battlewraith

It's more about a boomer state of mind. I expect that most of the routine posters here are GenX or millenials, but a lot of the nostalgia-driven discussions here remind me of those "don't become your parents" Geico ads. For a lot of people that are still playing this game, it is something of a masterpiece. I'm not here to dispute that. But I think there is a problem when those people insist that the things that they adore about it are THE defining features the new players should be coached to recognize. Citizen Kane was remarkable for it's artful use of a bunch of, for the time, non standard storytelling and cinematic techniques. Those techniques are now commonplace in media. It's entirely possible that contemporary viewers would simply find it boring and want their time back. Likewise, new gamers might have an interest in some aspect of the superhero gamplay but not care about the lowbie grind, or the lore.

Typical Chat you see in this game: AE farm: "Thanks for the invite!" "Reset" PI +4 radios: "Thanks for the invite" Mission ends. Waits for next waypoint. BAF "PUSH THE BUTTON!" "Boobs!" "team 1 go N" etc. "Watch the health!" "Stay on team if you want to go again." Granted the BAF comments are truly Shakespearian compared to a farm. A so-called AE baby needs to understand how teams work. How entering a mission or trial works. How to qualify for participating in certain things (e.g having an alpha slot unlocked). And they need to be able to read chat and follow simple instructions (something traditional players are often bad at). If they can do these things, it really does not matter if they don't understand their powers or how the combat mechanics work. The farmer kills everything. The radio team nukes stuff before you can even get a hit in. The roided out BAF participants are in danger of, at most, failing to get a badge. The game is not hard. The learning curve is deep because the layers of ad hoc noodley game from different eras of development. Aesthetics and writing that hit hard in the early 2000s probably doesn't have the same effect on a contemporary audience 20 years later. The (dare I say it) boomer take on this is the same as it was at the beginning--people that want to skip content are lazy kids that will just wander in and get bored and cause irritations and then leave. I'm going to say the opposite--people come in and see a quaint game that is obviously a grindfest at the core. And they quite reasonably want to see where it all leads before committing a serious chunk of their leisure time to engaging with it.

I remember the first time I encountered a rikti in a mission. "wtf is that?" I didn't know what I was doing, didn't understand defense mechanics, damage types, took the power descriptions seriously, etc. So I fought this alien and lost. I then made a solemn vow: I would learn to play better. I would get more experience, powers, enhancements. I would improve, and then I would come back and have the satisfaction of.... --nope. I just got a bunch of inspirations, popped them and kicked it's ass. But I'll be damned if I sit here idly in the year of our lord 2024 watching these damned filthy farmers and their "gimme gimme gimme culture" rob new people of the experience of using standard game mechanics to cheese encounters. The long winding, tab-targetting road of vicarious heroism should not be sullied in this way!

I call bullshit on the whole "farmers ruining the enjoyment of a new player's game" thing. You roll a character, and start playing the normal way. If that was really an enjoyable progression, then people wouldn't be tempted to get pled on a farm right? Except that has always been the case--ever since the beginning there have always been people looking to skip the grind of killing X number of skulls, thousands of clockwork in a tf, or whatever. It was not at all uncommon to just grind xp by street sweeping. But what happens if I get a 50 right away? My enjoyment of the game is ruined because lvl 50 content is boring? lol. I could always just roll a new lowbie character and have that wonderful slow-grind experience any time I want right? Or exemplar down? If getting experience of the late game destroys the enjoyment of the early game--that doesn't speak well of the quality of the experience of the early game.

Lol maybe I'm on the wrong server. All they seem to talk about on excelsior lately is some Boss Baby movie and references to pandas.

Or maybe the problem doesn't have anything to do with learning the game. It's pretty straightforward to roll a character, pop into Atlas, run up to some purse snatcher, maybe defeat a few of them, and then gas out. You have to take a knee to get end and health back. And this state of affairs will pretty much continue until you can grind enough resources to make a build that will permit continual activity. Imagine a version of Mario Kart where you had to stop and gas up the cart every 40 seconds. And what do you do in the meantime? Defeat thousands of mobs in extremely repetitive encounters in order to follow some narrative threads. Can't imagine why anyone would want to skip any of that. This game is loaded with early 2000s game design-isms. It could be that new players recognize that MMOs are basically about communal grinding and don't want to go through a tedious asthma-attack simulator to get to what are actually the core activities for most players. The failure, if anything, is the inability to see that.

I just hope something is done...um...immediately. After 20 years of absolute ruthless negligence it really feels like the hammer could fall any second now. And this fragile dreamworld-- this poetic house of cards if you will -- could all come tumbling down. And for what? The lack of a sign.

This thread reads like a bunch of retirees having a debate at their condo association meeting. 1. Someone let their dog poop on my lawn, it's clearly against the bylaws! 2. What do you want us to do about it? 3. PUT A SIGN THERE SO THAT THEY KNOW IT'S WRONG!

“Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks.” — William S. Burroughs Moderation in all things people.

I watched a video titled "Maximus has the Idiot Savant perk" and it made a lot of sense. Viewing his character in light of that playstyle really him click with me a lot more lol.

"At some point, eventually, in the fullness of time"-- expressed on the forums of a 2 decades old MMO. lol.

Yeah in theory. In practice it doesn't necessarily work out that way. Especially with different types of media.

Very cool! It's not an obvious color combo to me, but that blue looks good against the tan.

My understanding is that the Wachowski's didn't even want to do the fourth movie but had to in order to keep some sort of creative control over the series. I think their goal for it was to basically undo the heroic arc of the first film so that the studio wouldn't keep making more. Very disappointing that it didn't work out that way.

I've been playing with Midjourney for about a year. It's ridiculous how much more advanced it's gotten in a year. They now have a function for consistent characters that works pretty well. I don't know where things will lead with the technology, but it would not be implausible to think that within 5 years ALL digital art production involves AI and that some things like traditional polygonal modeling and rendering become niche if not outright obsolete. I think what's difficult for people to get at this stage is that this technology produces great results very quickly and very cheaply (in terms of skill required). We're still in a stage were it makes noticeable mistakes, but that should go away relatively soon. So you will have a technology that can produce professional quality results at lightning speed. Any user will be able to produce more content in a month than a conventional artist would be able to in a year. There's speculation in AI circles that when things reach this state there will be a general shift away from digital work being perceived as art. "Artists" will be people making things by hand.

Thanks! Glad to hear it!

Here's another experiment with mixed media. Again with water soluble graphite, white charcoal, and ink. I'm wondering if rapid rise in AI will make people more or less interested in hand-crafted art.

That's the crux of the issue right? These stories are utterly ridiculous in general. The only one that approaches any degree of realism is Watchmen. If you are not a child, most of these older stories are going to be lacking. Recent superhero movies get around this issue by making comedies, psychologizing the characters, and/or making it some sort of vehicle for social commentary. All of which are played out imo.

I went to Sweet Baby Inc.'s website and there is no reference to them being involved in this project. It's not listed anywhere. What's your source for this? As a side note, there was some controversy when MachineGames released Wolfenstein The New Order. Apparently a game where you violently mangle nazis, in a franchise devoted to stomping out nazis, upset some gamers who were.....I dunno...sympathetic to nazis?

Thanks! It's called making a comparison.

It's not really about using your emotions, unless you think all valuation is based on using emotions. In real life you have the majority of the people that actually make life livable making very little money because of the way the market works. The market is not a meritocracy, it is not a moral system, and yet people are willing to accept the most bizarre outcomes and write of other perspectives as feelings or opinions. That doesn't hold up under the most gentle scrutiny. It's even weird in this thread. People intuitively seeing the wrongness of some of these outcomes (i.e. actors being wildly overpaid) but discrediting themselves because it's opinion (and the whole philosophy behind the market is not).

Well first of all, nobody as far as I know is forcing you to engage with or respond to my comments, none of which were directed towards you. If you want to get pissy over it fine, but don't whine to me about arguing.... again, when you are butting in and getting pointlessly emotive.... again. Nonetheless, I will try to break this down for you in simple terms: Excraft said this: "That and I agree with those who've said Hollywood way overspends in general, specifically way, way, way too much on actors. It's insane the amount of money being paid to some of them, especially when you have SAG/AFTRA going on strike over wages and such. " Do they get paid too much or not? From what perspective. With respect to the actual history and economics of the industry the answer is no. Promoting and hanging the success of films on bankable stars is the default business model of Hollywood. That's not a matter of opinion. THAT is the factual aspect of this conversation. You're tying yourself in knots over this fact vs. opinion nonsense, in response to me criticizing someone's opinion based on the facts of how the industry has historically operated. And yes, I added the heart surgeon example to indicate a different way of looking at things. Should I send a written request to your office first before I add things to the conversation? It is deeply troubling how much that throws you.

Sorry "horrible evil monster" is a competitive position and you don't make the cut. As I indicated, there are metrics where Tom Cruise deserves more than what the heart surgeon makes. Tom is going to bring in money for the studio, far more than the heart surgeon as an individual will for the hospital. But it shouldn't take a great deal of imagination to see how perverted and stupid that is as a compass for what people are worth. The person who is literally saving lives is worth less than the actor who is making Top Gun movies a financial success. Regardless, this is in response to the comment that some actors are paid way too much. With regards to how the industry works--no. The actors that are paid that much money are brought in because they have a fanbase and a track record of success with audiences.

Ummm no. Let me quote this for you again: Does Tom Cruise deserve to make more money for a day's work than say a heart surgeon? According to the market yes, because Tom Cruise will bring in an audience of fans that will significantly increase the odds of a film making a lot of profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system_(filmmaking) "The phenomenon of stardom has remained essential to Hollywood because of its ability to lure spectators into the theater. Following the demise of the studio system in the 1950s and '60s, the star system became the most important stabilizing feature of the movie industry. This is because stars provide film makers with built-in audiences who regularly watch films in which their favorite actors and actresses appear.[7] Contemporary Hollywood talent agencies must now be licensed under the California Labor Code, which defines an agent as any "person or corporation who engages in the occupation of procuring, offering, promising, or attempting to procure employment for artist or artists."[8]: 167  Talent agencies such as William Morris Agency (WMA), International Creative Management (ICM), Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and many more started to arise in the mid-1970s. CAA created new ways of marketing talent by packaging actors, agencies are able to influence production schedules, budgeting of the film, and which talent will be playing each particular character. Packaging gained notoriety in the 1980s and 1990s with films such as Ghostbusters, Tootsie, Stripes, and A League of Their Own (three of which star Bill Murray). This practice continues to be prominent in films today such as Big Daddy, Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy, and Billy Madison (all of which star Adam Sandler). The ease of selling a packaged group of actors to a particular film ensures that certain fan groups will see that movie, reducing risk of failure and increasing profits."