Geek_Boy
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:I will admit I can be a tad blunt. Blame my art school instructors back in the day. Spending weeks at a time getting less than 4 hours of sleep a night only to turn in projects that had literally sometimes included your blood (knives are sharp) only to have your professor basically tell you you're a bad person who should be ashamed of themselves gives you a thick skin.Originally Posted by Dalghryn
There are people in this forum that use their opinion as a bludgeon, without regard for how that bludgeon affects the real person behind the creation.
With that kind of background, I tend to think people need to grow a bit thicker skin and that they're too coddled nowadays. Not everything you do is good and you don't always get points for effort out in the real world.
Oh, and as usual Venture is a terrible poster and I'm going to put my fingers in my ears and go "LAH LAH LAH" because even if Jesus, Ghandi, and John Lennon registered City of Heroes accounts and lambasted every word of one of his posts, proving him wrong factually, grammatically, and theologically, he wouldn't admit he was wrong. There's just no point in me wasting my fingers on it. -
Quote:Totally copping out again. What I'm saying has merit whether you agree with it, like it, or not. My name is Jesse Miller. I'm 31 years old and live in Ohio. I do community theater and am working on a graphic novel. There. I'm not anonymous and I still don't like this arc and still find it offensive.Originally Posted by Dalghryn
You know, there are some people that play this game... and participate in this forum, that forget it's a game.
You're right that "Simply because you have a level of intelligence that allows you to speak that opinion in some kind of lucid fashion, does not render differing opinions worthless." My opinion is not worthless because it differs from yours. Other people are allowed to have their opinions too, and if they want to defend them they're more than welcome to. I'm stating my opinion and supporting it. You're welcome to post yours and support it. It's called a conversation. Telling me I'm a bad person for not liking something is essentially trolling IMO.
I'm not sure I'm completely on the same page with Glazius re: the meaning of "Women in Refrigerators" since I understand it to be more about female characters existing for no other reason than to die horribly to motivate the "more important (usually male)" characters around them.
I also love Blackest Night and don't see it as using that trope at all. No new characters were killed this way and most of the characters have been dead for a good long while. Ah well. I'm a giant Green Lantern fan and that's not what this thread is about. -
Quote:That's a cop-out. Britney Spears is absolutely terrible at everything she does, but she has at least one Grammy. So since someone else thought it was good I'm supposed to suddenly forget that I disagree on many, many, many levels?Originally Posted by Dalghryn
. . . we should also recognize that those arcs that may not be our favorites have all received very positive feedback from some sectors.
I guess I should also suddenly think all the terrible comedies titled "_____ Movie" are suddenly good because they made money.
I think I'll take down all the quirky art pieces I have around my home because Anne Geddes is way more popular and there's no way I could get sick of looking at babies in funny outfits.
Also, Carlos Mencia is suddenly hilarious even though I've heard all the jokes he's telling from other comedians who actually wrote them and were funnier.
If we all lived by that motto Disco would never have died and I'd still be a white boy with a bat symbol shaved into my head (hey, it seemed awesome in 1989). -
Best TO Range Arc (1-15)
I'll abstain, not having played these.
Best DO Range Arc (15-25)
Abstain
Best SO Level Arc (25-40)
I've only played one of these, so voting seems unfair
Best Epic Level Arc (40-50)
First Place: One Million Eyes #71933 @minimalist
Second Place: Have a Blap, Blap, Blappy Day Kids! #2019 @Wrong Number
Best Short Arc (1-3 missions)
Abstain
Best Multi-Part Arc (2+ arcs)
Abstain (partially because I will probably never play a multi-arc story unless I know the author and owe them money or something).
Best Serious Arc
First - Blight #140423 @Witch Engine
Second - Kiss Hello Goodbye #156389 @Kitsune9tails
Best Comedy Arc
None of my favorite funny arcs are there . . . -
Quote:Since I find it offensive (I'm really hard to offend until it comes to sexist or anti-semitic imagery - haven't found anything anti-semitic, but I'm being totally open here), I'm kind of sickened to see that particular entry in there.Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
Exactly. This trope literally occurs in one of the story arcs.
Especially since even though the devs have said over and over that you can't have an EB in a mission without describing it in the mission accept text and said arc commits that sin, too.
Or at least it did when I tried to play it and gave up in frustration and disgust.
I haven't played all of the arcs there and have heard some good things about some of them, but this is showing me that my idea of what's good and the devs' are apparently worlds apart. This doesn't bode well for my continued hope that GR will suck me back in.
--edit
So as not to derail the thread, I'll just edit my post. I thought this anonymous feedback I received was hilarious:
"Women decide if it's sexist or not, not men, and especially not boys."
Obviously written by someone with a doctorate in philosophy and maybe even womens' studies. So since there are bimbos who get drunk and enter wet t-shirt contests who don't think they're being taken advantage of by a bunch of sexist pigs, the guys watching are suddenly absolved of any wrong-doing?
Good luck with that line of reasoning. -
Quote:You mean putting women in refrigerators?Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
#7. An adversary must murder a relative of a major character for shock value. (3 of 8)
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As a minor critique of your critiques, I'd suggest giving us the arc number at the very least. The global it's published under would be nice, too.
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Quote:This sounds an awful lot like a movie I saw a trailer for last night called "Legion."Originally Posted by GlaziusF
The Fight Of Angels (329420). Verdict - *. Review below in this thread.
The movie looks incredibly bad. Spectacularly bad. I mean really, really bad.
Just thought I'd share. -
Mark Waid played for a while.
If I knew Gail Simone's login I don't think I could help but pester her with terrible arcs full of the random misogyny that seems to be so prevalent in fan writing as a sort of "can you believe this?" kind of thing, so it's probably best that I don't. -
No wonder I wasn't leveling as fast as I normally do during a Double XP Weekend when I was playing around in there earlier. Oopsie.
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Didn't have time to go through all of these or replay arcs to remember which ones I was thinking of, so here's the ones I can do off the top of my head. I'll try and round out the rest before the deadline, but I wanted to be sure I got what I could.
Best TO Range Arc (1-15):
164235 Poi, Demonology, and Everything I Learned From Hellions @londerwost
Best Epic Level Arc (40-50):
71933 One Million Eyes @minimalist
Best Comedy Arc:
9882 LOST DOG @6x
Best Serious Arc:
140423 Blight @Witch_Engine
Best use of Mechanics:
245042 The Next War On Drugs @anachrodragon -
Quote:Absolutely! Especially when most feedback comes in the "This is awesome and I love it and you're a great human being for writing it," or, "This has time travel so it's automatically dumb." Detailed, constructive feedback is the bomb.Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
Awesome, I'm glad the feedback helped! I really think that feedback from players (whether reviewers or not) is one of the best ways to improve.
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Your massive post reminds me: Did I mention I edited Speeding Through Time based on your review? I think I did, but either way I have now.
Thanks for helping me identify some places I wasn't as clear as I should have been. I didn't tone down Red Blur in the slightest since that's my favorite part of the whole thing and I won't ruin my own fun so nyah
butI did change the way it works so that more of the objectives spawn as you complete others. You find the first one before all the others spawn and you find the bomb before you spawn Aeon. Though there's still the problem of being able to exit before his ambushes can show up.
Hmm. More tweaking may be needed, but you were a big help and I wanted to thank you again for that. -
Quote:Ahh, good. I should have some time to get my list together, then.Originally Posted by Bubbawheat
[*]This thread will be open for nominations until October 14th
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Quote:Someone with bad taste or a great sense of humor neg-repped me for this post "for recommending crap." Anonymous, of course. Made my day.Originally Posted by Geek_Boy
I think the arc in my sig fits the bill quite well. It has it's challenging moments but it was created to be fun. I can think of some things it isn't, but "fun" sums it up quite well.
I'd also suggest anything by @Witch Engine, @minimalist, and @muu. All excellent authors.
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I can't remember if I suggested the one in my sig or not, but I think it still might be a tad rough at the end since it pops you up to level 45+ due to who you have to fight at the end.
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I think the arc in my sig fits the bill quite well. It has it's challenging moments but it was created to be fun. I can think of some things it isn't, but "fun" sums it up quite well.
I'd also suggest anything by @Witch Engine, @minimalist, and @muu. All excellent authors. -
The sad part is the quality of the content he's playing just went down dramatically.
ZING!
But really, I hated Champions. Hopefully he returns soon and continues this great thread. -
I am not attached to it in the least, so have at it. Even if I wanted to get all "my concept!" about it, he'd still be a guy covered in rocks. Just not Devouring Earth looking ones.
Anything where I can still see my costume is a good thing. Possibly customizable on top of that? Even better. -
Quote:So will reducing all XP, though.Originally Posted by Jeuraud
If the Devs truly want to limit player advancement via the MA, they are going to have to reduce the xp of all critters in the MA. This badly thought out, heavily focused Player critter nurf, will not do the trick. All it will do is reduce the number of legitimate Player created critter arcs/missions.
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I wouldn't have asked for your opinion on my work if I didn't respect what you had to say. You articulate your thoughts well, go into a lot of detail, and (most importantly) you're fair. I have yet to see any odd hangups in your reviews that you can't seem to get around, which puts you heads and shoulders above some of the reviewers out there.
I really appreciated the info you gave me on my arc and I just wanted to add some more love to this thread. I know I haven't gotten around to doing any edits yet, but soon. Soon. -
Well, first of all "interesting" doesn't always mean "good."
I will freely admit that I have read a lot of reviews simply to rip them up one side and down the other for my own private entertainment. Did I find them interesting? Yes. Did I enjoy reading them? Only in the way I enjoy looking through stacks of 90's Marvel comics with foil covers.
I'm a big fan of Roger Ebert and have mentioned him many times in discussions about the quality of reviews around here. He believes that a review should judge a work based on how well it accomplishes the goals its creators set (obviously there are technical considerations too, but that's the big one). He's given a lot of movies he didn't personally enjoy good reviews because he knew they deserved them, no matter his personal biases. Basing a review on a narrow opinion of what is good or bad with your own personal checklist of no-no's is not helpful to the author or the potential consumer and really just serves to stroke the "reviewer's" ego.
Not everyone who is opinionated is cut out to write good reviews. Its the difference between working for a prestigious newspaper or magazine and having a crappy blog no one reads.
Unnecessarily harsh criticism does not make you serious or your opinion important. Its all right to be picky. Its all right to be honest. Its even all right to be blunt. Insulting the creator of the piece you're looking at, no matter the medium or genre, just makes you a jerk.
While not everyone enjoys everything, there are folks here who get that you can discuss what you did or didn't enjoy about something while tipping potential consumers off on whether they might enjoy it or not and giving the creator some tips on what they did well and what they might do better. There are folks that are completely incapable of doing any of those things. There are folks somewhere in between. We've got reviews that go all the way from one end of the spectrum to the other, but I'd rather see more Roger Ebert-style reviews than, say, Perez Hilton-style snarky egotistical drivel.
In the long run, well good reviews (as in: well balanced, well written, fair ones) are going to be more interesting than even the most entertainingly bad ones. I think if we can raise the level of quality, there might be more interest in this forum. I like the mix of in-character reviews and purely out of character ones here. I wouldn't put one over the other and just view them as "different."
Then again, you could have a whole group of creators that just don't care whether the chosen few here like their work or not. There are hundreds of thousands of arcs out there and maybe a thousand reviews or so (and I'm being really generous since I'm too lazy to look up the thread where the guy is actually compiling them) on this forum. Obviously a lot of people just don't care what the reviewers here think.
Heck, I love this forum and don't care what about half of them think.
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Quote:We have a winner!Originally Posted by Lazarus
Or you know, they could have simply implemented the reduced XP for groups without minions thing and seen how that went for a month rather than throwing unneeded variables into the problem.
And Craigen, I personally don't care where people decide to hang out and don't quite understand why so many people do. I have always avoided Atlas because a lot of people were hanging out there being annoying already. For me, the AE spam is no more or less annoying than whatever else I was seeing in Atlas to begin with (people ******** about the game, discussing politics, showing how "ironically" racist or sexist they are, etc). I don't want you to think I'm picking on you since I agreed 100% with the rest of what you had to say. I just don't see a problem with people congregating here or there for whatever reason. For me, it just puts them all in one place that I can easily avoid. -
Quote:I am in complete and total agreement with you. Very well spoken.Originally Posted by Amberyl
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Quote:You managed to respond to them far more eloquently than I tend to have the patience to.Originally Posted by james_joyce
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The number one thing that is important in any content in any video game is whether it is engaging to the player or not. Objectively, that is the purpose of a video game: to engage the player. If I'm bored, it doesn't matter if Shakespeare wrote the screenplay, Stephen Spielberg directed, and Scarlett Johannsen runs around naked the whole time: It still fails to accomplish the primary goal of any content in a game.
The movie analogy is easy to make, but they're unique mediums. Sure, movies, games, comics and books can all draw from each other, but they're all separate mediums. Movies, comics and the written word have the advantage of having a nebulous enough goal as to be able to do almost anything they want to and get away with it. Games don't, though. They can aspire to a lot of the same goals, but if your player walks away or stops interacting with the game, you're done.
If I'm playing a video game and I'm doing something that makes me not want to play anymore, then the designer of that content (or the game itself) has failed.
So, tout a narrow definition of a "good" story all you want, but this is a video game. If your arc doesn't make me want to keep playing this video game, then you've written a bad arc. Since goals are a piece of what we enjoy about this game (because accomplishing something is great whether its eating all the dots on your screen, hopping to the top of that blocky pyramid, or getting your dozenth level 50) then if content fails to be sufficiently rewarding, it will be unappealing to the majority of people who play video games. This is true in this game as well as any that has ever or likely will ever exist. Its one thing to say "Go do this boring task to get this reward" if that reward is something the player desires and the task is something they're willing to do for that reward. If it isn't, then they won't perform that task, no matter how easy it might be.
I've spent hours doing things like picking cotton and killing animals in the hopes of picking up that piece of leather I need in Age of Conan, but those boring, menial tasks lead to other, more interesting things. I'll be damned if I'll play a mission for no reward in this game.
Presuming that anything comes before "engaging" is just plain wrong. Since most folks who play any kind of video game are doing it to accomplish some goal within that game, removing rewards completely or even making them extremely out of whack with other content is going to drive a whole lot of people away from regularly using the MA for its stated purpose. I completely agree with removing exploits and cutting down on some of the broken mechanics, but this is draconian and extreme.