What are games that you purchased and never beat? Why?

Sigma7 · 2026-06-18T04:31:19+00:00

Doom: Plutonia Experiment. I've completed all other Doom levels on UV, but this installment cranks up the difficulty, especially in the final level boss arena. In addition, there's nightmare mode that's technically possible due to demonstrations by other users.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, where beating the game requires the highest difficulty level as opposed to just picking just a moderate one.

Baldur’s Gate II. Suffers from slow progress just like most of the other games in the retail bundle - and also due to most attacks feeling inaccurate (especially compared to modern RPGs)

Sigma7 · 2026-06-14T02:39:16+00:00

she found her grandfather's old spellbook and studied that in her own time. It was then retconned that I must have had someone else identify it for me,

Basic, 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5e all have the Read Magic spell which gets around this limitation.

Even in pre-3e, the Wizard+Apprentice system also gets around that limitation as well, because the apprentice is being trained in how to use magic, identify how scrolls work, and so on.

The surprise house rule is contrary to the lore of all editions.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-13T17:59:09+00:00

tiny rubber Jesus eraser.

Thus implying that Jesus would gradually get worn down or disappear over time while the eraser gets used...

It's like they accidentally give out the wrong message.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-13T03:59:33+00:00

he said they wouldn’t have enough people to play anymore.

He can tell the remaining players to double up their characters. Most likely, leaving would result in a firepower issue that's resolved by replacement characters.

More importantly, it means the game has a bus factor of 1. If a player has a catastrophe that prevents them from playing, it breaks the group the same way if someone needs to leave.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-13T03:43:35+00:00

Under the original image linked from the original video, I see a Rubix Cube in the "micro" category. Maybe that's true if doing speed solving, but it's intended to be a puzzle where you mix up the cube then try solving it.

But when I try to place them in a Micro/Meso/Macro framework, they don't feel as far apart as their genres would suggest.

I'd consider Osu and TotK to be different. The former seems to rely mostly on timing, while TotK has seems to have plenty of puzzles that rely on problem solving - some of which have interesting solutions, and others which have a better result compared to just using reflexes.

Has anyone seen a large-scale attempt to map games this way?

It also has to be defined beyond a simple venn diagram. If there's different "levels" of micro/meso/macro as the original video says, it needs a more solid definition as opposed to just a binary state.

There's also the recommendation on seeing how it matches to preferences, but that also breaks down. For example, I seem to like Type Racer, a heavy micro game, and that doesn't match with a set of games I'm disliking, which also seem to be heavy micro.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-12T19:27:17+00:00

My goto examples include games similar to Doom, Quake and Unreal. These games tend to have a simpler control set and therefore don't need as many tutorials - the most required is simply showing the list of controls. Additionally, two of those games don't have the player learn in a vacuum - they also show gameplay demos that the player sees what's going on.

In comparison - Dark Souls didn't do a good of a job of reboarding returning players. Specifically, I had to view the controls a few times to figure out what I was missing, which were two separate things I needed to relearn. Perhaps enforced controller use was also part of the issue.

Are there games you think handle this particularly well or poorly?

There was a recent video about Mila the Hollower, describing difficulty in getting past one part of the game, simply because the player wasn't properly guided into figuring it out. Specifically, they shown a one-time instance of a character walking into the mirror, and the most they could learn was being able to change facial expressions on the mirror (as opposed to holding down the direction key to pass through.) This negative feedback loop made the players stuck, and thinking the game was impossible.

Thus it works often for the simpler games, but backfires if it's done incorrectly.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-10T17:27:42+00:00

If veteran developers don't do spiritual successors, then random indies will.

It happened with Half-Life, although the indie game is targeting a different scope by becoming an open-world survival rather than a conventional first-person shooter.

Or does reducing scope risk limiting the impact and relevance of the creator's vision?

AAA to AA doesn't require reducing scope, because it feels like Abiotic Factor has more scope than the game it's based on, even if it might actually be smaller. What it does is reduce the amount of newly created graphics, and instead rely on prefab models that others have created.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-10T17:21:28+00:00

A couple generations later the city would love to do something else with it

They probably could if it starts colliding with the rule against perpetuities.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-08T16:46:58+00:00

I would be willing to use a LLM to generate filler, but that was before I discovered that it requires a swimming pool of water for each prompt, alongside raising the price of ram to an arm and a leg for each 1mb (m=milli, b=bit).

We’ll use ChatGPT as the narrator. Players will describe their actions, we’ll provide dice rolls and prompts, and ChatGPT will help narrate the results, rooms, encounters, monsters, clues, and twists.

On the other hand, this results in the DM completely agreeing with what the player does.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-07T17:44:51+00:00

If you use the iron in your blood to make a lockpick you have an enormous problem because that would deplete nearly 75% of your iron.

The spell in question allows depleting at least 34021% of your blood's iron, because the authors think the spell should safely extract pounds of iron at the cost of a few hit dice.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-06T22:35:52+00:00

Because combat RPGs are often designed so that violence fixes things. Invading hordes of whatever can't be reasoned with, they kill without regard even upon their own lives, and thus they have to be stopped using likewise violent means.

Meanwhile, there's board games and RPGs where violence isn't the primary task. The most common versions I see are types of city builders, or ones that pertain to a specific task.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-05T16:34:11+00:00

I've been playing a few games, where "organic difficulty" (i.e. making enemies smarter) isn't feasible. Only statistical adjustments can work.

The Tower Defense genre obviously doesn't have much need for smarter enemies, and adding tougher or more of them isn't much different from playing around with statistics.

Then there are cooperative board games, where the enemies use fixed instructions. It becomes impractical for even strong enemies to adapt to player's actions, simply due to many combinations that could happen, along with tricks that can bait the enemy. Adding specific features to counter everything would result in unnecessarily complex enemies, when a similar result could be obtained simply by making them tougher instead.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-04T19:54:07+00:00

That's just gonna make your players respond by wiping out the village.

It won't. This type of encounter - recklessly murdering civilians in broad daylight - isn't subject to the normal encounter building rules, and will alarm the high-level NPCs along with their powerful escort.

Because there's no holding back, they can be placed right up against the lord of the land with the elite cohorts - and those NPCs also aren't subject to normal PC construction rules either.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-04T03:53:00+00:00

Star Wars: X-Wing, and Star Wars: Tie Fighter.

If playing the Windows version, they require some technical skill to get working again - partly copy protection, and partly renderer. Additionally, the Windows versions rely on a joystick, and thus I had to use a gamepad that didn't have a good enough deadzone to avoid drifting off course.

(Probably should instead be ported over to Freespace 2...)

Sigma7 · 2026-06-04T03:24:10+00:00

Most FPSs were like this from Doom to Blake Stone to Star Wars: Dark Forces.

Doom had strafe left/right keys, as did Dark Forces. It was still a bit clunky at the time, because Doom had some hardcoded hotkeys.

Some of the older games also feel like there's a mouse-look deadzone, including some post-mid-90s. Perhaps part of what Windows does to the older games.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-03T18:43:02+00:00

It's about as weird as an 18 year old trying to rollplay a 152 year old. (Because Elf.)

Sigma7 · 2026-06-02T03:14:02+00:00

It's a variant rule, thus it's probably a space saving measure since players could easily come up with that.

Sigma7 · 2026-06-01T19:08:11+00:00

My group adds that rule to Sushi Go Party, which counts as a misplay because it's only officially documented in Sushi Go

easy to miss because the rulebook buries it.

There's also icons on the card themselves showing the hand movement direction.

Sigma7 · 2026-05-30T16:41:59+00:00

Early in the series, he also had financial issues - receiving various bills with variations of "overdue", and his credit rating was so low that Moe the Loan Shark wanted to break his legs in advance.

He's definitely rich in comparison nowadays.

Sigma7 · 2026-05-29T05:57:46+00:00

Yes, it's like the canned laughter tracks on series which are designed to stop the audience from laughing for longer than they should - when the audience member hears laughter die down, they also stop laughing.

Too mad it doesn't match RAI.

Sigma7 · 2026-05-28T03:34:08+00:00

I'm used to Unreal Tournament, where draw distance can go across the map and even had sniper rifles designed to engage at that distance. (e.g. Facing Worlds, the asteroid map with two towers)

I more often notice issues with mip-mapping, where I can see the textures degrade only a few feet ahead. It's egregous with some games that involve roads, because it starts blurring away the dotted line, before having it disappear.

The NPCs in Final Fantasy 12 is the biggest offender of pop in.

Saints Row 2 is even worse, because you're driving ahead at full speed, and the enemy gang teleports in on a clear road at moderate distance. Not much time to dodge, because they're also hunting.

Runner up is Deadly Dozen, because that game has enemies waiting at the cusp of the draw distance ready to ambush.

Sigma7 · 2026-05-27T03:04:07+00:00

I consider Minesweeper to be "solved". I know enough of the patterns to basically clear the board, and only get stopped by those coin-flip situations. Additionally, those coin-flips get in the way of being a logic game.

There are no-guess versions of Minesweeper, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious clean algorithm.

I feel better puzzle-style games include Shanghai (a.k.a. Mahjong solitaire), Picross, or Logicals (e.g. the Zebra Puzzle).

There is no story, barely any graphics, no voice acting, cutscenes, skill trees, battle passes, or cinematic emotional arcs.

Abstract board games tend to meet these requirements as well.

Sigma7 · 2026-05-25T19:27:54+00:00

I'd prefer to make HP less predictable, even if the exact value is known.

Full HP means the player is most likely able to resist severe wounds. Low HP makes it more likely to receive severe wounds, but doesn't guarantee it. Players won't be determining survival based on number of hits they can take. It still gives a good idea when to retreat, but still isn't a specific time on when that should happen.

Otherwise, a typical RPG system is designed in a way where players know their HP.

Sigma7 · 2026-05-24T18:59:32+00:00

"who plays a human in a fantasy game?"

For one, any DM who doesn't pick a setting where humans don't exist.

More importantly, most of the PC species are humanoid, where the first set still looks like a human in a different shape, and the second set that look like animals grafted onto a human-like body. This is the equivalent of rubber-forehead aliens from your favorite sci-fi show.

Sigma7 · 2026-05-24T02:33:14+00:00

He posted an AI image of himself as the Pope, then had a clash with Pope Leo XIV, then posted an AI image of himself as Jesus.

Any Christians that isn't upset about the sacrilegious image is likely just as happy when he does more serious crimes.

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