Aentertainment Tonight

You do have a point about my 'sappers' comment, I should have bewen more specific. Expecially since you can't make the actual Sapper mob a Lieutenant anyway. However, the Elec blasters I fought were easily as effective at draining my Wp Tank of end.

The comment about the Kat/Invul was more intended to be dismissive than anything, it's "just" Kat/Ivul, not a big threat (at least to the character I was on).

As for the rest, I didn't have any more trouble with the timed mission than you say, it was more a warning to others. I have seen folks low-rate an arc purely on teh existance of a timed mission (no I don't get it either), and I can't really comment on squishies fighting Praetorians, I don't have any that are high enough level.

Also, we have another episode airing tonight at 7 PM.

I just listened to the review and I have to say...wow. 5-stars across the board! I'm honored that you all think so highly of it and I was especially happy that you all believe that it is worthy of Dev's Choice! In response to a few things brought up, the intent was indeed to make the arc as close to Dev content in terms of presentation as possible. Glad you all thought I pulled that off! I was also quite amused by the nickname for the individual you fight in mission 5. Interesting that you all took the "good" path, as well, since the "evil" path does have some practical merit (Even if it's quite morally questionable and something I, personally, would not do). So far, only two people who have played the arc that I asked have chosen the "bad" ending (Although one was just to see that ending, the other was going with what his character would decide after weighing the options, which I was happy to see). I was particularly surprised that the person with the evil stalker type took the "good" ending.

Also, you were definitely right about how much work I put into it. I worked on it off and on for about a month and a half (Possibly even two months) tweaking the dialogue, adjusting the enemies, dealing with writer's block, adding new things, and testing it all. I do this with all my arcs because I feel that if I'm going to take the time to make an arc, I'm going to make sure I put a lot of effort into it. That's not even counting how much time I spent thinking about it before opening the MA window.

As for the enemy diversity, space was indeed the issue. I was going to add a third minion to the group if I had space. Unfortunately, I'm at 99.86% or so in terms of space so I had to abandon that. That's the cost of having a lot of text in your arc, I suppose.

Finally, Mentalshock did indeed play my arc and loved it just as much as you thought he would. I'm certain you referred him to it and for that, I definitely thank you.

Anyway, thank you once again for playing my arc and I'm glad you all liked it that much!

Crap. Forgot it was on at 7. You guys going to have archives? I can't seen any on your site.

Okay, I will take you up on that. My email is in my profile.

Hm. looks like your show will be right between two meetings for me tonight.

Dang, with both my arcs being reviewed, really wanted to listen.

Well, if fortune smiles on me, I might be able to squeeze it in, listening on a laptop in the office between meetings.

If not, I'll cross my fingers that the archiving system is working.

Episode four of AEntertainment Tonight includes reviews for:

Amazon-Avatar
Escalation
Is it live or is it Memory-X
Birth of a Hero (parts 1 and 2)

Justice Blues, since the Archives are not yet back up, I will send you the review file for Future Skulls. However, the new forums doesn't actually list your e-mail, instead it opens up it's own window to send you the message directly, and I'm not seeing the "Attach File" option. If you could PM me your e-mail Address, I'll get the file to you.

Thanks for the reviews of both my arcs!

I wasn't able to catch the stream live, but an SG mate recorded it for me.

At least 2 members of my SG listened to the stream, maybe more.

Think my favorite line was "FemFury is either female or Joss Whedon."

I appreciate the solid reviews, and the good ratings.

Seemed that the biggest complaint about "Escalation" was feeling the pattern of upgrades was a bit predictible. I was kinda shooting for establishing a pattern, so that the feeling of "How can I beat her? She keeps getting nastier" could sink in a bit. Which was supposed to set up the moment in the briefing for Mission 5 where Detective Becktrees says he thinks he's sending you into a "no-win" situation, and is impressed that you're still going in anyway. It's supposed to be a moment where your character can "be a hero", and charge in against an apparently insurmountable situation, defying the odds. Of course, that's a tough thing to pull off in this game structure, but that's what I was shooting for.

Again, thanks for the reviews on both arcs. It definitely sounds like both enjoyed and considered worth your time, and I'm very glad of that.

Thanks for the file and the review. Glad you all seemed to like it, except for the outdoor mission at the end.

While it is the first appearance of the Future Skulls, it was not written as a beginning of a trilogy. I wrote it as a standalone, with the thought that maybe I would revisit them a few arcs down the road. Unfortunately, they were very loud and persistant about intruding in the next arc I wrote, so it got pretty much scrapped and they took over. I just completely gave up and finished them up for the third arc, it was easier then trying to write something else and getting bullied again.

But through all of that, the story in the first arc hasn't changed. The second arc has been completely re-written 3 times with some major changes in missions even after the story was set and the 3rd has been re-done twice (And there are still a few things in both of them that irritate me.) but the only changes in the first one are mechanical and map changes. And cleaning up typos of course. They never go away.

A point that was mentioned on the show, the Death Skulls will not be a problem with xp. They are Lts in the Future Skulls group, that has the required minions, Lts, and Bosses in the group. If they were Lts in a group by themselves, they would lose all xp. They will lose some value because they are on Standard setting, but there is nothing anyone can do about that except the Devs. (I am not going to put them on Hard. At low level nobody could survive them.)

I don't know if you have played the other 2 arcs yet, but I did want to warn you that the second one is very different in style, being more of a MacGuffin chase. The third arc is irritating because the final mission has to take place on a particular map from a story point of view, but that map does not all a suitably climactic finale because of spawning limitations.

Thanks again for the review. Glad you enjoyed the arc enough to look for the follow-ups. I was wondering one thing, for the 3 1/2 star rating, did he round up or down on the AE?

So, who's up for the next show? Rumor has it I should be listening, and plugging my sound up to the home theater system, but I haven't seen any confirmation of that.

Tomorrow's show will feature:

Necrotic Beginnings (by Mikiri)
The Consequences of War part one (by Dalghryn)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (by PW)

And I'll say it here, at the end of each show, one of us lists off the arcs planned for the next week. At the time we recorded we had zero submissions. I know there are some that got lost during the web host swap that haven't re-submitted, but I don't remember who they are. Without those submissions we kinda don't have a show, so if you think you may be one of those that got lost, please resubmit, and if you haven't submitted at all, we'd love to give your arc a whirl.

The show begins in a little less than two hours.

Thanks for the "Consequences of War - Part 1" review, guys. My wife and I chuckled... and I was flattered at your comments. I'm very glad you liked it.

By the way, Hro'Dath does use the Hro'Drotz model, but he's a completely different "bloody huge" Rikti.

Thanks much for reviewing Teen Phalanx Forever! It was fun listening to the AEntertainment Tonight show. I missed the first few minutes, but I liked listening to the reviewers' opinions of Consequences of War (which I had played through too). I enjoyed the symphonic metal music (was that Within Temptation maybe?).

I'm glad you enjoyed the Teen Phalanx story arc. Loved hearing that y'all thought the Vahzilok brides maybe were a real Vahzilok minion, and the comments about how biased the "heroic clockwork and villainous humans" press release was, and "Do I really have to watch this monitor for 2 hours?"

Thanks again for the reviews. It sounds like you are short on story arc submissions, so I may (greedily) submit a few more.

If you're short on submissions, feel free to give "Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black" (161629) a whirl, if you don't mind Malta.

By all means send in those submissions. Also, if you find an arc that you liked, or have a different point of view on an arc that we've reviewed we also take 'guest reviews' on the show. All you need to do is record your own audio file (mp3 preferred, but I can convert SOME other file types) and send it to dj-abrahms@kjsr.net. Please remember to be respecful of any spoilers in the arc.

Do you know when the archives for these episodes will be available?

I don't know when the station archives will be back up, but they only save the most recent episode. However, I do still have the files of the reviews themselves saved, and as soon as I can figure out HTML, I can put them on their own site.

I'm tempted to slit my wrists... Something came up with my baby girl last night and I wasn't able to listen to the show. PLEASE tell me you've got it saved and it's just a matter of figuring out how to get it posted somewhere. I was really looking forward to hearing it. So was my wife.

Well, the modifications you suggested have been made to 'The Rikti Civil War'. All that's really left is adding a little more flavour text, but other than that, it should be a little more streamlined. Biggest change was removing the kill all.

I finally got to DL and listen to the review for "The Consequences of War - Part 2". Thanks, VERY much! You're praise was touching, and the one critique you guys voiced was the final straw that broke that camel's back. After hearing you and others comment on it, I've replaced the carnie tent map with one that turns that entire mission on its ear. You definitely feel the war with the new map.

Oh, and it's pronounced... Doll-Grin.

Thanks again!

Just listened to the archive and I think you may need to equalize the volume between the speaking portions and the musical interludes. Sort of has that quiet -> LOUD effect going on. Otherwise it's good.