Defenestrator

I used to write DVD reviews for a web site, and the approach I always took was thus:

1) Put personal biases aside. I don't like romantic comedies, for example, so that doesn't mean I should bash a romantic comedy on the basis of it being a romantic comedy. (And some romantic comedies ARE ACTUALLY GOOD MOVIES.) I think one of the things I could do well (as Geek Boy points out with Ebert) is I can say, "This isn't my cup of tea, but it's well done and other people will probably really enjoy it." Likewise, I can take something I personally liked and say, "I really enjoyed this, but I don't think it's going to be for everyone."

2) I always tried to figure out what the creator intended and judge based on how well he or she succeeded in achieving those goals. Granted, I'm not a mind reader, so I don't always KNOW what was intended, but it does tend to be easier with MA arcs. You can tell a comedy arc early on from a straight ahead sci-fi story. (Then there's people like me who will sprinkle in a couple of odd bits of humor amongst a horror story.) If an arc is a comedy arc, I'm not going to bash it because it's not serious. Now, if a comedy arc really just isn't funny, then there's a problem.

3) When looking at reviews for arcs, I don't want someone to be overly critical, nor should they complain about problems with the game engine (i.e. some villain spawned in the wrong order, the one ambush that's supposed to come accidentally went nuts and spawned 30 minions). And I'm not going to 3-star a 5-star story because of one typo here and there (though I'll send a tell in the feedback with the typo and location so they can fix it). Nitpicking about small, tiny details is really petty.

What am I looking for for feedback?
--Was the story arc fun?
--Did the story progression make sense?
--Did any custom character designs work properly in the context of the story?
--Was there anything that was tremendously out of whack? (An unkillable Elite Boss, for example...yes, I've run into those in a few arcs).
--Would you recommend the arc to other people?

I actually thought about that, but I think the by the time the final mission is there, we know what's going on and it's time to stop the big bad. I definitely appreciate all of the comments and suggestions you've made, Zamuel, and I do give them all a lot of thought even if I don't fully use them. (For the record, Zamuel hit this arc hard and brought a good group through it. He found a couple of missed typos and one potential snag.)

The big clue is after mission 3, as there's a lot of stuff there in "Kara's story." Azuria reiterates some of it and builds on it a bit more before Mission 4. My biggest worry was whether or not to have a big clue (potentially missed by a player) or have Azuria with a big wall o' text before mission 4 (and I don't like the big wall o' text so much).

I mentioned in another thread that I've thought about putting a custom group around the final AV. I'll revisit the idea of putting a clue or something in the beginning of the mission. (Maybe a frightened CoT patrol? I planted the seeds in an earlier mission that the CoT might not be able to control what they were doing this time, and that maybe they've "gone too far," even for them.)

Zamuel just ran through "Husk" and found a couple of typos I'd missed. It's so easy to think you catch them all, but your eyes start to bleed after editing for a bit. Plus, if you write it, it's harder to see your own mistake.

He had another decent suggestion, too...one that I half implemented.

I'm also thinking about going back and adding a custom group around the AV at the end (they would be similar, smaller and much weaker versions of the AV). I have the memory space to do so, and I think it would make more sense for the story.

All in all, it's a better arc because of the feedback, and I like the results much better than my first arc. I'm just wondering how the changes in I16 are going to affect it.

ESPN makes this so difficult at times.

Anyone interested please PM me their e-mail. We'll be starting from scratch.

I'm going to tentatively schedule the draft for the evening of 9/8 -- start at 8pm so we can hopefully catch any West Coasters. If my other draft is occurring at that point it will be all good as that is also going to be done online.

I'm also going to start the league I suggested above and open it up to all COH players.

Weren't the Tunnel Snakes that group of poseurs in the Fallout 3 vault?

I haven't gotten it moving yet, and my apologies.

I'll get in to the site tonight and see what needs to be done. My problem is getting a draft scheduled because I have two drafts that I need to do live and I don't have set dates for them as of yet. (The commissioners be draggin' their heels.)

Instead of doing this league, would people be more interested in running a "Salary Cap" league. This would mean any number of people can enter (we won't be restricted to 12), and we won't need to set up a draft. Just want to see the reaction to this.

The way it works is you have X amount of salary dollars. You spend that money on whichever players you want (thus many people can have the same players). You then lock that player in on that salary and then score points for that week. The next week the salaries of free agents are changed dependent upon their performances and you can stay with your team (at their locked salaries) or purchase new players (or a combination thereof).

Thoughts?

I ran about 20 or 25 arcs this weekend, just trying to pick stuff at random.

Of those, most of those were blatant farms (all with the same map and attempts to pack as many lieutenants or bosses into a room as possible) and were flagged/reported as such. (Though, this doesn't seem to actually do anything about it.)

I think I ran ONE really good arc that I 5-starred (don't have the number here).

My point is, that unless people are checking these threads to find something cool to run, getting people to run an arc is nigh-impossible. (I think I need to visit those sorts of threads more frequently.)

Arc Name: Husk
Arc ID: 316340
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: Defenestrator
Difficulty Level: Moderate - hard. Bosses with custom power selection. Elite boss/AV with custom power selection
Synopsis: Azuria loses something, a woman harbors a dark secret, and the fate of the world is in your hands.
Estimated Time to Play: 1 hour

Thanks to Zamuel for being the guinea pig and finding one last spelling error. Dependent on feedback, I might tone down the AV/EB at the end. Fire armor can be a pain to deal with, but at least he doesn't have Rise of the Phoenix.

I spent the better part of the day yesterday putting together and finishing "Husk," MA arc #316340.

Dependent upon feedback, I might tone down the AV at end. He has fire armor, but at least he's set to not have Rise of the Phoenix.

Plot hook: Azuria loses something, a young woman harbors a dark secret, and the fate of the world is in your hands.

Good luck!

Let me take a look at the current set up and see who was in last year...they'll have first dibs on the 3rd annual.

After that I'll start taking names.

(Note: I many not be able to get to this tonight, but will certainly take care of it this week as I have to get my other leagues moving, too.)

I ported over a couple of my blasters from Justice and got a few levels in the high 30s on each of them.

I didn't have too much time to play yesterday, otherwise I could have gotten a bit farther.

But now that I got some playing time in, I realized how much I missed playing. Hopefully my real life lightens up a bit so I can log in a bit more.

Boomtown.

And it will never get fixed because the villains keep blowing up most of the forklifts and the gravity controllers take the rest.

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shouldn't the players themselves add content? A player inspired TF.

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Yeah, if only there was some sort of tool to create missions in this game...

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Now farmers can farm in silence... this is a good thing.

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Exactly. I've never had problems with people farming. I've had problems with broadcast spam and multiple tells from the same person asking for padders.

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I think it's all great -- how many years did they continue to tell everyone that power customization (colors) just wasn't feasible due to programming and code considerations, but they've found a way to overcome them (whatever they were), and give many vocal players what they were screaming for for years. Very nice.

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It's not that it wasn't feasible, it's that it was extraordinarily time-consuming. Consider that until NCSoft bought the IP out from Cryptic that they were down to 15 people actually working on the game, they just didn't have the resources to put in new content AND recode the database to allow this type of customization at the same time.

Now that they've been on a hiring spree, they have the resources. A few posts from Castle have indicated that they aren't done yet, and it has been insanely time-consuming to do this (as they predicted).

I'm glad the option is almost here though.

I really really really need to find time to play again now. Issue 16 looks AWESOME.

Weird story:

I created my Tanker with Energy Melee under the hopes of one day being able to dictate which color each punch would be and gave said Tanker a rainbow-hued costume. The name is Dr. Spectrum.

Each attack can now be a different color of the spectrum as originally intended.

I'm excited by this.