Eva Destruction
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Quote:It's ok to give a poor review to something if you play it for a reason other than to bash it, but it turns out to be bad. If you play something just to bash it, then you prove nothing.Originally Posted by Friggin_Taser
So Sam and Venture writing "snarky reviews" of Graves arc doesn't prove a point either? Or is it only okay to snarkily review something if it aligns with your self interest?
(And yes, I was one of the people who played a bunch of farms just to bash them, so don't even bother pointing that out. Nobody took those reviews seriously either.)
Yeah, it is actually better than something someone was paid to write. Is it perfect? Heck no. I felt the custom Malta were unnecessary and Venture generally doesn't pay as much attention to gameplay details as I would like in the arcs I play. But it's actually got a story that doesn't need to hide behind shiny gimmicks, doesn't require scores of walls of texts to tell, doesn't make any unfounded assumptions about the player character, and casts the player character as the protagonist rather than as a spectator. None of the newer arcs do all of these things. Some of them do none of these things.Quote:And snarky review nothing. I wasted an hour playing his arc in earnest. It was bad and he should feel bad. He is the one who said it was better than something someone was paid to write. He was the one who stuck his neck out. If I played the arc and it was actually *gasp* good, I would say so. But it so so isn't. -
Arcs that should be nuked from orbit:
Origin of Power. It's a lot of running around just to find out that your character concept is now secondary to what will eventually become the puddle of annoyance.
Roy Cooling's arc. For reasons that have already been stated multiple times.
Vincent Ross's arc. The puddle of annoyance rears its annoying head again. Also has you messing with things you really shouldn't be even thinking about messing with at level 20-30. It works out in the end (sort of. Temporarily. Unless you're trying for the Legacy Chain gladiator, in which case it works out swimmingly) but really, you're taking a huge risk on an embittered ex-Legacy Chain member's say-so.
Arcs that could stand a revamp, but only if the revamp actually keeps the story intact instead of "improving" on it:
Pretty much all the pre-i3 arcs are longer than they need to be.
Anything that has "speak to Arbiter Daos" in it, where speaking to Arbiter Daos is the reason your character does something because Arachnos says so, even if it's something you wouldn't do unless Arachnos said so, or it's something you could figure out for yourself.
Dr. Q's TF and Justin Augustine's TF. But considering the text on the explore badges there, I think they should just leave the Shadow Shard alone.
The ITF. If there was ever an opportunity to expand on and tie up the Path of the Dark storyline, that was it. But instead we get a bunch of nonsense with a bunch of Roman versions of modern-day characters that isn't relevant to anything but itself and what will eventually become the puddle of annoyance. The reason I don't include it in the "nuke from orbit" section is because the gameplay is fun. -
Quote:Actually, it was better than something someone was paid to write. For one thing, I actually *gasp* fought stuff instead of clicking past long-winded conversation after long-winded conversation. You know, fighting stuff. Like in a video game. Which this is. For another, it didn't assume anything about my character other than 1) I think Malta is bad, which is a safe assumption for anyone with superpowers and half a brain, and 2) I know stuff about the game world, Crimson, and Malta, which is a fairly safe assumption for a high-level character with half a brain.Originally Posted by Friggin_Taser
And snarky review nothing. I wasted an hour playing his arc in earnest. It was bad and he should feel bad. He is the one who said it was better than something someone was paid to write. He was the one who stuck his neck out. If I played the arc and it was actually *gasp* good, I would say so. But it so so isn't.
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Dr. Graves didn't get a chance to hurt my brain. This is because I did the hero-side arcs first, and after realizing that whoever wrote them thought that anything Flambeaux had to say might actually interest someone, I haven't bothered to read a single sentence of those endless conversations in any of the tutorial arcs. As far as I'm concerned, they all say "click here for badge."
That said, I agree with Sam and Venture and everybody else who actually thinks people should hold themselves and their work up to a standard, even if it's "just" a video game.
Friggin' Taser, writing snarky reviews "to prove a point" just makes you look like you're writing a snarky review to try to prove a point. It doesn't actually prove a point. Especially when the person whose work you're reviewing has a better handle on the relevant canon than you do. -
Quote:Yes, this, a thousand times this. What, do they think we're all going to make new characters with whatever new shiny they just put out, get those characters to level 30 and....what? Let them sit there so they never have to worry about mismatched APPs and Hasten hands? Why do they think people wanted an end game? For new lowbies?Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Personally, I'd have power customization for Pools and Epics before I had a singe new powerset, because it would make my existing characters a lot better looking.
If the core of this playerbase subscribed to the same "forget that old stuff, here's something new and look how shiny it is, let's chase it" mentality the devs do, we wouldn't still be playing a 7-year-old game. -
I like the majority of this set. I only looked at the female options, but I like pretty much all of them.
Except for one. Yes, this again. High heeled boots are not shaped like that. USE THE STILETTO HEEL SHAPE DEVS. It's the only one you have that is even remotely close to what actual high heels look like. The rest are fugly and distorted and have cankles. It's too bad, since I like the design of the boots otherwise, but with those feet I won't be wearing them. And no, I don't have some weird thing about feet, it's just that they look so glaringly wrong to me. -
The ratings system is meaningless and you should treat it as such. I'd avoid any mention of ratings at all and just treat it as a way to trade plays and feedback. I'm boycotting ratings.
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Quote:Because if they did that even fewer people would play arcs, to the point where there would be so few players the system might as well not exist. You don't want to accept that.Originally Posted by Venture
Fixing it is easy: eliminate rewards. People just don't want to accept that.
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For the last few weeks this game has done almost everything possible to make me not want to play.
First problem: I crash on loading redside. ALL THE TIME. It actually started about two months ago, when I would try to load a zone, the bar would get to half and I would crash to the log-in screen. Usually it happened with St. Martial or Grandville. I updated my graphics drivers and though it was fixed, but a few weeks ago there was a patch and now it's worse. I've just tried about five times to load up a Blaster parked in Port Oakes. It hasn't happened blueside....yet.
Second problem: Network lag. Started a few weeks ago. Comes and goes. Buff icons come and go, powers aren't animating, enemies are jumping around, and my netgraph is a spiky red mess.
Third problem: The launcher. I can play fine all day, exit the game normally, no crashing, and the next time I try to launch it tells me I need to repair files. The beta client is even worse, I need up update and repair and update and repair over and over again before I can get in. I've also been intermittently unable to connect to the updater. Today it is especially horrible.
Fourth problem: The forums. I often get a "server not found" message when trying to access them, and today they are loading like molasses.
It looks like the network lag isn't just me, and someone forgot to feed the hamsters. But I haven't seen much about the crashes on loading and the launcher issues. What could be causing them? -
Quote:Right, they want to make sure NCsoft doesn't sue themselves over stuff like "Crey," "Freakshow," or "Automatons."Originally Posted by Clave_Dark_5
And sometimes your lawyers can't help but twitch and advise you to bee "too careful" when it comes to possible lawsuits.
Please stop making excuses. The continued state of the filter is not just "they're being careful," it's not just playing it safe. The devs SCREWED UP. While that is frustrating, it does happen. What is inexcusable is the utter apathy they have demonstrated toward this issue after the initial passes.
By the way, you guys who have custom critters that are invalidated by the filter: you must change the critter file save name also. -
Quote:I would love the ability to leave publicly viewable comments. This would let me know what the reviewer's priorities are, and thus whether their opinion matters to me or not. It would also allow me to write "this arc is awesome, play it now" in-game where every user can see it instead of just recommending said arc over and over where only the forum-goers will see it.Originally Posted by Jagged
I would also like to be able to personally rate reviewers. This would mean all story reviews are public and you could potentially find reviewers with tastes that closely match your own.
Not all players are authors. People who exist just to 1-star most likely are not. Something like this would also discourage leaving low ratings on arcs that legitimately aren't very good, by whatever your definition of "not very good" is. Promoting indiscriminate 5-starring won't actually make for a useful rating system. Promoting accountability will.Quote:Some rating systems use a system or individual "credit", these typically allow you to give something a negative rating but it impacts your own. Hopefully discouraging needless pointless negative comments and completely preventing people that exist just to 1 star. -
Quote:Yep, and judging by recent content they're out of the coherent story business.Originally Posted by Crysys
^^ I think its fairly obvious from how the iTrials have been built, the whole incarnate system in general, the Marketplace and now Freedom business model that the Devs are now _IN_ the farming business.
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Quote:And how many times have you been on a team playing through an arc and at the end of it suddenly had the contact replaced by the hologram dude and did not get a rating screen? I can't remember exactly what causes that, but it's a bug that has been around for ages. I do believe the arc is still marked as "completed" though.Originally Posted by Tubbius
Having the ability to rate only on completion seems best. How many times have you had someone on your team play through your arc and forget/not get the chance to rate, but they were able to start it right back up and quit just to rate it favorably then? Yes, they've completed it, so they should be able to rate it whenever; otherwise, no dice.
Even if people in those cases were unable to rate the arc without completing it again though, it would still more than be offset by taking away the ability to drive-by 1-star.
Their silence indicates that they don't consider it one. "Here's a Dev's Choice and a few new maps, now shut up and go farm the new trial."Quote:Originally Posted by Jail_Bird
Here we go again. We have presented many good solutions in the past that are being repeated again here. None of them matter at all if the devs do not speak up and let us know if this is considered an issue or not. -
Quote:In Soviet Praetoria, Hamidon farms you? And maybe that's why Cole won't allow an AE building.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Hmm. Their Hamidon was so much more powerful and destructive than ours because theirs was the fully grown and mature Hamidon, while ours has been stunted into relative infancy.
You know, this implies that Primal Earth was actually saved by the fact that we farm everything. -
Quote:No, they are not. The biggest part is people 1-starring other people's arcs out of spite, or to push them off the front page, or because somebody said something mean to them on the forums and that's their virtual equivalent of TPing your house when they don't have a snappy comeback ready. Farmers don't play our arcs. Any farmer who starts an arc with "Knives of Artemis" in the description hoping for quick XP is an idiot.Originally Posted by seebs
Seriously, how many people are sending messages like "bad XP compared to other farms"? Not all that many, I'd guess, but I bet they're a BIG part of the rating hit real writing is taking due to the existence of farms.
All that really needs to happen to put a stop to the 1-star bombing is to disallow the rating of arcs you haven't completed. Ideally, all previous ratings from players who haven't completed the arc would be wiped. Remember when all the 0-star ratings were wiped? We suddenly got a rash of 4-star arcs jumping up to 5 stars. You would think the devs would have learned a lesson from that. But they didn't, they never will because there's a new shiny over there, and the rating system will remain completely useless. -
Quote:Primal Devouring Earth do too after level 45. They took Focused Accuracy.Originally Posted by Daemodand
Actually, they are 31% worse. They hit 31% more often than Primal Devouring Earth do if you are at 45% Defense.
Oh, his motivations are perfectly clear. I just don't care. No really, I don't, and they have utterly failed at making me care. Maybe if he'd been presented as such from the get-go, rather than being presented first as evil goatee Marcus Cole, then as a walking example of "power corrupts," then having bits and pieces of backstory tacked on piecemeal in an attempt to give him depth and a severely misguided attempt to make him "grey," then I'd care. But I don't. Just let him implode and take the rest of his god-mode Sue multidimensional counterparts with him.Quote:Originally Posted by Olantern
However, as this thread shows, it's little more than an opportunity for the Content Police to call the developers horrible writers, for reasons that still aren't too clear to me. Aside from one prominent exception, posters have repeatedly claimed they want "nuanced" characters with realistic motivations and that "black-and-white morality is dumb and childish," essentially a "City of Wild Cards" vibe. This is exactly what we've received with the Tyrant/Praetoria storyline. Tyrant, far from being evil for evil's sake, seems more like a thinly-veiled political allegory, and the writers have endeavored to give him some sort of motivation while still portraying him as an unmistakable villain.
I consider its entire premise, "it's evil goatee Paragon!" to be fun for an episode here and there, but far too flimsy to base a major storyline around. Especially for villains. "Their monsters are scarier than our monsters" doesn't make it much better, since we all know their big scary monster is somehow going to link back to that annoying puddle anyway. (Prove me wrong devs. Prove me wrong.)Quote:I understand why people dislike the Incarnate backstory, but I don't really get the hate for the Praetorian storyline, as expressed. Yes, I see flaws with it (I consider its entire premise, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!", to be short-sightedly intolerant at best and appallingly savage at worst), but I don't understand others' complaints about it.
I also don't like the lawful obedient vs. chaotic obedient morality of Praetoria. I also dislike how incredibly contrived a lot of the "moral choices" are. -
Quote:If Cole followed the game's definition of vigilante morality, Praetoria would be a smoking crater.Originally Posted by NightErrant
I personally think Tyrant is the epitome of the dark side Vigilante alignment.
"Only I can protect the world."
In theory he is heroic. His basic intentions are the safety of his people and the stability if his world. Very Blue intentions. At least from what we have seen.
In practice however, he falls pretty close to the Red alignments. He's like a Vigilante who has done a lot of the Vig -> Vill tips, but has always stopped before making the jump. -
I am Jack's complete and utter lack of surprise.
This is an awesome arc, and more than deserving of Dev's Choice. Gratz PW! -
Quote:True, but the two things the trials do have in common with those things you mentioned is that they are highly rewarding, and that they are highly repetitive.Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
I am indeed not commenting on Incarnate Trials, because, regardless of how I feel about them, the degree of reward associated with the trials is consistent with the degree of effort the developers have expended on the trials and the apparent value they assign to the trial experience. Assigning high reward to content that some people do not enjoy is a different kind of decision from assigning high reward to some content while expending effort and resources on improving the quality of other, less rewarding content.
Which just begs the question: did the devs base the Incarnate system on the philosophy of "well, if everybody loves farming so much, we'll just make them farm what we want them to farm! And we'll require such big teams so that the uber elite farmers can't exclude everyone else! Farming for everyone!" -
Quote:In that case, I see why you left the trials out of your post, since the development team wants us to farm them until our eyeballs bleed.Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
I am, however, troubled by the specific examples I gave, because to me they represent the strongest examples of incongruity between what the development team has stated they want the players to do and what the system created by the development team grants tangible rewards to players for doing.
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Quote:So?Originally Posted by TempestMaster
1) He grew up in poverty, and
2) The first place ravaged by Hamidon was the city of his birth
A sociopath. No really, I hate to agree with you-know-who about anything, but he is the villain of this piece, and any attempts to paint him as sympathetic or grey or not so bad after all have failed. The presence of a more powerful villain doesn't make him any less of a sociopath.Quote:Is he a tortured savior, or a sociopath on a dimensional scale? -
Quote:No, please, do go on. This thing needed a proofreading pass. Not nearly as badly as the last one, but it did need one.Originally Posted by FlyingCodeMonkey
The repeated use of "required" in the next-to-last paragraph is awkward, and "He was dead before he hit the wall 50 meters behind him" is a little overbearing with the pronouns.
/grammar off
Otherwise, not at all bad.
Not here to nit-pick. Also, my sentence fragments.
Also, Cole's dialogue sounded less like a tyrant punishing an insubordinate underling and more like a hissy fit. Sure, not every supervillain has to refer to himself in the third person IN CAPITAL LETTERS, but the man is 100 years old and having him say stuff like "are you a moron?" just makes it seem like the writer doesn't actually have a grasp on his character and just tried to make him talk "like a normal person" even though he isn't one.
Because the "we're trying to defend a world that hates and fears us because they're stupid enough to believe anything a villain with good publicity tells them and have the memory of a goldfish" thing has been done to death. Not that that means it won't work, just that it shouldn't work, for the sake of my head and my desk.Quote:Originally Posted by OminousVoice
It worked once already. No reason to think it won't work on a new audience in a different venue. Aside from PC's, and a select few NPC's, the general populace of Primal doesn't have a clue about the true nature of Cole and Praetoria. -
Quote:This only works if a relatively small percentage of players are doing it. In order to take money from other players you need a bunch of other players to give you money.Originally Posted by Nihilii
I'd throw "take money from other players" in there, as playing the market yields much better rewards than either tips or tickets.
Yep, farm AE for XP, farm more AE or farm tips for loot (which some ebil marketeer will "steal" from you to get more loot than you in less time with less farming), farm trials for Incarnate powers.Quote:I guess it is good that they added an untradeable currency for incarnates - which I would also throw in that list, by the way, because XP or loot is trivial to get whereas incarnates take hours, if not dozens of hours to grind no matter how good you are yourself, due to the high number of players required. -
You can use Mastermind pets as allies and such, and you can use the boss-class ones as "fight a boss" details although I believe they don't give XP....at least they didn't last time I checked many many moons ago. None of the "pet" class critters did. But that was a long time ago so it may have changed. Of course you can't use Lieutenant or Minion class pets as "boss" details because you can't use any Lieutenant or Minion class standard critters as "boss" details despite it being done in dev-created arcs (Old peeve. No, I'm not going to drop it.) Last I checked you still couldn't use pets in custom groups.
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Quote:Uh, yeah, farmers are already doing that. That's kind of the point of this thread.Originally Posted by Zortel
Considering people have had their stories one starred because they're 'poor farms', this is running counter to that. If people downvote story arcs for being 'poor farms', why not downvote farm arcs for being poor stories?