PJEBarlow
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Posts posted by PJEBarlow
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I found the Sith Lord title part puzzling as it encompasses both genders by default in the Star Wars universe. The word doesn't have the same definition it does on Earth, where it means a land owner or noble.
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The fact that everyone is so up at arms is interesting. If you felt personally attacked, it was not by me, as there were no references on my part, to anyone in particular, except perhaps SWTOR writers.
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I get your meaning now Celacia, I misunderstood what you meant.
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The fact that you press the issue so much, would indicate to me, you've used this reason to avoid the conversation many times before. Which would lend itself to the preception that you avoid the conversation altogether regardless of how it's addressed. You're not alone, I've met many men, who either refuse or dismiss the topic, because their uncomfortable discussing it. Not a problem I expected this response from some men, as it's a usual defensive response.
I don't take it personally, or do I take your attempts at name calling, it's a typical response.
You know, DiannaB, there's really not much point in trying to continue baiting someone once you've been found out.
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To me it reads like, "My attempt to stir up controversy instead sparked a reasonable, adult discussion. I couldn't bring myself to engage with the conversation any further, because much of what I had to say was fairly ill considered. Wow. I feel kind of embarrassed by the whole thing. I know, I shall pretend that I meant to do that and that everyone involved was just a puppet on my string."
Honestly, it's pretty insulting, yes. Also? Childish. If you don't want to engage in the conversation anymore, just, you know, don't.
I didn't read it the same way. The middle part of her post clearly reflects her intention to "show men how she feels" by making them angry, she made them angry and now she gets to claim some "moral victory". The relevant part:
"The fact that men find it offensive, just underscores how offensive women have found the issue since the beginning of time."
It's all well and good saying "then don't respond", but that's the whole purpose of trolling. To get someone wound up enough to respond. Trolling is a art.
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Exactly Ruei, and I myself responded to at least one of your posts in a frustrated manner that really was only meant because I had assumed that you were defending the tone of the OP. Now that you've made it clear that you don't support her antagonism I'd like to apologise for responding the way that I did.
It's a shame people like her have to commit wanton arson in an already flammable public issue, purely for their own amusement, when two people like ourselves could have enjoyed a civil discussion on the subject in another place or time. There's really no need for it, and the baiting that she used to draw hostility from men could easily create a bad impression of men in general, which only serves to perpetuate the cycle.
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PJ...my post was meant to spark debate, it was meant to be extreme. It was meant to get peoples passion up and see how they responded to something that is a very real issue. The fact that men find it offensive, just underscores how offensive women have found the issue since the beginning of time.
I thank you for your participation
You basically confirm here beyond any shadow of a doubt that you were trolling from the start. If you were unaware of the term "trolling" or what is involved in posting a "troll thread" then Google will be more than willing to explain it.
At this point you've probably not only caused a collective facepalm among men but (I'd hope) also amongst the women who actually came in here to defend you, because they thought you were serious and not just trying to troll men by blatantly attacking them and then waiting to sit back and proclaim victory when they get mad at such an attack.
Ever wondered why men respond defensively to threads like these, or conversations about male chauvinism in general? It's because all too often they come from highly antagonistic and unpleasant individuals like yourself who just want to cause a fight and/or make things even worse.
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When you look at it that way, yes, it's outstandingly effective. However, it's completely silly as a piece of swimwear. It also doesn't really matter.
Actually it's very effective. A one-piece is better for competitive swimming due to the physics of fluids, but for recreational swimming a bikini is fine and is also the next best thing to being naked for getting a tan.
Of course they exist, but how often are they worn? I've seen them in shops but never 'out in the wild.' I would also say that the majority of people don't want to see that anyway.The majority of men are just not interested in wearing such a garment, whereas bikinis are popular among women for their attractive style and for the reasons above. Sometimes people's taste matters without there being some social conspiracy, and a cigar is just a cigar.
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Ruei: all that is true (re: power fantasy vs. sexual objectification) but I hasten to add that men *do* internalize all that as the ideal. The ideal is superman; we're taught that our power is what matters. Is it any wonder we're messed up?
Young males internalise a lot more than that from media, especially comic books, and a lot of it is negative and has a deeply negative effect on self esteem. I'm not going to go in to a huge tirade on exactly why, partly because it's 1:32am here but also because it would just be dismissed the way accusations of sexism have been dismissed in this thread.
But I will leave you with this; Internalisation does matter. Now take a man who has been subjected to antagonistic points of view and attacks on their gender such as "experiments" like this thread (as admitted by the OP) their whole life, now try to connect that to why most men might respond defensively or simply not give a damn about taking a trolling thread seriously.
Yeah, internalisation matters. Since feminists are the ones who talk about it so much they should think about it for a moment.
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I don't think the OP meant to imply that.
Sorry for snipping your post, I did read all of it. I just wanted to reply to say that I didn't mean the OP specifically, she and I already discussed the topic at hand earlier in the thread.
I just keep seeing "sexual objectification" and "sexism" popping up, two terms that have completely lost the gravity of their meanings through vast overuse in recent times, and it sent me in to rant mode.
Strictly speaking, a bikini set is a highly ineffective set of clothing. It's designed to show off all your goods.That, being its purpose, is exactly why it is a highly effective item of clothing. Why would anyone care if a woman wore a bikini as long as she wanted to wear it?
And, for the record, g-string bikinis for men do exist. Some have so little material the only thing they cover is the genitals. They technically show off a lot more than women's bikinis because they generally come with a top, but you don't hear men complaining about this being objectifying toward men because we simply don't give a damn as long as nobody is being forced to wear it.
This has been a very interesting experiment, I thank you all for your insights and dialog. It was an experiment to see how the two sex's would respond to the subject of sexism.As expected most men deny the existence of it, their happy with what they call "Social Norm", but I'm happy to see there are those who do see the issue and that it must be addressed.
If you don't see how this post sounds like trolling, or like a sexist attack against men (and therefore completely hypocritical), then there's no point discussing sexism whatsoever. This is the point I've been trying to get across earlier in the thread.
When you "de-construct" the attitude you yourself put across when bringing this issue up, you will see why men generally don't feel like taking part in these discussions or will respond in a defensive manner.
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Oh dear, now we're on to how items of clothing "sexually objectify" women?
Newsflash: My smuggler's arse is always appearing in the camera during cut-scenes, and his pants are REALLY tight. Newsflash: Two of the four body types quite strongly emphasise masculine features to almost comic book-like levels. These things mustn't be happening, right? I must be imagining it because we live in some kind of patriarchy where men cannot possibly be objectified. Of course, we don't call it objectifying when it applies to men, because of "male privilege", right? Hogwash.
You know what is sexist? Making grand proclamations on behalf of 51% of the populations just because you share their sexual organs. I mean, seriously, what are you even implying by doing this? Are you saying you have to speak out against this stuff because other women have some kind of Stockholm syndrome and are just too dumb to see this sexism everywhere?
Guess what, humans are sexual creatures and are pleased by seeing such things. Even women! I propose that we accept the fact that not all "sexual objectification" is bad, nor a product of some vast, misogynist, patriarchal conspiracy before we move on.
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But why are we put in a position of having to make that decision??? If you want to be personal w/a companion, then why not start a separate storyline for that, instead of making it a part of the main story.
Sometimes people just want things we don't and we have to upset them, and the characters in this game would be a lot more two-dimensional if this sort of thing didn't happen.
This isn't even just limited to female characters, trust me, I've had to upset Mako on a number of occasions and it's easy enough to see why it happens. Your character is an "attractive" person, and by that I mean he or she is a hero and has taken these people in under their wing to accomplish whatever mutual goals you have (not even including saving the galaxy). In the Star Wars universe this often produces some kind of attraction along the way. I think you're supposed to take it as the game recognising you as some kind of hero.
What I think people took issue with was how your original post seemed like a big attack on men. You made it clear enough that you think this game is "obviously made by men for the twisted desires of men", to paraphrase it, but there are female writers on the team as someone mentioned already and I personally know one woman who plays this game and makes a point of exploring the romantic story lines. And, as I said above, these "situations" aren't limited to female characters.
In the end what's supposed to set this MMO apart from others is story, and the characters are two-dimensional enough without cutting out all the potential romance interactions. I'm not interested in those myself but I'm glad the option is there.
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As for my particular incident where I had to make a choice, it was a companion conversation and all of the option, lead to "fade to black", except one. Orginally picking this one option, gave me negative points, which I felt wasn't fair. I did end the conversation and made the choice to pick one of the lesser "fade to black" choices in order to not get negative points. So, yes..I did make that decision and that was my free will, but I shouldn't have had to make that decision or face negative points. That's what I'm trying to say....
Sometimes you are going to do or say something that gets you negative points, that is life, and it is the same with companions in TOR. If you can't say "no", and have to compulsively make a decision like sleeping with a character for the reward, then it sounds like a personal problem and not a game design problem.
If you're just interested in getting maximum score with your companion buy them a gift after turning them down.
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It's not just companions. They are easy. Piss them off, then give them a gift to make up for it. Read my other problems with the flirt. With quest givers.
I've not yet encountered a quest giver that made it mandatory for me to flirt with them. I've come across one or two with the option, but exercising my freedom to choose I simply chose not to. The only reason I've seen for people being "forced" to flirt is if the reward was higher for doing so and, well, if flirting for rewards is irresistible that sounds like a personal problem.
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Some of the classes and companions simply have flirty characters. Playing as a BH it seems I can't help but be subjected to Mako's needy personality until I get another companion, playing as a smuggler I am "forced" (as you wrongly put it) in to being given the option of flirty dialogue. But I guess this isn't sexist to you, since I'm playing with male characters.
I guess it also isn't sexist to you that you seem to think you speak for all women, who are a very large and varied group with their own minds and opinions on flirting or being flirted with. And the fact is you can avoid the flirting, you might bug the companion who's doing it to you but this is no different to rebuffing the advances of someone you don't like in real life.
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And amazon delivers to your car on the freeway, right?
Since your ship only serves as a portal when it's not docked in a hangar I don't see why it shouldn't be able to take deliveries. If anything, adding some actual functionality would give me more reason to use my ship and see it as more than just a portal.
It adds nothing to the game in terms of difficulty or immersion to have to run about so much, there would still be enough time sinks in the game if you removed this one.
then why would anyone hang out in the fleet?those things are not on your ship so that people gather in the fleet, so it makes it easier to find groups.
I'm not buying that it's incentive to find groups on the fleet. Finding groups is incentive to go to the fleet.
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Pretty much all servers in the US are "light" pop.
Another month and SWTOR will be done to 10 servers.
When does your subscription run out?
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Some of the morality choices do bug me too.
[MINOR SPOILER ALERT FOR QUESTING ON TYTHON.]
A great example is when you're dealing with the two Jedi Padawans who are in love with each other. I was expecting I'd be able to hide their secret by simply not telling their master about them, but instead the only negative option was to take a bribe from them in the form of a lightsabre crystal.
Now, maybe it's just me, but taking a bribe is a lot worse to me than simply hiding someone's secret for them. As such I was forced to turn them in, because I didn't want to take a bribe. Why could I not simply hide their secret, did the dark side option really have to make a completely corrupt bastard out of me?
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I applaud you sir, and I was starting to think I was the only sane person left.
I'd challenge all of you who don't think something is wrong to roll a Republic character on Bondar Crystal and see just what i'm talking about. It's hard to see the real issues when you play the Empire.
I, for one, never denied the game has problems but you're sounding like you think it's D.O.A.
Considering you play Star Trek Online you should be able to tell the difference between D.O.A. and not.
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The STO boards are not even close to the condition of these. It's rather funny I think to see just how bad the TOR boards compare. I've not seen raging like this since Warhammer Online.
They were during beta and when the game had just been released.
One example I still fondly remember is the massive, 100-page flame wars between lifetime subscribers and non-lifetime subscribers because the lifetimers kept demanding crap like their own forums and ships and whatnot.
Thank the maker we don't have to deal with that kind of trolling here. The worst I see here are ignorant "S.S. TORtanic" memesters who come from 4chan to post stuff about the EA stocks yesterday.
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It really saddens me when I look at the boards and every thread, and sub thread is some kind of rage, that points out obvious issues, and it looks as if Bioware doesn't even care about it.
You mentioned Star Trek Online, which is kind of funny because I played that when it came out and their forums were just as loud and angry as this one. So were the Rift forums, and so were the Age of Conan forums.
Actually, pretty much every MMO forums I have ever used have been a very loud and angry place. I don't think the The Old Republic forums have a unique problem.
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That said, 3% is not inconsequential.
Good thing EA stocks are back up 2.22% today then.
Right now everyone is working off of numbers thrown out of nowhere and so anything and everything makes people nervous.If we were dealing with some exaggerated or made-up numbers "thrown out of nowhere" EA would not survive their next shareholder's meeting. When they have announced things like "350k concurrent users" the announcements have to be true.
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Why are people still posting this? Their shares are back up over 2%* today and they're a lot higher than they were this time last year, all we've seen is some market speculation by a single analyst who probably doesn't even play video games. I don't think people who keep posting this even understand how stocks work.
Why don't you just go to 4chan and join in on the constant "TORtanic" threads?
*http://www.google.com/finance?q=EA
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Why dont you apply for a job at bioware if you think its so easy?
if you are correct then you will do the rest of us a favor and gain an income!
Seriously, you call this a response?
Bioware already has web developers, ones who clearly know how to do PhP etc. If they had just opted to use a decent bulletin board package instead of this trash they would be able to add as many forums as they want without using ridiculous amounts of bandwidth, they also wouldn't need to keep adding and removing the search feature because it doesn't work.
You don't need to be able to do PhP to know this, before you tell me to "do better".
Improve the grass please
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