Sister_Twelve

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  1. Thank you for the review. I appreciate you taking the time to do so.

    Quote:
    -OSI? Someone watches the Venture Bros :P
    I'm not sure what the Venture Brothers is. I've used OSI (the Office of Scientific Intelligence) in a lot of my tabletop games since about 1988. The organization, (at least my version of it... there actually WAS an Office of Scientific Intelligence, but it probably bore little resemblence to what I've morphed it into), has its creative roots in King's The Shop, a secretive government entity involved in all manner of evil stuff. In King, the organization probably featured most prominently in Firestarter, which was also a movie with Drew Barrymore, during her child actress days in 1983-4, and David Keith.

    My OSI probably draws some inspiration from shows like The X-Files and Dark Skies, as well as roleplaying games like Dark Conspiracy. None of these are detail types of inspirations though... more a mood and a general perception of what this agency is to be. I suppose you call also draw some parallells to The Malta Group in the game, which the distinction that The Malta Group doesn't have the legitimacy and government sanction that OSI does, nor does it have OSI's emphasis on the weird and the paranormal.

    Quote:
    -"Egor" should probably be "Igor" if that's what you're going for.
    In the original book by Mary Shelley, Dr. Frankenstein did not have an assistant. In the various movie versions, the assistant character has alternately been called 'Igor' and 'Egor depending on what version you are watching. If Savage had watched just the right one, he might have referred to Symons as 'Fritz,' although that one isn't nearly as much a part of the collective unconscious of the culture as the other two.

    Quote:
    -The contact could use a bit of text formatting to make the briefing more interesting - at the very least the title could be in a different colour (And possibly bolded/sized up) to make it stand out from the briefing itself. I harp on this with a lot of people but that's because so few people actually seem to want to make use of that feature. Protip: It doesn't count against the field size limit when you publish, so you can actually break the character limit if you apply formatting LAST (It does make it a bit trickier to edit - though you can just remove the formatting to make changes, then reapply when you're done). If you've run my "Tomorrownauts" arc you can see how much colour I jammed into that first briefing - it's sitting at like 1500/1000 characters and still publishes no problem.
    I honestly have no idea how to do this.

    Quote:
    -I'm not sure you really need 3 desks with notes in this mission, given that as a multi-objective, you get the clue on the first one. What you could do if you want the player to have to cover the whole area is instead of making one objective that spawns 3 glowies, you could make them 3 separate objectives that each give their own clue - it would make them more interesting.
    This is a valid critique and a good idea. I implemented this change and it strengthened the mission.

    Quote:
    -Am I supposed to know who Escobar is? The contact mentions him as if he should be familiar to me but I don't recognize the name. I was kind of able to gather who he's meant to be by the description, but by tossing a name at the player it implies familiarity. If he's just meant to be some top lieutenant, you could just put "He's sending one of his strongest enforcers" rather than the name. If I am meant to know who he is, a brief description in the intro couldn't hurt.
    I intended to do this, but ran out of space. I will probably re-edit this section once I finished the overhaul of mission 4.

    Quote:
    -Should "Debit" card be "Credit" card? Usually company cards are the latter rather than the former. If you have a fixed budget expense account, then the former applies, but his description seems to imply a more fluid limit (Minor nit, I know, but I write what catches my eye).
    I'm honestly not sure. An agency like OSI would probably use whichever version is easier to hide, since they don't really want to be found out to be providing an expense account for a known villain at this point in the relationship. I used a debit card because it seemed to me that it would be tied to a bank account somewhere that could be opened up under anyone's name and be relatively anonymous, but a credit card would perhaps be less secure, but I honestly don't know enough about the financial world to claim that is true.

    Quote:
    -I'm guessing from the clue that my character is actually trying to make an honest attempt to go clean - I'm hoping that the next few mission take this farther, it's a good plot thread to run with.
    Well, the only assumption I am making about the player's character is that he/she is choosing to work with OSI for SOME REASON. The commentaries like this one regarding things of this nature... the fact that he/she is doing the very same things he/she was doing last week can be read in several different ways... anger at the truth of it, sardonic amusement at the truth of it, world weariness and self-satisfaction that the 'legit people' do as much evil stuff as he/she ever did... etc.

    Eventually, simply by the nature of the way COH arcs work, the character will make the choice to stay. I can't completely avoid pushing some actions onto the player. The player, if he/she wants to finish the arc, will enter the final mission. That very thing implies that he/she is going to stay with OSI. But whether the motivation for that is because he/she really wants to go straight or not is completely up to the player.

    Like I said, I am trying to avoid the phenomenon of writing in motivations for your characters. All I am assuming is that in this moment in your character's personal journey, he/she has a compelling enough reason to listen to OSI and start down this particular path in life.

    Quote:
    Mission 4:
    -The "Accept" text here is just the default, I'm assuming that's probably just an oversight since the rest of the arc thus far has used custom text.
    -Hmm, this one seems kind of a downgrade in "Shadiness" from the previous one. Yeah, I suppose you are operating on US soil but you aren't killing anyone this time around (Well, depending on how you intepret what you're doing to the security guards).
    Mission four is being completely overhauled. To be honest, I was never particularly fond of this mission. In a later arc, I might explore the political aspects of OSI in greater depth, but it seemed out of place to me that they would trust a complete freelancer with something this vital to the agency's continued existence. Removing this mission and replacing it with something stronger might help the entire arc bind together more cohesively.

    Quote:
    Those orphanage matrons sure are nasty with their katanas - it seems like a bit of a weird disconnect there. Maybe instead of using customs, take a member from an existing group of "Civilian-ish" mobs and rename them? I guess it's kind of justified by the description text, but it still seems a bit silly. The extraction team costume design is nice though.
    -Good job also on the orphans, although their description is set to the default "Minion" description - you might want to fix that. Random aside: Being a critic is fun. *Casually guns down orphans* "Oh BTW you should probably fix their description text"
    Believe it or not, I've spent more time tweaking the Heatherford Home cast than anything else in the creation process. They were too weak, then they were too strong, then they kicked my brute's tail, then they were too vanilla... etc... trying to build what are essentially 'normal people with a lot of hand-to-hand training' is very difficult to balance in this game.

    Logically the orphan matrons should not be able to challenge the sweeper that OSI sends in. I agree with that. But unfortunately, the few powersets that can simulate the 'trained fighter' rather than the 'superhuman' seem to deal inordinate amounts of damage.

    I will continue to tweak.

    Quote:
    Likewise there were quite a few clues, and most of them didn't seem to be strictly necessary seeing as how the connecting plot thread is about the agency rather than anything you do in each individual mission (For instance, do I really need to know about the Vahz research being done in mission 1, let alone 3 separate clues about it? It's never referred to again).
    Hopefully, the revamp of mission four will go far in dealing with the disconnect between the individual plot threads and the throughline of the arc. It is difficult to balance certain things, because there are obviously a lot of things going on that an agency like OSI just flat out would NEVER tell a freelancer.

    On that level, I have to be careful about balancing annoying the player by creating an arc that looks like just a jumble of seemingly disconnected missions and having my organizations of scientific super-agents be dumb-dumb enough to blab to this passing stranger why they've hired him/her to these things.

    Quote:
    On a different note, I think the writing would really benefit from some use of formatting. As I said, the contact is pretty verbose, so without any use of font or text colours it just comes off as a big wall of white, which is a bit difficult to read sometimes. It's broken up into paragraphs, at least, so there's something.
    Like I said, I have no idea how to do this within the MA interface.


    Thanks again for playing the arc and for your feedback.
  2. Currently unplayable while I overhaul mission 4.
  3. I wasn't arguing your critique of the arc. On the whole, your critique of the arc left little for me to answer, because by and large, your criticisms were wholly based on your own individual experiences, which I don't know and can't intelligently answer.

    I was using this as an example of how a reviewer's personal experiences tend to dictate the way he reviews. The tone of the critique certainly didn't indicate that you were tired of the map because of any mechanical difficulties it offers. The tone of your review indicated that you were simply tired of playing that map.

    Quote:
    Might be a bit higher if I hadn't played so many arcs already, but the asylum is just getting a bit old.
  4. Quote:
    Then there's the opposing viewpoint: arcs with low ID numbers were written in the early days of AE, when authors weren't as aware of the tools available to make a good arc. Also, options were fewer. Those high ratings may very well be holdovers from the days when players had lower standards.
    I can't speak intelligently about what tools were available back in March versus what tools are available now simply because I wasn't actively playing when it was launched, so I don't know what is availible to me now that wasn't available then. However, I can dispute that there's I somehow have 'more knowledge' when writing my first arc now, versus what I would have know had I written it back then.

    Quote:
    Being around for a long time does not mean an arc will have more ratings, there are plenty of 1000-range arcs that have hardly a dozen votes after all this time.
    Are you seriously trying to tell me that you believe that an arc that's been available for nearly 8 months now has NOT had greater opportunity for consumption and review than an arc that's been available for a week?

    Or that an arc that was produced in a time period when, say, 1500 people were actively playing AE missions all the time and rating them, will not have had greater OPPORTUNITY to get seen than one produced in, say, a time period when, say, 150 people are actively playing and reviewing AE missions.

    Because if you are, then I really have no idea how to convince you otherwise.
  5. Quote:
    I'm not seeing what the relevance is there. Arcs are sorted by rating, not ID. There are plenty of 4 and 5 star arcs with high IDs as well as a lot of low-ID arcs in the 2-star gutter.
    I speaking specifically to the potential for an arc to get played. If you see an arc with a low id number, that means that the arc was written during a period of time when a lot more players were excited about MA and, thus, was involved in the invariable rush that occurred to play player-written arcs when it first came out. In addition, that arc has had literally months of time for high ratings to dilute the damaging effects of low ratings.

    An arc with a high id # has been written probably within the last week or so. If that arc is rated with a 1 or a 2, the effects on it are far more devastating than for an arc that has 250 reviews because it has been around for a long time.

    Basically, if you consider that 4 stars is pretty much the point at which most people will consider playing an AE arc, (not all, but most people), it requires 2 5 star ratings to counteract every 2 star rating. All that I am saying is that an arc with a lower id # has had a great deal more time and potential for playtesting to reach a genuine distribution of ratings.

    And that if the first reviewers rate an arc low now that the shiny of AE has sort of worn off, a newer arc probably will never get the chance to get that distribution because it will be in the dustbin before it ever really gets played.
  6. On that subject, I think you'll find that most reviewers start out with the intention of being nice and polite and helpful. Unfotortunately, what quickly happens in most cases is that they become jaded due to a variety of factors. They tend to see a lot of material and it all bleeds together.

    For example, when GlaziusF reviewed my arc, one of the things he downgraded me for was me using the Mayhem's Hospital map. That mission featured a hospital and the only map I could find that featured hospital trappings was that one. So I considered that particular criticism a bit unfair on his part. But his experience is his experience. If he finds the hospital map to be overused and he has had to play through it numerous times, then in his eyes, the criticism is valid.

    I think it's far better as an author to take someone's criticism holistically, especially when the specific criticisms they offer either don't seem to make much sense or are completely personal preferences about which way they would have taken the story. In the first case, either one of two things happened. As a writer, you didn't convey your intent properly. Or as an audience member, he didn't pay much attention to what was writtern and what was going on. Without a telescope into his mind, it is impossible to tell which actually happened.

    In the second case, you have no control over what someone's personal preferences, likes and dislikes are. As a writer, all you can do is try to tell the best story you can tell.

    However, what reviews DO is offer you an encapsulated view of a potential audience member's reaction to what you've created. If the audience member dislikes it in general, no matter what his specific criticisms are, then it probably needs more work. If the audience member likes it in general, then you've probably reached the stage where it no longer needs much more than minor tinkering.

    In either case, I don't think most reviewers are doing what they are doing to be snarky or to be jerks about it. Some of them probably honestly want to help people produce the best product they can and believe this is the best way of going about it. However, at a certain point, I think if you look at what you are doing and finding that you are rating every arc a '2' these days, it might be time to take a step back and not review for awhile, because it's likely that you've lost your perspective.

    Not to mention the damage you are potentially doing to an author whose arc id# is NOT 1000 or so and whose arc doesn't have many plays. When you rate the neophyte author's arc a 2 and the arc id is say 400000, you've pretty much consigned that author's work to never being seen because frankly people just don't play arcs that only have 1 or 2 stars.
  7. Quote:
    Women are overrepresented as victims in comics because comics (Western mainstream superhero ones anyway) are written for adolescent boys. That's because it's adolescent boys who buy them.
    Ummmm... not so much.

    Quote:
    Today, we are seeing print runs in the 80,00o range, give or take. But really this doesn’t mean much because we are missing one important point – the average age of the reader. There are several titles and issues that I try to find from my childhood. This is one fun part of the hobby for me and for many others. I do read a couple of new issues for fun, but here is the crux of the matter. The average age of todays comic book reader is around 28 years old.
    A lot of people may be experiencing a phenomenon called "extended childhood" these days, but I doubt you'll find a single psychologist that would categorize a 28-year-old as 'adolescent.'

    In fact, like the author of the article suggests, it's because adolescent boys AREN'T buying comics that the industry is in real danger. We already see comic books dealing heavily with 'real world' issues like terrorism and the politics of the day in crossovers like Marvel's Civil War.

    You'll know that comic books have reached their death knell when Spider-Man begins to address issues that are topical to 50-year-old men in order to remain releveant to the reading audience.
  8. Probably too many changes to list here at the moment. Most of them would be irrelevent to most since not too many have played it yet anyway. Everything I did was done with the purpose of streamlining the arc and increasing the playing speed.

    Have generally been playtesting it with a SS/INV brute at 2/+2/Boss/No AV's. At those settings, for me, the arc has been fairly tough but finishable in about 45-55m.

    Republished... the new arc id is #340454.
  9. I ran this again tonight because I never really took many notes the first time around. I think that overall it's a superior arc and manages to do something that not many others would be able to do in this particular milieu... ie generate a sense of rising dread.

    That being said, though, I doubt that I will ever run it again. I hate the map on the fourth mission that much. Don't take it as an indictment of the arc or the writing. It's just the map.

    General stream of consciousness observations:

    - I think perhaps you try to do a little too much within the confines of a 5 mission arc. I could easily see any one of the three main throughlines being able to sustain its own arc. They are tied together nicely though, but each one individually feels a bit unfinished, if that makes any sense.
    - Schism's denouement feels more powerful than Event Horizon's, which is unfortunate because it occurs first. That means the climax of the story really occurs a full mission before the arc ends. This is sort of what I meant by 'unfinished.' Though Event Horizon is met first and is referenced throughout, he doesn't appear again until the end... which means that after the very dramatic events that preceded his reappearance, I am uncertain if the emotional impact is there with him.
    - There are times throughout when I am pausing because I am not entirely sure what to do next. I'm not sure if this is indicative of me being a slave to compass commands or whether the vague directives that appear could provide a bit more direction without detracting from the style you are utilizing.
    - I am not entirely sure if the little zombies add enough to this particular arc to warrant the space within AE that a custom group invariably uses. I'm not indicating they are a bad custom group... just that perhaps the 10% or so they are using could be used for additional content for the arc.


    Overall, as I said before, I believe this to be a superior arc and the critiques above did not detract from my overall rating of the arc. The one true criticism I would levy is the use of the map for mission 4. I understand why you are using that map, but there is a difference between darkness as atmosphere in a medium like television or film... and actively having to spend 30-45 minutes trying to traverse your way through it in the context of a game.

    I've never been a fan of dark settings for that reason.
  10. Well, to be honest, I did unpublish it after the 2 star review in game. Having an arc stuck with a 2 star average is basically a guarantee that it will never be played by anyone again. I'll work out some things and republish it when I think it's a bit stronger.

    I'll post the new arc id at that point.
  11. Ah, well, sorry you didn't enjoy it.

    Thanks for pointing out the typos anyway.
  12. I'd like for you to give'The Long Road Back' a try if you have the time. I rather enjoyed Astoria in D Minor and I'd like to see what you think of mine. The mission ID is 338602.
  13. Changes for the day:

    Not many. I was playing other people's arcs today, so I didn't do much work on my own. Until I can get some others to play test it, all I'll be doing is essentially arguing with myself.

    Mission 5

    Managed to create what are essentially 'non-powered,' attackable minions, which was the effect I was looking for with this mission to start with. Reverted to the original text of the storyline which gave no mention of the Heatherford Home residents having any powers.

    (They do have powers... it's impossible, as far as I've seen for them not to, but they have no attack powers and their defense powers are essentially weak and have no special effects, rendering them invisible.)
  14. Quote:
    Any chance of making the Silver Mantis fight optional? That's not the first time she's thrown into a mission as an objective for no good reason. (See Crash Cage.) Non-climactic use of AVs really cheapens them in my opinion, and gives me good reason to drop the mission even if you fix the generators.
    This may be my faulty memory because it's been quite awhile since I've run the generator mission, but I seem to remember Silver Mantis BEING an optional objective. Back when I used to run the RWZ arcs quite a bit because the Dark Watcher one especially gave loads and loads of prestige, (back when comm officer portals gave huge amounts), I seem to remember just ignoring Silver Mantis and she'd go away without causing the mission to fail. In fact, the only time I ever actually failed it was when I engaged her instead of saving the generators to start with.

    I remember finishing the mission with all the generators still alive soloing with a rad/rad corruptor. They must have seriously changed something in the interim.

    Quote:
    Here's the thing, though - that's a cheat. Mind you, I do it every time I can, but a mission shouldn't be coded such that you have to AVOID saving the people you're supposed to be saving. It's like the Lady Grey mission - with all those hideously strong Vanguard bosses, it's usually better to pull the spawns guarding her away, so that you rescue her, but don't get her to follow you. That spawns the bosses to defeat on your way out, which you can do without Lady Grey in tow, thereby keeping her out of harm's way. And since enemies won't attack NPCs that aren't attached to you, she's perfectly safe.
    I don't regard the leave the general at the front door tactic a cheat. That's just your character slipping and falling into a pile of sense.

    "No. You are NOT a superhuman. You CANNOT come with me. What you CAN do is stay here, not move and stay ALIVE."

    The way you have to accomplish it is cheesy, yes, but keeping an old, overconfident blowhard from attacking things that have howitzers on their arms when he's nothing but an old, overconfident blowhard isn't cheating. It's smart.
  15. I am not entirely sure. It's probably my unfamiliarity with the MA system more than anything else. I think just because of the nature of the system that it would have had to have been 2 arcs with different id's. And I didn't lose that much really. Only 1 person had rated it thus far and most of the changes I was making were necessary ones anyway. It's in much better condition now after having made the changes than before.
  16. The new id number for this arc is 338602. When I tried to edit it and republish, it put 2 arcs of the same name up. When I tried to unpublish one of them, I unpublished both and had to republish the arc from scratch.

    Hence the new arc id.
  17. Changes I have made thus far based on the one person who has critiqued it. I sort of like the idea of an ongoing log of what I am doing and my thought processes behind doing it. This will contain some spoilers for those who have yet to play the arc:

    Mission 1: Neither am I. Unfortunately, there are very few maps available that fit the description of an abandoned hospital, which is what the mission called for.

    *(This was a reply to the player saying that he did not like glowie hunts on this particular map)*

    I made no significant changes at this time, though I may tone down the Symons encounter if I receive feedback that too many players feel that it is too difficult.

    Mission 2: I disagree that it is too much for a low level character to do. I generally complete this mission within a 5 minute window in testing. Granted, I know exactly where Patrick is, but this particular map is not exactly an intricate maze.

    Changes at this time:

    - I toned down Luis Escobar, since I can see solo characters having significant problems with him as the mission stood. He is now a boss and not an elite boss. He was always intended to be tough, but he was having a tendency of 1-shotting my ss/inv brute and that was unacceptably tough.
    - I changed Patrick McManus to a 15-20 lieutenant, instead of an 11-15 boss. If the player exemped down to level 20, Patrick was appearing at level 15, which meant he could be 1-shot in the final encounter. The only Outcast characters available for the full level range of the arc were minions. And the minion was taking too much damage during the last encounter of the mission. Doing it this way will mean that if players pick up the arc at level 10-12, Patrick will be purple, but I'd rather Patrick be overpowered than have players lose the arc because he can't deal with the Escobar encounter.

    Mission 3: Your contact explains why Longbow is guarding the ambassador. The ambassador requested it. But I am not married to the idea of Longbow being part of this arc, so I went ahead and made the change. The only reason I went with Loingbow instead of Arachnos to begin with is that I think that Longbow would be kinder to the player than Arachnos at this level range.

    Change:

    - Changed the opposition faction from Longbow to Arachnos. Altered the mission texts to reflect this change.
    - Removed Commander Everheart and replaced her with Huntsman Arroyo as the initial encounter of the mission.
    - Increase the time limit from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. I generally complete this mission in about 10m, so I don't think this change will alter much one way or the other.

    The time limit is in place to simulate to the player that once Aeon arrives to begin the negotiations, OSI's window of opportunity to complete this objective is gone.

    Mission 4:

    The critique makes sense.

    *(The critique in essence was that there were too many glowies for the player to have to find. I had no problem with reducing the number.)*

    Changes:

    - Reduced the number of glowies of each type to 1. Left in the ambushes. If a player chooses to truly stealth the mission, he/she will not have to contend with them anyway. They are there to simulate the idea that the target is a United States senator and it makes sense that he would have things like silent alarms to alert his security forces attached to his safe and his private computer in the event that someone tried to mess with it. If it seems later like this goes against the nature of the mission, the ambushes will ve easy enough to remove when I publish the final version.

    Mission 5:

    This mission is not intended to be difficult at all. If it is, then it's a failure of design. The only thing that was intended to be difficult about it are the moral implications of what the player is doing.

    - Toned down all the residents of Heatherford Home substantially. At this point, all of them have the lowest attack in their powerset and resist physical damage. The staff members have 1 martial art attack and 1 willpower defense. If it still doesn't seem as though the player is running over them at will, I will go back to the drawing board with them.
    - Tried a variety of maps for Heatherford Home. None of them really seemed to fit, so I went with one that was linear and only has 2 floors, so it would not turn an annoying, long glowie hunt.
  18. http://cohmissionreview.com/2009/10/the-long-road-back/

    The Long Road Back has been posted here. I would appreciate any feedback you guys would have to offer.

    Story Description: A secret organization within the United States Intelligence community offers paranormals operating outside the law a way out of the life… at a cost.


    Story Arc ID: 338026
    Author’s Global Chat Handle: @sister_twelve
    Length: Very Long (5 missions)
    Level Range: 10-20
    Mission Status: Work in Progress
    Alignment: Villainous

    In-Game Keywords: Custom Characters, Canon Related, Drama
  19. Thanks, Spade. The more people who play it, the more idea I'll have of the types of things I need to work on to make my arcs better.
  20. I'd certainly appreciate it if you would review it, Tangler. I've read your review thread and I like how you put your reviews together... sort of like the old Siskel/Ebert review show where they'd give a brief synopsis of the film along with a taste of what's there (with snippets of the movie for them and your screenshots for you). Spoilers get sort of a bad rap, I think. Most of the time, it's what I see of a movie beforehnad that's often the driving factor on whether I'll pay the money to go see it.

    Or in this case, plunk down the time and effort it would take to finish the arc.

    At any rate, if you have the time, I'd like to see what you have to say about it and how you'll present what you see there.

    I missed the launch of mission architect this year, as I stopped playing around last December. So predictably, when I finally started up again, there were literally thousands of arcs for me to try to wade through, the vast majority of them unfinished or only half-finished, and the majority of the rest seeming to be private farms to build characters and so-forth. That makes threads like yours especially helpful to someone like me who wants to experience what the community has to offer from a storytelling point of view.
  21. This is my first attempting at writing in this particular format.

    The story is intended for villain players, though I've noticed that the Architect allows you to play any arc with any character you wish and most players probably have both heroes and villains in their stables of characters at this point.

    The level range is 10-20. The arc is 5 missions long. When I test it, I generally complete it in less than an hour, but I know the maps very well by this point, having tested the missions as many times as I have.

    It is not intended as a comedy and if it is taken as such, then I have seriously lost my sense of humor and my ability to tell a story.

    The arc is intended to be the first in a series that feature the OSI branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. It also presumes that the villain in question has some compelling reason to 'go straight' or is at least willing to take advantage of being given the opportunity to do so.

    I am not sure how difficult it really is. For some players, it will probably be very easy. For others, it might be quite challenging. It all depends on playstyle and the composition of your team, (if you choose to team of course), and what settings you've chosen for your characters. When I called myself a team of three and asked for +2 villians and indicated that I wanted bosses, the maps were quite challenging and tedious for me to try to solo.

    It also tends to be not much fun to take on massive groups of Vahzilok at lower levels, but if you can handle them, then go to it and have fun.

    I hope that some of you enjoy it and offer me some feedback on it. It is my first arc, as I said, so the craft of doing it will undoubtedly take some refining on my part.
  22. Well, you are incorrect. I am not predicting a future nerf. I am analyzing the situation based on the mathematics of the situation. It is virtually impossible for a community of people to focus on a set of tasks and for the amount of time it takes to complete those tasks to increase.

    Predicting a nerf would be me saying, "I think that regeneration will lose some of its utility in the next patch."

    When Synapse has flatly stated that his reward system is based solely on one number and that number can only move in one direction, I am not pulling out a crystal ball when I say that it is inevitable that reward merits will move in a parallel direction without some artificial, external modifications to the systems like the one implemented in this patch.

    And if they are constantly going to have to artificially boost the baseline in order to keep the illusion that the system works, then why not just fix the system and be done with it?

    I am not complaining about a future nerf. I am complaining about the nature of the system and the difference is huge even if you choose to categorize my complaints as something they are not.
  23. Well, that might hold water if there were many arcs or tfs or trials that actually received a bonus of 40%. If you look down through the list, there aren't many. Even the ones that got the biggest gains in raw numbers of merits earned didn't gain 40% even though baseline was increased by 40%.

    What that means essentially is that more people are probably doing arcs than before and that the times for the vast majority of them did not go up. They went down and received an illusionary boost in merits earned based solely on a large one time bonus similar to the enormous gift in prestige to supergroups last year. It was nice and shiny and covered up a fundamental flaw temporarily, but did nothing to address that flaw.
  24. His post specifically says that they went from a baseline of 1 merit per 5 minutes of TF time to 1 minute per 3 minutes of TF time. That means they intended a global increase in merits earned of about 40%. But they only got 26%. That isn't me focusing on the explanation. That is me analyzing exactly what happened.
  25. The system isn't punitive because of any arbitrary global change that they might make at any given time. They could change the reward to 1 merit every minute. They could change it to 1 merit every 30 seconds. Those are arbitrary benchmarks that they assign. They are baseline numbers.

    The system is punitive because the better that you play and, more to the point, the better that we all collectively play, the worse off you will be in terms of the rewards that you reap for the completion of set tasks.

    Let's say you and your group start out and play together for the first time and do, say, an ITF. You aren't familiar with each other and you aren't geared very well, so it takes you 2 1/2 hours to do. Now extrapolate that to everyone who plays. The ITF is new, so it takes an average time of 150 minutes to complete. Well, that's worth 50 merits under this system. If they arbitrarily set the benchmark at 1 per 2 minutes, it would be worth 75, but that's irrelevant to why this system is punitive.

    This is why it's punitive:

    You and your group get better. You get more familiar with the maps. You improve your enhancements. You improve your tactics. Within a month, you can now run the ITF in 100 minutes. Your increase in skill and ability has improved your completion time by 33%. Extrapolate that to everyone else in the game. So now the average time is now 100 minutes.

    Basically, the population of the game as a whole has gotten about 33% better at this one specific task. The ITF.

    Now, any sane system would say, 'Okay, they are better, so they deserve the rewards of getting better.'

    But this system is punitive, so it does not. It says instead, "Oh, since they can do the task in less time now, the task must be worth less."

    So instead of getting rewarded for your increase in skill. Or even remaining on par with where you were for completing the same task you used to get 50 merits for, suddenly your reward for completing the same task is only worth 33 merit, because the only calculation used to determine the reward is how long the TF takes.

    That's why the system's philosophy is punitive and rewards mediocrity. The longer we stay mediocre at tasks and take inordinantly long periods of time to complete them, the more rewarded we will be.