Lurker > ParanoidObsessive

None of the above.

I prefer my GTAO character.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

funkyfritter posted...

Dragon age was never about dragons.

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He's not a super hero as much as he is a pulp adventure hero.

They're related concepts, but they're not exactly the same.

Indiana Jones pairs off better with people like Zorro or The Shadow or Doc Savage than he does Batman, even though Batman himself arguably has elements in common with all three of those examples.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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Metalsonic66 posted...

I think that newer Simpsons isn't as great as it used to be, but IMO it's still one of the better "adult" animated shows right now. Definitely a step above any of the McFarlane shows.

That's not really saying much, though, because most of the MacFarlane shows fall into exactly the same category as The Simpsons - ie, shows that were good once but which have run too long and thus burned out/run out of ideas.

I'd easily take the first five seasons or so of Family Guy over the last 20 seasons of The Simpsons without hesitation.

South Park sort of falls into this as well - it's another show that has kind of fallen off in later years, going from a must-watch show to a show which was mostly strong, to a show that has a lot of bland episodes but still manages to push out a couple brilliant episodes per season.

And there are definitely better shows (or at least shows that were worthwhile early on as well, that might be weaker now *cough*Archer*cough*). There really hasn't been a time when The Simpsons was the pinnacle of "adult" animation for more than 20 years now.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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Kana posted...

That game felt so unfocused and it's way too big for its own good. It's like they were working on an MMO but changed their minds at the last second and made a single-player game.

Quoted from Helly's topic:

ParanoidObsessive posted...

VeeVees posted...

a game with huge maps for the sake of having huge maps and no focus

It's the end result of their "We love Skyrim and are going to examine it for ideas" philosophy they openly gushed about during development.

Even at the time, I was mostly like "While a BioWare-style game set in an Elder Scrolls-type setting could be phenomenal, odds are they're going to learn all the wrong lessons from Skyrim, and wind up watering down all the things that have always been BioWare's selling points". And that's basically exactly what we got.

About half the game felt like inconsequential fetch quests (a la 90% of Skyrim's pointless, weak, narrative-light sidequests that are almost inevitable once you start working in an open-world environment) and tedious grind (which in some ways felt almost MMOish in its pointlessness).

Developers never seem to understand this, but "open-world" makes it almost a requirement that the rest of the game be "narrative-light", because you never know when a given player is going to encounter a given plot-point, or otherwise experience part of the story. In Skyrim, you can play for 100+ hours and never even fight your first dragon, or you can rush directly through the main plot and ignore everything else. You can do the civil war plotline as soon as the game starts, or you can put it off until after you fight Alduin, or you can ignore it entirely. You can do the Mages' Guild questline, or not. You can spend the entire game never going to Markath. And so on.

So every one of those questlines has to be both almost entirely self-contained and mostly inconsequential, so as not to conflict with other things. Which means that almost nothing you do ever really matters, no one you meet is ever really going to be much more than a bland generic NPC, and no grand narrative is ever going to weave through all of your actions and tell an overarching story with interesting themes or metaphors. You're always going to be a bland collection of RPG stats adventuring in a very pretty but ultimately soulless world, grinding for mats, stats, and coin. You're basically an oldschool D&D character in a game being run by a dullard DM.

And while I'm picking on Skyrim (though the same could be said of Oblivion, and ESO, and...), the same holds true for most open-world RPGs. SOME can almost transcend this weakness (New Vegas), though most don't (Fallout 3 and 4). Because it requires brilliant writing and some massive coordination and dialogue juggling to really make that dynamic work and still tell a story worth hearing.

So when you're BioWare and 90% of the praise all of your previous games got was for strong narrative and character interaction, "open-world" is about the absolute LAST thing you want to try to incorporate into your game. Especially when you don't really seem to know how to do it in a compelling or interesting way.

In DA:I, that mostly manifested as the open-world just being a backdrop for endless fetch and grind quests, while all of the plot goodies were still mostly linear trees. Which made the game feel dull as shit (especially in the Hinterlands) when you were doing main story quests.

But even that could have been countered if the gameplay and supporting characters were the best the series had ever seen... as opposed to some of the worst, which is what they were.

DA as a franchise is pretty much dead to me. As is ME. And BioWare.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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helly posted...

i forgot who flemeth was, so i googled and spoiled myself

ucking bitch boy solas kills flemeth? what the actual shit? from just a hug? bullshit.

explain.

Okay, short version?

He's basically absorbing her soul and taking her power into himself Hence, she dies. But she gives it up willingly, so it's not a fight as much as a deliberate passing of the torch, hence the "hug".

And here's the total end-of-game plus outside material explanation, so this is about 110% spoilery. Don't read unless you're ABSOLUTELY SURE you want to know everything.

Solas is the Dread Wolf. ie, he's the Loki/Trickster God of the Elf pantheon in Thedas. It's implied that the other gods (who apparently weren't gods in the literal sense after all, but powerful elven mages who ruled over the weaker elves and declared themselves divine) murdered Mythal (one of the other gods), who was his friend, and in retaliation, he deliberately sealed them away in some fashion (ie, they weren't "killed", more likely banished into the Fade or otherwise locked in eternal magical slumber of some kind).

It's implied that he's been asleep or gone ever since, but he "wakes up"/comes back somehow shortly before the events of DA:I. He deliberately gives his orb (the focus of his "divine" power) to Corypheus, because Solas isn't powerful enough to "awaken" it himself (for some reason). His original plan was to have Corypheus awaken the orb and kill himself in the process, but that plan goes to total shit (because Corypheus is more powerful than Solas anticipated, and because your Inquisitior gets involved at a crucial point by fate or by accident).

So the Veil gets torn a new asshole, and Solas spends most of the game helping you fight Corypheus, because a) he wants him dead, b) he wants to repair the Veil since it was his screw up that caused the problem, and c) he wants to get his orb back. But when you fight Corypheus and seal the Veil in the end of the game, the orb gets broken, and the implication is that Solas/Fen'Harel is now crippled in some sense (which is why he's so upset by it, and why he leaves almost immediately after).

Flemeth is basically the avatar of Mythal. As early as the first game you hear stories that imply she was an ancient mage who made a deal with a spirit and became an Abomination, though in later games Morrigan and others will tell you there's more to the story than that. What actually happened is that Flemeth was sort of possessed by the spirit of Mythal, and became a living avatar for her power.

The ending of DA:I is ambiguous as fuck, but the upshot of it is that Solas now needs power to somehow replace what he's lost, and he meets with Mythal/Flemeth, who acknowledges both his need and his future plans. She willingly allows him to basically absorb her soul and her power, killing Flemeth but empowering Solas.

In the Trespasser DLC (which takes place after the main game), Solas' true nature is revealed, and nearly every single thing you accomplish in the main game is undone, because it's a shit DLC written by shit writers who'd written themselves into a corner. So as bad as DA:I is, Trespasser retroactively makes it way worse, and entirely meaningless besides. But the upshot is that now Solas is openly active and planning to restore the lost elven empire, even if he has to wipe out every current civilization and culture in Thedas (including the elves, who he sees as backward, ignorant, or broken). Because he feels like the only reason the empire fell in the first place was because of his actions, so now he feels like he needs to make amends and undo what happened.

He (and the elves who serve him) will probably wind up being the main threat in DA4.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

VeeVees posted...

a game with huge maps for the sake of having huge maps and no focus

It's the end result of their "We love Skyrim and are going to examine it for ideas" philosophy they openly gushed about during development.

Even at the time, I was mostly like "While a BioWare-style game set in an Elder Scrolls-type setting could be phenomenal, odds are they're going to learn all the wrong lessons from Skyrim, and wind up watering down all the things that have always been BioWare's selling points". And that's basically exactly what we got.

About half the game felt like inconsequential fetch quests (a la 90% of Skyrim's pointless, weak, narrative-light sidequests that are almost inevitable once you start working in an open-world environment) and tedious grind (which in some ways felt almost MMOish in its pointlessness).



knivesX2004 posted...

I got about 10 hours into that game before I realized that there's nothing in it and stopped.

To be fair to them, there IS a strong Dragon Age story in there.

The problem is that it's only about 40% of a game's worth of story, and it's bogged down by more than half a game's worth of nonsense.

If you cut out nearly all of the sidequests and Power level requirements, rebalanced enemy strengths to compensate for the changes, dropped the terrible combat mechanics entirely, and reworked and expanded some of the existing storylines, there's enough meat there to make a really awesome game.

Most of my other complaints about the game are minor at best (and a lot of them are just companion relationship based). Like thinking Cassandra would have worked better as the lesbian romance while Sera would have been better as the straight one. Or feeling like they shouldn't have shied away from having NPCs flirt because the backlash to Anders in DA2 made them panic. Or the fact that they pretty clearly needed to fire their voice director and most of their main cast VAs and replace them with people actually capable of producing worthwhile acting.

Or hating how Patrick Weekes handled the end of the Grey Warden storyline, and just hating most of his DA:I contributions in general (which is why I'd be very depressed about the fact that he's taking Gaider's position as head writer, if they hadn't already murdered my interest in the franchise to the point where it would take an utter miracle for me to buy/play DA4 anyway). Though to be fair to him, he DID do a much better job for most of what he wrote for Mass Effect.



TheCyborgNinja posted...

Honestly, as bad as Andromeda was, Inquisition was worse. It pandered harder to "them" and had a less meaningful story (somehow) and worse gameplay.

To be fair, I knew Andromeda was going to be shit the moment they said they were looking to Inquisition for design inspiration.

But I'd still say that Andromeda is an objectively worse game than Inquisition. Because while Inquisition did manage to turn me around on DA from it being one of my favorite franchises in gaming (to the point where I bought their two World of Thedas books) - even moreso than Mass Effect - to being a franchise that I am completely and absolutely apathetic towards (I have no intention or desire to ever play DA4), there WERE still hints of a good game in there, and moments of greatness that were all the more tragic because of what they were surrounded by.

Whereas Andromeda basically starts flat and gets worse all the time, has almost no worthwhile VA work at all (whether because they hired amateurs, because the director was inept, or just because no one involved gave a single shit), and was designed as a throwaway game by fourth string programmers in a sub-tier studio. DA:I failed, but ME:A was DOA.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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Syntheticon posted...

PC.

I can't even play most of my old PC games on PC, let alone play 90% of the games I actually want to play, most of which were console exclusives. DOSBox is a solution, but it isn't necessarily a great one, and trying to play older games can lead to a metric shit-ton of hassle and annoyance.

It's better now than it's ever been before, but it's still not the perfect system that "PC Master Race" assholes love to fellate it as.



Zangulus posted...

Fucking piece of shit bluray player won't load my Betamax tapes.

Fucking bullshit.

It's a poor analogy, because not only are most of the shows and movies that were originally released on Betamax also available on newer formats, but tape transfer is a thing.

Now, if I could copy PS1 games over onto PS4 discs and play them perfectly on my PS4? Then it would be a perfect analogy. It would also be world-class awesomesauce.

That being said, even "backward compatibility" isn't necessarily a valid alternative (should anyone wish to bring that up), because at least the way Microsoft handles it, it's mostly just shitty emulation that only works for some of the most popular games anyway (ie, I couldn't play about half of my XBox games on my 360 and have them work exactly the way they were supposed to, if at all - I'm still kind of annoyed that I can't play Invisible War on 360 period).

It WOULD be kind of nice to have a single console that could play multiple format games across multiple generations as a single unit, though it's also something that would never, ever happen due to rights issues and the level of technical complexity (or the need for multiple disc drives and cartridge slots built in).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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knivesX2004 posted...

My only retort to that is they knew Voltron is popular, they were "taking a chance" on Castlevania.

Considering that there have been Voltron remakes that have completely tanked before, they were arguably taking a chance on Voltron as well.

Hell, even the original Voltron only worked in the US as the 1st/Lion one. No one gave a shit about vehicle Voltron, and most people don't even KNOW about the third one.



Entity13 posted...

I have said this many times already, but The Simpsons has gone downhill since Phil Hartman died.

He apparently voiced up to Season 10, and the show had already started to slide before that.

There will still good episodes in later seasons, but I'd say the cracks started to show as early as Season 7. Even counting me as an outlier, a lot of people would agree that Season 8 or 9 was the turning point. But even people who push the turning point to the later end of the curve tend to agree that you started noticing weaker episodes popping up even in the earlier seasons.

I think the real problem is that most TV shows tire out after a certain point (and doubly so sitcoms), but animation is the only medium where you can pretty much keep those actors there forever. Live-action sitcoms arguably almost always peak somewhere between seasons 3-5 and then progressively trail off until they're eventually mercy-killed.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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I've never liked Tarantino's sense of style or dialogue choices, or his constant "homages" to 70s exploitation films he loved as a kid, so I generally dislike most of his movies period.

I can sort of tolerate Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, partly because he made those back before he became convinced of his own cinematic genius and started spending all of his time with his head firmly wedged up his own ass, but also because Pulp Fiction was the one where he had Roger Avary as a co-writer.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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GunslingerGunsl posted...

Oh I didn't even notice you posted P.O.

;_;


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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helIy posted...

it's been FOREVER since I've seen a proper po post

That's not really a proper PO post. I would have needed a topic I was actually passionate about, at which point it would have run about 17 posts long.

Erik's just a mostly dismissed thought I only bother to remember every few months or so, just long enough to post "Close your account" at him before moving on. The only reason he didn't wind up as one of the first accounts on this board I would up ignoring was because then I couldn't tell him to close his account.







Though now that I'm thinking about it again, I'll also take the opportunity to point out that at least some of that initial resentment of him as a welcher stemmed from the fact that, in the past, there was actually a regular tendency on these boards where, if a mod or admin noticed someone making an account bet, and they lost, they would actually close that person's account. Sort of like divine justice keeping welchers on their toes. But Erik happened to make his bet at a time when the site's backend policies were sort of in flux, and he got away with it at a time when the mods/admins were deciding it wasn't "professional" behavior to punish account bet cheaters, so he sort of became the Ur example to shit on for it.

People made account bets before him and refused to follow through, but would occasionally be punished for it. People after him have made account bets and welched, but people get far less annoyed with them because Erik's already provided the example that lack of integrity will never be punished anyway, so people take it less seriously now. Erik sort of wound up in a "wrong place, wrong time" situation, where everything just sort of conspired to get him an extra helping of abuse for it.

But again, that doesn't really justify why he decided to run with that notoriety and become a total knob afterwards.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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Erik_P posted...

Comparing someone to ICOYAR isn't a joke though.

Nor is telling you to close your account.

Or pointing out that, a fair amount of the time, you're actually worse than ICOYAR.



Kana posted...

I know it's dumb but I always think it's funny when new posters try to get in on the joke when it happened over five years ago.

To be fair, when he did it, he sort of brushed it off with a "Hah, people on this board are so dumb, everyone will forget about it in a month anyway", which is why a bunch of people basically said "No one will ever forget, because we'll make sure no one ever forgets." It was never supposed to be a joke (in exactly the same way "We don't talk about the poll" wasn't a joke, originally). It was meant to call a shitty person out on their shit.

I personally said something like "I vow to bring it up as long as I'm on PotD, and I'll probably be here until I'm dead, so this is literally never going away." So I'm pretty much morally obligated to keep saying it from time to time (because otherwise, I'd be a welcher. Sweet irony!).

Though it's also worth noting that I went out of my way to NOT bring it up in any topic or post of his where he actually said something intelligent, or interesting, or otherwise acted as a spur for conversation rather than just being a complete tool (sort of like positive reinforcement meant to make him a better poster - don't be a shit, and I won't call you out for shit you did years ago). But then Erik basically thrived under the negative attention and turned into a way worse poster after that whole fiasco, so those moments of genuine worthwhile posting have become so utterly rare and the shitposting has grown so much that almost every topic or post he makes should pretty much be followed by an endless string of "Close your account" replies. Because he deserves absolutely nothing else.

When I say Erik is a worse poster than ICOYAR, I don't mean that as a joke or an idle insult either - no matter what people think of ICOYAR's real life, or how many topics he makes about poop, his signal-to-noise ratio is still higher at this point than Erik's. Over the last 5 years, ICO has probably produced more worthwhile conversations (either directly or indirectly) on this board than Erik has.

And Erik's really only gotten worse since the election, where he's decided that PotD is his personal political blog, where its his obligation to constantly post about things he doesn't understand to people who don't give a shit about his opinions.

Welching on a bet is pretty much the least terrible thing he's ever done on these boards, which is part of why the constant reminders sort of seem inconsequential at best and growing tiresome at worst, but he still deserves it.

Especially when, as countless people have pointed out over the years, all he really needed to do to silence the constant taunts was to just, you know, close his account. He could easily have made a new one, and it's not as if age or karma actually means anything on this site. But he won't do it, because he basically loves the negative attention (again, just like ICOYAR does).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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Archgoat posted...

Maybe see the movie before acting like you know it is crap?

I hate that today we automatically just start trashing movies/books before they are even out and act like we know.

I just find it irritating that people think they can make an informed opinion on something they have actually not seen or read.

To be fair, when a movie has been in development hell for years, and then when it finally comes out the trailer that is meant to sell it as a must-see film makes it look absolutely terrible, and then critical reviews start pouring in and its approval rating is bottoming out in the teens, pretty much every single sign is pointing at it being a huge turd.

Is it possible for a movie to overcome all of that and still manage to be good? Sure. But it's also incredibly unlikely.

And in a world where we're being constantly bombarded all year long by massive blockbuster movies, and there are thousands of hours of quality film, shows, games, or other forms of entertainment available almost instantaneously on a whim, a lot of people are no longer willing to waste a few hours and spend $10+ to go see a movie in an actual movie theater if all signs are pointing to it being crap.

20 years ago "See it for yourself before you make any judgments!" might have been a valid argument, but it isn't now, and it really hasn't been for years.

Like it or not, in a world of functionally infinite entertainment options, any movie needs to do everything in its power to win you over long before the time comes to put your money down to see it.



Archgoat posted...

Speaking of Idris Elba, if you have issues with the movie, I don't see how he can be it. He was really good.

That was my point. Even the reviews that say the movie was terrible all tend to say that he was doing good job in it.

But we're just coming off of the Ghostbusters remake, where loads of people went "Man, that movie is terrible because it is poorly written and not funny," and then people defending the movie went "You're only saying that because it was an all-female cast, you sexist!" So I'm curious to see if The Dark Tower crashes and burns hard, if there's going to be an upswell of "You're only saying it's terrible because they cast a black man in the lead role, you racist!", solely because the Internet thrives on outrage culture and persecution narratives no matter how illogical or unsupported they might be.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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PK_Spam posted...

Play with my boobies and then abuse my power

This, but also "buy a full-length mirror and then never leave my bedroom again."


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Mario_VS_DK posted...

Well, Stone to Flesh, I can't really think of anything where you would consistently need it.

If your DM is a dick and is constantly throwing gorgons and basilisks at you, you might need it fairly often.

But even way back in the day, when you were forced to choose a limited number of spells per level in Final Fantasy, the "Soft" spell usually got the axe for not being useful enough compared to other alternatives at its level, in spite of there being areas in the late-game where you could pretty much be Petrified to death by half a dozen enemies per turn (at least until you manage to equip the Ribbon). And D&D tends to be way more forgiving than that (and way more creative with the ways it can insta-kill you at higher levels).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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Seven. I almost never use any of them, though.



WarGreymon77 posted...

None. Alts are for trolls.

In the old days, they were also for intelligent posters to occasionally make funny jokes with, and were often appreciated by other posters... but that ended when most of the posters with worthwhile senses of humor left the site forever.

Now most gimmick accounts are basically troll accounts by proxy, because all of the gimmicks are pretty much universally terrible.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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ss4parrothair posted...

jramirez23 posted...

That sounds like a cool idea, but I wouldn't like it if it were like Reddit where the best liked posts are at the top.

I wouldn't like that either. But if you couldd just like it that would be swell

Forever and a day ago (long before Reddit was a thing), someone suggested they should tie an approval system here to karma, so if a user gets a set number of likes they gain extra karma from it. But while that's an interesting idea in theory, it's sort of ruined by the fact that karma is absolutely meaningless anyway.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

But honestly, yeah, that's always been a problem in D&D (and most systems where you can "choose" your level ups, honestly) - there are always going to be spells which are pretty much "must have", and spells which almost no one is ever going to take of their own free will, because they're sub-optimal as fuck at best, and utterly pointless or self-destructive at worst.

Generally speaking, you'll only see those spells get used if a given player a) likes them for flavor reasons, and are willing to "handicap" themselves for style, or b) the player figures out a devious spell combo (like, say, Polymorph/Disintegrate) and abuses them in ways most people don't think of.

The same holds true for Magic: the Gathering - if you play on the more competitive scene, you'll notice a lot of decks have similar themes, and people are always scrambling to make decks that are basically just copies of last year's winners. Though the developers have admitted that they actively create shitty cards sometimes solely to see if players can come up with creative or interesting ways to use them in combos.

I'd say you probably shouldn't be trying to think of ways to "force" players into using more uncommon spells if they don't want to. If you're really hung up on the idea of seeing players be more creative, provide a positive example - say, have a more powerful NPC use a particular spell combo or otherwise make them WANT to be able to do the same thing once they're that strong themselves. Or have a villain use those "weaker" spells against THEM. If you can make the spells seem more worthwhile, players are more likely to take them. But if they've only got two open spell slots and there are already at least two spells that are considered "must have", no one's going to want to "waste" that much potential on something they don't see as being all that worth having.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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VioletMassacre posted...

I was surprised to not see Life Is Strange: Before the Storm in the poll.

Maybe people are against it because the whole VA Strike means they had to recast the voices, which were about the only reason anyone cared about the original game in the first place.


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crinalex posted...

Also, as training, recovery and dietary regimes, as well as science around sports all get more advanced, players in general are getting better all the time. Especially since basketball has grown, and continues to grow greatly in popularity.

Yeah, that's the flip-side of the coin that makes it so hard to accurately compare athletes in any sport across time periods .

Because, on the one hand, you can say that "athlete's today put up consistently better numbers statistically", or in team sports, "athlete's today put up worse stats, but are also performing against far more fierce competition," but on the other hand, we'll never really know just how good someone from the past could have been if they'd been raised in a time where they had access to the best nutritional and training information, the most cutting-edge equipment, and the opportunity to improve their personal game even more by performing against stronger opponents. Even minor factors like the quality of sneakers or the uniform a player is wearing could easily nudge the advantage to a modern player over an older player regardless of purely inherent skill and/or potential.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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I recently read an article about the actress who they cast to play Domino in Deadpool 2, where she said "For So Long I Thought I Was Ugly."

My instinctive first thought was "That's probably because you are."

Way too many people these days seem to be developing entirely unwarranted self-esteem. It's a terrible epidemic!


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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shadowsword87 posted...

Like Stone to Flesh is a super weird, super powerful spell.

What can I do, as a GM, to promote players to use these weird ass spells? Other than just wrecking any sort of spellcaster while doing that.

Constantly attack them with stone golems until one of them gets a very twisted idea.





To be fair, Stone to Flesh really isn't supposed to be an offensive sort of spell, it's meant to be the "antidote" to Flesh to Stone-type spells or Medusa/Basilisk-type effects.

Though if you ever want to see a bit of odd spell interaction, with spells being used in ways contrary to their original intent (including an odd use of Stone to Flesh), read Crewel Lye by Piers Anthony. You might glean some inspiration from it (or you might not).


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Jiggy101011 posted...

It's time to let the Dothraki and dragons do what they do best

Sit on the sidelines and do absolutely nothing for multiple seasons?


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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I'm not a basketball fan, so not only do I not have a horse in this race, but I'm also not going to be citing any stats or the like to really take any sides.

But it IS worth keeping in mind the overall impact each player had on the sport at the time they were playing. Yes, MJ helped his team win a lot (but he also had the benefit of a good team around him, so it wasn't entirely single-handed), whereas Kareem was so good and so singularly beyond everyone else on the court that they literally changed the rules of the sport to handicap him.

Granted, if you had a time machine and could grab all of your top-tier players and put them on the court at the same time and compare them directly, someone like MJ might be more objectively superior... but on the flip-side, the fact that someone like Kareem seems as if he was more subjectively superior to everyone else he was playing against at the time makes his skills far more impressive overall.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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TheWorstPoster posted...

There should be a rule that automatically bans anyone who posts a video of Filmation's drivel

Hey now, boy. I'm usually one of the first people around here to defend you or attempt to squeeze utility out of even your worst topics and posts, but them's fightin' words.



Foppe posted...

What about the Pussycats?

They were basically a spin-off from the Archies (because their comic was directly descended from Archie).


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Golden Road posted...

CoinFlipBimbo posted...

Unless you have a valid reason such as sensitivity to lighting, it makes you look like a total dbag.

How can you tell if they have a valid reason, though?

This.


wwinterj25 posted...

CoinFlipBimbo posted...

Unless you have a valid reason such as sensitivity to lighting, it makes you look like a total dbag.

I agree with this so voted no.

And also this.



CoinFlipBimbo posted...

Everyone that voted for no most likely wear sunglasses indoors confirmed.

More like everyone who voted no understand how language, logic, and conditionals actually work.


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FrozenBananas posted...

I lost all hope the second I saw the trailer

Basically this.

Hearing other people shitting on it is just sort of gratifying in a way, because it kind of confirms that I wasn't just taking crazy pills when it looked like garbage to me, because a lot of other people seem to agree.

Though I'm waiting to see how long it takes before people start spinning this and blaming the movie's (presumed) failure on casting Idris Elba as a white character who is supposed to look like a young Clint Eastwood, because mumble mumble racism something (in spite of nearly every critic saying he was about the only redeeming feature IN the movie).

Then again, I also lay about 50-50 odds that it will be a huge success regardless, because stupid people lap shit up all the time, and it's entirely possible that even massive negative word of mouth won't stop a major opening weekend (at least) from happening.


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Lokarin posted...

minervo posted...

My problem with Aron Ra's speeches is that they're all bullcrap.

So edgy

Shitting on an Internet Angstheist is sort of the polar opposite of edgy.


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Zeus posted...

Venu = ....ummm, idk, but probably not Venus + saur = latin for lizard

Venus Fly Trap.


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My father is dead, and even when he was alive he never really cared about the whole idea of "Someone must carry on the family name!" sort of crap (which is probably a good thing, because it technically ends with me).

My mother has probably gotten used to the idea since I've spent the last 20 years or more telling her she was never going to have any grandkids by me. But she already has two via my older half-brother, so she probably got in all of the grandmom-ing she needed anyway.

Also, my girlfriend isn't on speaking terms with her dad (and hasn't been for most of her life), so his opinions don't really factor in. I feel like her mom is kind of conflicted about it, though, because on one hand her daughter didn't make the same mistakes she did and have kids early in life without a stable father figure, but then on some level she'd probably welcome the idea of having at least one grandkid.



wwinterj25 posted...

According to my dad I would be silly to have kids with anyone who isn't white and British. He's dated mixed race girls before himself so it's a bit hypocritical of him.

Or, conversely, there could always be a bit of "LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES!" involved there. After all, if you've dated mixed race girls and every one of those relationships ended poorly in some way, you'd be in a fairly qualified position to discourage other people from going through the same problems.

Then again, you'd probably have faced more societal issues or family stigma for doing it 20+ years ago than you would today, so it's entirely possible the experiences wouldn't necessarily be analogous anyway.


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I think that theory is flawed because he didn't make an amazing trilogy. He made an amazing duology with an acceptably sufficient ending tacked on.


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HorrorJudasGoat posted...

Wing Commander 3. I see why Origin gave it for no cost.

The problem with this statement is that it was a great game.

About the only real thing that could be an issue is the FMV, but that's very much a "looking back in retrospect and judging by current standards" sort of issue, because regardless of what people today say, FMV was awesome at the time.


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ungubby posted...

Daenerys the only character that I care about. Wbu?

I can honestly say there has never been a single point anywhere or anywhen in GoT or ASoIaF when I ever gave a single iota of a shit about her. She's one of the dullest characters in the entire setting.

Though she's not as annoying or irritating as Catelyn or Sansa, so there's a point in her favor right there.


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Ehh.

I mean, she's responsible for some brilliant casting in the DCAU, but she also casted a few stinkers here and there (especially for the various JLU "guest appearances"). But I also have a hard time naming a single other thing she's worked on off the top of my head, so it's not as if I'd classify her as top-tier casting talent or anything.

Though granted, it's kind of shitty that it was health issues that forced her to retire, and not just her own innate desire to go chill on tropical islands somewhere.


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But... but... it's not really up to you!


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Damn it, want to edit something in there, but I already hit the character limit (~grumble~):

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The next closest might be when I write backstories for a PC that imply they've already been through campaigns you've never heard of or seen because they're so damned complicated and have a bunch of NPCs tied to them even before the first game. But that's actually rare (I've probably only done it for about a half-dozen different characters across multiple systems).

Was going to mention that this was almost always a thing for online games, not tabletop ones. And mostly the online games that were more collaborative than actually being run by a GM of any kind (ie, where the players themselves are all improving the story and building on the contributions of other players).

Those were the sorts of games where having extremely complex or detailed backstories was most useful, as opposed to feeling more like one prima donna player trying to desperately grab the spotlight of an entire game for themselves. In more traditional games, I'd mostly just try to sketch out a backstory in broader strokes and try to set up hooks for a GM to use, but I wouldn't necessarily be writing up a dozen NPCs or describing the character's previous adventuring party.

I think I actually have a few PC character write-ups still on line at this point (definitely my stats for characters in Nudo's game, but I think their backstories as well, and I've got a couple Amber characters from the last 2-3 games I played online years ago) if you ever wanted to see them (but I know you don't, because you're tired of grandpa's war stories).


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shadowsword87 posted...

Sure, I'll call your bluff. If you can set up a Basic D&D game, or an AD&D game, I will play it with you.

I will even learn how to play, so nobody has to teach me.

Try me.

Well, to "call my bluff", you'd still have to agree to come to NJ first. Probably more than once or for a prolonged period of time unless you just wanted it to be a one-shot.

And "set up" implies I'd be doing any of the work - I'm not invested enough to care to drag together people I haven't played with in years to play a game I almost never play solely to "prove" something to you that doesn't really need to be proved anyway. I was mostly just off-handedly saying I could TRY to track down those two players if you showed up with a game in tow as a joke. Though realistically, I haven't talked to the AD&D kid for about 20 years now (the Basic D&D kid I still see about once or twice a year, but he hasn't RPed in about 15 years or so either - in fact, he gave me all of his D&D and WW books about 10 years ago).

If I was going to try to drag players into a game, at this point the most likely candidates would be my friend who literally just had a new baby a week ago, and maybe my nephew who wants to learn how to RP (and who has watched Critical Role) but who has zero experience beyond HeroQuest.

Keep in mind, we've already established that I don't really have an active RP circle, and don't really feel like pulling one together. So I don't have a ton of people willing to jump to join a new game on the spur of the moment (because if I did, I'd probably be running/playing in one). Which is why most of the stories I DO tell are from games that happened 10+ years ago.

And you're not going to reverse-psychology trick me into going out into the world and desperately tracking down a new group of RPers just to prove you wrong, because I already shot that idea down in the D&D topic.

RP is like going to war. When you're young it's an intense experience you go through, then you eventually go home, and then when you're old you sit around boring young kids by just telling all your war-stories over and over again.

Oh, and...



shadowsword87 posted...

it was all just you playing the game with yourself.

The closest I ever got to this was probably when I'd sit around and make a dozen NPCs for games I knew I was never going to run (though there was always that voice in the back of your head going "Maybe someday, you'll run a game and use these people"). But even then, I was mostly doing it as a side hobby while still actively playing online games.

The next closest might be when I write backstories for a PC that imply they've already been through campaigns you've never heard of or seen because they're so damned complicated and have a bunch of NPCs tied to them even before the first game. But that's actually rare (I've probably only done it for about a half-dozen different characters across multiple systems).

Most of the time, if I was in an RPish mood and didn't have a game to serve as an outlet for it, gamebooks like Lone Wolf or Fabled Lands would scratch that itch, or later on, games like Fallout: New Vegas or BioWare stuff like Mass Effect or Dragon Age.

They actually used to make "solo game" RPGs in the 80s, but it was never a thing that really appealed to me. I've never even used the "solo mode" they have in Advanced HeroQuest. RP's always been too collaborative for me to see it as anything other than a group activity.

I've never been entirely adverse to two-person sessions, though. I've played (and run) a fair amount of two-person Amber, and most online games are just a succession of scenes involving 2-3 people strung together over time.


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HillChange posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The last wedding I was invited to that I completely blew off took place on September 10th, 2001.

I don't believe that. Who the heck gets married on a Monday?

Well, to be fair, that particular friend was sort of a nut. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a Monday.

But it's entirely possible I'm mis-remembering and it was actually the 9th.

I mostly just remember it because one friend of mine DID go to the wedding, and he WAS stuck there (in Seattle), and because another friend of mine also blew it off, and I was like "See, aren't you glad we didn't go?". I just checked my old e-mail to see if I had one from around then, but apparently not. So I can't say for 100% sure which day it was.

But the point of the story is the same regardless of whether or not I forgot the exact date like the old person that I am.


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TheCyborgNinja posted...

That time the DS game got on the front page a couple of years ago was a highlight of this community.

The fact that you believe that shows just how low this community has fallen over the years.


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To be fair, Sansa is and has always been an idiot.

As much as people have been "Oh man, she's gonna get all devious and clever now!" or "Man, she's gonna out-Littlefinger Littlefinger!", she's still mostly an idiot.


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The last wedding I was invited to that I completely blew off took place on September 10th, 2001.

Had I gone, I basically would have been trapped on the opposite side of the country for about a week or so, give or take.


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helIy posted...

which team? afaik both the good ones are working on anthem

I'm pretty sure only the old ME team is working on Anthem, the old DA team (or what's left of it) is working on DA4.

Laidlaw's supposedly in charge of it, but it's still pretty early in its development cycle.

And Gaider's definitely out.


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Kolari posted...

Jane, Jane Bond.
Double O Vagina. Sounds more like a Porn.

It was, in the 80s.

Though she was 0069, for obvious reasons.


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shadowsword87 posted...

Kimbo is real happy to tell people about a child orgy.
I get it.

To be fair, it's less of a child orgy, and more just a group of boys all having sex with the same girl one after the other. So more like running a train on her.


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shadowsword87 posted...

Also on a completely unrelated note, I just ordered Slaughter House 5, and I'm prepared to have all sorts of literary brilliance fly over my head as I read a story because I'm not good at that sort of thing, but I like to think I'm smart.

I've always found Kurt Vonnegut to be vastly overrated. Like Thomas Pynchon, he falls into a category of authors I feel like people only bring up in an attempt to convince other people that they're smart or deep, as opposed to the writer themselves actually being either smart or deep.

Though in Vonnegut's case, at least part of that might be that I haven't read EVERY story he's ever written, and the ones I have are mostly coming from an authorial point-of-view I don't relate to in any way (see also J. D. Salinger), and not helped by the fact that I was turned off him early on because Cat's Cradle was required reading in school (but to counter that, I WAS reading at a pretty hefty level by that point anyway, so it's hard to say I just wasn't "ready" for it, or that it was solely the fact that it was required reading that shut me down).

I feel like it isn't entirely coincidence that everyone I've ever heard praise him is a Boomer, though. I feel like the main disconnect is one of generational zeitgeist and outlook.


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shadowsword87 posted...

Don't worry, I am now applying Death of the Author to basically every time you talk about a game you played/ran online or not, and headconnoning it so it was all just you playing the game with yourself.

1) That's neither what Death of the Author means nor how it works.

2) You're free to believe that, in spite of it not being true.

Though for reference you won't care about, just doing a rough count in my head I'd say I've probably RPed with about two dozen different people (in different groups over the years) in person alone, another dozen or so if you include people I only gamed with for a single session or two, and probably about a hundred more once you start factoring in people I've played with online more than just completely casually.

But really, all you're basically doing is just the equivalent of when I occasionally suggested that no one in the Geek topic (or on PotD in general) actually exists at all, and that you're all just the voices in my head and I'm currently just typing all of your replies in Notepad and then forgetting that I wrote them before I answer back. Because there's literally no real proof that any of you exist at all.



shadowsword87 posted...

Until you can convince me in a non-PotD DnD game.

This would pretty much be impossible, since it means you would have to fly to New Jersey to either run or play in a D&D game. And simultaneously either bring a few extra players with you or recruit some here, because very few of the people I've played with over the years still play, and only TWO of them ever played D&D at all (and one of them played AD&D while the other played Basic D&D, which I'm assuming aren't editions you'd want to play in).

(I've actually got three cousins who currently play 5e and my nephew has mentioned kind of wanting to learn/play, but they're teenagers and I feel creepyweird about playing with them, so I haven't dropped in on any of their games. You could probably bribe them into inviting us in, though.)

For all the experience I've had with RP over the years, D&D was always the gaping hole in that particular curriculum vitae. No matter how many people consider it THE iconic game of the medium, it never meant anything to me for years. My first realistic contact with it wasn't until Baldur's Gate (apart from an attempt by someone I used to RP with to run an AD&D game in high school that went nowhere), and Nudo's game was basically the first, last, and only time I ever really played it.

But that means that I don't really know anyone else who played it, either.

Like I've said before, Marvel Superheroes RPG was my original system, WW Storyteller was my core system during most of my hardcore gaming years, and Amber DRPG became my love later on (and is still the system I'm most likely to play in on the rare occasion I tabletop these days). In between I've played L5R and 7th Sea, CoC and TimeLords, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, Lone Wolf, and a handful of other systems for shorter campaigns or one-offs. And I've talked to people who ran other systems I've never played, so I'm at least passingly familiar with stuff I've never gamed in.

But D&D? Almost never.

Though I pretty much live it vicariously for like 7 hours a week via Crit Role and Acq Inc at this point.


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helIy posted...

when EA was asked if there was any plans for ME:A DLC anywhere in the future, they were suspiciously quiet about it

so it's not even going to get DLC

EA's "quiet" about it because they don't care enough to answer.

They've already openly admitted they're putting the ME franchise "on hiatus" and there've been reliable leaks that ME:A is never getting updates (which includes DLC) or sequels, so we've already known the answer for months.

ME:A is definitely dead, and ME as a whole is going to get stuffed in a closet while EA hopes people slowly forget about how terrible ME:A was so they can eventually drag the name out again down the line and exploit it some more.



helIy posted...

andromeda probably killed mass effect, like inquisition killed dragon age

Inquisition didn't kill Dragon Age, they're already working on DA4.

I'd be willing to equate DA:I with the ending of ME3, though. That point where you realize the series is rapidly skidding out of control and headed for the edge of a cliff, but it hasn't quite gone over yet.

Whereas ME:A is the car at the bottom of the cliff already on fire and with the driver in about four pieces.

I do fully expect DA4 to turn out to be a total disaster creatively, though. But I'm cynical enough to suspect there's a least a 50-50 chance the public will lap that gooey diarrhea up and say it's delicious regardless, because I have absolutely no faith in gamers to actually recognize terrible things and admit that they're terrible.


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A better question would be whether or not a "dagger on a stick" goes through a phase where it's actually technically a sword before it becomes a spear.

Because a sword isn't necessarily just "long blade with handle". Stuff like the Aztec macuahuitl count as swords, in spite of pretty much just being "cricket bat with razor-blades taped to the edges".


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