Dr. Graves hurts my brain...

In light of my attempt to not demonise their creators when speaking of certain pieces of content, I shall attempt to comment only on what's in the game and not on the people writing it. And using the word "shall" in a gramatically correct fashion, which is to say in the first person only.

I had the opportunity to play through Twinshot's "continuing training arc" hero-side on Beta long ago, and for the most part, it was fun and quite well done. This has been my first opportunity to actually play through Dr. Graves' counterpart of the same arc villain-side, and I must say that I am sorely disappointed in what I'm seeing. Now, I'm not exactly happy with the writing of this thing - almost every named character has typos in their descriptions and a lot of the mission texts have really inexcusable errors in the (an DNA sample), but that's really not what I had in mind to demonise.

No, what this arc has proven to me is that just because you CAN make conversation trees and interactive dialogue, it doesn't mean you should. I will admit that at the time of writing this, I'm not very far into the actual arc, but just the first mission itself has been enough to piss me off to no end with the things it has already made me say and do. Let's look at a few examples:

A machine requests a DNA sample and I'm given the option to refuse. I would have hoped to be given the option to put an axe through it, but I'm not. The machine then draws a sample on its own (begging the question of "how," but that's besides the point). At this point, I wanted the option to put an axe through the machine THEN, but I was not allowed. Instead, my character was forced to sit like a goon and wonder aloud about the obvious lies the machine was saying. And you know what the kicker is? The machine blew up on its own afterwards anyway. So why couldn't I break it, instead?

I'm led to speak with several people, all of whom are gigantic ********. I'm allowed to threaten to kill each and every one of them, and at every opportunity we are both cowed by Graves warning us we will be disqualified. And somehow, this works to scare everyone, myself included, despite the fact that no-one has ever told us what we're competing with, aside from "power." I can get "power" by sticking a fork in a wall socket. Could you give me a bit more context than that?

At several points, the game forces me to say some very blockheaded things, like backing away from an obvious sicko or underestimating a seemingly incapable character who is - to one even slightly genre savvy - obviously more powerful than first appears. Oh, and I get mind-controlled. That's always charming.

Here's the thing - having a contact give me a basic description of what needs to be done without telling me why I want to do it leaves the door open for me to fill in the blanks. I can elect both WHY I am doing this mission and HOW I go about doing it, interpreting the game's "kill everyone in the instance" mechanics as representative of more complex actions. When the game goes out of its way to overtly write my character as a foul-mouth, impatient, easily-intimidated ponce, there really isn't much room for reinterpretation, now is there? I look forward to the game taking pity on me and permitting me to kill all of these people the very next mission, but I rather doubt this will happen. And even if it did, I'll still have gone through the initial humiliation to get to that point.

Dialogue trees are an interesting idea with much potential. However, dialogue trees, by their very nature, have to infer things about our characters that aren't always safe bets. Why would you draw DNA from a cybernetic organism, just as a random point. When done well, these can offer a range of responses, from professional to playful to malicious to disconnected. When mishandled as they are in this arc, they twist my hand behind my back and make me say "uncle." Literally.

Unless magic happens within the next hour, I won't be playing through Dr. Graves' arc again. The forced humiliating conversation is not worth it and the text errors grate my nerves.

*edit*
Ah, there we go. I found something to criticise. I knew it was only a matter of time.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I ran Graves' first arc last night and I agree with and endorse everything Sam said.

Railroading characters into saying, doing, and thinking (!!!) things the story wants for its own sake is both bad writing and bad GMing. Graves should be named Marty Stu, just so we're all on the same page with the level of maturity displayed towards the player character role in the story.

Were this an AE arc, I would be Zero-starring it and recommending to everyone that they steer clear of it.

Instead, I'm posting here. Unless your character is meant to be a two-bit twit, steer clear of this arc. Because that's how you're going to be treated.

I've played it with two characters so far and didn't have any issues with my choices, or the dialogue, unlike the blue side. Since we trick our way to a win I most certainly didn't leave feeling like a half wit. Graves does not like you and the dialogue reflects that but unlike the blue side nothing that happens actually makes you "smell of fear" or do anything stupid. Plus if you read the dna machine dialogue you will see that you realise its all a trick and jump out of the way.

So I am happy with the mission other than not getting the opportunity to fight the final character.

The arc left an extremely bad taste in my mouth. Not in the "nerdrage" sense, but in the "oh holy hell what did I get into by going villain? These people are crazy. Time to ramp up the diff and hurry to 20 and go rogue."

It's either that, or just reroll. I thought the grave's arc was fine for atmosphere, great even, but like you said, Graves and the other NPC's just weren't...well...scary and I probably would have waxed them early if I had gotten a chance.

Oh, this is rich. Now I'm having to act like a retard for the Arbiters. Never before in the game have I had to make myself look DUMBER in order to progress. I'm sure this counts as a "trick," but it's the sort of humiliating, self-deprecating "trick" which makes the reward at the end not worth pursuing. I'm definitely never running that arc ever again. I don't have many villains who enjoy being stooges.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You are told up front you need to make them think you are not worth their attention. If you don't want to do that you can abandon the mission/arc. No problem. Again, you are the one doing the deception here. Unlike the other times this has occurred, when its supposed to be genuine.

I wonder what a viscious snarl sounds like. I'm assuming the writer was going for 'vicious,' but now I'm imagining an arbiter making an angry face into a bowl of jell-o.

Also I ******* hated this arc. The only character I considered to be an actual villain was Crosscut, because he reminded me of a really frightening cross between Hannibal Lecter and a not-campy Freddy Krueger.

Other than that:

Dollface is stupid. She's just flat out stupid. She wipes your mind of recent (see: before level 7 and after level 6 because you didn't forget how to USE YOUR POWERS) memory with no effort whatsoever, and then when you confront her and use the parent-talking-to-a-naughty-child interrogation method ("The bad men will come after you if you take the cookies, you little brat") she breaks like a dry spaghetti noodle and acts like a toddler who's had her toy taken away. Lame, boring, disappointing.

Zephyr is a total loser. "I'm THE Zephyr wind, brah! I like totally dump boats over, tcheah!" It's like someone combined a frat boy with a cloud of dust and put the Ascension Belt on it (which is BS, by the way). The guy does NOTHING but yammer on about how funny it is to sink boats. Yes. We get it. You like to make wind that crashes boats. Stop talking. Seriously, stop talking. Why am I still clicking?

Finally, Omnicore is probably the worst NPC I've ever interacted with. I'd much rather listen to Infernia's 5 minute rant in the LGTF or Becky the Tarantula Mistress than spend six seconds reading her dialogue. She's a forum whiner! That's all she is! She insults you for merely showing up, she uses the term 'indisputable facts' and gets her robotic panties in a wad when she gets moderated and ragequits the conversation. All she does is whine and talk herself up and insult you. Whoop-de-doo, while she's busy yammering like a beta forum poster who just found something they consider a nerf, I'm busy fighting and actually being a villain.

I thought the three arcs were good.. Maybe a lil wordy but for new players just learning where basic stuff in the game (tailor fate waver, university, black market, etc.) It is sorta like missions and a tour of the more important useful things. Id rather have new people go through that arc than see a ton of people asking in help channel where these things are over and over.
That's my stand point. I myself didn't "read" much of the dialog I mainly did them to see what they were like first hand so when new players come I knew what I was doing. As well as for the badges :3

Yeah, I plan to avoid Grave's arcs, because I was NOT impressed with what I saw in Beta. The utter, blatant and badly done rail-roading was atrocious.

And yeah, it's ok to give NPCs the Incarnate armour at low levels, Posi, but heaven FORBID that Players who have got to level 50 and got the damn thing can use it on new alts, nooooo. Apparently we're not UBER enough for that!

Bull-[HONK!]

Graves one of the few Bad bits in I21. End of.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

During beta, I wrote up a four page list of criticisms of these three arcs. A lot of my suggestions got used, but you've put your finger right on the biggest things that didn't: the whole concept of "I'm in a competition with a bunch of really unpleasant people" sucks, and all the way through from beginning to end it assumes that you are human, and that you're rude, dismissive, and prone to over-estimating yourself. At the risk of channeling Venture, there is an Idiot Ball in this arc, and you spend a lot of time holding it.

Heroes definitely got the better end of the deal on the tutorial missions. Twinshot's arcs do a better job of teaching the material, they work better as the tutorial they're supposed to be. Twinshot's arcs actually tie into the issue 19-22 storyline; Dr. Graves' arc is just kind of random. And even on her worst day, Flambeaux is less annoying than even the least annoying of the characters in Dr. Graves' arc.

These arcs didn't need to be fixed, they needed to be yanked out and replaced with something completely unrelated, done over, and done right, from scratch. Unfortunately, as I pretty much expected, by the time any players saw them and were able to give feedback, it was way too late for that.

My advice? Skip it altogether; just grind the Death from Below trial. It's more fun, and will level you past Dr. Graves before you can blink.

i dont like dr graves lvl 5-9 arc, but his 10-14 and 15-19 arcs were quite enjoyable

i do agree the 5-9 arc had WAY too much talking in it

(i personally disliked ALL of twinshots arcs, none of them were really enjoyable too me, it felt like all the heroes i was forced to work with were complete imbeciles in one way or another)

Done the first arc, the one thing I've liked in the Villain arc is Crosscut. He's all kind of nuts, the good kind of the bad kind of nuts. I'll run through them on one character I think, and on a badger or if I want the badge titles for them, but... yeah, Death From Below sounds a better way to level during the lowbies.

While the initial arc isn't as good as it could be, the overall story that progresses through the teens in does become enjoyable, IMO. Don't just base your opinions completely off the initial arc (in before "first impression"), because things aren't as they appear.

Oh, and it's explained later on why Zephyr wears the Ascension belt. It won't pacify the folks who rage because NPCs are not under the same costume limitations as players are, but at least it's explained in-story.

I think I'm starting to put my finger on one big aspect that really sours my impressions of this arc - it's really sloppily written from a technical standpoint. The "viscous snarl" I posted before is a typo I didn't even catch when I posted it. It's just what I copied of my text box. I pick text out of the arc at random and it has a typo in it. Oi... But here's another one:

I approach an "Intercept Team Alpha" which consists of one guy standing around, not intercepting. He says this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

tl;dr

You complain too much.

Maybe it's intended as a more light-hearted look at Villains to balance out the darker stuff in the Mercy Island revamp? The blue side training arcs play a similar role to the semi-apocalyptic tone of the tutorial and following Atlas content revamp.

Oh, and here's another gem:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You do realize you don't have to take the arcs so seriously right? I thought they were a nice little addition to the Mercy revamp personally.