Broken Base Cleanup

YMMV.CN City:

• Broken Base: This era is either part of Cartoon Network's golden age, silver age, or the beginning of their Network Decay. Most people will at least admit that the bumpers were creative.

"Some people like this, some hate this". Can I cut?

I don't even think I've heard a soul say CN City was the beginning of their Network Decay. That's nearly unanimously attributed to their incorporation of live-action programming.

Into the bin it goes!

Bringing up the following examples from Legion Of Superheroes 2020:

• Broken Base:
  • Fan reception to Bendis' take on the Legion has been divided since the moment it was first announced. Some Legion fans are happy with a new continuity and a fresh start alongside Ryan Sook's gorgeous designs. Others argue the book is an incoherent, poorly edited mess where most of the Legionnaires simply stand around in the background or ramble on about nothing, and another continuity reboot is only going to make the Legion more inaccessible for new readers.
  • Gold Lantern's character has been hyped up in-universe by other Legionnaires announcing he has an amazing backstory and even President Brande seems to think highly of him. The thing is the character hasn't really done anything to warrant such hype nor has anything been revealed of his backstory. What doesn't help matters is that for some reason, the sixth issue sold out because online markets treated it like the character's first appearance, when Gold Lantern made their first actual appearance in Superman #14.

I can guarantee that anything involving Bandis would be divisive.

Going through the SMT IV A stuff that Alley posted

• The Bonds Route. Depending on who you ask, it's either an exceptionally satisfying Earn Your Happy Ending or an exceptionally awkward tonal shift.
  • Probably cut, given this is just a more specific variant on the fourth entry which goes over the problems better and why *this* game specifically having a happy ending was so divisive.
• The Massacre Route. Has multiple divisions. On the one hand, some fans consider it a route that comes as out of place from the rest of the narrative and tries too hard to be dark and edgy, since here you fight not just some of the other sides, but all of them. On the flip side, even when interpreting it as a good ending, fans disagree on just what exactly it is about. One particularly common debate is whether it's a rational ending at all, or just a glorified "villain path."
  • I think there's a valid fanbase issue being discussed here but that last sentence makes me think this should just be cut.
• For that matter, the redone alignment system itself. Detractors feel it removes the series' trademark moral ambiguity by having Law and Chaos be early bad endings clearly framed as completely in the wrong and one of the two rather offbeat Neutral endings being favored over the other. Supporters fire back that the difference for once is refreshing and that the characters offering said Neutral endings make some very good points about the sheer futility of the traditional Megaten narrative.
  • *shrug*, I could go either way.
• The nature and quality of the story is a major hot topic among the fans. Proponents love it for its greater depth and characters, presenting a story with a setting and characters that are refreshingly different for a Megaten game, fixing recurrent problems other games in the series have such as Flat Characters and Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy. Meanwhile detractors hate it, finding it a mess of cliches, stock characters, Mood Whiplash, lack of subtlety and feels like the story relies on contrivances to move forward. And while those elements may be refreshingly different to the series, and some detractors may even like the story in general, they nevertheless dislike that they skirt dangerously close to generic-RPG-ville and thus don't work as an SMT story in particular. And the fact that the Bonds route relies so heavily and blatantly on The Power of Friendship feels out of place in what is otherwise a more cynical series.
  • Absolutely keep. SMT IV A's tone and writing is probably the most sustained issue that fans have argued over for years after its release.
• A small break emerged when some of the unused designs for the demons and characters where revealed in the art-book. Namely that many of the rejected designs where met with wide praise and raised questions as to why they where rejected in the first place. Some claim it is just how things turned out while other think that the developers tried to go for more Persona-like designs instead of following the mythology like the rejected designs did. Others like the designs that did get used in game and enjoy them, but also tend to like the concept ones and see them as working better for future games.
  • IMO, this is a valid complaint, but not big enough to argue over.
• It's less breaking than the demons, but an earlier concept of the protagonist is a man in his twenties (with a transformed arm that seems to outright replicate Dagda's in place of a Power Tattoo) instead of a fifteen-year old boy. Naturally, those in charge of the game asserted that a more "open-minded" teenaged protagonist would be a better fit for a Japanese audience. While the initial design was repurposed into Asahi's dad, some Western fans found the notion of an older protagonist to not be a good fit as a Player Character to be somewhat absurd, although this issue is endemic to many JRPGs, not just MegaTen. Others prefer the original concept simply because they don't like the half-shaven head look.
  • Honestly, this might as well go back into the tone issue where it's debated whether or not this game fits the series tone as it emphasizes the youthfulness of the protagonists a lot more than other entries in the franchise.
• While Doi's demon designs has been all around well received, the design of YHVH's second form is quite a source of contention. Some like it with how it incorporates numerous biblical themes (most notably the ten plagues) while others loathe it, thinking it looks plain and generic, and yet others love it because it is so generic, like any other demon.
  • This is just a specific extension of the demon design issue. Cut.
• A number of translation errors were found in the English version, including, infamously, an important late-game dialogue prompt that was left completely untranslated. ^note It should be said that the particular untranslated lines in question only appear under a specific circumstance that can be avoided. Many people are defending it, saying that it's not a big deal and can just be patched later, or that things like that slip through, whereas others argue that XSEED Games has a smaller staff than Atlus, translates games with much more text on a regular basis (such as The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky or Trails Of Cold Steel, though these games aren't completely free of them either) with less staff, all without charging the extra $10 Atlus does for their games. Atlus PR's joking response (which some found funny and others condescending) or that they have been doing this for◊ a◊ while◊ hasn't helped.
  • This feels like a broader issue about Atlus that this game's YMMV page was used to complain about, cut.
• There are some discussions over who should have been the Final Boss of the game, with some saying that YHVH is perfect for it while others hold that Vishnu-Flynn should have been citing that the game is pretty much concluded at that point. There is also a third camp that think that Vishnu-Flynn should have been exclusive to the Bonds route while YHVH would be for the Massacre route.
  • I don't think I've actually even seen this argument anywhere.

Since you seem familiar with this fanbase:

Whether or not there's a genuine broken base over the quality of the translation, is there ANY reason other than Fan Myopia that this brings up entirely unrelated games from what I have to assume is an entirely unrelated company?

Edited by nrjxll on Oct 23rd 2020 at 7:05:13 AM

It sounds like a potential Fandom Rivalry at best.

This is probably the most charitable interpretation, I think punching down on the translation by praising another specifically for their work on one specific series and mentioning price for some reason only makes sense if someone was already predisposed to them.

Crossposting from the Bojack Horseman thread:

This entry was added to the YMMV page:

• Broken Base: Should the series ended during the first half of season 6 or the penuiltimate episode or was the actual series finale the best of them all?

Grammar and spelling problems aside, I think this is a legit example, but it needs more context. Broken Base isn't just "any disagreement between fans," it refers specifically to a sustained, entrenched, and especially bitter disagreement between two or more discrete factions with little or no middle ground. I think one could make a fairly compelling argument, but the example as written doesn't do that, it stops at describing the three major positions.

I would rewrite it something like:

• Broken Base: The subject of the series' end is a contentious one among the fanbase. A sizable and vocal faction believes that the penultimate episode, which apparently ended with the main character's death, would have been a better ending than the finale, which they decry as anticlimactic. A second faction insists just as vociferously that BoJack dying would "let him off the hook" too easily, and that the actual finale was the superior ending for forcing him to live with the consequences of his actions. A third, somewhat smaller faction would have preferred the happy ending BoJack would have gotten if the series had ended halfway through the sixth season. Debates on the topic periodically flare up on the series' subreddit the better part of a year since the show ended, and there doesn't seem to be anyone within the fandom who lacks a strong opinion.

Thoughts?

Edited by HighCrate on Oct 26th 2020 at 9:22:05 AM

When America has a new president, will YMMV.Saturday Night Live still need this entry?

• The increased emphasis on political skits and humor in the wake of the Trump presidency. Many people have enjoyed the coverage of the extreme chaos of the Trump administration and find the skits hilarious. Other people think the show is relying too much on anti-Trump humor at the expense of other current events and the jokes have become stale, especially since Alec Baldwin's impressions of Trump seem too lazily-acted and inaccurate.^note He even admitted after season 44 that he had gotten tired of the role, yet reprised it afterwards in season 45.

I think you can just update it to past tense and add something about the new material once it airs.

It's probably a little early to update it now. I think it's best to wait until February, once Biden has been inaugurated and the new presidency is well underway.

Edited by Redmess on Nov 7th 2020 at 6:53:51 PM

Looks good to me. The series finale is contentious and I've had my fair share of arguments over it in Discord.

I think that period of time is so infamously contentious that it can stay if adjusted to past tense. We'll see if their comedy style changes under a new president. I doubt the Biden era won't come with its own challenges for SNL.

A Broken Base does not cease to have been a broken base just because it's in the past.

There's been a brief discussion regarding the Broken Base page for Pokemon Sun And Moon, and whether there are currently enough entries to justify having it's own page. There are currently four entries, whereas there are about 30 entries for the franchise on Video Games page and the four listed on the YMMV page for Pokémon Sword and Shield.

Should the Sun and Moon entries be moved back to the YMMV page? Give Pokemon it's own Broken Base page? Or are they fine the way they are now? Here's what's currently one the page.

Since when do people dislike S/M having a plot? From what I see, the fandom really likes games with complex storylines, given how that's the reason Gen V gets so much retrospective praise. If there's any complaint, it's that even if the plot itself is good, there's too many long cutscenes that interfere with gameplay.

Yeah, people like the plot of SUMO from what I can tell. The issue is the long, unskippable cutscenes and the padding that comes along with it.

I think people dislike the Ultra SUMO plot, at least, since the changes kind of screw up the narrative while simultaneously being too similar to the original for most of the game.

Is that Broken Base, though? I've never seen anybody try to claim USUM's plot is an improvement; the majority of fans prefer the S/M plot.

It's not. BB requires in-fighting in a fandom and there doesn't seem to be much, if any.

Well, somebody already submitted the page to the Cut List and moved the entries to the YMMV page.

But given the discussion here, is it okay for me to rewrite the entry about the story to make it about its presentation instead of its quality? I do agree with the viewpoint that most fans who enjoy stories in the Pokemon games really like Sun and Moon's story, but it's more the number of cutscenes that the divisive issue.

Do people have legitimate disagreements over whether the cutscenes interfere with gameplay or go on too long, or is it leaning mostly towards "yes they do" or "no they don't"?

It's about time BrokenBase.Pokemon Sun And Moon got cut. The game wasn't divisive enough to warrant its own Broken Base page, and we don't have a separate Broken Base page for Pokémon Sword and Shield which is much more divisive. Generally, individual works usually don't have enough heated fandom disagreements to warrant their own Broken Base pages as opposed to entire franchises.

Edited by ADrago on Nov 18th 2020 at 11:30:36 AM

YMMV.Animaniacs 2020 had a Broken Base entry added despite the show just coming out.

I just removed it.