Author's Saving Throw cleanup

That would help so Much

I'd give a to Author's Saving Throw requiring a citation; it'd definitely help cut down on people using it to wonk about things they don't like.

YMMV.Star Wars The Bad Batch

• Author's Saving Throw: It's questionable how deliberate it is, but many fans noted that the Empire's use of "chain codes" to strictly control travel between planets makes it a lot easier to believe the franchise's notoriously implausible conceit that all knowledge of the Jedi was completely forgotten in just a couple decades.

I'm wondering if AST has to be seen as intentional. As an Audience Reaction it has to be seen as a successful fix but intentional I'm not sure on. Fan reaction I've seen to it is positive. Thoughts?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Jun 7th 2021 at 10:34:02 AM

YMMV.Injustice Gods Among Us

• Author's Saving Throw: Regime Nightwing, or rather Damian Wayne is a trash-talking jerk with little real depth in-game. Considering the game came out right before his comic counterpart's Heroic Sacrifice, this was seen as bad writing in poor taste. The comics have fleshed him out considerably, revealing that the death of Dick Grayson was an accident rather than an attempt at Klingon Promotion and focusing on his close relationship with the Bat family.

I remember this was all in Year One, so wasn’t this all planned from the start rather than just being made up to please the fans?

Ooh, a thread for ATS abuse!

I'd like to bring up this pile of stuff from YMMV.Fire Emblem Three Houses

There's a lot to unpack there.

One, fans didn't really hate Avatarsexuals, they just saw them as a weakness; it was less "This sucks!" and more "This good game would be even better if these characters had more supports."

The stuff about paired endings is weird. No game has ever had paired endings between every single character. There was some criticism of the lack of bespoke paired endings in Fates, but again, it was less "This sucks!" and more "This could be better".

I would say this one is valid, since this is something Fates was criticised a lot for. The example exaggerates things, and comes across like someone who played the Flame Emperor route first and is trying to justify that by making out that everyone else is just as bad, but the example can reasonably stay.

Yeah, nobody complained about the marriage mechanic. There were complaints about how Fates integrated it into the story, but that's a story issue, not a gameplay issue, and in any case people generally like the child characters. This is just the devs deciding to do something different.

I don't think this one is valid. Nobody sets out to make a bad game, and the example makes it sound like Intelligent Systems responded to fan feedback with "They didn't like it when we made a bad game? Gosh, we should make a good game instead!" Three Houses is simply better written than Fates. It's a thing that happens.

Hmm. I don't think the part about expanding on Jeritza's issues is valid, since the evidence is that he was supposed to be in the base game but was screwed by deadlines, so was added in a patch. This suggests that what's written here was the intention all along, it just couldn't be initially included due to time constraints.

The comparison to Peri is ambiguous. Fates and Three Houses are completely seperate continuities, in different universes with unrelated characters. As I understand it, narrative ATSed have to be within a continuity, or at least a What If? situation. Can it apply to types of characters?

Mmmm, possibly. Hapi's backstory is intimately caught up with those who slither in the dark, and all of her endings involve purging the Nazis from Fódlan. This does address an issue people had with Azure Moon, but I suspect it was incidental.

Valid.

Yeah, that one also looks valid.

This is the sole example on Monsters at Work:

• Author's Saving Throw: John Ratzenberger has not appeared in the last two Pixar movies. Him appearing in the series is most likely Pixar's way of offering compensation.

Yeah the reaction is what caused the attempt. Not actually succeeding.

Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin has gotten a sizable Saving Throw entry, and I'm not sure all of it qualifies. The first part definitely does; the devs have gone on record in the linked article about the issues they tried to address. But then it goes into quality of life improvements and general Sequel Escalation; which, yeah, they improve annoying things from the previous game, but I'm a little concerned at the trope's tendency on the whole to collect little tweaks regardless of whether the issue was bad enough to need a "Saving Throw" in the first place.

• Author's Saving Throw: The developers specifically identified three issues with the first game that they worked to address in this one:
  • A lot of people, including the kids who were the ostensible target audience (and the adults who ended up actually playing the thing), thought that the art style of the first game was too cutesy and childish, especially for the subject matter. The new game keeps the cel-shaded style, but stars characters that are a little older and gives everyone more realistic proportions. The final effect is more than a bit comparable to Breath of the Wild or Genshin Impact.
  • Gameplay in the first game was too reliant on guesswork, so enemy attack patterns were made more consistent and it also became clearer when enemies enter "rage states" that more heavily change up their attack patterns.
  • Monstie customization via the Rite of Channeling was originally pretty limited until the postgame; this game opens things up sooner and allows genes to be moved into any slot instead of always taking the same space on the board.
  • A number of quality-of-life improvements were also added:
    • Need a Catavan but don't want to walk all the way across the map to get to it? Now there is a quick-travel option to get to any catavan you need.
    • You can now rename your Monsties after they hatch, a long-standing bugbear from the original game.
    • Don't want to deal with Goddamned Bats battles wasting your time? If you're high enough level, you can do a Quick Finish to instantly win a fight.
    • Tired of the first game's Guide Dangit tendencies? This game's Monsterpedia is much more informative, giving more info on the monsters' weaknesses, their genes, how to make them retreat to their dens even what their eggs look like.
    • Eggs have been improved in two ways: first, they don't have multiple colorations for the same Monstie anymore, so it doesn't throw off the player when they are looking for a specific eggs. Secondly, in addition to Navirou's comments, there's now visual flair attached to finding a rare- or super-rare-quality egg, making it easier to figure out if you just hit the jackpot.
    • Speaking of getting eggs, it used to be that gathering inside the heart of a nest would eat up your time for egg searching. This, functionally, made the gathering nodes inside a nest heart useless, because ultimately nobody would actually trade egg search time for materials that can be found elsewhere. You can now loot a nest heart with no impact on your egg search time.
    • Bottle Caps now have a use aside from just giving Navirou cute outfits. You can now use Bottle Caps at Melynx Co. and they give you a plethora of items. From recipe books to hair magazines to weapons and armor to even layered armor for cosmetic customization and new Rider Card customization!
  • Additionally, the weapon selection in Stories 1 was often cited as being disappointing, in large part because there were only four weapon types (greatswords, sword & shield, hammer and hunting horn) and functionally there wasn't really that much difference between the weapons aside from certain special moves (with GS and hammer getting hit especially badly by "feels the same" syndrome). Stories 2 addresses this in two ways: first, there are two more weapon types, bows and gunlances (which, among other things, finally gives Riders a "ranged" option in a way that feels satisfying in the combat engine), and secondly & far more importantly, damage type now matters — GS and S&S now deal slash damage, bow and GLance now deal pierce, and hammer and horn now, logically, deal blunt. Different monsters, and even different parts on monsters, have different physical vulnerabilities, meaning it now makes sense to have multiple weapons and weapon types and gives broad weapon categories things they are good at.
    • Moreover, effort has been made to make sure the mechanics of the real-time MH games are now present in the turn-based system: bows can charge up for special shots, horns now have an easier time setting up their tunes, the large weapons now have their full movesets represented, et cetera. Gunlance even has all of its vial and discharge mechanics, in some form or another!
  • Finally, while the monster selection in the original game was fairly decent (it ultimately featured nearly 70 Monsties to collect), a good deal of the monster selection felt... "last-generation", so to speak, with the only real representation the then-contemporary 4th gen had being Nerscylla, Kecha Wacha and Seregios, with Glavenus also technically present but only available at specific tournament events. While Stories 2 doesn't feature Monsties from its direct stablemate Rise outside of Palamutes (which, given the development timeframes, is a bit more reasonable), it very pointedly features Monsties and Monstie variants which go all the way up to Iceborne and Generations Ultimate, including a fair few iconics from those titles, and generally features more monster variety than 1 did and more monsters that recent international fans are likely to be familiar with. Several World-era monsters, like Nergigante, are set to play significant story roles.

Update: I went ahead and cut most of the MHS 2 entry, leaving behind the stuff that the devs themselves acknowledged needed fixing in the linked article.

Update 2: So, of course, someone quickly added back some of what I cut. The "more weapons" and "more monsters" entries were added back with the edit reason "The weapons and monster selection are not "minor QoL updates"; the weapon changes and expansion, in particular, changes how the game plays massively." They're right that these aren't QoL (I guess I didn't phrase my edit reason clearly enough), but I still feel the entries are natural Sequel Escalation and not in response to criticism, and I can't cut again without it being an edit war. Does anyone want to weigh in?

Edited by DragonRanger on Jul 8th 2021 at 3:05:09 AM

Bumping because my last edit didn't.

Regardless of whether the entry is valid or not, SpaceDrake is edit-warring. I've brought up the issue in ATT.

YMMV.TheCatInTheHat

• Author's Saving Throw: Although it doesn’t make the movie any less awful, the tie-in merchandise and storybooks are drawn in the style of the original book, and get rid of the crude jokes, looking like something Dr. Seuss would approve of. It doubles as Misaimed Marketing.

What the hell is this entry even? The entry even admits that it didn't change the film. This only just exists to take a snipe at the film.

That's...a tough one. I get what it's trying to say, but at the same time I can't really verbalize it, and either way it's bashing.

These are on YMMV.Young Justice in regards to season 3:

Edited by RainbowPumpqueen on Jul 11th 2021 at 2:13:40 AM

Bump.

YMMV.The Mitchells Vs The Machines

• Author's Saving Throw: In late January, the movie was rebranded with its original title The Mitchells vs. The Machines, coinciding with the announcement that it'd be being released on Netflix due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This lacks context, it doesn't say the thing people didn't like was.

This entry does have the context the AST entry needs, although some people (including myself) didn't like "The Mitchells vs. The Machines" either.

• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Regardless of its double meaning, the change of the title from "The Mitchells vs. The Machines" to "Connected" was criticized for taking a generic One-Word Title approach, rather than giving the movie its own identity. Especially due to how overused the gimmick of using adjectives or even nouns as titles is nowadays. Luckily, the film was revealed to have reverted back to its original name in 2021 when it was revealed that the movie was bought by Netflix.

Carrie (2013):

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • It's also much clearer in this version that Sue was not in on the prank, as she only goes to the prom when she receives a threatening text from Chris, at which point she hurries over to try to stop it. I thought it was pretty clear in the original that Sue was trying to stop Chris's prank.
  • Carrie spares Miss Desjardin, likely because she was the only teacher who was decent to her. Apparently Betty Buckley had wanted her character to be spared in the original for this reason, but was told no. This doesn't sound like the writers were responding to fan complaints. It's not even clear if this was done to appease the original actress.

Edited by RustBeard on Aug 21st 2021 at 10:17:42 AM

YMMV.Sonic Colors

• Author's Saving Throw: In a rather surprising move from Sega, after the game's HD remaster received a ton of backlash from fans for being a Porting Disaster (particularly on Nintendo Switch), Sega announced that the game will receive several patches aimed at fixing the issues with the port, with the first one fixing the infamous seizure inducing glitches of the Switch version. This move was met with positive reception by fans.

As AST no longer allows prerelease, I intend to cut it until the patches are released and deemed successful. Any objections?

Also, post-launch patches are now standard practice for video games, so launching and patching later was likely the plan all along as opposed to an after the fact fix. And how was it a surprise move? Is this a first for Sega?

I was on the Marvel Cinematic Universe yesterday, and I noticed that Captain America: Civil War had an extremely long tree. Long enough to warrant a page IMO. However, it turns out that a page already existed beforehand, but was cut because it was "Yet another unnecessary single-work subpage". I only found out about this after making a subpage for Spider-Man: No Way Home

Due to the length of the tree, I feel inclined to bring up the examples here, so that we can see which examples are valid, because I am not sure about it. If not a page, it can at least be folderized

• Captain America: Civil War:
  • Kevin Feige's statements as soon as the movie was announced that the movie would not revolve around the subject of unmasking and secret identities, which marks a significant point of divergence from the original Civil War comics, as most heroes in this verse don't actually have a secret identity to begin with. And the preview released at D23 seems designed specifically to assuage several fan concerns:
    • Captain America is clearly the central figure throughout, alleviating fears that the movie would be a Cap film in name only and that he would be overshadowed by all the other superheroes. At the same time the others do appear to be more than just glorified cameos.
    • Bucky will be a prominent figure in the plot, for those worried that he would be Demoted to Extra again and that the movie was going to pull a 180 on the previous film's Sequel Hook.
    • Iron Man has a clear and more understandable stance here developed from his experiences in Age of Ultron, suggesting that he'll avoid the situation in the comics where he was a Strawman Political with a Jerkass Ball, though the scene of the parent who talks to him about her son's death is still in the film. His ensuing final fight with Captain America is also rooted in more understandable motives this time, building on HYDRA murdering Howard and Maria Stark this time around due to the former being a prominent founder of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Captain America learning this in The Winter Soldier but not telling Tony about it with the additional reveal that the brainwashed Bucky carried out the hit for HYDRA.
    • The first trailer went further to please anyone concerned about source material, as it indicates that the main source of conflict has been changed from opposing political views (which would require a big Conflict Ball to make them take up action against one-another), and more about what to do with Bucky (who is a wanted man due to the crimes committed by the Winter Soldier), and Cap willing to go against the law to protect him, which gives both sides much more grounds to stand on.^note On the one hand, Cap's crossing a line by actively attacking legitimate law enforcement agents to protect a fugitive, on the other hand, Bucky doesn't deserve the punishment he's facing and protecting his friend is a completely understandable thing to do.
    • The film still involves an explosion which is the last straw to get the Accords passed, with Crossbones filling the role Nitro had in the comic of causing that explosion. However, while Nitro simply vanished from the story as a Karma Houdini, Crossbones' bombing was a suicide attack (making it easier to explain why he wasn't mentioned for the rest of the story). It also helped that unlike Nitro, Crossbones wasn't trying to destroy innocent people, he was trying to kill Captain America. While the New Warriors were unfairly blamed for something that technically wasn't their fault, Scarlet Witch's attempt to rescue Cap by lifting Crossbones up with telekinesis is what caused him to instead blow up civilians in a building, and managing to kill a lesser amount of people than Nitro ever did, which was a change from the New Warriors being The Scapegoat for the attack to the Avengers definitively (if accidentally) being to blame for unwanted deaths.
    • The first trailer also eased many of the worries that this was a Captain America film In Name Only. Prior to this, it had become commonplace for fans to dub the movie "Avengers 2.5" (a joke which Honest Trailers actually used), and there were rumors that it was effectively an Avengers movie. The Russo brothers even mentioned that the trailer's strong emphasis on Cap and his supporting characters was meant to convey that no, this is not another Avengers sequel. And while many Avengers do play a strong role in the film, The Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, Hawkeye, War Machine, Black Widow, The Vision, and Spider-Man don't overshadow Cap, Bucky, Iron Man, or Black Panther by the end.
    • Marketing example. There was a lot of outcry over the lack of merchandise for Black Widow and Scarlet Witch in Age of Ultron, to the point that it got coverage on mainstream news outlets and even Clark Gregg and Mark Ruffalo criticized Marvel over it. The big announcement for Civil War licensing made sure to mention that characters like Black Panther, War Machine, Black Widow, and Scarlet Witch would be heavily featured in the marketing and merchandise, seemingly going out of its way to highlight the fact that the female and minority heroes wouldn't be left out this time around.
    • Though his Badass Longcoat in Age of Ultron was better received than his Ultimates inspired initial look, Hawkeye's costume choices still got criticism for not being like his comic look, which was made worse when Jeremy Renner confirmed he wouldn't wear a mask and appeared somewhat reluctant about the idea. This quickly died down when his look for the film was unveiled, showing a new costume with a stronger purple coloring that greatly resembles his comic outfit, but with the MCU's aesthetics. Fan response has been rather positive as a result.
    • Likewise, a number of fans disliked the War Machine Mark II armor from Age of Ultron since they felt the slimmer, more streamlined suit was a poor fit for a character known for his bulky armor and insane amount of firepower. The new Mark III armor has gone over well with fans since it once again sports a bulkier, more heavily armed design closer to the one Rhodey wore in Iron Man 2.
    • There is very little romance in the movie, and Natasha still acts like a professional despite Bruce's departure. The Black Widow/Banner romance was one of the most polarizing and heavily criticized aspects of Age of Ultron. The relationship is only hinted at in a few lines of dialogue, and Steve and Sharon have The Big Damn Kiss in the midst of the movie far from main events.
    • In Iron Man 3, Tony destroyed all of his suits and vowed to quit the superhero business. Then in Age of Ultron he was back to being Iron Man as if it never happened, which a lot of viewers accused Marvel of engaging in Canon Discontinuity. In this film Tony not only explicitly acknowledges his backtracking, but reveals that the broken promise severely damaged, if not outright destroyed, his relationship with Pepper.^note Though Spider-Man: Homecoming would ultimately subvert this detail due to Iron Man proposing to her, her accepting, and them having a child by Avengers: Endgame.
    • Scarlet Witch's "Sokovian" accent is heavily toned down compared to her previous appearance in Age of Ultron, likely in response to criticisms that it was too over-the-top and Narmy. Some viewers have praised the fact that her voice sounds like an actual person this time around.
    • Wanda is made an outcast and called a public menace for causing the deaths of several aid workers, in response to viewers who saw Wanda as a Karma Houdini in Age Of Ultron who was allowed to join the team despite essentially being the mastermind of the villain's plot. The deaths are also accidental on Wanda's part and she is shown to feel genuinely guilty afterwards, addressing viewer complaints that Wanda's lack of remorse for the deaths she caused in Age Of Ultron made her harder to root for.
    • Phase 2 was criticized for straining to justify Superman Stays Out of Gotham, as the various heroes dealt with major threats and didn't call in the rest of the Avengers for help. Phase 3 justifies this in two ways: on the one hand the events of Civil War means a lot of the Avengers are in hiding, and the ones that are still public are not on the best of terms with each other; and on the other hand, most of the movies in Phase 3 that precede Infinity War either follow new characters dealing with threats they wouldn't ask the Avengers to help with (Dr. Strange, Black Panther), or they follow characters who aren't on Earth and are out of their reach (the Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor). The only exception is Spider-Man, and appropriately Tony does appear in Spider-Man: Homecoming as a major supporting character.
    • Also, the treatment of the pro-registration side in general. In the comics, though we're told Both Sides Have a Point repeatedly, they went full-on villainous, to the point of throwing former friends into the Negative Zone without trial and letting out mass-murdering supervillains to use as muscle; basically, they fully turned into being just like every evil government type from X-Men who ever wanted to lock up all mutants and throw away the key because some might become dangerous. The movie version is different - you don't come out of this hating them the way you do the comic version.

Bump

Not sure about some of those, but I do remember repeatedly bringing up the "Hawkeye gets a more purple costume" thing as one of the more absurdly trivial Author's Saving Throw entries I've seen. However, I'm told that it's in keeping with a TRS redefinition of the trope, so.

Edited by nrjxll on Jan 17th 2022 at 8:46:20 AM

The MCU does have a problem of not using comic costumes, so the recent changes to the costumes of people like Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch do please the fans who complained over it, even if it's comparatively minor.

I'm the person who added the entries about the conflict being reframed as more Gray-and-Grey Morality, and I think those absolutely should count as they were some of the most common complaints about the original comic event and a criticism vocal enough that the producers felt the need to address them openly to assuage fans.

• The ones about Avengers 2.5, Steve, and Bucky can probably be cut as in hindsight a good chunk of the audience feel that the movie really wasn't successfully able to deal with those issues after all.
• The ones about Iron Man's stance being smoothed out (he was notoriously derided as a fascist for his comic depiction), the trailer emphasizing that superhero registration was ''not' the focus of the movie, and the inciting incident being changed from something like what happened with Speedball, should stay with some condensation. I can get to writing replacements for those.
• The Black Widow toys entry can stay, as there was a big push for Widow merchandise (to the point that hashtags like #We Want Widow took off) to criticize the double standard around the time of AOU, and Civil War was the first movie that attempted to address the controversy.
• As mentioned earlier, I do think the Hawkeye entry applies, as nitpicky as it may sound. Perhaps rewrite it to make it clearer how the lack of comic authenticity is behind such opinions. Maybe also keep the War Machine comment for the same reason. It's not as big a point but I had seen a few comments of that nature beforehand.
• The romance entry. I also added this one as it made sense back then going off some reviews I saw at the time, but I'm honestly unsure how to feel about it nowadays. Currently Bruce/Natasha and Steve/Sharon are among the most derided Official Couples in the entire MCU, but for two opposite and mutually exclusive reasons (the former being a Romantic Plot Tumor, and the latter avoiding the same issue, only to fall into Strangled by the Red String; YMMV on which is worse).
• Tony's characterization shift should stay. One of the reasons among many that AOU is so controversial is because of that choice, which many felt was a glaring instance of Aesop Amnesia, and it's very evident based on some of the dialogue in the film that Civil War was attempting to do a patch-up job to reconcile the difference (by self-awaredly noting that Tony relapsed and that it hurt his relationship with Pepper).
• Wanda's accent can also stay. It really was heavily criticized in AOU for being Narmtastic, and many viewers praised in Civil War for being much less obnoxious. I don't remember any official statement on if the change was deliberate, but given how different Olsen sounds between films, it's likely that it was, even if only to make it easier for her to deliver her lines.
• Wanda's characterization should definitely get an entry of some kind, whatever it ends up saying. The writers were 100% aware of her extremely controversial portrayal in AOU and how they were hoping for viewers to kind of forget about that for this film. Whether it worked, I don't know, as many feel the way she was depicted her made her seem like even more of a Karma Houdini, but there was a self-aware effort of some kind. So even if the entry needs to be rewritten to say the complete opposite, a deliberate effort of some kind was made regarding the issue.
• Regarding the Superman Stays Out of Gotham example, it's a hazy example. As it was deliberate, but also a bit of a pointless issue in practice as all the movies that came between it and Infinity War were set in other places or times where the issue would've never needed to come up anyway. So an AST for a non-issue? Phase 4 works do tokenly acknowledge the issue, so maybe it did contribute something meaningful to worldbuilding after all.
• The treatment of the Pro-Registration side seems like it can be rolled into the second entry point about them making a concerted effort to avoid the writing issues of the original comic.

All in all, most of them actually are legit but could afford to be trimmed down.

Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 10th 2022 at 10:33:21 AM

Found this on Uncharted (2022). I have never seen anyone complain about this and also the games are third person shooters, so large body counts are kinda inherent to the genre.