Mentioning smoking breaks is a big part, I think. At a place I used to work if you smoked you basically got free extra breaks to take care of it that other associates did not, and depending how tough your job is it could be an incentive.

You didn't, I'm just saying that since there are many great switch games that run just fine it's not quite a hard pro and con situation where the switch experience is always so poor that it'd make the Deck a sheer upgrade worth the money.

Just depends on how much you value that performance, I'm able to get used to 30 FPS pretty decently, so the Switch is much better for me at the price point and ease of use, but I know there's definitely a contingent of players who really value performance and your comment comes into play for them.

Not every switch game runs poorly.

When I start making notepad lists of long term goals or shopping lists and such, usually in open world games with lots of tasks where you'd forget on your own what you might be working toward

I think when a new post is posted and it hits the front page it bumps all the other posts back by that many, which will make them get bumped from the end of one page into the beginning of the next

It's not always the best option, like if you wanna save your gold for the ship upgrades it'll eat a big chunk out of that, but you could totally keep your gear perks that way if you really like them, you can upgrade at 61, don't have to wait for 62

My best guess is that it's a debris effect from your ship taking damage, and it's supposed to fly away and expire, but somehow got stuck instead of disappearing, so now it's an "effect" on your character that doesn't know its supposed to have timed out already.

Other Bethesda games, especially Skyrim, had bugs like this of status effects that would get stuck on your character longer than they were supposed to and you'd only realize hours later when your character has some weird blue fog following them

Once you get the perks you want you totally can hold onto it. Every ten levels all of your perk and major attack stat bonuses on gear get more powerful, (but there's no stat bonus to upgrading before the 10 level threshold at all) even when you upgrade the same old gear you had, but it happens at the "first" level of each ten, so not at level 20, instead it's 21, 31, 41, etc.

Basically I've had the "same" gear for like 30 or 40 levels, now, just every time I hit the new stat range I go and upgrade all of it. It costs a shitload of gold, but aside from ship upgrades I don't have another major gold sink, so it's worth it to me, my perk loadout is extremely optimized for assassin damage, which is important for me since I'm basically playing it as an open world stealth game where I only fight if I get caught, I can one shot anyone I want, no exaggeration (using critical assassination when necessary).

The final ship upgrades are very expensive, yeah, just seems like they give you something to grind for if you get that far

The ones that aren't timed (don't have the hourglass icons) are worth picking up because they're all just like "kill 20 Athenians", "sink 5 ships", basically shit you're already doing, so you just swing by, pick them up, and keep playing like you already were and randomly one will pop and you'll get fat XP for doing what you were doing already anyway, but that's only if you want the extra XP, it's totally unnecessary

Nintendo hire this man

Sorry, my intent was not to sound condescending, I was erring on the side that you weren't aware of the ways you could get around those issues in order to enjoy the parts you wanted to. Your criticisms are definitely valid, I would agree that even needing to know about the workarounds sort of proves that what was included wasn't an entirely cohesive and tight product to begin with, the way I played is not necessarily right or wrong, and neither is yours, it's just how I was able to mine the most enjoyment out of what was there.

My main idea is to not let someone see your comment and assume that that's how the game is and there's not another way to enjoy it or any clear ways to identify where content you'd want to play begins and ends, I was able to figure out and selective play the parts I enjoy, but even still there is content in that game that I skip because it's, definitively, not fun. Even still, it's become one of my favorite games of all time, but no one game is for everyone, thanks for the mature discussion, sincerely!

You can just pay off your bounties instantly at any time from the map screen, and I've always had so much money in that game that I've never had to deal with a bounty hunter unless I wanted to, and I don't even sell any gear, I dismantle it all.

If you're a compulsionary completionist then the game is probably too big, but they make it as friendly as they can to not have to complete the world. Unique gear drops only seem to come from unique Cultist leaders or checking vendors, and there's no achievements for completing all map markers, it's just supplemental content for XP and some gear or if you just really want to do it, there's no huge cost to just moving on to actual quest content if you want.

They don't tell you when you've completed a whole region for a reason, to disincentivize completing it all unless you're a madman. I'm doing world completion just because I like grinding the game, but it's been two years in the making with big breaks in between, and if you ever feel like your gear or levels are behind the curve and you have to grind, the difficulty settings can be changed and can be set as forgiving as you like, they actually alter the level scaling and RPG aspects.

I think it's a great game worth playing, but you do need to be ready to tell yourself when enough is enough because they give you too much for weirdos like me that just wanna experience it all over a really long... Odyssey.