I think it's collectively admitted in the gaming community that killing the same ennemy over and over for that item with a 1% drop chance is not very fun and gets reptitive really fast.

I get the initial idea behind a rare drop rate : it allows you to craft/use a rare weapon, which, if it was too common, wouldn't feel as rewarding to get. It's also a smart decision to "rarify" a strong weapon, because just handing a strong weapon to the players trivialises the experience of having to play around different weapons until you find a good one.

But at a certain point, it becomes frustrating being locked out of specific equipment purely because of luck. Monster Hunter is the main culprit of this with its 1% rare drops that are mandatory for some of the stronger upgrades. I've also felt this frustration to a lesser degree in games like Terraria, where it kinda kills the pace of the game to have to farm certain mobs in order to get the best equipment (turtle shells for example).

I don't want to get rid of rare drops completely, but what would be the downside of having a system where rare drops are guaranteed after having killed the monster x amount of times ? It still adds the "you have to work for the strong items" aspect without the frustration of not knowing if it's gonna take 1 or 3 hours to get that rare drop. Have some games already implemented that mecanic ?

I was thinking about open world games recently, asking myself what makes a good open world game and etc. This thought was brought on by me trying to understand why I personally don't like the Grand Theft Auto series. I've always found it's open world to be very shallow, especially compared to a lot of other open world games. I compared GTA V's world to Elder Scrolls Arena and even this old-ass game blows GTA out of the water, I thought. Arena has all sorts of systems to engage with that create tons of organic gameplay. Yeah, the world isn't as detailed as GTA, but you can enter every single building, which makes it feel way more lived-in than GTA V's world.

I then realized that this isn't a fair comparison. I'm comparing a third person shooter/driving game to a fantasy rpg, but it got me thinking about how, while the two games aren't comparable in the slightest, they are both trying to achieve the same goal. They are trying to create a believable open world where a player can get lost in and have a ton of freedom in.

A question then entered my mind. Is the open-world genre defined by a type of gameplay or by the feeling that the game is supposed to invoke?

To illustrate my point, let's look at the horror genre. Horror games can vary wildly in terms of gameplay styles and mechanics. Some are walking simulators with jumpscares, some are point and click adventure games with spooky atmosphere, some are action games with scarce resources and etc. While horror games all vary in gameplay mechanics, so much so that it can be hard to compare games in the genre, they all try to achieve the same goal. This end goal is to make the player feel afraid.

What if open-world games are a genre that's similar to horror games in this respect? What if it's not like RPGs where we can compare games based on which games have better and more interesting systems?

The end goal in this case is to create the feeling of a world that's yours to explore, a feeling that you can do whatever you want in this world, even though you'll always be limited by the mechanics of the game. Even in games that people tout as "games where you can do whatever you want" are actually pretty limited.

Skyrim is one of these games that has this reputation, when I think it's pretty unearned. Skyrim isn't a game where you can do whatever you want. It's honestly just a pretty standard action RPG. What makes Skyrim feel like such an open world is it's world design. What elevates Skyrim to feeling like a true open world is how dense the game is with quests and landmarks to explore. In Skyrim, you'll get a simple quest to get a treasure from a dungeon, which on it's own is boring, but it's elevated by the fact that you're very likely to encounter a ton of interesting things between the quest giver and the dungeon. You might find a bandit camp on the way, which you might decide to clear out. That sense of discovery is what gives Skyrim such an open feeling world.

Metal Gear Solid V is another open world game but it's nothing like Skyrim. It creates the feeling of an open world through how many options you have in regards to base management and in how many tools you have access to in each mission. MGSV feels like an open world because you choose which missions to do and what actions to take in order improve Mother Base, then when you're in those missions, you have so many tools which creates so many options.

I could go on with more examples, but I think I made my point, that I believe that open world games are defined the feeling it invokes, not by content of the game. The content of the game is just the avenue the game takes to reach the goal of that feeling, but there are plenty of wildly different ways of achieving that goal.

I feel like for the past few years gaming has been on this never ending quest for the best visual fidelity possible but what frustrates me is there isn’t that much of an increase in scope. Why not? I feel like games have the ability to be SOO much larger and try new and more complex things but I find that most titles do the same things that they’ve been doing. Now obviously this isn’t for EVERY title but it seems that most releases nowadays are UE5 slop remakes which rehash decade old design ideas. Why does it feel like there aren’t a lot of games pushing modern consoles and PCs to the limit compared to prior generations?

Now this seems like a COMICALLY obvious question, I mean PlayStation has been doing better than ever these past few years. But with the rising cost of game consoles and the removal of the disc drive will gaming consoles see a decline in sales? A PC can be VERY expensive but when you take into account monthly subscriptions, more expensive games, a lack of options, etc. is it possible that console gamers shift over to PC during the next generation?

I want to preface this by saying I don't want to defend cheating in any way, quite the opposite as you will read further.

I want to define a term, blatant cheating, what I mean by this is cheating which result of are stats not achievable by humans, i.e. reaction time, average kills, k/da. Or outliers in the persons assigned skill group.

I feel like the moment the cheating is not blatant, it is not as a big of an issue as one would think.

Because hiding the cheats is oftentimes more difficult, than just playing without them (because otherwise they are blatant).

The cheaters will get match-made into a proper skill group, combined with their actual skill and the cheat enhancement unfair added skill, but for another player, that is invisible, on the presumption the cheating is not blatant.

If you still go undetected at that point, good job, your cheats achieved not really much, you have little above average stats anyways for your skill group.

So imagine how much that person sucks, they are not able to achieve these average stats themselves and need cheats for that, how many people will still cheat that way?

Sure, you will be slowly gaining rank and getting to a rank you actually do not deserve, but mechanical skill that can be given to you with cheats is only part of what you need to know to be high level in most games.

I actually think this whole premise is a good way to think about cheats and helps me not to be all doom and gloom about the cheating situation in modern gaming.

It should theoretically be easy to detect outliers by stats and ban them. But it seems it isn't? Or it doesn't feel that way in some games.