Crazycrab

I completely agree. Andrzej Sapkowski wrote a brilliant book series, but that doesn't mean he isn't a high and mighty prick. He has no respect for video games as a medium and that's why he done himself bad in the original deal. It was his own damb fault. So much of the interest in the books was generated because CD Project Red's games, especially internationally, and thus generated a lot of sales for the books, so he already got a massive payday that he himself said he wouldn't because of arrogance and disrespect for the medium. Not to mention there is no way he would have been able to earn that licence fee from Netflix for the new TV series if the games hadn't been successful. Like @Crazycrabsaid, they settled out of court, but I will always believe CD Project Red owed him nothing.

I simply vote with my wallet, I flat out refuse to buy any game with lootboxes, insidious microtransactions or from really unethical companies.  To tell the truth, I don't really feel like I've missed on anything that I really wanted to play, by avoiding these things you avoid the vast majority of the garbage.
 
 
That is debatable, if you ask me the whole debacle was entirely his own fault!  The author of the books Andrzej Sapkowski by the admission of his own ignorance made a mistake by taking a cash sum in exchange for the rights instead of a % share in the profits that they offered him in the first place.  He didn't think the games would make a dime because he didn't know anything about video games. Honestly in my opinion, he's been a bit of a knob chasing CD Projekt Red for royalties just because the games became a success.  It doesn't matter now anyway, they settled out of court just recently so can buy any of the Witcher games with a clear conscience.
 
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-12-21-cd-projekt-and-the-witcher-author-andrzej-sapkowski-ink-new-ip-rights-deal

All I want for the future is good games, honestly when it comes to performance of consoles I'm pretty comfortable. Personally I'm not looking or expecting any innovating stuff but at the same time I feel that releasing a new console is pointless because there will be nothing "new" just improvements on what already exists, so the only thing I hope for the future is better games since for me thats what makes a console good.

That's actually not true. Deer are one of the more dangerous animals we have in the US, especially during mating season. A buck will attack a human without hesitation if it cant run. And the power of these animals is immense. There are several hunters every year that are gored by deer, most of them killed. Here in Missouri that is. And a doe with a fawn is just as dangerous. She will intentionally run at you and attack to protect her young. There was one incident a few years ago where a guy hit a fawn as it was crossing the road with its mother. he tried to get out of his car to check the damage and the doe wouldn't let him out. For whatever reason he couldn't get his car to start again. I think the radiator had gotten busted in the collision. But according to him she was snorting, bleating, hissing, and rearing up and attacking his car with her front feet. He ended up having to call 911 to get help out there. Deer are no laughing matter.

I simply vote with my wallet, I flat out refuse to buy any game with lootboxes, insidious microtransactions or from really unethical companies.  To tell the truth, I don't really feel like I've missed on anything that I really wanted to play, by avoiding these things you avoid the vast majority of the garbage.
 
 
That is debatable, if you ask me the whole debacle was entirely his own fault!  The author of the books Andrzej Sapkowski by the admission of his own ignorance made a mistake by taking a cash sum in exchange for the rights instead of a % share in the profits that they offered him in the first place.  He didn't think the games would make a dime because he didn't know anything about video games. Honestly in my opinion, he's been a bit of a knob chasing CD Projekt Red for royalties just because the games became a success.  It doesn't matter now anyway, they settled out of court just recently so can buy any of the Witcher games with a clear conscience.
 
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-12-21-cd-projekt-and-the-witcher-author-andrzej-sapkowski-ink-new-ip-rights-deal

xD a little bit of an overacted scenario I will say, I'm no expert but I find that hard to happen. The only thing I know about sport hunting is deer hunting and I will say that even during hunting season Deers will walk around freely around your property or on the road, at least in Oregon, and people dont seem to care.

"It's a Nintoaster. And yes, it works."

Very honoured you would nominate me @kingpotato. Thank you so much
 
I'll nominate@StaceyPowers, @kingpotato, @LadyDay and @Crazycrab

I nominate @Shagger,  @LadyDay , @Crazycrab , @Executor Akamia & @Alyxx
 
Thanks for the nomination @The Blackangel

A group of people are gathered...
Hello. My name is Shagger...
..."Hello Shagger...", they respond in unison...
 ... And I am a dairy addict. Milk, yogurt, cream, milkshake, iced cream, cheese, I can do without none of them. They always get so disappointed in me when they see the white stuff all over my face, but I'm only human! A simple, weak, unworthy specimen of humanity, just LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

@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.

@Crazycrab First average lock picked successfully :) Great things are in my future =D Thanks again!

The Sims and most other games with that kind of RTS isometric design are better suited to a PC interface.  The experience on console can feel a little cumbersome.  In case of Skyrim and similar games (especially from Bethesda) you can use debug consoles and/or mods to bypass certain issues or make the game easier.
 
Beyond those two situations and bad ports aside (like Arkham Knight on PC for instance) I can't really think of any other situation where playing on a PC (or a console) makes the game any easier.  For the most part it doesn't make any difference.

I prefer the lockpicking mechanic in Skyrim but never had that much trouble in Oblivion.  In fact it seems  expert at it judging by what some people say about their struggles, one of the first things I usually do is loot the lockbox outside the Arena and that's a master lock 😁.  The mechanic is all about timing, you need to hit the button the instant the pin hits the top of the lock for each one, the harder the lock, more pins you have to secure AND the faster the pins move.
 
What's maybe not so obvious at first is the pins don't respond the same way or retract at the same speed every time, occasionally they will even bounce around that the top and if you try to hit the button then you're guaranteed to fail.  There is a trick to this and that's listening, there are audio clues that give you a clue as to what the pin is going to do. Here is a video that explains this better than I can with the written word:
 
 
With this knowledge and a bit of practice you should get the hang of it.  Also look around the barrels and crates in the Imperial City market as you can usually find a few lock picks there and they at least should be on sale in the general stores.
 
If you still can't get the hang of it there are some alternatives, Alteration magic has spells that can open locks and at level 10 you can do the quest at Nocturnal's shrine which rewards you with the Skeleton Key, which is essentially an unbreakable lockpick so you can auto attempt past your way any lock.
 
Hope this helps!

There are a couple NPC’s that absolutely drive me insane. Of the two that stick out in my mind, one is  supposed to be beneficial. The other is just enraging by its mere existence. The supposed beneficial one is Odin in FF8. Typically I don’t mind him. But when he starts showing up in literally every single fight you get into, then you’re no longer playing the game. You’re just walking around for a second and the game does everything else.  It makes games not worth playing. 
The other is Kaepora Gaebora. That worthless fucking owl, is enraging to me. It’s almost impossible to look in a different direction without the bastard interrupting the game. It never even offers anything to help the game. Nothing but inane gossip. Shit that no one needs or wants. It doesn’t offer any clues or directions. So what is the god damn point? For this thing, there is none.

Sticky from Fallout 3
 

 
If you've played the game, you know why.

I think comparing a PC to a Mac is more like comparing a Jaguar to an Aston Martin.  A Jaguar does everything the Aston can but Aston charge double the price...  purely because they can.

*DISCLAIMER*  I started writing this post before @Shaggerposted his, so I'll be touching opon allot of the same points on Oblivion's leveling system, but since I have some stuff to add I have decided just to finish and post as is rather than take a bunch of stuff out and re-edit. 
 
The main difference from Oblivion and Skyrim is the leveling system, it can be very unforgiving if you level your character wrong... but's it's also more expoitable and even without mods you make a character who's almost invincible if you get it right.  I'll start by addressing some of the points in you OP and then I'll a brief leveing guite that might help you.
 
 
Now onto leveling, I'm running under the assumption of a legit playthrough with no mods or console commands to assist.
 
For starters, when creating your character you want to pick either a Breton or a High Elf as for your race and The Mage as your birth sign, even if your intention is to be a hairy, naked, club weilding, screaming Barbarian!  Any other combination is a waste becuase the spell making facility allows you to do everthing that the greater powers of the other races can do VERY easily.  So the Mage is the only one that adds a legitimate stats benefit with no drawbacks.
 

 
When picking/creating you class you might think that it's best to pick the skills you use most often as your major skills since they get a boost.  Like in Skyrim if you want to raise your smithing and sword skills quickly you pick the Warriors stone in the beginning. This however, is a beginner's trap and truth is you want to do the opposite and assemble your class with (as much as possible) skills you never/rarely use in addition to avoiding skills which can rise spontaneously like athleticism.  You also need to avoid picking all 3 governing skills for one attribute since the way to level up an attribute by the maximum step of 5 is to raise its governing skills collectively 10 times. For example, if you make your class up with Heavy Armour, Block and Armorer raising endurance by 5 will become extremely difficult since you will have to avoid raising any other major skill even once at that level.
 
When you start leveling It's important to work on endurance.  It dictates how much health you have and how much your health raises each time you level.  So the quicker you raise that Endurance to 100, the more health you will ultimately have. As you touched upon earlier the other thing you will want to do as quickly as possible is join the Mages Guild and get into the University not just to make that charm spell of 100 (which I can confirm is REALLY easy to do) but also to make training spells for all the magic skills for raising Intelligence and willpower.
 
Here are some other tips and tricks I've picked up:
 
Light Armor is better than Heavy and that is a fact!  You can easily carry more than one set of light armor for varying situations and at Master level skills a full set of light armor will perform exactly the same as it's heavy counterpart also at Master level. Raise your Illusion skill to 100 ASAP, there's no point in waiting since you don't need personality and with a skill of 100 you can create a Chameleon 100% spell.  Cast that without wearing armour and you can attack, stealth kill and steal all completely undetectable, literally no one will stop you! Short of cash?  Without spoiling too much once you complete the Mages Guild questline you get an item that allows you to reanimate dead NPCs.  There is another questline called "Order of the Virtuous Blood", when that is completed an NPC will give 250 gold for each piece of Vampire Dust you give him.  By reanimating a dead vampire then killing it over and over you can spawn literally dozens or even hundreds of them 🤑.  
That's about all I can think of for now, hope this helps.

The Sims and most other games with that kind of RTS isometric design are better suited to a PC interface.  The experience on console can feel a little cumbersome.  In case of Skyrim and similar games (especially from Bethesda) you can use debug consoles and/or mods to bypass certain issues or make the game easier.
 
Beyond those two situations and bad ports aside (like Arkham Knight on PC for instance) I can't really think of any other situation where playing on a PC (or a console) makes the game any easier.  For the most part it doesn't make any difference.

Indeed. I do remember Cinderella getting trigged and going on a massive twitter rant about much Vannile offended her.

You're right for the most part. It really doesn't make a difference what platform a game is on 99% of the time. But we all know there's some asshole out there that just wants to pick a fight, and will argue that a game is impossible to play on one platform but is easy to play on another, when there's no damn difference.

Snow from FFXIII

 
This self-righteous douche canoe is so annoying and dumb blind to what is going around him it's almost funny, but it stays in cringe. His abilities are useful in combat, but I can't stand the character. The game tries everything humanly possible to make you like him, but none of it works.
 
He is so beyond salvageable as a character that even having him played by Troy Baker couldn't save him. Think about that.

It's not "Cheat Codes" per se but I often use the debug console commands on games like Skyrim.  In particular for crafting materials if I can't be bothered to go round the map visiting multiple merchants to find what I'm looking for.  It's also useful for getting around certain bugs.

And interesting topic. Well thought up.
 
I think we will. It may not be exactly like it is on Star Trek, but I do see this being technically possible in our lifetime. What I find more interesting is how holodecks are featured culturally. Video games, whilst they have gained some serious stock and are more respected than ever as a mature pastime, aren't yet respected in the world of culture as perhaps they should be. The "holo-novels" in Star Trek, which are basically like role-playing narrative games, are a cultural expression held in no lower stature than classic novel would be today. I know that video games will be respected like that someday, but I would like to think that time is closer than how long it'll take for technology to get that advanced. They also use holodecks for training, experiments as well as recreation, and I see that in the future of gaming technology as well.

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?