Personally I just hop in an wing it. In the case of baldurs gate I already understood most classes and races because of DND but in general when it comes to games like that yeah I just wing it and hope for the best

For BG3, don't search something about it, just start and play. You don't need to know anything prior, however it's a role-playing game so play accordingly what kind of character you created. You can save-scumming if you want if some desicion you made leads to something bad, though they all the part of the game. Just play and experience.

For games like Overwatch, it isn't complicated at all. It just requires you to play it constantly and learn counter measures just by playing. Learning them is the fun part, overthinking about them not so much.

To be fair when I see "complex game" part, I was kinda expexting some advanced building games, something like Factorio, maybe RimWorld.

Anyway, also you don't have to like any games even if they are overwhelmingly positive titles. Just find what you like and dig in.

A lot of these games are working off of an assumed learned collective memory.

Think of movies, and their tropes. How do you understand that when a movie cuts to black for a second, and then suddenly shows a new location, that we did not just teleport? That the black cut indicates the end of a scene, and the start of a new one?

Think of how many games assume you know which button pauses, which opens the menu, which buttons move the character and which ones make you jump. Now, add another layer of controls. And another.

BG3 is also working with an assumed collective memory from DnD. Assuming you already learned about class vs race, and cantrips vs lvl spells, and turn order, etc.

It sucks when you miss large games that establish these things, but its also how art forms evolve. Games just dont yet have a way to easily re-teach them.

I recently started playing Divinity Original Sin 2, and I went through this problem as well until I changed the way I approached the game.

I just let go of trying to make the most optimized decisions and instead just make the decision I, or my character would make (if I'm role playing).

I just realized that no matter what decision I make, it will still lead me to finish the game. If I really want to, later I can go back and play it again to see more of the game. Only if I like my first play-through though.

I just wing it at first, and figure stuff out as I go, even in online stuff. BG3 in particular, by the end of chapter 2 you'll be pretty familiarized with mechanics. Inventory management is here, but worth doing sometimes. I just unload stuff from main character into someone else in the party.

Here's a fun thing you can do: just stop thinking about stats and make a character you'd like to bang, then just ooga booga it.

Baldur's Gate 3 may be very daunting at first, even with its genius tooltip system, so I just went straight into it with a Dragonborn barbarian with no real thought put into it other than "he's hot and totes my new fursona". You'd be surprised at how far you get and how much you pick up naturally over the next 80 hours of gameplay.

That being said, it's still not for everyone, as much as it tries to be, and if even Overwatch is too complex for you already, it might just be that the evolving game design in the industry is becoming more misaligned with your tastes, and that gamers are becoming more and more serious about the video games they play.

I’m curious why you think Deep Rock Galactic is complex. It’s one of the most “pick up and play” friendly games, I think, that I own.

The game does not explain any of this. I went to watch a tutorial online to try and wrap my head around all of this. The first tutorial just assumed you knew a bunch of stuff already. The second one I found was great but it was 1.5 hours long. There is no in-game tutorial I could find.

Why do you need to know? Just pick one and go with it!

Deep Rock Galactic

I haven't played much but, it's not complicated? There's a main lobby where you select a quest, then you go on it. It generally involved following a path and gathering/dropping off stuff with some fighting in between.

Overwatch

This one is just anticipating other people's movement on a map, which can be chaotic but I don't really think it's complicated? Honestly if you're having issues ~~just play Paladins instead~~ I would stick by 1 or 2 teammates and just focus on staying with them no matter what. Over time you'll learn what works and doesn't work.

Destiny

Now THIS one is complicated bullshit. lol

Use your thinkbox

BG3 is a unique example in that its built in a system many players already know and understand, AND the whole thing is so watered down that you can absolutely just wing it with a rudimentary understanding of how things function and be fine. You don't need to min/max to enjoy the game, and if it's too hard there are multiple difficulty levels. It's fine to hit explorer difficulty pick a class for RP and just enjoy the game. The "GaMeR" police aren't going to kick down your door.

The answer to the wider question is: No, I don't. I like learning systems and I've practiced learning systems very rapidly. I've been quickly learning new systems for some 20+ years, so by now, I am just good at it. I do not spend any real length of time researching how to play these games; I load in, read and absorb what's in front of me, and try thngs. Things that don't work, I throw out, and I try new things. After a few iterations of this, if I am still heavily struggling I may Google some build repository so I can glance over some ideas of what other suggest work and then incorporate those ideas into my own setup, but even then, that practice is preserved for more competitive games. Games like BG3, Deep Rock, Warframe, Darktide, Inkbound, and Cassette Beasts, just to name some I've played in the last couple months, I'll never look up how others build and play. This is in part because I don't need to, and in part because crafting my own builds and finding my own solutions is a large part of the fun for me.

I just pick a character class that looks interesting, make them look like me, and get going.

Figure it out as I play, and just have fun. I pretty much never watch videos or read anything about games unless I get really stuck, or have already finished the game and am curious about other playstyles.

Is destiny complex? When I played, it felt basically like all you do is follow the arrow and shoot everything

Wing it, discovering that I've made a massive mistake is part of the fun, I don't want to spoil any game with let's plays. I don't try to get the most optimal build I'm just looking to have fun. I use what ever gun I enjoy the most in borderlands, yeah when it starts to feel weak I swap but I'm not going to use a gun I hate because it does two more damage that one I love.

Or does each game just build on top of working knowledge of previous similar Games?

This. There is a sort of gaming DNA that you just internalize over time. I've been gaming for 30 years, I just know how that one breakable wall looks, that you need to come back to once you get bombs or whatever it is. I know the difference between a caster, a fighter and a rogue when I see them without knowing the exact details of their ability mechanics in this particular game. My intuition as to how a given ability is most likely going to work is also usually pretty close. Because they are often very similar across different games.

Also if you don't know and don't have to have the absolute optimal combination from square one, just pick what looks cool and try it. If it doesn't work out, try something else. Most games allow respecs nowadays. We learn through failure and repitition.

No need to watch tutorials on how to create a character brother. Figuring things out as you play is the fun part

Destiny, Deep Rock Galactic and Overwatch are complex?

I play Dwarf Fortress. And I got into it before the Steam version gave it a functional UI. Maybe I'm just spoiled. I've been gaming since I was 3 or 4, so like 90% of what most games require is already ingrained in me. That last 10% is the stuff unique to a particular game; and recently I'm finding these unique things to be the only things not taught in a tutorial. And that is pretty annoying that they will teach the basic controls, which even a non gamer could figure out in mere seconds, but not a mechanic unique to that specific game that no other game has done before.

Experience. I’ve been playing video games for 40 years. Many of them of any given genre tend to follow a familiar formula. While I also wing it, like others have said, it usually doesn’t take long to recognize the patterns of the formula.

I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 with Wyll as my mage, and two custom hirelings that I brought in to replace Shadowheart the cleric, and the vampire thief guy who I was really liking up until he tried to bite me. So I killed him. Also thinking about letting Gale starve to death because I'd rather sell surplus magic items. The heroic characters talked too fucking much, and I didn't appreciate all their drama. Hirelings are quiet and they kill who I want them to kill without complaing about it.

I'm playing a half-drow elemental monk who somehow learned to play the lute and lyre. He's black because I'm black, which is also why I wanted Wyll. I found a cowboy hat somewhere.

The Baldur's Gate character creator is a lot less daunting if you've played D&D before. Honestly I've seen far scarier character creation screens

BG3 is based on arguably the most user-friendly version of Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition (5e). Larian themselves also do a fantastic job at easing you into the mechanics via gameplay, so you can honestly jump in and just play something that sounds cool to you without worrying about having to min-max or optimize your character. The game lays out what you get on each level-up pretty well and it defaults you to being a single class, so you won’t have to worry about multi-classing unless you want to - and because it’s based on 5e, you can honestly get away with not optimizing your build that much, if even at all, and manage to do fine as long as your main damage (STR for melee, DEX for ranged and Finesse weapons)/casting stat (INT for Wizards, CHA for Bards/Sorcerers, and WIS for Clerics/Druids) is high.

Can’t speak on OW2, but with games like Deep Rock Galactic and Vermintide, I found it’s best to just play it and figure stuff out slowly from experience. A lot of it can sound complicated, but I found it’s easier to digest the complexity of the mechanics and systems a bit at a time as your experience with the game grows. Like with Vermintide, as an example, I recently started really diving in deep with Cleave, Stagger, and Frontline/Heavy Frontline/Tank property mechanics and numbers for melee weapons; you literally cannot see these things from the game’s UI, and starting out I had no idea these things even existed, and it only really matters once you start playing on the hardest difficulties, Legend and Cataclysm. If I had to figure out all that stuff early on, I would nope out of the game super quick lmao.

Deep Rock is good at letting you ignore what you don't care about. I've never needed a wiki for it. It's just fun and silly co op action, with massive complexity mostly about trivial things.

Isn't Baldur's Gate 3 just DnD, so thats easy as I already have that knowledge. All the others don't seem that complex.

Deep Rock is Shoot Stuff, mine, don't die

Overwatch is only complex when you get past the early learning and pissing around and start learning characters and trying to counter pick. Which you don't need to do to have fun.

Destiny I don't remember much of. I guess it had some more complex movement and stats so that one might be more complex.

Maybe you should check some lets plays instead of watching tutorials. Just an episode or two to get an idea of what the game is and whether it seems to be up your alley or not.

The lets player will probably explain some mechanics as they come up while they're playing (at least in the beginning to help new viewers unfamiliar with the game) and that should be a lot easier to digest than someone purely explaining a bunch of game mechanics in one go.

I already was a dnd fan so I understood how character creation worked but still spent a good one and a half hour in the character creator. This is something I enjoy though.

Lol, some of these replies...

I think you know what it is you enjoy, so you've just got to remember not to fall into that trap of "well, everyone says it's good, so I must try it".

The great reviews come from the people who already enjoy that kind of game. Like, reviewers on a site usually favor specific genres. If something gets a good review, you've got to put it into the context of whether or not it's something the reviewer usually plays.

You're not often going to see an RPG review by someone who mostly plays platformers.

So if an RPG is good to an RPG-enjoyer reviewer, and most of the people picking it up are already RPG fans, then good reviews are always going to be biased in favor of people who enjoy that gaming experience.

My advice?

Take a look at the tags on Steam. I know they're user-submitted and "RPG" is on like every fucking game now, but things like "turn-based", "tactical", "simulation", "crafting", and a few others I'm forgetting will most likely be the things you'll want to avoid (maybe there will be some exceptions here and there).

Also, wait a bit. No need to play games immediately. Play some stuff you enjoy for a year and then see if you still want to play it.

As for how and why people play these games... Just preference really. It comes down to the energy and time someone's willing to commit. Neither a good thing or bad thing. Some find that thrilling, others find it chore. Both perspectives are perfectly valid.

Sometimes, people just enjoy them as is without getting too deep and never bother with "the meta" or whatever. Usually one of two things happens here: either they really enjoy it because they don't have people backseat gaming them and telling them how to play and they're finding creative ways to do things, or they find it a miserable experience because it's just not fun if they don't like the core mechanics.

I personally don't have the energy for "deep complex games", despite enjoying RPGs and immersive sims. I don't ever bother with crafting or strategy games (although I did get into Civ V for a while, which was nice).

Over the years, I've learned what I like, what I don't like, and just wait things out. Game Pass and deep sales help a lot here, actually. (Also other options, but not strictly ones people necessarily approve of for various reasons.)

Sounds like you have mind goblins

You don't need to research anything to finish Bg3. You don't need to understand all the things to enjoy a game. You just put it on easy and enjoy.

But really destiny and overwatch complicated??? Those games are for children

Yeah - I just jump in and wing it.

At the risk of inviting the internet's wrath, when people talk about the difference between serious gamers and casuals, this is the sort of thing they're talking about.

"Serious" gaming involves a particular set of skills and interests, such that the person is willing and able to just jump into some complicated new game and figure it out. And it's not just that "serious" gamers can do that - the point is that they want to. They enjoy it. They enjoy being lost, then slowly putting the pieces together and figuring out how things work and getting better because they've figured it out. And they enjoy the details - learning which skills do what and which items do what, and how it all interrelates. All that stuff isn't some chore to be avoided - it's a lot of the point - a lot of the reason that they (we) play games.

You talk about your inventory filling up and then just selling everything, and I can't even imagine doing that. To me, that's not just obviously bad strategy, but entirely missing the point - like buying ingredients to make delicious food, then bringing them home and throwing them in the garbage.

I got you. Nowadays I would look at the UI of a game first before jumping in. If it looks too complicated I just pass. My job is already complicated enough, I don't need to make myself more stressed when I just want to have fun.

I like to just jump in and wing it, learn on the fly. Actually hate playing with people who expect everyone to "have done their research". Games do build on top of knowledge of previous ones, to an extent... but it's figuring out the rest what gives me a thrill.

As for complicated games, I think you forgot World of Warcraft... which I can repeat to you what I told someone who called it a game "for nerds": according to their IQ, 2% of the world population are "gifted", there are 8 billion people, WoW had slightly over 10 million players at its peak.

In an ideal world with equal opportunities for everyone, you could expect a potential audience of 160 million "nerds"... so yeah, some games are going to be more difficult that candy crush.