@tragedyjones said in Good TV:
At least The Hand had a reason to raze New York. In fact, razing NYC wasn't even their goal, just a byproduct of getting what they are after.
Except alexandra goes on this spiel about how you get used to seeing cities fall and how they were behind all the big ones like Pompeii. So it's still the same story beat.
It's literally "we burn these cities to the ground to fulfill some stupid cycle of burning cities to the ground because that's what we're here for because apparently cities have expiration dates that we decide".
"The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory they are extinguished."
Yeah, I mean, I get that it's a compelling fucking story beat, but COME ON MAN, at least let a decade pass before you blatantly use it again. It's been less than five years since Arrow bashed our heads in with that shit, and it was already super obvious they were ripping off Batman Begins.
It's just... bleh. I liked it, but still.
@surreality said in Good TV:
@Coin @Ganymede Admittedly, this is more or less the same schtick we see on MU*s a lot -- it's more or less the equivalent of the 'end of the world' plot.
It's not the same to reuse a plot for a roleplaying game than it is to use the same exact gimmick across three franchises.
It's literally "we burn these cities to the ground to fulfill some stupid cycle of burning cities to the ground because that's what we're here for because apparently cities have expiration dates that we decide".
Like, it is VERY SPECIFIC.
the Hand already took over the world, inasmuch as they ever would. Their plans for New York were more in order for them to MAINTAIN the control they had, by burning the city to the ground in order to get what they were after.
Good thing they weren't the Foot.
Although, I think I've heard this plot before, about burning a place named "Gotham" to the ground.
sigh
Yeaaaaaaah.
I noticed that too.
The parallels between the League of Shadows (Batman), the League of Assassins (Arrow) and now the Hand (Defenders) is like: guys, get a new gimmick, you're literally regurgitating this shit over and over across brands, come on now.
@surreality said in Good TV:
@Coin I am still hoping for another Jessica Jones. I suspect that's even less likely than more Iron Fist, though.
Pretty sure Jessica Jones was already flagged for renewal a while ago.
@Coin I also don't love we saw Stone for like five seconds back in DD season 1, then never again.
SPOILERS
So if the Chaste are actually all dead (assuming we take Stick's word for that) then I guess they introduced the guy real quick then killed him off screen, which is just awesome.
SPOILERS
Man, I don't even remember Stone.
But basically I think they dropped the ball with the Hand becuase the Hand is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING and they could do SO MUCH MORE with it.
At least Gao survived.
Weaver's character was ... underwhelming because for all they all said they feared/respected her, she never put forth enough actual power. I would have liked to see her kicking a little ass, myself.
The unlikelihood that we will get an iron Fist 2 means that he'll probably crop up in other shows (Luke Cage and Daredevil, probably) and in the next Defenders. Which means we can probably expect Joy Meachum and Davos in the next Defenders show.
The fact two of the Hand's 5 actors aren't too young (as much as it saddens me to think about it, Weaver is now what, in her 50s or 60s, and Gao's actress is probably up there unless a lot of it was makeup) means they could only do so much when it came to them being part of fighting choreography. They could have at least given Alexandra some more telekinisis or something though.
Speaking of which... Daredevil season 1's choreography was just goddamn incredible for TV. I still remember those amazing long fighting sequences (minutes long) was just revolutionary for TV... but now they've gone back to much simpler quickly edited cuts where sometimes I can barely tell wtf is going on.
That's a shame for most shows but for Iron Fist... if I can't expect amazing fighting from a martial arts superhero then they better deliver in some other superb way, which... yeah, they didn't.
Yeah, but that's what body doubles are for.
@Coin I also don't love we saw Stone for like five seconds back in DD season 1, then never again.
SPOILERS
So if the Chaste are actually all dead (assuming we take Stick's word for that) then I guess they introduced the guy real quick then killed him off screen, which is just awesome.
SPOILERS
Man, I don't even remember Stone.
But basically I think they dropped the ball with the Hand becuase the Hand is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING and they could do SO MUCH MORE with it.
At least Gao survived.
Weaver's character was ... underwhelming because for all they all said they feared/respected her, she never put forth enough actual power. I would have liked to see her kicking a little ass, myself.
The unlikelihood that we will get an iron Fist 2 means that he'll probably crop up in other shows (Luke Cage and Daredevil, probably) and in the next Defenders. Which means we can probably expect Joy Meachum and Davos in the next Defenders show.
In the Defenders did anyone else think the Hand's end game super-soldier - the Black Sky, who we get very little information about - wasn't that impressive?
Elektra is deadly but she wasn't overpowered at all. We saw several characters hold their own (Danny punches her through a wall through the opening scene), and I kept getting the impression that without extensive plot armor Luke Cage could solo her - hell, he might have soloed most of the Hand.
These dudes aren't going to take over the world.
Well,
SPOILERS
the Hand already took over the world, inasmuch as they ever would. Their plans for New York were more in order for them to MAINTAIN the control they had, by burning the city to the ground in order to get what they were after.
I feel like Elektra suffered from Conservation of Ninjitsu a LOT. If she was alone against all four Defenders, she could 1v4 them, but the minute she had some backup, one of them was a match for her. However, she drop-kicked Luke several times, so I think her powers are similar to that of Danny's, but less overt--like, she can hit like a mack truck (thus hurting Luke), but not ALL THE TIME, just concentrated hits. It's not developed enough, frankly.
I would have seriously preferred if they had delved into her being like, a vessel for The Beast, so that we could have a Shadowland arc in the future.
@surreality said in Space Games and Travel Time? Why? Why Not?:
Damn, I even mentioned this in another thread and completely missed this one. The #2 'some day' weird idea I had was for a traveling space carnival game. Think of a mashup between Carnivale and Firefly: dustbowl/depression era troubles on fringe worlds struggling to get by.
Grid was the rag-tag caravan of ships, which would travel (over time) from border world to border world, as a group. The border world (if they were on one) would have been 2 rooms: of 'this is a general representation of this world, temproom off of here for any locations you find relevant as necessary', and the faireground room where the show gets set up to bring in the crowd. It'd be 1-2 weeks on that world RL time, with the weekends included at both ends, and the weekdays between for 'travel' to the next one, arriving Friday night -- so fairly easy to schedule around.
Collectively, through either dodging warrants or hiding out or just not being welcome or not being up to code and barely having resources as a group to do more than just scrape by and keep the lights on and food on the table, individual or small group 'go jaunt off to <other planet>' was just not in the collective budget, and/or there would be other reasons this would not be a thing. Ships aren't up to code for their legit port, not enough fuel to get there, that rich kid hiding out with the weirdos got disowned so there's just not the cash to cover the trip, whatever -- it would have been marked out as 'this is not a thing unless there's some big, effects everybody story involved, because it would effect everybody if somebody did it'.
It wasn't so much 'tightly focused' as 'holy crap, this is packed tighter than a tin of sardines'.
Highly weird, very gritty, but the reasons everybody would be in the same place -- even if that place was different every so often -- were built in. People could probably do something similar with a team of mercenaries or other group traveling around in a similar way, I would think. For a one-faction, PvE-oriented game, it should be possible to construct a setting that supports this without too much hassle.
It just likely isn't the kind of thing that people are necessarily looking for when they think of 'space game', where one of the appeals for some folks would be 'can be on any number of active worlds'. Star Wars is a perfect example of the sprawling space opera on many worlds at once that has a good potential for game longevity if people take to it, for instance.
That said, a lot of the most engaging sci-fi stories (to me, at least) are set in space either all take place on one ship, or one ship and one world (or only one world at a time). Some could have long-term potential, but a lot of them would be the kind of game you'd need to know from the start would likely have a limited lifespan and some top-down story arcs built in from day one. Think of stuff like any of the Alien films, in which the action takes place predominantly on one ship, or one ship and one world. You could technically have a game based on a film like Event Horizon, with the exploration of the ship taking much, much more time and a larger team handling salvage and research -- or, much as most people I know aren't keen on it (myself included), Alien: Prometheus could follow a similar model. The trick here would be to know going in what you plan to cover and know there's an expiration date when that collection of stories is played out.
The 'tell a story, do a time shift or location shift reset, continue the over all story but in a different time/with a new set of characters/etc.' concept that @Coin has talked about from time to time could work really well for something like this to keep the game going and give interested players more to do in the broader universe to tell more and new stories, even if it's essentially run in installments with resets and time breaks in between. (Something like the Alien films could be done this way, for example, just -- for fuck's sake -- things should be presented in chronological order.)
In a way, the 'we're all getting older and we don't have unlimited time' factor nudges me a little toward this being a more realistic model these days for a space game than one with the enforced travel and wait times of some traditional multi-world games. I think the sprawling space operas have a better chance of longevity without breaks or resets and such if people can get past that hurdle (or find a way around it as @Seraphim73 has described), but I have to admit, the breaks and resets model is uniquely compelling here, and I'd be curious to see if someone tries it some time to create a long-running game with defined 'chapter breaks' and troupe-style play with character changes throughout.
It took me like a minute to find my tag. XD
@Thenomain said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
@Coin said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
I actually don't mind the information being in game. I would just like for it to also be available off-site. That way we both win.
And this is why @Chime's wiki-to-mux help and news reader makes her a goddess. She has berated me before for thinking inside the Softcode Box before, and she's absolutely right.
My mom is a fucking hassle. She can't open a fucking Chrome window without downloading three viruses and fifty seven malware bugs.
Fuck. I have to pay a visit today again.
God dammit.
Have you considered AdBlock Plus and a machine to smack her knuckles every time she clicks a link? Maybe a firewall rule against any "driver update" website would help, too.
She already has Ad-Block plus but I suspect there's some really well-hidden malware somewhere that disables it.
Also, she downloads torrents so--LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.
@Thenomain said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
@Coin said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
I think you're taking it too personally.
Only a little. I think it was something that needed to be said. Really, let me summarize what I saw Tree saying. (This is not an actual quote)
I don't like doing things this way therefore you can't do it the way you like to do it
Fine, whatever, ignorance, but when someone I respect for thinking things through agrees with that then it's time to clear the air. As I'm not a writer, it all comes out in thought-ramblings that may look more personal than they are. Except for the "The Other" comment; seriously, peeps, this is a hobby to us as well.
Back to a real quote:
@Coin said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
My point is more that I think at least some of the time you put emphasis on things that other people consider irrelevant, and vice versa.
And my point is that they may seem irrelevant to you, but you're not the person on the spot who has to decide, with all they know, what "relevant" means.
For fuck's sake, dude, this tangent started because I said that it's a pain in my ass to hit up a wiki for one line's worth of information. This was even explained using words and examples! It would be super-duper cool if someone made a GUI for Mu*, that allowed a web site to be pulled up concurrent with the text input/output window, but here we are for now.
By "here" I mean "as long as I'm the coder, information will be available in-game, even if it's also available out-of-game."
We're both people with social issues that make communication a fucking hassle, so instead of being put-out by the above, just remember you're my codey-bear.
...
...
Your mom was a fucking hassle.
I actually don't mind the information being in game. I would just like for it to also be available off-site. That way we both win.
See? I can compromise.
My mom is a fucking hassle. She can't open a fucking Chrome window without downloading three viruses and fifty seven malware bugs.
Fuck. I have to pay a visit today again.
God dammit.
@Thenomain said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
And as a coder, I have to shoulder the responsibility of those decisions that I have to make. Let's be fair; you also hate it when I take extra time to make something as easy as possible on the user because it takes more time and that's time I can't use to do something else. What is being asked takes a metric fuck-tonne of time with the tools I'm using.
What you don't see is my process of exploration, the sometimes hours I take for information-gathering. I am, to be frank, a little put out that you don't consider this discussion here to be me focusing on problems that you--you personally, as well as you the reader in general--have not yet asked me to do.
What I mean to say to you and @The-Tree-of-Woe is that if you don't think I'm thinking of the end-user experience, then you are absolutely insane. I do things that make no sense to me all the time.
I ask of people like you (hating that I'm being put in the position of The Other by you two, by the way) is that you explain to me what your position is. And if I can do things I think is the wrong way to do things, if I can suck it up, then give me and other coders the respect that we are trying and that we are shouldering the things that you find are "the wrong way" for no other reason than because you think what we do is magic.
ProTip: It's a lot of fucking work. You're good at working with coders on a compromise and explaining yourself, @Coin, but in your agreeing with Tree I'm going to use that as a platform to swan dive into this. I did ask Tree that if he wanted to go down this path to make this a different thread, but nnnooOOOooo, and so you get this rant here, this rant that I hold in every time this comes up. I hold it in because as a coder I have to shoulder the responsibility of those decisions that I have to make.
I hear this quietly from other coders, too. I know @Chime left Mu* coding because she got tired of people not respecting even the most basic of miracles. I know @faraday has openly said this is why she keeps partially quitting Soapbox. Hell, even @Cobaltasaurus left here because people would rather tell you what you're doing wrong than trying to make it right.
So no, @Coin, I don't code on my own whim. I code on a lot of information and I try to do things right by as many people as possible. I'm sorry that you absolutely can't stand some aspects of the Tiny platform. I'm sorry that there aren't enough hours (or ponies) in the day. I'm sorry that I don't make a big deal out of how hard this shit is so that you and The Others get complacent that when I say something like "this is the wrong way to approach the problem" you think I'm saying that because I'm lazy or ignorant or ignoring the end-user.
Hopefully this will fix some of that. If not, then whatever. This took a half hour of my day, but I thought it was important not for me, but for your edification. I might be wrong, but at least I tried. And maybe @The-Tree-of-Woe can't understand that this is to help bridge understanding, but I know sure as hell that you aren't this dense.
Being dense is my job.
I think you're taking it too personally.
I absolutely do understand the amount of effort and time you put into it, which is why I don't routinely get mad about stuff when we disagree on implementation. It's also why I don't learn to do it myself. I lack the patience.
My point is more that I think at least some of the time you put emphasis on things that other people consider irrelevant, and vice versa.
If I didn't think you put your best foot forward when we work together on projects, I just wouldn't work with you. We're both people with social issues that make communication a fucking hassle, so instead of being put-out by the above, just remember you're my codey-bear. 
[ducks]
@Rook said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):
Sexual assault and sexually-themed violence seems to be a major, recurring issue talked about on WoD game threads here. Yet, are the one genre of game that have the highest levels of Consent, Privacy and Conduct types of rules in place.
The genre is designed from the 10,000-foot-view to be gritty and realistic in a modern-world. Gritty and realistic horror is not the life that most people who have triggers want to live, even as a character.
Like, duh.
This has to do with the way people's hang-ups, their traumas, and their psychological past and current make-up affects what they enjoy and how they can enjoy it.
Some touchy subject matter below (slurs, mention of rape, etc.)
For example, many men think that a woman who likes to be called "cunt, bitch, slut, whore," or who likes to be slapped or tied up, all during a consensual sex act, is going to be okay being called those things or being smacked or shoved or abused outside of the sex act.
This is so wrong. In general, people compartmentalize and enjoy things within a context. There are even--and I used this example because it's extreme and I thus better gets the point across, and I apologize to anyone it may honestly trigger--there are even women who have been raped in the past, who have rape fantasies now. Does this mean they secretly want to get raped again? No. Does it mean they want their roleplay partner to surprise them with a rape scene? No. Does it mean they want to be watching a TV show or movie and be surprised with a rape scene? No. It means that, when they are alone, some part of their brain and their desire has attuned itself to that fantasy. But it is very important to remember that fantasies are not necessarily what we consciously want, even if we are consciously thinking of them. Just because we fantasize about it does not mean we want it to happen or would even enjoy it at all.
So in a game where the setting and theme are gritty and dangerous and violent, we have policies that protect people who do not want to deal with gritty and dangerous and violent without their consent, much the same way people who enjoy abusive slurs or slapping or whatever during sex only enjoy it when it's consensual.
I edit to add a more mundane example: Some people like playing American Football. In american Football, you get tackled. Lots of people enjoy that aggressive physical contact within that context. Does that mean you get to tackle me on the street because I really like playing American Football? No, fucko, there is a time and a place.
@Thenomain said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
Yeah, but I'm often the person who has to make this level of decision, when I'm the coder. I try to impress on people that how information is available is dependent on what the information is. I am always concerned at making sure that the information makes as much sense and is as easy to find as possible. (I've always learned information defined as: Data that is Accessible & Timely.)
I am more than willing to change my own methods of garnering information, but unless staff assures the data is accessible to the average dunce, then who cares where it's kept?
I'm always looking for input, so in that sense there is no finality and therefore no "agreement". Only "improvement". This has never been an either/or debate.
To be fair, @Thenomain, this is a contentious point you and I have always had passively: you as a coder are always looking for a way to do things how it makes sense to you, and while you're usually pretty good at asking me (when we work together) how I prefer it, sometimes you just like how it looks or feels one way from backstage when I absolutely hate the way it looks from the user point of view, and you do what you want. This is not me fist-shaking (I do that at you in private!) it's just pointing out that oftentimes coders make decisions from a coder point of view, when the BULK of the people using the code are not, in fact, coders.
I personally fucking loathe having all the info on the game. Honest to god, I hate typing MU commands to pull up sheets, help files, news files, boards... it all just clutters my god damned MU window, scrolls it, and often--if I am in a scene--rips me right out of it because suddenly the place where the scene was happening (the MU client window) has a bboard, or a help file, or a news file on it. I vastly prefer clicking on my Chrome and checking the wiki, then coming back to the client and reimmersing myself.
@Arkandel said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
@SunnyJ Agreement isn't the point, debate is.
If ever there was a more @Arkandel phrase written in the history of the entire polymultiverse, I don't think anyone has the ability to conceptualize it.
Smiley included.
@tragedyjones said in Good TV:
So I am only 13 years and 2 presidents late but I am finally watching Arrested Development.
I've never watched Arrested Development either. I don't like the camera style.
@Coin And the lack of Ghost. Poor Ghost. "We can only show majestic fire-breathing dragons or a big white dog, so."
@Lisse24 said in Sin City Chronicles:
@Coin Conflict of Interest on a political game can be troubling, as one player attempts to manipulate things to their own advantage. I can also see why what you posted about might be interpreted as potentially squicky by staff, and maybe they'd want to protect you from being pressured into doing something or pressuring someone else? Other than that, I don't see the issue.
If they wanted to protect me they would have come to me and asked. They wanted to flail like idiots and bash someone they didn't like.
@Thenomain said in Sin City Chronicles:
Really, my experience has it that a game with separated out spheres with 20 players has one sphere with 15 players and another sphere with 15 players, because people will play the sphere and therefore game they feel like that day. They also are able to keep in OOC contact with friends who play other spheres, giving them more reason to play that particular game.
I feel very confident about this because we keep needing to discuss Conflict Of Interest policies. If people played only one character on a game, no conflict.
Conflict of Interest always seemed like a silly topic to me, but I come from a gaming culture where people didn't really do that.
I remember on a my first MU, Devilshire, where my character had been sexually (because Jack Moore + Romance was laughable) involved with someone, and then he had to go on a mission with another character played by the same person. And they got to talking about relationships and she gave him some advice about the relationship he had with the other character.
And staff. went. fucking. BATSHIT.
Meanwhile, I was like, 'man, chill out, this is absolutely nothing worth losing your heads about.'
And they kept RAILING until we actually had to remove that bit from the log.
Insane.
