Sg3 on 4/7/2012 at 18:57
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
You're stupid:
And the voice chat icon appears if a person has a mic hooked up at all, not only if they're talking, since it's open mic only, which is why 'Mute All' was such a heavily requested option. If there had been push-to-talk, it wouldn't have been such a problem.
Oops, I forgot about that lobby "mute all" (it's been a few months since I've played). However! The "mute all"
is not available during the match itself, only in the lobby--moreover,
it only works on people who are present at the time of pushing it, not those who join while the match is in progress. So, yes, you can hit "mute all" to mute everyone in the lobby before the match starts, but once the match starts and a bunch of new people join, you can't, and have to do each one by hand (and you have to catch them while they're talking). Shitty, shitty system.
The individual mute button
does only show up whenever a person has a mic actively transmitting. Hop into a game and stare at the scoreboard for a while; most people will constantly have the mute button blinking on and off as they talk and go quiet--the only people with the mute button always there are the ones whose mic is always on (in which case you'll hear heavy breathing, computer fan, background talking, and/or pop music).
Regardless of fine points of the mute mechanics, it's a horrid system which doesn't allow you to easily mute people, allows vocal griefers to have a heyday, and forces you to leave your character defenseless in the middle of a warzone while you deal with any such problem. And nowhere, at all, is an option to turn off VOIP altogether. You've always got to be juggling with muting new voices during matches. No game should be without the user-side option to turn of VOIP altogether for oneself.
Yakoob on 4/7/2012 at 19:10
Quote Posted by Phatose
Oh Jesus fucking Christ TTLG.
Look, I appreciate that gaming is a medium largely defined by men, for boys, about power trips and tits and using a big sword/gun/nuke to get the cute heroine to fall in love and fuck you until you die.
But fucking A. This is TTLG, and WH40K: Space Marine has much bigger problems then tits. Like the fact that the combo system is Button A 1 to 4 times then Button B. Like the fact that the plot is "KILL EVERYTHING. LOL, SUCKS TO BE YOU."
We're better then this.
But but... SEXISM! AND TTLG!
Quote Posted by dethtoll
ITT we learn that female portrayals in media and the (un)fairness thereof take a backseat to combos being simplistic which is fucking awful and everyone should be enraged about it
and i'm the one who gets told i'm ruining ttlg -- what's to ruin?
I think he's point is that we've already got one, nay, two threads about sexism, so pushing ANOTHER one in that direction isn't really necessary. You're not even discussing the game
per-say just one (arguably small) artistic aspect of it.
Kind of like all the Diablo 3 threads never talk about the actual game or lore but only about DPS, iLvs and other columns in the excel spreadsheet. But I still believe the excel spreadsheet IS the gameplay in that case :|
DDL on 4/7/2012 at 19:24
Quote Posted by Phatose
When you start doing that in fictional universe set in the future, it's real hard to claim it's just historical - since you're not even dealing with history. At the very least, you might want to explain why exactly every advancement made in gender equality in the 20th & 21st centuries vanished and we're back to the medieval way of doing things.
(
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Age_of_Strife#.T_SVIZFrWSo) Age of strife?
That's basically "everything got fucked for 7000 years", and humanity had to start from scratch, on a vastly more militant footing.
Quote Posted by Phatose
More problematically, it starts to seep into other elements where you're actually creating subtle new sexism. For example, the Imperial Guard is quite established as including females - yet, if you look at Dawn of War 1's expansions, you wouldn't know it. All the units are male - even though they shouldn't be. All the voicing is male - this is no doubt because it feels correct in the setting, even though it's absolutely incorrect in that universe.
That seems...awfully hair splitting. Given that at any given moment in DOW1 you're mostly looking at a bunch of tiny peeps (generally being mowed down by heavy bolters), rather than zooming in to check gender. I'd attribute this one entirely to simple laziness ("ffs we have to record twice as many barks and make twice as many models? Hell with it, roll with all dudes") -especially since going with all female ImpGuard would've been more jarring. It's established that women are certainly in the guard, but I don't believe they're the majority, or even close to it.
Phatose on 4/7/2012 at 21:18
Quote Posted by DDL
That seems...awfully hair splitting. Given that at any given moment in DOW1 you're mostly looking at a bunch of tiny peeps (generally being mowed down by heavy bolters), rather than zooming in to check gender. I'd attribute this one entirely to simple laziness ("ffs we have to record twice as many barks and make twice as many models? Hell with it, roll with all dudes") -especially since going with all female ImpGuard would've been more jarring. It's established that women are certainly in the guard, but I don't believe they're the majority, or even close to it.
Oh, I'm not expecting male and female models for every single unit. But you've got 8-10 different voiced units, each using a single voice all of that type....and not one of them is female. The generic representations are universally male.
Quote Posted by Yakoob
I think he's point is that we've already got one, nay, two threads about sexism, so pushing ANOTHER one in that direction isn't really necessary. You're not even discussing the game
per-say just one (arguably small) artistic aspect of it.
Kind of like all the Diablo 3 threads never talk about the actual game or lore but only about DPS, iLvs and other columns in the excel spreadsheet. But I still believe the excel spreadsheet IS the gameplay in that case :|
Er...no, but that actually would've been a much more useful thing to say.
june gloom on 4/7/2012 at 22:31
I never wanted to make a big deal out of it. God forbid I make a simple fucking comment without some winner jumping on it. DDL was like STOP MAKING A BIG DEAL OUT OF IT and suddenly he made a big deal out of it. Thanks a lot TTLG.
Fafhrd on 4/7/2012 at 23:10
Quote Posted by Phatose
And no, batman doesn't boil down to 2 buttons. If you'd like to argue that, I'll give you punch and counter and put you up against an armored foe........and you're kind of fucked, aren't you?
Fight a heavy armoured nob and only press x and y and you're more fucked than against an armoured guy in Batman if you're playing with the same limitations. You're being
massively reductive.
DDL on 5/7/2012 at 06:01
Quote Posted by dethtoll
I never wanted to make a big deal out of it. God forbid I make a simple fucking comment without some winner jumping on it. DDL was like STOP MAKING A BIG DEAL OUT OF IT and suddenly he made a big deal out of it. Thanks a lot TTLG.
It's true, you're definitely one of TTLG's more calm, collected, reasonable contributors. :rolleyes:
june gloom on 5/7/2012 at 06:05
Nice try, but no. Here's how it went:
[me] oh hey a reasonable female portrayal in 40k
[you] giant tits in 40k are acceptable because the models are ugly, also i know more about women than you
Seriously, just... just stop. You're not impressing anyone.
It's not even that bad in 40k. I mean we're not talking 90s comics here. All I wanted to say was that some of the portrayals of women in the artwork were a bit, er... Liefeld-esque? And you had to get all beardy on me and blow everything out of proportion, including everything I say to make me sound ridiculous. And then everyone says I'm the one making a big deal out of feminism because god forbid 40k expand its target demographic a bit. Fuck you and fuck this thread.
DDL on 5/7/2012 at 08:03
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Nice try, but no. Here's how it went:
[me] oh hey a reasonable female portrayal in 40k
[you] giant tits in 40k are acceptable because the models are ugly, also i know more about women than you
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Why don't you try actually talking to a woman -- you do know at least one, I presume -- about these things? And by talk, I mean shut up and listen, instead of telling her how she should feel or saying she's shallow or ~oversensitive~ if she doesn't really appreciate the stupid proportions and other issues in the artwork.
I really don't think I'm the one making unsupportable claims here.
The real problem here is you seem incapable of engaging in rational argument: you just can't seem to handle challenges to your viewpoint in any reasonable fashion. The speed with which you go from "statement" to "FUCK YOU I'M OUTTA HERE" to "NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME" is
stupidly excessive. I realise that this is also one of the things that make you an
entertaining poster (rage is always fun), but it does make it difficult to actually have a discussion with you about anything.
Regarding the actual (sub)topic, seriously: focussing on "tit size" as a metric of sexism strikes me as a really poor tactic: it renders the entire topic into the realm of the physical, for a start. Criticising a work of fiction because of how women are physically proportioned is still judging women wholly by physical attributes, which is right back in the sexist camp again. Women
can have big tits and not be 'pandering to men'. Physical proportions should be (ideally) irrelevant. A fictional universe should ideally cater for all body types.
Now as I've noted previously, there ARE physical aspects I find more indicative of 'pandering to a male audience': armour choice would be one. The classic "chainmail bikini"-syndrome, for instance. Here GW gets plus points for making everyone wear giant chunky suits of armour, because giant chunky suits of armour are unarguably more useful in a firefight than 'sexy' suits of midriff-and-cleavage exposing armour might be. Also, more supportive (chainmail bikinis would make terrible sports bras, I suspect).
Still, overall I'm tending to think that focussing entirely on the physical aspects (while admittedly easier) leads one to overlook deeper issues, such as those that Phatose has touched upon, or issues such as characterisation (less relevant to 40K, admittedly: given that really,
nobody has much actual personality in the 40K universe).
I think that's a more interesting area, not least because improving things there is more likely to have knock-on effects up to the physical: if people complain about tit size on female characters in a game that also treats them as brainless simpering objects for the men to fight over, then the response would probably be to just reduce the tit size. If people complain about the fact the female characters are just simpering objects for male affection, then the writers might have to actually start treating their female characters as
people, with personalities and goals and some fucking dignity. Once you start doing that you open the door to "hey, why the hell would this character wear
THAT? Jesus. I'd better call the art department."
So yeah, I still think this is an interesting discussion, so I'm open to continuing.
faetal on 5/7/2012 at 13:56
Quote Posted by dethtoll
..And you had to get all beardy on me..
Bullied by kids with beards at school?
Forced to grow a beard by an employer?
Nightmares involving beards?
I'm trying to think how you came to be this way.
