Posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@betternow said in Good TV:

It has Lucky the Pizza Dog. That is all I needed it to have.

I've been pleasantly surprised by how much it's taking from the Matt Fraction comic from the reviews (to the point where I now have to watch this thing).

@arkandel
Yeah, all the quotes about it from the cast/crew have that really weird 'we've signed an NDA, stop asking about it', too. It's a bummer, the actor's good in the role. I hope it's nothing too bad, whyever he left/was replaced, and that the new guy isn't too jarring.

I feel like the eps get quite a bit better as they go. I didn't love the pilot but the action climax in episode two worked a lot better for me, and three and four were solid with some good world-building/character moments. I'm skeptical of the pacing given how short the season is, but overall am enjoying it.

@ominous said in The Desired Experience:

@ganymede

Bringing four sandwiches to one potluck because you're short on cash is one thing. Consistently bringing four sandwiches to the monthly potluck gathering over and over is another. If the first, it happens and isn't a problem. If the latter, your invitations are going to start getting lost in the mail.

I hate potlucks due to the social pressure surrounding them and just started taking days off work when my office had them so...win.

This relates to the conversation. Doing something you don't enjoy is a good way to make someone cease engaging altogether.

@derp said in Good TV:

***If you haven't read the books yet***

click to show

@three-eyed-crow said in Good TV:

Rand's actor is the most boring of the white dudes in the cast at this point

How is this a surprise? This is genuinely the same as the books. I even mentioned to @Devrex that that character being flat and boring was pretty much spot on for the books.

It's not a surprise and is indeed probably inevitable if they're sticking more or less to the book's characterization, I just think the way the series is positioning some mystery stuff creates additional problems down the line.

@arkandel
I read the books way back when and thus far I've enjoyed the series, though I have some issues with the pacing (it seems REALLY structured around big action sequences without a lot of room to breathe for the characters). I also have some issues with how they're positioning the central 'mystery' (book reader spoilers to follow).

tags:***=WoT Spoilers***

click to show

I think my ambivalence boils to...I don't see them actually changing who the Dragon Reborn is, but they're doing some stuff to keep it mysterious that feels like it'll ultimatley make it being Rand more of a letdown. Egwene, Mat, and Perrin all got a little bit of extra screen-time or fleshing out apart from what was in the books. In the case of Egwene and Mat this worked for me. Perrin's less so, but I see what they're doing especially in terms of his wolfism so...I'll ride with it for a bit. Some of Rand's backstory and time with his dad got actively cut, I think because he has the VERY obvious portent heavy Luke Skywalker parentage that pretty much anvil's 'this is this guy's heroes' journey.' Which, OK, if you want people to not be sure who the Dragon Reborn is for a while, that's a choice. But they didn't replace it with anything, so he feels like the thinnest and most annoying character at this point. Which feels like it's just going to lead to an inevitable let-down when this dude who they've been kinda avoiding fleshing out to make the other characters seem more plausible as protagonists is revealed to be the Dragon Reborn. As a friend of mine who's also watching put it: I can't imagine anyone who didn't read the books is going to be both surprised and satisfied, anyone who's surprised is probably going to be disappointed, and that's without even getting into how Rand's actor is the most boring of the white dudes in the cast at this point, so dragging out the reveal feels kinda not great to anyone who invests in Egwene or Perrin as real possibilities for the lead of this thing.

All that being said I'm interested to see how they round out the season and am here for it.

I would probably never do a purely pay a pay-for-play game. It's the reason I didn't get into MMOs. I just don't really do subscriptions for my gaming, it's not even a MU thing, and is unlikely to change.

There are Patreons I throw a few dollars to a month and I'd gladly do that for MUs I'm a dedicated player on if it was a voluntary thing/you didn't get perks for doing it. A MU I staffed on ages ago asked us to chip in a little a year to help cover server costs. It was nominal and made sense.

@silverfox
Past a certain point the sequels (particularly anything written by Frank Herbert's son) do not have a great reputation. The original 'Dune' and its direct sequel, 'Dune Messiah', are pretty unimpeachable, though, and can be read on their own.

I read Dune at 15 and it imprinted on me in that particular way such books do if you like them and read them in high school/junior high. So I have no objectivity regarding it. It's a world I got absorbed in and has stayed with me. I'm honestly not sure how someone coming to it later would take to it if it bored them the first time. I've still never gone back to Lord of the Rings (which I gave up on for similar 'this is boring' reasons) even though I love the movies, and from the reviews it's similarly possible to enjoy the new 'Dune' movie just as its own thing.

@shaggy said in Games:

All the new games are Ares.
Am I the only one who just doesn't really care for Ares?

It's the easiest way to set up a game without a ton of coding ability. It's the same reason most Ares games default to FS3, because it's so well-supported and integrated with the portal compared to even the other plugins.

I'd love to see more variety but people have to make it, so!

ETA: Ares is very well-suited to me as a player in most ways and I like it/admire it a lot, but the reason you see so many new games using it in similar ways at the moment isn't some kind of mystery.

@macha said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:

@ominous You say "Mandate of Heaven" and my brain goes to a 20 year old Video Game "Might and Magic 6: The Mandate of Heaven." ... and now I have to find it somewhere, download it, and play it.

GoG has versions of all those games that run quite well! They are one of my mindless blisses, though I'm more for the Heroes series because I relax via base building mechanics.

I'm sure attachment is a large part of it, but the client still has features the browser doesn't for me, like spawns to make dealing with multiple channels easier and RP while doing so, dual-input windows so I can save a pose while doing something else like paging in another one, etc. I use Beip, it's nice. I do most of my posing on the web portal and all my forum interaction there, but it's not my favorite way to engage with everything else. Getting closer to it every day, though. The web portal's already leaps and bounds better to play exclusively on than it was a couple years ago.

ETA: I'm also a Firefox user and the Ares web portal at this point just works better in Chrome, so playing exclusively on the portal right now means either a (slight, but still present) decrease in how well it works or using a browser I typically don't, which comes with a loss of some of other pros of playing in-browser. This is one of those things I expect to change as Ares evolves, though.

@tinuviel
It's particularly common in the type who apps overtly 'antagonistic' PCs, then writes a bunch of checks their ass can't or doesn't want to cash. I'm not sure there's any solving the issue of 'the person who most wants to play this is the last person you'd generally want playing it.'

Building in coded systems where players can engage with goals that aren't necessarily compatible is appealing, though. Anything that takes the human element out of that stuff tends to cool off the OOC problems with it.

Comedy is hard to RP but when everyone clicks with a vibe in a certain way MU comedy is great.

@lotherio
The point I take and I try to do is you can make bowling alley RP non-boring (mundane's probably arguable) by interacting with the setting, maybe posing some silly NPCs like fellow bowlers, or just having a character who has SOME opinions about bowling, whether they like it or hate it.

Or you can be a block of cardboard who barely reacts to stuff and just says hi and sips their drink, which is certainly the worst of bar RP, but the flaw isn't in the bar but in ourselves, Horatio.

@coin said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

If all you're doing is showing up for Events, then I'm unlikely to want to interact with you during events, too.

Yeah, it is so weird to RP with a person in a PrP I've never interacted with outside events. I'll do it but no way it is a better way to meet people than a random bar, it's just jarring.

Going to add to the chorus of people who love Beip, if you're on a Windows machine. The support/developer responsiveness is what sets it apart for me (though I like its functionality better than the other options, too). It makes my heart grow three sizes to see a MU product with this level of support in this day and age.

@sunny said in Character likeness:

public broadcast look sounds like my worst mush nightmare.

I was checking out a MU a friend of mine recommended once that both notified everyone of +finger/+info checks and also showed who'd last +finger'd them in their profile that anyone could see. It was very strange and I can't fathom the motivation behind this code. People be weird, tho.

Preference is 1, 3 is OK if it fits the medium.

@faraday said in Criticism: X-Men Divergence:

So is requiring apps at all; Ares has a simple roster/claim that immediately lets you take a character and play. Some games just prefer to have an application process.

Speaking as coming from a game that's tried both options, an issue with roster/claim is that it leads to a lot of drive-by app claiming of people who never log in their rosters and play. Which is fine if you're a game with a robust roster/geared toward roster play and you can afford to let one of them turn over and idle out, but if you've got a more limited roster it can suck if a viable character is stuck in the idle void a time or two (or three, or four, or five, literally real case of a char that just got a player who actually logged into him and played after like 2 years). It's kinda shocking how much a one-sentence 'application' mitigates this (idk, if I understood MUer psychology I could make a mint, I'm sure). Not that it isn't ideal if someone can make an OOC bit to do job maintenance.