battlewraith

Probably the majority of games played throughout human history. Ever heard of a Frisbee? The ones that incentivize rewards to towards which you have to work, particularly video games, likely do so to make money off of people's efforts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(video_games)

Lol the same sorts of things they do now, except without having to invest x amount of time grinding stuff as a prerequisite. I think there are probably three types of player relevant to this discussion: Group A: Players who are interested primarily in new experiences or content. These are people who are new to the game or people the will pop back in when there's an update, play the new content, and then leave again. Group B: Longterm players who are still interested in some aspect of the game, provided the grind is not too tedious. So these people are on the cusp. The devs have made a lot of concessions to these people--make travel powers available almost immediately, double xp available all the time, etc. These people still fall off pretty regularly. Either stopping for substantial periods of time or transitioning into Group A. Group C Grinders. The game is about accumulating stuff. Why the hell else would you get online and play a superhero game if it's not to...have racks of stuff sitting in a base somewhere? And if they earned it--by god you should have to too. Grinders on the forums are the first line of defense against the stubborn, unmotivated, unclever masses who for some bizarre reason don't want a fake game job in addition to their real life one. A proposal like "make certain things free" is aimed at Groups A and B.

No the argument I was making was intended to illustrate that there are different types of players with different motivations. It was a rebuttal to your characterization of other players as unclever and/or stubborn because they won't conform to your standards of how the game should be played. The indignation here about free stuff is not an answer. It's just you stating your preferences. Imagine I waved my dev wand and made everything free. If that was the case, would there be any reason to play the game? I think there would be, and I think development would be better if it involved introducing fun features that didn't revolve around dangling carrots in front of people that need an excuse to waste time.

You're mincing words obviously. It's not convincing. It's also a distorted view of the people you're criticizing. People don't avoid things like the AH because their widdle tiny brains are not clever enough to use it to make enough money to skip grinding. They avoid it because they don't like it for some reason. Maybe it breaks immersion. Maybe they ask questions like this: "why am I sitting here engaging with a fake economy when there's a real economy I should be worrying about? "I bought this game to pew pew things with energy bolts, if I'm going to be buying and selling this much, shouldn't I be playing Farmville or something?" Imagine if the devs made pvp the most lucrative way to make money in the game. There would be a shitstorm from the players who hate pvp. And someone would no doubt pour gasoline on the fire by telling these people "well, you're just being too unclever to make money the most optimal way." You're going to have to explain what this question even means. You're giving me two hypotheticals and asking how they can both be true. True in what sense? This is not rocket science. By way of analogy--you start the game with a bicycle and after progressing though content you end up with the option of building a hotrod. And then you either drive the hotrod around all the time, or you repeat the process. Most people will repeat the process. Over and over and over and over again. For over 2 decades (lol). So it's inevitable I think for people to ask "is it really necessary for me to have to repeat the same grind I've done for years every time I get inspired to make a new hot rod?" The people who adamantly answer yes to this question I think are the ones that would continue to grind away in this game until the lights were turned off, even if there were no further development between now and the end. Which I think leads to the devs to perpetually tinker with balance and throw new in new currencies and cosmetics to get these people to grind for. In other words, more of the same for the low hanging fruit.

In other words, if they avoid doing things that they don't enjoy the game becomes even more grindy--but that's just them being stubborn and dumb in your estimation. I think stubborn is insisting on the same reward schemes and timesinks, 20 years later, that were intended to keep people paying a subscription. I do agree with other people that have posted that a move like this would cause chaos. It would knock the hamster wheel off it's axis and many long term grinders would be in an existential fog, as if the Old Ones had returned and Cthulhu was coming for their salvage racks. I think they'd still keep playing though. And maybe the devs would be inspired to introduce new minigames or different types of gameplay rather than keep introducing things to grind for.

I read a couple people saying that in this thread and I'm not sure what they're smoking. Yeah if you have some big stockpile of resources, there is no grind. If you don't, there is a fair amount of grind setting up a new character whether you have 50s or not.

I think a clever player would understand that this is actually an indictment of the game. It's saying that, if you remove the grindy aspects, the actual gameplay, design, worldbuilding, etc. doesn't really amount to much of a game. A clever player would also likely realize that people who skip over leveling, earning enhancements, etc. probably do so because they have done so thousands of times over the course of twenty years. If everything were made free, people would still be able to play the market. They just wouldn't be able to prey on the suckers who just want to get their characters outfitted asap. But playing the market is so much fun you'd still have a bunch of people buying and selling right?

Starting a thread about something you're not going to watch, tone policing the discussion, and then mocking feedback from someone who did watch on the grounds that it did not meet your critical standards--LOL. I can't see any hard distinction between this and trolling. It's bizarre.

So in other words, you've glazed over almost every point I've made in this thread. I'm going to try that "agree to disagree thing." I don't want to have to summarize arguments related to a property you're not going to watch anyways. Till we meet again mon frere.

I don't think I can agree. I'm a monster. I'm giving people the third degree, I'm tying them down and beating them with hoses. I'm wreaking havoc all over the place up in here.

Nobody is forcing anyone to spend a day doing anything. Nobody should be cuffed to a chair and beat with a rubber hose--what? Is that what's happening? And how does you posting white knight memes and calling people paid shills fit in with this? You're really calling out other people for their behavior?

Well I think the expectation in a forum is that things can be argued. And I think it's clear based on how others behave in these threads--someone goes to the trouble of making an argument why some plot point is bad writing. That reasoning can be criticized. If it's not something that can be debated, there would be no case to made for something having been done poorly. Excraft made two arguments about the show that I think are weak. I explained why I think they're weak, He countered. He asked questions. He brought up more examples. He's trying to make a case. I responded. Back and forth. Welcome to the internet. Welcome to the activity that we have all engaged in now for years in this subforum alone. But as usual, when people can't actually resolve the debate, someone shows up and says this to the person they disagree with: "What might look better is you actually saying "I disagree with you, but can respect your opinion" Instead of something like: "What might look better is if we all actually said "I disagree with you but I can respect your opinion."

I don't think that is how these forums work generally speaking. If I go to suggestions or even general discussion there will be an abundance of people who will gleefully inform me that I'm wrong if I make a suggestion about the game that they don't agree with.

They read like opportunities for people who don't like the MCU to vent (generally the same people). 1. The thread is started by someone who has no intention of watching it. 2. Many of the replies are from people who think it looks bad and have no intention of watching it (or congratulate themselves for dodging a bullet because their favorite influencer said it was bad). 3. Some people will claim that it was ok, but will nonetheless relentlessly hammer some point that they think is unacceptable. 4. Obligatory complaining about "we're not allowed to say anything bad." I'm not sure what better looks like under these conditions.

These "writers" lol. The scorn over this show runs deep. You keep repeating the bit about how she's supposed to be smarter than Stark. You sound offended by the character whether she's making bad decisions or not. Riri is 20 years old. Stark was born wealthy. Pym was a professional biochemist. Gates was able to borrow money from his parents to buy DOS and license it to IBM when he was 25. Tesla I already talked about. It's not that Riri can't make money, it's that you are miffed that she hasn't done it now, when none of the other people mentioned had accomplished anything of that significance when they were just out of their teens (although Stark graduated from MIT at 17). That's good. It was a dumb question. And you didn't like the answers.

Nothing. It just sounds worse than what they're doing and we already had that with Tony. Maybe she'll end up rich. Starting off at twenty, it seems better to not have her flush with cash. If Tesla's your model of a genius inventor, he was not that successful starting out. He would end up making a lot of money, but also lose patents and suffer professional and financial setbacks. He ended his career with limited resources and was evicted multiple times. And this was the late 1800s/ early 1900s. My bad, I thought you were asking something relevant to this conversation here on the forums. If this is some philosophical reflection on what people are allowed to do, maybe look to Buddha, Jesus, Nietzsche, Aristotle, modern neuroscience, etc. for the answers you seek. It's a bit above my paygrade.

I love it. Well done! I don't want to be wasting my time with people who don't want actual discussion of something. Keep posting your memes and doing your emojis. It's all good man.

Can you point me to some examples of intelligent people approaching corporations or universities and negotiating the funding of their own tech project by delivering some other tech gadget that the financial entity is supposed to...pay up front for? Or Riri's going to work some other tech job in order to gradually finance her own project? Just wanna get an idea what that looks like since it's what intelligent people do. I literally gave you the most straightforward answer to the question. These are not my forums, I do not allow things. If you're asking something else, reframe the question.

This has already been commented on. Corporations, governments, institutions, etc. don't fund you to do what you want. They fund you to serve their own interests. You would get a paycheck and access to a lab. There would be layers of oversight and supervision and she would not own the technology she was making. I don't know why this point isn't sticking with people. You could have some eccentric billionaire show up and throw money at her for some vague reason but I don't think that would be an improvement. People are irritated that she gets involved in crime--at least it's not cliche. If your university throws you out, you don't just show up at another one. You have to go through the admission process somewhere else, which could be difficult if you got thrown out of a prestigious program. You're going to go home unless you're wealthy and can afford to live elsewhere. What people are allowed to say is up to the mods. If you don't want people pushing back on your ideas, stop quoting them. Or say something like "this is just how I feel don't argue with me about it." Something like that. 🙂

That's the whole point. These movies are inherently ridiculous. To see people fixate on one specific aspect of a plot as some sort of defeater is amusing, particularly in light of what has occurred in the other films. Laws reflect societal interests, cultural mores, etc. at a point in time. Laws have permitted all kinds of atrocities over the course of human history. Treating the law as some sort of moral arbiter of behavior leads to all sorts of silliness. You can root for people who were arms dealers, thieves, assassins, walking rage machines that are environmental hazards, etc. because they aren't breaking the law (which is doubtful). At the same time you can pinch your nose at some character that steals money in order to get their superpower going.

The "why doesn't Riri have funding" objection reminds me of the people who didn't like the first Matrix movie and complained "Why didn't they just use cows?"

Note that you didn't answer the question. If what he did was legal--why did he stop selling arms? Why did they make such a big deal about it? The answer is simple: the writers saw his arms deals as incompatible with virtuous heroic behavior. His arc in the first film was to go from "Pa always did right for 'Murica" to "I need to take responsibility for my tech and keep it out of other people's hands." Legality is not synonymous with morality. Is Riri ethical or right in her criming? No, but I don't see her as an irredeemable character. Particularly in regards to the mayhem to which Tony would've contributed. If illegality is a dealbreaker for you and characters simply can't recover from that, I would like to introduce you to a character named Batman. Batman routinely violates laws that get in his way and has no intention of ever changing in that regard.

Then why did he stop? Why was it a major plot point in the series that he chose to shut down his arms division? The point is not that he couldn't legally do it. The point was that he recognized it was unethical. He could not guarantee that his weapons would not be used on innocent people and there was already a death toll associated with his business. That's the key word: business. That's the thing you're not getting. Someone like Justin Hammer is villainous in large part because they have no concern with the damage that they enable and encourage in the world as long as they can make profits and legally get away with it. Meanwhile Riri would be irredeemable for stealing a candy bar. Stark continues to make weapons in the series, but it's no longer a business. That means he no longer has an implicit interest in seeing those weapons used to make the enterprise profitable. He also doesn't use political influence to direct governments towards military interventionism. If anything he's trying to undermine the justification for nations investing in defense contracting, with mixed results. The arguments that arms dealing is fine are basically this: The arguments against amount to this: Duvall's character thinks he's in the right. As an individual he even helps the woman and her child. But anyone who puts any thought into this scene, or that pointless war, understands that this guy probably had cooked hundreds of such women and children the same way. Dow certainly understood this and didn't care. And the use of napalm was eventually restricted when people ethically objected to it.

I think you lost the point of the discussion. There are people here saying Riri is a bad character because she makes bad choices and gets involved in crime. Tony was brought up as a counterpoint to show a double standard. The consequences of his arms deals are far worse than the crimes Riri is involved in. But he is redeemed (after almost getting yeeted by his own weapons) and becomes a beloved figure in the MCU. You pointing out that Tony, even after his redemption, continues to make bad decisions that have almost world ending consequences makes that double standard even more apparent. Yes, because that's what sane people do. You look at the consequences of what something is meant to do, how it will be used, what the effect on the public will be, etc. That's what public policy is: picking and choosing. We allow people to go into a store and buy Tylenol. We imprison people selling heroin on the street. Why? They're both selling a drug that can be misused. The reason is that societies generally aren't governed by cartoonishly simple comparisons.