aluminiumtrioxid

You can't be serious. Neverwinter Nights, being built on D&D 3E, had laughable balance.

Just... read back the conversation leading up to this point, would you? You posited that they're idiots for railing about inequality when the issue is inequity. I brought up examples of actual issues they're railing about, which had nothing to do with inequality (as per your definition). I then posited the theory that it's probably a semantics issue, and your disagreement with them might be easily solved by mentally switching out every instance of "inequality" to "inequity" in their parliance. Since you didn't really posit counter-examples where they clearly can only mean inequality itself as undesirable, I think your issue with them trying to "solve" inequality by creating inequity is... unfounded.

For some reason, I don't find it surprising at all that the actually most numerous camp of people who take issue with the Sad Puppies selection - ie. those who think that the majority of the nominees are utterly talentless hacks - gets ignored in this post in favor of ascribing all sorts of scheming and politicized motives to them. My point is that your original complaint - ie. "SJWs are wrong because they confuse inequality with inequity" - is pretty much arguing over semantics instead of engaging with what they're talking about. Because they are two different things. Everybody is unequal to a certain degree since we all have unique traits, strengths and weaknesses. But that doesn't matter since 1) it is a part of human nature and will be tolerated in any society. However, with inequity people will live by different rules compared to the rest and the end result is revolution or bloodbath. This is not something new, all social animals have these dynamics. What these SJWs seems to be confused about is that inequality has to be erased through methods that will in the end lead to inequity, because you cannot create a totally equal society without dealing great injustice on pretty much everyone. ...You didn't seem to object earlier when I suggested that you're arguing over semantics and when they say "inequality", they really mean "inequity". Which renders your point about the erasure of inequality necessarily leading to inequity completely moot. So what are we talking about?

I guess you're right. But I'm not complaining that the game is hard in this thread. I'm just saying there is a big (outrageous) efficiency gap between certain classes. And I don't understand how Obsidian missed this. I'm just saying, if no choice makes the completion of the game impossible, then essentially all choices are viable, despite the efficiency gap you mention.

"China owes its success to the autocratic nature of its government" is a statement that's pretty much impossible to prove is my point. Because logical-sounding explanations without experimental proof are just that, logical-sounding explanations. And those, as history has proven countless times, have an unfortunate tendency to reflect the preferences of the speaker instead of objective reality.

But it's not about whether you are aware of it or not. It's the realization that you will never get away from this existence that is the problem. In PoE's world everyone knows you reincarnate. Maybe it wouldn't be as horrible if you don't remember anything, but it would still be pointless because in that case all our personalities would fade and they would become irrelevant and so would the question of reincarnation. Even Buddhism and Hinduism don't have eternal reincarnation, because it would be so meaningless as to render life itself meaningless. In those religions the soul eventually becomes part of god and stops reincarnating e.i dies. It would also be a valid choice to kill yourself if you don't like your life now. All those miserable parents of hollowborn children? Kill yourself, maybe there are no hollowborn in the next life. That prostitute which you can pay to get the amulet from could just kill herself. Mearwald could kill himself rather than endure his madness. Aloth having an alcoholic father and seeing no way out - kill himself. Raedric killing his wife for being an Eothas worshiper - pointless. Suicide becomes a valid choice to any seemingly impassible problems rendering even death meaningless. Except there's the issue of possible soul fragmentation upon death, so it's not exactly a choice without perils. Not to mention that souls tend to Awaken if they have unfinished business from previous lives, which also has the potential to be... inconvenient.

I see your Katanas & Trenchcoats and raise you Stab City! Also:

I'm just not sure such antagonists are very nuanced, or worth building a game around, even if well-written.

Which currently is not. It still doesn't really affect the outcome. Game's laughably easy even with a suboptimal party, at least on Normal.

But how much time can you enjoy it? A million years? 2 million? A trillion? Even more than that? Then what? It *never* ends *ever*. Being able to "Awaken" doesn't help. In the end *everything* would be so boring as to be agony and then the realization kicks in that you can never ever get away from this existence. You'll go insane quite fast after that. Except you'll never be aware of the fact that you've been doing this for millions of years except in the vaguest sense, so that's... not exactly an issue.

Even in that it's certainly not a slam dunk though. Autocratic China has lifted more people in absolute terms, and more people in relative terms, out of poverty in the past thirty years than anyone else has done in history, and certainly a lot more than its closest 'democratic' analogue India has done over the same period. ...What do we always say about correlation and causation?

My point is that your original complaint - ie. "SJWs are wrong because they confuse inequality with inequity" - is pretty much arguing over semantics instead of engaging with what they're talking about. Class and wealth privilege are pretty much universally understood to be the most significant factors. But they also tend to coincide with other sources of privilege more often than not. This would be true for African American culture within the USA, but gender? Sexual orientation...? None of this matters if you have wealth. Wait what? The point is that white cishet guys are more likely to acquire class and wealth privilege than, say, black people, or trans people. ...Woefully inobjective? I'm not sure it's helpful to compare black multimillionaires to white non-multimillionaires when explicitly talking about race privilege. Also, when race privilege (or rather, lack thereof) makes it less likely for someone to acquire wealth privilege from any other source than winning the lottery, saying that it's meaningless except as a way to explain how they ended up their current situation seems... woefully inobjective.

I very much like The Dragon Trashed, The Dragon Wailed. You sing at people and they combust. How ****ing metal is that?

Yes. I have to admit, I'm actually pretty pumped to play it, if possible. Also: space pirates! (They're not as cool as Exalted's zombie pirate ninjas, but Abyssals are still years down the line, so it's not like the two campaign ideas are stepping on each other's toes.)

Also, Watcher powers are rarely used to solve sidequests. It's a real pain, because hey, you can read and manipulate emotions and absorb the knowledge of the dead. It's such a hilariously broken powerset, and we never get to use it in earnest. So... being reincarnated with no memories of your previous lives instead of having your existence erased utterly is pointless torture. ...Okay.

Hey, it's almost as if like the gods are just super-powerful soulforged AIs made by a certain earlier civilization with a pre-written set of preferences and behaviors, and no particular insight into the real nature of the world... oh wait.

...Not really? It's pretty much like saying "hey, you can't stop every crime, so why bother with the whole law enforcement system?".

well if one class clearly is better and occupies the same roll as the other I feel obligated to take the more powerful one it seems like simple logic *shrug* By the end, I simply ended up not using half my party in most fights, because the tanks could faceroll everything by themselves anyway, so why bother with the dedicated damage-dealers? I really couldn't care less about Wizards in general being underpowered and Aloth being an especially sorry example of a wizard, because in the context of the game, he was a perfectly viable pick anyway.

Unless you want to specify exactly what you mean by outperform, I'm going to assume that you mean from purely economic and international power perspectives. I'm pretty sure he meant it from the "quality of life for its citizens" perspective.

Even if it's perfectly viable, despite not being as good as Class X? Game balance isn't really about making every choice equal, it's about making every choice worth taking.

Whereas I'm not surprised in the slightest. Amused, certainly, but not surprised at all.

Spoiler: much less than the people who unironically use the term "oversensitive whiny outrage brigade" like to think. The fact that content gets changed on a regular basis these days because of them is enough for me not to like it.

i dont see why someone should hate democracy or any other form of government... they are all equally flawed. each is convenient for some and not so much for others, while the trully rich are simply above and beyond They are not "equally flawed". Some forms of government are simply better than others. So far representative republics have been very much out-performing despotism for example. trust me they are. everything manmade has as many cons as it has pros... it all depends from what angle you see the coin Well yes, despotism is totally swell... as long as you happen to be the despot. Otherwise you're far more likely to be ****ed than not, because even if your despot didn't start out as a horrible tyrant, power corrupts.

Spoiler: much less than the people who unironically use the term "oversensitive whiny outrage brigade" like to think.

So, as an alternative to Mass: the Effecting, we could also use this. I quite like it, actually.