Why does the Ethical Hedonism Symbol need to be on all the assets?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Poor game design, Mar 15, 2017.

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  1. Womby

    Womby Avatar

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    In the future I would like the option to convert rewards with the EH symbol into patterns without it. That doesn't seem like much of an imposition, since the work to create those items has not yet commenced. In the meantime I'm happy to just sell the blemished items that I already have.
     
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  2. Canterbury

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    "Blemished" is a wee bit dramatic.
     
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  3. mercster

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    Coming from the king of the dramatic... :rolleyes:
     
  4. Spoon

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    Sorry about the late reply... See that the discussion has moved on.


    Proving my old couple comment.
    Even though it may feel like it, it would be impossible for you to disagree with everything I said if devoid of the fact that it was I who said them. ;)

    I wasn't trying to argue that you believe the same thing Drocis does. I was trying to argue that you are letting your meta knowledge outside of Drocis's own knowledge affect how you RP Drocis .
    Drocis would only have in world knowledge and ethical hedonism isn't. (Unless we go full inception and you claim that you are you and know about SotA from before going into that avatar).

    Now in your scenario you have outlined that stuff that Drocis acquire are due to some inheritance. So then these things are dusty old things that Drocis finds as he searches the properties he has been bestowed here.

    This was my wording:
    "Just like you don't become more of a murderer from playing FPS games."
    Note that your response differs in the key driver and the result from what I wrote.

    You are here conflating two very different things.
    1 whether action X affects our behavior (lets call this Correlation)
    2 whether action X makes us more likely to do Y (lets call this Causality)

    It's like the notion that RPGs would make you commit suicide because someone did commit suicide in relation to getting a D&D curse
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Pulling

    Yes of course we are affected by everything which is a part of our lives. As such what kind of pop culture you consume will influence how you think and behave (especially when it comes to superficial things like how we dress and our hairstyle etc). Which means that Correlation will always be present and thus any statement on whether action A is part of a trend of B then must be evaluated as a relative affect versus the base population.

    Does FPS playing effect your behavior? Definately, without a doubt, especially things like sleeping cycle and D-vitamin levels.
    Does it make you more likely to become murderer if you play FPS? Nope. Statistically it makes you less likely, even much less likely depending on country. While things like regular drinking of alcohol outside your home makes it more likely.
    Thus it is not the activity itself but the context.

    So for instance, watching a lot of Murder She Wrote or CSI doesn't make you more likely to become a murderer, but it will potentially affect how you commit a murder which is a different thing.

    Which brings us back to what I said:
    "Just like you don't become more of a murderer from playing FPS games."
    Playing FPS games does not have a Causality on the likelyhood of you becoming a murderer.

    Couple of things here from a historical perspective.
    -Yule trees are not ancient. (mostly 19th cen tracing to 15th cen) The custom is a rather recent one. There were earlier tree-ish traditions but those have little or insignificant relation to a yule tree. However it is correct that the Yule traditions predates christianity. But with all of the intermingling of traditions/cultures/religions that is of little significance to the current Yule traditions.
    -in large parts of the world the term Christmas tree is devoid of religious connotations including the Mass part. Over here in sweden for instance it is a Julgran, literally a Yule-Fir, same thing in Denmark juletræ literally Yuletree.

    Here in our game why it is a Yule tree was because it was requested as such by the community during a hangout in response to such a request from Richard and Tracy at the time. Most likely it was specifically asked for Yule due to Ultima Online.
    RG:
    Absolutely. In fact I hope it's more than just a minor role. You know even if you go all the way up to the Lords of the Manor, i realize there's only a dozen of those people, but we have a lot of work to do. And it's very obvious the quality of the core audience we have in this community. I mean, I'm shocked and stunned about the quality. One of the reasons I'm so stunned is because I know how hard good storytelling is to do, I know how hard you know, reality crafting is to do, and when I look for example behind me, I have the box right behind me from the Hearth of Britannia folks, right here, that they sent to me and the team with some of the stuff from the amazing event they put on.
    And with all the hand burned into runic that's all over the box, exterior and interior, and the fact they were so clever to write a letter to the team in English and write a note to me in runic knowing the team would have no idea how to read it and would therefore have to come to my desk in order to be deciphered. It's brilliant. And so I have complete faith as you all, as we're willing to expose more of the backstory to you, that the developer level contributors will be able to help us out a lot.
    Even in the little areas. One of the ways Tracy and I really do work alike, which I think was, I know for me a joy and I think Tracy had a similar epiphany, was we kind of work on all parts simultaneously and we'll find a little inspiration over here and nail it and hold it for the future. And something will, some threads we'll get to tie together and run with it and fill in a big gap, and we'll sometimes go back to that one little piece that we nailed up to look for a way to expand it.
    And I'll tip another place. On the north eastern area, the kind of a peninsula that juts up to the north on the eastern side. There's a little village with an island across from it. When Tracy, one of his first things he did was to pup up a straw proposal. Here's some names to put on to places and names and regions and rivers just to ask me how I thought of it just so we could have the discussion of what word sounds do we like and what's the logic we didn't.
    One of them was Port Graff. And as soon as I saw Port Graff and I don't remember Tracy if you told me what your inspiration was for that word but as soon as I heard it, when I was first living in an apartment up in New York when I would go up to visit my girlfriend, prior to being my fiance, prior to being my wife, right next door to our apartment was a jewelry store Graff. And Mr. Graff who ran that jewelry story was a good of my now wife's and he's a particularly fine jeweler there in New York city. So when I saw Port Graff, I was going to Tracy, like, Tracy, where did Port Graff come from?
    I told him this story about how we had this friend who talked about building our wedding rings and those kinds of stuff you know from Graff. And so just from that beginning which had no basis on any other story, I had this affinity for the word Graff and so I'm looking at the map that you all can't see yet, and near Port Graff we decided to build him this really opulent place on that island off the shore. We've added some of the best gems mine in all of this continent are nearby in the mountains to the north east of that.
    And we just built this story just around this kind of personal fragment that happened to show up. And so those personal fragments, you all have those same personal fragments. And we want to learn about, if you think there's any way we're not going to put the Hearth of Britannia in this game, of course we are. And not just a little bit. This has got to play an incredibly deep role within this game. And so we will do that. We want to do that. This is your world. This is your game.
    We want to know your stories to make sure we can incorporate with just the same level of excitement as whatever has inspired us to put in the pieces have put in initially.

    TH:
    Yeah actually one of the things that we were talking about just prior to coming on air here today was the question is to whether we wanted to include as part of the toolset within the game the ability to create story, the ability to create adventures and quests that you could structure for other people to come in and play through in the same way that you come through and play through the stories that Richard and I are developing.
    And I kind of like that idea. A lot of the intrinsic and basic foundational concepts of this game evolve around the idea that yeah you can craft stuff, you can build a shop, you can sell your goods, you can create things within the game and offer them into the game as a creation of your own. And certainly I would like to be able to see us get to a point where not only are Richard and I generating story content here in terms of structure in the overall story that's taking place in the world but also for you as a creator to structure quests of your own and create story of your own in game that other people who come along can discover and enjoy and participate in.

    However that was not uncontroversial, and has caused some stir every now and then.

    No they are not. But since what we see as offensive is subjective there will be deviating opinions about that.
     
  5. Drocis the Devious

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    Drocis knows that the Ethos sign represents the complete opposite of Dominion.

    [​IMG]

    So it's actually more like I'm using the knowledge of Drocis to provide feedback in the real world to the development team. Which is I think how it should be. Players play the game and provide feedback as to how development decisions impact their characters. The developers weigh that feedback and decide how to make the game better.
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2017
  6. mercster

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    Thanks for letting us know you disagree on a completely subjective point. (?)
     
  7. Brent S

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    I really don't care one way or the other about the symbol, but here is an example of an item that is not available without it.

    It happens to be an item that a lot of people want:

    [​IMG]
     
  8. mercster

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    In the end, grin and bear it. It's a video game. Are they handling things like this perfectly? No. Noone's perfect.
     
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  9. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    I do hope they make a version of this available, preferably dyable.
     
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  10. Spoon

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    Then revisit and rewrite your OP since that was not how you formulated your request nor how you advocated for it in subsequent posts.

    We can't know what your intention was when you formulated something completely different. We can only react to what you actually formulated and wrote down which is what we read, not what you were thinking while doing so. Or more so post factum.


    But alas it seems that our discussion has become slightly moot:

    o_O
    Context matters, even more so when quoting someone. I didn't just "disagree" I outlined the reason for things being the way they are which should have given you a different perspective on the issue.

    So lets go through this:

    I disagree that it would be offensive for the devs to honor a request from players about including a Yule tree and then more yule stuff. This harkens back to the Spiritual Successor bit as such terms and motifs was used to give the renaissance fair / pseudo-olde english in the old games. See the Norgard dialect for reference.

    What you outlined was something else in that you made the claim that you feel they have an agenda in specifically excluding/censoring certain traditions/religions but not others. Something which I agree would be subjectively offensive to followers of such traditions/religions, if true.

    Now where you and I agree is that they should never have included the menorah under that name. 7-arm candelabra, or 9-arm candelabra (can't remember which one it is) would have been a much smarter choice.
     
  11. Drocis the Devious

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    Too many semantics, Spoon. I think the OP is clear enough as it is.

    I did see Darkstarr's reply to my telethon question, and I hope for the sake of the game they reconsider. It's a very limiting "defining characteristic" for what would otherwise be some great assets. Will it impact my contributions of $5 per telethon, I think that's unlikely. But it will make me continue to hold my nose when I do it, and so I think that's valuable feedback which is why I made the OP.
     
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  12. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    And Scene.
     
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  13. Gideon Thrax

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    OMG - are you kidding me? I just realized that your feedback for telethon rewards is predicated on your character's in game RP idea of the Ethos symbol on real world telethon rewards. Dude, that's really freaking me out. I think if you had put a RP disclaimer on your OP this would have been a different conversation altogether... for everyone.
     
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  14. Onyx

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    I would certainly hope that they DO NOT make a run of the mill Cavalier's Hat. It is one of the few rewards that is unique and quite rare. If they do that how about a plain jane Hearth of Britannia. There are some items that were only available to early backers of this project that should remain rare.
     
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  15. Drocis the Devious

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    Ha!

    I'm amazed that people jumped to the conclusion that I was somehow talking about the symbol impacting me in real life. I thought I made that clear throughout the thread that this wasn't the case. After reading the OP again, I can see where more of an RP focus would've helped some people, but regardless the point is the same either way really. As I said in the OP my "personal preference" is to have no symbol at all. By putting the symbol on the item there's no real choice remaining if you like the item but can't/won't use it because it has the symbol on it.
     
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  16. Gideon Thrax

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    This is a new twist for me. I can see where you're coming from but it's confusing as all getout. You're in character using your character's knowledge of the game's real world development and providing real world feedback through your real self, based on the opinion of your in game persona.

    Ha! Dude - that's awesome.
     
  17. Drocis the Devious

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    I think it's more like this...

    In real life I have knowledge of the game development AND my in character persona. I'm omnipotent in that regard. My in game persona doesn't know where all these items come from, he just doesn't use them if they have the Ethos symbol on them because he doesn't agree with that philosophy, in fact he's very much in opposition to it.

    However, the real life me understands exactly where those items come from and on behalf of my in-game persona I'm providing that feedback. :)
     
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  18. Stundorn

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    I got that from the first read, but so many not roleplaying people can understand that, like Bowens cannibal health potion arguments etc...
    I think i sometimes have the same Problem arguing, and i have Double trouble bco language.
     
  19. Spoon

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    Semantics matter and no.
    :p

    How is this for semantics... if the reasoning would have been:
    "why are we only getting rewards with the Ethos symbol? What about our characters on a different path? Could you please consider rewards with the Oppression symbol as well"
    Then I'd immediately jump on board.
    ;)
    So they matter indeed.
     
  20. Drocis the Devious

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    I understand. However I specifically did not ask for items with the Dominion symbol because it would avoid the neutrality I was seeking.

    I do agree that in retrospect (and many pages of multiple people jumping to the wrong conclusion) I could've praised it differently. But if anyone were to read the OP again, also in retrospect, I think it's clear that some assumptions were made that should not have been made. Still, I'm a firm believer that whenever there is a communication problem it's the transmitter that should be checked first before one blames the receiver, so I'll be happy to take the blame if it makes anyone feel better.
     
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