#i don't really have gameplay or lore to justify this opinion i just want it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

emblemxeno · 4 months

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This ask is going to be kind of long, but your platform is really the only platform where I feel comfortable having this conversation. You don’t have to post this if you don’t want to, I won’t feel any sort of ways about it, but I’ve got to get this feeling out of my system. The way the fandom treats Fates compared to the other games in the franchise, makes them completely unbearable. I don’t think I can forgive the fandom for it even if they did somehow start giving Fates its overdue credit. Treating its fans like shit for almost a decade is unacceptable. I don’t know how so many people can justify their behavior in regards to this game. The fans of this game have literally done nothing to the fandom other than love it unapologetically, and we still get condescended to about it. You dare offer your opinion about a take in the series and it’s like, “You’re a Corrin fan, you have no right to talk about anything.” I have never seen a group of fans that have to literally HIDE the fact that they cherish a game in order to appease its larger community, it’s so disgusting. I don’t care if I’m being harsh with this ask because I have witnessed and dealt with this condescension for years. I don’t care to spare any feelings at this point, and I think the fandom certainly doesn’t deserve any of our grace either. Calling out the elitism, cliquish behavior, and hypocrisy is the right thing to do no matter how much some people soften/normalize these issues.

Hope you don't mind me posting this anon.

It's certainly an unfortunate situation. While Fates has its problems--I say this as a diehard fan--I agree in that it's in a singular situation where it's just met with derision initially and only given praise in backhanded manners. Think "Fates sucks but it does have great X and Y" and including an obligatory compliment towards Conquest. Which, don't get me wrong, Conquest is fucking amazing in the gameplay department, but half the time I'm just like... all right, I think you're just pretending to like anything of Fates just because you feel obligated to like one of the most acclaimed gameplay centered entries in the series.

There was just the perfect storm of controversy and unmet expectations that people had towards the game: the woefully inaccurate conversion therapy accusations, the romance options, the sales model of having multiple versions, the story not being liked, Corrin not being liked, the cast being seen as tropey, the fanservice hatred, etc. Its reputation from pre-release to nearly a decade after release is just a swamp of negativity.

And, in risk of sounding defensive and deflective, Awakening did most of this first. Awakening used being gay as a constant punchline especially in DLC (but people are reclaiming that now as something to be praised cuz of course), Awakening had problematic romance options (Nowi, any of the children but especially Nah, Donnel, Ricken, and Lissa are still underage, Aversa is technically your sister and she's written in the M!Robin support to tease that aspect, Tharja in her entirety), Awakening's cast was the de facto tropey cast before Fates, its story was criticized for the same things Fates was (poorly explained lore and world, pacing issues, convenient plot devices, pandering to a previous game, and had its exclusive issue of being inconsistent with Archanea's lore), Robin was criticized for being an all loved player insert with too many powers/importance, it started the oddly designed armor designs for fanservice reasons, and while it didn't have multiple versions, it was the first game with a ton of paid DLC.

Don't get me wrong, I love Awakening to pieces. But that game started pretty much everything Fates gets shit for. Yet it gets retrospective love or at the very least a pass cuz... Fates does it worse/more and because it was gonna be the last game in the series? Wouldn't it be fair then, to give slack to Fates for following in the footsteps of the most well received and successful game in the series by replicating it while trying to improve on what some felt were lacking? But I guess at that point, people think it utterly failed in improving on the story and characters so :/

I think you have a point regarding Fates fans as well. We're pretty much the only FE fans that get unironic negative labels, at least by casual aduiences. Apparetnly we're "coomer, porn brain freaks who don't know what good games are." Though, that's about it in terms of the elitism thing, otherwise I think it's just fans of older games being out off by the direction newer games have gone, and most make no distinction and criticize all of Awakening, Fates, 3H, and Engage. Still, Fates fans are the ones getting the most accepted flak.

To end this off, let's be honest: If Fates is the example most people give of the worst game in the series, FE fans have it pretty fucking good lmao.

#fire emblem fates #fire emblem discourse

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qsmp-yaoi-island · 5 months

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Now that Purgatory (round 1??) is over I wanna do a more concise review on it. Warning for possible neg and long post, I just wanna talk about my personal opinion with it:

The event itself: I wanna say first that the most fun part of this event was the CCs. The event itself was... the least fun part. I understand the point of purgatory was to suffer, but from a content creator point you have to take your audience into account. To spend your limited time running back to your body for 30 minutes - 2 hours to get back to your body was just one part of the frustration and then pile people hunting you for points on top of that, it's bound to get people upset. People have already talked about how the biggest problem was the lack of testing for the event, so it they had to balance the event as it was ongoing. The constant changing rules made every victory feel less about skill and more about exploiting the rules/Who had the most people on that day.

Meta vs. Lore: This has been a problem with the qsmp for a while now, but it's never been more apparent with purgatory. All of the hints that were thrown around vague or not about the cursed team caused so much confusion. Cellbit said a really good point about it early on: "Why would they have an event where one team was bound to win? You're grinding for 10 hours each day just to give up and let one team win." <- paraphrased. So we were faced with a conundrum where we're unsure if we take the hints as something to consider in the competition of the game, or just play what the admins intended. And the balancing having to be done by the players for no enchants, lead to a lot of anger over disagreeing with that rule was in rp or not.

Was it worth it the reward?: First impressions, I want to say no. The coming days will probably change my mind but for now to justify two weeks of ten hours a day of grinding for a cliffhanger is pretty defeating. Multiple cc's have said they want a break after how intense this event has been and now they don't really get a reward for it, and will probably have to do it again. The drama was good, the emotions were high, but you cannot keep a story going on hopelessness forever. And now that they're going back to the island it's undetermined how this is gonna effect the characters in lore and feels like again, everything is put on hold for now.

I loved this event, the admins did so well despite it's flaws. My only hope is from here is that things start to get solved, the Eye being introduced at this point has really muddled with all the current mystery of the Fed and Resistance already had going on, and it's spreading out the focus far too much. We need answers not more villains.

That being said I'm excited to see where they take it from here. It really jumpstarted my love for the server all over again: it had tons of good interactions we wouldn't have gotten otherwise, intense gameplay, and tons of good character driven content. But man, I want off this wild ride.

#qsmp #qsmp liveblog #qsmp thoughts #qsmp analysis #qsmp purgatory #long post

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arcane-ish · 1 year

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So I wanted to write this long rambly post about how even after a year the ideological conflict between Vander and Silco (respectively: what other options are offered up by characters around them) still sticks with me and feels very current to my life.

But the more I tried to formulate my thoughts (for the record: my position is something along the lines of "they are both in the wrong, the right choice is probably closer to Ekko's position") the more I ran into the issue of:

1.) This is a fictional universe, in the end, regardless of what seems plausible to me about "what's the right way to deal with a problem" doesn't really change that they can decide what works in their universe.

(a core question would probably be something like: should you build up infrastructure to make sure your goals are being progressed even if you die, since we already know from statements that there will probably be people taking advantage of his death)

2.) As a rule of thumb, within the larger League universe, making definite choices is kind of antithetical to the entire concept.

As a game League is eternally in flux. You are supposed to play the same conflict over and over again. All characters are supposed to be equally viable. Definitely saying that one character is better (whether physically or morally) than another goes against the entire gameplay and monetization concept of League.

In my opinion, this played a large role in making Arcane as appealing as it is. Every character feels vibrant and fleshed out, almost if they could be a main character => yes because in their game, everybody is equal. There are no side characters. Everybody is designed to be instantly appealing and tantalizing, everybody is designed to invite you to empathize with them and want to step into them.

League story also kind of specializes in putting forth interesting concepts and setting up interesting contrasts and conflicts and never resolving them.

Because most of the time, it's not supposed to be a story about good guys getting together and defeating evil. Most conflicts are intentionally unresolved.

And yes, sometimes stories are progressed (ie Miss Fortune replaces Gangplank as Pirate King, Viego attacks Runeterra and in banished), but the base conflicts (like Solari vs Lunari, Piltover vs Zaun, Avarosans vs. Winter's Claw) are intentionally left open. Because all sides are supposed to have something compelling about them.

The whole "everybody is a hero of their own story" holds especially true here. You are supposed to attach to these characters and few people like to think they are bad or like to play as jerks.

When it comes to morals, I would roughly divide the characters of League into the following main categories to offer players more ways to morally justify the character to themselves:

Traditional white hat usually traditionally good looking well meaning characters. Can be enjoyed if you just want to attach to a nice seeming character and don't want to question things (after all League doesn't force you to engage with its lore). Or if "they mean well" is good enough for you. (ie Garen, Ashe, Lux, Irelia, Zeri)

"Quirky" rogueish well meaning good guys (I would actually put Caitlyn in here as well as characters like Miss Fortune or Akshan) and angsty well meaning good guys (ie Yasuo, Riven)

"Well actually!" characters who seem evil, but are actually secretly good or morally superior or at least potentially morally justified if you want to buy into their lore (ie Swain, Sylas, Lissandra, Viktor)

Evil or jerk characters, but they are basically forces of nature so moral concepts feel like they aren't really applicable (ie Fiddlesticks, Evelynn, Asol, Pyke)

Characters who are jerks or evil, if you really don't mind being playing as a jerk (ie Gangplank, Singed, Thresh, Jhin)

(though I guess one could argue for a category of characters who just don't take morality as seriously but aren't like outright straightlaced kill and torture everybody, ie Draven)

Now, the most interesting category has been the "well, actually!" characters to me. Because to me:

(1) It speaks to people being drawn to evil aesthetics but still kind of want them to be morally right (2) IMO it's Riots way of inviting people to debate and engage with their lore. To foster engagement. Like their way of saying something controversial so people will fight in the youtube comments. (3) But while I'm prone to being cynical, I also think that it's their way to genuinely add complexity to their world and throw up interesting moral questions, even if they usually have no interest in resolving them.

#arcane #league of legends

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ja-khajay · 6 years

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Hi! I was wondering: what do you think about ESO in terms of lore? I've seen some people hating the game because "Cyrodiil was a jungle" and such, and as a Half-Life/Portal fan I don't understand people so violently putting "canon" above playability. I've only played TESV and ESO so I wanted to know from someone with more knowledge and you also seem to be a rational person. Have a nice day!

Hello! I tend to be very big on lore - after all, I got into teslore before getting into the actual games. I however do not really blame devs for some inaccuracies, the lore for tes is absolutely huge and retcons itself constantly, so minor problems I’m fine with.

I see a lot of hate for ESO in tes fan circles online and how it’s an abomination who murders the good established canon for it’s greedy horrible gameplay, and I disagree with it. ESO is a huge game and did wonders in furnishing it’s world with stories and other trivia. My opinion of it is majorly good (as my 3k+ hours on it can probably tell lmao) but I do have some nitpicks.

First of all...the “crown lore”. ESO has this neat little thing or adding a lore description to it’s items. Crown (cash store for those who dont play ESO) store items also have them and some people will count them as canon. However, if I like the fact they’re relating fancy cosmetics to ingame places and history, the descriptions remain an often shoddy polish that’s added above the big edgy wolf mount they’re trying to sell. I don’t like counting these as cold hard canon lore. I don’t like when people brandish them as a strawman of ESO being shite either.

Second of all, there’s some choices ESO made that kind of tamed down the lore? I understand why they woudln’t want to portray weird shit especially in the base game where it was hard to implement, but it really does feel like some cultures were nerfed from the strange early Tamriel histories to Just Normal because of how everyone joined the alliances. Recently Summerset was a big dissapointement, and even if they remain one of my absolutely favorite races, Bosmer feel like they skipped over how chaotic the people are. (even if it’s probably a good thing when i see how mind boggedly racist r/teslore writes any tamriel “tribal” culture)

And as a final......Morrowind and everything that came after ESPECIALLY including the thrice cursed clockwork city DLC. It’s not a secret that almsivi are among my fav characters, and OG Morrowind remains to this day my most treasured tes game. But it really feels like since the vvardenfell expansion came out, they stopped writing out lore to be creative and started cashing out on tesIII nostalgic fanboys instead. Good for buisiness since morrowind elitists were big on hating on ESO when it launched but oh god does it make for bad writing..they mischaracterize almsivi and clockwork city outright felt like a cringy mess. Here’s a great post that sums up what I hate about it pretty much.

But enough for the bad, time for the good and there’s a lot of it so list format we go :

spotlights for every race, including most excellent ones like argonians and redguard who have big lack of content in tes games

they dug back stuff from enemies to books from older games like daggerfall

the items you steal and quest items all have lovely little descriptions that detail life for tamriel inhabitants in such a good nice simple way that would be hellish to implement

I personally found the MQ boring as hell but the sidequests in vanilla have very fun and interesting tidbits

the Orsinium DLC who i owe my soul to

Maw of Lorkhaj bringing great insight into khajiit religion despite being a raid most people come to to farm. Khajiit are the best and every text and dialog option found in that goddamn dungeon is amazing

craglorn, Ra Gada and Celestials, which I don’t believe to have popped up before ESO. I haven’t finished that zone but i have a great fondness for the lore it introduced

same for the Reach

In your ask, you mention canon over playability and it plays a big big role in how ESO handles lore. ESO is not an elder scrolls game. It’s an MMO set in tamriel. How elder scrolls handle lore cannot be achieved in ESO, due to how they have to format the dungeon and quests to fit multiplayer. The MQ is weak because of that, but strong in how it justifies how your character interacts with the world. Yes there is less to explore and talk about because NPCs don’t have much dialog, but the quest dialog we have is written way better than what TES games usually do...Etc, etc etc. I don’t really have a definite opinion on ESO’s lore, it changes at each new expansion, and varies hugely depending on the zones (and my personal biais too. fuck bretons) but I will continue pissing upon people blindly insulting the game’s writing. It’s nice!

#eso #and this is how you def blacklist yourself from your art being featured on zeni's website lmao #winston-ramone #answered

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