And it's totally stupid. You'd be the most idiotic boss ever to do that.

You have a weapon that fails 1 time out of 6. That means that it will spread out day 1 that the weapon malfunction (customers tries their new weapon-with such a likeliness of failure, it will be known immedialtely). IRL, it's a hidden vice and you'd have to get the customers money back or replace it.

Let's say it's 6th World, extraterritoriality and such and let's imagine that nobody could force Ares to give the money back. The weapon small market sales will drop down quick.

Now worser, wide scale contracts: equipping armies and mercenaries, which are the heart of the market (even if Sixth World is full of weapon, Joe Average doesn't wait to buy the new gun day 1 like he would for a Playstation?). Do them that, and don't refund them, and you can dream to sell them any contract afterwards.


If an Ares boss just ordered that it's.... Mmm...wait...no.... it's just not well thought by an roleplaying game author who didn't thought his plotline deep enough.

Five times out of six. It has a 1 out of 6 chance to actually work.


You think advertising massively and publically on all channels, as the text claims, is given to Ares for free? Even if they advertise on their own channels alone, that advertisement is costing them because it airs in slots they could otherwise sell for money, meaning they are missing out on revenue by spamming themselves with advertisement for the Excalibur.

And there's even more cost to this course. There's giving themselves bad rep, there's storage cost for the unsold weapons that are highly unlikely to ever sell properly, overtime cost for switching shenanigans with 'customer service', overtime work for PR, more PR to damage control the damage control, even more money to market the gun as actually functional while scrambling for a bugfix ... it's just throwing more and more and more money after bad money. The technical term for this is Escalation of Commitment - trying to recoup an investment lost by investing more, and more, and more. Essentially, this is why gambling is such a dangerous thing to some; they just don't know when to stop, cut their losses, and walk away.

Seriously, I hope you never try and open a business of yourself. You'll ruin it in the first quarter.


I am assuming you know basic economic principles. Apologies if I was mistaken.


Assume what you will. My explanation is a courtesy, not an obligation to you. I am not your teacher.

So in other words, the truly questionable point is the marketing campaign. After all, they have to store the things either way, it's been established previously in this argument that they wouldn't have cause to expect the sort of rep damage that occurred, the 'customer service' was literally the bare minimum effort (and the hell are you assuming overtime for), they didn't actually do all that much PR, they weren't even trying to fix it... Literally the only relevant point there is the marketing ramp-up, which is called out as questionable in the fiction. They're not spending money on the things you think they're spending money on because they know it would be a waste. They're trying to get some money in, and are spending literally as little as possible. Seriously, the sunk cost fallacy (which, as you should have noticed, I've referenced previously) does not apply here - and even if it did, given the fact that such a mistake is made in real life, it is not "lazy writing" for the same mistake to be made in the fiction. Hell, the decision could well have been made by the project lead who was completely aware that she didn't have a job anymore anyways, and maybe wanted to do some harm (brilliant HR decision putting her in the position to do so, but there you go).

And the obligation isn't to me, but rather to the argument you're attempting to make.

The Ares situation has been discussed back and forth enough by now. Let it be and focus on other parts of Storm Front from now on.

I do think that discussion like this should be done beforehand between the dev. line.

It's supposed to be one of the main factor for Ares stumbling, no?

Independantly, you could buy a part of it:

- Hack to Ares system that caused dysfunctions in orders to correct the weapon.
- Reputation hit by a malfuncting weapon that caused several deathes.
- Project lead taking vengeance of Ares.
- Division leader that sends on sale a fail product anyway out of desperation and short-time sight.

BUT:

This gives the feeling it's Corporate-scale mess up (hardly realistic) which cause trouble to a megacorporation (hardly realistic) with a weapon as the faulty product. It's too much. and that's even worser with the rules of the weapon.

Urm, well.


Say the weapon had a less identifiable flaw (but life threating), that R&D was essentially focused on the weapon, that other megacorps used the vacuum in other research domains to take Ares market parts, that massive news campaigns highlighted how Ares did know (wether it's thruth or shadowrunning false blackmailing) the flaws of the weapon and still sold it to the soldiers (perceived asheroes of the nation) and caused their death, that several nations in turn deceided to boycott Ares...

That might have hurt them.


The way I see the plotline written there, it doesn't seem well thougth enough (so "lazy writting" I guess)

Sorry, seen it after I posted.

No worries.

So... Did we dodge the bullets on pseudoapocalyptic events this go around?

Nope - I heard the last page has a subtle reference to SURGE-III

So it's X-men now?

in 2075, 43% of the population has lazorz for eyes !

And I hope, 100% of the shark population have those on their heads!

But on a more serious note: No, it's not that apocalyptic. If you're not a dragon or someone living in GeMiTo, that is.

43% of the population are attached to sharks AND have Lazorz for eyes ?

Seriously .. are you on the creative writing team for SR5 ?

or just high

Hm! I wish. (Both.)

Page 145. Tadashi/Tadeshi.
Also, if you were the only one to proofread it, it isn't your fault.

Ya know, when I stop to think about this, is it honestly that far fetched?

What percentage of people have cybereyes, I wonder? And what percentage of cybereyes employ some form of laser, even just for reading or writing data?

~Umi

Damn!

Alright, I don't think we can toss corrections in at this stage, but I'll have to watch that closer in the future. Thank you.

Do the writers show each other drafts too, or are you just proofing each others' finished contributions?

One of the books does say that Cyber eyes are the most common cyber there is. That it's not odd what so ever for people with fully functioning eyes to take a lunch break and go get cyber eyes installed.

I know I'd have them, if it were an option.

Addendum: the following is only my own experience/opinion.

Mostly it depends on the writer(s) and the timeline. There are some of us that have a circle of other freelancers in on, like, every step of the creative process, and sometimes we'll send three or four files back and forth with comments and stuff prior to tossing a copy to Jason or up for overall group perusal. Other times (and on other projects), all depending on what kind of schedule folks have and how available we are, it might just go to the "pretty much finished contribution" phase.

Just depends on how busy folks are, and how long we've got to work on a given thing, y'know?

As a note, for the PsuedoApocolypse for this go around... RUmor has it the Clans are invading.

Great, just what we need... Celts.

You can never have too many of us!

Didn't we whoop their asses back in the days?
Hard to remember everyone we vikinged (it's a verb deal with it)

No, that was the Romans - the guys who did everything the Vikings ever did, but bigger, better, and a millenia or two sooner.

Except for cross the Atlantic and leave a failed colony to die on a forsaken foreign shore, of course.

~Umi

... We had better parties.....

Rome had much greater access to intoxicants and inebriants, far better hygiene, and a greater variety of cultures and ethnicities.

In terms of sheer debauchery, Scandinavia was a cheap whorehouse with watered down booze while Rome was a top tier penthouse pleasure parlour.

~Umi

You need to stop watching Spartacus Umi

The whole "e-ghosts" taking people over thing could become apocalyptic pretty quick. Plus the Ares bug problem and the Azzies having the Sextant of the Worlds and a locus doesn't bode well.

I meant the Celts, not the Vikings.

Bodes well for the Azzies. lol

THIS is what happens thanks to the Celts being Vikinged (Verb ?)

for those that don't like Links .. google Up Helly-Aa ! ... damn weirdos but HELL That is a PARTY !

Who cares about them?

Pyramid Watcher?

lol They, themselves do?

Heh. I'm an Ares boy myself. I'm sweatin' a lil, about some of the dumbass moves of my fave corp.

Can't wait for Aztlan to be swallowed by a blood magic singularity.

While I totally agree with you. (( they're my corp I love to hate)) you'd think if it was going to happen, it'd have happened during that

I finally finished the book and compiling my notes into something vaguely coherent. This is my review. Brace yourselves, it has a lot of text. And not all of it is nice.

So this is Stormfront. The mini-game promised mixed blessings at best, and it wasn't lying. In fact, the blessings aren't only mixed, they're not particularly impressive for large parts. I have to say, I don't like the title art much. It has little relation to the book (despite Echo Chernik's claim that all these characters and everything happening there were written into the book, I couldn't find them), and it seems ... not up to what the book seems to want to be. Art is, otherwise, consistently high quality, and two pieces deserve special kudos; more on that in the appropriate section of the review.

What the hell does CGL hate about proper tables of content. This is supposed to be a print product, so there is no way you can get away by pointing out the bookmarks sidebar in PDF reader, because print products don't have that. The TOC is bland, doesn't tell me anything relevant and is just not helpful. The older, more detailed TOC were helpful, this ... is a page wasted.

Quality of writing varies widely. This is why I consider this not to be as bad as War!, though at times, it is. Other parts are quite good. It's a very, very mixed bag indeed.

Here's for more detailed reviews. Edit: added individual ratings for a quick overview for people who don't like walls of text.

"Review: Chapter 1 and 2 (Eye of the Hurricane/Aztlan's Triump(h))" 1/10


Review: Chapter 3 (Fall of a dragon) 2/10


Review (Chapter 4: Seattle Shakes) 8/10


Review (Chapter 5: Lightning in Denver) 5/10


Review (Chapter 6: Ares Trembles) 2/10


Review (Chapter 7: Shadow network): Unrated


Review (Chapter 8: First among Equals): 8/10


Review (Chapters 9 and 10) 8/10 and 9/10


Review Chapter 11: Escaping the Ghost Decade 6/10


Chapters 12 & 13: Fractures/The Cracks Inside 8/10


Review: Game Info 1/10


There are several problems that perpetuate throughout the book. Some affect all chapters, some only a number; some chapters are affected worse than others. Some chapters are letdowns or just plain horrible, others are neat to very nice. It is not War!, the badness isn't omnipresent, but it isn't a good book either.

Bad editing persists. Bad proofing does, too. As Critas said, proofing is done on a 'if possible' base, which is just unprofessional for CGL to do. Editing seems not to have happened at all. Some of the articles are unfit as a draft, let alone for print. Bad stuff, CGL. You have managed better before.

The Shadowtalkers and other characters that have been previously established act wildly out of character depending on the writer. The shadowtalk is especially bad. Sometimes, I have the impression the writer just wrote something in Shadowtalk, and someone else randomly slapped Shadowtalker names to it. Also, story characters act bizarrely. Lofwyr, for instance, hires runners in bataillon strength because Saeder-Krupp suddenly has no more private army or something. The Greats then stay out of a fight against one of their own, instead of jumping into the fray. Harlequin wants to murderkill Ghostwalker and then suddenly is talked down by Ehran. Ghostwalker becomes all sulky and ignores Aztlan, which mere weeks before blasted a Great Dragon and is the most anti-dragon country ever, but suddenly he could care less. Lazy writing, no care for and with characterisation ... it's sometimes just plain horrible.

Now, I also noticed something, a culmination of a distasteful trend in SR writeups I have been following for a while now. I have my doubts this is even conscious for the most part, but it is there nonetheless.

All dead Jackpointers in this book are Non-Americans, non-Anglos. All who get saved, boosted or promoted are American. Four long established mercenary organisations are out of business - Combat, inc. (Hong Kong), MET 2000 (German/European) and Tsunami (Japanese)are effectively destroyed, and Black Star (German) is dead to a man, despite 'several' having been in custory of the FMC (being unintentionally realistic?) - but we have the Free MarySue Corps now (I will refer to them as this only after this post), who popped up out of nowhere and suddenly are the second biggest mercenary company because ... I dunno, reasons and manifest destiny? Roskosmos apparently employs only Americans on Gagarin base too, despite being a Russo-Japanese company. It was already pretty annoying in 10 Mercs - where all but three units were American. And before, in blanket assumptions that everywhere works like the US of today (like a few in Gun Haven II), with the casual disregard that GeMiTo was treated as something like a horde of bums in the desert somewhere (not even SoE makes it out to be that), with the Africa writeup in the Almanac that might just as well have been labeled 'here be black people'. I'm not saying this is a conspiracy, or even a conscious effort. However, there's thisattitude, and it shows more and more, and FEELS more and more distasteful. And I am certain I am not alone in the observation that SR seems to drift towards a highly America-centric and American-dominated world view. Kind of like Tom Clancy was made Line Dev.

Then again, at least Clancyrun books would be properly proofed and edited.

Edit: All in all, this book has some bad and some good in it. I rated the chapters individually, but as a tl;dr: I rate it 5,8/10

Considering all the hostility you display during even the first chapter or you other posts on this board I don't even bother to read the rest of the review. It is clear that you do not (want to) like the book and that one can't expect a fair review.

Interesting opinion. You should have read on.

^For once, I agree with that assessment.

While there's a little bit too much snark for my liking, hermit doesn't bash ALL of Storm Front.

I don't think so. Even in a negative review the reasons why it is bad should be pointed out in a fair manner.
Here though the hate is dripping from every sentence and I do get the impression that the verdict of the review was a forgone conclusion.

I thought you didn't read on?

I haven't.
The 1st chapter and the unspoilered part (at least a few sentences form each passage). That all I can stomach.

You ... really don't realize that you're doing what you're bemoaning, do you?

Difference is I am not writing a review of the review.
As personal opinion hermits post is fine. But imo a review has to adhere to a higher standard.

I am writing a review, not a commercial.

But, out of interest, what standards would those be?

Okay. So, no fairness in all things, just fairness in things you like. Got it. Have a nice day, then.

To comment: I'm not that far into the book yet, but my initial feelings towards the Triump of Aztlan and the Fall of a Dragon chapters is one of "Good ideas, weird execution." I'll agree that the start of chapter 3 seems more promising than the first parts I've read so far, and I'll keep an eye out in light of the comments made.

I read it all. I won't go point by point. That'd take forever.

I will say, Hermit you seem to have missed a very great deal, in your hatred, of parts of the book. You claimed things in your review that either didn't happen, or claimed they happened for no reason, when they were in fact explained.

While your review isn't universally bad, it's very much tainted by how much vitriol you put into it. As pointed out you hated the book before it was out and it does shine through. Yes you state "It's not all bad" more than once, but to be honest it seems more like armor from being accused of just writing a horribly biased review. Multiple times in the write up you characterize people/dragons/events in summary, grossly inaccurately from how they're actually presented, and more over -explained-.

Perhaps it'd benefit from another read through. You seem to have missed a great deal in your first time through. I'm not saying the book is perfect. I do see some flaws. And there are even parts of your review that I agree with, (( though not quite so hot in the pants to jump up and down and urinate all over it)). The thing is, the points that you do have, that I might agree with in parts, are lost under the flaming feces slinging rant.

Again. I don't disagree with ----everything---- you've written. I actually agree with a couple of parts. But your presentation and general hatred for the book pours out with such vehemence and frequency that your message, when it actually pertains, is lost.

Again. I'd suggest you re-read it. Your summary's show that you've either glossed over, skipped or "Didn't get" Alot of what the book presented. I can tell by your posts you are not one of low intelligence. So I can only guess you skimmed, or skipped parts. Try it again, maybe slower and a touch more relaxed. Switch to Decalf. See if it feels a little better. Your dislikes might still be there but it might make more sense and you know. Less flaming torches and pitch forks.

Being impartial and try to stay as objective as possible for example.
Your personal opinion will of course always show through, but that should be kept to a minimum.
In this review your dislike of the product and CGL is clearly visible and everyone who reads the review to inform himself would always wonder if the book really is that bad or if its just you using hyperboles because of a personal vendetta.