I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
Dota 2. 2000 hours and I mostly played in 3k mmr games. The game was fun, especially when I had 2 more friends to play it with and we were the majority of the 5 team and could turn the game in our favor. Playing with less people was 50% of the time a miserable experience, 30% of the time neutral and 20% actually fun. The team mates were just too conflictive in most games I played and the negativity just ate me down. I also didn’t love the game as much to keep up with its constant changes. The last meta I remember was making Luna illusions to slowly chip away at towers till the game is over.
Typing this as I have a Dota stream in the background, lol. Also well over 2k hours in it. I haven’t touched anything but Turbo every since it was introduced. But at this point I play one match evey 4 months, and that’s with my SO. I don’t do more than that because either teammates are toxic/griefing, or my SO gets toxic or I get annoyed at everyone else. Back in the day it would bring the absolute worst out of me. Now even if I feel like playing a bit more, I quit as soon as the negativity starts hitting. I just go play a single player game instead. It’s rarely chill to play without a full stack.
I log in once a week to play ability draft. Nobody cares about the game in ability draft and it’s a blast.