funny but awsome trait

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Short descriptions are only visible when you get an announcement that more than one building has been built. They are very clearly *announcements* and not just short descriptions. You only see them then also - when you click on buildings and look at their descriptions, those are the regular/full/normal/long descriptions. Those are strictly historical descriptions (along with explanations about how they help you in the game).

So, since the short descriptions do serve as announcements, we have turned them all (and still are in the process of it) into something closer to that format. An advisor (depending upon your faction it changes a little to be appropriate) gives you the message. All short descriptions have at their start this basic information: "We have constructed a -blank- in this province."

At that point, more information is then added - and yes, a good deal of humor is thrown in, *but* it's (almost) always got something in it of reality. If it is a Macedonian one, stereotypes of other Hellenes might be used, or something from Athenaeaus or Dio Chrysostom or Pausanias or something provides the core of a historical fact or stereotype or something like that. On my desktop here is a new Mak one that hasn't gone in yet: "Metalleia have been constructed throughout this province. Our lands have not always had gold easily available to them. Duris the historian says that Philippos, the father of Megas Alexandros, possessed a golden cup weighing fifty drachms, and that he always took it to bed with him and placed it at his head. Though this was lost on Alexandros, who had his servants encase food in gold, which was then thrown off as they ate the meal, with the slaves enjoying the profits. Times change." I believe that comes from a little nugget of information Athenaeus provides. Some are certainly not very PC, but I'm sorry to say that neither were many of the societies we are dealing with here. A little has been thrown in from a recent book "The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity" too.

Again, you only see those short descriptions in the announcement of multiple buildings being constructed - they aren't are regular descriptions.

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Just saw the "useless" comment. Well, that's your opinion mate. We think the basic format of them "X has been constructed, my king/etc." is exactly right and is even more correct than the vanilla game - given the way those short descriptions are used in the game. I take it you don't "role play" much with those generals of yours either, eh?

[blacksnail]

If the short descriptions reduce your interest in EB, my suggestion is to not read them. Writing short descriptions is simultaneously the most thankless and the most mindless part of the game. This is why "Short description needed" was ubiquitous in 0.74 and earlier.

Of course, you could always offer to perform the thankless and mindless task yourself. We certainly have a lot to fill.

[fallen851]

Yeah, the EB team thinks they are pretty funny, but they aren't. Though I certainly don't see humour in 1/4th of the descriptions, maybe I just don't get it, maybe thats why I don't think the EB team is funny? I've only found a few with lines that ruin the immersion (such as the above...).

I've been editing the descriptions, if you want my file I'll post it up after 0.81 is released, with a bunch of other stuff I'm making for EB. Or you can edit them yourself in the export_VnVs- file, under EB/data/text.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I teach for a living. I understand that some kids will just crap on everything you put out there and don't want to hear about anything or much less be there, but I also understand that the ones that range from neutral to minimally interested to somewhat interested to very interested generally appreciate packaging material and information in interesting and humorous ways too. They get more intrigued by it, even purposefully bad jokes often, and pay attention better and the atmosphere is friendlier usually too, which helps in my opinon. The one kid in the back who just goes "Bah. Whatever.", well, there's only so much you can do to try to keep him motivated or interested. I may be a bad teacher for not caring so much for what they think, but I do pretty well with the vast majority of them and wind up with a surprising number of people signing up for minors and occasionally majors at the end of the semester. Same basic idea works here too I think.

[Sarcasm]

Yeah, the EB team thinks they are pretty funny, but they aren't. Though I certainly don't see humour in 1/4th of the descriptions, maybe I just don't get it, maybe thats why I don't think the EB team is funny? I've only found a few with lines that ruin the immersion (such as the above...).

You're kind of an asshole aren't ya?

[fallen851]

I certainly hope TA isn't trying to keep fans interested. We aren't here to earn credits for a history requirement, rather, here because we enjoy this period of history. Thus, if we aren't interested, we wouldn't be here.

So I disagree that you need humour to keep people interested. And for all the "we make this for ourselves, not others" that the EB team has repeated over and over, what you are saying TA, flies right in the face of that.

Or do you need the humour to keep yourself interested? Or other team members?

Unlikely. Either way, the "we write humour to help keep people interested" is dumb argument based on the above.

So why do you write humour?

Face it, you don't make this mod just for yourselves, you make it for us. So quit saying that. In that case the humour is just fine, except for me, because smiley faces I can't stand!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I'm just explaining things from my point of view. Different members work on the mod for different reasons. My personal reasons have a lot more to do with making the game educational than many other members. Some members really are just making it to enjoy for themselves (a few). We might have some general trends, but it varies a lot. Anyway, those short descriptions are in there for a reason, one that maybe not all members even totally like, but the point has been raised internally and the support for doing it like this was extremely and overwhelmingly positive, so they will remain this way.

If you don't like those short descriptions, don't read them. It can be as simple as that. But you'll miss out learning about Macedonian footwear if you do! "We have constructed a large palace here, one so grand and luxurious that even Demetrios Poliorketes would have approved! He, of course, being our great king who wore the most expensive footwear a Makedonian ever has dared place on his feet, like a half-boot they say it was, covered in felt of the costliest purple, woven behind and in front with a very intricate pattern of gold! This is a palace to match such boots!"

[fallen851]

If you don't like those short descriptions, don't read them. It can be as simple as that. But you'll miss out learning about Macedonian footwear if you do! "We have constructed a large palace here, one so grand and luxurious that even Demetrios Poliorketes would have approved! He, of course, being our great king who wore the most expensive footwear a Makedonian ever has dared place on his feet, like a half-boot they say it was, covered in felt of the costliest purple, woven behind and in front with a very intricate pattern of gold! This is a palace to match such boots!"

See, that doesn't sound like a joke to me, but ok.

Oh well, this thread is becoming boring. I was simply sharing my opinion, if you don't like it, I don't care.

I already said I was modding out the jokes I don't like, the ones I don't think are funny. I was not trying to force the EB to remove the jokes to please me.

Do I want the EB team to mod out the jokes? It doesn't really matter. But the EB team shouldn't pretend to put in the jokes to keep peoples interest, if they don't care whether or not people play their mod (as had been said in the past), unless the EB team puts in the jokes to interest themselves. Everyone on the EB totally dodged the question about why they put in the humour. That is fine to, I don't care. I think it because they want people to see their work, and be interested in it. But again, just an opinion.

That is all I said. What it leads to, nobody knows! No need to long explanations about feedback and angry posts. There is nothing to see here. Boring thread.

(My ability to drive people crazy on this forum is achieving legendary status! Please, just relax.)

[blacksnail]

Face it, you don't make this mod just for yourselves, you make it for us. So quit saying that.

You seem to have an interesting, if incorrect understanding of how things work around here. Please apply this to all future dealings with EB staff.

The EB team makes what it makes. We get feedback from the forums as to what works and what doesn't. We are most likely to listen to the constructive feedback that presents a good case. We are least likely to listen to feedback that comes across as hostile, insulting, or anything with an outrageous sense of entitlement.

At the end of the day we owe absolutely nothing to anybody except for the hosting providers who maintain our website. We do not get paid to do any of this, which means we are not obligated, required, or in any way expected to put up with aggravation. We do this because we want to do so.

We certainly want to produce something that is enjoyed by many and hope to enrich the understanding of this time period as accurately as possible, but we also understand that you can't please everybody all the time. Some aspects of EB might be disagreeable to you, and if it bugs you enough your best option is to post feedback that is constructive and presents a good case rather than anything hostile, insulting, or anything with an outrageous sense of entitlement. If after the fact the EB team still decides to go another route, we hope you can either get past it or change it yourself in your home game, possibly posting any changes as a mod to the base game.

As a reminder I will link this post to my sig. If you encounter any posters who you feel could benefit from this important advice on feedback, please direct them here.

Thanks!

[Kull]

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What he said!

[MiniMe]

This is the best "MyOpinion" thread I ever red on any forum.
That's why I love i-net : you can meat so many intresting people via net =)

[Kugutsu]

Yeah, the EB team thinks they are pretty funny, but they aren't...

You seem to have a knack of jumping on the bandwaggon of people who are critical of EB, and making inflammatory comments which push it over the edge.

The rest of your first post wasnt even particularly negative, but that first comment is either carefully chosen to really irritate the people who are working of the mod, or you simply have a very unfortunate turn of phrase, and no idea why people are annoyed with you. If the former, then

You're kind of an asshole aren't ya?

is about right. If the latter, then perhaps reading your comments before you hit 'submit reply' will spare you from being a victim of the team's wrath...

[edyzmedieval]

Yeah, the EB team thinks they are pretty funny, but they aren't. Though I certainly don't see humour in 1/4th of the descriptions, maybe I just don't get it, maybe thats why I don't think the EB team is funny? I've only found a few with lines that ruin the immersion (such as the above...).

Your comments are so intelligent, that even a stuck elephant in a magnolia tree can make better comments...

[Avicenna]

Wise, serious and unshakable ones who cannot have jokes, please feel free to make your own modification if the jokes present are seriously life-threatening, not up to your special standards and/or simply too childish or stupid for educated gentlemen like yourselves.

I rest my case.

[Mithradates VI]

At that point, more information is then added - and yes, a good deal of humor is thrown in, *but* it's (almost) always got something in it of reality. If it is a Macedonian one, stereotypes of other Hellenes might be used, or something from Athenaeaus or Dio Chrysostom or Pausanias or something provides the core of a historical fact or stereotype or something like that. On my desktop here is a new Mak one that hasn't gone in yet: "Metalleia have been constructed throughout this province. Our lands have not always had gold easily available to them. Duris the historian says that Philippos, the father of Megas Alexandros, possessed a golden cup weighing fifty drachms, and that he always took it to bed with him and placed it at his head. Though this was lost on Alexandros, who had his servants encase food in gold, which was then thrown off as they ate the meal, with the slaves enjoying the profits. Times change." I believe that comes from a little nugget of information Athenaeus provides. Some are certainly not very PC, but I'm sorry to say that neither were many of the societies we are dealing with here. A little has been thrown in from a recent book "The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity" too.

Shameless plug--That book was very very interesting. I highly recommend it to everyone on this forum. I'm eager to see how it has been used.

I must say I appreciate the humorous announcements. They made me chuckle. Yes, history should be taken seriously, but whenever I talk about history when I'm tutoring fellow students, I always use a little bit of humor. They have told me flat out that it makes it easier for them to learn and greatly appreciate it; I'm glad that EB is also using this standard.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Well, at first I checked it out, hoping for some ideas on ethnicities - we have tons of "higher chance for X trait", and depending upon the ethnicity those vary. But I've also taken some stereotypes of different groups and used them in other ways. Probably in no way the way the author had hoped the book would be used!

The index is a good place to start with it: Lydians: bravery of..., corrupt the Colophonians..., effeminacy of..., first traders... Things like that, looking at how they were perceived. We play to that a lot - especially from different points of view. Our KH faction maligns the backwards and drunken Macedonians when given the chance in text opportunities. Our Mak faction will often put down their southern Greek neighbors because of their poor martial skills or loquaciousness or something like that.

What would have been really nice would be a "handbook of ancient ethnic stereotypes" or something like that.

[McHrozni]

Just saw the "useless" comment. Well, that's your opinion mate. We think the basic format of them "X has been constructed, my king/etc." is exactly right and is even more correct than the vanilla game - given the way those short descriptions are used in the game. I take it you don't "role play" much with those generals of yours either, eh?

You misunderstood.

EB says: X has been constructed
Vanilla says: X serves this and this function

X has been constructed is something I can see from it's name and picture in the "Construction completed" queue window. The purpose of the announcement text is hardly to tell you that once more what was done, but remind what purpose it serves. That's why the vanilla announcement descriptions come out much better, unfortunately.

In regards to racim and other stuff, I don't mind it, I actually like it, I just dislike how it is implemented at times. To use an example for above, does it really suit a military governor to say "We can now throw poop down our walls on the enemies! Yes!"?

McHrozni

[Bava]

Face it, you don't make this mod just for yourselves, you make it for us. So quit saying that.

This is probably the ****** post i´ve ever seen.

Congrats.