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[Bohandas]

Let's talk about how dumb depth of field and motion blur are. Stupid graphical gimmicks or stupidest graphical gimmicks?

Oh god! I hate those!

[Shadowlord]

Depth of field annoys us all so much that I'm pretty sure we've complained about it in this thread a few times already.

(I know I have!)

[UXLZ]

I'm fine with depth of field for several reasons. Firstly, unless it's overdone it isn't annoying and obvious like Motion Blur. Secondly, it's simulating something that actually occurs naturally. So is motion blur, but motion blur is already happening when you play the game (stuff naturally blurs as it moves fast.) Pretty sure depth of field won't normally occur on a 2D monitor. 

[miauw62]

Let's talk about how dumb depth of field and motion blur are. Stupid graphical gimmicks or stupidest graphical gimmicks?

Depth of field is alright, motion blur is holy-hell-what-the-fuck stupid.

At least depth of field and motion blur are effects you get in real life through your eyes, though video games tend to exaggerate it to ludicrous degrees, a new effect games are using is chromatic aberration, which causes artifacts like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's caused by light going through a lens and getting distorted, but in first person games where you're ostensibly looking out your character's eyes it makes no sense to have it.

You can get that if you wear glasses. I've had those blue/orange 'halos' in the past after getting stronger ones. They seem to go away after a while, but that might just be that the brain gets used to them and filters them out.

Yeah, I have some pretty strong glasses and that effect appears at basically that magnitude for me every day

[LoSboccacc]

I'm fine with depth of field for several reasons. Firstly, unless it's overdone it isn't annoying and obvious like Motion Blur. Secondly, it's simulating something that actually occurs naturally. So is motion blur, but motion blur is already happening when you play the game (stuff naturally blurs as it moves fast.) Pretty sure depth of field won't normally occur on a 2D monitor.

except you can turn your eyes while not changing your movement direction, things you can't do in most games, while depth of field is stuck dead center on your screen, and in many games that is where you are going (all driving games, walking games have strafe)

and don't get me started on depth of field vs looking at small objects: you can focus really well in real life to a small object, but in a game you have to have the mouse exactly on those handful pixel to get that in focus, and that fails miserably in many situations (like leading a target for a shoot - you look ahead of it, the target is quite small and all blurry because whatever is under the cursor is on focus)

[UXLZ]

In general I dislike turning those kinds of things on to begin with, but I prefer DoF to motion blur. The kind of DoF you're talking about sounds massively overdone, though.

[Sergius]

We need eye tracking in games for better DoF!

[itisnotlogical]

Improbably lazy quest design

During a quest in STO, you need to get an NPC a nerve tonic. I get that NPCs have to be lazy or incompetent, because otherwise there wouldn't be any quests and then it wouldn't be an MMO. The problem though?

Spoiler: How far the bartender is from the lady (click to show/hide)

She can see the bartender from where she's standing. At least put the bartender on a different floor or something, good grief!

[Shadowlord]

They don't want you to have to run TOO far, heh.

[SealyStar]

EDIT: Removed by user upon realizing it would cause a derail. You know what it was.

[FArgHalfnr]

Braindead morality

I was playing Fallout 3 the other day and I have to say I hate how stupid the morality system is. The only way to be evil in this game is to be a brain dead jerkass who takes every opportunity to insult or cause harm regardless of the risks to his own safety. I want to play as a manipulative bastard or a backstabber, not a school bully.

I wish video games in general didn't have such a childish view on morality.

[Leatra]

Braindead morality

I was playing Fallout 3 the other day and I have to say I hate how stupid the morality system is. The only way to be evil in this game is to be a brain dead jerkass who takes every opportunity to insult or cause harm regardless of the risks to his own safety. I want to play as a manipulative bastard or a backstabber, not a school bully.

I wish video games in general didn't have such a childish view on morality.

Yeah, I hate that too. Also, you have to go out of your way to be "evil" and most of the time it doesn't even benefit you. In most games being "good" gets you more money and perks, and it's much easier. This is because how "evil" is defined (you must blow up shit and murder to become "evil" simple bad stuff won't get you anywhere).

[Shadowlord]

Suggestion: Play the Witcher 1.

[Sergarr]

Suggestion 2: Play Eador.

Evil choices in this game are nearly always profitable in the short term. Not only they bring you more money and magic crystals, they also move you closer to the evil side, which has some really good (effectiveness-for-cost wise) units. Good side not only has a much bigger problem actually acquiring stuff, but it also has really costly units that only start to pay off if you micromanage all your battles to ensure that your units all survive to really high levels, where they get pretty strong... but can still die in a random battle if you're not micromanaging every battle. Meanwhile the bad side continues to use his absolutely expendable 1st level bandits to act as meatshields to your heroes, who because of that can grow up much faster and start kicking ass.

In short, evil side absolutely rules in this game, mechanics-wise. The only downside to it is it that you get more random bad stuff happening to you after a while because of all the bad karma you've acquired, but who cares about that?

It's a shame that this game is incredibly slow, incredibly hard and incredibly long on top of being slow, because it has a lot of customization for a turn-based game. And by "a lot" I mean "on par with Master of Magic".

[EnigmaticHat]

Part of the reason I played Skyrim and Oblivion as a kleptomaniac thief was because it felt like a believable kind of bad guy.  My characters weren't malicious some much as they were callous and greedy.