People who play games 100% in the dark (Blind Playthrough) - how do you do it?

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Stuff like this honestly makes me think people that play way too much, or in some cases exclusively, WoW have been so thoroughly retrained how to think its broken them in some way.

Its like asking how you go into a book or movie blind. You just do because thats the normal way people experience anything. I mean shit in this case its a medium literally called "games". Not "movies", not "stories" but games. As in "a physical or mental contest or challenge which people undertake for enjoyment and pleasure". May as well watch a screensaver if you dont want that.

I hate to say it but I think you are right. I started to dislike playing non-WoW games with some of my friends because they would go into them (no matter the genre) as if they were raids, looking for guides to be most efficient etc.... but finding that out for myself is part of the fun for me. Like if we picked up say, Fallout 4 or Diablo, or Dark Souls, or whatever else ... some of my friends would already know the best guns or guilds or whatever before I even got out of the tutorial. Whats the point? You are basically just following a guide at that point.

[dlld]

If it's an rpg with builds that very easily lets you make garbage characters I look up build guides, primarily because of my experience all the way back in nwn2 where i just couldn't defeat the end boss and beyond downloading some cheat or something there was nothing I could do to finish the game. Looked up a build guide and restarted, then breezed through the entire game effortlessly. But I generally don't look up how to play the game in the more direct fashion like mechanics and stuff before actually playing it.

[Kumorii]

The fun part is figuring things out.
Sometimes though it can be too obscured or it's just something you think of etc etc that I might look up a hint to see what I overlooked.

I find most games do too much hand-holding in general...

[Hitei]

The fun part is figuring things out.
Sometimes though it can be too obscured or it's just something you think of etc etc that I might look up a hint to see what I overlooked.

I find most games do too much hand-holding in general...

This. If anything I wish games were less obvious about telling you exactly what to do.

[Kotuthan]

In my Opinion half the fun of games is discovering, exploring and finding solutions. I can understand using a guide to get past a part you been stuck on for a few hours. But for the whole game? You might aswell just watch a movie at that point.

[StillMcfuu]

OP Snip.

I'm old and I've always played that way mainly. I actually don't look up raids either, just go in and figure them out, really only take a few passes, about the same as people who looked it up, but they need to figure out timing.

But the general way it works on regular games, brute force and reaction. Its shocking how many games you can get through on just reacting (reacting isn't knowing) and brute force, I can take 100% of enemy hp to 99% of mine. Actually one of my current favorite games, Ghosts, I beat entirely on that method with a spattering of learning enemy timing and triggers (tricks like back dashing twice will initiate a quick dash attack where one back dash triggers a more deliberate dash) really manipulation of game mechanics.

[Donald Hellscream]

It takes the fun out of it for me, if I research a game down to every single detail before playing it, seldom has a game had puzzles where I couldn't figure them out eventually without resorting to written guides, sure its a lot of trial and error and me fuming at how the devs are the worst people for making such shit puzzles, until I beat them and realize it wasn't nearly as hard as I made it out to be. But it is more fun than following a guide step by step everytime something isn't apparent straight away.


As much as the assassins creed games are incredibly formulaic, the latest two entries does something incredibly well in regards to exploration and figuring stuff out yourself, if you choose to play in exploration mode, might not be able to remember the exact wording, you are only given vague directions but no markers on the minimap, usually hints like, somewhere southeast of this landmark etc. That I feel helps keep the game interesting to me, as I have to do abit of exploration in order to find and identify the targets rather than relying on a marker to show me where to go.

[PACOX]

I just want to add. My most fun raiding regardless of game has been going in blind. Of course you don't want to do that unless everyone is is doing the same or don't mind. A well designed encounter drops hints so you can figure out a fight. Looking up strats comes later when you want to become more efficient at an encounter or something just isn't clicking.

[Onikaroshi]

Some people don't like the term "blind playthrough" and I couldn't think of what other way to say it, so I apologize for misleading you. It's definitely about gameplay, not the lighting quality of the room.

Blind playthrough is a fine and proper term, who cares that some people don't like it, that's just silly.

[aceperson]

you're first example is precisely what i do if i can't figure out something after a while. like say that a level requires me to go a certain path but i don't see the path because the environment makes it look like it isn't there. otherwise, i just go in with a "have fun" mindset. if a game is stressing me out, then it's because the game isn't doing a good enough job of being fun to play. for me, i like having the challenge of content and the plot twists of stories not ruined.

i have a non-game example of something i think people do as well that may help you. looking at star wars episode 8 (the one that has the heroes doing a bunch of stuff because the acting-admiral refuses to tell them anything and the heroes end up making things a lot worse by doing their own high risk, low reward plans. when i went to see that movie in theaters, i was expecting a star wars movie. it was less of a star wars movie than a thriller with plot twists and elements from star wars. so when i look at the movie as a star wars fan, the movie is bad. but if i judge the movie aside from the star wars brand, the movie itself isn't bad. so it was a decent movie, just not a good star wars movie.

so having the right expectations and being able to see when you're expectations don't match what was advertised is a big deal. at least i think so anyways.

[schwarzkopf]

I don't get how people do it. How do they play games not knowing what the hell they're doing?

They work it out, the best time I ever had in WoW was doing Kharazan blind, no maps, no boss guides - just a bunch of us wandering around a mysterious place working out how bosses worked.

[Very Tired]

I would never spoil whatever secrets are coming up in a game. And unless you have the gaming skills of an old man, most games shouldn't be so impossibly hard you're banging your hand against the desk trying to beat them. And if they are that difficult, the problems are usually obvious and don't require looking up 3rd party sources to fix. If any game does, they were horribly designed.

[xmirrors]

I'm the opposite way. It's not fun at all if I don't get to discover things for myself...

Bloons TD 6 is a good example. I went in blind, not knowing anything about the game, and had a blast playing around with every tower, building my own strategies, etc. What fun is there to be had if you just follow a guide on the "meta"? People really need to stop min-maxing everything and just learn how to enjoy games again.

[Onikaroshi]

I'm the opposite way. It's not fun at all if I don't get to discover things for myself...

Bloons TD 6 is a good example. I went in blind, not knowing anything about the game, and had a blast playing around with every tower, building my own strategies, etc. What fun is there to be had if you just follow a guide on the "meta"? People really need to stop min-maxing everything and just learn how to enjoy games again.

Some peoples fun is doing meta.

[TheLucky1]

Problem solving is one of the biggest fun factors in games for me, I also go into the first weeks of an expansion launch with like minded friends completely blind into the mythic0 dungeons and try to figure out the class rotation changes by logical combining, it's by far the most fun time I have with a new WoW installment.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

I mean when I first started playing video games there was no way to do anything but this.
There was not hundreds of thousands of hours of footage to watch online, and the "strategy guides" were often nearly as expensive as the game itself.

The way I look at it, games are puzzles for the mind.
Much of why our brains like video games is because we used to be a species that constantly had to outsmart and outthink our surroundings.

Now our lives have evolved to be so insanely easy that anything even remotely thought provoking is a great stimuli for the mind.

My advice is to not rob yourself of this.
Playing a game like WoW where the difficulty can be extremely high is one thing. Obviously you should be preparing to give yourself the best chance to succeed.

But I think your average single player game is not ever intentionally meant to stop you from succeeding, so any small puzzles you do run across should probably at least be attempted once or twice.
If not, what's the point of playing the game? Would be more time efficient to just watch some one else play it, huh?

[Dezerte]

I'll lookup up theorycrafting posts, or use tools that allows me to plan ahead and min-max. I think I've only looked up a strategy/tactic/solution when I feel like I've wasted enough time trying to figure it out myself. This was probably more common in older games that often only had one difficulty setting and a game design that was less balanced.

Maybe it has something to do with how you value your time, or how you approach games (e.g. games should be fun, not a chore).

[GrinnersGrin]

If you have to look up a guide, you're not playing the game.
You're getting played

[Nastard]

I grew up with some cryptic-ass NES games. If I reached a hard part and the answer wasn't in Nintendo Power, I could either trial and error until I figured it out or give up and go outside. Why would I want to go outside? There's no Nintendo there. So I'd persevere until I figured it out because we didn't have a lot of money to rent a second game that week from Family Video. I was stuck with just that one, and I only checked it out because the box art was cool.

Eventually a lot of the difficult sections from games start to get familiar. If the solution isn't evident right away there's enough clues around to put together a strategy. Once you realize the answer you get the "aha!" moment and a little hit of dopamine. A lifetime of that will shape a mind into solving puzzles easier, and usually it takes longer to read a guide than to take a few seconds to assess the situation and figure it out on your own. I don't want to knock anyone who goes straight to a guide, but they'll always be that kid that solves a rubik's cube by peeling the stickers off rather than learning the logic behind it. Though if solving things isn't fun for them and they get pleasure by rushing to the end of the game as fast as possible I can't really argue with that.

[McCrazy]

When I had my first PC there wasn't a thing called 'the internet'. The games you could buy were in boxes with a handbook/manual on paper, where the player could read some necessary information on how to play the game. Sometimes there was even kind of a tutorial/walkthrough for the first part of the game, if you could not find it out yourself or if there wasn't a tutorial in the game.

Sometimes there were hints and tipps or even walkthroughs in magazines. Even patches came on CDs with the magazines. Playing was a lot more adventure then today, because the player had to find quests by him-/herself with talking to NPCS. Most older games had no map and one started to draw them on paper to find the way through dungeons or caves or what ever environment you had.

When I plan to buy a new game, I try to not get to much spoilers of the story. Sometimes I watch a video about the gameplay, to make sure I would want to play the game.

WoW made everything so easy with minimap, NPCs with !? on the head and later even showing glowing questitems on the ground. It's almost standard now in every game, because people are lazy, lack the patience and/or time to search for everything. And no developer wants feedback that the game is 'horrible/bad/broken' because people get stuck on anything, because they were not able to find the NPC or questitems or whatever clues one needs.

I think, the real adventure to play a game is to find out all these things for yourself and feel good and rewarded if you do. If a game is played with a guide/walkthrough it's like following orders/instructions.
Well, I guess everyone has different preferences, but I like to 'play' games, not being 'led through'. That's like watching a movie but having to move the actors from place to place.