Shadowe

I joined OCR's forums over 20 years ago at this point, after having been a listener for some time as well. It's hard to believe it's been two whole decades already. The ups, the downs, the good, the bad, losing family members, nearly dying, getting married and discovering what it truly means to live... for over half of my entire existence on this planet OCR has been my life's soundtrack. Maybe there's a reason I wound up marrying a musician. How do you even begin to put that into words? What can I possibly say that could begin to hold a candle to that, to encompass the joy and solace music provided for half a human life? I guess all I can say is: Thank you, DJP. For everything.

The number one thing: Please for the love of all that is good in the world stick to real actual HTML links and pages designed for PC users. A 3 inch wide column of web 6.0 javascript with billboard sized text that never gives you any idea whether you actually clicked a link or not, whether something's loading or not, or whether the problem's on the far end or what is a nightmare.

So what do you want to call the attitude that a particular idea of what a UsEr ExPeRiEnCe should be is so important and valuable that the actual forum users and what they want simply don't figure into it? What is that if not elitism? It's true that OCR's forums aren't doing well but that's not because forums in general are dying. I'm part of some very active forums elsewhere that are even actively growing, and as Meteo Xavier said there are plenty more out there. The "paradigm" is fine, what's changed is that today people have almost limitless connectivity and the other forum I'm on thrives precisely because of that connectivity. Leadership there have made it a point to treat the forum first and foremost as a community. Give people a stake in something, make them feel like they have a say, and a sense of belonging and investment in that places' success will follow. Do the opposite, and the opposite happens. OCR's been dying a slow death going all the way back to unmod getting deleted, and your response pretty much proves why. When you tell people that the only thing you'll consider "good faith" is telling you what you want to hear after you do something your forum's users don't like you can't be surprised at the inevitable decline of your community. Tell people "my way or the highway" and they're going to wind up choosing the highway. Don't blame the "erosion of the paradigm", own your leadership's results.

If anyone had any doubts about the intentions of this or whether this thread was in good faith keep in mind this thread's being silently censored. I made a post that apparently cut way too close to home when I brought up elitist postmodernist designers treating users as a monetizable resource to be farmed and managed rather than respected and listened to. Let's be honest, this was never going to be a conversation. Feedback was never actually wanted, this was just an attempt at trying to placate users by pretending they had any voice at all. OCR's staff haven't been willing to listen to their users since they deleted unmod.

But User #63421, ninjawizardguruexperts who went to importantpomoartschool have informed us that this is Good Design(TM). They know what's best, not the users who actually use this forum. They assure us this decision will be a resounding success. After all when has a postmodernist hip attempt to strip features and control away from users ever gone over badly?

I've been around OCR since the logo was blue and I've got to be honest, I think you're being misled by the same UsErExPeRiEnCe clique that's behind most horrible UI decisions that actual users utterly despise. With social media and tech being the way it is today we're seeing more than ever an extreme gulf between what "experts" and self proclaimed thought leaders say customers and users want and the reality. You see this everywhere from phones to computers to pop culture, just compare the "critic" score to the user score on almost any major mainstream release on rotten tomatoes for the past decade.

Maybe I'm just a freak or something but I mean when I was 4 I had an NES with SMB1, SMB3, Adventure Island and a Sega Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and a couple other games. Older games are hard as balls by todays standards but they were still games and still played by us back then. Children will rise, or not, to your expectations of them. They want challenges and genuine achievement rather than games that give you wins for free and make it all super easy for you. The first time I ever actually beat Sonic 3 entirely on my own was an incredible feeling. Remember we're the generation that grew up with childhood games like The Lion King and those insane moon logic LucasArts and Sierra adventure games. Nobody told us that was "too hard" so we just kept trying until we beat them. Kids have a superpower, limitless potential growth as long as nobody tells them what they're doing is impossible.

After the stunt they pulled stealing someone's decks with MTGO i'm never touching a digital wizards product.

Kinda reminds me of the "Movers" track from the Homeworld 2 OST

That's because Sarkeesian/McIntosh would deliberately curate comments to delete anything reasonable and leave only trolls. My answer to any claim of "objectification" is the same: Disprove the claim. If it's a legitimate concept and not a cry of "witch! communist!" then no one should have trouble naming a simple way to disprove the accusation something is objectifying. If there is no way to disprove an accusation then it isn't legitimate, it's witch-hunting and can be dismissed summarily.

Subterrania was this amazing objective based gravity-is-a-thing spaceship shooter, never played anything else like it. It was like a 2d Jungle Strike set in space that didn't suck. Then there was Crusader of Centy, which played something like a cross between a single character Final Fantasy, Metroid, and Streets of Rage. Gaiaraes was a kickass R-Type styled game where you could steal weapons from enemy ships. This game was long for a shmup too, and had the usual trippy level design complete with black holes and giant animals/people. Gain Ground was... Interesting. You got different characters with different weapons and the goal was to either eliminate all enemies on each screen or somehow get all your characters to the exit on each level. Infuriatingly difficult at times. General Chaos was also a tactical sorta-isometric game but you controlled a whole squad at once in a sort of turn based combat. Mega Turrican was a really long and artistically amazing sidescrolling platformer that was kinda like Ecco in hitting on some surreal/disturbing story tones told through level design. Ranger-X was another sidescrolling shooter but with the interesting twist that you controlled two different mechs simultaneously, which could interact with each other. The levels were generally somewhat non-linear and objective based. Robocop vs The Terminator was on the surface a plain old sidescrolling platformer/shooter, but there were a ridiculous number of weapons and once you uncensored the game with a cheat code things got a little crazy with blood and stripperrific outfits. Shinobi 3 is probably one of my favorite Genesis games, right up there with Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The art and music are great, the storyline conveyed surprisingly well through level design alone, and the gameplay is top notch. Imho it's one of those games that shows just how much a competent team can get out of the Genesis.

There's a case to be made for some clothing, particularly things like suits, where to a point quality and price go together. A bespoke canvassed suit will fit you perfectly and last far longer than an off the rack glued-together polyblend suit, but it'll also cost a hell of a lot more. I saved up for many years to buy a set of navy, charcoal, and black partially canvassed suits on sale at Brooks Brothers and comparing it my old Men's Wearhouse suit is like comparing a guitar bought at target to a custom american made fender.

I'm not going to buy the idea that it's oppressive but it's certainly cringy as fuck. I think someone was on something way stronger than acid to think this was a good idea.

Ziggy's not dead, he just went home.

Congratulations, you've just literally said Jack Thompson was right about everything and videogames make people violent and sexist despite literally all evidence we have showing otherwise. You're right about one thing though, there's nothing really to discuss with someone that holds a religious belief in the evil influence of media even when contradicted by the scientific evidence that it doesn't work like that.