That. What Zozma said. Thank you for your articulate and patient answer.
Erra, I apologize for the personal attack, for judging your responses from your starting tactics, and for venting my cumulative impatience with you and several other people all at you. I should not have made that post. I should maybe have made this one instead.
You ask why I didn't answer your specific points as though that were the only possible subject of discussion. At least you aren't tone-policing me for rudely calling out rudeness, for which thanks.
Your viewpoint is your own; you have a perfect right to it; the conversation would probably be interesting if I were willing to accept and engage with your charming approach to discussion. I'm not. (Some others here seem to be. More power to them.)
You have:
- replied to disagreement with aggression and insult
- taken your premises and analysis as absolutes
- caged the discussion to your conclusions and your statements of opinion-as-fact
- twisted responses and argued with your own version instead.
All of these points are classic tactics of dishonest argument. I'm in a glass house on the first point, granted. That doesn't make it any less true in your case.
There's been a steady stream of this kind of crap from several people here in the last month. I'm tired of it. I'm annoyed enough for other reasons that I suck at ignoring it. Pity me. Whatever. None of that has to mean anything to you; I expect it doesn't.
Which said:
- If you follow what I'm saying, and you really want a conversation, please knock it off.
- If you can't or don't want to follow, I expect I could quote specifics all day long and you would just shift the grounds and your argument to avoid acknowledging your behavior. If I'm doing you a disservice here I owe you an apology, but I doubt it. History suggests not.
- If you just don't give a damn, or this is how you amuse yourself, then you just carry right on. As though you needed my permission.
This is also didactic, btw. You asked. This is the best I can do. My bad.
A huge difference between my what you call 'personal attacks' is that they aren't actually attacks of character.
They're indications of flawed thinking models. Now if you view such pointed criticism as a character flaw than that is a personal worldview requiring a more sophisticated thinking model. Larger perspective, pulled out scope, self-auditing, empathetic presence.
You obviously have the capability to at times utilize those based on this post. So let's extend them over to my initial concerns (I will break myself down for you):
The reason I use such language is that as someone who uses this dynamic thought approach I encountered an individual on this board whom asserted a specific desire for a change in the game based on what they perceived as a flaw. A flaw alone.
At no point was this information considered as a potential design feature nor awareness shown that there were potential benefits to the game play flow from the presence of this design.
Even more significantly was the demand that this feature be changed based on a requirement that his specific character have access to specific spells at a specific time in the game. This assertion was made with absolutely no concession to other aspects of tactical balance in the game.
Calling this a linear, rigid thought process is not inherently insulting. It is factual. It is a line of thinking that travels one thread directly and reaches a predetermined conclusion. It is not a thought process with branching, multi threading, and an analysis based outcome.
So having identified that this individual has only one line of thinking how else should my viewpoint stand? Has anyone with only one frame of reference ever had the full point of view? While my viewpoint may not be completely correct in terms of degrees of randomness necessary within an emergent narrative (This is a lever which needs to be carefully tweaked to ensure neither side is too dominant) it's impossible for my point of view to be less complete than his. Why would I take a stance of conciliation with someone who has one conclusion in mind? Now if he had instead engaged me in a more peaceful discussion or his initial post was one of an arm extended for conversation "I'm not sure of the reasoning behind this" or "What is this providing to the game" than my response would have been matched to his initial tone. If someone wants to take a hardline tactic it seems foolish to expect soft power in return; the sign of an individual not expecting to be challenged on their unrefined notions.
There's nothing dishonest about my argument style. I will concede to two things: It is very predatory of rigid, linear thinkers. That's the point. It exposes the house of cards on which their one note ideas stand. Hence it results in anger and true personal insults from the other side. I called no one stupid, dumb, or anything that is meant to demean them. My statements were restricted to the information displayed in their ideas alone.
The other is that I never tried to break down the actual nature of the motivations behind his posting like you have done. You have tried to engage me as a poster whereas I tried to engage his idea and the way he was presenting it alone. Had I tried to engage him as a poster lets be quite clear: the response would have been far more brutal.
Your last statement is a perfect way for us to examine the other side of a situation. Perhaps you've seen many people utilizing these tactics because this board is filled with very rigid, linear thinkers that want the game to be built in one way? I specifically signed up because I read no less than 25 threads with comments similar to this with...a holistically 'give me everything on a silver platter' approach to game design and not nearly enough people disabusing them of their poorly thought out concepts.
Also speaking to your previous post: The fact that neither of you can even competently argue and discuss the idea of an emergent narrative and how it informs this games design does in fact lead me to conclude that you lack the necessary background to competently discuss these game design facets. I've yet to hear a cited experienced of where you've enjoyed emergent narrative that was fueled by your predetermined spell lists.
