Talen Lee

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I wouldn't be surprised if they put a damage debuff on Domination (down to dominators w/o domination right now, or so). Then, you can choose to be control-o-matic w/ bonuses by hitting the bubbly button or just damage it up.

[/ QUOTE ]You think that might get mentioned, right?

Such games have very slow movement, and a very clear idea of what does and doesn't constitute 'in combat,' because getting out of combat can lead to such large bonuses. With such a dynamic game as CoX, such metrics are not directly comparable.

Isn't profit measured by income - overheads? Overheads can change in time. I'm not saying there's hard proof one way or another, but it's entirely feasible given how small the team for CoX got, overheads might have gotten to be teeny-tiny by comparison to before.

Also, and I'm not super-proud of this, you can put it on auto and go AFK for a bit with a boss.

Always useful. Fast animating, punches through defence, does decent damage and mitigates a bit. It's like air superiority but psi.

How about you check what's going on rather than taking the word of the village idiot? It's the huge thread with the redname posts in it on the front page.

Doms are being buffed. You will no longer receive a significant damage buff for stacking domination twice, and your recharge will still make all your powers recharge faster. You will do more damage, you will still get domination providing bonus mez mag, mez protection and an end bar refill.

I love how people are making such a huge beat-up of stuff that has been mentioned by a redname that's available in the developer digest.

Base damage change. No damage buff from domination. Can't be that hard to find what Castle said in the one thread he's commented in, surely?

Is the number the same?

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Are you getting tired of the game nerfs? If so, plaese speak your mind here.

[/ QUOTE ]*hands you a little paper cup*

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To get their full damage output, Blasters don't have to stand right next to a guy with AV levels of AOE damage and likely Mez.

[/ QUOTE ]... They don't?

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Personally, I think it's hilarious that we just had everyone and his dog (including me) tell Captain Amazing that he shouldn't change the way he writes to suit me, and now we have you telling me I should change the way I write to suit you.

[/ QUOTE ]I think you should consider ways to write better. You seem to like the idea of avoiding improvement.

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So the million dollar question:

Will a huge buff to damage sweep aside the PToD issue?

How much damage is enough damage for Dominators to make a fair contribution in an AV fight?

[/ QUOTE ]In my estimation and testing, yes. Playing with damage buffs, I've found that it's reasonable. They're not going to be scrappers - who can survive the AV entirely on their own - but with tools like Drain Psyche, Surge of Power, Demonic, Purples, and whatnot, doms should certainly be able to handle their own EBs and contribute handily on AVs.

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In a situation where one is putting oneself forward as an authority on writing it behests the individual to actually write well. As it stands, there is almost nothing one can glean from a venture review one could not glean better from simply going to TVTropes and researching for oneself.

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But Venture never did that. So far as I am aware, Venture never stated he was an "authority" on writing. Writing reviews does not do that implicitly, nor does writing harsh reviews do that implicitly.

[/ QUOTE ]If you set yourself up to provide a perspective on what someone else is doing wrong, you are in effect doing so with the implication that you know what is wrong. He doesn't have to be able to produce better work himself, but to be a good critic, I would expect it of him to actually criticize well. As it stands, a venture review is basically a bullet point rundown of the plot tied to whatever convenient Tvtropes comments support his perspective, good or ill.

As it stands, Venture is a mediocre critic who posts with a lot of venom and doesn't seem to actually want to help authors improve as much as he wants to act as an authority. From where I sit he's neither entertaining or useful, which would be why I offer advice on improving one or the other. As a reviewer I honestly can't work out what the fuss is about, what the incentive can be to have your work reviewed by him when you could just as easily go to a specific site and read for yourself.

I think the most telling element is just how well the critic has responded to criticism.

Skewer + Fling thorns + Skewer + Fling Thorns.

And then you have to hope they don't go 'Oh, let's get ANYTHING ELSE.'

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An issue that I think Nivienne would be willing, nay, eager, to comply on.

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Actually, Nivienne directed me to make an in-game petition. I did that and eventually got a reasonable reply that indicated a willingness to rethink/work through this issue.

[/ QUOTE ]I was more indicating that Nivienne is particularly permissive on the subject of lesbians.

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My opinion of her goes up a few notches then.

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah, it's always nice to know appropriately geared fanservice can circumvent rules. It's like in the real world, when girls can get out of parking tickets with low-cut-tops and tears.

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Ahh wow, I never noticed I swapped two of the numbers for the arc's ID. No wonder, oh well! I've enjoyed reading your reviews nonetheless. If you ever do get to it (not that I expect it considering it was a major snafu on my part), the actual ID number is 15381.

[/ QUOTE ]Bumped to the top of the queue. It was there before, but obviously, since I couldn't get it to run, I couldn't do it.

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Of course, you'd have to have played the damn arc first yourself, in which case why exactly do you need a review? Presumably after playing it yourself you've formed your own evaluation.

[/ QUOTE ]I mean the people who make the arcs. You're not being anything of particular use to them, which means your reviews are purely a place to provide people with the simple metric: Here's what I like, and if you like what I like, you'll like it. Which is fine, but it's also not particularly helpful in the long run to the betterment of the MA content.

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Look: people aren't having significant trouble understanding me. They're just not. I'm not going to change. Get over it already.

[/ QUOTE ]That would explain the massive thread with the big argument over one of your terms where the people involved talk about it in the hopes they can avoid what you've made out to be quite a big problem. Clearly, there is no problem with the term as you choose to use it.

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I'm sorry but there's nothing increasing ambiguity here. There just isn't. Language is ambiguous by nature, about the only useful thing deconstructionism has to say.

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In essence, you're saying 'because people can misunderstand me, I am under no obligation to say things that are understandable.'

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In situations where language is unambiguous, the responsibility is always on the speaker to express the correct thought. Computer programming is like that.

[/ QUOTE ]In a situation where one is putting oneself forward as an authority on writing it behests the individual to actually write well. As it stands, there is almost nothing one can glean from a venture review one could not glean better from simply going to TVTropes and researching for oneself.

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An issue that I think Nivienne would be willing, nay, eager, to comply on.

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Actually, Nivienne directed me to make an in-game petition. I did that and eventually got a reasonable reply that indicated a willingness to rethink/work through this issue.

[/ QUOTE ]I was more indicating that Nivienne is particularly permissive on the subject of lesbians.

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I know people chortle about 250 points of damage that takes 45 seconds to deliver, but dominators are often so critically low on damage that you will likely have the 45 seconds that you need to get the full punch out of thorntrops.

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maybe if you solo
itend to prefer to be in team. and generally, 45 sec is the time the team need to deals with the first 1/3 of the mish :s

[/ QUOTE ]If you're on a team, your damage is going to be flat-out unnecessary anyway.

Actually, I can't find the arc. The following arcs have been bumped to the bottom of the list for technical reasons:

47771 - A Dinosaur Dilemma
- Arc doesn't show up under that ID - and nothing else does
Arc 15831 - Name: Heaven's Not Enough
- Arc doesn't show up under that ID - in fact, nothing does
Arc 49280 - The Toypocalypse!
- Doesn't seem to work. I've tried to start this arc four times and not once does it actually start.

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I've written a short letter to the devs asking them to rethink their decision. I'd encourage other folks with concerns to do the same. However, I have some small problem. Who exactly should I sent it to? Do we know which dev-person is point on this issue?

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I would send it to Niviene. This is a customer service kind of issue, not a developer issue.

[/ QUOTE ]An issue that I think Nivienne would be willing, nay, eager, to comply on.

I was just copying off Azu's notes

Arc 26095 - When Trouble Blows In
Rating: **

Back when I used to get paid for being an opinionated [censored], we used to do these things called set reviews. A new set of cards would come out, and it'd be a list of about 300 cards, and writers would then look at them and intersperse commentary on each card in a vacuum. Typically, they were terrible. One of the writing trends you could observe in this is that all the white cards - the first cards to show up in the list - would get a lot of detailed study and analysis. Then, the lands, the artifacts - the things that came last - would get little, sparse, one-liner comments. This is something I thought of as writing tapering, where the writer's enthusiasm all bubbles up, starts the project, and then steadily peters out. Stubbornness gets them to finish - and it shows. Strong introductions, clear opinions, good analysis early on, and then it kinda dribbles off.

Such is the vice with this arc; I want to rate this arc higher. On a conceptual level, on an ideas level, I want it to be a four. But the problems that show up with the writing and the later mission design just drag it down, then down, then down. So let's round up the crimes of the arc: <ul type="square">[*]Custom enemies who are modest as minions and bloody scary when lieutenants and bosses thanks to having storm debuffs, sonic debuffs, and Aim.[*]Narrative coincidence - the first and second missions have nothing in common from the outset. Until you do them, they've got nothing in common.[*]It introduces an enemy group that can't be seen again.[*]Level range jumps, very very clearly - in fact, one mission is locked at a single level range - which is never mentioned in the briefing or clearly justified in-game.[*]You fight two groups who you fight 'just because' - Arachnos and Freakshow.[*]Clue and dialogues are somewhat unmeshed.[*]The contact joins you in the last mission![/list]And yet, at the same time? The Freakshow are good! They're well-written. The contact isn't super-obnoxious (she's a boss, so she's obviously going to be badass, but she's also ditchable if you want to - though that shouldn't really be necessary). The custom enemy looks good, solid, and appropriate to its type, and while the arc is 'Hey, look at this new enemy group springing up out of nowhere that you've never heard of before and will never hear from again,' it has a good reason for why you'll never hear from them again.

As to the difficulty of the arc, I did this on a level 31 Claws/Willpower scrapper using nothing but SOs, purchased. Therefore, everything he had was level 30, and grey. Underpowered? Possibly, I suppose. Either way, the new guys would punch through purple inspirations (they visibly have targeting drones), they would rip through through me when I wasn't able to drop them in one or two hits. I could herd up three spawns of Freakshow at a time to AoE them, and yet in the same mission, the minions of the new group had me huffing oranges and greens to survive. Nonetheless, I did not let this daunt me - since the arc has an espionage and covert ops theme, I took it upon myself to be a dirt-stabbing back-bag, huffing inspirations and playing hit-and-run with the bad guys. This brings me on to one of the other weaknesses of the arc: The compass text is atmospheric to the point of being confusing. The final mission gives you three goals - two easily identified, the third totally impenetrable.

In the interest of full disclosure, I got through the four mission arc, up to the finale, then, facing this final requirement which seemed to imply a defeat all, couldn't handle it. I figure half the fault here is Swivel's - if I'd bothered to IO him, or if his SOs were green instead of grey, I'd be fine. Plus, the problems I had noted seemed to be clear there - the bad guys hit hard, they pack up tight, and they debuff to prevent me getting away. Well, that's what happens, and if I was playing a tougher character who was a bigger badass, well, I'd probably have been fine. Assuming it was a defeat all, I quit, and decided to round up my thoughts.

Looking back, the arc didn't anger me. It had a story, it had a tone and it had a clear sense of character voice. There was only one 'character' per se in the piece - one individual I dealt with, who was, by and large, quite good and entertaining. She did overdo it in her character voice, and when I could finally look at her bio, I found it lacking. Despite that, though, I found her decent enough and not offensive - I certainly wasn't annoyed when she was involved in the mission, and I imagine if I was a buffer, I'd quite like having her along (which didn't get us tickets, but that's its own problem).

Generally, the details in this arc have received due attention. The story arc has a good idea behind it, but it needs refinement, it needs affirmation. There are a lot of strong elements - a strong idea, if I could be so bold, a strong outline for an arc. Now it needs filling in. Characterisation could use some extra depth - as a group, as a plan. This story feels like it needs work to get to the higher ratings I feel it merits, but the good news is, all those areas are pretty clear - they're places the author can expand. If you're a fan of espionage or dirt-stabbing back-bag behaviour as a heroic character, give the arc a run. I think this one needs more eyes than my own, because the arc has a good idea underpinning it.

Also I've noticed I have a large number of SO-driven characters where I would normally be using IOs this time last year. Any field crafter wannabes on Virtue, heroside, who want some help on getting Fabricator, drop me a line &gt;.&gt;

Arc 3630 - You Say It's Your Birthday
Rating: No Rating

Today, I resolved, to get some backlog dealt with. So perhaps I deserve it for finding that I have... well, a lot of comedy arcs. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to give people the wrong idea, I like comedy. I like comedy a lot but I don't know what's so attractive to people about the mission architect that screams 'use me for comedy.' It feels like trying to carve with boxing gloves on, or as if comedy can excuse writing that may not make sense, or be overly simple. Whatever.

This arc was PM'd to me by someone so I feel bad for them in this case, but as is my wont, I got about halfway through the first mission, recognised just how different this arc was to what I was looking for, and decided to leave. It's not a bad arc - it's decent-ish for the kind of comedy it wants to be, and it doesn't really do anything that I found entertaining in the opening.

Now, look, as an author it's your job to not only provide an interesting conclusion to a story but to provide a good beginning. My primary interest in mission architect is story-based reviews. I want to play through stories, through ideas, through uses of the mission architect to do something that can be part of a character's life. Why do people insist on constantly using it to make fart gags, in droves!?

I didn't rate the arc - at least, I hope I didn't - because I simply wanted nothing to do with it. If you're looking for a showcased custom enemy type, a bunch of cake gags and an inefficient, unimpressive use of the mission architect system elements that I actually like, take it for a spin. Take it away.

So, look, here's the thing: I don't care about what simple joke you can make. A joke has to support a mission, not be an excuse for it. A story arc has to be a story arc. I am getting very very fed up with seeing a joke dragged out, custom factions being wiggled around on the end of strings, and the 'OH HAY I CAN MAKE MY OWN MISSIONS NOW' approach people are giving me. Especially since most of the times, the jokes aren't funny, the custom critters suck, and No, you probably can't really make your own [censored] missions.

Ugh. I am seriously considering shifting to a QPQ system so that people will maybe read the thread a bit more clearly and consider: 'Do I really want Talen telling me that my jokes suck?' before they submit YET ANOTHER STUPID COMEDY ARC to me.

Oh, and this is the first thing on the list. We're in for a looong day.