Azarkon
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Posts posted by Azarkon
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Why would you need to wait for the draft?
To do what?
If a draft comes and I don't believe in the war, I'll evade it - thus incurring whatever penalties thereof. I assume this is what Di means by prison time, as I can't see how a non-enlisted individual could go to prison for refusing the service in any other circumstance.
If a draft does not come, and I don't believe in the war, I will refuse to condone it, protest it when appropriate, refuse to support the troops who are fighting in it, and refuse to enlist in the military.
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Then I respectfully suggest you do yourself what you are suggesting these individuals do... give up your own life to enforce your belief. Because that is basically what you are saying, that if these individuals do not sacrifice themeselves and their future to decades in prison or worse, then they are unworthy of respect and support.
So go ahead. Present yourself to be imprisoned for the next few decades. Otherwise, you should not be so flippant to insist others do what you yourself are unwilling to do.
If the draft comes over an evil war, that's exactly what I'll do. But why would I commit a crime now to enforce my beliefs? That is a ridiculous request, and in no way "respectful."
Quitting the service - or not enlisting in the first place - is a perfectly reasonable option for people who were not tied to the service to begin with, and incurs no penalty of imprisonment (certainly I've known plenty of people who refused to join the military over their beliefs). For those who were tied when the war occured, going to war is perhaps their only option, and I doubt any of them feels strongly enough about the war to evade duty, so all I can say is - I respect their decision, but do not support them. Same rhetoric.
You're letting your emotions get the better of you, I'm afraid.
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You say that you're not the one making things black and white, and then state unequivocally, that people enlist in the military so that they can fight in wars, or are otherwise deceived and tragic characters.
Wars are not black and white. Rationality, however, can be binary. Still, I don't pretend people don't join the military for other reasons; I'm just saying that in the specific situation mentioned by the statement I quoted, I consider them to be tragic characters.
I don't see why the decisions of political leaders need to affect your respect of the people who are tasked with carrying them out.Respect has nothing to do with it. Support the troops != respect the troops. I already said that I respected the troops as individuals, but I do not support them. The same is true if I say that I respect any man willing to die for what he believes in, but that I do not necessarily support him.
Saying that the military disagreed with what was done but was forced into doing it because, well, the military obeys orders is a fair point that might, under certain circumstances, absolve them of responsibility. But that still doesn't mean I can support what they're doing. Like I said before, I don't think that you can divide the situation into "I hate the war" but "I support the troops cause they're just following orders!" If you support the troops in a volunteer army, then you support what they're doing. Otherwise, you're not really supporting them - that's my view.
What would you have the soldiers do, I wonder? Mass insubordination? Perhaps raise a motion to reverse the military decisions? Overthow a decision of the democratically elected leaders of their country, perhaps? A military coup?Quit the service, if they really feel so strongly about the war being wrong.
I do not believe in an amoral, depersonalized army that simply does what it's told - assigning others all the responsibility of right and wrong. I do think that people should join the military based on whether they believe in its cause, and not simply because of some abstraction notion of "duty" to a potentially corrupt government. However, coops/insubordination are not the way to go as methods of rebellion as it sets a precedent for military rule. The best way to act, therefore, is simply for individuals to quit the service (and to do so as individuals, instead of "mass boycotting," which is just another way of putting power in the hands of the military).
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Actually, I'm talking in general. Iraq was a good example because it makes a clear opposition point to the principle of supporting the troops without supporting the war. Afghanistan is a good example of indifference - ie how controlled the US is by the media, which can easily manipulate public sensibility to focus on Iraq while ignoring the situation in Afghanistan.
But that's getting a tad off topic. My position is that I cannot support the troops without supporting the war. This is true both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. What I was saying in that second part is that I can see why someone would support the current occupation, and thereby the troops who participate in it, without having supported the original invasion. In either case, for me supporting the troops means supporting the war, and vice versa.
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Lucius: While I don't disagree with your position per se, I hardly think that it's me who's simplifying this down to a black and white matter. For example, from what you're saying supporting the troops is like supporting Red Cross workers. Yeah - and who doesn't want to do that?
Yet that's not what you're supporting. What you're supporting is an occupation that's become the source of sectarian violence, that props up a Shi'ite government that uses death squads and extortion to achieve what they want, and which has all the signs of becoming a puppet of the clergy seeking to purge all who disagree with them. What you're supporting is a war that's turned a relatively stable nation into a country of refugees, destroyed the possibility of Iraqi sovereignty, and by all measures made life worse than it was under Saddam.
Though, I admit - it's probably one thing to say that you support the occupation now because there is no choice - because if we leave, all hell will break lose - and another altogether to say that you supported the war in the first place. However, it's not clear to me that you can divide one from the other, since the invasion was justified on the basis of what we'd achieve afterwards - and what we've achieved is a direct product of the invasion in the first place. Furthermore, it's not correct to say that the current war is fought solely to make up for the damages we've caused - some do indeed consider it as such, yet if we were to win the Iraqi war tomorrow the administration would undoubtedly take the credit and justify the original invasion on its basis. That, in my mind, can never be sanctioned.
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Oh, and to answer Walsingham's original question as to what would make me support the troops, I think it's pretty obvious where my perspective leads -
If they're fighting a war that I support, then I can fully support them. But then, if such a war existed, I'd probably be fighting in it, one way or another.
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Well pardon me but I think that's bull, a lot of guys sign up for many other reasons than wanting to try and fight in a war, perhaps just for being part of the nations defence for instance.
Then they are tragic characters, deceived by the nation that they were trying to serve. That does not garner my support for what they're doing; it merely makes them all the more tragic.
I think you're confusing two concepts - support of the troops in the sense of wanting to help them as individuals, and support the troops in the sense of supporting what they're doing. This ambiguity is intentional - it's the basis for an entire military stratagem built upon appealing to the public's sense of duty to the troops. But I draw a line between what I support and what I sympathize with. I can sympathize with the troops' plight. I can exonerate them as individuals. But I cannot support the war they're fighting - and therefore I cannot support them. Not for a moment.
Feel free to disagree. I don't expect to speak for the "correct moral attitude," as I don't believe that such a position is possible in this context. To me, supporting the troops while not supporting the war is an impossible position - a contradiction at best, hypocrisy at worst. If you take this position, then we are in fundamental disagreement, and I do not think that this is a disagreement that can be resolved on this board.
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Lack of support comes from lack of caring.
The war in Afghanistan is fraught with indifference. When you go around asking people these days about what they think about the war in Afghanistan, their first response is usually "what? We're still fighting in Afghanistan? I thought the war moved to Iraq." Very few people know - or care - about what the soldiers are doing in Afghanistan. Their eyes are focused on Iraq where US support wanes by the day, where sectarian violence and bloodshed has led the country to the brinks of civil war.
When you say, "support the troops, not the war," what I hear is a contradiction. It's not possible to support the troops and not support the war. You can pay mouthpiece all day long, but at the end of the day if what the soldiers are hearing is "we hate this war, and we hate the administration that carried us into it," they won't feel support. If what they hear is, "we support you - please come back home safe" they won't feel compelled to keep on fighting. And of course, most people don't even attempt to mince words.
Who here, I wonder, would argue against supporting the soldiers? Who here would ever stare into the face of a soldier and tell him that he's wrong to fight in the war, that he's a bastard for going there? I doubt that this is the problem; ask on any major public forum and what you'll get is a gushing, feel-good litany of "we support the soldiers, but not the war." But that's the problem - you can't truly support the soldiers unless you support what they're doing. You can't tell the soldiers that they're doing a good job, and then turn around and condemn the bombing of civilian buildings and the death of thousands of Iraqis. The two facts are inseparable - it might be in your mind, safe as you are at home and free to argue over the morality of war, but in the minds of those who are doing the killing, who are doing the bombing, they are inseparable.
What any fighting man truly wants to hear is that he's doing the right thing, that he's out there - fighting and dying - for a good reason, a just cause. If you can't tell him that - because you do not support the war, for example, or because you do not think that the Bush administration is doing the right thing - then you can't really support him. You can tell him that he's doing a good job, that he's fighting for the country, etc. etc. but at the end of the day when the polls drop and the war condemned the soldiers feel a sense of abandonment. And why wouldn't they? They sacrificed years of their lives fighting the war. Years that could've been spent bettering themselves and in the company of friends and family. They sacrificed comrades, close friends, and in many cases limbs and the very ability to thrive in civilian life. And all for what? To be remembered as the fighters of an injust war, the defenders of a corrupt administration?
This is not a conscript army we're talking about. A conscript army, especially one conscripted against the people's will, can be satisfied with putting an end to the fighting - because they never supported it in the first place. But what we have today is a volunteer army. They made the choice to fight in this war, and it's this choice that they want to see validated. If you can't support that choice, then you can't really support the troops.
That's my take, at least. And let me end this by saying that I don't believe that there can be a satisfactory position - and that the lack of this moral safety zone is a good thing. Wars cannot be reduced to struggles between good and evil, and one of the most problematic aspects of the modern mentality is the fantasy that they can be - that the goods and the bads of a war can be compartmentalized and treated as separate entities. That you can support the troops all the while decrying the "evils" of war.
This is blindness. This is naivete. And I'll argue that it's exactly this sort of attitude that's caused entire populations of normal, relatively good-intentioned civilian populations to be deceived - willingly - by the atrocities around them.
War is not something that can be minced and packaged into acceptable little chunks. I've never made it a secret that I disagree with the war, so I'm not going to cower now and say that "but I support the troops!" I might feel sympathy for the troops, I might consider them tragic characters who should not be blamed, and I might respect them and their choices as individuals, but I won't - and do not - condone what they're doing (that is, fighting a injust war). And therefore, I cannot support them.
To do otherwise would, in my mind, be hypocrisy.
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Btw, given that we've been mostly talking about Western RPG romances thus far, what are you guys' stance on JRPG romances? Like/don't like? Better/worse?
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Yeah, but many guys like that sort of personality. I'm not sure as to the opposite, but I have a feeling women don't typically like submissive men.
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Can't say I disagree. There usually is a sense of accomplishment involved - people who like RPG romances tends to think, for some reason, that if you devote alot of time and attention to a character romance should be the reward (I guess it's something of a fantasy for how real life should work?) In that sense it comes down to the gameplay - romances can be a form of gameplay, rather than just ambience/flavor. Course, I'm not suggesting to go as far as those dating games in Japan but... Well, you get the idea.
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as a secret side quest, rather than a main feature of RPGs. With this in mind, romances should be made easier to screw up (you say the wrong thing, and you're done), and also, the PC should choose who he/she wants to romance. This should make things seem a little bit more open-ended and not as scripted as they usually are. The problem with this approach is, of course that a lot of development time/money is spent on something that in the end, won't be experienced by most players of the game.
But then you have people whining about how difficult it is to romance a character and how romances should be something that everyone experiences through the course of the game.
Sometimes I think that people want harems of slavishly devoted characters, and there's some truth to that - after all, I doubt by "romance" most people are actually looking for a replay of RL relationships.
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Volourn: I think you'll find the amount of people who like romances, at least as represented by board posts, fairly even between men and women
Otherwise, there wouldn't be so much outcry over Neeshka.They're almost universally poorly written, fumbling attempts at expressing intimacy from shallow characters in awkward and inappropriate situations to a character that attracts the NPC because GENDER=MALE.I find myself agreeing, in principle, yet when I look back I can't say that I've disliked them. When I first played BG 2 and experienced the Bio romances, I should not have been impressed - but actually, I was. Simply because it was something I've never seen in games before, and the dramatic possibilities excited me on a visceral level. Little did I know then that I was witnessing the birth, death, and fossilization of Western RPG romances, all in the same moment, as nothing was ever done of this potential.
So, perhaps a better question would be - given that RPG romances are, at the moment, so poorly developed, do you think there can ever be good romances in RPGs?
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Hey Josh, I just read over at the Bio boards that you disliked romances in RPGs. Would you mind sharing your reasoning as to why?
I'd also like to hear everyone else's opinions regarding why romances are bad in RPGs. I think I have a good grasp of why people like romances, but if you don't, I'd really be interested in knowing why.
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Saving is definitely something that NWN 2 isn't as keen on as it should be. Given the game's occasional tendency to bug out during quests at times, it's absolutely imperative that players save often and intodifferent slots. Since this game isn't as linear as, say, DM (which has frequent autosave points), the best way to do this would probably be to build in the feature into quicksave.
I know that it's a bother because supposedly people should be saving manually into different slots, but my experience with gamers these days is that they're awfully peevish and lazy - and would rather blame the devs than spend some extra time themselves managing saves. Since quick save is so much more convenient (and could be even moreso if it didn't fade into the save screen & back), most people just use that - and the UI person in me says that you want to adapt to people's behaviors rather than depend on them to adapt to yours.
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I'm not really sure why it says that. Other than being more cinematic, the two dialogue systems don't have a lot in common. I guess it depends on what Scott meant by "modified". - Gaider's quote.
Hope someone isn't getting cut out of the development loop
Nah, the more likely truth is that Mr. Scotty decided that ME = next-gen therefore relating to ME = DA IS NEXT-GEN. I guess we'll see how it works out after ME is released. -
Preview says very little of substance, but I'm starting to get worried. Saying that the game uses the Mass Effect style of conversation is another way of saying that it's going to have a lot of one-liners and short replies, which I thought was implemented due to the console-controls of ME but apparently Bio is moving towards that direction in general.
Also, the combat system, despite the attempt to link to BG, is very much KOTORish, and while KOTORish combat isn't bad it went hand in hand with the simplicity of that game. Here's to hoping they'll innovate ontop of what's already there.
Large-scale creature fights sound good, though it's odd they're hyping that aspect of the game.
Darker story sounds good, though what that means is anyone's guess.
Surprisingly little was said of the game's roleplaying features and NPCs. If they're going to hype a RPG, I'd have thought that this would be where they start...
Game coming out in late 2007/early 2008 indicates that its hype storm should hit next summer, so maybe the game's still in an early stage. I hope so, for the graphics aren't exactly spectacular and will be less so next year, especially if we compare it to Mass Effect.
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You're going to be flamed. Hard. And for good reason.
Criticizing a game considered good/great by most without giving an argument... Is about the stupidest form of trolling you could do.
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Linguistic immersion is a matter of taste. Personally, I'm fine with either modern casual (so long as it doesn't have blatantly modern slangs) or Ye Old English, but that's because I rather like old lit and have studied them somewhat extensively. I can easily see how most people who play games nowadays would be frustrated or annoyed with trying to interpret older dialects, however, and that it'd be a immersion breaker for them.
I also have no real issues with the UI. In fact, I prefer it to NWN's simply because of the Quickcast/Quickuse bars. I do have an issue with the slowness with which the camera seems to move and what I see as a more-clunky-than-necessary chase camera, however.
Still, I don't think the game deserves a 6/10 unless your score for most games average around a 4. Gamespot's review is about on par with what I'd rate NWN 2.
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Gamespot's review is pretty fair, I think, relative to the rest of the PC scores (console scores seem very inflated on GS). They did, however, give Oblivion a 9.3, and I found that game a failure on many fronts... But then again, I'm probably not the target audience, and the production values on Oblivion, if nothing else, were higher than NWN 2.
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One thing that I'm really digging about NWN 2 is the Quickcast UI. Wonderful not having to click through three levels of buttons in order to cast a spell.
I will reserve judgment on the rest of the game until I've finished it, but it looks good so far
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How the heck should i fit in my role, if i think the char is ugly !? <_<
Whatever you do, dont post that opinion in this thread or you'll get eaten alive for daring not to like it.
not possible anyway becouse thats closed
elf:
That's not an elf. That's a human with elf ears
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Alas, I must wait till the morrow to get my copy, and can only put a few hours into it even then, for I fly out on Thursday
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I can't agree with his assessment of NWN. Personally, I hated the NWN OC and couldn't see how Bioware could've done such a crappy job at the game. Whether NWN 2 improves upon that remains to be seen - somehow, I doubt it could be worse, simply because it'd take a monumental effort to be as bland and uninvolving as the NWN OC.
Otherwise, there wouldn't be so much outcry over Neeshka.
Nah, the more likely truth is that Mr. Scotty decided that ME = next-gen therefore relating to ME = DA IS NEXT-GEN. I guess we'll see how it works out after ME is released.
Helping to lose
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
Oh.
Now that I think of it, evil is not exactly the right adjective for this war. Foolish and unnecessary is more like it. One does not defeat an organization based upon hatred for the US by stirring up even more hatred, but that's a discussion for another thread.