10-29-2012, 02:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-29-2012, 02:49 PM by StarSock64.)
Not to beat a dead horse, but people still don't seem to get what I'm trying to say so I'd like to try again...
The reason this is so important is that rival characters tend to be, y'know, of elevated importance. If it's someone who's trying to beat you, you're going to want the player to feel the drive to beat them or to not be outdone. Shoot, it could even be a lovable loser kind of thing. I'm not saying it has to be "cool" or "opposite," just characteristic in some way or another that makes it interesting enough to want to care. I'm all for a rival who's not opposite. That's really not the point.
I appreciate Zac's post because it tackled a relevant issue (telling us why he thinks I'm wrong) instead of saying that my C+C isn't...what...worth the effort? No C+C is really "necessary," and that's for Gorsal to decide and nobody else. If it's flat out wrong go ahead and say something, but if your argument sounds similar to "you don't need to put the time into something like that because it doesn't bother me, even though I have no reason to say it wouldn't help" then that's really not an argument worth having. Especially when half the board apparently was bothered by it.
Still, I disagree. You can throw in words like "genius" if you want but I think it's a really weird justification for something that has a much better option. It's perfectly okay to have some characters be "ordinary" or "unremarkable", but why would you want a rival character, of all things, to be like that? It's a rival. It's supposed to stand out. It can be second to the hero, yes, but this design is second to pretty much every character in the game. If the audience doesn't care about the rival, why even have one? The post itself practically admits that she's not very likable. Why would you ever want to justify your rival not being particularly likable? Isn't the likability of rivals what makes rivals so great in the first place? Do you really want your character's rival to just be someone who fades into the background? Like, they just come up every now and then and you don't even pay mind to them? It serves no purpose. Why settle for something dull when you could do something better?
------
And now after I finish writing this huge as butt post, gorsal posts that. I seriously don't know why you would let us argue for several pages about "this design is bad!" and then pull out "it's supposed to be bad!" out of nowhere. That's not what you told us before, you just said it was supposed to be a rival parody yes, but idk why or how that means it has to look less remarkable than any rival character I've ever seen in my life. That doesn't have anything to do with a parody of rival characters and honestly sounds to me like an excuse. Rivals aren't unremarkable, and parodies tend to y'know, exaggerate or make fun of traits they actually have, not make them up. If anything, I think a real rival parody when put red oni/blue oni TO THE MAX or do luigi-style inferiority complex TO THE MAX, but a generic NPC recolor design says neither to me (was there an argument about luigi how used to be a recolor? Nintendo changed his design for a reason, y'know.) She can look inferior to arisa, look a little bit ordinary, and have an inferiority complex she's trying to overcome without being so ridiculously ordinary and generic that I can't even care about her existence.
The parody of fancharacters thing came out of nowhere. If that's what we're going with all of a sudden yeah okay sure. But if I was going to do a parody of fancharacter rivals, I would probably make it even MORE ridiculous than I would a parody of a normal rival character because fancharacters tend to throw on all sorts of crazy unnecessary details or have really terrible haircuts/wacky color schemes/blah blah blah in horrible attempts to stand out (which sounds like something somebody who constantly wants to be better might do!). I fail to follow the reasoning under any of the possible lines of thought, frankly.
And to answer dragonboy's questions about why arisa and belle look too alike
None of the changes between them would require surgery. Give belle a paint job, a change of wardrobe, and a wig, and voila, she's arisa. Normal people can do this to themselves in real life without surgery. Even shadow has entirely different quills/different eyes that can't be swapped by any normal, natural methods (don't even say a haircut because that's not how their quills appear to work)...most rivals have a different body type, etc...her hairstyle is kind of -the- anime NPC hairstyle. Idk if she has different eyes, but if they are different, it's hard enough to tell in the sprites that it's a negligible difference.
The reason this is so important is that rival characters tend to be, y'know, of elevated importance. If it's someone who's trying to beat you, you're going to want the player to feel the drive to beat them or to not be outdone. Shoot, it could even be a lovable loser kind of thing. I'm not saying it has to be "cool" or "opposite," just characteristic in some way or another that makes it interesting enough to want to care. I'm all for a rival who's not opposite. That's really not the point.
I appreciate Zac's post because it tackled a relevant issue (telling us why he thinks I'm wrong) instead of saying that my C+C isn't...what...worth the effort? No C+C is really "necessary," and that's for Gorsal to decide and nobody else. If it's flat out wrong go ahead and say something, but if your argument sounds similar to "you don't need to put the time into something like that because it doesn't bother me, even though I have no reason to say it wouldn't help" then that's really not an argument worth having. Especially when half the board apparently was bothered by it.
Still, I disagree. You can throw in words like "genius" if you want but I think it's a really weird justification for something that has a much better option. It's perfectly okay to have some characters be "ordinary" or "unremarkable", but why would you want a rival character, of all things, to be like that? It's a rival. It's supposed to stand out. It can be second to the hero, yes, but this design is second to pretty much every character in the game. If the audience doesn't care about the rival, why even have one? The post itself practically admits that she's not very likable. Why would you ever want to justify your rival not being particularly likable? Isn't the likability of rivals what makes rivals so great in the first place? Do you really want your character's rival to just be someone who fades into the background? Like, they just come up every now and then and you don't even pay mind to them? It serves no purpose. Why settle for something dull when you could do something better?
------
And now after I finish writing this huge as butt post, gorsal posts that. I seriously don't know why you would let us argue for several pages about "this design is bad!" and then pull out "it's supposed to be bad!" out of nowhere. That's not what you told us before, you just said it was supposed to be a rival parody yes, but idk why or how that means it has to look less remarkable than any rival character I've ever seen in my life. That doesn't have anything to do with a parody of rival characters and honestly sounds to me like an excuse. Rivals aren't unremarkable, and parodies tend to y'know, exaggerate or make fun of traits they actually have, not make them up. If anything, I think a real rival parody when put red oni/blue oni TO THE MAX or do luigi-style inferiority complex TO THE MAX, but a generic NPC recolor design says neither to me (was there an argument about luigi how used to be a recolor? Nintendo changed his design for a reason, y'know.) She can look inferior to arisa, look a little bit ordinary, and have an inferiority complex she's trying to overcome without being so ridiculously ordinary and generic that I can't even care about her existence.
The parody of fancharacters thing came out of nowhere. If that's what we're going with all of a sudden yeah okay sure. But if I was going to do a parody of fancharacter rivals, I would probably make it even MORE ridiculous than I would a parody of a normal rival character because fancharacters tend to throw on all sorts of crazy unnecessary details or have really terrible haircuts/wacky color schemes/blah blah blah in horrible attempts to stand out (which sounds like something somebody who constantly wants to be better might do!). I fail to follow the reasoning under any of the possible lines of thought, frankly.
And to answer dragonboy's questions about why arisa and belle look too alike
None of the changes between them would require surgery. Give belle a paint job, a change of wardrobe, and a wig, and voila, she's arisa. Normal people can do this to themselves in real life without surgery. Even shadow has entirely different quills/different eyes that can't be swapped by any normal, natural methods (don't even say a haircut because that's not how their quills appear to work)...most rivals have a different body type, etc...her hairstyle is kind of -the- anime NPC hairstyle. Idk if she has different eyes, but if they are different, it's hard enough to tell in the sprites that it's a negligible difference.
![[Image: sxv5uJR.gif]](http://i.imgur.com/cqpCy.gif)