I can't think of a better topic title right now, sorry
So essentially I said that saying face-rubbing and the bathhouse scenes and such were "optional" is a pretty lame cop-out for not wanting to hear anyone's criticism of it (or even hearing that they dislike it) because that's how people were using that excuse, not to mention it's not really optional because it has an actual effect on the gameplay, atmosphere, and immersion (which you can argue but please don't be stupid and get into that; just respect that is can very legitimately be seen as not being optional and even if it WAS completely optional, it's STILL valid of being critiqued, like anything else; after all, playing the game at all is being optional)
now one of the responses was this
Thing is, optional is what it is. It's a fact. You don't have to increase your bonds with your units. It's like FE:A, you don't have to marry anyone. You don't have to grind. You don't have to play on Classic. You don't have to play on the harder difficulties. You don't have to 100% it.
See what I'm getting at.
Now this can be interpreted in two ways:
A) You're right, it's optional. But so are all of these other things. However, my point is that you're right and that just because you can technically avoid it, it doesn't mean it's not a legitimate part of the game that can be critiqued/had an opinion about.
Dude, it's optional. Just like all these other things that you don't have to do if you don't like them. You see what I'm getting it? Face-rubbing is also optional so clearly you should tip-toe around it and just deal with it without saying anything
Now, I want to make a point that the point of this discussion isn't really to say whether or not face-rubbing is bad. (First of all, most of us will probably say it's not the kind of feature we like having in our Fire Emblem game, no matter how insignificant people play it off as, so it's probably not going to be much of a discussion here; sorry to anyone who legitimately likes it, but I know my fellow forum members well enough to know they aren't going to get excited over this, lol.) The point is that a lot of people can't handle people's dislike of certain elements of FEif and the direction it is going and are going all-out in order to avoid the problem and dismiss other people's comments on it, often times with cop-out statements: in other words, there is a WHOLE lot of damage control, and there are some people condoning this which is making it worse due to the mob mentality (if person A respects person X and person X has Y response to topic Z, then person A is very likely to also have Y response to topic Z, due to topic X; and then person B sees person A following person X and is compelled to do the same without thinking for themselves, etc. etc. until you get a lot of persons with a lot of letters, lol).
Anyway, tell me what you think and how you would interpret this response to my original argument. Try to keep the discussion respectful and intelligent since this is a relatively serious topic (something I try to stay away from because I'm lazy and people are way too sensitive, but I don't think we'll have any problems here XD inb4Mercuriusmakesanegativecommentabouthowwedon'thaveenoughpeopleforanydramatostart).
