battlewraith

Well ad hominem is the last resort of people that don't have an argument. If it makes you feel any better, I don't set out to troll you--I generally forget you exist until a confused emoji shows up in my notifications.

That is literally what he asked. "Why aren't people willing to sacrifice for their builds?" If nobody in their right mind would do this sacrifice if given the choice, then it isn't really about sacrifice is it? That's the point kiddo. "Go find your cheat codes elsewhere." The current iteration of the game is full things that would've been considered "cheat codes" in earlier iterations of development. The judgmental vitriol of these comments in light of the actual history of the game is hilarious. Old man yells at cloud level hilarious.

That makes absolutely no sense, unless you think that everyone playing this game is supposed to be doing ALL the content that is available. Furthermore, compare what you just said with what he was complaining about:

Ok, so let's frame this issue in terms of willingness to make a sacrifice. Assume that the devs went ahead and made a change that allowed people to skip something like boxing in order to get tough. You would still be able to make that sacrifice. Don't change your build, still take boxing even though it's relatively worthless in terms of power choices, and so on. If that's not acceptable, then it sounds like the issue is not "willingness to make a sacrifice." Sounds more like mandating what sacrifices other people are required to make. "Willingness to make a sacrifice", if we're going to be righteous about it, is the ultimate answer to the specter of power creep. Think something's OP? Don't play it. Don't like meta builds? Don't play them. Play the game you want to play. Digging your heels in about the status quo is the opposite of making any kind of sacrifice, so you probably shouldn't call out other players for requesting pretty minor changes.

Thanks for looking! She's actually inspired by a Tom Waits song called Such a Scream.

Lol my dude, I went back to review that thread and you participated. Did you forget?

Except I'm not the one who bowed out complaining about it, was I? You are completely lost in all of this. The double standard has to do with the extent to which changes can be made to an IP while still remaining faithful to the spirit of the source material. As outraged as you are by the whole situation, the answer to that question is subjective. And it has jack shit to do with the twitter beef between the Amazon team and the portion of Tolkein fandom that is outraged by this production for whatever reason. Jackson made the LOTR prior to twitter existing, so he didn't have to deal the same level of social media hysteria. But imagine there had been a big backlash against his trilogy and he went online and called all the haters bigots, or whatever. Would that have somehow have changed the quality of the films. No. Btw, it's hilarious when you rail about talentless hacks and bring up something like Star Wars. Those three recent movies made over 2 billion dollars.

That's really all I get out of this discussion. Pretty much any change could lead to negative consequences...so we just have to embrace poor design, like wasted power selections...and convince ourselves that this is some sort of plus. Consistently applied, this ethic will result in no substantial changes more or less indefinitely.

If you want a rational, civil discussion--try being rational and civil. This subject was debated at length in the previous thread. I was just offering a summation to someone else. You took issue with that summation, started up again, but now you're done with me. Thanks? When I pressed you on your double standard, you said this: They both may say it, however it is more than abundantly clear to anyone with more than two brain cells only one means it. I read this and think to myself, "ok well this guy is throwing some shade so I guess I can be blunt". Nope. Not true. Turns out you have a double standard about adaptations and a double standard about talking about adaptations. You're actually going to complain about civility. If you're point is to express sympathy with irate Tolkein fans, or even to say this miniseries will suck because the production team being mean, you could've done all of that without making any reference to something I said.

The level of entitlement is off the rails. It is silly. The Tolkein estate sold the rights, for a large sum of money. Whoever owns those rights doesn't owe you anything. And they haven't damaged you or the IP by doing something you don't like with those rights. I was actually talking about Peter Jackson. I did my due diligence with him and saw all the movies. I don't give a damn about the social media circus surrounding the Amazon series. The "writers" and "producers" (why the quotes lol?) were mean to you? They didn't back down and change the things you didn't like? Oooookay? Do "writers" and "producers" on other features do that for you? None of this ultimately speaks to quality of the actual series. Just skip it and you'll live through this ignominy.

In your opinion. In your big-brained mind reading from afar opinion. Arwen is not a new character, true. She also did not face down a bunch of nazghul with a sword. And she is in no way crucial to understanding Aragorn's character. Your not going to read the books, scratch your head, and wonder "what the hell was that Aragorn guy thinking?" The appendices are supplementary material. Tolkein wrote books. You want the lore exactly as he wrote it, there ya go. Pick it up off the shelf. Want a miniseries? Easy just cough up millions of dollars for the rights and then mount your own project. What's that? Don't have millions of dollars to do so? Damn, well I guess like the majority of the population you'll just have to deal with what they make or simply don't see it. This is commerce. They need to make money, therefore they need to appeal to as many people as possible. And this inclusiveness that you think is a modern political sensibility is actually a modern commercial sensibility. Maybe these producers think that zealous white male nerds, as a demographic, are tapped out. You already saw this in both the Jackson LOTR and Hobbit films. I can sympathize to a certain extent, but the IP is the same. The books are the same. You may be pissed off by an adaptation, but you didn't lose anything and you're not entitled to anything from it because you didn't put any time, effort, or money into the maki8ng of this thing. Clutch your pearls and don't watch, if you're lucky everyone will hate it and it will go away. Brie Larson? Wtf? Honestly I don't even remember why nerds hate her. I just picture car commercials these days.

They both say that. Quoting Jackson's intentions is irrelevant. I've seen the actual films. The Arwen material is an attempt to add another female character (and love interest) to the narrative to make the films more attractive to a female audience. I think it's the weakest part of those movies. And the Hobbit movies were dreadful, which also calls into question his faithfulness to the source material imo. There's a cottage industry of haters on social media that attack pretty much any adaptation of an IP that doesn't fit with their politics. They get a lot of traction in communities of beloved properties like LOTR and they generate pre-hatred of productions based on previews and comments from production staff. I suspect that the industry will eventually just come to view dedicated fans as irrelevant at best, or tools to generate publicity for a wider audience (via controversy) at worst. There's a whole generation of LOTR fans who haven't even read the books and think Jackson's vision is the true one because those movies were good. Those are the kinds of people to whom studios like to cater.

There was a long, contentious thread about this series that eventually got locked. If you're a big fan of the books and expect this to be like the books, I would definitely either skip it or tone down your expectations. From what I've heard, I would call it an adaptation of Tolkein's work. Something inspired by the lore but filtered through the production team's notions of what will appeal to Amazon subscribers. Usually people hold Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy as the gold standard of faithful Tolkein adaptations. But it actually made quite a few departures from Tolkein's work--dropping characters (Glorfindel, Tom Bombadil), dropping themes (scouring of the Shire), changing character motivations, adding Arwen as a main character, etc. Christopher Tolkein hated those movies and the Tolkein estate sued New Line for royalties, which they got by holding up the Hobbit movies until they got paid. Did you enjoy those movies? Maybe you can enjoy this miniseries on it's own merits. Who knows.

Hey guys, I'm getting ready to launch my webcomic, which includes some of my coh characters. Kind of brainstorming elements for banners and whatnot. Here's an icon of my first OC battlewraith who eventually makes an appearance, so I thought I'd post it here:

Lol. This sub-forum, and this thread in particular, is analogous to a family get-together with entitled, elderly relatives who have been having the same menu at this event for over a decade. So somebody comes in one day and suggests that they do something else for the main course. And you get a familiar set of ridiculous responses: "We've always done ham. That means we always should do ham and if you suggest something different you're a selfish jerk who is putting their own interests first...in front of mine." "You're just doing ham wrong. Ham was never meant to work alone. There's green beans too. They compensate for the ham, why do you think they're there?" "I've never had a problem with ham." Uncle Bob's furiously flipping through the dictionary looking for the definition of ham which will no doubt prove him right. "If we change the ham, we will have to change everything. Because that's logical. To me." "You just want instant gratification. You want to change the ham to ice cream. Which is bullshit. You have to eat ice cream AFTER you have the ham. Everyone knows this." "Back in the day, ham was super important. Helped stop the spread of communism and stuff." "Everybody wants everything too fast now. You have to relive that excitement of having that first savory bite of ham in your mouth...even though we've been eating it for years." Eventually the other relatives come up with excuses not to go to this shindig. And its just this small geriatric mob rocking on their chairs. "I fuckin love ham. mmmmm."

I can draw you some venn diagrams if that would help. It's really not that complicated. The primary reason you two probably don't get it is conflating the meaning of things like feedback, debate, review, etc. to a single meaning. And just blowing off other posters. eg. Browbeating is a form of trolling. Nobody's doing that. Ok boss,,,

Yeah not even close. Hilariously wrong.

Here we go again. 1. The Diva exit. Instead of just leaving, you announce it. 2. Cherry pick some comments that you obviously don't understand in order to support a point that is irrelevant. 3. Deflect criticism of your posts by appealing to the fact that feedback is encouraged. Then turnaround and call feedback that you don't like trolling. Can't have it both ways kiddo. Furthermore, I generally try to avoid you if possible. You're tedious as hell and other people have signaled the same thing. Nonetheless, you think this your little debate headquarters so you have to apparently weigh in on everything. Fine, but don't get butthurt and whine about trolling when you respond to a comment I'm making to someone else and it doesn't play out the way you expected.

Good lord. Where did I say that player feedback is not supposed to happen? The claim is that your self serving desire to debate the crap out of people posting suggestions drives people away. That has nothing to do with what the devs want or intend for the subforum.

The statement you quoted was a response to something he said. It doesn't make sense taken out of context. He stated that a formal review team was like this subforum. It isn't.

If there are only a handful of people consistently responding in the suggestions forum, that's a problem. It undermines the idea that the forum serves any point other than giving those individuals a platform with which to shoot down ideas they don't like. And it isn't necessary to weigh how a change will affect the community unless you think the devs are utterly incompetent. So why aren't there more people posting suggestions? Well, the indication is that people pop in to make a suggestion, not get into a dissertation defense with the likes of you. You signal a meek, cookie cutter approach to development that will gradually choke the game. And you discourage players from posting in the suggestion section.

No lol. Not like a suggestion forum. You were not hired to review proposals. There is no particular reason to view you as an authority to determine which ideas "hold up." And most importantly, there is no stipulation that an idea suggested has to meet your review specifications. That's an assumption that you are making. People that serve on different types of creative teams are selected for qualifications they bring to the table. Those qualifications and processes are going to vary if you're doing a sociological study vs. a theatrical production vs. an animated short. Making a blanket assumption for random posters on a video game suggestion forum strikes me as pretty daft. At worst they will waste a lot of time and experience a lot of aggravation trying to defend what they may have thought was a fun idea to the unofficial REVIEW TEAM, which is probably irrelevant to the actual success or failure of said idea. It's not about expecting people to immediately accept ideas. It's a criticism of your review team mentality. It's fairly common in this forum to have people declare an idea a bad idea, justify that stance with a screed that is basically a declaration of their game preferences, and/or give some ridiculous lecture on some tangential subject like...oh I dunno...how you need to be rounding out your build with power pool attacks. I think people just get fed up with garbage feedback from opinionated crusty forum vets who are bent on the status quo. Even at the height of the game's population, the forum posters were a small percentage. Now with a much smaller number of people, I think it's probably more apparent that people like you are sucking the oxygen out of the room. And you would would clutch you pearls and complain about "what forums are about" until you were the only person left in the room.

LOL right, of course don't entertain the actual criticism at all, just assume that it's fragile people trying to suppress your ability to discuss (ie crap on ideas you don't like). I do think you accidentally described the problem. People are anti-disagreement--meaning they see how these threads are received and think it's not worth trying to post a suggestion on these forums because of the shitbirds--and they refrain from replying--they abandon the suggestion thread and don't post here again. Or they don't even bother to begin with.

The point of a suggestion forum is for ideation. It's for people to share their ideas and desires for future development. The notion that this a place to come and debate peoples suggestions is idiotic. You're not a dev, you don't have insider knowledge of what they can or plan to do, so what are you debating exactly? Typically it's people gatekeeping based on their own biases or understanding of the game. And it's generally the same small group of people all the time. It wrecks the suggestion forum as a pathway for community engagement in exchange for a few individuals getting the ego gratification of LARPing as a dev.

This is not about being valid. This is not a forum for logical debate. As Sovera pointed out, the devs are going to do whatever they want. Making a suggestion here is appealing to them. Unfortunately, doing so means running the gauntlet of a handful of players who take their self appointed duty to be rooting out bad ideas. Bad typically meaning things they don't like because it doesn't fit with their subjective experience of the game. I think this results in three things: 1. People are discouraged from posting suggestions. 2. People are turned off by the community. 3. To the extent that suggestions matter at all, the game design is steared towards a samey-same paint by the numbers orthodoxy.