If you don't like the writing...
By
.Viridian.,
Posted on: 2012-07-19 13:15 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Y'know back in the day, DC Comics had a tounge-in-cheek continuity keeper called Jonni DC, Continuity Cop.|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Do they get a really nifty outfit? Maybe a sword (or at least a cudgel?)
Alternately needing a long white beard, robes, and a heavy leather-bound book. (Beard optional if the keeper is female.) (Not disagreeing in the slightest. I just now have this image of the Keeper of Continuity in my head, walking up behind someone writing something fairly out of whack and hitting them on the head with The Tome.) |
Yes, I'm serious. She looked like this:
http://www.placesandpredators.com/52/JonniDC.jpg
You're welcome.
- Green Lantern
"Say, Jim...woo! That's a bad out-FIT!" - Superman: The Movie
Me 'n my posse: http://www.citygametracker.com/site/....php?user=5608
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You're probably right. I just want the studio to hire at least one person whose sole job is to read other people's work and correct it. In essence, I want someone to go over the game's texts and storylines who can't have the excuse of "Oh, he was too busy animating bugs away with his pocket calculator to worry about how 'rediculous' is spelled!" I want this to be a job, not just someone's side project for whenever there's spare time.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Just saying hiring a story editor in the traditional sense is probably outside the financial purview of Paragon Studios...
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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.
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It was sarcasm. (from me) But if my wife looked at it I am sure she would have you feeling like a 7th grade writer trying to write at the college level. She is a copy editor by profession. Having her edit your work is 1) quite irritating 2)wonderful, because it is so much better when she finishes. It might even be 1) that stops the team from hiring a competent editor. It cannot be the price, they could spend $100.00 and have a copy editor actually edit all the textfor an entire storyline. Let's face it the game is not text heavy, and they really just need the 99% stupid grammatical errors taken out. The continuity stuff is not something you can expect an editor to do, and the text would be lightning fast to do. My guess is they have never priced out an independent editor. I know 3 working locally that are part time temps doing on line stuff while working at the local paper full time. They are not working at minimum wage, but they are not charging lawyer fees to do this by any means. And seriously, the amount of work the game needs done is almost nil. Add up all the text in one storyline and read it. It will take a few minutes. |
Originally Posted by Kirsten
...How so?
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My suggestion would be to have the writers block out the text the way it will be in a game. Contact a editor freelancer, forward them the (very very raw) copy. Have them correct it. Should take an hour or so. Put the repaired and correct text in. The difficulty seems to be 1) not wanting to take the 3 step process, and 2) not wanting to pay the nominal editing fee.
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Well said, Sam. I wholeheartedly agree.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Bottom line is they need an editor. At least one. What I mean by "editor" is a person whose sole job, or at least primary job to where he can put everything else aside, is to read through all of the stories suggested BEFORE they go into production to catch any glaring continuity problems, and then once more read through all the text of the finished arc to take a pickaxe to the writing.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That seems to miss the point. It sounds like you're saying the reason why we have continuity errors, typos, grammatical errors, and sometimes broken writing is because the writers are too busy world-building to spend time writing effectively.
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I don't care.| I think world-building is just one of the things. From prior to current history, I get the impression that there are a lot of moving pieces at the CoH side of Paragon, and only so many hands to keep said pieces moving. |
All that matters is the quality of the work. There are no excuses. If they've bitten off more than they can chew they need to scale back accordingly. I'm sure they're all great people off the clock but that's not what I or anyone else here is paying for.
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Originally Posted by James Mason
I'm going to tell you something that I learned when I was your age. I'd prepared a case and old man White said to me, "How did you do?" And, uh, I said, "Did my best." And he said, "You're not paid to do your best. You're paid to win."
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"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"
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The writers could be recruited to refill the vending machines and wash Positron's car, but I doubt the powers team would let the writers anywhere near the critters and powers design spreadsheets without making them take a test first.
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Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
I think world-building is just one of the things. From prior to current history, I get the impression that there are a lot of moving pieces at the CoH side of Paragon, and only so many hands to keep said pieces moving. There's the list of player-discovered typos that's been sitting around for years now that there's never any dev time to fix. Having an editor for typos and lore comes in noticeably lower on the priority scale compared to most everything else.
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...Now I have the image of .Viridian. washing cars. Thank, Arcanaville. I think the only thing you could have done that would be worse is somehow disproving nachos.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The writers could be recruited to refill the vending machines and wash Positron's car, but I doubt the powers team would let the writers anywhere near the critters and powers design spreadsheets without making them take a test first.
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EDIT: To clarify, I meant the character. I have no idea what the staff member looks like.
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If Masterminds didn't suck, they'd be the most powerful AT in the game.
Here's something I just noticed, which I will henceforth call the "the alright epidemic." I'll turn over two pages at once and skip the whole discussion about whether "alright" is an actual word (it isn't) and just accept that we're using it without question. Moving on from that... Why does every text box in Night Ward start with that word? Seriously, I went through a full conversation with both Montague and Hellewise and Stray and nearly every text screen they showed me started with that word. "Alright, you need to..." "Alright, lets..." "Alright, I found..."
Why? Why is this "word" even needed? Seriously, pick the entire conversation with Ksenia, search-replace "alright" with "" and nothing in the slightest would have changed about it, aside from a few sentences starting without a capital letter. She won't have said less, she won't have sounded any less "street," she won't have been any less obnoxious... Nothing at all would have changed if we'd just up and skipped the repetition of this word. The way it's used in Night Ward is literally as whitespace. Filler, if you will. It pads out paragraphs so that they all start with the same word like Night Ward characters are speaking via fill-in-the-blanks form letters.
This is where an editor, or a proof-reader at least, would have really helped, because this kind of redundancy is very obvious to anyone who reads the text of the game. It sticks out like a sore thumb and adds nothing to the text it's in.
*edit*
Oh, speaking of redundancies, here's an excerpt out of an Animus Arcana description: "Legendary artifacts only known in rumors and legends..." My original reaction to this was something along the lines of "No! Really? Legendary artefacts are known in legends? I thought for sure they were known in scientific literature!" but Nuclear Toast had one shorter and much better: "Legendary artefact is legendary." Welcome to icanhazexcalibur, people!
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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.
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I'm sure a lot of players would do it for free, if they saw their work paying off.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Honestly? I can believe it, but I'd say that at the very least someone who speaks English well will do just fine. Hell, I'd do it for free, but they'd never hire me
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I stopped doing it for free when I saw typos I /bugged in beta make it to live.
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Alright, if it bothers you that much you should consider making a list of them and PMing them to the devs.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Here's something I just noticed, which I will henceforth call the "the alright epidemic." I'll turn over two pages at once and skip the whole discussion about whether "alright" is an actual word (it isn't) and just accept that we're using it without question. Moving on from that... Why does every text box in Night Ward start with that word? Seriously, I went through a full conversation with both Montague and Hellewise and Stray and nearly every text screen they showed me started with that word. "Alright, you need to..." "Alright, lets..." "Alright, I found..."
Why? Why is this "word" even needed? Seriously, pick the entire conversation with Ksenia, search-replace "alright" with "" and nothing in the slightest would have changed about it, aside from a few sentences starting without a capital letter. She won't have said less, she won't have sounded any less "street," she won't have been any less obnoxious... Nothing at all would have changed if we'd just up and skipped the repetition of this word. The way it's used in Night Ward is literally as whitespace. Filler, if you will. It pads out paragraphs so that they all start with the same word like Night Ward characters are speaking via fill-in-the-blanks form letters. This is where an editor, or a proof-reader at least, would have really helped, because this kind of redundancy is very obvious to anyone who reads the text of the game. It sticks out like a sore thumb and adds nothing to the text it's in. *edit* Oh, speaking of redundancies, here's an excerpt out of an Animus Arcana description: "Legendary artifacts only known in rumors and legends..." My original reaction to this was something along the lines of "No! Really? Legendary artefacts are known in legends? I thought for sure they were known in scientific literature!" but Nuclear Toast had one shorter and much better: "Legendary artefact is legendary." Welcome to icanhazexcalibur, people! |
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The writers don't actually work on their own and come up with whatever they like - they have story meetings and discuss what they want to do with each arc and what themes they want to present, and how it fits into the long-term storyline, and the lore in general - like when they decided to revamp DA, Positron didn't just swing by Dr. Aeon's cubicle and say "Mot's woken up, give me 6 arcs about it", and then left him to get on with it by himself.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Alright, stay on a focused point. Copy-editing is not that expensive. I am unsure of the exact rates, but lets call it $20.00-$30.00 an hour. There is very little actual text in a storyline. So, either 1) Nobody wants to spend $50.00. 2) Nobody wants to spend the time to enlist a copy-editor, or 3) Nobody but us gives a crap. Alright?
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This entire post makes me cringe because of how harsh it is. And yet, I can't find any part of it that I can disagree with.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
And it feels like the extra resources he was given actually WORSENED the stories he produced. I'd actually appreciate the game's writing if it did stick to more or less what the Architect provided, but damned if the development team didn't swear to outdo Architect writers in all ways. So we get these over-scripted messes with unnecessary custom maps and custom critters and custom dialogue and custom artwork that seem to have neglected the one thing which makes a good story - the actual story. I can think of no worse offender in this respect than the SSA1, which feels more like a tech demo for a mission creator players don't have access to than it feels like actual content. It's less a story made for us to consume and more a product which tells me "See what we can do? We're so much better than those peasant Architect authors! We can make EVERYTHING custom!" Yes, I see. Can you make your story custom, though? Because it feels like you slapped it together from Lego bricks.
Budget and time constraints are not an excuse. As far as an actual writer's job is concerned, this is neither so expensive nor so time-consuming. Even if we extend this to mission design, the average time needed to make a basic story arc is around a week, not counting QA testing which is typically carried out by other people. I assume it would take longer if the arc needed custom everything, but that's all the more reason to NOT include custom everything. Take SSA2.1, for example. That arc used entirely preexisting maps, almost entirely pre-existing character models, relatively cheap new enemy factions pulled together from existing critters and only a couple very simple scripted sequences. And it was amazingly good. SSA2.1 is good not because it has lots of bells and whistles, but because it tells a good story, and a good story doesn't take as much time and money as people seem to be convinced it does. It just takes a writer who cares about the writing as opposed to about the gimmicks. Well, it takes an editor, too, as SSA1.7 proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Basically, time and money are not an excuse for not knowing the lore of the story you're working on, or otherwise not asking someone who does or cross-referencing a lore source. People manage to make shockingly good Architect arcs on their own time after work on zero budget and with limited tools. If actual developers are unable to at least match that, then it transpires that their better tools are more of a liability than a help. |
That saddens me.
"I do so love taking a nice, well thought out character and putting them through hell. It's like tossing a Faberge Egg onto the stage during a Gallagher concert." - me
@Palador / @Rabid Unicorn
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Originally Posted by Kirsten
They should, in my opinion, fix AE, and after they do that, take the best AE arcs they can find and occasionally turn one into an official arc. It wouldn't have to be a major one, or even figure into the larger story, but it would mean an interesting new arc from time to time.
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Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
They really should. I have to admit that I assumed that was part of the thinking when AE was created in the first place -- get the players to do some work for free, creating good new content. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I'm sure most players would think that getting their work made part of the official world canon was payment enough.
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PS: Adding in the occasional map or enemy group does not count as "updating AE" any more than adding PvP stats to new powersets counts as "fixing PvP".
"I do so love taking a nice, well thought out character and putting them through hell. It's like tossing a Faberge Egg onto the stage during a Gallagher concert." - me
@Palador / @Rabid Unicorn
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Honestly? I should. It's actually what I'd do for people who asked me to test-run their story arcs - basically make a huge list of everything from the text I had a comment on, with reasons why it stands out and suggestions to improve it. That's not a bad idea.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Alright, if it bothers you that much you should consider making a list of them and PMing them to the devs.
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This isn't why I came to post right now, though. Something occurred to me just now, a praise I gave the game in chat a few minutes ago that... I don't think I've ever given it before. I ran through some of Night Ward, and for as grim as the setting is, there are a lot of decent jokes, too. I found myself reading along and laughing out loud, and commenting that this was actually pretty funny... And then it struck me that I don't think I've ever - EVER - praised the game's writing for being funny. Good, yes. Imaginative, often. Inspiring, sometimes. Funny? Not really. In fact, every attempt at humour I've run into, such as *spit* Dillo have come off as more aggravating, the way genuinely good and funny voice actors devolve into irritating pests when they try to do a "funny" voice for a children's cartoon. But First Ward actually had me laughing along with the characters, and that's new to me.
I have to say, the Animus Arcana are probably my favourite so far, pun-dropping Lightning Storms notwithstanding. They all sound so earnest, so honest. "Hey, I like you! Let me help you! I like helping you! I like everybody!" It's making me chuckle even as I think about it
To some extent, it's probably residual humour left over from the Aperture Science turrets which would say things like "Hello, friend." before opening fire or "I don't blame you." when defeated, all in this tiny, earnest voice, but a Fireball eager to make friends and setting everything on fire in the process was just too good to resist.Honestly, I like the structure of the zone and I like the way it's being treated seriously, but at the same time with a nod towards the goofier aspects that are pretty much unavoidable. If there's one thing that RUINS a dramatic story and turns it into angst is when you realise it's infinitely goofy, but the author is still adamant about selling it with a straight face. You can tell he's both trying WAAAY too hard and you can tell it's not working. Night Ward doesn't have that problem. It is, at its heart, a serious story, but it has a very, very good balance of drama to levity. At least so far, I'm only an arc in. But I liked what was done with Katie, I liked what was done with the Midnighters, I REALLY like what's done with the Drudges... I like Night Ward. So much, in fact, that I wonder where this person who wrote it was when we were waiting for First Ward, because the two stories could not be more diametrically opposite if you drew them on either side of a circle. Good Lord!
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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.
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I'll pass your feedback along to my minions.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I have to say, the Animus Arcana are probably my favourite so far, pun-dropping Lightning Storms notwithstanding. They all sound so earnest, so honest. "Hey, I like you! Let me help you! I like helping you! I like everybody!" It's making me chuckle even as I think about it
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I, and a number of other folks I know, would leave this game as soon as the announcement was made if they removed AE. It's one of the very few things I can consistently enjoy that I don't get burnt out on over time with this game. Sure it needs attention badly, but that doesn't mean we gotta nuke it.
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Originally Posted by Rabid_M
I too thought that was going to happen. Instead, it's been left broken and abandoned. At this point, I'd almost rather they remove it than leave it like it is, a sad reminder of the promise it once held.
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Yeah, I know, and I'm not really suggesting that they should.|
Originally Posted by Xzero45
I, and a number of other folks I know, would leave this game as soon as the announcement was made if they removed AE. It's one of the very few things I can consistently enjoy that I don't get burnt out on over time with this game. Sure it needs attention badly, but that doesn't mean we gotta nuke it.
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It just makes me sad whenever I open the editor in AE, and great ideas start to flood into my head. I sit down, I start to type, and... I realize that while the game itself can easily do what I want it to do, AE can't. Nor will it ever. I eventually close the editor and move on to something less depressing.
"I do so love taking a nice, well thought out character and putting them through hell. It's like tossing a Faberge Egg onto the stage during a Gallagher concert." - me
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And therein lies the problem, inasmuch as someone might agree that it IS a problem.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The CoH story writers don't just write stories.
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IMO, it's a huge problem, but my priorities are very clearly different from those of management (and there's nothing to say that my priorities are the "right" ones from a business standpoint).
I played the beta of Guild Wars and I bought the game at launch and despite having faded away from it in the past couple of years, there's little doubt that I'll buy Guild Wars 2. It's not just that it looks cool in a half-dozen ways. It's that it starts a whole new story for Tyria and THEY HIRED A WRITER WHOSE JOB IS TO WRITE AND MAINTAIN THE STORY OF THE GAME.
Moreover, that person, Ree Soesbee, is someone who spent years writing story for CCG's of Alderac Entertainment Group. She has experience and as someone who played Legend of the Five Rings avidly for a few years, I have direct knowledge of her "chops" in the story department.
All that to say that story and the company policy to support that story with a real writer in control of it is a HUGE selling point and one that swings the buy decision from "looks cool, might get it sometime" to "I need to have this game!"
City of Heroes could use some of that.
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Yes and that's what makes things like the Reichsman story arc so painful, but that's a topic for another time.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The writers don't actually work on their own and come up with whatever they like - they have story meetings and discuss what they want to do with each arc and what themes they want to present, and how it fits into the long-term storyline, and the lore in general - like when they decided to revamp DA, Positron didn't just swing by Dr. Aeon's cubicle and say "Mot's woken up, give me 6 arcs about it", and then left him to get on with it by himself.
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I agree wholeheartedly. I have a sneaking suspicion that we've never had quote-unquote "writers" work on City of Heroes probably since Rick Dakan, so much as we've had "mission designers." That's not a dig against Doc Aeon or the others, mind you - newer content in this game has been quite amazing. But at the same time, what we're getting isn't stories, it's "story arcs" in the in-game definitions of it. We're not so much getting stories represented by game mechanics as we are getting game mechanics strung together into a story, and that's not the right way to do it. Why? Well, allow me to elaborate.|
Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
All that to say that story and the company policy to support that story with a real writer in control of it is a HUGE selling point and one that swings the buy decision from "looks cool, might get it sometime" to "I need to have this game!"
City of Heroes could use some of that. |
A "story" is not just a sequence of events listed in chronological order. That's a script or a storyBOARD. A story is something we care about, it has characters with unique personalities, it has a setting, it has history, it has a broader world that it exists in, it has emotion, it has a whole number of things that go beyond just game mechanics. That's the difference between City of Heroes and Praetoria. City of Heroes has its "story bible," and yes I'm sure it exists, even if not many people reference it. It has a LOT of background information about things that happened before, history, setting, established characters and old events. It feels like a world that we're only seeing a small part of. It represents its own established fictional universe that our writers ought to draw more from. Prateotia, by contrast, is wholly and entirely limited to what's onscreen. There's only as much "story" as can be explored through arcs and nothing beyond. When new ideas are introduced, they're introduced completely out of nowhere because Praetoria has absolutely no backstory or history or broader fictional universe to draw on. It's not a world, it's just a series of story arcs.
To me, designing a story arc first and then trying to tie a story around it is akin to designing a character costume first and then trying to come up with a concept for that costume. It's not necessarily "bad" or "wrong" so much as it misses out on having a real, organic story behind it. When you're trying to explain away gameplay, you typically do only as much as it's necessary for gameplay to make sense and move on, whereas when you're writing a story first to draw gameplay out of, you get the context of a world that exists beyond just the confines of the game. And that's where a professional writer can shine in ways a mission designer who's just good at writing really can't, not for lack of skill but for the nature of the design approach.
I'll close by saying this: I like the old Launch City of Heroes story arcs the best of the whole game. I know the Nethergoat and the Techbot will kick me in the shins and say they're horrible gameplay, and they are. But I like the STORIES they tell and the way they tie into the broader world. I like the City of Heroes of old less because it was good at letting me punch things in the face or good at having characters die dramatically, but more because it was a well-crafted, tightly-woven world within which stories made sense and motivated me to want to learn more.
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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.
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I know that I sound like a broken record about these things, but it's mostly because I don't understand why the studio has what seems to be an active anti-story stance.
When I stop to think very hard about it, I'm still flummoxed that when they went through one of their periodic downsizings a few years ago, that they didn't just dump Arctic Sun, who was doing most or all of the outside-of-the-game lore at the time. (Hell, we barely have any of that any more.) They dumped the entire Paragon Times. All of it. Thrown away like so much useless trash.
What game company does that? Who made a decision to just delete a couple of years worth of game lore and leave it to the players to try and rescue it from the Wayback Machine and save it in some form approximating the original?
If you met a new hero in Freedom and said "You just got Fly? Cool! C'mon, let's have some fun. We'll buzz the Spirit of Freedom!", that person would have no clue what you were on about.
For there to be quality in the writing and in the lore, the management has to believe that the writing and lore add some value to the game. The studio seems to believe exactly the opposite; that story and lore are distractions and that the game really is all about punching people in the face and looking good while you do it, to quote one of the earliest reviews of the game.
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Seconded. Some of my favorite storyline arcs are older ones (the Library of Soul and the Revenant Hero Project, to name but two), and although their actual implementation leaves a LOT to be desired, I thought the concepts behind them were spiffy. If part of I-24 included a 'tightening up' of some of the earlier arcs (ditch the unnecessary FedEx mishes, have a few flow into one another a la the Positron TF, etc), I'd be a very happy camper.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'll close by saying this: I like the old Launch City of Heroes story arcs the best of the whole game. I know the Nethergoat and the Techbot will kick me in the shins and say they're horrible gameplay, and they are. But I like the STORIES they tell and the way they tie into the broader world. I like the City of Heroes of old less because it was good at letting me punch things in the face or good at having characters die dramatically, but more because it was a well-crafted, tightly-woven world within which stories made sense and motivated me to want to learn more.
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Indeed...|
Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
Seconded. Some of my favorite storyline arcs are older ones (the Library of Soul and the Revenant Hero Project, to name but two), and although their actual implementation leaves a LOT to be desired, I thought the concepts behind them were spiffy. If part of I-24 included a 'tightening up' of some of the earlier arcs (ditch the unnecessary FedEx mishes, have a few flow into one another a la the Positron TF, etc), I'd be a very happy camper.
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Oh.
My.
GROD.
What if we took the old arcs, changed NONE of the story, but revamped the mechanics behind them? And what if they had random guest writers occasionally come in, JUST LIKE IN REAL COMICS!?! And what if we all got ponies and ice cream!!?
(To be clear, except for the pony bit, I was being completely sincere. Although I would rather like a pony, but that is outside the powers of Paragon Studios. Unless it was a pony travel power...which I'd be totally cool with. Good for Jonah Hex-style characters...*continues on series of random tangents*)
I gotta agree. The really old arcs have some great stories, even while being stuck under...uh...squiffy mechanics. I wish we could have more stories like those. Think how awesome they would be now that we have the modern game mechanics that exist today!
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If Masterminds didn't suck, they'd be the most powerful AT in the game.
But we don't allow them that excuse if there's a giant hole in the geometry or if the elevators in the missions don't work. If someone said the world-builders and map editors are spending too much time writing to make the missions work correctly that someone would be ridiculed, rightly so.