Ardbert's Party vs the Scions Analysis

[CrownySuccubus]

Are you going to answer my question or not? I will repeat it for you

I did answer it. You guys are united in the argument that what you don't like is to the dire detriment of the game, to the point of calling it "for kids" or shallow, while positioning yourselves and others who make the same complaints as the only ones who "care" about the series.

The entire argument is one which forcefully seeks to impose specific changes under the justification of objective quality or mass appeal.

By the way, you're throwing in an awful lot of "you guys" there. I don't profess to know what the game's "silent majority" believes, I can at best rely on proxy indicators which are admittedly of limited use, but I do note you seldom push back on any claims made by Striker or similar to that effect, and his claims about "majorities". I leave it to the reader to infer why that might be.

Interesting. So you're implying that me not pushing back against something Striker says means that I agree with him?

Okay. Let's run with that argument.

Based on that, unless I see you actively argue against or disagree with statements made by your clique, what you specifically do or don't profess is irrelevant. If Aveyond makes the claim that there's a silent majority of dissatisfied players, or that SE needs to replace the Scions, and you guys are silent...but you IMMEDIATELY jump in and start arguing when someone tells him he's wrong or his points are invalid, then it doesn't matter if you yourself professed it or not. I mean, this is according to YOUR own logic about my own lack of reaction to Striker.

If someone is breaking into a car, and you throw away the owner's phone before they can call the police, claiming "Well, I don't profess to agree to car theft" is irrelevant. But I will make a note in the future that, you, specifically, claim that you don't know what the "silent majority" wants. So when I say "you guys" or "the clique" from now, we can both assume you're not included in that.

Also, I can prove that even I agree with someone's overall opinion, I absolutely WILL speak out about points or arguments they make that I don't agree with, provided I have the time to respond or see it. In Striker's case, I had three specific posts I wanted to reply to as quickly as possible, so maybe I'll reexamine his posts. In your case, I think that may be a little harder to argue, because Aveyond tends to repeat himself a LOT, so the question of why you never "pushed back" (again, if we're assuming that no pushback = agreement) is arguably a little more egregious.

[Theodric]

I'm an Ascian/Ancient fan, and Emet-Selch is my favorite character. (I even think Venat was a horrible person and the Sundering is an unjustifiable mass murder that has basically broken the game's lore, and have posted about this, passionately, at length! I have had many arguments about it with other posters, even!) I'm very familiar with the frustrating "if you like [x] you are a fascist/bad person/support war crimes" rhetoric used to try to emotionally pressure other people. And because I recognize the manipulative, disengenuous rhetoric for what it is in that situation, I also recognize manipulative rhetoric when it's used elsewhere - ie, bringing in the victimhood of Garlemald fans out of nowhere, without context, in a completely unrelated discussion.

It's not really out of nowhere when I'm specifically replying to a poster who, completely out of the blue, name dropped both myself and a handful of other posters as part of a very strange and long lasting grudge.

The poster who, repeatedly, has made strange insinuations about not only myself but friends of mine as well and who continues to do so in various different ways.

I know that you had some sort of issue over my linking of a Twitter profile a while back though I really don't think it's at all unreasonable for me, as someone who isn't American, to not want localisation dictated by those who cannot separate themselves from their political identity and who are happy to openly attack and dismiss large swathes of the population based on their personal beliefs.

As someone who is pretty apolitical in general, I'm tired of politics being dragged into everything. It really isn't anymore complicated than that. Nor do I think it to be appropriate for staff working on the game to be dismissing the opinions of players who have an issue with Venat. On the basis that I played World and Warcraft and saw such statements made in defence of Sylvanas Windrunner who proved to be equally as divisive a character.

At any rate, I'm not hugely interested in this inane back and forth. To be quite honest, the two of you creep me out more and more and I'd like you both to make use of the ignore function and leave me alone. Or at least engage in a civil manner.

[CrownySuccubus]

It's not really out of nowhere when I'm specifically replying to a poster who, completely out of the blue, name dropped both myself and a handful of other posters as part of a very strange and long lasting grudge.

I'm not the one sub-tweeting about people in other threads, Theo.

At any rate, I'm not hugely interested in this inane back and forth.

Ah yes, another example of "running away while firing one last bullet".

To be quite honest, the two of you creep me out more and more and I'd like you both to make use of the ignore function and leave me alone. Or at least engage in a civil manner.

Again, you can put ME on ignore all you like. That doesn't mean I have to do the same. If you want to not see when I refute one of your points, that's on you. I'm not obligated to act like they don't exist.

[Lauront]

I did answer it. You guys are united in the argument that what you don't like is to the dire detriment of the game, to the point of calling it "for kids" or shallow, while positioning yourselves and others who make the same complaints as the only ones who "care" about the series.

The entire argument is one which forcefully seeks to impose specific changes under the justification of objective quality or mass appeal.

And how would it propose to forcefully impose said changes unless the developers agreed that these are issues and that the proposed changes are the best way forward? That is assuming that I run with your massive reach here, which would apparently even include calling the writing shallow.

Interesting. So you're implying that me not pushing back against something Striker says means that I agree with him?

Okay. Let's run with that argument.

Based on that, unless I see you actively argue against or disagree with statements made by your clique, what you specifically do or don't profess is irrelevant. If Aveyond makes the claim that there's a silent majority of dissatisfied players, or that SE needs to replace the Scions, and you guys are silent...but you IMMEDIATELY jump in and start arguing when someone tells him he's wrong or his points are invalid, then it doesn't matter if you yourself professed it or not.

If someone is breaking into a car, and you throw away the owner's phone before they can call the police, claiming "Well, I don't profess to agree to car theft" is irrelevant. But I will make a note in the future that, you, specifically, claim that you don't know what the "silent majority" wants. So when I say "you guys" or "the clique" from now, we can both assume you're not included in that.

I was actually taking it in the direction that you seem to have a vendetta against certain posters here, rather than that you share his beliefs, and that your concern over the absoluteness of certain claims is more a window dressing as opposed to anything else. We won't be communicating an awful lot in the future, so what you choose to believe going forward is of little consequence to me.

[MikkoAkure]

At any rate, I'm not hugely interested in this inane back and forth. To be quite honest, the two of you creep me out more and more and I'd like you both to make use of the ignore function and leave me alone. Or at least engage in a civil manner.

You could just do what a lot of people including myself do and just not respond to someone if you don't think they're worth your time.

To bring it back to FFXIV, if Emet-Selch thought the WoL wasn't worth his time, the Ascians would have won as the WoL would have been overwhelmed by light aether, not knowing what they were doing and having nothing to do with it all, and caused another Calamity. He just needed to not get involved.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Man was curious to check back on this thread and currently seeing how derailed it was to its original topic. Kinda says something about how much little of an impression the Warriors of Darkness (and I'm talking about the other 4 besides Ardbert) left in this game's story were people care more about talking about other things than wanting to debate about each individual WoD. Seriously the community as whole cares more about Ardbert than any of his other companions, and for a good reason since he was given the chance to have more of a fleshed out arc and purpose within this game's msq compared to his friends. Which is kinda sad.

Its ok Nyelbert, Lammitt, Renda-Rae and Branden, at least you'll live on in the 1.0 and 2.0 marketing where they used to focus on having multiple stand-ins for the protag before SE decided to just focus on Ardb- uh I mean derplan- uh I mean METEOR. Yeah...Meteor...

[CrownySuccubus]

And how would it propose to forcefully impose said changes unless the developers agreed that these are issues and that the proposed changes are the best way forward? That is assuming that I run with your massive reach here, which would apparently even include calling the writing shallow.

I'm not sure why you think that something doesn't count as a "demand" or "forceful" unless the other party relents to it. You can forcefully demand something, and the other person can choose to ignore it. That doesn't make the demand any less forceful.

I was actually taking it in the direction that you seem to have a vendetta against certain posters here, rather than that you share his beliefs, and that your concern over the absoluteness of certain claims is more a window dressing as opposed to anything else.

Again, I'm not the person living so rent free that I'm sub-tweeting in other threads or making whole new threads to misrepresent someone else's arguments.

We won't be communicating an awful lot in the future, so what you choose to believe going forward is of little consequence to me.

....kay.

[Theodric]

I'm not the one sub-tweeting about people in other threads, Theo.

You brought me up by name a few pages back within this very thread:

Except Aveyond, Theodric, Rulakir, et al, actually DO try to invalidate other opinions, whether by claiming that these observations are factual criticisms, that the game overall is suffering from them, that players will leave because of them, or calling the things they don't like "for kids" and that anyone who did like them are shallow or aren't paying enough critical attention.

As for this...

Ah yes, another example of "running away while firing one last bullet".

No, it isn't - since that isn't what I'm doing. Please cease attempting to attribute false motives to me in a malicious manner.

[Lauront]

I'm not sure why you think that something doesn't count as a "demand" or "forceful" unless the other party relents to it. You can forcefully demand something, and the other person can choose to ignore it. That doesn't make the demand any less forceful.

So basically there is no real means or intent to "forcefully" impose anything, understood. Merely leaving a business poor feedback could be construed as "forceful" under such a watered down definition. The graveyard of "forceful" demands that Yoshi and his team have refused to cater to should be evidence of how meaningless any claims regarding "imposing" one's wishes are, and gaming companies are no stranger to consumers with views on what should be done, which once more, they routinely bury. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. At best, you hope the developer might notice matters have soured if disposition is growing more negative in tone, and listen more closely that something is awry, e.g. with healer feedback, and it is in that spirit which feedback is offered. But the idea that the developer is having their arm twisted to do so in any meaningful sense beyond trying to get their consumers to stay is risible.

At any rate, it's clear to me that there was never really any substance behind this beyond Striker disliking how certain things are worded.

[CrownySuccubus]

So basically there is no real means or intent to "forcefully" impose anything, understood.

Again, you can use whatever semantics you want.

At best, you hope the developer might notice matters have soured if disposition is growing more aggressive, and listen more closely that something is awry, e.g. with healer feedback.

Right. Especially if you present yourselves as people making that "more aggressive" (but not "forceful") feedback.

At any rate, it's clear to me that there was never really any substance behind this beyond Striker disliking how certain things are worded.

Again:

....kay.