Dragon Age: Inquisition - The Problem With Roleplaying Games

It's another half-hearted review of the new Dragon Age ("I quite like Dragon Age: Inquisition" he waffles) from Erik Kain writing at Forbes, but he uses this one to talk about his problems with looting and crafting in modern games in general. He gripes:

The only thing that’s really dragged the game down for me is the necessity of picking herbs and looting bags. This isn’t terrible at first, but it becomes enormously tedious after a while, simply because it’s such a big part of how you spend your time in this game.

Looting bags strikes me as pretty archaic in modern video games [...] There’s nothing good about picking up yet another basic weapon that’s not worth anything and is leagues worse than the gear you already have. [...] It’s so often less about playing a role and more about all the other stuff. 

“RPG elements” can just be code for “gamification of video games.”

"Gamification of games" is a little tail-swallow-y for me, but let's go with it for a second.

Gamification is often used in educational applications. Take some piece of work—say learning about biology or math—and have “leveling” and rewards and such for achieving certain things. [...] My daughter’s math homework is partly done online and finishing a unit rewards her with little sticker icons. When grades aren’t enough, XP will do the trick.

Gamification is inspired by video games but it’s come full circle and is used to create feedback loops in video games and genres that traditionally didn’t have “RPG elements.” Think of the leveling in Call of Duty multiplayer. It creates an addictive reward cycle as you rank up that’s not present in older shooters....

Anyway, his main point is that harvesting all that elfroot over and over is boring, which is certainly true.