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Triumph

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Everything posted by Triumph

  1. Really?! Perhaps you have an unfair view of some people if you think "trample minority rights" is a substantial part of what it means to be "socially conservative." Thinking something is wrong doesn't necessarily mean that one hates people who do it or wishes to trample on individual rights.
  2. ZING! Sick burn, bro I know your question specified social views. You said that before. Your definition of liberal on social issues may perfectly encapsulate how self-identified liberals would summarize their views. Well and good. The problem is that I am not a social liberal by literally anyone's definition (be it on abortion, nature of marriage, religion, divorce, or whatever). Except that I identify far more with the definition you provided for socially "liberal" views than with any of the other definitions you offered for social views. Moreover, with my background, I've known a great many people over the years who would identify as "socially conservative" and I've never heard a single one express themselves in terms resembling your definition of "conservative" social views (that is, "it's fair for the government to promote values most people agree on, and to ban or censor things most people agree are bad"). Such a definition does not at all reflect how I would characterize my worldview. Maybe you based your definition on people you've talked to who identify as conservative; whatever your source was, I'm confident you were making a good faith effort to accurately depict people's views. But as one of the few (sole?) "social conservative" folks on these forums, I feel like I might have at least a little standing to discuss how "social conservatives" describe their own views and to critique a definition I find inadequate. In the context of a poll, if you define "social conservative" to mean something that no IRL "social conservatives" believe, no one will answer your poll as "social conservative." I know I didn't - I clicked "Liberal" based on of the definition given; I'd rather choose the definition that fits me better rather that click the empty label society conventionally assigns to me. Maybe the conclusion to draw here, if both socially "liberal" and "conservative" people appreciate the idea of "the government should avoid interfering with personal liberty, and it should uphold minority rights, but some things are just so immoral or socially destructive we can ban those," is that we've misidentified the nature of our disagreements.
  3. There isn't an uproar, Alhoon. You sound more worked up about this than literally anyone else here. The responses you're getting are from people who would happily improve the poll if possible, but who are trying to explain you, the one who sounds worked up (and also to the other user who was so frustrated by the poll as to give up on it entirely!), that the issues you cite are inherent hazards of cross-cultural communication and can't really be "fixed." People want you to know there's no America-centric discrimination going on. Ironically, in light of your comment, you're the one whose responses have come across to us as upset, and we're trying to calm YOU down. That may not be at all what you intended, but it has sort of sounded that way. Maybe we're all just confused about how much any of this bothers each other?
  4. Yeah, I think Slarty is right on this. It's an English-speaking forum, populated overwhelmingly by native English-speakers. It would be difficult if not impossible for us to design a poll that did not reflect that fact. No one here is clairvoyant, either (well, maybe Alorael), which means there's no way to gauge precisely the level of English fluency of Spiderwebbers like you for whom English isn't a first language. There are going to occasionally be language gaps, or even cultural gaps (think about our discussion over in the Geneforge forums about the unwritten norms of forum conversation that Slarty and I had that you didn't share). It's a reality of life more than a defect with the poll, I would say. Actually, Alhoon's definition is a passable summary of what is sometimes called classical liberalism. Now, at least in America, mostly the only people who would talk about "classical liberalism" these days are history / politics nerds, but he's not crazy for associating "liberal" with such views.
  5. I don't know if I'd call them insulting...but yes, the definitions used for some of the questions clearly reflected a certain point of view. E.g., I've never heard a self-identified "conservative" define themselves or their beliefs in the way the poll answer did. I ended clicking "Liberal" based on the definition given, despite the fact that relatively little of my views align with what is typically called "liberal" today. However, I think that may speak more to the inadequacies of arbitrary political labels than to any ill intent by the poll's author. I am curious what aspects of the poll you found "US-centric." I'm confident Slarty didn't intend any such thing, so depending on the nature of the issue, there might be room for constructive feedback. The only thing I recall is the question about Uber and Lyft, which are American businesses, but I wouldn't consider that one question to give the entire poll a "US-centric" taint.
  6. Not quite sure what your question is...? In every game except G1, raising a skill increases the skill point cost for raising the skill again.
  7. The encounter with Beka has no impact your rating of pro/anti servile views. And no, you'll never see her again no matter what.
  8. Nicely done, Slarty! I have no doubt all of us could pick out a few places where we would tweak the phrasing of the questions / answers / both (e.g. the political one had me befuddled because it defined "liberal" and "conservative" in ways I've never seen before, so do I go with the definition that better represents me or the word more commonly associated with my views? LOL). Nonetheless the poll overall was put together well. I look forward to seeing the results. The poll seemed shorter than I remember the one five years ago being. Is that just my imagination? Also, what, five years ago??? Wow. Time is both too fast and too slow.
  9. Responses: That was...mostly easy, though as you'll see from my responses a couple stumped me. I didn't need more than a moment or two to recognize most of them.
  10. In G3, Greta is downright annoying. "Oh, I'm appalled by the horrible things the rebels are doing! But I support them anyway BECAUSE!" On the other hand, while Alwan is no Alcander (from Avadon 2, and one of Jeff's most entertaining NPC party members ever), he is more intellectually consistent than derpy Greta, and he actually has one or two funny moments in his dialogue. Still probably not worth the hassles of keeping him around to the very end.
  11. In G1, absorb and replace as you are able to raise your chosen type of shaping skill. In all the other games, it generally better to keep them alive, EXCEPT when you're making a major upgrade in type (e.g. absorbing your early-game fyoras to make vlish in G3). Not once you get some good types of creations. The early game chaff (think thahds, fyoras, artilas) is stuff you'll need to replace. Once you get to higher types of creation, say an army of Wingbolts, you'll want to keep them alive so they gain levels the rest of the game. Yes, leveling up shaping skill does become pointless eventually. Again, G1 is different; in G1 you actually do want to keep raising your chosen type of shaping skill and making new creations with the upgraded skill. But in the later games, you want to get your shaping skill as high as you can early on, find the ability to make a fairly strong species of creation (or two), and make a bunch of creations that can stick with you the rest of the game. Once you've shaped up your long-term army, you don't really need to invest further in shaping skills.
  12. What level difficulty do you play on? Did you ever consider lowering it? You went wrong somewhere in G3 if you couldn't make the shaper-&-legion-of-vlish strategy work. It might have been your build, or your tactics, but that is a well-attested model for cleaning everyone's clock in G3. The best strategies for shaping vary by game, because Jeff tweaks gameplay mechanics in sometimes-trivial, sometimes-significant ways every time he makes a new game. G3, for example, is especially suited to making a posse of vlish on the second island and then leading them through the rest of the game, whereas G1 was a lot more supportive of replacing your creations on a regular basis. It would be a novel to answer your questions for every game. I would recommend checking out (1) the strategy (2) threads (3) pinned at the top (4) of the forum (5). There's one for each game, and the first post in each thread contains information, or links to information, that people have collected on each game, including how the mechanics work as best the forum community understands them. One last thing: how much use of leadership and mechanics do you make? Jeff was very, very good in the Geneforge series about providing alternative paths to your goals. There's pretty much always a brute-strength, fight-your-way-through path and a path that relies on leadership, mechanics, and stealth. Sometimes both paths appear in the same zone, and sometimes you'll need to traverse an entirely different set of zones to reach to same goal from a different direction. I've personally done a "pacifist" run in G3, where I never once made creations, struck a blow with a weapon, or hit enemies with spells. If you can't beat some fights, there are certain areas you'll never be able to complete, but with sneaking, diplomacy, and tinkering around you'll still find a way to finish the game.
  13. Brainstormed topics while I went walking: Height? Number of different states / countries lived in? Number of siblings? Favorite Pokemon? Favorite superhero film of the past 20 years? Favorite JRPGs? Favorite non-SW non-J RPGs? How many have ever played an MMORPG, & how many still play one? Preferred form of exercise? Favorite current SW forum moderator? Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, or Archer? Have you ever taken music lessons, if so, in what and do you still play the instrument? Do you currently own a pet, if so what kind of animal? How many currently keep a vegetable garden? How many have gone hunting in the past year? Fictional character you would nominate to be a SW forum moderator? Have you ever watched anime (and do you currently)? Have you ever watched Game of Throne (and do you currently)? Have you ever watched Twitch streamers (and do you currently)? How many movies do you see in theater in an average year? Attend religious services on a weekly / monthly / yearly basis? How many times have you been hospitalized (not counting when you were born)? Have you ever had a broken bone? Own a Nintendo Switch (or intend to acquire one)? Own a PS4? Own...whatever the name of the current version of Xbox is?
  14. There actually is...hmm, no spoilers, a zone that really helps you sympathize with the rebels in G3. The problem is that it's a zone in the endgame, after you're already locked into one side or the other, so it has no chance of persuading you to be come a rebel (because either you already are or it's too late to change your mind). At least it can make you feel better about your choice to be a rebel, I guess?
  15. Unknown. Maybe dead? Or perhaps still over on the eastern side of the continent, somewhere in rebel-held territory?
  16. I think G3 was a transition point in Jeff's game-writing endeavors. It was the most linear of any of his games up to that point (which IIRC, consisted of E/A 1-3, BoE/A, Nethergate, and G1-2?). It was also the first time he ever wrote NPC party members (yes, there are NPCs that can join the party in previous games, but they never receive any meaningful development in the way Greta and Alwan did). It was, in some respects, a darker and grimmer world than his previous offerings, what with making sides of the war so unappealing and all. I think Jeff went on to do better in subsequent games a lot of the things he first tried to do in G3. Because of all that, G3 stands in an odd place where some people don't care for it because it departed from Jeff's older design ethos (and they preferred that style of game), while those who favored the kind of thing Jeff was trying to do have seen him do it much more effectively in later games (e.g. G4), so they too don't particularly appreciate G3. At least not as whole; it has bits that people are fond of - e.g. IIRC, Khyryk is one of most liked characters in the entire series.
  17. Guilty as charged. I think G1 is among Jeff's finest works, and the best game of the Geneforge series. I was just clarifying that I don't hold that view merely because of fond nostalgia from having played it first.
  18. Yes, but there are characters you can talk to about drakons! It's not fair to Jeff to say "I think it's unprofessional that NPC so-and-so didn't answer all my burning questions, even though several other NPCs in the game answer the question!" I think that's a silly criticism, frankly. Additionally, I know (99% sure) G2 has "Oh, what's this strange new thing?!" dialogues for gazers, drakons, and rots, at a minimum. You may not have seen them all in a timely fashion, depending on the path through the game you took (a hazard of the game's freedom of exploration), but they are there. I don't believe this true, at least not at face value; G2 has plenty of explanatory, world-building dialogue. However, there might also be a grain of truth to what you're saying. What you might be picking up on is that G2 is a lot less linear than the later games, and doesn't force you to visit key zones and talk to key NPCs in the way that the later games do. You can play G2 without ever talking to Zakary, Barzahl, Pinner, Rhakkus, or whoever (you can even skip Slarty's beloved Aodare! ) . This is very different from how there's literally no way you can avoid characters like Litalia, Rahul, Khyryk, and Akhari Blaze and still finish G3. Some of us love having the game give us all that freedom. Like with more meaningful liberties, though, the freedom of non-linearity in a game imposes responsibilities on the player - including the responsibility to pay attention and explore and not expect the game to just shove knowledge into one's face. This goes Back to the difference in emphasis that I mentioned before. The early games are all about exploration and discovery. It would defeat the point of the game to just hand you all the info. The later games are about experiencing, seeing the effects of, and participating in the big war. The later games throw exposition at you because there's a war story that needs to move along and the game has to make sure you under the scenario that is playing out. The later GF games are more a reflection of Jeff's evolving design sensibilities (which can actually be seen throughout his entire corpus) than a matter of having more refined or "professional" writing. Also, there's no "first love" toward the early Geneforge games for me. The first time I played the G1 demo I thought it was weird and boring. The first Geneforge game I ever played the full game of was G3 (in fact, G3 is the first SW game ever that I played all the way through).
  19. 1. Alhoon, you would have completely overlooked Zakary's Guardian contingent if I hadn't essentially given you the guided tour. In light of that, I'm a little skeptical when you say "The game didn't explain such-and-such!" It's entirely possible that the game DID explain it and you just never found or noticed it. 2. Maybe some things DEVELOPED OVER TIME and therefore DIDN'T EXIST in the earlier games. E.g. in G2 half the drakons you meet are very old, upgraded drayks, or were at least heavily influenced by them. It's no surprise that the "drakon culture" they possessed would be quite different from the "drakon culture" of later games, where every drakon in existence originated from Ghaldring and he had a very different background and formative experiences than Rhakkus, et al. There are also relatively few drakons in G2 and they've only been drakons and/or existed a few years, whereas by G4-5, there are enough drakons to actually have a distinct culture, they've been around long enough to develop one. 3. You haven't finished G3 either, have you? 4. Since Nim already pointed out there's about rots in G2, I'll just offer some info on Gazers from the game: So, pretty clearly, Barzahl started from the vlish template and created the gazer design, and then the drakons took that and ran with it. I'm not sure if you were expecting a more extensive treatise, "On the Origin of Gazers" or something (?), but I feel like the game does offer multiple points of dialogue addressing what gazers are and where they came from. If you didn't see that dialogue, that's YOUR fault, not the game's.
  20. Lots of things are only explained in depth in one game of the series, even if they are referenced briefly in other games. G1, as the first game in the series, has by far the most world-building. Actually, I'd say Jeff did less and less world-building as the series went on. The first game and (to a lesser degree) G2 are more focused on discovery and on the background of the world than on any ongoing plot event. In contrast, the latter three games focus more on depicting the Shaper-Rebel war than telling history and background. Also, G5 can be "self-contained" without including all the world-building info Jeff ever dispensed. You were never "required" to have background knowledge from earlier games in order to enjoy it. But that doesn't mean G5 was the definitive source of all knowledge or that knowing the older games couldn't increase your appreciation for G5..
  21. Ghaldring doesn't appear in G3. However, multiple characters present a matching story that clarifies the meaning of the G2 ending's sealed door. Taken together, we get a pretty unambiguous picture of Ghaldring being hidden away behind the sealed door sometime prior to the arrival of the G2 PC, then being overlooked in the canonical ending of G2 where the Shapers purge the mountains, and emerging sometime afterward to join up with the surviving serviles and drayks.
  22. So the Barrier of Winds seems like a bad idea to you, but using more spawners sounds like a good idea? Hmm. If you've seen the Barrier of Winds and are underwhelmed, well, that's it as far as the Awakened are concerned. That's their secret plan to defend themselves; there are no further big reveals for them.
  23. People have TALKED about making a tabletop RPG of Exile / Avernum for years. And usually when they do, they ask if there's any extant work or other useful info from previous attempts. I don't recall ever seeing anything of the sort, however. If anyone in past actually did get further than just talk, then I don't think it's ever shown up here on the forums in any substantial way.
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