# Weird Video Game Questions You Have **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [December 24, 2013, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072 "2013-12-24T08:55:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Cognoscant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Cognoscant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cognoscant)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2013, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/21 "2013-12-27T14:27:01Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#): > > Here’s a question for Minecraft, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and every FPS-style game ever made: > > “WHERE ARE MY LEGS?!?!??!?” Seriously? All you need to do in Oblivion/Skyrim/ESO (no, Zenimax, that is not a spoiler) is go to the character view screen and zoom out. My, don’t your legs look trim and attractive (or furry/scaly if you’re a Khajit/Argonian). ---
**Author:** ![Cognoscant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Cognoscant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cognoscant)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2013, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/22 "2013-12-27T14:45:11Z")
This one might sound totally offbase, but I wonder whether Blizzard consulted an economist before implement their auction-house system in Diablo 3. I’ve only got a passing grasp of microeconomics and economic history, but I could see the fatal flaw with the AH in Diablo 3: there were far too few money sinks and very little to spend gold on after a certain point in the game, which meant you had nothing to do with it other than spend it on auction-house items. The result was hyperinflation: even fairly common items were selling for millions of gold pieces, and rare items were going for hundreds of millions. The upshot of that was that people spent most of the game grinding for gold. If they actually did stumble upon a rare item, because so many of the items were class-based and could only be used by one of the five classes chances were they’d just sell it on the auction house for yet more gold. Worst of all, if you wanted to play the game without bothering with the auction house, you were at a marked disadvantage because you could always buy better gear than you could loot at your level (which you probably weren’t going to get anyway because of D3’s stingy drop rate). D3 became a gold-acquisition game rather than a dungeon-crawling game, and a lot of people gave up on it and actually went back to playing D2. I think an economist would have looked at D3 for about a day or so and said, “If the money supply keeps increasing dramatically, the cost of items is going to increase proportionally, and that’s going to have a big effect on the game.” I know that eventually Blizzard came to their senses and introduced Loot 2.0 and dropped the auction house idea altogether, but by that point everybody had ceased to care, and a franchise that had had loyal followers who were willing to wait 12 years between D2 and D3 was pretty much dead. It just seems weird to me that Blizzard, who had seemed to get the economy balance right for so long in World of Warcraft, would drop the ball so pitifully on Diablo 3. ---
**Author:** ![Mogle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mogle/32/12021_2.png) [@Mogle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mogle)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2013, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/23 "2013-12-27T15:06:31Z")
> [@Cognoscant](#): > > It just seems weird to me that Blizzard, who had seemed to get the economy balance right for so long in World of Warcraft, would drop the ball so pitifully on Diablo 3. Gold inflation wasn’t the only problem, item inflation was too. There was no mechanism that would forcibly remove items from circulation either, so the average item power would steadily creep upwards, at the lower gear end stuff ended up getting cheaper and items that at one point would have been really nice eventually turned into vendor trash. Still, if you look at D2 then the D3 AH kind of made sense, people would be trading items anyway, so having Blizzard provide a safe and convenient(where Blizzard get a cut in the case of the Real Money AH) way of doing that wasn’t a bad idea in principle. ---
**Author:** ![Mekhazzio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b38774/32.png) [@Mekhazzio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mekhazzio)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2013, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/24 "2013-12-27T16:34:17Z")
> [@Cognoscant](#): > > D3 became a gold-acquisition game rather than a dungeon-crawling game, and a lot of people gave up on it and actually went back to playing D2. …where inflation was so high that gold was literally worthless, and trade value was measured in vanishingly-rare runes or dozens of SoJs instead. Nothing happened in D3 that didn’t also happen in D1 and D2. The addition of the auction house, as well as other things like the (first for the series) elimination of gold carry limits, was _because_ it was expected. The only thing they failed to see coming was the psychological response to the formalized auction house. With WoW, it’s even more obviously intentional. Like Diablo, it has no real checks on inflation. Bind-on-equip and server-wide material spawn rates only serve to slow it rather than prevent. WoW’s best check on inflation is bind-on-pickup making the ultimate equipment extremely difficult to barter for, thus there’s less pressure to explode massively, but it’s still continually inflating. They were adamant against doing this in Diablo, and its addition to Reaper of Souls is somewhat controversial; even then, it’s not going to be remotely on the same scale of logistical difficulty of integrating some random person into a high-difficulty raid fight. Inflation is a feature rather than a bug; high inflation weights current rate of income over existing wealth, which is the only thing allowing newer players to compete economically with older ones. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2013, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/25 "2013-12-27T19:29:05Z")
> [@Cognoscant](#): > > Seriously? All you need to do in Oblivion/Skyrim/ESO (no, Zenimax, that is not a spoiler) is go to the character view screen and zoom out. My, don’t your legs look trim and attractive (or furry/scaly if you’re a Khajit/Argonian). I’m guessing this is referring to most FPSes where your feet are invisible even if you look straight down in first person view. And the only time they’re visible is in third person or if you have a kick attack. Arms are invisible except when holding weapons. Buttons push themselves. Only a few games do otherwise. Call of Cthulhu? I forget. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2013, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/26 "2013-12-28T22:26:57Z")
Not to mention that the auction house itself was the single biggest gold sink in Diablo 3. Every single time an item was sold, a fraction of its gold value disappeared, and as item prices rose, the amount that disappeared rose likewise. It wasn’t enough to completely stop inflation (for it to do that, each item would have to change hands an average of six or seven times), but it was at least something. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2014, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/27 "2014-01-03T01:49:45Z")
y can’t metroid crawl? > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Fallout III and I believe Fallout: NV. You can even get a nice slow motion view as you go _crunch!_ It’s happened to me a few times when doing the mission for Moira Brown where she wants you to get injured and break a limb; a simple way of doing that is to jump off a building. I once spent a good hour in FO3 using the nuke gun to blow the shit out of myself. The funniest ones were when it wound up throwing me onto a roof or somesuch. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2014, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/28 "2014-01-03T03:46:02Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > I once spent a good hour in FO3 using the nuke gun to blow the shit out of myself. The funniest ones were when it wound up throwing me onto a roof or somesuch. Hah, yes, I’ve done that. For that matter, fairly often when I’ve decided it’s time to stop playing I’ll equip the Fatboy or missile launcher and go on a rampage, sometimes ending with me blowing myself up on purpose. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2014, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/29 "2014-01-03T03:57:05Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > y can’t metroid crawl? Originally, the developers wanted to make Samus Aran crawl, but they couldn’t get the animation to look right. The solution was the ball morph. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2014, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/30 "2014-01-03T12:39:15Z")
Tomb Raider would let you hit the ground. It was more of a crunch than a splat, as I recall, unless you also landed on spikes. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2014, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/31 "2014-01-04T00:50:02Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Originally, the developers wanted to make Samus Aran crawl, but they couldn’t get the animation to look right. The solution was the ball morph. Of course Justin Bailey would have an answer to a Metroid question! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![brujaja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@brujaja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brujaja)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/32 "2014-01-06T07:29:46Z")
Okay: In\*\* “Alice: The Madness Returns,”\*\* is there no way at all to skip a level? No way to call up a console? I have been stuck forever in the second side-scroller sequence. I just never got good at those things. I’ve been thinking I’m going to have to get a neighborhood kid over here or sumthin’. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/33 "2014-01-06T08:00:54Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > I’m guessing this is referring to most FPSes where your feet are invisible even if you look straight down in first person view. And the only time they’re visible is in third person or if you have a kick attack. Arms are invisible except when holding weapons. Buttons push themselves. Only a few games do otherwise. Call of Cthulhu? I forget. Mirror’s Edge. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/34 "2014-01-06T08:16:24Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > In Skyrim, is it possible to kill an entire village and get away with it? I mean if you kill everyone, who’s gonna tell the other villages? Bounties are tracked per hold, so crimes committed in Windhelm don’t make Winterhold guards angry, and vice versa. > [@Smapti](#): > > You’re wanted for a crime the instant you commit it and there’s at least one witness, even if you kill said witness before they could possibly tell anyone else. I was able to break one quest because this is incorrect. Some corrupt guards made the mistake of framing me for murder. I responded with actual murder, and I lost my bounty when the last witness died. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/35 "2014-01-06T09:21:19Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > Tomb Raider would let you hit the ground. It was more of a crunch than a splat, as I recall, unless you also landed on spikes. 🙂 Am I the only person who plays Tomb Raider just to make Laura die in as many ways as possible? ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/36 "2014-01-06T11:09:47Z")
All the Halo games show your feet moving nicely if you look down at them. Many button presses and interactions also show your hands involved as well (but not all of 'em). My dumb video game question: why the heck was The Immortal such a frustratingly difficult video game, even in the era of punishingly difficult games? Did anyone ever legitimately beat this game without the strategy hints given at a rate of $2.99 per minute by calling the 900 number in the instruction booklet? ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/37 "2014-01-06T16:15:02Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > In F.E.A.R. if you jump off a tall building the game cuts out before you hit the ground and simply tells you you’re dead. Are there any games that let you take a deadly fall and hit the ground with a nice splat? In Stair Dismount, the whole point of the game is die the most violent death by falling as possible. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/38 "2014-01-07T08:03:16Z")
> [@brujaja](#): > > Okay: In\*\* “Alice: The Madness Returns,”\*\* is there no way at all to skip a level? No way to call up a console? I have been stuck forever in the second side-scroller sequence. I just never got good at those things. I’ve been thinking I’m going to have to get a neighborhood kid over here or sumthin’. MY advice is that if you can’t get through the second side scroller level just give up. The fifth or sixth side scroller level is one thousand times harder. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/39 "2014-01-07T14:33:12Z")
> [@brujaja](#): > > Okay: In\*\* “Alice: The Madness Returns,”\*\* is there no way at all to skip a level? No way to call up a console? I have been stuck forever in the second side-scroller sequence. I just never got good at those things. I’ve been thinking I’m going to have to get a neighborhood kid over here or sumthin’. Why would there be a way to _skip_ a level? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072/40 "2014-01-07T15:55:01Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > (I don’t know if it’s still true in Skyrim, but in Oblivion, _horses_ were capable of acting as witnesses and reporting your crime to a guard[…]) IIRC in Skyrim they fixed that but the behaviour has been observed with chickens. Informing cluckers ! However if you do kill the last witness to a crime in _Skyrim_ the bounty should get lifted, in theory. The only problem of course is that typically the process of murderizing a witness running away will be witnessed by someone else. Or a chicken. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-video-game-questions-you-have/677072.md?page=3)