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What are controversial gaming opinions you have?

Orwell is one of those Games With A Message And Theme that gets almost immediately undermined by the fact that it is a game, and thus has to have gameplay mechanics that have to be programmed in, rather than freeform. You're supposed to make connections and link clues based on the social media and web presence of your targets, but many, many times I was going "the clues are right there", but since it's not time for me to figure that out yet as part of the story, I can't actually click on the clues to point them out.

Also while its surface message is that Surveillance Is Scary, any level of thought into the story will show that the answer is more surveillance, rather than less. As in, the terrorist bombings that drives the first couple of chapters could have been avoided if we had access to blog posts that get revealed to us after the fact. In fact, revealing all the blog posts immediately (and these blog posts were made several years before the setting of the game) would have solved the overarching mystery very quickly. And given that the writers of the blog posts were considered Persons of Interest long before the game deigns to reveal their posts to us, it's not clear why it took so long for those posts to be available to us, since they became available at all.

Probably the only message that is consistent throughout the game (and its sequel) is that once you add humans into the mix, things almost instantly become screwed up. Especially since the entire system was apparently designed from the ground up to be as incompetent as possible: one of the first obvious danger signs (highlighted and pointed out with big neon warnings) is that taking information out of context can have dangerous consequences... except the Orwell system in-game is literally designed so that the person who is in charge cannot see the context at all, relying on the investigator (ie the player) to give them that context. Except we can't clip out more than what we are allowed to by the game, or add annotations of our own, even though there is no in-universe reason why we cannot. So again, defeated by the game mechanics.

Come to think of it, a game that was basically Person Of Interest from the viewpoint of The Machine might actually be pretty cool.

EDIT: To clarify, "more surveillance" is not the only takeaway to be had from Orwell, but it's the one I got, and try as I might, I could not come up with a good reason from the game to disprove that.
 
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Adloquium said:
It's functionally the same idea, but applied differently for the end user.

City of Heroes had Toggle powers, which are basically what you described, except instead of "reserving" a set amount of Mana (in CoH's case, Stamina Endurance is the combat resource) that gets temporarily chopped off your bar, it consumes a given amount of Endurance per second, against your innate Endurance regeneration (which can be buffed by passive abilities, but that's beside the point).

These Toggle powers range from the standard "increase Defense" or "increase Resistance" to "decrease enemy Attack" to "stuns surrounding enemies" to "applies a DoT to surrounding enemies", so on and so forth. The more impressive the power (note I said impressive, not effective), the more expensive it is to maintain, but in almost every case, a character would need to keep up at least two Toggles at any given time, so the Endurance consumption adds up to something noticeable, rather than trivial and token.

In the backend, what Toggle powers actually do is apply the buff (or debuff) every server tick (or couple of ticks; I can't recall), and subtract the Endurance at the same time. Basically, it's a continuing cast that the player sets and forgets, to simulate a constant power drain.

Back then, I remember the math gurus on the CoH forums did mention that in effect, the Endurance drain on Toggles basically meant you could lop off a section of the Endurance bar for the same effect. So the Dragon Age method is exactly that, updated to modern coding.

But in a roundabout way, I can see how it can be considered the "same idea" as casting a buff every so often. It's just that the buff this time is cast automatically, rather than manually.

EDIT: It's been a while: Endurance is the combat resource. Stamina is the ability that buffs its regeneration.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that CoH Toggle buffs also include abilities that can increase Defense (or Resistance) for all players close to the buffer, including the buffer themselves, so it's not a case of "either the player or their friends, but not both at the same time".
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Sorry in the delay getting back to you. Work got "unique and interesting." It also took a bit to recall my time playing CoH. It has been a while.

You're talking about the Defender class of heroes in CoH or specific pool powers. The Defenders were designed to use buffs. And those buffs were designed for that. The costs were carefully tuned to allow Defenders to use combinations of buffs indefinitely. Furthermore the Stamina skill, as you said, increases your Endurance regeneration so players could have more buffs. (Typially from the power pools.) Furthermore the Defender buffs were generally party wide. Everyone got a benefit.

The catch is that in DA:O the spells weren't designed like that. The amount of mana they reserve was rather large. It was designed to be a burden to prevent players from running one mage with "all the buffs" on all the time. Furthermore most of the buffs didn't help specific roles or only helped the caster. For example Arcane Shield only increased the mage's defenses. It didn't help anyone else. Flaming weapons only helped the melee characters. It didn't help archers or mages.

Furthermore you're not addressing how Fatigue actually worked. It reduced your maximum mana and not just your mana regeneration. It also scaled with mana increases. So say you have 100 mana. 5% Fatigue means you only have access to 95 of that. If you have 200 mana then you only have access to 190 of that. If you are running multiple buffs - Arcane Shield (5%), Flaming Weapons (10%), Spell Wisp (5%), and Haste (10%) - the total effect adds up quickly.

In effect it didn't just reduce resource regeneration it also magnified the cost of your abilities. Casting a spell that costs 10 mana when you have 100 total is 10% of your maximum. Casting that same spell when you have 70 total is about 14% of your maximum. So while on paper it only looks like you are losing 5% of your mana regeneration for a 5% fatigue it actually turned out to be quite a bit higher.

I can sort of see where you are coming from but CoH had Defenders designed to use their abilities early and often. In DA:O it was designed for the reverse - you can use those abilities but you cannot use all of them and still be functional in your role. There was no designated "support" class. Mages were the only AoE DPS class in the game or the only healers. So having a mage turn from a functional healer to a passive buff bot hurt.
 
From recently getting the Megaman X Legacy Collections.

Megaman X5 and X6 are pretty cool. It's X8 that's wonky as hell....I think they tried to go back to the original 'idea' for MMX while keeping 3D...while X7 and Command Mission do a much better job of a Modern MMX Aesthetic in 3d.
 
Nicholai said:
Sorry in the delay getting back to you. Work got "unique and interesting." It also took a bit to recall my time playing CoH. It has been a while.

You're talking about the Defender class of heroes in CoH or specific pool powers. The Defenders were designed to use buffs. And those buffs were designed for that. The costs were carefully tuned to allow Defenders to use combinations of buffs indefinitely. Furthermore the Stamina skill, as you said, increases your Endurance regeneration so players could have more buffs. (Typially from the power pools.) Furthermore the Defender buffs were generally party wide. Everyone got a benefit.

The catch is that in DA:O the spells weren't designed like that. The amount of mana they reserve was rather large. It was designed to be a burden to prevent players from running one mage with "all the buffs" on all the time. Furthermore most of the buffs didn't help specific roles or only helped the caster. For example Arcane Shield only increased the mage's defenses. It didn't help anyone else. Flaming weapons only helped the melee characters. It didn't help archers or mages.

Furthermore you're not addressing how Fatigue actually worked. It reduced your maximum mana and not just your mana regeneration. It also scaled with mana increases. So say you have 100 mana. 5% Fatigue means you only have access to 95 of that. If you have 200 mana then you only have access to 190 of that. If you are running multiple buffs - Arcane Shield (5%), Flaming Weapons (10%), Spell Wisp (5%), and Haste (10%) - the total effect adds up quickly.

In effect it didn't just reduce resource regeneration it also magnified the cost of your abilities. Casting a spell that costs 10 mana when you have 100 total is 10% of your maximum. Casting that same spell when you have 70 total is about 14% of your maximum. So while on paper it only looks like you are losing 5% of your mana regeneration for a 5% fatigue it actually turned out to be quite a bit higher.

I can sort of see where you are coming from but CoH had Defenders designed to use their abilities early and often. In DA:O it was designed for the reverse - you can use those abilities but you cannot use all of them and still be functional in your role. There was no designated "support" class. Mages were the only AoE DPS class in the game or the only healers. So having a mage turn from a functional healer to a passive buff bot hurt.
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And then you played a Blood Mage and said "lol" to all that 'compromise' shit that losers have to do.

And/or played an Arcane Warrior and stacked all of your buffs, put on your heaviest plate armour then ran around autoattacking the world to death.
 
Nicholai said:
Sorry in the delay getting back to you. Work got "unique and interesting." It also took a bit to recall my time playing CoH. It has been a while.

You're talking about the Defender class of heroes in CoH or specific pool powers. The Defenders were designed to use buffs. And those buffs were designed for that. The costs were carefully tuned to allow Defenders to use combinations of buffs indefinitely. Furthermore the Stamina skill, as you said, increases your Endurance regeneration so players could have more buffs. (Typially from the power pools.) Furthermore the Defender buffs were generally party wide. Everyone got a benefit.
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Defenders (and Corrupters), Tanks (and Scrappers and Brutes), Controllers and Masterminds and Blasters and Stalkers...

Everyone had some form of Toggle power, and some had multiple, not all of them tuned to use indefinitely. Scrapper Regeneration with Instant Healing used to be mutually exclusive with Integration, then it was made non-exclusive (while nerfed), but the Endurance cost was still set high enough that the devs didn't actually intend players to keep it on all the time.

But players just slotted Endurance Reduction and took both Quick Recovery and Stamina, and kept it on all the time, managing to out-tank dedicated Tanks. So the devs had to make it a click power with a super-long cooldown.

And then Dark Armour was infamous for being so Endurance-hungry that the devs had to make several passes to reduce the Endurance cost of each of their Toggles to significantly lower than others, and it still wasn't quite enough, simply because Dark Armour had so many. (Most of that was the cost of Dark Regeneration, though.)

The point is that the intent was for players to keep some Toggles running and others off as the situation demanded. It's just that the CoH devs were kind of terrible at balance. They were learning relatively quickly (especially since they were complete newbies to MMO design), but, well.

And I'm also saying that based on what I recall from the math worked out on the old CoH forums (which I will concede is third-hand knowledge), having a constant running cost for the Toggles is functionally equivalent to "reserving" a portion of the Endurance/Mana bar, and it's just a matter of adjusting the numbers. As in, what CoH did is more or less the same as what you're saying in kind, but I acknowledge that it's probably vastly different in degree.
 
Mutton said:
It still exists? I had fun it with back at launch almost a decade ago
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It exists, yes. Not doing much else, but it does still exist.

For another thing, it seems like the new developers have no idea how to correctly work with part textures and so a bunch of customization had been entirely absent since the very moment CO was sold.
 
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KOTOR II was better than DA2 in terms of being a deconstruction. And adding the fact that it didn't drag me through an annoying plot where I saw bad shit that was going to happen to the main character from a mile away but I had no means to prevent said bad shit from happening which got me really annoyed at the game's story.

And KOTOR II actually explains why such a dysfunctional group would actually stick together when some of them hate each other among other RPG mechanics.

On paper, the Friendship/Rivalry system is fine but considering most Rivalry options come across as antagonistic and in the last game if you did enough actions like that, the party members would leave the party or outright try to kill you. I can completely say that it would better in another game in another series.
 
KingseekerFreyr said:
KOTOR II was better than DA2 in terms of being a deconstruction.
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Dragon Age 2 isn't a deconstruction of anything. It just spins off from Dragon Age's boring low, epic fantasy to do a blood-soaked dark heroic fantasy/sword and sorcery story with bigger focus on the personal life of it's protagonists instead of politics and apocalyptic threats and shit.

The closest it gets to meta is how hilariously honest it is about the main character basically being an RPG character who's primary interaction with the world is being paid to kill things.
 
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Nikkolas said:
What is the general opinion towards Tales of Symphonia? Used to see it listed as one of the best JRPGs ever but now I see folks saying not only is it not GOAT, it's just plain garbage in every way.

It is the only Tales game I played and I didn't like it but not sure if that is controversial.
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'M not sure who the hell is saying that the game is garbage. Most people these days are let down by all the hype surrounding the game, or have played future games in the series that pulled off what Symphonia did better. Symphonia was most memorable in two ways: One, it finally codified the formula most Tales games used from thereon in, and it was on the GameCube, a system infamous for its utter lack of JRGS. It's still a fine game, but later games are just better.
 
thesevenwielder said:
'M not sure who the hell is saying that the game is garbage. Most people these days are let down by all the hype surrounding the game, or have played future games in the series that pulled off what Symphonia did better. Symphonia was most memorable in two ways: One, it finally codified the formula most Tales games used from thereon in, and it was on the GameCube, a system infamous for its utter lack of JRGS. It's still a fine game, but later games are just better.
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Baten Kaitos is a forgotten treasure on the Gamecube
 
Reveen said:
The closest it gets to meta is how hilariously honest it is about the main character basically being an RPG character who's primary interaction with the world is being paid to kill things.
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The 'Champion of Kirkwall' thing is hugely underrated. The fact that Hawke is just this idle rich person empowered by the state to sit around until it's time to bust some heads is fantastic.
 
DA2 is the tale of a rando who has their village destroyed. He or she then slowly rises up the ranks, attracting various companions in their bid to save rheir new home and set everything right.

They fail misreably because the seeds of Kirkwall's doom were planted before you even got there. You spend all your time treating symptoms while the disease festers and spreads.

A single person, no matter how capable, cannot fix the world.

KOTOR II had a very different task in mind, namely questioning the source of SW morality. There are other things too like Atton appearing to just be a Han Solo clone but being anything but or how Hanharr shows the dark side of debts and oaths, but criticising the Force and its warped ethics is the thing I took to be the main purpoae of the story.


Back on DA2 I love Isabela but handing her over to the Qunari is probably the most just option.

Also DA2 talk got me thinking of ME2.

Considering Jack's recruitment, there really isn't any reason not to recruit Morinth. Based just on inital information, Morinth is actually a safer bet. The folks in the super space prison containg the worst criminals in the galaxy all agree Jack is nobody to fuck with. Upon meeting her you find this super biotic is not only highly unstable, her animosity is directed right at your current benefactor. Basically she has the motivation and power to kill everybody on the Normandy.

In contrast Morinth is intelligent and stable. Serial killer or no there is no reason to fear she will randomly destroy us all.
 
Nikkolas said:
DA2 is the tale of a rando who has their village destroyed. He or she then slowly rises up the ranks, attracting various companions in their bid to save rheir new home and set everything right.

They fail misreably because the seeds of Kirkwall's doom were planted before you even got there. You spend all your time treating symptoms while the disease festers and spreads.

A single person, no matter how capable, cannot fix the world.

KOTOR II had a very different task in mind, namely questioning the source of SW morality. There are other things too like Atton appearing to just be a Han Solo clone but being anything but or how Hanharr shows the dark side of debts and oaths, but criticising the Force and its warped ethics is the thing I took to be the main purpoae of the story.


Back on DA2 I love Isabela but handing her over to the Qunari is probably the most just option.

Also DA2 talk got me thinking of ME2.

Considering Jack's recruitment, there really isn't any reason not to recruit Morinth. Based just on inital information, Morinth is actually a safer bet. The folks in the super space prison containg the worst criminals in the galaxy all agree Jack is nobody to fuck with. Upon meeting her you find this super biotic is not only highly unstable, her animosity is directed right at your current benefactor. Basically she has the motivation and power to kill everybody on the Normandy.

In contrast Morinth is intelligent and stable. Serial killer or no there is no reason to fear she will randomly destroy us all.
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Morinth is a compulsive murderer who will kill your crew (and you) any chance she gets. She could have very easily slipped under the radar and lived in relative peace (or as much peace as she wanted) centuries ago. Instead she keeps killing even when she knows that it is what lets the Justicars track her down.

She is effectively an unrepentant drug addict and killing people is her drug.

Jack isn't a great pick for the mission but Morinth is significantly worse.
 
DA2 is a good idea in concept but not so much on paper. Which is a shame, because it says some pretty neat things, which is sadly hindered by certain unlikable dipshit companions and also just overall boring combat.

Nikkolas said:
In contrast Morinth is intelligent and stable. Serial killer or no there is no reason to fear she will randomly destroy us all.
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A better option is just not to recruit serial killers and powerful biotics with a grudge lol
 
Nikkolas said:
Considering Jack's recruitment, there really isn't any reason not to recruit Morinth. Based just on inital information, Morinth is actually a safer bet. The folks in the super space prison containg the worst criminals in the galaxy all agree Jack is nobody to fuck with. Upon meeting her you find this super biotic is not only highly unstable, her animosity is directed right at your current benefactor. Basically she has the motivation and power to kill everybody on the Normandy.

In contrast Morinth is intelligent and stable. Serial killer or no there is no reason to fear she will randomly destroy us all.
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The issue with this line of logic is that recruiting Morinth isn't just adding an extra nutter to your team of nutters or replacing Jack with a different serial killer, you need to murder Samara to do it. You're replacing a mentally stable, highly trained, powerful biotic who has a lot of clout with the asari...

...with a dumbass sex vampire.

EDIT: oh yeah, apparently she'll try to seduce Shepard and double pinky swear Shep totally won't die if she [X] Stick It In, which shockingly results in Shepard fucking dying like a total fucking idiot
 
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Ostrich said:
The issue with this line of logic is that recruiting Morinth isn't just adding an extra nutter to your team of nutters or replacing Jack with a different serial killer, you need to murder Samara to do it. You're replacing a mentally stable, highly trained, powerful biotic who has a lot of clout with the asari...

...with a dumbass sex vampire.
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This is why I stuck with Samara, yeah.

But as a player I though Samara was ugly and boring. Bad voice, bad design, it was a time when my character overruled me in a way.
 
I never used Samara, she just isn't very interesting to me.

Still way better then the sex vampire.

At-least Jack has a clear hook to maintain her loyalty (information on Cerberus) and isn't a goddamn lame space!vampire.
 
Some of Samara's potential character designs were so much better than the one we got.

In those she looked like a religious murder-templar rather than her existing costume, which I felt was kind of silly even by ME2 standards.
 
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