Path of Radiance vs Radiant Dawn

[Jotari]

23 minutes ago, Xander said:

It's not close at all and it's interesting to me how this conversation seems to be between the newer generation of FE fans who didn't even live through playing the games until over a decade after they were released, and haven't even played through each game (or probably either game) 10 times (Three Houses and Engage are both great games as well but, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, if you started with those then you probably have no business giving your opinion on Tellius games). All I ask is that if you're going to do this at least show respect to the games by comparing them without trying to prop one game up while tearing the other one down with ridiculous criticisms.

If they've played it, then they have business having an opinion on it.

[Xander]

21 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If they've played it, then they have business having an opinion on it.

You know what's funny, I edited my post and it came off as saying they had no business giving their opinion on it when the point I meant to get across was players who actually played the games more, for longer, competitively, and under different circumstances should hold more weight. Fair enough for getting defensive over it, since I figured certain people would, and I failed the edit.

Edited April 11 by Xander

[Integrity]

nah lol that's a really shitty and stupid way to handle fandom as a concept. there shouldn't be a minimum lived experience to post an opinion on a fire emblem online, i don't care if you've played the game once or 36 times "competitively". hell, people who are neck-deep in the filth of a franchise have a horrible tendency to lose perspective on it, it's not like more experience is equivalent to more understanding.

e: hell, just the concept of prioritizing the opinions of people who play a single player game "competitively" is clown shit on the face of it

Edited April 11 by Integrity

[FRZNHeir]

On 4/11/2024 at 12:19 PM, Xander said:

You know what's funny, I edited my post and it came off as saying they had no business giving their opinion on it when the point I meant to get across was players who actually played the games more, for longer, competitively, and under different circumstances should hold more weight. Fair enough for getting defensive over it, since I figured certain people would, and I failed the edit.

Takes like this are the reason that older FE fans tend to get the label of elitist. It's a super gatekeep-y mindset that's quite toxic. I think that a first time player's perspective is quite important to discussions about the game as many people tend to only play a game once or twice, and the feelings someone may have had playing the game for the first time could be lost/forgotten by those who have many playthroughs under their belt. 
I think the only (probs dogass) take that's valid here is that someone should at least experience the media they are engaging in conversation/fandom about at least once before their takes are valid, but that's still gatekeep-y and exclusionary, especially in regards to a series like Fire Emblem, which has notable issues with accessibility and availability.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, FRZNHeir said:

Takes like this are the reason that older FE fans tend to get the label of elitist. It's a super gatekeep-y mindset that's quite toxic. I think that a first time player's perspective is quite important to discussions about the game as many people tend to only play a game once or twice, and the feelings someone may have had playing the game for the first time could be lost/forgotten by those who have many playthroughs under their belt. 
I think the only (probs dogass) take that's valid here is that someone should at least experience the media they are engaging in conversation/fandom about at least once before their takes are valid, but that's still gatekeep-y and exclusionary, especially in regards to a series like Fire Emblem, which has notable issues with accessibility and availability.

I wouldn't call it gatekeeping to expect someone to have actually experienced the thing they're expressing an opinion about. The gate is wide open in that case, the person is just refusing to walk through because they've already made up their mind. A particularly salient example for us would be the 90s panic about video games being violent and corrupting the minds of the youth, expressed by people who had never played a game in their life. It's like the literal etymology of prejudice.

Edited April 15 by Jotari

[FRZNHeir]

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

I wouldn't call it gatekeeping to expect someone to have actually experienced the thing they're expressing an opinion about. The gate is wide open in that case, the person is just refusing to walk through because they've already made up their mind. A particularly salient example for us would be the 90s panic about video games being violent and corrupting the minds of the youth, expressed by people who had never played a game in their life. It's like the literal etymology of prejudice.

I guess the main reason I feel this way is a personal definition?
I see tons of people in the say, Persona community, who haven't actually played the games themselves offering opinions when all they've done is watch a playthrough (which is the subject of a more than a few memes), and I feel like it's a bit weird to count this as experiencing a piece of media as it's done vicariously. But that's my own horrid opinion. 
 

[Integrity]

i don't think it's gatekeeping at all unless you're super inclusionary about the term gatekeeping (is that ironic? i think it is) to say that the minimum bar to have a supportable opinion about a video game is to have fisthand experience playing it. watching LPs is all well and good, but they're going to objectively give the viewer a shallower and, at worst, legitimately biased take on the material, especially if the LPer is competent at all at editing and cuts out / compresses grinding sessions and shit to make it entertaining. you can't get a comprehensive Take out of just reading/watching someone else playing, even if you can absolutely get Vibes. post with your mates and joke away, for sure, but when you get to the point of saying "three houses sucks i don't get why anyone likes it" or whatever, i'd hope you at least took a stab at three houses and bounced off of it yourself.

e: illustratively, if someone watches my gaiden LP from twelve years ago in lieu of playing the game, and thinks the game looks like shit and they shouldn't play it, that's a completely valid stance to take and there's no legitimate reason they ought to go out and play the game just to have a "legitimate" take on the game to be a real fire emblem fan or some bullshit. i'd also expect that person to know that they don't have the breadth of knowledge to participate in actual discussions about gaiden, because at the end of the day their take would boil down to "integrity thought this game was shit and, hell, i agreed secondhand".

e2: i am very deliberately leaving the typo in the first sentence because it's making me laugh

Edited April 16 by Integrity

[lenticular]

I think it largely depends on exactly what the opinion is. For instance, I've never played Genealogy. If I state my opinion that I don't really care for the art style of the character portraits in that game, then I think that's pretty reasonable. I have seen a lot of the character portraits, after all. Maybe I should equivocate and disclaim a bit by saying that I've never seen them in their original context and for all I know maybe they work better there, but at the most basic level I don't think this is an unreasonable opinion for me to share. On the other hand, if I started to express opinions about the game's pacing or difficulty or story then I would rightly be laughed out of the room.

Or another example: I know from past experience that I am susceptible to the sort of psychological manipulation tricks that are common in games with microtransactions/loot-boxes/gacha/etc. They mess with my head and I end up spending more on them than I want to. So, these days, I just flat out won't touch them. So I hold the opinion that Heroes is a trash game, purely because of its business model. I don't think this is an unreasonable thing for me to think, even though I've scarcely touched the game. But I am in no way qualified to talk about the quality of its tactical combat, for instance.

Basically, I think that you can hold opinions about things you have very limited experience of, so long as you are circumspect and nuanced in those opinions. If you're willing to be upfront about having not played the game and frame your opinions in that light then that has the potential to lead to interesting discussions ("yeah, I know it looks that way from outside but it's actually different when you're playing" or "yeah, that's a problem that a few people have with it, so if you think you won't like it for that reason then you're probably right", for instance). But this is the Internet and there's no shortage of people who want to claim complete expertise in all sorts of subject matter that they really shouldn't. And I do agree with either ignoring those people or pointing and laughing at them.

[Integrity]

i think that's a fair take, but unfortunately i'm gonna have to ban you for trying to apply nuance to a discussion 😕 i hope you understand

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I think it largely depends on exactly what the opinion is. For instance, I've never played Genealogy. If I state my opinion that I don't really care for the art style of the character portraits in that game, then I think that's pretty reasonable. I have seen a lot of the character portraits, after all. Maybe I should equivocate and disclaim a bit by saying that I've never seen them in their original context and for all I know maybe they work better there, but at the most basic level I don't think this is an unreasonable opinion for me to share. On the other hand, if I started to express opinions about the game's pacing or difficulty or story then I would rightly be laughed out of the room.

Only legitimate opinions on Genealogy's artstyle are those who've played it on  a 1990s CRT TV with a RCA composite connection XD