edit: just made the banner more random, albeit in a really mundane way, but i have a soft spot for mundanity apparently

while being open ended toribash still has direction and the entertainment/game part comes in when you do something with what it is, not when you don't.

i criticized the spar to point out things you could do in the game, not to suggest that you couldn't do things except the established things in the game.

if everything you do right now has no reason not to be amateurish by every metric, then it isn't a problem if i point out why.

toribash's in-game direction (via the scoring system) is "beat up the other guy", but we were in sparring mode. sparring mode doesn't have any inherent direction to it (it just has outside interpretations of what to do with it). As far as what the game dictates, sparring mode is just the "do whatever." unless i missed a big flashing sign that said "try to act like a human."

i hadn't actually picked "looking realistic" as a goal, and, again, that's a goal that one has to pick, not an inherent fact of reality especially when effective fighting styles in toribash don't necessarily look realistic. your critique was literally uninvited since we'd never agreed on the goal, and the goal is the basis of your critique (on how we missed the goal). If you'd said "let's try to look realistic because i like trying to look realistic" and i'd said "yes let's, even tho i am but a mere newbie" then the critique would be appropriate. as it was, it was more of an inadvertent answer to my earlier question about what your goal was.


as it stood, my objective was "experiment", and so i experimented, and then you showed up with "you messed up here" and i'm being like "when did i ever say i was trying to hit the mark you're saying i missed?" and, yeah. shit's relative. edit: obviously if i'd been on board with trying to look like a realistic human, i wouldn't've been making a point of doing bizarre, inhuman things, so it's just totally mis-aimed, unnecessary critique.

if you're not intending to play the game, or see anything you can do with the game, then you're not experimenting, you're having a seizure on your keyboard.


i think what goal you think you were having was making a joke, and this did not come across at all until you told me.

going through the process of adjusting the muscles in whatever way interests me at the moment, and then observing the results, is itself a process of getting more familiar with how the game works just in a brain-conditioning kind of way. When you're as new as I am, the bar for "see anything you can do with the game" is very, very, very low. So yes, I was experimenting.

It's not like people are supposed to sit down at an unfamiliar game and instantly start doing their best to win. That's inefficient and stupid. "Play to learn", not "play to win," you know? Playing to win all the time is unnecessarily stressful and blocks you off from just relaxing and experimenting and exploring, which is what leads to bigger improvements.

free experimentation naturally folds into making jokes since they're both just open-ended riffing, but also i'm definitely getting the message that when you're as familiar with this game as you are, all the basic obvious physical humor of the game has dried up.

i could set a more specific goal than "play with the muscles and see what happens so i get more familiar" and that would be a more focused kind of experimentation, but again: pretty new. i'm explaining to you what it's like to be new since you've forgotten since it was so very long ago now.

edit: also the jokes i did go for were great since i laughed at them.

no, you just weren't being funny.

your goal to do funny stuff was just failing to explore in favor of choosing the pose that would be the most "wacky" when you haven't played to learn long enough to figure out how to pose.

i'm very new to sparring and my criticism comes from a bystanders standpoint, but also from a self-criticism standpoint.


correction: anything can be funny to someone but only some things are inherently funny, or jokes. I can make a toddler laugh. It's my superpower.

you just spent 2/3s of your post going after the single jokey vulnerability i left in my post (the acknowledgment that i went for some things i thought were funny), totally ignoring all the f l a w l e s s l o g i c in the rest of the post.

here's another flawless counter: even going for things i think are funny improves my familiarity with muscle control. it's progress.

also humor is relative and especially what a tori noob thinks is funny is way different than what a tori vet thinks is funny so you can't really say i "just wasn't being funny." it was funny to me. so it was funny to someone. so it was funny. just not to you cuz it's old to you. you're practically implying my sense of humor is "wrong" by saying it wasn't funny, which is obviously nonsense. (edit: and for reference i have no reason to be bothered that you didn't find any humor in it. humor is relative and there's an obvious reason you would see it differently than i would.)

and again: if you specifically wanted me to go after Serious Realism, you could've established that as a goal beforehand. I mean, why not? as it was i was along for the ride aimlessly, so i gravitated largely towards the strongest reason-to-click-muscles that i detected: self-entertainment. it's a reason. it still results in experience. If you want me to click muscles for a different specific reason then say so.

and yeah you're free to self-criticize given that you set that goal for yourself. just don't critique me when i never set the target you're saying i'm missing. declare your targets out loud.

edit: Also, even something that would make literally anyone laugh the first time will get old after the 100th repetition so I don't think you're in a position to gauge the inherent humor value of Toribash Wackiness. you're just too familiar.

if you haven't found a direction in an open ended game then you should know about the directions you can take. not being funny is not one of them. making yourself yourself laugh says more about you than how funny you are. you're not funny. if the only reason you click on joints is to humor-wank, then you're not going to find a direction. you don't have to follow my criticisms to play but you can make a decision about what the endgame looks like to you based on the paths you can take. if that looks like Serious Realism to you, then go ahead.

I don't get this universal sense of "funny." "Funny" is relative. Humor is just something personally experienced/perceived. It's not fundamentally something that must be done to entertain other people. If I play a game and something funny happens in the game, am I not allowed to laugh unless other people are around? Am I not allowed to cause things to happen that I think are funny unless other people are around to validate it?

Should I feel bad for not seeing a more serious reason to click joints? The game only captures my interest so much. Is that a problem?

For me, being "objectively" funny is not a priority. I don't dream of being a comedian who's mastered the kinds of humor that work on the largest amount of people. I have my own sense of humor and it's not in perfect harmony with everyone else's, and I can entertain it pretty well on my own. Is that an issue? Hint: Laughing at humor that i created (or "discovered" is what it feels more like) doesn't require believing that anyone else would laugh at them, so I don't see how it's wanky. It's just a straightforward situation of humor, by my understanding.

If you have a problem with how idly jokey I am in general, then hopefully you're having a little fun right now with my straightfaced seriousness? I have that too.


edit:
"you don't have to follow my criticisms to play but you can make a decision about what the endgame looks like to you based on the paths you can take. if that looks like Serious Realism to you, then go ahead."
See that just sounds like "determine your own personal, relative goals and head for them", which is exactly how I operate already and what I'm vouching for.

i'm not sure serious realism is the endgame for me though. my goal is just to do something expressive, and i think it's been proven by veteran player in the game that you can do that while being twitchy (or without.) and without even implying the tori has any spacial awareness. So if you really think Serious Realism is for you then you can do that.

if something funny happens in the game, I'd probably laugh too. that said, you don't have to explain it for it to be funny.