rian_frostdrake

well, first thing is that metaphor isn't quite on. in your example, you purchased a game with an established setting and, with no stated mandate from the players, introduced elements that are not native to the setting, just because you wanted to.

What we have seen in several threads is that people state their dislike of something that several players, usually including myself, do want in the game, because of a very narrow definition of what the super heroic genre actually encompasses. in contrast, there are, and I have references lots of examples of, western comics drawing certain cultural touchstones from eastern, particularly Japanese culture. wolverine's time in japan, the foot clan from tmnt, samurai from the justice league, most of the stuff drawn by adam warren, silver samurai, marvel's various manga/ anime side stories, the teen titans tv series the ninja girl from sin city, Its a part of the genre, so when people say "no thanks" or more accurately, when people tell me my ideas dont belong in the game and should be disregarded outright because the only true superhero is a four color spandex clad anachronism, then yes, people are going to take their dismissal personally.

And i'm failing to see where you are going with the borg comment as anything substantial, the borg destroy and alter what they assimilate, expanding the game's aesthetic options to allow for a greater representation of different types of superheros destroys what exactly? does fighting alongside a player in a hamkama somehow invalidate your capacity to control what your character does or looks like?
which asian mmos are you talking about? there are cheap ones like 9 dragons and sort of conquer online, but by and large the market is primarily western fantasy(guild wars,tera, rift, eq1&2, wow, lotro, vanguard, dark age of camelot, age of conan, even final fantasy 11&14) with maybe some smidgens of eastern content in the case of wow, final fantasy, and conan and the original guild wars. beyond that there is sci fi(star wars tor, phantasy star online 2, sto and that intensely boring space one who'se name I cant rememberEDIT:eve online, thats it,) and some modern horror with tsw, but a asian themed mmo with a real budget? not seeing them. even aion and lineage are more culturally filtered interpretation of western fantasy, rather than explicitly asian in setting or theme.

furthermore, you even state yourself that comics have become more inclusive since the 40's, so have bathrooms and drinking fountains, I'd say the ability to include a broader number of culturally iconic themes has helped comics grow into a stronger medium. The batman of the past didnt look half as intimidating as the current one with multiple eastern and western unarmed fighting styles to draw from, he is more black belt than utility belt. Besides, have you ever heard of manga? its quite popular these days, comics are more than just one thing. I dont think anyone is saying western "culture" cant stand on its own, what we are and have been saying is that superheroes have evolved, and to ask the developers to artificially retard the number of representations that players have the option of using in the form of some nostalgia is regressive thinking.

western culture itsself is more inclusive of influences from all over these days. Within reasonable driving distance I can go to a korean Tang soo do school and a african-influenced capoeria school after snacking on a peroghi and while listening to j-pop music, American culture IS assimilating culture, and that is something comics are representing more and more. superheroes are not analogous to cowboys, one is set in the modern times and one is set int he distant , locked past, though games like rizing zan and movies like shanghai noon, do give some precedence. the scope of the argument sis so exaggerated as to be absurd. Diversity is about including others in, not excluding you out. The fact that we had the natural pack or the imperial dynasty pack never prevented you from having a large number of tights patterns available if you so chose. it only meant that people who liked spandex and those who didnt both had something to enjoy.

look, lets get to the meat of it, what do you think doesnt belong exactly? eastern martial arts? katanas? power armor? psychics? martial arts influenced costume choices? Cat girls? Giant robots? ninjas(or more accurately, western movie portrayed ninja, in anime and such, ninja often behave quite differently) Once you break it down, those scary foreign influnces are already a part of the genre already. so whats the breaking point for you?

The final bit of irony to this whole thing is that gg, the voice that launched the whole argument's one character that she has across all the servers is a MARTIAL ARTS/regen scrapper. based, as she said in the past, on herself since she studied kung-fu...so the voice for excluding eastern influences from the game based her character on someone using one of a large number of CHINESE martial arts. ya know?


EDIT: looking back, this was more confrontational than intended, cap actually is a poster who'se posts I enjoy, and I was just looking for a clarification because it looked like it was saying one thing, and i'm prety sure it was a thing he wouldnt be sayng. So was jus trying to draw out a more clear opinion out, not tackle him through wall, as it may have initially looked.

That actually is the subject of a lot of player's hopes. If we can get a good portion of them back together to make a new game, superhero or not, I'd have to say that my patronage is assured. the question of course is how they would secure cash, but given their track record, maybe some venture capitalists might see them as a good investment. given posi's affection for traditional D&D it could even go fantasy, but so long as I can have a monk, im cool with the setting shift, though the fact that there isnt a great offline single player superhero game with customizable characters and powers and with an expansive world like fallout 3 or skyrim is something i'd love to see rectified. apparently todd howard wanted to do one, but he wanted it with batman...no, I want customization.


and yes, i know about infamous, but the character is already set for you, and powers are only lightning and ice/fire. close, but customization is a requirement for me.

to be fair, a lot of people were helping initially because we wanted to help the efforts of brian clayton and presumably a part of our dev team get the game back. with october being the great "go screw yourselves" from ncsoft, that goal mostly vanished, they weren't selling, and no crying westerners were going to change that. I am all for generating what negative publicity that I can for them, and have been preparing reader reviews of guild wars 2 for gamefaqa, amazon, gamerankings and metacritic to try and hurt them where i can, and I have been active on kotaku making sure people know what ncsoft did in every ncsoft related post that would make sense, they wont blink now, and the devs wouldnt be there if they did, so pretty much all I could do is go from "work with ncsoft" to "hurt ncsoft" and I can be persistent.


as a side note, i'm really glad to hear about the weight thing. that was a significant step for his health, and I'm betting he feels significantly better because of it.

If you look deeply enough from a culture different enough, I suspect many respected people would not look particularly good. that's the good thing about our forefathers, they are too long dead for us to remember what they did to get where they were.

well, I cant read the mind of the op, but in defense of apologetics, its a word that has kind of drifted in meaning. an apologist is someone in the greek legal system who defends any position. as opposed to the katagoria, who takes the offensive position. so if you like co, then technically you, and i, are an apologist, because you are in some way defending the game. if nothing else, you are keeping company with Plato.

Not to turn it into a list making game here, but I'd strongly add aftershock too. that last battle was on par with the last mission with mot.

This Is a problem that kind of bothered me. combat can be interesting, but it became a thing of one or so powers being really good, so you just spam them. For me, martial arts was, thunderous lunge, into a group, dragon kick with full charge, drops every minion, burning chi fist for the survivors, if its a nasty boss throw knees to interrupt hits and keep chi fist on him.. for my sorcery main, its skarns bane and sigil of the primal storm, drop survivors with the ST charge blast. mechanically its st's and aoes here too, but at least there is a flow of techniques, made thing s a bit more visually distinct.

Wind waker too, which was huge, but also got controversy because it didn't fit the style of an earlier tech demo of link fighting gannon. cel shading isn't something that is just good or bad, its a matter of preferences, particularly for people used to a style for 5 years. i love cel shading and have to admit, I had to tag off the outlines myself.
I will admit, fully human characters with no facial coverings do look a little wonky there, but since I play monsters, robot and such, i am somewhat insulated.

(and this is just a pun, i actually liked the album.)

absolutly, with one qualifier, i'm kind aofdown on mmos. While I would play one i'd really prefer a game like arcana described, a game that is primarily single player, playable offline but where you go to hub areas and can go online for quests with others. kinda like phantasy star online.

not to turn this into a throw gaming suggestions at bill thread, but in another thread you made about your general displeasure at the industry in general, you mentioned liking older pc games. have you seen the setup for "project eternity?" its a kick-starter thing for the guys at obsidian(a lot of them from the old black isles) that are making an retroish looking isometric crpg. wont be out for a while, but if you are looking at the past crpgs nostalgically, might be up your alley. they have a monk class so im in already :P. now to nag them to get me a reptillian race.


as for the coh thing. I never really liked mmos, you cant really affect the world because it has to stay more or less static, latency tends to make the gameplay less engaging than games like ninja gaiden. and the general need to emphasize teaming to force communities and keep people paying for long times ..not my style. Add in the continual wallet drip feed, even if "free to play" and the fact that soulless sons of...erm... publishers can just remove everything from you that you paid for at a moments notice, screw that noise, I can plug in my atari and play endeuro with a cart from nearly 30 years ago, but I cant play coh, which i have put possibly a grand into, come December,

I am very mad coh is going down, the devs gave feedback that i have not seen from previous favorites like capcom, nintendo and bethesda, and i will be following them to whatever studios hire them because I liked them. but as gaming goes, I will be fine offline. coh was a means to an end for me, suffer the indignities of the mmo structure for the amazing character creator, if I could have had it in a single player game with additional dlc...no question that i'd prefer that. i loved hanging out with my friends that id play, but I have a phone, mmos were never my intention. I'll hang out at CO for a time, see if they get their act together and start trying, but I dont see myself cradle to the graving it like coh, that happens once.

HEY, what did I do?

there's nothing I can say,its a total ellipse of the heart.