StaceyPowers

I've screwed up levelling in multiple games. A simple example would be my first Skyrim playthrough, where I didn't know what skills i liked and didn't, and so, to play it safe, I was picking perks all across the skills pretty evenly. I wound up with lots of wasted perks in skills I eventually stopped using altogether.

@Crazycrab @Shagger Thank you very much for your detailed comments on all of this. The very fact I am going to have to re-read both of your posts multiple times to grok the levelling system tells me how convoluted they made it ... I screwed up levelling in Skyrim on my first playthrough but easily figured out what went wrong and how to fix it next time. And I am now almost positive I have levelled badly so far in Oblivion.

Maybe I've been misunderstanding the timing of when to hit the button--I'm going to give it a try now ... and if that fails, it's off to the shrine. Thank you for all this detail.

I feel like the isometric view (not first person) would make me feel detached on Hatred. What you say about gore rings true with me too though. If things don't bleed a lot on the screen, I feel cheated, lol.

I can pick the easy locks in Oblivion, but for some reason, I can’t pick Average locks? I don’t understand this mini-game. When I push up on one of the tumblers, it literally doesn’t let me move to the next one until it comes back down. There seems to be no physical way to open the lock. What am I doing wrong/missing? Any recommendations anyone can give me for beating this mini-game or avoiding it completely would be awesome. On that note, I can’t find lockpicks for sale anywhere. I have been playing for weeks and have only four. @DylanC

I’ve been playing Oblivion for weeks, and while I like it, I swear it is so much more challenging than Skyrim, even with the difficulty down. -I notched the combat down quite a bit, and it is still harder than playing at Expert level on Skyrim. -I somehow only have four lockpicks? After playing Skyrim for the same length of time, I had dozens. -The mini-games for lockpicking and persuasion are confusing to me. In fact, I can’t figure out the latter at all, to the point where my sole mission right now is just to get entry to the mage’s college place so that I can make an uber charm spell and persuade people that way. -Enemies in this game will chase you to the edge of Tamriel, lol. They’ll even clamber up mountains to chase you. So, running away is even difficult. Who else finds Oblivion to be much harder than Skyrim? @DylanC @LadyDay

Thank you :)

What games do you play to channel your aggression? I’m not talking about games making you more aggressive—I’m talking about games that help you burn off extra adrenaline when you are already feeling aggressive and need to take it out on something, even if it is made of pixels. @The Blackangel Tagging you because I figure you have input here =D

@Shagger was talking about self-imposed challenges in video games, i.e. (Shagger’s example) trying to beat TLOU using nothing other than bricks and bottles. I can’t imagine trying to do that, lol. My current self-imposed challenge is to play my new Skyrim character doing nothing but destruction magic and conjuration, no weapons. It’d be a lot harder without the conjuration, but conjuration is just too fun for me to give up. What self-imposed challenges have you taken on in video games? Which were you successful with? Were there any you gave up on? Which do you think you might try in the future?

I totally agree! I miss when I temporarily had enough astronomy knowledge in college to look up at the sky and get what was going on, and I feel like a game could somehow make it easier to do that again, especially if it somehow incorporated real-time RL astronomy events.

@Crazycrab was talking about isometric games on another thread and saying that on console they feel cumbersome compared to on PC. I feel like I agree with this, though I can't quite explain why. Though in general, I find isometric games cumbersome. Don't get me wrong--I do like them. The first time I saw an isometric game was Solstice on NES, and as a kid, it blew my mind and was my instant favourite game. But I always sucked at it. I think it is because everything on the screen is tilted at an angle. I remember trying to tilt my NES controller thinking that would help me move correctly, but it didn't. Do you like isometric games or dislike them? Does anyone have any tips for getting better at them?

You have to inhabit the world of any dystopian novel. Which do you choose, and why?

I am so quoting that. Favourite movie of all time, and why?

done

In a thread where we were talking about where to store consoles, @kingpotato mentioned covering them with a thin blanket to ward off dust, and @The Blackangel mentioned using plastic storage tubs. I am wondering what other tips others here have on how to protect unused consoles from dust? It seems like it would be easy to forget to dust them regularly if they are out of sight and out of mind for long periods of time.

@The Blackangel was talking about using Game Genie in order to make opponents stronger when games become too easy. I was wondering what everyone else’s strategies are for continuing to get the most out of a game when the challenge goes away even at the hardest settings? I don’t find this a problem with story-driven games, as I am mostly playing them to enjoy the stories. But with open world games, I will usually try and challenge myself to play through with a different set of weapons/tactics.

@LadyDay was mentioning that her sister finds it more stressful to play The Sims on PlayStation than on PC, which led her to wondering if it the game is harder to play on console than it is on a computer. This made me wonder what games everyone here has played on multiple platforms, and whether some platforms made the games significantly more challenging. @Crazycrab mentioned using the console commands for Skyrim, which was the example that sprung to mind for me as well. So many times, I find myself with a problem in Skyrim, and I look up the solution, only to find that there is no way to solve the problem on PS3, as the only known solutions are console commands I would have to enter on PC. So I can definitely say that makes the game harder to play on PS3.

We probably already have a thread somewhere on our favorite party members in various single player games, but I don’t think we have one on party members we can’t stand. Are there any characters that just annoy the heck out of you who are eligible to be in your party? Do any of them annoy you so much you dismiss them completely? This topic leapt to mind while playing Mass Effect last night, and deciding I don’t like Ashley’s attitude toward aliens. I don’t know if Mass Effect lets you boot people out entirely, but I’ll probably still keep her around in case she has an interesting story.

@skyfire made an interesting suggestions in another thread that he’d like to see Eastern religions featured in video games since a lot of people especially in the West may not be as familiar with them in a world dominated in large part by Christianity. I was wondering if there are other real-world topics you all would like to learn more about by seeing them featured in popular video games? I learned a lot about history, architecture and design while playing BioShock games, so those are areas where I’d love to continue to learn more while playing other games in the future.

I recently started watching Stranger Things, and I love how the teamwork skills the characters developed playing D&D help them to work together in real life. It made me reminisce about how I learned a lot of teamwork skills playing MUDs, probably more than I picked up on doing group projects in school. Playing MUDs helped me learn some basic etiquette that helps facilitate teamwork (apparently I didn’t learn that stuff as a kid), and also helped me feel more comfortable in leadership roles. Both have served me well in business IRL. For those here who play MMOs, FPS games, co-op games and so forth, have you learned valuable teamwork skills doing so? What specific skills, and how have you applied them IRL?

@LadyDay was recommending The Sims 4 to me as a relaxing, stress-free game. By coincidence, a friend was telling me a couple days later that she finds the game very fun, but that it stresses her out without using cheat codes to take care of her sims' basic needs. I am curious who here makes use of cheat codes in video games? In which games do you use them, and why?

I currently own one console, but hopefully, I will soon own two. In a small space, that will be a challenge. I know some of you probably have multiple consoles right now. For those of you who have two, three, four or even more consoles, where do you keep them all? Do you have them all pretty much set up and ready to go all of the time? Or do you keep most of them in storage somewhere, and pull them out only when you want to use them? Do you rotate through each of your consoles? Or do you mostly keep the most recent one out all the time, and only occasionally play on your older consoles? @The Blackangel @kingpotato @killamch89 @skyfire

Following up on this topic about the future of VR, do you think we’ll ever have a true, full-immersion VR experience that incorporates all of the senses, like the holodeck in Star Trek? I’ve seen websites for a few companies in the past that were trying to create holodeck-like VR experiences (i.e. you show up at their facilities, put on a headset, and they provide the rest of the effects in your RL surroundings). What do you all think of this concept? @The Blackangel @kingpotato @Alyxx @skyfire @Shagger

I spent like 50 minutes fighting one lone geth armature last night in Mass Effect on casual level. I eventually beat it by standing near it behind a barrier and dodging a lot, but seriously, one shot from that thing and Shepard dies. Anyone have any combat tips for this game? Is it just a matter of using cover like this and being supremely patient, or am I missing something? @Alyxx @killamch89 @DylanC

I don't think you stepped on any toes? Great example, too! I forgot about the whole Talos issue in Skyrim. On the whole, I sided Imperial, but that was the one point where I completely empathized with the Stormcloaks.