A Thought

I think I'm getting old.
<ahem> You are using Baldur's Gate vs. Icewind Dale to compare combat levels. I'm afraid your use of the term "getting" is becoming dubious. At least in gaming circles. ;)

Maybe it's just the combat difficulty? If you're getting bored in a combat system, maybe you should try pumping the difficulty up? If it's still boring, you can drop it down to the minimum and at least get it over quickly.

It's really interesting that you liked the Witcher games but not Mass Effect. They're both heavy narrative games but they both still have plenty of combat. ME's was pause-on-space, too, so it seemed more tactical to me than Witcher.

By the way, have you tried Subnautica? There's not much combat there.
 
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No, but maybe I should try it. Actually, I'm always tempted to lower the difficulty of my current games, so I can get over the combat quickly.

Maybe it's also the setting. A lot of games I've played since Mass Effect are advertised to be like some old classic. It all feels the same. I think I need more interesting settings, so I think I should get Subnautica in a sale this year.
By the way, I was fine with Mass Effect 1, but in Mass Effect 2 they've swapt most of the boss fights for several bigger waves of enemies. It felt like a drag, so I've quit it.

And yes, in gamer terms I am old, but I'm still not 40 yet, so I feel I'm still too young to be old. :p

But maybe I should start practicing already:
"Back in my day, most games still had something unique and original about them. Every game had it's own worlds, rules and feel. There were a lot more different settings. you see, Arx Fatalis felt different from Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights. And there were games with Vampires, and turn based post apocalyptic games, and everything was better, yes!" *swings walking cane*
(Don't worry, I'm just kidding. Not everything was better, just different. In good and bad ways.)

Yes, different settings would be nice. Now that I think about it, that's probably what I really need. Interesting, less generic worlds and everything that comes with them to motivate me. The combat's no fun if it all feels the same. Same rules, same foes, same spells, only different names because of the copyright. That's so dull. Even exploring the dwarven ruins in Skyrim seemed more interesting than fighting my way through the almost unfirnished kobold caves in Pathfinder. Though I liked the troll community. Too bad I had to kill them all.
 
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Not yet 40!? Oh my goodness! Well, Saints Row is out. You're still a bit too young for that sort of naughty game. Maybe in a few years... assuming you're mature for a 40 year old. ;)

There's plenty of 'new and different' out there. Hmmm, have you done much 4X gaming? The Endless Space and Galactic Civilizations games can be played without spending much time in combat at all. Both have 0 interaction while battles run and provide a 'skip to the end' button. Set up larger galaxies with few other civs (preferably less violent ones) and you may not even have many of those.
 
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I think I have Galactic Civilizations on Steam, but I'm more out for questing, thank you. I'll get back to it.

PS: I like your kind of humor. :biggrin:
 
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After seeing this chart of games being published this year https://www.pcgames.de/Spiele-Thema-239104/News/PC-Spiele-2019-Release-Termine-1215262/

there are 55 games, if I have counted correctly
of them, 15 are labelled "shooter", if I counted that correctly
and 15 of them are labelled "action" in various forms (being "Action-RPG", "Action-Adventure" or simply as "Action")
and 10 of them are labelled "strategy" like in "Aufbau-Strategie" ( = "building-strategy"), real-time strategy, or simply just "strategy".

So, when looking at this release list, it is not difficzult to see why I#ve become such a "grumpy gamer" ( I still love that title & blog of Ron Gilbert ! ) : I just don't like any of that listed here.

It's easy with this list to see why I often feel like "being left out", no more being a member of the group of "gamers".
It's easy to see why I often feel too old, because this release list is very much catering the younger player base, I think.

So, if you judge me, keep this or a similar list in mind.









… and the rest is various genres…
 
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But there's hope, Alrik. These games still look alive. Either on their homepages or on Kickstarter.

-Baldur's Gate 3 (obviously)
-Realms Beyond (according to Steam it's going to be released early 2020)
-Black Geyser
-Stygian - Reign of the Old Ones
-Dungeons of Aledorn
-Archaelund
-Wasteland 3

Knights of the Chalice 2 is an the planning phase, part one is supposed to get to Steam and GoG. For people who don't mind a action in their games, there's also Cyberpunk, Outer Worlds, and Bloodlines 2.

So be patient. Next year is looking good. Even without wannabes (in my opinion) like Biomutant. And I don't think that BG 3 will be out in the next 2 or 3 years, so there's a future, too.

Edit: Has anybody played Exiled Kingdoms? Is it any good?
 
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Well, I think the "good old times" feeling is something we all have to face at some point of maturity. But I think that its still possible to come to conclusion the "new times" are not so bad after all. Not only in gaming.

But speaking of gaming, there is so many games and genres these days like never before. We have adventure games renaissance upon us, with tons of story and exploration games with no fighting or combat at all. We have tons of musical games completely devoid of any violence. We have plethora of indie games not focused on violence. I could name titles, but is it really necessary? And so many games really suitable for kids are available (especially by Nintendo).

Im old, but I dont want to think the gaming (or world) is heading to hell. :)
 
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Yes, in the Indie gaming scene everything is flourisghing like never before.

What actually worries me, however, is the big boys never doing something outside of a very few genres due to risk aversion - or silencing it to death like Unravel.
 
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Vacation-time.
I can do everything I want.
It's in the height of the day. The sun shines, everything is lit and bright.
I want to play a game.
I start up a game.
"Huh ? It's so dark within that game … I can't see anything with the sun outside shining ! Even without the sun shining i nto my room, it's just too bright ! I just can't see anything on that monitor !"
"Umph. I can't even turn the brightness of my monitor so high that I can see anything within the game without the game's athmosphere going away ! It's just crap to play a murky dungeon with the brightness setting so high during daylight !"

Seriously. Why are there so many games I can only play in the evening or in the dark ?
Yes, of course, games are meant to be played after work, when it's getting darker anyway.
But it's my vacation time ! I want to play a game I like in the brightness of the day ! The daylight should not ruin it !

When I look at some console games, I become jealous. These are meant to be played by the whole family … and that includes : Daylight !
I mean kids don't want to play games in the darkness of the evening. well, modern kids perhaps do … But family games are an completely different audience. Being able to play a game during daylight is kind of mandatory for these kinds of games.

In recent times, I more and more wonder where to get a game I like and which is coloured so that I can play it during daylight - for the PC platform !

I fear I need to get a console.

And no, shutters don't count.
 
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The worse the light is for playing a game, the better the light is for reading a book!
 
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Yeah, I found out that, too !

Bought myself Eberron novels today in NEW condition in an RPG shop !
Even with the original prices !
 
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Herokon was an online TDE game that was running in a browser.
It's design goal was great : To cover ALL of Aventuria. I never thought that this would happen.
It never reached a full release,
and it came into the infamous list of TDE game developers which went out of business during or after the development of TDE games ( Larian almost came into that list as well ! ) Silver Style went out of business 2014, as far as i know.
There is a small Wikipedia entry for it : https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Schwarze_Auge:_Herokon_Online

Here is the only screenshot I could find of it (stumbled upon it by chance), I think my character had the name of "Aldarion" then. The meeting took place within a tavern, so sorry that there is so few to see about it.
 

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Was it yet another mmo?
 
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Yes, but one programmed in Adobe Flash, if I remember correctly.
It was running in the browser.

I had thought I had made more screenshots, but I cannot find any more.
 
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This is an opinion piece I had intended for a talk page of Wikipedia; but since Wikipedia states that opinion pieces are not allowed there, I'm putting it into this here :
It is about this page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions

==Only Enterprise products ?==
I must say that it still says a lot about the distribution of Linux systems that there are so few specifically aimed at househiolds and home. There are only very few of them, several others I know are missing, probably because they are marked as "inactive". "Desktop" is often used as a synonyme for "home use", but that isn't necessarily right. "Desktop" use can encompass the use of people who know Linux as an OS relatively well, meanwhile households might not know a lot about that (Translation is also an issue - the best "home" Linux system isn't good enough if its help texts are in a language the household members have never learned. Although I guess that this would appear not that often these days anymore.) Linux is still B2B these days, although the situation has become much better, for example through the use of Ubuntu and some of its derivates. That it is still highly emphasised on B2B can be seen by the fact that almost all distributions marked here as "active" are "Enterprise Products" which of course have a long-term support, because only firms/companies are able to financially maintain the support via long-term contracts. Households just don't have the money for that. So, seeing how many distributions are appearing and disappearing in the couse of time - and a lot of them are "desktop" distributions - it also has some kind of social aspect to it. Those who can't afford long-term support won't get, and are faced with distributions which become "inactive" at one point, because no-one (or at least relatively few people) are supporting the support financially. We can seethe "social side" of Operating Sytems for example by the fact that the home edition of the current Windows 10 is forced to install every update on every PC which has it, meanwhile business systems are able to withhold the updates until they are bug-fixed. In this case also the ones who are able to financially support the support get 1. support at all 2. long-term support 3. better support. This is also the case with Enterprise editions of Linux distributions. And to me this looks like the cause of so few Linux distributions - especially active ones - being especially there for households. Lots of unpaid work, few feedback. And I guess that this is what made Ubuntu relatively widely distributed in households : Common people get the feeling as if someone respects them by offering them LTS versions. Accepotance of something often has something to do with emotions, with feelings, and that's why Microsof was having the upper hand so often, and the LInux community, mostly relying on scientific logic how to present why this OS is the better one, often fails with households. A few distributions have tried to give "the common man" more the feeling of being respected (meanwhile Microsoft is losing it more now, because it currently acts like a completly business oriented B2B company, no home users, please, by forcing home users to stomach every update, no matter how poorly tested it is and no matter how buggy it is). You can convince scientists through sheer logic, but not home users that much. It's as if you'd try to explain through sheer logic why one kind of pizza is better than the other, meanwhile the adressed person insists that one kind of pizza simply has a better taste. You just can't explain "better taste" with logic, because "taste" has a lot to do with feelings (and I'm not even using the word "emotions" here). And as long as there is no work done to adress specific problems of households, Linux distributions won't be too far accepted there (and I personally still do believe that home users have very different problems than business users).
 
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I've been going cynical again.

This was written by me several minutes ago as a reply on the reply quoted there in the DDO forums ( I don't know what they'll do with it there ) :

The question to ask should be "What would make you feel VIP has similar value?"

Capitalism has created Elitism based on money. Those who have money feel entitled to be someone special because they have money.
Some of these money-based Elitists go even so far as blackmailing software developers into "either you do what i want or you won't get my money !".
Capitalism has created a society in which EVERYTHING, yes EVERYTHING us purchaseable, and there is no kind of morale or humanism involved anymore, even Philosophy is rendered [spelling ?] as irrelevant because money rulez.

This Elitism is going to break society at one point, because there will be a fight at one point between those who have, and feel entitled to push their will through EVERYTHING with the help of this money, and those who have not. The end resuklt will be some kind of masked slavery for those who don't have because the capitalistic system will require MONEY to be the currency for making a living - and withholding it from some people or even only giving some people less and some people more will result in those who don't have money being the ones "at the wrong end", because MONEY is the tool to push through the own will against those who have no will because they have no money. No money, no lobbyism.

I have learned to know Elitism in my own case : A box of collected music of a certain band was available at one point in the past when I was much younger and was not able to purchae it. Now, those who've had the money own this box, and they say "this is in the box, you don't need to buy this additional CD or book about it". They see the world through the eyes of someone who has, and is through the Curse Of Knowledge not able to see through the eyes of those who don't have.
 
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