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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 11, 2016 11:54:38 GMT -8
Okay, rather tangential, but this was bothering me: You DO know that roughly 50% [citation needed] of Mass Effect's selling points WAS multiple romances, right??? ?
I don't get the point you're trying to make.
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Post by valikdu on Mar 11, 2016 12:36:56 GMT -8
Romances were a small part of the story. They couldn't have been such a significant selling point.
...
Well, unless that woman from the Extended Cut presentation ("Thank you soooo much for that last moment with Kaidan!!!") is representative of some 90% of the fan base.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 11, 2016 12:57:18 GMT -8
Romances were a small part of the story. They couldn't have been such a significant selling point. ... Well, unless that woman from the Extended Cut presentation ("Thank you soooo much for that last moment with Kaidan!!!") is representative of some 90% of the fan base. You obviously never frequented the game's forums.
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Post by valikdu on Mar 11, 2016 13:11:14 GMT -8
Romances were a small part of the story. They couldn't have been such a significant selling point. ... Well, unless that woman from the Extended Cut presentation ("Thank you soooo much for that last moment with Kaidan!!!") is representative of some 90% of the fan base. You obviously never frequented the game's forums. ...yeah. Chris banned me permanently for posting too much Gamer Poop.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 11, 2016 13:26:47 GMT -8
You obviously never frequented the game's forums. ...yeah. Chris banned me permanently for posting too much Gamer Poop. Long story short - romances, the many different options and continuing them all were big reasons people liked the games.
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Post by admiralcheese on Mar 11, 2016 17:05:49 GMT -8
...yeah. Chris banned me permanently for posting too much Gamer Poop. Long story short - romances, the many different options and continuing them all were big reasons people liked the games. At the very least they were a big reason for the "Core" fans who actually stayed invested.
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Post by Histidine on Mar 11, 2016 17:22:01 GMT -8
I'll admit that this might well be obvious to me if I'd actually frequented the forums (presumably the official Bioware ones). But even if we assume the official forums are representative of the customer base*, deriving "about 50%" (half!)** from "big reasons" requires more logical steps than have actually been provided.
Or, to make my point as clear as possible: How was this ballpark figure determined, beyond an "intuitive" guess?
*I say "customer base" as opposed to "fan base" based on a straightforward interpretation of "selling point." If this were altered, there would be less question of the official forum activity representing the base, but the overall problem still remains.
**What, does this mean about 25% goes to non-romance story elements, and the remaining 25% to the gameplay? Is there still room for graphics, soundtrack, etc.? Inquiring minds want to know!
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 11, 2016 17:34:22 GMT -8
I'll admit that this might well be obvious to me if I'd actually frequented the forums (presumably the official Bioware ones). But even if we assume the official forums are representative of the customer base*, deriving "about 50%" (half!)** from "big reasons" requires more logical steps than have actually been provided. Or, to make my point as clear as possible: How was this ballpark figure determined, beyond an "intuitive" guess? *I say "customer base" as opposed to "fan base" based on a straightforward interpretation of "selling point." If this were altered, there would be less question of the official forum activity representing the base, but the overall problem still remains.
**What, does this mean about 25% goes to non-romance story elements, and the remaining 25% to the gameplay? Is there still room for graphics, soundtrack, etc.? Inquiring minds want to know!Polls, fan-threads and first-hand experience. Granted, 50% might be an over-estimate, but it's an understandable one considering that the characters involved in those romances - the interactions, the evolution, ect - were things that were widely panned and damn-near unanimously declared the reason so many loved the game. Or, to be frank - I think you're pressing me on basically amounts to semantics.
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Post by Histidine on Mar 11, 2016 17:59:47 GMT -8
Or, to be frank - I think you're pressing me on basically amounts to semantics. I don't consider people posting figures/proportions of no clear provenance to be "semantics."
"Made-up figures, like made-up quotes, serve to give an argument an illusion of far greater strength than it actually possesses." - Baruch Spinoza But this was tangential from the beginning, so I'll just drop it here.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 11, 2016 18:03:11 GMT -8
Or, to be frank - I think you're pressing me on basically amounts to semantics. I don't consider people posting figures/proportions of no clear provenance to be "semantics."
"Made-up figures, like made-up quotes, serve to give an argument an illusion of far greater strength than it actually possesses." - Baruch Spinoza But this was tangential from the beginning, so I'll just drop it here. Considering that these figures/proportions are CLEARLY VISIBLE just by visiting BioWare fourms, it does kinda equate to semantics just by taking even a cursory glance there. It's hard to say it's "an illusion of far greater strength than it actually possesses" when the numbers are not only real but publicly viewable. It wasn't tangential since it was part of my point - namely that having a degree of agency in a story can make all the difference for player enjoyment, even if the ultimate or penultimate endings aren't affected by who you did or didn't choose to romance.
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Post by Histidine on Mar 11, 2016 20:21:42 GMT -8
Considering that these figures/proportions are CLEARLY VISIBLE just by visiting BioWare fourms, it does kinda equate to semantics just by taking even a cursory glance there. It's hard to say it's "an illusion of far greater strength than it actually possesses" when the numbers are not only real but publicly viewable. Okay, I said I was going to drop it, but now you've gone and done it: At the time of writing: Mass Effect 3 Story, Campaign and Characters subforumSorting threads by most recent post: 3 of the first 30 threads are specifically about romance (one of which is about a romance between two NPCs). There are 7 character threads (Garrus, Miranda, Liara, Traynor, Kaidan, Vega), with an unspecified proportion of posts being about romance. (Yeah, I didn't count... are you going to do it?) Sorting threads by most replies (excluding locked threads): 1 of the first 30 threads is specifically about romance. There are 12 character threads (Miranda, Kaidan, Liara, Ashley, Garrus, Jack, Javik, Traynor, Cortez, Kasumi, Samara, Jacob). Three of those characters are not romancable. Mass Effect 3 General Discussion subforumSorting threads by most recent post: 2 of the first 30 threads are specifically about romance (one of which is about a romance between two NPCs). Sorting threads by most replies (excluding locked threads): 0 of the first 30 threads are specifically about romance.
As for polls, a brief search turned up only this: Your Interests in ME3 ( original thread for context) - Single Player Story: Overall Plot - 43%
- Single Player Story: Characters and backstories - 41%
- Single Player Gameplay: "Romance" - 7%
It's not clear how much people mean "romance" by the "characters and backstories" part, but even if we count it as 3/4th romance (hugely generous) that still doesn't add up to even 40%. So no, it is not in the least bit "CLEARLY VISIBLE" from "a cursory glance" that picking your romance made up half of Mass Effect's appeals, and the only "real" and "publicly viewable" numbers similarly fail to support this contention. You said there were polls; go on, post one, it'd end the discussion in short order. Until then, I have no reason to think this is anything other than typically fallible human perceptions at work. EDIT: missed this earlier: People liking the development of characters who happen to be involved in romances != people liking the romances. Conflating the two is not helpful.
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Post by admiralcheese on Mar 11, 2016 20:31:52 GMT -8
To be fair the waifu talk in ME was much more prevalent in the old forum. Especially before the 3rd game. Some of the waifu threads reached tens of thousands of pages.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 11, 2016 21:38:04 GMT -8
To be fair the waifu talk in ME was much more prevalent in the old forum. Especially before the 3rd game. Some of the waifu threads reached tens of thousands of pages. Thank you - yes, IDK if Histindine was aware but the original forums had "waifu wars" in abundance - many of which I was actually there to witness first-hand. Granted, I wasn't aware the caches containing much of the old stuff was flushed, so that's my failing.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 11, 2016 21:54:09 GMT -8
Considering that these figures/proportions are CLEARLY VISIBLE just by visiting BioWare fourms, it does kinda equate to semantics just by taking even a cursory glance there. It's hard to say it's "an illusion of far greater strength than it actually possesses" when the numbers are not only real but publicly viewable. Okay, I said I was going to drop it, but now you've gone and done it: At the time of writing: Mass Effect 3 Story, Campaign and Characters subforumSorting threads by most recent post: 3 of the first 30 threads are specifically about romance (one of which is about a romance between two NPCs). There are 7 character threads (Garrus, Miranda, Liara, Traynor, Kaidan, Vega), with an unspecified proportion of posts being about romance. (Yeah, I didn't count... are you going to do it?) Sorting threads by most replies (excluding locked threads): 1 of the first 30 threads is specifically about romance. There are 12 character threads (Miranda, Kaidan, Liara, Ashley, Garrus, Jack, Javik, Traynor, Cortez, Kasumi, Samara, Jacob). Three of those characters are not romancable. Mass Effect 3 General Discussion subforumSorting threads by most recent post: 2 of the first 30 threads are specifically about romance (one of which is about a romance between two NPCs). Sorting threads by most replies (excluding locked threads): 0 of the first 30 threads are specifically about romance.
As for polls, a brief search turned up only this: Your Interests in ME3 ( original thread for context) - Single Player Story: Overall Plot - 43%
- Single Player Story: Characters and backstories - 41%
- Single Player Gameplay: "Romance" - 7%
It's not clear how much people mean "romance" by the "characters and backstories" part, but even if we count it as 3/4th romance (hugely generous) that still doesn't add up to even 40%. So no, it is not in the least bit "CLEARLY VISIBLE" from "a cursory glance" that picking your romance made up half of Mass Effect's appeals, and the only "real" and "publicly viewable" numbers similarly fail to support this contention. You said there were polls; go on, post one, it'd end the discussion in short order. Until then, I have no reason to think this is anything other than typically fallible human perceptions at work. EDIT: missed this earlier: People liking the development of characters who happen to be involved in romances != people liking the romances. Conflating the two is not helpful. Sorry - I think you might have "gone and done it" yourself. Namely that you've gone off on a tangent for what's actually the wrong place to look. Like admiralcheese pointed out, there are TWO different sites - one is the older forum, and on the older forum, there were "waifu wars" that make the ones here look small. Another REALLY big flaw in your argument - "at the time of writing". See, at the time of writing (which is right now), the current BioWare fourms website is a completely different one from the original. Most of the many debates, polls and ect were flushed when the new site changed - granted, I wasn't aware of that at the time of the last post, so that mix-up's on me - but there are at least a few archives. Point of fact being - what you're seeing there? It's not even a fraction of what I saw back in 2012 on the original forums site when the game and everything about it was still fresh for debate. I was there when every day people were talking about Mass Effect the same as how people here were/are talking about Sunrider waifus in the here and now. And here would be the best archive I can find, though sadly there's no real way to organize it anymore and most of the latter stuff is about the ME3 Endings. social.bioware.com/browse_polls.php?s=poll_datecreated%20DESC&v=0&p=2Also, these would be the most intact romance-polls I can find so far from the old fourm's cache (and this is just in the first hundred results out of over 35,000, dating back only to the most recent game - Mass Effect 3 - and yet this many debates pop up at a time when the endings were so hotly debated. So... yeah - what the hell were you saying about it not being CLEARLY VISIBLE from a cursory glance?): social.bioware.com/1810293/polls/5439/social.bioware.com/110/polls/1358/social.bioware.com/892908/polls/1975/social.bioware.com/980362/polls/3585/social.bioware.com/3225189/polls/31259/social.bioware.com/1639775/polls/4933/social.bioware.com/700/polls/1994/social.bioware.com/892908/polls/2681/social.bioware.com/50746/polls/2237/social.bioware.com/1724485/polls/20089/social.bioware.com/3757925/polls/36026/social.bioware.com/3757925/polls/36022/social.bioware.com/566323/polls/8535/social.bioware.com/21532/polls/593/And further proof - debate of the waifus in Mass Effect got so intense that BioWare itself AXED AN ENTIRE SECTION, shutting it down and wiping all comments - www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-01-10-biowares-increasingly-toxic-forum-repels-dragon-age-writer-david-gaiderSo... yeah. 'Bout that whole " typically fallible human perceptions at work" bit? Congratulations - you've actually gone and insulted me, and I try not to let people do that. But when you pretty much call me a liar about this stuff... well, that's the limit. So sorry if I sound bitter in this - it's probably because I am a bit right now. But anyway... the point here is that waifus and the ability to choose one, regardless of if it affects the final outcome of the story, really does matter to the player a lot more then you might think, and that having the ability to choose - or even just "illusion of choice" as Marx had put it - can make all the difference in enjoying the narrative.
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Post by Histidine on Mar 11, 2016 23:25:55 GMT -8
UGH. First: If you (and admiralcheese) say there were waifu threads running into the thousands of pages (that were lost when the Bioware forums were moved, although whether they were or not doesn't really matter for this purpose), I believe you, and accept this as sufficient evidence to make the claim sufficiently plausible that it need not be singled out. I think you should have stated this from the beginning, but here it is now. Now as for the rest: I'm sorry about you feeling bitter (I have my own adverse reactions to even relatively mild Internet arguments), but at some point I also have to say that you're being really bad at logic. Like admiralcheese pointed out, there are TWO different sites - one is the older forum. Another REALLY big flaw in your argument - "at the time of writing". See, at the time of writing (which is right now), the current BioWare fourms website is a completely different one from the original. Most of the many debates, polls and ect were flushed when the new site changed - granted, I wasn't aware of that at the time of the last post, so that mix-up's on me - but there are at least a few archives. I only posted what I found and said it did not obviously demonstrate your point. Sure: honest mistake, no-one is to blame, etc., etc. and I don't want to harp on this. But I submit that if I have to dig up stuff from a now-defunct forum, it is not "CLEARLY VISIBLE" from "a cursory glance". There are 14 polls in that list. The last one is a Dragon Age poll, so that leaves 13. Assuming a random sample*, the fact that 13 out of 100 polls are about romance in ME (mostly "which LI is your favorite?" or "do you want same-sex relationships in ME?") is not evidence that about half of the series' appeal is due to romance (or more specifically, being able to choose your romantic interest). Or a third, or even a quarter. Using it as evidence for 13% is already a stretch in itself. The fact that I need to explain this is an indicator of a huge problem in this discussion. The only two of the linked polls that directly substantiate the claim are this and this. *How did you search anyway? There's no poll search function on BSN that I can see. Google site search would make sense but I'd need to know the search terms, and how did the DA poll get in then? (I'm also wondering: why are the poll numbers so disparate?) Which shows that there's a subset of ME fans who feel strongly about their LIs to the point where they're willing/motivated/such to indulge in forum toxicity over it. It says nothing about how big this subset actually was. Fine, let's say it's big (maybe even a majority of the overall fanbase). This is still not the same as proving (using the informal definition of the word) that anywhere near half of ME's appeal is due to selectable romance options, although it does serve as evidence; it certainly suggests to me that the claim is more likely to be true. Reiterating the main point: The fact that people are talking a lot about aspect A of item X does not prove that A is the key selling point of X. That is sheer saliency bias. ( Isn't this the exact same mistake Samu-kun made?) If you feel insulted, I'm sorry; all I can do is plead lack of intent. But at no point did I "pretty much call [you] a liar" (at the very least not in any sense implying malice); in fact, my wording was specifically selected to avoid any implication of deliberate falsehood, or implication that the issues behind any false statements you may have made are specific to you personally. In fact, I'd say that the only way you can claim otherwise is through a willful misreading of my post(s). But anyway... the point here is that waifus and the ability to choose one, regardless of if it affects the final outcome of the story, really does matter to the player a lot more then you might think, and that having the ability to choose - or even just "illusion of choice" as Marx had put it - can make all the difference in enjoying the narrative. And my point is: say that! Don't post unlikely numbers (or strong claims in general) unless you can support them!
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 11, 2016 23:49:06 GMT -8
UGH. First: If you (and admiralcheese) say there were waifu threads running into the thousands of pages (that were lost when the Bioware forums were moved, although whether they were or not doesn't really matter for this purpose), I believe you, and accept this as sufficient evidence to make the claim sufficiently plausible that it need not be singled out. I think you should have stated this from the beginning, but here it is now. Now as for the rest: I'm sorry about you feeling bitter (I have my own adverse reactions to even relatively mild Internet arguments), but at some point I also have to say that you're being really bad at logic. Like admiralcheese pointed out, there are TWO different sites - one is the older forum. Another REALLY big flaw in your argument - "at the time of writing". See, at the time of writing (which is right now), the current BioWare fourms website is a completely different one from the original. Most of the many debates, polls and ect were flushed when the new site changed - granted, I wasn't aware of that at the time of the last post, so that mix-up's on me - but there are at least a few archives. I only posted what I found and said it did not obviously demonstrate your point. Sure: honest mistake, no-one is to blame, etc., etc. and I don't want to harp on this. But I submit that if I have to dig up stuff from a now-defunct forum, it is not "CLEARLY VISIBLE" from "a cursory glance". There are 14 polls in that list. The last one is a Dragon Age poll, so that leaves 13. Assuming a random sample*, the fact that 13 out of 100 polls are about romance in ME (mostly "which LI is your favorite?" or "do you want same-sex relationships in ME?") is not evidence that about half of the series' appeal is due to romance (or more specifically, being able to choose your romantic interest). Or a third, or even a quarter. Using it as evidence for 13% is already a stretch in itself. The fact that I need to explain this is an indicator of a huge problem in this discussion. The only two of the linked polls that directly substantiate the claim are this and this. *How did you search anyway? There's no poll search function on BSN that I can see. Google site search would make sense but I'd need to know the search terms, and how did the DA poll get in then? (I'm also wondering: why are the poll numbers so disparate?) Which shows that there's a subset of ME fans who feel strongly about their LIs to the point where they're willing/motivated/such to indulge in forum toxicity over it. It says nothing about how big this subset actually was. Fine, let's say it's big (maybe even a majority of the overall fanbase). This is still not the same as proving (using the informal definition of the word) that anywhere near half of ME's appeal is due to selectable romance options, although it does serve as evidence; it certainly suggests to me that the claim is more likely to be true. Reiterating the main point: The fact that people are talking a lot about aspect A of item X does not prove that A is the key selling point of X. That is sheer saliency bias. ( Isn't this the exact same mistake Samu-kun made?) If you feel insulted, I'm sorry; all I can do is plead lack of intent. But at no point did I "pretty much call [you] a liar" (at the very least not in any sense implying malice); in fact, my wording was specifically selected to avoid any implication of deliberate falsehood, or implication that the issues behind any false statements you may have made are specific to you personally. In fact, I'd say that the only way you can claim otherwise is through a willful misreading of my post(s). First - Thing is that I didn't know that much of the original caches were lost and already admitted that was my bad - I hadn't even visited the BioWare fourms since 2013. How the hell does that make me "bad at logic" as opposed to "misinformed/made an assumption"?
Second - What I gave you is an EXAMPLE, and only out of the most recent polls that were active prior to the old site being shut down. It was to show you just how many, many, MANY people (thousands at any one time) cared about this to the point they would regularly open debates, and the only reason it was "13 out of 100" was because it was during the blow-up over ME3's ending. 13 out of the first hundred from 35,000 (and taken from a sample where romance was generally the last thing most would have been thinking of on the back of ME3's ending) is a small fraction of it. This isn't even a quarter of what I saw - it was just an example.
Third - I googled the polls. No real poll-search function properly exists anymore, or at least not for the old forums-site. The old site is all but defunct outside of cashes, so there's no organization to any of it anymore - and I gave a LINK to the only archive left, which has them all massed together.
Fourth - "Subset?" It was apparently the majority of the active fanbase if that article was any indication. And again, I point you to the defunct link in that article - the one where what was once a thousand pages was wiped clean because it was deemed too toxic to continue. Again, me and admiralcheese saw this stuff - it numbered in the thousands. You can believe it or not but in the end, if it was big enough that a website-news article felt it substantial enough to report on it (and it was hardly the first thread that was shut down, believe you me - just one of the largest) then you can't deny it had to have been a sizable subset.
Fifth - See, this is another mix-up; I never said it was THE selling point. I said it was A selling point. That in games like this, love/romance often matters as much to the players as story and having agency in that, even if it doesn't affect the main story's outcome, is important to have. So please don't accuse me of a bias I don't have since, counter to your example, I DIDN'T say it was the only thing people wanted - I said it was equal/50% at best, and even noted that I might have been overestimating to boot, so how the hell you can say "bias" is beyond me. And yes, saliency bias is same mistake Samu-Kun made - hence why I was arguing in the first place why having the whole "choose how Chigara is loved; sister or girlfriend" choice added in was something I thought would fix any lingering issues people had with the story.
Sixth - Again, "Typically fallible human perceptions at work" - that came across as saying I was lying at worst or wrong and not admitting it at best. Saying "willful misreading of posts" is THE SAME THING as saying I'm misrepresenting it on purpose/lying about it, and it's what you were pretty much accusing me of before. Add to that things like the above bias accusation and... well, you might want to re-think your approach if you thought those words represented your stated intent.
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Post by Somasam on Mar 11, 2016 23:54:41 GMT -8
Is it naive of me to still be kind of off-put by the negativity and aggression found on internet forums?
The beautiful thing about the internet is that we are all able to get together and communicate about things we care about with others from all across the world. With the added benefit of having all the world's knowledge at our finger tips at the same time to help spread information and ideas with one another.
Could we perhaps take a step back and just take a breather for a bit? Its perfectly alright to have conflicting ideas and our own ways of going about expressing them, hell this conversion is bringing up some good points and it lets us see both sides of the argument in valid ways. Healthy competition breeds innovation and new ideas. But just trying to tear each other down doesn't really help anyone, and just ends with all sides feeling bitter and wronged.
I'd be fine with this discussion going on, but it would be nice if we could all just take a moment to recompose ourselves and try to be respectful to one another.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 12, 2016 0:33:34 GMT -8
Is it naive of me to still be kind of off-put by the negativity and aggression found on internet forums? The beautiful thing about the internet is that we are all able to get together and communicate about things we care about with others from all across the world. With the added benefit of having all the world's knowledge at our finger tips at the same time to help spread information and ideas with one another. Could we perhaps take a step back and just take a breather for a bit? Its perfectly alright to have conflicting ideas and our own ways of going about expressing them, hell this conversion is bringing up some good points and it lets us see both sides of the argument in valid ways. Healthy competition breeds innovation and new ideas. But just trying to tear each other down doesn't really help anyone, and just ends with all sides feeling bitter and wronged. I'd be fine with this discussion going on, but it would be nice if we could all just take a moment to recompose ourselves and try to be respectful to one another. I wouldn't be able to answer that, since IDK if it's that you're naive or that I'm jaded (or maybe both for all I know). Thing is, I wasn't trying to tear anyone down - it felt more like he was the one doing that (saying I don't get logic/have logical arguments, was misinformed at best and misrepresenting/lying at worst, then in the next post said had a bias, was deliberately misreading posts, ect.), and that's where I draw the line and take it somewhat personally. I've been patient so far - pointed out where I was wrong, pointed out where I think he was wrong, done my best to clarify any misunderstandings I might have caused and so-forth, and I've not once said he lied or had a bias or any of the like. So yes, I'm all for respectful debate - so long as it stays that way.
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Post by Histidine on Mar 12, 2016 1:06:43 GMT -8
First - Thing is that I didn't know that much of the original caches were lost and already admitted that was my bad - I hadn't even visited the BioWare fourms since 2013. How the hell does that make me "bad at logic" as opposed to "misinformed/made an assumption"? The "bad at logic" bit refers to your attempt to use 13 polls and the romance subforum being shut down as evidence of selectable love interest being half the appeal of ME, not the part about not knowing the old forum was wiped. (I might also mentioned this post, but dragging up off-topic stuff from another forum seemed undesirable. I only mention it now to defend the personal assertion I made) One: The fact that there exist N of X polls about the topic, where X >> 2*N, is not evidence of the original "about 50%" assertion, which was what was originally being disputed. This has been explained repeatedly. Two: Your claim that the polls took place at the height of the ME3 ending debacle is almost totally false, and can readily be shown to be so. Ten of the 13 polls linked were created well before ME3 came out (the newest about 9.5 months before), as were a large majority of their comments — look at the dates. I'll assume you accidentally sorted by last comment instead of actual date. I don't know why you're harping on the quantitative point when I already conceded it for the sake of argument, but: 1) The Eurogamer article contains no claim that the toxic arguers on romance (or even generally) were a majority of the active userbase (or that any attempt was made to quantify them to begin with), only that they were sufficiently numerous, active and concentrated to justify binning the entire subforum. If you disagree, quote text from that article stating otherwise. 2) If you're seriously going to advance the claim that the amount of news reporting on an issue has any real relationship to the number of people affected by the issue, I'm just going to facepalm. Yes. Yes you did. However, altering my post accordingly ("a major selling point" instead of "the key selling point") does not affect the fundamental point. You didn't say "at best". You said "roughly", which carries a greatly different connotation both generally and in the context of the post where it was used. I brought up saliency bias to show the logical fallacy involved in thinking that extensive discussion of romance in ME is strong evidence of it being a highly important selling point (50%, which is very large in any comparison with two candidates), as illustrated by your use of the number of polls and the fact that the romance subforum got binned as evidence of the 50% claim. Any implication that you, personally have saliency bias results from your use of said fallacious arguments; simply retract them or at least acknowledge their limitations, and the implication will cease to apply to you. The phrase states that you are (presumed to be) relying on perception rather than measurement, human perception being often faulty (hence the lengthy discussions in the scientific community of cognitive biases, eyewitness errors and the like.) It cannot be reasonably interpreted to say you are lying. Nor does it discuss whether or not you are admitting previous error, being concerned only with how the original error came about. If I think you're doing either of those things, I will specifically say so. "Willful" does imply more intent than I meant to impute, and for that I apologise. However, you are still claiming I accused you of lying prior to the post where I wrote the "willful misreading" phrase, and I contend there is no part of my posts prior to then that can be reasonably interpreted as making such an accusation. Again, if you disagree, quote the offending section. Is it naive of me to still be kind of off-put by the negativity and aggression found on internet forums? The beautiful thing about the internet is that we are all able to get together and communicate about things we care about with others from all across the world. With the added benefit of having all the world's knowledge at our finger tips at the same time to help spread information and ideas with one another. Could we perhaps take a step back and just take a breather for a bit? Its perfectly alright to have conflicting ideas and our own ways of going about expressing them, hell this conversion is bringing up some good points and it lets us see both sides of the argument in valid ways. Healthy competition breeds innovation and new ideas. But just trying to tear each other down doesn't really help anyone, and just ends with all sides feeling bitter and wronged. I'd be fine with this discussion going on, but it would be nice if we could all just take a moment to recompose ourselves and try to be respectful to one another. Things are a bit blunt/terse here, but even with the accusation of accusation of lying, I'd say it's actually far, far better than the Internet median. Still, you're right.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 12, 2016 1:53:57 GMT -8
First - Thing is that I didn't know that much of the original caches were lost and already admitted that was my bad - I hadn't even visited the BioWare fourms since 2013. How the hell does that make me "bad at logic" as opposed to "misinformed/made an assumption"? The "bad at logic" bit refers to your attempt to use 13 polls and the romance subforum being shut down as evidence of selectable love interest being half the appeal of ME, not the part about not knowing the old forum was wiped. (I might also mentioned this post, but dragging up off-topic stuff from another forum seemed undesirable. I only mention it now to defend the personal assertion I made) One: The fact that there exist N of X polls about the topic, where X >> 2*N, is not evidence of the original "about 50%" assertion, which was what was originally being disputed. This has been explained repeatedly. Two: Your claim that the polls took place at the height of the ME3 ending debacle is almost totally false, and can readily be shown to be so. Ten of the 13 polls linked were created well before ME3 came out (the newest about 9.5 months before), as were a large majority of their comments — look at the dates. I'll assume you accidentally sorted by last comment instead of actual date. I don't know why you're harping on the quantitative point when I already conceded it for the sake of argument, but: 1) The Eurogamer article contains no claim that the toxic arguers were a majority of the active userbase (or that any attempt was made to quantify them to begin with), only that they were sufficiently numerous, active and concentrated to justify binning the entire subforum. If you disagree, quote text from that article stating otherwise. 2) If you're seriously going to advance the claim that the amount of news reporting on an issue has any real relationship to the number of people affected by the issue, I'm just going to facepalm. Yes. Yes you did. However, altering my post accordingly ("a major selling point" instead of "the key selling point") does not affect the fundamental point. You didn't say "at best". You said "roughly", which carries a greatly different connotation both generally and in the context of the post where it was used. I brought up saliency bias to show the logical fallacy involved in thinking that extensive discussion of romance in ME is strong evidence of it being a highly important selling point (50%, which is very large in any comparison with two candidates), as illustrated by your use of the number of polls and the fact that the romance subforum got binned as evidence of the 50% claim. If you object to me possibly implying you have saliency bias, simply retract the fallacious arguments, or at least acknowledge their limitations, and the implication will cease to apply to you. The phrase states that you are (presumed to be) relying on faulty perception, human perception being often faulty (hence the lengthy discussions of cognitive biases, eyewitness errors and the like.) It cannot be reasonably interpreted to say you are lying. Nor does it discuss whether or not you are admitting previous error, being concerned only with how the original error came about. If I think you're doing either of those things, I will specifically say so. "Willful" does imply more intent than I meant to impute, and for that I apologise. However, you are still claiming I accused you of lying prior to the post where I wrote the "willful misreading" phrase, and I contend there is no part of my posts prior to then that can be reasonably interpreted as making such an accusation. Again, if you disagree, quote the offending section. Is it naive of me to still be kind of off-put by the negativity and aggression found on internet forums? The beautiful thing about the internet is that we are all able to get together and communicate about things we care about with others from all across the world. With the added benefit of having all the world's knowledge at our finger tips at the same time to help spread information and ideas with one another. Could we perhaps take a step back and just take a breather for a bit? Its perfectly alright to have conflicting ideas and our own ways of going about expressing them, hell this conversion is bringing up some good points and it lets us see both sides of the argument in valid ways. Healthy competition breeds innovation and new ideas. But just trying to tear each other down doesn't really help anyone, and just ends with all sides feeling bitter and wronged. I'd be fine with this discussion going on, but it would be nice if we could all just take a moment to recompose ourselves and try to be respectful to one another. Things are a bit blunt/terse here, but even with the accusation of accusation of lying, I'd say it's actually far, far better than the Internet median. Still, you're right. First - I don't see how that even comes close. It was a sample-size from a point where the forums were dominated by ME3-ending controversy - an example that there were polls out there that had thousands of views and votes apiece even that late in the game when it had already been talked and debated to death. There were generally only two things that were talked about on the forums - plot and character-romance with the occasional philosophical debate cropping up (and being quickly canned because it got too toxic too quick).
Second - You're again arguing "N of X" when it's NOT even applicable here. I gave you a sample size of what was readily available out of 35,000 postings, not even counting the articles that were deleted wholesale. And you seem to have missed that each of these polls were active and still being debated on over a year after ME3's release in many cases. I'll in turn assume you didn't even bother to look at how long those comments/debates lasted and only glanced at the date-of-creation - so no, it's not in fact "almost totally false, and can readily be shown to be so." I'd actually say it's the complete opposite - proof that this wasn't something people let go easily.
Third - I'm "harping" on it BECAUSE you're regarding it as "quantitative". Eurogamer paid attention to that specific forum out of all the others that had been closed down for toxicity - potent enough for even a BioWare staffer to comment on it. That alone infers it was larger then the others - and please don't ask for such quotes because it'll just end with me pointing out you don't have any that support your own claim any more or less, ending it in an impasse.
Fourth - NO. No I did NOT. My original comment was "You DO know that roughly 50% of Mass Effect's selling points WAS multiple romances, right???" WHERE in that did I say "it's THE key selling point?" This is important because I want to make sure you're not doing what you accused me of; misreading posts. That way, I can make sure that's not the cause of this argument as opposed to differing beliefs. And yes, it does affect the fundamental point - it's the difference between saying "people only come for the romance" and "the romance is a big part of why people come". One definition implies sovereignty to that element over all others, the other does not.
Fifth - I know that; I was using a different paraphrasing to express the same thing a different way. "Roughly" assumes the best possible estimate, which in turn is inferred from the best numbers (or at least I used the best numbers). How can you argue this has a different connotation and yet try to argue "a" and "the" do not?
Sixth - Fans arguing that long and that intensely for their characters tends to breed that opinion. admiralcheese pointed out it was a key element in what made the core fanbase love the series so much. Continuing romances was a key selling point for fans of the past games, which made up a big portion of ME2 and ME3's subsequent sales. The number of polls I showed illustrated how long-lasting these debates could be and that they could crop up even very late in the game. So no - Saliency bias is trying to infer a specific element has sovereignty over all others simply because it's talked about more (example - Samu-Kun with Sunrider's combat system). I never stated romances were the bigger factor over all others - just that it was A big factor for a very large portion of the fanbase, which I estimated to be half. So, by your own cited example, the fact that I never proclaimed for romances to have supremacy over all elements means I do not fall under saliency bias - so what was fallacious NOT my arguments but rather your trying to label that bias to me.
Seventh - Ignoring logic/"seeing what you want to see" is generally regarded as a form of lying because it's the same as willing ignorance of stated facts. Repeatedly inferring that I'm relying on faulty perception is the same as saying I'm choosing not to abide by logic if I stick to those beliefs for any reason - ergo, "willing ignorance of stated facts". At best it translates to unwitting misrepresentation, at worst it translates to knowing misrepresentation (the later otherwise known as "lying"). Saying "typically fallible human perceptions at work" not only implies that you saw my beliefs and very ability to perceive them as faulty, but effectively implied that if I continued to advocate them that I'd be flying in the face of logic - ergo, LYING. Call it an extreme generalization, but it's what I took from it at the end of the day.
Eighth - That's just it, though; you've done that all throughout. What you said before - implying my perceptions and their resultant beliefs were "faulty" - is the same as saying that I'd have to be denying logic/lying/misrepresenting to keep supporting them (or at least that's how I took it). And sorry if I blew up at you for it - if there's one thing that peeves me, it's someone arbitrarily stating things like that.
Back to the original point - the reason I said you were arguing semantics in the beginning was because you were devoting all your time and effort to hounding me over the details of the ME3 example I used as opposed to WHY and WHAT that example was even meant to illustrate for LibDay; that having agency in a romance choice is important to people regardless of if it affects the main-story's plot. My point - my ORIGINAL one - was that the method our dear Kayto Shields loved Chigara Ashada could have been determinable between "girlfriend" and "sister" and it wouldn't have affected the path of the main plot, and it's getting progressively more lost in translation because of this debate over my estimate for ME3 being precise or not.
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Post by Samu-kun on Mar 12, 2016 2:38:53 GMT -8
Uhh someone reported this thread so here I am.
I can't really tell what the bottom line is, and a lot of it seems off topic since it's about Bioware from what I can tell?
I dunno why people are shouting over the internet. Please conduct your business in regular voices.
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Post by Histidine on Mar 12, 2016 3:31:11 GMT -8
I never stated romances were the bigger factor over all others - just that it was A big factor for a very large portion of the fanbase, which I estimated to be half. If factor A accounts for 50% of the total, and there are more than two factors involved, A is obviously larger than every other factor unless the second largest factor is also 50%. If the non-A 50% shows anything resembling an even split between the other factors, A is much larger than any other factor (2x as large for an even split of the remainder with N = 3, and this goes up as N gets bigger). This is basic arithmetic.If you meant something that does not require the sum to be 100%, e.g. "50% of Mass Effect players consider selectable romances to be one of the selling points of the game", then rephrase your original statement "roughly 50% of Mass Effect's selling points WAS multiple romances" to that and we can all finally go home. A misunderstanding; I meant to say I accepted that you said it was "a" point, not "the" point. Sorry. That's not how I imagine most people parse "key selling point". If it were the only selling point, most people would say "only". But even if the difference was as you describe; my point was: a lot of people talking about one aspect does not necessarily mean it is the largest aspect or even particularly large in terms of importance. "X is at best 50%" does not mean "my best guess is that X is 50%." The closest synonym to "at best" here is "at most". EDIT: Scrubbed most of my post because I really don't want to continue arguing about something that's already wholly off-topic and is ultimately really, completely pointless (and if Samu-kun or Vaendryl has to step in because of that, I'll be ashamed). If for some reason someone wants to see the original post, it's pastebinned below: Okay, no. I said I wanted to drop it and I mean it.
pastebin.com/[REDACTED]
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Post by vaendryl on Mar 12, 2016 7:14:31 GMT -8
I appreciate your restraint. didn't want to have to lock this topic.
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Post by KnightOfXentar on Mar 12, 2016 10:39:00 GMT -8
Okay - RANT/TANGENT incoming. I don't think it's clear at all, since everyone assumes I'm against it and don't like it. Once again, I'M NOT and I DO - what I'm against is there being no choice in the matter. It's been used as an example before, but Mass Effect (the first and second ones at least) showed that a romance didn't have to change the "common route" - that all paths could have the same end and everyone could still approve of it. And again, the issue with your statement is that I haven't seen ANY reason that it "has to happen" like that - how does being able to choose whether Kayto loves Chigara as a sister or a girlfriend change the "Kayto's love for Chigara and trust in her betrayed him" plot at all? And again, I point you to the literal crap-ton of people who said it WOULD have cut it - that this was the single biggest flaw in LD aside from the ending....................................... majority of steam players thought that number 1 problem was lack of content (though I must admit, that if you have paid only 10$ for LD on Patreon, then you are probably not as angry as them)2nd biggest problem was stupid/forced/rushed romance 3rd biggest problem was bad/sad ending It's very clear by now how you feel about Kayto hooking up with Chigara, but part of what V2.0 did was make clear this didn't count as a 'girl route' but part of the common route. It has to happen for things to play out the way they did. Its required by the overall plot, which will surely become more obvious as more of the story is revealed. A platonic relationship doesn't cut it. If it was and the results were in fact the same it wouldnt even be a choice anyway, which will have people complain about that instead. I get that you don't like this part of the story but it's nowhere near as "locked in" as you say. It's quite over by the end if you choose it. In a sense, the player only really gains agency over waifu choice at this point, and yes, I understand you wanted that agency much earlier, but the author chose plot over instant waifu gratification. I think the story is better off that way in the long run, but we can bicker that point till the suns burn out. oh man, oh man. Please don't try to be a devil's advocate. Saying " we don't consider it to be real romance route" is bollocks (not just you, even Samu-kun wrote something similar). Just because you let her die ASAP, doesn't it make it less real. It happened, period. Let's imagine resembling situation... How would fans reacted if Bioware would have done something similar: Show bunch of waifu to players, but then in Mass Effect 2 they would make player "forget" about their waifu and force them to sleep with Garrus Vakarian!!! It's very similar, 'cause majority of players never considered Garrus as possible romance interest, they thought of him as bro. And then Bioware would comment with garbage " We don't consider it real romance option, it's just part of story." I can very vividly imagine reactions of fans: at the very least Bioware's pages would receive DNS attack. PS: By no means I have something against Garrus... in fact, GARRUS IS DA BOSS
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 12, 2016 11:16:29 GMT -8
Uhh someone reported this thread so here I am. I can't really tell what the bottom line is, and a lot of it seems off topic since it's about Bioware from what I can tell? I dunno why people are shouting over the internet. Please conduct your business in regular voices. No-one was shouting, last I checked. And the example was "people like agency in their romances regardless of if it affects the main plot or not." My example was that a very big aspect of BioWare's fans got Mass Effect and continued to play it for the waifus and the romance - it didn't have to alter the story to satisfy them. My point was that having how Kayto expressed love for Chigara be optional (love as a sibling or love as a girlfriend) would have given a satisfying agency to players without altering the story of LibDay in the slightest.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 12, 2016 11:47:06 GMT -8
I never stated romances were the bigger factor over all others - just that it was A big factor for a very large portion of the fanbase, which I estimated to be half. If factor A accounts for 50% of the total, and there are more than two factors involved, A is obviously larger than every other factor unless the second largest factor is also 50%. If the non-A 50% shows anything resembling an even split between the other factors, A is much larger than any other factor (2x as large for an even split of the remainder with N = 3, and this goes up as N gets bigger). This is basic arithmetic.If you meant something that does not require the sum to be 100%, e.g. "50% of Mass Effect players consider selectable romances to be one of the selling points of the game", then rephrase your original statement "roughly 50% of Mass Effect's selling points WAS multiple romances" to that and we can all finally go home. A misunderstanding; I meant to say I accepted that you said it was "a" point, not "the" point. Sorry. That's not how I imagine most people parse "key selling point". If it were the only selling point, most people would say "only". But even if the difference was as you describe; my point was: a lot of people talking about one aspect does not necessarily mean it is the largest aspect or even particularly large in terms of importance. "X is at best 50%" does not mean "my best guess is that X is 50%." The closest synonym to "at best" here is "at most". EDIT: Scrubbed most of my post because I really don't want to continue arguing about something that's already wholly off-topic and is ultimately really, completely pointless (and if Samu-kun or Vaendryl has to step in because of that, I'll be ashamed). If for some reason someone wants to see the original post, it's pastebinned below: Okay, no. I said I wanted to drop it and I mean it.
pastebin.com/[REDACTED]
First - Again, you're arguing factors that have no bearing on this. I said it was a factor that a lot of people - which I estimated to be "roughly 50%" - got the game for. That is and never was a statement that this specific element was superior to all others. There where honestly all of two things that were talked about on the forums as why they loved the game - Story and Romance - and I have been treating "Story" as what the other half loved most. So no - it's more like "A is equal to B" out of what was most spotlighted on the forums as "why people like this game". This is not arithmetic , so it has no place here. So no - I don't need to rephrase that statement based on the above - especially since your focusing on that is really, really sidetracking from why I even made it to begin with.
Second - Thank you. Now you see what I meant about misunderstandings likely being a big part in why this got so tangled(?). My original point was, again, that agency in romances is important to players but that it doesn't need to impact the main story to do that.
Third - If you phrase it as "THE key selling point", that's pretty much just another way for saying "the only selling point", or at least distinguishing it from a group. Saying "THE key selling point" implies it's the one aspect out of all others that the game is purchased for, ergo that it has sovereignty over all other points. Saying it's "A key selling point" implies it's one of many points and not necessarily superior to all others - it does not have sovereignty over all other elements. I'd never said it was "the largest" - the most you could ever say is that I said it was EQUAL in importance to the main story for people and that it was clearly observable among the core fan-base from the way, extent and frequency it was talked about. It was a comparison to how much people care about who their character gets together with - that choosing how those interactions go is pretty important to the player.
Fourth - You're arguing semantics here. "At best" and "At most" are the same thing - inferences from the most generous standpoint for a statistic. But I digress.
My point had and still is that when it comes to romance, the factor of "can I choose" matters more then whether or not it changes the main story, and that this was a key element to what made Mass Effect so attractive to its core fans. Sure, no-one's going to REFUSE if you offer love-paths that change the main story accordingly, but they'd be satisfied with just having the ability to pick who they get with. Pushing a "cannon romance", even if just as a casual fling, is typically something that's frowned upon not just for lacking agency but because it could almost be seen as disrespectful to even the very character you're forcing the romance with. I'm not exactly a Chigara fan but I do think she deserved better then to either be the "arbitrary rebound fling to get over the ex (Ava) or your own issues" or the "forced romance you feel obliged to continue because you now feel sorry for her" - it's like saying nobody would have picked her otherwise. Or, to use KnightOfXentar's example, it's like a bait-and-switch for the character who best works as a sibling - you tend to not want it to go that way unless it's your choice to (and I admit fully that this is how I PERSONALLY feel is what Chigara was left as, so as to avoid confusion).
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 12, 2016 13:32:38 GMT -8
Really, simply stop. I can see where this started to degenerate and probably have my own opinions about it, but at this point everyone agrees that it simply there's no point continuing. Heck, Vaen's comparison to Mass Effect was a tad problematic from the beginning; Sunrider never had that much of a focus on choices and player identification. A lot of the problems come in fact that Shields is his own person and not simply our avatar. Really, Sunrider is a lot more VN-like than anything else (at least in its storyline). Like Nagashofchaos mentioned, a forced route in the common route was done in Princess Waltz, and while not exactly in the same way, a forced "route order" is extremely frequent in Visual Novels. It's a plot device that has flaws, but also some strong points if done right, the problem being that whether it's "done right" is only seen at the very end. It's no use arguing now with only a half-finished series.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 12, 2016 14:22:23 GMT -8
Really, simply stop. I can see where this started to degenerate and probably have my own opinions about it, but at this point everyone agrees that it simply there's no point continuing. Heck, Vaen's comparison to Mass Effect was a tad problematic from the beginning; Sunrider never had that much of a focus on choices and player identification. A lot of the problems come in fact that Shields is his own person and not simply our avatar. Really, Sunrider is a lot more VN-like than anything else (at least in its storyline). Like Nagashofchaos mentioned, a forced route in the common route was done in Princess Waltz, and while not exactly in the same way, a forced "route order" is extremely frequent in Visual Novels. It's a plot device that has flaws, but also some strong points if done right, the problem being that whether it's "done right" is only seen at the very end. It's no use arguing now with only a half-finished series. Um... you're really, really just completely contradicting yourself here. First - A VN-protagonist is BOTH his own person and our avatar because, while he often always has a general pre-set personality. there is STILL AN AMOUNT OF PLAYER AGENCY in what he chooses and why. What you're advocating isn't any more or less unique to any of the many, many other VN's that retain multiple-choice endings in spite of the protag having a set personality - in fact it actually makes what was done in LibDay stick out even worse by contrast. Nobody's against the common route having Kayto come to love Chigara - only that there's no choice between loving her like a girlfriend and loving her like a sibling, which in turn makes the idea of future romances awkward at best because it makes Kayto feel like, as Blackhead said in a different forum, like he's been pre-set to to a "circle jerk" if it stays like this. It's a necessary ILLUSION OF CHOICE - the very thing you advocated was a major part of what made Sunrider work.
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Post by 白龍 on Mar 12, 2016 14:31:22 GMT -8
Really, simply stop. I can see where this started to degenerate and probably have my own opinions about it, but at this point everyone agrees that it simply there's no point continuing. Heck, Vaen's comparison to Mass Effect was a tad problematic from the beginning; Sunrider never had that much of a focus on choices and player identification. A lot of the problems come in fact that Shields is his own person and not simply our avatar. Really, Sunrider is a lot more VN-like than anything else (at least in its storyline). Like Nagashofchaos mentioned, a forced route in the common route was done in Princess Waltz, and while not exactly in the same way, a forced "route order" is extremely frequent in Visual Novels. It's a plot device that has flaws, but also some strong points if done right, the problem being that whether it's "done right" is only seen at the very end. It's no use arguing now with only a half-finished series. It's a whole sub-branch from Visual Novels. Kinetic Novels, where you have little to no choice/choices that do not impact the story path. There are quite a few of these now, they're growing in popularity. So, let opinions be opinions and let's leave it at that?
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 12, 2016 14:36:30 GMT -8
Really, simply stop. I can see where this started to degenerate and probably have my own opinions about it, but at this point everyone agrees that it simply there's no point continuing. Heck, Vaen's comparison to Mass Effect was a tad problematic from the beginning; Sunrider never had that much of a focus on choices and player identification. A lot of the problems come in fact that Shields is his own person and not simply our avatar. Really, Sunrider is a lot more VN-like than anything else (at least in its storyline). Like Nagashofchaos mentioned, a forced route in the common route was done in Princess Waltz, and while not exactly in the same way, a forced "route order" is extremely frequent in Visual Novels. It's a plot device that has flaws, but also some strong points if done right, the problem being that whether it's "done right" is only seen at the very end. It's no use arguing now with only a half-finished series. It's a whole sub-branch from Visual Novels. Kinetic Novels, where you have little to no choice/choices that do not impact the story path. There are quite a few of these now, they're growing in popularity. So, let opinions be opinions and let's leave it at that? (Points to above statement) I never said it had to affect the story. And even Kinetic Novels give the illusion of choice - loving someone no matter what choice you make can be received more positively if you can decide how that love is shown.
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