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General Discussion / Re: The current state of things.
« on: April 14, 2016, 08:06:50 pm »So we should play crpg because its not rational to play it ?
Well I would suggest reading his book A Master and his Emissary to understand the more intricate and complicated point/argument he is making. The video is just a short overview.
Besides which, the wisdom of understanding that there is a limitation to rationality does not mean that we are to throw out rationality altogether.
The real point I was making is to do with how this is about "the current state of things" which could be applied to crpg by context of forum and a larger context of western existence ala Mcgilchrist's argument.
But in the crpg context we look at the state of things (a dwindling player base with a, generally speaking, consistently negative perspective on the future of the module they 'enjoy') and in this context we see how the left-brain bias leads people to substitute the holistic wisdom that could have been applied to avoid this current state, in favour of an incredibly technical and specific focus on what is most efficient combined with personal bias of pride and ego at competition.
A classic example is: Person dies in CRPG, person's ego is wounded, person creates excuse to alleviate a broader truth that their self-perception of skill is perhaps not as great as they believe it to be, person maybe dies again, anger ensues and people are at their most stupid when angry, so now even more engaged in "YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH!" behaviour. The natural pattern perception of the human brain is now distorted by this anger and a specific (left brain) point is used in mechanical terms in order to justify the anger eg: "X weapon or style of play is overpowered, thus needs nerf". Forward the denotive language of the left brain, now instead of styles of play we have classes. We now have a target and the trigger; clearly defined by categorical language.
The perfect excuse is created.
Instead of looking at what made the game so entertaining in it's earlier incarnations (looking beyond just the fact it was a new module in a fresh-ish game) we slowly narrowed our focus to various culprits which were specifically ironed out in the name of balance. Unfortunately we lost the more creative and outlier elements in the process and that nature of 'ultimately lifeless' is exactly what we are left with.
Let me state for clarity that balance is important, a narrowing of options and freedoms is bound to happen within the context of a game in order to remove abusive elements. But taking a step back, it's not hard to identify that too many of those who get angry are similar to the example outlined above, too many who refuse/d or are/were incapable of perceiving the position of others, especially those who have play styles that are different to their own and often might be the foil to their particular angle.
Not to mention that perfect balance is never entirely attainable. Right-brained wisdom helps us realise this and realise that human nature and it's aspirations to perfection are decidedly imperfect, along with everything we create and do.
