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You stop enjoying new RPGs around age 30+

best describes you

  • im 13 but I play f1. Is something wrong with me?

  • <30, old people should stop playing games

  • <30, already see less enjoyment with new titles

  • >30, only new games i enjoyed are AoD/Underrail

  • >30, play only oldies, they are cheaper

  • >30, new games are bad/worse, same as movies, and music, and my age is not related

  • >30, didnt enjoy DOS/witcher/dork souls

  • >30, drive harley, enjoy new titles


Results are only viewable after voting.

vazha

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Very true, and the craving is just unbearable.:negative:
The OP mentions the original poll was intended for music and that's true as well. I had my heyday as an Atmospheric/Depressive & Folk/Black Metal fan in late 00-ies - on one hand you had Wolves in the Throne Room, Coldworld and Drudkh, on another - Finntroll, Kromlek, Korpiklaani and the rest, and now? Most of these bands are still around but play some inane, uninspired shit. Even Primordial have gone stale. :negative:

Off the top of my head, try Gris's À l'âme enflammée, l'âme constellée…, Thantifaxath's Void Masquerading as Matter and Dordeduh's Dar de duh.
As for Gris' latest, I'll admit it's pretty good (and incomparably superior to what other bands have been up to) but not even close to their own magnificent Il était une forêt... (I used to have La Dryade as my gf's ringtone :)), same can be said about the Ex-Nebura Bunget dudes. Don't recall ever listening to that Thantitatawhatever, will give it a try, thanks. Then again, years 2010-2014 werent that bad I suppose, Drudkh's last decent album also came out during that period and also Darkspace III. For the last 4, almost five years I'd say the best thing I've listened to is Forndom's Daudra Dura and it's not even Black Metal.
p.s. Forteresse's last album wasn't half bad either, but still not as good as their previous stuff.
 

Twizman

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Just hit 30, have become a very combat-oriented gamer. I bought Dragon Quest XI as I want to be more open to a modern rpg experience. But I just feel so bored, really want to like it. Although the graphics and nature aspect is nice, the battles take too long and put me to sleep (so far). Going to keep playing though with this thread in mind.

The only rpgs I can seem to enjoy are from the 80s or Wizardry tradition, where they were so limited in what they had to work with. You create a party, go into dungeons with random battles. You have that formula of resource depletion, team-building, ever-changing strategy based on the randomized mobs you enounter, and the tension of how far you want to push deeper before returning to the castle. Even though the graphics are wire frame, or on an NES, having revisited my favourites last night they are way more exciting, fast and fun. And I didn't even grow up with these games, found them after doing research.

I'm concerned I may just write off any rpg that: lacks immediate and constant combat, challenge, is an action-rpg, involves significant cutscenes or story elements that limit my control, and overly long battle animations. It's strange because I see the games that people near-unanimously praise, and my opinion is often completely different.

I mostly play fighting games nowadays, exciting to play people competitively. In that genre my favourite titles seem to mostly match the general consensus on classics. But for rpgs something changed after I unearthed Wizardry-style experiences a few years back.
 
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Messages
5,869
Very true, and the craving is just unbearable.:negative:
The OP mentions the original poll was intended for music and that's true as well. I had my heyday as an Atmospheric/Depressive & Folk/Black Metal fan in late 00-ies - on one hand you had Wolves in the Throne Room, Coldworld and Drudkh, on another - Finntroll, Kromlek, Korpiklaani and the rest, and now? Most of these bands are still around but play some inane, uninspired shit. Even Primordial have gone stale. :negative:

Off the top of my head, try Gris's À l'âme enflammée, l'âme constellée…, Thantifaxath's Void Masquerading as Matter and Dordeduh's Dar de duh.
As for Gris' latest, I'll admit it's pretty good (and incomparably superior to what other bands have been up to) but not even close to their own magnificent Il était une forêt... (I used to have La Dryade as my gf's ringtone :)), same can be said about the Ex-Nebura Bunget dudes. Don't recall ever listening to that Thantitatawhatever, will give it a try, thanks. Then again, years 2010-2014 werent that bad I suppose, Drudkh's last decent album also came out during that period and also Darkspace III. For the last 4, almost five years I'd say the best thing I've listened to is Forndom's Daudra Dura and it's not even Black Metal.
p.s. Forteresse's last album wasn't half bad either, but still not as good as their previous stuff.

Highly recommend Spectral Lore III. It's an one-man act from Greece and this album has that inexplicable spark of greatness for me. It's a few years old now and the guy hasn't released anything even remotely as good since, but I'll be spinning this one for many years.



re: poll, I'm 38 and these days I have zero patience for bullshit. If the game has overtly verbose prose that you can detect was written by a self-aggrandizing early 20something hipster it's an instant pass. I feel like every single game genre has been dumbed down significantly even if the apparent outward trappings have become more complicated (greater number of required inputs for example).

There are very few games these days that qualify as interactive systems I'd like to explore, rather than 'press A to skip dialogue' simulators. I mostly play jap action games and old classics on emulator.
 

pomenitul

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Agreed, Darkspace and Spectral Lore are great as well (and I'll look into Forndom – thanks!). A mere notch below them I'd also recommend Chaos Moon, Grift, Bestia Arkana, Lluvia, Severoth, Colotyphus and Kalmenkantaja's albums from last year. To be fair, though, these past couple of years have seen the balance shift towards death metal. There's lots of incline on that front, compared to the heyday of neo-black a decade ago or so, but that assumes you care for DM in the first place (I do, although not quite as much).
 
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Roqua

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One thing that is probably consistent between all men of all ethnicities, cultures, ages, ideologies, class, sexual orientation, etc, is we all enjoy our penises and sticking them in people. Or just touching them. It may lose some of its pizzazz with age, but not nearly all of it. Penis is the great unifier.
 

Shaewaroz

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I'm very into cock and ball torture
You make a false equivalency between gaming and escapism.

You're right. Gaming is just like any other entertainment and there's nothing inherently wrong about entertainment, as long as it doesn't take up disproportional amount of one's attention. Almost any pleasure-inducing activity can turn into escapism if one uses it as a constant distraction from the hardships and responsibilities of daily life.

But even if you hadn't, "escapism" is not unequivocally bad. No matter how much stock you put in the philosophy of "power" there is going to be shit in life you are powerless to affect. Your wife dies in a car crash, you're drafted to war, whatever the case, finding respite in another world, in whatever medium, is not a "distraction from the truly meaningful activities of life." Gaming or reading or music can serve as distractions from immutable, invariable negative external forces so that you can do the things you have to do in order to flourish as a human. They can also provide perspective to process grief, tragedy, or whatever else.

This is where I disagree with you. First of all, I define power a bit differently from Nietzsche, who was obsessed with individual, tyrannic power. To me power is simply all those resources we have that let us influence out internal and external reality. Our health, bodily functions, all of our senses, our relationships and the benefits we enjoy as members of various collectives all add to our individual power. You might want to read the forum link thread I posted before if you want to argue this definition further, since the topic is discussed there in length. I leave the link here just in case you want take a closer look.

http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15226

Now, to me it's obvious that we encounter events are realities in life that we're powerless to change or overcome. Let's take your example - your loved one dies in a car accident. I lost by brother in a car accident when I was young, so I can relate well to this example. This kind of loss unavoidably creates sadness and it can immobilize and incapacitate us even for a long period. However, from the perspective of individual's well-being, one of the worst responses to this kind of event is playing video games 24/7 to numb the pain away. By sweeping negative experiences under a rug will only make the eventual recovery more difficult. Instead, a tragedy can be a transformative experience - you can become more goal-oriented and determined by reflecting on how short and fragile a life can be.

How you deal with negative external forces? By enduring them, by facing them head-on and not letting them discourage or distract you from doing what you should be doing. Train your mind and body to withstand hardship. This is where I agree with Nietzsche.

Games, books, and music can resonate with people intellectually and emotionally, they can challenge (e.g. playing chess with a skilled opponent), and so on, and there are certainly ways to incorporate the associated hobbies into a "truly meaningful" life.

Certain type of entertainment can be useful, yes. The problems arise when entertainment becomes a bad habit, which they often do. Good habits are difficult to gain, but easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to gain, but hard to live with. Unfortunately gaming in most of it forms fall to the later category - it becomes a time-consuming distraction that doesn't aid us to become the best version of ourselves. Like I said before, all decisions about how we spent our time are value judgments. Adopting a habit of exercising instead of playing games is surely more advantageous for one's health and well-being. To me true happiness comes from power acquisition (remember the definition I mentioned above). A constructive habit like exercising leads to more power acquisition than gaming, and is therefore a more preferable use of one's time. Therefore we can conclude that gaming, for the most part, is a waste of one's time. In other words, if one decides to incorporate gaming into his/her daily habits, it will not be the best use of his/her limited time.

If you have not already, I recommend you study Spinoza's Ethics and Aristotle's Politics rather than Nietzsche. Iconoclasts and übermenschen are not stable models for human excellence, and the Conatus doctrine is much more concise and well argued than Neitzschean "power-centers" or his resulting theory.

As I mentioned above, my definition of power differs from Nietzsche's. I'm actually not really interested in metaphysics or abstract approaches to ethics. I appreciate the concept of power (as defined on the forum thread I linked above) because it works in practice. It is directly applicable to our everyday life, instead of simply being a vague theory about how the world might be or how it ought to be.

I believe I mentioned Spinoza briefly on the thread with regards to how Nietzsche referenced him. I don't actually think Aristotle's or Spinoza's views on a meaningful life are in sharp contrast to how I define it - I merely take a slightly different angle to it. Strifing towards everything noble and good as defined by society is very important in terms of power acquisition. Knowledge is power, so strifing to gain more knowledge is essential part of power acquisition. To me Spinoza's philosophy is however far too focused on rationalistic theorizing and loses touch to practical realities of everyday life. Although I have the highest admiration towards Aristotle, he is a bit far removed from contemporary life to be a very practical guide to how contemporary people should live their lives. All I'm interested are practical contemporary approaches to obtaining a meaningful life.
 

thesheeep

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Adopting a habit of exercising instead of playing games is surely more advantageous for one's health and well-being. To me true happiness comes from power acquisition (remember the definition I mentioned above). A constructive habit like exercising leads to more power acquisition than gaming, and is therefore a more preferable use of one's time. Therefore we can conclude that gaming, for the most part, is a waste of one's time. In other words, if one decides to incorporate gaming into his/her daily habits, it will not be the best use of his/her limited time.
And this is, again, where you are completely wrong and do nothing except projection.

Nobody would argue that you shouldn't keep both your body and mind healthy.
But in order to do that body part, you really don't have to spend a lot of time. Depending on who you ask 10-50 minutes a day (I don't think I've ever read more than that anywhere) is simply enough - and that is for people who do not have a physically demanding job which keeps them in shape "automatically". Any time you spend excercising beyond the merely necessary is pointless - except if you enjoy it.
Same is true for keeping your mind healthy - something in which games can actually be very helpful.

And as you said yourself, "to you" true happiness comes from your definition of power acquisition. Nice for you.
But you have to realize that this simply cannot be true for everyone, as people tend to be different.
Plus - what kind of skill one wants to improve, what kind of knowledge one wants to gain, is completely subjective. And gaming/games is a very valid choice for either, fulfilling your power requirements. Just not for you, it seems.
 

Martyr

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One thing that is probably consistent between all men of all ethnicities, cultures, ages, ideologies, class, sexual orientation, etc, is we all enjoy our penises and sticking them in people. Or just touching them. It may lose some of its pizzazz with age, but not nearly all of it. Penis is the great unifier.
there are kids on this forum !!! :rpgcodex:
 

Roqua

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What I meant was that, in my view, people in general can only become happy through power acquisition.

In my view, people in general can only become powerful through happiness acquisition. And power in general can only become happy through people acquisition. And powerful generals can only make acquisitions when happy.
 

thesheeep

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Much justifying of playing video games in this thread.
What's stranger is the need to do so.
A surprising number of people (surprising for this place, anyway) are very much stuck in the past with their views on gaming... well, on second thought, maybe it is not that surprising.

You know, when someone in their 60s wants to tell me that games are a waste of time, I can happily ignore that, knowing that his anachronistic views will die with him - quite soon.
But from younger folk I expect to be a bit more on par with reality and a bit less with baseless old myths.

What I meant was that, in my view, people in general can only become happy through power acquisition. If you don't understand what I mean why this, you can read the forum thread I mentioned.
And it doesn't stop to weird me out that you honestly seem to believe that nonsense.
People aren't drones, all functioning the same. That might be the case biology wise (well, even that is only true on a very basic level). But as soon as you deal with matters of the mind, what applies to some will not just apply to all, especially not with incredibly subjective matters such as happiness.
 
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Doctor Sbaitso

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You make a false equivalency between gaming and escapism.

You're right. Gaming is just like any other entertainment and there's nothing inherently wrong about entertainment, as long as it doesn't take up disproportional amount of one's attention. Almost any pleasure-inducing activity can turn into escapism if one uses it as a constant distraction from the hardships and responsibilities of daily life.

But even if you hadn't, "escapism" is not unequivocally bad. No matter how much stock you put in the philosophy of "power" there is going to be shit in life you are powerless to affect. Your wife dies in a car crash, you're drafted to war, whatever the case, finding respite in another world, in whatever medium, is not a "distraction from the truly meaningful activities of life." Gaming or reading or music can serve as distractions from immutable, invariable negative external forces so that you can do the things you have to do in order to flourish as a human. They can also provide perspective to process grief, tragedy, or whatever else.

This is where I disagree with you. First of all, I define power a bit differently from Nietzsche, who was obsessed with individual, tyrannic power. To me power is simply all those resources we have that let us influence out internal and external reality. Our health, bodily functions, all of our senses, our relationships and the benefits we enjoy as members of various collectives all add to our individual power. You might want to read the forum link thread I posted before if you want to argue this definition further, since the topic is discussed there in length. I leave the link here just in case you want take a closer look.

http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15226

Now, to me it's obvious that we encounter events are realities in life that we're powerless to change or overcome. Let's take your example - your loved one dies in a car accident. I lost by brother in a car accident when I was young, so I can relate well to this example. This kind of loss unavoidably creates sadness and it can immobilize and incapacitate us even for a long period. However, from the perspective of individual's well-being, one of the worst responses to this kind of event is playing video games 24/7 to numb the pain away. By sweeping negative experiences under a rug will only make the eventual recovery more difficult. Instead, a tragedy can be a transformative experience - you can become more goal-oriented and determined by reflecting on how short and fragile a life can be.

How you deal with negative external forces? By enduring them, by facing them head-on and not letting them discourage or distract you from doing what you should be doing. Train your mind and body to withstand hardship. This is where I agree with Nietzsche.

Games, books, and music can resonate with people intellectually and emotionally, they can challenge (e.g. playing chess with a skilled opponent), and so on, and there are certainly ways to incorporate the associated hobbies into a "truly meaningful" life.

Certain type of entertainment can be useful, yes. The problems arise when entertainment becomes a bad habit, which they often do. Good habits are difficult to gain, but easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to gain, but hard to live with. Unfortunately gaming in most of it forms fall to the later category - it becomes a time-consuming distraction that doesn't aid us to become the best version of ourselves. Like I said before, all decisions about how we spent our time are value judgments. Adopting a habit of exercising instead of playing games is surely more advantageous for one's health and well-being. To me true happiness comes from power acquisition (remember the definition I mentioned above). A constructive habit like exercising leads to more power acquisition than gaming, and is therefore a more preferable use of one's time. Therefore we can conclude that gaming, for the most part, is a waste of one's time. In other words, if one decides to incorporate gaming into his/her daily habits, it will not be the best use of his/her limited time.

If you have not already, I recommend you study Spinoza's Ethics and Aristotle's Politics rather than Nietzsche. Iconoclasts and übermenschen are not stable models for human excellence, and the Conatus doctrine is much more concise and well argued than Neitzschean "power-centers" or his resulting theory.

As I mentioned above, my definition of power differs from Nietzsche's. I'm actually not really interested in metaphysics or abstract approaches to ethics. I appreciate the concept of power (as defined on the forum thread I linked above) because it works in practice. It is directly applicable to our everyday life, instead of simply being a vague theory about how the world might be or how it ought to be.

I believe I mentioned Spinoza briefly on the thread with regards to how Nietzsche referenced him. I don't actually think Aristotle's or Spinoza's views on a meaningful life are in sharp contrast to how I define it - I merely take a slightly different angle to it. Strifing towards everything noble and good as defined by society is very important in terms of power acquisition. Knowledge is power, so strifing to gain more knowledge is essential part of power acquisition. To me Spinoza's philosophy is however far too focused on rationalistic theorizing and loses touch to practical realities of everyday life. Although I have the highest admiration towards Aristotle, he is a bit far removed from contemporary life to be a very practical guide to how contemporary people should live their lives. All I'm interested are practical contemporary approaches to obtaining a meaningful life.

It comes down to values. Gaming can be part of your delicious balanced breakfast.
 

Kaivokz

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You make a false equivalency between gaming and escapism.

You're right. Gaming is just like any other entertainment and there's nothing inherently wrong about entertainment, as long as it doesn't take up disproportional amount of one's attention. Almost any pleasure-inducing activity can turn into escapism if one uses it as a constant distraction from the hardships and responsibilities of daily life.

But even if you hadn't, "escapism" is not unequivocally bad. No matter how much stock you put in the philosophy of "power" there is going to be shit in life you are powerless to affect. Your wife dies in a car crash, you're drafted to war, whatever the case, finding respite in another world, in whatever medium, is not a "distraction from the truly meaningful activities of life." Gaming or reading or music can serve as distractions from immutable, invariable negative external forces so that you can do the things you have to do in order to flourish as a human. They can also provide perspective to process grief, tragedy, or whatever else.

This is where I disagree with you. First of all, I define power a bit differently from Nietzsche, who was obsessed with individual, tyrannic power. To me power is simply all those resources we have that let us influence out internal and external reality. Our health, bodily functions, all of our senses, our relationships and the benefits we enjoy as members of various collectives all add to our individual power. You might want to read the forum link thread I posted before if you want to argue this definition further, since the topic is discussed there in length. I leave the link here just in case you want take a closer look.

http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15226

Now, to me it's obvious that we encounter events are realities in life that we're powerless to change or overcome. Let's take your example - your loved one dies in a car accident. I lost by brother in a car accident when I was young, so I can relate well to this example. This kind of loss unavoidably creates sadness and it can immobilize and incapacitate us even for a long period. However, from the perspective of individual's well-being, one of the worst responses to this kind of event is playing video games 24/7 to numb the pain away. By sweeping negative experiences under a rug will only make the eventual recovery more difficult. Instead, a tragedy can be a transformative experience - you can become more goal-oriented and determined by reflecting on how short and fragile a life can be.

How you deal with negative external forces? By enduring them, by facing them head-on and not letting them discourage or distract you from doing what you should be doing. Train your mind and body to withstand hardship. This is where I agree with Nietzsche.

What you’re basically saying is that “playing games 24/7 to avoid your problems is bad.” I agree. Where I disagree is the implicit assertion you make that one cannot face their problems head on and then still escape into a book or game in the afternoon. I think people quite plainly can face their problems with fortitude and conviction, and still escape through books or music or hell even science: look at Heisenberg, Bohr, Pauli, Einstein, etc. A great deal of scientific progress was made by men avoiding politics and escaping from society.

Games, books, and music can resonate with people intellectually and emotionally, they can challenge (e.g. playing chess with a skilled opponent), and so on, and there are certainly ways to incorporate the associated hobbies into a "truly meaningful" life.

Certain type of entertainment can be useful, yes. The problems arise when entertainment becomes a bad habit, which they often do. Good habits are difficult to gain, but easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to gain, but hard to live with. Unfortunately gaming in most of it forms fall to the later category - it becomes a time-consuming distraction that doesn't aid us to become the best version of ourselves. Like I said before, all decisions about how we spent our time are value judgments. Adopting a habit of exercising instead of playing games is surely more advantageous for one's health and well-being. To me true happiness comes from power acquisition (remember the definition I mentioned above). A constructive habit like exercising leads to more power acquisition than gaming, and is therefore a more preferable use of one's time. Therefore we can conclude that gaming, for the most part, is a waste of one's time. In other words, if one decides to incorporate gaming into his/her daily habits, it will not be the best use of his/her limited time.

Happiness, or contentment, is intimately tied to power, but your argument seems rather circular. What is the use of power? To gain more power. Power has to be exerted toward something; it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Power should be exerted toward securing your own advantage and, by extension, the advantage of your family, friends, and society. Your own advantage is not “power” but something more robust—human excellence, toward which all your power should be directed.

If you have not already, I recommend you study Spinoza's Ethics and Aristotle's Politics rather than Nietzsche. Iconoclasts and übermenschen are not stable models for human excellence, and the Conatus doctrine is much more concise and well argued than Neitzschean "power-centers" or his resulting theory.

As I mentioned above, my definition of power differs from Nietzsche's. I'm actually not really interested in metaphysics or abstract approaches to ethics. I appreciate the concept of power (as defined on the forum thread I linked above) because it works in practice. It is directly applicable to our everyday life, instead of simply being a vague theory about how the world might be or how it ought to be.

I believe I mentioned Spinoza briefly on the thread with regards to how Nietzsche referenced him. I don't actually think Aristotle's or Spinoza's views on a meaningful life are in sharp contrast to how I define it - I merely take a slightly different angle to it. Strifing towards everything noble and good as defined by society is very important in terms of power acquisition. Knowledge is power, so strifing to gain more knowledge is essential part of power acquisition. To me Spinoza's philosophy is however far too focused on rationalistic theorizing and loses touch to practical realities of everyday life. Although I have the highest admiration towards Aristotle, he is a bit far removed from contemporary life to be a very practical guide to how contemporary people should live their lives. All I'm interested are practical contemporary approaches to obtaining a meaningful life.

You right that no one should believe the minutae of something like Aristotle’s theory of “gravity”, but his methodology is still relevant. Spinoza gives a reason why power is important, though I’d be curious to know if you disagree with the Conatus doctrine.
 

Shaewaroz

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It comes down to values. Gaming can be part of your delicious balanced breakfast.

In small doses, yes. I would actually argue that power is at the core of nearly all societal value systems all around the world. The most powerful members of a society are often also among it's most valued members. A society that doesn't encourage power acquisition institutionally and among it's individual citizens will unavoidably fail and deteriorate. Individuals and small groups can of course value things that don't enhance their power capabilities, but their ability to impact the world around them will always be limited by their degenerative values.
 

Drowed

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You know, the kind of life you propose sounds boring as hell.

But hey, I imagine that the habit (which I would call a form of entertainment) of discussing "philosophy" in a hardcore RPG forum should in fact bring a lot of "power" to someone's life, right? After all, I don't think there are many things that could be more advantageous for one's well-being than reading and posting on the 'Dex. Indeed, we are the bastion of the incline, virtue and ethics.
 

Shaewaroz

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What you’re basically saying is that “playing games 24/7 to avoid your problems is bad.” I agree.

I was actually making a counter argument to your claim that gaming can be a good way to overcome tragedies in one's life, which I don't think it is.

Where I disagree is the implicit assertion you make that one cannot face their problems head on and then still escape into a book or game in the afternoon. I think people quite plainly can face their problems with fortitude and conviction, and still escape through books or music or hell even science: look at Heisenberg, Bohr, Pauli, Einstein, etc. A great deal of scientific progress was made by men avoiding politics and escaping from society.

Presumably the term escapism implies that a person tries to avoid something pressing that would need to be dealt with? And that the act one does to escape this pressing issue is just a distraction from it? So ideally it would almost always be more beneficial for a person to actually deal with the pressing issue instead of fleeing from it? Even if the pressing issue is complicated and cannot be fixed immediately, there are still ways to tackle the issue through various activities instead of escaping from it. Seen like this, escapism is always something undesirable.

I agree with you that a person can live a good life and read fiction, listen to music and play games. BUT he would live a BETTER and HAPPIER life if he'd spent his leisure time towards activities that accumulate power more efficiently.

Games, books, and music can resonate with people intellectually and emotionally, they can challenge (e.g. playing chess with a skilled opponent), and so on, and there are certainly ways to incorporate the associated hobbies into a "truly meaningful" life.

For the most part, these hobbies have only minor benefits in terms of power acquisition. There's always better ways to spent one's time that will also make one happier in the long run. If we agree that true happiness comes from power acquisition, then wasting time doing anything that generates power resources inefficiently is unwise. We of course have to take into consideration that our bodies have limited energy reserves and sometimes resting and relaxing is the best options in terms of power acquisition. But we should also find ways of relaxing that work to our betterment instead of degenerate our character.

Happiness, or contentment, is intimately tied to power, but your argument seems rather circular. What is the use of power? To gain more power. Power has to be exerted toward something; it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Power should be exerted toward securing your own advantage and, by extension, the advantage of your family, friends, and society. Your own advantage is not “power” but something more robust—human excellence, toward which all your power should be directed.

I actually completely agree. This is a very interesting question. What is the use of power? Well, what do you want of your life? Power can give you anything you desire. Remember that any change you want to make in your internal or external reality requires power. So whatever you want in life, you need power to acquire it.

We can also explore something like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow's model is essentially a rough outline for a happy life. I presume we can agree that if a person can fulfill all the needs in Maslow's pyramid will be a tremendously happy person? Maybe Maslow's model doesn't perfectly simulate the entire complexity of life, but we can still agree that if all the needs in his model are satisfied, a person will be much happier than people who cannot satisfy the needs mentioned.

Power will let a person to satisfy all desires mentioned in Maslow's model. This is how power should be used. This is how power makes a person live a happy life.

Spinoza gives a reason why power is important, though I’d be curious to know if you disagree with the Conatus doctrine.

I'm only familiar with the term in how it's related to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but to me it's something that seems to work very well with both the Theory of Evolution and my views on the nature of power.


Thanks for your responses, by the way. You make good, thought-provoking arguments.
 

Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
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YES!
I used to think it was weird how many general gamers came to this rpg site. Now it think its weird that so many people that don't even like video games come to this rpg site.
 

Master

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 19, 2016
Messages
1,160
It comes down to values. Gaming can be part of your delicious balanced breakfast.

In small doses, yes. I would actually argue that power is at the core of nearly all societal value systems all around the world. The most powerful members of a society are often also among it's most valued members. A society that doesn't encourage power acquisition institutionally and among it's individual citizens will unavoidably fail and deteriorate. Individuals and small groups can of course value things that don't enhance their power capabilities, but their ability to impact the world around them will always be limited by their degenerative values.
So, companies like Troika wasted theirs and everyone else's time and Tod Howard is a valued member of society.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
I stopped enjoying modern RPGs when they became shit Open World jaunts, which contain absolutely fuck all worth searching for.

Think The Technomancer, Shadowrun Returns & Dragonfall, & Deus Ex:MD are my favourites from recent years. Less pointless loot, more roleplaying.
 

Plisken

Learned
Joined
Oct 8, 2017
Messages
255
I used to think it was weird how many general gamers came to this rpg site. Now it think its weird that so many people that don't even like video games come to this rpg site.

Theres quite a bit of difference between being a person who likes video games and being the kind of soulless dignity lacking creature who spends 10+ hours per day in a NEET cave with the curtains drawn click click clicking.

similarly, no one could begrudge a man for having a spank bank. Thats quite a bit different from the retarded millennial faggots on here who jack off to tranny and incest porn 5 times a day, no?
 

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