Critical Critques - Reviewing "Awful Arcs"
By
AwesomusPrime,
Posted on: 2009-04-10 10:59 in Mission Architect
[ QUOTE ]
My favorite example, and I say this with love since it's from one of my SG mates, was a Stone Armor / Energy Melee LT. With Buildup. Two of them punched through my scrapper's mezprot and killed me in under three seconds. Yow! Fortunately, knocking them down a level was enough to make them challenging instead of bend-over-and-lube-up.
[/ QUOTE ]
Now I want "lube" as a searchable keyword in mission arc descriptions.
...I'd hit it.
[ QUOTE ]
I've been running 0 star missions almost exclusively, as there are so many, and there obviously must be more than a few in there that are really good. Here are a few tip-offs to ones that should be skipped:
1. The mission summary is blank or full of mis-spellings
2. The mission summary says just "kill all <blank>" or "farm mission"
3. The mission contact wasn't chosen (just the generic green hologram)
4. The mission summary is all about some popular movie, comic book, or TV characters (Last night, I helped Luke Skywalker fight Darth Vader in one mission.)
5. The mission summary goes into GREAT detail about some kind of fantasy society at war with some other fantasy-type faction. I've found that the more background that needs to be explained BEFORE even starting the mission, the more convoluted the mission becomes. ("Wait, what am I trying to do again? Is that the guy, or is it the other guy who I need to watch out for?")
[/ QUOTE ]
I was just trying to play a mission called Full Life Consequences, it had a description that said something along the lines of "u are John Freemans, Gorden Freemans brother and one day you were on a computer" I didn't recognize the names so I decided to give it a try. The first mission was a boss on a Croatoa map with invincible zombies in lab coats, and that's when I recognized the name as the lead character from Half Life. I quit out of the mission, reported it and marked it with 0 stars, gave a comment like "Why make the mission impossible? Why commit copyright infringement?"
He responded a few minutes later and we had this exchange
"its not impossible you're clearly just bad"
"and nothing is copyrighted just similar"
"tears elsewhere please"
"Gordon Freemon is a copyrighted character, similar isn't worth a pinch of salt."
"its a fan fiction youtube search full life consequences before you rage to me"
"thats why I have gordEn, learn 2 read"
"Ah, I see, I'm just going to go enjoy some missions with Batmen from Gothem."
Frankly, I'm just really disappointed in people for it. It was the first example I had seen of blatant copyright infringement. I'm hoping anyone that reads this will go and report his mission as well, we don't need another company trying to sue City Of Heroes.
This thread going really well I see. 
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxyZaZlaOs
He did a Parody of a Parody. HOW ORIGINAL.....
How am I not surprised we would see this kind of stuff.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Publish one mission of the Arc, get people to run it since it's listed as "short", get the reviews/rates, then add in the later missions by editing.
By doing longer arcs, you have less of a shot of getting casuals to run/rate the thing, since they show up under "long/very long".
[/ QUOTE ]
That's essentially bait-and-switch though. You're not really offering what you claim to be. IMHO, authors who do this without warning deserve to be downrated.
[/ QUOTE ]
Like it matters really. As you add missions the length field will auto update to reflect it.
[/ QUOTE ]
I don't understand your point.
Publishing incomplete works is annoying if you don't make it clear the work is incomplete. If there's a good reason to do it that way, fine, just don't sucker people into playing something half finished. It's like the writer had all the story elements laid out but all the enemies were Council instead of the custom mobs they were supposed to be. Or as if all the battle elements were in place but all the text said was "C" in every field.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
<QR>
Ran some 1-star missions this weekend. I like to give 1-stars a chance, especially if they've only been rated once or twice, to see if they're truly deserving of their ratings, or unfairly spammed.
There were only one or two redeemable ones, one of which was this Valkyrie mission on the outdoor KR map. First there were 10 objectives(collecting bodies of fallen comrades), which triggered on ally rescue, which finally triggered one EB fight. Overall, not too bad, except the EB ran at half life, continuously, the clues needed more details, and the mission looked like it was supposed to move into another mission, but didn't (like what KeepDistance is discussing). But overall, I don't think it deserved a one-star rating, as it was better than other missions I've seen in and of itself.
Speaking of which...
Three arcs really stood out to to me this weekend as bad. The first one was like what KeepDistance describes above:
[ QUOTE ]
all the battle elements were in place but all the text said was "C" in every field.
[/ QUOTE ]
This mission was like this, except almost every field in the mission was like this. Mission description, intro text, etc. The only exceptions were the Statesman/ Castle boss fights. The mission was basically a juvenile jab at these two devs for perceived wrongdoings and scapegoating for the game's PvP. So yeah, personal attacks and all that - rated and reported.
Another one was a mission filled with icy custom critters in an "Office to Caves" map. The first sign of trouble was the 25 collection objective, which was tedious. Also, the icy critters liked to stack slow, although this was more of a challenge than an annoyance. But the breaking point was the Ice/ REgen EB that activated MOG at the start of the fight, and who's regen was so high I could not make a dent. After trying twice to defeat him, but either running out of END or continuing a stalemate, I gave up.
Finally my wife and I tried one mission that had strangely named ally and boss objectives. The ally turned out to be an EB Statesman, and the boss turned out to be an EB Lord Recluse. The only problem was that the Statesman ally was follow but, apparently, non-combat. After trying for Recluses twice, with both attempts leading to faceplants, we quit the story. Might have gone better with a team, but I was afraid the EBs would scale up to AVs. I wouldn't have mided the diffuculty so much if there had been any sort of mission description, but as it was, meh.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Publish one mission of the Arc, get people to run it since it's listed as "short", get the reviews/rates, then add in the later missions by editing.
By doing longer arcs, you have less of a shot of getting casuals to run/rate the thing, since they show up under "long/very long".
[/ QUOTE ]
That's essentially bait-and-switch though. You're not really offering what you claim to be. IMHO, authors who do this without warning deserve to be downrated.
[/ QUOTE ]
Like it matters really. As you add missions the length field will auto update to reflect it.