StaceyPowers

Since I switched from playing the PS3 version of Skyrim to the free PS5 upgrade of my PS4 edition, I’ve been surprised at how much more immersive and atmospheric it feels. As far as I can tell, this is partly from my mods, but also partly just from the better frame rate and a slightly wider field of view. What technical changes have you noticed can increase immersion in different versions of a game?
 

Do you play online games to keep up with old friends? I just started playing Minecraft with my high school BFF who lives across the country from me. It’s been a great way to hang out again virtually.

@StaceyPowers you once told me that you're a disabled how true is that? 
It's a pleasure reading the info through the link, I believe those who has mobility issues gonna enjoy VR system often. It will enable them regain where they fell short. 

Here is an article discussing how some people with specific mobility challenges might benefit from gaming: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/12/carters-quest-virtual-reality/

Here is an article about research into video games for relieving depression in older adults. "In previous research, scientists found that 60%­ to 70% of older patients who were unable to benefit from antidepressant meds and who played specially designed video games reported a 50% decline in depressive symptoms in 30 days, according to U of U Health."

Some of my childhood maladaptations. They served their purpose when I was young, but now they just are holding me back from being my best self.

Watch Dogs Legion is my first Watch Dogs experience AND actually my first encounter with Assassin's Creed. So, I can't really give an informed opinion, but from what I can tell, the tie-in integrates really well. I think you could be right that a completely integrated game could work well!

When you have a weird little slice of time to fill and you want to game, what do you play? For example, say you just finished a game, and you have 20 minutes before you want to quit gaming for the day. What do you fill that gap with?

When you have a weird little slice of time to fill and you want to game, what do you play? For example, say you just finished a game, and you have 20 minutes before you want to quit gaming for the day. What do you fill that gap with?

1. Lack of quest marking.
Weirdly, I don't remember getting lost much in the first game, but I got lost a ton in the third because it didn't always tell me what system to go to. I think in 2/3, you can push a button to tell you what direction to go in real-time in an area, but I don't recall if that was implemented in 1?
I WILL mention a warning here that I think mostly applied to 2/3, which is that you should get in a habit of doing side quests and such when they become available before doing main quests, as otherwise they can sometiems get disabled by your progress.
2. Difficulty spikes
ME and DA are both terrible with this. Thus the casual mode for me.
3. Vehicle
Awkward on console too, but manageable. Honestly, I got in a habit of either 1-sitting still at a vast distance and shooting when possible (works better in 2/3), and 2-just running over enemies.
I like the vehicle in the second game much better, but I don't know how the controls will translate to PC. But it is less cumbersome in how it moves.
 

When they run out of ideas is when they start the rubbish of using the same thing over and over again. Do they think that we can't see through it or what? 

Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Tsushima Legends will always be on top of my list when it comes to such games that can't skip my mind for a day. 

Dark Souls series kept getting better in the subsequent releases as well as God of War series too. Ragnarok seems like it's going to beat everything they ever made. 

MMOs tend to let you remove them but that's more because of server limitations, or more cynically, making you spend more time picking them up in a subscription based game (time is money, after all.)
I think the desire to remove them is tied to two problems:
Fool me once, shame on you. Little Timmy Sticks has been kidnapped by a very hungry bear, and you've been offered a quest to rescue him. You take the request, and continue collecting other quests in town. You decide to do the nearest quest first, which is counting potatoes, and Momma Timmy Sticks isn't going to tell you to hurry up saving her boy. This is because few games have time-sensitivity, unless it's fear of missing out (FOMO) in the microtransaction shop. Be it due to limitations with coding NPCs to chase after you to remind you of progress, or rather lack thereof (which could be done in the days of the Infinity Engine), or the audience of today's games not liking time-sensitivity, side quests can be done at any pace you like, so there's no reason to get rid of them because they may be useful to you at some stage. Fool me twice, shame on me. As Kane points out, many games allow you to collapse them in their own seperate menu. Sometimes, especially in older games, the side quests aren't sorted from the main ones. This is particularly annoying in titles such as Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, where you can't know what quests are safe to progress in case you pass the point of no return with others. So the answer here is to make the user interface clearer: give quests different levels of significance (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim does this spectacularly well with main quests including those belonging to DLC, side quests, and miscellaneous quests) and their levels of completion. "Current quests," "Completed quests," and "Quests nearest to completion" are all good filters to have. Some solutions, including ones offered above, are thus:
Scale Mail. A controversial topic in RPGs is the idea of zones scaling to you, meaning that enemies will always be a roughly appropriate challenge for your character. The difference in difficulty between The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and IV: Oblivion is night and day for a number of reasons, but most obvious is that in Morrowind the game doesn't change its enemies and their capabilities depending on your level, whereas Oblivion does. If you go somewhere too high level in Morrowind you'll die. In Oblivion, there's no such thing as any place too high levelled; difficulty is determined by your level and the incredibly generous difficulty slider. My point is that if you were to scale quest requirements, enemies and rewards to the player's level (if they finish the quest several levels higher) they should get rewards appropriate for the investment of time and skill. Therefore they spend (roughly) the same amount of time doing the quests as before but now get rewards they can use. No longer are you getting that lv.3 reward, you're getting that current level reward that makes it worth the time spent. Gone Shootin'. As said before, MMOs typically allow you to remove quests from your journal. They may also have achievements for doing all the quests in that zone, such as World of Warcraft's Loremaster achievements, which grant you a tabard as a status symbol. It's tangible proof that you've done the content, perhaps even absorbing the information. Plus achievements are frequently used by developers and publishers as a metric for who's doing what, to my understanding. I forget the specific word, analytics or something? Quality over Quantity. I will always prefer a good game over a long game. If the side quest adds nothing meaningful, I'd go as far as to say it shouldn't even be in the game, let alone be easy to ignore. Developers and I will undoubtedly disagree as to what adds how much to a game, but as someone who is grossly in favour of more games getting editors in to chop out the chaff, I'd say I'd rather have too few side quests than too many. Add DLC later if you must, and do it properly, not like the journals you get for the Skyrim anniversary edition. TL;DR - The removal of side-quests is a nice idea, but is an admittance of UI and game design failure and shortcomings. Rather than remove them, let's make them worth doing when we get them.

I have a question that I feel like probably has an obvious answer, but I don’t know what it is. Why must one pay for a subscription like PS Plus to game online at all on a console? I get the need to pay for servers, but sometimes one does that directly through a game (i.e. Minecraft). So why must one also pay for PS Plus for this purpose?

I think the idea of Minecraft is to be a sandbox game that people can spend hours exploring and learning, so not having an in-depth tutorial sort of makes sense. If you get stuck, there are plenty of guides created by the community, as others said.

Since the beginning Minecraft never offered a tutorial, Usually people learn it by just spending hours discovering And also by Watching Survival Lets Plays on YouTube that's the main source for all things But if you want a very detailed "All thing about Minecraft" check this https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Minecraft_Wiki It shows information about every Item/Block/Entity/Dimension/ and stuff you'll probably never use. 

There are lot of external guides for the same though. In game guide is not enough often especially when you drop in a lot of modules from external developers.
 

I've won it in the past, and I don't have a habit of bowing out, but it is true I'd prefer someone else to win.

I nominate @kingpotato for his many thoughtful replies 🙂

If so, then I think @StaceyPowers deserves it, due to her quality threads being helpful to the community. 

I'll nominate @StaceyPowers, she's posted a lot of good threads.

Watch Dogs Legion is my first Watch Dogs experience AND actually my first encounter with Assassin's Creed. So, I can't really give an informed opinion, but from what I can tell, the tie-in integrates really well. I think you could be right that a completely integrated game could work well!