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.
More than that, Origins/BFZ are the beginning of a new Creative paradigm, and what we're seeing right now are the growing pains of trying to make their vision for the future work with what came before. They're not letting themselves be hamstrung by the past, but they're having to pick and choose what parts of the past they want to keep going forward. I think the goal is noble: going forward, they're telling a more cohesive story. Unfortunately, they're getting too aggressive in the picking and choosing and so the seams are really showing. Starting the new paradigm with a Return To block was not the best decision. I'll be interested to see how they handle creating a new world with the new paradigm.
I've for the most part stopped posting in Storyline because of the negativity, and I'm a freaking Mod. That's how bad it is. Every thread that goes up I know is just going to be the same five or six people complaining about how "creative sux" "this was stupid" "I hate creative" "Raaa retcons" etc. They just want to complain.
I skipped over this post for some reason.
Well when the story's good, it gets praise or generates discussion. When it isn't, the missteps generate discussion. Don't blame the posters; blame Creative for having more missteps than good stories.
There are constructive complaints (which is what this thread is for) and there are unconstructive complaints.
Example: Constructive Complaint:
"I don't like how they characterized Nissa's 'secret power' she's been 'suppressing'. It's never been mentioned before, and it makes her sound more green/red (primal, uncontrolled energy) than green/black."
Example: Unconstructive Complaint:
"I should know better by now, but I'm tired of creative yet again retconning Nissa. Which of their stable of idiots wrote this piece of garbage this week. Nissa's never had some secret well of power to suppress. What the ****? It's like Creative doesn't even know how the color pie works."
To me at least, it seems like most of what we get is Unconstructive Complaints that derail every thread. Less enfranchised Vorthosi come into the storyline forum, and instead of seeing us talk about Nissa and Ob fighting (which was a great scene), they find a bunch of angry posts about how much the story sucks. It's not welcoming, and it's not how you build up a community. We're supposed to be the place to celebrate the Vorthos aspects of Magic. We shouldn't be driving away the next generation of Vorthosi just because there are things we don't like. I'm not saying our complaints are invalid, but the constant negativity defeats the very purpose of this forum and turns off new people from coming in.
And this is the last thing I'm going to say about the subject, because now I'm derailing the Complaint Thread with a complaint about complaints. It's getting too Complaint-ception in here.
That's a bit of an understatement. I screwed up and let my frustration show, and I opened my mouth without thinking. I should have phrased my post better, and I apologize if I offended anyone. It wasn't meant as a personal attack against any particular poster(s).
I leaned too hard on the R side of UR and let my passion run too hot.
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.
I've for the most part stopped posting in Storyline because of the negativity, and I'm a freaking Mod. That's how bad it is. Every thread that goes up I know is just going to be the same five or six people complaining about how "creative sux" "this was stupid" "I hate creative" "Raaa retcons" etc. I read every thread in Storyline, because that's my job, but there's no point in responding to most things because these posts don't want to encourage discussion. They just want to complain.
So would threads like "Would the Eldrazi losing be bad writing" be just a post here rather than its own topic?
Yes.
Think of this like the Storyline Equivalent of the Commander Banlist thread. Our goal is to contain all the negativity to a single nexus of disappointment rather than dragging down the forum as a whole.
EDIT: I'm going to go ahead and sticky this to make it all official and such.
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!
Example: Constructive Complaint:
"I don't like how they characterized Nissa's 'secret power' she's been 'suppressing'. It's never been mentioned before, and it makes her sound more green/red (primal, uncontrolled energy) than green/black."
Example: Unconstructive Complaint:
"I should know better by now, but I'm tired of creative yet again retconning Nissa. Which of their stable of idiots wrote this piece of garbage this week. Nissa's never had some secret well of power to suppress. What the ****? It's like Creative doesn't even know how the color pie works."
To me at least, it seems like most of what we get is Unconstructive Complaints that derail every thread. Less enfranchised Vorthosi come into the storyline forum, and instead of seeing us talk about Nissa and Ob fighting (which was a great scene), they find a bunch of angry posts about how much the story sucks. It's not welcoming, and it's not how you build up a community. We're supposed to be the place to celebrate the Vorthos aspects of Magic. We shouldn't be driving away the next generation of Vorthosi just because there are things we don't like. I'm not saying our complaints are invalid, but the constant negativity defeats the very purpose of this forum and turns off new people from coming in.
And this is the last thing I'm going to say about the subject, because now I'm derailing the Complaint Thread with a complaint about complaints. It's getting too Complaint-ception in here.
EDIT:
That's a bit of an understatement. I screwed up and let my frustration show, and I opened my mouth without thinking. I should have phrased my post better, and I apologize if I offended anyone. It wasn't meant as a personal attack against any particular poster(s).
I leaned too hard on the R side of UR and let my passion run too hot.
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!
Think of this like the Storyline Equivalent of the Commander Banlist thread. Our goal is to contain all the negativity to a single nexus of disappointment rather than dragging down the forum as a whole.
EDIT: I'm going to go ahead and sticky this to make it all official and such.
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!