Games

Not a favourite anymore but still beats my second most played games by a factor of 4... Warframe was fun at the beginning and really clicked at about 200hrs. I left after about 2200hrs because I burned out but it still has a place in my heart.

Don't Starve Together scratches the MMO itch for me. It's not an MMO, but there are public servers where you can hop in and hang out, raid bosses and whatnot. I have ~4k hours in it now.

Monster Hunter. The first one I played, MH4U back in the 3DS days, I put 1,000 hours into. That was nearly 10 years ago, and I'm still playing the franchise to this day. Currently finally going through the Sunbreak expansion of Monster Hunter Rise on the PC, and noticing a marked improvement in my mental health over playing other games.

7 Days to Die for me

Garry's Mod. Basically a gateway drug to hobby animation, and in some ways not so far off from the modding tools used to make it.

If you've watched stuff like Heavy Is Dead, they're usually made with it. Some more professional-looking stuff is instead made in "Source Filmmaker".

There was a moment in my life when I thought that perhaps I was outgrowing games... that they were just not really designed for the entertainment of adult human beings in a way that could satisfy me. Not one of my old stand-bys could, as you said, "scratch the itch" or provide "the same enjoyment that it used to." I found myself spending more time with films and books.

Then I got into FromSoft games and indie titles, and within a year I realized games still held incredible experiences for me. I hadn't outgrown games. I had only outgrown the bland slop represented by most AAA releases, and especially by online multiplayer releases. Personally, I'd recommend giving up on looking for a new 1000+ hour obsession. Instead I'd recommend seeking a broad array of 10-100 hour loves. If you haven't already tried them, for me a love of gaming was saved primarily by: Dark Souls, FTL, Spelunky, and Hollow Knight.

I'm amazed nobody has mentioned Kerbal Space Program (first one). That and TF2 are my most played

Elite Dangerous is my go-to lately.

It's different to most other games, by not being goal-oriented except for the goals you set for yourself. No main quest line dictating progress. No mandatory tasks. No win condition. Instead, it drops you into a simulation of our entire galaxy roughly 1300 years in the future, where humanity has mastered hyperspace travel and spread through hundreds of star systems.

(To give an idea of the simulation's scope: Around 85 million systems have been recorded by players so far, and those are a vanishingly small fraction of what's out there. Space is big.)

I like that it offers a variety of activities to fit whatever mood I might be in on a given day. I can hunt pirates, mine asteroids, engage in a bit of piracy myself, find and collect bio samples, infiltrate rival settlements, venture into vast unexplored areas of space, discover Earth-like worlds that nobody has ever encountered before, defend humanity against hostile forces, photograph beautiful stellar phenomena, rescue stranded survivors, customize and finely tune my ship to perform beyond its original specs, team up with friends, pledge to a political power and expand their influence, or chill out as a space trucker and haul cargo to earn enough money for my next upgrade. It can occupy all my attention, or just be relaxing entertainment while I listen to music or an audiobook.

It's an MMO in the sense of having a large game world (galaxy) shared by all players in real time, but PvP is optional. One mode exposes you to other players, while another limits you to NPC encounters. You can switch between them at will.

One warning: A space ship has more than a few controls to learn, and they're better suited to a game controller or HOTAS than a keyboard and mouse. I use button combinations for almost everything beyond basic flight controls, since there aren't enough buttons on a controller for everything.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord with some mods took long enough to give up for me.

X4 Foundations... This sucks people life: you start a game when the sun goes to sleep, one second later the sun wake up 😅

The Binding of Isaac

No Man's Sky. A foot deep but a mile wide.

Rocket League

Kerbal Space Program

I’m well above a thousand hours on the first game. Then all my flying sims (MSFS, Xplane, DCS, Elite Dangerous) also have a very high hour count. But for civilian airliners most of those hours are spent AFK in cruise.

If you're a Destiny refugee, the most obvious answer is Warframe, which just keeps on getting better and better.

Trackmania 2020. Great example of a game that is simple in concept but super deep in skills that you can both play super casually at your own pace or super competitively. Plus there is a great community and endless content to play.

Guild Wars 2, so far I put 4,800+ hours into it.

I like that it has so many kinds of solo and group content that I can just do whatever I'm in the mood for that day.

5k hour in Tales of Maj Eyal :https://store.steampowered.com/app/259680/Tales_of_MajEyal/

Beat it in every difficulty once.. except the last one. Half of my time must be on trying that.

lol the problem with Destiny is they turned it into a treadmill and stopped putting the work into character and level design.

Elden Ring can easily take more than 100 hours on your first playthrough, and different builds significantly change your play style.

BG3, similar deal. Subsequent playthroughs are probably going to be accelerated, but there are a bunch of different story choices you can make that feel different, the party members have their own story lines, there's a special custom character called Dark Urge that's intended for a later playthrough that has it's own twist, and you can change the strategy of encounters a lot with different party constructions.

Rimworld calls itself a story generator because you're going to fail and have people die and whatever, but every game plays out different, there are a good couple scenarios, and there's expansions and mods you can add on top of that for variety.

Just the first couple that come to mind. I'm not near 1000 hours on any of them, but they all have a lot of content.

L4D2. built a new computer for that game specifically after loving L4D. super fun arcade shooter that will never be uninstalled from my computer.

Stellaris

Rimworld, and Football Manager (although they last one I played is 2020)

Team Fortress 2

FFXIV, the campaigns alone are roughly 500 hours long and then Team Fortress 2

Factorio, Warframe, Minecraft, Dota 2. However, the only two I'd still recommend are Factorio and Minecraft. Warframe's grind seems to have finally burned me out for good, Dota 2 is bad. You're not gonna have fun with Dota 2. The game concept is good, but like most competitive online games, the community fucking sucks.

In addition to Factorio and Minecraft, try Voices of the Void, The Long Drive, WEBFISHING, and Balatro.

Edit: oh yeah, and personally I have both Sims 2 and Sims 4 w/ all DLC (yeah, I toootally bought all the dlc) installed on my steam deck. Both fun games with their own ups and downs. Sims 2 is great vanilla, Sims 4 is great when heavily modded. Don't bother downloading the F2P version of Sims 4 from Origin if you're wanting to mod it with stuff like sacrificial's mods. Those'll break with every major update (and sometimes minor updates too!) and you can't pause updates anymore. So, you'll have to find alternative methods.

Dark Age of Camelot

Path of Exile.

I'd say I'm a fairly mid-tier player, get better with each season I play, the breadth of mechanics and depth of complexity is mind breaking. I've only played like 2000 hours though, I'll get it all figured out eventually... Right?

If you like space games, X3 and X4 can probably eat up lots and lots of your time. Space Engineers if you're less interested in flying, space economics and creating a supply chain (which X lets you) and more in gathering materials and creating all sorts of weird, funny or actually amazing stuff. SE is probably better played with at least 1 other person, possibly more, while X is exclusively single player.

Grand Strategy games can also obliterate your free time. Civilization 5, any Total War game. Hell, Age of Empires 2 can have very long matches if you play on huge maps and people have loved that game for over 20 years.

You can also go for Fallout 4 or Skyrim with extra content mods, like dungeons, quests or areas.

Personally, I'm just past 400h on Palworld, so I'd recommend it as well. I've played from start to "finish" some 4 times by now. Official servers will be wiped sometime in December, possibly with a new patch arriving, but you can always play single player and even invite a friend to play on your local save and never lose progress (unless the save gets corrupted, which can happen).

Minecraft. Probably have around 5000+ hours I think. Playing since I was 10(now 17). So, many wasted hours on Anarchy Servers and Ranked Bedwars.

Team Fortress 2. There's just so many different ways to play the game with its combination of classes, weapons and game modes!