Switching Back From MMOs to Single Player Games Will Kill Your FOMO

I’ve been covering games professionally for almost two years now, and it’s safe to say that it took a toll on my enjoyment levels from games for a good long while. When you’re writing about your favourite games, it’s both a blessing and a curse. Yes, you get to sit down and write about something you’re passionate about. However, you also come to realise that if you don’t play all the content, you’re likely to miss something.

This is a very real fear that I think a lot of people out there suffer from. In particular, I think it’s present in MMOs or games-as-a-service. Examples of these types of games would be Destiny 2, The Division 2, World of Warcraft, Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty: Warzone, and so many more. The core aspects of a game like this is a never-ending reward funnel. They all have battle passes or rewards that you’ll work for hours to earn, only to realise that there are loads more that require ten times the work further down the line.

I dedicated myself to Destiny 2 and all of its rewards at one point. This meant playing every day to unlock the best rewards on the daily quests and bounties. I also had to hit whatever weekly ones there were. On top of this, I needed to play through every mission, side mission, hidden missions, and whatever weekly event was going on at the time. When seasons got introduced, meaning that there’s not even more content in the game every few months, content you need to unlock by playing and grinding out a battle pass, I had to take a break.

It’s still possible to write about the game without chasing the rewards, so my work was fine. My mental state was not though. I struggled for weeks. I felt like I was missing out on so much. I’d log into the game occasionally to try to catch up, but always found that I was way too far behind. When Beyond Light launched, I tried to start over, but the game is just too full of stuff to do for me to enjoy myself. It felt like I was ticking a box and it got boring.

That’s when I turned my attention back to open-world games. I tried out Watch Dogs Legion, but the one that really showed me how much I’d been suckered into a replay ecosystem in Destiny 2 was Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

I went from a closed off collection of worlds with repeatable content to a massive open-world with hundreds of hours of potential in a single move. The best thing I thought as I played more of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was that none of the content was going to be repeatable.

A Change in Mental State

Suddenly, I forgot about the grind of Destiny 2. I wasn’t bothered about missing out on Hawkmoon or going back to collect all the gear for the latest Dawning or Iron Banner event. I was happy scouting Saxon England for treasures, murdering guards, and completing the plethora of side quests on offer.

I’m about 40 hours into Assassin’s Creed Valhalla now, but I’ve barely scratched the surface of its content. I’ve been too busy soaking in the atmosphere and collecting all the side activities. Even just raiding is an endless source of fun. There’s always something I can do that’s slightly different.

When a live event did come along, the Yule Festival, I found myself grinding out the content. However, there was an endpoint. Only a few items were available to buy as part of the event, and there were only two or three extra missions. I completed the missions and purchased the items, then I left the event alone. It felt great.

The thing is, I can play Assassin’s Creed Valhalla every day and feel like I’m progressing further into something that has an endpoint. With Destiny 2, I could play every day and still never feel like I’d gotten anywhere. There would always be something else for me to do, and someone else with a piece of gear or weapon that I wanted.

Inner Gaming Peace

Now I feel a sense of (I know this sounds cheesy) inner peace about playing Destiny 2. Thanks to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, I’ve been able to remind myself that there are games out there that don’t require me to commit all of my free time to them. It’s okay to put games down and come back to them. Sure, there might be time-limited events, but my life doesn’t revolve around playing them for every spare hour just so I can feel good about having a single new Scout Rifle or Helmet.

I thoroughly recommend that everyone who feels trapped by an MMO like Destiny 2 put it down and give a single-player game with an endpoint a go. It doesn’t have to be a huge open-world epic like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. It could be something simple like Cloudpunk. What’s important is that you can pick it up and put it down without feeling depressed about missing out on something because you need to sleep or have a social life.