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Jack2142 posted:I don't understand why people worry about color or human racism in fantasy/sci-fi games where there are entire other sapient species / aliens. Dwarves, Halflings and Elves are already stand ins for repressed minorities and the Witcher games do a great job highlighting how stupid it is to target your neighbors just because they are "different" when the world is full of poo poo that is far worse. It's more about representation and not alienating vast swathes of the population than 'we need people our characters can be racist to'
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Jun 4, 2015 18:54
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I think this is the best reply to the Polygon article I've seen thus far: http://thegonzologist.tumblr.com/post/120655612895/the-one-where-i-talk-about-diversity It's annoying they're going after W3 for these issues, I think the devs could've put in Zerrikanians or people from other places in the capital Vizima as emissaries from foreign lands or something but I don't go nuts over it. What is irritating about the articles appearing is that a lot of them, while well-intended, contain lots of half truths or lies, which started with the review on the bloody baron quest and then moves on to lack of PoC. "There are 0 PoC in Witcher 3" Which is untrue, one of the first people you meet in a bar looks somewhat Middle Eastern or Persian (that face appears only once in the game too so far as I can tell), and you later encounter a black succubus as well. (which shows at least that they did think about it, otherwise there would be truly 0) 2 people isn't going to make up for it with 1 of them arguably being a stretch, and I don't want to defend the game by saying this, but I think it's an indication that a lot of people haven't even played the game honestly... but ok basically read the link up top as a reply to Polygon's article. I understand that people make an issue out of this and I'd like to see more diversity in games myself, I just think it's a little unfair to barrage Witcher 3 with this considering where this plays out in the world of the Witcher (Polish, Dutch, German, Ireland, Vikingland influences) and all that while the game goes to great lengths to show players injustice and prejudice and in general just has a very progressive slant to it. Again, they could've put a few emissaries in the game or traders or w/e, but wouldn't that be tokenism? In any case people will always find something to complain about.
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Jun 4, 2015 18:57
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GrossMurpel posted:I haven't fully built up my Nilfgaard deck yet but with that Emhyr who can steal a card they should outdraw anyone. They have as many spies as the North but about 3 more medics. Nilfgaard can run with 5 medics, 4 spies, and a leader ability that lets them play one of their own spies from the enemy graveyard that nobody else has an equivalent to. Barring a disastrously bad hand, they're going to have card advantage over anybody, often by a hilarious factor. From what I've seen of their deck they can't ordinarily get the same huge numbers as Monsters or Northern Realms on a round where they try to go big, but instead they can play the same strength 10 Black Archers / Heavy Fire Scorpion every single round to constantly force resources out of their opponents while totally controlling the pace of the game by having twice as many cards in hand. As an added, perk, they're much less vulnerable to scorch than Northern Realms. Tight Bonds can make some huge numbers, it also turns the units into scorch magnets and unless you were lucky enough to draw your one Medic and have decoys left over you aren't going to be able to recover those cards. Nilfgaard goes into a game expecting to play half their units from the discard pile anyways, and with their inevitable card advantage they have a pretty good opportunity to just wait you out before playing their best cards. This also makes them indirectly less vulnerable to weather, since their play style is less committal in general. I'm curious as to how you'd get a 200-point round out of them, though. Even with like 15 cards on the table, they don't have the same kind of crazy stacking bonuses you can get out of Northern Realms.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:09
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Erik Kain also put out a response to that Polygon piece - http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/06/04/should-the-witcher-3-feature-people-of-color/ There is also a #GamesSoWhite hashtag running around on Twitter right now  Nielsen posted:I just think it's a little unfair to barrage Witcher 3 with this considering where this plays out in the world of the Witcher (Polish, Dutch, German, Ireland, Vikingland influences) and all that while the game goes to great lengths to show players injustice and prejudice and in general just has a very progressive slant to it. It's a very popular game that is out at the moment which is exactly why it's being targeted. Like that dev's Twitlonger I posted earlier said, there wouldn't have been as much hubub about what Moosa said in his piece if it focused on Life is Strange, Gone Home, etc. Mekchu fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 19:12
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Unfunny Poster posted:It is basically a (I'm guessing) American guy saying that CDPR should do X and Y with the Witcher story and setting. It's a weird piece that argues that, you can't use "it's based on mythology" or "it's based on history" as an excuse because those aren't acceptable excuses to the writer when you have monsters and such involved in the storytelling. Just like people are saying "you can't use it's historically accurate" for the recent Game of Thrones kerfuffle. He also argued that it'd be OK to do something called racebending (I genuinely didn't know this was a term), where you change a character's skin color a la Heimdal in the Thor movies or the new Human Torch in the Fantastic Torch, with Witcher characters but doing vice versa with any other mythology from around the world is "white washing." I mean designating some characters black isn't an awfulidea (though 'black' is a culture as well as a skin colour. Obviously the main issue is that games are generally made by white men (because of educational privelige and the historical marketing of STEM qualifications and videogames to that demo) for white men (simply becasue people make stuff that they'd enjoy themselves). It's a difficult issue to solve and requires action at all levels to really make a difference, but 'representative of the population' is different in different countries. I'd say CDPR is probably pretty representative of the polish population race-wise. They could probably do with hiring more women though since that's true of literally every game studio. 'Historical Accuracy' and 'oh it's based off mythology' have varying legitimacy, and it's difficult. On one hand adding black (for instance) characters for the sake of it can reek of tokenism, on the other hand adding well realized black characters helps black people engage with your game and feel represented. Ideally you have a representative population of ethnic minority people with creative control of their own studios, and represented at every level but that's hard to acheive without incentivising ethnic minorities to play games, gain the skills to make games and remedying the societal issues that preclude many of these people from getting a good childhood and education. Whichever way it's done it's a long, drawn out process awith no easy answers. IDK why I wrote this many words about this in the witcher thread but hey at least it's better than complaining about texture resolution or somet Generic Monk fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 19:14
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Please no.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:16
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Generic Monk posted:I mean designating some characters black isn't an awfulidea (though 'black' is a culture as well as a skin colour. Obviously the main issue is that games are generally made by white men (because of educational privelige and the historical marketing of STEM qualifications and videogames to that demo) for white men (simply becasue people make stuff that they'd enjoy themselves). It's a difficult issue to solve and requires action at all levels to really make a difference, but 'representative of the population' is different in different countries. I'd say CDPR is probably pretty representative of the polish population race-wise. They could probably do with hiring more women though since that's true of literally every game studio. And you were doing so well, too.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:20
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Voyager I posted:Nilfgaard can run with 5 medics, 4 spies, and a leader ability that lets them play one of their own spies from the enemy graveyard that nobody else has an equivalent to. Barring a disastrously bad hand, they're going to have card advantage over anybody, often by a hilarious factor. From what I've seen of their deck they can't ordinarily get the same huge numbers as Monsters or Northern Realms on a round where they try to go big, but instead they can play the same strength 10 Black Archers / Heavy Fire Scorpion every single round to constantly force resources out of their opponents while totally controlling the pace of the game by having twice as many cards in hand.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:21
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Drifter posted:And you were doing so well, too. It's a legit issue that deserves to be talked about. Maybe not in the witcher thread, or in my rambling, poorly articulated style though. Like in terms of videogames demograpic representation is prob the #1 issue that needs to get sorted out, and we'd get better games if it was.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:27
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Does this game have any Jews or Muslims in it? If not that's a serious problem.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:27
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Junkfist posted:Does this game have any Jews or Muslims in it? If not that's a serious problem. In the vein of demographic representation the Jewish population of Poland was (more than) decimated during the holocaust which is kind of the definition of a serious problem.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:32
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e: oops double post
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Jun 4, 2015 19:32
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Unfunny Poster posted:So Polygon posted this opinion piece about the lack of people's of color in Witcher 3 - http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/3/8719389/colorblind-on-witcher-3-rust-and-gamings-race-problem For some reason I read this lead-in as somehow being about color grading or accessibility for colorblind people and other nerdy poo poo like that and got briefly excited. Anyway, ShadowMar posted:this is the most obnoxious and terrible article about a general overall opinion i agree with lmao
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Jun 4, 2015 19:33
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Baron Bifford posted:Stupid. The Witcher is based on Slavic mythology and in medieval times it was rare for white people to encounter people of color because travel was hard. that's not true
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Jun 4, 2015 19:38
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Generic Monk posted:In the vein of demographic representation the Jewish population of Poland was (more than) decimated during the holocaust which is kind of the definition of a serious problem. I always saw the treatment of elves and dwarves, especially in cities where they're ghetto-ized, as a very loose analogy for medieval persecution of Roma/Gypsies and Jews. This is a lot bigger deal in the first two games than W3, though. I wonder if players new to the Witcher series noticed all the elves live outside of the Novigrad city walls?
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Jun 4, 2015 19:40
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Generic Monk posted:In the vein of demographic representation the Jewish population of Poland was (more than) decimated during the holocaust which is kind of the definition of a serious problem. If only they got them all we wouldn't have to suffer with their unfair under representation in fantasy video games, a deeper problem to be sure.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:42
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Bort Bortles posted:I really wish I could find a second 10 strength archer dude, that always shoots for the knee, and a 5th Imperia Infantry unit and all the spies and medics. I'm level 17 and pretty far through quests in Novigrad and I just do not have enough moxy in any other Gwent deck to try something other than my good ole Northern Realms deck. One of your Black Archers and Auxiliary Archers come from a person in distress in Velen. He's on the moderately large island a bit to the east of Claywich, and returns to Claywich after being rescued.. Your spies, unfortunately, are all random drops, and the ridiculously good Emperor ability that really sets Nilfgaard above Northern Realms is a reward for beating an opponent in the Gwent tournament. It takes some work getting proper Nilfgaard deck running. I wouldn't worry about the Imperia Brigade. There are only four of them and they're not terribly good compared to other options.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:44
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Junkfist posted:If only they got them all we wouldn't have to suffer with their unfair under representation in fantasy video games, a deeper problem to be sure.  drat son haris pilton fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 19:47
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Please stop
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Jun 4, 2015 19:49
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I've been getting a lot of pops and crackles in the ambient audio whenever I'm in Novigrad (and to a lesser extent in Oxenfurt). Does anyone else get this? It's pretty annoying and is making me want to go do Skellige first until the next patch drops and maybe fixes it.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:50
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There's a ! on my map in skellige, near the druid hill. It's attached to a generic druid that only gives out generic responses, how do I start that quest? Getting kind of annoyed at how many sidequests are completely busted.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:51
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Generic Monk posted:This is a legitimate issue in the games industry as a whole, especially in the US where the non-white population makes up about 23% of the country yet is woefully underrepresented in media. In poland ~98% of the population is white european. Not really the best game to use to illustrate that issue. It's a terrible game to illustrate the issue (which, as you say, is a very real issue). The problem is that it's a high-profile game with exactly zero non-white (humanoid) people--that makes it a really easy game for these thinkpieces to target. It seems to be working, too, if the comment threads on articles like these are any indication.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:53
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Pellisworth posted:I always saw the treatment of elves and dwarves, especially in cities where they're ghetto-ized, as a very loose analogy for medieval persecution of Roma/Gypsies and Jews. This is a lot bigger deal in the first two games than W3, though. The magic-user persecution in Novigrad reeks of holocaust imagery too, I found it quite evocative considering you're in the thick of it for hours of gameplay, it pervades into a ton of quests, and it affets characters you've known for multiple games/books. Pretty well done. Women are fairly well represented and varying in character too... wow it's almost as if this game isn't a particularly egregious example of problems in the games industry. It's like that polygon article was written to make me embarassed about holding any kind of progressive views. Christ. It's nice that ideals of social justice and egalitarianism are becoming more populist and marketable but it saddens me to to see 'the good guys' essentially having the same journalistic standards as fox news. Generic Monk fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 19:57
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Can I just say that Ladies of the Woods is a fantastic song and every time it started playing made me feel uneasy in a good way.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:59
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Let game makers make the games they want to. Consumers will vote with their wallets. I'd love to see Polygon make a game just to see how loving bad it would be. Anyways, on to more important things: How awesome was Geralt's drunk voice?!
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Jun 4, 2015 19:59
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Baron Bifford posted:Stupid. The Witcher is based on Slavic mythology and in medieval times it was rare for white people to encounter people of color because travel was hard. I don't want to get involved in this for lots of good reasons, but I will say one thing here, regarding this point, which I hear a lot without much push back. The ethnic homogeneity of modern Poland is a modern creation, the result of the 20th century. The idea that a white person would never see someone non-white in the middle ages just isn't true. And fantasy lit promotes this. Just as an example, in the 13th century much of Poland was ruled over by the Moguls. Even after the empire retreated, a lot of those people were still around. That's just one really obvious and well known example, but the history of migration and ethnic diversity in Europe is not at all as homogeneous as you'd expect from reading Tolkien. Of course, this all gets weird because "white" is an 18th century idea that would have been foreign to people in the middle ages. They absolutely had the idea of ethnic classes, but (and correct me if I'm wrong) not the same sort of white-overclass/poc-underclass we're talking about here. That (modern) dynamic gets mirrored in the Witcher universe by having the non-human races stand in for people-of-color, but as people have pointed out, that creates other problems with lack of representation as well as othering.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:03
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Let's just blame this on Sapkowski and move on.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:05
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I have to ask this again. I know you're supposed to win Thaler card from the innkeeper in Arnbjörn, but if I already progressed the plot far enough (shenanigans ensued) and he's bugged so he won't talk to me anymore, am I just SOL with Thaler?
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Jun 4, 2015 20:08
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I don't want to get involved in this for lots of good reasons, but I will say one thing here, regarding this point, which I hear a lot without much push back. The ethnic homogeneity of modern Poland is a modern creation, the result of the 20th century. The idea that a white person would never see someone non-white in the middle ages just isn't true. And fantasy lit promotes this. Just as an example, in the 13th century much of Poland was ruled over by the Moguls. Even after the empire retreated, a lot of those people were still around. That's just one really obvious and well known example, but the history of migration and ethnic diversity in Europe is not at all as homogeneous as you'd expect from reading Tolkien. ^a good post I'm a total novice when it comes to polish history beyond the 20th century - my grandad was polish but we were never particularly close, which seems a shame now. Still got the last name though which never fails to raise a comment in the UK where every third person seems to be named 'Daniel Smith.' Generic Monk fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 20:09
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Greenplastic posted:You are just wrong, and you would know if you read anything about the bug. Myself, and many others, are not getting XP from any quests at all, of any type or level. LvL 15, doing level 15 story quest, nothing, level 20 contract, nothing, level 20 story, nothing, and so on.. Only quests that drop XP for me now is 10xp from horse races and other miniquests that don't have a recommended level. No need to go all "look how wrong you are!" at the guy, especially since he's on to something. There's a mod which sets all quest levels (and, more specifically, the levels of all steps of a quest) in the rewards.xml to 68 and it's a functioning workaround. Badly Jester fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 20:10
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:Of course, this all gets weird because "white" is an 18th century idea that would have been foreign to people in the middle ages. They absolutely had the idea of ethnic classes, but (and correct me if I'm wrong) not the same sort of white-overclass/poc-underclass we're talking about here. That (modern) dynamic gets mirrored in the Witcher universe by having the non-human races stand in for people-of-color, but as people have pointed out, that creates other problems with lack of representation as well as othering. You don't have to go back very far, even in American history, to see ethnic prejudice that isn't defined by skin color. See: the Irish, circa late 1800s, early 1900s.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:12
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Azazell0 posted:I have to ask this again. I know you're supposed to win Thaler card from the innkeeper in Arnbjörn, but if I already progressed the plot far enough (shenanigans ensued) and he's bugged so he won't talk to me anymore, am I just SOL with Thaler? It appears that you are, sorry friend.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:13
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Harrow posted:You don't have to go back very far, even in American history, to see ethnic prejudice that isn't defined by skin color. See: the Irish, circa late 1800s, early 1900s. Or the 1930s with the KKK harassing Catholics as far north as Connecticut.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:16
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Harrow posted:You don't have to go back very far, even in American history, to see ethnic prejudice that isn't defined by skin color. See: the Irish, circa late 1800s, early 1900s. Yeah, Ireland is still very divided along the lines of Protestants and Catholics. It seems like such a weird anachronism but there ya go
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Jun 4, 2015 20:20
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Nielsen posted:I think this is the best reply to the Polygon article I've seen thus far: good read
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Jun 4, 2015 20:21
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Badly Jester posted:No need to go all "look how wrong you are!" at the guy, especially since he's on to something. There's a mod which sets all quest levels (and, more specifically, the levels of all steps of a quest) in the rewards.xml to 68 and it's a functioning workaround. It's the "I'm wondering if there even is an XP bug" statement, and trying to explain away getting no XP at all from any quests at any level with mislabeled quest levels that is wrong. Even if that mod fixes the XP bug all around it isn't available on consoles, so yes, there is an XP bug, and a quest actually being level 16 when it's labeled as level 18 doesn't change the fact that it should give XP when done at level 15, especially when it's shown to do so by youtube videos of people unaffected by the glitch. It's great to try to figure out why the bug happens, it's just the claim that it's mostly or completely imaginary that irks me. Greenplastic fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 20:21
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Greenplastic posted:It's the "I'm wondering if there even is an XP bug" statement, and trying to explain away getting no XP at all from any quests at any level with mislabeled quest levels that is wrong. Even if that mod fixes the XP bug all around it isn't available on consoles, so yes, there is an XP bug, and just because a quest is actually level 16 when it's labeled as level 18 doesn't change the fact that is should give XP when done at level 15, especially when it's shown to do so by youtube videos of people unaffected by the glitch. It's great to try to figure out why the bug happens, it's just the claim that it's mostly or completely imaginary that irks me. It is mostly imaginary, considering everyone in this thread has a different definition of what the bug does. There are undoubtedly some people with the bug otherwise CDPR wouldn't need to fix it, but I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority just see people screaming about the sky falling (you) and assume because they didn't get any XP for a level 10 gray quest at level 30 they also have the bug.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:27
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Verranicus posted:It is mostly imaginary, considering everyone in this thread has a different definition of what the bug does. There are undoubtedly some people with the bug otherwise CDPR wouldn't need to fix it, but I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority just see people screaming about the sky falling (you) and assume because they didn't get any XP for a level 10 gray quest at level 30 they also have the bug. Ahh, well, I'll let go. Anyways, hope they fix the bug soon, wish I had a pc so I could just fix it myself, and glad I have an awesome fantasy book to read while waiting to learn the fate of Geralt and friends (someone please make a Kingkiller Chronicle RPG with a detailed system for sympathy, with all the nice math, energy sources and spergy poo poo it involves!) Greenplastic fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 20:35
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I am shocked to not find any African Americans in Skellige or Novigrad.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:36
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Greenplastic posted:It's the "I'm wondering if there even is an XP bug" statement, and trying to explain away getting no XP at all from any quests at any level with mislabeled quest levels that is wrong. Even if that mod fixes the XP bug all around it isn't available on consoles, so yes, there is an XP bug, and a quest actually being level 16 when it's labeled as level 18 doesn't change the fact that it should give XP when done at level 15, especially when it's shown to do so by youtube videos of people unaffected by the glitch. It's great to try to figure out why the bug happens, it's just the claim that it's mostly or completely imaginary that irks me. The devs acknowledged there is a bug though so that's not even up for debate. Not sure why they can't just explain what's happening if they keep delaying the patch until who knows where though, would save us a lot of guesswork.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:37
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