Am I weird for not having a backlog? I have games I haven’t played much of, usually because it didn’t click with me, but can’t thing any that I have never played.
I have almost 1000 games. There are certainly genres I own but don’t want to even install. The games that I haven’t played are those I don’t want to play but somehow ended up owning. Probably through bundle deals.
Dungeons and Dragons 5e is less fun than 3.5e IMO.
There was more of a sense of character progression, and ability differentiation in 3.5e.
5e achieves balance by flattening the power curve.
For example, the attack bonus for a level 20 Fighter in 5e is just 4 points higher than it was at level 1 - same as a 5e Wizard. Both get +2 at lvl 1 and +6 at lvl 20
In 3.5e, a level 20 fighter’s attack bonus is 19 points higher than it was at level 1 (+1 to +20), but a wizard only gains half that much fighting prowess as they level up (+0 to +10).
All 5e characters are pretty much the same statistically & mechanically. Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
I haven’t played any 3.5e proper, but I understand Pillars of Eternity 1 is largely based on it, and I’ve played a handful of the 2e games. I dig a lot of the changes in 5e. I wouldn’t say the power is so flat that the differentiation only comes down to role play; I’d say a lot of it comes from the apples and oranges comparisons between classes, like things beyond to-hit roles. Your fighter has no AoE attacks like the wizard has but has Second Wind and Action Surge, for instance. The advantage to flattening the differences a bit more is that your character’s role is less preordained (“you are playing class X, so you must be responsible for Y”) and that you are less hamstrung by the absence of one particular role, which scales better to small parties.
4e did some really cool stuff while also going a bit off the rails for me. I think overall I like 5E more, but we played a ton of 4e and I’ll always remember it fondly. I was really into the more defined roles, and how classes were a bit more self contained so they could just keep making more and more niche ones
Heartbreaking that they decided static item attack rolls and DCs was a good idea. It’s my biggest gripe with the system. Some items, like the Holy Avenger, subvert this and are pretty good, but most items suuuuuck the instant you outlevel them. Like, Sparkblade is cool, who doesn’t like chain swordbeams? Anyone over level 4, aparrently, because every creature you come across has learned to dodge lightning from that sword in particular
I feel the 5e rules are poorly organized, too. Lots of interdependent rules scattered far from each other in the books, and sometimes buried in the middle of seemingly unrelated sections, so unless you’ve memorized multiple chapters, understanding how to resolve common situations sometimes requires stopping the game for 15-30 minutes while someone digs through the books to find all the relevant factors. Even when you do find the relevant info, it’s often in ambiguous language describing what could have been made perfectly clear with a few keywords. The books are pretty, and the text might be nice to read for entertainment, but they’re pretty bad the the job of being game manuals.
Does 3.5e use the d20 system? Does it have the advantage/disadvantage mechanic? I like those aspects of 5e; they’re simple and they help keep games moving along.
Maybe I should give it a try. Or perhaps 4e, which I have read does a better job of clearly defining its gameplay mechanics.
3.5 does use d20, but lacks advantage/disadvantage in favor of doing a lot more math every moment of every round of combat. This is the biggest appeal of 5e, it’s approachable and keeps the games moving.
I wouldn’t recommend 4e, it strongly suffers from the aforementioned “everyone can do everything and feels samey” much more than 5e.
Pathfinder 1e is basically just dnd 3.5, and as others have mentioned, PF2e is more of a middle ground
Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
Can you explain why you would play a TTRPG if you’re not interested in role play? Seems like a battle sim like warhammer, or just a video game might be the thing you’re looking for.
As a DM, the cooperative story telling IS the interesting part. D&D has never been an airtight game system, it’s a bunch if hand waving to give just enough illusion of structure and randomness so you don’t feel like you’re just arbitrarily deciding everything yourselves. But at the end of the day, you are. The characters and story you’re left with is the only thing of value.
I started TTRPGs with Pathfinder (1e). Some people talk about it like some impossible thing to play. It does have a lot more detail than 5e, but it isn’t that bad. (I did play one character as a wrestler, who did grappling a lot, which is notoriously one of the most complex systems.)
5e sells itself as being simple, and it is in how little control it gives you. However, the rules are anything but simple. There’s so many contradictions and stipulations every player has to memorize. It’s a mess. For example, some spells can be used as bonus actions, but not if you’ve already cast a spell, except for some that can anyway. It’s stupid.
Pathfinder 2e seems to make things so much simpler for everything, while still giving players freedom. Actions are just actions. If you’ve got the points you can use them for anything. Movement, attacks, spells, etc. Pretty much everything just is what it says.
I’ve noticed. Compared with their subpar games nowadays and the lack of freshness in their catalog. I’m not really feeling them anymore I’m playing Kirby air ride on dolphin more than anything
Emulating the classics, or playing them on real hardware might be the way to go, and not getting things like a Switch 2 or later (maybe a Switch, since you seemingly own the games you have in those cartridges, and not some DRM-heavy license where the developers will revoke it at any one time).
I’ve played some romhacks, so I get that part too. Otherwise, fan-made projects or romhacks would be much better nowadays than the slop that’s made today.
There’s a lot of undisclosed AI usage in modern games, and they won’t tell us in any storefront that doesn’t require AI disclosure.
A lot of teenagers don’t like being in photos, I never did. When I got older, I was to lazy to move out of the frame, and charmander aged me was like fuck it life is great
Is the openworld meant for exploring, like pre-Starfield Bethesda game? Yeah i love those.
Is the openworld crafted only for wasting player time, like Ubisoft game? Nah.
Is the openworld crafted as a backstage for the main story but also can be explored, like GTA franchise or dying light? Yeah, those are nice.
Is the openworld only used as a backstage for the main story that doesn’t encourage exploration because it conflict with player urgency, like Metro Exodus? I’d rather not.
Skullgirls - Still the best damn fighting game ever made. I've been grinding for a full decade now, and I'll be entering Combo Breaker 2025 once again this year.
Slay the Spire - The game that ruined all other roguelikes for me. What I love about StS is that it never lets you get complacent, never lets you lean on just one good synergy that will carry you the entire run. You always have to keep adapting, and you have to have a well-rounded deck to deal with enemies that are designed to counter players who try to rely on only one thing. And when I eventually got to the point where I'd had my fill of vanilla, there's so much fun stuff from the modding community to play around with. Packmaster is incredible.
CrossCode - It's been years since I finished this RPG and its colorful cast still lives rent-free in my head. This is a game that is perfect in every way and adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Fantastic combat, tons of side content, endearing characters, emotionally powerful story, beautiful visuals, amazing soundtrack.
CrossCode is all about how it plays! That’s why there is a free Steam demo! Go give it a try! Take the best out of two popular genres, find a good balance between them and make a great game. That’s what CrossCode does. You get the puzzles of Zelda-esque dungeons and are rewarded with the great variety of equipment you know and love from RPGs. During the fast-paced battles you will use the tools you find on your journey to reveal and exploit the enemies’ weaknesses and at the same time will be able to choose equipment and skills for a more in-depth approach in fighting your enemies.
Yeah, I took a look because of your comment. Sounds like something I should try. The art is certainly appealing to me. Appreciative that more games are putting out demos lately.
I’m so glad someone’s mentioned CrossCode! Such a wonderful experience from beginning to end. The world really feels alive with every inch of a mal being used to either enhance the story or hide a puzzle! I loved seeing chests and figuring out how to get to them across several maps.
I’m really looking forward to their next project, Alabaster Dawn. I hope it’s just as good!
I think “mandatory physical versions” kinda misses the point of the issue, tbh. It’s bad digital rights laws that are the cause of the problems that you’ve mentioned, not a lack of physical media. DRM has been around a lot longer than digital downloads of games, and shutting down a game’s online services affects purchasers of physical disks just as much as digital downloaders.
Besides, mass-producing physical media is expensive, and I’d rather not give publishers another excuse to make games even more expensive than they already are.
Then you purchased a wrong game and should just play solitaire.
Witcher 3 is absolutely great, but if you just go through only the main quest, won’t explore the world and won’t do side quests then I can see you ending up disappointed.
What I like is that side quests can impact the main quest and even the ending.
But you’ve made a lot of assumptions in your comment, and you’re mistaken about most of them.
I played the side quests. Many came with a good backstory, but that is not gameplay. Nearly all were copy/paste instances from a small pool of tedious tasks. There were a few memorable exceptions, but very few.
I explored the world, as much as one can “explore” something that is fully labeled with point-of-interest markers. They lead the player to a repetitive handful of uninspired encounters, cloned over and over again.
It has plenty of other flaws as well. If you loved it, then I’m happy for you, but I found the gameplay boring.
The strengths I found in The Witcher 3 were its story, lore, characters, and Gwent. Not its gameplay.
Meanwhile, Gwent is a surprisingly well-designed strategy game. So much so that it ended up spun off into a stand-alone version (although I don’t know how good the spinoff is).
Yep. I played an earlier version but it’s the same game.
The key thing that made me notice was the scarecrow cards that allowed you to pick up your units, those make sense in Condottiere as it’s divided in rounds where you fight multiple battles, so it made sense to pick up your units if you had excess power and were winning anyway, save your strength for the next battle in the round, whereas it made a lot less sense in Gwent given its 1v1 nature and fixed amount of rounds.
Mind you Gwent evolved a lot afterwards, I don’t know much beyond the witcher 3 version, which I still enjoyed plenty.
There is no argument if the statement is objectively true
The Witcher 3’s gameplay was so bad that I couldn’t finish it (the map and the quests’ gameplay part too, but that’s another story). Gwent was pretty cool though
There is a lot of highly critical discourse around the Last Samurai. Not current, because it’s not a current movie, but saying that it’s “okay” suggests you they haven’t looked for criticism.
Also, weary.
Edit: clarity.
Edit2: I have since been made aware by @SkunkWorkz of a different perspective that makes a lot more sense, see comments below.
And even then, there were people who were uncomfortable with a narrative of some heroic white dude coming in to save the exotic natives. Just wasn’t a very popular opinion.
That’s presumably the beginnings of an awareness of why that narrative is problematic. And also of the importance of historic accuracy. His role in the narrative was that of a saviour though. (Also, he survives.)
Yeah but it was the other side of the spectrum. It weren’t right wing racist who were mad but SJWs who didn’t see the movie and don’t understand that the word Samurai in the title is plural not singular.
I’m not sure if The Last Shogun is something different, but if you’re referring to the Shogun series recently adapted by FX, I can say having watched it that it features a main character who fancies himself a superior white savior, but ultimately leads to realizing how completely out of his depth he is.
But it’s like the Memoir of a Geisha problem: since the original work was written by a white dude anyways, how much value does it have as a cultural work?
I thought so too in the beginning. But the English character in that series is more of a… Useful tool that gets used. He has no agency and he never realises it throughout the entire series.
You can downvote all you want, but that is the logical escape the industry will take. They will make the online part of games expensive to pay until no one wants to play it or pays them an absurd amount.
Hey, you do you. Just don't try to sell me a moral high horse about exclusivity. I grew past console wars when the kids in the playground were excited about Terminator 2 coming out. If we're going to bring the conversation back to that level I demand my knees stop hurting in the proces of de-evolution as well.
Any good thing about Epic Store other than Free games?
Why would anyone want to buy it on Epic if it available on GOG, Steam or Itch? Personally, I will never because it didn’t even provide good regional prices.
I don't know, I don't care. I don't often buy things on Epic, myself. Seems to me that "free games" is a pretty big thing to dismiss out of hand, though. That seems like a good thing, free games.
In any case the fact that Epic isn't my store of choice for anything but exclusives and free games also means I don't spend my time posting stuff about how much they suck. That seems like an undue amount of effort and attention for my what? Fourth, fifth favorite online games store on PC.
There's also nothing particularly bad about it. Bit of a simple, feature-light UX. Free games is nice. They are smart enough about allowing third party logins, so you can easily import your games automatically into other, better launchers like GOG Galaxy, Launchbox or Heroic. Seen worse.
Ah, the killer retort of the online argument. "If you don't care about this thing I'm mad about for no reason, why are you explaining how I'm wrong about it?"
See, the answer is "because you whining about it on the Internet bothers me more than the thing you're mad about", which doesn't make anybody involved look good. I didn't say I was a dignified commenter, I said the console wars nonsense is too undignified even for me.
One reason is that the Epic Games revenue split gives more to the developers. That being said though, they do enter exclusivity agreements with publishers all the time, which is anti-consumer.
But MudMan’s comment was more about how the meme denounces store-exclusive games, yet games that are available only on Steam are also store-exclusive.
GOG is a bit of an outlier. They allow developers to list their games DRM-free so their customers can truly own their games. If store exclusivity is the problem, GOG is the solution - not Steam.
Some game on Epic cost more for me than Steam(BTD6, Brotato and some other). If a game is available on Steam and Epic, I will buy it on Steam. If a game is available on Steam, GOG and Epic I will buy it on GOG. If it’s available on itch.io then itch.io.
Yeah. Those assholes. Taking 12% of the gross of a game sales instead of Valve’s 30% at a time when studios are struggling.
That better overlay and browser is totally worth 18% of the total value of a game and shouldn’t go to the employees making the product or into more features. I need my virtual stickers!
Steam also has anti-consumer policies. They just hide it better.
You think the reasen that games that are on both platforms don’t cost 20% more on Steam is because the devs love Gabe?
He’s a fucking billionaire who makes infinite money running an app store that takes a bigger cut of the game’s income than the combined pay of all the developers working on the game combined.
He’s not your friend. He’s a leech running a glorified app launcher.
This is a conversation about steam, the platform not Gabe. Yes, he is a billionaire, yes that makes him shitty, but guess what? Steam is a fantastic service for the end user, and that’s what matters.
If they charged less.fpr the platform, they’d still be raking in more than they can spend while also not taking an extra 20% out of game development budgets versus the competition.
As a consumer I’m more concerned about Epic’s anti-consumer practices than what they are paying devs.
Talking about how much they could charge devs does not change my experience as a consumer. It does not provide a compelling argument for me to use a service that does noticeably make things worse for the consumer.
You think Valve taking an extortionate amount of the budget doesn’t affect you as a consumer?
Games have budgets. With Valve taking as much money as the actual development budget for many games, the end product is significantly impacted. Games are regularly released late while missing features and so buggy as to not work. The extra 18% of the gross taken up by Valve versus EGS could be used to put more resources into the actual game.
Walmart and GameStop provide a physical place, that’s it. The Developer sends them the physical product.
Steam provides unlimited downloads, user forums, automatic updates, remote play, user reviews, Steam workshop etc…
None of these other stores provide these things.
Maybe Epic should charge more than 12% and invest that money in improving their client, or at least do that instead of wasting it on exclusivity deals. Then maybe I as a consumer will give a shit about Epic.
Yeah I love Epic’s cloud saves… Wait… I mean I love their supreme 80% discounts… No wait, I mean I love their integrated friends li… Their API?.. No, I mean their customizable launche…Well, the two free games they hand out once a month are alright.
I love their tags and vast user game reviews the most, myself:
This game that is 🛁 relaxing, has 🌐 diverse characters and is 🐣 great for beginners has 4.7 stars, from the “players in the Epic Games ecosystem.”
It’s the action adventure game GTA 5, of course.
Epic deserves shit for being a shitty company overall. The lower sale tax is great for devs, but most consumers don’t care, because the program is a shitty Unreal application pretending to be a shitty web browser
Valve can definitely lower their sale tax, they get loads of money off trading cards and skin sales, maintenance of that shit is waaay lower than the petabytes needed for games. At least some of the money is spent making better consumer stuff, like Steam deck and increasing the number of games that you can play on Linux with Proton. Doesn’t explain the 30% either way
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