1230 réponses à ce sujet

[AngryFrozenWater]

rolson00 wrote...

i really dont see how "Why is BioWare taking a dump on continuity?" thread is anything to do with this one

Yeah. I don't get it either. The thread was about continuity and not about the direction of DA2 that BW has chosen.

[rolson00]

javierabegazo wrote...

rolson00 wrote...

i really dont see how "Why is BioWare taking a dump on continuity?" thread is anything to do with this one

The OP is distressed over the new changes (i.e. direction) with the Darkspawn design amid other things. Seems fairly similar to me?

Pitch me an argument as to why it's not sufficiently similar and I'll open it, I'm not beyond reasoning. It's just at a few glances on the pages of that thread, it seemed like it could move to here

i didnt mind it closing, on that thread we we talking about just the changes in continuity only  this one is about it all i just find easier to focus on just one thing 

[javierabegazo]

Ok, I've reopened it

[AngryFrozenWater]

javierabegazo wrote...



Ok, I've reopened it

Thanks, javier.

[Vaeliorin]

Jimmy Fury wrote...

Vaeliorin wrote...

Hulk Hsieh wrote...
DA:O never gave me the choice of why.
I became a Warden because Duncan said it is the only way I stay alive.
And after the battle of Ogstar I did all those things because of "I am a Warden".

I think DA2 has good potential to give me the "why" aspect better than "that's what Wardens do".

Sure it did.  You apparently just never bothered to take advantage of it.  It's not explicitly defined in the game, though.  That's the entire point.

That's not a very functional arguement...
"Origins never gave me a choice of why"
"It did it just wasn't really there"
?
If it isn't defined in the game then it can't be considered a choice the game provided...

A better argument would be:
Yes it did, the final conversation you have with your parents as a Human Noble gives you the ability to choose your motivation for leaving.  You can: Leave to find Fergus. Leave to get revenge on Howe. Leave to save your own behind. etc. (I can't recall all of the dialogue choices off the top of my head, apologies.)

You're missing the point entirely.  You always get to choose why your character does what he does.  The game doesn't know your reasons, though, and it's not defined within the game (nor should it be, because it would be inherently limiting.)  Besides, defining it in the game would require your character to go around explaining why he does everything he does, and that would be completely nonsensical.

[Jimmy Fury]

Vaeliorin wrote...
You're missing the point entirely.  You always get to choose why your character does what he does.  The game doesn't know your reasons, though, and it's not defined within the game (nor should it be, because it would be inherently limiting.)  Besides, defining it in the game would require your character to go around explaining why he does everything he does, and that would be completely nonsensical.

I didn't miss your point. I said your point was incorrect. As was his.
You do get to choose your motivations in Origins. Not all of time, but in many instances the dialogue gives you motivation-based choices. Particularly in the instance he was claiming. As I demonstrated the dialogue options in the final convo of the human noble origin give you the ability to explain your motivation within the game itself: Leaving because you need to find Fergus, Leaving because you demand vengeance/justice against Howe, and Leaving just to save your own hide; are all motivations for leaving with Duncan.
Other examples:
Agreeing to kill Flemeth because: Flemeth must be stopped or because you value morrigan's friendship.
Helping Jowan and Lily because: you are loyal to your friend, you are loyal to the circle, or you hate the circle.

You can, of course, embelish these motivational choices with your own out-of-game reasons, such as choosing the "value morrigan's friendship" because you want to nail her. Or hating the circle because your mage wants to be a blood mage.
The ability to imply additional motivations, however, does not mean that the choices available do not provide a framework for your motivation.

-edit-
I beleive, and someone please correct me if i'm wrong, that this is why people are not happy about the VO and dialogue wheel. The perception being that paraphrased responses will not all you to properly choose an option based on your characters motivations.

Modifié par Jimmy Fury, 31 juillet 2010 - 07:28 .

[Sidney]

Jimmy Fury wrote...
I beleive, and someone please correct me if i'm wrong, that this is why people are not happy about the VO and dialogue wheel. The perception being that paraphrased responses will not all you to properly choose an option based on your characters motivations.

You've chosen about the only 3 times you have that sort of wall of choices and really those are always tied to a very slim set of options. You sure don't get those alot and it is intermittent - see Recliffe where there's not a lot of good ways to choose why you help you do or you don't. I'd like a lot more ways to explain why I do what I do but all too often it is just Yes or No and not a lot of room for why. I mean even a simple change like asking "Will you help" and you get a "Yes/No/Maybe set of options and then after that the NPC asks why and then you get another set of options.

As to VO/wheel, there's nothing that says you can't do exactly the the same things you described except in people's deeply limited imaginations. Really, ME2 has a lot more sort of "feeling" driven options than DAO does where you can respond in different ways to things.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Hulk Hsieh wrote...

DA:O never gave me the choice of why.
I became a Warden because Duncan said it is the only way I stay alive.

That
reasoning makes sense for some of the origins, but even so there's no
requirement that your character made any decision for the reasons
Duncan says he did.

How would Duncan know, after all?  Duncan isn't your character.  Duncan can't read your character's mind.

And after the battle of Ogstar I did all those things because of "I am a Warden".

If that's why your character did those things, then that's the reason you chose.

You
could have chosen differently.  And why did you choose to do all those
things as you did them?  Why did you choose to recruit one group before
another?  Why did you choose to save Redcliffe (or not)?

DAO let
you decide all of those things by not deciding them for you.  As long
as you don't think your character is some sort of automatonwho does things for no reason, you had to have invented such a reason for very nearly everything he did.

I think DA2 has good potential to give me the "why" aspect better than "that's what Wardens do".

If you rely on the game to give you the reasons why your character is doing things, then you'll always be disappointed by RPGs.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Jimmy Fury wrote...

As I demonstrated the dialogue options in the final convo of the human noble origin give you the ability to explain your motivation within the game itself: Leaving because you need to find Fergus, Leaving because you demand vengeance/justice against Howe, and Leaving just to save your own hide; are all motivations for leaving with Duncan.

I disagree entirely.  The game allows you to say those things (and nothing else), yes, but that doesn't mean those are the only possible reasons you're doing that thing.  It just means those are the reasons you're giving others for why you're doing that thing.

You could be doing it for literally any reason you can imagine - the only limitation is that the game won't let you say so (which makes sense, as the game can't provide responses to all possible remarks).

The dialogue options are things you can say - they needn't be viewed as giving any insight at all into the player character's psyche.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Jimmy Fury wrote...

I beleive, and someone please correct me if i'm wrong, that this is why people are not happy about the VO and dialogue wheel. The perception being that paraphrased responses will not all you to properly choose an option based on your characters motivations.

Since I don't see the dialogue as necessarily giving any insight into the PC's mind, I  also disagree with this.

The problem with the VO and dialogue wheel is that the PC might actually behave in a way contrary to his character without giving you a chance to prevent it.  The only way around that in ME is to define Shepard's character in nothing but the broadest terms.  Any attempt to refine Shepard's personality yourself has a very high risk of breaking the game as soon as Shepard says or does something entirely inconsistent with that personality (and again, there's no way for you to prevent it since you don't know what's going to happen).

I gave an example before where your character gets angry as someone for some perceived slight.  But the specifics of that slight are not made clear in the game.  The problem with you refining those specifics yourself is that some other event might occur later that is relevantly similar to the initial slight (based on your definition), but not based on BioWare's definition, so they'll write dialogue as if there's no reason for Shepard to get angry a second time, but they'll be wrong about that.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Not false so much as incomplete.  The definition offered described only one type of story.

We're right back to this? If I say, it is only possible that f(x)=x, and you say f(x)=x and f(x)=2x, then you are saying my definition is wrong. Whether or not you think there are other conjuncts is irrelevant. I am arguing categorically that story is this and only this. You are arguing that story is something else. Whether or not that something else involves my definition exactly as I stated it has no bearing on whether or not you are claiming that definition is false, which you are.

That are language is structured in a certain way is not evidence of anything beyond the structure of our language.

Don't dodge. I claimed the logical consequence of your view is that something can be an argument only if it is succesful and claimed that to be an absurd consequence. What's your response?

Those predictions would only be lies if they were not identified as predictions.

If I say "I predict the world will end in 2012," I've just made a statement about the present, not the future.  The core of that sentence was "I predict" - present tense.

No - you've made a claim about the future. Remember: "the structure of language is indicative of nothing other than the structure of language."

The word prediction has to value other than to show intention (that you do not believe this to be a certainty, that you are trying to qualify it - whatever), but you are denying that intention is relevant to lying.

If I say "The world will end in 2012", and I'm wrong about that, then yes, I have lied (I'm not lying yet, but I will have been lying once the truth value of my assertion becomes false).

Oh, so you were just retroactively lying. Which is to say that what your intention was when you said it is irrelevant, all of which is to get at the fact that if your standard of lying is the actual truth value of the statement, something either is or isn't a lie independent of everything but the truth value of the statement.

All of which is a useless way of looking at lying, and about as effective as defining boot as a kind of four legging animal.

Once they are formalised (and thus become definitions) they are no longer up for debate.

Let us say that you and I agree on a definition. Suddenly, a third person enters the room, never having been privy to our particular discussion. We say, the definition of x is y. The person says, no, that is absurd, the definition of x must be z.

Convention only has power over those who agreed to honour it. The definitions are always up for debate because even if you insist tha by divine fiat or logical neccesity or whatever authority you want to appeal to, that your definition is the correct one, you still have to convice the other person to believe it. So definitions are always a matter of debate, because someone always has to buy into the convention.

This is why I count games and RPGs as different in kind.  Using the conventions of video gaming to describe RPGs (computer or otherwise) is an error of category.

Except that your standard is vacuous. What does it mean to have player input? What does it mean for player input to be a focus?

You're always trying to impose standards on the world, Sylvius, but just like I told you re: deductive logic, there is no reason for me to have to take you for granted on this.

Put another way: to have two classes of things, games and RPGs, you have to impose that category. These are not natural kinds, and despite claiming that you are a nominalist, you really do not seem to think as one would. Let me put it this way: if you think definitions are unique, and if you think we can all come to an objective agreement as as to what each entity is based on a set of features which distinctly demarcate one from another, then you cannot be a nomalist.

I don't see how role-playing generally is much different from fantasizing, so it would then follow that a computer role-playing game would, as its core feature, offer computer-assisted fantasizing.

And we reject that it is anything like fantasizing. So were does this sort of thing get us?

This is why I think your description of story-telling is incompatible with role-playing.  But since I think story-based games can rely heavily on emergent narrative to do the story-telling while still being story-based, a story-based game (as I would define the term) would still be compatible with role-playing.

Except, of course, what you think is story based isn't what we think is story based, and it does not matter how adamant you are about what we think being only a subset, we will never grant that the "broader" definition as you put it is a possible definition, and never accept the kind of game you see as story-driven as, well, story-driven.

The only thing we can do is identify why we disagree over what makes something story driven.

And to prevent one of your favourite replies: KoTOR, BG, and games in that vein did not accomodate my style of play any more than ME does yours. The mere fact I play them does not mean they are accomodating.

I've said it before and I'll say it again,
what you do isn't anywhere near as important as why you do it.

I couldn't
have said it better.

But I don't think anyone disagrees over the generality of this claim. What we are all debating is the specific.

You think the "why" is being respect if you can have some imaginary interaction, or as you put it, fantasy, about the character in the game. We deny this. We demand that a game must show this, that it must be reactive and illustrative, for a choice or attitude to exist. This is an axiom.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
You could be doing it for literally any reason you can imagine - the only limitation is that the game won't let you say so (which makes sense, as the game can't provide responses to all possible remarks).

The dialogue options are things you can say - they needn't be viewed as giving any insight at all into the player character's psyche.

But as you love to say - there is no reason not to view them as insight into the psyche of the character. I simply don't understand why you can't see how the entire thing driving this is preference, and can't appreciate how your own preference just isn't commesurate with anothers.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
The problem with the VO and dialogue wheel is that the PC might actually behave in a way contrary to his character without giving you a chance to prevent it.  The only way around that in ME is to define Shepard's character in nothing but the broadest terms.  Any attempt to refine Shepard's personality yourself has a very high risk of breaking the game as soon as Shepard says or does something entirely inconsistent with that personality (and again, there's no way for you to prevent it since you don't know what's going to happen).

We're going right back to this. "Refine" the personality is a vague and empty term. To you, this means facts and details and precise wording. To other people, it means attitude and general tendency. Do you honestly not see the irony what you're doing? You're trying to justify your playstyle on the basis that multiple interpretations are possible, and when other people give you an alternative interpretation, you try to reject it.

[Sidney]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

If that's why your character did those things, then that's the reason you chose.

You
could have chosen differently.  And why did you choose to do all those things as you did them?  Why did you choose to recruit one group before another?  Why did you choose to save Redcliffe (or not)?

DAO let  you decide all of those things by not deciding them for you.  As long as you don't think your character is some sort of automatonwho does things for no reason, you had to have invented such a reason for very nearly everything he did.

Your character has free will within a fairly narrow band of options. I can save the Circle or Purge it. There's no option to wipe out the Templars which my Dalish warrior and Blood Mage would have been far more likely to do. I guess I can imagine why I can't do that but again you are back to creating rationalizations not reasons. You can save Redcliffe or not but you can't really choose why you do so. Can you make up a reason, yes. Can you express it in the game, no. Will you have to express a motive in the game, yes. Will that motive match what comes up in your fevered mind? Maybe not, it never has for me.

You can imagine a lot of things the problem is that the game keeps intruding on that imagination with the dialog and plot it has developed and so unless you just toss "the game" out the window you don't have any real choice or free will. You are driving a car . The game frames the start, end and road all you get to do is pick a lane.

[Jimmy Fury]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I disagree entirely.  The game allows you to say those things (and nothing else), yes, but that doesn't mean those are the only possible reasons you're doing that thing.  It just means those are the reasons you're giving others for why you're doing that thing.

You could be doing it for literally any reason you can imagine - the only limitation is that the game won't let you say so (which makes sense, as the game can't provide responses to all possible remarks).

The dialogue options are things you can say - they needn't be viewed as giving any insight at all into the player character's psyche.

I get the feeling you're disagreeing with me simply to disagree with me...
You seem to have completely ignored this part of my post:

Jimmy Fury wrote...
You can, of course, embelish these motivational choices with your own out-of-game reasons, such as choosing
the "value morrigan's friendship" because you want to nail her. Or hating the circle because your mage wants to be a blood mage.
The ability to imply additional motivations, however, does not mean that thechoices available do not provide a framework for your motivation.

I never said the motivation-based dialogue was your only possible motivation. In fact I said the exact opposite. I said it's a framework in-game that you can build on out-of-game in your own mind.

I'm all for debating but if you're going to "disagree entirely" with my statement then at least do me the courtesy of reading the whole thing.

Modifié par Jimmy Fury, 01 août 2010 - 04:54 .

[AlanC9]

You guys seem to be doing a lot of talking past each other.

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]In Exile wrote...

We're right back to this? If I say, it is only possible that f(x)=x, and you say f(x)=x and f(x)=2x, then you are saying my definition is wrong. Whether or not you think there are other conjuncts is irrelevant. I am arguing categorically that story is this and only this. You are arguing that story is something else.  Whether or not that something else involves my definition exactly as I stated it has no bearing on whether or not you are claiming that definition is false, which you are.[/quote]We need to back up, because you clearly missed a point.

I don't have time to go find it right now.  Yes, we disagree about what the definition of "story" is.  You seem to think that narrative can, under some circumstances, fail to be a story.  And that position is patently false.

There.  But that's not what we were actually arguing about a couple of pages ago.
[quote]Don't dodge. I claimed the logical consequence of your view is that something can be an argument only if it is succesful and claimed that to be an absurd consequence. What's your response?[/quote]Yes, you've only
successfully argued for something if you've demonstrated the truth of your assertion.  There's nothing at all absurd about that (unless you're using a definition of "absurd" of which I am unaware).

What really annoyed me about the supposed argument, though, was that it made no effort to justify its definition of story.  It asserted what story meant, and then drew a bunch of conclusions based on that definition.  At no point was any work done to show how he'd come up with that definition.
[quote]No - you've made a claim about the future.  Remember: "the structure of language is indicative of nothing other than the structure of language."[/quote]Are you being intentionally obtuse?  The structure of a sentence tells us very nearly everything about the contents of that sentence.

"Language" and "a sentence" are not synonymous terms.
[quote]The word prediction has to value other than to show intention (that you do not believe this to be a certainty, that you are trying to qualify it - whatever), but you are denying that intention is relevant to lying.[/quote]Absolutely.

When people get married and say "I will love you forever" I think it's an idiotic thing to say.  If they said "I intend
to love you forever" that would make a lot more sense.  The second sentence talks about the present.  The first sentence talks about the future.  The verb tense alone gives that away.

Sentences mean what they say.
[quote]Oh, so you were just retroactively lying.[/quote]You're misusing a verb tense.  You will have lied.  But you were being reckless.  To say "you were lying" suggests you were lying then, and you weren't.  You couldn't have been, because your statement didn't yet have a truth value.
[quote]Which is to say that what your intention was when you said it is irrelevant, all of which is to get at the fact
that if your standard of lying is the actual truth value of the statement, something either is or isn't a lie independent of everything but the truth value of the statement.

All of which is a useless way of looking at lying, and about as effective as defining boot as a kind of four legging animal. [/quote]What does utility have to do with it?

Being correct isn't always useful.  But that doesn't stop it from being correct.
[quote]Convention only has power over those who agreed to honour it.[/quote]Facts have power over everyone.
[quote]The definitions are always up for debate because even if you insist tha by divine fiat or logical neccesity or whatever authority you want to appeal to, that your definition is the correct one, you still have to convice the other person to believe it.[/quote]To get them to agree with me, yes.  To be right, no.
[quote]And we reject that it is anything like fantasizing. So were does this sort of thing get us? [/quote]It means that one of us is clearly wrong.  So let's investigate that.

Let's find examples of role-playing (where we agree that what's happening is role-playing) and see which of us has made an error.

The trouble is, I think you're reaching your definition through rationalisation.  I, however, defined the term
first, and then went out to find things that meet my standard.  To test this, I ask a question:

Is there a fixed standard you use to determine whether a given gaming activity is role-playing?
[quote]You think the "why" is being respect if you can have some imaginary interaction, or as you put it, fantasy, about the character in the game. We deny this. We demand that a game must show this, that it must be reactive and illustrative, for a choice or attitude to exist. This is an axiom. [/quote]Yes it is.  And that makes it baseless.

Why do you accept it?
[quote]In Exile wrote...

But as you love to say - there is no reason not to view them as insight into the psyche of the character.[/quote]
Oh, but there is.  The lack of evidence in support of a conclusion is all the reason one should ever need not to draw that conclusion.  The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

You are, again, incorrectly assuming an excluded middle.  Please stop doing that.

You're effectively asserting that A equals B, and I'm disagreeing with you.  But I'm not saying that A doesn't equal B.  I'm saying that there's no reason to believe that A equals B.  And therefore, while it's possible that A equals B, it's also possible that A does not equal B.  And as long as it's possible that A does not equal B, then my playstyle
remains logically tenable.

If you would prefer that A equal B, then by all means play like that.  And if you were would prefer that A not equal B, then play like that.  That we don't know if A equals B gives us the freedom to choose for ourselves.  If the game ever does tell us one way or the other, then one of our playstyles will be utterly destroyed.

You say those other games didn't accommodate you, but did you enjoy them?  Were you able to play them in a way that was fun?

Because I was entirely unable to play ME in a way that was fun.  I simply didn't know how.  I went through the motions of playing the game, but at no point was it a fun experience.
[quote]In Exile wrote...

We're going right back to this. "Refine" the personality is a vague and empty term. To you, this means facts and details and precise wording. To other people, it means attitude and general tendency. Do you honestly not see the irony what you're doing?[/quote]
Do other people honestly think that their actions and decisions are driven solely by "attitude and general tendency"?  Do you really have no idea what you're going to do or say from moment to moment?

When someone asks you a question, how do you respond?  Do you say something that makes sense, that at least makes an effort to convey the information you want to convey?  If you do, then the ME-style dialogue system does not come close to accurately modelling your conversations.

Shepard made me feel like a schizophrenic who was off his meds.  I know some schizophrenics, and it was exactly how they behave.  They say things that don't make sense even to them.  They behave nonsensically. 
That was Shepard.  The only way to avoid that feeling was to detatch myself entirely and just watch Shepard like I was watching a movie.  I didn't know her.  I didn't care about her.  And because I wanted to know and care about her, that I couldn't made me angry.  the game went out of its way to hide the character from me.  What pssible gameplay benefit could that have provided?
[quote]Sidney wrote...

You can save Redcliffe or not but you can't really choose why you do so. Can you make up a reason, yes.[/quote]
You just directly contradicted yourself in the span of two sentences.
[quote]Jimmy Fury wrote...

I get the feeling you're disagreeing with me simply to disagree with me...
You seem to have completely ignored this part of my post:[/quote]
No, I read that bit.  See below.
[quote][quote]Jimmy Fury wrote...
You can, of course, embelish these motivational choices with your own out-of-game reasons, such as choosing
the "value morrigan's friendship" because you want to nail her. Or hating the circle because your mage wants to be a blood mage.
The ability to imply additional motivations, however, does not mean that thechoices available do not provide a framework for your motivation.[/quote]
I never said the motivation-based dialogue was your only possible motivation. In fact I said the exact opposite. I said it's a framework in-game that you can build on out-of-game in your own mind. [/quote]
Your example relied on taking the expressed motivation and adding to it.  I'm suggesting that the expressed motivation might in fact be completely irrelevant.  You could choose one of the written options and have the real motive be one of the other written options.

Your character can lie.  Your character can hide his motives.

You didn't allow for that.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 01 août 2010 - 08:12 .

[Vaeliorin]

In Exile wrote...
You think the "why" is being respect if you can have some imaginary interaction, or as you put it, fantasy, about the character in the game. We deny this. We demand that a game must show this, that it must be reactive and illustrative, for a choice or attitude to exist. This is an axiom.

I have to admit, this doesn't make any sense to me.  In the real world, your choices or attitudes aren't necessarily demonstrated to those around you.  A character could hate elves, yet be polite and respectful to the Dalish (and perhaps even the alienage elves), for example, because they realize it's stupid to antagonize those who are supposed to be your allies.  If I'm reading what you've written correctly, you think the only way a character I'm playing can hate elves is if they openly act as though they hate elves.  That's not anything like how people work in the real world, so why should it be how people work in a fantasy world?

It seems like your saying that your character in game has to express their every thought, or those thoughts aren't occuring, and that is obviously contradictory to making a character who's anything like most people.

[Hulk Hsieh]

I think this thread has lost all its meaning to present even the slightest part of the market/gamer when it turned into such long discussion focusing on detailed ideas of few people.

[dms_xcal]

David Gaider wrote...

I would suggest that you wait to hear exactly what our approach is before trying to figure out whether it's what you're interested in or not.

People appear to be acting as if the scant details we've revealed are all they'll ever learn about the game ever, and they're thus required to render judgment immediately.

...

As long as there is information released prior to a game launch there will be people complaining about stuff, people have different tastes and your always bound to have people that dont like the way something is done. Its funny though how people start as soon as something is announced instead of waiting to see how stuff works and find more info about it.

And as someone said earlier even if they do go and change parts of the game, it doesn't instantly make it a bad game. Wait and see how it turns out and judge the game on its own merits rather than how you think the game will turn out from some limited information from early in the development.

[captain.subtle]

dms_xcal wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

I would suggest that you wait to hear exactly what our approach is before trying to figure out whether it's what you're interested in or not.

People appear to be acting as if the scant details we've revealed are all they'll ever learn about the game ever, and they're thus required to render judgment immediately.

...

As long as there is information released prior to a game launch there will be people complaining about stuff, people have different tastes and your always bound to have people that dont like the way something is done. Its funny though how people start as soon as something is announced instead of waiting to see how stuff works and find more info about it.

And as someone said earlier even if they do go and change parts of the game, it doesn't instantly make it a bad game. Wait and see how it turns out and judge the game on its own merits rather than how you think the game will turn out from some limited information from early in the development.

As a matter of opinion, the malcontent will be proportional to the information available.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Vaeliorin wrote...

In the real world, your choices or attitudes aren't necessarily demonstrated to those around you.  A character could hate elves, yet be polite and respectful to the Dalish (and perhaps even the alienage elves), for example, because they realize it's stupid to antagonize those who are supposed to be your allies.  If I'm reading what you've written correctly, you think the only way a character I'm playing can hate elves is if they openly act as though they hate elves.  That's not anything like how people work in the real world, so why should it be how people work in a fantasy world?

I've been saying effectively the same thing to Virgil for many months.  I don't understand his position either.

[Davasar]

AlanC9 wrote...

You guys seem to be doing a lot of talking past each other.

What???

You mean ignoring salient points or distorting them entirely?

That NEVER happens.

[AlanC9]

Actually, I was talking about people operating from different premises without acknowledging the fact.

As for your post, Davasar, there's nothing wrong with ignoring a salient point when some other part of the argument fails. Sure, one could post "you're right about X, but since the inference you drew from X is completely bogus, it doesn't matter that you were right about X" --- but would such a sentence be worth typing, or reading?

And if someone feels his point is being deliberately distorted -- more often, he wasn't clear about his point in the first place, or he posted a grab-bag of feelings rather than coherent argument -- he should make clear what his position is and what it is not. Edit: see, for example, my first sentence of this post.

Modifié par AlanC9, 02 août 2010 - 06:27 .