Bleck

Kind of glad if that's the case. For one, the every sweet step closer this game is to Crisis Core makes me want to buy it more and more day one.
 
Besides that, FF's illusion of exploration was never all that compelling to me, and trimming the fat is always a good thing.
 
If your towns/overworlds consists of freely accessible at all times NPC's that say basically a looped dialog excerpt UNLESS it is the specific time in the story when they're actually relevant, there wasn't really any point to it at all besides a really annoying, incessant reminders of "haha you're in the wrong place!".
 
Besides occasional side objectives or mini games, there's no reason to beat yourself over the head with all the mash-x-random-encounters that are required to "explore". And when a game like FF tries to tell you where to go through vague dialog, and you inevitably have no clue what it's telling you, you end up "exploring" anyway and it's a miserable waste of time (though I guess grinding for levels is a plus).
 
 
I pretty much agree. I only really think turn-based combat was ever okay in two situations:
 
-Pokemon, when everything you're doing is actually giving commands to your little critters and watching them fight (that's the point)
-Super Mario RPG, where the monotony of watching numbers flash was pulverized by Nintendo's genius introduction of timed hits (which was so good as a gameplay riff on turn based combat that they used it basically verbatim with improvements in all the Paper Mario incarnations). For those who don't know, you could block enemy attacks with timed presses of the A button. In Thousand Year Door, you could even press B (with a smaller time window) to counter and react with damage to enemy attacks (with the benefit of absolutely no chip damage and with the risk of missing it and taking a full hit). Most special moves in all those games relied on rhythmic, sporatic, or other variations of timed hits. This completely de-motivated "mash A to win" and instead made you pay attention to the combat, even at the lowest level of enemies. It made random combat less of a button mashing chore and more of a practicing of your skills that you're gonna need later.
 
Sticker Star made timed hits actually coincide with the game music, which was kind of cool.

Above and beyond your misunderstanding of the George Zimmerman case (the Stand Your Ground law was not used as part of his legal defense), you're missing the point.  You can't be put on trial for "being a huge douchebag", and "but I'm a good person" isn't a valid legal defense for committing a crime.  The point is that the justice system doesn't care about your moral character, it cares about your actions.
 
Of course, using lethal force to defend yourself is a different action than committing murder.  The whole point of the trial was to determine which Zimmerman had done.  No one disputes the fact that Zimmerman shot and killed Treyvon Martin, but the prosecution was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was murder rather than self defense, so he was acquitted.  He wasn't found not guilty by reason of being a really stand-up guy.  He was found not guilty because they couldn't prove that the actions that he took constituted murder.
 
Anyway, the entire justice system thing is a derail.  Timaeus, you originally made the argument that what someone does doesn't define what they are.  Here's the original quote:
 
 
This is incredibly silly.  If you do sexist things, then you're sexist.  That's what "being sexist" means.  You can't say "sure, I do sexist things, but I'm not a sexist".  It's nonsensical.  A sexist is someone who does sexist things.  It's like saying "yeah, I stole something, but that doesn't make me a thief."  Yes, it does make you a thief.  That's what "thief" means.
 
What you think about your actions doesn't matter.  Doing sexist things makes you sexist, regardless of what you thought you were doing.  No, that may mean you're only accidentally sexist and someone just needs to educate you along the lines of "hey man, don't do that, that's sexist".  Which is great and all, but it doesn't make what you're doing not sexist.

Where do you think people get sexist tendencies from?  By absorbing the attitudes of the society around them -- the people in their lives and the media they consume.  It's a chicken-egg problem.  Sexist cultures produce sexist media, sexist media reinforces sexist attitudes, and sexist attitudes contribute to sexist culture.  If you can short-circuit the process at any point, then the cycle ends.  Since you can't very well keep media from influencing attitudes or attitudes from contributing to culture, you try to stop it at the "producing sexist media" point.
 
It won't solve the problem by itself, certainly, but it will help.

social sciences are not often based on observation of physically objective phenomena - the problem here, even in this thread, is that people keep saying that correlation does not imply causation (which is true) and then implying that it's possible for social sciences to do anything other than point out correlation (which is not)
 
the reason why I, as such, say "arbitrary standards" is because you demand a kind of evidence that isn't actually real, and then denounce any idea that fails to present it
 
like I said, whether or not sexist behavior is, in fact, caused directly by sexist media doesn't matter, because the question demands an answer that is not possible to ascertain

there isn't really a functional difference in those sentences

I think you may have misunderstood my post and as such I also don't understand yours

every second post in this thread = "media does not cause violent tendencies in people, therefore it is impossible for media to influence behavior in any capacity" ~ video gamers
 
have you considered that maybe the reason video games don't increase violent behavior is because there are a significant number of social hurdles that exist to prevent violent behavior, which can not really be said for sexist or otherwise discriminatory behavior
 
like maybe you guys can talk about that instead of Strawman Quest (sorry djp your posts are well-typed and long and that's cool and all but it doesn't change the fact that you're trying to argue that someone's stance is wrong by changing it to a different stance)

every second post in this thread = "media does not cause violent tendencies in people, therefore it is impossible for media to influence behavior in any capacity" ~ video gamers
 
have you considered that maybe the reason video games don't increase violent behavior is because there are a significant number of social hurdles that exist to prevent violent behavior, which can not really be said for sexist or otherwise discriminatory behavior
 
like maybe you guys can talk about that instead of Strawman Quest (sorry djp your posts are well-typed and long and that's cool and all but it doesn't change the fact that you're trying to argue that someone's stance is wrong by changing it to a different stance)

Yeah. This is at the heart of what a lot of union negotiations boil down to: defining what "is" is. You can say something like "I fail to see why your late ass shouldn't be fined for wasting the publisher's money and the studio's time" and that sounds perfectly reasonable because people generally understand that you shouldn't be late for work.
 
But what if you hit traffic? What if you have an emergency? What if you're sick? What if you get into an accident on the way to the studio?  What if the dev miscommunicates the studio recording times? What if the dev told you to go to the wrong studio? What constitutes "late?" 5 minutes past call time? 10? Half-an-hour? What if you're 1 minute late and the publisher decides to slap you with a $2500 fine?
 
What constitutes "wasting the publisher's money and the studio's time?" Who gets to the decide what wasting time is? In the bit Bleck quoted, the word "attentive" is being contended. They have to clearly define what they mean by attentive, because the repercussions for not being "attentive" are pretty severe. A lot of people goof off at work every once in a while. What if whenever you goofed off, your boss took $2500 out of your paycheck?
 
Collective bargaining is all about working as hard as you can to clearly define the terms of the contract that everyone is going to abide by. Everyone in the union plays by the same rules, and management has to treat everyone in the union equally and according to the terms of the agreement. And everyone, generally speaking, has to be on board with the agreement.

Phony Phanto is my attempt at bringing back an old enemy that I'm pretty sure everyone hates.
 
8F37-0000-0062-807B

screw you, 2015
 
fuck you

screw you, 2015
 
fuck you

I actually just finished a run of this myself, and found it was a lot more fun if you do a run without summons.

FF7 has three major things that drastically need improvement. One is the graphics. The models just look awful by any standards. Even by PS1 standards, they really don't look good (just compare to FF8 or FF9). So for that reason alone, a remake would be awesome. Another issue is the translation, which was not entirely faithful to the original Japanese.. to the point where fans have been working for years to completely re-translate it. Lastly, the music (while a personal favorite of mine!) has poor production.. again even relative to other PS1 games. 
 
In comparison, FF6's sprite graphics look beautiful even by today's standards, particularly the enemies, bosses, and summons. The music, despite the SNES limitations, still sounds really nice. Again relative to other SNES games it's a standout. And then the translation is considered to be quite good overall. 
 
On the gameplay side... there's definitely stuff to be fixed in both games, so it's a tossup there (IMO). Especially after playing a game like Bravely Default with such a fantastic battle system.

my body is ready

FRIDAY 
FRIDAY

movie of the year I loved it oh my god
 
also this isn't a feminist movie because "it stars a woman", it's feminist because it's literally, transparently, about smashing the patriarchy

Everyone's all excited that Akira Toriyama is involved, but he was involved with the Cell Saga and onward, too, so...