Sage

Well I thought the whole westernised comment would give you the common sense to apply that to most European/North American countries.

Also, a death penalty is permanent. I don't see you can even compare that to sitting in prison for a few years.

I did apply it to other Westernised countries. And when I considered the US's--you know, a Westernised country, what with being Western and all?--take on it, I found it contradictory to your point and said so.

Death is permanent, and so is psychological trauma, though the latter can sometimes be lessened with years of intensive therapy. The comparison of death to imprisonment wasn't the comparison I made, however; my point was that choosing to ignore the death penalty as an option solely because it can't be taken back is hypocritical, when you can't give a wrongfully imprisoned man back the ten, fifteen, twenty years of his life that he could have been, say, raising a family, building a career, and not living in constant fear of his fellow inmates. "We might be wrong and then we can't fix it" is not a valid reason on its own.

Also, I'd like to point out. If I had left my car, unlocked, with my laptop on the dash, sitting in a dark alleyway and it gotten broken into, I would have questions asked. Why didn't you take more care? Why didn't you put more thought into securing your property? So forth.

If you left your car unlocked and all the valuables sitting in open view, it's the fault of the thief for stealing your shit. If the thief had not stolen your shit, you would not be a victim of theft. That is the problem of victim blaming, and while people would ask you what you were thinking not locking up and such, that doesn't make it right that they do. The same is applicable to a rape victim; it is not his/her job to stop rape from happening, it's the job of the rapist not to rape people.

I don't blame victims, but it's hard to have sympathy for people who put themselves into dangerous situations very recklessly.

Try harder.

Nobody completely stole the movie out from under the feet of everyone else (although RDJ avoided it only by the slimmest of margins by dint of being hilarious and classy and calling Loki 'reindeer games'), and I didn't immediately hate Black Widow and Hawkeye for being wimpy.

Some feat, since I have a serious thing for Thor in this universe. They had a lot of as-we-go character development and the plot fully expects you to have seen the previous movies, or at least have a vague concept of what happened in them, so there's very little time wasted on bullshit LET'S MEET THE HEROES recaps.

If you hate comic book logic and comic book presentation, you'll hate this movie, but if you're willing to suspend disbelief (as you should be by now, it's a fucking comic book movie), you will be a grinning idiot from beginning to end.

"Have a care, ...he is still my brother." "Your brother murdered 80 people in 2 days." "*faltering*..he's adopted."

** STAY THROUGH THE ENTIRE CREDITS. It's so worth it. I saw this at a midnight showing before an early workday and I continue to say worth it despite the sleep dep and general surliness that followed.

What's the point of this trust thing? From an in-game perspective as well as just a game mechanic perspective? Why do pets need to trust their owners, and also, what does that accomplish for the player? Is it just so people are encouraged to keep the same pets for longer and not cycle through new ones?

Also, this whole evolution thing just keeps screaming at me that what's wanted is basically a blend of Neopets and Pokemon and not something especially unique. Why not finish fleshing out the basic things that HAVE been pointed out as desirable before moving on to the next "Wouldn't it be cool if" impulse?

You've got a list of stuff you can work on, I'd recommend tightening your focus a bit so you don't get lost and have a huge list of stuff you can't use later on. Pets haven't even finished being defined. You don't have any names for pets, you don't have an explanation of the mechanics in play for the pets, and so on. Why not take care of the most basic aspect before you start building the whole world around a group of creatures you don't even have rough concepts for? If you actually get a viable list of simple roughs for pets, you'll probably have a better idea of where to go from there, as you'll have an obvious and cohesive style to play off of, instead of grabbing random ideas out of the air.

I've done some game design (read: took a college course in it and designed all parts of a game except for programming it, nothing professional and certainly not an expert) and I'd be willing to throw my art abilities into the ring if the idea gets that far. That said, I have some concerns.

1) The Quiz. I don't mind the notion of only getting access to a few pets at the start, but I'm not a fan of my pet being assigned based on a quiz (or, for that matter, anything else that doesn't allow my own input in the decision, and a quiz doesn't do that--all the available answers are written by someone else)... What's wrong with just picking one that looks neat, or reviewing the base stats and going by that if looks don't matter to me as a player? Would I also be able to dump this pet if I don't like it and pick a different one at the outset (as in, "Here's what we think will work best for you, but if you want, you can pick something else from this list")?

2) The Stock Market. The reason the stocks in Neopets don't reflect buy/sell activity is because they USED to, until a guild got naughty and artificially inflated a single stock. They made millions, but the entire guild got frozen, and the stock system became randomized. Just food for thought; a system that works a way users can effect is one that users can and will abuse sooner or later. How would you plan on preventing that?

3) Elemental Alignment. What would a pet's element bring to the table? Is it just yet another battle specialty? That goes right into being pokemon, in essence, and frankly, if that's all it's for, I don't see a need for it. You don't need to layer more and more customizable battle-related skills (especially not right at the beginning when no one's expressed displeasure with the battle system yet), because eventually that just gets complicated and everyone throws up their hands and walks away.

If the elements aren't supposed to be JUST battle related, then what exactly do they do? Does it just mean that you get a green pet? Does it mean their homes are decorated with tons of waterfalls? If you're going to ask for input on an idea, you can't just say "What about having elements?" You need to say what you intend them to be used for. This really applies to any suggestion; why is it a good idea? What's the intended result of implementing it? What makes it good to use from a player's perspective and not a creator's? That last question is vital--you have to consider how you would react to something if you had no direct ability to change it.


Edit: Since nobody's said anything else yet, I figured I'd just edit to add, NO CLICK-BASED EXPERIENCE. That's just going to encourage linkspam and there are way too many of those sites as it is. No clickwhoring, no viewwhoring, no vote-whoring. Just no. No, no, no.

Right, so if it wasn't controversial that would be better. They would have all their rights that they deserve, no questions asked. So the fact that it's controversial is sort of...bad isn't it?

Controversy in and of itself isn't a bad thing. It has negative connotations because it generally means people argue about it, and we don't like to get into confrontations when we can possibly avoid them because they have the potential to harm us in some fashion. Where controversy itself becomes bad is when people can't behave like adults and fight, instead of debating.

It's been fun, but it's nearly 3 AM here and I'm gonna crash now.

Lemme just say it like this... If it's not all that controversial anymore, why is it necessary to say 'gay' as well as 'leader'? If it wasn't a controversial issue on the whole, that would mean the detail was no longer significant enough to mention either because there are a whole bunch of 'em everywhere, or because the vast majority doesn't care anymore. Rather like referring to a black governor or a female senator.

Also let's not begin the 'America sucks' nattering, shall we? The assumption that the OP's country of origin (or at least the one they're talking about specifically) is America isn't unreasonable, given where the overwhelming majority of this forum's members come from. And if you want to mention how behind "the rest of the world" America is, I will cough delicately and glance sidelong at Australia, among others.

Why, then, is there not a single openly homosexual U.S. politician? One does not have to be a "nut" to let their religion guide their thoughts and actions.

Well, if you want to get technical about it, every male politician that gets caught soliciting male prostitutes (of varying ages) is pretty much outed... But yeah no, as far as controversy is concerned, homosexuality is right there on the list with abortion and women's rights.

Personally I think everybody would be happier if we were all bi. Everyone is porn! Yay!

But I'm guessing doing art under pressure / for a living isn't the most fun thing to do... unlike say someone who loves fixing cars, restoring cars etc gets a job as a mechanic/car restorer, where there is generally plenty of business for it not to be overly pressured in order to pay bills.

My stepdad said that once he became a professional mechanic instead of just doing it for projects, it became mind-numbing, particularly if he had to deal with customers personally (he works for the city of [redacted] as a fleet mechanic and works most often on firetrucks, lately). There's plenty of business for artists too--mostly graphic artists, and even then, the average company prefers a freelancer or a contract term, instead of a full-time steady job. There's plenty of work, but not much security.

People seem to be thinking that this is an April Fools Day joke, it's not. We've been meaning to clean out the Advanced+ for a while because there's a lot of people who haven't been active for years still under that rank so the best way to do it is just to start afresh. We're hoping to start the voting in the next few days so make sure to stay active so we know who to make voting threads for.

Sorry but any major changes made cannot be trusted until midnight tomorrow. Dem's da rules, yanno.

Bands: Blind Guardian, Dream Theater, older Iced Earth (before Ripper Owens showed up and shat all over it)

Genres: Metal (especially power and prog, but FUCK Dragonforce and everything they do). I'll listen to pretty much everything except rap/hip-hop/whatever it's called.

And mine. Got a late start, too. Bah.

ooooookay this one's hard.

Edit: 28 minutes to solve! Christ.

Somehow this one was almost easy.

This one took me a little while. Woof.

Mine today:
(Sorry it took so long, I needed a shower!)