CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

Dark Souls 1.

author=LockeZ
Someone else mentioned to me that from the player's perspective, this type of nonlinearity is largely obsolete today due to the large number of free games out there. Instead of going and doing something else in the game, players can just go do something else in a different game. But of course from a developer's perspective, I'd prefer they keep playing and enjoying my game.

I don't think that's true. Sometimes a game does a better job of hooking me than the majority of others. If I were to abandon that game, the other game will probably be a downgrade. There's also the fact that if I was mentally invested in the former game, I would feel a loss if I abandon it, even if the replacement were to be equally engaging and fun.

The discussion happened due to the disclaimer at the beginning and the end of the review. If we want to revive it, we could always make a review of kumada's disclaimer.

Anyway, this review did get me to decide to play this game (eventually) although "Earthbound" had a lot to do with it.

I followed a game called Grim Dawn during development. While the nerfes were plenty and there was always people complaining, most nerfs were well received by the majority.

It helps if nerfs don't trash a build. When a build was nerfed in Grim Dawn, it usually meant that said build was brought into the level of other builds, not that the build became underpowered. Sometimes minor adjustments (like more energy regeneration to support a now more costly skill) were needed, but the general build concept still worked.

If you have to nerf a build into uselessness, the players tend to be more understanding if the build contained an obvious exploit like glitches. If a build is dependent on a glitch, then obviously the build will cease to work if the glitch is fixed. Ditto for skill that is supposed to have a disadvantage, but the disadvantage is bypasses, most players will realize that something is broken and probably will get fixed.

Usually when a nerf get a lot of backlash, it's because the nerf wasn't very well thought trough. Overnerfing or implementing a nerf that ends up breaking a lot of non overpowered builds as a sort of collateral damage will not go well. It's not rare that the developers aren't very skilled at balancing and has a hard time avoiding a backlash simple because they have a hard time not breaking more than they fix.

I started Ultima V. It was my favorite Ultima, but it is a very outdated game. I'll see how long this lasts. I'm also playing a "no psychic powers" playtrough, meaning I don't use knowledge nobody hasn't told me about yet and I don't know how long that will last either. This doesn't apply to pure game mechanics though.

I made sure to roll a character with a lot of dexterity. The number of turns you get is determined by dexterity squared, so that stat reigns supreme. After a bit re-rolling, I got a character with 24 dexterity. I have no Ultima IV character to import.