The best thing I ever did for my blood pressure was stop worrying about Delves.
You are playing GoW, and GoW is playing you, and if it were any different you’d quit. GoW is dangling achievements in front of you and they are designed to be so hard, it takes a little luck to get them. GoW’s target audience responds to this like cats to catnip. If you weren’t just a little mad about it, you’d be bored and mad about that.
Being mad a lot does awful things to a person. There are games that are this challenging but also reward you for overcoming the challenge and eventually say, “You did it, you got me, I am out of challenges.” I think we’re all a little sick because we’re addicted to these games that deny us the pleasure of release by promising to extend the climax.
So I think the devs aren’t “not paying attention” so much as “pleased their system is working as designed”. The best way to get under their skin is to stop chasing their carrot, but they know you’re here because you consider that a losing move. That is why you’re always mad, you are a mouse in a cage that only unlocks if you do something against your core values.
Sometimes those core values demand maintenance. If you are really having fun, then posts like this are part of that fun because you are a person who needs questionably-attainable goals to thrive. But be very careful. For every “artist who finds comfort in their art”, there’s a Kurt Cobain or Layne Staley. Sometimes the art’s just another cog in the dependency machine, and acts as an enabler instead of therapy.
There are games where 2 hours a week eventually results in a congratulations, because you succeed at every challenge and can move on to another game. GoW is a game where spending 2 hours only reminds you what you could get if it were 4. Spending 4 hours only reminds you of what you could get if it were 8. Even if you spend 8 or more hours, you’re reminded the rewards you get will be available again next week and you need to commit to doing it every week. It is encoded in our expectations for the game that if some % of players reaches “the end of Delves”, the devs will replace it with a harder challenge that takes more effort to complete.
That’s technically an abusive relationship. No matter how much you give GoW, it will ask more. You are never going to be congratulated for solving its puzzles. If you finish the fastest, it will only respond, “It is my fault for making it so easy a player like you wasn’t challenged.” Think about Shinji Ikari. He’s the target audience for an F2P game. We weren’t quite meant to look up to him as a hero, we were meant to pity him as a victim.
