RaiderRich2001

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The review system should replace the rating system in player's attempts to find things. I know it does for me - I've lost all faith in the rating system for making sure good content bubbles to the top.

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This. Every star rating should come with a review of at least a paragraph. If not, there should be some way to aggregate and average reviews so one reviewers opinion doesn't dominate.

And by the way... Metacritic rules.

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I don't have time to deal with all of this, but here:

If the site is not intended to be a list of cliches and things not to do, why is he using it for that purpose?

Because some of the things on it are cliches and are things not to do. These are things that tend to crop up in the "offenses" line. Or are you seriously prepared to argue that someone should toss the player the Idiot Ball? Is it even remotely possible to have a justifiable Wall Banger, or (as I suspect) does that make as much sense as a married bachelor?


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OK, as an instance, you have marked down people for a Xanatos Gambit (a.k.a "having a backup plan") or some variation thereof. This is a comic based MMO! Comic books practically invented the Xanatos Gambit because superior strategy and planning is the only way a scrawny weakling like Lex Luthor would have been able to put Superman in any kind of danger, because otherwise it's just Superman punching Lex Luthor, fight over, no plot, no story.
The Xanatos Gambit is a staple trope of the comic book genre. Without Xanatos Gambits, there's no comic books. Without comic books, there's no City of Heroes.

I've seen you mark people down for a Mary Sue. The page itself says there's no way to define the term. You can't mark an arc down for something that is so nebulous and confusing that nobody knows what the hell you're talking about. Hell, I could classify any character as a Mary Sue/Marty Stu.

Big Bad is a listed trope on TV Tropes. Marking down a mission for a Big Bad means that every mission containing an EB or AV will never get 5 stars. Having a boss behind it all is not only a basis for comic book tension, it's a basis for video game and RPG structure as well.

You know what else is a trope? Story Arcs. What are we creating? Story Arcs. So because every trope on TVTropes should be marked off, every story arc fails the Venture test.

You cannot mark down something simply because it appears on TV Tropes.

You like Star Wars? Guess what? the entire plot of the 6 movies taken together is a Xanatos Roulette. I guess that franchise deserves only one star. You like Star Trek? That franchise has named 25 tropes on that site (to say nothing of the others it includes), I guess that series deserves one star. Name a piece of fiction you like. It probably has several tropes

All who have contributed to this thread win the internets. ROFL

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If the odds are that stacked against you. Why even write an arc if Venture's going to inevitably mark it down and his can't-think-for-themselves fans will one star it down further?

Should all arcs be 5 stars, no. But why keep the cream from rising to the top because of a no-win scenario?

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Venture doesn't low-rate all arcs. Besides, there are several other reviewers here so a second opinion is not out of the question. Everyone has different tastes, likes, and dislikes. Just because Venture might 1 star an arc doesn't mean that people like Talen_Lee or myself are against high-marking it. It really is better to get more than one person to review something anyway, just for that very reason.

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It would help if an MA Metacritic existed, unfortunately we don't have anything like that.

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He mentioned that his lines come from TVtropes, and he assumes that you're intelligent enough to use Google.

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The problem is, he hasn't read the first page of the site, which says:

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Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite". In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.

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(emphasis mine)

If the site is not intended to be a list of cliches and things not to do, why is he using it for that purpose? There has to be thousands and thousands of tropes. At some point you will probably use one.

It's like playing Minesweeper on a 10x10 grid with 100 mines. You are going to hit a mine no matter what you do.

If the odds are that stacked against you. Why even write an arc if Venture's going to inevitably mark it down and his can't-think-for-themselves fans will one star it down further?

Should all arcs be 5 stars, no. But why keep the cream from rising to the top because of a no-win scenario?

Well, you never know, I could be making a Firefly reference...

Trouble is, I'm probably the one person on this board who hasn't seen a damn episode. It's on the Bucket List, I swear!

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I don't care what the term is. It's just an excuse for Venture and his followers to grief the ratings.

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One person not liking your arc and giving it a low rating isn't griefing. It's one person not liking your arc and SHOCK! giving it a low rating because of it.

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Not every person on here has enough sycophant brownshirt followers to sink an arc either.

I don't care what the term is. It's just an excuse for Venture and his followers to grief the ratings.

How about the Place Charles de Gaulle in Paris. Home to the Arc De Triomphe

OK, I'm tired of being limited to Paragon City and Rogue Isles maps. No matter how much text description I put into it, it's still going to look like Paragon City or the Rogue Isles

Bottom line: We need more maps. And not just more Paragon or Rogue Isles maps. We need more maps that are instantly recognizable, more maps of historic places, or maps of places that have a unique architecture or geography that can be used for a lot of exotic settings.

Since there's a costume request thread, why not have a request thread for MA maps? Surely there's locations you want to do, but don't have a proper map for?

I can think of a few off the top of my head

* Times Square, NYC (ads, of course, could be replaced with more game-appropriate ones)
* Reliant Park in Houston (the design and style of the Astrodome and Reliant Stadium can easily make such a map double as the exterior of a space colony)
* The Pyramids of Giza - good for mystical-themed missions or pulp novel/adventure movie setting.
* The interior of Roman Colosseum, past or present. - The past one would be a great final showdown in between Romulus and Imperious, a present one would be a cool cave-like map.
* City of Westminster - Who wouldn't want to have a superhero brawl in the shadow of The Clock Tower?
* Normandy Beach in France - For D-Day missions or perhaps you're in Axis America world and you're fighting Zee Germans.
* Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah - This could either be used as the surface of a planet, or a western scene.
* Meteor Crater Arizona
* Tombstone Historic District, Arizona A shootout at the O.K. Corral with your nemesis?
* Gangnam-gu District (NCSoft HQ) in Seoul.

There, that's enough to get started. What do you want to see?

(Mind you, this is not a thread to critique other suggestions, this is for brainstorming and making suggestions. Nor is this for people who are not devs to shoot down suggestions of new MA maps. If people make enough suggestions, anything is possible.)

Look TV Tropes is not intended to be a list of cliches or things to avoid when writing. It says so on the front page.

Besides if you tell a story, you are inevitably going to use at least one trope listed on that site. If you inentionally tried to avoid everything on that page, you would have a blank MA file.

Furthermore, some cliches are universal

Well, so far we've been lucky with community relations people. So long as NCSoft doesn't hire Ivan "I'm not really sorry I'm using your forums to poach your subscribers" Sulic as a replacement, I think we'll continue to be lucky.

Best of luck Ex.

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Dang, you name your company after your flagship game

[/ QUOTE ]This is the MMO world we're talking about. Might not want to say the word "flagship" when raining praise

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We don't have any actual ex-Flagship people, so we don't have to worry. Certain other to-be-released superhero MMOs, however, aren't so lucky.

So does this mean another game is in the works?

I'm submitting my arc for the contest, but I'll put it here for you to try out also: (also bumping it so others know about this contest)

Arc: RJ The Road Dog: Year One
Arc ID: 7544
Search Keywords "Road Dog"

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Animal House

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U iz on dubble seekrit probahsun

Arc Name: RJ The Road Dog: Year One
Author: RaiderRich2001
Publish Number: 7544
Description: A gang war has broken out in Little Tokyo between the Tsoo and the Yakuza over an ancient artifact, and a hero emerges from the chaos.

Arc Name: RJ The Road Dog Year One
Arc ID: 16865*
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @RaiderRich2001/RaiderRich2001
Difficulty Level: Medium (but a lot of the missions are timed, I'm trying to make it more of a challenge so any suggestions would be helpful)
Synopsis: Origin Story of RJ the Road Dog told through the eyes of his mentor... which would be you.
Estimated Time to Play: not sure, but 3 of the 4 missions are timed.
Link to More Details or Feedback: linkage
You can also PM me or leave me a tell... or fill out the comment form

* - subject to change, a better way to search for the mission is to just search "Road Dog" because usually it's the only mission that pops up.

Gah... helluva way to find that out.

Anyway, I'll be without internet for the rest of the weekend... moving... but your thoughts will be with me

There's got to be some type of category for media types... hell, there's a long tradition of superheros working in the media that dates back to Superman.

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Justice League #24

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Oookay... Superman, Zatanna, and a GL (Jordan?) lying motionless on the floor... this bad guy is bad news (and could make for an interesting read)

*reposting Jeremie's entry from the dead thread*

Name: Light-Darkness
Motto: "Fighting for evil doesn't mean you can't work for darkness either."
Leader: Firey Kitten & Alexetron
Player Type: Casual & Hardcore gamers
Number of members: 41
Current member levels: 3-42
Normal time of Gameplay: Varies most of the time, peak time tends to be at 8:30 EST
Other information: We're a supergroup that tries to form a friendly community and we are helpful between each other. We prefer casual gamers but everyone is welcome to join! We currently have an active base that has teleportation pads, A workshop that has various utilities and we currently plan to improve the size of the base!

Wow... That's what came up on the Random button?

Is there an update to this guide?

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There's no mystery here. The man's an Artist, so when he was done with the zone, he squiggled his name in the corner...

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And it was a happy little villain zone