Venture's Reviews II: The Nightmare Continues
By
Aisynia,
Posted on: 2009-05-16 24:40 in Mission Architect
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JABOSTH is the trope I have the most trouble understanding in practice as it applies within the MA. It seems like many, many of the canon arcs suffer from this problem, and while I have something of a spidey sense about it, I don't know that I can quantify what it really means.
While I haven't sat down and tabulated them all, I'd say the majority, maybe even the vast majority, of the canon stories are "just a bunch of stuff that happened".
Gotterdammerung had a good quote on the subject in the old thread:
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You're right in saying that avoiding JABOSTH is a very tricky thing to do, especially in a system where no assumptions can be made about the protagonist. However, I think Venture's right in placing such a big emphasis on this, because I believe it's critical to writing a good arc. The easiest way to do this is to look at your story and ask youself: "what question is this story asking?" If you're asking a question, you've got yourself a theme. If you answer the question, you've got yourself a moral. If you're really not asking anything, then you've got JABOSTH.
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I'd still advise designers to go the direction I sketched out, though each to their own. 
Most literature doesn't package its meaning in simple morals or thematic messages. Sure, you get it happening in "A Christmas Carol" by Dickens, "Huckleberry Finn," religious or culture-defining parables, and Aesop's fables - and there's nothing wrong with having a strong thematic focus or message - but large swaths of literature follow a more complicated pattern.
What, for example, is the moral lesson or theme of "The Maltese Falcon?" Or "The Living Shadow," the first story featuring The Shadow? The Harry Potter books perhaps have a theme of making sacrifices in the fight against evil, but it's a rather broad theme adopted by pretty much all heroic literature. Frankly, a lot of stories involve us and move us, but don't move us in a specific direction.
I'd say that most literature doesn't dwell on themes so much to provide unity of story - and thereby avoid JABOSTH. Instead the most central focus of storytelling is a matter of introducing and resolving suspense, and there are many methods of doing this. One highly successful method is the digression, where you set up one situation and transition to another, leaving the audience hanging on in suspense for the resolution of the first situation. Novelists often use different points of view to break up a story into different parts told by different characters, where each new point of view acts as a new digression and the audience waits for the story to return to earlier characters. Another method is foreshadowing, which is successfully used in horror stories for example, in which the audience is led to predict an outcome and waits in suspense for eventual validation. Mystery stories rely on a similar device, where the audience races to develop a prediction of an outcome before the revelation occurs. With foreshadowing and mystery, audiences often appreciate it if the storyteller extends the suspense by adding a twist or two. Yet another method is the turning point or gap, where a decision has been made that changes circumstances for a character, and may prevent the character from returning to their original status - forcing them into new and unsettling circumstances. In this case, the audience is hooked either awaiting validation of their prediction on how it will turn out (foreshadowing), or they are hooked in trying to gather enough information to make a prediction (mystery).
In addition to generating suspense - which is essential for keeping the audience glued to the tale - for a story to be emotionally satisfying there must be emotional elements. This is not required, however. Some stories, like mysteries, are primarily intellectually satisfying. But for a classic "catharsis" you must have emotional elements that elicit an emotional response from your audience.
Themes can be a part of introducing and resolving suspense involving emotions. When you develop a character you give them passions which provide them with direction or motivation. As these passions culminate in choices, actions, and results, you not only introduce and resolve suspense, but you also introduce thematic material as a byproduct of the process. The themes are a consequence of the developing story, and not necessarily the original aim of the story.
For example, a character may feel very strongly about injustice. They may also be prideful (or as the Greeks would say, suffering from "hubris"). These passions can play out in circumstances where in the choices and the following results they become meaningful or thematic.
So, sorry if that was a bit longwinded, but if you have solid characterizations with passions and motivations, and this leads the characters to make decisions, and these decisions lead to consequences, in the process of creating unity of story and suspense you've probably also created a theme.
Arc #131780, "The Day I Tried to Live"
tl;dr: 1 star. Offenses: Mary Sue, Statesman
Reviewed on: 6/4/2009
Level Range: 30-54/41-54/30-54/40-50/41-54
Character used: Agent Cerulean/Justice
I had the usual type of review mostly done for this, but erased it all because it's better to just cut to the chase. The last mission has Statesman in it. As a hostile. The rest of the arc is an overwrought narrative about the author's character's inner monologue. Presumably the author insert is available as an ally on the last map (the author mentioned there being an ally in a tell; when I played it there was no indication of one in either the briefing or nav bar). Seeing as how it was the Agony Hall map there was no way in hell I was going to grovel over it looking for an ally and then drag it over to Statesman. I can't say I'm terribly interested in being the author's sidekick while he beats down the game's signature hero either. Anyway, I ate at least half a dozen deaths, blowing about 400 merits on medium inspirations to try to have a chance, then tossed in the towel.
Skip it.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
Most literature doesn't package its meaning in simple morals or thematic messages.
If it doesn't have a theme, it's not literature.
What, for example, is the moral lesson or theme of "The Maltese Falcon?"
As Chandler put it in the (highly recommended) titular essay from one of the Seven Books That Contain All You Really Need to Know, The Maltese Falcon is "the record of a man's devotion to his friend".
Or "The Living Shadow," the first story featuring The Shadow?
I've never read it so I couldn't tell you. Maybe it doesn't have one -- maybe it's just a pulp fiction bit of fluff.
The Harry Potter books perhaps have a theme of making sacrifices in the fight against evil, but it's a rather broad theme adopted by pretty much all heroic literature.
The Potter books have various themes depending on the specific book. They tend to be simplistic and heavy-handed but it must be remembered that these books, no matter how popular they turned out to be with adults, are written for children.
I'd say that most literature doesn't dwell on themes so much to provide unity of story - and thereby avoid JABOSTH.
If the story doesn't have a theme, then what is the author saying with it? The answer has to be nothing. If that question does have an answer then there's your theme, but if the author isn't saying anything then what, exactly, about the story in question justifies the killing of even a single tree to produce the paper to print it? Generating suspense may sell books or movie tickets but it doesn't make a story into literature.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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If the story doesn't have a theme, then what is the author saying with it? The answer has to be nothing. If that question does have an answer then there's your theme, but if the author isn't saying anything then what, exactly, about the story in question justifies the killing of even a single tree to produce the paper to print it? Generating suspense may sell books or movie tickets but it doesn't make a story into literature.
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What about sit-coms? None of them have a theme, they simply have characters who are put into situations for our amusement. Heck, most tv dramas could be considered the same thing. Heck-again, one could argue that the entirety of real life is Just A Bunch Of Stuff That Happens. So i think using it as a -2 star penalty might be a bit over-doing it?
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
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Mary Sue
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In what way? How powerful the contact claimed to be?
I edited the text earlier, I am assuming you were already mid way through the arc though, to reflect that an ally was present and I emphasized twice that Statesman would show up. Perhaps I will change Statesman to someone else.
You're telling people to skip it based on Statesman?
The arc has had 8 play throughs so far and no one has claimed not to be able to defeat Statesman. Mission Four is the only mission I'm not sure what to do about and has gone through the most changes, and I'm sure will continue to do so.
Sitcoms seem like a bad example to use here. Most of them are absolutely JABOSTH, only existing to provide humor based on scenarios with no greater thematic plot. There are exceptions, of course, but most will tell their joke-of-the-week, then reset the stage for next weeks escapades with little-to-no effect on the rest of the series.
Rise of the Copper Legion (#60280; with soundtrack)
The Fractured Dreamer (#498588; with musical theme)
"Now Leaving: Paragon City": original composition for the end of CoH
I generally hate sitcoms for precisely that reason. There are some that stand out as exceptions, though; "Arrested Development" definitely has a strong theme of family, responsibility, and self-reliance (or lack thereof, depending on the character).
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
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Most literature doesn't package its meaning in simple morals or thematic messages.
If it doesn't have a theme, it's not literature.
What, for example, is the moral lesson or theme of "The Maltese Falcon?"
As Chandler put it in the (highly recommended) titular essay from one of the Seven Books That Contain All You Really Need to Know, The Maltese Falcon is "the record of a man's devotion to his friend".
Or "The Living Shadow," the first story featuring The Shadow?
I've never read it so I couldn't tell you. Maybe it doesn't have one -- maybe it's just a pulp fiction bit of fluff.
The Harry Potter books perhaps have a theme of making sacrifices in the fight against evil, but it's a rather broad theme adopted by pretty much all heroic literature.
The Potter books have various themes depending on the specific book. They tend to be simplistic and heavy-handed but it must be remembered that these books, no matter how popular they turned out to be with adults, are written for children.
I'd say that most literature doesn't dwell on themes so much to provide unity of story - and thereby avoid JABOSTH.
If the story doesn't have a theme, then what is the author saying with it? The answer has to be nothing. If that question does have an answer then there's your theme, but if the author isn't saying anything then what, exactly, about the story in question justifies the killing of even a single tree to produce the paper to print it? Generating suspense may sell books or movie tickets but it doesn't make a story into literature.
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My apologies if I'm jacking your thread. I just thought I'd offer my understanding of the situation with the hope it would be helpful to some forum readers.
(And if you are reading this and suffer from TL;DR then skip to the end. 
)
The point I was trying to make is that you don't have to begin conception of a story with a theme. You don't have to center a story on a theme. You CAN do this, of course, but you don't have to. Not everyone tells a story because they have "something to say." You can let the theme(s) arise organically from your characters and plotting, have fun with it, and let your story say what it will.
I tried to point out that there are well-known examples of literature that are theme-focused. They were written to communicate a specific message and perhaps elicit some form of personal or social change. There are also examples of fiction that do not appear to be thematically focused. I don't expect anyone to have actually read "The Maltese Falcon," it's just something that came to mind. But if anyone has read it, I think my point would be made. It doesn't come across as a thematically-oriented story. Hammett may have had "a record of a man's devotion to a friend" in mind, but what comes across is a specific literary tone of voice, guns, a babe, duplicity, and a struggle for wealth - spawning a whole genre of imitators who included those specific things. Some would not call Hammett's work "literature," as it lives pretty soundly in the realm of pulp fiction, but it certainly has proven to be iconic and has left an indelible mark on the minds of generations of authors and audiences. And it was not the theme that left the mark, it was the characterizations.
There is a similar situation with Superman, who is typically taken as the original subject of superhero fiction. He's iconic, the notion of Superman has made its mark in world consciousness, and it's the character of Superman (and the characters of those who accompany him) that give rise to themes in his stories. In reviewing the history of Superman's stories you can see the character concept develop and where new themes emerge as a consequence of characterization.
I'm not sure how you define literature, Venture - definitions can be a sticking point - but I define it broadly as storytelling, esp. the type that can or has been written down. It can be high brow or low brow, art or craft, a Greek tragedy, a tribal myth, a newspaper article, or whatever. So long as it draws the audience along willingly from point to point and entertains.
The problem, as I see it - and you may see it differently, which is fine - is that events that are not tied together in some manner to provide a unified story are JABOSTH. JABOSTH is like a to do list, a shopping list, in which the subjects are not well-connected, except perhaps as a sequence of A, B, C, D. But if you take the objects - say a hammer, nails, wood, and glue - and you present them to the audience as though they WILL add up to something, and then you do have a resolution where they come together into a house, or a chair, or whatever, then you have taken that list, put it into action, and in the process you've told a simple story. "A man bought these things and then built a house."
Then if you add emotional elements based on character, passion, motivation - like "a man's struggle to finally do something right" - you've got a theme organically grown to go along with your story. Add in a complication of some sort to be overcome, and you've added to the suspense and gained an opportunity to enrich the detail of the story. You could also add an air of mystery if you don't tell the reader what the man is struggling to make, but instead drop the occasional clue to engage the reader in guesswork and projection. The mystery adds to the suspense created by the complication, and all the forms of suspense, with their introductions and resolution, can be positioned to keep the audience's interest piqued and prevent the elements of the story from flying apart.
In this, an "arc" could be defined as the introduction and resolution of a suspense element. Typically, a story ends with the resolution of an arc that began early in the story, and thereby binds the beginning to the end.
So one can certainly start with a theme and select or prune characters to fit the shape of the theme. Or one can start with characters and let their actions and reactions to situations be dictated by their individual essences, and let the theme(s) arise from the interaction of character and plot.
On a practical level, a writer may find that if they start with a theme they may get too preachy with it, or lose it in the details, or as you write the story you may find the theme may change into something else. I think it works better to let your themes emerge on their own, when you can, as they then seem more authentic to the characters and events.
And if your story suffers from JABOSTH, then to fix it you focus on stitching together the parts of your story not just with a numbering system or flow chart (where this happens, then this, then this ...) but with arcs of suspense. You add emotional impact to an empty story by providing characterizations illustrated by choice, action, and result, which creates a theme.
Where people are running into problems with Venture's prescription to add a theme to prevent JABOSTH is that you can't just tack a theme on to an existing sequence of events and call it fixed. You have to build the story from the foundation up with the elements that provide unity of story.
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Mary Sue
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In what way? How powerful the contact claimed to be?
...
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FYI, I took the liberty of using this as my first "second chances" review - see other thread.
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
Arc #114284, "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend"
tl;dr: 4 stars. Offenses: weak themes, poor portrayal of canon character
Reviewed on: 6/4/2009
Level Range: 15-20
Character used: Amarantia/Virtue
Desdemona the Glint has a job for you: knock over a bank that's currently holding a shipment of diamonds, which she is particularly excited about. When you get there, though, the bank is completely empty...except for Ice Age, an Outcast Boss who's had a sudden attack of heroism. The Outcasts already have the diamonds, the whole thing was a set-up, but you do grab some cash on the way out. Desdemona denies knowing anything about the trap, and offers to help you set up the would-be hero Outcasts to get them back.
She's going to do this by setting herself up as a kidnapping victim, hopefully drawing the Outcasts to "protect" her. This also draws the attention of Longbow so you have to bust their heads first. After you "kidnap" Desdemona another Outcast Boss, Firezone, spawns. After he hits the carpet you get some information out of him: the "hero" Outcasts have set themselves up in Bloody Bay, since no one really cares about the place anyway. They've been protecting some of the people trapped there and plan to use the diamonds to help them out. The Clue heavily implies that you off him after he talks which might not sit will with some, though I don't have a problem with it.
Your next stop is Bloody Bay, which the entry pop-up notes looks a lot like an outdoor St. Martial map. There are Outcasts and Circle of Thorns everywhere, hostile to each other. The Circle guys are going on about getting their crystals back, implying those aren't actually diamonds the Outcasts have. Teremex, a Ruin Mage, tells you on his defeat to take out the (just spawned) Outcast guardian, which turns out to be a custom boss, "The Cthonic" (nit: on All Custom Characters faction). I don't know what his powers were (his info says he's a powerful Brick) because he never got to use them. When he falls the hidden tunnel to the Outcast's base is revealed, and Teremex offers you a deal: get the crystals for the Circle and he'll reward you with real diamonds. He assures you the crystals are of no value to anyone but the Circle.
Desdemona naturally tells you to accept Teremex's terms, and the acceptance text is narrated as coming from him: he tells you he's sent some of his minions ahead and give you an amulet that will identify you as a friendly. The map is a Cimerora cave. There are three Circle allies, two minion Spectrals and one Spectral Daemon Lord. None of these are guarded and two of them shouted from the entrance, suffering from the text substitution bug. The first objective is a chest, which turns out to be locked. Finding it triggers your next objective..."Jiggles" the Shivan Destroyer, the Elite Boss kind (even on Heroic, it didn't downgrade). Just what I wanted to see with an empty Domination bar...fortunately with an SDL on my side it wasn't too bad. The Shivan had the key to the chest, which is filled with white crystals that might be mistaken for diamonds if you're blind, deaf and (very) dumb. Teremex meets you afterward and arranges an exchange that night at a cemetary.
Desdemona admonishes you to be careful as she doesn't trust the Circle, but this seems to be the only way to get the diamonds she's lusting after. The cemetary turns out to be a battlefield, as the leader of this bunch of wayward Outcasts, a Radiation Blast/Stone Armor (I think) Boss/EB named Tunguska (altered by the comet fragments in Bloody Bay, according to his info) has brought his troops out for a showdown. He's torqued off over the death of his pet Jiggles from the last act and rather despondently accepts his fate. Teremex is present as an ally escort; when you lead him back to the entrance he makes good on his promise and hands over a big bag of diamonds. Desdemona is ecstatic with the diamonds, and says " Tonight drinks are on me, and later you can kidnap me again and take me to your hidden base, you wonderful, wonderful Dominator you!" The souvenir is her kiss, too.... Um...yay?
It's a good arc though it does have some problems. Aside from the technical nits, Desdemona's voice is entirely off. She's talking more like Boris, the other Cap au Diable broker (you can almost hear the moose-and-squirrel at points). While the arc does have some themes they aren't very well developed. The faux-kidnap plot in Act II could use some development too. As it stands the Outcasts basically come out of nowhere to rescue your "victim". The souvenir makes a reference to the Outcasts experiencing "mutant discrimination" back in Paragon City...I thought I had spotted a reference to that during the arc but overlooked it. That's an X-Men plot element that doesn't apply here. There are no EB warnings in the briefings, which I think are especially needed given the arc's level range. Still, I recommend the arc, especially if you're looking for low-level villain arcs.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
Isn't mounting discrimination against mutants expressly mentioned as a cause of young mutants banding together under the Outcast's banner, hence the name?
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Thanks for the review.
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Offenses: "It ain't half bad/It ain't half good, neither"
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I am use to your reviews pointing out short comings of arcs, mistakes, logic flaws, areas of bad design etc. along with possible suggestions on how things might be improved.
From what I can glimmer from your short review (more of a plot summery) is that the arc was technically pretty prefect, had no logic flaws, was pretty well written, had decent and balanced customs (sorry, but comments like the boss was too hard/easy I take with a giant grain of salt till I get a few saying the same thing. Since you are of first to mention it in almost 300 plays, it is "awaiting more feedback") but was too short????
I thought you might be bias against this arc because it featured time-travel and you have made it clear how much you hate that. It is also clear you read your fellow reviewer's review of this arc and the criticism he took after it.
I guess all I can really say is I am glad you liked the arc and am pretty happy my writing was able to generate an emotional response ("It's ON"), but very disappointed in your review and confused by your rating since I have seen more criticism of arcs you rated 4 or 5 stars than what you wrote about Death to Disco!.
WN
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No comment?
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It is also clear you read your fellow reviewer's review of this arc and the criticism he took after it.
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I am short on time but I wanted to hit this one point: I do not read reviews of arcs I have not played. I did not know anyone even had reviewed your arc until you mentioned it.
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Ok, I will chalk it up coincidence.
WN
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story
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Catching up:
From what I can glimmer from your short review (more of a plot summery) is that the arc was technically pretty prefect, had no logic flaws, was pretty well written, had decent and balanced customs[...]but was too short????
Basically. There isn't enough of a story here to have any serious problems.
I thought you might be bias against this arc because it featured time-travel and you have made it clear how much you hate that.
Again, it isn't elaborate enough, and since it's a comedy it gets some slack in any case. Which leads me to....
What about sit-coms? None of them have a theme, they simply have characters who are put into situations for our amusement.
I give comedic arcs a little extra room because in order to make a joke the author may have to play loose and fast with logic and plausibility. That being said, the best comedies do have themes. Up, to use a current example, is a goofy little cartoon about a guy who turns his house into an airship by attaching a billion toy ballons to it. It still has themes, several actually, with more theme in its first four minutes than the average Michael Bay movie has in its entirety. It's not A Farewell to Arms (which I thought was mostly just Hemmingway blogging about his own failed romance anyway), but it's head and shoulders over, say, Gilligan's Isand. I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect as much from Architects as I get from a Disney cartoon.
Heck, most tv dramas could be considered the same thing.
The writing on most TV dramas, most writing on TV in general, sucks. Don't assume that it's OK to do something just because someone did it professionaly, even if they made buckets of money doing it. Three words: Jar Jar Binks.
The point I was trying to make is that you don't have to begin conception of a story with a theme.
Someday I'm going to figure out why 90% of the human race seems to have no problem understanding what I say, but there's always someone who has to respond to what he thinks I said instead of what I actually said as straightforward as I could.
I did not say "you must begin writing your story with a theme". I said "a story needs a theme". How it gets one is up to the author. If I said "a car needs wheels" I don't think anyone bright enough to design one in the first place would take that as an admonition to design from the tires up. It just means what it says: without wheels a car won't work. Likewise, a story that has no theme or moral is not literature, it is not even a story, it is just an account of events berift of animus, gravitas or telos. It has no soul.
Mangling Kuhn, there is no decision algorithm for the creative process. If there was I'd write a computer program to write stories for me. There are more methods of writing than there are authors, because authors don't approach every story in quite the same way every time. I'm not going to tell people how to get a theme into their story because there is simply no one way to do it, or even a best way, or even a set of best ways. All that matters is that the story has one when the author puts down his pen.
I don't expect anyone to have actually read "The Maltese Falcon," it's just something that came to mind. But if anyone has read it, I think my point would be made. It doesn't come across as a thematically-oriented story.
I have read it, and it does.
Some would not call Hammett's work "literature,"
I would disregard the opinion of any critic or professor who said The Maltese Falcon is not literature. Whether it is good literature is a debate issue, but to say it is not literature at all is to use a definition of "literature" that is at best far too narrow in scope. Of course that's largely what Chandler is saying in "The Simple Art of Murder".
Isn't mounting discrimination against mutants expressly mentioned as a cause of young mutants banding together under the Outcast's banner, hence the name?
Nope. It's not mentioned on their background page, it's not in any of their /infos, nothing.
No comment?
Sorry, but I don't always follow up on responses to reviews in a timely fashion, or sometimes at all if I don't feel there's anything to be gained by it. Like everyone else my time is limited and I'm investing quite a bit of spare time in reviewing arcs already. There is a limit (a soft one, but a limit nonetheless) on how much time I'm willing to invest in one person's work, especially when I have so many requests waiting.
Finally, an update on the queue status. The asterisk shows which queue I'm scheduled to draw from next. The plus sign by the Rerun queue is a marker showing how many times I've skipped that queue; I only hit Reruns on every third pass.
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*Hero: 81378, 170506, 163274, 57352, 149323, 137705, 171149, 161797, 79354, 75386, 59147, 15988, 1036, 55715, 37636, 17006, 174368, 60280, 178774, 100306, 181244, 91644, 167493, 149765, 191775, 4824, 171031, 122569
Villain: 77533, 161865, 32801, 97774, 153720
Neutral: 170547, 123675, 175675, 156389, 143017, 177826, 67356, 1296, 176180
Hero 15-20: 135563, 24926, 108375, 195149, 185895
Villain 15-20:
Neutral 15-20:
+Rerun: 181165, 106553
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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<QR>
From what I can glimmer from your short review (more of a plot summery) is that the arc was technically pretty prefect, had no logic flaws, was pretty well written, had decent and balanced customs[...]but was too short????
Basically. There isn't enough of a story here to have any serious problems.
I thought you might be bias against this arc because it featured time-travel and you have made it clear how much you hate that.
Again, it isn't elaborate enough, and since it's a comedy it gets some slack in any case. Which leads me to....
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I don't know how much story you expect from a two mission humor arc, but you don't just grade on story now do you? Here is what you said about other arcs you rated 3 star:
3 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happened", Timey Wimey Ball, no closure, muddled morality
3 stars. Offenses: badly disjointed level range, excessive ambush, bordeline Idiot Plot, no closure
3 stars. Offenses: plot issues, overpowered mobs
3 stars. Offenses: overpowered mob, Shaggy Dog ending
3 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happened", plot hole, gratuitous geography
3 stars. Offenses: overpowered mobs for a joke arc
My arc had none of those offenses
4 stars?
4 stars. Offenses: plot issues
4 stars. Offenses: weak theme, telegraphed trap
4 stars. Offenses: zero Clues, excessive AVs/EBs for the level range, problematic escort
4 stars. Offenses: weak themes, poor portrayal of canon character
Nope, none of those offenses either.
Sorry, I was just expecting something constructive if you were marking my arc down stars. When you reviewed my Blappy arc I took what you said to heart and significantly rewrote the arc's contact's dialog (you then even replayed it and upgraded it's rating accordingly).
What I feel it comes down to is you don't like short humor based arcs That fine, but you should state your bias up front and own it rather than cop out with "It ain't half bad/It ain't half good, neither" That just wastes both our time and I don't think it really serves the purpose you strive for with your reviews.
WN
Edit for typo.
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story
[ QUOTE ]
Isn't mounting discrimination against mutants expressly mentioned as a cause of young mutants banding together under the Outcast's banner, hence the name?
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It's not exactly explicit. A few contacts mention various things like Outcasts running around in Boomtown pretending to be heroes but actually just extorting people by handing out "fines" for silly crimes like jaywalking. Frostfire himself started out by trying to be a hero but made a few mistakes and became a villain. I'm building on these ideas and decided that a few Outcasts were going to the Rogue Isles to make a name for themselves as heroes, or to prove that "mutants can be heroes too". Tunguska and some of his friends had good intentions but their methods were flawed. Their followers weren't all in it for the heroism either.
Oh, and thanks to Venture for the review. I know there are a few errors in it like the bad faction "all enemy groups", but I can't seem to fix it. I've already tried a few times but it doesn't work. I'm going to try again when i15 hits.
Desdemona's voice is another problem. I was going for "foreign", possibly "latin american", but a few people have interpreted it as russian and in one case ukrainian. Desdemona doesn't speak like that in the game but then again she gets all of one sentence in her own voice and the rest of her dialogue is standard broker-speak. She was much worse before, I've toned it down a lot and I considered removing it entirely, but some people who's judgement I trust have told me that her voice makes her a lot more interesting.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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Desdemona's voice is another problem. I was going for "foreign", possibly "latin american", but a few people have interpreted it as russian and in one case ukrainian. Desdemona doesn't speak like that in the game but then again she gets all of one sentence in her own voice and the rest of her dialogue is standard broker-speak. She was much worse before, I've toned it down a lot and I considered removing it entirely, but some people who's judgement I trust have told me that her voice makes her a lot more interesting.
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FWIW, I'd thought that Desdemona might have a British accent, as her sobriquet "the Glint" sounds to me like something a classic London sneak thief might use. Also, Desdemona is also the name of the wife of Othello in Shakespeare's play.
Arc #81378, "The Broken Chain"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happens", undeclared multiple EBs
Reviewed on: 6/8/2009
Level Range: 1-54
Character used: Venture/Freedom
Alderoy, a custom Contact with no introduction, wants your help in dealing with a fallen leader of the Legacy Chain. Adrastus, leader of the Legacy of Light, has been corrupted, hundreds of years ago. Now he has reappeared as the head of something called the Red Night, which is attacking the Chain. You're being called in to help for no clear reason. The first mission takes place on an office-to-caves map with three hostages to rescue and a Boss to smack down. The Red Night is made up of custom mobs in several lines, similar to the Chain...Steel, Pain, Darkness. It's clear from the enemy chat that they're looking for Alderoy, who obviously has been less than forthcoming. He pretty much blows this off by telling you that he's the current minister of the Legacy of Light and there's another attack taking place.
Next up, psychics Alderoy has hired have determined the Red Night is conducting a summoning in some nearby woods. It seems the Chain is outsourcing everything these days...anyway, you're to stop the ceremony while he chats with the other ministers. This is a woods map with four rituals to stop, each of which has a Dark Melee/Dark Blast Elite Boss. There is no EB warning in the briefing. Because the EBs ran for the county line due to my Caltrops and debuffs, this was about as much fun as root canal.
Alderoy's call to the psychic hotline pays off, though, as they've located a Red Night library. You're sent in raid it. The library turns out to be a Cimerora cave map...I hate people who don't take good care of their books.... You have to find a couple of glowies and take down a boss, "Scribe of Darkness" (whose info says he's Gaze of Darkness). As he falls he says the "Ossuarian" will destroy me, whatever that is. On your return Alderoy reveals the undecipherable langauge of the tomes you recovered is one the Legacy Chain itself created and the tomes are a record of Adrastus' dreams.
After reading through the tomes Alderoy concludes Adrastus has taken the title of the Ossuarian, and he will be found presiding over a temple in Nerva. This turns out to be the Infernal map. Ossuarian is a Dark Blast/Dark Melee AV/EB and a fairly straightforward beatdown. Alderoy thanks you for offing him, the end.
The arc has no theme. For a Legacy Chain arc it has a surprising lack of actual Legacy Chain mobs. There is no reason, other than perhaps the author's desire to avoid level restrictions, why this couldn't be set within the usual level range for the Chain. The Contact, at least, could have been a Legacy Chain model. There is very little dialog and no characterization to speak of. The EBs in Act II are particularly odious; there does not seem to be any story-related reason for those mobs to be so powerful and throwing four EBs at a player without warning is more than a little over the line. This is the arc's only real fault but even if it were fixed what's left would still be a lackluster slugfest.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
Thanks for the review. I plan to use some Legacy mobs once I can customize their descriptions.
Also, the main reason the EBs are the way they are is because I didn't want them spawning in the boss pool. Mine is a lazy solution though.
Thanks again.
Sermon
@sermon
One of Six, Cannibal 6
Arc #77533, "Kung Fu On The Loose"
tl;dr: 1 star: Offenses: legion
Reviewed on: 6/8/2009
Level Range: 1-54
Character used: Dr. Solaria/Liberty
You're at home watching your televsion (the Contact) when you drop the remote and there's a blinding flash. That's the intro for the first mission...OK.... Entering the mission puts you in a woodland scene from a kung-fu movie you were just watching. You are to defeat Master Gi and find a container of white rice, according to the nav bar. Thanks to a plethora of Super Reflexes and Willpower mobs everything has a huge agro radius. All of the mobs are turned up to Hard or Extreme. The same goes for the next mission, which has an Elite Boss for its Big Bad. In the end the whole thing was just a dream.
There is no story, never mind a theme, just a pile of unfun, tedious mobs to fight. Skip it.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
Arc #161865, "Aeon's Nemesis"
tl;dr: 5 stars. Nits: no theme (but comedic)
Reviewed on: 6/8/2009
Level Range: 35-54/33-54/30-54/41-45/46-54
Character used: Amelia Escobar/Virtue
Marshall Brass has his doubts about the Architect system. Preposterous! It was built by Dr. Aeon himself! What Could Possibly Go Wrong? But, Aeon convinced Arbiter Daos it was worth spending Arachnos funds on a "strategic simulation training tool" using the AE technology and that means Brass has to like it...officially. Unofficially, he's willing to pay an independent contractor to poke around. Brass is maybe a bit more verbose than his usual somewhat taciturn self but otherwise he's written spot on. He wants you to start checking it out by running a simulation of a Vanguard attack on an Arachnos base. Not what I want to see on a 35 Widow. Especially when battles tend to leave extra-large spawns of them, all with +perception. The attackers are led by Fusionette, who has some reasonably funny dialog. Brass notes the system handled a routine enemy attack fairly well but wants something more ambitious for the next test.
This time he wants you to set the danger level to "Extreme" and have it come up with a random threat to the Rogue Isles. You find yourself facing down black-suited "Techticians" at Pogodyne Research while looking for a prototype portal generator. The place appears to be a Nemesis front company and the portal generator has been used to raid a Council base. In the debriefing Brass interprets things differently and thinks Nemesis automatons tricked the mercs into attacking the Council. We'll find out soon enough....
The next step, of course, is to continue the simulation and follow up on the lead. Brass points out that the clue was too convenient; if this was a real Nemesis plot you would be walking into some kind of trap. Since it's a simulation it might just be sloppy writing, not that it matters much either way. Defeating the Pogodyne attack team's leader lets you steal the portal generator...which then just vanishes. (Cute clue.) It also doesn't end the simulation. You have to search to find the anomaly, which turns out to be triggered spawns of Nemesis patrols and a Warhulk. Defeating the Warhulk lets you leave. When you get out, Brass seems nonplussed by your report, mainly because he has something more incredible to tell you: several of the Techticians emerged from the datastream and captured Aeon. This is, of course, impossible, but there's no time for lunch at Milliways.
Brass reports a large amount of the AE system's resources are being tied up running a copy of the Shadow Shard. He guesses Aeon is there. (Three guesses who else is, and the first two don't count.) He's not really interested in that right now, though. Brass recognizes the situation as an opportunity to go Off The Rails. If holograms could jump out of the system and steal Aeon, he figures you could use the AE interface in Aeon's "secret office" to break in and steal info on Aeon's secret projects. Once you destroy the security logs the whole thing can be blamed on the rogue Nemesis program. This is a very nice, villainous turn in the plot. You're sent to an office map with nine experiments to investigate (glowies), Arachnos to smack around and the security logs to destroy. The experiments are mostly pretty funny, my favorite being a project to clone Blue Steel that was abandoned when Aeon realized Blue Steel never bleeds. (A close second was the attempt to combine Will of the Earth with a Shivan Shard.) Brass is pleased with your results on your return as he gets lots of dirt to use on Aeon.
But, alas, all good things must end and Brass can't let Aeon just vanish. You have to go into the Shadow Shard simulation and find whatever's preventing Aeon from using his emergency recall to escape, then terminate whatever is responsible for this, whether it's a simulated Nemesis getting involved in the real world or the real Nemesis screwing with your simulation for some reason. Sadly, we don't have any actual Shadow Shard maps available so you end up in a tech lab. You have to destroy two jammers, which triggers a new objective to verify Aeon has left the system. He hasn't. He's so wrapped up in his project he thinks you're just another simulation to beat up. It turns out the AE system's version of Nemesis achieved self-awareness and started to work on a Holographic Hologram Projector, which would let it project itself out into the real world. It couldn't make it work, though, so it brought in Aeon to finish it. He isn't letting a little thing like it being impossible stop him, which is why the system has been drawing more and more computer power as he tries to find a solution. You have to beat him (EB, the Dull Pain/MoG version, was a bit of a pain to deal with) to get him out of the system. That just leaves Holo-Nemesis to deal with. This was going well for me until the last ambush, which consisted of the Techtician guys and their massive -Defense. He went down easily in the second fall. On your exit, Brass tells you he's having all copies of the training sim deleted and even destroying the hardware that hosted your copy, just in case. There's just one loose end, which makes the souvenir....
The arc doesn't have a theme, at least not one I could make out, but it has enough comedy in it to cover for that. It's a Nemesis plot, but it doesn't throw the Idiot Ball at anyone or do anything else objectionable, mainly by having Brass decide to do his own thing in the middle instead of following the script. I would have gone with 4.5 stars if that had been an option because of the lack of theme, but it's really a very good arc and recommended.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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Arc #77533, "Kung Fu On The Loose"
tl;dr: 1 star: Offenses: legion
Reviewed on: 6/8/2009
Level Range: 1-54
Character used: Dr. Solaria/Liberty
You're at home watching your televsion (the Contact) when you drop the remote and there's a blinding flash. That's the intro for the first mission...OK.... Entering the mission puts you in a woodland scene from a kung-fu movie you were just watching. You are to defeat Master Gi and find a container of white rice, according to the nav bar. Thanks to a plethora of Super Reflexes and Willpower mobs everything has a huge agro radius. All of the mobs are turned up to Hard or Extreme. The same goes for the next mission, which has an Elite Boss for its Big Bad. In the end the whole thing was just a dream.
There is no story, never mind a theme, just a pile of unfun, tedious mobs to fight. Skip it.
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Thank you for you comments and your time. While I completely disagree with everything you wrote, you are entitled to your opinion, and I can respect that you did not enjoy yourself.
Go Team Venture!
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Thank you for you comments and your time. While I completely disagree with everything you wrote, you are entitled to your opinion, and I can respect that you did not enjoy yourself.
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What? A mature response? You're not allowed to do that!
Goodbye, I guess.
@Lord_Nightblade in Champions/Star Trek Online
nightblade7295@gmail.com if you want to stay in touch
Arc #32801, "Sharkhead Isle and the Circle of Banished Warriors"
tl;dr: 4 stars. Offenses: "just a bunch of stuff that happened"
Reviewed on: 6/9/2009
Level Range: 20-29/20-29/20-29/15-29/5-54
Character used: Dr. Solaria/Liberty
Operative Kirkland wants you to look into the Warriors. They've just crept into the Isles and whatever they're doing, they're not paying their "taxes" to Arachnos. You're to enter a cave they're using as a base, see if there's anything interesting lying about and "speak" to whoever is in charge, percussively if necessary. In the former category you find a chest with some minor artifacts and some very suspicious thorns. In the latter, a Circle of Thorns Boss named Pharason who was a Behemoth Lord model -- I don't know if he was supposed to be a demon or if the Architect just set the spawn to "Random CoT Boss". Anyway, Pharason lets on as you approach that the artifacts came from the Mu ruins under Primeva and the Warriors are paying the Circle to obtain them. Kirkland notes that if they're smuggling Mu artifacts they're going to owe a lot more than the usual cut.
After checking with the higher-ups, Kirkland sends you to the dig site some of the artifacts have been traced to. There are supposedly two more Circle Bosses on site and you're to smack them both down. He warns you to keep on your toes as there's no telling where the investigation may lead. Sure enough, the Circle is fighting the Banished Pantheon when you arrive. One of the two Bosses is actually a Spirit captured by the Circle that leaves when you smack down its guards. The other, Regalion, talks about how they're passing the cheap stuff off to the Warriors as bait and keeping the good stuff for themselves. Both the Pantheon and Circle boast about some of the artifacts they've recovered lately, which may sound familiar. Regalion was another Behemoth model but from his chat definitely doesn't sound like he's supposed to be.
Kirkland wants to know more about the artifacts the mystics were bragging about so he does what Arachnos usually does in these circumstances: sends someone to knock over a Legacy Chain stronghold to look for the necessary books. This is a good idea, which is why the Circle and Banished Pantheon had it first -- they're both already there beating up the Chain and looking for the same information you're after. Except it turns out the Circle was there to ask for help and was apparently going to get it. They're trying to stop the Pantheon too, because both of the Pantheon's plots involve destroying the world, which is inconvenient for them (and everyone else). Kirkland tries to keep it all straight, noting that he can respect the Circle for wanting to conquer the world but they'll have to get in line behind Arachnos.
He gets the Mu Mystics branch working on the various threats (they freak out over the mention of one of the names involved...Tielekku) and sends you out for more information on the thorns you found back in Act I. Because there aren't enough factions involved yet you're off to rescue a Tsoo Sorcerer from the Family. This is a straightforward ally-escort rescue. The Sorcerer, "Mighty Wind Master" (that's just not the nickname you want to get stuck with, really...) tells you that the thorns are possession traps. Kirkland tells you Arachnos got the same story after debriefing him, though the version he relates isn't quite what characters eventually learn about the thorns later in life. This isn't a continuity gaffe though, it's just the characters not having all the facts yet.
Time for the Fight Scene: Kirkland's superiors don't like the idea of the Circle using the thorns to steal bodies, so they tell him to tell you to go smash the latest harvest. (Kirkland also tells you that the other artifacts have been recovered by heroes, and Mako is getting involved with that Leviathan thing you heard about so it's not your problem.) You're sent to Thorn Island to take out three Thorn Enchanters (more random Bosses, I got two Behemoths and a Hellfrost) and destroy three crates, again pretty straightforward. There's no text or dialog here. Kirkland thanks you for a job well done, the end.
The arc doesn't have a theme, but other than that it's well written. The seeming use of random Bosses for the Circle is disconcerting. On the plus side there are a lot of references to the canon that are handled well. It has good gameplay for a mid-range arc if a bit on the light side, having no EBs or AVs (which may be what you're looking for). Recommended.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
Thank you: four stars is about what I was, by now, expecting to get. I was just curious as to what problems you'd find with them, in hopes that I could learn to do better.
You're exactly right about the Circle of Thorns bosses, and that one drove me nucking futs during the design phase, because there are no human-form CoT bosses that exactly line up with the targeted level 20-29 range. If I restricted them to Agony or Death Mages, I could have it be 20-24, or 25-29, and that's narrower than I wanted. Most of the time I've tested it, I've gotten fewer Behemoths than you did. I don't know what I want to do about that.
From a writing perspective, the biggest problem I had writing this sucker was the overwhelming urge to try to cram 8 pounds of that which promotes growth, and is very powerful, into a 5 pound bag. This was my attempt to fill in some of the gaping plot holes in the canonical level 20-29 red-side story, the places where CoV includes factions from CoH and then never EVER gets around to explaining who they are or what they're doing. In hindsight, trying to cram most of the major plot revelations from "The Tsoo Coup," "The Wheel of Destruction," "The Scroll of Tielekku," "The Library of Souls," and issues 13-15 of the Top Cow comic book ("Awakenings"), into five missions, while trying to foreshadow "The Temple of the Waters" and "The Perfect Killing Machine," was, perhaps, too ambitious.
I was also fiercely determined to write a Legacy Chain scene that showed them in action, and not just against the players. (I also went to some trouble to insert my own explanation for why everybody in the freakin' Isles knows where the Legacy Chain's library branches are, and I'm a bit proud of that, too.) In act 3, and frankly in all 4 of the first 4, I went to a lot of trouble to change things up, to keep things lively, to provide as many alternatives to boring static spawns as I could have make sense, to have something be happening in the instance when you got there instead of the standard MMO cliche' that nothing ever happens in an instance until you get there. So, yeah, that three-way fight that mixes CoT/BanPan battles, Legacy/CoT battles and hostage-takings, and Legacy/BanPan battles is something that I'm really, really proud of. I guess most people aren't as impressed with it as I thought they'd be. Oh, well.
(The Legacy Chain were never going to help the Circle, the hatred runs too deep. There's at least one line of dialog in there, or at least there's supposed to be, that's supposed to make that clear. Which is why the comic book version of "The Scroll of Tielekku" arc ends with the Circle turning to Freedom Phalanx.)
I'm also not sure I did a good job writing everybody's voices. Operative Kirkland is easy for me; if I grew up in the Rogue Isles, Operative Kirkland is probably who I'd have grown up to be. The rest? Not so sure.
I think of it a having a theme, a common enough theme in comic books: nothing is ever simple. A simple attempt to get the piddliest, weakest, tiniest faction in the Rogue Isles to pay their taxes drops you into the middle of three separate plots to destroy or enslave the world, all of which are working at cross-purposes to each other. The other day, I was joking in a global chat channel that I could write an arc where in act 1, you get sent to the post office to buy a stamp for the contact, and by the end of act 5 you'd be battling to save the human race from extinction. Not thematic enough? Can't help it; it's what I know how to write.
But hey, at least you didn't do what most of the commenters who rated my arc did: knock off a point for having Circle of Thorns in an arc that says it includes the Circle of Thorns. And even if I did only get four stars, I did get the coveted "recommended" rating from Venture. That's not nothing. No reply necessary; thanks for your help.
It is also clear you read your fellow reviewer's review of this arc and the criticism he took after it.
I am short on time but I wanted to hit this one point: I do not read reviews of arcs I have not played. I did not know anyone even had reviewed your arc until you mentioned it.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"