Rowr

I dunno I guess i consider griefing basically causing other players in the game grief. Which this would obviously do.

My stance on this is always that "if you can get something for free with literally no effort and very little time spent people will choose the path of least resistance" why are you even playing the game?

Actually I guess if you are AFKing technically you aren't even playing the game... The whole point of these games is to do something that takes a little time and effort to get some satisfaction of completing it and a reward to help you with the next thing.

I dunno it's just something my brain can't compute, i sort of understand why people do it i guess.

Is griefing even much of an issue in this game? I get the general impression that it's more of a people who know each other sort of thing as opposed to dealing with teenage randoms?

It seems like bungie have probably done a good job in avoiding the sort of issues that usually crop up in these "MMO" type games.

I feel like this seems to vary wildy for different people, and I don't think it's about skill or anything but perhaps just the different playstyles of different people.

So I don't necessarily think it's that the game was too "easy" as people have labelled. I had the same experience where I died very little and feel like I didn't get quite the experience others had out of it. I generally tend to play very patiently and carefully to avoid dying, especially in games that have some sort of stealth element. It's so ingrained at this point that I couldn't exactly turn this compulsion off during the game.

Also I didn't spend a lot of time doing side missions to become overpowered before the story missions, in fact it was the opposite that I ran through and mopped up 70 percent of them before the finale.

I REALLY hope the season pass DLC includes some sort of hardcore difficulty mode that comes with a few more hooks and maybe carrying over your runes and abilities to encourage another play through.

O well hey never mind, my guesstimate was off for the age thing. Still I feel like the writing probably plays better to the younger generation.

I just did that birthday party mission and thought it was fantastic, these sort of missions and writing are really where borderlands excels in my opinion, I really like the way it sort of turns the droll repetitive mission structure you would expect from a loot driven mmoish game like this on its head. Same with the tiny tina missions, though the writing of the character is painful to me, the missions were great.

It is still kind of blowing my mind that gearbox can do something like this in a few years of development, meanwhile bungie have you doing practically the same thing every mission with almost zero characterisation.

Ironically corruption in game journalism is probably less prevalent than in any other industry with the same volumes of money due to the ridiculous prioritising and scrutinising of the general topic of video games on the internet.

That and the open nature of it's communication over the internet causing a huge amount of media that doesn't classify as journalism anyway, word of mouth still being a major player as far as generating interest.

Basically there isn't much of a story here, and even where there is - who gives a fuck anyway. No one is secretly taking over the world here with video game journalism corruption and anyone with any genuine rage on the subject I can't regard as anything other than a complete loon.

The hilarious part is that those same people are probably either eating up or entirely ignoring everything they get fed in every other realm where journalism exists in regards to real world issues.

Man what a sad state of affairs this poll demonstrates the 2014 AAA game industry to be.

SoM on it's AI alone.

I'm not convinced there is anything "next gen" demonstrated in any of the other games listed here.

Could be an age thing for the characters? Though i'm just making assumptions that you are probably younger than me, it definitely feels like the characters in this game probably play much better to a younger demographic, whereas crotchedy old fogies like me and Jeff are just annoyed.

I've found at times you wont see shit unless you have a zoomed weapon, I don't know if it's the colour pallete or what, but enemies have pretty long range and sometimes seem to blend in to the environment. Some of these suckers hide behind walls pretty frequently as well, so when you actually look you don't see them.

I've actually been streaming this game a bit to my nvidia shield - you can imagine some of the squinting that requires hah.

I feel like many of the big titles for a while have had their own creative ways for explaining away your in game death, AC has the animus, Bioshock had the vita chambers and then the separated universe thing, borderlands it's reconstruction or whatever.

I think for most people unexplained death respawns really aren't a huge immersion breaker. It is definitely cool what shadow of mordor does with it and a pretty core aspect to the initial design document, so that's cool.

The other most notable game I enjoyed for it's take on death was Prince of Persia as some have mentioned above. It wasn't popular at the time, but it really lent to the relaxing exploratory nature of the game.

Dying in roguelikes like spelunky STILL pisses me off to the point I really can't play these sort of games for more than short bursts. I just really enjoy the journey of progression in games and it just yanks too hard when I'm pulled out of that. I've definitely loosened up on the concept, but i'm not sure i'll ever break with it being somewhat detrimental to my experience. The blow is definitely softened in the roguelikes that have an overarching persistent progression.

I think i'm just at the point i've played so many accumulated hours of video games at this point in my life that my patience for repetition is severely low. Nothing will throw my enthusiasm for a game than a two or three deaths under the same circumstance requiring more than a minute to get back to that same point.

There is a point with spelunky for example, that I just accept the first 6 levels of that game is all i'm prepared to "grind" to get to. Playing 90 percent of the game retreading the same early levels only to die quickly on the attempts I get further to new circumstances, just isn't engaging to me.

@r3beld0gg: Funny you should say that, i've had almost the exact opposite reaction doing exactly the same thing.

I think lichdom battlemage and all this destiny talk has got me in the mood for a loot driven shooter, with borderlands the presequel coming out I thought rather than waste money on that i'd give my copy of Borderlands 2 another go.

Many aspects of this game really turned me off when it came out - and many parts of it still do, but I'm getting some enjoyment out of it this time.

Most of the sidequests are actually really quite well done as far as being entertaining even with the characters being so god awful, I really don't feel much of a grind with it - which is pretty remarkable considering the genre and how hard it seems to lean on that (see destiny). The variety in the guns is decent, although I feel like it could be much more diverse and the drop rate is decent enough.

It could be due to the game drought, I dunno I also feel like that when games are coming out you always have an expectation that someone is going to build something even better on the formula within a few years. With destiny's epic failings and nothing else really coming about I guess it gives a better appreciation for what they have done.

I've also had some issues with the pacing of the difficulty in this game playing solo, I consider myself above the average curve for difficulty in most games - but i've had a few moments where i've just felt woefully underpowered. For some reason I have a bunch of those gold keys in my inventory so using a few of those throughout the campaign has helped a bit. I'm pretty sure that blasting through parts of the early game quickly with other people and then transitioning to solo play hurt my game a bit in the first playthrough. A lot of that could be the siren class - I don't know.

Literally all they need to do for B3 is just release something with some more likeable characters (or just at least not so goddam cringeworthy), some sort of fast travel system so you aren't getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a 10 minute walk when you finish quests and then add some new guns and graphical effects.