Shallow

Donating a dollar or two in order to technically not be committing fraud isn't really what I'd define as honorable or principled, it's what I'd define as having the least bit of a brain, which is why I don't fully believe this, it is an extraordinarily stupid mistake that could've been easily avoided for next to nothing.

I'm going to not assume guilt just yet here, it just seems unbelievably stupid of her to not just donate some absurdly small percentage to IFred and thus avoid potential legal issues.

Just finished PS: T for the first time, gotta say, besides the really anticlimatic being able to resurrect all your companions at the end of the game when the game had been screaming "If you bring your companions with you they're gonna die off for good" 24/7, and the not that fantastic combat, the game was amazing. Being able to resurrect one companion was fine, it did add a sense of choice, and I was desperately wondering who deserved to live (ended up deciding on Ignus) when I went ahead and just resurrected them all, the whole thing felt sort of cheap. Game was amazing though, every aspect but the combat and the ending blew me away.

Indeed, the genders aren't currently treated completely equally by the law in the west, let alone the rest of the world. I wasn't talking about fysical sport but precisely aiming at common politely behavior, forgive me if I'm wrong in assuming that you do differentiate between the genders there as well, if I'm not wrong: I respect your opinion, I fully agree that the law shouldn't discriminate at all either way, and that individuals should have the right to discriminate (I'm talking polite behavior here), and I agree that people who do the same job for the same company should generally be payed the same amount of money. We pretty much disagree 100% on how this should be achieved, I'm gonna go ahead and assume we're also in disagreement over how much freedom to discriminate should be given to the individual (I'm of the opinion that as long as you don't harass someone you should more or less be able to do what you want, but I'm libertarian), but nonetheless odds are pretty much everyone here who has argued against you here can agree on the core values behind you, despite being extremely opposed to how you'd try and implement those values, which I find sort of amusing.

But aren't "Protect women, be a gentleman, be sensitive, treat women with great respect" and true equality not incompatible, I mean there are perfectly polite things you'd (in the general sense, I don't know you and thus can't judge you) do for women that you wouldn't do for men, which is perfectly normal, but isn't gender equality. I'm not trying to imply you're some crazy MRA or believe all men should be put in concentration camps, I'm merely asking you to reflect on whether true equality is what you're looking for, to me that doesn't appear to be the case (not that there's anything wrong with that, this isn't intended as an attack on you, or your values, please don't take it that way).

There is a massive different between a joke meant to bring laughter to someone somewhere, and people tossing insults and attacks at specific groups. Intentionally attacking and someone is a **** thing to do, airing coca cola adds and making jokes about radfems even though rape victims might feel offended isn't.

Depends who the person is, some people take themselves, their race, their nationality, their ideology, their sexual orientation, and their gender more seriously than others, and as I said, while the comic does mock a certain style of feminist, I don't believe it seriously makes fun of actual rape, and for the record, I'm all for rape jokes when entertaining enough and not uttered with malicous intent, so I'm not saying I don't believe it makes fun of actual rape to make me feel good about laughing. Resonate positively isn't exactly clear terminology, but I certainly do believe a decent percentage of women would find it funny, same way I believe a decent percentage would be overly offended. Do you consider yourself a feminist? Your values always seem more in line with the "Protect women, be a gentleman, be sensitive, treat women with great respect" SJW and whiteknight style of ideology, instead of the more feminist schools of thought., not that there's anything wrong with not being a feminist but still being SJW, merely think you should reconsider whether the feminist movement really is something that coincides with your viewpoints. For the last part, a woman who has been a victim of rape probably won't enjoy the humor, but women aren't the only ones with horrible things leaving lasting scars, I fully disapprove of intentionally shoving things that could make someone mentally scarred feel bad into their face, whether they're women or anyone else, but if you never said something that someone somewhere in time or space would have a very good reason to feel offended by, you'd never speak. Odds are most of us here have at at least one point read a joke that, due to a some tragedy, made us feel very bad, odds are for some brief moments we were offended and felt the need to tear it down, but hopefully, we realized the person making such a statement meant no harm, it was a wellmeant joke meant to give someone a laugh, or just something offhand never really meant to hurt anyone, and then we carried on with whatever we were doing beforehand.

Of course it does, the punch line positions the comment from the women as a response to how she is being verbally attacked. So she says " stop raping me " and the immediate response from some people who read is " look she is playing the rape card as a response to criticism" This makes light of the heinous deed of rape and how we react to it. I'm surprised you can't see it? The meaning it is trying to get across isn't l0lz femz claimz rapz, it is A. that there are plenty of strong female chars in games, and B. that some feminists like to redefine rape to whatever they disapprove of, such as consentual yet arguably violent (piv) sex, or cheating, it's also appears to be hinting of mocking people on your side of the fence trying to apply words like mysogonist and harrasser to anyone who refuses to bow down to the feminazi agenda/who are evil servants of the patriarchy hellbent on oppressing the superior gender.

Why are we Kill-XP folks always forced to defend the notion of XP rewards for every action when it isn't what we're advocating at all? There's a HUGE difference between assigning XP values combat encounters vs. assigning XP values to 'taking a step' or 'swinging a sword', or 'disarming a trap'. The latter rewards specific builds and punishes others (won't be getting sword-swinging XP if you're a mage!), while the former doesn't do either. It merely rewards resolution - granting the player complete freedom to decide how he wishes to achieve that resolution. We are asking for Kill XP. Let me repeat that: We're asking for Kill XP. As for the 'arbitrary' argument. Nope. No sale. There's nothing that hand placed arbitrary XP distribution brings to the table that Quest and kill xp doesn't. Except for maybe randomness. Quests can be dynamic enough to reward all sorts of Playstyles, and Kill XP, being directly tied to combat, does the same thing by nature (every single class is designed to excel in combat, thus every single build can use its strengths and get through a combat encounter and receive XP) I meant that (xp for everything) as the general far off ultimate into that direction you can go, in no way did I mean to imply you sought such a thing, I sincerely apologise if you felt mislabelled. As for your second portion of your post, that's just not true. What arbitrary xp specifically can reward is getting through dungeons and wilderness areas one way or the other, regardless of whether you were told to go there, regardless of whether you stumbled upon Farmer Joe after defeating the magic sentinent cutlery of king Boris the lazy. Combat xp only rewards you if you fight your way through the areas to get through said dungeons or wilderness areas, quest xp only rewards you if you're a social talkity kind of guy (by that I mean that you have to talk to a questgiver, not that you have to be passive or take the dialogy route), honest arbitrary xp if done right will give you benifit in a dynamicyer way than either of those systems, by the virtue of not being a system, and developers being able to give xp for whatever minimilestones they feel deserve xp, probably primarily from reaching certain places, dealing with certain quest-tied characters/ogres one way or another, finding hidden stuff, and in probably smaller segments for talking to a couple random minor village idjits with interresting things to say. BTW: Saying "quest xp can be dynamic eough to reward all sorts of Playstyles" is a pretty big argument against combat xp in any event. You can set an objective standard for kill xp if you want to, it'd be silly, but you could write a formula, the formula in itself would still be a bit arbitrary, but everything is arbitrary down at the core.

No. Working Systems, by definition, must operate with a modicum of consistency. Otherwise they're amateurishly flawed and you can't even call them systems. And When it comes to experience distribution the problem is magnified. Lack of consistency does nothing but cause confusion and makes players feel like the game is a buggy mess. (ie. "hey, I got no XP for completing this quest!" Or "how come the last hidden passage I found granted me 200XP but, this one granted me none?") I understand your point, and I won't argue that you're wrong, because I don't think you are. However, at the cost of some confusion and some inconsistency, arbitrary rewards can properly reward various playstyles in a way I think only reward every single tiny action a player makes (like taking a step, or swinging a sword, or breathing) systems can, and those systems have their own inherent flaws. Quest xp (with or without combat xp tagging along) is also inherently extremely arbitrary, not much less arbitrary than my honest arbitraryness. The way I see it, either you get an arbitrary quest xp system, an arbitrary quest xp system with a reward tiny actions system tagged on, a pure reward tiny actions system (which results in TES style xp progression), or just honest arbitraryness. The good thing about honest arbitrary xp is that you don't waste time building an inherently flawed and most likely arbitrary system, and that you aren't confined by such a system. I do however understand why some prefer systems, and systems generally are indeed a bit more consistent.

Quest xp isn't that great, I still hold it in higher light than kill+quest xp though. The best xp system would be one with handplaced xp rewards for reacing certain points (ends of dungeons/room with treasure, finding hidden stuff, various unique scenic areas, finding new cities, etc) and handplaced rewards for certain specific interactions with specific characters (dealing with the orge one way or the other (never understood why you get experience from telling a guy you did something and not from doing something), other bosses, learning lore or ability related things through conversation, just various interactions deemed worthy really).

Yeah I conceded a while ago that Muslim extremist was a bad example But it isn't, it's just your logic is highly flawed, and the Muslim example made that even clearer, if you'd never made that example all the other comparisons Amentep made would still hold just as true.

I don't really believe there has to be serious change around inclusitivity, so I'll give you that. However you said: "The word "gamer " refers to white males who refuse to recognise inclusivity and changes to the gaming industry. The words "the gamer is dead" applies to people who don't want to be part of the change in the industry.", implying that a person has to be anti inclusitivity and not just consider the status quo inclusive. I've never played a game that demanded proof of your rl gender and treated you differently based on it, as far as I'm aware, such a game doesn't exist. When differnet demographics grow in the gaming industry, provided they're into other styles of games than most regular games, the niche games they like will get earn more money, and be able to develop into proper big-budget games, when new people enter the industry old people don't necesarily leave, thus there'll only be more money floating around, meaning more games in the sectors the new people want. There doesn't have to be some revolution, there doesn't have to some kind of unified genre and message all games shout whilst holding hands, developers should produce whatever they want, people should buy whatever they want, there is no need for all this bull****.

Many Americans are not happy with turning USA to socialistic immigrants refuge camp. With good enough campaign I think it's possible to convince majority to vote yes. It's not as this voice is among few percent right now, it's up to 20% which is a perfect starting option. You're forgetting the whole patriotism thing, and whilst a sizable amount of people do use confederate flags, they still say god bless America. Also, socialist immigrants refugee camp is probably the least fitting discription you could give the US. There is no way they're gonna get to a 51% percent for secession, let alone a proper 66% majority that's generally required for more extreme things. If they ever do get a proper percentage though, I hope they secede.

Bruce, what's your opinion on this article: http://j-k-degoya.tumblr.com/post/96600027121/musings-on-notyourshield-a-last-word-on-zoe-why ?

Doesn't that mean he has to commit seppukku or something? But seriously, to me that's slightly irrelevant, for it wasn't Anita he said he'd die for in herself, the same way it wasn't feminism, or even SJWhood, it was the principles of whiteknighting.

Ah yes, the "1v1 me brah". That statement is as close to whiteknighting as can be, damn. This guy really needs to go into a warzone and try to protect women who are actually in danger, before declaring that he'll gladly die in a duel to defend the honor of someone who said a bunch of bull**** and got some overthetop reactions.

You're all fools! Ha! The whole campaign against gamers is a mysogynist conspiracy, and I can prove it. Gamers are nerds, nerds like starwars, most people weren't big on the prequels, thus an evil nerd starwarsprequel fanatic mysoginist who lives in his parents basement hatched an evil plan to restore the patriarchy and destroy the SJW order! A massive uprising against gamers is orchestrated by the evil MRA lord, the uprising and the ensuing civil war attracts various people over to the other side, whilst makig the okayhearted gamers hand over full controll of the responding resistance to the evil MRA-lord-in-disguise 4chan, 4chan slowly brings the most powerful yet still unstable SJW over to the dark side, the SJWs realize to late that 4chan is the evil MRA lord, they attempt to stop the MRA lord but are mostly slain by his new and powerful apprentice, the remaining SJWs throughout the internet, as well as the journalists and fake feminists the MRA lord used to start the uprising are all wiped out by the united gamers, and thus the patriarchy rises once more. PS Anakin Skywalker is TrueNeutral. It fits perfectly damnit, TrueNeutral is even trying to protect his girlfriend, this whole thing is a giant conspiracy based on the prequels, mark my words.

I don't see these things as mistakes. But, depending on PoE's reception/sales when the full game is released, Josh might end up learning some lessons. Lessons on the risks of trying to reinvent the wheel, or fixing what ain't broke, or making good players suffer from mechanics designed to police the bad players. I know you don't, but Josh does, and for better or for worse, Josh is in charge. What's worse than some design philosophies you disagree with, is design philosophies the head dev disagrees with, for when someone is designing a game which systems they don't feel passionate about, and they're stuck dreaming of the innovative (and possibly disastrous) ideas they have, for the lack of passion will spill over to other portions of the game, the few design decisions that don't just fully go along with what the designer is expected to make will also then either be totally out of place, or so insignificant they only add confusion. I get that you don't feel this game is what you backed, but the worst thing that could happen is a dry, stale, game without passion, which is what you'd get if Josh didn't follow his heart. I'm not saying you should embrace his decisions, or even embrace him, I'm merely saying that I strongly prefer devs going out making something that follows their heart, for while that leads to some horrible disasters, it also leads to some of the greatest games ever made.

He isn't coming back later. Why do you guys misunderstand almost everything? a) He's already come back later. b) and I said Rules, not 'the rule sets'. The stated function of just about EVERY mechanic in PoE has been in response to what he saw as "failings of the IE games" Shall we go down the list? 1) Prebuffing in the IE games caused metagaming tactics, therefore -----> No more prebuffing. Result: Tactics are now 100% reactive, instead of being a function of both planning and reacting, like they were before. 2) Chance leads to save scumming in the IE games, therefore ------> no more chance. No more save or die spells, no more save or pretrification. No more dire charm. No more confusion/chaos. No more domination. No more random effect items like the deck of many things, or the wand of wonder. etc. 3) Invisibility items/spells in the IE games rendered some rogue skills 'redundant', and could be abused, therefore -------> No more Invisibility. aka. No more tyranny of choice! 4) Mages were overpowered in the IE games, therefore --------> Magic must be nerfed, and rendered 2-dimensional (there's only damage spells and buff spells for mages.) 5) Resting freedom in the IE games leads to rest spamming, therefore --------> We must create a system where health equals health and stamina equals health, and stamina regenerates, and you can't rest in a dungeon unless you have camping supplies, and camping supplies are limited, and some abilities and spells are per encounter so you don't need to rest that often anyway....(phew! That should teach those degenerates to play the game MY way from now on!!!) 6) Min-maxing/ dump-statting was rampant in the IE games, therefore ---------> No more of that sh*t! Min-maxing is now practically pointless, as the stats themselves are merely bonuses. Small list. Not the least bit complete, but I'm pretty sure there's enough here to demonstrate the friggin point. And if not, we can always discuss the reasons why Kill XP was removed. So what you're essentially saying is that you shouldn't try to learn from your mistakes? If you make a poor choice once, every time you're presented with the same challenge you should just go down a road you personally aren't proud of? That doesn't really seem sensible to me, and for the record I only believe about 40% of the altered things were handled appropriately, however I still believe about 30% of the 60% of changes I don't really like are superior to their IE variants.

Nope, they were satelites, regardless of their importance in the eastern bloc they were still satelites and not a part of the Soviet Union, and as Oby said, Uzbekistan became quite industrialized, thanks to the Soviet Union.

None of those states were a part of the Soviet Union, they were merely satelites, asking how the people of those lands felt about being a part of the Soviet Union is like asking South Vietnam how it felt being a part of USA. If you want to call the survey on selective bias it'd be far better to focus on the baltic states, who generally hate Russia, and to be fair, the survey also left out Uzbekistan, a country that's generally quite friendly with Russia.

Good, honestly. We need this. Here's something that popped in my mind though: so obviously there's fringe stances on all sides. Yes there are total losers who scream insults on the internet and in games and treat women like ****. Yes there are feminists who are absolutely insane. Why on earth though does it seem like feminism is the movement where somehow, the fringe zealots always seem to "rise to the top" and find their way to the pedestal to give speeches? I mean gamers don't really have a representative on a pedestal with the ability to give speeches to the community as a whole who has nothing to add but "**** scrubz and filthy casuls, also women shuld go make sammiches" and instead we get dorky dudes and corrupt game reviewers. Feminism however consistently seems to pop up here and there in little sub cultures or whatever and the fringe voices are ALWAYS there and ALWAYS loud with plenty of "support" in the sense that while there's plenty of women shouting that "they do NOT represent us or feminism," those fringe-feminists somehow managed to get to a position that allows them to speak "on behalf" of all feminists. How the HELL does that keep happening? It seems rather odd to me the more I thought about it. The vast majority of self-proclaimed feminists I know are just female friends who want equal rights in society. That's the most reasonable stance in the world. But when it comes to them as a collective or attempting any sort of movement, omfg we get the psychos. Just kinda baffles me considering there ARE plenty of loser gamers. We could all log Counter Strike, TF2, CoD or any other online game right now and find idiots screaming like children, but when we form as a collective or for some sort of movement, those idiots get locked in the basement so they can't speak. How do feminists consistently forget to lock away their fringe idiots? Kind of odd. And before anyone accuses, no I'm not implying "IT'S BECAUSE ALL FEMINISTS SECRETLY SUPPORT THOSE EXTREMISTS!" I'm sincerely curious as to how that seems to happen and how the extremists repeatedly plague and speak on behalf of feminism as I know from personal experience that the vast majority of women would name themselves feminists but disagree with the extremists. Just a guess, but in general gamers aren't shy about ****talking eachother if they disapprove of something the other person/group is doing, it's an integral part of gamer culture outside the casual lands of occasional tetris, this is a hobby and the people practicing it generally have strong beliefs in support of free speech, and anonymity, the hobby also existed and gave us plenty of time to start throwing **** at eachother before this whole thing started and big groups of us more or less unite in disapproval. Feminism isn't a hobby, it's an ideology, the same way it is generally ultranerds who take the mantle up against the journalists here, it is the dedicated feminists who are willing to rise to the occasion. The dedicated portions of both groups have a disproportionally large amount of whackjobs, as we're people with a hobby, and we've been ********alking and arguing with eachother since the dawn of gaming, no one is gonna accuse us of "betraying the movement", seeing as we aren't really a movement, and seeing as us behaving like that is tradition. Feminism on the other hand is a political movement, and debate isn't democratic, just because most females agree with the moderate dedicateds doesn't mean they're the ones with the power to shape public perception, nor the power to shape the debate. The reason the whackjobs end up with the power they have is probably a mixture of two things: If you distance yourself from the whackjobs up front, regardless of whether you're up front or not, you'll be actively causing conflict within the movement, which even other moderates will disapprove of (as it is weakening the greater goal), therefore the most extremist portions of the group that don't actively distance themselves from the moderates will be able to say what they say, and any internal opposition is supressed. It's hard to know whether someone has a point before you pay them to make their statement, even if you know how whackjob they are, you don't know if they've got a reason to be, and if you're a casual gamer but still a feminist, you won't know whether what they're saying about games is true, Anita's a good example. When you have a moderate person making reasonably argued statements in a pleasant manner you won't see deaththreats, you won't see insults, you won't see large amounts of disapproval and smaller amounts of insane disapproval, sure such a moderate might be capable of convincing us that some change would be nice, but she won't get the free advertising someone like Anita gets, the insults, threats and hate alone gets feminists giving Anita more money, the same thing plus the massive drama plus knowing feminists will support you gets journalists writing about how great she is and how horrible we are, the power of negative response propels her forwards, making her the flagship of feminism in gaming. And if you think you'd be considered a traitor, or just destabilize and damage the movement by distancing yourself from a deducated feminist, it'll be a million times worse when you attempt to sink the flagship. tl:dr The main purpose of gaming isn't pushing the gaming agenda, it's having fun playing games, thus we can freely destabilize the potential greater agenda without betraying a bit of what we stand for. The main purpose of feminism is advancing its policies, thus any act that could destabilize the movement, or push it back slightly, is seen as high treason. Also, that whole death threat thing is probably taken way out of proportion, how many of us have never had someone shout deaththreats at us in a fit of rage before calming himself down, during a very heated argument or towards the end of a fight? Let alone had someone write such in a fit of rage.

Whilst Russian ethnicity in the area greatly increased in the area during Stalins reign, due to the **** Stalin did as well as the general effects of ww2, the 1897 Russian Empire census however shows the Russian language already strongy dominating in the cities of Easternmost Ukraine. If you look at modern statistics you'll also find large portions of the ethnic Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine supporting prorussian policies. Of course portions of the USSR wanted out, and were kept in against their will, but that doesn't mean everyone hated the Soviet Union, a prime example is the easternmost side of Moldavia starting a civil war over the region leaving the Soviet Union.

Eh what why? States in soviet union didnt want to be its part, they where occupied. I dont understand why yhey have to be part of it again because of infallibility of territorial sovereignity. Also i agree that coup was kind of undemocratic, however president was elected because he promise that he will sign EU treaty but then he rejected it so he didnt follow part of his deal with his own people. I dont understand why soveriegnity would be silly there were states before Soviets occupy them. No comment on NATO, states are not forced to be part of it Eastern Ukraine also doesn't want to be a part of modern Ukraine, the coup and the violence during the election sorta removed their ability to have a say in the matter. Because, if borders have a magic right to never be altered despite what the people living along said borders feel, then despite the fact that people wanted out of the Soviet Union, they have to stay in it. I don't personally believe this should be the case, but I do consider consistency important. You're right in that there were states before the Soviet Union came to be, but the borders of those states were still quite different from what we have now, and if you argue that those borders are the borders that should exist because they existed at some point and borders shouldn't change, then Crimea becomes a part of Russia, which is something I doubt you consider just. The way I see it either large regions of a nation should be allowed to seceede if a massive majority of the populace seeks to do so, and if (provided the region recieved more state benefits than they payed in taxes in the last decade) any benifits the greater government payed them during the last decade should be given back. But we could return to the earliest borders defined in the history of mankind despite how little sense they make in the current situation. And sure you can say, if you want to be a part of Russia go join Russia, but the Russian speaking majority in the East lived in Ukraine before Ukraine even became a state, it's not like they migrated there and then decided they'd claim the land for themselves. Obama also didn't exactly follow through on a lot of his promises either, doesn't mean a tiny minority of USA would have the right to force him to resign and set up their own government until the next elections. And in regards to NATO, sure states aren't forced to be a part of it, but still, the one thing Gorbachov demanded when he backed out of Germany was that NATO doesn't expand in his direction, you can't blame Russia for wanting a buffer zone against an organization whose sole purpose was to limit Russias power, especially when the head of NATO (USA) was involved in Georgia.