Geek_Boy

You are not this entire forum.

Though I will say that between I16 beta and the CO beta, you have a lot of people who probably just haven't been doing much CoX'ing here lately.

Batman: AA doesn't help any either.

I also think we're seeing things slow down a bit due to AE no longer being the new shiney. I haven't published any new arcs in months and did my first real edit in a month or more earlier this week. I imagine others are going through a similar dry spell.

Thanks for the great review! I really appreciate the detail you went into here and I'll be tinkering with this for the first time in months (useful reviews had kind of fallen off into either "I LOVE IT" or "bad xp" style one liners).

It looks like the main thing is that I need to more clearly explain my idea of how events unfold from Red Blur's point of view. First of all, he has no time for anything because the situation is dire, but mostly because he's a superspeeder of the highest degree and gets bored waiting for the second hand to move. I didn't want to just out and out state that, so I just tried to imply it in everything he said. I'll make it more obvious.

I didn't want to go too far into pseudoscience partially because I wanted to keep the story moving but also because until I15 I was at something like 99.8% full. I couldn't fit it in. Now that the sizes have been reduced so much, I suppose I should go in and add some of the planned info back in.

The story as I intended it to unfold was that he shows up and recognizes you, considering you his closest friend and ally. He already says, "You may not know who I am yet, but I consider you one of my greatest friends and allies," but I think a line or two about you being the one who makes all of this possible needs to be stated more clearly since I thought I had addressed it but you still felt like it wasn't stated clearly enough.

I also didn't go into pseudoscience too much because I didn't want to bore the reader when most folks just want to move on to punching things (me included). I'll add a little clearer explanation of the mechanics somehow in the 5.31% I have left (eek). The way I picture Red Blur's powers working are that to create these multiples, he retrieves himself from the past at a given moment. That duplicate will run beside him and then eventually return to his point of origin, only to be retrieved again to run through the whole thing a second time. Once he returns, he's retrieved again to do it all a third time, and so on, and so on. He's an old man because he lived hours or even days of his life between individual seconds over and over again. The older the "copy," the more it knows about what is happening, but eventually you catch up to the "real" version (who is the one who has completed this mission x number of times) and he is the one truly living in the moment who can still be surprised.

A clearer sequence of events would be that Red Blur finds out about the Council's plan, fails to stop them from happening, and after seeing the aftermath starts hopping through time to see how he can prevent it. By the time he finds you, he has already been hopping around for years trying to stop this bomb. He's an old man who has fought this mysterious villain alongside your hero (who he has spent far more time with than you have spent with him - so the relationship is a little one-sided) only to see him disappear at the last moment despite your best efforts. He knows that you're there and while you're doing this mission for the first time, he's running alongside you for the first, second, third, etc time. The only Red Blur that doesn't return to the second he left is the old man who follows Aeon into the timestream at the end of mission three.

It's the old man Red Blur that is your contact who follows this man that you can identify as Dr. Aeon (since Red Blur would have no idea who he was or where he'd come from without your help) back further into time alone. None of his younger selves have any knowledge of where he went after he zipped away that final time, but his fingerprints are all over the reality you return to. If you look closely, you'll even see that Aeon's description changes from one mission to the other.

His description reads: "An unethical scientific genius, Dr. Aeon is not a man to be trifled with. He has become a big player within Arachnos, crushing his enemies at every turn," in the third mission, which is a variant on the default text, which appears in the last mission (four):

"An unethical scientific genius, Dr. Aeon is not a man to be trifled with. Some think he may soon become a major player within Arachnos, assuming he survives the plans of his enemies."

So yeah, Red Blur has made it so that the madman who destroyed his version of the past never even grew up to be the man he would have been (time travel makes for odd sentence structures). Aeon is still a mad scientist, but he lacks the ruthlessness that made him capable of knowingly causing so much destruction. Your wrecking of his research both confirms and helps solidify this.

The easy explanation would be the alternate realities that are theoretically created every second of every day when you choose to walk left instead of right or you stay home sick instead of going to work. That's my personal favorite, so I guess I'll throw in a mixture of that and predestination (since Red Blur came to get your help at least partially because he had already come to get your help) in some clearer explanations.

Now, as far as the third missions goes, I know Red Blur is waaaay too powerful in there but I like him (them) that way. My goal in this arc and in that mission in particular was to create something you couldn't find anywhere in the "regular" content. I wanted something over the top and I think I've accomplished that. He's overpowered by design and I have played my own arc dozens of times for no other reason than because I never tire of how much fun I have in that mission. The rewards aren't so great and all, but it's a blast for me and while I want others to enjoy it too, my number one reason for not changing it is essentially that every so often I need to giggle like a school girl and that mission will do it for me every time. It tends to create a love/hate relationship for most people, but obviously based on my 4 star rating overall more people enjoy it than don't. Even if they didn't, I still wouldn't change it. I know all the reasons it's wrong, but I like to think that by turning that volume up to eleven I've made that wrong so very right.

I've also had people complain about the ambush of Aeon's being too difficult (though I have no understanding as to how they could be unless you haven't freed anyone yet), so that creates an alternate excuse for not changing that aspect of it.

I don't want you to take my attachment for mission 3 the wrong way, because I really appreciate everything you've got to say here. I've printed out your review and will do some editing with it at my side here in the next week or so. I might not change everything exactly as you've suggested, but I respect your opinion and acknowledge that if you see a problem, there must be something there I could have at the least explained more clearly.

I've only got 5.31% to work with, so I'll have to be creative as far as adding much of anything. So little space.

And thanks for the 20 tickets!

Not really, no, no, and they still are.

Quick! Answer this both before and after you play my arc.

My personal opinion is that it depends on the arc you're playing and the author's intent. If someone is supposed to be all-powerful but then shows up as an LT ally just so someone doesn't get their nose outta joint over the sanctity of their character, that's a bit silly. Not every story should have powerful allies and not every ally should be a pushover. Some should be, some shouldn't be.

IMO, "over" powered says it all. If you meant for this NPC to tear through everything and they do? Then it obviously isn't "over" powered. If it's supposed to be someone who is just there for a bit of assistance but it's AV class set to full agro running all over the map killing everything in sight? Then it is "over" powered.

At least that's my take on it. PW's and others (especially some of the others) may take a totally different vew on it.

Check my reg date. I've leveled up exactly two characters in the sewers ever. It wasn't really by choice so much as my team outvoting me.

I didn't and don't like the sewers.

How about I play my game the way I like and you play yours the way you like?

And that's why I keep posting about the subject whenever I can find the time.

For the record, we actively recruit people to play this game and when they join up into our global channel, we take care of them. For the people I play with, MA has been nothing but a positive experience since it's brought back old players and new ones alike. More players = good.

They can farm all they want or whatever, but they have a support structure from day one telling them what powers are good, bad, etc. They have a whole private forum full of user guides, builds, build advice, assistance in putting TF/SF's together, etc, etc. We talk them into trying the game and we take care of them when they stick around.

How many of these folks who are out to nuke the MA from orbit can claim this?

How about instead of talking about how much you hate these newbies you create a support structure for them?

Then again, I haven't played in a PuG in (literally) years. I only play with people I know (well, not exactly know but are at least in my channel). Why? Because I have found players just as bad as the ones being described every time I've joined one since I first started playing this game. Bad players are everywhere and always have been. In fact, I'd assume that if you only play on PuG's, you're probably even the kind of player that got me to drop them in the first place. I apologize if my sympathy is a tad limited.

but there must be character growth!!

Like I said, I'm totally going from memory and could swear on a stack of bibles that this is how I remember it. The links I found seemed to back it up depending on unit, class, etc. Not saying I can't be wrong, but I couldn't find anything in the few minutes of research I did that said I was definitely right or wrong about it.

I thought it was common knowledge, but then again my brothers enlisted in the mid-80's so I've been aware of this for decades.

A quick google search to be sure my memory is correct links the blue uniform's origins going as far back as 1779. They apparently used different color coats for different functions until recently, but I know my brothers have old blue uniforms in their closets collecting dust (they've both been out for a long, long time).

It's funny the things you take for granted.

Then you aren't looking for them.

Eh, I'm just having fun at this point. Stop taking the internet so seriously.

Just copy and paste a few random articles from TV Tropes if that's what you want. Much easier than waiting for his queue to clear out.

Have you seen the poster in question? He's not very good at ever letting go of a bone once he's got his teeth in it.

Ideally it would work that way, of course.

YES!

This this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this a thousand times, THIS!

Nobody here has problems with negative criticism. We have a problem with people being (insert expletive of choice).

Here's a sample of how certain posters could have approached things:

Instead, the attitude was much more like "This arc was dumb and you're stupid for liking it." Oh, and we never got to the end (well, until a mod had to actually lock the thread), because they would not stop posting. Pages of personal insults thrown at the author and hyperbole about wanting to nuke the arc from orbit are not constructive, useful, or anything resembling polite.

GIVING FEEDBACK IS A GOOD THING.

Being a jerk is not.

I hope that makes things crystal clear.

Oh, I understand what a strawman is and I know what a "Godwin" is. I'm telling you that at this point when people pull out "strawman" they've already gotten to what used to be the Hitler part of the argument. As soon as I see that word, I view it the same way I would if they were telling me that my views are what killed the Jews in the Holocaust. I'm starting a movement here.

Strawman is the new Hitler, thus the new Godwin.

I thought I was exceedingly clear about that before, but there you go.

Pointing out that someone is being ridiculous in creating some strange absolute is not creating a "strawman." How someone gets "people should graciously accept an unsolicited review" from "some posters around here are jerks" is beyond me.

The problem isn't that people review stuff. The problem isn't that people review stuff badly. The problem is that a few (mostly one) of the folks around here zealously attempt to pound you into the ground with their opinions when nobody asked in the first place. I'm just taking it a step further and pointing out all the reasons their observations are flawed in the first place.

If you can give whatever review you want, I can give whatever review of that review I want. Happy?

It's also irrelevant from the other side of that, too. At least one poster said that they will never give a 5 star rating because they don't think anything is perfect.