Talen Lee

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I give up. Starting a willpower tank or stone tomorrow. This guy is on the scrap heap when do Fire tanks........get to be tanks?

[/ QUOTE ]When they actually put enhancements in their sockets.

Test server is your friend. Or use a secondary server.

And also? Mind/NRG is a very reliable, small-medium team powerset. It is like unto a people mover or a small truck. You will hit hard, you will provide very regular damage output, and you will have a great toolbox of controls.

Fire/fire is all about doing the same thing again and again as regularly and as quickly as possible. That thing is killing everyone in the room.

What would you recommend for people who disagree with your postulates?

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I should mention though, I personally feel that with the recent changes, Power Boost for Doms should be changed to Power Build Up. Leave it at the 120s recharge it's at currently, give it a Damage/To Hit boost, and maybe lower the amount of +Duration it has. Icy and Energy won't be able to do as many "bursts" of damage that Elec can, but at least it will have an option for those that feel the +Duration is superfluous.

[/ QUOTE ]I just want to remind you, we do have an option. We skip powerboost. It'd be nice if it did something, but it doesn't, so... ah well, eh. It's not a big deal.

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Yup, I know ^.^

I actually already posted in this very same thread that that is exactly what I did with my Mind/Icy Dom.

[/ QUOTE ]Durn kids, writing more than I read.

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I should mention though, I personally feel that with the recent changes, Power Boost for Doms should be changed to Power Build Up. Leave it at the 120s recharge it's at currently, give it a Damage/To Hit boost, and maybe lower the amount of +Duration it has. Icy and Energy won't be able to do as many "bursts" of damage that Elec can, but at least it will have an option for those that feel the +Duration is superfluous.

[/ QUOTE ]I just want to remind you, we do have an option. We skip powerboost. It'd be nice if it did something, but it doesn't, so... ah well, eh. It's not a big deal.

Wah.

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If any character is put into the position that they need to use rest in 30 seconds because of endurance, even with rest recharging that fast, I don't see using rest that often as fast-paced enjoyable play.

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For the pre-Stamina levels in question, rest is often needed after every spawn.

[/ QUOTE ]Uh. Huh? Often?

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If you try to take down a white lieutenant and minion standard solo combination, a tanker will surely need to rest if the lieutenant of that combo is a Tsoo Sorcerer. The same goes for a 3 minion spawn of CoT spectres. Leaving aside whether your hit points will carry you through such a fight, the end game of any such single spawn will consist of waiting for enough endurance to fire off an attack and hoping it hits; and you will need to rest when it is over.

[/ QUOTE ]You know, if you stopped turning all your inspirations into blues and turned one or two of them into yellows, you might not have this problem.

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What?! You dont like increasing the length of your holds, or increasing your other secondary effects?! Weird. I mean, I can understand liking Build Up or Aim more, I just dont get the "ugh" part.

I personally LOVE Power Boost. I'd rather be "slow and sure" on my control vs damage. Doms get plenty of damage without build up or aim, anyway, IMO. At least now they do.

Lewis

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I have a Mind/Icy Dom who has dropped Power Boost, and I honestly have not noticed a lack in my control durations.

[/ QUOTE ]My mind/nrg dominator has powerboost purely for Aid Self purposes, and even that's grotesquely unnecessary thanks to Personal Force Field.

Powerboost is one of those tools that seems totally unnecessary the more you put into making your dominators faster. Some people look at a short control duration and respond to it by trying to increase it, others look at a short control duration and see that as a finish line.

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I think you might overestimate the area of the stalker critical.

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I don't think he does. Not vs. "hard targets" and on a large team.

[/ QUOTE ]Sure, but that's funnily enough, not all the time. In fact, considering the teams I find myself on, that's barely 5% of the time. AVs, pylons, gms, sure. Great. Whoo hoo. They're good at that.

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Day Job badges: worst badges ever.

[/ QUOTE ]Weird thing is, I really love them. Some give great bonuses for lowbie alts. Some give good, work-towards-it kinda powers. And the titles themselves are generally fantastic.

Don't get me wrong, I imagine they really put a kink in the pipe if you're a pokemon-style gotta-badge-em-all style player.

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Devs Hate Scrappers

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Why -> ?

That's been true for awhile. Were it not true, we would be awaiting SS or EM or Ninjitsu in I16 instead of the utter fail that is ElA.

/threadjack

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Quiet, you. Some of us have been waiting ages to make DB/Elec Scrappers.

[/ QUOTE ]That too, I want an elec/elec scrapper.

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Other species also mate facing each other and don't have bewbs. Regardless, more research on the uniqueness of humanity needs to be done.

[/ QUOTE ]That's the thing. My first reaction was '... That can't be true, is it?'

Few hours on scienceblogs later...

I think you might overestimate the area of the stalker critical.

I just peed someone else's pants. Nice set.

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*The theory is that human breasts are supposed to resemble the curved shapes of the buttocks as a visual arousal trigger/cue since humans tend to mate face to face, unlike other mammals. No other mammals have an equivalent buildup of fatty tissue on the torso or mammary glands.

[/ QUOTE ]It's not really more than a hypothesis and not a theory, and one that is easy to disprove when you consider the natural shape of breasts look absolutely nothing like human buttocks at all. It takes fashion, and fashion with respect to preferred breast shape has been highly variable even between decades, not to mention over the span of thousands of years, and because of this would not have been a significant contributor to the passing on of mutations toward "front butt."

Indeed, that hypothesis is based on a very cultural bias that, through ethnocentrism, is believed to be shared by all humanity when that is not the case. The sexualization of breasts is not a universally human trait.

[/ QUOTE ]This post made me think, and look things up.

That's cool.

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Depends on your definition of "mutant" I guess. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this and assume they're only talking about the kind of mutation that gives you superpowers.

[/ QUOTE ]So no aphids in the CoXverse? D:

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Hero Version
Villain Version

Each person you speak to tells you a short story, unless you're the same origin as them then which they'll tell you a lot more. Overall when you look over all of the extended stories they all imply that every origin owes it's existence to magic.

What a crock.

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I basically took the whole thing as "none of these people know what they're talking about," after the mutant contact flat out invalidated some people's concepts with the whole "no mutants before they split the atom" garbage.

[/ QUOTE ]Invalidate concepts? How about invalidating the entire theory of evolution? Kinda a big deal, especially since said theory is how mutants as a concept arose in the first place.

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I don't want to argue with any of you heavy boys any more

[/ QUOTE ]'Heavy boys'? Are you serious?

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I wouldn't, if that's what you mean.

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah you would. It doesn't matter how gently the negativity is offered, you react to it very childishly. Except when it's you complaining about people doing things differently to you, of course.

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hang on, are you changing the subject or Are we still talking about Venture's delivery of negative criticism? If you can give me an example of Venture being nice i'll happily stand corrected.

Eco

[/ QUOTE ]I'm talking about you, as an individual poster, reacting to anyone who states their opinion firmly. If an opinion is negative, you natively rail against it or run from it. It's something I've noticed observing your posting habits - people who disagree with you are mean, people who agree with you are good. It left me, at first, wondering if there was a reason to bother trying to convince you of anything you did not already agree with, then I figured it just wasn't worth the bother.

I'm bringing it to your attention here, because if you've given me this impression, there might be a reason for it - that you might well be too inclined to think badly of people who disagree. Perhaps you just fear conflict, perhaps you're right and everyone in the world is a jerk. Maybe you're too sensitive. Either way, I don't think there's any hope of Venture modifying himself to suit your standards - ever.

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All told, looking the thread over, there are some folk here who seem upset that something they like doesn't bear up to critical analysis. That's okay. There are people who critically analysing something and finding what look like lots of legitimate problems.

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I'm just upset about the *quality* of the critical analysis.

[/ QUOTE ]Quite a fair criticism. Having not done the arc myself, I'm not offering any critique of the arc. I don't think the thread needs yet another opinion cluttering it up (though I've reacted to the criticism and the spoilers I've willingly read - specifically, by determining that the arc doesn't touch on anything I think I'd enjoy, so I don't run it).

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The arc does have legitimate problems, but none of the critics notice them because they're too busy harping on the things that offended them personally, which are entirely a matter of taste. The gist of Venture's arguments, for example, is "You touched my character! *Nobody* touches my character! Waaah!" and "Nemesis Plots are overdone and rarely done well, so nothing with a Nemesis Plot in it can possibly be good".

[/ QUOTE ]Venture's opinion is worth as much weight as you'll give it. While I do sigh heavily when someone says 'A reviewer gave me one star, but a dozen faceless, unnamed people gave me five, so it doesn't matter what the reviewer says,' it is a fair and reasonable reaction. It's showing what the author values, and it shows how the author reacts to the various forms of reaction they get. Most people would rather a dozen faceless praises than one hard critic.

As far as personal bugbears go, I try to control for them - I mean, I have so far actually stopped reviewing comedy arcs because I know I'm not going to enjoy them. I have so far, run a dozen or more arcs and simply chosen not to review them because I think my review will be meaningless. The result of dealing with some authors, I know. The problem remains, however, that regardless of the intent, Venture has cited criticisms.

Now, I think one of his criticisms is wholly unreasonable - the idea of his character being sacrosanct is not 'bad writing' it's 'writing he dislikes.' I myself also dislike it - I'm sick of authors trying to 'play with my perceptions' because I think the AE is at this point too undeveloped in content that actually is just well-executed punch-the-nazis style of fun. I think there are too many people trying to crawl into flying. Still - it's there, it's a criticism.

Just to provide an alternative perspective, I think the author citing dev writing as precedent is hogwash (the devs have many bad writers amongst their number, and they have done much writing that is bad), and I also think that the argument that the presence of farms and the like means that an arc that's spelled all its words right is not, somehow, just as fair a candidate for 1-starring as any other arc is also hogwash. I don't think either side is blameless, and I don't actually have a dog in this fight.

I mean, I agree with Venture's point that 'And then I woke up' or 'It was all a dream' conclusions to stories are very simplistic and often used to write a person out of a corner. But that's not to say they're bad. Douglas Adams did them all the time, but he did them with a flair and a style that meant it was surprisingly hard to notice at times and yet at the same time, enjoyable regardless.

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Look, if you don't like thinking about or studying your entertainment, that's okay. There are whole cavalcades of things for you. There's every film Michael Bay's ever made, the works of Jerry Bruckheimer, and so on. But there's nothing wrong with demanding intelligence from your entertainment.

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So if you gave Hearts on Fire five stars and Venture gave it one (and found in it a host of problems that he finds in every other Architect arc), does that mean you demand less intelligence from your entertainment than he does?

[/ QUOTE ]Different situation, and a meaningless comparison. I'm not saying that people who enjoyed this arc don't demand intelligence from their entertainment, I'm saying that there's nothing wrong with demanding intelligence from your entertainment at all. There are problems with the arc. Some people care about them, some don't, but it seems the people that don't think that those that do are doing something wrong, or even immoral.

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This arc, from what I've gathered,

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You could just play the damn arc so you know what you're talking about.

[/ QUOTE ]Why? I don't think I'd like it. There are all these reviews discussing it and talking about the type of story it is. Playing it so I can form my own opinion about something I'd probably dislike seems like just asking me to kick sand in an author's face. It certainly, certainly wouldn't do anything to have the arc improved. I've learned a lot about arc authors in my time and I will say there is almost no point giving advice for changing arcs in any but the most incremental of ways. There are some authors who will listen to more sweeping changes, or more conceptual or stylistic ones, but for the most part, there really isn't a point.

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Though I wish people would stop asking people who make it a duty to provide criticism to provide them with their criticism and then deny the criticism.

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The author never went out of their way to ask for criticism (except in the general way that putting an arc you made into public view invites criticism of it). Also, if the only criticism an author gets is "you should never write this sort of story", they are *well* within their rights to deny it.

[/ QUOTE ]It's not the only type they got - and at least according to this thread, Venture reviewed the arc before this thread came about, and the author complained that they got a one-star. The last time I spent time reading Venture's review threads, he wasn't doing anything but submissions. Forgive me for assuming that they'd submitted for Venture's opinion.

Either way, I see no real reason to be sympathetic for either side. I especially dislike the implication from the author that it's only the result of Venture's complaints that the rating for their arc went down. I had an arc that was 5-starred, and now as its rating numbers climb, its rating has dipped down to 4 stars. That's not the forum cartel manipulating things, that's not sheeple voting as Venture tells them to - that's just the natural reaction of the law of averages.

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I wouldn't, if that's what you mean.

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah you would. It doesn't matter how gently the negativity is offered, you react to it very childishly. Except when it's you complaining about people doing things differently to you, of course.

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I dont see many ATs asking for a buff to their inherent that regularly.

[/ QUOTE ]So?

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" I wish people would stop asking people who make it a duty to provide criticism to provide them with their criticism and then deny the criticism."

its not the message thats the problem, its the manner of its delivery.

Some call it author-coddling. I call it not behaving like a [censored].

Eco

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, but Venture could offer his critique in a three-part mime play performed entirely by adorable fluffy kittens and you'd still whine about it.

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I'm just curious, as right now, Criticals are easier to get on any one of my stalkers if even 2-3 of my team members are standing near me. Maybe they should raise the Crit chance on scrappers to a even 10-15% for everything.

[/ QUOTE ]*laughs, and not with you*

That works fine.

Thanks. I'll have to make up a good custom explanation for this, but should be fine.