MTG Salvation

Quote from Trinite0 »

1. I'm pretty certain that in the long, plot-heavy stories like these two, Alison Luhrs is not responsible for most of the writing. She (or someone) is putting together an outline, and various writers are filling in sections. You can very obviously see the differences in writing style and quality between sections.

Note that with the shift to the 'Narrative Team' byline, the articles are much more of a collaborative effort.

Quite a few creative team members have left in the last year, and those positions haven't been filled :/

Quote from Trinite0 »

Then I guess this is the right place to say that "The Talented Captain Vraska" really needed some proofreading. I liked the story content, but boy were there some jarring errors.

Oh? Like what? (Genuinely curious)

I've had a suggestion that we start using this thread again. I'll start moving posts that seem more interested in talking about subjective quality than the plot here.

Just a reminder that story criticisms should be posted here. Threads in storyline are for discussing the story itself, not the quality of the story. It's okay to talk about it a little bit, but if you want to get into detail come here.

Quote from OrzhovPlaneswalker »

I told myself I wasn't gonna ever write in here but this story I feel like could have used some help. I think the major disappointment is that it was trying to tell an epic battle but in very broad terms with few detail and character interactions. I would have preferred this story lasted over the course of 3-4 episodes with more detailed accounts from a varied cast of characters than the broad generalization given. For instance, I would have liked to see how these characters interacted with one another, The Vampire Blood-chief, the Snarky Merfolk wizard, the overly enthusiastic Kor General, and the critical military strategist. Not to mention the other planeswalkers.

Yeah, Gideon's charge in was just stupid, and then the rest of the battle was kind of a waste. I wish we had multiple stories about the retaking of Sea Gate instead of some of the filler stories we got early on.

Quote from TerrorKingA »

I pretty much can't will myself to sit through these stories now that I know the ending, and have not read this week's story as a result. That's a complaint, right?

This week's is the best so far.

Quote from TerrorKingA »

Clockworking was way too needlessly confusing. That makes me feel like it was Creative that came up with the concept because there's no way Matt would just make that ish up lol.

From what I understand, the authors of the 'A Planeswalker Novel's were given free reign. Laura Resnick was given a very broad angle for Gideon, and she created everything about his character. And honestly, due to the timing of Test of Metal being around the same time as the implosion of the novels/webcomics/story, it wouldn't surprise me if it was just that no one was paying attention.

Quote from TerrorKingA »

When it comes to fight scenes, Matthew Stover's one of the best there is. His Star Wars fight scenes are like a sultry massage on the imagery sections of the brain. His fight scenes in Test of Metal are good too.

Yeah, it was pretty solid. It's a shame Test of Metal gets bogged down by clockworking, Tezz is one of my favorite characters (top three with Daretti and Dack) and it's great on characterization, but the plot itself is just nonsensical.

Quote from TerrorKingA »

Quote from Jay13x »

The old web comics were quite excellent, and show that Doug and the creative team know how to tell a story.

Wasn't Brady the one in charge back then?

And a lot of the members of the current creative team weren't around back then.

*knew

I don't know the exact dates, but you're probably right.

The old web comics were quite excellent, and show that Doug and the creative team know how to tell a story.

I think BFZ, at least so far, is having problems because of the amount of restructuring they've had to do to meet the two blocks a year schedule.

Quote from Nefkano »

Most people don't "just want to complain", and most people are not exclaiming "creative sux". You're making it sound like we're constantly flaming how bad the story and creative are, when usually there is constructive criticism and suggestions/ideas for what people would like to see as an improvement. Yes, there are more criticisms than compliments, but that is the nature of any discussion board. Yet there are still articles that are widely regarded as good, such as the recent Drana one, which prompted more positive and intriguing discussion than complaints. If the quality of URs goes up, there will be a lot less complaining - it's typically not just for the sake of it.

I don't see how complaining about the complaints in the forum and insulting the users is going to help decrease negativity at all, especially when you've indicated you don't even attempt to contribute more positive discussion. It's nothing personal, but it's sad to see a mod essentially give up on a section and bemoan its users.

Kaburi put it indelicately, but we've received a fair amount of complaints from other users about how the UR thread was going. We just want people to focus on the story, not the storytelling, which is obviously much poorer than it was even five years ago but which frequently threatens to derail threads.

Quote from mineralica »

Btw it's showing how, for all the moping about her past self being flawed, she embraced her "wilder side" when fighting Ob Nixilis, felt she became in-between her past and present self when preparing to restore the power, but never thought about that again? Not even a line in conclusion, just riding in sunset.

I mean, she had already had her 'epiphany', but the story itself was repetitive enough in following Nissa' thoughts. I don't think repeating it again would have added any value.

Quote from Nefkano »

Are those statistics dissimilar to those from other forum sections?

I personally started commenting to join the complaints.

Haha, maybe not but the other forums (besides Water Cooler Talk) aren't my problem

I mean, I don't mind complaining, I really don't, it's just gotten distracting and overshadowed actual story discussion a little too often.

Quote from Doombringer »

Shouldn't this be merged with just about every thread from the last few years in this subforum?

My complaint if anything is that they needed to be even more clearer about the location of Kozilek and Emrakul, cards like Vestige of Emrakul are great for giving us a big picture view but then this gets muddied by cards like Kozilek's Channeler.

The reason for this - and I don't agree with it - is that I think creative wants to leave their options open. We'll have to see in Gatewatch, but Kozilek is somewhere IN Zendikar why Emrakul is

Part of that ambiguity is probably because they want to keep their options open for future blocks, but I'd rather they just plot things out far enough in advance (not details, but at least broad strokes) so that we get an idea where things are going.

I will say the current direction for UR is pretty disappointing compared to the pretty good stories from BFZ.

Quote from TerrorKingA »

I think this thread should be for dedicated discussions about the quality of the story and shouldn't restrict what types of threads get made.

Obviously, if your thread is "The story sucks, and here's why" you should be posting here, but if your thread is something like "Vampirism" and eventually it goes to talk of the retconned nature of vampires, I don't think it's fair to tell that/those poster(s) to leave the thread and come here.

So there is some nuance here, and while I'll allow your kingship here ( ), it honestly isn't just you.

If it relates to the topic at hand and doesn't become distracting, it's okay. Posting in a vampire thread that 'Man, I can't believe they ninja retconned vampires on Zendikar' is okay. But it shouldn't be the focus of discussion, nor should it turn a thread about the nature of vampires into a thread about how bad creative is. Basically, this is the place for off-topic conversations to be moved to. The kinds of thread derailments have always been off-topic, but we're hesitant to infract anyone for it.

It's been incredibly hard to talk about the story recently because the discussion focuses primarily on the quality of the storytelling, not the story itself. This thread is for those discussions on the quality of the storytelling.

Edit: For instance, in the Uncharted Realms thread, we get around 47 views for every post, but it's the same 5-10 people posting all the time. I can't help but feel if we kept the discussion more focused we could bring in new people, and the way the current discussion is going it discourages new people from participating.

This is the official storytelling critique thread. Since so many of our story threads are getting bogged down in the quality of the storytelling rather than a discussion of the story itself, I feel it's necessary to split off a separate thread where people can gripe without derailing other threads.

This thread is for talking about the how the story is told, not about the story itself. Tired of filler? Complain about it here. Like the weekly content? Talk about that here.