Withywarlock

I never knew that. That's disappointing to hear, as I really liked that game. 😞

I've told this story a load of times, but not in the detail I'm about to. I had intentions to do a video on it, and perhaps some day I will. This is the most boring quest I've ever done, and I loved every second of it. Once upon a time in Azeroth, Lady ADHD had decided that I should partake in a quest. The quest was to become a Bloodsail Admiral. The requirements? To quite simply reach the reputation of Honoured with the Bloodsail Buccaneers. Reputation in World of Warcraft is as follows: Hated (-36000 reputation), Hostile, Unfriendly, Neutral (3,000 reputation), Friendly (6,000 reputation), Honoured (12,000 reputation), Revered (21,000 reputation), and finally Exalted, which you become upon finishing Revered. Typically a faction starts at Neutral; they won't engage in combat unless you attack first, provided the game even lets you attack that particular faction. The Bloodsail do not. The Bloodsail are the sworn enemies of Booty Bay, one of the Steamwheedle Cartel (neutral goblin) towns, and your quest hub. In order to begin to gain reputation with the Bloodsail, I had to reach a point where Booty Bay was "phased," which means I'm stuck in a stasis of some sort. This is during a quest when the port town is under attack, and that only I and other players on this exact quest can see the Bloodsail invaders attacking, with flaming buildings and - most importantly - weakened Booty Bay Bruisers, the previously super high level guards. Bruisers themselves don't offer reputation per kill, but the townsfolk do, and the Bloodsail invaders who get caught in my attacks don't penalise me with reputation loss. So I began with my Druid, circling the town, killing people.... for one and two reputation points at a time. I had to go from about Unfriendly, which takes 3,000 to rank up to Neutral, and then Neutral to Honoured (18,000 total points), with about 3 rep for every two NPCs killed. After spending a few full-time days doing this, I had eventually received my title, my hat, and some clothes I couldn't transmogrify such as a Bloodsail sash and shirt. Still hot-blooded after days of grinding, I decided to take this a step further for a title of even greater renown: Insane in the Membrane. Called so because it was insane to attempt it. There was no benefit to reaching Exalted with the requisite factions besides a title; no gear, no tabards, no mounts. There was virtually no roleplay value either, but that's a criticism of the game itself rather than this one achievement. The factions involved were all the Steamwheedle Cartel towns (Booty Bay, Everlook, Gadgetzan and Ratchet), the Darkmoon Faire, and Ravenholdt. The Steamwheedle Cartel was fairly straightfoward: kill Bloodsail nearby.... at the cost of reputation with them. More on that later. The Darkmoon Faire were only around during the first week of the month, and in a game where you pay a monthly subscription to play, you can imagine the issues that would've caused. We'll get around to that shortly. I decided I'd take a break from the Cartel's requirements and do Ravenholdt, so off to the Arathi Highlands I go. Ravenholdt are a faction of assassins, who have played roles involving Stormwind's SI:6 and several Rogue class questlines. I have the honour of getting my guild's Fangs of the Father, which involved that faction. Ahem. My goal is simple: gain reputation with them from Neutral to Honoured by killing members of the Syndicate, a rival faction which has mages in its ranks. Fun fact: you can level up Syndicate reputation to Honoured, but this takes considerably longer because there's only one place to farm rep, and there's nowhere near as many NPCs to harvest. Again, no rewards either except dubious bragging rights. There were some difficulties to this reputation. Arathi Highlands is significant for two reasons: It is the first zone in the Eastern Kingdoms where Horde and Alliance players are likely to meet, and will be level appropriate for the zone. It's a massive quest hub. This meant I had to contend with lower level players stealing the kills I was rightfully stealing. Having some sense of honour I would let lowbies 'tag' mobs and help them kill them so they could move on with their quests and let me carry on with my lengthy task. Eventually I finished my grim harvest, only to find in order to advance my reputation I would have to hand in some lockboxes to the faction. Another fun fact: lockboxes can't be sold on the auction house, meaning you have to go farm them or pay someone to do it. I'm poor, have several TV shows to get through, and like farming, so I set to. I sent to the Isle of Quel'Denas to slaughter what must've been thousands of Murlocs to get their lockboxes, each Murloc having a 1-in-3 chance of having a box. World of Warcraft has bag space rather than encumberance or weight. A feather takes up the same space in a bag as a falchion, or indeed, a lockbox. This meant numerous trips to the mailbox, having my Forsaken Rogue send them to my Troll Druid, who was turning them in for reputation from a town not far from the guildhall. During all this, the Darkmoon Faire was on, which was fortunate. This meant doing their daily quests each day, their profession quests for each time I was there, and handing in Darkmoon Decks. I had my Pandaren Shaman buy the reagents to craft Darkmoon Decks (tarot cards, essentially) and mail them to my Druid so they could be turned in for reputation. If I recall correctly they netted me between 5-15 reputation each. Again, I needed 42thousand reputation total before this week was over. If you'd ever seen a Pandaren's hands become ablaze, that was me putting on my sigma hustle. After all that, I had unceremoniously handed in the final deck to the applause of one person who had just logged on that morning. I was dead chuffed, and the one who had just logged on had long been Insane. And so, on the 10th of June, I came to be known as Johní the Insane.

There's a whole host of reasons why I no longer trust developers, individuals or studios. A few off the top of my head include: Godus Almighty. I could listen to Peter Molyneux talk about his plans for any game - even ones I'm not particularly interested in - all day, be it in an interview or an audiobook. None of his ideas are particularly bad, but their execution and the followup to that execution is what offends his fans, now-former fans, and people who just want to be angry. Mighty Number Two. This is because he's not the one executing them; there's other factors involved such as people, budget, time, technical considerations, and other things I won't pretend to know about. And the more people there are involved, the less likely his artistic vision is going to be as he had intended, because the late Lionhead Studios didn't think to employ telepaths. But because Molyneux doesn't have the ability to do all of the things to make Fable on his own, he had to settle for his artistic vision actually being out there, and not in some sort of postmortem blog post. Even if it is stuck in Early Access for money, with someone doing weekly updates on the fact nothing's been updated in years. Puke-a-Laylee. There's also the fact that Peter Molyneux hasn't inappropriately touched or harrassed his colleagues (that we know of.) I use Molyneux here as an example because he's a man whose ideas I respect, but whose execution of them and treatment of customers to be abhorrent. The Molydeux parody character remains amusing because of this. With other companies and individuals I assume distrust, but I can still hold them to different ends of the spectrum: I can trust Blizzard Entertainment to make increasingly maddening decisions, and I can trust Obsidian to make a decent game at worst.

This goes for as-a-service games moreso than open world ones (not that there's a great deal of difference today), but as others have said, play until you decide you don't want to. It's one of the chief merits and especially failings of such design, and is totally unavoidable: eventually players will either see everything and stop playing, or not see everything and stop playing. Neither provides a whole lot of satisfaction because they're not designed to. Finishing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion quest 'An Unexpected Voyage' isn't a satisfying conclusion to that game if it's the very last quest to be done except from a completionist point of view, which I don't think really holds much weight. At the same time, trying in vain to complete all of what Fallout 4's bastardisation of 'emergent gameplay' isn't particularly satisfying either. This is partly why I'm more for hub-based and linear games over open world ones, and even then, there's still valid arguments to be made about those. I just find that most games are too long anyway, and open world games can be lumped in with those as much as others that are in desperate need of an editor. So Sony, if you'd like to hire me to save you some money and development time, you can contact me on...

TotalBiscuit was a vocal critic of there being no FOV sliders in games, one example being with The Darkness 2. Before where that link begins, he does give an explanation as to his view point, but I linked at such a point where there is a benefit to a greater FOV using an external, unsupported programme.

You'll hear mixed things about it from people in all circles, but I for one absolutely loved it. I describe it as "the survival horror game for people who don't like survival horror." It's softcore horror, I guess!

See, it doesn't make me sick either, but I've heard it does other. A reverse 'we in the Royal sense,' I guess! But as @m76 says, I can't stand it. It feels off at best, and causes me eye strain at worst. Interesting that you're the opposite in regards to motion sickness though! 🤔

To quote the Travelling Wilbury's 'Tweeter and the Monkeyman,' "in Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught." In other words, any behaviours that go unpunished. It's something that can't really be helped because developers and publishers can't hire enough eyes and ears to go through all the reports of bots, scams, and God only knows what coming their way. So when people feel powerless to cheaters they think they might as well join them, and that complacency from developers breeds problems further, spreading into other games. That said, it can go too far. Blizzard Entertainment, in a bid to stop people getting upset, banned the term 'GG' in Overwatch. This had created a lot more friction between players because they feel that's too draconic, and will either take their custom elsewhere, or their ire elsewhere (such as forums). Toxic positivity is still toxic, after all. See when Final Fantasy XIV had its surge of players when Asmongold went there to play.

Neither mode is superior if I'm not in the mood to play the game. And what is the extent of first and third person? Is it a choose-your-own-adventure book like Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy Classics, an isometric perspective like Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Roleplaying Game, an over-the-shoulder perspective like Gears of War? Perhaps I might want to play a first person game, but if the field of view (FOV) is too narrow I might end up having motion sickness or other forms of discomfort. I realise my answer may come off as aggressive, that's not my intention, it's just that I find the subject too broad to choose. They both have their merits and faults, and combined with other things one may find less immersive (flight, UI, language, subtitles, audio quality, graphical fidelity, etc.), they may be either outstanding or obfuscated by the other merits and flaws of the game.

My bias toward hub-based games over open world has been made obvious here time and again, so I can add very little to this conversation by saying that I think BioShock is far better a game as it is now. Open world games, by their very nature, make it much harder to maintain a consistently paced story. I believe the mechanics of splicing and the gunplay could very well suit an open world game, but mechanics are only a portion of what BioShock is. The only compromise I'd accept is if the first game's formula remained, except with more flexibility in where you go and when. This would have to sacrifice some story beats because you're doing things 'out of order' so to speak, which may work in the game's favour if there's a mystery to unravel. But then we know what the mystery of BioShock is, so we'd need another [x]Shock game.

I concur that Dragon Age: Origins is rather liberal with its difficulty. It's part of the reason why I don't like non-d20 based RPGs such as Neverwinter Nights or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which use visible and easily calculable maths. At least when you die to a bear at level one in Baldur's Gate, it's because you can see it did did three attacks between 1-8 damage in the combat log, which is enough to take out anyone who isn't a Barbarian or a Fighter in a single, lucky blow. Dark Souls isn't so much difficult as it is punishing when you mess up. This doesn't mean it's easy, it still takes practice and attunement to the movement and tells of your enemies. It only becomes 'easy' in a sense when you've mastered the backstab, and/or have a player/NPC doing all the work in boss fights... provided they survive. The hardest thing about it was adjusting to the idea that you will die, and it's totally expected. I was way too used to the idea that dying meant you were bad at a game, and while there is some merit to that idea, nobody's ever played Dark Souls with dying in obvious or silly ways on their first try.

Very rarely do I feel the story is about me per se. The writers don't know me, and I don't know them, so they can only write about what they know as they should. Or in the case of Lovecraft, what we don't know, which was far more interesting than writing about me. Games can certainly influence my way of thinking, it's my most commonly consumed source of media and entertainment, but I don't believe for a second a game was made with me in mind. I completely misread the OP the first time, and I think even with extensive rewrites of this post I still don't think I've answered the question adequately. Awful sorry for wasting everyone's time.

To answer the title, it was a controversy. Steam wasn't always as popular as it is today. Back when it was first launched people really didn't like that Half-Life 2 among other Valve games were going to be Steam-exclusive, and that there wasn't going to be a disc in their cases but a paper code. What Epic is going through with their hate has been going on with Valve, and in response to that Steam improved. It became something people wanted to use, and I think it fair to say that it's done a lot in bringing the pockets of a massive audience together under one platform. Both Steam and its users have had their growing pains, and now Epic is going through the same, albeit in a time when past mistakes ought to have been avoided. Except with Steam, there's no monetary incentive for a developer or publisher to lock access off to other platforms. GOG are (or used to be) highly selective of what games came to their platform and the amount of legwork they can do fixing older ones up for modern systems, so if it's Steam exclusive it's probably because the second best PC service has rejected it or deems it too much legwork to maintain. This then becomes a question to developers and publishers: "where do I buy the DRM-free version of your game?" Honestly, I believe there to be some hypocrisy but for many users it can be forgiven because they don't remember or even know the time of strife Steam and its users went through. It's a toughie. 🤔

I was going to say "more than they currently offer," but then I think about how many followers in the latest World of Warcraft expansions, beginning with Warlords of Draenor, go off to have more fun than I do whilst I'm sitting in a base waiting on their return so I can progress the endgame. Honestly though, I love having companions on the proviso they can't be killed permanently, or they require me to carry their corpse and gear to a temple so they can have a Raise Dead spell cast upon them. This is why I save scum (much to my chargrin I've only just noticed that I may have to reload a save because my Cleric - the party's healer - has died) in Baldur's Gate II, and why I'm looking at companion mods for TESIV: Oblivion that will deem them essential - and thus unkillable - NPCs.

I'm afraid I've not the foggiest. I would like to say all of Thedas, but I don't know what the policy is on Paladin/Mage Chapters outside of Ferelden. Keeping in mind, per a link in another thread about DA, there was no intention to make any more games with this property so the developers may not have thought to apply it to anywhere else. 😞

As I've said in other threads, I think that when Dragon Age does lore, it does it rather well. It's why I'm so eager to play the tabletop RPG version, because it's the narrator who makes the story out of the lore within the book, and other sources. I could very easily make my own stories which fit the lore of Origins! Likewise, I frequently criticise Pillars of Eternity for having more lore than workable story, but give me that in tabletop format and I can make something salvagable out of it. It'd be hard not to! I'll say The Elder Scrolls. A boring answer I realise, and I can't follow much of it, least of all Michael Kirkbride's contributions such as that CHIM business, but I can appreciate how good it must be to have expanded as far as it has without much complaint. What I also find interesting, which I appreciate is meta, is how Kirkbride has created a graphic novel script called C0DA which has created much debate about whether or not the lore should be open-source or not. So strange is Elder Scrolls lore, that Kirkbride's penning of it has become a more and more absurd story; it started out with cigarettes and alcohol, and then as time went on all manner of drugs entered the retelling of the story. Again, it speaks volumes to Morrowind's tone if you find that story as believable as I do. As always I've answered a similar but not your question, which is "whose lore is written in the most interesting way/ by the most interesting people," but I don't divorce the art from the artist. I also believe that if anyone were to go to any further extent than Kirkbride they'd be a "tryhard" to my eyes.

With the caveat that Alistair was alive by the end of all this. I don't exactly recall how happy he was with taking the throne or executing Loghain shortly before/after doing so. But yes, that's the reason why I'm so vehemently against the later games, and to an extent the expansion. Apparently Templars didn't get the word they were no longer to hunt down mages, least of all one that was now in the custody of a (now living) Grey Warden.

~~SPOILERS FOR DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS BEGINNING IMMEDIATELY~~ Toward the end of Dragon Age: Origins, you come to the realisation that the only way to defeat the Archdemon is for a Grey Warden to slay it and die in the process. This is another reason why their recruitment is so secretive and selective. Had Duncan not died this information would've been clear sooner, but due to the tumultuous events of the game, it's not until you meet with a Grey Warden much later where you have to decide if either you, Alistair, or if Loghain lives through the Grey Warden ritual you can choose to put him through, sacrifices themself to fight the Archdemon. The game pushes Alistair sacrificing themself, and presumably Loghain for martyrdom, so your character can live on, but I felt it appropriate I give myself in sacrifice so Alistair can rule as is his duty. Roleplay aside, my character - a Mage of the Tower - had given their life, and in doing so, had given the Mages of the Tower full autonomy. No more Paladin influence, thus ending the tensions that somehow occur in Dragon Age: Inquisition less than a decade after the events of Origins. And I thought the peace between the Great and Second World Wars was shortlived. This is also ignoring how the expansion Awakening does things. Several events are retconned (such as, err, my character's death), which should've been a harbinger of how BioWare are going to handle RPG continuity going forward. I've linked this a few times in the past but here's my write-up of the expansion, detailing some other issues I had. ~~END OF SPOILERS FOR DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS~~

Your framing makes a lot of sense, no worries there, and in that regard it may make the games a lot more tolerable. Like I say, I'm really annoyed that the ending I've got - which is one of the most satisfactory conclusions I've had for a game - somehow allows Inquisition to exist. I think this is just one of those things where, because I'm autistic, I'm going to be incapable of budging on I'm afraid.

Action adventure can mean just about anything these days. I've no idea what the difference is between roguelite and roguelike, and I've seen too many variations to trust just about anyone on this. Roleplaying game. If I had a penny for every time I heard "it's a game where you play a role," I'd have exactly 74p. Massively Multiplayer [x]. I don't know what the criteria for 'massive' is anymore, and MMO-Lite seems to be something of a contradiction in terms. Those're just a few off the top of my head. As for what I'd pick, that's the difficult part. And how do you make it so catchy that people will instinctively use that instead? I'm afraid I can't help you there.

Much as I like Dragon Age, the fact that it's a series is my problem with it. Ignoring that I found the following games mediocre at the best of times (sans the tabletop RPG, which I've heard good things of) it wasn't supposed to be a series and that the first game ended conclusively enough. And I concur with your reasonings, @StaceyPowers, that Mass Effect works better as a series, even if I feel the later two games of the core games could be chopped, changed and merged. Origins accomplishes everything it needed to do from beginning to end. So, Mass Effect, if for unsavoury reasons.

To say I don't know much about it, the Chantry was the first video game that really got me thinking about organised religion in RPGs. I'm certainly impressed by the amount of scripture they have and what their ideas are, but I don't know all that much about them. It's going to be difficult to do so now I'm embittered by how the later games treat the ending I achieved in Origins. I'll follow this thread for yours and others' insights on this subject!

Before I give my opinion, here's a link to the quest and a brief rundown of what it entails: Work your way through various referrals: from Raminus Polus, to Count Janus Hassildor of Skingrad to Melisande in Drakelowe. Retrieve five empty Grand Soul Gems to get Melisande to help you. Collect bloodgrass, nightshade, garlic, blood of an argonian and the ashes of a powerful vampire for the potion. Retrieve the potion, and take it back to Janus Hassildor for a reward. I'll freely admit I'm bias toward vampires in this series because the fantasy behind them is magnificant. Thematically, vampires are the most dreadful creature a typical character in The Elder Scrolls will come across, save of course for if they're around during the appearance of daedra or dragons. If non-players are afflicted they probably won't be in much position to look it up without arousing great suspicion. They won't even know what it is until their hunger gets the best of them, and there's no way they can return to town and get help after committing such a crime. I think at that point many that don't die would be enbittered by their (self-)exile and would rather use their newfound power to forge their own path. So mechanically, I think this reflects the theme. You are given a chance, if reluctantly, by people who can save you. And it's no wonder you don't hear how often people get cured with how long and dangerous the undertaking is. That said, as others rightly point out, the mechanics to being a vampire are not the same as the theme. You're not the Master Vampire from 'Salem's Lot, and even the ease of attaining the Vampire Lord form in Skyrim cheapens the experience of being one. I've mixed feelings on it. I'm glad the option is there, but I would rather only have the option after I've fully committed to it and, upon meeting other vampires who may be friendly, would I come across some who might work to find a cure. They can't all be evil... right? Better yet, use the Font of Renewal in the Vile Lair DLC.

On the contrary, I make a point of looking stuff up on wikis to see which choice I'd prefer to make. It spoils things, absolutely, but I'd rather know I've made the right choice than one I've come to regret. Too many resolutions and endings have soured my ability to make choices without save-scumming if I find an outcome disagreeable. To say I love roleplaying games, I am a shocking roleplayer, and where possible I leave nothing to chance.

Echoing others' sentiments, 'the worst thing about metal is metalheads.' It's the people, not the systems, because there are measurable instances where one console has more of a certain thing than the other. Granted, a lot of these fanatics don't know what these things are (teraflops being the latest watch-word to my ken), but what matters most is what games there are and how well they run when they come out. Besides tech enthusiasts who enjoy reading on innovations and the inner workings, I don't believe these systems deserve as much praise for achieving 4K 60FPS and so fourth, so much as the studios who can make good games using such hardware. People are quick to forget, or simply don't know, how Crash Bandicoot came about from 'hacking' the Playstation 1, for instance. I'm sure those more versed in their Nintendo lore could go on about the Nintendo 64's hardware and accomodations made for some first party games.