Patient Gamers

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.

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 wanted to play a Mass Effect game, but I suck at cover-shooters. So I put it on easy and ran around punching my way through the game.

I place most MMOs as Auction House PvP.

Hollow Knight and Silk Song. I put an unlimited jump mod on. There's too much back and forth from getting lost or finding hidden area and im trash at anything platforming.

From GTA, Saints Row to Cyberpunk, I just prefer to walk.

In Fallout 4, I would toggle god mod and just focus on building settlements.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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

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

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

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.

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.