Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 116
- 1
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I bought starfield. There is a sweet spot with Bethesda games where modders are still active, the price has come down, and the latest official expansions/patches are out.
It has been alright so far. Inventory management was a pain but I changed max carry weight in the difficulty settings to mostly fix that.
The criticisms that it has no soul seem mostly on point to me. But soulless games are sort of my bread and butter since I shamelessly play clicker games.
It's also been a great game for my podcasting habits. I like to listen to comedy podcasts while I play video games. And starfield is a great semi-mindless distraction.
The ship builder seems too difficult right now. Hoping I'll break into it at some point.
I hate ship combat anyways. Juggling power systems seems annoying. All the ships seem to fly in such a clunky way, yet they designed it like a WW1 dogfighting game. If you aren't gonna go for any realism please just give me the Assassin's creed black flag ship mechanics.
The gunplay is kinda fun. I wish it was easier to find it. I'm now looking at a journal full of quests that all seem to involve talking with people. Luckily most of the quests have devolved into shooting anyways. I don't like to talk things out in video games.
A security defense force that wants to halt piracy set me up for a crime and then kidnapped me. I turned down the offer to join them, because they fucking kidnapped me. The game for some reason interpreted that as me wanting to join the pirates, rather than me having a legitimate grievance against kidnapping (a moral grievance, but mainly a gameplay grievance, I was in the middle of a thing don't interrupt me). I have yet to follow through on the pirate request, but I look forward to shooting my way out of that meeting. I guess this is going to be a repeat of the Skyrim army vs army quest line where both sides are objectively dick heads.
The vibe of "computers stopped getting better in the 90's" is a pretty cool aesthetic for a space game. I feel like it neatly justifies all the reasons you might want to have humans still running around doing things. Some of the robots are still a little too smart and self sufficient. I might not have played enough, but they also missed the opportunity to have more super computing complexes. Which is a thing the government and military used to build more of when they needed more processing power for something.
I didn't play much Starfield, but i did complete the SecurityVPiracy questline and it reminded me strongly of the Skyrim Thieves Guild questline, in how little of the plot actually makes sense. I have mercifully forgotten most of it at this point, but my overall impression was that it was deserving of the kind of breakdown that the late Shamus Young did for the aforementioned Thieves Guild quests. That said it does at least have one decent (by the game's abysmally low standards) dungeon on a lost, derelict ship.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link