Positive arc threads should be allowed!

The strangest objection from reviews I've read is to stories that don't follow canon lore. Those reviewers seem to forget that AE is presented as a virtual world w/in a a virtual world. All the missions are supposedly training, which supplies Posi's (weak) in-game rationale for letting heroes run a villain created system.

I couldn't care less about any discrepancies from canon, esp. since canon stories are not uniformly high quality. The more a story veers away from dev canon, the more elseworlds it becomes. An imaginative alternate story can be more fun than slavish conformity to existing canon.

As an example, try running PW's Teen Phalanx arc. You will be entertained.

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A lot of artists, for whatever reason, cannot accept criticism on any level. Worse still are their fans who seem to be infinitely more rabid when it comes to defending what they like.

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You're right, but it goes both ways. Some critics cannot accept criticism of their style of criticism, as it were, and they too have their fans who will rush to their defense.

Eco.

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Maybe so, but at the end of the day, a critique is a personal opinion and doesn't actually NEED defending, unless the critic has done something fundamentally wrong, like not playing/reading/watching said thing they are critiquing.

Additionally, it wasn't a criticism of the style of reviewing, it was more of a criticism of the opinion. It pretty much came down to "You only dislike it because you have no idea what you're talking about.".

That's pretty much setting yourself up to be infallible.

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Well, that was what was going on in the Blight thread: certain known 'critics' from the forums outright missing a lot of content in the arc then drawing their own conclusions from what information they did piece together from parts they didn't ignore, which is kind of ironic given the setting and story.

If it'd been legitimate complaints about the arc, I wouldn't have cared, but I've played it and seen/read the things they obviously did not. And so, several of the 'reviews' were fundamentally flawed.

If some critic wants to complain and criticize an arc, but failed to get a lot of information about it right, he opens himself to criticism and rightly so. Choosing to debate it further by launching more criticism, picking new parts to criticize, and ignoring points just magnifies the terrible review even more. Certain people would be wise to realize that.

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If I ask for a review I deserve what I get, and have gotten.

Basically don't ask if you don't want to know. If your creative vision is too tied into your emotions as to survive harsh feedback then you need to step back away from the review threads.


On a side note, I am both looking forward to and expecting a thrashing from Venture when he hits my arc. Such is the literary process.

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If I ask for a review I deserve what I get, and have gotten.

Basically don't ask if you don't want to know. If your creative vision is too tied into your emotions as to survive harsh feedback then you need to step back away from the review threads.


On a side note, I am both looking forward to and expecting a thrashing from Venture when he hits my arc. Such is the literary process.

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I don't know why you've aimed this at me; every review I've asked for I've appreciated, and said so.

..?

Eco.

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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)

Sorry, was meant as a quick reply. Sorry about that.

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Sorry, was meant as a quick reply. Sorry about that.

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Ah lol, I see. NP, I've done that too.

Eco.

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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)

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Critics need to learn to give MA authors the benefit of the doubt, like they would with dev created stuff.

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Nonsense. The Devs are the professionals here and we're paying for their work, they should be held to even higher standards.

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The strangest objection from reviews I've read is to stories that don't follow canon lore.

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First, I would draw a line to differentiate between criticism and condemnation. Just because a critic mentions some technical factor, it doesn't mean there is implied condemnation.

For instance, if a reviewer mentions that a mission doesn't follow canon it isn't necessarily a condemnation. It could just be stated as a technical point. But it may be taken as condemnation by an arc writer who is too easily offended.

Also, maybe a critic has a preference for canon-related arcs, but it still doesn't mean all non-canon work is automatically condemned. So they may not *like* that aspect of the arc, but it doesn't mean you're being downgraded because of it.

Of course, sometimes it is clear that condemnation is the critic's intended point. Not necessarily condemnation of the arc writer, but condemnation of whatever technical point is being discussed. Personally, I think it's better for critics to just mention the technicals and not assign values to them, and thus avoid condemnation, but not everyone sees it this way.

If you've had some aspect of your arc condemned, remember it's not the end of the world; it's whatever you make of it. You can feel offended by it or not, and it's better if you decide to not be offended.

If you think the reviewer is open to feedback, and you feel justified in what you did, you can explain to them the technical reason for why you did the thing that earned you condemnation.

In my opinion, explanation or moderate rebuttal is fine, as it can broaden the perspective of a reviewer and audience. However, don't be thinking your replies and explanations will win the reviewer's approval, and don't expect you'll win the approval of that reviewer's audience. Recognize that people tend to stick with the opinions they have, and repeated attempts to get them to change their mind are typically seen by them as annoying and stupid behavior.

Critics call it as they see it. Arc writers need to make what they think works. If the criticism you get is useful, then use it. Otherwise just move on.

And if what you're looking for is approval, then just look inside yourself. If you approve of what you've done then be happy. Don't make your approval of your project be dependent upon some other person's approval. And certainly don't wait for *everyone* to approve your work, or you'll be waiting forever.

Related to the OP, I think both positive and negative arc reviews can be allowed, but my preference will be for technical reviews.

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The strangest objection from reviews I've read is to stories that don't follow canon lore. Those reviewers seem to forget that AE is presented as a virtual world w/in a a virtual world. All the missions are supposedly training, which supplies Posi's (weak) in-game rationale for letting heroes run a villain created system.

I couldn't care less about any discrepencies from canon, esp. since canon stories are not uniformly high quality. The more a story veers away from dev canon, the more elseworlds it becomes. An imaginative alternate story can be more fun than slavish conformity to existing canon.

As an example, try running PW's Teen Phalanx arc. You will be entertained.

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While the Teen Phalanx is certainly not CURRENT canon, part of the reason why it works so well is that it's a plausible extrapolation. If it was just about a random bunch of teen heroes fighting a random bunch of villains it wouldn't be nearly so funny. Teen Phalanx makes use of what people know about the canon, and it's not exactly like I can leave any of that behind.

I'll assume that any explanation in the arc that conflicts with what I know is evidence of either incomplete information on the explainer's part or that something more is going on than what seems to be. This may conflict with the arc's presentation of the explainer as a trusted authority, or the chain of events as being nothing more than what they seem.

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Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?

My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)

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The strangest objection from reviews I've read is to stories that don't follow canon lore. Those reviewers seem to forget that AE is presented as a virtual world w/in a a virtual world. All the missions are supposedly training, which supplies Posi's (weak) in-game rationale for letting heroes run a villain created system.

I couldn't care less about any discrepencies from canon, esp. since canon stories are not uniformly high quality. The more a story veers away from dev canon, the more elseworlds it becomes. An imaginative alternate story can be more fun than slavish conformity to existing canon.

As an example, try running PW's Teen Phalanx arc. You will be entertained.

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There is a difference between an arc that deliberately goes outside of canon and an arc that is supposedly set within canon but the author did not do the research. "Teen Phalanx" works because the author DID do the research, then extrapolated from it. The story is clearly not set within current canon, but it does respect it.

An "elseworlds" arc is something different entirely, I only consider an arc "elseworlds" if it has nothing to do with the CoH universe at all. Any arc that mentions anything from CoH canon, no matter how much the author deliberately mangles it, is a "canon" arc in my mind, and the author needs to do the research.

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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

And we do have the "Canon" and "Non-Canon" tags for a reason.

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I like feedback of all sorts. However, and I think this is part of the problem, I'm not willing to compromise on anything and everything in order to please someone. I cherry pick feedback for suggestions I like and pass up on suggestions I don't like. People have their own idea of a fun arc, a good storyline, a believable NPC. If the one reviewing doesn't share this vision, the author can either make that compromise (which very rarely happens), try to defend their choices (which leads to this percieved "you don't like anything"/"stop being a carebear" dilemma), or they can take the feedback for what it is, subjective feedback, and simply ignore it.

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This is really well said. Pick out the useful parts, if any, and ignore the inane parts of the review.

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The strangest objection from reviews I've read is to stories that don't follow canon lore. Those reviewers seem to forget that AE is presented as a virtual world w/in a a virtual world. All the missions are supposedly training, which supplies Posi's (weak) in-game rationale for letting heroes run a villain created system.

I couldn't care less about any discrepencies from canon, esp. since canon stories are not uniformly high quality. The more a story veers away from dev canon, the more elseworlds it becomes. An imaginative alternate story can be more fun than slavish conformity to existing canon.

As an example, try running PW's Teen Phalanx arc. You will be entertained.

[/ QUOTE ]An "elseworlds" arc is something different entirely, I only consider an arc "elseworlds" if it has nothing to do with the CoH universe at all. Any arc that mentions anything from CoH canon, no matter how much the author deliberately mangles it, is a "canon" arc in my mind, and the author needs to do the research.

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Actually an elseworld is a divergence from the existing history of the given universe, an alternate world. As such, it should have a reference point w/in canon. Afterwards it can veer away a little or a lot.

That said, there seem to be too opposing views of AE. Those who take the stated purpose of the system as entertainment w/in a virtual world, or to stretch it further, as a training tool endorsed and approved by Posi in-game. The other side demands consistency w/ current canon, if any canon elements are referenced at all. Neither satisfies me. I prefer the looser middle. But then I'm not a RPer. I have no problem running a heroic mission w/ a villain. So stated intent, both from dev rationalizations or MA authors just make me shrug.

Please forgive me Eva. I don't mean to pick on you in any way. It's just that from other posts of yours, you seem to take things too literally sometimes.

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An "elseworlds" arc is something different entirely, I only consider an arc "elseworlds" if it has nothing to do with the CoH universe at all. Any arc that mentions anything from CoH canon, no matter how much the author deliberately mangles it, is a "canon" arc in my mind, and the author needs to do the research.

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Actually an elseworld is a divergence from the existing history of the given universe, an alternate world. As such, it should have a reference point w/in canon. Afterwords it can veer away a little or a lot.

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I said that's MY definition of "elseworld." By my definition, "Teen Phalanx" is not an "elseworld" arc, as it is firmly based in CoH canon. It's what I'd consider a "non-canon canon arc," if that makes any sense. "Elseworld" to my mind is an arc set in a D&D fantasy world, feudal Japan, the planet Omicron Persei VIII, or wherever.

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The other side demands consistency w/ current canon, if any canon elements are referenced at all.

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I want consistency unless you have a good reason not to be consistent. "Did not do the research" is not a good reason. "It's funnier" or "canon contradicts itself/is unclear/doesn't explain it at all" or "the in-game explanation is given to your character by people who don't know what they're talking about/are deliberately misleading you" are good reasons, among others.

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Please forgive me Eva. I don't mean to pick on you in any way. It's just that from other posts of yours, you seem to take things too literally sometimes.

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THERE IS NO FORGIVENESS!!! I must now vocally put you on /ignore and continue to argue with you anyway!

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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

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words about Teen Phalanx Forever!

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By my definition, "Teen Phalanx" is not an "elseworld" arc, as it is firmly based in CoH canon. It's what I'd consider a "non-canon canon arc," if that makes any sense.

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I confess I was not sure whether to check "Canon" or "Non-canon" as a keyword for Teen Phalanx. Its characters and situations are heavily derived from current canon (since it has a lot of invented teen sidekicks of existing heroes) but certainly they aren't [u]actually[u] canon.

Neither keyword quite fit, so I didn't use either one.

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"Elseworld" to my mind is an arc set in a D&D fantasy world, feudal Japan, the planet Omicron Persei VIII, or wherever.

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As it happens, I've actually written a story arc set in a feudal Japan version of Paragon City -- A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force. I, also, consider this an "Elseworlds" arc.

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@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

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THERE IS NO FORGIVENESS!!! I must now vocally put you on /ignore and continue to argue with you anyway!


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works for me!

eco

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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)

I think Mod 08 said it best (regarding the Blight thread):

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The extremity which many presented their opinions in this thread was entirely inappropriate. Let me state that when reviewing arcs, I am fairly tolerant of criticism. A number of comments in this thread went well beyond criticism with the intent to offer the author materiel on which to help improve their story and became lectures on storytelling technique that were not called for or necessarily correct. Personal attacks against those who voiced such criticism were also incredibly inappropriate.

Please remember that those who offer their creative attempts are doing so without particular benefit and are making themselves vulnerable by doing so. A few kind words about what did work in the story goes a long way towards making any criticism palatable. If you can't find what someone is doing right, you probably shouldn't be reviewing that story at all.

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I fell in the "Personal attacks against those who voiced such criticism were also incredibly inappropriate" crowd and apologize for that. Honestly, in my case it was just my personal frustration at the quality of reviews I've been seeing around here getting the better of me. I'd been trying to find some tactful way to say some of these things for a while and just kind of gave up in that thread.

I think the biggest thing we have to remember is that no one person's opinion on a lot of these things is to be regarded as fact. For instance, people throw out the term "Mary Sue" incorrectly all the time on the internet (not just here). Just because someone accuses you of a particular "sin" doesn't mean that it's true.

It also doesn't really mean anything even if they are "correct."

Will Eisner pointed something out in one of his books that really bugged me for a long time until I matured enough to get it. He pointed out that every single story about an adventure character like The Spirit or any random superhero is about someone chasing someone else.

Every.

Single.

One.

So, if you don't like stories about characters chasing each other, you shouldn't like any comic book published by anyone but a handful of indie publishers, right?

But one character chasing another can be as trippy as Grant Morrison's "Arkham Asylum (which really is just about Batman chasing down all these guys and locking them back up if you want to simplify it)" or as epic as "Crisis on Infinite Earths (which is all about finding and stopping that pesky old Anti-Monitor)".

My point here is that a story can carry some aspect that has been seen before (in this example it's the chase scene) and use it in a new and interesting way. Just because you maybe have time travel in your story doesn't mean that it's going to be just like Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. Just because you have a strong protagonist doesn't mean you've got a Mary Sue. Just because you have a plot twist that can maybe be predicted doesn't mean you're throwing any balls around (idiot or otherwise).

Cliche exists because it works. It isn't the pieces of a story that are important, it's the journey it takes you on. If I were to tell you that there was this movie about an author recovering from a car crash in the care of some crazy lady where the guy doesn't get out of bed for the vast majority of it's running time, you might think it sounds pretty boring. Then Kathy Bates walks in with the sledgehammer and BLAMMO! you're hooked.

Read most of Alan Moore's output to see more examples of this. I could go on and on, but the basic point of "just because you've seen it before doesn't mean you've seen it before" has been made as adequately as I'm capable of tonight.

I'll admit that writing for an MMO is an interesting exercise that is a bit unique, though. Writing for an unknown protagonist is enough of a stretch that I think there should be some room for a bit of leeway. Obviously some people don't agree, but I'm also coming from the background of a Jeff Smith wannabe instead of a Roger Ebert wannabe.

It's one thing to say "write a story with no flashbacks." It's another to say "write a story where you don't know who the protagonist is and can never make a single, solitary assumption about them. No, not even their gender, race, or species."

Now, some of you may say "that's why it's hard to do well." There's some validity to that, but I'm also pointing out that it is entirely ridiculous. One reason MMO's aren't literature and shouldn't really be looked at in exactly the same terms is because there can literally never be character growth, resolution, or any great meaning applied. Without those things, it seems pretty ludicrous to apply some of the critical thinking that's been bandied about (often poorly IMO) around here.

Maybe a whole new paradigm is needed, since we can't actually look at a lot of the the old benchmarks and there's a whole new factor (probably the most important one) that says "Was this fun to play or not?"

To sum up, I don't think a lot of the reviews we've been seeing are fair or an accurate reflection of the medium they were created in and for.

Also, some people around here take their own opinions waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously.

That's a lot of typing. Sorry.

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One reason MMO's aren't literature and shouldn't really be looked at in exactly the same terms is because there can literally never be character growth, resolution, or any great meaning applied.

Given that an MMO adventure can (and likely does) have many more characters than the player, there is no reason for this to be any more true than it is of books, movies, or any other form of storytelling.

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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 don't see MMOs as being an unusual case in storytelling. At some point someone in the industry brought up that thing about a game being about the player and the player being a cypher and how weird and unusual it all is ... and I think that notion has been a confusing red herring. It's not like that at all.

Stories in a MMO are not about YOU, the player, they're about THEM, the NPCs. As a player you participate in their story, and maybe you have the ability at times to change the course of the narrative to some degree, but it's really all about them and you play a role in unraveling the skein of their story.

As a player you move through this content in order to reveal detail about the game world and the characters in it. It may be told well or poorly, but the tale of the characters and their world is done with the standard tools of storytelling.

And if the storytelling isn't compelling or the content has been replayed too much, then the player is probably farming.

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the virtues of being....

...average.

It was probably one of the most horrifying moments in my life.

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With good cause, I can agree with you there. Still, sometimes average is better than worthless, like some of the AE arcs I've seen out there. Sometimes you can be happy that an arc is "only as good as any radio mission".

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Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

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As William Burroughs pointed out, anything "worth doing" is by definition worth doing no matter if you do it poorly or not.

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THERE IS NO FORGIVENESS!!! I must now vocally put you on /ignore and continue to argue with you anyway!

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Lol. I'm glad you have a sense of humor. And if you post that you weren't kidding, I hope i"m not drinking something while reading, cause I'll spew it out.

I was using Elseworlds in the DC Comics sense. They practically invented the term. Marvel uses "What if?" to identify similar stories.

One story had Kal-el's rocket landing in Soviet Russia. So instead of a loving Kansas farmer couple, he was raised by the state to become the Soviet Superman, Red Son.

So if Superman or Batman had a son or daughter and you told a story about them, it would be an elseworlds story. It's an extension of the current mythos, but not part of current continuity.

By that defintion, an Elseworlds tag fits Teen Phalanx perfectly.

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Personally, I'm disgusted by the behavior of a select few who feel that their negative and non-constructive thoughts need to be heard on any thread on this sub-forum.

[/ QUOTE ]Really?

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OP, despite what your title erroneously (or dishonestly) implies, "positive threads" are indeed allowed. They simply aren't entitled to be free of dissenting opinion. Nor should they be.

Negative =/= non-constructive

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No, but needlessly sarcastic, rude, insulting vitriol (such as, for example "I wish it could be erased from the database") is.

Eco.

[/ QUOTE ]Just as a tidbit, Eco, it's against the forum rules to call someone a troll. If someone is trolling, it's your responsibility as a member of the forums to bring it to a moderator's attention. To slander a person as a troll both taints the well for those people who are reading their posts and promoting the thread that the moderators will then have to prune back to remove TOS violations. It's having your cake and eating it too, claiming a superiority which you do not have to enforce or earn.

I would appreciate it if you went out of your way to be a more responsible and respectful member of this community. If the moderators do not deal with the troll as they deal with trolls, then it is your criteria, not the troll that is wrong.

Either way 'troll' is a personal attack and you should know better.

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QR - Talen, since we seem unable to get along, and I don't wish to a. have my enjoyment of the game and the forums spoiled and/or b. run the risk of a modslap from an overly...emotional response to a post or forumgoer I have issues with, I have you on ignore too. If anything I say irks you, I advise you to reciprocate. If whatever you posted was in some way not a criticism or dig, I apologise, but I feel its best we don't communicate.

Regards,

Eco.

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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)

*laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs*

How helpful and positive! Someone should inform Eco he's breaking the rules.

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