Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-26005008-20160407215658/@comment-3547390-20160804013152

Yeah, I love exploration. One of the annoying things about Daggerfall is something I hate in games in general, time limits, because they work entirely against exploration. Got to rush to the end, then do the next thing where you rush! I just like to take my time and fully immerse myself in a place. Generally I like to find the way forward, then find any optional routes and check them out. Thief is a great game for hidden treasures, even I have run into new things over the years. You wouldn't know how amazed I was to find some secret areas of Unreal as well.

I hate stats, at least visually on the screen by default. It is convenient when working on a Wikia for sure, but when I want to play a level by myself I don't want to see the counters telling me I am missing one thing and then have to torture myself with a wild hunt. I don't want an enemies killed count at all. Unreal is the perfect example for me, it has absolutely no stats, and is absolutely brilliant for that. The only reason I have them up in Doom engine games and Quake is because the end shows it anyway, which feels more like an annoying surprise whereby now I have to load my save and hunt again. Thief also has an amazing example of how to do stats properly, that game has quite a few and is a lot more intricate than most of the other games I have seen for such stats. However, all of it is totally optional, you have to press a button after finishing to see it, while the normal page is just the objectives complete screen. Even though there is plenty of hidden loot, I never feel tortured by it because it doesn't appear by default, so it feels more like a puzzle I decide to tackle instead of one forced on me by the game with giant text.

Yeah, sometimes I read what I say and I worry it comes off like I am a person that fully hates exploration and optional content due to how much I get annoyed by hunting for the stuff. Like I have tried to imply, it is more the matter of presentation, I love exploration itself and that is a big part of my passion for Thief. I guess a big part of exploration is the fact that I am being rewarded. I want there to be purpose to me wandering around, not walk around for a few hours and see absolutely nothing of interest. Secrets in Doom tend to serve no purpose since they tend to be one-shot levels that I am going to start from scratch afterwards anyway. Even wandering around in Arena was pretty bad because there just wasn't much to see, though I did appreciate when I ran across a dungeon with some minor detail in some far off corner. I just don't like to be sitting there feeling like I am wasting my time and questioning why I even began this trek to find something that is completely pointless and disinteresting. Daggerfall's books for example, I will forget most of them, so it feels almost pointless that I am reading them. I should be able to find something interesting in about the time of one of my really long Youtube videos, or about an hour and fourty minutes, to make it feel like it was worth it. I shouldn't just be sitting there and not feel like I did much of anything worthwhile.

Meh, I tend to not like playing a game over and over if it means seeing most of the same content in a rather boring game. I guess it matters if the game itself intrigued me enough to warrant a replay, I wouldn't mind for a decent game, but you are kidding if you think I am playing Elder Scrolls Arena all the way through once more just to see what the experience is like as a mage. Yet for Thief, a game with a lot of depth that means you will get a lot more detail on the second playthrough, I wouldn't mind replaying it over and over.

See, I don't feel thrilled by the hunt. I just keep saying "it has to be here somewhere" while getting frustrated all the while and just wanting it to be over with. It feels like I am just going back and forth over the same few areas, I start to question if the level is broken if is a custom level and usually end up ruining things for myself, and usually loathe whatever gave me such an annoyingly long hunt even after I have been through such an area. My least favorite levels in Thief are like that, lengthy hunts and I feel unsatisfied by the end, even for an area that originally interested me quite a bit. Hunting for stuff just kills the experience for me. I think part of the reason I get so negative with these PWADs is because many feature me having to hunt for stuff which I either end up giving up on and then hating myself for giving up, not giving up and realizing I wasted a lot of time on something that doesn't even exist, or the disinterested feeling of finally finding whatever that thing was and being happy that I can finally get out of wherever I am. It is a chore, yet one that I get compelled to do due to a counter. I seriously wish there wasn't that end of level counter for Doom or even for Quake, then I wouldn't have this can't-win situation that keeps coming back every time I touch a level and can't find all the secrets right away.

I noticed it, but I had to run off :P