[ QUOTE ]
Nothing that happens there affects the character's "real life" so your character shouldn't feel violated.
[/ QUOTE ]
Heh, except for all the new powers and slots and phat lewt you get!
The canon placement of the MA still rubs me wrong even after writing an epic 4-arc tale about it. Oh well.
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
Yeah that's true enough. If he's that opposed to the actual core story and concepts of the arc, there's pretty much nothing I can do to please him short of completely changing the arc into something tailored for his likes, in essence, just making it his story, and not the one I wanted to tell.
[ QUOTE ]
c) Appropriates the character's identity, which is an unforgivable trespass. The character's identity is utterly inviolate; it is what the player brings to the story in any RPG.
[/ QUOTE ]
Ever read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? It had a brilliant resolution that relied on breaking one of the deeply entrenched expectations that murder mystery fans bring to the table.
There are no "utterly inviolate" rules in writing, there are only good and bad ways of breaking them.
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d) The five most common words in high-school fiction are: "and then he woke up". These kinds of stories are not cute or clever: they are tired, cheap and extremely obvious. There is no trick at all to writing them, because the writer holds all the cards in the first place.
[/ QUOTE ]
Throwing up a whole bunch of crap that doesn't make sense and ending with a "and then he woke up" is different from deliberately constructing a narrative that slowly and methodically takes you Into The Mouth Of Madness.
[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and I do enjoy having fun. So much so that I take fun very seriously.
[/ QUOTE ]
Just because you didn't have fun with it doesn't make it bad. The people who had fun with it are not wrong or stupid, and you're not wrong or stupid either for "not getting it". It's not your kind of thing. It's okay. Admit it, move on.
Character index
Yeah, I don't get Venture's opinion of it at all. I've played several arcs that he reviewed and generally agreed with him, but this time he's way off base IMO. I did start out thinking the anagram was kinda lame, but toward the end of the arc I thought it made perfect sense.
I thought it was a great take on a classic idea, definitely one of the better arcs I've played.
[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and I do enjoy having fun. So much so that I take fun very seriously. Entertainment is far too important to be mindless.
[/ QUOTE ]
Tell me more.
That whole cape incident left him a bit crabby.
Anyway, I'm glad this arc's finally getting the attention it deserves. It's a favourite of mine. 
Just finished playing with my 50 Plant/Storm Controller. Interesting arc, but I'll partially agree with Venture - I don't like having my toon appropriated. I'd change the arc at the end to have Nemesis reveal that he was messing with your mind...
Mission 1:
- I'm going around incinerating barrels of highly lethal contagion. Ok... that doesnt make sense - you'd usually haul that stuff of to a facility to be safely disposed of. And how am I incinerating stuff? Pocket blowtorch?
Why didnt Ms. Liberty help?
I'd avoid using %supergroupname in mission text unless you intend for it to be played solely by SG members. I'm not in a SG and it comes at as "No Supergroup".
"... seems to have all been destroyed...". Hmmm, pretty sure I destroyed them , no "seems" about it.
Mission 2: I was here less than a week ago? Make that 10 seconds.... Assuming a long passage of time doesn't work with this game's format.
Mission 3: The Rogue Isles were hit hardest...
Mission 4: "Morgan" is a fairly uncommon name for a female toon - which is what I was playing. Morgan Fairchild is the only instance I can think of. Adding a twist where you are a deranged patient at a mental hospital is interesting, but should have been revealed to be a Nemesis plot at the end.
"Bad Drawings of Superheroes" clue contains incorrect spelling "denziens".
Overall:
Interesting plot, even though I didn't like my toon portrayed as a nutcase. Nice custom mobs. I'd avoid having multiple instances of patrols/guard groups/etc. having the same text.
The addition of the Clockwork King didn't make any sense to me.
131430 Starfare: First Contact
178774 Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name ( 2009 MA Best In-Canon Arc ) ( 2009 Player Awards - Best Serious Arc )
[ QUOTE ]
Except it isn't. It is different for the MA, but as Venture pointed out, they already did this on Buffy, right down to the "which scenario is more plausible?" dialogue.
[/ QUOTE ]
Forgot about that one, but you are correct. I thought of the DS9 episode that was a very similar plot. I am not sure which of those came first, but I know I saw the DS9 one first myself and thought Buffy ripped the idea off. Actually, I think this plot may have been a Twlight Zone or Outer Limits, but can't swear to it.
In any case, it was very well executed and enjoyable.
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
[ QUOTE ]
Overall:
Interesting plot, even though I didn't like my toon portrayed as a nutcase. Nice custom mobs. I'd avoid having multiple instances of patrols/guard groups/etc. having the same text.
The addition of the Clockwork King didn't make any sense to me.
[/ QUOTE ]
...Maybe it would make sense if you actually finished the arc? You left out the last mission, IIRC.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Except it isn't. It is different for the MA, but as Venture pointed out, they already did this on Buffy, right down to the "which scenario is more plausible?" dialogue.
[/ QUOTE ]
Forgot about that one, but you are correct. I thought of the DS9 episode that was a very similar plot. I am not sure which of those came first, but I know I saw the DS9 one first myself and thought Buffy ripped the idea off. Actually, I think this plot may have been a Twlight Zone or Outer Limits, but can't swear to it.
In any case, it was very well executed and enjoyable.
WN
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, you're right, DS9 did it before Buffy. I wouldn't be surprised if Twilight Zone or Outer Limits did it before that.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
I've never even seen an episode of Buffy in my life. I didn't even own a TV from 2002 to until a couple months ago 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Overall:
Interesting plot, even though I didn't like my toon portrayed as a nutcase. Nice custom mobs. I'd avoid having multiple instances of patrols/guard groups/etc. having the same text.
The addition of the Clockwork King didn't make any sense to me.
[/ QUOTE ]
...Maybe it would make sense if you actually finished the arc? You left out the last mission, IIRC.
[/ QUOTE ]
Maybe I didnt have any specific comments on the last mission? Troll elsewhere please. The reveal at the end that the Clockwork King was another mental patient didnt make any more sense.
131430 Starfare: First Contact
178774 Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name ( 2009 MA Best In-Canon Arc ) ( 2009 Player Awards - Best Serious Arc )
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Overall:
Interesting plot, even though I didn't like my toon portrayed as a nutcase. Nice custom mobs. I'd avoid having multiple instances of patrols/guard groups/etc. having the same text.
The addition of the Clockwork King didn't make any sense to me.
[/ QUOTE ]
...Maybe it would make sense if you actually finished the arc? You left out the last mission, IIRC.
[/ QUOTE ]
Maybe I didnt have any specific comments on the last mission? Troll elsewhere please. The reveal at the end that the Clockwork King was another mental patient didnt make any more sense.
[/ QUOTE ]
Changing the ending to be all a giant Nemesis plot would be really really dumb, since it would completely change the ending as well as the entire theme and most clues in the arc. Just sayin'.
I'd been meaning to play this one for awhile, and I finally did a few days ago. I think it's one of the best arcs out there, and certainly one of the most unique (Uncreation by @Muu coming in at #1 there, which I also played recently). I think it's awesome that people are breaking the mold with arcs like those two and trying something different with the Architect system. They both felt more like stories than almost any other mission I've tried, and I was happy to get caught up in them and just go along for the ride to see where the story would go.
On a side note, Love is in the Error had me in stitches. Fabulous.
I'm just a holy fool, oh baby it's so cruel
Thessalia, by Darkchildx2k
Uncreation is, no word of a lie, my favourite AE arc in the game. It's just so surreal.
[ QUOTE ]
Yeah that's true enough. If he's that opposed to the actual core story and concepts of the arc, there's pretty much nothing I can do to please him short of completely changing the arc into something tailored for his likes, in essence, just making it his story, and not the one I wanted to tell.
[/ QUOTE ]
This sums up my feelings about the arc pretty well. I pretty much hated everything after mission 2, and I had several of the same criticisms Venture did.
Without (again) giving anything away, all I can say is that the arc suffered from the failure inherent in all modern horror: mistaking gloom and mind-tricks for horror itself. I didn't feel frightened or even intrigued at the end of this thing, just manipulated into a situation of saying, "My character is a joke, life is meaningless, and every thing sucks."
All that said, I still rated the arc highly. When I'm doing criticism on an arc, I try to keep in mind that I may not be the arc's intended audience. I'm reminded of something my Creative Writing thesis advisor told me some years ago, about when criticism strikes a chord with a writer. He said something along the lines of, "When you find someone who loves what you've written but finds fault with what you've done it, that person is the person you should be writing for."
Someone who can't tell the difference between the two will provide you with tinted feedback that you'll have to filter to make useful. The problem with this, of course, is that writers are horrible about filtering feedback on their own work, and why that person you should be writing for is so valuable to find.
Edited to remove asterisk that connected to the footnote I decided to take out.
"Bombarding the CoH/V fora with verbosity since January, 2006"
Djinniman, level 50 inv/fire tanker, on Victory
-and 40 others on various servers
A CoH Comic: Kid Eros in "One Light"
[ QUOTE ]
They both felt more like stories than almost any other mission I've tried, and I was happy to get caught up in them and just go along for the ride to see where the story would go.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think this may be tied to the "character is inviolate" issue.
I remember back when Joe Morissey ("Hero 1") did his Dev Q&A. One of the questions I asked, which ended up being one he answered, was "How do you write stories knowing nothing about the protagonist?"
His answer, such as it was, essentially amounted to, "Good question. Um, It's hard."
The real answer, I think, is that it's impossible. At least, I believe it's impossible to write a truly excellent story where the protagonist is interchangeable with any other protagonist. Character is inextricable from plot. As one critic stated (sorry, I don't have the source available at the moment), "What is character but the determinor of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?" This is actually a wonderful thing in fiction, but it's a problem in MA.
There are ways to avoid this issue, but I find neither of them fully satisfactory. First, one can do what Witch Engine does in "Blight." The author can create a prototagonist and project that character onto the player character. Effectively, this converts the MA arc into a traditional story. This is, in my opinion, exactly why something like "Blight" "feels more like a story" than most arcs.
However, this technique will frustrate players who want to preserve their own characters' . . . characters. I know it frustrates me, and it clearly enrages Venture. (That's not to say that all arc writers, including Venture and me, don't do it at least a little bit by making assumptions about the player character, as I intimated in my last post.)
The other strategy is to accept that MA arcs, as a literary form, are different from "stories," i.e., prose fiction or other narrative works, and to accept that they must sacrifice some literary perfection in order to remain accessible to the majority of players. That is, details that would enhance the plot of a story, or even the characterization of characters other than the protagonist, have to be left out or sketched more broadly than they would be in other literary forms.
This approach, too, has its problems. At its most extreme, it produces arcs that are little more than a series of combat animations. Because, as I argued above, plot is tied to character, skimping on character ultimately means skimping on plot.
Neither strategy is adequate on its own, but I believe both have to be accepted, at least until we have a better sense, as individuals and a community, of what we feel "works" in MA arcs, or, indeed, in MMO stories in general, for story purposes. This isn't going to be a quick process. MMO's have been around for only a few years, in the scale of literary history. Right now, we're working from a small set of gut reactions. We need a bigger set of emotional data, one that could take years and several games beyond CoX to accumulate.
I guess what I'm really arguing is that MMO stories and other forms of fiction are different and need to be analyzed in different ways. An MA arc is not a book or a TV show, and, in my opinion, it can't be critically reviewed as if it were. Something new, a form of criticism we're still developing as MMO consumers, is needed. I often criticize the devs for spending too much time as game mechanics engineers and not enough as storytellers, but there's something to be said for the unique nature of a story in the form of an MMO, too.
"Bombarding the CoH/V fora with verbosity since January, 2006"
Djinniman, level 50 inv/fire tanker, on Victory
-and 40 others on various servers
A CoH Comic: Kid Eros in "One Light"
Yeah, I guess the difference between me and people who are bothered by this arc is that if someone's telling a good story, I don't much care whether or not it "violates" my character. I just want to participate in the story and see where it goes.
I'm not making a value judgment here either, so saying that isn't meant to be read as "god yeah look at how much cooler I am than you!" Maybe it makes me a bad reviewer, or at least I'm sure some people will think it does. And it's not that I'm not invested in my characters; nearly every one of them has SOME level of backstory, even if it's only ever in my head, and I'm very attached to them all. But I can separate the MA as being a game within a game, I guess, and enjoy things that way.
Of course, if Blight had terrible writing and a story I hated, I'd have bailed after the first mission (okay, I lie, I try to at least finish even the most terrible things). Great writing and an intriguing plot will suck me in almost every time.
On an amusing-only-to-me note, the character I ran Blight with IS a crazy person, like literally mentally unhinged (still a a hero, though! she means well), so it was kind of awesome that the story took the twist it did. I guess in this instance the arc didn't violate my character at all, but dovetailed perfectly. 
W_E: Yep, part of what I loved most about Uncreation was its surreality. Guuuuuh.
I'm just a holy fool, oh baby it's so cruel
Thessalia, by Darkchildx2k
Glad you started this thread, I never would have played it otherwise. The story was solid and innovative. Reminded me of a cross between the Extadine Lab arc and a classic episode of the Twilight Zone (with a CoH twist!)
I had a feeling that name was an anagram, just didn't take the time to puzzle it out cuz I wanted to experience the "twist!"
Great job, 5 stars! 
Craft your inventions in AE!!
Play "Crafter's Cafe" - Arc #487283. A 1 mission, NON-COMBAT AE arc with workable invention tables!
Post deleted by Moderator 08
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
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Personally, I saw it as a "What If?" side issue from the main comic series.
What If...Paragon Wasn't Actually Real?
If I may deconstruct this a little, you seem to be ignoring a lot of things here.
Pet peeve: this is reductionism, not deconstructionism. Deconstructionism is taking a text (which doesn't have to be an actual text) and re-interpreting it so that it says the opposite of what it was intended to say (or, really, anything the interpreter wants it to say).
This was done specifically with this contact, and for this reason, because there is precident in the actual game for the exact same thing happening with this exact same sort of anagram, and, it hints that something is wrong to the observant right away.
The devs do not have papal infallibility. It's not right just because they did it. It is not a "hint" that something is wrong, it is a flat-out declaration, and it mocks the player because there is nothing he can do about it other than refuse to play the arc. Quoting Arcanaville from my first review thread:
[ QUOTE ]
By the way, this is what makes contact betrayal so dangerous. The one thing the player - the human behind the screen - and the game make a silent pact to honor is that the player will play the game, and the game will encourage the player to play the game. When the player *must* do mission five of an arc, but the contact does something that makes it absolutely bat-[censored] stupid to do mission five of the arc, the game violates that pact with the player, and that's what makes that so generally annoying. The game is never supposed to tell the player that the only winning move is not to play.
The player is supposed to agree to play your work, and your work is supposed to always give the player objectives they want to complete. Tampering with this contract is something that requires massive skill to pull off successfully across the vast range of possible players. Exploiting this contract is what makes it possible to hide the railroad tracks.
[/ QUOTE ]
Rubbing the player's nose in an obvious Nemesis plot (or any other type of screw-the-player plot) constitutes terminating that contract with extreme prejudice.
If you actually read the mission dialog, the clues state you very carefully incinerate the canister, anything it came in contact with, AND the surrounding area. And then when you leave, you and the contact send in biohazard clean up crews in case you missed anything. It's right there in the mission text.
Yes, I read it the first time, and it is completely wrong. If those cannisters contained biohazardous materials and one was found to be leaking, the response would not be to blithely assume incinerating a few things would fix the problem. It would be more like OMFG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE RED ALERT ALL HANDS ON DECK BATTLESTATIONS DEFCON ONE! The cannister could have been leaking all the way from the Rogue Islands, it could have infected any number of people, including the player, the bioagent could have leaked over any amount of terrain and if it is an airborne agent it is already too late for the city. All of Atlas Park, if not the entire city, would have been quarantined on the spot until CDC, SERAPH, whoever, had figured out what they were dealing with.
That, by the way, is just considering the kinds of bioweapons that really exist, which frankly are scary enough. When you start throwing in the kind of things that could exist in City -- magically-active bacteria, techno-organic nanoviruses, "grey goo" -- really, it's a miracle the City world hasn't exterminated itself a dozen times over by now.
I know that's harping on what's really one of the arc's minor transgressions, but hopefully people will read this and stop treating these kinds of scenarios so casually in their arcs. It's come up a few times in my reviews.
This is literally the entire point of the arc. If you don't like it, that's fine, but giving 1 star for personal bias is a little extreme. The whole arc was deconstructing and pointing out the insanity of the entire superhero mythos and how absurd it would sound to a 'normal' person.
Which is kind of like complaining that ships in Star Trek travel faster than light. We already know it doesn't work, that's why it's taken as a genre convention.
There is no 'waking up', the entire arc has you bleeding on various levels in and out of lucidity. Every step of the way, up to, and including the ending, is left ambiguous as to how much of it exactly is 'real', specifically because a story that permanently changes the game or a character in a way that player doesn't approve of is bad form, so it is constructed in such a fashion that a player can take what they want from the finale without invalidating the story of the arc, or their character. You get what you put into it.
Philosophically you can't conclude anything from the arc. Once you have played the There Is No Reality card no conclusion is justifiable because there are no facts upon which to base one, not even cogito ergo sum. The arc is not "just a bunch of stuff that happened" because there is no way to tell what, if anything at all, has even happened. It has reached the Pauli Pinnacle: it is not even wrong.
when over 90% of your feedback is overwhelmingly positive, I think the person must be doing something right.
I'm sure Stephanie Meyer and Michael Bay tell themselves the same thing.
In an architect completely overwhelmed with farms, impossible to read grammar, broken enemies, and worse, this is really the unforgivable sin of arcs?
Yes.
You speak of wanting quality on the AE, but taking arcs that are actually trying to present a quality experience and shouting them down as the worst of the worst doesn't really endear people doing them to make more.
I haven't calculated the average in a while but I was running close to a 3 star arithmetic mean. I've given a good number of arcs 4 or 5 stars. You just can't play the VENTURE HAETS EVERYTHING! card.
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"
I never played the Venture hates everything card. I played the 'Venture's expectations, definition of fun, and outlook of the game is so far removed from a normal person's it can be regarded as statistically invalid in this scenario' card, which is quite different. Apparently to you, fun is SUPER DUPER SERIOUS BUSINESS, which sort of defeats the point. And makes me a little sad
You don't like having your precious little snowflake of a character having an identity crisis, you hate Nemesis, you apparently don't read all the arc's text, etc. etc., we get that. Most players, if we go by my voting and feedback, don't seem to have a problem with it at all.
It's a difference of opinion, everyone is entitled to it. Similarly, I'm equally entitled to defend my choices in the arc, and I am not going to cater to some pretty extreme demands or fundamentally change the arc because of one person's personal weird hangups.
I'm just pointing out how absurd it is to take an arc, ANY ARC, in which the author actually made a real attempt at creating a coherent story, paid strict attention to game lore, used reasonably balanced and interesting looking custom mobs, added lots of things to see and do, properly equalized level range, added contact and custom mob info, a souvenier, and so on, and then calling that arc outright terrible, a prank, wishing you could vote it negative stars, and so forth. It just seems really petty and really doesn't do a service to people who are trying to make a real effort to provide actual stories in a sea of farms and broken garbage.
You don't like having your precious little snowflake of a character having an identity crisis, you hate Nemesis, you apparently don't read all the arc's text, etc. etc., we get that.
I do read all of the text. Usually twice. I read what you wrote. What you wrote was bad.
As for hating Nemesis, he's become a magnet for a particular type of very bad writing, which this arc is an example of. I used him myself in "Why We Fight", albeit in a humorous context, and I five-starred "Aeon's Nemesis", which has him as the Big Bad. The character is poorly used in canon and too many people seem to think that what the developers do is right just because they did it.
I'm just pointing out how absurd it is to take an arc, ANY ARC, in which the author actually made a real attempt at creating a coherent story, paid strict attention to game lore, used reasonably balanced and interesting looking custom mobs, added lots of things to see and do, properly equalized level range, added contact and custom mob info, a souvenier, and so on, and then calling that arc outright terrible, a prank, wishing you could vote it negative stars, and so forth.
Attempts don't matter. Results do.
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"
People complaining about the "unforgivable trespass" of having your character's story dictated to you should remember that, within the game, all MA arcs are played out in a virtual reality.
Your character is choosing to essentially watch an interactive movie. Nothing that happens there affects the character's "real life" so your character shouldn't feel violated.
Back to the arc, I absolutely loved it. The non-combat mission was a little slow because I took my time not knowing what would happen with each glowie, but overall it was a good time.