xzar_monty

As far as I know -- or as far as what I was saying, anyway -- this is not really about that. The argument is not that the next generation is horrible. However, as far as that argument goes, it is quite correct. One of the oldest cuneiform tablets ever found contains the lament of an elderly priest aghast at the fact how the young ones no longer revere gods to the extent they should. This is old as day. Related to this is the very sad fact that elderly people actually enjoy reading bad news about the young. That's a disappointing study finding right there!

The European perspective may be extremely significant here. I know a famous physical education teacher (strength, flexibility, acrobatics) who pointed out that Europe and North America are two different worlds in this regard. In Europe, he can bring up problems in his students' approach and execution, whereas in the United States, in particular, he has to be extremely careful with criticism, because (as he said) a harsh word is likely to send students into extensive psychotherapy.

Wow. Some major synchronicity here. I am, as of this very moment, on another window, working on a long (say 16 months at least) project concentrating exclusively on Infinite Jest. A superb work of literature, that is.

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop." -- A very old saying going back to the 12th century at least. Both are equally true. (And no, nobody should believe in the devil.)

Toynbee argues that civilizations are born out of more primitive societies, not as the result of racial or environmental factors, but as a response to challenges, such as hard country, new ground, blows and pressures from other civilizations, and penalization. He argues that for civilizations to be born, the challenge must be a golden mean; that excessive challenge will crush the civilization, and too little challenge will cause it to stagnate. He argues that civilizations continue to grow only when they meet one challenge only to be met by another, in a continuous cycle of "Challenge and Response". He argues that civilizations develop in different ways due to their different environments and different approaches to the challenges they face. He argues that growth is driven by "Creative Minorities": those who find solutions to the challenges, who inspire (rather than compel) others to follow their innovative lead. This is done through the "faculty of mimesis." Creative minorities find solutions to the challenges a civilization faces, while the great mass follow these solutions by imitation, solutions they otherwise would be incapable of discovering on their own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History N. N. Taleb also explores this golden mean in his mathematically interesting but argumentatively infuriating book, Antifragile, which despite its numerous faults is recommended reading. The difficulty does indeed lie in the question of the golden mean: both the physical and the psychological realm can provide both too little and too much stimulus, neither of which is good and an excess of either can indeed be deadly (the physical generally kills quicker). Trying to soldier on in overly difficult conditions may look heroic on the outside but can be extremely detrimental (cf. John Henryism; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henryism). Taleb's main argument is superb and sound: human beings -- and by extension, human societies -- are antifragile, i.e. stress and hardships make them stronger. Minor deprivation, for instance, actually strengthens the immune system by provoking it to work hard. And going to the gym or studying math produces results via stress, which should occasionally be quite intense for brief intervals. But, and this is a big but, antifragility only exists within limits: we all know we can be destroyed by both too little and too much work/stress.

Entitlement requires certain standards to be met, and although the phenomenon did exist earlier on, it was confined to a very small minority of the population, mostly the aristocracy. One of the things that a lot of people do not understand (until they're told about it) is that many of us on these forums, for instance, have lived our entire lives in a state of luxury utterly unimaginable to nearly everyone throughout human history. We do not know of hunger, thirst, want, etc. The human psyche, just as the human musculature, requires a certain amount of stress to develop properly, and in the absence of that stress, it does not grow and/or it deteriorates in a very serious way. This can produce extreme weakness both physically and psychologically. Silliness has always existed, and the young have always been rash, there is no question. But the specific phenomenon I am talking about has intensified and become more common, for reasons described above. I am not saying it is anybody's fault, but it's there, nevertheless.

I did not make the argument that everything was better in the old days or that today's youth is somehow ruined or particularly bad. Not at all. Of course I know Hans Rosling, and although there is rather a lot of good about what he writes, strictly in terms of the statistics he presents, there are also some glaring problems with what he does. For instance, he offers no convincing arguments to support his claims about the hangups in our thinking. Much of that is quite possibly true, or at least partially true, but either way, all of what he writes is on faith, which makes him look bad, given how he claims to rely on facts. Second, if you put all the positive developments he describes on one side, and the danger of climate change gone horribly wrong on the other side, it's quite obvious that the latter is a much more important factor in determining our future and renders much of the other side meaningless. But yes, I would also recommend that people read Hans Rosling. What this topic comes down to is what you describe at the very end of your comment: youth is both better behaved, better educated etc., than before, and the question of entitlement-induced infantilism is also there.

This is indicative of a general societal trend starting from approximately the beginning of the new millennium and increasing at a steady rate since then. The reasons are quite obviously manifold, but given that it's particularly prevalent among affluent North Americans, it probably has something to do with overly cosseted youths utterly unable to deal with disappointment. Incidentally, if one's reactions to something as insignificant as this are seriously as drastic as we've seen, it's rather unlikely that that person's adult life is going to be rosy, in terms of emotional stability or maturity. Tantrums are ok, of course, if you're two years old. But now we're getting maybe a bit off topic.

I was not focusing on scale-breaker, merely commenting on the specific thing you yourself brought up in your previous comment. Acting like other people are infinitely inferior to your intelligence does not reflect well upon you at all. So have a good day!

I definitely get the sense that my PoE game makes a difference. There's Vela, there's a whole lot of things in dialogue, there are comments from the gods themselves, there are a few items. All of that's good. I can't see how something as small as scale-breaker makes a meaningful difference: it's a very specific minor talent for an extremely limited number of potential fights. Expectations in general are not a very good thing, I would say. They have a tendency to make things a lot more disappointing than they'd otherwise be.

As for the XP gain thing, by the way: I like it, if only for the fact that my companions reach the XP cap a bit later. But everybody still reaches it much too early.

The real reason is probably the desire to start essentially from scratch. This is why you're brought back to level 1, etc. It is logically consistent with all of this. Given that, I don't mind it at all.

Verde: Not questioning the fact that food is powerful. I agree it is. More like saying that given the game's (lack of) difficulty, these buffs are very rarely needed, if indeed ever.

I'm pretty damn sure it's not possible to use the inventory in combat in PoE1.

The consumable thing is interesting in the sense that there's a whole lot of combinations of foods you can cook, potions you can brew and scrolls that you can scribe -- but you absolutely don't need any of it. This is very, very different from the importance that potions, for instance, generally have in RPGs. (Not complaining, just pointing out the way it looks to me.)

Those who've been around since the Usenet era of the late 1980s will remember that the internet was ruined in September 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

One thing that I thought was very strange was the uselessness of potions in PoE. I just finished the game yesterday, to get a continuous run of the two games. And I didn't use potions. I had a heck of a lot of them in my inventory, but there was almost never any use for them. This is very strange, in the whole of RPG tradition. I also almost never used scrolls, but there were a few situations where Scroll of Paralysis came in handy. All the others, no. Oh, I think I did use Twin Stones once.

Nah, just the bugs and regression when it comes to development choices of something that's supposed to be a successor to the last game In my book, Deadfire is so clearly superior to PoE there isn't even any comparison. I mean, really, they're worlds apart.

DiabloStorm: Maybe you should just do something else, if the game really annoys you that much.

Resetting weapon enchantments would be a major immersion breaker and would also reduce the idea of magic into just playing around.

So how do you copy items from one weapon slot to another? I've wanted to do this, to be able to use the same shield with a different weapon, but haven't been able to.

Thanks. Much obliged. Not knowing the rationale, that sounds like an odd choice.

Pardon my ignorance, dear forum members, but what is the "the TOW / Epic Games thing"? Anyone care to explain?

What could that reason be, conceivably? I think they are just what they are, and intentionally so: walls that you can bang your head against, and if you're persistent enough, you just might get through, and that's all there is to it. This is perfectly fine. (I have no interest in them.)

Yep. This is the heart of the problem, and this is why Hollywood, for instance, has been creatively dead for, what, like, twenty years at least? Nothing has been created, in terms of innovation. (And of course now, with the global market, the main audience of mainstream American movies is no longer even in America, it's in China. Way more profitable.)