"What's in it for me?"
"Respect, admiration, and the feeling you get from saving a galaxy?"
"Pshaw. I want wine, women and song!"
-Sporff/The Princess
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| #1 .Praetor[149704] | | dhcp116.des.ucdavis.edu | | Hey, well lookee here. I guess I won't rate the other one. Probably give this one a 6. AAY, you might want to read my other comment though. | | #2 Lord_AAY[149707] | | 204.113.161.185 | | Can you tell em what I could have doen to make this report better? | | #3 .Praetor[149709] | | dhcp116.des.ucdavis.edu | Ok. Good things:
Tower Rushing (when it's not an expected strategy)
Some Humor (uh... how long has the game been going?)
Map picture (esp. not temple)
Dragon roost vs marketplace comment
Opponent's wacky attack comments
Illuminate comment.
Pre-Game RL warmup.
Other things:
Back ground was ok, because you had yellow text. Be careful with those.
The End picture. Blizz graphics were used enough in the background.
Bad Things:
Humor seemed to try a bit hard (bacardi - cognac - heiniken) that joke was actually ok, but combined with mixing words like 'gargs' and 'nuked', you seemed to force overstatement.
Game ending in Disconnect
Non-standard Abbreviations (aco's)
General grammar, clean-read check.
Things You Could Have Done:
Pictures (<--- warning, hypocrisy detected)
Understatement - there's a reason the 'his wraiths were doing .0001 damage to my ultras every hour' is in the funny quotes.
It was a good report though :). | | #4 .Praetor[149710] | | dhcp116.des.ucdavis.edu | | If you go by Mark4's guide to battlereporting, you've got 6 & 7 down pat. 1 & 3 need work. 2 & 4 are a bit shaky (no center alignment, please). | | #5 maareek[149711] | | mblt-ac046.gtcom.net | Um, the background was strong, but so was the text so it worked, though not great. While it may be overdone, black on white and white on black are good solid background/text combos. Personally I like using such things as a blue background with white text, or similar color combos. Strong colors bother me. Center alignment of text makes no sense to me, unless it's to emphasive something very important.
I know absolutely positively nothing about this game. So I won't give points about that, I was lost after the first few paragraphs. I suggest you read lots of other reports to get the hang of what to put in. Obvious choices are cattle~bruiser, mark4(<3), AQD3(<3 more than mark4, if that makes any sense), and .Praetor, to name a bare minimum. Mainly text-onlies there, pics are a whole other area. YRM is image king, check out his reports. | | #6 maareek[149712] | | mblt-ac046.gtcom.net | And, like .Praetor said, read the guides, especially Mark4's.
I don't claim to be that good of a writer, and I'm certainly not in a position to tell you anything better than .Praetor, but I hope that helps. As far as war3 reports, I don't read em, so I'm not sure. But read Ling's, CB's, and others, I'm sure that will help. | | #7 Lord_AAY[149713] | | 209-253-79-206.ip.mcleodusa.net | | Soo, how's about deleting the mispost and the one that wasn't posted by me but by my name BRs? | | #8 Lord_AAy[149714] | | 209-253-79-206.ip.mcleodusa.net | | And I may be mistaken, but I think most of my grammar (I SAID MOST, SO ONE/TWO SENTENCEs DOESN'T COUNT) Was dead on.. And by understatement you mean like lines under pictures to make the picture seem more humorous, or am I totally lost? | | #9 maareek[149716] | | mblt-ac046.gtcom.net | Johnny_Vegas is the admin and handles deleting spam posts, he'll take care of it when he can.
As for understatement. It's saying something that's obviously bigger, more important, or longer than you say it is. Like saying that it's been a little while since .Praetor wrote a report (<3 .Praetor, but can't you find a little extra time to write another report, I mean, reports ARE more important than real life you know ;)) when it's actually been 2 years (or so).
Hope you can understand that, I'm not very good at explaining things :( | | #10 .Praetor[149717] | | dhcp116.des.ucdavis.edu | Shoot, it's been almost a year and a half since I visited the site :). Well, Lord_AAY, maybe the gargoyles are the only real example of this. But you mention your gargoyles nuking your opponent's meat wagons. This is overstating their abilities. (Unless TFT seriously changed them.) If you overstate too much, it becomes meaningless. If the gargoyles nuke the meat wagons, the gryphons toss their MIRVs at the abominations, the Archmage rains mile-wide comets down on the crypt fiends, and the Terran player ends the battle by blowing up the planet's molten core, no one cares anymore even if it's the greatest battle report of all time.
| | #11 .Praetor[149718] | | dhcp116.des.ucdavis.edu | | I guess it's a personal pet peeve of mine. What I mean is, if an attack is sad and pitiful, most of the time you can tell people it's sad and pitiful. If you tell them it's even more woefully sad and pitiful, that's understatment. Sometimes you want to sell stuff as more important than it is (Deon Peon), but most of the time you don't. | | #12 .Praetor[149719] | | dhcp116.des.ucdavis.edu | Now, lots of things contribute to the overall 'mood' of the report. Looking back at your report, you're right. Most of your grammar is correct. You cover all major parts of the battle, with the exception of hiding your opponent's expansion and army build-up until the end of the report (justifiably used to surprise the reader as it did you).
But the BACKGROUND, and the YELLOW text (and frequent caps), and the disconnect, and the overstatement, all server to 'hide' what is actually a well-written BR. I never formally studied writing in college, which sucks, because I could probably explain this better. But here goes.
| | #13 .Praetor[149720] | | dhcp116.des.ucdavis.edu | The background calls attention to itself, as does the text, as does each instance you use caps, as does the purple-colored sections of the text. If you overload the reader with things that are 'marked' for his attention (as in all those things that are made special in some way), it distracts from the main course of the BR, the writing.
It's like cooking, but you overspiced the meal. Each spice is nice, but if you use too many it sfuks up the report. A background is nice, but a subtle one like GammaRayBurst's simple color or texture don't call too much attention to themelves while improving his reports. WWC3 has probably the most elaborate backgrounds that aren't too annoying.
| | #14 .Praetor[149721] | | dhcp116.des.ucdavis.edu | CAPS are all right, but try to restrict yourself to two or three genuinely important moments in the report. Such as 'Bob finally scanned, revealing the lurkers. Too bad all his marines WERE ALREADY DEAD.' Even then you can often do without.
Take this example: I found that I had put the word ILLUMINATE here. WTF???
You should instead mark illuminate with single quotations. As so (WTF is fine because it's an acronym): I found that I had put the word 'illuminate' here. WTF???
Text color should always be chosen to minimize the difficulty of reading. Very occasionally (not for large sections) words can be tinted (perhaps blood red) for a certain effect. The purple text you had should have been in quotes, italicised, or just indented in its own paragraph.
| | #15 .Praetor[149722] | | dhcp116.des.ucdavis.edu | I have to go home now, so I'm going to stop rambling (<--- example of selling one's self short for effect. Reader either thinks 'Thank God' or 'hey, you're not rambling, you made sense').
Someone summarize me so I'll don't sound like an idiot.
And don't let them fool you about me writing well. Took me numerous reports to figure out paragraphs. | | #16 maareek[149723] | | mblt-ac046.gtcom.net | | .Praetor's pretty good at analogies, though. Much better than I could do, and I have studied english in college (and, despite what my reports might let on, am a pretty good writer). Basically what he's saying is, the report has to work together as a whole. The background shouldn't overpower the pictures or the text. Neither should the pictures overpower the text, nor should either be a crutch for lack of depth in writing (I've done this, the end result is...well, not desirable). The text should be the most important part of the report. You don't want the flow of the text to be interupted except for something very important. | | #17 maareek[149724] | | mblt-ac046.gtcom.net | I, personally, see very little reason to ever turn a section a different color in a text, italics or bold text does the same thing basically except more subtly. Trying to make something grab the readers attention but still be subtle is good, most readers don't need overstimulation to get the point. Sections that really need attention, can be set off in a different paragraph.
I'm sure somebody can do better than me, I just wandered through here and wanted to help. Just remember, .Praetor and Ling have both have ratings lower than this, and they are some of the best. | | #18 Decay[149730] | | 66.44.173.154 | Not bad at all, although I personally did not like the background choice. Stick with a solid color, or at least something that isn't a lot of pictures. And for text color, use something that stands out well against the background. (IE, not purple on black and blue, like you had in places)
Writing was good, IMO, and call me sadistic or whatever, but I enjoy the little outbursts and 1337speak (OMG WTF BBQ LEWLZ HAXX0RS D00D!) One thing that I am wondering, since I never played war3 past the single player missions (because I disliked it and wanted to play starcraft more) did you ever mention your hero? I know you continually tell us of it's level and stuff, but I have no idea what you picked. :O
Decent report, clear up a few of the surface errors and you'll have yourself a sure gold. ;) | | #19 Chris[149733] | | astound-66-234-209-235.ca.astound.net | | Ban. | #20 
[149734] | | 129.142.195.30.ip.tele2adsl.dk | Jesus praetor.
You now it's a good comment when it's longer than the actual report.
First of all, this looks like it's a fake report. As in dreamed up - an imaginary game. If it's not I'm "very" sorry, but please -.-
Things I didn't like:
The 1337speak / CAPS. Yawn. Throws me off when I'm reading. There's a difference between the language you'd use when speaking, and when writing.
This sounds like you were talking to a half-deaf 8 year old.
The formatting of this report is among the worst I've ever seen. I'm sorry but it really is. And the thing is, it's not particularily hard to do a decent one, here's 2 minutes of work:
http://battlereports.com/users/ZerG~LinG/lordaay/
So there's some room for improvement here - look for advice if you can find it in Praetors posts (speaking of understatements).
5 | | #21 PeaceableGhost[149738] | | adsl-68-73-197-1.dsl.sfldmi.ameritech.net | Sheesh, Praetor, if you don't already have a guide, why not spend 10 minutes and edit all that advice into one? ;)
Anyway, the report was good. The background stunk. THe formatting was okay. | | #22 Desert Demon[149745] | | user-0ce2kqk.cable.mindspring.com | Haha...I looked at the source of Ling's formatting, and I'm like "wtf?!"
Way over my head... | | #23 endersshadow[149748] | | ool-182d2f86.dyn.optonline.net | You can't really expect everybody to know CSS Ling, hell, I barely have a grasp on basic HTML.
In all seriousness, you should try writing a CSS guide for site. Release the same day as Praetor and the new reporters will flock :D. | | #24
[149752] | | 129.142.195.30.ip.tele2adsl.dk | Meh, I've actually been thinking about it - because some basic, basic tags increase readability and everyones enjoyment greatly.
And the personal joy of seeing more semantically correct reports would also be worth a bundle.
Consider:
<font size="-1">
And:
font-size: 12px;
-1 WHAT? Font tags are officially deprecated. |
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