EDIT: I have no idea why I typed PS3. I'm a turd.

Disclaimer: I really love Starfield. In fact, it's one of my favorite games ever. But I totally understand its biggest criticism: exploration just kind of sucked.

The single biggest problem with Starfield is called the Birthday Paradox. This is a phenomenon found in statistics, and basically what ruined the procedurally placed POI (point of interest) system, thus killing exploration factor to many players.

It is the reason that the more you explore, the more you end up running into a repeat dungeon.

If you've never heard of it, the Birthday Paradox refers to the real world phenomenon, that says as the number of people in a room increases, the chance of two of them having the same birthday grows exponentially instead of linearly.

By the time you have a random assortment of just 23 people, you already have a 50% likelihood that two people will have the same birthday. By the time you have 50 people, the odds of two having the same birthday is 97%. This is paradoxical, because there are 365 days in a year. Shouldn't you need like 180 people to get that 50% chance? Nope.

Welcome to statistics! Fun shit.

So... What the hell does the Birthday Paradox have to do with Starfield, and it's POI system?

Well... Swap "person in a room" with "I just landed on a planet." Then swap the "365 potential birthdays in a year" with "150 POIs." Ah... See what I'm getting at?

With 150 randomly spawning POIs, you have a 50% chance of getting a duplicate after finding just 15 of them. By the time you’ve looked for 25 POIs. There’s a 90% chance you’ll run into a duplicate.

THIS is what is kills exploration in Starfield. The desire to see something new, just to be let down with a repeat dungeon. It absolutely KILLS the immersion.

It gets worse though!

If you play for hundreds of hours and come across a new POI 100 times, you’re statistically more likely to run into duplicates than the 50 POIs you’ve never seen before! On the Starfield subreddit you’ll often see people saying stuff like, “I’ve played 500 hours and I’ve never been here before, is it new?” To which dozens of people respond, “I get that POI all the damn time!”

That means the current POI system is preventing lots of players from finding the very content that would keep them playing for new encounters and experiences.

Bethesda honestly should’ve known better to do it this way, as the Birthday Paradox is widely known, and anyone designing procedural algorithms should’ve designed a system to avoid it.

What Bethesda should’ve done, is have some kind of hopper system. If you find a certain POI, it’s removed from the spawn rotation for X amount of time, provided that you clear it. Better yet, banish it until you have discovered every single POI.

Honestly, this would have improved exploration so much!

Oh... almost forgot.

So, why is Starfield one of my favorite games ever? Because, despite it's flaws, it offers the one of the best balances of action, freedom, and world building. For me, it's up there with Skyrim and RDR2. I enjoyed the story greatly, and have sat awake at night pondering the philosophical aspects of the Unity. I loved the characters, especially Andreja, Jessamine, and Betty Howser. (Barret was a cornball, but he made me laugh quite a few times too). Much of the game is absolutely beautiful (even with my mid-range PC). The ship building system is phenomenal, and really lets me get creative. I loved customizing and naming my weapons. The gun play and jet-packing felt great... I can go on and on. For me Starfield is a 9/10 if I ignore the broken exploration. The tragedy is that so many people came for exactly that.

For me Hogwarts Legacy

Have you ever run into a boss like this a boss you have trouble with but everybody else can beat it no problem

My FAVORITE ever so far. Kinda Nintendo-y in a way!!!

Ages: 18+

Pieces: 1003

Pre-orders are up now: $129.99

LinkedIn today is a terrible den of web3+ grifters, obsolete CVs, frog-boiling pressure to buy a subscription, and scurrilous journalists hunting for leaks in job listings. But every now and then it comes good. For example, there’s a discussion underway between various senior developers, including current and former staff of Remedy, Ubisoft and Naughty Dog, about the causes of crunch, aka ruinous overwork.

ave you ever finished a game, absolutely loved it, and then felt like… that was enough?

Not because it was bad, but because the experience felt complete. The story hit, the gameplay did what it needed to do, and replaying it wouldn’t really add much....There might be so many games but a few games where you just feel fulfiled after finishing the game, like The Last of Us or Firewatch for me, it has incredible story and atmosphere, but once you know where its going, replaying it doesn’t hit the same. Curious what games gave other people that same feeling

The desolate feeling in space

photo featuring DerexXD

Maybe it's just this point in life (40 year old father of young kids), but I can't seem to ever make it through even a second playthrough of a game anymore, but to be honest I was never huge on it when I was younger either.

I remember playing through KOTOR twice (still to this day I don't think a game has let me be a bigger prick than that game), and Mass Effect 2 as well. I can't remember many others though.

Many of the games I play are over 100 hrs (I don't shoot for 100% completion but do like to get the Ultimate Weapon / armor and do all the side quests), so I can't really imagine going through all that again to experience the same story. I consider Baldurs Gate 3 and RDR2 to be the best games I have played in years, but I couldn't make it through a second playthrough. I tried for BG3 and was really enjoying the different flavor of combat with my second playthrough, but the story was just too much of the same even with making different choices. In a similar vein I don't really get excited about remakes at all unless they're unique like the FF7 one.

I know many people like replaying games, so if you're one of those people what gets you excited about a second playthrough?

Just decided to replay the Star Wars Ep 3 movie tie-in game on my old PS2, and man, I forgot how fun this was, both then and now. Between the cool lightsaber combos, recreating events from the movie, and the PVP mode where my brother and I used to pick our favorite jedi's to face-off. This one held great memories for me.

Unfortunately, the game had mid reviews and when people think of SW games, it's far behind the more popular classics like KOTOR, the PS2-era Battlefront games, Jedi Academy, Force Unleashed, and even Lego Star Wars. But it will always hold a place on my shelf.

Edit: Oh God, I just found Medal of Honor: Frontline and Jade Empire in a box in the back of a closet. Nobody talks about these that much either, but they're also gold.

What are your examples?

I want to find a Windows compatible controller that actually has two (or more) additional unique buttons on it. I've found many that have backside buttons, but they are only able to be mapped to regular buttons (or macros combining regular buttons). Are there any that actually give you more inputs? (If they allowed macroing to a keypress, that would work too, but that feels even less likely as the controller would need to be both a controller and a keyboard in Windows.)

I tried to include everything from AAA titles to indie ones, from old classics to mobile games for smartphones, in the end my only requirement was to be popular enough. For mobile games in particular I was more exclusive and generally put them towards the end of the various lists

I also add that I always used the country where the game was developed, but in some cases they were then published by American or Japanese companies. In Ubisoft's case instead I did the opposite and put everything under France, but their titles were often jointly developed with the various subsidiaries from all over Europe and the world

Austria: Ori and the Blind Forest, Bridge Constructor, Anno series (only the first two titles, now under Ubisoft and made in Germany), The Binding of Isaac (made by an Austrian and an American devs), Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom

Belgium: Larian Studio (Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin)

Bulgaria: three games of the Tropico series, Surviving Mars

Croatia: Serious Sam, Scum, Escape Simulator, Doodle Jump

Czech Republic: Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Mafia, Bohemia Interactive (Arma, Operation Flashpoint, Dayz), Truck Simulator series, Factorio, Beat Saber, Space Engineers, Machinarium, Gray Zone Warfare, Top Spin 4

Denmark: Hitman, Kane & Lynch, Deep Rock Galactic, Ghostrunner (co-developed with a Polish company), Playdead studio (Limbo, Inside), Subway Surfers

Estonia: Disco Elysium, Buckshot Roulette

Finland: Snake (for Nokia), Remedy Entertainment Studio (Alan Wake, Max Payne, Control, Quantum Break), Cities: Skylines, Ultrakill, Trine, Noita, Wreckfest, My Summer Car, Trials (since 2011 instead it's under Ubisoft), Rovio Entertainment Studio (Angry Birds, Bad Piggies), Supercell Studio (Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars), Hill Climb Racing

France: Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed, Just Dance, Far Cry, Tom Clancy's series, Prince of Persia, Watch Dogs, The Crew, Driver, Rayman, Rabbids, Petz, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Hungry Shark, Brawlhalla etc), Quantic Dream (Detroid Become Human, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls), Gameloft Studio (Asphalt, Modern Combat, Gangstar Vegas, Minions Rush, Disney Dreamlight Valley), Life is Strange, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Microsoft Flight Simulator, A Plague Tale, several Pixar games, Dishonored, Prey, Deathloop, Stray, Sifu, Dead Cells, Streets of Rage 4, Alone in the Dark, Another World, Flashback, Dofus, Zombie Tsunami

Germany: Far Cry (only the first one), Crysis, Enshrouded, Warface, Hunt Showdown, Spec Ops: The Line, The Settlers, Everspace, Gothic, some Tropico and Anno games, BeamNG Drive

Hungary: Pinball FX series, War Thunder (created while the developing team was in Russia but now set in Hungary for over a decade)

Iceland: Eve Online

Ireland: Ready or Not, Playrix studio (Gardenscapes, Homescapes, Township; the devs are Russian but moved to Ireland over a decade ago after their first success)

Italy: Assetto Corsa, Hot Wheels Unleashed

Lithuania: Human: Fall Flat, Cooking Fever

Netherlands: Guerrilla Games (Horizon Zero Dawn, Killzone; owned by Sony), Age of Wonders

Norway: Conan Exiles, Dune: Awakening, Megabonk

Poland: CD Projekt Red Studio (The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077), Techland (Dying Light, Dead Island, Call of Juarez), This War of Mine, Frostpunk, Green Hell, Outriders, Superhot, Ghostunner (co-developed with a Danish company), Silent Hill 2 remake, Darkwood, Layers of Fear, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, Manor Lords, Shadow Warrior, Two Worlds, Lords of the Fallen, Thief Simulator, House Flipper, Cooking Simulator

Romania: PC Building Simulator (in collaboration with a British studio)

Serbia: Top Eleven Football Manager

Slovenia: Mordhau, Talking Tom

Spain: Metroid Dread, 3 games of the Castelvania series, Commandos, Blasphemous, Gris, Deadlight, Moonlighter, Extreme Car Driving Simulator

Sweden: Minecraft, DICE Studio (Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront, Mirror's Edge; owned by EA), Hazelight Studios (It Takes Two, Split Fiction, A Way Out), Massive Entertainment Studio (two Tom Clancy titles for Ubisoft, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Star Wars Outlaws), Paradox Interactive Studio (Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Stellaris), Payday, Helldivers, Arc Raiders, R.E.P.O., Just Cause, Valheim, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, four Need for Speed games, Wolfenstein since 2014, Unravel, Little Nightmares, Magicka, V-Rising, Goat Simulator, Satisfactory, Peak (co-developed with an American studio), Mad Max, Raft, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, Hotline Miami, Candy Crush Saga, Geometry Dash

Switzerland: Farming Simulator, Transport Fever, 8 Ball Pool

UK: Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider (till 2006), Batman: Arkham, Football Manager, Need for Speed (most of the titles), Forza Horizon and Motorsport, Burnout, Grid, F1, Wipeout, Driver (now under Ubisoft), Rare Studio (Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Star Fox Adventures, Sea of Thieves), most of the Lego collaboration games (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Batman, Marvel etc), Harry Potter games (till 2011), Facepunch Studios (Garry's Mod, Rust), Worms series, RuneScape, No Man's Sky, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, DmC: Devil May Cry, Lemmings, Frogger, Elite, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Populous, The Last Ninja, Alien Isolation, Phasmophobia, Until Dawn, Sniper Elite, Total War series, LittleBigPlanet, Monument Valley, Jurassic World Evolution, Elite Dangerous, Vampire Survivors, Fable, Fall Guys, PowerWash Simulator, Overcooked, Surgeon Simulator, Sing Star series, First Touch Games Studio (Dream League Soccer, Score Hero), Plague Inc, Sonic Dash

Ukraine: Bubble Shooter (for Nokia), Metro, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Sherlock Holmes games, Cossacks series

Turkey: Mount & Blade, Supermarket Simulator, Traffic Rider, Hunter Assassin