Geek_Boy

Some of you don't seem to have actually read this thread.

You're getting down to the "hurl insults and throw hyperbole" round of the argument. Before you Godwin yourself, I'm just going to bluntly say that I'm not going to show my work because I don't care enough about this subject to read any of your reviews a second time. I haven't read all of them, but I've cruised through all of your threads.

Reading your reviews is usually a pretty quick process for me because it never takes long before I roll my eyes and start counting the TV Tropes quotes that rarely actually apply to what you're describing and don't carry any actual weight in the first place.

You, of all people, don't get to play the "the character growth is shown through NPC's" card when you constantly complain when anyone does anything that takes the focus off of your grand character for half a picosecond.

I'm really not going to respond to most of your arguments not because I'm incapable of proving you wrong, but because I just don't care to spend the time to do it. You're never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to admit that you might possibly have been mistaken so there's just no point in it. I've said my piece and I'll just leave it at that.

You were shown to be wrong about some of your accusations about Blight so many times that it just baffles me that you can't see that. "You didn't tell me this" was often followed by "It was right here [insert complete quote copied and pasted from a clue]" which you would then retort with a "nuh uh you lie I read it all and it wasn't there you're making that up." Trying to show you you're wrong is like arguing that the sky is blue with someone who is color blind.

This will be a bit quick and lazy since while I could comb through review threads to find specific examples, I didn't enjoy reading them the first time so I'm just not going to.

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One reason MMO's aren't literature and shouldn't really be looked at in exactly the same terms is because there can literally never be character growth, resolution, or any great meaning applied.

Given that an MMO adventure can (and likely does) have many more characters than the player, there is no reason for this to be any more true than it is of books, movies, or any other form of storytelling.

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Silver_Gale already pointed out where you're stepping on your own toes there, but I'll go a step further and remind you that I said "exactly the same terms."

You are always writing for an unknown protagonist. Always. You are one of the biggest proponents of this idea and constantly remind people that they can never dare make an assumption about the character that is actually performing the actions within the story being told.

So that's my line in the sand. Either you're bending that rule a bit to add depth or you're sticking to it like a zealot and killing any possibility of character growth, etc. Either way, someone will say you're committing a sin and will probably be right.

Whether you care that they're right or not is a totally separate issue, of course.

Also, what is probably the most important factor in a story set within an MMO is whether the player had a good time doing it. Honestly, if something is extremely well put together but boring to take my character through, it doesn't matter a hill of beans if it avoided every little foible on TV Tropes or not.

This is true of dev content, too.

At it's core, the story is an excuse to put the player in a situation where they enjoy playing their character so that they don't log out and go do something else. This is the primary reason for a story to exist in an MMO and should really be the main consideration in any review of a MA or dev created arc.

"Fun" is extremely hard to objectively quantify, though. It's much easier to fall back on old habits and cherry-pick ideas from reviews of other mediums, but that doesn't make it right.

Other aspects are important too, of course. God knows I'm never going to be able to get through some Naruto fanfic arc or anything, but dismissing something because it "breaks" a "rule" with no thought for whether it's fun to play, whether that "rule" made any sense in the first place, whether the breaking of that rule is what makes the story unique or interesting, etc is a tad myopic.

I think Mod 08 said it best (regarding the Blight thread):

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The extremity which many presented their opinions in this thread was entirely inappropriate. Let me state that when reviewing arcs, I am fairly tolerant of criticism. A number of comments in this thread went well beyond criticism with the intent to offer the author materiel on which to help improve their story and became lectures on storytelling technique that were not called for or necessarily correct. Personal attacks against those who voiced such criticism were also incredibly inappropriate.

Please remember that those who offer their creative attempts are doing so without particular benefit and are making themselves vulnerable by doing so. A few kind words about what did work in the story goes a long way towards making any criticism palatable. If you can't find what someone is doing right, you probably shouldn't be reviewing that story at all.

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I fell in the "Personal attacks against those who voiced such criticism were also incredibly inappropriate" crowd and apologize for that. Honestly, in my case it was just my personal frustration at the quality of reviews I've been seeing around here getting the better of me. I'd been trying to find some tactful way to say some of these things for a while and just kind of gave up in that thread.

I think the biggest thing we have to remember is that no one person's opinion on a lot of these things is to be regarded as fact. For instance, people throw out the term "Mary Sue" incorrectly all the time on the internet (not just here). Just because someone accuses you of a particular "sin" doesn't mean that it's true.

It also doesn't really mean anything even if they are "correct."

Will Eisner pointed something out in one of his books that really bugged me for a long time until I matured enough to get it. He pointed out that every single story about an adventure character like The Spirit or any random superhero is about someone chasing someone else.

Every.

Single.

One.

So, if you don't like stories about characters chasing each other, you shouldn't like any comic book published by anyone but a handful of indie publishers, right?

But one character chasing another can be as trippy as Grant Morrison's "Arkham Asylum (which really is just about Batman chasing down all these guys and locking them back up if you want to simplify it)" or as epic as "Crisis on Infinite Earths (which is all about finding and stopping that pesky old Anti-Monitor)".

My point here is that a story can carry some aspect that has been seen before (in this example it's the chase scene) and use it in a new and interesting way. Just because you maybe have time travel in your story doesn't mean that it's going to be just like Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. Just because you have a strong protagonist doesn't mean you've got a Mary Sue. Just because you have a plot twist that can maybe be predicted doesn't mean you're throwing any balls around (idiot or otherwise).

Cliche exists because it works. It isn't the pieces of a story that are important, it's the journey it takes you on. If I were to tell you that there was this movie about an author recovering from a car crash in the care of some crazy lady where the guy doesn't get out of bed for the vast majority of it's running time, you might think it sounds pretty boring. Then Kathy Bates walks in with the sledgehammer and BLAMMO! you're hooked.

Read most of Alan Moore's output to see more examples of this. I could go on and on, but the basic point of "just because you've seen it before doesn't mean you've seen it before" has been made as adequately as I'm capable of tonight.

I'll admit that writing for an MMO is an interesting exercise that is a bit unique, though. Writing for an unknown protagonist is enough of a stretch that I think there should be some room for a bit of leeway. Obviously some people don't agree, but I'm also coming from the background of a Jeff Smith wannabe instead of a Roger Ebert wannabe.

It's one thing to say "write a story with no flashbacks." It's another to say "write a story where you don't know who the protagonist is and can never make a single, solitary assumption about them. No, not even their gender, race, or species."

Now, some of you may say "that's why it's hard to do well." There's some validity to that, but I'm also pointing out that it is entirely ridiculous. One reason MMO's aren't literature and shouldn't really be looked at in exactly the same terms is because there can literally never be character growth, resolution, or any great meaning applied. Without those things, it seems pretty ludicrous to apply some of the critical thinking that's been bandied about (often poorly IMO) around here.

Maybe a whole new paradigm is needed, since we can't actually look at a lot of the the old benchmarks and there's a whole new factor (probably the most important one) that says "Was this fun to play or not?"

To sum up, I don't think a lot of the reviews we've been seeing are fair or an accurate reflection of the medium they were created in and for.

Also, some people around here take their own opinions waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously.

That's a lot of typing. Sorry.

No, no. You're doing it all wrong. You're supposed to give it a negative rating and tell Witch_Engine he's a bad person for having published it.

Recognizing that it accomplished it's goals despite it not being your cup of tea is entirely too rational, polite, and balanced a respone.

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I think we're well past the point at which the idea of the MA system being used for leveling needs to be discarded, but that's another argument.

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Something else you're wrong about . . .

AE made me think I was a true artist, so when someone said something mean about my work I had to kill myself from the shame.

To be blunt: You're fooling yourself if you think you don't do this.

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Venture: His reviews tend to look at an arc as a piece of literature. Story is first and foremost the important feature of his reviews. He looks for things like theme, structure, and character to be strong points in the arcs he likes. Also, he knows canon quite well, either that or does research with canon he's not familiar with, and has problems with things written too far off canon. He's not looking for a challenge, and humor is hit or miss: he either likes it or he doesn't. He is often viewed as a very harsh critic, and doesn't often offer up suggestions for improvements, he simply states the arc as it is. But he does know what he's talking about and he is one of the most popular reviewers in this forum with over 100 reviews to his name. However, he is currently not accepting new submissions until his current queue thins out.

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If I was going to list Venture's biggest sin as a reviewer, it's that he doesn't review anything based on it's technical merits or on whether the author achieved their intent, but on how he feels about it. This means that if your arc includes time travel, Nemesis, or in any way intimates that his character might feel a certain way about something, he's likely to absolutely hate it despite anything else it might have going for it.

To be fair, it's a common failing with amateur reviewers. If you look at Roger Ebert (one of the most respected movie reviewers out there), he has given tons of positive reviews to films he's absolutely hated. Why? Because the creators of the film achieved what they were going for. His personal feelings about the subject matter are (as much as is possible of course) thrown to the side since while he's not, say, a huge horror movie fan, someone else might be. If a slasher flick is the best slasher flick it can be, he'll tell you so. His personal feelings on the genre be damned, if it's a good xmovie, then it's a good x movie.

Venture is not alone in his complete inability to do this, but I think it's important to understand it when you're reading anything he has to say about an arc.

I know you've played the one in my sig, but I have a lowbie-ish villainous arc that I haven't edited one bit since bringing it from Test.

I'd love to have some fresh eyes look at it and tell me what they think since I'm sure it needs a lot of work.

Strike!
Arc ID: 18401
Help the Local 151 get the Scrapyarders better working conditions. These guys have been pushed down and repressed for long enough! Actually, maybe you won't. Bit it is fun to torture this over-optimistic moron.

Contains an EB and will auto you to 20 on the last 3 missions if you're not already there. Whenever I edit it I'm going to even out the level range to max at 30 for all of them if I can, but it varies between 29 and 40 (30 for the last two).

It assumes your character is a mean [censored], so if that conflicts with your precious little snowflake of a character's personality, I really don't care (that's not aimed at the wost-dragon's, of course).

Hope you have a blast at Comic Con!

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I have always thought these forums were absolutely terrible

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Not getting involved in any of the other stuff or this "discussion"... but man, you must be new to the internet.

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I'm picky about my internets and tend to gravitate towards websites that would ban about half of the people here before they racked up a dozen posts.

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you never let it go, Venture. You always have to have the last word, followed with 'and now im done with this nonsense', as though the other person involved is so much worthless scum.

I think an accurate vetting of my responses in various forum threads would show a substantial number of cases in which I simply walked away.

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Proving yourself wrong while patting yourself on the back at the same time!? AMAZING!!

An author is allowed to say "Hey, you've got this wrong," when someone says something factually incorrect about their work. What in the hell makes people think that someone is just supposed to roll over and take it when someone says something completely off-base about a piece?

I have always thought these forums were absolutely terrible, but Venture, Gale, Lazarus, and a few of you others have taken it to a whole new level.

You've gone from occasionally mild annoyances to "people I'm glad I don't ever have to deal with in real life." Good Lord do you all need to go outside.

Post deleted by Moderator 08

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If your character is even slightly studly, you can take down most EBs solo if you have a good supply of inspirations. Take a couple of purples before attacking and use others as necessary. Since the inspiration vendor is about 30 feet from the mission entry point in the AE building, it's really easy to leave an AE mission and get more inspirations if you run out.

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This is all very, very true. I have some of mine tagged as "challenge," but I do my best to be sure that if you're running on Heroic most anyone can complete the required objectives. Now, if you crank it to Invincible and treat everything as a Defeat All (which NONE of my missions are), then it's going to put you through your paces.

The Stories and Lore section would probably be a better home for this thread, but I'll throw my own arc in my sig at you too.

It has an optional Extreme AV in the second mission you can totally skip, a very easy but insane third mission, and an EB you find in the dev content in the final mission.

It recently fell to 4 stars again, so it's time for me to start pimping it again.

I'll also suggest anything by @jjac and @Mu. They're some of my favorite authros so far. I am also fond of @6x's very silly "LOST DOG," but I think the last patch may have invalidated it until he gets a chance to fix it (it has destructible objects).

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Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.

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Then someone was either transferring some money to an alt or they had one heck of a typo. You see that all the time.

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If I made it through a day being called nothing worse than a crybaby, I think I'd pinch myself.

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Er... wow. I make it through pretty much every day without being called names. Maybe you need to get a different set of friends/coworkers.

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I work customer service for the phone company. There's rarely a day when my mother isn't accused of all sorts of shenanigans.

edit - nice rename!

I think you've typed plenty of words to prove the "crybaby" assertion (especially in your post about not being one), but whatever.

If I made it through a day being called nothing worse than a crybaby, I think I'd pinch myself.

For some content, as a player of nearly 5 years, you could have stumped me a few months ago if you'd asked if Invincibility's aura still caused travel power suppression. I've written guides, I give build advice, I spend hours in character planners, but even I don't know all this stuff. Since more often than not I'm one of the folks the people I know come to for advice, you're looking at an awfully large percentage of players who couldn't answer these.

Completely agree that the resulting broadcat spam would be hilarious.





I wonder if the people who wanted to get around this would make things like those old wheels they used to use before DRM existed. The game would ask you a question and you'd spin it around to reveal the answer before you could play.

I kinda miss those.

Stop being a crybaby. You had a terrible idea and people told you so.

The questions crack me up because my wife has been playing for almost as long as I have and couldn't answer most of them. Every time she plays she asks me about when she can go buy SO's and such, so I guess she's not allowed to level either?

The problem is that if more people are playing enough to get purple drops, they're also making more money. More money entering the economy for high priced items when you're still only playing 3 hours a week means you're still never going to be able to afford purples.

Nor should you be able to with that kind of play schedule. They're not for the casual players, they're for the hardcore.

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So I should get less XP on my already-terrible-for-XP arc because I think it's a lot of fun to try it with different characters?

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Sure, since all your characters share missions and XP.
What? Since when does a mission that one of your characters does ever affect your others?

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Your idea and your reading comprehension leave a bit to be desired.

To spell it out as plainly as possible:

I use a single character to do all of my initial testing whenever I create or tweak an arc.

That character plays all of my arcs many times to test all the changes.

Since doing this in Test mode is completly retarded as you get no rewards for it, I do it in Live mode.

I made arcs that I enjoy.

Since I enjoy them, sometimes I just play them because I feel like it.

Speeding Through Time gives terrible XP, but is a lot of fun.

Playing Speeding Through Time with diminishing rewards would give even worse XP.

Does that make it clearer? Your reasoning is that the only people playing the same arc more than once on the same character are farmers (as if I care what they're doing anyway), and I'm proving to you that you're wrong. You'd be punishing people who test their own arcs, enjoy their own arcs, play through their own arcs with friends, play through their friends' arcs more than once, reviewers asked to repeat an arc to see if changes helped, etc, etc, etc.

tldr: It's a bad idea.