Russian_Babes

Ok it's up to you on how you review. I just though it might be helpful.

But look at it this way... it's like a "Where's Waldo" book. Waldo is in there but sometimes he's hard to see. It doesn't negate the fact that he is there. Some people see him easier than others. (Assuming there is a Waldo in the picture)

A theme is like that in a sense. I think we all remember school and being asked to find the theme of a book. You could get 10 different answers in a class. Sometimes there actually were more than one theme. Sometimes only on the second read did some people catch the theme. But the theme was always there.

You run a mission once and you might miss something. Or you could be tired when reviewing it and not as observant as normal. People are human and make mistakes. (under the assumption that there actually was a theme).

In my opinion, someone saying to you what they think the theme is before you play an arc is not necessarily bad. If you do see it there after all, then it always was there. If you still don't see it then the author might not have made it clear enough.

Anyways those are my thoughts on it.

Respectfully,

My concept of what a theme is as follows (pulled from a Literary site):

THEME

The main idea or underlying meaning of a literary work. A theme may be stated or implied. Theme differs from the subject or topic of a literary work in that it involves a statement or opinion about the topic. Not every literary work has a theme. Themes may be major or minor. A major theme is an idea the author returns to time and again. It becomes one of the most important ideas in the story. Minor themes are ideas that may appear from time to time.

It is important to recognize the difference between the theme of a literary work and the subject of a literary work. The subject is the topic on which an author has chosen to write. The theme, however, makes some statement about or expresses some opinion on that topic. For example, the subject of a story might be war while the theme might be the idea that war is useless.

Four ways in which an author can express themes are as follows:

1. Themes are expressed and emphasized by the way the author makes us feel. By sharing feelings of the main character you also share the ideas that go through his mind.

2. Themes are presented in thoughts and conversations. Authors put words in their character’s mouths only for good reasons. One of these is to develop a story’s themes. The things a person says are much on their mind. Look for thoughts that are repeated throughout the story.

3. Themes are suggested through the characters. The main character usually illustrates the most important theme of the story. A good way to get at this theme is to ask yourself the question, what does the main character learn in the course of the story?

4. The actions or events in the story are used to suggest theme. People naturally express ideas and feelings through their actions. One thing authors think about is what an action will "say". In other words, how will the action express an idea or theme?


I have a suggestion that might (or might not be) be helpful.

When someone submits their arc for review to Venture, put in what they think their themes are. That way Venture could have it in the back of his mind when he does the review. If he sees the theme he could mention you were successful. If he doesn't see it then he can (if he feels like going the extra step) offer a suggestion on how to get that theme across.

Respectfully,

First off... thanks again for the review and your follow up post!

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I'm not sure what difficulty level you played at because many of the things you are describing NEVER happened in over 50 test runs of the mission. (I've only tested at lvl's 1-4 difficulty).

I played the arc with Agent Cerulean on Justice, a level 36 (now 37) SoA specced as a Huntsman on CL2. His build on my web page is current, if you have Mids and want to see it.

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You know, I don't think I tested at lvl 2 difficulty. I can't remember. I know I tested at Levels 1,3,4.

BTW, I have looked at the COX page you have in your signature, it states he is lvl 31. Or are you talking about a different page?

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I thought warning people BEFORE they play a mission was the correct thing to do?

The problem is that the warning was necessary. It's basically advertising that the arc's difficulty is over the top. I've squishy-tested all of my arcs (well, "Why We Fight" hasn't been squishy-tested yet but despite what the nav bar says at times there's nothing bigger than a Boss in it) and in some cases I've run them with characters below the intended level range just to be sure. I ran "Blowback" (e.g.), a level 41+ Malta/Rikti arc, with a level 32 EB/Dark Corruptor successfully, without extreme set slotting, Shivans or any such advantages.

While I don't expect Architects to cater to the lowest common denominator in terms of mob strength (making arcs suitable for the near-mythical pure Empathy Defender, for instance, or eschewing all use of AV-level mobs because of Controllers and PToD issues), there is really no reason to turn it up to a point that the Architect feels non-melee builds need to be waved off.

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Fair enough.

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Well Mistress was wearing a full body dress (yes a sexy one), so I fail to see the problem here. Women have different sizes and shapes, she represent one of them. You seem to be misrepresenting what her "special gift" was (although you don't find out what that gift is until the end of the arc)... immortality.


If you put the character's sexuality out front that's what people are going to respond to. (On a related point, an open dominatrix calling me "darling" is not comforting. It is a cause for great concern.)

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LOL... so Doms scare you! I can see that.

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In case you missed it ... " I have observed you for a long time and I think you might be someone I can work with" , she was looking for someone she could trust and had a similar morality. She was recruiting for the Order ultimately.

I saw the line but that's not what it said to me. To me it just looked like she thought I'd make a good mercenary sub-contractor. A lot of your response to my review is coming from the fact that things that are obvious to you as the Architect are going to be interpreted in vastly different ways by the player, who does not have access to all the assumptions and axioms that you left unstated.

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Yes I can see different people interpreting it in different ways.

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As for typos... you didn't point any out and I had hoped I had caught all of them. I apologize for any that slipped through. I'll have to double check. Also are you thinking that some words are spelled incorrectly? I'm Canadian and we tend to use British spelling.

I somehow managed to lose my notes (which is why I didn't list them in the first place), but off the top of my head I'm pretty sure I saw more than a few cases of "your" being used for "you're".

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Ah... I'll have to look for that. thanks for making that clearer.

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KillerBunny is supposed to be tough, but I had lowered her SR to below ELUDE level so she shouldn't have been that hard to hit. Also her attack was on STANDARD. She is the only custom enemy you need to face in the arc. Every other enemy is stock COV.

Claws (particular on a custom mob) is a high-DPS melee set, and she was an EB, meaning she had inherent resistance to Immobilize, plus Quickness, giving her extra running speed and resistance to slows, and in a tight indoor map with no way to fly overhead and limited roon to kite. These factors make her a more difficult kill than you might think for builds that rely on keeping mobs at a distance.

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Yup... she is quite the handful. She's one mean bunny!

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Mistress determined that KillerBunny knew nothing of the Order and changed her memories so that she wouldn't remember who defeated her. Is that not a smart move for her to do rather than kill a superhero and have KillerBunny's SG out looking for her killers?

I didn't complain about that, but since you ask it's kind of a toss-up. If for any reason Bunny gets suspicious about the mindwipe there are potentially plenty of folks with superscience or magic that could undo it, or divine what really happened in some way. Getting ahead of myself, this is the kind of thing that could lead to the exploration of a theme, as the Order would have to deal with the consequences of their choices.


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Well my take on it was that the memories changed would basically include a memory of her getting overwhelmed by the 4 groups and left for dead. But I can see what you mean. I just envision that vampires are exceptionally good at protecting their secrets. They need to be in order to survive.

Great suggestion on the theme BTW! That's exactly what I was hoping someone would do... offer me suggestions.



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As for the werewolves, well depending on your toon's powers you could just "stealth" and just kill the werewolf leader and click on the box.

And get next to no reward for the mission. Rewards for arcs come entirely from fighting mobs, so making maps that are so difficult or tedious as to encourage people to avoid fighting and skip to the end is counterproductive.


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I didn't make it for stealth. I just wanted to point out that that was a tactic that could be used. I had already looked at your COX page and seen you used a SOA, I just wasn't sure if you picked a stealth power. I've have always fought my way through. And run away screaming with some toons! "The big bad wolf is after me!" LOL

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But until the Mission editor will allow us to group 4 captives into a single rescue objective (thus leaving only 4 rescues needed), I'm stuck at 16.

Well, you decide how many hostages there are to rescue. That's not the system's fault. If implementing the story results in a nightmare of tedium then the story has to be rewritten.


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I already have done so. since the only 2 people ... Dragonslayer & yourself to have given me any feedback have the same opinion. They are "twins" now, so there are only 8 rescues now.

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My testing (except for lvl 4 difficultly) NEVER had more than 3 people guarding a captive (1Lt, 2 minions at the worst). There were no bosses to fight in any group.

The most common spawn pattern on CL2 or CL4 is one LT and four Minions. Spawns with fewer mobs will be one level higher than the base for the map. As of i15 it is now possible for a CL2/CL4 spawn to have one Minion and one Boss, too. I don't know if this is a bug or an intended change in the rules (yes, I bugged it in beta). Because captive/escort details spawn in addition to regular map spawns it is easily possible for their guard mobs to overlap a map spawn (or even another detail). As a result between overlapping spawns and the size of the spawns I often had to deal with two or three spawns at once when freeing hostages. This meant sometimes having five or six debuffing zombie-summoning Shaman to deal with at once. It also meant that sometimes I had to peel away surrounding spawns so I wouldn't be dealing with four or five spawns at once.

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Ah... I was wondering what was happening. Now I know what you meant. I agree the summoning shamans could sometime cause problems. Since I reduced the number of rescues, I found my test run was much easier.

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Adamastor should have been relatively easy to kill with your ally's help. (personally I never needed the ally's help).

As I said, I did not release the ally until the end of the mission. The ally would have made things much, much worse.


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LOL... we did the same thing then. I only release Jacklyn at the end as well.

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Has the Mistress lied to the character at any point?

Technically the player has no way of knowing if she's lied at any point.

What part of her actions would lead you to believe that she might be lying (which she isn't)?

Villains are naturally suspicious. Furthermore, none of the people the Mistress (allegedly) displayed mercy towards had the kind of information on the Order the player is about to have.


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This is perhaps the pivotal moment for my other theme (I think the most obvious theme): "Trust is earned, not given". Because up to this point the character should realize that the Mistress hasn't told him any lies yet (that he knows of) he decides to trust her. Because the character trusted her and because of his actions and the fact she cares for the character, she entrusts the character with the secret of the "Order".

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Also no bosses spawned during my tests, no group was larger than 3 or 4, only the final Boss Gunslinger group had a sapper spawn. I didn't find it that hard.

The final Gunslinger spawn had the Big Bad and two LT Gunslingers, plus a few other mobs. I knew I'd never survive all of that (all three Gunslingers effectively ignored my defenses) so I concentrated on taking out the LTs before I got killed so I could get the Big Bad on the rematch.

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Ouch... bad luck for you on what spawned!



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he Arch-Magi are as the developers designed them, I'm sorry you find them so boring. But they are part of the cannon mobs in COV, so deal with them.

I'm aware they're standard mobs. As I said I used them myself. But "they're canon so deal with it" is not a valid answer. That's why I stopped using them and invented custom CoT Bosses instead. They're poor designs. Essentially they are lower-level mobs artificially scaled up to higher level by tacking on a 75% resistance to everything. The Arch-Mage of Death is particularly odious as he stacks -ToHit and -Damage on top of that, and then adds a powerful self-heal. None of them have attacks powerful enough to make them likely to win, it's just that you'll spend all day whittling them down. They're no fun to fight.

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They are very tough. The Arch-Mage of Death is by far the toughest I agree. The ally if you have her with you makes it much safer and faster.

I found they were more than powerful enough to kill my characters on occasion.

I guess fun is subjective. It's a tough fight. Some people will appreciate that, others won't.

Btw, I played your arc with the COT customs? Good job! But I personally found them too easy to kill.

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The ally spawns in the MIDDLE, not the back and you must pass her on the way so you should not be able to miss her.

If by "middle" you mean "the room before the last one" you're right. That's where she spawned. She was behind all four of the Arch-Magi and one room ahead of Baphomet, who spawned in the very last room. Unfortunately the system has pretty silly ideas about what "front", "middle" and "back" mean. If you want to ensure one detail can be found before another you need to choose your map and spawn regions carefully.

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I'm sorry your Mission instance produced such a weird placement!

I'm not sure why she spawned where you say she did. She has always spawned in the same place for me, which is around the midway point in a chokepoint (It would be impossible not to pass her).

Anyways, I have changed this and made her spawn at the beginning. So hopefully this will make the last mission much easier, since she will be with you in every Archmage battle.

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Your ally flys, so she should not "fall" into anything.

Mobs that can fly don't always do so when it would be useful. Furthermore, the ally's pet did not fly and would fall into pits or get stuck. One one occasion it fell into a part of a room I hadn't bothered to clear and agroed more mobs, so the ally suddenly reversed course and ran back to help it. Allies and their pets are basically morons that often behave in frustrating ways.


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True... so true... what the AI does sometimes is frustrating.

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You apparently didn't read the clue for the defeat of the Archmage Of Death.. it said you recovered the files from him.

If that's what it said then mea culpa but as others have already noted, the clue spam had already convinced me long before that point that the clues weren't worth close examination. It looked like another "you have just done that thing you did" clue.


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Yes it was there. But I have removed all the reminder type clues so that has been corrected.

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The contact was honest and straightforward with the character the entire arc. She was looking for someone who could kill when needed, show mercy when appropriate, could follow orders, and was trustworthy. Characteristics that your character shows to her during this week.

None of this was really impressed upon me at any point.


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Now that I15 id here and I have almost 29% extra space now! (doing the happy dance!), I can hopefully make a lot of stuff clearer now.

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...ilHasStandards

All throughout the arc the contact has been advising you not to kill innocents. The Order is devoted to peaceful coexistance between humans and vampires. All of these are moral choices. So I think your way off base on that statement.

Tropes are not themes. What you are describing is just a trait of the Order. It could lead to the exploration of a theme, but that's not what you did. I'm standing by this charge: if you meant for the arc to have a theme you failed to develop or convey it adequately.

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Well I'm sorry you missed the theme(s) , they are there. But I can obviously work to make them clearer.

Start of edit: You have commented twice (your review and this response post) on the part in Mission 4 where the character trusts the Mistress and takes the mission even though he knows everyone who reads the files has to die. Because he hasn't been lied to by the Mistress, he takes a leap of faith and does the mission. In return he is entrusted with the "Order's secret by the Mistress. She places all her faith in the character. At the end of mission 5 she stated "you have earned our trust" and she offers the gift of immortality. This I think is VERY clear. This is the theme "Trust is earned not given". There is a theme.

I'd like to make a suggestion, I don't know if it would be helpful or not, but I'll offer it.

Should authors when asking you to review their arcs point out what they think their themes are in their request to you?

That way it could be in the back of your mind and you might see... or not see that theme in the arc. Then you could provide a little constructive piece of advice.

I think it might be a good idea.

End of edit:


Thanks again for your time and thoughts and suggestions.

Respectfully,

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Russian_Babes, there's a limit to defending your arc. You've posted in this thread nearly as often as Venture has, it seems.

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Venture has posted about 90 times. Rightfully so.

I have posted now 15 times in this thread. I have posted a total of 23 times in 18 months.

I would have been happy with just 4 posts.

My first 2 posts were defending Venture's arc against MrCaptainMan's comments.

My 3rd post was in response to you... I just added the comment that Venture was working on his own arcs and reviewing arcs on test.

My 4th post was in response to Venture's review. I have not bothered him since. nor do I have any intention of doing so.

I have no axe to grind with Venture, I just think he missed some things.

My next 11 posts were in response to other peoples questions and comments. If they had not asked the questions or made the comments there would have been only 4 posts in this thread. Don't blame me for being polite and responding.


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Whiny. If you respond to this you're proving the point.

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That makes no sense at all. LOL



Anyways, I should not tell you this, but I'm going to let you know why this is important to me.

I won't be here much longer. Hopefully.

I will be dead.

I have many health issues.

Have you ever experienced a "charlie horse" aka muscle cramp, where your leg muscles contract so much they feel like steel and the agony is so much that tears start coming out of your eyes? That would best describe the pain level from the nerve damage I suffer down my spine, legs and feet. Every second of the day. Neverending.

I sleep, if you can call it that maybe 30 minutes - 1 hour a day.

I have had multiple heart attacks in the last few years.

My vision is starting to go and my hearing fades in and out.


But 18 months ago I found something that briefly takes me away from my reality... this game.

In this game I can become what I am not.. healthy and strong.

It takes my mind off of suicide.

Then came the Mission Architect... I can enjoy seeing what other people have created.

I read the forums and especially the review section with Venture and the others. I like playing arcs that to me sound interesting. It saves me the time I would be wasting going through all the crap farm missions.

Also the MA allowed me to try and create something I hope others could enjoy... after all it's the only thing that will survive me.

I want feedback. I want to improve my story. If I have made a mistake I will correct it. If I am told my theme/moral is not clear and someone actually offers a constructive idea on how to make it clearer that would be good.

I view my arc as a work in progress. Hopefully with I15 I can make it better.

If everyone who plays my arc hates it, then so be it. At least I made the effort to make it better.

If anyone actually plays my arc, be honest... I don't need or want a pity vote.

Actually, I think I'm going to unpublish the arc and work on it and then republish it.

In any event, this will be my last post here. I am sick and tired of being made out to be something I am not... some egomaniac who thinks his arc is great... I don't... that is why I am looking for ways to improve it.

Respectfully,

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Seriously, speaking as someone whose arc is approximately number 30 in the queue (and eagerly awaiting his review sometime before Christmas ), it's really frustrating to load up the forums, see that this thread has multiple new pages since I was last here, and instead of finding half a dozen new reviews, finding maybe one review followed by a two-page shitstorm of people debating their bad score.

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The speed of Venture's reviews has absolutely nothing to do with me commenting on my review. He reviews at his own pace. I patiently waited a long time for my review as well.



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Do you have a right to respond to criticism? Yes. If you think the review was unfair, then please explain why. But you made your point in the first response, there's no need for this epic back and forth, especially with someone who has openly admitted that he hasn't even played the arc!

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Again I responded to someone who wrote to me. It's called being polite. He had questions and I answered them. If you don't want to read the post then skip it.

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I can understand being upset, even offended by the score you got. Just take the debate somewhere else. Reading a dozen posts about why you didn't like the review just makes you seem like you're throwing a whiny tantrum.

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I have responded once to Venture. I said what I wanted to him in that post. Other people responded to me, and I responded to them. If no one else responds to me, then I obviously won't be saying any more about it will I?

If you feel I have somehow been whiny than you have totally misunderstood the situation. I have just been polite enough to answer people that talked to me.

Your lack of response will get the result you desire!


Respectfully,

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These point by point, walls of text explanations of what Venture didn't understand about your "awesome" arc bug me to no end. It was said that the best thing you could say in response is, "Thanks for the review," and that was it.


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If for some reason my organized responses "bug you", then I suggest you don't read them.

I don't think my arc is awesome... I think of it as a work in in progress. I've already said I think its a 3 or 4 star arc. I certainly don't think it's a 5 star arc.

I asked Venture for a review and have thanked him twice for that review. But I think he missed a few things and pointed them out. And I have also agreed with some of the things he has said.

I have no personal beef with Venture. In fact I have defended him on a few occasions. Some of you seem to be reading into my comments and jumping to conclusions.

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Still, it's up to Venture to speak out against them. This is his thread, and if the inane chatter doesn't bother him, then there's nothing I can say.

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Yes, he can reply when and if he wants to.

Respectfully,

I'm not ranting, I've just answered people that responded to something I wrote.

Respectfully,

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I've not played your arc, but in your story did you create any sort of conflict - that is played out, not just implied - about any of these proposed themes? A situation in which the subject of one of these themes is focused upon and challenged?


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Yes and No.

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"Trust is earned, not given" - Is there a scene where this trust is challenged; that is, where something casts the trust in doubt? To create a conflict, and dramatize this theme, there should probably be something that puts the trust in doubt, and then some event where the trust is justified. In that way we show that the trust is "earned." Running with a premise of "Okay, you do this for me and I'll trust you" isn't sufficiently dramatic. There needs to be an arc (up/down movement). So if you begin with a state of trust ("I'm giving you this mission because I trust you to an extent"), then the next phase must be one of failure and distrust ("I don't know if I can trust you, because of X.") This is then resolved with earned trust ("Okay, I see why things happened that way, and it turns out I really CAN trust you.")

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This is the most obvious theme I believe. Essentially your character is hired to do some jobs for the Mistress. She tells you at the start of Mission 1 she represents " well let's call it the Order for now" She does NOT trust the character completely. Throughout the arc she always tell the character the truth about what they will face. She exhibits concern for the character "get some rest" also she starts calling the character "darling" (a sign of affection). At the start of mission 4, she tells the character that they must raid a Malta base and "find and read all the stolen files and kill anyone who has seen the files", and even Venture commented on this... the character asks "Wait a sec... your killing anyone who sees the files, what happens to me?". The Mistress promises the character will NOT be harmed by her or anyone else. The character shows trust in the Mistress and takes a mission against one of the most deadly opponents in the world. At the end of mission 4, the Mistress says "I owe you the truth" and reveals all about the Order (their real name, purpose and the fact that they are all vampires). She also tells the character about her past. She places all her trust in the character, just like the character did when he did the mission. Also at the end of Mission 5, she says to the character "you have earned our trust" and offers the character the gift of immortality. Could it be any more obvious?

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"One must struggle to retain humanity" - Again, this must be dramatized. What is the challenge to one's humanity? How is this played out in the choices given? Where is the point where the outcome of the struggle to retain humanity comes into doubt? How is this struggle resolved?

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Well this is basically revealed by a speech by the Mistress when she tells you about vampires and the Order which is devoted to peaceful coexistant with humans. All who have joined the Order have done so because they want to "retain their humanity" They constantly struggle against "the beast within that screams for blood". The background of one of the vampires you meet is given in great detail (not the mistress) and it points out that she was overwhelmed with thirst when she was first turned and for months she killed her friends and the horror she felt at what she had done. She joined the Order to retain her humanity. I think it is very clear.

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"Even villains have standards" - You can probably see where I'm going with this. Is this standard demonstrated, and demonstrated in a way that provides dramatic punch? Or is it just a rule that is stated and followed?


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The Mistress many times asks the character not to hurt the innocents, she asks that you rescue many innocents, the Order's stated purpose is NOT to kill humans, even for feeding purposes (well bad guys are an exception!). You capture a superhero for the Mistress and she tortures the superhero into finding out what the superhero knew. She then modifies the memories of the superhero and lets her go (although their is the added reason that killing a superhero would lead to problems)... the Mistress likes to feel and cause pain, but she draws the line at unnecessary killing. Later on she states "we are damned, but we are NOT monsters". It's a constant theme that is continually told throughout the arc. It is demonstrated dramatically I guess through words and the actions of the Mistress and the character.

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"Love arises in the strangest of places" - I think to make this theme emerge, you'd first have to take some pains to create the impression that this "strangest of places" is hard and loveless. You can't just assume that the player sees it that way at the outset. It has to be acted out in some way - or several ways - to create a strong impression. It's only when you have the audience thinking one way about a thing that can you create an impact by giving a twist.

Also, it would be more dramatic if the love was revealed at the end as a motive for NPC actions that have already been witnessed.


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I think this is the most tenuous theme (but since in I15 I hopefully will have more space to expand upon it). Right from the beginning the Mistress states "I have watched you for a long time and I think you might be someone I can work with". Not romantic at first glance, but we'll get there! At the end of mission 1 she is starting to call the character "Darling". I think it's around Mission 3 she comments on how she might show the character "why the word PLEASURE is part of my name" (her name is Mistress of Pain or Pleasure). At the end of mission 5 she offers the character the greatest gift she has... immortality and comments on "how she has grown quite fond of" the character and hopes he will accept (she has a problem saying the words... "I love you" in my mind, but I had no space to expand upon this). Also if the character actually failed any mission (I'm not sure if they actually could the way its setup now), you see another side of the Mistress... were she "plays"... aka Disciplines the character (she should kill the character, but she doesn't want to). She continually finds a reason not to kill the character. Why this would be revealing, would be the contradiction in what she told the character in Mission 1. She told the character he could kill anyone in his way if he wanted to (not the innocents) because she doesn't tolerate incompetence (the Freaks had hired a superhero in disguise to be a hostess at a meeting). But she would ignore that for the character. And the arc Souvenir message has the character pondering the offer of the Mistress... immortality and would it be worth it. Also the character comments about life with the Mistress and how hot... In a very scary way she is! (I wanted to expand upon this as well but ran out of room)

Mission 2 as I originally intended (couldn't do to space limitations) was to expand upon the Mistresses past loves. The werewolf she sent you to kill was her former lover. In a fit of romantic rage (Mistress is a magic user) permanently turned the Werewolf Leader into a massive muscled totally hairless man! He would of been lamenting about how embarrassed he is. Also this would have allowed me to created a custom character for the werewolf leader (personally I think he's too easy to kill).

Basically, the Mistress longs for love, and sees in the character morals she can appreciate and well she just loves the character. All this happens during a very hectic violent week. Love arises in the strangest places after all.

Anyways, as I said this the the one that is the hardest to see. And I really wouldn't fault anyone for not getting that theme (as it currently stands).

Respectfully,

Edited because I forgot to add a line.

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See, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. It's Mission 5, far enough into the arc for the player to understand your style. If you haven't by that point convinced the player it's worth their time to read all the clues, then they're going to skim them, or maybe skip them entirely. Going by the description, you haven't convinced Venture it's worth reading the clues - in fact, it seems to be the opposite - you've convinced Venture it's not worth reading the clues. So he skipped it.

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There are I believe 11 other clues that do contain valid information, 4 of which happen in in Mission 4. So while I agree that 17 clues (I have removed already) were not important to the story (I have already explained why they were there). They way it was going to work in Mission 5 originally, was that each Arch-Magi was going to have one of the files (divide and conquer method of dechipering the encoded files). Simply put I had NO space left to type even 1 character. So I put the comment in the Arch-Magi of Death Clue that all the files were recovered from him (I have expanded that clue now and made it bigger). I can see him missing it if he made the assumption that my clues were useless. But he should not be making that assumption should he? Other clues were NOT useless. No clue I made would have taken more than 5 seconds to read.

In any event the clues (reminder type) have already been eliminated. So that mistake (although made with good intentions) has been corrected already.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm really not trying to beat you up here. Venture does say at the end of his review, "There's a good story here trying to get out" - I'm trying to help you get it out, by trying to change your perspective a little bit. The writer's effort doesn't matter to the player, only the player's experience matters. That's what they rate the arc on.


[/ QUOTE ]

Please feel free to beat me up... as long as it's constructive.

I have no SG friends or people to play my arc... I want feedback.

I'm glad he thinks there is a good story in there. And I do appreciate feedback. As you have seen I have already corrected most of the things Venture/Dragonslayer had issues with.

I asked Venture to look at my arc because he has a reputation for being harsh and I knew may things he might not like from my reading his reviews of other people. I expected my worst rating to come from him.

But I think he was a bit sloppy in his review (not reading clues during a review is sloppy) and got some facts wrong and missed possible themes/moral and he put the "just a bunch of stuff that happens" label on it. I took a lot of effort in making a story that was NOT that, so when he said that, I was understandably shocked.

To get a 2 star rating which to me means it is worse than a normal COV radio mission I find very insulting.

But I can understand some of the points Venture/Dragonslayer made and I immediately corrected them.

But in I15 I might get some space back from what I have heard and be able to make it patently obvious through expanded dialogue/briefings/etc what the themes are.

To me they are obvious, but then again I wrote it! LOL

[ QUOTE ]
By the way, one of the hardest things for me when the MA came out was to admit to myself that not everyone's going to like my stories. I like convoluted, thought-provoking plots, and a lot of people just like to fight through. As a result I decided to try to advertise effectively so the kinds of people that like the kinds of stories I write would identify them correctly and that those who don't would be able to skip over it without getting involved. But I also made an effort to make the convoluted plots optional; if you just liked to grind through, you'd get an interesting arc mechanics-wise, and things would mostly hang together without being too confusing. (I probably did not succeed at that as well as I'd like.)

Writing to a specific audience versus expanding your audience is a tricky balancing act, but it has to start with the player's perspective first and foremost.

[/ QUOTE ]

In the MA Summary (where you select arcs to play) I did point out it was a Story Focused arc, intended for solo play and not "for squishies". I've tested the arc with Brutes, scrappers, tankers, SOA's and Widows... all could complete the arc with varying degrees of difficulty. My tests on Blasters, Corrupters, Dominator, Controllers and Defenders did not go so well... way too many deaths and mez problems.

In short I tried my best to inform the player what they should expect.

Respectfully,

You added another paragraph just after I responded to you...

[ QUOTE ]
Also, don't expect players to stealth in order to make your mission fun to play. Stealth (and its various other cousins) are not part of many builds and those characters are going to have to fight. Some players like to fight. If it becomes a grind because of your design don't expect them to like it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't make the mission for stealth, I just pointed out stealth could make it easier (the character he used was a SOA, but I don't know if he took stealth). And most enemies could be avoided if he hugged the walls. All mobs were stationary groups in this mission. Personally I fight my way through. 1LT and 2 minions mobs (what I encountered) should not be that difficult.

I understand and do agree with you.

I thought I was doing the player a favour by putting little reminders of what happened in. Because of my own personal play experience (infrequent playing and being continually interupted while playing) I thought reminders would be helpful.

As I know now, not everyone wants them, so I did remove the 17 clues I consider to be just "reminders".

Respectfully,

[ QUOTE ]
I think that happens to every writer in every medium. It's certainly happened to me. But ask yourself this: did Venture miss the work you put in because of something about Venture, or because of something about the way the story is written?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well he missed the clue telling him he found the files in mission 5 (the clue is in the Archmage Of Death Clue), after telling me most of my clues were meaningless(which 17 of them were... I just summarized what happened in a line or two so that If a player took a break they could come back and look at the clues and remember what happened). He stated that you didn't have to find the files. So he didn't read the clue. And if you can't read a clue that is one or two lines long and would take 5 seconds at most to read, then I think the readers patience level is rather low. 17 clues * 5 seconds = 85 seconds. Wow... a lot of wasted time.

Not reading the clue would be Venture's fault. Doubly so since in the Mission Summary right at the beginning I ask that they PLEASE READ THE CLUES (and DIALOGUE was supposed to be in there , but that got cut off since I was at 100.00%)

Obviously, theme/moral is a more elusive concept to find. But I think it's in my arc. I certainly see it.

[ QUOTE ]
I get the feeling that you have a very large back-story behind this arc that is not tied to canon. In those kinds of situations, the first thing you have to do is make sure that the player is going to care about that back-story enough to invite examination. Given Venture's description of the contact and first mission, I think that didn't happen, and everything beyond that is necessarily going to suffer.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I don't know Venture personally, so I don't know for sure what his "tastes" are.

I have seen him comment about the new gender changing option coming soon and he doesn't seem to like that idea.

Maybe he has issues with what he would consider "deviant" behaviour? If so he would not like the Mistress... a dominatrix. All I tried to do was make interesting characters.

My humour might also not be to his taste. But I think the dialogue is appropriate for the wandering patrols. If he doesn't like it, then that's his right to not like it.

He might also not like the way the groups treat the hostesses. But again they are villains who are not particularly likable. So I think their behaviour in this arc is appropriate.

And it can be quite funny when one of the Nemesis Jaeger robots says "I'm lonely" and someone else in the patrol tells the robot to "ask one of the BunnyGirls out on a date!" Come on who wouldn't laugh at that! ( the patrols randomly spawn with human soldiers and robots so who says what is very random). Also lends a personal touch to the Nemesis... aren't their soldiers human and might actually be lonely? Might not the pretty hostess like to go out on a date with a man in uniform?

Another freak patrol asks "what lube do you use?" the other freak replies "Wd-40, keeps me limber"... harmless conversation to me, since they are metal monstrousities that need to oil their joints. It also ties into the conversation going on with one of the Hostesses and the freaks surrounding her. One of them asks for a "Lube job".

The Carnies wonder about why they are there at this meeting... "to meet some mysterious person".

The Council patrol comments on how the "Carnie women are hot" while the other patrol member says, "but those masks give me the creeps".

None of this dialogue I can see being very offensive.

Anyways, play the arc if you want and see for yourself.

It's only been voted on 4 times:

1st time: Unknown... 10 minutes after I published it... 1 star... interesting they could already know they hated it! LOL

2nd time: Dragonslayer's review... 3 stars (arc was then sitting at 2 stars)

3rd time: Venture... 2 stars (I assume arc would still be at 2 stars... another vote came in)

4th time: Unknown... But my arc is at 3 stars now , so I assume they gave me 5 stars

Respectfully,

I have taken the 2 reviews (Venture/Dragonslayer) I have had of this arc and adjusted mission 3 to hopefully cater to the concerns they had on this mission.

Made them twins... now there's only 8 rescues not 16.

Unnecessary clues: removed the clues (17) that didn't contribute to the story. Now if a clue pops up... read it!

Hopefully that lessens the tedium factor.

Added a recommendation in the Mission Summary part of MA that it's recommended for Lvl 3 Maximum difficulty .

I don't think any of the dialogue is an issue so I'm not changing that.

I think there is a theme/moral (a few actually) so I'm not changing anything in that regard.

I can't find any typos yet, but I'll play it again and maybe I'll catch something.

Respectfully,

Getting a 2 Star review doesn't bother me if the concerns are valid. Personally I think it's a 3 or 4 star arc. If a 3 star is to be considered an average COV mission, I think it at the very least qualifies as that.

But I knew going in that he would probably dislike it.

Why?

1. I read that he hated the Arch-magi... Strike 1
2. Long missions are hated... Mission 3 is long... Strike 2
3. Humour is subjective... Hit or Miss... Ball 1 or Strike?
4. Mission 5 tie into the cannon past of the Mu-Orenbegan War... Didn't know if he'd like that or not... Ball 2 or Strike
5. The only custom enemy I have (1 EB) is a pain to kill... then again all Custom EB's seem to be a pain to kill. But I did lower her defense and her attack is as weak as the MA will allow... Strike 3

I saw many things he might not like, and sure enough some of them he didn't like.

But I asked for the review and he gave his opinion.

I have a right to respond to his comments.

Basically I responded paragraph by paragraph to what he wrote. I just responded to what he wrote, and clarified some of the things he wrote about (I don't know if he liked/dislike many things).

If he found it tedious in Mission 2 fighting werewolves because his choice of toon couldn't immobilize them, he's entitled to his opinion. Maybe if he read the Mission Summary that appears when you select a mission in the MA he could have avoided that. It lists werewolves as one of the enemies. If you come into the mission unprepared that's the players fault (at least in this case).

In a couple of cases he got his facts wrong... I corrected them. Eg. Where and when certain enemies spawn, Ally "falling" when she flys, his suspicion of the contacts honesty, etc...

My main concern is his saying bosses are spawning and large groups. This didn't happen to me unless the difficulty was lvl 4. And even then it was manageable. He didn't say what difficulty he was playing at. My goal was lvl 3 Maximum difficulty for the story.

My concern would be if he played an arc at high difficulty and used those results as the basis for the review.

I had Dragonslayer (I think) review this before. He gave it 3 stars mainly because there was too much to do and big maps. He did like the story (which is what I want people to like). I did listen to his suggestions and changed 2 of the maps to smaller sizes. I do like feedback. And I am perfectly willing to listen and adapt if I believe it is a good suggestion.

I think Venture/dragonslayer are correct about Mission 3... 16 rescues are alot. But I wrote with my own bias in mind. I want it to be just 4 rescues, but we can't put 4 people into a rescue group yet. I am very patient and I personally like long missions. (Yes I know I am weird! LOL). I may change the 4 quads to Triplets or twins... thus lowering the rescues to 12 or 8. Hopefully this will make it less tedious.

The clues I can also reduce in number. I didn't think it was really an issue personally, but I can easily reduce them.

But the whole arc is about morality. You have villains (vampires) doing some heroic deeds and asking your villain character to do the same. But don't think they won't resort to violence and bloodshed if the need arises. That is what makes them villains as opposed to heroes. Most heroes won't kill. Those that do are generally in a grey area of morality. In my arc I portray a certain small group of Vampires who try their best NOT to hurt innocents and hurt only those that are evil. But make no mistake about these "good" vampires, if it came down to killing an innocent to survive (need blood desperately) or to protect their very existance (or secret)... they would kill! In that sense they are (in my mind) villainous.

You must also understand these vampires don't want people to know of their existence at all. Acting in an overt open way would be stupid for them. Why risk exposure? They setup proxies to interact with other groups normally (see mission 1). They are a hidden power operating in the shadows. They're "villainy" is subtle.

But the contact was looking to recruit a new member and she actually did the very unusual act of meeting the character directly, instead of through a proxy. The character was worth her notice.

If Venture disagrees and thinks that the contact telling you to kill anyone in your way if your character wants to(except the innocents), telling you that you MUST kill many individuals through the arc and the contact torturing the superhero aren't villainous... well... that's his right to think so.

Throughout the arc the character demonstrates the characteristics (morals) that the contact is ultimately looking for.

For these vampires the struggle to "retain their humanity and not give in to the beast within that screams for blood" is foremost on their mind. It's what separates them from other vampires... and evil people for that matter.

Anyways, I'm talking too much as usual, so let me finish this.

I see a moral/theme in this story, everything is tied together (I think quite well).

Possible themes/morals:

Trust is earned not given... Did the character earn the trust of the contact through the characters actions in the story and was in turn entrusted with the "Order's" secret - YES

That no matter what happens in life, one must retain his humanity... The vampires daily unending internal struggle to deal with what they are - YES

Even Villains have standards... Displayed by the contact's wish to not kill innocents - YES

Love arises in the strangest places... Well the contact seems to come like the character in a rather romantic way by the end of the arc (and yes she is bisexual.. in case you are playing a female character). - YES

That is why I don't agree with Venture on "just a bunch of stuff that happened".

When I spent so much of my limited time working on this arc (I am gone 16 hours a day with work/travel). It is disturbing to see all the work that has gone into the story being ignored and every one of the various themes being missed.

First of all thanks for the review!

I'm sorry you didn't like it.

Did the devs change something in AE overnight?... My arc was at 100.00% last night and is at 81.89% today? WTF?

Edit: LOL I get 2 different readings... at home (on same laptop) and at work (on laptop) both have different file sizes... bizzare.

I'd like to make a few comments though. Because I really think you missed quite a few things.

I'm not sure what difficulty level you played at because many of the things you are describing NEVER happened in over 50 test runs of the mission. (I've only tested at lvl's 1-4 difficulty).


[ QUOTE ]
This one comes with a "no squishies" warning in the browser entry. That's seldom a good sign.

[/ QUOTE ]

I thought warning people BEFORE they play a mission was the correct thing to do?

[ QUOTE ]
The Mistress of Pain or Pleasure, a lady with the Most Common Superpower, wants your help dealing with KillerBunny of SAFE (Superheroes Against the Forces of Evil). Bunny is harassing a business concern of "the Order" and Missy is willing to pay top dollar for you to stop her. Oh, and she may throw in a "special gift", If You Know What I Mean. The job takes place at a convention of sorts where representatives of various criminal factions were to meet with an Order representative (who now will not be showing up).

[/ QUOTE ]

Well Mistress was wearing a full body dress (yes a sexy one), so I fail to see the problem here. Women have different sizes and shapes, she represent one of them. You seem to be misrepresenting what her "special gift" was (although you don't find out what that gift is until the end of the arc)... immortality.

In case you missed it ... " I have observed you for a long time and I think you might be someone I can work with" , she was looking for someone she could trust and had a similar morality. She was recruiting for the Order ultimately.

[ QUOTE ]
[NPC] Lancer: I'm lonely!
[NPC] Lancer Surgeon: Well ask one of the hostesses out on a date. They're hot!

Yeah. The arc is filled with this, and single entendres, and a fair number of typos.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sorry you didn't like my humour in the patrols speeches. Well after all humour is subjective.

As for typos... you didn't point any out and I had hoped I had caught all of them. I apologize for any that slipped through. I'll have to double check. Also are you thinking that some words are spelled incorrectly? I'm Canadian and we tend to use British spelling.



[ QUOTE ]
You have to rescue several BunnyGirl hostesses to trigger the spawn of KillerBunny, a Claws/Super Reflexes Elite Boss that was a real pain to bring down. You deliver her to the Mistress for interrogation, If You...eh, I'd have to say that way too often in this arc.

[/ QUOTE ]

KillerBunny is supposed to be tough, but I had lowered her SR to below ELUDE level so she shouldn't have been that hard to hit. Also her attack was on STANDARD. She is the only custom enemy you need to face in the arc. Every other enemy is stock COV.

Why do you have a problem with Mistress interrogating KillerBunny? Is that not what villains do? Mistress just happens to get pleasure from hurting (not killing) others.



[ QUOTE ]
he next day, after the Mistress has determined KillerBunny knew nothing of the Order then magically erased her memory and released her, you are asked to head out to a cargo ship. An "old enemy" of the Order is intercepting an important shipment. They want you to intervene. On acceptance, you're told the ship is being attacked by werewolves and the Mistress wants the lead werewolf dead as revenge for their last encounter. You're also to retrieve the one important crate without looking inside. (There's a cute clue/message on thsi one.) You just have to gun down most of a ship map full of Werewolves, which is fairly tedious for a build that often relies on Wide Area Web Grenade to keep mobs at range.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mistress determined that KillerBunny knew nothing of the Order and changed her memories so that she wouldn't remember who defeated her. Is that not a smart move for her to do rather than kill a superhero and have KillerBunny's SG out looking for her killers?

As for the werewolves, well depending on your toon's powers you could just "stealth" and just kill the werewolf leader and click on the box. If you hugged the walls, you wouldn't need to fight 90% of them. There was NO need to kill anyone other than the leader's group. And even if you do decide to kill everything, there are not that many to kill. It's the smallest ship map! If your difficulty level spawned more than 3 in a group (1 LT, 2 minions), then you experienced something I never did. I would say that you made it more difficult by attacking everyone, which was not the mission objective.


[ QUOTE ]
Your next Herculean labor involves stopping a Banished Pantheon ritual. They are going to sacrifice four sets of identical quadruplets (that's sixteen hostages, for those keeping score at home) in a cemetery. You have to rescue them. Oh, and there's this Adamastor thing in the way, it has to go too. And you have to destroy the cauldron they're using for the ritual. Egads. The only good thing I can say about this is at least it's not the fogged-over graveyard map. I almost quit the arc at this point. Between overlapping spawns, the large guard parties on each...single...one...of...the...sixteen...hostage s...and the tendency of Banished Pantheon maps to spawn extra Bosses, I ended up with 771 bonus tickets for this mission. That should give you a hint as to how much I had to kill. You do get an ally (Jacklyn, a Claws/Regeneration Boss or Elite Boss, I forget now) but you'd have to be insane to try to drag an ally all over this mission so I saved her for last. The Mistress tells you to get some rest afterward since she expects to have a job for you tomorrow.


[/ QUOTE ]

LOL... Herculean labour? Well I can't fault you for saying that on this mission. This is the mission I know people will hate. But until the Mission editor will allow us to group 4 captives into a single rescue objective (thus leaving only 4 rescues needed), I'm stuck at 16. For me, I averaged about 20 minutes to complete this mission. My testing (except for lvl 4 difficultly) NEVER had more than 3 people guarding a captive (1Lt, 2 minions at the worst). There were no bosses to fight in any group. Adamastor should have been relatively easy to kill with your ally's help. (personally I never needed the ally's help). Also it is NOT a kill all, just Adamastor, 16 captives(yes alot) & a destroy 1 object.



[ QUOTE ]
Sure enough, Malta goons have broken into an Order base and raided the files. Most of the files were destroyed by booby traps but they did get away with four partial files. You're to retrieve them and kill anyone who has seen them like the raid leader. You're smart enough to ask what's going to happen to you after seeing the files...the Mistresses promises you're safe, no, really, cross her heart, etc. OK.... You have to hit four glowies (with clues that reveal "the Order" to be a vampire clan) and take out a Master Gunslinger...with a large guard party. Ouch. Unfortunately for the Order, the Malta leader sent a copy of the files to the Circle of Thorns.

[/ QUOTE ]

Has the Mistress lied to the character at any point? Has she not told the character exactly what they would be facing? Has she not demonstrated concern for the character? Has she not demonstrated mercy in each of the 3 previous missions... release BunnyGirls unharmed, set KillerBunny free & asked that you rescue the innocents about to be sacrificed? What part of her actions would lead you to believe that she might be lying (which she isn't)? Also this allows the character to demonstrate trust in the contact... something she is looking for.

Also no bosses spawned during my tests, no group was larger than 3 or 4, only the final Boss Gunslinger group had a sapper spawn. I didn't find it that hard.

[ QUOTE ]
The briefing for Act V has some reveals in it, basically fusing White Wolf and CoX canon. It seems the Order fought on the Mu side in the Mu-Oranbega war and as a result the Circle has it in for all vampires (meaning they're going to be very busy on Virtue). So, you have to go in to retrieve the files. The Mistress and Jackie have to contact the Order's leaders, but the Mistress is sending a "Lady Carmela" to help out. Your goals are to find her and kill the four Arch-Magi. Having used them myself in the first version of "Chains of Blood" I know exactly how tedious this is going to be. Just to extinguish any lingering hope that this won't be like kicking dead whales down the beach, Baphomet spawns when you wax the first Arch-Magi and he has to go too. I couldn't even dent the Arch-Magi (which all spawned at +1) so I had to pick up the ally (which I usually skip; also she's on the SAFE faction). She spawned in back, so I had to run all the way to the back to get her, then backtrack to take out the Arch-Magi, then find where Baphomet spawned which turned out to be even further in back resulting in running over the map three times, mostly dragging a mob that kept getting stuck on the geometry or falling into pits. I finally downed Baphomet and ended the mission. Despite the mission briefing and title saying you have to recover the files you never actually do. The exit pop-up says " Ok this week sucked! Who didn't you fight this week? Council, Carnies, Freaks, Nemesis, Werewolves, Pantheon, Malta, the Circle, Demons, Spectres, a hot Bunny and even a crazy pot! Sigh... You need a vacation!"...really not a good idea to lampshade your arc's tedium. In the debriefing the Mistress offers to make you a vampire. Um, no.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Arch-Magi are as the developers designed them, I'm sorry you find them so boring. But they are part of the cannon mobs in COV, so deal with them. The ally spawns in the MIDDLE, not the back and you must pass her on the way so you should not be able to miss her. The 4 Arch-Magi spawn in the middle as well. Baphoment spawns at the back and he spawns AFTER you find your Ally. Your ally flys, so she should not "fall" into anything. You apparently didn't read the clue for the defeat of the Archmage Of Death.. it said you recovered the files from him.

The exit popup summaries who you fought this week and your exhaustion. I wanted to make each mission against different groups to keep it NON TEDIOUS... apparently you had the opposite reaction?

And the "Special Gift" she offers you at the end is immortality.

The contact was honest and straightforward with the character the entire arc. She was looking for someone who could kill when needed, show mercy when appropriate, could follow orders, and was trustworthy. Characteristics that your character shows to her during this week.

She offers your character the CHOICE of becoming immortal and teaming up with a like minded group of Vampires in the "Order". She is offering you the greatest gift she has.

Remember, the 3 Vampires you meet NEVER had a choice in what they became (they were involuntarily turned into vampires). But they did make a choice later on to join a group of vampires who did not kill humans for food and tried to retain their humanity. The are damned, but they do try to restrain themselves.




[ QUOTE ]
The arc has no theme. It is very tedious, particularly in acts III and V. The arc had, by the end, I think 26 clues, the vast majority of which just told you that you did something you just did -- i.e. you'd kill BOSSNAME and get a clue saying "You have killed BOSSNAME."...um, yeah? Finally (and I didn't really deduct for this but it's worth noting), there is really nothing villainous about this arc. Granted that's a complaint that can be leveled at a lot of the CoV content but since the mistake's already been made repeatedly it should be easier to avoid. The player spends this whole arc rescuing people or protecting what's described as a benevolent order of vampires. The arc should have its morality reconsidered or its action edited to match the villainous intent. Somewhere under here there's a decent story trying to get out, but it's going to take some effort to do that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well we differ on what we use clues for I guess. But not a big deal I think. I agree I could remove alot of the clues.

As for being villainous... that's open to interpretation. I consider someone telling you to show no mercy towards scum and kill them to be still villainous. Showing mercy to innocents can also be a characteristic of of villain's personality.

And as for no theme... well you apparently totally missed it!

From your Tvtropes:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...ilHasStandards

All throughout the arc the contact has been advising you not to kill innocents. The Order is devoted to peaceful coexistance between humans and vampires. All of these are moral choices. So I think your way off base on that statement.

And it's not a Bunch of stuff that happens. The arc's title is "A week in the life of a villain". These event unfold during a VERY hectic week. They are ALL intertwined because they all involve the Order and it's enemies. And ultimately there is the subplot of the Mistress recruiting the character. She sees over the course of the 5 missions the qualities in the character she is looking for.

Since there is a theme/moral and all the stories have a purpose, there is NO way you can say it is "just a bunch of stuff that happened"!

In your own words from this Thread:

[ QUOTE ]
Can you explain "a bunch of stuff that happens" a bit more?

"Just a bunch of stuff that happened" means the story has no theme or moral to it. It's nothing but a meaningless string of events. It's just about some guys doing some stuff you don't like so you clobber them to make them stop. The plot doesn't say anything or teach anything, making it suitable for use by any of the most vapid Saturday-morning cartoons.

[/ QUOTE ]

By your own definition this arc can't be defined as "just a bunch of stuff that happened"

I'm sorry but again your way off base.

But thanks again for your review and taking the time to play it.


Respectfully,

Note: Edited to correct spelling mistakes and clarify a few points

Probably the same reason Dr. Doom carries his Mauser Pistol:

"to dispose of weaker enemies whom he considers unworthy to kill with his armor's weaponry."

I see from a post Venture made, that he is busy on the test server this weekend tweeking his arcs for I15 and looking at other peoples arcs there as well.

My Villain arc is the one he is set to review next... I think he took a peek at it and started screaming "this is the worst arc ever" and ran away to hide! lol

Anyways, I'm the next one in the crosshairs!

[ QUOTE ]
Quote:
Well I was reading this post and had to comment on a couple of points MrCaptainMan makes:

Quote:
he ‘equipment to confiscate’ turns out to be those huge science probe things. Not sure how I’m going to take those away, tbh., they won’t fit in my pockets, that’s for sure...



Well what small piece of tech equipment available in the MA do you suggest? They all seem rather large don't they? There is NOTHING small from what I remember so how could he pick something that doesn't exist?




He doesn't have to find another gloiwe to use. The glowies are simply Mcguffins to get a plot point across. He could have simply said 'examine and disable'. As it stands, the player is being asked to remove 4 pieces of machinery that each stand over a mans height. Which is silly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, suspend your disbelief for a second and imagine the glowie is 1 foot tall. Or the character places a teleport beacon on the 8 foot tall device and teleports it out. It's his story and he wants you to remove the objects so just do it! Maybe if Venture feels it's a issue he will slightly modify his arc to accomodate you and others who might feel this way.

[ QUOTE ]
Quote:


Quote:
Finding the last silent kneeling citizen on an outdoor map is horrible. We have big shiny glowy captured animations for a reason.



What reason would the captive have to be glowing?





Rikti isolation fields? The writer can use the writing to lessen any tedious nonfun stuff for the player. This plotpoint was to find hostages. it wasn't necessary that I fly around an outdoor map for ages because the elements Im looking for are difficult to find.

In one of my arcs, I had a pile of bones as a glowie to find on the Eden map. it was horrible, and testers rightfully complained. I changed the pile of bones to something really large, and altered the writing slightly to compensate. The writer has the final word on what goes into his arc. The players are free after the fact to give their opinion.

[/ QUOTE ]

I understand what you are talking about, but that's part of the story isn't it... finding the hostages? I think they wouldn't be sending up flares to advertise where they are holding them do you? But again I do understand what you mean, from a gameplay point of view. Finding objects/people can be frustrating at times. I myself am a very patient person and like to "immerse" myself in the story. If something takes time, but is worthwhile (rescuing hostages) then I am willing to do it. A pointless collection mission on the other hand really bothers me!



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Quote:


Quote:
Mission 3. Briefing. Another mangled idiom. “wrap up some loose ends.” – I checked that ‘tie up loose ends’ was the correct form of the idiom as I thought, and found a possible source for Venture’s problem; one of the tvtropes.com contributors also makes the same mistake.



Wrap & Tie have the same meaning, there is NOTHING wrong with him saying that. If he wants to use one word in place of another that's his perogative. And what he wrote makes perfect sense.





Wrap and Tie don't have the same meaning (try to wrap your shoelaces), but what you mean is that they act in the same way in this fixed phrase. Getting an idiom or a fixed phrase wrong is akin to making a spelling error IMO. You are free to disagree.

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I do disagree.

Definition of Phrasal Verbs:

wrap up
To bring to a conclusion; settle finally or successfully

tie up
To impede the progress of; block

"To tie up loose ends" idiom means :
(idiomatic) To deal with the minor consequences of a previous action; to tidy up, finish, or complete.

So does not "wrap up loose ends" mean exactly the same thing?

So his use of that phrase was correct. A writer does NOT need to use exactly the same idiom to get the same meaning across. Writing would be very boring if we used the same fixed phrases to express ourselves, don't you think?

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Quote:
My first body gleans this system message: ‘This is the body of a Malta operative, gunned down by other Malta operatives.’ So does the second. And the third… Why anyone bothered to put them in bodybags in the midst of a shootout isn’t explained. The fourth does drop a clue, however, and some of the others do also. Not all of them. Some must be there for flavour, but they just seem a timesink to me.



Again... what other graphic could he have used to convey a dead body? Please let me know. A real body? Not an option that I see in the MA. Bones? Well how did the flesh get stripped off the bones? Coffin? Well if you have an issue with a compact storage device like a body bag, I'd hate to see your issue with a large coffin!





Again, the writing can be used to workaround the limits of the MA. You seem to think I'm criticising purely the glowie choice, when the fact is he's done what we all do - chosen a glowie AND written some plot to refer to it. The glowies are limitied. The writing is only limited by the writers imagination and skill (and somehwat by the profanity filter lol). I'm supposed to accept that in this frantic shootout I'm too busy to read one email even though I'm stealthed, yet the very people who are doing the frantic shooting can find the time to put the dead into bodybags (including the dead of their enemies!). The glowie isn't to blame for my incredulity; the writing is.

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Uh huh... well I can't remember this part that well from when I played the arc, but I don't see the problem. There is a frantic shootout...bullets flying everywhere.. .and your calmly reading emails without a care in the world because your invisible? Wow... bullets don't care that your invisible do they? Now you are right in the sense of game mechanics you are safe, but if you actually immersed yourself into the character you were playing, I don't think he would be so glib about his safety in that situation... do you? You are incredulous that they would put the dead into body bags? Why? Is not Malta organized and professional, would they not clean up after themselves? Also civilized people do take care of enemy dead don't they? Maybe Malta had "stealthed" personnel doing body bag duty? After all if it's ok for your character to be perfectly safe... LOL! As for incredulity, do you not have an issue with a different point... why do all the bodies of people killed in the game just disappear? He was trying to show dead bodies and the only way to do that in the MA is to use a glowie... 2 out of the 3 choices would make no sense. So he used a bodybag glowie( something a modern military unit would have), so that there would be something for you to search. Whether the information they provided moved the story ahead or not I can't remember.

Respectfully,

Well I was reading this post and had to comment on a couple of points MrCaptainMan makes:

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he ‘equipment to confiscate’ turns out to be those huge science probe things. Not sure how I’m going to take those away, tbh., they won’t fit in my pockets, that’s for sure...

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Well what small piece of tech equipment available in the MA do you suggest? They all seem rather large don't they? There is NOTHING small from what I remember so how could he pick something that doesn't exist?


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Finding the last silent kneeling citizen on an outdoor map is horrible. We have big shiny glowy captured animations for a reason.

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What reason would the captive have to be glowing?

[ QUOTE ]
Mission 3. Briefing. Another mangled idiom. “wrap up some loose ends.” – I checked that ‘tie up loose ends’ was the correct form of the idiom as I thought, and found a possible source for Venture’s problem; one of the tvtropes.com contributors also makes the same mistake.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wrap & Tie have the same meaning, there is NOTHING wrong with him saying that. If he wants to use one word in place of another that's his perogative. And what he wrote makes perfect sense.

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The hostage dialogue is identical for all. I think Venture’s made one objective and set the number to 5. It doesnt make for believable characters when they all spout the exact same dialogue.

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I would agree that everyone having their own unique dialogue would be wonderful. Guess what? To do that he would need create 5 separate instances of "Release Captive" to achieve that. Did it ever occur to you that each instance uses about 0.5% of the available mission space, without any text added. Using 1 instance with multiple spawns uses NO MORE SPACE! Maybe he was running out of space?

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My first body gleans this system message: ‘This is the body of a Malta operative, gunned down by other Malta operatives.’ So does the second. And the third… Why anyone bothered to put them in bodybags in the midst of a shootout isn’t explained. The fourth does drop a clue, however, and some of the others do also. Not all of them. Some must be there for flavour, but they just seem a timesink to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again... what other graphic could he have used to convey a dead body? Please let me know. A real body? Not an option that I see in the MA. Bones? Well how did the flesh get stripped off the bones? Coffin? Well if you have an issue with a compact storage device like a body bag, I'd hate to see your issue with a large coffin!

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I finally find a handbags-out email exchange between two malta operatives being catty with one another. I don’t have time to read the final one till after I exit the mission apparently, despite having time to access a computer, open 10 body bags and grab a note from a desk whilst ‘the shooting’ is going on. By the way, I’m stealthed the whole time. I have actually found ample time to have a poo during this mission, afking in a room with 6 malta operatives in it. Reading one email wouldn’t be beyond me, I’m sure. The ‘you discover the whole truth AFTER you finish!’ ploy is a side effect of the mission complete clue field being larger than the in-mission ones. One of my arcs uses the mission complete clue to deliver a pretty hefty chunk of exposition, but at least in my defense whats discovered is actually said at the same time the missions does complete. Venture’s just been unable or unwilling to find a way to get the info across in a less lazy way. It’s not as bad as writing a ‘So THIS is what really happened!’ Souvenir, but to me it smacks of the easy way out, and I’m not the only player who’s going to be stealthing.

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So you have an issue with him not being able to fit something in a text field that's too small for him to fit it in? Seriously? What did you want him to do? Hack the game and recode the text field sizes?

Respectfully,

As I said I appreciate honesty.

I don't particularly care what rating I get. Although if I got less than a 3 that would strike me as rather odd, because I thought it was a very balanced and well planned arc. I enjoyed playing my arc and even more so, the making of it.

I like to hear people's opinions though. And everyone likes it when someone genuinely pays you a compliment (which I assumed you were doing when you said it could be a 4 or 5 star arc)

My comments about you not liking large maps and long missions I had already guessed from your comments of other reviews and mine. Everyone has their own dislikes and likes.

If you didn't lower the rating because of it that's good. If you did on some unconscious level then that's fine to. You gave me honest feedback on what you thought. That's all I care about. You have every right to judge it on whatever criteria you like.

We are going to agree to disagree on certain parts of the plot and setting though, because some of your suggestions would leaving gaping holes in the story and hurt the story.

Mission 1 map: It is supposed to be a large map because there are many representatives at a hotel/office building. Now are there better maps? Maybe, but I looked over quite a few and that's the one I liked. As for the patrols which you do NOT have to attack, I think it would be rather silly for one group to trust the other villain groups to be security for them (or as it was intended checking up on each other), don't you? There were 4 Bunny waitresses to find so that you could find the hidden one among them. I thought that was logical as well, wouldn't you need to find the right one, since they're all in the same outfit?

Mission 2 had to be on a ship so I picked a ship map. i guess I could have picked a slightly smaller ship map, but again I thought that having the cargo hidden amongst many containers made more sense from a security point of view. But it could have been smaller I guess.

Mission 3 Map: Well Banished pantheon would kind of stick out anywhere else but a deserted graveyard. Also since their main troops are undead it kind of fits. Graveyards are generally large and outdoors. For setting a mood it fits as well. The number of rescues I can see many people having an issue with. True, many of them could have already been dead. But I wanted a "good" outcome not a tragedy. If you exit the mission and see the contact she tells you something to get you back into the mission fast so that no one dies. If you actually fail the mission, you get a result like what you suggested. Also if any complete set of quads died then their part of the ritual would have been completed and logically a LOT of Spirits of XXX would have to be generated. Failure is always an option in MA! But I do understand what you meant, although I did the mission in maybe 15 - 20 minutes so I'm not seeing the great waste of time personally. How long did it take you? Also, I would hope anyone who "gets into" the game, might find killing enemies who perform human sacrifice and torture and other unspeakable acts satisfying enough to spend a few extra minutes to finish the mission. For me there was a VERY strong sense of satisfaction at the end of that mission... not that it was FINALLY over, but because they were dead and I actually rescued people from a horrible fate. Anyways, that's my opinion.

Mission 4 Map: I agree with most of what you said. this could be a smaller map. There could be only one safe, although that would make it impossible to tell the 4 clues.. we only have limited space to write the clue in and it would be literally impossible to do so in the space we currently have for a clue. Also my hope of slowly revealing the truth would be screwed up. It's a build up the the revelation. I thought it was a good plot device.

Finally Mission 5 Map: Again... it's an underground city... it's huge... it's the final mission... it's the stronghold of the COT! Come on it can't be small! It would be like the final battle in the Lord Of The Rings taking place in a parking lot! This is an epic confrontation against one of the deadliest enemies in the CoX mythos. This is a feud that started 14,000 years ago and you want it to be over fast? They are going to summon the Demon Lords in a ritual that needs the 4 Archmages and Akarist to perform it, and you want one of them to be stuck in traffic? Mages.. that can (theoretically) fly...teleport... etc.. I think you see where I am going with this? Also could there be any worse outcome than allowing the CoT to succeed in this ritual? The last time they did this, they almost completely wiped out an entire civilization. And the goal of the current CoT is to wipe out billions of people (Decendants Of Mu). with the demon hoards they could do this. I think the risk/reward ratio is appropriate don't you think? Kill 5 mages to save potentially 1 fifth of the world's population?

Anyways I think the size and type of map I picked for 3 of the missions are perfectly justified. The mission 4 map i could make smaller I agree. The mission 2 map could be smaller as well although I don't think there's that much difference between the ship maps in size really.

The mission 3 objectives may be too long for many people I agree. However I guess I wrote it with my own bias in mind... I am a very patient person so it didn't seen that long to me.

Maybe my tastes are different than a lot of people. I like longer missions and missions with a plot.

Again thanks for the review and your follow up message to me.


Btw, i loved the Phantom Of the Opera Arc as well!


Note: Edited to add a comment about Banished Pantheon

Thanks for reviewing my arc. I appreciate the honesty and feedback.

I was expecting a 3 star maybe a 4 star at best. It's nice to think with some polishing it might be a 5 star. Although 75% of the 5 star missions in the MA (I have tried) I think aren't even worth 2 stars. But we each have our own tastes.

I've only played a few Task Forces, so I can't comment too much on their length or content, although I would say my arc is far smaller than the ones I have played.

I'm guessing you don't like large maps? Or long missions? (I like the longer missions personally and a variety of enemies... I don't like the speed run type of mission)

Well you liked the one thing I hoped that would be liked.. the story. As I said it was a story driven arc. It requires patience to unfold, but hopefully is worth it in the end.

I'll explain what I was thinking when making the arc.

First of all, no group was set above medium difficulty, except boss groups.

I tried for many groups to show up to hopefully keep it fresh over 5 stories. You never fight the same group again in the 5 stories.

I interjected some things I found funny (if anyone actually reads dialogue bubbles) , but then that's also dangerous because humour is subjective.

There are no defeat all missions, There is in fact no need to fight anyone other than captive groups and boss groups

It is meant for a team. (although I couldn't find anyone to test it as a team, so I soloed it with 3 characters)

The only trouble soloing I found was on Mission 1 and Mission 5.

I tried to make this a reasonable as I could, yet retain some difficulty.

I purposefully used the stock enemy groups due to my experience playing other arcs, and the insanely overpowered characters I have encountered (minions 2 shotting me). I felt that CoX groups would be better balanced. I did make 3 custom characters (that fight), 1 you need to fight and she is difficult, but NOT unbeatable. and the others are actually allies, and you probably will need the ally in mission 5.

The contact, Mission 1 EB, and Mission 3 & 5 allies are all my toons from a Supergroup and a Villain Group of mine. Now I have heard people say they don't want to see other peoples toons, but I felt they were so appropriate for this arc I had to put them in.

The 1st mission's EB was a custom character (actually a toon of mine), I just felt she fit right in the story. She was difficult. I tested it solo with a lvl 40 Dual Blades/Willpower Brute on lvl 4 difficulty (I made a mistake when I said it was lvl 3 difficulty.. oops) Also I soloed the EB with 2 other toons on lvl 3 difficulty (Crab Spider and a Blaster). But I had warned people a team would be better. There are roaming patrols, but remember it is supposed to be a "convention/meeting" so people would be logically moving around the map wouldn't they? You only had to actually free 4 captives and fight the boss so I felt it was appropriate length personally. Since it was to be a meeting of different enemy groups, I needed 4 groups that the Contact might want to have business dealings with (and ultimately control or eradicate according to the contact's ultimate wishes if the meeting actually happened). The purpose of the first mission was essentially a test of the contacts to see how your character(s) would perform (and treat the captives, although I forced the issue by making the decision for the character).

The 2nd mission I thought would be easy. Since you don't need to kill anyone except the boss group and click on one object (and there is only one to find), you could simply breeze through this mission (and there are few maps smaller than the ship maps... but it had to be a ship for the background story). And this is the teaser clue, It should hopefully make people interested when they click on the object. (I did tell people to please read the clues). The werewolves are supposed to be real werewolves not council, but we can't make custom werewolves that look as good yet. I hope we can soon!

The 3rd mission, was going to be long, This is where I hummed and hawed over the length. But in order for the story to develop the contact's personality (her wish unlike many villains to not kill innocents) the danger had to be readily apparent and the truly evil nature of the group your character was about to face had to come out. The events in this mission show the depravity of the Pantheon.Your characters actually come out like heroes in comparison. And to deal with the AV (which you can avoid) I put in an Ally. (and the Ally as you know may trigger a remembrance of the teaser from mission 2). I wanted the results of the ritual to be unthinkable... that is why the scope of the ritual needed the 16 rescues of very special people(in my mind) The length is unfortunate (and if the game actually placed the captives where I told them too, it would be very linear, but the MA seems to have issues regarding placement). I did find that 75% of the captives spawned almost next to each other right near the begining, so there was only a few I really had to look for. I hoped people would like the Cauldron's weird personality) LOL Ultimately, this was another test of the contacts (remember the offer at the end of mission 5?), she wanted to find like minded villains, who could do what needed to be done (kill), but could show restraint when needed (remember what was the purpose of her Order?).

The 4th mission was meant to reveal the "secret" gradually during the mission with the 4 clues, and completely (almost) at the end of the mission. Hopefully, as they read the clues (assuming they do), it should suddenly start hitting them. What the heck have I gotten myself into? The 4 glowies I agree with you. They are NOT showing up where they should be( set to FRONT. MIDDLE, BACK), and they can be hard to find sometimes (I've played the arc over and over again and they seem very random as to where they are showing up. If I could fix this I would, but I can't with the current MA options. Maybe in MA when issue 15 comes out? I hope! Malta sappers would be rare (at least solo) because of the medium difficulty (and maybe depending on your own difficulty setting). I agree with you though, I am NOT a fan of searching, but until we can specifically place items, we're all out of luck.

Finally, the 5th mission comes. Due to the background story, you finally know the truth and what's at stake. Everyone's favourite enemy, the COT (although the real background was thousands of years ago)! . But You learn the truth about your "ally" from mission 3 (a toon of mine as well). But in finding out her background, you hopefully come to understand her a bit. You find out a bit about the background of the contact and your ally in mission 5. You learn what the "Order" is about. And why these 3 toons are in the "Order". Hopefully, you think about the varying degrees of evil presented over the arc. The 3 members of the "Order" you meet in the story never had a choice about what they became, but they did make a choice and join the "Order" You can be evil and yet still have a conscience (contact). You can be evil out of ignorance and need (Mission 3 ally's background), but seek to lessen your evil by joining the "Order" (again remember what is the Order about), and you can be evil and not know why or if you really are evil (mission 5 ally's background... this happened to her, but why did her Deity allow it to happen to her? Is she actually doing his will?) Unfortunately due to length limits in the MA, I couldn't really expand on what the story is ultimately about. Morality.

I needed the 4 bosses and the 1 AV for a simple reason... their are 4 types of Archmages and 1 leader, together they can form a Pentagram... 5 points... 5 bosses. And enact the ultimate ritual they can perform. What happened the last time the COT summoned the Demon Lords?

The map had to be big, because it is supposed to be the City of Oranbega where the leaders are and considering their egos, I doubt they would be in small quarters.

Akarist is VERY difficult, and I think without the ally (if soloed) almost impossible. Epic is right... I think I spent over 10 minutes fighting him. The ally I picked to be helpful but not overwhelmingly so. I was actually going to have the contact show up, but I found her too powerful.

Spoiler of sorts (what I really wanted to convey in the mission):

Also if you read the "cannon" history of the COT, the original ruling body called "the Circle Of Thorns", fought a war against the Mu civilization eons ago, The COT made a bad choice and dealt with Demons to repel the Mu (that it where my fictional background history of the "Order" would come in), but the Mu wizards found new tactics (hmmm.. i wonder what help they had?.. the "Order" maybe) and repelled the COT. Again the COT sought help from the Demon Lords and began the final slaughter of the Mu... but wait the COT couldn't go through with it and refused to slaughter all the women and children. And because of that "moral" choice they were cursed and the COT exists as it does today, intent on killing a large part of the world's population.. the descendants of Mu. Now the COT is truly evil. The "Order" chose a side 14,000 years ago (Mu). And because of that choice the COT and the Demons were stopped, but at what price? You see the tragedy of the situation? The original COT would probably be considered good until they made the pact with demons. But even corrupted as they were, they drew a line an refused to go over it (slaughter). The "Order" is similar in that because of what they are, they would be considered corrupted, yet they show restraint in what they do. I thought it as an interesting parallel for a story.

In the end, I am glad you liked the story. I may try to find smaller maps, but It's kind of trial and error since we can't really "see" the maps until we play the mission. And the larger maps have the spawn points for the objectives I want.

Thanks again for taking the time and effort of reviewing it!

Note: edited for my bad spelling and grammar

If anyone would like to review my first Arc, I would appreciate it.

Name: A Week In The Life Of A Villain
Arc ID: 153720
Level: 30 - 54
Length: Very Long - 5 Missions
Morality" Villainous
Creator: @Russian Babes

Story Driven (please read clues)... A villain becomes ensnared in an Ancient Feud over a week.
Mission 1 - EB.
Mission 2 - Boss.
Mission 3 - AV, but it is not necessary to fight him.
Mission 4 - Boss.
Mission 5 - 4 Bosses and AV.
Team recommended, but soloable. Soloed with lvl 40 Brute in testing on 3rd difficulty level.