Fenixp

Can't plan with imperfect information. Can't restart with insufficient time. I'm sure ignoring a respec option costs people with time to spare a lot less of it than restarting does people without that time. You see, time is an actual resource people have to contend with on daily basis. Imaginary points in a videogame... Well, aren't.

Aside from Ass Creed Syndicate, which is really good fun, I gave War for the Overworld another shot. It still doesn't nearly have the charm of Dungeon Master. On the other hand, developer has improved upon the game quite a bit in the updates and I'm having a decent time with it.

I actually kinda dig how Fallout (partially) got around this issue by allowing player to find ways to increase base stats - in case of strength significantly so.

An infallible developer can afford to not have a respec option in his game. In other words, if you can guarantee that I won't hit a dead end with whatever wacky build I come up with, you don't need to include a respec option in your game. However, game design that purposefully has me wasting dozens of hours of my life just so I have to repeat them is poor design. A DM will make sure that the obstacles you will face are honed to your characters - a static game won't. So yeah, just be on the safe side. Put a respec option in. People who want to ignore it will.

Or course Youtubers and jurnos are going to leech off the current 'Ubisoft is evil' fad as much as humanly possible. Fact of the matter is that you hit the level cap loong before you finish the game and you don't really have to go out of your way to do it, outside typical RPG tradition of doing side quests anyway. And yes, you did have to do side-quests in TW3 to proceed the main storyline, some of them extremely lengthy. Whether you consider that grinding or not is entirely up to you - I don't tho, I loved that stuff. Edit: Heck, I mean, the game even does the thing where you get the most XP for doing main quests, a bit less for doing side quests and doing the repetitive grindy stuff that's always been in ass creed games will net you by far the least.

Oh I think it's terrible design, but microtransactions are not at fault there. There's a reason why I called them "Pointless numbers telling players how strong everything is".

No they don't. They make you do side-quests if you want to have enough XP to progress through the main quest, but the amount of side stuff you're required to do is absolutely in line with any other RPG that has pointless numbers telling players how strong everything is, like The Witcher 3 that Ass Creed Origins and Ody take the most inspiration from. It's unfortunate that these games contain MS, but they existed since, like, Ass Creed 4, were always tucked away in a menu somewhere and there was no need to ever touch them - a feature rather obviously implemented to tick a box that management asked for. Devs seem to realize that making microtransactions mandatory would only lead to a worse game in the end, so all big budget SP titles including them (that I know of) never actually required player to use them.

I'm not entirely sure what kind of insanity possessed them to release patches that are not hotfixes this rapidly. I know Continuous Integration is da shiz today, but I'm not entirely sure it's the best idea for videogames...

Oh so they're hiring Chris "Personified Stretch Goal" Avellone?

Well Ass Creed games are very much "Do you really like the idea of exploring this particular setting? Have fun!" I'm getting good enjoyment out of Syndicate, because it doesn't take itself seriously and because I love how it portrays 19th century London, and I enjoyed Black Flag because pirates, but other than that... Eh. It's the same reason why I'll be getting Origins tho. Anyway, point is: All of them that I've played are extremely repetitive, have stories that are just kinda meh and gameplay that's also kinda meh, but give you a big world to explore and a ton of stuff to do in it. My enjoyment of them then entirely depends on whether or not I'm interested in exploring said world. It doesn't help that main characters of all AC games I've played aren't controller by player, but receive suggestions from players, like "I'd like you to murder a man" or "I'd like you to grab to a ledge" and then make uneducated guesses on what is it exactly that player meant. It's often "All right player, I'll jump from the roof and assassinate that dude who was just walking past as opposed to the guard who was right in front of me and you were pointing your camera at him" or "All right player, I'll ignore this ledge just above my head and leap to that ledge all the way over there - yes, the one right in front of that guard looking at it for some reason"

Not really news per se, but... https://youtu.be/-TpGtrhpDuI?t=622 That's what Doom 3 sounds with Eax! I never had an Eax card, now I want one! For... Well, Doom 3

Well, what's been proven in this discussion is that PS4 can render impressive graphics for tight, mostly obscured (by blur, scenery and shadows) corridors when running @ 1920 by 800 at nearly smooth 30 FPS.

That. You don't know a whole lot about TES lore, do you? Which in turn inspired Mad Max and so on and so forth. Of course there's going to be a whole lot of interesting touches and influences, any world that had a decent amount of thought put into it will. That proves neither its worth nor its originality - and claiming that Fallout's world was particularly original is misguided at least. What made Fallout shine at the time, aside from surprisingly user friendly interface (... for the time) was its writing, its characters and the array of choices and consequences it offered to the player. "Futuristic wild-west wasteland" trope was neat, especially since it's not been done that often, but certainly only a small part of what made Fallout Fallout I care to immerse myself in both generic fantasy tropes of Elder Scrolls and generic post-apo tropes of Fallout games as I very much adore both series, for at least good 20 years at this point. I won't claim they're something they're not tho.

A lot of work and thought went into Elder Scrolls world building, which doesn't mean it's not a fairly generic fantasy world at the end of the day. I'm sorry, but Fallout is very much a Mad Max with 50s coat of paint - which doesn't mean it's not carefully crafted, but it's certainly neither particularly original, nor is it what made the games what they are. My point exactly.

Well, to be honest, it's not like Fallout 1 and 2 weren't bland 50's postapocalyptic theme with Vaults. What made those games were mainly their writers and designers, and regardless who got the IP in their hands, the game just wouldn't be the same without the same team. I mean F2 already saw big changes in staff from F1 and it made all the difference in the world with the fairly radical shift in tone between the two games - to the point where I ended up linking Fallout 3 more than I did Fallout 2, but I didn't really like Fallout 2 all that much to begin with. The original is one of my top games of all time tho.

Oh no, it's fair enough. I still think just scaling encounters is a fairly lazy solution all things considered, and games in general should offer more choice in how to deal with encounters - sadly, most don't even offer the 'flee' option properly (I'm looking at you, Pillars of Eternity.)

What does 'level scaling' mean to you, tho? I mean... There's Oblivion's way of doing it (which is rubbish) and then there's Baldur's Gate of doing it where it only really makes sure the game doesn't throw a random encounter you can't win at you (in other words, it does a DM as opposed to fixing monster levels in such a way that they're all exactly as powerful as you are) - both of these are a no-no?

Well now they can say they added those on popular demand, forgetting to mention they omitted all mails with swear words in them

How do you lose interest in a game based purely on a piece of information that it utilizes level scaling? I mean, Baldur's Gate 2 used level scaling and that seems to be one of the places Kingmaker takes its inspirations from.

Yeah, Xenonauts is a delightful take on classic X-com games and gameplay.

Are the chicken at least levelled? Are chicken above your level a true challenge? Is there a chicken boss that only sports an upscaled chicken model and level described as [PlayerLevel + 2] ?

a) You can play all your games on a PC, cry me a river b) Of course there's a reason for consoles to exist, and it's the same reason why they always existed and prospered - they're easy to get working, games are easy to get running and there's very little troubleshooting required. If you're not bothered by any of these things, good, you have more stuff to play on your PC, why even break a sweat?

They just patched in a possibility to explore and scavenge orbital wreckage - I mean, if you track such wreckage through sector rumors and manage to not kill half your crew during the process. Which is a free patch with a major mechanic. That they have a whole bunch of planned.

Huh. So you're one of the mysterious people who would cheer in a crowd for a publisher announcing exclusivity which both actively hurts consumer and the title in question (except for titles developed in-house, of course)