Arctangent

ah yes, assholery based around mocking a tic someone has, what a great way to start This is really just forcing your own perspective on anyone else, you realize? I mean, I get where you're coming from, but I don't come from there. You may think it's safe to assume such huge distinction and not read between the lines, and maybe for you, there's really never been an issue that would require changing that. But for me, I really have no way of telling whether someone's just being lazy with their typing or if it means exactly what it looks like it means, or what it means when you put it in the context of everything around it. There's just so much meaning that a sentence structure can hold and people do make use of it. This really seems more like a call for the reddit-style of branching off of individual replies instead of just having one big ol' chronological view, since making a new thread completely breaks the flow and removes the context of a conversation. Maybe the concept of "linked threads" would work better with the current system in place, where like you drag one reply out of a thread to act as a sort of pre-OP post to a new thread and there's like, various things connecting the two otherwise separate threads, but I dunno.

I mean, yes? The thread has a title? I'm not sure what part you're stuck on, either the fact that replies can deviate from being exactly what the title says or that posts can have multiple aspects to them. When stuff like is said, it has little to directly do with the title of "How much do you care about Doom's plot?," but the post still has a link to that with: but, of course, it's still a different aspect to the post than that. The latter is putting down an opinion relating to the topic. The former is an incorrect fact that doesn't get automatically covered by "it's just an opinion" ( although it'd still be a bad and incorrect opinion anyway ) intrinsic to the thread title. I feel like this is something that'd come naturally to someone who's been on forums for at least 11 years. It's a really common thing, after all; pretty sure like a majority of both my and your replies that are more than a sentence or two long have stuff like this.

Gov, I know you insist on the idea of people being mind-readers that instantly know every thing other people are saying even when they're floundering around with their words, but you really need to realize that that's completely unrealistic and you only add fuel to the fire by insinuating anyone who doesn't know the other person better than they know themselves are assholes. And it's not even good fuel. It's like, hypercoal with a thousand times the pollution rate of regular coal.

If that's what I've been doing, then she could do a lot better at not presenting her opinions as absolute fact.

I mean, it's the same thing as people saying that they don't care about what a game looks like, while at the same time clearly never tried playing a game where everything visual was composed entirely of the colors #FF0000, #FE0000, and #FC0000. Or, to keep the water comparison, "I don't care about water despite being what I drink every single day."

I feel like you're being too old-minded and refusing to think about story beyond how books and words tell it. Thing is, all this stuff is important to storytelling even for movies and all visual media, really, not to mention it's even more important in games because game stories are at their strongest when it's the players creating the specifics of the story. They're the ones controlling the protagonists' agency, after all - everything will slam to a stop should the player put down their controller. You don't need to shove the audience's face into everything to make sure they get it. Visual and sound design is so important for selling what's going on in a game, and you're doing nothing but spitting in developers' faces by saying what they do to create a cohesive experience doesn't matter. Audiosurf is pretty clearly a ride through some psychedelic tunnel, perhaps one somehow composed of sound waves given that the levels are generated from music. You can tell this by the fact that the player character looks just like an F-Zero racing machine, as well as the fact that the part your character moves around on is designed like a multi-lane, one-way road. Given how game-y the game is, with no real antagonistic force, it's likely some sort of vehicular sport - heck, since the sequel introduces less abstract track designs, it may just be some future sport based around reaction time and wit. Even if it's not particularly true to our world, what's going on in Audiosurf is realized well enough to make it feel like something like F-Zero - something done for entertainment that couldn't be done in our current world, but very much feels like it could be with advancements in technology. Also, Tetris and its sequels do actually have traditional plots - NES and GameBoy involve launching a rocket, the Grand Master involves the development of a fetus, the Grand Master 2 involves factory work, and the Grand Master 3 involves travelling through the solar system. I actually pointed out how absurd and out of nowhere the original games' endings were, but looking at the rest I realized something: in all except TGM3, the storyline involves putting various pieces together to form a completely whole - exactly how you clear tetriminos. You have to construct a rocket before it can launch, after all, and TGM1 and 2 both directly involve something being created. It turns the game itself into a metaphor. Makes me wonder why they went with a trip through space for TGM3, honestly. I mean, it works as a continuation of the first game, but it also doesn't really have anything to do with the gameplay, outside of maybe implying that the space shuttle is being repaired while it travels. Meaning that if you fail, you end up killing all the astronauts. But unless I'm missing something, there's really nothing suggesting that at all - it really does just seem like they looked at the last few games, saw that the backdrops were a sequence of related objects, and went "hey, let's use our solar system!" I don't really think you understand how you can't just say you did something, especially when it comes to stuff that's purely interpreted by other people. I mean, if that's how it worked, I could just say that I proved that cheese falls from the sky everyday at 7:00 AM on the dot, and nobody would be able to deny it since, y'know, I proved that it happens. But anyone here can plainly tell you that that's not how it works.

Egh, that just brings to mind that FFVI port.

Not really, but that's because you're trying to damn the game as a vapid light show with nothing interesting going on for it. Especially considering it's a game based around dodging bullets, so making the game look like pixel vomit makes it look like the designers had very little idea on what they're doing. It really doesn't seem like you like that game all that much if you're willing to discredit it so heavily just to try to make a point. Still, there's still enough actually visible to gleam some stuff about the game's story. The prominent bars and focus on score numbers instantly show that it's something to be taken at arm's length, something just to give the player enough context for the game to be more than meaningless lights and noises. Still, even in the huge amount of wasted screen space, it's clear that it's sticking to that story even in an area that is mostly blank and is otherwise only occupied by detailed score info; the metallic green rims are shaped akin to a space-y door, which is further emphasized by the superfluous lights on the edges, and the hexagonal mesh that looks to be some sort of hard, military-grade plastic is a visual shorthand for more sci-fi space affairs. The futuristic setting is further reinforced by both the texture on various bars in the game screen, and the metal cube frame around what is likely the score objects of the game, given that their design doesn't really convey anything in particular and they have numbers prominently printed onto them. Numbers, again, drawn to look sci-fi. It's hard to tell anything else about the game because it's all buried under pixel vomit that looks like absolute shit in a still frame, but even with as little as I have to go on I can tell it's some sort of sci-fi space game, likely with a relatively less fantastical bend then, say, Gradius what with the metallic-looking stuff that can be seen not seeming all too sleek. Though I have to say, the color coordination seems a little bit confused - the bar on the top looks like a boss health bar that starts light blue and degrades to red, yet the same blue is used as like an aura shadow for the score items? I mean, the score items also have a similar green in their core to the bar under what looks like the bonus score system, so it's not just a color pulling double duty as ill-advised as it is to have a "friendly" entity and a enemy sharing a color like that. Maybe it's just the art director's favorite shaded of blue, considering it's used in the bar at the bottom's letting, but that seems like a pretty thoughtless reason to do something like that. There's also the fact what looks to be the player's barrier has the same color as the projectiles that look like they're coming from what's maybe the boss buried under all the score items - I mean, one of the projectile types is blue with that pink-purple as some sort of aura, but the others are just flat-out pink-purple. Man, I'm impressed. CAVE shooters are usually so clean and parseable with their visuals, but you managed to find something like that, that looks ... pixel vomit really is the only way to put it.

I feel like this is like admitting you're the exact type of person to make those old Flash animations on Newgrounds that are taking like Pokemon or Pac-Man or Kirby and making them explode into a fountain of gore and ... well, that's really about it, since all that matters is the explosion of blood, no matter how well it fits into things, huh?

( this is all incentivized to you by the plot, by making the monsters unambiguously evil and therefore justifying unrestrained brutality against them, and also by giving both your attacks and the demons you use 'em on enough context so that they properly feel powerful enough to be gratifying )

You missed on a significant amount of the original Mega Man X, then; not only does the intro stage serve as a great indirect tutorial on a lot of the game's mechanics, but it also establishes the throughline of the entire game, by providing a rival of superior strength that you and X want to surpass - Zero - but also a reference point for that strength - Vile, who you can't even tell if you're damaging at first but Zero comes in defeats with a well-placed charge shot. Then, what happens through out the entire game? You get the standard Mega Man "you get new, more powerful weapons when you defeat a boss" shtick, but also you find upgrades in the stages which make you tougher and give you new abilities that resemble Zero's, as well as making you resemble Zero himself. By the end of the game, Vile shows up again, and Zero is annihilated during the fight, leaving only X to finish Vile off - and, indeed, afterwards should you not have found the buster upgrade, Zero's last actions is to hand you his own buster which serves the same purpose, which isn't quite a torch but make quite a bit of light anyway. It's nothing mind-blowing, but it's a plot that the mechanics of the game are built around and will almost certainly resonate with the players - since, it is an action game with character progression, the player is going to want to get stronger like X does if they're playing it. Honestly, I can only imagine that this mindset made your experience with Mega Man X less than it could've been, as being in-sync with your player character is always a great thing for immersing yourself into a game.

Games among the biggest esports prove you completely wrong.

In terms of basic arsenal, Master Chief has a stupidly powerful and accurate pistol that would likely down any incarnation of the Doom Guy in like one or two headshots, all while the Doom Guy has to flounder around with one of the Doom series's various wimpy handguns. Even in melee, Master Chief has an advantage in this case, because his melee attacks are powerful enough to instantly break a Spartan's energy shield in one blow and then instantly kill an armored, superhuman Spartan with a second, or even take down a shielded one in a single blow if he can smack 'em in the back of the neck. Doom Guy ... I mean, Doom '16 Guy has some pretty terrifying strength when he can get next to stunned enemies, but even his normal melee attacks are pretty underwhelming against anything tougher than the emancipated, mostly dead zombie equivalents of this game. As soon as you add other factors in, though, it becomes extremely variable. As others have said, Master Chief completely outdoes any Doom Guy in long range combat, and even the quick Doom Guys would just get easily gunned down by a Battle Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Spartan Laser, etc. - even, again, Master Chief's pistol would completely destroy the Doom Guy in long ranges if we're keeping to his Halo 1 pistol. Even which such a clear cut strength, however, Master Chief doesn't have all that many clear cut weaknesses in his arsenal - the Halo games really do have a pretty versatile arsenal with strong weapons for almost every situation. The big drawback that Master Chief suffers from in this case is that, as versatile as his arsenal is, he's actually pretty damn limited in spite of this due to only being able to pack two or three ( depending on if he's dual-wielding or not ) guns, a handful of grenades, and some form of utility gadget. So while Doom Guy might start out with no real advantage any fire fight if Master Chief comes prepared, he does have the advantage of being able to instantly adapt to any new situation while Master Chief would have to track down some new weapons to do the same. That said, things still don't look the best in my eyes for Doom Guy, just because of Master Chief's shield. See, as much as most Doom Guys would be able to control the tempo of the fight pretty well with their incredible mobility ( especially in the case of Doom '16 Guy, thanks to his amazing vertical mobility for a FPS protag ) and full access to their entire arsenal, it really doesn't seem like any single Doom Guy's arsenal would really be able to kill Master Chief faster than he could turn the fight with some well-timed melees, or plasma grenade, or well-aimed shots - at least, outside of Doom Guy's super weapons. A good shot with the classic BFG, though not the easiest to achieve vs. someone like him, would be very likely to annihilate Master Chief instantly. And the '16 BFG and likely the chainsaw? I really doubt Master Chief could really survive anything but completely stupid usage of 'em, and with the BFG I even doubt most stupid usage would fail against him. In conclusion, I have no idea why the two of these guys would fight. I doubt the two of them would get along all the great, mind, but they both have humanity's interests at heart and will fight hordes of powerful, inhuman creatures to make sure the human race will survive to see another sunrise. Really, the question should be how the Covenant would fare against the demons of Hell, since even if those two groups both want to get rid of humanity, they'd almost certainly want to get rid of each other as well.

People who say game stories don't matter always confused me, because like ... have they ever actually played a game without any sort of cohesive narrative or plot? Like, Doom's story isn't particularly deep, but it's an effective and the game is built entirely around the concept of a not-so-far-future space marine fighting off an invasion of hell either alone or ( during co-op play ) with a tiny team of other marines stuck in the same situation. The monster designs, weapons, decorations and textures, music, level design and names - it all comes together to form that narrative, and it helps actually bring context to what's happening instead of it just being meaningless shapes moving around and into other meaningless shapes. Like2, Pong has a narrative. It's literally just "you and a friend play ping pong" but it's there, it's in the name. Goddamn Progress Quest, a game where you do nothing but making a character out of meaningless options and then watch a progress bar complete and a text log fill up with randomly generated text while numbers, has a fantasy-themed narrative. It's generic and has no real effort put in it, but it's also a major component to the game being a pastiche of grindy RPGs - without that narrative providing the context, it literally would just be a progress bar filling up and then unlabled numbers increasing with absolutely no meaning. Granted, this points out that it's awfully hard to make a game without any sort of story, but making sure the story is at least consistent and serviceable is still an important part of making sure the player isn't taken out of the experience. Doom would probably be a lot less well-regarded if midway into episode 2, new enemies were introduced that looked like completely by-the-numbers children's cartoon characters and didn't die with any amount of blood, in spite of the game's previously ultraviolence. No, not twisted, demonic versions of cartoon characters, either; knock-off Bugs Bunnys pop up in E2M5 and appear in every map afterwards, complete with an incredibly exaggerated walk cycle and dumb noises. And yes, I'm well aware that some of you are going to have a gut reaction to this post saying that you wouldn't think any less of Doom if that was the case, but I know you aren't actually trying to imagine what it'd be like if that happened. Sure, Doom might be narmy nowadays, but it was significantly less so when it was released and even nowadays such a completely out of place murder of the tone would seem like an incredibly bizarre, experience-dampening decision.

notarget is probably close to what you'd want, maybe.

wha y'do realize having to clarify that "olympic results aren't really that skill-based" doesn't mean "sports are satan's assdicks and satan's assdicks are meaningless" doesn't qualify as my opinion changing right

I don't think you're actually disagreeing with me here. That whole post was just distinguishing how the Olympics aren't like other sporting events, and how renowned it is is part of that and affects how it ends up is a pretty big aspect of that too. Also, no real wonder that some sort big ol' rock wall or whatever wouldn't exactly draw the attention of actual mountain climbers. Honestly, that sort of illustrates the lack of sustainability as a factor I brought up earlier; whereas actual climbing involves significant risks of injury due to just flat-out scaling natural terrain with one drop likely meaning the end of something, sports climbing no doubt uses terrain specifically designed to facilitate competition and comes with plentiful safety measures to minimize any bad flubs' chance of causing anything serious. The Olympic version has nothing keeping you from going all out, since you'll neither have the risks of actual mountain climbing nor will you have to conserve your strength to safely get back down - meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the major causes of mountain climbing-related deaths is just lack of restraint in terms of the climber making sure they'll be able to get back after reaching the peak.

I get the feeling that you're trying to say something, but to even try to do that you had to bend over backwards hard enough to completely destroy you spine just to shove your head so far up your rectum that you've not only rupture it, but also both intestines. Someone call 40oz a doctor before he bleeds to death. I don't think that'll do anything for him trying way too hard to try to "gotcha!" people that he completely fails to realize they already covered their bases hours before, but y'know.

I think one of the biggest distinctions here is the distance we see the Olympics from everything else. Because you are absolutely right about this stuff in terms of nearly everything competition related, and I'm not remotely disagreeing with you in that regard. But the Olympics are just an entirely different scale from regular competition, because of two factors: it requires a significant chunk of a lifetime to prepare for ( factoring in that Olympic athletes get in fairly young to avoid the issue of age bringing them down ), for something that isn't even a career. Granted, yeah, making an appearance in multiple Olympics isn't exact infeasible, but that's a single appearance every two years if you compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympics, which have extremely different events. It's four if you only appear in one, so unlike every other sport - even e-sports - there's no real concept of fatigue like that which comes from sporting careers. I mean, yeah, there's exhaustion from training, but the athletes don't have to bring their best for an attempt at regular times - just every two or four years. The Olympics just lack the factor of sustainability that comes with every other sporting thing, and that's as a result of the lack of regularity which has even more results. An athlete just has to bring their absolute best, a "just" that sounds absurd when applied to, say, an NBA player because of how often they have to play but in the Olympics? Again, you have two or four years to prepare for your time in the spotlight. It's just not really comparable to other things, ironically ( since I've been saying it's a helluva lot of luck in the end ) because it's just less chaotic than what you can try to compare it to.

why do so many people act like i said the olympics didn't require incredible amounts of skill i flat-out said that it's the entry requirement the skill part of the olympics is getting there in the first place The thing is, it's not racism, because race has nothing to do with it as it's far, far, far too board of a category to have anything more than a glance at the concept. Any sectioning done would require some really ridiculously precise "genetic maps" that track the flow of particular genes and stuff like that, which ... I mean, between the fact that gene inheritance is pretty damn random and almost all genetic traits stem from not single genes but combinations of genes, the whole thing becomes pretty infeasible before you even factor in mutation and chimerae and stuff like. And it's not like any of this is relevant for like 99% of life, or even 99% of people - Olympic sports are extremely intense, extremely short events where it only matters how you're built for a particular task, and nothing else. Doing the shotput? Being good at tennis is completely irrelevant. Doing the 1500m freestyle? Doesn't matter in the slightest if you have a knack for numbers. Hell, there's a bunch of different categories for what amounts to running just to show how specialized all these genetic advantages are. Like, just take to mind how different people doing the 100m dash and the 10000m dash are built - again, both events where all that's being done is running. It's the sort of thing where anyone who puts any merit beyond Olympic results and similar things into what I'm saying probably completely failed the genetic lottery and didn't develop a brain. And died in the womb. I mean, like I've said countless times, you have to get extremely skilled before these genetic advantages are a major factor - it's just when you've reached that point, skill can't exactly overcome those advantages. Basically, if you want to value your personal achievements, aim for reaching the Olympics in the first place, not actually placing first place. Then leer at people who try to devalue this because they have no concept of humans having physical limits that they can't overcome without literally breaking the rules of the Olympics in the first place.

But Decay already pointed out why, even if he did it under the pretense mocking me because he slid into another dimension and saw that dimension's version of me actually call the Olympics a no-skill contest. See, short of not being able to see the targets period ( and even that's debatable ), vision isn't the deciding factor in precision with archery. It doesn't matter if you have such telescopic vision that you can pick out the various terrain features of Pluto from Earth - if your arms can't keep steady or pull the bowstring back enough to launch the arrow far enough, there's no way you're hitting a bullseye. Was he more skilled than his opponents? Yeah, certainly. Was that why he won? Honestly, I doubt it, it just seems like that was how he was able to compete in the first place. In the end, either he was just better suited for archery than the competition, or ... Not ... really? I mean, I guess that's not genetics, but no amount of skill will be able to overcome a bad coach or having no access to good training facilities or knowledge of good training methods. It still comes down to luck - in this case, either where you're born or how well what life you're born into allows you to travel - that determines how well you're able to train. I mean, sure, there's devotion and stuff, but that's affected heavily by genetics and one's life as well, what with stuff like executive dysfunction. If I'm really to believe that these are the best of the best, then there's waaaaay too many factors that seem far more important than a teeny difference in skill in what determines who takes home the gold.

Well, me neither, but you don't see me roaring at people before tearing their innards out and attempting to shove a much straw as possible before their corpse bursts.

Well, I guess if there's a thread to reveal that people have very selective reading, this would be the one.

You might want to doublecheck my post, since I edited it with an extra bit. I'm not talking about competition in general ( heck I don't even consider luck uncompetitive - I'm really into competitive card games ) but just the fact that the Olympics is such an extreme level of competition that it actually loses all aspect of skill outside of people entering when they're under the bar. It's basically like putting a perfect play AI vs another in a fighting game or something, except their character is given random stats and they have a chance to flub what they're doing to simulate nerves or something along those lines - at that point, it's really just down to which one got the better stats, unless that one rolled its chance to flub at vital moments.

They're important because otherwise they wouldn't reach the Olympics at all, like I already said, but you already have to be the best of the best in terms of country-wide skill to even reach the Olympics in the first place, so at that point the only thing that doesn't come down to genetics is just purely having a shittier training thing. Are we talking about just some casual deathmatching or, like, a 1v1 moneymatch between you and the other guy at the top of the ladder after enough time has passed to really let the ladder gain accuracy? Because if it's the former then yeah, obviously, skill plays a big role but that's a completely irrelevant comparison. If it's the latter, then I doubt the 200 ping wouldn't cause a major issue as your skill couldn't carry you, since the skill difference between you two is basically nonexistent. Especially since you're also working against any difference in your brain chemistry that would affect your reflex time and the quickness of your thought process and stuff like that. EDIT: Even then though, it's not the best comparison because I doubt you or the other guy would have dedicated a huge chunk of your life to be able to reach and maintain that point in the first place, as we'd be talking about a video game that doesn't exactly have an e-sports side to really push PvP play to such extremes. You really can't compare the Olympics to much anything anyone on this forum does ( outside of the odd member that happened to actually perform in the Olympics ) as it's just so far on another level than even most other sporting events. Heck, I brought up the e-sports thing but I don't even know if the Korean e-sports scene even comes close to Olympics-level devotion.