Skray

They largely are. $70 is becoming the new price point for a new game.

That would require every player even new ones to make very complex loot filters and understand what loot is valuable and not to automate it.

Every item in PoE that is automatically picked up doesn’t take up inventory space (Metamorph organs, Expedition fragments, Sulphite, Azurite). The concept is that players make an active decision of what they’re picking up and that they’re aware of what they have because they made an active decision to pick it up.
It doesn’t take control of their inventory away from the players.

It also feeds into the dopamine loop, when you get an exciting drop you see it on the ground it doesn’t automatically just get sucked into your inventory.

Trading will never be addressed in the way the community wants because what they want is not good game design.
Most players want some form of Auction House to automate trade completely, but that in conjunction with completely free trade like what exists in PoE completely undermines the actual gameplay of an ARPG.

Trade is highly highly efficient, and ARPG game developers are usually quite afraid of trade. PoE is one of the few games that has completely open and unrestricted trade.

The restriction in PoE comes from the idea of trade “friction” where it takes additional time and makes it inconvenient.

But this huge risk of trading is exactly the reason why Blizzard removed trade entirely from D3 and D4 has limited trade too, and even brand new ARPGs like Last Epoch also have restricted trade.
Trade has a huge risk of undermining the entire game and removing the reason to play it.

Many ARPG developers feel trade removes from the game, while Chris Wilson and GGG feel that trade adds value to items because they can be tradable, but once you add that AH it makes trade too powerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE3MAFGDzWw&t=29460s

The DLC in all the games are fairly important depending on the DLC/expansion, and there can be a lot of it. DA2 and DAI both integrate well into the story while DAO was kind of built around the idea of side-story mini-adventures so there’s a lot more of them.

DAO Primary story DLC: Warden’s Keep, Stone Prisoner, Return to Ostagar add side quests to the main game and are solid to play.

DAO Standalone campaigns: Leliana’s Song is a prequel focusing on the Leliana party member (you’ll meet her pretty early in DAO although she is missable), Darkspawn Chronicles is an alternate history and not needed although fun, Golems of Amgarrak is a short post-story adventure that’s not that important, Witch Hunt is a post-game story around Morrigan that’s actually pretty important.

Awakening is a full-length expansion and absolutely worth playing, some of the characters you meet here tie into DA2.

DA2: All DLC integrates with the main story and can be played at any time. Legacy is a very important DLC that directly ties into Dragon Age Inquisition.

DAI: All 3 story DLC are fantastic, Jaws of Hakkon, The Descent and Trespasser.
Jaws and Descent are played during the main story as side quests, and Descent has some major lore implications for the world and raises some serious questions about the past and the potential future. Trespasser is a post-game story that directly leads into DA4: Dreadwolf when it comes out.

Also not sure if Gamepass supports this, but you can import your saves forward. For Dragon Age Inquisition you will need to use Dragon Age Keep to recreate your choices to import them into your world state.

2 definitely shows the issue of EA wanting to push the game out in 1.5 years. Many cut corners and a lack of assets with the repetitive maps.
I think it’s the weakest entry in the Dragon Age series, and a lot of it’s negative reception was because it failed to live up to expectations of DAO.

If Dragon Age 2 wasn’t a Dragon Age game, it wouldn’t have gotten the poor reviews it got. As a standalone game it’s actually not bad.

I always recommend playing it, as it directly leads into the story of Inquisition and it has some great characters in it.

I recently played an indie game called Iron Danger that allowed you to rewind time.

It was a party based real-time-with-pause tactical RPG. So you’d pause, command your 2 party members to use their skills and then rewind if things didn’t go exactly right.

It led to combat being a really interesting puzzle where you’re playing with the timing of skills to block a hit at the right moment, get a knockdown off before an enemy hits you, or trying to position your characters just right.

It’s a nice twist on the typical tactical RPG combat that sort of merges turn based and RTWP combat. Timing matters, where normally in a RTWP combat you wouldn’t have the ability to fine tune your actions, and in turn based timing doesn’t matter at all.

Outer Worlds is currently in the July Humble Choice if anyone wants to pay $12 for it and some other games.

Depends on the game.
Some DLC are equivalent to the expansion packs of the 90s where they add new content, new areas, and let you continue the story.
Others are just small cosmetics, or single new classes.

I grew up with expansion packs being the norm.
There are very few memorable games from my childhood that didn’t have expansion packs, and I think for many games DLC is the modern version of an expansion pack. Although DLC varies quite a bit.

Obviously there are good pieces of DLC and bad ones, and it can be hard to tell what’s what. Day 1 DLC can be a big offender, but I do remember the days where games had content in them that wasn’t finished.
Baldur’s Gate 2 has a mod called Unfinished Business that modders finished up the content, and there is the famous Ascension mod that rewrites much of the ending of the expansion, the funny thing with this mod is that the creator was David Gaider of Bioware, one of the writers and directors of Baldur’s Gate 2, due to his feelings that the expansion was unfinished he released a mod to fix his problems with it.

I don’t see either thing happening in today’s gaming world, that unfinished content can be finished before the game is released and then sold as DLC, being unhappy with the game’s ending can be patched later on, or again sold as DLC.

My annoyances with DLC are typically pre-order bonuses, especially if they’re exclusive to stores. And if they’re selling very important story based content on Day 1.

I don’t mind additional story content coming later, because that seems so similar to the expansion packs of years ago.

A good comparison is Mass Effect. Lair of the Shadowbroker I think is a fine DLC, it’s not largely important to the plot of ME2, but it’s a good side quest that is important to the character and was released about 9 months after the launch of the game.
But From Ashes in ME3 I think was terrible, it was Day 1 DLC and featured an extremely important and lore significant character locked behind an additional paywall.

That said, I do have some annoyances with DLC:
An abundance of cosmetic DLC in single player games is whatever for me, but if the game doesn’t have a way to unlock other cosmetics in game, it feels like a cheap cash grab.
Pre-order DLC especially if it’s store-exclusive and ESPECIALLY if it’s not available for purchase later- I would like the ability to have a complete game.
Having to wait for all DLC to come out before I can feel like I’m playing a complete game. Although this isn’t always new, as things like the D2 Battle Chest, Neverwinter Nights Platinum Edition or Heroes of Might and Magic 3: Complete Edition existed when I was a kid as well, where we were buying individual expansion packs as they released or we waited for the special editions.

Survivor games which are very similar to roguelites can also be an option. Vampire Survivors being the big one. Runs are up to 30 minutes long with permanent unlocks in the form of characters and new power ups or boosts.

I would third control. I picked it up from the Humble female protagonist bundle and it was fantastic, loved everything about it.
Once you unlock all the powers the combat and exploration really open up, and the game still has a significant bit of story left giving you time to have some fun with them.

Also loved the environmental lore, all the notes and the vids with Dr. Darling are great. Highly recommend the game.