Aliana Blue

Wasp all the way.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=193278

I did a little inquiring yesterday when I noticed an overabundant amount of 2-boss spawns when set to x4, and apparently that has been happening before i16 - it was quite noticeable when you ran in pairs. I suppose that what you're seeing happened before i16 too, just never noticed until now

And away!

Thanks for the review! Couple of things (general, I'm not nitpicky).

1. Regarding the navibar objectives. In principle, I don't mind being vague; in fact, that's how I had the clues at first. One of the things that I gathered from the early feedback I got was that people didn't seem to like vagueness in the objectives. Getting thrown in Orangebagel with "Seek Clues" as an objective seemed to put people off. So I went more specific. It's something the regular game does without embarassment, I have walked int a map with the objective of "investigate warehouse" (for example), only to have "3 hostages to rescue, defeat Bonefire" or somesuch appear there.

As I said, I'm not opposed to vagueness ("my character doesn't know that!"), and on the other hand I have to think that this is, at the end of the day, a game. Still not sure how to go about this one.

2. About the framework, and the Mender's mysteriousness. The reason I originally did the arc this way is that I feel there's not enough "detective work" in this game, so to speak, with the hero (the player, you!) taking initiative. In that sense, that's what I try to accomplish when you stop following the Mender's directions and do your thing, with the contact merely being a plot device to achieve it. Glazius suggested something similar, having the player talk to the Mender directly and afterwards hijack the pillar and do your own thing.

Thing is, I just can't do anything like that with the MA. If it were a regular world mission it'd be trivial to do like that, I could chain missions without having to talk to the contact, have a fedex "click the portal" to progress the story of you hijacking it, and so on. But in the MA you have the chosen contact sitting there at the hologram projector for the whole arc, no matter what. Doing your own thing by talking to the Mender and somehow hijacking the portal would feel incredibly forced, moreso if he's supposed to betray you at the end.

The sense of mystery, or rather, of being left in the dark, is part of the character I wanted to give the mender, and tried to cultivate some mistrust in the mind of the player in their dealings with Paelin by having him acting so vaguely. If he doesn't trust you, why should you trust him?

Basically, the reason for the framework can be cut down to: Having a sense of investigating yourself (instead of following the contact), having the Mender's motives be untrustful, having the betrayal of the Mender be somewhat of a surprise without handing you an idiot ball. Vagueness was the best avenue I could think of.

Some minor details:

- The hostages in mission 3 were clones because "random" for civilians has been bugged for some time, and would pick models from enemy NPCs and even take after the guarding group. I had to have a single encounter with X hostages if I wanted to trigger something off the completed objective since otherwise it triggers on the FIRST rescue instead of the LAST (bloody retarded >_<). Chaining was done because the navbar looked very cluttered otherwise.

A chain of unfortunate events That said, I'm going to cut it down to 4 and remove the chaining, so I should be able to have 4 separate encounters. Space permiting *crosses fingers*

- "This is... unexpected" in mission 4. It used to be the case that the first spawn point of that map was always within spitting distance of the entry, so you saw the Nemesis soldiers as soon as the map loaded. Now apparently they spawn around the corner, I'm guessing there were complains of accidental aggro before finished loading... Easy enough to change though.

- Mission 1 and the forensic examination. At first it used to say that and when the clicking finished it'd say "Yep, he's dead." Bit of humor. Then I changed the second part because of complains of vagueness on the text in general

Hm, I think that's it. Thanks again for the great feedback!

My highest ranking in the buttkicking scale would be Actin, DM/Inv scrapper. 7 dev-made AVs at once (and over the aggro cap of custom-made AVs, for giggles) attest to that. Solo'd the ITF too, good times.

Most crazy fun has to be my Ice/Fire, no-Stamina blapper, nearly softcapped for all positional defenses (over 40%, current pending the acquisition of a PvP +def IO to get the extra oomph). She's hilarious. And does a ton of damage too.

Don't think I have any character being particularly weak that's not associated to still being low level. Dishonorary mention goes to my Ice/Cold Corr (or cold/ice or whatever the combo is, you can tell I'm not very thrilled about it) which I disliked the most. Least enjoyable character I've bothered leveling so far.

Well, rare salvage has the advantage of being deterministic with tickets, you go there, plop 500 of them, and get the orange shiny you wanted. If there's a spike of 3-4m, as it's been seen recently in some instances, it's trivial to whack some holograms and make a decent profit

As far as recipes go, I was extremely surprised when I got an Achilles Heel proc yesterday as an arc reward, and checking on the market turned out to be worth several millions (something that I have never seen happen before, and I've bought many many of these for different alts). Haven't seen much of a price hike in the more common sub-30 recipes yet, which is probably because of all the new alts being played. We'll see how it pans out after the new alts start hitting the level cap.

The only thing preventing me from publishing more arcs is lack of slots. I made three arcs shortly after the AE release, and I've been sitting on my thumbs (creation-wise) since then, simply because I have used all slots. I could un-publish and publish something else, but there wouldn't be much point, I don't see any new arc I make doing any better than the arcs I've already published, which are firmly and safely entrenched in 4-star territory. So what would be the point? *Shrug*

And no, I'm not paying for the privilege of whitewashing the fence some more. It's fun enough if it's free, but that's as far as it goes.

As far as playing goes, I _have_ been playing lots of AE arcs, there's only so much Frostfire I can take. And yes, it is annoying to have the same arcs that I'm not interested in playing showing over and over in my searches. I'm having to stick to "long" and "very long" arcs in the search parameters, when in reality searching for "2+ missions" would do the trick much better. I want to be able to hide arcs without having to play them. I want a favourites list! I hope they'll add some sort of aggregator like "players who liked this also liked..." kind of thing that has been suggested many times.

Just tested some more. Made the custom group with level 25-40 minions and Lts., and level 40-50 minions, Lts., and bosses available, at level 50, spawns will be composed of the level 25-40 minions and Lts. (at level 40) and level 40-50 bosses (at level 50, and if bosses spawn, i.e., 2+ people difficulty for spawn size). The level 40-50 minions and lieutenants, which are available in the custom villain group, won't be used at all.

But, if you're set to 8 people you get one or two 40-50 minions and Lts. at 50, but you still get most of the spawn being the 25-40 mobs, at 40.

Here's a funky (and annoying) one.

Make a custom group with Nerva Demon (CoT) minions and Lts., their level range is 25-40. Add all the minions, Lts. and Bosses from the group "Ghosts" (40-54).

Spawns at level 50 will be composed of level 40 grey Nerva Demons for minions and Lts., and the level 50 Ghost boss.

So... Frustrating...

Thanks for the feedback! Let's see a couple of things

Hey Glazius, can I be cheeky and ask you to check one of my arcs when you have time? I posted it in the mission review site ages ago but nobody ever commented on it there

http://cohmissionreview.com/2009/04/...rs-and-legacy/

Story Arc ID: 1589
Author’s Global Chat Handle: @Aliana Blue
Length: Very Long (5 missions)
Alignment: Heroic

Couple of AVs in there but they come with allies for you, stock mobs too. Thanks a bunch!

There's been a few more options added, like having more lines at health% for some objectives that didn't have them (it's in the release notes), so that's probably it.

Yo Coulomb! Thanks for the review! Let's see if I can clarify a bit the vagueness at the end of the arc (btw, did you read the souvenir? I'm guessing you did ). Or rather, explain what I wanted to do with not having full closure.

THERE BE SPOILERS! (Duh!)

About whether you succeeded at preventing the rise to power of the Circle. Consider that the Circle's takeover happened *before* the events you witnessed; as per the timeline, when you first rescued Phillip's parents, he was a mere kid, and the Circle seemed quite entrenched in power already (I didn't explicitly say that, but tried to strongly imply it: "show, don't tell" and all that ).

Thus, Phillip (and his parents) may be able take the Circle down, not so much prevent their rise in power; I tried to present a scenario where the heroes are fighting a losing, desperate battle against a powerful, ruling Circle of thorns, but the arrival of this new hero you mentor can change the tide of battle.

However, as the letter from Mender Paelin said, he was interested merely in making Phillip stronger, as Mender Silos had ordered. He was not interested in the consequences of that just yet - it is something he'd try to tackle later. What use Paelin (or rather Silos) had for Phillip I didn't expand on; we know next to nothing about the "Coming Storm" for one thing, and there are other things he could be useful for (perhaps travel back in time to prevent the rise of the Circle in the first place).

You see, in-game the Ouroboros menders aren't the most popular chaps. Quite a few people have expressed mistrust of their motives and objectives, and they tend to work in narrow problems and a limited scope and really don't disclose much of what they're doing. I tried to keep in-line with the character of the existing Ouroboros faction when Paelin is handling the information he's giving you. That's why I don't give full closure to everything, I'm giving you exactly what objectives Paelin had and how you threw an egg to his face.

Did Phillip become strong enough to challenge the Circle without his lust for vengeance? According to Paelin, he became even stronger than the version he had created by shifting the death of his parents forward, and the three of them were alive last time you saw them. There's every reason for your character to believe they will manage. Again, I didn't want to explicitly spell it out, but I gave a strong hint that it may be the case; I wanted to stay in-character with the Mender, while still giving the player enough closure.

There's the second part, about Nemesis rise to power. According to the information you found in the 4th mission, Phillip destroyed himself and the best part of the Circle (the most powerful ones, including Zoria and all that) in a crazy, gigantic battle. If one considers that other heroes were, for the most part, either gone or weak enough not to be a threat for anyone (which is the conclusion if one considers Phillip had to do everything alone), the destruction of the ruling Circle and lack of heroes is the ideal situation for some other villain group to take over control of the world. There are a few good possibilities here:

- Nemesis: He's a very fitting one for someone who may have laid low and bid his time to wait for a chance. With the oppressive conditions of the Circle's rule, it's a perfect breeding ground for a man such as him to gain popularity and rise to power, and recruit young hot blooded men to his army. Chaos and Anarchy = Breeding grounds for dictators.
- Devouring Earth: On the other hand, with no effective opposition, the Devouring Earth may have a good chance at taking over a decimated world in chaos. We know they're still around, because the Circle have used them. And if they're no longer under their control, well... But it wouldn't be a good choice if I want the player to be able to find clues about what happened in the past, Nemesis is more likely to keep that information around.
- Council: Having alien reinforcements could work wonders as to why this faction would still be around, alive, and kicking. It would work when it comes to give the players clues too.
- Arachnos: Perhaps, it didn't feel right without Lord Recluse kicking about though.
- Ghosts: Scorched earth future with everyone dead and haunting the world. Tempting, I have to admit, but getting clues in that future may have been hard, I'd need a good map where one would explore some ruins of a library or something.

I ended up choosing Nemesis. I couldn't resist having a 4th wall pun about a Nemesis plot, then turning out it wasn't really a Nemesis plot

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. Would Phillip and his parents be able to prevent the rise of Nemesis after the destruction of the Circle (if they managed to destroy the Circle, which your character has good reason to think they will)? Maybe. Your character has done the best he or she could to give the heroes of the future a fighting chance - that was my objective with this arc, what I wanted the player to think and feel. Will that be enough? Well, in this case I would want you to wonder, and think about the heroes you've left in the future; if you actually are doing that, I'd consider I made a good job at painting those characters And of course, going back to the Menders, they always work in discrete time frames, don't try to fix everything at once!

That, and that's how sequels are made, if I ever get an extra slot, that is How it happened exactly? I didn't think it'd be too important to go into detail if I left clues about Phillip's last battle and the state of the world I tried to convey in the first three missions.

Hm, that was long. Congratulations if you made it this far!