What keeps you away from AE arcs?
I'm pretty confident that no author writes descriptive text for an arc with the intent to somehow grief the player by
Impromptu writing question, then, what with all the arguing about character metaknowledge and all that...
How would YOU rewrite the following descriptive text to make it 'acceptable'? There is no right or wrong answer here, FYI.
"You cautiously enter the warehouse by an alleyside door, away from potential prying eyes. The acrid scent of Superadine taints the air, marking this warehouse as being the right one."
"Pushing open the rusted gate, you enter the cemetery and glance around. The sound of the wind in the trees almost seems like whispering voices, but you are unable to make out the words."
"A cry echoes from an office floor above you, before it's abruptly choked off. Somewhere in here is a child that needs your help... you square your shoulders and stalk toward the stairs, intent on bringing the kidnappers to justice."
Go.
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
Impromptu writing question, then, what with all the arguing about character metaknowledge and all that...
How would YOU rewrite the following descriptive text to make it 'acceptable'? There is no right or wrong answer here, FYI. "You cautiously enter the warehouse by an alleyside door, away from potential prying eyes. The acrid scent of Superadine taints the air, marking this warehouse as being the right one." "Pushing open the rusted gate, you enter the cemetery and glance around. The sound of the wind in the trees almost seems like whispering voices, but you are unable to make out the words." "A cry echoes from an office floor above you, before it's abruptly choked off. Somewhere in here is a child that needs your help... you square your shoulders and stalk toward the stairs, intent on bringing the kidnappers to justice." Go. |
Selection 2: Seems fine to me, although I realize that a character with Daredevil/Superman-level super hearing might object.
Selection 3: Strike everything after "needs your help." Again, ascribes motivation to the character that may or may not be there.
34 heroes,
20 villains, Victory, Justice, Infinity, Virtue, Triumph, Exalted -- some more active than others
Okay, this semantics issue over whether or not my character can feel/smell/hear/whatever what is going on around him or her... This is not what keeps me away from AE. I have a good feeling it doesn't keep a lot of people from AE, too.
It's probably going to keep this conversation from leading anywhere productive, though.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Impromptu writing question, then, what with all the arguing about character metaknowledge and all that...
How would YOU rewrite the following descriptive text to make it 'acceptable'? There is no right or wrong answer here, FYI. "You cautiously enter the warehouse by an alleyside door, away from potential prying eyes. The acrid scent of Superadine taints the air, marking this warehouse as being the right one." "Pushing open the rusted gate, you enter the cemetery and glance around. The sound of the wind in the trees almost seems like whispering voices, but you are unable to make out the words." "A cry echoes from an office floor above you, before it's abruptly choked off. Somewhere in here is a child that needs your help... you square your shoulders and stalk toward the stairs, intent on bringing the kidnappers to justice." Go. Michelle aka Samuraiko/Dark_Respite |
"The alleyside door to the warehouse was steeped in shadow and unguarded, the perfect entrance. Signs of Superadine in the air marked this as the right place."
"Pushing open the rusted gate, you enter the cemetery and glance around. The sound of the wind in the trees almost seems like whispering voices, but they don't seem to form themselves into words."
"A cry echoes from an office floor above you, before it's abruptly choked off. Somewhere in here is a child that needs help... The kidnappers better prepare themselves for justice."
Some only needed minor changes to remove the character from the description. Though I don't know how much I changed the mood of each one.
Also, for those who avoid AE because of the quality of the arcs, what do you think of the new Lady Winter mission? To me it smell of farm all over it. Giant map? Check. Filled to the brim with all of the same enemy group and no dialog? Check. Chained objective? (not farm related, but annoying on a giant map) Check. Overpowered AV to fight? (not farm related, and also not overpowered to some ATs) Check. No real story to it whatsoever, just an excuse to fight snowmen and an AV? Check.
"You cautiously enter the warehouse by an alleyside door, away from potential prying eyes. The acrid scent of Superadine taints the air, marking this warehouse as being the right one."
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"Pushing open the rusted gate, you enter the cemetery and glance around. The sound of the wind in the trees almost seems like whispering voices, but you are unable to make out the words."
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Eliminate the phrase following the ellipsis. The part before that adequately establishes the hostage's situation, but that last part is downright trying to roleplay my character for me. If I saw that in an AE mission it would automatically be disqualified from a 5-star rating on the spot, and even 4-star could be lost if it kept throwing stuff like that at me.
How would YOU rewrite the following descriptive text to make it 'acceptable'? There is no right or wrong answer here, FYI.
"You cautiously enter the warehouse by an alleyside door, away from potential prying eyes. The acrid scent of Superadine taints the air, marking this warehouse as being the right one." "Pushing open the rusted gate, you enter the cemetery and glance around. The sound of the wind in the trees almost seems like whispering voices, but you are unable to make out the words." "A cry echoes from an office floor above you, before it's abruptly choked off. Somewhere in here is a child that needs your help... you square your shoulders and stalk toward the stairs, intent on bringing the kidnappers to justice." |
The rest of them are fine.
I'm pretty confident that no author writes descriptive text for an arc with the intent to somehow grief the player by
Maybe we could be outraged about something that is actually a problem? |
I
"You cautiously enter the warehouse by an alleyside door, away from potential prying eyes. The acrid scent of Superadine taints the air, marking this warehouse as being the right one." |
"Pushing open the rusted gate, you enter the cemetery and glance around. The sound of the wind in the trees almost seems like whispering voices, but you are unable to make out the words." |
"A cry echoes from an office floor above you, before it's abruptly choked off. Somewhere in here is a child that needs your help... you square your shoulders and stalk toward the stairs, intent on bringing the kidnappers to justice." |
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 to Finsplit, Bubbawheat, Shatterjack, Jophiel, and Eva for their answers. Discussions or examples and explanations like these are far more helpful to me than the meta-sensory argument earlier. This at least illustrates possibilities for alternate phrases, or how to keep things neutral without being soulless.
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
Personally I found the clone arcs writing to be insanely stupid (especially with the way some assumptions are made in them which are easily neutered just by the setting that the game is in). But I don't want to get into why here.
I don't read the boxes that pop up at the start of missions as they OFTEN don't match up with what the character I've made can or can't do.
The other modern writing/arcs aren't that bad. Some of the stuff in Praetoria is okay.
AE however has so much bad writing (even in some of those DEV's CHOICE arcs) that I've come to expect nothing more from the AE.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
![Big Grin](images/smilies/biggrin.gif)
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
Thing is, lots of the arcs in that list are terrible. Without even scrolling down, I see "Future Skulls" and "Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls" which I immediately recalled as awful, and I haven't played either of them in forever. I see plenty more arcs on that list that I have played. Some, such as "Astoria in D Minor," were to my tastes, but literally every comedy/parody arc in that list that I recognize was awful.
Sturgeon's Law applies to everything, even compiled lists of arcs.
edit: Teen Phalanx Forever and Nuclear in 90 were also good
That is the problem with a list being made by one person (with all due respect, given that the list is what brought me back to playing AE again). I look at it, however, as half the dev arcs stink, and I have to play through them at least once to figure that out. If half the arcs in that list don't fit my taste, how is that any more difficult than the regular game?
@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.
"You cautiously enter the warehouse by an alleyside door, away from potential prying eyes. The acrid scent of Superadine taints the air, marking this warehouse as being the right one."
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"Pushing open the rusted gate, you enter the cemetery and glance around. The sound of the wind in the trees almost seems like whispering voices, but you are unable to make out the words." |
If you want to take the focus off of the PC in the second sentence, you could replace the second half with something like '...their words indistinguishable to even the best-trained ear.'
"A cry echoes from an office floor above you, before it's abruptly choked off. Somewhere in here is a child that needs your help... you square your shoulders and stalk toward the stairs, intent on bringing the kidnappers to justice." |
Well, okay. I can believe that most folks acting as a hero or even a vigilante would guess that a kid being held hostage upstairs needs aid to stop being a hostage. I think any PC's reaction to this would depend on whether or not they knew the kid was there in the first place. Given that you refer to the hostage-takers as 'kidnappers', I'm guessing the PC already has some idea of what's going on. Aside from that, however, different PCs might react in a variety of ways. Suppose that any given PC could be a new and/or nervous and/or squishy hero wondering if they're really cut out for the job; a beserkerbarrage 'I'm the best at what I do, bub' archetype; or someone who uses their head a bit more and has a MO that differs from sternly marching up a staircase with a one-liner locked and loaded. Alternatively, the PC could be an arbitrary mechanical mind that's just doing what it's told or and doesn't give a whit two ways, I don't know.
Also, in regards to the terseness that might keep some folks away from the MA...I wouldn't say that the kid is 'somewhere'; we know from the previous sentence that he or she is upstairs. Pretty close, too, since the PC can hear them (unless they have that super-hearing stuff, that I don't know.)
Also, 's kinda off-topic, but I can't think of a better place to put it considering that the question is primarily being asked to infrequent MA'ers.
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
Reading things like this and similar notions previously in the thread I can't help but wonder if none of you have ever heard the surprisingly accurate theory that 90% of everything is crap. And 90% of the remaining 10% is also crap. There is however some stuff that isn't crap and people have already done the hard work of finding it, collecting it and listing it in a thread that is easy to find. There's even a link to it in my signature. That list doesn't fix the problem with the AE search engine but nothing is fixing the problem with the AE search engine so far, so the list is still a good start. If the problem you're having with the AE is that you can't find good arcs because the AE search engine sucks, then it seems silly to complain about having to look elsewhere for the good arcs. If something sucks and a better alternative exists: use the better alternative.
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1) lets us easily separate the wheat from the chaff, and
2) lets us individually define what "wheat" and "chaff" mean
Reading things like this and similar notions previously in the thread I can't help but wonder if none of you have ever heard the surprisingly accurate theory that 90% of everything is crap. And 90% of the remaining 10% is also crap. There is however some stuff that isn't crap and people have already done the hard work of finding it, collecting it and listing it in a thread that is easy to find. There's even a link to it in my signature. That list doesn't fix the problem with the AE search engine but nothing is fixing the problem with the AE search engine so far, so the list is still a good start. If the problem you're having with the AE is that you can't find good arcs because the AE search engine sucks, then it seems silly to complain about having to look elsewhere for the good arcs. If something sucks and a better alternative exists: use the better alternative.
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That particular list is a collection of arcs based on one individual's own taste. It is in no way a reliable source for finding good arcs.
Just as Emberly said, there are a lot of terrible arcs in that list. Especially the comedy ones.
That a list like that was even stickied by the official team shows how much attention they are paying to the system. In other words, zero. It is, basically, a disguised review thread. (If you don't believe, reread the first post and its "small lines").
While I understand that it was created to help the AE community, it being stickied is somewhat unfair to other reviewers, like Venture, GlaziusF or Coulomb2, to name a few.
[COLOR=darkorchid]Nebulhym's AE Arcs: Try them now![/COLOR]
# 12647: Of feathers and fur...[COLOR=yellow]Winner of [B]The American Legion[/B]'s January 2011 AE Author Contest![/COLOR]
# 292389: From Tartarus with love...
# 459592: Interdimensional Headache
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean AE mish.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
That particular list is a collection of arcs based on one individual's own taste. It is in no way a reliable source for finding good arcs.
Just as Emberly said, there are a lot of terrible arcs in that list. Especially the comedy ones. That a list like that was even stickied by the official team shows how much attention they are paying to the system. In other words, zero. It is, basically, a disguised review thread. (If you don't believe, reread the first post and its "small lines"). While I understand that it was created to help the AE community, it being stickied is somewhat unfair to other reviewers, like Venture, GlaziusF or Coulomb2, to name a few. |
If a reader does not like comedy arcs, or perhaps simply does not like the comedy arcs that are listed, then by all means you are entitled to consider the comedy arcs "bad". I hope that you will grant that this opinion, too, is subjective. I try to tag the various arcs I listed with keywords like "Comedy", "Drama", etc., so you can have a better idea what to expect from each one, and can avoid arcs that don't sound fun to you.
I certainly don't think everyone will like every one of the arcs listed in the "Contact Tree for Mission Architect", and I don't claim that the Contact Tree contains all the good material that is actually in the system.
I do hope that players looking in this contact tree will be more likely to find a story arc to their liking. My feeling (which I believe is supported by the opinions in this thread) is that it is too hard for people to find good stories in MA, and that's why we need resources like the Contact Tree for Mission Architect.
Regarding the fairness/unfairness of my listing being stickied by the forum moderators over that of respected reviewers such as Venture, GlaziusF, Coulomb2, Arrowrose, etc., my belief is that the main thing my list has over the other "review threads" is not that I'm the ultimate arbiter of good taste, but, rather, that it is nicely formatted.
![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
For what it is worth, in developing this list, I do make a concerted effort to try and play arcs that are highly reviewed by other players (both "forum reviewers" and "casual players"). I spent several weeks playing through everything Coulomb2 rated as 5 stars in his "Pro Payne" thread (he had a GREAT summary at the end of his thread). I also tried to play through everything Venture and GlaziusF rated 5 stars (admittedly, much shorter lists, hehe). I don't always agree with other reviewers, though (I'm ornery like that) so my list is, in fact, subjective.
I'd be most interested in learning about more good story arcs that would be worth considering, though. If you hate all (or most) of the comedy arcs I've listed, can you give me an example of a comedy arc you consider "good"? I'd love to try something recommended by someone with such high standards. (I realize that must sound sarcastic, but not intended that way -- someone with very exacting standards is less likely to recommend something that sucks, after all.)
@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!"
I'd like to avoid the whole writing for the player vs. writing for the character argument, but I thought it would be an interesting exercise to write this with any character thoughts/feelings removed from it:
"The alleyside door to the warehouse was steeped in shadow and unguarded, the perfect entrance. Signs of Superadine in the air marked this as the right place." |
"Pushing open the rusted gate, you enter the cemetery and glance around. The sound of the wind in the trees almost seems like whispering voices, but they don't seem to form themselves into words." |
"A cry echoes from an office floor above you, before it's abruptly choked off. Somewhere in here is a child that needs help... The kidnappers better prepare themselves for justice." Some only needed minor changes to remove the character from the description. Though I don't know how much I changed the mood of each one. |
Yes, I have outliers, but I've made so many alts that I'm going to hit every concept sooner or later.
Also, for those who avoid AE because of the quality of the arcs, what do you think of the new Lady Winter mission? To me it smell of farm all over it. Giant map? Check. Filled to the brim with all of the same enemy group and no dialog? Check. Chained objective? (not farm related, but annoying on a giant map) Check. Overpowered AV to fight? (not farm related, and also not overpowered to some ATs) Check. No real story to it whatsoever, just an excuse to fight snowmen and an AV? Check. |
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Hey PW!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with your list and it being based on your tastes. Like I told you in-game once, I really appreciate the effort you put into helping the AE community grow. The only thing I don't like is that it's stickied when Venture's or Coulomb2's are not. Whatever the reason is, wether it's your amazing formatting skills or anything else, I still find it a bit unfair to the others. But then again, it's their game.
Regarding the comedy arcs, I tend to avoid them like the plague! Too many were big disappointments, especially the ones that are DCed. In all honesty though, I remember laughing during "The Footstep Initiative" (which is in your list). That was pretty much it.
And where did you get the idea that I had " such high standards"? I don't think I am the only one who didn't agree with your list. If anything, I think I am way easier than most of the reviewers here.
It's a game after all, not a literary circle...
[COLOR=darkorchid]Nebulhym's AE Arcs: Try them now![/COLOR]
# 12647: Of feathers and fur...[COLOR=yellow]Winner of [B]The American Legion[/B]'s January 2011 AE Author Contest![/COLOR]
# 292389: From Tartarus with love...
# 459592: Interdimensional Headache
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
The only thing I don't like is that it's stickied when Venture's or Coulomb2's are not. Whatever the reason is, wether it's your amazing formatting skills
![]() |
Regarding the comedy arcs, I tend to avoid them like the plague! Too many were big disappointments, especially the ones that are DCed. In all honesty though, I remember laughing during "The Footstep Initiative" (which is in your list). That was pretty much it. And where did you get the idea that I had " such high standards"? I don't think I am the only one who didn't agree with your list. If anything, I think I am way easier than most of the reviewers here. |
![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
@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!"
See? I win!
Funnily enough though, my Demon/Dark Praetorian just did a mission tonight where 'there was a psychic aura in here'. All you could tell visually was that someone had gone overboard with the purple smoke machine. It was presuming I had some kind of telepathic sense despite being all alone (even 'Mother' couldn't follow me).
Does remind of the 'sped-up world' thread started not too long ago.
Tyger (50), Mutation-Controller Mind/FF - oldest Mind/FF on Union