The problem is a second launcher or library is a pain in the ass for a user. I already avoid GoG unless it’s massively cheaper, and there’s the no drm benefits there. I’m not even interested in free games on epic.

Epic is the latest example that’s trying. EA gave up that fight years ago, and probably had better shot than Epic ever will.

Most the article makes no sense, but the Mac stuff is really weird. This 18 year old YouTube video is still accurate about the Mac part. https://youtu.be/2B-ekl_cEWk

Retreating to PC makes sense, because PC won the console war.

It’s a new game. Unfortunately I think we are now in an era where we can expect new games to run like shit on release, and be improved over the first year.

You can be almost everything in Morrowind, just like Skyrim. If anything Skyrim actually locks a chosen play style in more due to talents. There’s a few more exclusive guilds in Morrowind, but they aren’t major for the most part. Just because you have spent the time to learn how to avoid the rough edges doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

The fact you have to start your comment with multiple don’t do X things proves my point. As a story it’s great, but as a game it’s got a lot of problems.

The level up system was bad. The thrust/chop/slash system for weapons is awkward. Every attack costing stamina is bad for early characters. The excessive number of weapon categories, combined with short and long blades being the only ones that were common. The persuasion system was just bribe people to get what you want, or taunt them for free murder. Run speed being a skill, jumping being faster than running and being a skill as well (combined with the level system this can cause problems). Item durability in general. The encumbrance system, and containers having weight limits. The spell making and enchantment system had some cool things, but it was also trivial to break the game in multiple ways. The quest tracking and journaling was garbage. Alchemy was undercooked. Merchants had way too little gold so selling became annoying by mid level. The haggling quickly got annoying as you could sell at extreme markup or buy for nothing fairly easy. Magicka didn’t regenerate, so being a mage was annoying at early levels until you had sufficient potion access.

There’s also some things that are more bugs I think than bad mechanics. Stealing from a merchant flagged every copy of an item as stolen from them. I once managed to make every redoran guard hostile to me on sight, which got really annoying.

Morrowind had a decent story and great world building but the mechanics were absolute shit.

There’s never been much content blocking in elder scrolls. You could always master every skill even in Morrowind. Morrowind had a few exclusive guilds, but even Skyrim had a couple. Role playing in Skyrim is self imposed.

I bought it with iceborne when it was on sale recently on steam, I had a copy for PS4 but I’ve transitioned to just PC games at this point.

There two big differences to me are scale and value. A ccg has rare cards, but they aren’t actually that rare compared to loot boxes. Loot boxes tend to have both lower drop rates and pollute their drops with lots of garbage, even for rare drops. Secondly, physical cards have value, you can sell or trade them, you can buy singles of cards you want. You can use them for things other than the game as well.

As others have said start with 5. The rule of thumb for civ games is to wait for the expansion dlc to release and buy the game on sale. 7 is also a significant departure from the previous games, so it’s probably even more important to wait or outright skip it until they get it more polished.

Also it’s worth looking into endless legend or endless space 2 if you want to try more 4x games.

The PS5 doesn’t even have games and we are moving on to the 6? I guess that’s some innovation.

Having a magical standard fairy waive a wand isn’t going to fix scripts, or stop them from breaking.

If something is common enough to be a standard it’s a standard.

AOE 3 had a treaty mode that blocked attacking or building too close to an enemy before a certain time. It was a moderately popular mode.

I’ve tried a few space RTS games, and it’s not my favorite. They tend to be extremely slow paced to simulate the vastness of space. At super low prices it can be worth it to try out, but it’s definitely a different experience to consuming a map with an ork waaaagh.

Most the must haves are older, some aren’t on steam, but are worth checking out if you end up liking some others.

• dawn of war 1 and 2.
• StarCraft 1 and 2.
• Warcraft 3, 1 and 2 are very dated, but if you like the style/setting try them.
• AOE 2 and 3. Maybe 4, I find it a step backwards.
• age of mythology.
• Rise of nations and legends.
• beyond all reason

A 40k quote with democracy on the end feels so awkward.