StaceyPowers

When you are struggling with a puzzle or some other aspect of a game, how long/hard do you work at it before you finally throw in the towel and look up the answer online? What makes you finally go “enough is enough”?

I don’t entirely hate when games use a system of auto-saves and checkpoints (preventing you from saving any time you wish), but they do annoy me in some respects. For example, it really irritates me when a game usually saves every 5-10 minutes or so, but sometimes won’t save for closer to 30 or 40 minutes, with the end result that it is way past my bedtime when I can finally quit for the night. What are your auto-save pet peeves?

That is really awful. My worst experience was playing an MMO which was freemium. Unfortunately, the things you could purchase in-game actually lent a real advantage, so similarly, unless you had loads of cash to spend on the MMO, you were left way behind. So real-life class differences determined power stratification in the game world.

What do you consider to be the greatest FPS game ever made? Why does it get your vote?

What is the worst experience you ever have had gaming with microtransactions?

I was curious if anyone here has ever made a big jump from Xbox to PS or vice versa, or from console to PC or vice versa. If so, how did it go? What made you switch? Are you happier now, or do you want to go back to what you used to use?

When you play an MMO, do you interact a lot with other players (i.e. actually chatting, roleplaying, etc.), or do you pretty much mind your own business?

Anyone here have PS VR, Oculus Rift, etc? How often do you use it? What are your favorite and least favorite games in VR?

What level of challenge do you want when you play a video game? How do you decide on the difficulty setting you’ll use? I know some people prefer their games to be virtually effortless, and others who want them to be as punishing as possible. For me, I like there to be just enough of a challenge that it pushes me to find ways to innovate my strategies or improve my aim, but not so much that it is just relentlessly hard.

Compassionate, pragmatic rule-breaker. Home Improvement. Typed this sentence.

I do that too :)

Has anyone here attended any big gaming conventions? What was it like?

Do you get into the “roleplay” aspect of single player RPGs like Skyrim, Dragon Age, etc? I see so many people on forums with elaborate character concepts, and they often make vastly different choices on their playthroughs based on how their characters would think and react. I think that is really cool, but for my part, I always find the only choices I can make in games are the ones I would actually make myself. Anything else makes me lose immersion.

I'd like to visit Costa Rica.

lol. I know there are more factors than just the exploding corpses, but perhaps not taking that perk next time will be enough ... Never again, lol.

Watch it be with PS4 only. I could so see that happening to me.

We’ve all encountered quests we’ve really hated, but in my experience, these fall into two categories. 1-Quests we hate for personal reasons (which might not matter to the average gamer). 2-Quests which are flat-out badly designed. Of course, design is a somewhat subjective issue in and of itself. So what do you think makes for a poorly designed quest? And what are some examples that stick out to you?

That would be amazing. I hope you get to do it!

I have more than enough games to catch up on to be happy with it for another 1-2 years. I'm kind of banking on PS5 being backwards compatible with all my games so I can replace it with that and not have to have two consoles sitting around in my very tiny house.

I think it's more than that though. I mean, I don't feel a lack of immersion in real life (lol), but I often feel like my actions do not matter to anyone/anything outside myself and my immediate home/family/workplace. Video games are like "significance simulators," designed to make you feel as if you can change the world--even if it is a virtual one.

Are there any quests in any games you have played which were so frustrating that you just gave up on them and flat-out refused to ever come back and finish them? On a related note, are there quests you finished but hated so much that you never replayed them again on future playthroughs?

Indeed, this is the issue. I'm on a PS3. Like, apparently picking the exploding corpses perk was a huge mistake. All those little bits to keep track of.

What countries have you visited?

Ironically, it's sometimes easier to feel like your actions matter more in a video game than in real life--pretty much what they are designed for in some respects, I think.

Do you ever find yourself surprised by how differently you process moral decisions in video games than other people? Like the other day, I finished Dragon Age: Awakening for the first time, and got curious what other players did in a situation where I thought a moral choice was easy and straightforward. I was surprised that my decision was actually the minority choice. On the other hand, there are sometimes moral decisions which I’ve struggled over in games which probably seemed clear-cut to others. Anyone else ever surprised by this sort of thing? I think it’s really cool how you can find out more about the different ways people process their decisions by examining what they do in games.