Mass Effect cleanup

Okay, so it looks like there's a problem with large amounts of Complaining About Shows You Dont Like over Mass Effect, especially over Mass Effect 3. So much in fact, that we get constant vandalism. So, we need to clear some of the bile.

Now, I know the game has a huge Broken Base, however, that doesn't excuse random complaining everywhere. We aren't looking to silence negative fan opinions, just keep the whining to a minimum. Any help is appreciated. But please, let's not get into a fight over what sucks and what doesn't.

A couple of pages that look problematic at first glance:

• Internet Backdraft
• Broken Base
• They Just Didn't Care

I am the one who made the new Internet Backdraft one, and I don't think it contains Complaining. I also don't think there is bile in the articles, and even if the vandalism must be annoying for the mods, caving in to that is showing them that vandalism was a right way to complain about it. Note: the constant vandalism is made by only one person, the same one that came here to the forums and I had arguments with.

Most entries at worst show what the plotholes are, and if there's any opinion about it, they are worded as that, an opinion, and don't contain mindless bitching. I try to make sure they stay fairly objective. I am of the mind that we cannot ignore the problem with the ending just because one vandal thinks we are all part of a conspiracy by the Retake movement.

edited 22nd May '12 10:21:47 AM by Anfauglith

Internet Backdraft examples in general, including the Mass Effect one, look like a list of things that rile up people. In other words, a list of Flame Bait. Should these entries be rewritten to be about the reaction rather than the causes?

The problem is, just bad writing does not fit in the They Just Didn't Care entry. The product must show an all-around level of non-interest from the makers to qualify.

So, yeah, ME3 don't fit there and any attempts to put it there should be zapped on sight.

Internet Backdraft:

I rewrote this one, respecting what was previously written. Going by the style of that whole article, the two opposed positions are shown: someone who is anti-ending and constantly rages about the issue, and one of those annoying pro-ending ones that claim that we don't understand it; which are negative representations of the worst of the two points of view.

This one is mine too, I altered the previous one because it contained bias against the Retake movement. The backdraft is against the arguments about the endings, not against any position about them in particular. Retake is fairly contained to their website and threads in BSN (Bioware Social Network). The case about the charity is true, the previous version of that paragraph made it look like Retake wanted to withdraw donations, and it was just a cople of persons that received flak from both sides. I certainly saw flak against them coming from Retake.

I added something to an existing entry here. There are two clear cases of this causing issues, one is from when there weren't same sex romances, and the other is from when they were introduced. The second was listed by several journalists as the reason for why people didn't like ME 3, which caused backdraft. I don't see bias here.

These were existing entries and they do not show any bile or bias.

It's a novel with glaring continuity errors and several So Bad, It's Good / So Bad Its Horrible moments, and the origin of the meme of Kai Leng's toothbrush, the pissing vase, etc. Bioware promised to make a revision of that novel.

Caused issues as well, because it was day one DLC and the character it introduces was cut from the vanilla game. The entry is pretty bare-bones and doesn't show any stance in particular, so I don't see how there are problems with it. I changed the previous one because it made it look like Javik (the character) was the one getting backdraft, but the fanbase is quite fond of him, the problem is with the DLC itself.

Another entry without bias.

As I said in Ask The Tropers, the bit about Talia's photo on They Just Didn't Care looked like a valid entry.

Ok, let's take it one by one. This was on They Just Didn't Care:

What's it about?

For the Internet Backdraft page, the paragraph about the ending has a lot of bias. It implies that you'd get a reaction only if you say something nice about the ending, but I've seen a lot of people rage at others who bash the ending. It should be written in a more neutral way, as in any mention of the ending will usually erupt into an argument. Other than that, the rest seems fine.

For They Just Didn't Care, I don't think the ending qualifies. The first two arguments against the ending are debatable while the third merely attacks it for the lack of a happy ending. Tali's face seems fair game to me, though.

edited 22nd May '12 10:49:45 AM by lilyxlightning

EDIT: Ops sorry I was writing this before I saw Lu's post.

Gainax Ending:

I helped with this one. It's quite matter-of-factly. Shows what things are unclear (a.k.a some of the plotholes) and then just tells what happened, leaving the interpretation to the reader.

Shocking Swerve:

All of this is true. The Inferred Holocausts exist, at least until they Hand Wave them away in the Extended Cut DLC. Inevitably is between ''s because that's what the already mentioned Ancient AI (the Catalyst) says, and one of the problems with the endings is that this is presented as a fact, but comes out of the blue. Oh, and the ending does belong to Shocking Swerve.

Broken Base:

I would remove one of the "lots", but other than that it's pretty accurate. You do need multiplayer to get the best Destroy ending. I just removed the "lots."

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—

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How does that imply that?

"There's been a certain amount of Backdraft against all the arguments about the endings as well. In particular, many people have gotten just plain sick of hearing about it and want to move on to other topics"

edited 22nd May '12 10:53:50 AM by Anfauglith

One at a time, guys! We're gonna get lost.

So, it looks like the Tali-person thing on They Just Didn't Care is legit. Do we have agreement to put it back?

I agree. It should go back there.

As for the rest of the points in They Just Didn't Care, I think I agree about removing them. That trope is about extreme problems in production and such things. I agree with all it says about the ending but I don't think it belongs in that article. I'd move it to Shocking Swerve, because the fact that the ending ignores themes of the series shows how much out of left field that conclusion comes from. Also I would change some things that seem too biased, which I'm doing right now.

edited 22nd May '12 11:10:36 AM by Anfauglith

The first part implies that saying something that is "distilled disgust" won't net you a backdraft; only if you say something positive about the ending will you get a backdraft. The part which you quoted only states that people are tired of the arguing—it doesn't say that they're tired of people only attacking the ending. It would be better if it were phrased more as "say anything about the ending" than "say anything good about the ending".

As for the arguments for They Just Didn't Care, I don't think they should be moved to Shocking Swerve. There are people who disagree with those arguments and putting them into the Shocking Swerve post would come off as Complaining About Shows You Dont Like.

I... noticed that. So used to BBCode. XD

edited 22nd May '12 11:09:59 AM by lilyxlightning

It's double brackets around "quoteblock", like this: [[quoteblock]] text in the quote [[/quoteblock]]

edited 22nd May '12 11:08:56 AM by Telcontar

I think my views on our No Negativity rule have always been clear (at least for the forums), but anyways I'm editing those points so they are more representative of more accepted and less extreme views.

As for what you say, it doesn't imply anything, it just shows the two worst extreme positions: Someone that gets upset when others say something about the endings that isn't distilled disgust, and someone else that complains that the ones who didn't like it are morons (our vandal being one of these Up To Eleven). And yes, people are tired of the arguments. We had that happen on this forum, even people who hated the ending get tired about discussing it endlessly.

edited 22nd May '12 11:14:38 AM by Anfauglith

Guys, we're here to make the entries less complainy, not find out who's right (I swear, I'll play the damn game so I can comment). We're keeping them at one thing at a time.

My views on that. The criticism.

My answer: "As for what you say, it doesn't imply anything, it just shows the two worst extreme positions: Someone that gets upset when others say something about the endings that isn't distilled disgust, and someone else that complains that the ones who didn't like it are morons (our vandal being one of these Up to Eleven). And yes, people are tired of the arguments. We had that happen on this forum, even people who hated the ending get tired about discussing it endlessly. "

—

Anyways here I edited those other entries from They Just Didn't Care, that I intend to place in Shocking Swerve:

• Shepard and his armada, made up of combatants from many races, engage the Reapers on Earth to get the Crucible working to defeat the Reapers once and for all. After killing The Illusive Man, you suddenly meet the Catalyst, who explains the purpose of the Reapers: He says that synthetics will always rebel against organics, and in order to stop this from destroying organic life the (synthetic) Reapers destroy all advanced civilizations every 50,000 years. You are then presented with three choices:

  • Control: Take control of the Reapers and force them to leave the galaxy at the cost of Shepard's life.
  • Synthesis: Merge all organic and synthetic life together into a new form of life (with "a new DNA"), again at the cost of Shepard's life.
  • Destroy: Destroy all synthetic life in the galaxy, including the Reapers, EDI and the geth. Shepard potentially lives depending on the number of your War Assets.
    • Note: If your War Assets score is too low, the Crucible will misfire and wipe out all life in the galaxy, organic and synthetic.

• Irrespective of your choice, the Mass Relays are destroyed and perhaps galactic civilisation is thrown into the dark ages. The Normandy, last seen in the battle around Earth, is shown travelling through space, where the energy wave released by the Crucible damages its engines, and it crash lands on a random planet. A few of the squadmates emerge from the ship, despite some of them being previously seen on Earth with Shepard. The last scene of the game shows an old man telling stories of "The Shepard" to a child. The circumstances of how did the squadmates end up in the ship, what was the Normandy doing away from the battle, why didn't the Relays cause devastating explosions as shown in Arrival, why would we believe that synthetics will always try to destroy organics (despite what we learned of the Geth and the Quarians in this same game), between others, are left unclear and are the subject of "speculation from everyone".

edited 22nd May '12 11:39:57 AM by Anfauglith

Most of the Internet Backdraft page is fine, but I would make minor adjustments to the first two paragraphs. For the first, I'd word it a little differently:

The second paragraph is somewhat incorrect. It wasn't as much that Retake expected "ties" from Child's Play as much that Child's Play stated that they wouldn't accept donations made for a cause other than their own.

I don't see the need of rewriting the first paragraph, but yours is not bad either ^^.

"There was also a case where some people who'd donated to the Child's Play charity said they wanted to withdraw their donations after learning the charity itself had no ties with the goal of Retake Mass Effect"

Retake didn't expect ties, and I didn't say that. Just that a few persons apparently thought that the goal of Child's Play was getting money for the ending DLC, and when they learned that it wasn't true they wanted to withdraw the money. Anyways there wasn't too big a backdraft about that issue (because everyone -including Retake- criticized those individuals, so no strawmanning of the whole movement could be made; and because Retake didn't complain much about the donation drive being closed), plus the original version of that paragraph was added by the vandal to flame on the Retake movement. Maybe we could just remove it entirely.

—

Soooo I will organize all my posts here because my opinions are all over the place and disorganized.

1- I defend Internet Backdraft. Also some other posts contains further thoughts on this.

2- I defend Gainax Ending, the current Shocking Swerve and Broken Base

3- I believe that a less extreme and complainy version of the removed entries from They Just Didn't Care can replace the short Shocking Swerve entry. The second part of this cited post contains the version I edited

Other thoughts: I think Tali's photo belongs to They Just Didn't Care.

Final note: We must keep in mind that there is only one vandal. I'm seeing a lot of people believing that the current articles are attracting masses of angry fans, and it's not true, and it's what the culprit wants us to believe. We are dealing with Caius Ragnarok/Remus D Duck/We Are Legion, a single person who uses proxies to change his IP.

edited 22nd May '12 12:09:20 PM by Anfauglith

I wouldn't say that the Backdraft over the charity was small. The Facebook ME fan pages had a huge amount of backdraft over the charity issue, especially considering the circumstances of which Retake supporters brought up the issue. Long story

Regardless of that incident, there still is a large amount of backdraft towards the Retake movement. There are a lot of people angry about the Retake movement on the Bioware forums and Facebook fan pages.

Remus isn't a vandal.

edited 22nd May '12 12:13:05 PM by lilyxlightning

Hmm... so given that I don't care either way about Mass Effect and I'm not about to play it, that leaves me in a disinterested position on the whole matter.

I suppose the big question is, just why are we going into so much detail about all of those points? Do we really need to document every single piece of why a particular YMMV or Trivia item should apply to the series?

Also, unless I missed something, none of the Mass Effect games qualifies for They Just Didn't Care. I don't think the series would have even gotten to a second installment, let alone a third, if that was the case. There might be an argument for Wall Banger, but you need beginning-to-end cock-ups to qualify for TJDC. Even the most negative folks about the third game generally just save their wrath for the ending.

edited 22nd May '12 12:18:50 PM by 32_Footsteps

How do you know Remus, by the way?

Oh and, IP overlap. Our vandal screwed up there. He shouldn't believe that no one can smell his sockpuppets. Heheh.

They Just Didn't Care about Tali's pic. 'Tis true, and fits. Big mistery through the whole series, fans arguing about how she looks like, and they finally present a royalty-free photoshopped pic, and if you see the comparison images it's not even a good photoshop. I'd say that counts as low production for something that had really big expectations.

edited 22nd May '12 12:22:00 PM by Anfauglith

He's a friend of mine. He's posted content to this site on my behalf when I've asked him to. And he is not a vandal.

Let's stop discussing individual tropers here, OK?

@21 That's not what They Just Didn't Care is meant for. At all. Skimping on a couple of minor details (and one character's photo is a fairly minor detail for a game about the destiny of multiple inhabited worlds) for whatever reason does not count for that, not to mention that it's projecting frustration over something not being quite at the level fans wanted and contributing negative qualities on the developers for that.

Quite simply, that entire section should be chainsawed. It's being used solely to complain that a couple small details wasn't as perfect as desired. I'm sorry, but when you've dealt with as many full-on horrendous media as I have, you can't consider something that minor to be They Just Didn't Care.

Unless, of course, you just don't care about tropes actually meaning what they say on the page.

Sorry, but They Just Didn't Care doesn't necessarily have to be about all the work, a smaller part of it is okay as long as it's related to production. Lo and behold a lot of the examples are about the authors not caring about relative small parts of the work in question. Also, drop the personal attacks. Heh.

By the way this is the image in particular◊

edited 22nd May '12 12:46:34 PM by Anfauglith