Cethin

I would say most of the writing is bad. There are a handful of interesting quests, but most aren't. Then there's things like the generation ship, which they don't do anything interesting with, it uses the same technology as the modern ships, and also the quest path to end it is stupid. There's also so many things that just don't make sense in the universe it's set in, and it's overall just boring.

I agree overall the game is just aggressively average though. It plays fine enough, but it gives no reason to want to play it. It's not actively painful to play, but it gives no feedback to make anything feel worth doing.

I'm pretty sure intent is part of the laws that exist. If you're just collating information, I don't think there's an issue. When you're posting that information in a forum to identify the person and send people to harass them, that's where you usually cross a line. It isn't the gathering of information that's important. It's the intent to cause harm.

$70 is going to be the new normal price for AAA. Prices haven't increased in decades. I don't like it, but that's what it is. It's not AAAA because of the price, nor is that even a thing.

AAA comes from credit rating scores. It essentially means nearly guaranteed returns. It was used to identify games that need to be stocked for game stores. AAA is going to sell. AA is slightly less but still good. Etc. There is not AAAA credit rating. That was just stupid marketing buzzwords that don't matter.

The engine isn't why Starfield sucks. Sure, the constant loading isn't great but it isn't the reason there's nothing fun or interesting to do. It's also a solvable issue, but they haven't made the investments they need in the engine.

Starfield is just soulless. The characters are boring, the stories aren't interesting and don't let the player choose fun options. The universe is static and nothing matters. There's just no reason to be involved in the world, so there's no reason to want to be in it.

They could fix this. I'd say the way they need to go to do so is to stop targeting literally every player. They need to figure out who they're making the game for and target them. I'm a big sci-fi fan, and I like older Bethesda games. I should have been an easy target for Starfield, but I hated it, not because of the engine but because the stories, characters, and universe weren't engaging. The engine is an easy target to complain about, but it isn't what's holding them back. Indie games can do more with worse engines.

No, sadly I think the design is too new. Morrowind was 22 years ago. It is the direction I'd like to see them go again. A complex world that feels lived in, and actually gives players options to play how they want and figure things out for themselves. The newer boring "design for everyone" approach sucks. There's no soul and nothing interesting.

FromSoft is somewhat notoriously old-school. Their game design has directly evolved from their older games. Look at King's Field and then look at Dark Souls. There's so much similarity. Yeah, ER is more cleaned up with a fuck-ton more money and technology available, but it's essentially the same design.

Obviously Balder's Gate 3 is just an evolution of classic RPG design, and it did very well. I'd argue CDPR also has taken classic RPG inspiration more than modern ones. A modern RPG design wouldn't do half the stuff Cyberpunk did, because it's not targeting everyone (and no one).

Modern AAA design doesn't pick a target. Their target is everyone and everything, so they do nothing well. Classic design is knowing who your game is for and making a game for them and not anyone else. Bethesda is doing the former.

I was on Windows at the time and had GamePass, so I pleasantly had access included with what I was already paying for. I ended up pirating it so I could mod it (that is prevented on GamePass), because it needed mods.

No, it's not negative because it's MS owned. It's a very bad game. I love older Bethesda games and I love sci-fi. This should have been an easy win for me. Wow, it was disappointing. The actual combat gameplay is fine, but everything between combat sucks. Too many loading screens taking you out of the gameplay.

The writing sucks. They make use of established sci-fi tropes, but then they don't understand how to make them work in a story. They give you very few choices, often not including the most obvious ones.

Despite this being the "exploration" game, exploration is essentially non-existent. Every planet pretty much has the same stuff. There's like five bases that spawn everywhere identically, and a handful of "natural" points-of-interest, which appear all over the planet identically, as well as being the same as every other planet with the same ones. You might see some benefit to explore if you're building bases, but that system is incredibly clunky and frustrating to make operational. Even once you have things running, it'll still require managing storages from overflowing and blocking incoming supplies. It's really bad.

The universe is incredibly unreactive too. If you thought this was true for their previous games, it's worse in Starfield. There's no ships bringing supplies to colonies. No colonies being built that weren't there at the start. No fighting between factions, besides pirates randomly and it's the same random event that happens when you warp into a place, not something that happened because pirates are raiding a supply line or something. It just doesn't change ever.

Basically, no. Starfield actually sucks. I really wanted to like it, but there's nothing to like in my opinion. I've seen some people say they like it, but I honestly don't get it. Every aspect seems like a downgrade from FO4, which had its own issues but had reasons to like it too.

It's because you're gathering data to encourage others to use it for nefarious purposes. It's not just innocently looking up their email or whatever.

For the last bit hoping they'll find something like what RS used to be, they won't. That type of game can't really exist anymore. (It obviously could make money, looking at OSRS's player base, but it would never get the funding it needs.) The best options are OSRS (or RS3, which has pros and cons with OSRS and doesn't deserve all the hate), potentially Brighter Shores in the future (developed by one of the brothers who created RS), or playing a modern MMO.

Doxing is usually gathering already public info, but I agree if it's not shared it's not doxing.

You can't just tell us some rich bastard is a piece of shit and expect us to believe you! It's so rare and unlikely!

Seeing as this is the first case, as mentioned in the article, yes. 100% of penile mutilations while under the effects of psilocybin are done by men in Austria.

I don't think this is fear mongering. In fact, I'd say it's the opposite. It discusses the benefits, and that studies show that events like this are extremely unlikely to happen. Someone will use it to fear monger, but this is not doing so.