. It's lazy and it signals that the world is built for and around you instead of you just being a part of that world.
When I'm walking around some well travelled road between cities I don't want to meet wolves first and then some damage sponge minotaur lord slaughtering every guard patrol coming through two weeks later, just because I levelled up a couple of times in between.
Might I recommend the timeless classic Heroes of Might and Magic III? Most of the campaigns are not too difficult after you get the hang of things, if I remember correctly. And you can get a hundred hours out of it even if you only play the official campaigns.
I think Diablo 1 is much more punishing than Diablo 2. I don't think you can get away with not chugging potions. The sorceror is even worse than the warrior because he's completely dependent on mana. So until you get the mana shield spell you'll need to have both mana and healing potions ready on him.
The best you can do is try to get as high resistance and armour values as you can so you don't take as much damage when you get hit.
For example, if you find a high lightning res ring that you don't have much use for now you might want to keep it and put it on when on a later level has enemies dealing lightning damage. Stuff like that.
I recommend a simple little game called Rush. I don't even know what motivated me to get it some time ago, but I had fun with it even though I wouldn't say I usually like puzzle games. It's all of 0.22€ on sale where I'm sitting, might be worth trying.
That is sort of reasonable if they are the ones who want that thing.
On the other hand I'm similarly infuriated when somebody asks me to get them a thing from one of their messy, unorganized cupboards, even if with very specific instructions. Then when I cannot find it they'll come, open the cupboard and pick the thing out right away and look at me rolling their eyes and/or sighin. And now I should feel bad? Find your own damn stuff in that mess! :D
I'd say you can try the Witcher 3. It's story rich so could be interesting to just watch too. Lots of violence though, but most of it is quite cartoonish imho so maybe it's still okay.
Yeah, I hope you keep at it. If you are fighting blood knights it shouldn't take too long now.
Either way I recommend Carbot's Diablo 1 cartoons for everyone new or old to the game: https://youtu.be/Odi5iR9Ni50?si=i7LIEWEwzN73foZN
I second XCOM, if we are talking about the original two, Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep. I heard good things about the more recent ones, but I never played those.
Okay, pretend I mentioned a female celebrity you like... are you still with us? How are you feeling?
I guess I should mention 4 more. Most of these are playable in some form or other too, but still.
I'm actually tempted to say Snatch too. City of God (Cidade de Deus 2002) is up there with it. Some time ago I probably would've said Donnie Darko, but I've grown out of it over the years.