Nabeel Ansari

I disagree in two parts.Number 1 is that you can in fact change what motivates people. First thing I said is change the economy and market demand. Make it so businesses see that sex no longer sells (bonus i guess if sex hurts sales). It's just capitalism at work. Second is raise kids better. You haven't really addressed this besides reducing it to "telling people not to do the thing" but I don't think you fully understand what it means to influence growing youth and what kind of long term benefits it has for society insifar as repairing these so called intangible things you guys see as something that needs no attention. Number 2 is I'm not sure I've ever really seen punishment for actions to be at all effective. I'm not gonna pull the prohibition card since it's obvious, but generally retaliating against someone and antagonizing them for doing something bad is less effective than reaching them at a level they understand (the motivations for their actions). If the problem examples are doing it for money, then we know it's a market demand problem. If they do it for their own artistic expression, we know it's an attitude problem (between men/women). "Sexist" people are still people, and they often don't know they're doing something wrong because their understanding of right and wrong is different from everyone else's (which ultimately was shaped by how they grew up both before and after entry into adulthood). Tangential side note, belief and attitude INEVITABLY manifests in action. Ignoring the problem until it actually *happens* is not enough if we want to get anywhere. The recent surge in Islamophobia is proof of this; long held attitudes by sectors of the American public have now been unleashing at alarming rates because of encouragement by the words from Repub. This isn't just about the actions. The problem is ignorance, belief in fearmogering, etc. all of these mental "non actions" are what's accelerating this mess, because they inevitably are resulting in actions. So casting them aside as not wothy of consideration until they manifest is like a police officer letting an armed robber walk into the bank and only trying to stop him after he's begun shooting the glass.

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It's how Crisis Core (and FF15 I think) works. You have actions you can select from a menu but you actuate them in real-time with positioning and the like. General note: I don't think people understand what a remake is. A remake is not a tune-up, an HD remaster. A remake is a complete dismantling of something, observing its strengths and weaknesses, and employing improved design choices from the get go. It's not supposed to be the same game but "looks better". It's supposed to completely re-imagine something so that it can feel better, sound better, resonate better, play better, look better, etc. Graphics is an auxiliary complaint; gameplay is more important.

Well... there's no need to speculate, just watch the video. There's combat in it. None of these statements logically lead to each other at all. >_> Because the way it played before is bad. So they're making it not bad (see pages of discussion on failings of its turn-based combat, random encounters). That's what you do in a remake; you correct all the mistakes. Gameplay design isn't the end-all identity of content when you're talking about narrative driven games. If it has the same characters, same story, same (probly spruced for voice recording) dialog, same progression of events, same visual aesthetic, same music.. it seems kind of arbitrary to disqualify it as being "something completely different". If a chosen medium or genre doesn't serve your content well, there's nothing wrong with changing it to serve your content better. The idea that the original medium/genre for some conceived experience is the best medium/genre for that experience is flat out wrong, but it's some of the arguments I'm seeing popping up here against the gameplay changes. I don't care about playing the same game with better graphics in it. I want to play the same story and world with a better game in it.

I kind of disagree. I don't see why menus and action have to be mutually exclusive, and all action when boiled down is QTE (all good action gameplay is based on timing and reflex). Adding action to it removes you from being a spectator to having direct control over what happens in the game. Sure, it could then be less strategic... but... like I said, Final Fantasy's formula needs a lot of work if it wants to be a good strategy game, because as I said earlier, having clever boss fights isn't sufficient. Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door is something I also see as objectively (tongue-in-cheek) the best turn-based RPG (if not one of the best video games in general) ever made though (in gameplay design, narrative, visual aesthetic, variety, depth, music, etc.), so I'm biased here.

Timed hits are not quicktime elements, though. They're anticipatory, learned gameplay elements that you get better at. It's not a "SURPRISE PRESS THIS BUTTON OR GET A SLIGHTLY WORSE CUTSCENE" it's more just a "I see you tryna punch me BUT YOU GOT BLOCKED BY DA RHYTHM FOOOOOOOL" and later when you master it, it helps you get out of particularly sticky situations because you got genuinely better at playing (not just lacking great stats). And yes to all of your second paragraph. Interesting combat all around.

No, that's what I'm saying, Final Fantasy hasn't implemented turn-based combat and designed interesting strategic aspects for it in general (not per-boss fight gimmicks, but in GENERAL the way the combat works). It's not a failing of turn-based combat, it's a failing of Final Fantasy. Before I noted two examples where I saw RPG-style menu turn-based combat done right, and that was both in Pokemon and in Super Mario RPG (and related spawns of the Mario RPG variety). Obviously Fire Emblem, Advanced Wars, and games like that all work with it well too. To reply to each: 1. Right, and Mario did this, so it falls into my example. 2. You can do this in Final Fantasy, but it has a fairly invisible stat effect. I'm not sure if going on to changing fields/areas of effect is really all that great by itself, enough to save it. 3. Some of the more esoteric strategies in FF were built around doing weird things to yourself to get optimal statistics for certain boss fights. If they want to do this, they need to do it in a way that isn't esoteric, i.e. not "combine these status ailments and items so that you induce a AI loop where the boss is unable to kill you!" 4. I agree with this, just generally. 5. I'm not sure I agree with this. I agree with it on difficulty for the player, but not generally in the game, and here's why; I stopped playing Final Fantasy 6 halfway through because I was fed up with losing up to an hour of progress every time I died because of the infrequent save locations in the game. Like throw-controller-at-the-TV fed up. The opera segment, for example, has no save points. You have to win the opera segment in order to stop. If you make one mistake and die, you have to do the whole segment over again. And that means listening to all that slow super nintendo opera singing, picking the lines for Celes, navigating the rafters, etc. In an era where you needed to maximize player hours to justify the price of your game, this was I guess the norm. But it doesn't work nowadays, and infrequent save locations/game exit cues hurt your game design a lot because people aren't willing to put that kind of time into their games anymore. Sorry, I didn't mean to say none of the fights had strategy, but in fact most if not all of the plain random encounters (which make up a very large portion of the games' combat time) are. In a game designed around random encounters, they need to be fun and require you to pay attention, else they're just a mash-x chore. All of the game's combat should be solid, not just clever boss fights. I also just hate random encounters in general. Pokemon allowed to you repel them, and in a lot of other styles of RPG's, they're not random at all; you get little "monster" dudes walking around on the overworld you can sneak up on or avoid. In the Mario games you could get first hits, sneak attacks, behind attacks (which were random chance in FF), etc. But having vanilla menu turn-based combat and having clever fights for bosses is essentially taking a somewhat boring system and re-injecting life into it occasionally. I'd rather it be fun at its core and extend from there, or even if it was fun at its core and never extended. Timed hits in Mario were a core part of the combat, they weren't just a one-off boss mechanic you only saw once. You saw it in every fight in the game.

The problem with turn-based combat is that it's inherently a strategic combat type of system and Final Fantasy is *not* a strategy game. It's not Civilization, it's not Advanced Wars, Fire Emblem, etc. There's so little strategy involved in Final Fantasy (like Angel said, difficulty is essentially 1-on-1 tied to enemies hitting harder and having more HP) that it doesn't warrant strategic gameplay. This could be improved as others said with character positioning and things like that. But then it simply approaches a Tactics game, which is something they already have done and don't need to "figure out" because Tactics was good and if that's what they wanted to do they could just do it.

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.

Besides the examples I gave that weren't that (market influence, proper school health programs), sure I'm saying that sexism by dictionary definition is having a belief in gender or sexual superiority. A sexist person fits that definition. If a person does a sexist action but doesn't actually believe in sexist opinions, they are not sexist. I can't make this clearer. This is just the basics of applying a definition to something. Again the only way your argument works here is if action has 1 to 1 mapping to motivation, or in other words if I make something that objectifies women then I actually believe women are sexual objects and no other reason.

The nuance is that he doesn't believe that belief has anything to do with it, and that a person's actions are inseparable from their character or that there is any belief beyond what is in accordance with a person's actions. Maybe? I don't know. Like you said, he's kind of just going to two directions at once. His crappy post writing doesn't help either. The entire point of my side here is that belief has everything to do with it, and more effectively than policing sexist actions is stopping the motivation for sexist actions by passively correcting beliefs of people in society over long periods of time (you know like how we've dealt with every other civil rights issue). In other words, make sexist actions stop by raising kids to be less sexist as they grow up (shit, all the preventative rape culture stuff I was shoveled in high school actually did contribute to why I'm informed about ongoing conversations about consent and sexism in the first place. More schools should have that.). Showing businesses that sex doesn't sell anymore. Maybe even possibly persuading currently sexist people to be less sexist, but it's harder to change a person's mind than it is to raise a small person or take away money. Hell, if you fix the market, and fix the kids, society's in good shape already, and that's not counting the other solutions you can come up with when not idea-blasting them on a game music forum. I'm not sure why this is rocket science, but the gist is he doesn't agree because he doesn't think sexism has anything to do with how the person is raised, what they think, or what they believe; it's only sexism when it is manifested as some action or some kind of observable oppression. And when it is, it can be viewed without context and it is ultimately sexist, even when the brain isn't actually behind it. The same kind of logic, of course, does not work at all when applied to mental health issues. If a person keeps quiet about their depression, does that make them not have depression? If they have homicidal thoughts but don't act on them, are they not homicidal, and do they not need mental health care? How far do you extend pervert the definition of "action" before you end up just taking into account all of a person's psychological factors anyway? Then you're just back at square one, and I say those psychological "actions" are the ones that cascade into "real ones" and those former are what we should focus on. I'm not really interested in further asserting this point, since it's been clarified a bit ago that claims of Anita's censorship talk has been unfounded. And so I don't actually really particularly care about her in this instance anyway, I'm just responding to supposed counterpoints despite that it's irrelevant to the thread at this point.

Wow, okay, this makes a lot more sense now. However it doesn't agree with every definition of sexism, some of which pertain to beliefs and attitudes, not just physical (or verbal) actions. So even if you're purely motivating reaction according to action, I think fundamentally the way you're describing people is wrong. You're saying you're not trying to evaluate anyone, but calling a person sexist and calling them out for doing a sexist thing are different reactions. I don't think I'm trying to say they're not sexist if they don't know their actions are sexist. I'm saying doing sexist actions doesn't ma- Sorry, nothing makes you sexist until you satisfy the definition of being a sexist, many of these definitions pertain to belief/attitudes about sex/gender superiority, and not specifically actions. So you're not wrong by some definitions, but you are by others. It's a spectrum, and so your absolute assertions are irresponsible. According to definitions that pertain to belief/attitude: If I do something that objectifies women, but I don't believe that men have any more humanity or that women are objects that doesn't make me sexist, that just means I'm doing something sexist. This is because the action -> belief feedback argument doesn't work because there are many reasons besides full agreement that motivate an action. I said this earlier: money. A lot of this stuff is economically motivated because of money. The game developers or artists may or may not have actual creative input and/or take actions that agree with their own beliefs. Sure, their output is sexist but that doesn't mean all of those people are sexist people for doing it. In fact, not even the person who made that business decision would be sexist either; if he only cares about money and success and doesn't really care either way, the only thing you can evaluate him as is greedy in the face of hurting minorities because it's the status quo. I'm not interested in "you're wrong, and yes they are sexist", I'm looking for an explanation as to why you don't think the variable motivation for an action is negligible in determining if someone is a sexist person if I can clearly come up with an example in which a person performing a sexist action does not line up with a number of definitions of sexism.

@Bleck: All you're correct on is that observable actions are the only things we have to go on to judge a person; that's far from actually making the case that those observations are absolute and sufficient to make accurate evaluations. It's one thing if you say "actions are the best thing we have to judge someone as correctly as we can because other factors in a person's character are unverifiable and subjective", but instead you're framing it as "actions are the only things we need to make a correct evaluation because there are no other factors in a person's character".

I actually find it incredibly refreshing that your comments weren't the same "FF should be turn-based and text-based!!!!" nonsense and had something to do with some nuance of the game's narrative instead.

That kind of reeks of "objective reality" type philosophy, be careful with that. It's also a bad method of evaluation; generally an action is meaningless without context and a history to measure it against in relativity. This is how media can basically turn any "action" into any "meaning" or "evaluation" they want. They take some snippet of something they see from their armchairs and then interpret it how they see fit.

yep EDIT: The Zoom is a model of choice for many production audio people. Not to knock the Tascam at all, since I know nothing about it; just that the industry professionals I've been taught by at school always recommend Zoom. The H6N is cooler, because it comes with interchangeable mic capsules; you can switch between shotgun, XY stereo image, etc. If you're doing field recording for sound design/effect purposes, you'll want to get additional mics too; that comes later, but since the Zoom models have mic in jacks for additional mics, you won't need to carry around a big audio interface backpack.

I just picked up some DT880's. $180 on Amazon atm, not far off from ATH M50x at reg price. It's less bassy, but I notice in a good way. It's semi-open, so the bass is no longer contained. I get the same (honestly, better) clarity without the fatigue.

this thread is some synesthetic shit dude

I like how people in this thread somehow came to the psychologically unfounded conclusion that a person's mind has nothing to do with their character.

Except the comparison to 50 Shades of Grey was already debunked in this thread, twice. So nothing really backs up your original review, which was just pseudo-intellectual "yeah I know names of different things in culture, that makes me right, right?". And calling it "poor man's 50 Shades" would have to insinuate that 50 Shades addresses sexual abuse and emotional manipulation more intelligently than JJ does, so it's unbacked until you actually explain why. It also ignores the fact that JJ has a lot of narrative work around things that aren't just a sexual conflict. And also ignores the fact that 50 Shades is about BDSM, not rape. You don't have a lot going there for your premise and main quote you decide to bring to the thread. As far as what I can tell, from interviews and reading about the plot, it makes a lot of sense given the context of the modern day that the show chooses to emphasize those issues. It's progressive, and highlights concepts of rape culture in the TV/big media light where it can reach a lot of people. Also from a character writing perspective, it makes sense to spend time on explaining in detail why your characters act a certain way towards each other. That's not unnecessary, that's just good writing. Show, don't tell. In TV, you can, well... actually show. That's the champion ability of the medium.

I'm going to speculate here based on some reading I've read about the show, but not actually having seen it: If your drama is centered around specific gender/sexual conflicts, would it not make sense to explore those conflicts in detail? That's like saying "I knew this was a drama about the horrors of war but they didn't have to show us people getting shot and blown up by explosives". Sad/terrible things and good drama are rarely "family friendly", and "family friendly" caters to an age group (kids) that wouldn't really have much of an informed and meaningful reaction to genuinely complicated social and emotional issues (while sacrificing the kind of R-rated content that's needed to address these issues more effectively than words on a page). There are rare exceptions, but not when a main character conflict is... well, sexual abuse. Also, 50 Shades of Grey is about BDSM, not general sexual abuse/rape; while its portrayal is questionable and as many argue flat out wrong about BDSM culture, that is the core of the narrative. Comparing this drama to 50 Shades, like Angel said, irresponsible. They serve different motives.

You'll need something like VE Pro, which lets you network MIDI and audio over ethernet and such. Then you create templates where you load up your big samples on the slave computer, send MIDI to them from your master machine's DAW and receive audio back in. It's basically like using any other multi-midi channel sampler, except inside of VE Pro takes care of sending and receiving data over network so that on your master DAW session, it simply looks like you're using a gigantic sampler with tons of tracks and audio outputs. (and within that giant sampler you are loading VST's)

I use an external Samsung T1 for all my soundware now. The only thing I haven't moved over is Omnisphere (which hugely suffers for it, but I'm lazy). SOOOO GOOD The reason for the external is that I have my DAW on both desktop and laptop set up to read stuff from the same drive letters, so now I can take all my stuff on the go without having to make sure both computers have the same installations and version .dll's and whatnot. I frequently need to work on stuff outside of the home (at cons/panels, for game studio in-person meetings, etc.) Added bonus is that they read projects from a dropbox folder. Zing!