This thread is just about giving ideas that are contrary to commonly held beliefs. Nothing really too serious. Just present how you view things differently.

Something that have been a thorn in my side for the longest period of time. The idea that Goku is a bad person. A lot of people cite his bad parenting, his self centered ways, and his lust for fighting above all else as reasons why he's a bad person. I think they are completely wrong.

I think the entire reality around Goku are bad people, and they try to spin it onto Goku.

A few things to get in order. First, He has had a Brain Injury that was severe enough to change his personality (scroll to number 1). Two, The Flying Nimbus Cloud. You literally can not ride it if you don't have a pure heart. And for those who think that since he grew up, he might have become a jerk... Number three: The Spirit Bomb. An attack that can only be used by someone with a Pure Heart. Which also answers the question why no one else uses the technique.

After his Adoptive Grandfather dies, the next person he meets is Bulma... a woman who tries to shoot him, steal his only keepsake of his Grandfather (the only person who he loved and took care of him out of the kindness of his heart), and then manipulates Goku into coming along to get the dragon balls because she knew she couldn't take it away from him.

From that point on, everyone Goku meets tries to kill him or trick him... or have him fight people who have no issue killing him for their own benefit. The only person that takes him in for any amount of time is Master Roshi. Master Roshi, however, took this as a chance to get a young boy to bring him a hot woman to ogle.

No one tries to teach Goku about the world. About education. I don't even rightly know how he knows how to read. No one actually teaches him about the world around him, they just yell at him when he doesn't know what they had to learn themselves with families and people who cared about them. People only seem to care about him when they need saving.

Goku is a bad father? He doesn't know what family is really. He doesn't even know what a healthy relationship is. Everyone he is friends with has tried to either kill him or use him. There is no exception to this. Even Trunks took out his sword and tested him to see if he could trust the fate of the world on his shoulders.

And Let's be real, if Goku wasn't as strong as Trunks needed him to be, he would have cut Goku up.

Sure, people like Goku. But no one cares about Goku. In terms of his actual well being. People yell that he should be a better father. We're talking about the boy who thought Marriage was a type of food, and that didn't stop his eventual wife from saying "...Oh shit, cut my weird little girl dreams, this boy needs far more help than I thought".

Also, that doesn't stop her from yelling at him to get a job. Doing what? He was trained for what? A Lawyer? A Doctor? A police officer? No one taught him how to be a human, yet everyone gets on his case that he's not like us.

That's the entire world failing Goku. Not the other way around.

Anyway, that's my Devil's Advocate. You got any?

Merry Christmas, US federal employees! Just what you needed to enjoy the festive season.

For those not aware of the details, the Senate has refused to fund a border wall, and Trump won't pass the budget, so the government can't pay for a load of its work. This is not a particularly big shutdown - only a modest proportion of the US bureaucracy is currently on indefinite leave.

Apparently there were frantic negotiations to prevent it, and when it became evident Trump wouldn't get the votes, he looked like he would accept a temporary extension. However, various conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh started complaining about the idea of Trump conceding, and so naturally he bowed to these rabid morons who broadcast to his base.

The idea, concept, movement and purpose does not make sense to me.

Now, what do I base this off of?

Is it my politics? No. While I'm not a left leaning person I also don't consider myself a right leaning one (Although my Commander Contrarian nature makes me argue for the right more often on these forums).

Is it my religion? No. While others of my faith see arguments against it based on our faith, that is not from where I draw my problems.

My problem is I was brought up to believe that men and women are equal and have the right and capability to pursue whatever career or life pursuit they wish. In school I was taught that a girl doing "boy things" is perfectly fine and that boys don't always "have to be tough". That our ideas of how men and women are taught to behave is a cultural thing that we do not have to adhere to.

Transgenderism, thus, does not make sense. How can someone have a female brain in a man's body if the way a woman thinks and acts is defined by a set of rules that we ourselves have created? My own brain as an autistic individual is certainly different from that of what is considered "normal" but it does not mean I think to identify as an alien stuck in a human's body (I am, unfortunately, well and truly part of the human race).

I see the idea that this or that person having a brain that, upon analysis, is closer to the opposite gender of their physical body is just someone that is like me, they have a unique way of looking at things that does not conform to normal standards. Transitioning therefore is to me someone essentially rejecting their unique perspective to adhere to the standards that society has set. While you will no doubt become angry at this comparison, it is like implants and facial reconstruction that some people go through so that they can adhere to society's idea of beauty.

Now. Does this mean I think those that identify as transgender are subhuman? No, I think the people that ridicule and harm transgender people are terrible and should be stopped from doing so. Does this mean I think laws should be made to stop transgender people from transitioning? No. While I think it is the wrong decision, it is ultimately up to them to decide what they think is best for them, even if I think they are making the incorrect choice, it is still their choice to make.

I just do not see the logic behind it. What is a tomboy for instance? Is that a boy stuck in a girl's body just because they don't play with dolls and have tea parties or other such generic ideas? Who's definition of "male" or "female" is supposed to be used for deciding this when so many cultures and people have different ideas of what makes a man a man or a woman a woman?

Again, what a person that calls themselves transgender decides to call themselves or do with themselves in regards to their body is up to them, but I just cannot agree the reasons that are given for it. All I seem to be able to do is ask questions, I am sure everyone here has their own thoughts to voice on this and I am sure I will be responded to with hate for voicing my thoughts but I felt I should voice them all the same in the hopes that I may understand better.

Since 2018 is pretty much over(thank god), pretty much all the GOTY/Top 10 lists are out by this point and a new year is quickly approaching, I'm gonna go ahead and ask: What games are you planning on playing this coming year?

They don't have to be games being released in 2019. Backlogged games or games you just haven't gotten around to picking up yet are also fair game.

For me, the list goes something like this:

-Horizon Zero Dawn

I got it for Christmas 2017, haven't played it yet.

-Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

Because Ancient Fucking Greece, not to mention I rather liked Origins so why not?

-Mutant Year Zero.

Sure, it's furry XCOM, but I liked XCOM, furries don't bug me and the game is getting good reviews.
'
-Gris

It's apparently really atmospheric and such. Also, it's 4 hours long, which is really nice in an era where every game has to be a 60+ hour open world game because reasons.

-Outer Worlds

Assuming it's good, of course. I liked FO:NV and Alpha Protocol so there's a decent chance.

-Kentucky Route Zero Act V.

Yeah, I'm being super optimistic here and assuming just because it was scheduled for a "Early 2018" release it might actually drop in 2019. 4/5 acts are done and I kinda want to see the whole thing completed.

-God of War.

It's apparently really good and I've been avoiding Spoilers(other then Kratos kills a bunch of dudes, some of whom are Gods).

-Red Dead Redemption.

I'm not playing 2 until I play the first one, for numerous reasons. I know the newer game is a prequel but apparently a fair number of RDR characters are shown in RDR2 at an earlier point in their lives(including John Marston).

Edited:

-Either Pillers of Eternity or Divinity:Original Sin. Both are apparently good but different from each other. Both have an apparently even better sequel as well.

And I'm sure a couple games will take me totally off guard and I'll have to grab those as well, because it happens every year(Return of the Obra What? What is this thing? Wait, it's actually good?).

So after all that has happened in 2018 in the AAA gaming space, I thought I would start a discussion.

For years we've all heard about how the gaming bubble is going to burst. That as AAA games become more and more expensive to make stacked on top of the seedy practice of adding in extra charges around these games, at some point the market was just going to collapse.

It started with DLC, then it became day one DLC, then DLC on the disc that you already paid for, then microtransactions started, all boiling up to lootboxes. Each of these practices for extra monetization caused the games to loose an aspect of their initial quality. From DLC selling us the "real" ending, to selling us extra fighters on a roster artificially limited in order to sell us the characters on the disc for an extra price. Once AAA-gaming really started to dig deep into the Microtransaction and lootbox department, balancing of the entire game got fuck-a-doodled.

But now AAA gaming has gone even further off the rail I think. AS the backlash of the lootboxes finally reached a massive head with Star Wars Battlefront 2, to the point that governments started telling publishers to fuck off with that gambling bullshit, I feel like publishers tried to cut back on costs as well as look at other ways they could still have their microtransactions without losing too much of the billions of dollars in revenue that they've seen over the last few years.

The result are incredibly unbalanced games, or shit cheaply made games that they've tried to sell us as AAA-experiences.

Fallout 76 - an asset flip where the only thing that works is the incredibly overpriced cash shop.

Red Dead Redemption 2 - regardless of the "quality" of the single player experience, the multiplayer is the mode that people are going to play for any real bulk of time and that economy is fuck skittles. Designed to sell you gold bars so you can have something as basic as fast travel. This is only slightly better than selling save slots.

Not to mention publishers are now pushing things into areas we don't want nor do we care about. Look at Blizzard and how much everyone loved that after 6 fucking years the latest Diablo game is nothing more than a reskin of a knock off Diablo game on mobile phones of all things.

With all this in mind, are we finally facing the AAA-gaming industry reset that we've all been speculating for years? Can AAA gaming recover from this shitstorm that they've landed in?

It seems like every year, we are getting fewer and fewer AAA releases that don't come with shady business baggage. Looking forward to 2019 how many AAA games can you predict wont have some microtransactional bullshit tacked on?

THIS IS THE HILL I INSIST ON DYING ON

(Edit: Using this post as a jumping off point)

Specter Von Baren:
Hhm. So this is the thread that got Saelune suspended. Hopefully this means they'll think about how they've been acting and shape up and be civil again.

"And they called [Obama] a muslim, a terrorist, they insulted his wife, his daughters ...
And now they want civility?

Okay sure you can have civility if you hop in a time machine, and change the past, so that you deserve civility because until then ... civility is not on the table."

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/9vvfyw/when_the_us_had_a_president_who_wouldnt_let_a/e9fk5hj/?context=3

Not my reddit post, but a point I agree with.

Civility is a tool of oppression. Civility is what those in power demand of those not in power, for civility helps them stay in power. Civility keeps people from calling out others for their misdeads. Civility worse yet, being used to oppress by people who neglect their own civility.

What civility is there in white supremacy? None. What civility is there in rape? None. What civility is there in murdering a black man who gun nuts could have used as a champion for the 'Good guy with gun' mentality but instead was shot dead, while white mass shooters are treated with the civility of being taken alive? None for those who deserve it anyways.

Civility is why I get punished here while Donald Trump and Republicans and all other right-wingers abuse and oppress me and people like me, and people unlike me, and hell even you. That is the real irony is that Republicans are even oppressing their own, yet their own praise them for the honor to be shat upon by their glorious bigot fascist leader.

It is not civility we should be demanding, but decency, compassion, empathy, and justice. But when 'civility' comes knocking, they want you to put your head down, get in line, while the police out you in local newspapers. Indecent civility is no civility at all.

The Stonewall Riots were not civil, but they were effective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

When gay rights activists were civil, they were ignored. Because civility is a tool of oppression. A quiet problem is no problem at all.

When LGBT people decided enough with civility, cause all it gets us is handcuffs and abuse, then it became loud and proud and...effective. We're here, we're queer, get used to it. No please, no thank you. A bold, uncivil statement of existence that those 'civil and fair' hetero bigots despised for now making them be aware that we exist.

A war, ironically called the 'Civil War' was even less civil than that! A war for the very humanity of a huge chunk of the American population, well, as far as one side was concerned, for the other side, the CONFEDERATES, did not even view Africans as people, but as property, as cattle. What civility is there in that? None. Ironic now that the two sides that opposed each other, the Republicans and the Confederates, are now the same damn side. Though if you look at the sides of the states, you will notice a pattern.

What civility did Hitler show the world? None. Should people have been civil to him? I mean, he was the legal ruler of Germany, and you never dare speak ill of those in power, you must be civil! But Hitler was not civil. He like so many others, dehumanized, reduced. I guess you don't need to be civil to people when you don't view them as people, hm.

Anyways, here is hundreds of instances of Trump being uncivil.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article?ion=Footer

Civility is a tool of oppression. Chains meant to keep the oppressed bogged down. 'Do as I say, not as I do'.

So we have a few people on here who might trot out this term a bit too often.

But the response fascinates me. It doesn't come to a discussion on whether the words that 'racist' was applied to was actually racist. Or different interpretations of the word racist.

No, it becomes an all out brawl on shutting down the opposition without thinking about their position. Usually in that same discussion, someone points out how the word shuts down conversations (which is correct) while simultaneously shutting down the person who uses the word racist. And the latter learns absolutely nothing other than everybody is a hypocrite.

PS. I think this site is actually much better with trigger words like racist. There are many worse places out there. But it still happens.

Also, discussion on what you think is/not racist would interest me.

ur gay lol

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-dives-in-11546298426

Trump may die before 2020. He may become too ill to run. He may say screw it or even end up in jail!

So, less about him, what do you think of her? What positions do you think she really will fight for? What challenges do you think she faces?

My thoughts: She is younger than Bernie and has positions on major issues similar to his.

Your thoughts?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/27/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting

But I am seeing the news on TV at the moment and they say that the suspect surrendered and is now in custody.

To me its a suprising thing because usually these armed suspects would commit suicide after having done a murder spree of this proportion. Especially after having shot and downed police.

EDIT: Total of 12 Casualties. 4 dead, the rest unknown.

-The gunman was a reportedly a heavy-set white male with a beard

I listened to Mogworld a couple of years ago and recently finished Differently Morphous.

I thought Differently Morphous was pretty good. It was silly and lighthearted, but still managed to have a twist to the whodunnit that works fantastically in retrospect. I was actually quite surprised how well everything came together in the end.

Anybody else read any of Yahtzee's stuff?

Merry Christmas, US federal employees! Just what you needed to enjoy the festive season.

For those not aware of the details, the Senate has refused to fund a border wall, and Trump won't pass the budget, so the government can't pay for a load of its work. This is not a particularly big shutdown - only a modest proportion of the US bureaucracy is currently on indefinite leave.

Apparently there were frantic negotiations to prevent it, and when it became evident Trump wouldn't get the votes, he looked like he would accept a temporary extension. However, various conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh started complaining about the idea of Trump conceding, and so naturally he bowed to these rabid morons who broadcast to his base.

You know what? I'm sick of always seeing nothing but negativity in the conversations we have here, why don't we try something different with the start of the new year?

Say something nice about another forum member, something you find commendable or honorable about them, maybe you think they're funny or insightful, just say what it is here.

For myself. I really like ObsidianJones's way of making posts in the R&P section. They're firm in their beliefs and in talking about problems but they don't try to play up the incidents they talk about or turn them into hate topics, they say, "Hey look, this shit is bad." and just let it speak for itself.
So often people try to sear their message into you like a hot brand, but Obsidian just lets it sink in like water through soil. It makes me have to actually stop and think about it because they're clearly not just doing it to be sensational with what they're talking about, just telling it how it is.

I like that, I think you're a pretty cool person Obsidian.

*Sigh* (English is not my native so I guess sorry for the grammar and typos)
I feel sad, the gaming now is totally sick, intoxicated with this "malpractice", because well, greediness.
After big debate on the forum of Hearthstone and the most recent Magic the Gathering Arena. I wanted to come on neutral ground and tell my opinion.
Loot box, microtransaction for skin or simple pay to skip (experience potion, more stash, etc..) is a bad thing.

Loot box (or booster pack for CCG), you can't directly buy what you want or the price for individual items is ridiculously overprice, some stuff are arbitrarily more rare for some reason, and often, loot boxes are filled with a lot of "useless" junk that barely few people care (like spray, icon or even flag in Heroes of the Storm for example). Just so you think the rare stuff is more interesting (gambling mechanic).
Like in HotS if you buy one character with gems it's like 5$, I have seen some skin with 20$ attached to it, wtf?

Micro for skin, well I think this one is hard, and some psychology and philosophy may get into, but for me, paying for a skin can give you an advantage that some other players don't have. Not everyone as the same kind of vision, if you have a different skin than the "normal one" you may blend better or may be harder to see for some players.
And why back then in a game like says Quake 3 arena, everyone had access to the 4 or 5 pages of 16 skins, now we have to buy them individually?

And the last one, which for me is the worst of all, the Pay to Skip.
No matter the form it takes, I despise all kind of P2Skip a game can offer, even worst when it's already a P2Play like WoW where you can pay 60$ to have a max level character.
Because of if the method of P2Skip exist it means the original game and the method to attain a certain aspect of game has been artificially slowed down, either by time gate, loot box randomness, restriction of daily quest or similar.
I just rage, because no matter what, paying for skipping is NEVER a good thing, because, all you do, is throwing money out of the window (in a way). You don't give money to buy more content, or to have access to thing you couldn't before, you pay to access them faster, because you made them slower so I could lose my patience and pay you to skip ahead.

Let now talk about the fact of paying for a virtual currencies, I think I have never seen a game that offers good well rounded virtual currencies, its always Pay 500 gems for 5$, 1100 gems for 10$ and such, but in the shop, almost no items cost exactly 500 or 1100, they have cost like 750 or 1300, so you are stuck with a portion of the amount you paid in virtual currency that you can't spend. So instead of paying says 7,50$ for an item, you paid 10$, because they made this artificially, again, not having something at 2,50$ so you gave them more than you would have.

So people say, let other people do what they want with their money, but the problem is, if you buy the skin at 5$ or the pay to get more boosters in Hearthstone, you say to the design that its correct to do it and thus making my own enjoyment of the game of not having P2skip worst. So no, you do have an indirect impact on me.

Now I am sad because more and more games are getting through this route of giving more and more granular content and trying to squeeze from us more money by using "morally grey" mechanics and design choices like more grindy games and gambling mechanic.

Honourable mentions to basically 99% of the mobile games which either use one or a lot of these practices.

Since 2018 is pretty much over(thank god), pretty much all the GOTY/Top 10 lists are out by this point and a new year is quickly approaching, I'm gonna go ahead and ask: What games are you planning on playing this coming year?

They don't have to be games being released in 2019. Backlogged games or games you just haven't gotten around to picking up yet are also fair game.

For me, the list goes something like this:

-Horizon Zero Dawn

I got it for Christmas 2017, haven't played it yet.

-Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

Because Ancient Fucking Greece, not to mention I rather liked Origins so why not?

-Mutant Year Zero.

Sure, it's furry XCOM, but I liked XCOM, furries don't bug me and the game is getting good reviews.
'
-Gris

It's apparently really atmospheric and such. Also, it's 4 hours long, which is really nice in an era where every game has to be a 60+ hour open world game because reasons.

-Outer Worlds

Assuming it's good, of course. I liked FO:NV and Alpha Protocol so there's a decent chance.

-Kentucky Route Zero Act V.

Yeah, I'm being super optimistic here and assuming just because it was scheduled for a "Early 2018" release it might actually drop in 2019. 4/5 acts are done and I kinda want to see the whole thing completed.

-God of War.

It's apparently really good and I've been avoiding Spoilers(other then Kratos kills a bunch of dudes, some of whom are Gods).

-Red Dead Redemption.

I'm not playing 2 until I play the first one, for numerous reasons. I know the newer game is a prequel but apparently a fair number of RDR characters are shown in RDR2 at an earlier point in their lives(including John Marston).

Edited:

-Either Pillers of Eternity or Divinity:Original Sin. Both are apparently good but different from each other. Both have an apparently even better sequel as well.

And I'm sure a couple games will take me totally off guard and I'll have to grab those as well, because it happens every year(Return of the Obra What? What is this thing? Wait, it's actually good?).

So after all that has happened in 2018 in the AAA gaming space, I thought I would start a discussion.

For years we've all heard about how the gaming bubble is going to burst. That as AAA games become more and more expensive to make stacked on top of the seedy practice of adding in extra charges around these games, at some point the market was just going to collapse.

It started with DLC, then it became day one DLC, then DLC on the disc that you already paid for, then microtransactions started, all boiling up to lootboxes. Each of these practices for extra monetization caused the games to loose an aspect of their initial quality. From DLC selling us the "real" ending, to selling us extra fighters on a roster artificially limited in order to sell us the characters on the disc for an extra price. Once AAA-gaming really started to dig deep into the Microtransaction and lootbox department, balancing of the entire game got fuck-a-doodled.

But now AAA gaming has gone even further off the rail I think. AS the backlash of the lootboxes finally reached a massive head with Star Wars Battlefront 2, to the point that governments started telling publishers to fuck off with that gambling bullshit, I feel like publishers tried to cut back on costs as well as look at other ways they could still have their microtransactions without losing too much of the billions of dollars in revenue that they've seen over the last few years.

The result are incredibly unbalanced games, or shit cheaply made games that they've tried to sell us as AAA-experiences.

Fallout 76 - an asset flip where the only thing that works is the incredibly overpriced cash shop.

Red Dead Redemption 2 - regardless of the "quality" of the single player experience, the multiplayer is the mode that people are going to play for any real bulk of time and that economy is fuck skittles. Designed to sell you gold bars so you can have something as basic as fast travel. This is only slightly better than selling save slots.

Not to mention publishers are now pushing things into areas we don't want nor do we care about. Look at Blizzard and how much everyone loved that after 6 fucking years the latest Diablo game is nothing more than a reskin of a knock off Diablo game on mobile phones of all things.

With all this in mind, are we finally facing the AAA-gaming industry reset that we've all been speculating for years? Can AAA gaming recover from this shitstorm that they've landed in?

It seems like every year, we are getting fewer and fewer AAA releases that don't come with shady business baggage. Looking forward to 2019 how many AAA games can you predict wont have some microtransactional bullshit tacked on?

The idea, concept, movement and purpose does not make sense to me.

Now, what do I base this off of?

Is it my politics? No. While I'm not a left leaning person I also don't consider myself a right leaning one (Although my Commander Contrarian nature makes me argue for the right more often on these forums).

Is it my religion? No. While others of my faith see arguments against it based on our faith, that is not from where I draw my problems.

My problem is I was brought up to believe that men and women are equal and have the right and capability to pursue whatever career or life pursuit they wish. In school I was taught that a girl doing "boy things" is perfectly fine and that boys don't always "have to be tough". That our ideas of how men and women are taught to behave is a cultural thing that we do not have to adhere to.

Transgenderism, thus, does not make sense. How can someone have a female brain in a man's body if the way a woman thinks and acts is defined by a set of rules that we ourselves have created? My own brain as an autistic individual is certainly different from that of what is considered "normal" but it does not mean I think to identify as an alien stuck in a human's body (I am, unfortunately, well and truly part of the human race).

I see the idea that this or that person having a brain that, upon analysis, is closer to the opposite gender of their physical body is just someone that is like me, they have a unique way of looking at things that does not conform to normal standards. Transitioning therefore is to me someone essentially rejecting their unique perspective to adhere to the standards that society has set. While you will no doubt become angry at this comparison, it is like implants and facial reconstruction that some people go through so that they can adhere to society's idea of beauty.

Now. Does this mean I think those that identify as transgender are subhuman? No, I think the people that ridicule and harm transgender people are terrible and should be stopped from doing so. Does this mean I think laws should be made to stop transgender people from transitioning? No. While I think it is the wrong decision, it is ultimately up to them to decide what they think is best for them, even if I think they are making the incorrect choice, it is still their choice to make.

I just do not see the logic behind it. What is a tomboy for instance? Is that a boy stuck in a girl's body just because they don't play with dolls and have tea parties or other such generic ideas? Who's definition of "male" or "female" is supposed to be used for deciding this when so many cultures and people have different ideas of what makes a man a man or a woman a woman?

Again, what a person that calls themselves transgender decides to call themselves or do with themselves in regards to their body is up to them, but I just cannot agree the reasons that are given for it. All I seem to be able to do is ask questions, I am sure everyone here has their own thoughts to voice on this and I am sure I will be responded to with hate for voicing my thoughts but I felt I should voice them all the same in the hopes that I may understand better.

I mean make it like the RE remakes in aspects and update things and all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTVLc2K7n0c

Essentially Razorfist claims the FBI as of recent times is inexorably corrupt and far outlived its original mandate and purpose and long overdue for dissolution. And of course he shows me a bunch of images of website articles (without showing which website it is exactly or linking his sources, and said article list itself as an opinion.)

But still I want to know what other people have to say about this topic of whether the FBI today is corrupt and what not?