I have! Around 2015 I used to come home from work shortly before my favorite meta event (Auric Basin) popped in Guild Wars 2. I had just enough time to shower and settle down on the couch and hop online before it started. I'd spend about an hour playing/doing the event.
It used to be one of the most profitable events in game and requires a good bit of collaboration between large squads. GW2 meta events like that typically tire me out, but for some reason, that specific event required just enough focus/strategy mixed with just enough MMO fun to pop all the stress from a sucky day out of my brain. Focusing and needing to try new stuff kept me thinking about non-work things, on map shenanigans kept me chipper.
It was one of the first times I genuinely started trying to learn the game better and not just cruise through it, and I still remember and use some of the tricks I learned back then.
Like I said, a lot of the comparable events leave me so exhausted that I have to take a break from the game, but that and a couple of others are just so enjoyable that they were perfect for post work de-stress.
I don't really play GW2 to de-stress anymore (the game has gotten much bigger since then. It's more of an "Oh god, I have to do all these things" game for me now, which is very sad)
But! I've found that tossing on Fire Emblem Awakening or Fates on the 3ds and playing a map or two on one of the saves where I'm doing horrible things and building bad characters with the XP maps tends to cheer me up. I'll pop a couple of battles in, check any new supports, and then I'm good to go.
The only other games I could think of would be Mass Effect 3 or maybe Dragon Age Origins, so many games exhaust me no matter how much I like them, so finding ones that actually leave me more refreshed is a rarity and a treat.
Coincidentally, listing these games has made me realize most of them are some of the only games that I like to try to play on harder difficulties, that I really go at with all I'm worth. I think the fact that they don't stress me out is probably a huge part of my being willing to try something that might make them more stressful.
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Date: 2022-06-01 01:25 am (UTC)It used to be one of the most profitable events in game and requires a good bit of collaboration between large squads. GW2 meta events like that typically tire me out, but for some reason, that specific event required just enough focus/strategy mixed with just enough MMO fun to pop all the stress from a sucky day out of my brain. Focusing and needing to try new stuff kept me thinking about non-work things, on map shenanigans kept me chipper.
It was one of the first times I genuinely started trying to learn the game better and not just cruise through it, and I still remember and use some of the tricks I learned back then.
Like I said, a lot of the comparable events leave me so exhausted that I have to take a break from the game, but that and a couple of others are just so enjoyable that they were perfect for post work de-stress.
I don't really play GW2 to de-stress anymore (the game has gotten much bigger since then. It's more of an "Oh god, I have to do all these things" game for me now, which is very sad)
But! I've found that tossing on Fire Emblem Awakening or Fates on the 3ds and playing a map or two on one of the saves where I'm doing horrible things and building bad characters with the XP maps tends to cheer me up. I'll pop a couple of battles in, check any new supports, and then I'm good to go.
The only other games I could think of would be Mass Effect 3 or maybe Dragon Age Origins, so many games exhaust me no matter how much I like them, so finding ones that actually leave me more refreshed is a rarity and a treat.
Coincidentally, listing these games has made me realize most of them are some of the only games that I like to try to play on harder difficulties, that I really go at with all I'm worth. I think the fact that they don't stress me out is probably a huge part of my being willing to try something that might make them more stressful.