unpopular gaming opinions - here's mine, share yours

[Mamoulian War]

The best thing on Classic was Dungeon Design, just compare BRD or Dire Maul to anything inHellfire Peninsula or Achenai Crypts or how it is called... a lot of newer dungeons were while I still played were far far away from what i would say quality design.

[Skazz]

I hated, loved, and loved to hate vanilla WoW when it came out. Despite some nice memories, I still can't tell if the experience was more about the fun or the frustration. Ultimately, I was glad to see it gone.

No game should feel like a second job, no matter how "rewarding" its content may be.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Skazz

[bugarup]

Ooooh, am I late to the party?! Aaanyways, here's my contribution:

1. High fantasy setting is dull, boring, derivative and if you played one game, you played them all;

2. Baldur's Gate sucks twice, once as a boring high fantasy genre representative and second time as just being boring by its own merits;

3. Mass Effect 2 is just overly melodramatic soap opera with guns;

4. Undertale has obnoxious writing, piss-ugly art, annoying music and characters so disgusting I'd squash them all like pests they are if I only bothered to git gud at that ghastly "combat". 

How am I doing?

 

[majestic]

7 hours ago, Malcador said:

Yep, was fun to troll Classic people pretending the game required anything more than time and endurance rather than any skill.  I miss vanilla for the way the world was, but that can never be done by an expansion due to the fact it would be an expansion.   I never really raided that much, so class balance and stuff I am not aware of.  Not trying to say WoTLK was bad or anything, I liked TBC better by not by much.

I like to gripe about balance in Cataclysm because that was the only point in my entire MMORPG gaming carreer where I got benched in spite of being the best healer in the guild because my main's class was so fundamentally broken that it was pointless to bring any of the three possible specs to the raid. Sure, I could have done what everyone else did, switch mains, but I didn't want to. So I quit. I get too attached to my characters to be all professional and simply switch them.

Interestingly enough Cata was also the high point of my raiding in WoW. I raided with a bunch of casuals in WotLK and we couldn't get Ulduar clear and it took weeks (and the 30% buff) to down the Lich King in the end. In Cataclysm, after switching guilds, we were the first guild on the server to have the achievement drake for the launch raids, although that was mostly also because nobody else bothered to do Ascendant Council on heroic before overgearing it. That was one bitch of a fight.

Much of Cata was like that though. Probably in response to all the vocal people who said WotLK was too easy (and I'd bet that these guys never saw Mimiron, let alone his hard mode). So Blizzard came up with encounters like Ragnaros and Sinestra. Eh, and Spine of Deathwing. Geez. Not to mention the hilarity with the dungeon finder groups before the first wave of nerfs.

[the_dog_days]

21 hours ago, bugarup said:

3. Mass Effect 2 is just overly melodramatic soap opera with guns;

I concur.

[mkreku]

• Party based RPG's are only fun for people who like to play with dolls
• Isometric was a necessity of the time and is completely obsolete nowadays
• Bioware had writing that worked on nerds the same way Twilight worked on young girls: it was still ****
• Turn based games were made for people who can't think fast, and call it "strategic" to feel clever

Fight me

[Skarpen]

29 minutes ago, mkreku said:

• Party based RPG's are only fun for people who like to play with dolls
• Isometric was a necessity of the time and is completely obsolete nowadays
• Bioware had writing that worked on nerds the same way Twilight worked on young girls: it was still ****
• Turn based games were made for people who can't think fast, and call it "strategic" to feel clever

Fight me

Roll initiative to check who has first turn.

[Skazz]

37 minutes ago, mkreku said:

• Bioware had writing that worked on nerds the same way Twilight worked on young girls: it was still ****

Now this is a genuinely interesting thought. Honestly, I've never approached it this way.

Care to elaborate?

[Malcador]

4 hours ago, mkreku said:

Turn based games were made for people who can't think fast, and call it "strategic" to feel clever

Or it is for styles of games that suit it, like 4X games or wargames (well, if people still make those).   Situations where it's not due to you not being a l337 m3nt4t rather than just far too much stuff going on, so if it's real time you'll slow the pace down so much that it might as well be turn based.

 

On 2/25/2020 at 11:20 AM, Mamoulian War said:

The best thing on Classic was Dungeon Design, just compare BRD or Dire Maul to anything inHellfire Peninsula or Achenai Crypts or how it is called... a lot of newer dungeons were while I still played were far far away from what i would say quality design.

BRD is the most boring slog they ever made, fitting the most boring slog of a raid is in there too   The more recent dungeons are a lot better than old ones I find, fights actually have some sort of mechanics now (that the player base still outsources thinking to mods to deal with)

Edited February 28, 2020 by Malcador

[Melusina]

I like new BG3.

I like DOS2 DE

I like art direction of Original Sin games

[bringingyouthefuture]

I am looking forward to Dragon Age 4 as much as I am BG3

[213374U]

3 hours ago, Malcador said:

Or it is for styles of games that suit it, like 4X games or wargames (well, if people still make those).   Situations where it's not due to you not being a l337 m3nt4t rather than just far too much stuff going on, so if it's real time you'll slow the pace down so much that it might as well be turn based.

Yeah. Different kinds of games. War in the East in real time? Get outta here. On the other hand, Hearts of Iron is real time, even if the pace can be so slow as to make the distinction merely technical. Spellforce is a tactics game in real time and BATTLETECH is a tactics game that is turn-based -- but I failed far more often in the latter.

I also reached my highest APM playing a dps in SWTOR, not in strategy games. And improving my max APM it didn't make me better at Wargame: AirLand Battle, sadly. ****ing ATGMs, man.

[Zoraptor]

7 hours ago, Skazz said:

Now this is a genuinely interesting thought. Honestly, I've never approached it this way.

Care to elaborate?

Back when the Bioware forums existed it would be very, very easy to point to equivalences to Twilight class fandom especially in the Mass Effect fandom (eg Talimancers and the infamous sweat analysis). Later Bioware games' NPCs were almost entirely service for various subgroups of obsessed fans so much so that I'm not at all sure it would count as an unpopular opinion.

[Skazz]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Back when the Bioware forums existed it would be very, very easy to point to equivalences to Twilight class fandom especially in the Mass Effect fandom (eg Talimancers and the infamous sweat analysis). Later Bioware games' NPCs were almost entirely service for various subgroups of obsessed fans so much so that I'm not at all sure it would count as an unpopular opinion.

Does this apply to all Bioware releases, though? What about KoTOR, Baldur's Gate 1/2, or even Jade Empire? I know Dragon Age is divisive for people (I liked the entire series), but surely Origins isn't "nerd porn"?

I was under the impression that the crazy train in the fanbase only gained momentum somewhere after Mass Effect 2.

Edited February 28, 2020 by Skazz

[Hurlshort]

Not gaming opinion but:

Twilight isn't ****. It's just not written for you. Being able to find a market and tap into it is extremely difficult and takes more skill than the vast majority of people possess. 

You can say the same thing about the Bioware RPG's. Heck, look how difficult it has been for them to maintain that edge. 

[Mamoulian War]

Well, maybe it is difficult to maintain said edge, because people get tired of experiencing the same **** over and over?  

[Mamoulian War]

7 hours ago, Malcador said:

 

BRD is the most boring slog they ever made, fitting the most boring slog of a raid is in there too   The more recent dungeons are a lot better than old ones I find, fights actually have some sort of mechanics now (that the player base still outsources thinking to mods to deal with)

Well, I was talking more about dungeon building design, and less about dungeon encounter design. Of course Kargath of Shattered Halls was better encounter than most of the BRD bosses, but the footprint/ground plan (dunno which word is the correct one) of the SH looks like it was made by my 4 year old niece

[kanisatha]

8 hours ago, bringingyouthefuture said:

I am looking forward to Dragon Age 4 as much as I am BG3

I am looking forward to Dragon Age 4 but not BG3.

[Zoraptor]

3 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

Twilight isn't ****.

I'd disagree, but it doesn't really matter if it is or isn't anyway. Obviously a lot of people enjoy it, and if they enjoy it that's fine with me whatever I think of its quality.

But even though it wasn't me making the original comparison I'd say that a comparison of obsessive Twilight fans to obsessive Bioware fans is certainly a comparison that has merit, because a lot of those fans get the same type of enjoyment out of both.

4 hours ago, Skazz said:

Does this apply to all Bioware releases, though? What about KoTOR, Baldur's Gate 1/2, or even Jade Empire? I know Dragon Age is divisive for people (I liked the entire series), but surely Origins isn't "nerd porn"?

I was under the impression that the crazy train in the fanbase only gained momentum somewhere after Mass Effect 2.

There was a fair bit of crazy around before ME2, though that is definitely the high water mark and the time at which it became the (stereotypical) Bioware fan's distinctive trait. It's very much a result of Bioware's development system of NPCs up to ME2 which culminated in a game which was, essentially, NPC recruitment and loyalty missions stitched together by a haphazard main plot which ended up with you fighting a ludicrous Terminator Reaper hybrid made of soylent greened people.

There wasn't much crazy at all for BG1 because the NPCs were very basic cyphers with a dozen lines each, a bit for BG2 as the NPCs developed more and so on as the system progressed and especially as the idea of romances progressed. They're not so much nerd porn as variable quality relationship simulator porn. Bioware definitely played for this, indeed they actively developed character archetypes that were the same through multiple games because  of it- the Anomen (Carth/ Sky/ notAshley) archetype of whiny damaged love interest, the Korgan (Canderous/ Black Whirlwind/ Wrex) amoral mercenary, the vulnerable love interest, the tough love interest etc etc.

I liked DAO a lot, but there was definitely some obsessive behaviour around Morrigan/ Leliana/ Alastair even though they'd toned down the biostereotypes a bit. OTOH, Inquisition and Andromeda both came across as if they'd written their characters based on a list of traits written on a whiteboard that they thought would appeal to different subsets of fans instead of writing them as 'real' people.

[the_dog_days]

14 hours ago, mkreku said:

Party based RPG's are only fun for people who like to play with dolls

Please. I play with spreadsheets.

[Jozape]

On 2/28/2020 at 2:10 PM, Zoraptor said:

Back when the Bioware forums existed it would be very, very easy to point to equivalences to Twilight class fandom especially in the Mass Effect fandom (eg Talimancers and the infamous sweat analysis). Later Bioware games' NPCs were almost entirely service for various subgroups of obsessed fans so much so that I'm not at all sure it would count as an unpopular opinion.

Oh god, I forgot about the gigantic Tali threads. Those were really disturbing. Usually it was a tiny subset of the forum posting but they were EXTREMELY active. I think the other romantic interests had those embarassing threads too but not as extreme.

[ComradeYellow]

There was something always not right about Bethesda and Bioware fans and games, I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there's also something not right about reactionary "OLD SKOOL ROCK SOLID HARDCORE!1" gamers as well so I'm hoping this new "3rd" way will continue to gain traction.

[Haljamar]

7 hours ago, ComradeMaster said:

There was something always not right about Bethesda and Bioware fans and games, I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there's also something not right about reactionary "OLD SKOOL ROCK SOLID HARDCORE!1" gamers as well so I'm hoping this new "3rd" way will continue to gain traction.

Bethesda lost me with their dumbed down spellcrafting, weak story, nerfed magic system, and the same old repetitive dungeons in Skyrim. Bioware lost me when they went full SJW, and released microtransaction filled crash happy games.

[Skazz]

I want THPS games to come back.

EDIT: On a somewhat-related note, I want to be 25 again.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Skazz

[ShadySands]

On 2/8/2020 at 9:17 AM, Skarpen said:

1) Real time with pause is a crap combat system in RPG and there is not one game where this system is any good.

2) Unique companions are better than a companions that are possible to be rolled as main character.

3) RPG's with a set protagonist are better than the ones that let you create one from scratch.

2 outta 3 ain't bad!