The Duviri Paradox

[(PSN)xxav1xl6ivax]

On 2019-10-04 at 7:52 PM, (PS4)Silverback73 said:

While your post is thought provoking and in-depth, you have to look at DE’s track record and strategy for success. 

The Unique art design, game design, and lore/story components of Warframe will be brought into DP.

DE is likely going to expand and improve on Operator options and gameplay.

But our little Rick Hunter (Operator) clearly isn’t able to use protoculture (Void energy via transference) to pilot his Mecha (Warframe) and clearly isn’t fighting Zentradi (Grineer).

He’s a normal, weathered middle-aged man on the open plains that must use wit, a quick trigger finger, a shotgun, and a horse to survive his first encounter.

Put a hat on him and he looks shockingly similar to Red Dead Redemption’s main character.

Warframe expanded into Open world from Looter-shooter because it was proven and established game design that could be monetized.

And now it looks like it will expand into the Survival-Western (The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption)...proven and established game design that they can monetize by improving Operator functionality with established programming and content; namely primary, secondary, and melee weapons already used by Warframes (hence the Tigris).

Your “grown-up” Operator isn’t just symbolically growing up...he’s growing up in the game design sense and his rig might literally be that of his Warframe.

 

 

 

 

You’ll have to forgive my lack of experience with Red Dead Redemption, (in that while it is not unfamiliar to me, I have not played it, probably by fault of feeling uncomfortable with games that impose a scripted male gender character role ... something which Metal Gear Solid V was actually able to diffuse by establishing a shell character, who is not only presumed to be amnesiac, and be estranged from his [my] own physical form, but also from the context of “the world,” though still requiring an extended degree of stamina to slowly take in on an infrequent and episodic basis) ... but, THAT’S ANOTHER STORY ; ) 

And so, by extension, I am not aware of the way by which RDR employs an Operator as an Avatar which presents within the environment as a differential proxy for the “self” from Shape, Styling, Fashion ... Armor ... [Warframes] ... Masks ... I don’t want to say “Forms,” because there is a critical part of Warframe that extends from Plato’s “Theory Of Forms,” which essentially confers a very different meaning to “Forms,” from it’s more familiar common usage.

But hey, if it was a forerunner to Warframe in providing for an Operator type role/mechanic in game, as an intermediary between self and the Character  ... (damn, I don’t know what his name is, not having played it ... if he even has one ... I mean Sergio Leone was able to translate Toshiro Mifune as a Yojimbo [real name not known] from “Bad Old Edo,” into Clint Eastwood, transplanted to somewhere in the “Wild West,” without even an assumed name, nickname or moniker being invoked throughout the entire movie, “A Fist Full of Dollars,” and a semi-sequel [wherein nothing more than the titles even implies that it is the same character being portrayed in two different stories, while there is also nothing that makes it impossible either] in “For A Few Dollars More“) ... I don’t know how they worked it in RDR ... I mean I could imagine it as being something like The Character whose sort of “inner child” as “moral compass” who is only ever seen by him and/or the player who creates it ... making for a perfect concept to try to carry over [as far as it could go] into a an adolescent-ish in-game proxy for the player as the Operator ... I just don’t know ... I mean  I don’t know how RDR did its Operator type thing. But ...

Oh, wait ... my bad, I think I just somehow misread what was written relating The Operator in Warframe to RDR. 

The rest, well, aside from a rather repugnant analogy, between the way Harmony Gold looted and bastardized Macross to make Robotech, reinventing “protoculture” as a literal source of energy/power out of just what the word implies, a sort of social phenomenology generated by culture, from which the Zen/Meltradi have been divorced ... I guess they figured that getting adolescents who were into He-Man and Thundercats to follow along with a story that used dynamism as both a central catalyst of conflict and a concept which the story explores, would have gotten the show labeled with the equivalent to a latter day ESRB “M” Rating.

Although Warframe might actually be evidence that if HG had not dumbed it down, Robotech wouldn’t have gained its US audience. In examining how much/little of the player base has identified what The Void represents as a Reciprocal to the Concept of Chaos in Cosmogony (which has been so easily and freely adapted for decades as “The Astral Chaos,” to serve the purposes of the  Soul Calibur franchise).

Then again, DE certainly did not bet the bank on players figuring out or even comprehending there being any “meta game” being employed as a set of guidelines and hard rules which, combined with the hard limitations of DE & any developers capacity to apply resources and technology in ongoing development to “expansion,” have provided a buffer against erratically miss-steering Warframe toward a course that is imitative of other video games, while providing plenty of room to borrow “mechanics” in an immense variety of ways, without losing its own. The “expansion” which the DP Cinematic teases, is, at the very least, subordinate to the full working implementation of “The Empyrean Expansion.” A major expansion of capacity by supplemental augmentation of the game engine itself, being enabled to actually link directly between differently scaled environments, and produce something which still can not be done (without that expansion in place):

The expanses of virtual space and scale of immensely sized objects which have been segregated, becoming fluidly integrated. (Meaning that IF what is seen in the far distance is, somehow, what it has been presumed to be, the Zariman, a ship too large for any depiction within the game up until now, the distance between where the action of the Cinematic has been focused and that enormous distant object, will not only be traversable, but the object will actually be accessible as an interior/exterior type of environmental structure).

Sorry to have to break the news that the Zariman didn’t crash into the limited old west plain of a monetized game disc. But the time for growing up comes along with figuring out that “protoculture” power wasn’t conceived as an energy source for running FTL engines or firing a huge mega gun into fleets of giant enemy space ships.

And so really, the conjecture has not had anything to do with “The Western Genre,” or with Warframe, but with wanting Warframe to turn itself into Red Dead Redemption or a “single player console game,” that revolves around guys on plain with beards riding horses ... like in Red Dead Redemption.

There’s already a Goon Show Script for this, actually.

Seagoon: I say, I say, those little people in Warframe; what, what race are they?

Bloodnok: The Tenno.

Seagoon: But what are the short ones without beards?

Bloodnok: Those are Operators.

Seagoon: And what are the ones who have beards?

Bloodnok: Those are Operators who haven't shaved.

Seagoon: I see. But why do only half of them shave?

Bloodnok: So that they can tell the difference. [Aside] Can we have music for this bit, please?

Orchestra: [Violin 'Hearts and Flowers']

Bloodnok: Thank you.

Seagoon: Tell the difference from what?

Bloodnok: Between those with beards and those without.

Seagoon: To avoid all this confusion, why don't the ones without beards grow beards?

Bloodnok: Well, that would be rather unfair.

Seagoon: Unfair? Why?

Bloodnok: The ones without beards are women, you see. That's how they tell the difference, you understand.

Seagoon: This is ridiculous. I've never heard of families growing beards in their relationships to differentiate between the sexes. Have you, Eccles?

Eccles: Oh, yeah. It happened in my family. When I was young, I couldn't tell the difference between my mother or father, so my father made my mother grow a beard.

Seagoon: Ahhh, and you were able to tell the difference?

Eccles: Nope.

Seagoon: Why not?

Eccles: My father had a beard, too!

All: Shut up, shut up... [various, in agony, striking Eccles]

 

NURSE: Time for your naughty medicine Mr Gonnor. 

KEN: Oh Nurse.... ha ha I didn't see you.... 

NURSE: You are naughty.... say Ahhhhhhhh! 

F.X.: MONEY BEING SCOOPED DOWN HIS THROAT 

KEN: (mou~hing) Ahh£50... my poverty feels better already... gad, I feel fit. 

ECCLE5: Hello dear.... well, how's the patient? 

NURSE: Ohh hello handsome. 

ECCLES: Ohh, you're a good looking fella too.

KEN Silly Eccles, this nurse is a woman. 

EGGLES: Oh well, he's a good-lookin' woman, isn't he.... 

NURSE: Are you married? 

ECCLES: Yer. 

NURSE: Your poor wife. 

ECCLES: Yer. But the girl next door, ohhh ho ho ho ho....

KEN He's growing up folks, it had to come. 

And of course, if one were to extend the analogy I had drawn, as a composite of the “old school” (that fed into & through a cinematic focal point of a couple of Jodorowsky flicks, right around when the players came together, Giger, Foss, O’Bannon, Möbius, etc.) brought into 2020 with the present gen of what Oshii was on top of ten years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Oshii

 

It’s pretty easy to see that there ain’t nobody gonna be making them grow a beard just so they get to play, but, at the same time, it’s difficult to make them look Old, (much less, disheveled, dazed and basically kind of witless). 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by (PS4)xxav1xl6ivax

[Vlada91]

Im tired of some theories,but im hoping for this update more then anything before...so im looking forward to see something new in future devstream. Maybe some new gameplay with mature operator and some exploration....

 

[(PSN)xxav1xl6ivax]

19 hours ago, Vlada91 said:

Im tired of some theories,but im hoping for this update more then anything before...so im looking forward to see something new in future devstream. Maybe some new gameplay with mature operator and some exploration....

 

A mature Operator or moderator? (I don’t know how the moderator “role” in devstreams is assigned, whether there’s a default to hierarchy, or someone on/off camera signaling or cuing, or whether it’s primarily a sort of anarchic consensus, or whether there are particular or informal guidelines (or both) for presentation (as differentiated and inexorable from “content,” i.e. a variation of “The Medium is The Message,” [Massage, Mass Age, Mess Age, etc.]).

But in terms of The Operator within Warframe, it would be nice to learn about some plans for incorporating some sort of maturation process into the schema (if there are any).

One impression from the transition sequence that was used to provide a cut to the DP Cinematic (and likewise matched the Cinematic sufficiently), was of an Operator who, though still “young looking,” also appeared more grown (in height) and with more a somewhat more dynamic range of expression.

That seemingly expanded range in the young Operator (or really, I should say, “young-adult-looking,” since this is only a personal impression) used for the demo, to match with the transition and then the Cinematic), while still pretty well fixed in the “serious,” was also beyond the present range of non-Cinematic expressions within Warframe in its present state.

Again, it has to be kept in mind that the DP teaser is entirely a Cinematic (and therefor may not be at all a reflection of anything that will be realized in terms of further development applied to The Operator in Warframe any time soon).

Generally the matter of how the Operator presents is overshadowed by a demand for things like “improving Operator functionality,” or a call “to expand and improve on Operator options and gameplay.” 

The bottom line being, that maturation is a subtle process, and the means by which it is measured, though varied, always have to rely upon a baseline concept of the “self.”

E.G.

“Yeah, I remember myself when I was that age, and I’d be out doing __________. Strange how growing up works. That I can still remember myself the way I was when I was younger, without feeling like that ‘self’ isn’t still an important part of who I am now.”

(In The more Objective realm of philosophical theory and psychology, there has long been a oft-called-“paradox,” formulated as a “thought problem” or “experiment” which directly relates to the matter of such observations, called “The Ship of Theseus.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus )

Now whether reflecting on maturation and growing up in terms of how the processes are subjectively perceived and/or objectively evaluated in relation to a “sense of self” -

(or what psychoanalysts used to refer to as someone’s basic or “fundamental character,” before psychoanalysis and psychotherapy were driven into professional extinction by the advancement of a Diagnostic & Statistical Manual [for Diagnosing Mental Illness] dissolving the “influence of Freud” completely with its third revised edition)

 - is something which “DE” has long had hanging in “the back of the mind,” so to speak.

Conceived, even before the first release of The Second Dream, “DE” began conceptualization for how the revelation of a player being depicted as an actor within the game itself was going to follow onward from there (“as we begin, so shal we go,” as someone once said ; ). And so the concept of following into yet another very radically different sort of “Quest,” aimed in the practically opposite direction from exploring outer space was being developed as an exploration of what McLuhan would have called “The Inner Trip,” as “The War Within.” 

The direction was predicated by the very conclusion of The Second Dream from the day it was first LAUNCHED. And there was a device which was built into the very structure of that quest, almost like having a book where the title of each chapter would be given a title after being read & digested, interpreted and then presented with a choice of titles, which would reflect the attitude & perspective (or “mood”) of the author towards the subject and story. 

It was a peculiar way of going about things, and incorporated a conceptual (and literal) “device,” which basically used continuous circular dioramas on three wheels to produce (and in continuing onward, further refine) a semiotic representation of the “self” or “fundamental character,” which eventually came to be called “alignment,” (in accord with the pervasive RPG terminology of “character creation”). 

I still have not found any source that correlates that term with any “official statement” made by “DE.” In fact, it took me a hell of a lot of searching to find out what the [thing] was being called at all, or referred to even just within Forum discussions.

And so where & when it finally came into being settled, (by whatever means), was with a forum posting that was interested to see what different players’ alignment looked like, being initially assumed that there were only four basic variants, but quickly established sixteen distinctive variations.

In a posting shortly following that, a player created composites drawn from what those sixteen variants showed, actually revealed three circular diorama wheels, and went on to demonstrate (what was not then shown within the game) how they turned continuously in relation to one another by making an animated GIF.

(It’s was much later on that DE actually changed the presentation of choices in-game in such a way that included the “alignment,” and actually showed the turning wheel mechanic activate when highlighting each choice before deciding).

But very much to the contrary of the way in which “alignment” is used for “character creation” in Role Playing Games, (as a predetermined set of parameters that govern or condition the behaviors of a fictional character), the way DE has deployed “alignment” follows closely in accord with the methods employed by what is generally referred to as “human metrics,” (or systems based on Jungian Topology, or in terms which adherents prefer to avoid using, for very good reasons, * “personality testing”) during initial evaluations, testing, inventory, etc.

So there are, already, numerous questions which “alignment” device or system calls to mind in a discussion of how the process of maturation or growing up is going to be handled in Warframe.

* During the 60s, Alan Watts made a particularly salient point concerning the nature and concept of self and identity, by calling upon a book written in the 40s by Harry Emerson Fos$&*^, called “On Being a Real Person.” The point to that was something which became a far better known term than “on being a real person,” by Watts’ dissemination. 

 

He quickly pointed out that what what the title really translates to is “How to be a genuine fake.” (Perhaps not a “paradox,” but certainly an absurdism by way of an oxymoron).

 

From there he focused on how the meaning of “person” had so far declined from its original form and usage, so as to practically represent the direct opposite.

 

Where it had been formed by a combination of the terms for “mask” and “sound,” as a devise used by the actors in Ancient Greek Theater.

 

The counter which Watts posed to the popular acceptance of person as meaning “whom someone truly is,” made a significant impact right on up into the very present day (to quote Nick Haslam as just one example):

“Interestingly, the word 'person' did not originally refer to the individual in the way we tend to use it today. Instead, 'person' came, via french, from the Latin word 'persona', which referred to the mask worn by tan actor to protray a particular character. In this theatrical sense, personality has to do with the role or character that the person plays in life's drama. The person's individuality, in this sense, is a matter of the roles or characters that he or she assumes.”

persona (plural personas or personae or personæ)

1. A social role.
2. A character played by an actor.
3. (psychology) The mask or appearance one presents to the world.

http://www.thinking-differently.com/neurophilosophy/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/AlanWatts-On-The-Taboo-Against-Knowing-Who-You-Are.pdf

And even the Webster’s dictionary has now dropped the definition of “person” from “common usage” down to fifth place.

Definition of person

 

1: HUMAN, INDIVIDUAL —sometimes used in combination especially by those who prefer to avoid man in compounds applicable to both sexeschairpersonspokesperson

 

2: a character or part in or as if in a play : GUISE

3a: one of the three modes of being in the Trinitarian Godhead as understood by Christians

b: the unitary personality of Christ that unites the divine and human natures

4aarchaic : bodily appearance

b: the body of a human beingalso : the body and clothing unlawful search of the person

5: the personality of a human being : SELF

6: one (such as a human being, a partnership, or a corporation) that is recognized by law as the subject of rights and duties

7: reference of a segment of discourse to the speaker, to one spoken to, or to one spoken of as indicated by means of certain pronouns or in many languages by verb inflection.

 

In that sense, it can be pretty easily recognized that the character of Nakack is acting in a role of raisonneur for ‘DE,” ever behind a mask, and making a point of skillfully dancing over (or dodging) the import of “person,” having “never met a good person, or a bad one. It’s just folks, friend. Everyone is just folks.”

Of course Nakack presents very paradoxically, as a seemingly very young girl, yet having gathered that very outlook from a lifetime of experience, working “all kinds of jobs, in all kinds of places.”

To be a 'real person' is to be a 'genuine fake.' The word person means mask, derived from Greece when actors would wear masks called a persona.

So this life is a drama and you are its actor.

You deliberately chose this life to play the role of this person. But you are not the person you believe yourself to be, for it is just a mask to who you really are. 

But you don't want to know this because you want to play the role in the drama of life you have chosen. 

So we put it out of our minds and we believe that this person or mask is who we truly are, and we genuinely believe this to be true.

But this person we think we are is just a fake, a mask over our true selves. 

We are pretending in the game of life.

Of course it is also understandable that many players MAY actually be less concerned with seeing a Mature Operator out of an interest in how the process of maturation or growing up is going to be handled, and more out of an interest to see their Operator ACTING more maturely than they do.

[Vlada91]

I start reading and then I realize this is just to long nonsense 😁 maybe good idea but its just that and nothing more. You are more inspiring then me and im the 1 who having dream about this update. Im for full packet. New open world,idea playing just with operator in this quests and finally that I can look like mature like what I am in real life...

[evilChair]

10 hours ago, Vlada91 said:

You are more inspiring then me and im the 1 who having dream about this update.

Yeah I think some people on these forums are fit to work in game design on their own.

[DrakeWurrum]

10 hours ago, Vlada91 said:

finally that I can look like mature like what I am in real life...

To be fair, I think most of us are much less "mature" than we'd like to believe. 😛

[Vlada91]

3 hours ago, DrakeWurrum said:

To be fair, I think most of us are much less "mature" than we'd like to believe. 😛

Yes you are right but,I like to watch my character to look like me so that I can easily focus and imagining like im the 1 in that world. And then I just love more the game because of that... its like im main character in that cool world and not like just some random kid....

Edited October 6, 2019 by Vlada91

[DrakeWurrum]

53 minutes ago, Vlada91 said:

Yes you are right but,I like to watch my character to look like me so that I can easily focus and imagining like im the 1 in that world. And then I just love more the game because of that... its like im main character in that cool world and not like just some random kid....

I dunno, I feel like I made my kid look pretty cool. Like me, but if I were an immortal void demon.

[(PSN)xxav1xl6ivax]

7 hours ago, Vlada91 said:

Yes you are right but,I like to watch my character to look like me so that I can easily focus and imagining like im the 1 in that world. And then I just love more the game because of that... its like im main character in that cool world and not like just some random kid....

There is something vital in that, which links to not only similar sentiments held by many players, but to the course of development since the first massive reorganization into a cohesive system that followed The Second Dream Quest (in 2016), through to the next “Update” (Empyrean) which is aimed towards doing very much the same thing in relation to the existing “content” and most immediately pending “content” in development for release before then.

I came into first discovering Warframe pretty shortly AFTER that massive “Update” first launched in 2016. 

It was being launched as though for the first time, as it had taken on a means of asserting an “identity” of its own outside of the Steam Community of Gamers (for “gamers” on consoles or so-called “causal players” with “home entertainment systems”).

I might have never discovered it at all, were it not for that effort.

It effectively relaunched Warframe in a way that would usually accompany a First Launch of a “AAA” Title (or any game that had sufficient backing and resources to spend four or five or more years in planning and development to enter into the Console Market with a new Title).

In fact I actually mistook it for being that “kind of a game.”

The wild story of the development of Warframe is itself nearly Epic in its “sprawl,” (which is a term that I don’t find used very often in the lexicon of game review or “critique,” since it really references an “effect” or quality that literary works can exude). It is NEARLY, but not quite, any of that, because it has not yet been written. And that’s actually a “good thing.” Because the “identity” of the Game really began forming just four or so years ago.

It May be more a matter of “synchronicity” than intentionality, that the newly added in-game avatar (or player proxy) which was first introduced in anticipation of that “massive overhaul” Update -

- framed the “human” [like] appearance in a way that resembles an age range most frequently associated in “developmental psychology” with a phenomenon it refers to as an “identity crisis” (the mid-late teens, which is now just sort of tagged as “adolescence”).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolescence

It is ironic (at least) that the apparent age which is represented seems to be paradoxically at odds with so much of the “lore,” wherein, even now, the NEW INTRODUCTION to the game just goes, perhaps, to the furthest extents yet, in presenting “The Tenno,” as ... well ...

This isn’ the first time, within this thread, where what has been set forth should/could have eventually been resolved into a discussion which opened up a path for a redirect [or bridge] into another forum.

There has been a forum concurrently running, with a topic posted by “DE,” which is looking for ideas that might be helpful to a number of dilemmas being worked on toward improving the “new player experience,” (and reducing early player dropout). It is quite timely that “DE” has opened such a forum, in light of the scheduling framework set forth that has announced a “drop” of “The New War” quest on or before Christmas, and intentions to integrate the New Introduction [content] early in February.

The New Intro is the “spearhead” for the coming “MAJOR OVERHAUL” which is in development, and which the Empyrean Expansion Update is being positioned to put into place, effectively doing something that is not dissimilar to what the Specters of The Rail Update did in mid 2016 - Reorganizing and creating further cohesion in the ongoing process of “world building.”

The framework expansion provides for both better space for new development and for cohesion and integration of existing “content.”

The reorganization is particularly critical to creating an overall environment necessary for both the incorporation of new [contextual] “in-game” [set-up] “introduction” [material] “content” and providing for rendering what has been teased by the Duviri Paradox Cinematic for the first time, ever.

I would inset a link to the above mentioned forum [HERE], if only I could find it again.

(oops?)

I’ll replace that with a link in an edit, if/when I find it again.

For now,

https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/6/20684361/warframe-new-player-cinematic-dan-trachtenberg-movie

[only links to]

https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/16/18618579/warframe-free-mmo-shooter-nintendo-switch

In the meanwhile, it is rather amusing to note that a Movie Trailer [Teaser, really] FOR the [then] yet-to-be revealed New Introductory In-Game Cinematics, which are aimed toward Warframe launching into a New Phase of Life (so to speak), wound up finding its way onto YouTube via [Partner] Tactical Potato, after having been recorded on video while in a real movie theater.

As such, it serves as a good example of how a “Cinematic,” (such as was made for The Duviri Paradox), is not necessarily showing anything which will actually be presented that way “In-Game.”

The assumption that what the Cinematic “Teases” is showing something which is going to happen “in-game,” and that the game (or expansion) will be defined by what is shown in the Cinematic, has a way of getting the better of peoples imagination, biases, and all too often (when faced with a deficit in knowledge or experience), the best of their own “Real Enemy.”

 

Edited October 7, 2019 by (PS4)xxav1xl6ivax