Games You Regret Spending Time On?
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Big Phoenix
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Phazael
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I stopped posting there a while ago (got out after Plane of Time, had enough of leading a guild before that and played with another before hanging it up), but that board went hyper left around the time this one started its shift to the right. Oddly, Winnow used to be a right leaning guy but abruptly went full NPC mode out of the blue. I think the dude just like arguing with people for its own sake (not that he was good at it, but more of Foler countertroll) and in that he has not changed. I peeked at the board once a while ago, and its basically a small little lefty echo chamber and all the better drama threads are gone. The Machine isn't even around anymore, just mostly a few CoE, CT, and Ixtlan/Legion poopsockers who still chat once in a while.
I do not regret my time in EQ, as I met my wife playing EQ and I mostly played with RL friends. I could never go back to that shit, though. And every MMO since has basically felt like a complete waste of my time (I got more out of my time as a Warhammer Tournament player and now as a boardgamer) that I wish I had spent better. Non MMO games? I can flatly state that Tides of Numeria is not only the worst game I spent money on, but the worst one I ever finished in my life. Complete waste of my life spending 50 hours slogging that game through. Honorable Mention goes to Star Ocean Til End of Time and Elite Dangerous. The first had the worst ending and overtuned final boss I have ever seen in an RPG. The second was basically No Man's Sky meets overly complex MS Flight Simulator that nuked my love of the original game completely.
Now that I think about it, most of the games I actually regret are the ones that were good until the ending shit the bed. Probably because you get this whole game thats fun or a good story experience, then the ending just shits all over everything that led up to it. Actual shitty games I never bother to keep playing. Thats probably why ME3 gets all the hate it does, honestly. It takes a special kind of design fuckup to make a game thats 90% awesome, only to completely ruin it with the poorly written ending or badly tuned end boss. Especially a long game with RPG elements that gets you invested.
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Rajaah
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Tides of Numenera being so bad is a bummer. I talked about this on the CRPG thread, but when I worked at Gamestop I knew so many people who were STOKED for that game, and watched them all get really bummed within a couple days of getting it.
Also sad to hear Star Ocean went off a cliff. Never played any of those but I was super hyped for SO1 and 2 back in the 90's and they've been on my "emulation list" for a long time. Weird how many serieses that were great in the 90's plummeted in the 2000's or 2010's, probably because completely different people took the reins of their design teams as time went on.
Seems like the Trump Era caused everyone to either go hyperleft or hyperright, often switching teams entirely. Every board I know of shifted in one direction or the other. What generally happens with boards is, whichever group is more numerous (or more able to dominate the conversation by being present/engaged) drives out the other group or makes them stop posting via dogpiling or ridicule. Then the first group "wins" and basically claims the hill, while members of the other group either post sporadically or go somewhere else. I don't know how much of a win it is when nobody's left to debate, 'cause debate is interesting and it's one of the only ways to change minds, but whatever.
Basically what I'm saying is that board composition is kind of like Supreme Court composition, you don't want one side or the other having total dominance or packing the court, because then balance gets lost and it becomes an echo chamber. Also I think the current incarnation of SCOTUS is probably the most "balanced" it has been in my short lifetime ideologically, but maybe I'm wrong, and that's a whole other discussion for another thread.
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Phazael
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Off topic, this board IS pretty open to opposing viewpoints. We dogpile, but honestly if your ideas cannot survive exposure to sunlight they were not good ones anyhow and you need to do better. People here are also WAY better at compartmentalizing shit to respective sub-forums than just about anywhere else I have been. With some exceptions, most people will keep personal, political, freetime hobbie, ect shit confined to the forums they belong with out carrying over disputes to unrelated subject matter. A guy like Captain Super Spreader can have a conversation with everyone about the latest videogames and not get shit on in that thread, for example. But we also have people who cannot segregate that shit in their mind, or are so insufferable or universally retarded that they get lit up wherever they post (once they make it abundantly clear its not a forum specific issue, e.g. Chris having the worst hot takes ever). We are the exception to this, from what I can tell.
On topic: SO3 was an unexpected Xmas gift from the wife when it came out. And for the bulk of the game I loved it. Decent characters, in an anime way. Action combat, which I normally hate, that did not make me want to puke. I even liked their crafting system. But the ending was basically "We are all in the matrix and the sys admin is literal satan" and the final boss fight (which took over an hour to run down to with zero save points along the way) was completely insanely overbalanced (tons of immunities, massive HP sponge, one shotting people constantly) that just did not occur during the main course of the game. And this was not some optional fuck you round eyes boss the Japs like to put in their games, like Ruby Weapon. This was the final story boss and I had personally leveled up all my weapons, stocked my potions, and marched through the dungeon to him without issue. Then blammo dials go to 11 out of nowhere and I had to read forums to find out the expecation was that you would spend upwards of 20+ hours grinding trash in the final zone Disgea style to get to a ridiculous level to actually have a shot at winning. It left a very sour taste in my mouth and I never purchased another game in the series as a result.
On topic: SO3 was an unexpected Xmas gift from the wife when it came out. And for the bulk of the game I loved it. Decent characters, in an anime way. Action combat, which I normally hate, that did not make me want to puke. I even liked their crafting system. But the ending was basically "We are all in the matrix and the sys admin is literal satan" and the final boss fight (which took over an hour to run down to with zero save points along the way) was completely insanely overbalanced (tons of immunities, massive HP sponge, one shotting people constantly) that just did not occur during the main course of the game. And this was not some optional fuck you round eyes boss the Japs like to put in their games, like Ruby Weapon. This was the final story boss and I had personally leveled up all my weapons, stocked my potions, and marched through the dungeon to him without issue. Then blammo dials go to 11 out of nowhere and I had to read forums to find out the expecation was that you would spend upwards of 20+ hours grinding trash in the final zone Disgea style to get to a ridiculous level to actually have a shot at winning. It left a very sour taste in my mouth and I never purchased another game in the series as a result.
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Kharzette
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I loved tides! The reliance on consumables was hard to get used to. I tend to hoard potions and the like in games, then forget to use them and finish games with too many. I loved all the story stuff though. I still listen to the soundtrack alot.
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Rajaah
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DickTrickle
Why picard?We've got one vote for Tides!
I'm okay with hearing something good about it, because it's still "on the list" for my CRPGs and I'm going to at least give it a shot. Would be great if I found something to like. I'll often end up liking unpopular things and disliking popular things (for example, I didn't enjoy Fallout 1 at all). So we'll see.
Yeah, this board is open to opposing viewpoints and I agree with your first couple sentences on that front. Need to be able to handle/counter scrutiny (or realize you're wrong) to survive. That's why I like it. And people compartmentalizing is also cool, Ukraine feuds don't spill into the FF16 thread is a good example. I've tried to get better at staying on-topic myself.
SO3's final boss... one of my biggest peeves is when a final boss (or lategame boss) has the dial turned up to 11 over everything before it, shutting down your playthrough. RPG examples include Velius in FF Tactics, the final boss of Tactics Ogre (what a goddamn fiasco that fight was, took me 2 hours), and Miang near the end of Xenogears.
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DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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This is not the thread for it, as you said, but it was your last sentence if you must know.
We've got one vote for Tides!
I'm okay with hearing something good about it, because it's still "on the list" for my CRPGs and I'm going to at least give it a shot. Would be great if I found something to like. I'll often end up liking unpopular things and disliking popular things (for example, I didn't enjoy Fallout 1 at all). So we'll see.
Yeah, this board is open to opposing viewpoints and I agree with your first couple sentences on that front. Need to be able to handle/counter scrutiny (or realize you're wrong) to survive. That's why I like it. And people compartmentalizing is also cool, Ukraine feuds don't spill into the FF16 thread is a good example. I've tried to get better at staying on-topic myself.
SO3's final boss... one of my biggest peeves is when a final boss (or lategame boss) has the dial turned up to 11 over everything before it, shutting down your playthrough. RPG examples include Velius in FF Tactics, the final boss of Tactics Ogre (what a goddamn fiasco that fight was, took me 2 hours), and Miang near the end of Xenogears.
Rajaah
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I've got another one: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. This game is a horse's ass. FFT on PS1 is one of my favorite games, so I was super stoked to get ahold of FFTA. Took me years to get around to it but when I finally did I couldn't have been more excited. Then within an hour of starting it up I had a very "what the fuck" reaction to the whole thing. The visuals are washed out, the music is subpar, the races are weird, it doesn't have any of FFT's strong story or even vibe. The classes are locked behind all manner of draconian requirements, rather than simple "get pre-req class to level 3" type stuff like FFT. Constantly ran into roadblocks trying to get the classes set up the way I wanted. And worst of all, the Judges and their card system. Every fight I'd be getting hit with yellow cards or red cards that messed up my day because I did something that was verboten in that battle. If the card system were a bit more sensible, like "don't use this specific spell", or the penalties were less harsh, it might have been worthwhile in some way. Instead I was constantly getting rules like "no healing whatsoever in this fight" and having to get my characters jailed just to save others from death. Game could have been okay but instead it felt idiotic and I regretted spending any time on it at all much less the 25-30 hours I put in hoping it'd get better.
DickTrickle
Oh I get it. I consider it 5R, 3D, 1 swing, which admittedly isn't that balanced, 4/4 and 1 swing would be balanced. Maybe what I meant is that I like the current incarnation the most because it's making decisions I like without being wildly lopsided. Gonna take it to a different thread.
DickTrickle
Oh I get it. I consider it 5R, 3D, 1 swing, which admittedly isn't that balanced, 4/4 and 1 swing would be balanced. Maybe what I meant is that I like the current incarnation the most because it's making decisions I like without being wildly lopsided. Gonna take it to a different thread.
Phazael
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I am pretty good at RPGs and had beaten Tactics Ogre more than once before I played FFT. but I confess I ended up having to replay the entire game my first run because I had no save file from before the Velius fight. Tactics Ogre's final boss is a lot rougher now than in the original (the no res thing is horse shit), but the trick of deliberately using screwball setups thaat the AI does not know how to play correctly remains the same (or burning him down). My worst case was FF8 which I ended up replaying the entire game because I had relied on summons and the last boss had the previously never seen ability to take away your summons during the fight. I mean I could have backed out and grinded, but by then the way my stats were when I leveled pretty much permagimped me when I analyzed it. In general, I really hate res fest fights in RPGs and you know a game/boss is shit when there are entire mechanics designed around it.
Sabbat
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Seananigans
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Caeden
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What’s crazy is I exclusively played WoW/Rift/GW2/SWTOR/D3/TSW/Lotro from 05 to 2018. Then only played PoE and BotW until 2022. That is a lot of console and pc single player games to play. Minus the zelda series, that’s 17 years of games. I don’t regret WoW per se. I really regret having so much alt-itis. I full regret Rift, Lotro, and tsw. I do regret playing the gw2 living world and expansions. The story was juvenile.
Chanur
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Rajaah
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Birthday is celebrating a birth, not a conception. We don't have a conception day.
I think pretty much everyone had to play FF Tactics twice because Velius kicked their ass. The fact that the game lets you save right before the fight (so you can't leave) almost felt malicious by design. They also give you one Hi-Potion from the previous fight, with no way to get rid of it (since you're locked into the area) which messes up Ramza's ability to Auto-Potion his way through the fight. Wiegraf's second attack is going to bone him since he'll respond to the first with the Hi-Potion instead of your stock of X-Potions. Yeah, that also felt on-purpose and malicious.
The two hardest fights in the game by a mile are Wiegraf and Velius, they're back to back, and the game locks you in. Such awful design in an otherwise great game.
Last time I replayed the game I also had a lot of trouble with Balk, the guy with the element-gun in the final dungeon. Think he's like the 4th to last fight or something. That fight was absolute bullshit.
Tactics Ogre Reborn gave me some fits on the final boss. Similar situation where you can't leave (without returning to a backup save a bunch of fights earlier). The final boss of that game is also absolute bullshit. There's an ability that negates "no rezzing", clerics get it. Absolution or something like that. Even with that taken care of, between the AOE stuns and the AOE MP drains, the final boss is a total goddamn chore to deal with.
Koushirou
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Mist
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How can a game released in 2018 be Early Access looooool I hate this industry.
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