Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
2020/04/13 21:36:40
Subject: Re:The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
In my young teens I was so bummed by the Wheel of Time by about book 8-9. The basic story had so much promise, as well as the glimpses of all the insane elseworlds that different characters kept stumbling upon throughout the series, as well as the mysterious magical artifacts that were left from the time before. But then it just became such a slog to read through, and massive parts of each book became dedicated to a single character at a time as they all got extremely separated.
I may have to go back to it after reading some of Brian Sanderson's stuff, as The Stormlight series, his new Wheel or Time-level 1,000-page per book series is freaking awesome, and I can only imagine what he did to wrap up the Wheel of Time. I am hesitant to go back to the WoT, but have read all three Stormlight books so far twice over.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/13 21:38:13
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
2020/04/15 00:31:41
Subject: Re:The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
Ooh, lads, I just remembered a good one. Margaret Atwood: Maddaddam triology. I read the first of these 3 and loved it. I'm a big Atwood fan, having read The Handmaid's Tale at like 16/17, when I was like a full-blown furious-at-the-world anarcho-punk kid, and the no-happy-ending dystopia that resonated with so much of the American Anti-Reagan/religious right music I loved absolutely cemented her as a favorite writer of mine. When I got a chance to read the first of the Maddaddams, I was thrilled, it's a really great environmental apocalypse sci-fi novel, feels really new, but with that same old Atwood snark. Highly recommend. But the sequels...
...oh man, the sequels. God's Gardeners has it's moments, for sure. As someone who was raised in a staunchly Catholic household, I appreciate the intertextuality, and like, it's not un-fun, but the ending, where everyone magically meets up with the hero of the first novel, who the protagonist of this one just happens to know, is fething lame. The third book reads like bad fanfiction and is essentially a great example of deus ex machina done really, really fething badly. It's put me off any modern Atwood, and I'm really afraid to check out the Handmaid's Tale sequel for that reason.
Killing Eve is a show I really never got into. I missed the first season while I was out in Korea, and when I came back to the UK, my mum was raving about it. Watched the 2nd season with her, and just. God. BBC bad dialogue at it's worst, a load of crummy "Eve is a psychopath so that means she has magic powers and can just violence herself out of any situation" plot points. Not fun.
'Cause I opened the lid on the Pandora's box of anime, I think about 5 or so years ago, I would've pretty much agreed with a lot of sentiment in this thread that Shonen stuff had gotten really formulaic, and that crap, fan-service-y nonsense whose sole purpose was to sell merch of cute girls for a few months and then be forgotten had become FAR too common and profitable for studios to make anything but. (I also have some SPICY anime recommendations for anyone who liked AKIRA, though I'm shocked that there are people who tried the Manga and liked it less???) However! I'm gonna say that in recent years, a ton of Anime has really turned this around. Just like in the 90s, when there was a load of really strange outsider stuff, like Eva and Akira being made, in the case of Eva, on an absolute shoestring of a budget, the technology for making anime and manga has gotten really, really affordable. This has lead to a real explosion of stuff, and a great deal of experimentation. While I'm really more into manga these days, it's easy to see how virality is playing a part in how the industry is evolving. Before, as people have pointed out, writers had to bust ass to get their work featured in a big publication monthly/weekly manga anthology, and that often meant jumping through various, very hoops in the faint hope of it maybe matching the beat of someone else's drum. But with how quickly a manga cap can blow up on twitter these days, even big business manga and anime are sitting up and paying attention. A great example of this is Kimetsu no Yaiba, which is, shock horror, a Shonen Jump series, but, though it shares a few tropes, is actually super gritty and grim, main characters die and everything is a bit of a far cry from Naruto or One Piece. It's ultra popular amongst highschool kids, and in my opinion is really unique, both in terms of the themes it plays with, but also the quality of writing and characterization.
Also, can we talk about music here, too? Because whilst I'm sure we all have too many betrayals to talk about (*glares angrily at everything Blink-182 made after the 90s in suburban white kid*), by FAR my biggest "I'm out" moment was The Front Bottoms' Back on Top. Gone was the fragile, vulnerable anxiety of the vocal delivery that made their first 3 albums (including the non-studio, youtube only ones) such a masterwork of sad-boy-punk of the late '00s early '10s, but they also did away, somehow, with the lyrical wit and content, leaving their subsequent stuff just feeling to slick and poppy and vaccous. Bummer, because when I was about 19 I think I played that self-titled album nearly constantly for about a year at least, and would tell anyone with ears to listen to them.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/15 03:49:18
2020/04/15 13:53:57
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
I’m actually a bigger fan of current Blink 182, now that Tom is gone. Of course, being replaced by the lead singer from my favorite band (Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba) doesn’t hurt that preference any. They’re older, more grown up (yet strangely more cynical), and they’ve created something that is the lovechild of Blink and Alk3.
Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.
Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.
Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.
2020/04/15 22:02:47
Subject: Re:The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
posermcbogus wrote: though I'm shocked that there are people who tried the Manga and liked it less???)
Wait, was that me?
Just in case: I didn't like it less, I just have real trouble remembering what happened when the manga kinda sorta picked up from where the film kinda sorta left off.
Spoiler:
I remember a blink-and-you'll-miss-it street preacher from the film was the leader of a faction of ex-experiment kids, and Tetsuo wasted the american navy when they turned up, I think? But the rest is fog.
If it was available digitally I'd snap it all up again.
Oh, Matrix. Felt the first film was pretentious clap trap, and get annoyed everytime someone quotes it as a basis for philosophical debte.
Well, it _is_ the basis for philosophical debate... in a Freshman Philosophy 101 class.
It plays out like the writers/directors read some cliff notes on philosophy, wuxia and a few very basic sci-fi tropes about robot rebellions, and then proceeded to Dunning-Kruger their way through a film that started life as a Bill and Tedd Visit the Future script.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/16 01:49:42
Efficiency is the highest virtue.
2020/04/16 02:30:12
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's an interesting book, with interesting ideas, and some interesting narrative ideas for presenting said ideas. And all of it's interesting ideas are fundamentally wasted in a book that seems to revel in its own tedium. The characters are largely boring and forgettable (and on the human side seem to be mostly motivated by holding the idiot ball). The alien side of the story is actually really cool, and where all the love from the author really seemed to be, but it's so mired in prose right out of a stuffy university lecture I found it to be far duller than it should have been. Also a wasted opportunity imo, because the 'alien' society really isn't any different from human society as it develops. Not really in any ways, despite vast differences in biology and environment. And the presentation is really all just boggling. It feels more like a successive series of goings on. I got bored waiting for the narrative to evolve past 'stuff that happens" halfway through.
It plays out like the writers/directors read some cliff notes on philosophy, wuxia and a few very basic sci-fi tropes about robot rebellions, and then proceeded to Dunning-Kruger their way through a film that started life as a Bill and Tedd Visit the Future script.
I feel like the Matrix is a prime example of a movie where anyone who ascribes depth to it is really just revealing their own shallowness. It's an action blockbuster with some 'look how thoughtful we are' window dressing. It's about as deep as any other action blockbuster.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/04/16 02:33:34
I always thought of the first half of the Matrix as a pretty cool "what's real, what isn't" Philip K. Dick-esque mindfuck movie. With karate.
Then halfway through Neo say "We need guns. Lots of guns." and it shifts gears into a mindless action movie which looks cool but fails to deliver on the rollercoaster ride of the first half.
The sequels other than Animatrix don't exist. Much like the third SW trilogy.
2020/04/16 15:25:24
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
I feel like the Matrix is a prime example of a movie where anyone who ascribes depth to it is really just revealing their own shallowness. It's an action blockbuster with some 'look how thoughtful we are' window dressing. It's about as deep as any other action blockbuster.
Eh, for 1999, I feel the Matrix was pretty deep for an action blockbuster, particularly as everyone seemed to have missed out on the preceding year's Dark City. The original Matrix movie is very much a product of its time and place, that pre-9/11 *early* internet era when the internet was still something of an undiscovered country for most people (even cell phones were several years from total personal ubiquity), and a lot of concepts in the movie just don't vibe today like they used to, but back then it was mind blowing. I see the Matrix much a I see old Star Trek or Doctor Who, the more time goes on, the more their flaws are revealed, and the less likely a new viewer will appreciate it as techonology/tastes/writing quality/cinematography in general have moved on, but for their time were brilliant.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
2020/04/16 15:51:35
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
Comics - DC's New 52. When DC decided to toss out decades of continuity for some half baked retreads which weren't really new.
And with a loss of interest in DC came a loss of interest in Marvel and the rest. Still get occasional TPBs but don't care about the two universes any more.
posermcbogus wrote: though I'm shocked that there are people who tried the Manga and liked it less???)
Wait, was that me?
Just in case: I didn't like it less, I just have real trouble remembering what happened when the manga kinda sorta picked up from where the film kinda sorta left off.
Spoiler:
I remember a blink-and-you'll-miss-it street preacher from the film was the leader of a faction of ex-experiment kids, and Tetsuo wasted the american navy when they turned up, I think? But the rest is fog.
If it was available digitally I'd snap it all up again.
My memory is fuzzy as well, but it's been 15 years, 5 of them drinking in the Caribbean so a lot of memory has been lost. But IIRC the 'nuke him from orbit' scene got repeated 2 or 3 times and I lost of a lot of interest.
In theory Manga should be much better than the endless universe churning of American comics but I find again and again that once a manga-ka has a hit the story immediately stalls as long as it can (looking at you 20th Century Boys and Battle Royale) until sales fall far enough and get on with it.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bran Dawri wrote: I always thought of the first half of the Matrix as a pretty cool "what's real, what isn't" Philip K. Dick-esque mindfuck movie. With karate.
Then halfway through Neo say "We need guns. Lots of guns." and it shifts gears into a mindless action movie which looks cool but fails to deliver on the rollercoaster ride of the first half.
The sequels other than Animatrix don't exist. Much like the third SW trilogy.
(and the second SW trilogy. And the 3rd movie. So basically Star Wars is 2 films, the animated Clone Wars, about half the CGI clone wars, the Marvel comic, 2/3s of Dark Empire and an article from 1981 in Cinema Gems magazine that guessed what Revenge of the Jedi would have).
As for the Matrix, I love it, but was very bummed out when Neo turned out to be the chosen one and not Morpheus. Think about it. The Oracle predicted Morphius would find the one. Morphius was always a lot more competent than Neo. Wouldn't be something if he was the One all along and just needed some confidence?
Reloaded was OK as a middle sister. The 3rd one... well it was certainly a film with dialogue and everything.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/16 16:00:25
2020/04/16 17:29:25
Subject: Re:The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
The Last Jedi is the moment I gave up on the idea of Star Wars...movies. As we’re discussing in another thread, it works much better on TV. But I will not hold my breath for any future SW movies.
2020/04/16 17:35:20
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
Vaktathi wrote: Eh, for 1999, I feel the Matrix was pretty deep for an action blockbuster, particularly as everyone seemed to have missed out on the preceding year's Dark City. The original Matrix movie is very much a product of its time and place, that pre-9/11 *early* internet era when the internet was still something of an undiscovered country for most people (even cell phones were several years from total personal ubiquity), and a lot of concepts in the movie just don't vibe today like they used to, but back then it was mind blowing. I see the Matrix much a I see old Star Trek or Doctor Who, the more time goes on, the more their flaws are revealed, and the less likely a new viewer will appreciate it as techonology/tastes/writing quality/cinematography in general have moved on, but for their time were brilliant.
I don't think it's vibe so much as derivation.
The Matrix's real innovations weren't it's thoughtfulness, but its cinematography. The way the film was shot and the way it took its own story serious set new standards for action blockbusters. Compare it to earlier films like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, that are kind of tongue-in-cheek imo about what they are. The Matrix was a blockbuster that treated itself as a serious film with serious ideas, and I can give it that even if I think it's ideas were ultimately really shallow. Modern film owes a lot to the movie, and like many movies that innovated or set new standards, it shows its flaws as time goes on and newer films take what it did well and do it better.
I look at The Matrix a lot like I look at Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghostbusters, or Call of Duty. They changed the landscape of their genres and mediums, and I think they suffer as a result because people who didn't know them when they were new are less impressed because they're familiar with the things they did well and 'new' as being common place. It's easy to forget in hindsight that they were groundbreaking in their own time.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/16 17:37:56
Battlefield,
Pinpoint BF V, not just because as an History enthusiast it irked me but also because it was and still is an unpolished turd.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
2020/04/16 18:04:24
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
Eva's the clearest example of something so influential that everything that came after it was essentially a copy trying to add just enough to appear unique. It's actually similar to the problem with Superman; he's THE Superman, but every other super hero is basically Superman + something to try and be more unique or interesting.
2020/04/16 18:35:37
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
Hmmm, the problem with me, is I tend to not have a single "tipping point" when I stop enjoying something and put it down like "THAT WAS THE FINAL STRAW!"
it tends to be more: something is not holding my attention well enough to continue, so I just move on to something else.
I guess the biggest one, from the days of my youth, would be the sequels to Ender's Game.
I had read Ender's Game probably...god, twelve times? since I finally decided to pick up the sequels. I was a bit of an obsessive re-reader when I was younger, and I was much happier to re-read something I knew I liked than something I didn't know if I was going to like, especially if the characters were important to me.
And god. Damn. did those sequels take the people I loved and turn them into something utterly unlovable. Every single thing I liked about the original was stripped away, and it successfully "Shrek the Third'd" the franchise for me. Which is kind of a sad thing, because no other single novel holds more childhood nostalgia to me.
Started off around 1990 with Akira (which is ace).
After that, it all became a bit pervy, in far too many ways, for my tastes.
I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.
I know I’m doing the majority a disservice. And I’m probably just incredibly unlucky with the stuff I’ve seen (and spoiled by seeing Akira”s perfection as my first taste), but it’s just something i don’t get on with.
Absolutely no disrespect or shade to anyone who does enjoy it.
I like an anime personally, for its willingness to explore some really compelling and interesting concepts that you generally see only in sci-fi short stories and novels, but the set of anime tropes that it has become saddled with really, REALLY drag many of its initially cool concepts into the mud.
There's nothing that grabs me and makes me want to sit down and watch it from a brief summary or intro sequence like an anime, and there's also nothing that disappoints and infuriates me like an anime. Take "knights of sidonia" -
"The remainder of humanity (that we know of) is on the run Battlestar Galactica style in a single huge spaceship built into an asteroid, following an encounter with a form of alien life that is completely and utterly inhumanoid, which appear to "communicate" by globbing into one antoher to form a single entity and share minds. First contact involved these alien beings dissolving and consuming the entire earth, and they now pursue humanity for unknown reasons. The ship is so massive and moving so quickly that attempting to turn it just three degrees is a cataclysmic event that unavoidably leaves hundreds dead. The humans have a grand total of 30 kilograms of a material that cannot be absorbed by the aliens and instead destroys them, so they have fixed them onto lances, so they don't lose it."
what a great fething setup! There's so much good gak going on there, from the leaders of the ship being this council of artificially kept alive corpses with their minds linked together, to the aliens "attacking" the humans being evidently just trying to learn about them and eventually coming to the conclusion that "having giant robot fights" is just how humans communicate with one another...and yet, somehow, it manages to have just enough anime trope bs in it to kill my interest in the middle of the second season.
That said, there are animes, both classic and recent, that dodge the bullet of those tropes and are just really, really, REALLY good concept-driven story telling. For a really super recent show like that, "The Promised Neverland" is extremely good, good enough that after watching the first season I went to read the books because as a setup I felt like it was DEFINITELY going to disappoint me in the classic "Lost" style of "oooh lots of mysteries, and it's lots of mysteries because we don't have any good ideaaaaas!!!" but it actually did not do that. Which is cool! Certainly the first time one of those serieses or shows defined by a kind of sci-fi mystery setup in the beginning hasn't come up with something way worse than all the fan theories/speculation surrounding it. If I had one complaint about the later part of the series, it'd be the fact that they stray just a tiny toe into the "ridiculous anime fight" territory, which kind of sucks because where the series is at its best is when it's about comparatively powerless characters using intelligence to overcome seemingly no-win situations.
I mean, if you like Akira though, then I suppose that trope wouldn't really bug you that much, because Akira leans on that particular chestnut even harder than comedic shows like one-punch man where that's the central gag.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/16 18:57:25
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
2020/04/16 20:12:50
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
LordofHats wrote:The Matrix's real innovations weren't it's thoughtfulness, but its cinematography. The way the film was shot and the way it took its own story serious set new standards for action blockbusters.
Indeed!
Spoiler:
the_scotsman wrote:to the aliens "attacking" the humans being evidently just trying to learn about them and eventually coming to the conclusion that "having giant robot fights" is just how humans communicate with one another...
Huh. Reminds me of a bit from Alita.
Spoiler:
Mercury is an off-limits ball of grey goo due to runaway nanotech, which is why everyone is curious when a contender from Mercury shows up for the ZOTT fighting tournament. It's a giant, vaguely humanoid robot with a massive schlong cannon that it uses to feth it's opponents. Tourney commentators speculate that the nanotech on Mercury has developed it's own kind of awareness and tried to imitate the human form and human behaviour in an attempt to communicate with the rest of the solar system.
Those two examples do have an element of a 'we'll just keep speaking english, but louder and slower' attitude about them.
On the topic of Jurassic Park, and JPII specifically: beating a raptor with high school gymnastics. That was a watershed moment for me, where I realised three things:
- there were people out there who would purposely ruin the JP series like that.
- there were people out there who would purposely ruin any film like that.
- Spielberg was out there and would purposely ruin a film like that.
There's an in-joke where the screenwriter has a cameo, eaten by the Tyrannosaur in San Diego. It doesn't seem enough, somehow.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/16 20:16:42
I had the same issue with Lex hacking the computer system in the first film.
"This is a unix system....I know this system! It even plays Solitare and Mine Sweeper! Do you understand what this means? We can play Solitare AND Mine Sweeper on a unix system!"
"JUST LOCK THE BLOODY DOOR!!!"
Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.
2020/04/16 21:06:55
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
Not Online!!! wrote: Battlefield,
Pinpoint BF V, not just because as an History enthusiast it irked me but also because it was and still is an unpolished turd.
Omg... so much this. I've loved the franchise for years. I played the original way back in 2002, missed Vietnam and 2, but have played consistently from Bad Company 2 onwards. I've loved every entry in the series until V. As a WW2 nut I'm honestly baffled that DICE managed to make a WW2 shooter that I didn't like but somehow they found a way. I'm hoping they'll find their feet again with the next entry, whenever it drops. I'm glad they're getting an extra year to develop it, hopefully it helps.
2020/04/16 21:48:26
Subject: Re:The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
SamusDrake wrote: I had the same issue with Lex hacking the computer system in the first film.
"This is a unix system....I know this system! It even plays Solitare and Mine Sweeper! Do you understand what this means? We can play Solitare AND Mine Sweeper on a unix system!"
"JUST LOCK THE BLOODY DOOR!!!"
That scene bothered me mostly because I had been introduced to UNIX the year before, and I was baffled by the 'user interface' being a slow flight simulator over rectangles.
At the time, if you logged onto a UNIX workstation, odds are pretty good that you were looking at a black screen, maybe a short bit of intro login text and this:
C:\Username>
and a blinking cursor after the '>'
No other information at all. Good luck!
Granted, having her dramatically type 'ls' and 'cd' repeatedly wouldn't have been very interesting to watch. But a good 'rm *' would have solved a lot of problems.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/16 21:53:11
Efficiency is the highest virtue.
2020/04/16 21:53:58
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
I figured her grandpa, the guy who made all the choices, had given her a class in the parks OS, or had chosen an AOS that the family liked on their home machines. Of course, this would have been better explained if she’s said “Grandpa showed me how to use this.” instead.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Autocorrect slaughtered my post like a helpless piglet.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/16 21:54:48
That's what bothers most people, but that's not actually the problem with it. The OS in question IS actually Unix-based; just not a remotely popular implementation. It's called Irix if you want to read the history on it, but essentially it was being developed by the company that did the CGI dinos and essentially inserted as a plug.
The problem with the scene is that recognizing the OS doesn't really let you hack into the system, though one could argue that maybe Irix was just so badly designed you could. The ME of its time.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/16 22:07:28
2020/04/16 22:09:36
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
I tried to get into Neon Genesis Evangelion, but damn. It was so slow I kept falling asleep because I was watching it after the kids went to bed. Sometimes I feel like I maybe just need to have my Anime be like FullMetal Alchemist to enjoy it.
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
2020/04/16 23:29:08
Subject: The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
I watched Bleach for a while. It got to the point I no longer cared about the main characters, or even the secondary ones. But was interested in the tertiary ones. I was watching it via Netflix disks, and forget if I just stopped getting them or they didn’t have any more.
David Webber is great for trilogies, but his stories tend to get repetitive. I tend to get 4-ish books in, then taper off. Read a lot of the HH series, and some of the Stronghold. Plus assorted one offs, which were fine.
Wizards’s First Rule was an other series that just got repetitive. Interesting book, but the sequels were just more of the same formula, tweaked, but not enough to make them worth it.
TLJ was the last Star Wars movie that I saw right when it came out. Still seen them all, but no rush on the later ones.
After the Butlarian Jihad trilogy, I tapered off the new Dune stuff. I think the last books to finish the Frank’s main arc were the last I read. There were some gems in the whole thing, but a lot of chaff. The original Dune is a classic, then it goes downhill. Sequel was still good, 3-4 were meh, and then I think it picked up a bit. Of the new stuff, the immediate prequels were good, the rest, pass.
David Brin is one of my favorite authors, but his last book felt really phoned in. Also disappointed in William Gibson’s latest.
AegisGrimm wrote: I tried to get into Neon Genesis Evangelion, but damn. It was so slow I kept falling asleep because I was watching it after the kids went to bed. Sometimes I feel like I maybe just need to have my Anime be like FullMetal Alchemist to enjoy it.
FMA was a rare manga that both got the popularity needed to keep running over a long period of time, and had a writer/editor who was completely content to end it when it was proper.
Not Online!!! wrote: Battlefield,
Pinpoint BF V, not just because as an History enthusiast it irked me but also because it was and still is an unpolished turd.
Omg... so much this. I've loved the franchise for years. I played the original way back in 2002, missed Vietnam and 2, but have played consistently from Bad Company 2 onwards. I've loved every entry in the series until V. As a WW2 nut I'm honestly baffled that DICE managed to make a WW2 shooter that I didn't like but somehow they found a way. I'm hoping they'll find their feet again with the next entry, whenever it drops. I'm glad they're getting an extra year to develop it, hopefully it helps.
Not when Dice Stockholm is the developper. Other subdivisions have B teams, but DICE stockholm is more akin to the Z division.
As for the underlined there are SO MANY REASONS HOW that it is difficult:
But here a non complete list:
Marketing:
Spoiler:
Yeah, that is supposedly how a WW2 game of a franchise that prided itself in imersion, should look like.... What do you mean it doesn't ! YOu are AlL tHe FolLoWiNg!!!!!
- Calling fans uneducated." Even though there were just as many surprisingly good thought out argumentations against this.
- Telling fans to not buy it. " Well the numbers did show now didn't they.
The design:
Spoiler:
Overarching Design is and was a failure.
What do i mean by that:
-A life service which allready performed worse in the sales department doesn't get any "life" service.
-Pay to earn cosmetics.
- No community servers.
- Gamemode rotation on some of the bread and butter modes like rush.
- NOT HAVING THE TECHNOLOGY FOR A 2x XP event supposedly, even though all BF titles recently had a 2x event due to the virus. Tied in of course with the over grindy but skipable by money grind for cosmetcs. AKA Greed.
The actual game design:
Spoiler:
- No all kit weapons.
- Serious balance issues in weapon balancing often times self introduced in ttk changes. (type 2 a, MMG too good, too bad, )
- Attrition: A idea that went neither far enough nor needed implementation. Either or no half measures because the halfmeasure ATM in place is just bloody annoying.
- Vehicle balance issues, because the one thing BF1 did really bad (aka choosable vehicles instead of fixed spawns)they copied over.
-gak tier visibility. Even after a whole year. BF1 had genius 10 / 10 visibility compared to V and BF 1 allread yhad visibility issues.
- Bad map design. Something that Dice Stockholm started with BF4, and BFV completed in many ways, the maps first designed by artists and then actually getting into the hands of actual level designers leading to hillariously stupid designed maps. One sided as all hell.
- the women. Not as in they are there, even though as a history nut you might allready have issues with it for most factions (except the soviets). No what i mean here is beyond the completly ahistorical fact of their implementation they also scream louder then the 10 Handgreanades inevitable flying and detonating on you when you attempt to revive them.
- Dice Stockholm, including but not limited too: Rushjob, lack of understanding of the technology, lack of foresight , lack of skill as shown by early 4 aswell and 0 capability to actually make a Netcode work (same as bf4). Except BF4 got handed off to LA and turned into a great game.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/04/17 07:58:12
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
2020/04/17 10:50:48
Subject: Re:The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
Hmmm oh, loads of stuff. I often get to a point where I just nope out on stuff. Comic books: - I was a huge batman fan until Chuck Dixon left and Grant Morrison started writing it. I despise the Grant Morrison version so much that I cannot go back to Batman now, the well is poisoned with all his stupid additions. - Spiderman comics similarly, the entire Parker Enterprises thing making Peter Parker into Mark Zuckerberg, just no, no, no. Generally, all the big crossover events and constant continuity resets just drove me away from DC comics. I mostly only read Marvel stuff now, and even then I will drop out for entire runs if the writer is a hack.
TV Shows - I loved the first two seasons of the BSG remake and liked parts of the third. But then everyone got all sweaty and religious and the show jumped sixteen sharks through flaming hoops. - I was a huge Supernatural fan until I dunno, season 5? It still has great episodes but I felt the main characters had become pretty stagnant charicatures of themselves at that point. Early seasons are still great though. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer was something I loved as a teenager up til I guess the Evil Willow arc? I just gradually lost interest as the characters became more and more unlikeable. - Dr Who was a big disappointment to me. I was really let down with Stephen Moffat's run. I thought Matt Smith was a really great doctor and the first season has some awesome parts, but the show really got way too high on it's own farts and River Song was a terrible and unlikeable character for me.
Book Series - Horus Heresy just has too much variation in quality. I dunno where I stopped but way before it had gotten anywhere significant. Maybe Outcast Dead or something? Was thinking of going back to it recently but I see that they are still letting hacks write most of it so I am not super interested for the prices they charge. I wish the series could have kept to the tone and pace of Horus Rising. It just accelerates WAY too fast in the first three books and skips over any characterisation of Horus in favour of "Magic Knife makes ya evul". - Like others, I dropped Wheel of Time. The quality drops around book 5, book 6 is crap, brief rally in book 7, book 8 is garbage, rallies again in book 9 but then book 10 is unmitigated crap. Stopped reading and only came back for the finale, and did not feel like I had missed ANYTHING by doing so. Would probably not be able to read the series again now, as I would be two embarassed by the awful characterisation and weird sex stuff. - A Song of Ice and Fire for similar reasons. Martin's "gritty" style is less appealing to me now than when I was 18, and I did not really enjoy the last book released and am no longer excited for the next one. When I look back, a lot of the other series I was reading at the time like Robin Hobb's Farseer series have aged waaaay better.
Movie Series - DC Movies. I was a much bigger DC fan than Marvel for a long time, only really being big into Spiderman on the Marvel side. But the combination of the poor handling of the comics and the utter trashing of the brand with these trainwreck movies has really soured me on the characters. Rewatching the old animated stuff in the lockdown and it remains charming and loveable, but I stopped going to see the DC movies after Batman Vs. Superman, one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/17 11:25:31
LunarSol wrote: That's what bothers most people, but that's not actually the problem with it. The OS in question IS actually Unix-based; just not a remotely popular implementation. It's called Irix if you want to read the history on it, but essentially it was being developed by the company that did the CGI dinos and essentially inserted as a plug.
The problem with the scene is that recognizing the OS doesn't really let you hack into the system, though one could argue that maybe Irix was just so badly designed you could. The ME of its time.
could've been worse
gotta get me a keyboard that works like that one day.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
2020/04/17 12:56:04
Subject: Re:The moment you gave up on a franchise? Books/Movies/Shows
AegisGrimm wrote: I tried to get into Neon Genesis Evangelion, but damn. It was so slow I kept falling asleep because I was watching it after the kids went to bed. Sometimes I feel like I maybe just need to have my Anime be like FullMetal Alchemist to enjoy it.
NGE is very 90s at times, and sags pretty heavily in the middle. It is definitely not a similar vein to FMA in any kind of sense, and I tend to only recommend it to folks who I know are interested in looking into "classic" anime stuff.
AegisGrimm wrote: I tried to get into Neon Genesis Evangelion, but damn. It was so slow I kept falling asleep because I was watching it after the kids went to bed. Sometimes I feel like I maybe just need to have my Anime be like FullMetal Alchemist to enjoy it.
FMA was a rare manga that both got the popularity needed to keep running over a long period of time, and had a writer/editor who was completely content to end it when it was proper.
Yeah, it's also why I am so fething pumped about The Promised Neverland. It has that same degree of being both long enough to have a huge, intricate, overarching plot and tight and planned enough that there's zero meandering and zero filler. When they start getting into the later seasons of the animation it is going to be FMA:Brotherhood level good, and it's almost exactly the same length - there's going to be about 12 manga volumes, 3 volumes to a TV season for 4 seasons.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/17 12:58:30
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"