Thread: [Thought Experiment] Is Dawntrail's 7.0 MSQ Planned to be "Terrible"?

Originally Posted by Cleretic

Dawntrail was a story that you happened to not like. That's it.

It's not some grand plan.
It's not some big structural failure.
It's not a secret flaw or saboteur that's keeping the developers from doing the work they really want to do.

You just didn't like a story. Accept it and move on, don't big it up into something it's not and then set up to disappoint yourself further when you're proven wrong.

If you must interrogate it, and get more meaning out of it than 'I didn't like it', then my recommendation is actually that you completely reject any assertions of inherent quality, and instead consider why things do and don't resonate with you specifically. Don't call Dawntrail 'bad' and Shadowbringers (or whatever your favorite expansion is) 'good', becuase there is no measurable difference between good and bad things; ask yourself why one story did work for you, and why another story didn't.

I have used this arguement before, but to me this sounds exactly like the Twilight and 50 Shades fans who feel they are both high literature and would get terribly terribly upset when ppl would disagree or break down exactly why they were just plain bad.

OP, for your next work try to stay away from combative prose and judgemental remarks about quality, taste, or rates of success. They detract from providing a clean analysis.

Originally Posted by Exmo

OP, for your next work try to stay away from combative prose and judgemental remarks about quality, taste, or rates of success. They detract from providing a clean analysis.

I appreciate your critique of my writing style, and I largely agree with it.

The reason I chose this style is that, as a thought experiment explicitly challenging the prevailing "DT sucks" sentiment, I felt it was necessary to maintain a clear, assertive, and at times, even "combative" rhetoric to make my case.

My goal of writing: to present a new methodological framework for analysis ("narrative forensics"), and to propose specific theories and the crucial evidence I uncovered using that framework.

Trying to achieve both goals in a single series was indeed difficult to control, and it might even come across as a 'schizo". I've had a thorough reflection session on this, and I agree that it's probably a better direction in the future to separate these different objectives into distinct works

But your point is well noted. It's a constant balancing act between analytical rigor and persuasive rhetoric. I appreciate you calling attention to it and giving me something to think about for future work.