Geez. I dunno what is up with me. Feeling vaguely groggy, lethargic, sorta kinda tired, pooped, mild stomach upset, and all around not-quite-depressed-but-not-really-happy either.
I slept through most of my off day yesterday. I do hope I am not coming down with not-quite-appropriately-named swine flu. :( No fever yet, but the thought of a new flu pandemic ala 1918 with no symptoms until a week later scares the crap outta me.
As spontaneous and effort-intensive as the anniversary event was, I found it a bit of a repetitive drag. It's fun to take down AVs and things when there are only a few of you in the zone, but lag kills any semblance of enjoyment when everyone dogpiles in. I got a couple of easy badges and free merits, so okay, not too shabby, but after killing your fifth Kronos Titan and 7th Lattice and 3rd Lord Recluse, the all too obvious fourth wall sets in and asks, exactly what is the explanation for what I am doing, besides an invisible GM spawning stuff randomly on us to kill?
Not to make "yet another farm thread" in my blogpost, but I have been finding it difficult of late to get onto a big fun team. Of course, this is 80% my fault because I have not set up a LFG flag, and I'm scared of answering 'lf ae team' broadcast calls for fear it is a farm in disguise, and I have not even bothered saying anything on a global channel because I haven't quite figured out what I want to do, if I have time to do it, and am vaguely scared of rejection. (Though not quite as bad as Luminara, perhaps.)
It's also true that by the time I hear one of these calls to team, I am already halfway into a solo MA arc and reluctant to get out and quit. Or have been faceplanted 5 times and getting dangerously close to the "ragequit the entire client" level.
One thing I -would- like to do is get a big group together to run each other's mission arcs. The problem with this, is that by the time I get around to thinking this is a good idea, and that there are enough people on a global channel to ask, it is touching 1am and I feel like collapsing into bed instead.
A shorter version of this is the slightly more selfish self-promotion. While I don't think I have the gall to grab an entire team and then yank them through my arc sight unseen, I do think that if I simply asked for volunteer playtesters on globals, I would get enough to walk them through my arc.
And that's 7 ratings just like that, if I'm lucky. If I'm very cunning, I will play my dark defender so that I pretty much kill my mobs' tohit so it will look very very scary but no one will die, and in case some moron wanders away from my debuff zone, there is my recharge-slotted howling twilight to save them a tedious trip from the hospital and extra sulking.
The only thing I'm slightly nervous about this is the face-to-face dissection/review of my arc. I think I would be okay reading about it from afar, as long as it's not a Venture-kind of review, but I don't exactly know how to react to face-to-face comments from strangers.
I tried this out with 3 people the last time. One went after the fact, "Heh. I think I quite liked that." Ok.... not exactly stellar praise, but at least he kinda liked it. Of course, it was revealed through a bit more talk that he completely missed the point of the destructible objects (he thought they contained Rikti brains, and needed to be destroyed, thus suggested to make them a required objective.)
Me, I just wanted them around for flavor, to show that the Architect had indeed ripped out Rikti brains to stuff into his Titans (to confirm that was why the Titans were Talking: Like This.) And since not everyone might have a character inclined to mass object destruction, I left it optional as to whether they should go boom or no. (Not to mention, the rogue Rikti patrol occasionally stumbles onto them, and has this fun spontaneous battle with Malta - great for environmental flavor, not so great if it's a required objective.)
However, this was a little heavy to explain there and then, so I just said, "thanks, will consider it." Felt like a blatant lie, though.
Another guy just 5-starred in silence. Ok. Hope you enjoyed it, and it wasn't from peer pressure or anything. Don't wanna make you feel uncomfy that way, even though I do want the ratings like everyone else, and wouldn't mind a bit of group psychology helping the ratings along. *silent guilty twitch*
Last guy was OOC: commenting on practically everything. I found this the most helpful of the lot, as he found one or two typos, which I was very happy to find and fix. He mentioned that my custom group Titan spawns were missing the Titan suffix, I let one or two of those go by, but as he kept going on and on about it, I had to mention the character limit which stopped me from adding those, and then he went, "Oh, alright." Felt weird though, like I had to defend myself, but I didn't really want to sound defensive, because I hate people who get all defensive when criticised myself.
He was also unclear on a story detail, which in retrospect, is slightly vague. I'm not sure that it is 100% mission critical storyline myself. However, in order to fix this, I pretty much have to retype huge chunks of my mission text, and I'm not really keen on editing the arc if it's something that only 1% of people will notice. After all, even the dev content and dev's choice arcs look worse with typos and plot inconsistencies. I'm happy enough to settle for 95% decent, and fix the 5% uncertainty with a sequel later on...
So again, I just said, thanks, and will consider how I can best fix that... lying through my teeth, pretty much, because I didn't really feel like fixing it, because I don't really think it is a show-stopping problem, unless the next 15 of 20 people that play my arc all point it out and ask about it.
Yeah. The lying through my teeth part is what kills me. I know the criticism is meant with good intentions. I welcome it. I think it is valuable feedback to see how different people perceive my arc. It gives me a baseline to work with for the future.
I'm pretty much there with story edits though. I've given my story a few passes on my own during Test phase, and tightened up most of the loose jointed bits. I'm tired of the damn story. Cos this isn't a heavy story/drama arc to begin with. I'm saving those for when we are actually able to make proper branched choices through MA.
It's just all an excuse for a fun romp through big groups of enemies to destroy an extreme robot mm I thought would be hilariously cool to watch unfold robots - but also conceivably give the player(s) a fighting chance to defeat it, hence the Vanguard allies, and a story reason for the Vanguard to be involved, mostly because I think Talsorian blades are the coolest thing ever, and making them green lets me link a recognizable in-game faction in players' minds, unsoweiter.
I'm happy to finish up with the difficulty balancing and final polish stage, and then call it "done."
So it's really hard to NOT explain all this in one great wall-o-text gush of defensive reaction when some well-meaning bastard decides that something else, like story inconsistency, is most important to him. I know that's not appropriate. But what is?
Do I say, "thank you, will take that feedback into consideration" politely, all the while meaning to toss it out of the window at the first opportunity? It does feel a teensy bit hypocritical to do that. I do appreciate the observation being made.
It just may not be my highest priority to drop everything to please your one single mind, so your comment will be noted, filed away and stored in deep freeze to see if there are enough voices to thaw it out and have a relook. But saying that honestly, is also just asking for a long drawn out argument/discussion too. :)
So the other possibility involves a bit more work, but I could start posting to all the mutual-trade arc threads and ask individuals to go through my arc, scoring ratings slowly but surely. The benefit is that I get some focused arc goals to go through as well. The downside is I kinda need TIME to play some of these long arcs - which is probably why so few long arcs can get rated. And this involves soloing mostly. Kinda boring.
It's really tough finding teams that are on the same page now, though. Even in my little playtest group, there was one guy who was going through the story and writing with a fine tooth comb, one silent guy who I'm not sure what he was looking for, and the one mad scrapper who was pretty much charging past everything in the search for great scads of action. How the heck do I play an arc with a full group if we end up charging at full tilt into spawns?
I can see why people end up joining farms, just for teamed action. I would too, if I weren't so strongly opposed to the principle of it.
The other thing keeping me occupied is the thought that I should buy the Superbooster Magic pack, and start work on the music video project that I have been neglecting for ages. I do want to do it, but this is a colossal project, involving many many parts and pieces to be put together. That's a lot of time to spend.
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