Zeusthecat

Ah cool, and I would agree with Schafer. Even as frustrating as the tank controls could be at times, I think it was the best way to control Manny without having any kind of point and click option. I do hope though that some tweaks were made to the way Manny navigates to make it easier to get into certain areas or rooms. That was really my major gripe. Some spots just had such a super narrow area where you had to walk with just the right trajectory to get to the next scene and if you fucked it up, Manny would just hit an invisible wall and rebound off in a different direction.

I guess I should have clarified. Specifically for PS4/Vita, do we know how they are handling that? Point and click definitely seems like the best way to go but if you are playing with a game pad, I wonder if they came up with any kind of way to make controlling Manny through set transitions less frustrating. I hated it when I would run in a specific direction in one scene, and then as soon as it transitioned, his trajectory would veer in off in a different direction because the camera was situated differently.

Are you guys playing this on PS4? I was regularly playing with a group of co-workers but they all ended up moving on and I just wasn't interested in playing solo by the time I got to paragon 80 or so. I would love to jump back in though so if anyone is on PS4 add me (xXZeusthecatXx)!

I may have missed this but did they ever talk specifics about how they are changing the controls? Are they just simply going with camera relative controls and would that work similarly to the camera relative option in the original PC version? I'm curious to know how exactly they are going to tackle that because I found the camera relative controls super frustrating when transitioning between sets and ended up preferring the character relative tank controls.

Oh my god the amount of time I spent playing that game. I got so into that one that when I was in high school, I would set my alarm at 5am so I could wake up and play a couple hours before school. I have never done anything like that for any other game. The greenhouse was the fucking best.

Absolutely. I have no doubt that I experience much less of this type of abuse because of the fact that I am in a position of privilege (straight white dude). But I still wonder, given any group of people, whether they are a marginalized group of people or not, would the abuse they might experience online be worse on average than the abuse they might experience in real life? In my case (as mentioned before), the answer is absolutely yes. What about for women? Going by the perspective given by Apple Cider above, it sounds like both real life and online have had their share of shitty experiences. But I wonder if the frequency and overtness of that abusive behavior would tend to be a bit worse online than in real life because of some of the factors I have mentioned previously. Then again, even if this were the case, being subject to this type of abuse in real life would probably be much more damaging to a person than what they might experience online because it is naturally much more personal. So I guess I just really don't know. And then there are other marginalized groups like African Americans. The N-word is basically one of the internet's favorite words and I have to imagine that word gets flung at them online far more than in real life. The systemic racism African Americans experience in real life is obviously a huge issue but I think if you are talking strictly person to person interactions, overt racism would probably be experienced at a much higher frequency and be much nastier online than in real life. Unfortunately, the lens through which I see the world makes it impossible for me to speak with any authority on this so I could just be totally wrong.

Damn dude, that's some rough stuff. I see your point.

I can definitely see how this is a lot more common before adulthood with shithead, socially inept kids but I have never experienced anything like this as an adult. Any abuse that has been directed at me has been far worse on the internet than it ever has been face to face. And I worked as a server at Applebee's for 4 years. I'm not trying to say that your perspective is necessarily wrong, just that it is vastly different from what I have personally experienced and observed in my own life.

I hope someone comes up with an accessory for the Oculus Rift that is a bathtub shaped pod that you can lay down in and be submersed in liquefied dead people which are also being fed to you intravenously. If movies have taught me anything, it is that that makes for a much more immersive virtual reality experience.

Yeah, now that you mention it I do vaguely recall that as well. So then does that mean that this game is made by the same people that made the original games or is this a new team?

Don't do it CollegeBaby! I will be the sole voice of dissent here and say that I think it's an awesome thread title. It has generated discussions about free speech, frozen yogurt, princess peach, and probably other things that we haven't even thought of yet. Some threads aren't so lucky.

I also have a number of years of experience working in the restaurant industry and I disagree with this assessment. Although I do think it is a good situation to look at when comparing how people treat total strangers face to face versus how they might treat a stranger online. In my experience, even with the worst assholes that come in and try to make your life miserable, there is almost always a way to get through to them. Being able to see their body language, hear the tone in their voice, make eye contact, and observe the body language of those around them I think makes a person more equipped to respond to the situation and reach some kind of resolution or appeal to their sense of empathy to cool the situation down. With interactions online, I think this is the case far less often. It actually takes some mental effort to recognize that what you are interacting with is an actual person and not just a wall of text.

Thanks for providing your thoughts. I am a bit ignorant on that topic. I think it is interesting to consider various cultures throughout human history and analyze how some of them got certain aspects of society "more right" than we do today. I think you bring up an excellent point that we tend to think that we have moved/are moving away from worse times. It seems like sometimes (most of the time?) we have a really bad tendency to not learn from the mistakes and successes of the past and just keep stumbling because we are too fucking proud and ignorant to admit we are wrong.

I'm genuinely curious to know exactly when and how that came to be the case. Has there ever been a time in human history that "women's labor" was held in equal regard to "men's labor"? I have to imagine there were some bright spots in human history where this was the case but I can't think of anything offhand.

Yes. The war on drugs is probably one of the single biggest fuckups of the last 50 years.

And I just want to point out that in my opinion, that is one of the hardest and most thankless jobs that exists on the planet. My wife opted to stay at home for the first couple years of both of our child's lives and holy shit she had to deal with so much more stress and hardship than I did going to work every day. It is pretty frustrating then to see that the culture we live in puts almost no value on the life experience that a person gains being a stay at home parent. In my opinion, for a wide variety of fields that should be the type of thing you should be able to put on a resume and should be valued as highly as any other work experience. So I guess to your greater point, I think it should be feasible to have kids and a career AND if a parent does decide to stay at home with their children, that decision should be recognized as an equally valuable contribution to society.

Some idling here and there was definitely part of it but for me the biggest culprit was how difficult the combat was. I must have specced out my party in a way that put me at a huge disadvantage because I had countless fights that I had to do over and over and was constantly dealing with having almost no potions, not doing enough damage, and not having a tank resilient enough to last during some of the longer battles. Honestly, I expect that I probably spent somewhere around 20 hours just redoing fights that I kept getting wiped out on. Also, that time includes all of the DLC that is integrated into the main campaign so there was a small chunk of hours dedicated to that as well.

No. It won't. I'm also currently playing this and finished the main campaign with about 105 hours logged. Deep Roads was quite a lengthy segment too so have fun with that. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the experience overall but goddamn it just goes on and on and on... Currently working on DLC since I got the Ultimate Edition and I hear Awakening itself takes around 20-30 hours. Then there are like 5 other smaller DLCs. So yeah, I might be playing this game for awhile still. On the brightside, once I am finished with this, I can easily knock off another 5-10 games from my backlog in the same amount of time it took me to finish just this one and then I will be so close to freedom.

Yeah, tell me about it.

I mentioned it in the random thought thread but I vote for this topic being pinned.

I'm feeling pretty lonely with my little dot all by itself.

Me too. I was just thinking about him the other day. Ucantalas is a rad dude.

I understand where you are coming from and I don't mean to suggest that breastfeeding has to be done even if it means sacrificing your career. I am attempting (rather poorly) to pose the question: if someone who is capable of breastfeeding has a child and they are in a position to choose whether to stay at home for x amount of time to breastfeed that child or to go with formula and continue to focus on their career, which is the best decision to make considering what is best for the mother/father and what is best for the child? That is obviously a really tough question with no simple answer. One thing that is very clear though, breastfeeding is absolutely better for a child than formula feeding. And feeding directly from the breast is absolutely better for a child than feeding them breastmilk from a bottle. This is not a situation where there is a bunch of folk wisdom and contradictory views on what is best for the child where some people think that formula is best and some people think that breastfeeding is best. These are hard facts that I don't think you would find anyone who knows what they are talking about arguing otherwise. Given that more often than not, the mother is the only one capable of breastfeeding, what is the right thing to do when a child is born? There are so many ways that women are at a disadvantage in our society and I think this is one unfortunate area where not only has breastfeeding become such a controversial thing, but women are under further pressure to not do it because the demands that come along with it can become a detriment to their career. Having gone through this experience with my wife for both of our children now, I can appreciate how complex this situation is and the sacrifices that have to be made. Where we have landed on this topic is that yes, we think a woman (or man) should strive to make the necessary sacrifices to do what is best (i.e. breastfeed) for their child even if it means having to make some kind of sacrifice in their career. I think it is the lesser of two evils. And given that this is a big point of importance to us, the angle that I am interested in seeing feminism tackle is how to get us to a point where a sacrifice doesn't have to be made. Most of the discussions I see tend to focus on sociological issues that women face but I think the biological differences between men and women and how that relates to raising children is of equal importance. I think the conversation should recognize that there are biological differences between men and women (although not always) that especially come into play when a child is born and that we shouldn't just pretend that an average man or woman can fulfill all of those roles equally (although I do think they can fulfill most of those roles equally). I don't think that is always the case in these types of conversations and unless there are people who have kids participating in the conversation, I think it is often overlooked. To be fair, the president of our company directly addressed this. He acknowledged that it is also a big social issue in our company but that the best way for us to go about taking any steps to remedy this was to make the business case for why we should address it because we still live in a kind of culture where people (shareholders) refuse to admit that there is a social issue at all.

Sorry if I came across flippant in my post. I realize it is not my place to state this opinion but it is a topic I just don't really seem to see anyone bringing up and I think it is a pretty important thing to consider. I know at least for the company I work for, the biggest reasons given for the retention gap between men and women revolve around child rearing (sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it was the breastfeeding factor specifically). They presented information gathered from years of exit interviews and that was overwhelmingly the main reason women gave for why they left the company. Due to the additional pressures brought on from having a child, they could not keep up with the demands of the job and had to make the decision to leave (of course they were lucky enough to be in the position to even have that as an option). Those that didn't have children or child rearing responsibilities had a much closer retention level to that of male employees (although still not equal). In my own experience, the majority of women that I have seen leave the company have done so because they could not keep up with the demands of the job after having a child (or they went on a reduced schedule with reduced pay). Women are already vastly underrepresented in the company and it is exacerbated by the fact that expectations for new mothers are the same as those for everyone else in the company. Thankfully, in our case, they recognize this is an issue and the business case for taking measures to close that retention gap is a no brainer. This is of course just a limited perspective based solely on my experience in the specific industry I am in, but I think it would be reasonable to posit that child rearing is one of the top factors affecting retention and pay gaps between men and women in a good number of other industries as well. To be clear, I think in an ideal world where we could truly do what was best for our children, BOTH parents would contribute equally to raising them. In reality, that is rarely the case and the bulk of the responsibility falls on one of the parents. And again, the reality of that situation is that more often than not, it is the mother who ends up taking on the responsibility due in large part to biological and societal factors. Whoever ends up with that responsibility though is likely forced to sacrifice their career at some level because our job culture doesn't really factor in the demands and importance of child rearing. Honestly, most of what I've read surrounding feminism has come from these forums and articles linked from these forums. It's all been a lot of really good stuff and has broadened my perspective and understanding on this subject immensely. Since I hadn't really seen much of anything mentioned about feminist perspectives on child rearing in this thread or elsewhere I figured I'd bring it up to get some perspective from other people. So thank you Apple Cider for taking the time to respond politely to me (god, re-reading it, I totally came off like a prick. I just couldn't quite get the words out of my head properly). Finally, on the breastfeeding thing specifically. That is just one topic that has been strongly reinforced as super important by the major women in my life. Unfortunately, it is a thing that has become an alarmingly controversial subject amongst both men and women (at least here in the US it has) and it really bothers me how much our culture has shifted to pushing formula over breastfeeding. They push it on you relentlessly when you are in the hospital after giving birth and then when you get home, half the people you know think you're fucking weird for choosing to breastfeed. We even had one friend who made the decision to be a stay at home mom but refused to breastfeed because she felt like it was too personal and would rather just feed them through a bottle. Our culture is really fucked up when it comes to this and I think it is an important feminist issue. But obviously, like you said, this will remain an issue until we experience the necessary shifts in our culture where women (or men in some cases) have the freedom to make the decision to breastfeed their kids without experiencing any negative repercussions culturally or economically.

One more request undermind9, do you mind creating a new thread for this with the necessary links in the first post so it doesn't end up just getting buried in this thread? And that topic should totally be pinned.