Poll: Critics are horrible.

[TheRightToArmBears]

Hell, I have great ideas all the time, but everyone tells me they're shite. Steak chocolate bar, anyone?

 

[spartan773]

well my idea was about a city called Archon City, it's ruled over by the Demon Hunter Guild... or just the Guild, a government funded military group that took over the National Guard and the Police forces in Archon and opperated like the both combined, made up of the best fighters the policing forces and military forces the earth can offer. the main character is John Engel, he's called a Specialist in the Guild, a Guild soldier who's capable of using melee combat, gunplay and magic without any other training. previously there were 11 Specialists... John, His mother Janine and the 9 members of the Mitsugi family.
The gameplay is a mixture of Assassin's Creed, InFamous, and Devil May Cry. John's capable of free-running like Altair, Ezio and Cole Magrath, the swordfighting, spellcasting and gunplay a bit like the devil may cry series, and it's open world with several different jobs for john to do for the guild.

The main enemies are demons, of course, The Cult of the Plague; a cult dedicated to spreading the demonic influence throughout the earth, and the Brotherhood of the Crimson Slayers; a offshoot of the Knghts Templar who's dedicated to stopping the demons, the cult AND the Guild and bring the earth back into the Dark Ages, where God reigned supreme, knowledgable ventures like science and art were non-existant and a King ruled over the people.

Ok, so just so you know, I'm not trying to be an asshole about this or just rant.. I'm not a critic but here are my opinions on this :

You must really have a high opinion of yourself and your work because from your post the story seems average at best, there are a lot of concepts from other games thrown together and really it is a cliche fest there so you should really put some more work in to it, because at least from what you wrote here it is far from excellent.

It sounds really generic, "The Demon Hunter Guild" or "The Guild" .. no, just no it has been done before and it never sounds right, try to invent a name or just think of what a military/government organization would actually call itself, I'd suggest an acronym of the actual name but really just try to be a bit more original. This also applies to the other names.. " The Cult of the Plague " really stands out and says evil which if you want to get recruits I'd thing you would try to be a bit more subtle about it.

I'd also say that the motivation of the Crimson Slayers is a bit unrealistic and really unachievable since they'd have to destroy everything really all the infrastructure, every device .. everything, and I find it hard to believe that any person that has at least an ounce of reason in them would set such a goal .. still, I will not downplay this too much since I don't know much of the overall plot to decide if this could actually be achieved somehow in the context of this univers.

Another thing, and this is a personal preference really, I think you should use a real city, it would help with the naming of places and important landmarks and really have the players feel more familiar with it.

About the story again, it just seems that this story is a too much of a grand scale to be played in a single city.. unless you have some sequels planned to take place in other cities.

The gameplay is just too much of a combination of different elements from many games that would be extremely hard for even a professional team of devs to implement well together and even more so in an open world environment which also I don't find fitting with the general story of the game.

Look I'm sure you think it's great but in all seriousness it needs a lot of work, just putting together a lot of other peoples ideas doesn't make for one good idea. Anyway it's just my short opinion on the subject and really you don't have to accept it as being true or anything, not trying to change what you want to do .. just though I'd throw in my 2 cents.

The city itself is huge, a majority of the story takes place in the actual city, which is both a rather large urban sprawl to the ruined Cult and Brotherhood-controlled outskirts of the city. I'm still working on the entire gameplay mechanics, i've only worked on the characters, setting, storyline, enemies and so on... not any of this is actually programmed or even in a design element.

 

[spartan773]

That;s the point of critism, to try to make the idea better through negativity. Embrace the hate, you might get a good idea from it.

Well it wasn't really negative. i just had a rather excellent idea, and these naysayers just burst in and tell me my own creative idea is folly and is going to not even sell a single copy.

'Yo guys, I got this really cool idea for a game, tell me what you think of it. Only, by "what you think of it", I mean "tell me it's really good". What do you mean you think X Y and Z could be improved? THIS IS THE BEST IDEA EVER!'

Critics provide criticism. If you don't want to hear it, don't ask for it.

i didn't really ask for the criticism, i just asked them if they would like to hear it.

 

[spartan773]

Have you ever had a rather excellent idea for a game, movie, business, comic book, food idea, book

All of the Above. I have a friend who wants to get into developing games for the PSN and when he asked me to Design them and he'd code them i was down. Unfortunately he wants something so easy and mundane a Amputee could play with his face. Every time i suggest something like weapon upgrades or a faster horse for barbie he says no can't do that won't do it.

ah.

 

[spartan773]

they really didn't offer much. they offered the constant standard cliches in most action-adventure games.
Moral Choices, customization of characters. it wouldn't fit in with my idea.

That sounds like they were more acting like cynics (destructive critics) than professional critics, who would deconstruct the idea and have a look at the mechanics behind it instead of proposing unnecessary additions.

By the sound of it, you want a sandbox game world, but without a moral compass telling you what you want to do. So, in this sense, there's a bit of GTA in it, except you aren't necessarily going to be able to go around killing innocent people. However, you compared it to Devil May Cry, so I'm not sure how you'll avoid linearity, which makes sandboxes kind of irrelevant.

The proposals made by your friends are in line, however, with the basic expectations of the demographic of people who might play a sandbox game. Your target audience may actually make their comments more relevant, depending on how ambitious you are with your idea/project.

yeah. i'm still working on the designs for the gameplay. a friend of mine suggested i make the weapon and element selection a bit like the power selection from Prototype, where it slows down action so you can choose what you'd like to attack with next, i'd have a feeling that would work a bit better than choosing DMC

 

[cuddly_tomato]

Had it all. I used to make mods for UT2004, vehicle mods. I gave up in 2007 due to all the trolling and hate I was getting for those mods.

There was a thread made about me on a particular forum three weeks ago, on a server running my mods even though I requested it remove them because of all the abuse I was getting. I got a fair amount of fan mail, which was nice, but it wasn't worth my face being photoshopped onto everything in sight and being called a Nazi because I made scorpions go faster.

 

[-BloodRush-]

That;s the point of critism, to try to make the idea better through negativity. Embrace the hate, you might get a good idea from it.

this basically. i'm about to get started on a project that strings together many themes that dont seem to have anything to do with each other. wish i had a healthy stream of criticism.

 

[spartan773]

You sure you're not bad at taking criticism?

Quite often an idea that you've conjured up yourself will be entirely based around you, so sound shit to everyone else without features X, Y and Z included.

i'd take creative criticism over cynicism, which they were doing, basically telling me the flaws in it and i'd improve it if i added a character creator, moral choices and being able to pick sides. It isn't what i had in mind for the game.

 

[Garaw]

If you live in a world without criticism and sanity checks, you end up making things like the Star Wars prequels.

And nobody wants that.

 

[Honkymagoo]

This is a stupid topic and I hate you. If you can't listen to criticism objectively you're a child and you should be treated as such. Is all criticism good? No. But you should quit acting like a crybaby ***** every time someone disagrees with you.

 

[-Orgasmatron-]

I never take criticism personally, whatever it is, as long as it's constructive, I like to take it all on board, whether I agree with it or not, then maybe use it to improve.

Now if someone is just straight up saying 'No, you can't/No, you're not good enough', that fucks me off, it's alright though because that sort of thing just spurs me on.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

I don't mind criticism as long as it is relevant to the topic at hand. For example, I dislike the critics who want online multiplayer in every game out nowadays. Seriously, why does Mass Effect [http://meforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=527659&forum=104] need to have co-op multiplayer?

 

[Kollega]

Why yes i did get a lot of blind naysaying - not constructive criticism, but "OMG YOU CAN'T DO THIS BECAUSE YOU SUCK". But the fact that my smaller brother is a professional troll out to piss me off may be related.

 

[Saylek]

I am a chef. So obviously yes. Mostly these people are called Waitresses and I respond by pointing out that they have no training, no qualifications, no skills in anything hence why they are carrying plates for a living.
What really pisses me off is idiots who claim they are just giving "constructive criticism" as though that gives them licence to say whatever they want as long as they claim its constructive.

On a side note. A wiccan? Really? Tell the dopey palm reading slapper to go practice fucking with her tea leaves or whatever it is those idiots do.

*snip*

nicely said

 

[spartan773]

Have you ever had a rather excellent idea for a game, movie, business, comic book, food idea, book

All of the Above. I have a friend who wants to get into developing games for the PSN and when he asked me to Design them and he'd code them i was down. Unfortunately he wants something so easy and mundane a Amputee could play with his face. Every time i suggest something like weapon upgrades or a faster horse for barbie he says no can't do that won't do it.

ah.

Not only that but every time i write a cool Guitar riff or write anything my other friends comment on it and try to get me to change it to something aside from what i started with.

ah.

 

[Baby Tea]

these people were trying to make me change from my original idea, which i thought was excellent.

Well maybe it wasn't.
I mean, let's be honest here: People can be overly critical about a lot of things, but sometimes people have flat out bad ideas. I think the Darwin awards are a perfect example of that. If someone came up to me and said: "I've got an idea for a novel where the main character is a piece of broccoli and the whole book is his inner monologue while being cooked, and it'll consist of pages of 'AAAAUUUUUAAAUAUAAAHH!!!' as he gets boiled." I would say: "That's a stupid idea"

They might think it's fantastic, but it's not.
I don't know your idea, but sometimes we all get bad ideas. Heck, I tried writing a story based on my play-through of Baldur's Gate. It all but fell through, and is just sitting there now. Simply: It was a bad idea. The writing didn't come out well, the scope was far far too large for someone like myself, and it failed. Lesson learned.
Sometimes we've got to know when we've got a bad idea on our hands.

Then again, your idea could be fine and they could be jerks.
I don't know.

 

[spartan773]

including correct explanations for magic, or "magick" as she called it (which came from a girl who i know is wiccan and is obviously how spells are made in real life but that's not important at all)

That's where the first problem is. You talked to someone who pretends to be a "witch" and such.
And, no, it's your idea, they should give you some feedback, but not out right say it's shit. Whoever you were talking to obviously needs to give a mouth hug to the curb, with your foot helping them embrace (Curb stomp, for all of you out there not getting it).

yep. there's no amount of "Magick" that can stop a curb stomp.