LaserJesus
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:The important question is if you were being hit by multiple quicksands. There are 3 different instances of earth thorn casters, with only one actually having quicksands.Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
Newp, I was fighting CoT redside yesterday, against multiple Earth Thorns. I think Sappers are a special case because they were just so annoying. -
Quote:You're the man now dog will suffice.Originally Posted by Bubbawheat
You're definitely not an "unknown author" now. Congratulations on another win, and keep making great arcs!
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Oh I have so many changes I want to make that are just not possible without a jump in available filesize. Drakule could always use new followers, and I'm constantly bumping up against the limit anyhow. I've had to edit down the flavor text of pretty much all of my arcs. I'd love to be able to go back and fill in all of those little system messages and add a couple more clues to some of my arcs.
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Quote:Like I said, it wasn't a sure thing, and there's honestly no way to know all of the things Pocket D War Witch has said over the years. It changed so many times, and paragonwiki.com only has the most recent one from issue 13, and even my memory isn't good enough to remember every little thing she said.Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
Just noting that as far as I can tell the War Witch in Pocket D is not the same person as the War Witch in Croatoa. Her comment was something like that she is surprised to hear that she's dead but that it's a big multi-verse out there, implying that there are many versions of her.
The Pocket D version is aware of the ghost version hovering in Croatoa, because people visiting Pocket D has presumably told her about the ghost version, but they aren't the same person. Whether the ghost version is aware of the Pocket D version is unknown.
All in all, it's a pretty minor nitpick, anyway. I'm more concerned with War Witch's motivations seeming totally out of character than possible canon conflicts with an interdimensional dance club where crazy **** happens pretty much 24/7. -
Real Afterlife
Arc ID: 361155
Author: @Tiger Knight
Rating: 1 star (No rating given in game, see below)
Short Version
An arc with a story that has some good things going for it, and could be really good with some more work and polish, but some really, REALLY rough playability problems that seem to stem more from lack of testing and feedback than anything. (The arc had not been rated yet, and the author has only had 5 total rates over all of their arcs. Noting that, I opted not to make the arc's first in game rating a 1, because, as you will see below, the problems that put it down to 1 are pretty easily fixed.)
Plot Synopsis
Azuria sends you to investigate the presence of Circle of Thorns, who seem to be digging for something in Croatoa. What they find threatens to make them a far more dangerous force to be reckoned with.
Story
The story has some solid potential, and the author obviously put a lot of thought into it. The formatting done to differentiate between "stage directions" and dialogue works, and the author uses different colored text to differentiate between different people talking, an idea that I've also used in an arc that I haven't finished yet. The story makes sense for the most part, and though it can border on powerposing (some might say it does powerpose) usually it does it for incidental things, like your character really wanting a cup of coffee because it's becoming a long night. At the end it goes a bit far with the player comforting War Witch while she's crying. That problem is further compounded by the fact that War Witch being upset with being a ghost seems pretty out of character for her. She came back as a ghost of her own free will to help heroes in any way she can. (A side note, Akarist's in mission dialogue seemed a bit off for him. I can't ever imagine him saying "Can't we just talk this out?")
Continuing on the problems with War Witch, though this might not actually be a problem because it's really not documented anywhere, but I always assumed that the War Witch in Pocket D was the same War Witch that was in Croatoa and that being in Pocket D somehow gave her physical form. She no longer says anything now, just the standard trainer stuff, but over time when she did say stuff, it would change from time to time. One of the earlier ones was something along the lines of "Surprised to see me here? This place can even make miracles happen." More recently she specifically mentioned hovering in Croatoa all the time. This implies to me that she is the same person, and Pocket D is just a really weird place and she's somehow able to be alive there. I mean, a floating ski chalet does pop up every winter.
While we're on the subject of canon, there is a problem with the story and it's regard to canon that is definitely real, and I have evidence this time thanks to the magic of the Internet Wayback Machine! The battle between the Cabal and the Circle of Thorns could not have happened during the Rikti War in Croatoa, as Salamanca does not go all Halloween until well after the war. Pretty easy fix, though. Just remove the reference to the Rikti War and everything is golden.
Aside from things that are out of line with canon, or possibly so, the story does take some liberties with the canon, by writing characters and events into the backstory of the game. None of those really clash, however, and the backstory isn't completely laid out in stone for us. There's a lot of room for interpretation, and it helps add a couple wrinkles to the plot.
The story does need a lot of polish, and a solid proofreading. Unfortunately, I try to keep my critique more on general story stuff and not so much on proofing, because I find taking tons of notes as I go through to really burn me out, so I'm only going to throw out some examples that stuck out to me or things that appeared repeatedly.
I noticed a lot of missing or incorrect punctuation, like periods where there should be question marks, and hardly any commas. There were also many misspellings, which a spell checker can get the majority of. The custom faction in missions 4 and 5 (more on that in the Mechanics section) had Oranbegan spelled wrong as Oranbangan. I didn't notice that particular misspelling throughout the rest of the arc, but like I said, I don't take many notes on spelling and grammar and I hardly even caught that one. The still busy text for mission 4 said "Did you find her? What did she say?" even though neither the navigation text nor the mission briefing mention anything about me looking for someone, I was just told that a group of Circle of Thorns have moved into a cave in Founder's Falls and are planning something.
There's quite a few instances of awkward phrasing as well. My general advice on how to fix this, is to read something aloud and see if it sounds natural to say it. I did save an example of this to show what I'm talking about, though:
Quote:This text starts and stops a lot, and reads pretty clunkily. Since it's descriptive text and not a quickly written list that my character is reading, some smooth flow to the phrasing would really help. You could do something like this with it:Originally Posted by ClueIn the dirt you find a large group of stones scattered around. The larger ones have magical runes on them. It looks like they were pieces of something.
I can just see people critiquing my re-writing of that sentence, but there you go anyway. Obviously, I'm not saying "change it to that", I'm just trying to illustrate how you can take a bunch of short statements and make it have a little more vibrancy.Quote:Originally Posted by How I would write itYou find a large number of stones scattered in the dirt that look like they probably were pieces of something larger at one point. You can see magical runes on the surface of some of the larger ones.
From the end of mission 3 and forward, coming back and talking to Azuria will more often than not have you actually talking to someone else instead. Sometimes this isn't explicitly stated, but the author does color code the dialogue, so I was able to figure out who was talking with little work. Still, it couldn't hurt to put a little "stage direction" along the lines of "Akarist speaks to you in a weary voice" at the beginning or something. Even with that, I'm sure some people will be annoyed at the fact that they're looking at Azuria and talking to Akarist, but with the limitations of the system, you sometimes just have to deal with people being upset at your workarounds. (Editor's Note: See review of The Echo by @MrCaptainMan)
As a final and minor note, I just want to mention that it's always refreshing to play an arc where Azuria is the contact where I'm not tracking down some item that's been stolen from the vault and she's not portrayed as a total airhead.
I almost went for /em raisehand and a Honeymooners line, but I decided that was just too crass.
Mechanics
Story-wise, this was solid 3 star territory. Here, however, is where things take a turn for the worse.
The level "range" is 39-39 for all missions. Bravo on the consistent level range, but why only level 39? This is pretty minor, really, just a very weird thing about the arc that I need to ask.
The first mission is a defeat all, though it's not really an annoying one. It's a relatively small "wide" cave map, that seems to be set to empty as its villain group, and is completely straightforward. One tunnel with no branching paths. Only enemies seem to be spawns that were placed by the author.
However, there's a problem with the Circle of Thorns groups that goes throughout the whole arc. For some reason the author decided to make a few custom groups of CoT instead of just using the standard ones. The problem with this, are the Earth Thorn Casters. Now, I *may* be wrong, but my understanding is that all of the thorn casters are split up into multiple instances, some with control powers, and some without, and the ones with the control powers can only show up once in a group. When you make a custom group, this limitation no longer exists, so you can run into groups where you're getting hit with a few quicksands, which have a pretty hefty hit to defense as well as the slows. (For future reference to anyone reading this, that happens with Malta Sappers as well. Please, do not put Malta Sappers into custom groups.)
My suggestion would be to just use the standard Circle of Thorns group and set the level range so players won't be fighting any enemies you don't want them to run into in the arc. Either that, or remove the specific Earth Thorn Caster that has quicksand. You can see the powers that the enemies have in the custom group editor when you select them.
The second mission involves 2 glowies and a captive, with a ton of false glowies. Fortunately all the false ones were the same, so after I found the first one and saw two more of the same kind in the same room I knew not to click on those anymore. However, this could easily get frustrating for a lot of players. Oranbega is definitely not a good place to go glowie hunting.
The third mission though, is when stuff gets total bananas. I keep thinking I know the MA pretty much in and out, but I continually get proven wrong. The custom group for this mission is comprised of various Circle of Thorns demons. Unfortunately, there's definitely some problems here. First, the only minions are Nerva Spectral Demons, with their resistances, tendency to run and stealth, and -tohit and -recharge. The bosses are Succubi, which aren't too bad considering they're bosses and I only saw so many because of my difficulty setting. (Though I would suggest turning down the difficulty on all of the captive spawns except for the one with Akarist, considering all of them but him are option allies and there's a few of them. Captives/Allies/Escorts set to hard almost always have a boss in there.)
But there's more: Blade Princes were spawning like bosses. I'm kicking myself for not taking a screenshot, but I was too worried about whether I'd be able to finish this review or not. Blade Princes, for those who don't know, are Elite Bosses that show up in late game CoV in a few missions. They have some wicked dangerous powers, like a power that summons about 8 floating ice swords that attack you, and terrify. As an SR scrapper, there wasn't crap I could do about the Terrify, and I had so many attacks coming at me from all directions from the spawn difficulty being set so high on the allies that without elude up I was pretty much guaranteed to die. I in fact got halfway to the debt cap before finishing this mission, considering this is also a defeat all. It wouldn't even be a huge problem, since it does make sense for the story and it was on a really small map, but with the problems with the custom group and my difficulty setting, it was like pulling teeth.
Looking at the custom group editor to try and figure out how such a thing could happen (elite bosses should never spawn as an enemy in a regular spawn unless they're the only rank in a group) I saw that the Blade Prince was listed as a boss. The logical conclusion is that the author didn't realize that Blade Princes were in fact ridiculous EBs and just wanted a demon boss of proper level other than Succubi, and then this horrible bug happened. Just goes to show that proper testing is really important. Even without the Blade Princes though, this custom group is just asking for frustration. It might be worth it just to bump up the level range to a 40-45 arc and use Infernal Demons with edited descriptions instead.
Akarist is the omni-mage AV class, but he's a captive instead of an ally. He's also 45-54, which is outside of the level range of the arc. This causes warnings to appear in the description, despite the fact that you don't fight any AVs or higher level enemies spawned at a lower level. Since Akarist's model is just that of a Madness Mage, he could easily just be replaced with one and be renamed Akarist and have its description changed.
In the next two missions, the main enemy group is a faction of recolored CoT enemies. The minions are Earth Thorn Casters, so it has the same quicksand issue. Another weird thing is that the group was giving out reduced experience, and I was constantly running into groups of all recolored thorn casters, and groups of all renamed nerva spectral demon lords. I have no idea what could be causing this, since they all had the same group name. The fourth mission is also a defeat all. There's really no good story reason for this mission to be one and this being the third one in the arc is going to make a lot of people angry, or not even play the arc once they see all the Defeat All Enemies in the mission description. You'd do a lot better if you just restricted it to the third mission, if you fix the custom group. It's a really small map and it's the only mission where I can see it being vital to take out all the enemies from a story perspective.
In this mission and the next, War Witch shows up as a custom boss level ally. The author did a pretty good job at capturing her look with the character creator, and her powersets are correct as well, but set to such a high level as to be overpowered. If it weren't for the all lieutenant spawns wrecking her pretty quickly, she would have made the entire mission pretty trivial due to her high damage output.
I just go for the full on blue hair, myself.
The final boss is a custom enemy with Necromancy set to a middling range of powers (I never saw a Lich) and Dark Armor with what seems to be every power but the self-rez. Personally, I suggest taking away the status protection and oppressive gloom. Those powers are pretty annoying. Cloak of Darkness also causes some people to inexplicably not be able to see the character model, even with +perception. Probably has something to do with graphics settings, I dunno, but the small amount of defense isn't worth some people not seeing your custom character. He was also spawning as a normal boss in the mission, or there was a duplicate boss spawn, since I ran into him twice, once with no dialogue.
At least there's no question whether he's a real threat to the city or not.
So yeah, a lot of mechanical problems. Not too surprising though, learning the ins and outs of the architect system and figuring out what will piss people off or not is a really trial and error thing that takes some time. Hopefully this will help you get it all sorted out.
Final Thoughts
I want to stress again that I did not rate it in game. This is a pretty rare exception, though. The things that made the arc incredibly frustrating were either bug related, or indicative of not knowing the ropes of the system yet. The arc also didn't have any ratings yet, and presumably hadn't received any feedback. So this one gets a pass in game. The 1 star rating in this post though stands for how I feel about it currently. I really can not recommend that anyone play this until the mechanical issues are worked out. -
Quote:Compared to most forums for any game, not just MMOs, we're practically total raving fanboys.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
They pretty much hit the nail on the head, except for that hilarious part about the "marked lack of whining".
=P -
Quote:It's pretty much the last mission that did it. I pretty much rate based on how much fun I had playing the arc, and the last mission frustrated me so much that I was having no fun at all.Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
So what did he do to warrant only one star? From what you just said it would seem like the arc deserved at least three.
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Just a quick post addressing some of the things you brought up, because I do so hate dissecting someone's post for specific quotes to respond to one by one.
Tediousness of the 15 freakshow bosses
Fighting them as a lieutenant and a minion would not make it less tedious. It would only make it take less time. The player still has to hunt around a map for 15 specific freak tanks that spawn in random areas due to the MA mechanics. These lieutenants would still have dull pain, and would still be able to self-rez.
Okay, so maybe I didn't mention the advice given in the arc. Granted, it's been a few months since I played it, but the advice was pretty much "Check this room to see if any other freak tanks are in it". I didn't really need the advice, since I have a rather good grasp on how the MA mechanics operate. But you do bring up a good point, though. Without that advice it wouldn't just be tedious anymore, it'd be pure ragequit material.
Humorous tone not meshing with the serious tone of what's going on
Yes, there is humor that involves grisly, brutal stuff. It's called black comedy, which your arc definitely is not. The tone of humor in your arc definitely went more for the over-the-top wacky kind. The spousal abuse and the villain's suicide-by-proxy were definitely not played for laughs, either.
The problem here isn't "Uh oh, violence isn't funny!" because the entire history of literature and theater proves otherwise. The problem is that the sudden switch from wacky, silly stuff, to "Hey, you murdered a guy, you dick" does not work well. Hell, I'm even a fan of absurd comedy. I just was not entertained by the delivery, and was put off by the sudden melodrama.
And yes, this is all my opinion, and the people who are a fan of your arc obviously enjoy what you've done with the humor and all of that, or else they wouldn't be fans.
The Monitor's difficulty
Again, been a while, but I recall him being a boss. Meaning that on heroic, or for current standards, +0/x1 No Bosses, he would spawn as a lieutenant. If you mean for him to be a lieutenant, make him a lieutenant. You should only make a custom enemy the actual rank you intend them to be. Never assume that everyone is going to run at heroic, even if you tell them that's how it's supposed to be played. I run at +0/x3 with Bosses in canon missions. If I'm going to give a proper review and critique that involves the overall challenge of the arc and any custom enemy groups that are within it, I need to use the same metric that I use all the time.
Harshness of review
Yes, the review is rather harsh. The thread title isn't just for show. However, I do want you to know that I'm not trying to be hurtful to you. I really didn't like the arc. I actually became very angry when I finished the last mission and saw the pop up. I started shouting obscenities at my monitor, which really isn't that strange for me, but still. I felt that based on the experience I had with the arc, that 1 star was the rating I would give it. (Side note: the 'if you care' was not meant to be hurtful. Poor choice of words on my part.)
Is the arc at least competently designed?
Apart from the last mission's 15 boss chain, The Monitor's power selections, and the oversight with the librarian boss, I feel that the arc was competently designed, at least mechanically. Everything worked, the dialogue and events happening could be easily understood by someone who can read English. But to be honest, competently designed is the bare minimum of what I expect when going into an arc. A competently designed arc that doesn't show any further kind of depth, bring some mechanical surprises to the table, or generally leave a lasting impression on me gets 3 stars from me. Granted, with your last mission you did do something out of the ordinary to achieve a specific goal using the MA mechanics in a unique way. However, that door swings both ways, and it left a negative impression on me.
I guess in summary: I didn't like the arc. Sorry. Hopefully my critique can help you improve upon the arc in a way that you are happy with. -
This arc has become a Dev's Choice arc, but considering the fact that the review was requested before it became one, I'm going to do it anyhow.
The Most Important Thing
Arc ID: 266877
Author: Aisynia
Rating: 4 stars
Short Version
An arc with a decent plot that's presented well, but has some issues with the delivery and the tone.
Plot Synopsis
Amy Callahan, a heroine with the power to see the flow of the timestream and prevent changes to it, needs your help to rescue her family from a mad scientist who has been blackmailing her. In helping her, you become involved in a decades long story of tragedy and revenge.
Story
SPOILER ALERT
Oh yeah, you bet we're gonna get into spoiler territory. We're going to blaze a trail all over it.
Ah, time travel and causality loops. Such a dangerous game. Fortunately, this arc doesn't do anything that isn't pretty standard for sci-fi and superhero stories and didn't have any moments that I instantly thought were blatantly stupid. The character motivations made sense, and it served the story pretty well.
Freaking mad scientists and time travel.
While that didn't bother me at all, the story wasn't perfect. I had two main problems with it. The first was the heavy-handed tone that the arc tends to take. While Amy should rightfully be incredibly upset about her family being kidnapped and murdered, for most of the arc the waterworks are on full force. Even before she learns the true fate of her family, Amy is a total mess when asking you for help. While the threat of death is already on them because she refuses to fulfill her blackmailer's demand for her to murder someone, her sadness seemed over the top. It seemed too much like depression and not enough like desperation. After the first mission, after it became apparent that her family had already been killed, her depressed attitude feels more appropriate, but the first mission's emotional outpouring was a bit too over the top for me and weakened the significance of her grief over her family's death. Continuing forward, she continues this same level of grief, and by the fourth mission I just wanted to shake her and tell her to get a hold of herself and get angry at Dr. Albright and use that anger to her advantage. In the end she does seem to come around and work through some of the grief and become determined to stop him, but I can't help but feel that the fact that the mission starts with full throttle emotion and doesn't let up for at least the first three missions makes it so there's no tension to build up to her tragedy.
Yeah, maybe I'm not the best person to go to for emotional support.
It also doesn't help that at times the mission straight out tells you what you should be feeling. The most egregious example that comes to mind is in the first mission, where one of the clues describes footage of Dr. Albright vivisecting Amy's family and then proceeds to say that he's a monster that needs to be stopped. Never tell the audience what they should be feeling. If someone doesn't feel that cutting apart a living person is monstrous, then they're not going to feel any emotional response regardless. When you tell the audience that it's monstrous instead of letting them come to that conclusion themselves and let it sink in exactly what kind of person that they're dealing with, the emotional impact is lessened significantly.
The other main problem I had was a plot point that came out of nowhere, and then was never addressed again. Halfway through the arc Amy is attacked by a hero. Apparently she is wanted for the death of her family, and she thinks that Dr. Albright somehow framed her. There's two problems with that. First, there's not really a motive for her to kill her family. Second, he could have easily just leaked evidence about the actual crimes that she did commit for him to protect her family, like the theft. Plus, nothing comes out of it. She's attacked by a hero, and then you both pretty much just shrug and continue on like nothing ever happened. You never find out if Dr. Albright framed her or why, you never clear her name, or anything.
By the end of the arc, I was getting pretty worried about the ending. The story was leading up to yet more tragedy for Amy, and it would be really easy to completely mess it up and have the ending be lame. However, it was also looking like it'd be pretty hard to have an ending that had any kind of dramatic satisfaction. I figured that the ending would go one of two ways, neither of which would have left me feeling satisfied: Amy prevents herself from being affected by the alterations to the timestream, dying in the process because of the strain on her powers because she felt like she needed to atone for her family's death, or she doesn't use her powers and instead is affected by the timestream, never receiving her powers or having her family go through the tragedy caused by Dr. Albright's schemes.
Genre savvy is another one of my superpowers.
Thankfully, neither of them happened. Amy leaves a note that is protected from the altered timestream that explains that she found out that she wasn't her mother's biological daughter, and was instead a genetically engineered embyro that was implanted in her mother's womb. In order to prevent any catastrophic paradoxes and to ensure that Dr. Albright's schemes never ruined anyone's life, she willingly sacrificed herself. I was pleasantly surprised by the ending, since it paid off on the foreshadowing earlier in the arc without the self-flagellating grief that I was expecting. The ending did a lot to help bring me around to liking the arc after some of the earlier issues.
Mechanics
The arc is pretty technically proficient. The custom group is completely reasonable, and the chained objectives worked without a great deal of backtracking. The only bumps I had were with the renamed Maniacs (Holy crap their higher recharge is brutal) and a spot in the last mission where a rescue group spawned on top of a normal group of enemies. Both of these issues were due to game mechanics instead of bad design choices on the author's part, so they didn't really affect my rating much. However, for the future, I find on maps that like to spawn rescue locations right on top of regular spawns, setting the enemy group to empty and filling out the mission by yourself. With a small map like the burning Arachnos base, the player probably won't even notice that the mission is technically "empty".
Final Thoughts
Despite the heavy-handed delivery of the drama, the ending was able to make me enjoy the arc's story. Overall, not a bad experience. -
Yeah, if I were in Dr. Aeon's shoes I wouldn't be rating the arcs either. Could you imagine peoples' reactions if they got anything less than a 5 star from him?
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Hey guys! Me again! Did you miss me?
...No?
Aww.
I'm going to start doing reviews again! It's been a while, and I've been doing all kinds of other stuff. But you don't want to hear excuses.
As always, drop a line here in the thread or PM me if you prefer that, and I'll get to your arc when I can. I promise to give feedback wherever possible and generally try to point out exactly what issues I had with an arc and any possible ways I can think of that they can be addressed. -
Quote:Ahh, a math major, I see.Originally Posted by Heraclea
Yes, thanks so much for starting these.
I will definitely leave mine up. As a result of this contest, I can say with some pride that I have Mission Architect arcs that deal with the most important themes of the game:- Jerk Hackers who have gone to the Americans;
- Lesbian Hellions;
- and now Kill Skuls.
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If you guys would be so kind as to play my Dr. Aeon Challenge arc, #379065: Holding Down the Fort, I'd be incredibly appreciative. Less than two days left, and any feedback would be awesome.
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Edited the first post to list Drakule vs. the Werewolf Bikers From Hell and Holding Down the Fort, my newest arc.
Any constructive feedback on Holding Down the Fort is appreciated, especially on how the challenge is for low level characters. I tested it with a level 8 Brute (the only character I had in that range) and was able to beat it, though it was a challenge. However, considering the nature of the arc, I wanted it to be a challenge. However, I don't want it to be cruel or unfair.
As always, if you see typos I'd be happy if you pointed them out, and any general feedback on the writing and missions is more than welcome. -
Finally finished mine. Hopefully I can get some feedback before I have to submit it.
Holding Down the Fort
ID: 379065
Author: @LaserJesus
Synopsis: Lord Recluse has used his Web device to steal the powers of the Freedom Phalanx. With all of the big time heroes dealing with that threat, it's up to the rookie heroes and the police to keep the city safe in their absence. -
Quote:Hurrrgh don't remind me...Originally Posted by Dr. Aeon
Hello Architects!
I wanted to give you all a reminder that this Wednesday is the deadline for the second Architect challenge!
If you're participating, make sure to have your arc submitted before that date!
Good luck! -
Quote:If it's trolling, then it's the tamest trolling I've ever seen. And if it is trolling, then holy ****, mission accomplished. If this was just between Wrong Number and Venture then I wouldn't have come in here to try and tell everyone to take a chill pill. Everyone's rushing to her defense over a review that wasn't harshly worded in the slightest compared to Venture's others, and gave three stars besides him not liking it. I dunno, but that rating, to me, says that the arc is technically well constructed despite him not getting any of the jokes.Originally Posted by Jail_Bird
That's not what he's saying. What DM said is that to write a review of something that you knowingly don't like is rude. For myself, I personnally don't like tv medical shows. So, for me to write a review of a Grey's Anatomy where I describe the show as a turgid snorefest and amend it with the statement that I don't like tv medical dramas would, according to DM, be rude. I don't know that I would consider that rude but, it certainly does pass my definition of trolling.
The real irony is that his seemingly negative review will probably get Wrong Number's arc more plays as people play it to spite Venture if this dialogue continues in this fashion. -
Quote:So wait, it's exceedingly rude to say that you don't like something?Originally Posted by DeviousMe
Exactly. Case in point. To the like of and exceedingly rude.
(And yeah LJ, I know what you mean. If you figure out a way, please let me know.
)
Oh jeez. Apparently the only polite way to operate in the MA now is to 5 star everything and say it was awesome to avoid hurting peoples' feelings? Everyone really needs to grow thicker skin if that's the case. -
Quote:It wasn't a constructive critique because he wasn't trying to offer constructive criticism. The review reads pretty much like that: a review. He pretty much just described the arc, stated that he didn't enjoy it, and stated why he didn't enjoy it.Originally Posted by airhead
I recommend you read this article at critters.org for how to phrase a critique constructively. This assumes you're not trying to channel Jerry Springer (note: lowbrow) for shock value, and you're not trying to fob your bad hair day onto some random person on the internet (note: Syndrome). I felt (note: I felt) that Venture's comments were too invective to be constructive.
And I don't see where you're getting the invective tone from. This is probably one of the tamest reviews Venture has ever done for an arc he didn't like. Hell, he didn't even tell anyone not to play it.
(I keep telling myself I won't get involved in these things, but they just keep pulling me back in) -
So close. Ah well. Congrats to the winners!
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Quote:Actually there's no part 3 either. It goes 1, 2, 5, Versus Werewolves.Originally Posted by Lazarus
A bit like how The Drakule arcs go Parts 1, 2, 3, and 5. Apparently Part 4 was preemptively retconned out of existence.
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Happy belated birthday, WN.
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Quote:The worst part is they are, just higher level.Originally Posted by Lazarus
"Don't worry Mr. level 7 hero, the Hydra in this dimension are just like the ones in Perez Park." *shove*
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If I do end up doing something for this, I'm probably going to avoid any of the signature characters altogether. It's a bit of a stretch (at least for me) that any of them would need the assistance of a small-time hero, given that any of them losing their powers would be a big damn deal and would likely require some powerful help to fix.
The only thing I could think of that would make for a decent story (to me) with that would be something like DC's 52. The Freedom Phalanx loses their powers, and since all the high level heroes are dealing with that mess, it's up to the little guys to handle all of the day-to-day problems plaguing Paragon City. Actually, it'd be pretty funny to shove some low level heroes through a interdimensional portal or something. Hmm. *rubs chin* -
Man, that game was excellent. When I got all the achievements in it I was sad, because there was no more Batman to play.
I guess I just have to wait for the sequel.