faetal on 4/1/2016 at 15:40
TW3 is game of the year for me. I've not finished it yet, but have put in over 90 hours (assuming GOG Galaxy's counter is correct) and not even left Novigrad yet. It's great for exactly the reason Ostriig put it too - the graphics are great, the world is really dripping with a sense of place and its inhabitants feel like people. Also, they have ploughed an insane amount of time into creating each tiny little quest and associated characters. The combat isn't terribly deep, but it's better than the previous instalments and on its way to something good eventually if they continue the series. Frantically rolling around like a dickhead is too rewarding and makes all of the encounters easy, if lengthier than the more tricky stand & fight tactics might be, which takes from the feeling of being a skilled swordsman a little (though I could arguably use less cheap tactics to remedy that), rather than a skilled gymnast who also uses swords.
The too oft-repeated bystander chatter is a slight downside, but I guess that's inevitable with a game of this size. I love the card game and the Pokemon quest almost as much as the game itself - much better than the poker dice of the previous games, since it always annoyed me that you could be considered to be skilled or "the best" at a game of almost pure chance. I'm a huge fan of how they've handled alchemy and crafting too.
Thirith on 4/1/2016 at 16:01
In the context of The Witcher, are you sure you want to use the word "plowing", faetal :cheeky:
faetal on 4/1/2016 at 18:03
Plow yeah!
Pyrian on 4/1/2016 at 19:56
Quote Posted by Ostriig
Pillars of Eternity. ... But this gripe does deserve its own paragraph - why the hell are the loading times so obscenely long?! They're roughly on par with Fallout 4...
3D geometry tends to be small. Load times are dominated by textures. Replacing 3D backgrounds with enormous static images frequently
increases overall data...
Ostriig on 5/1/2016 at 14:07
Yeah, I know what a texture weighs compared to a mesh, but even so. Or am I underestimating the scope of those painted backdrops in PoE? I know even something as simple as IrfanView will choke for a moment when you throw a couple dozen meg of bitmap at it, but isn't the bulk of a PoE map just the one image? Possibly another for pathing? I don't think the game does overhangs on a separate layer, I seem to recall it's the characters fading under arches and such. You got me curious, I ought to check the VRAM usage.
Quote Posted by faetal
The too oft-repeated bystander chatter is a slight downside, but I guess that's inevitable with a game of this size.
Some of it, mudcrab-style, then there's the rhyme in White Orchard about the Emperor that fires every time you walk past. A slip-up, that one.
P.S. Sulphur, while on the subject, TW3 doesn't give you boatloads of XP for combat either. Enemies too far below your level don't give you any, in fact. You can, theoretically, level exclusively through fighting loads of foes in your range, but in practice most of your progression will be coming from completing objectives.
faetal on 5/1/2016 at 18:35
Plus completing quests which are below your suggested level reward only nominal XP too, meaning you can go and mop up without fear of putting yourself too ahead of the plot curve level-wise.
Muzman on 5/1/2016 at 18:58
I'm pretty sure the only game from 2015 that I played in 2015 was Sunless Sea. I've got Her Story and Cradle but I haven't looked at them yet.
So, Game Of The Year!
I do rather enjoy it though. It defies clear definition. Which is a perhaps nice way of saying it's a little like cobbled together bits of different kinds of games which maybe aren't as completely realised as you'd like. But if you can resist imposing your desire for it to be a more familiar and elaborate sort of game that it can be its own thing. Quinns describes some of the ways that (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r6VtUW9504) things that are ostensibly wrong with it give it a quality all its own.
Plus I'm all about the atmosphere and this top down game made largely of text somehow has loads.
Pyrian on 5/1/2016 at 19:14
I have mixed feelings about nominal XP (meaning XP awards that are too small to be important for advancement). I see it used more and more these days. It's very much a Skinner Box sort of thing. For Designers, it solves an interesting problem: How do you reward certain behaviors without punishing people who don't? Nominal XP is very good at convincing people they're getting a reward without actually giving them anything. (Level-scaling enemies is potentially another approach to the same problem, with its own issues. Minor consumables is the biggest historical approach, also with its own issues.) Ironically, from what I've seen, the largest problem with nominal XP is precisely that it's TOO good at convincing people they're getting something when they're basically not! People get very determined to punch out every enemy in DX:HR on the basis of maximizing XP, but it's little more than one Praxis point over the course of the entire game. By the time you've gotten a punch-out Praxis, you're basically swimming in them anyway.
faetal on 5/1/2016 at 20:27
It's done well in TW3 though, since your main reward for mopping up is actually interesting content more often than not. You're just not penalised for going back to do it.
