@crayon said:
What I don't much care for is debating something where I think both perspectives are equally valid, but have a personal preference one way or the other, because it doesn't really accomplish anything.
And there, in a nutshell, is your problem. That's more or less our specialty in these parts. If there is one thing this group can do, it's fine-grain shit right to death. (Dead horse beating is how we make sure our parties have a good rhythm goin' at all times.)
The reason debate's been tepid at best here is because most of the criticism has been founded on the basis of this 'Us vs. Them' mentality or a 'MUSH vs. MUD' grounding rather than on actual ideas themselves. And I don't really care to debate that because I honestly don't really care about that contention.
See, this would be a lot easier to believe if you didn't haul out what follows, because it rather proves the disingenuous nature of that remark; it goes from being 'to each their own' to 'this is beneath our lofty notice'. Observe the bolded portion as to why.
Most 'criticisms' tend to turn into a circular debate that routes right back to our site's criteria for community games, particularly the requirement for automation which I think Jeshin and I have both made a pretty lengthy effort at explaining to satisfaction. If you're adamantly against automated arbitration and decision of in-game outcomes (eg. coded combat, automated dice rolls, etc.) or you're completely against permanent death you're probably not our target audience. And that's okay, games and players of games that aren't our target audience are still perfectly valid.
Most of the games discussed here absolutely have permanent death (more, I would say, on average, than MUDs do, apparently, from the discussion here about respawns). Coded combat? Some do, most don't. Automated dice rolls? Almost every game has them; whether they're a requirement or not varies, many games do require them. (Note: the people you're arguing with coded the ones in the broadest use at the moment, so far as I know.) Some have automation for travel, for healing, hell, Firan apparently had code to tell you when you needed to pee or take a bath. If that isn't automation to the point of absurdity, I don't know what is.
This all does not appear to be sinking in, which is rather mind-boggling.
And because that's not sinking in, the fundamental assumption here becomes problematic. The fundamental assumption is your advice will apply to any game that fits the criteria you've laid out. This is more or less a failure to understand the most basic of scientific principles here; you're trying to keep the theory intact by discarding outliers by insisting they can't fit the criteria, but the basis of this discard process is predicated on the basis of: 'because if it fit our criteria, our advice would apply'.
This is a failure of logic.
I bitch endlessly about the tragic lack of self-awareness being a common thing in this particular hobby, but I suppose it's one more thing that we can be said to share across the great divide. So that's a thing? Yay?
It seems his grasp of history is roughly on par with Michelle Bachman's.
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