Sacha

Sacha, 7 miesięcy temu

Mods are a different beast and not representative of the game, devs, or player base. Mods like this often get removed from big modding sites like Nexus, forcing them to be mostly in their own spaces. (There is/was a bg3 mod overhaul that makes every black npc white, some lesbian npcs into men so they are straight couples, the ability to change your gender and lock it to the body types. Etc and so on. But you can’t find it on Nexus. I remember the white Wyll mod but it got removed within 3 days)

It’s another matter entirely when a developer bakes this kind of shit into the game. Not every game has mod support and not everyone mods.

Sacha, 7 miesięcy temu

They did cut a lot of the slog from ARR, it’s not necessarily better because they didn’t rewrite anything they just cut it so there is context missing. As an example, if you don’t start in Uldah, you never meet the real Thancred anymore.

The actual patch series is easier to swallow because most of the dungeons got reworked to be more interesting and you’re not going to the waking sands every 2 seconds to just go back to where you just where, over something you could have told me over link shell. There’s still a lot of travel, but it’s not so bad.

I replayed through ARR as an alt character after the changes, it was before they changed the dungeons but overall the experience is easier to swallow, but again the story is a little clunkier.

The bloody banquet is still amazing though.

Sacha, 7 miesięcy temu

Final fansty isn’t that kind of ip. Different ones are set in different universes/planets, with different casts. There’s a billion different things you can explore. One game is basically medieval, another is basically cyberpunk. The things you explore are completely different and the only similarities are the name of the ip, the names of the gods, and maybe the names of some of the characters.

There aren’t many games you can make that argument with because of the way technology has advanced so much.

Elder scrolls v skyrim was easily the most successful, but your suggestion is stopping at morrowind which is an entirely different game. Tomb raider today is a different game from when it came out. Some ways for the best some ways for the worse. But there are always new things to explore. Even if it’s just mechanically.

Sure you can make that argument over something like the yearly sports games. But these games are not yearly releases.

Sacha, rok temu

I think there ie a middle ground as a rule but a lot of games use dlc as an excuse to sell the game for more.

Sims is a great example. It costs over $1k to buy everything for Sims 4 and the Sims 4 stans will defend it going “you’re not SUPPOSED to guy every pack”. Sims 3 vs Sims 4 is something as well. Sims 3 didn’t get as much dlc, but each one had so much more content and gameplay than Sims 4. 9 years and like 50 packs later, Sims 3 STILL has more content overall. The game was just poorly optimized and badly coded and is only now becoming playable in terms of load times and lag. A lot of the Sims 4 packs don’t even work that well together, or the opposite where they release a feature and you need another pack to fully utilize it. (The goats and sheep in the horses dlc don’t do anything without cottage living. And they already didn’t do much WITH it)

The Weather expansion with Sims 2 made sense at the time. Weather was a mechanic that not many games had and quite the milestone, it was groundbreaking for the time. Weather dlc for Sims 3 you could begrudgingly forgive, since it’s such a big thing and the base for Sims 3 was so big. But Weather being sold as an add on for Sims 4 was just unacceptable. The game was barren, weather is a base feature for every single game within that kind of genre. It feels like they remove the feature to sell it later. And you see this with the pets packs too. Sims 3 you had cats, dogs, horses, and small animals. With Sims 4 you have cats and dogs, my first pets stuff, cottage living (for the small animals, it does FINALLY add SOMETHING new with the cows/lamas and chickens), and horse ranch- for the same experience Sims 3 pets gave - and even THEN there is less gameplay and features. No unicorns, no wild horses, no pet jobs (I think) since you can’t control them, no nothing. Sims 4 still doesn’t have fairies somehow but there’s rumbles that they might be the next occult and they could bring unicorns but… you won’t be able to do anything with the unicorns without horse ranch.

So, it’s not even than Sims 4 costs more than 3, you are getting an objectively worse and more barren experience even when you do buy everything. The dlc for Sims 3 made sense and added so much, barring maybe the weather one as an arguable one. Almost none of the dlc in Sims 4 makes sense to be sold to the player instead of in the base game. City living, island living, cottage living, the vacation one… for that’s about it really. But becausethey are supposed to bring new content and gamellay experiences. But the dlc for Sims 4 was just such an obvious money cash cow that they are like “what pieces of the same dlc can we upsell as separate packs?” They barely add anything new.

I have no problem with dlc like how it is with Witcher 3 was with new stories, gameplay experiences, quests, etc, rather than selling base features of a game for morr.

Sacha, rok temu

Yup, classic case of realism not always making the game better.

I went to earth to check it out, I know the lore of why it is a giant sand ball but that also disappoints me. I walked around the approximate area of where I am from and found a small cave. But there was nothing in the cave except some abandoned drugs. I couldn’t interact with the glowing mushrooms, mine any minerals, etc. I was hoping for a sprawling cavern or something and just… nope. I might go back to earth to explore it some more but it’s so bland.

What do you think is behind that rock?

Another rock.

Sacha, rok temu

As fun as the Witcher is, the world may have been too big. Not every location had a quest, not every quest was necessary… some side quests were kinda bad. And it had a lot of collection bloat. The first zone wasn’t too bad. Small and focused, with collection stuff. It’s pretty nice. But trying to 100% everything after that is a nightmare.

Skyrim is a weird one, the main game is not the main story, but rather all the side stuff. It had collection bloat, but in the form of dungeons and quests. It didn’t really do the whole “legendary gear is in this obscure chest on the top of this random mountain that you have to visit on the 3rd Tuesday at 5am” thing. So while Skyrim is pretty big, it doesn’t feel like nightmarish, collection bloat that’s overwhelming.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was able to take both these approaches and make it work. It has a tone of secrets and things to collect. But it was done in a way that It didn’t feel mandatory. You feel satisfied doing the main story, but also by just going around and doing the side content like in Skyrim. But like Skyrim, sometimes people just want to stop the msq at certain places and just chill in the game doing random whatevers. However, like Witcher all the random collections and side content does feel overwhelmingly impossible to complete in its scope. I found a few YouTube channels dedicated to secrets and obscure side content in this game and its insane how much there is. And a lot of it is missable after certain points in the story. There is no way to 100% this game without a guide. With Witcher and Skyrim its at least possible without a guide.