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Yvonmukluk posted:So GW didn't send TTS a Cease & Desist but they're pulling their content preemptively? Wouldn't they be legally in the clear until that actually comes down, since if they actually ceased when GW told them to with a C&D, then GW can't sue? Basically, GW could file a takedown, the victims file a counter notification which might get the video restored and the strike removed (Youtube is not actually required to restore content taken down by a false DMCA claim). This is just the fuckery they can cop on youtube. They can be actually sued over it, and what I read here suggests that GW is the kind of lovely company who would do just that. If that happens it will last a few years and cost 30-100k+ depending on how long it goes. For small creators, this is just far too much money and it doesn't matter that they can get most of their costs back if they win because they can't afford to go that deep in the hole. They might be able to get it dismissed under an anti-SLAPP but if that doesn't work they are hosed and likely bankrupt. And it will still cost a bunch of money.
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Jul 30, 2021 14:43
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Lurker here. I haven't filed any reports or notified mods via PM or otherwise to shut down the discussion, but it is irritating for the thread to be filled with off topic posts that bump it to the top of my bookmarks. There is an existing thread for that design talk, you can do it there.
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Nov 12, 2021 21:25
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A person who cheats in competition with others demonstrates they have no respect for the game or interest in a fair contest and is solely interested in achieving a desired outcome at any cost. They should not be allowed to compete professionally. As for Magnus Carlsen, the way they went about this isn't great. That being said, it is hard to see many ways they could have practically gone about it better. A lot of organisations are far more interested in protecting their reputations than they are in maintaining their actual integrity. A secretive process that would, as many have pointed out in here before, likely come up inconclusive would accomplish nothing beneficial while letting any alleged cheater off the hook and free to continue their actions in future tournaments. Likewise, coming out directly and saying he believes Hans Niemann is a cheater would get him sued, most likely in a country specifically selected because they have obnoxiously horrid libel laws, like the ones that plagued the UK. This would find against him because, as pointed out above and earlier, the evidence would be inconclusive for any individual game. This would then be used by Niemann to claim vindication. Carlsen's actions to imply but not state that he believes Niemann is a cheater and subsequently refusing to play against him avoids the latter pitfall while calling attention to the mans prior cheating, which has resulted in a lot more of it coming to light (which the first process would not have done). It is not a great look, but it is the best of a bunch of poo poo options.
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Oct 6, 2022 06:16
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So many people not understanding copyright law here so a couple of important notes: 1: Copyright applies to creative works, not functional ones. A set of rules is not sufficiently creative to be done under copyright. Monster descriptions, fluff text, stories, adventure designs are all creative works and subject to copyright. Functional poo poo falls under patent law. As a rule, courts interpret copyright law to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...". Locking poo poo down as people have been predicting runs contrary to that, in conjuction with the other point above, will almost certainly get any case brought regarding it thrown out of court at the summary judgement stage. 2: The doctrine of Scènes à faire would preclude a bunch of the more hysterical predictions I have seen lurking this thread, like attempts to go after people for using standard stat systems like the old Str/Dex/Con/Int/Wis/Cha system, or the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system or what have you. This is in addition to them being functional, not creative. Anyway, now I can go back to lurking.
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Jan 13, 2023 05:05
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Ooh, it made it to a relatively mainstream news outlet: The Guardian
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Jan 13, 2023 14:50
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Cycloneman posted:Okay, and are you ready to fight a million dollar lawsuit with Wizards of the Coast to prove that? Honestly, a case could be made for sanctions against any attorney who put their name on any such filing, it is that settled.
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Jan 17, 2023 05:25
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homullus posted:Thank you, that was a good characterization, but no, I'm not confused. As you say, "goblins" are not copyrighted, but everything ever written about them in D&D is. Writing about goblins consistent with D&D (assuming you know what they're like from reading other WotC content) runs you the risk of using the verbatim expression of others, even unconsciously. The more that's written about D&D goblins, the greater that chance. Four decades of goblin text is out there. There are elements that are arguably common enough in the world to avoid infringement, but without some kind of full text search of "old things written about goblins" and "all D&D things written about goblins," you can't be sure whether what you're writing infringes. Some brought up Paizo, "hey they use goblins, boy you sure are stupid!" and well, sure, probably, but even a cursory look at the written and artistic expression of Paizo's goblins tells you how different they are from D&D goblins. It's now a lot harder to use laches ("you didn't sue when you realized there was infringement") as a defense in copyright suits, but WotC not suing anyone for this hypothetical goblinfringement is also part of the analysis of how closely your goblin text can resemble that in D&D, even verbatim. For example, You cannot copyright goblins, as they are a creature of historical myth. You cannot copyright the concept of a short green humanoid. You cannot copyright the concept of creatures living in a tribal structure. You cannot copyright stone tools. Or bone totems. Or being evil little fast breeding shits. You cannot even copyright all these things together since this is falls under the doctrine of scène à faire since it is an absolute mainstay of the genre. What can be copyrighted is your individual expression of how these factors combine. The small details of tribal life in the specific tribe, the characters within it. The artwork of specific individuals and specific dynamics. It is the same as you not being able to copyright the idea of a town of humans in England and their culture, but you can copyright your own original individual characters and their specific relationships. That being said, Wizards would have some copyright protection for their exact verbatim text, since that is something that required creativity. Getting around that is trivial, however, since it is easy as hell to rewrite enough to avoid that.
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Apr 10, 2023 03:37
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One of the issues with the whole good/evil - paragon/renegade thing is that it is easy to present a single option as a good option to follow that is ethical and cool and works for all parties, but it is hard to have the same for bad people, since the goals and reasons for going against what is considered good and ethical is as wide and varied as the number of means for actually doing it. You're never going to be able to do it well in a static format that video games currently exist in. You might be able to do it well if you already characterise the player character as a bad person for reasons, in which case you can create a series of options more or less extreme to follow along that pre-determined route that fit with the character, but in something as open as games like Baldur's Gate and Divinity Original Sin you are not going to be able to accomplish that sort of thing. It's far easier in pen and paper where the only real limitations are your imagination and what the GM and the other players will let you get away with.
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Jul 10, 2023 09:32
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Leperflesh posted:Maybe you'd just become so jaded that you don't have the mental energy to be upset about the flagrant exploitation and murder of the robot people. This is the same attitude everyone had towards the clones, by the way, likely helped by the fact that they are clad in identical dehumanising armour that conceals their faces. The whole setting is extremely depressing when you look at it from a civil rights standpoint. Even the good side are monstrous when you think about their actions and the consequences.
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Sep 28, 2023 07:08
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Halloween Jack posted:What if--and I know this is utterly insane--a company that does billions in annual revenue had staff artists? These are the most important things for upper management to remember in their quest for ever higher personal pay-cheques. From this perspective, free AI generated art is a no-brainer. Why pay a person when you can use a computer to make everything for you?
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Jan 7, 2024 20:36
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On the subject of Amalur, the recent re-release and expansion to it is an amazing example of what happens when people who don't understand the lore of a setting, or have an ideological bent opposed to the message of it, get free reign to make whatever they feel like. I could rant endlessly about how much they hosed up, from the tiniest things that are almost meaningless to flipping the entire message of the original game and its original DLC's on its head, and everything in between.
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Apr 1, 2024 07:11
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Kestral posted:If you want to make an angry effortpost about this, I’d certainly be interested. Amalur is something I’ve been fascinated with from afar for a while, though I’ve never played it. Okay, okay fine. I avoided posting this because I thought it was mostly off topic, but I also got messaged by Leperflesh through steam asking me to do it which counts as permission. I am going to make liberal use of spoiler tags here, since it involves lots of spoilers for the original games plot and sideplots. The games central concept is that the player has no fate. That because they have no fate they are able to change what is written by it. It turns out what was written was really really bad for everyone. Throughout the game and the side stories, and the original two DLC you repeatedly defy fates plan that has everyone facing a very unpleasant end. An old hero being doomed to be killed and made into stew, People doomed to be stuck staring at a door unable to pass it to get what they need, towns doomed to be destroyed by plague, towns doomed to be destroyed by spiders, a Niskaru Lord being freed (Chaos demon), Power being Usurped, Serial killers, Undead Pirates, Reversion of a race of Giants to Savagery, etc to name just a few. Your deeds, throughout the game, in changing and breaking fate, are portrayed as a universal good. Giving choice meaning. One of the cutscenes even spells that out explicitly. It is important to note that Fate is not as how it is portrayed in other games and settings as a guiding force that ensures major things happen despite your attempts to stop them. It cannot be cheated. Every single action and thought of every single being, every movement of a pebble, has been pre-ordained since the beginning of time, start to finish. This is why being free from fate is so important, it means that this plan can be changed, but only by a single individual free from this plan. Then at the end of the main story you meet a being fated to escape a prison and kill literally everyone. And instead you kill it. After that you are told that the people who read fate cannot read the fates of anyone any more. Yay! Fate has been defeated. Glorious freedom! The Fatesworn expansion in the remake shits all over this. It is set after the main story of the original and can only be accessed then. What you did was actually bad. Chaos God is trying to destroy fate with cultists and Chaos Demons. Fate still exists. The story starts with you being contacted by the head of an order of "Fateweavers" (Name for people who can read fate with cards). The very first thing they do is show awareness of the big bad from the main story as an entity that actually exists. Given that in the main story, people who even suspect the true nature of that being and it existing are routinely assassinated by a secret order, this knowledge literally should not be out there, and if they did know they would certainly not talk about it in public. People also call you "The Fateless One", which is not used anywhere in the game. You do obtain multiple titles through thee story, and those are well known, "Hero of Mel Senshir" being the biggest one. Literally the only place "Fateless One" appears is wiki's and reviews. It indicates they didn;t really play the game before writing the DLC. You are then sent to a place relatively close by that nevertheless has never been mentioned before in game or in the lore, populated by a race of basic humans that have never been mentioned before or appeared before despite being right nearby geographically speaking, and were likely only selected because they wanted to use the default human models for them rather than actually put in a little effort to be lore friendly. These indivduals follow the God of Order, and both they and their region are named for him, though it takes a long time to reach them bcause you have to progress through refugees fleeing... the war that already ended because you won it in the main story. Along the way you encounter many strange things. First of all is the fact that, unlike the rest of the game, the plants you gather for alchemy are generally located in places that make sense for them to be. In this they are just dropped wherever. Likewise, there is an extremely rare plant, only found in very well hidden areas of the main game, that allows you to harvest "essence of fate", used for top tier potions. These are growing, somewhat uncommonly, out in the open in this lovely region. Likewise, but more lore-relevantly, is an ingredient calld "Prismere Dust" used for high end mana stuff. In the main game there are lore reasons for it existing only in the final region of the game (Prismere is an emanation of Tirnoch's power) and in a single cave right near the start of the game (The facility you start in was built there because there was an unexpected lode of Prismere there). However, in the DLC this ingredient can be found all over the place with no explanation. It's like going to an arctic region of a world and finding tropical bananas growing there on the glaciers. Or cacti in swamps. As you pass through you find a facility allegedly used by the gnome responsible for your resurrection at the start of the story. This is despite the fact that lore in the main story had them active only in the desert region the gnomes have their in-game accessable home in (They have other places). There you find necromancy happening, and that this was sanctioned. The big problem is that the Gnome responsible, and allegedly sanctioning this, was opposed to necromancy and got a coworker sentenced to hang for it (That coworker was saved, secretly, by a higher up and is involved in the main story). On that topic, as the DLC story progresses, you eventually get told that you were, all along, a tool for those who made you, which somehow includes basically all your friends and allies from the main story, even those who clearly demonstrated no knowledge of your fateless nature and the capabilities of it when first encountered (One goes so far as to initially suggest that it is horrifying, noting you are absorbing the fate of those slain, until you later avert his fate by ganking the thing fated to eat him as he watches). Now, one might go "Sure, that is fine, even if it sucks", but the fact is that the player characters previous personality pre-resurrection is described. They were, to put it mildly, very much not a nice person. To quote a gnome who had the misfortune to work with them: quote:You never talked about yourself, but you were... you were terrifying, okay? You were the coldest, most terrifying thing I've ever met! You wouldn't have threatened me like this -- you would have just stabbed me to death and looted my corpse. Seriously, I saw you do that to people! Often! It is also a completely un-needed thing, and directly contradicts the main story. This part will be entirely spoilered since it happens at the very end of the game. In the caverns beneath what is left of the Winter Fae city of Bhaile, you are repeatedly spoken to by Tirnoch, who welcomes the player back, as she was the one who killed them in your previous life. She draws the fates they have taken by killing people out of you into alternate-you enemies you need to fight as you progress, demonstrating control over that type of power. She reveals that she had made a deal with the player character: The player was fated to die there, she would ensure their resurrection through the Well of Souls encountered and destroyed at the start of the game, and the player character would return and most likely try to kill her. She believed, as a colossal dragon, that she would easily slay them just like before. Her goal in doing this, having sundered the player from fate, was that all the power they had amassed from carving your bloody path through fate would allow her to free herself and then murder everyone in delightful revenge for being sealed away. Anyway, the developers were spoiling for the old Order versus Chaos story. And they decided that Fate was important and order related, and attributed it to the god of Order (Mitharu). There is a big problem with that: There is a goddess of Fate, Magic, and Luck (Lyria). They ignored this entirely. The concept of the DLC is that Fate's weave is weakened (Instead of smashed in the main story) and the villain, the Chaos God Telogrus, wants to break it entirely. He has a cunning plan to do this: Step 1: His followers grab important people. Step 2: His followers murder important people. Step 3: This destroys fate. Now, if you recall earlier what I described of how Fate works in the setting as opposed to how it is usually done in other setting, you will see a slight problem with this plan. Yes, his followers are fated to grab those important people, who are in turn fated to be murdered by those cultists, and by following the plan of Fate unerringly they... hurt fate? And this works despite the fact that important people have been murdered for millenia previously? And wars have resulted in mass bloodshed previously? And Enormously powerful demon lords have been summoned and slain previously? Now it works this way? It is, to put simply, stupid. The villain also encounters you part way through and declares boldly that he will kill you before you can meddle with his plan. You then attack him in futility because he cannot be hurt without special weapon bullshit as he does... nothing. He then... leaves? The whole thing occurs when the player is lured into a battle with a single big chaos demon to kill them off and... it is of a kind that they have already killed a dozen of through the game if they have done all sidequests. They also killed an even larger, nastier demon in the main story. One that was of the "I can sit down and crush a district of a city beneath my mighty fleshy buttocks" scale in power and size. It is basically a case of "You have very publicly killed Superman in single combat, but now you will be undone by my newest minion: A crippled hobo with a plastic spatula!" I am skipping a whole bunch of extremely boring poo poo and glossing over gameplay problems with the thing despite Leperflesh saying: quote:don't worry about what is on or off topic You reach the end of the game, kill the bad guy, victory. Happiness, treasure, cats for everyone, right? No. You then get told that you are the problem, and the problem can only be solved by... you going a long way away, as though geographical proximity means anything. Somehow this magically works due to bad writers saying it does despite it making no sense. Remember how I took pains to point out how the player character was once a monstrous arsehole psychopath? It is entirely possible for you to play as a monstrous arsehole psychopath too, and yet for some reason you accept exile to the frozen horrible empty uninhabited lands anyway, self sacrificing despite the fact it makes no sense, and also despite the fact that you'd really rather not and are strong enough to kill a loving incarnated god so they can't make you. I could go on about the smaller side quest problems, where they ignored the lore surrounding how side factions worked in the main game (They ignored basically all the lore), but I am expecting a pizza delivery sometime soon so I am going stop here. Oh wait, one last thing, less of a plot gripe and more of a laziness one. They brought back characters from the base game, but did not get the same voice actors for them. They are very noticeably different, which you could get used to, maybe, but they left the original combat dialogue lines in place, so they'll be shouting in their old voice in battle, and then suddenly have a new one in talky scenes. Also, access to the old dialogue trees regarding lore is still there, and that uses the original voice actor too. If you cannot get the same VA to do a character, don't have them reappear, especially when they don't really matter. Just write a new character to do it. This has the added benefit of avoiding massive lore problems that can arise from reusing established characters. Even if that was the only problem with the game I would still want to kick the project's management in the balls. Fake edit: Woo. I got all the tags right while working in notepad to draft this.
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Apr 2, 2024 03:37
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Just do not buy or play the Fatesworn DLC if you have it already. Everything else works, though there are some dangerous breaking bugs that haven't been fixed. There is one with the Prismere Chantries that is game breaking and hasn't been fixed. Lure enemies well away from them before killing them and save before you do each.Kurieg posted:e: Also i'm pretty sure the games cutscenes are still encoded in BINK codecs meaning that the audio just does not work on most modern computers. MonsieurChoc posted:I remember when testing to get all the achievements you had to rush really early to get to a zone where you could kill an enemy way above your level, becaus ethe way the scaling worked made it basically impossible if you were doing a completionists playthrough. Which we were doing, since we were testing achievements. I need to reiterate: The base game and the original DLC's have a good story, the world has good lore, and the game is fun to play if you can get around the bugs that the devs couldn't be bothered fixing for the rerelease. Just avoid the Fatesworn expansion as though it were an untreated sewage elemental.
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Apr 2, 2024 06:43
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