I didn't know that [nVidia became Nvidia]... Maybe I should put TechpowerUp back in the rotation...
I've just added them to my RSS reader. Had a look and maybe I can learn from them. (I use Reeder 4 on iOS, I've never been into RSS, but it was free and I've been trying to get the most out of it, maybe one day I'll buy the latest version. I think they want like $5 for it.) And yeah, as far as Nvidia goes, I only learned that seeing people write it the other way and decided to look it up.
I don't know if I would call Pathfinder a D&D knock-off. I'm sure it was the main inspiration, but there is a lot in the ruleset that is different. Sadly, I can't remember the details.
Well, that might have been a bit more pejorative than I intended. D&D went through a lot of version changes over the years, and after Wizards of the Coast bought the IP from TSR, one big change they made to Fourth Edition was to change the math and pretty much require miniatures. A lot of D&D fans stuck with 3.5 because of the controversial change, and 4e is regarded as the worst version, though it has its fans. Pathfinder, as I understood it, was an attempt to continue D&D along the path 3.5 set it on. I'm a bit more curious about
Starfinder since that is more like
Star Trek. I don't think it's played as much... side story, my niece got into D&D when she was around 11 or 12, and I got to bring her to an anime convention where they had a rotating D&D game, same campaign reset every couple hours. So we reserved a block (just for her, I only supervised) and I noticed they were playing
Starfield at the next table over. The GM was more than happy to give me a (very) brief introduction to what it was all about, and I wanted to play, but all their slots were filled, and of course I wasn't going to leave my preteen niece alone with a bunch of older guys (and some gals, actually). And as luck would have it, they were very welcoming to her as a new player, and she did well.</tangent>
PCs are good at math. Just not so good with RNGs.
Because DMs/GMs can fudge dice rolls. At the table, the interest is having fun. Computers can't comprehend that. D&D 5e (and maybe other systems?) uses a system called Inspiration, where if the player is getting into the role, the DM can issue them one point of inspiration, which can be used to reroll any d20 roll (attack or saving throw) once. It's a second chance that can be granted, and it can turn the tide. But even beyond that, if a player is getting real into it, and they roll badly, the DM can overturn a bad roll and say they hit, or they can overturn a good roll and say they missed for other reasons. Things like this can easily break a game if the DM is new at it, but can also make a game better as it can keep players engaged. Computers aren't really capable of this. There are a number of games where, if it's obvious the player understands what needs to be done, but maybe isn't doing it exactly right, the game just keeps failing them. A few will let you skip the event if you fail a certain number of times — I think
Grand Theft Auto V had this — but I have yet to see one that says, "you know what? You're clearly trying, let's just give it to you so you have fun and don't get frustrated." And then
move the game along.
I did not know about [Path of Exile]. I wonder how many hours I would have sunk into it?
Don't worry about it, I did not do my due diligence and check the name. That isn't it, either — that is a free action RPG with pay-to-win mechanics. Never played it, just must have heard the name. The name I was thinking of was
Pillars of Eternity. And now there's a second one.
In my previous post I forgot The Outer Worlds . There is another game that had a great beginning sameish middle and were out to lunch for the ending.
What a dumb, fun game. I had a blast with
The Outer Worlds, but it was not great by any means. Just a lot of fun. I assume by "middle," you mean that big planet you're supposed to land in the far northwest town of, and make a backwards U trip through it to get to where you need to go. Or you can spend 10,000 credits (I think) to get a landing pass there and fight your way through. That "middle" was alright, but I wish they put that much effort into the rest of the planets, because that felt like the real game, with everything before being the setup and everything after being the buildup to the ending. And then there was an early bug that made the game unbeatable — while storming the Tartarus prison (just how overused is that term?
My Hero Academia uses it for their supervillain lockup, too), there's a part where the game would crash upon you entering a room because an NPC's dialog was broken. The only way to advance, until they patched it (I assume they did, anyway), was to shoot the guy from outside the room and then go through. And the last boss was straight up bullshit. It wasn't
that hard, but it was Just Another Stupid Boss Fight. (So was Alduin from
Skyrim, to be fair.)