93 replies to this topic

[Russ]

Okay, I was debating whether or not to post this, but at this point, I might as well cut off this argument. Don't bother trying to convince James. You're not going to. He's a narcissist, and his opinion won't change. And I don't say that lightly. DSM-5 requires at least 5 out of 9 criteria to be met to diagnosis narcissistic personality disorder. Here's 6 of those criteria met from his first two posts in this thread alone, and I could probably fill more with subsequent posts:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

"For the record I will say that I've correctly predicted the "sales" outcome of Mike's Fun House and The Slipstream. In addition, in real life I'm a wealthy and successful businessperson whose job it is to predict and forecast sales of certain products and improve their sell ability if possible. So I've had no shortage of experience with these kinds of matters. And I feel its my duty to speak out and inform the community of my expert opinion."

(3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

"Of course you can do plenty without scripting, but it appears to me that most people want their game to sell. Me being the obvious exception."

{4) requires excessive admiration

"Perhaps you find it too tedious to learn how to script and that the 6 month barrier is too much for you. In that case, you should be avidly supporting me."

(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

"If Zelda Classic is to have a large pool of quest makers once again then the scripting requirement for making "good" and "sellable" quests to today's fanbase MUST go. It MUST."

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

"Finally Shane, its no secret that you've cancelled several of quests throughout your time here. In fact, you haven't produced any solo quest of your own. Why is that? Perhaps you find it too tedious to learn how to script and that the 6 month barrier is too much for you. "

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Basically the entire post, but to repeat a quote from early:
"For the record I will say that I've correctly predicted the "sales" outcome of Mike's Fun House and The Slipstream. In addition, in real life I'm a wealthy and successful businessperson whose job it is to predict and forecast sales of certain products and improve their sell ability if possible. So I've had no shortage of experience with these kinds of matters. And I feel its my duty to speak out and inform the community of my expert opinion."


I don't post this to make fun of James. Rather, I'm posting this cuz several users are attempting the equivalent of yelling at a brick wall and getting frustrated there's no change. You're not gonna convince him, no matter how much evidence you have. He's incapable of accepting that he's wrong. So let's do the smart thing and let this thread die.

[Moosh]

I think the most telling thing in this thread is the fact that James has not put forth a single reasonable solution that could divert the course of his predictions.

 

No "Scripters need to get more involved with the community."

No "The devs need to make scripting more user friendly."

No "People should reach outside of the community more."

Not even a "People should be more open minded."

 

All of these are good ideas, ideas we should be and are working towards, but not ones James brings to the table. James embraces fatalism because he's not here for the good of the community or the good of ZC, he's not here to "soften a blow" for anyone, to present factual data, or harsh reality. He's here to hear himself talk and revel in how right he is. Because James is a narcissist.

 

Edit: Magical Russ ninja with the hivemind move. Excellent play

Edited by Moosh, 22 October 2019 - 07:16 AM.

[Joelmacool]

As for the quests you've mentioned, how can you verify whether or not the author really did or did not make scripts of their own?  Maybe the author painstakingly learned how to script on their own and made a script that, unknowningly to them, already existed on the database.  Truth is there's no way to know for sure except by relying on the word of the author.

 

You know, it's weird how you keep making these claims yet you don't bother finding the truth out for yourself. If you can only trust the creator and yourself (primarily yourself, but sure) then why don't you directly ask the creator? I made both Second Chance and Necklace of Adrian and I can confirm this:
I have no scripting background, nor am I interested in scripting at all. I made both of these quests without any scripting knowledge, yet my quest still has scripts in it. This isn't thanks to myself, this is thanks to those who put the time and effort into scripting and submitted it to the database. 
James, you need to realise that you have no evidence because your arguments can't support evidence. Your sole piece of evidence, the creator, will disagree with you - like how I'm disagreeing with you now.

But I guess Russ is right. It's time to let this thread die. I just decided to post this just because of this one section by James, since I found it highly ironic.

[Evan20000]

Hi. Only read out to midway through page 4 before just skipping to the end, but I'm just chiming in to say ZC is probably gonna die and it's not gonna be anything related to the community. When Microsoft releases a windows OS that kills off 32bit support, that'll likely be the nail in the coffin since the full 64bit rewrite will at least take a few years (which most people probably won't be patiently waiting for keeping the community active in the meantime) and that's assuming the devs go full steam ahead on it/don't have other priorities. So the rest of this discussion just seems super frivolous given that.

 

Source: Trust me, I pulled it out of my ass but I washed my ass well and I promise it's not covered in shit.

 

 

EDIT: Just for fun, here's a list of shit in IoR that's vanilla that people often thing is scripted along with a list of shit that's scripted that people probably don't pay too much mind to:

 

Vanilla stuff often mistaken for scripted:

- Prismatic Gate

- Desyncing Red Wizzrobes
- Magus Tower's Warpmaze

- Event triggers requiring you to finish a dungeon before you can progress

- Permanent block puzzles

- All the dumb event flags associated with Glim Sanctuary (sans the most normal-seeming one below)
 

Scripted stuff people don't really think about:

- Combining both halves of the key for Echoing Shrine

- Triforce check before Prismatic Gate

- Goddess Spell check before getting True Master Sword

- The pit/conveyors in the middle of Blighted Abyss

- Farore's Wind.

 

 

EDIT 2: I'm 99% sure when most people say "Less quests are being released every year" what they mean to say "Less flagship quests that people talk about for more than a month are released every year.". That shit takes time to make. I think overall though scripting has actually lessened the development time of big milestone quests for the community. Back in the pre-2.5 days people needed a literal map for their hacky 2.10 ""boss fights"" depending on how fluid they wanted the animation to be. I don't think anyone misses that.

Edited by Evan20000, 22 October 2019 - 05:00 PM.

[Deedee]

Are we finally at the point where James is actually complaining that something is too hard? :O

My god, I never thought I'd see the day. ZC must be dead, cause the world's clearly ending! The end times are upon us!

[Yloh]

Hi. Only read out to midway through page 4 before just skipping to the end, but I'm just chiming in to say ZC is probably gonna die and it's not gonna be anything related to the community. When Microsoft releases a windows OS that kills off 32bit support, that'll likely be the nail in the coffin since the full 64bit rewrite will at least take a few years (which most people probably won't be patiently waiting for keeping the community active in the meantime) and that's assuming the devs go full steam ahead on it/don't have other priorities. So the rest of this discussion just seems super frivolous given that.

 

Looks like we better get started on this issue ... Look a squirrel! 

[NoeL]

-snip-

Unless you're a trained psychologist, don't do this. Armchair diagnostics are no good for anyone. Furthermore, having a narcissistic personality (which I won't deny James seems to have)  is not the same thing as having narcissistic personality disorder. It takes SIGNIFICANTLY more than a single line of text that perhaps, maybe, in the right context could loosely be considered meeting the criteria to say "Yes, this person meets this criteria". For most of the quotes you claim "meet" the criteria I could argue they don't. In fact, let's do that (in a spoiler since it's not important):

Rebuttal

1: James is simply providing justification for his opinion. At no point is exaggeration evident (unless you're privy to evidence that would dispute his claims of being a successful market analyst - though I suspect you're merely assuming he's exaggerating). He puts forth the "commensurate efforts" to justify why you should believe him, so there's no expectation of unreasonably being recognised as superior. You could argue what he believes to be "commensurate efforts" aren't as relevant as he believes, but I'm not sure they're too disparate to say he meets the criteria. That said, he IS claiming expertise in a field that's arguably only tangentially related to his actual field of expertise, and claims a sense of "duty" to inform the community (who presumably couldn't/wouldn't figure this out themselves), so this one gets a potential pass. Still needs more corroboration though, IMO.
3: Nowhere does he claim or imply that he "can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)", so you're really stretching with this one. At MOST he claims to be the exception to the rule that most people want their game to sell, which isn't an outlandish claim at all. Saying "This is how I'm different to the norm" doesn't make one a narcissist.

4: He's calling for support in his argument, not admiration for making the argument. It's not even excessive support, so he's not meeting either of the keywords for that criteria.

5: He's not asking for unreasonable compliance, he's stating the conclusion to his argument. Even if you were to interpret that as him asking for compliance, you can't claim it's an "unreasonable" ask when he's justified (or at least attempted to) that request. As with 1, making a flawed argument doesn't necessarily make you a narcissist.

7: This is just garbage, I'm sorry. You can't point to a single instance of someone being a MILD jerk and argue they're incapable of having empathy. Or do I meet that criteria too for calling your claim here "garbage"? Once again, all James is doing here is attempting to justify his claim. He might be totally correct that the difficulty of scripting has kept Shane from completing a quest, and that point of data WOULD go toward supporting his argument. Furthermore, to argue he's lacking empathy relies on the assumption that Shane would be upset by those words, AND that we should EXPECT Shane to be upset by those words. Now, I don't know Shane outside of this forum, and even then I only have superficial knowledge of his posting history. I don't know how sensitive or resilient he is, but I personally wouldn't expect a random internet user to be (significantly) upset by what James said.

9: This one I agree with you.

 

Also, just to preempt the claims of hypocrisy for being an armchair psychologist after telling you not to be, no I'm not being hypocritical because I'm not trying to diagnose someone, I'm doing this to illustrate the pitfalls of armchair diagnoses. Hell, maybe I could diagnose YOU as having narcissistic personality disorder since you claim to have enough expertise in psychology to diagnose James.

Edited by NoeL, 22 October 2019 - 07:12 PM.

[DarkFlameSheep]

American and European don't seem to be good at separating Tatemae(words) and Hon-ne (true intentions).

Edited by Stray Sheep, 23 October 2019 - 12:57 AM.

[Evan20000]

American and European don't seem to be good at separating Tatemae(words) and Hon-ne (true intentions).

We sure aren't!

 

Our discourse is absolutely plagued with nonsense arguments stemming from semantics with 0 overall relevance to moving the topic forward or trying to find a better understanding of each other's position. :tard:

[Aevin]

Unless you're a trained psychologist, don't do this. Armchair diagnostics are no good for anyone.

While I would agree that "armchair diagnosing" over the internet isn't a particularly great thing to engage in, I do feel compelled to point out that Russ is not completely lacking in qualifications. As a physician in training, he's worked with and been trained by psychiatrists on clinical rotations, and is also a board member for a free mental health clinic. Not all doctors are psychiatrists, of course, but all doctors are required to be trained in basic psychiatry. Given the informal setting of a video game forum, it's implied that this is not an attempt at an official diagnosis, but more of an informal observation that James appears to meet some of the criteria for the disorder. Personality disorders can be particularly difficult to treat, and in some instances, it might just take someone pointing out some symptoms to encourage someone to look into a more official opinion from a licensed professional.

This is the point where I feel like I ought to say, "stay on topic," but the fact is that this thread has never really been about Zelda Classic or the PureZC community. It was about James from the start. I agree with the assessment that he is a narcissist looking for validation, rather than someone with genuine concern for the community and an interest in improving it.

Since I for some reason am coming up in James's arguments in spite of not ever having spoken to him that I recall, I want to say that with my quests, my greatest motivation is in making something that I love and can be proud of. I make things primarily for the joy of creating and the satisfaction of seeing a final product I can be proud of, as well as the delight of seeing other people get something out of stuff that I've made. No, I didn't know how to script when I made Hero's Memory, but at the time I really wanted to make an homage to an NES Zelda game. Ever since then, I've been learning more and pushing myself harder to get better at making games and expressing myself and my inner world. And in that sense, I don't give a damn what James or anyone else thinks about it. I believe that most people making quests or any kind of art can relate to this. So my advice to everyone here is, don't worry about "selling a product." Just make something that you love, have fun doing it, and be appreciative of the work and passion that your fellow members put into their stuff. As long as we keep doing that, I think the community will only become more tight-knit, as well as warm and welcoming to others.

So basically, why don't we all move on from the painful process of stoking someone else's ego, and just get back to having a good time?

[DarkFlameSheep]

In fact, even many official great and popular game series are no longer developed by some reasons. Also, any ZC quest will no longer be developed from someday, though it's natural.

But one HDD or SSD was installed ZC and quests will be found as OOPARTS in the distant future.

Edited by Stray Sheep, 22 October 2019 - 11:16 PM.

[Anthus]

 

I know this has caused a bit of grief for some of you so I'd like to conclude by saying I love you all.

 

I love this community too, and that is why I don't think it is dying any time soon.

 

EDIT: (Missed a few posts) Aevin's last paragraph is pretty much spot on. We are just here making fan games for fun. Who cares if ZC eventually does die, there are still plenty of people here trying to have fun for now.

[NoeL]

snip

Thanks for making me look like an idiot! Jerk head. :tard:

[Aevin]

Oh, hardly. I think most of what you said is very sensible and good advice in general. In this case, I think there's at least some weight behind what Russ is saying, but it's true that some people take stuff like mental disorders too casually and base assumptions on gut feelings and pop science. It's admirable to be on the lookout for stuff like that and to call it out when you see it.

[NoeL]

I blame Russ. He should've prefaced his argument by saying he's a wealthy and successful physician who, with logic, a lot of thought and life experience has found it to be his duty to inform the community of his expert opinion regarding James's mental state.