[quote]In Exile wrote...
But even you argue that DA:O supported player-invented backgrounds. Your position is that "support" means something other than "have the game react to", but that's a very different debate. I'm not contesting that "support" in this sense shouldn't mean allow the possibility for". Rather, I'm contesting the aspects of the game that
actually lead a person to believe that DA:O is different somehow in its support from DA2. [/quote]
Because DAO doesn't force character-breaking action on the Warden the way DA2 does with Hawke. DA2 doesn't allow Hawke to have any player-designed justification for his words or actions, because the player has no way to avoid having Hawke then engage in contradictory words or actions later.
DAO's player can choose to have the Warden not do things, and have that choice respected by the game. DA2's player cannot do the same for Hawke, because DA2 does not respect that choice by allowing Hawke's behaviour to remain consistent with it.
[quote]And the answer is that people, someone, think that they can more easily ignore the set, established and absolute parts of DA:O re: the Warden's traits, personality and background. It's predetermined to the same extent as DA2 for any one origin, but somehow (some) players find the mental gymnastics unpalpatable in DA2 that they engaged in for DA:O.[/quote]
To which I reply that the restrictions you see in DAO are, in fact, wholly the result of your own mental gymnastics, except with yours you weren't aware you were doing them until I pointed it out. You're seeing game content that simply isn't there. We've been over this many times, and the only reason you still chold to your position is because you're not willing to entertain employing a stricter standard of evidence, even if doing so would improve your gameplay experience.
The restrictions you see in DAO are no more real from the game's perspective than my player-invested character backgrounds are. The only difference is that my backgrounds make me happy, while your restrictions make you unhappy. So why invent them?
[quote]DA:O also actively prohibits the backgrounds. You just engage in arbitrary mental gymnastics to ignore those parts of DA:O that prohibited them, and overstate the prohibition in DA23.[/quote]
I've previously explained, at great length, how that's not true. My supposed mental gymnastics are simply an awareness of what is possibly true versus what is necessarily true. Your insistence on drawing conclusions, even in the absence of conclusive evidence, is entirely your fault (though it probably served you quite well on your LSAT - I could never manage that section).
[quote]No, there isn't. That "middle" is just the incoherent standard that you (and others) apply to the "neccesarily implicated" and "explicit", which arises from the completely arbitrary standard that you use to ignore (what is effectively) objective reality in-game. [/quote]
There. Your parenthetical explains everything. Objective reality is binary. Every thing is either objectively real or it is not. There is no such thing as something being "effectively" objectively real. There's your mistake. You insist on holding some things to be immutably true, even when you can't prove them to be true in the first place.
Because...
[quote]A great example your follow-up post. You're happy to assume that all NPCs are socially incompetent and unhigned liars, but you refuse (for example) to just refuse to believe what is shown on the game screen explicitly. But there's no actual reason to distinguish between these two different ways to (effectively) deny real[/quote]
I don't make assumptions. I never make assumptions, Assumptions are incredibly dangerous, just like beliefs. Both do nothing but introduce the risk of confirmation bias.
But because you keep making assumptions about such abstract metaphysical concepts like the nature of reality, and then you apply those assumptions as if they are objective truth, without ever considering even the possibility that your assumptions are not correct (or not helpful), you're trapped by those assumptions.
Your assumptions are your own actions. Stop doing it, and these problems immediately vanish. I daresay that you would agree with me on virtually every point I have ever made here on BSN if you would simply stop making assumptions.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why you approach reality the way you do? You understand your own approach better than most. You understand many of the evolutionary reasons for your approach. You're aware that people, generally, benefit from your approach being widely used. But why do you, as an individual, cling to it?
[quote]You're just wrong on this point, but there's no way to have a conversation because the standard you apply - beside not even being internally consistent when it comes to the presumptions it makes about how logic works - draws an arbitrary post-hoc distinction between what features of reality you can deny (i.e., the tone that necessarily accompanies the text with the tone that explicitly accompanies the test).[/quote]
First of all, I don't claim to have a logical justification for my logical appraoch. I employ a logical approach because it makes me happier. If it didn't, I'd stop doing it. I suggest that you can choose your approach, on a case-by-case basis, for similar reasons.
I object, though, when your approach to reasoning is the source of the barriers about which you complain. If the barriers you invented are causing problems for you, stop inventing them.
On the tone point, you're simply wrong about that. No tone necessarily accompanies the text. For any line, I'm sure we can find at least two appropriate line deliveries, thus guaranteeing that no one tone is necessary.
Necessity would require exactly one mandatory tone, where any deviation, no matter how small, would somehow break the line. Is that what you're really claiming?
[quote]People behave according to very well established social and sociological standards.[/quote]
People do. A person needn't.
That's the difference.
[quote]Everything you believe about society is wrong.[/quote]
I don't believe anything about society. First, because I try very hard not to hold beliefs, and second, because I dispute that society exists. Since things that don't exist can't exhibit characteristics, holding a belief regarding those characteristics would be lunacy.
[quote]But because of the standard you illogically and inconsistently apply to "know" things, you've set up your beliefs in such a way that they're impossible to disprove.[/quote]
Why would you ever choose to have indefensible beliefs?
[quote]See, this is a great example of the sort of vacuous analysis you apply to social interaction. Without writing a treatise on all human society, let's me try and explain it to you this way:
1) Cooperation is important to the functioning of society. There are lots of benefits to cooperating - this is how society operates, via division of labour. [/quote]
The marginal impact on society of one person's lack of cooperation is effectively zero. What incentive does an individual (one person) have to cooperate? Sure, if I'm going to bring down "society" all by myself, I can think of lots of good reasons not to do that. But I'm not - the behaviour of the millions of people around me seems unaffected by my small choices.
[quote]2) A precondition to cooperation is trust. The prisoner's dillema illustrates this - lots of gains from trust, but no reasons not to trust. [/quote]
The prisoner's dilemma also demonstrates the benefit of being the lone outlier. I would argue that this particular thought experiment only encourages cooperation if the participants assume that the other participants are relevantly similar to them.
[quote]3) Lying is complex, and the morality of lying is complex, but demonstrating a tendency to lie over, say, trivial matters where there is no discernable gain makes one untrustworthy, i.e., not well-suited to cooperate.
4) This leads to social isolation - we ignore the things that liars tell us (because we have no reason to believe them to be true and no basis on which to investigate them), we ignore dealing with liars (because there is no reason to believe we will not be cheated) and so liars end up socially isolated (to varying degrees).[/quote]
Several points:
1) In-game, do we ever know these characters well enough to determine whether they are trustworthy? Or even socially isolated?
2) Given that there are more people in the world that just us and the people speaking to us, why would we not consider the possibility that the person speaking to us is interested in gaining favour with a third-party? If that's happening, then the motives become vastly more complex. Someone could lie to me because he was told to. For example, I have lied to people because I was instructed to do so by a superior - carrying out that instruction makes me more reliable in the superior's eyes, not less.
3) Is your analysis inapplicable when there is discernable gain? Because that happens a lot.
4) Why would anyone assume that the lack of discernable gain is equivalent to the lack of gain?
[quote]For someone to randomly invent things about the background of someone they don't know, and then tell that person invented things that they've done in the past, is just such a deviation from basic social behaviour that it requires a great deal of explanation.[/quote]
Assuming they're acting alone. Assuming they're even lying - perhaps they're mistaken.
But, sure, let's suppose for a moment that things said about the PC by NPCs, where those NPCs would be in a position to know, are true. Aside from it basically not happening anymore after the PC reaches Ostagar. And aside from the player's ability to create a background specifically designed to avoid those limitations as soon as he's seen an origin once.
Even then, this limited restriction in DAO is still not nearly as damaging as DA2's approach , simply by virtue of how the paraphrase works. Since the player cannot avoid contradictory outcomes, the player cannot invent backgrounds and stick to them moment-to-moment.
[quote]We either have to know how this entire society hasn't collapsed on itself, or why this person hasn't been forcefully evicted, or why they haven't just been declared (or honestly aren't) outright crazy.[/quote]
Based on our limited exposure to these people, how can we possibly say that the lying behaviour you're imaging exists (despite there being other possible explanations) isn't new? Or somehow sanctioned?
[quote]But you're perfectly happy assuming all of this things, and creating a setting that is an incoherent jumble of non-functional contradictions, because you take the absence of an explicit contradition for your theories as proof of their authority.[/quote]
Why else would I be doing it?
If you're not happy with how things are in your mind, change them. Your mind is the only one you can change.
Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 27 mai 2013 - 03:19 .
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
) 
