One QoL improvement I’ve not seen here is a better journal system. When I can’t further a quest line even something vague like ‘Continue your journey so learn more’ would be great. I have spent time on some quests hunting down a person to discover the quest can only be completed in the next act multiple times now.
I enjoyed what I played, and the choices felt like they could potentially be impactful in the future. Episode 1 is incredibly short, however. I explored a bunch, picked up most, if not all, the extra resources and it still clocked in at under an hour. Looking back, there were four main ‘scenes’ that actually contributed to any story.
Good start, but I really hope the future episodes are more substantial.
This is Charles Dickens syndrome (a term I just made up) but basically Dickens grew up 1810’s which was uncharacteristicly cold for Britain. Specifically, a lot more snowy than it had been for centuries. When he came to put the season into his stories, it was those seminal years that he wrote about. This then imprinted on our culture and the stories that came after it followed the theme. Anyone who lives in Britain can tell you, while we get some years that have a decent amount of snow, we get just as many that are wet and miserable.
People who believe ‘It was that hot when they were young’ likely remember one pivotal day or feeling warm but I doubt had any real concept of the actual temperature as a kid. What we’re seeing now is more regularity in the extremes. Yes, that day they remember may be imprinted on their minds for being extra hot, but then that becomes ‘It was this hot when we were young’.
Also, since the 60s life expectancy has got way longer. We’re living decades more than someone of that era, we’re extending the lifespans of the critically ill, and access to things like affordable housing have tanked making people live in less than ideal situations or a part of a much larger unhoused population than we’ve had for many years. All of these add up to extreme weather having an oversized impact.
It really annoys me when folks like that make blanket statements without realising we live in a very different world today. (Of course, there are some positives that advancements in technology and material science can bring to mitigate some of this).
Interesting fact: The same parent company owns both Reddit and Turnitin.
In my experience, even the consumer facing portion suffers from lack of innovation. Look at the big rounds of lay offs this year, fairly uniformly one of the hardest hit teams has been UX Research. If you’ve worked with a good researcher, you really know their value. But translating value that into hard metrics is tough. A lot of the time CEOs in the private sector will accept Good Enough & fast Vs moving at a reasonable pace.
I don’t think there would even be an appetite for hard research at most companies. Takes too long, too much of a risk, the boss’ cousin had a really cool idea instead…
Private sector is very good at operationalizing existing technology. Outside of the FAANGs(/MAMAAs) being good enough is too easy, or investing in research is considered to be too high an expense with no guarantee on return.