[The Final Dakar]

I don't expect this to be a rollicking thread, but I thought it worth mentioning that Fable III is available on Amazon with a $20 game credit. (I know this is how I ended up with three shrink-wrapped games last time).

Also, looking forward to better co-op this time.

[Leonard]

Looking for better performance (which may be related to the better coop). I remember times where the character movement was sluggish. I forget if it was when I had orbs on or off.

I will be buying it. I just won't be pre-ordering it and I may wait to play it, depending on what I'm playing at the time.

The plot or story sounds interesting, from what I heard and seen of it.

[The Final Dakar]

Honestly, the 360 is so hard-up for RPGs (or adventure, whatever) that this becomes a must-buy for me.

[gradient]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Honestly, the 360 is so hard-up for RPGs (or adventure, whatever) that this becomes a must-buy for me.

Likewise. I loved Fable II, though by the end of it I didn't quite have enough interest in shelling out for the extra DLC, and will definitely pick up the third installment. I might wait to find it used, though - I'm having a hard time justifying full pop for games these days.

[The Final Dakar]

Fable 3 offers free, day-one DLC with new copies | Joystiq

Very excited for this game.

[The Final Dakar]

Two starkly different reviews.

Review: Fable III

Yes, the best addition to Fable III is one so daring I'm shocked it works. In most video games, you can press pause and access maps and text menus of items and attributes. In Fable III, you press pause and zap eye-blink fast into a sanctuary staffed by John Cleese. How walking into a map room to spot your quests or into a weapon room to change your load-out is an improvement is mind-boggling, but it is. Access to the sanctuary is lightning fast, visually charming, orderly, and technologically stunning. They got this very right.

Review: Fable III - Destructoid.com

For a start, there are no real menus in the game. Instead of going to a menu screen to equip items, select quests, and check character progress, pressing Start now takes you to a "Sanctuary" full of rooms that you must manually enter in order to do anything. If you want to equip a hat, for example, you have to load the Sanctuary, enter the clothing room, walk to the mannequins, find the right mannequin, select the mannequin, select the hat, and then finally wear the hat. Apparently it was too convenient to just hit Start, select the clothing option, and put on the damn hat.

[Leonard]

Apparently one critic doesn't like losing his "menu" system in favor of a graphical(virtual or 3D) menu system. I think alot of games are doing this. I think Bioshock II multiplayer provides both - they provide an apartment where you go to different items or rooms in that apartment to do different things - dress your character, change loadout, get info, etc - and then they provide the same thing in matchmaking in a menu system way.

I think alot of new games are going this way. What's wrong with it. He didn't see this coming???

Another instance of this, is the Lego game series'. Each Lego game has some sort of hub, be it a university for Indiana Jones, the Spaceport for Star Wars, etc.

Although, in this case, I do see a possible problem that the critic may be bringing out. There are too many steps to do 1 thing - like put on a hat. I'd have to see the implementation myself, but they may have stretched things out too far.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Leonard 

I think alot of new games are going this way. What's wrong with it. He didn't see this coming???

Just because a lot of games go in on direction doesn't mean it's better. I think it'd be fun as a game reviewer to point out that every FPS lacks the ability to customize your controls, something that was available 10 years ago on an equally complex controller.

I have a feeling its going to be more efficient than BioShock 2's. Because if its not, its going to be unbearable.

And of course, Bioshock 2 let it be an option.

[Leonard]

I'm just saying alot of games are gong the direction of making the game more immersive by removing HUDS (Dead Space), or removing menus (Lego series', Saints Row 2, Bioshock 2 MP). If they do it properly, it's great.

Of course then you get the whiners complaining that they liked it the "old" way and that they shouldn't have changed it.

Is this guy whining or does he have a point?

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Leonard 

Of course then you get the whiners complaining that they liked it the "old" way and that they shouldn't have changed it.

One size does not fit all. This strikes me as a "wii " effect.

Originally Posted by Leonard 

Is this guy whining or does he have a point?

I'll find out tonight. On the theoretical level, I'll hate it. In actual use it all comes down to one thing - load times. I remember working with the paper doll in San Andreas. Go to the closet. Animation as CJ Walks to the mirror. Select the part of the body you want to change. Hit right. Load. Hat. Right. Load. Hat. Go to shirts. Pause. Right. Load. Shirt.

I fully expect Fable III to be much faster and smoother. But it needs to be seamless to be acceptable (i.e., I should be the slowest point of input).

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Go to the closet. Animation as CJ Walks to the mirror. Select the part of the body you want to change. Hit right. Load. Hat. Right. Load. Hat. Go to shirts. Pause. Right. Load. Shirt.

See that seems to be too stretched out.

But even in the menu system of the old Fable II, if you wanted to change every piece of clothing on your body to a specific thing, you would have to do pretty much what you mentioned(Menu-clothing-headpiece-new hat,menu-clothing-hands-new gloves,menu-clothing-jacket-new jacket, etc.) which is too stretched out, unless you picked an outfit (Menu-clothing-outfit), which changed all your items of clothing at once. I usually used the outfit and then maybe changed one item of the outfit after. I want the Spire guard outfit, but instead of the spire guard boots, I want the highway man boots.

Then again, I hate it when I see halloween 360 avatar items and it takes me into the avatar editor, and I finally decide I don't want anything and I haven't changed my avatar, BUT I have to wait for that SAVE and EXIT. Why do I have to SAVE and EXIT, I didn't change anything!

[sek929]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

I think it'd be fun as a game reviewer to point out that every FPS lacks the ability to customize your controls, something that was available 10 years ago on an equally complex controller.

I'll keep beating this horse, but that's why I love the Orange Box. I know there is no legacy control scheme, but all the buttons are able to be mapped to anything you want. Click left thumbstick to shoot? You got it!

Fallout is the same way, map any button anywhere you like, you can even make shoot the 'back' button if you wanted.

[The Final Dakar]

Hey, I that's the first thing I mentioned when we played before Reach came out.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Leonard 

Then again, I hate it when I see halloween 360 avatar items and it takes me into the avatar editor, and I finally decide I don't want anything and I haven't changed my avatar, BUT I have to wait for that SAVE and EXIT. Why do I have to SAVE and EXIT, I didn't change anything!

Yes, I understand.

[The Final Dakar]

Alright my initial thoughts/early review:

Like all Fable games (and more and more games), getting into it is a huge grind. First thing I noticed: The lip-syncing is so bad they almost shouldn't have bothered.

Combat: Each game they make it easier, and arguably, each game they make magic more powerful. I've never been much on the magic (save for the devastating high-level AoE attacks at the end of Fable II) but I've be happily subsisting on it this time around. I guess I could blame the buff partly on it being the only weapon you have to start with (which, given their reasoning for other changes to gameplay was likely done to force people to try/use magic because it was neglected in other games). I've just started with the new mix/match ability but I like the idea so far.

Social Interactions: You could argue the old "entertain giant crowds" was overpowered. The new "one-on-one" is tedious. It also suffers from dreaded fade screens when completing interactions (Very brief pauses to black as the scene resets). It also lacks an ability to choose what type of positive or negative expressions you can do, so I'm stuck doing Dirty Dancing with the totally straight Blacksmith trying trigger his friendship quest. It's actually more GTA-like than ever, which is a step back ("Mmm hmm. That is so interesting").

Friendship Quests: They'd be tedious enough around town. Having to wander the wilderness so some dude will like you? Not cool. Perhaps this is to encourage you to choose your friends wisely. Time will tell on this one, perhaps.

Jobs: I've upgraded my blacksmith skill twice and have yet to encounter it. That's like 30+ seals I could have saved.

While I love the "Lute Hero" the pie make being the same kinda sucks. Not to mention working off color is messing with me because, quite frankly, I don't have buttons memorized as colors. The payoffs, however, seem far better than II. I made 1k pretty quick when I put together a lucky session on the Lute.

Goods: It took me until the end of my session last night to figure out there is on guy in the town dedicated to buying your shit, rather than any vendor. Of course, in attempt to haggle how much I got for my Amethyst, we tangoed...

Missions: I think this was always the case; Main storyline feels like a chore to do when you want to expand your horizons. Side missions burst with personality, humor, and often, unforeseen consequences.

The Anti-Menu: As bad as you expect, though not crippling. Every time you hit start there will be a one-second pause as it fades to black and loads your Sanctuary. There you have separate rooms to go into to access different menu options. This would be near unforgivable if I didn't eventually notice fast access to these rooms had been mapped to the d-pad. Still, guess what? When you do fast access from the d-pad you get another quick black screen as it loads the new room.

I'd say the new outfit room is an improvement over the old menu for one big reason - I could never correlate every piece of clothing with it's title. The ability to save outfits is handy, too.

I should also mention that one anti-feature that got carried over from Fable II; You still can't scroll through lists with the d-pad. Best I figure they don't want to confuse people with the dual functionality, but really its atrocious.

Back to Sanctuary. Arguably, the most important feature in the game is the map. You use it for fast travel, organizing quests, and getting a general sense of what's going on. When juggling multiple quests it becomes quite key – which makes the way it's accessed such a drag. Start - black screen - Sanctuary - Walk forward for a second to approach the map table - Tap A. That is awful. Awful, awful, awful. I expected it to be one of the quick access things mapped to d-pad while in-game, but for some reason it goes to the (useless 90% of time) Road to Rule instead. Speaking of...

The Road to Rule: Not the worst addition to the game, but by far the most nonsensical one. It appears to be an attempt to relate RPG elements in a more simplistic manner, but what really results is a bizarre mixed metaphor. In the game you get items from chests and collect gold. But you also collect seals (uh, what) by achieving, uh, stuff (making friends, completing missions, uh, sometimes?) which you can spend (?!) to open chests that contain skills(???).

It's as retarded as it sounds. Upgrading abilities like combat or learning new magic make sense in their own little way, but purchasing expressions, work skills, and, most bizarrely, the ability to own houses and businesses, is just out and out weird. It gets better: everything is separated into segmented areas containing certain swaths of abilities and upgrades which are unlocked when certain milestones occurred. Usually this is triggered after beating a big boss or finishing a key storyline mission, but at one point a finished a mini-boss battle and was transported in the middle of a journey and underground cave to the Road to be congratulated on how I was doing and get more stuff. It was really disorienting and broke the continuity of the story.

---

That's my "quick" impressions. I'll probably litter the thread with other thoughts throughout the day.

[The Final Dakar]

Storyline: I don't understand why they chose to put this only 50 years after II. I'm the younger son of my first character. Here's the problem: My character only had one son. Neither person has the name of my child. The statues I built all around Albion in my image? Gone. C'mon. Wouldn't it have made more sense to make it 100 years and grandson? Not to mention the sudden industrial revolution would make more sense.

DLC: This wouldn't be noteworthy, but some fun stuff happened last night! Some random room in Sanctuary had stuff to interact with that sent you to a Guide screen. Terrible. Some free stuff that it auto downloaded. But when I went to the next cove it popped the Guide again and I hit a button to get past it before it even displayed anything other than a blue square and... I spent $2 on a ****ing dogsuit! No confirmation because it the dialogue you'd get when you're consciously shopping for DLC in the Dashboard. I'm somewhere between livid and ambivalent.
It's only $2, but the suit sucks and it's the precedent/possibility that this shit could happen to me again in the future. Of all the places not to have a "Are you sure?"

It strikes me as shady.

Gameplay/Hardware: I had a few times last night where the game did some serious churning and there really wasn't an appreciable reason for it to do so. I just started walking really slow but I didn't notice frames dropping or anything. All it did was make me tense up and think it was about to full-on freeze.

Also, seems like there's more load screens/necessity to move quickly between areas. I haven't played of my HD installation yet, so I'll reserve final judgment on load times, but overall, not impressed.


Lastly, I haven't figured out what hell I've been absorbing from enemies when I kill them. Since xp is "gone" I'm guessing its credit towards guild seals.

---

Coolest thing in the game so far: The ranged weapons. When you're in a battle using your rifle, your guy will do all sort of trick shot when he's not facing opponents (stuff like the mirror-shot at an opponent behind him, or one-handing the rifle terminator style at an opponent perpendicular to me) Very nice touches.

[The Final Dakar]

Oh, finally remembered: Worst Feature: I can't find a save & quit.

(Not sure if you can have multiple characters, either)

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

I'd say the new outfit room is an improvement over the old menu for one big reason - I could never correlate every piece of clothing with it's title. The ability to save outfits is handy, too.

Maybe you missed it in Fable II, but there is an outfit menu option in the menus of Fable II. You don't have to select every part, you can select one whole outfit.

There is one bad point to the outfit option in Fable II - if you don't have the boots of a certain outfit, it will put you in the whole outfit, except for the boots, which will be the boots you are already wearing.

You couldn't save outfits though in Fable II. You had to choose from the predetermined ones - Spire Guard, Highwayman, Chicken, Fanciful Rich Man's suit, etc...

... haven't read your second post yet on your review.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Leonard 

Maybe you missed it in Fable II, but there is an outfit menu option in the menus of Fable II. You don't have to select every part, you can select one whole outfit.

You couldn't save outfits though in Fable II. You had to choose from the predetermined ones - Spire Guard, Highwayman, Chicken, Fanciful Rich Man's suit, etc...

Dude, you're contradicting yourself, and proving my point.

[Leonard]

Ok. I must be misunderstanding what your saying and what you define as a title. NM

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Leonard 

title

Oh yeah, I think those are gone. Not a big deal either way, but I liked them a little.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

I don't understand why they chose to put this only 50 years after II. I'm the younger son of my first character. Here's the problem: My character only had one son. Neither person has the name of my child. The statues I built all around Albion in my image? Gone. C'mon. Wouldn't it have made more sense to make it 100 years and grandson? Not to mention the sudden industrial revolution would make more sense.

Hey, I had 3 wives, and 2 of the wives had kids. And, I was a saintly (good) character, go figure that one out!

If I'm the son of my character, which wife did I belong to, and what happened to my father's other wives and children?

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

DLC: This wouldn't be noteworthy, but some fun stuff happened last night! Some random room in Sanctuary had stuff to interact with that sent you to a Guide screen. Terrible. Some free stuff that it auto downloaded. But when I went to the next cove it popped the Guide again and I hit a button to get past it before it even displayed anything other than a blue square and... I spent $2 on a ****ing dogsuit! No confirmation because it the dialogue you'd get when you're consciously shopping for DLC in the Dashboard. I'm somewhere between livid and ambivalent.
It's only $2, but the suit sucks and it's the precedent/possibility that this shit could happen to me again in the future. Of all the places not to have a "Are you sure?"

It strikes me as shady.

I don't like the sounds of that. Hopefully there is an option to turn that "feature" off.

I look forward to more of your reports on Fable III.

I haven't bought it yet, but likely will.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Leonard 

I haven't bought it yet, but likely will.

Too bad, I was gonna ask what decisions you made thus far.

Overall, anyone who loved Fable II should pick this up. As I always lament, XBOX lacks good adventure games.

Originally Posted by Leonard 

I look forward to more of your reports on Fable III.

Not sure I'll have much more to report on, other than co-op which I'll likely be trying tonight.

[The Final Dakar]

Co-op: B+

Getting in and out of games is fairly easy, though there are times you need to be careful not to be pressing buttons as you may accidentally boot yourself. Lionhead seems to have cut off some boosting tricks off at the pass, and required players to stick together when completing certain parts of missions.

Still, there is a good amount of freedom. I managed to play the Lute last night as a friend bought up a real-estate empire. If he were to interact with people, however, those fade to black screens would affect me too, strangely. I'm not sure how loot is divided, but treasure chests seem to assign each person a random gift. I imagine silver chests will not be shared (at least, for non business partners) as quest completion doesn't cross-over either. This cuts two ways, as I considered that a co-op only character might be fun. A future option might be the way to go.

Battle is intense, and very fun. Flourishes are still included, and it felt like XP (err, I mean Seals, uh, I mean slivers of them?) was getting doled out in frenzied fashion. Previous to joining a game, I had been slowly getting seals by friending people to move my story forward. Within half an hour of entry I had burned through my quota without even trying.

Sanctuary is mixed bag. While the world is one (the host's), Sanctuary exists in dual realms, your partner and yours. When one visits his Sanctuary, the other is transported there as a ghost bystander.

---

On the silly side of things, the dog suit has almost paid for itself in co-op. Every cut scene your friend activates you are free to move about in, meaning every person they conversed with had a dog lurking in the background (The lack of crowd expressions is torturing me here). At one point my friend decided to earn money playing the lute. I grabbed a person in the crowd and farted on or rode them like a donkey, distracting my friend to no end.

On the bonus side, the Road to Rule has pedestals that immortalize your current look with each gate opened. I quickly realized that they included a pedestal for friends that might be playing with you when an unlock occurs. A dog now permanently resides on one of his.

---

On a more creative level, the fun of Fable isn't what you do, but the reasoning behind why you did it. Ex:

 

One mission has you rounding up chickens that have escaped. A crazy man thinks they're out to take over the world. At the end he and his wife have an argument over their captivity, the wife thinking they're future mozarts and da vinci's, the man thinking they're future napoleons and hitlers. You are given a choice: Kill them or let them live. I decided to kill them. Why? Because when I had been capturing them they had been clucking along to recognizable tunes, and I can't trust chickens that smart.

Another example: I found a vendor that sold condoms last night, so I bought out his entire stock (5). After a few seconds of thought I just bought the stall. Why? So I could get them cheaper in the future.

---

The game keeps stats that can be compared with friends. Most cringe and hesitation inducing: Most Group Sex Partners.

[Leonard]

I bought it today (and pre-ordered Assassin's Creed Brotherhood)... maybe I'll see you in Fable III next week... maybe.

[The Final Dakar]

I finished the main storyline last night. Time for some mostly-final impressions...

Story: Awful. If I haven't commented here before, this game felt more like a cash grab than something Molyneaux wanted to do. Nowhere is this more apparent in the story. It's shallow yet messy. It also felt much shorter than Fable II.

Glitches; Lending to the air of cash grab, this game feels far too unfinished, particularly compared to Fable II. The most common one seems to be that Jasper, your butler, goes mute at some point in the game. I pin-point mine to a specific plot-point. Achievement progress reset for on achievement twice, while another is either glitched or poorly described as I have completed it in excess and not yet received it. Weapon challenge tracking also feels inconsistent or indecipherable.

Sticking Points: The new touch mechanic makes the game far more tedious than before. I can live with this as it personalizes the social experience, but they went overboard, IMO. In II in order to woo someone you would just dance and clap and whatever until a heart appeared. Yeah, that's a little weak. Now in order to gain their friendship, you have to do a quest for them. Fair, but tedious (and in the long run, sort of useless). However, with women you can go a step further and get a date quest as well. Cool. After the date? I have managed to get zero women to put out, no matter what their description (like, say, "Nasty"). All want marriage. It's preposterous.

Second, in both the original and II, you could do clever things like friend people and trick them into following you somewhere secluded where you would murder them. In III there are a few mission where you are to murder someone, but when you arrive the person just stands there and does nothing. You can't interact, can't use the flaunted touch mechanic to hold their hand and drag them somewhere more logical. So you're forced to murder them in broad daylight, incurring the instant hate of whatever area you're in. So stupid.

In the end, I'd give the game a 6.5 (out of 10) now (and Fable II an 8, 8.5 with DLC comparatively), and would say that unless you love the series, don't bother. If you mildly enjoyed the series, wait until it's cheaper and patched up.

[Leonard]

As you may have noticed, I finally got around to this game. Had it on the shelf for a couple of months until I got most of Homefront done. I've been playing it for a couple of weeks now (every second day or so - switching with HF), and generally I like it. It's similar to the second one. But I do see some of Dakar's points.

Friendship Quests are tedious, but I guess they were trying to add more quests, or expand the friendship process. You do 1 quest to be friends and then a second quest to be best friends. Haven't tried the marriage part yet.

There seems to be alot more to collect this time. Collect silver keys, collect gold keys, collect gnomes, collect books, collect weaponry, etc. I think there are some flowers to collect as well - haven't got there yet.

The new Sanctuary doesn't bother me too much, certain things take awhile to figure out. I can see it being tedious, though, to always have to go through it rather than a menu. But my character - a woman looks hot in her underwear! I chose a woman because I thought it may be easier finding a her a husband on line.

Not having a health meter annoys me a little in fights. I've got knocked a few times already. My character seems somewhat underpowered against balverines and those big mercenaries. But that's probably because I haven't fully upgraded my skills and weapons.

Still trying to figure out why they added flourish attacks to the guns. It makes sense for swords, but guns?

[Leonard]

Well, I'm almost finished the main story - twice now. I'll probably buy the extra DLC and go through that as well.

Things I don't like:
- the glitches in the game. The main glitches I had was I supposedly have 1 more silver key to find in the Mistpeak area, but I know I've collected all the keys in that area. I used a guide and verified it, twice. Another glitch that I had that others have had, is where the Brightwall guard gives you a quest to drag a criminal to jail. I've done this quest a few times, but on the last time the gold path directs me to the Brightwall Academy and not the criminal. I can't find the criminal anywhere in Brightwall.

- Joining another player's world online to do the few online achievements is a royal pain in the ass. Apparently your DLC has to match up exactly. Sometimes the game tells you what DLC you are missing, sometimes not. So far I've tried to join 2 players games and failed. The first time, I try to join another player's game, it tells me exactly what DLC is missing. After downloading that it doesn't seem to tell me what's missing, just that I'm missing some DLC. As well, you cannot remove any DLC or the game complains. I'm gonna try a few more times, but this is frustrating.

- Collecting the Legendary Weapons. You have to collect 50 weapons. Only 26 appear in one play-through. You have to get others from other play-throughs or from trading with other players. This is worse than the Doll trading for the six dolls in Fable 2. Collecting the clothing seems ALOT easier, although it may call for playing through the game twice - to collect certain male and female outfits.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Leonard 

- Joining another player's world online to do the few online achievements is a royal pain in the ass. Apparently your DLC has to match up exactly.

That's terrible.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

That's terrible.

Yeah, it is, especially in those cases where we think we have the same DLC. I tried to join someone's game yesterday, that we both thought we had the same 3 DLC, it didn't work. And it just says your missing some DLC. He tried the same thing. Same message.

Then I was confused by how the DLC actually is DLed and unlocked. Apparently multiple DLC gets packaged in one pack. So if you download one part, you actually are downloading the whole pack which includes other DLC, but the other DLC isn't unlocked until you "download" it. I was looking in the Memory area of my Xbox and it looked like I downloaded Traitor's Keep (which isn't free and I don't remember buying), but my history didn't say that. So I deleted what I thought was Traitor's Keep. But actually it was the free Soldier's Uniform (which also includes the code for Traitor's Keep to allow coop with Traitor's Keep). But I can't play Traitor's Keep until I buy it. But apparently I should be able to join a person with that DLC. But I tried that a couple of days ago. It didn't work.

So right now I'm totally confused as to who I can play with. My hope is I keep on trying to join someone until I can get in.

I did have one guy join my game when I was trying to play coop with a local character I created. Surprised me and at the time I just wanted him out as I wanted to do some stuff with my local character and my Xbox Live character. So I kicked the guy.

AND, apparently you can't use the "Join Random Game" option as it can cause you to lose all your collectables. Besides it's impolite to join random games.

[Leonard]

Okay, I went about these online achievements another way! I turned on orbs in my world, went to the popular spots, and started interacting with other orbs. I found the orb info tells you if your DLC matches or not. If your Dlc matches it says nothing, otherwise it says your Dlc doesn't match. Much, much easier!!!

[Leonard]

Well, I'm done this game in terms of achievements. Got 1250 out of 1250!

The hardest achievement is definitely collecting all the legendary weapons. Luckily the XBOX achievements forum has 2-3 sets being passed around the forum. I had collected 39 out 50 of the weapons before accepting the rest of the set from someone in the forum.

I think I'll buy the Understone DLC and try it out.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by Leonard 

- Joining another player's world online to do the few online achievements is a royal pain in the ass. Apparently your DLC has to match up exactly. Sometimes the game tells you what DLC you are missing, sometimes not. So far I've tried to join 2 players games and failed. The first time, I try to join another player's game, it tells me exactly what DLC is missing. After downloading that it doesn't seem to tell me what's missing, just that I'm missing some DLC. As well, you cannot remove any DLC or the game complains. I'm gonna try a few more times, but this is frustrating.

Regarding this problem of joining other people's worlds. It doesn't seem to be as big a problem as I first had. My guess is the first couple of people might have had some pre-order DLC that I didn't. Lately I've joined other people's worlds and have had people join my world, and I haven't seen any problems.