Witch_Engine

Lazarus, most of your 'logic' problems were addressed in the other thread, and pretty much boil down to you either intentionally or accidentally ignoring mission dialog, or just personal opinion - "you didn't make an NPC called Marcus Cole this mission falls apart" etc. I mean, if you want to get this nitpicky on the arc, I hope you're at least this nitpicky with all arcs to keep things fair.

Stephen Sheridan has a mission in which one of the stated objectives is 'Destroy the Mutagenic Cansiters" which cause people who come in contact with them to become Lost.

You also ignored everything else addressing your points, many of which seemed to be you missing mission dialog, or just personal preference rather than actual plot holes.

EvaDestruction: Even the smallest broadsword is far bigger than the sword she uses, and to my knowledge, it says nowhere in game that she -can't- use it.

Good lord, the way people are obsessively deconstructing this arc you think they'd want me to have written the next great American novel, and not the 'fun mission that I put some thought into in a game where you fly around and shoot things with spandex' that I intended it to be.

I think it's more than a little unfair that people are treating this now as something to be hyperanalyzed every step of the way (despite a lot of those boiling down to people ignoring the actual NPC and mission dialog) when I never made claims it was some great work of literature, though I mean, the fact that they seem to hold me to those standards is a little flattering because it says to me they must think I'm on that level since that's the level they're breaking the arc down on.

"You cannot both claim that your arc is making some kind of philosophical statement and that people are reading it too deeply."

Why not? South Park does this like every week.

Mind4EverBurning: Don't worry, I have my grain firmly in hand. I see City of Heroes as basically The Tick Online, people who go this overboard into deconstructing everything into their own personal logic systems to this extent kinda scare me. Demanding everything follows their own exacting demands and 'realism' in a game where you fly around in spandex shooting lightning is kinda silly to me, and seems a waste of energies better spent just enjoying the game for what it is.

To address a few concerns:

Q: "Why do you have to blow up the canisters instead of clicking on them?"

A: You are not allowed to place clickes or defendables on the Atlas Park map. I worked with the tools I had to try and put out the story I wanted to tell.

This isn't the first time you blow up canisters and whatnot to stop a plague in game, and since this is the same game where the preferred method of stopping a ghost is punching it in the face repeatedly, smashing the shell and incinerating the canister didn't seem out of line. Nobody bats an eye when you have to hack computer codes with your caveman character every other mission, or when NPCs tell you to do other equally ridiculous things, I had no idea people would make such a big deal out of something that routinely happens in the game anyways.

Q: Wouldn't a hazmat team be disposing of this stuff? Where is the hazmat team?

A: The contact mentions (twice actually) that they ARE sending in a hazmat team to ensure the area is safe once you clear out the Arachnos. When you leave the map for the first time, it's clearly stated the sent in a cleanup team to scrub the area.

Furthermore, your contact is a doctor who specializes in cleanups in this situation (mentioned in passing in mission dialog, and specifically in 'about this contact'), and he gives you to go-ahead to go on your way after the mission.

Q) No competent HAZMAT worker would make that assumption. They'd assume the worst because they'd have to. Why didn't they track it?

A) They did. It's stated in the 1st mission dialog that Arachnos came straight down in their fliers, and immediately set up. After you check the area, you report back to Solemnise, who informs you they're waiting for Liberty to show up, and that they are sending in the cleanup crew. Mission dialog then points out specifically that 24 hours after they'd been in there, since they didn't return, they sent in SWAT and superheroes to investigate. The Hazmat team was doing their job, but as evidenced by mission 2, just ran out of time.

Q) Why does Ms. Liberty have a Katana?

A) That's Hero-1's sword, that she normally wears at her waist. In game lore, she refuses to use it, instead holding on to it, awaiting Hero-1's return.

Since you can't add it to a custom costume, and she is a little, well, out of it, I thought it would be fun to have her swinging it around at foes. Used Katana since it has a rusty model (dragging a sword THROUGH buildings can't be healthy for it) and it mentions this in her custom mob description as well.

Q) Synapse ran off and spread it? Why didn't anyone stop him?

A) Synapse moves at incredible speeds. It's not a stretch to imagine that given the speed Blight took effect in Atlas, he could have been infected and rocketing across america before anyone was able to raise the barriers. The problem with catching a superspeeder, is if you're slower than them you have to anticipate where they're going to later be, not where they are.

Q) How do we know Mako created this thing anyways? Why does he have command of the Arachnoids?

A) 2 different sets of NPCs specifically mention the Blight was created by Mako's crew in Mission 1, with different dialog on each group. Mako's dialog in Mission 3 has him bullying the Arachnoids around, calling them freaks and informing them they're making a last stand.

The combination was partly chosen to set up a brief red herring for observant players that all the survivors were half person/half animal creatures so they might think 'maybe that's a part of the cure', partly because I felt it made his dialog 'you won't turn us into abominations like you' funnier given who he's standing around with, and partly because they're some of the strongest, nastiest guys in Grandville, so it makes sense they'd be some of the last survivors.

Q) Why is the clockwork king there?

A) He's supposed to look horribly out of place. You're a crazy person. Your stories are starting to break down, bleed into each other, and outright shatter the further and further you get off your 'meds'.

Q) Why Solemnise?

A) The definition 'to perform his duties with gravity' I actually thought fits him well. Every step of the way, from your perspective, he's the one trying his best to help you, despite it seeming to be a hopeless situation, even if that situation changes. Plus, it only makes 'Lord Nemesis' if you include the 'Dr.' and I had a few people remark in comments that it completely threw them off because they dropped that part of the name when they went over it in their heads.

Q) Why does the Chief call you your hero name? Why does the zombie look like a zombie?

A) It's mentioned in the clues in that mission that even while 'on your treatment' you still resist a lot of the staff's attempt to rehabilitate you, and aren't entirely lucid. It's mentioned that referring to you by your 'hero' name has, previously, tended to calm you enough to let them administer your medication. the zombie only looks like a zombie to you. Note that nobody else seems to see him that way, or react to him being out of place.

Q) How can a hostpital forbid a mother from seeing their child.

A) Having worked in hospital security in the psychiatric ward, this actually isn't uncommon at all, depending on the state of the patient and whatever else is going on.

Q) Where are all the doctors named Marcus Cole and so forth? Why does this hospital look like a tech lab?

A) I don't know, did you ask any of those doctors wandering around their names? For all you know you had the entire freedom phalanx run right by. I'm not going to change every single NPC on that map into a reference, that's just silly.

It looks like a Tech Lab because the game has no hospital map in it aside from the asylum, and making it the white portal maps would have made it excruciatingly large, which would do nothing but be added time sink. Plus you know SOMEONE would have complained then that tere was giant portal equipment everywhere and portal signs. I picked a small, clean-looking map. The player has to use a little imagination, but maybe that was asking too much

Q) Why is it not a definitive ending? The Nemesis Plot ending would have been more coherent, pick an ending.

A) I actually thought the ending was fairly clear. Think about how really really stupid the Nemesis ending would be if it were the 'true' ending. It's horror, so really unhappy endings are perfectly acceptable, but, because I knew people like Venture would get bitter about insinuating their character was a nutjob, I left it as an 'out' to disregard everything that had happened.

I'd like to note that once the hospital is introduced, you are told repeatedly that there's no supervillain plot, up to and including the fight with 'Nemesis' in which it begins with him outright stating he's not Nemesis, and then ending with you tearing off his mask to reveal...he's not Nemesis.

Plus, if you watch the dialog, the longer the fight drags on, the more corny and ham-fisted his dialog becomes...until it reaches a point where it's like the NPC dialog in mission 1 - putting you right back on the edge of when you were fully convinced Paragon City was real at the start of the arc.

I think you're reading way too deeply into things, dude.

Oh, I agree, Bay's stuff isn't exactly the pinnacle of literature, but, like you said, it's generally pretty fun to watch things explode for a few hours, and really, at the end of the day, that's enough to get at least a 'pass' from me.

If Venture thinks I'm as good as Michael Bay, I'll take it as a compliment, man. The dude is absolutely loaded and gets to blow things up all day. Say what you will about his work, but the fact remains, his job is probably fun as hell, and he has tons of success and a massive audience that line up for his unique brand of terrible ham-fisted dialog and mindless explosions enough to shower him with money.

...Basically what I'm saying here, is, shower me with money, people.

Chief of Medicine's bio is fine - it's making a demand of you, not asking you nicely.

As for the other two, thank you very much for catching them! I'll fix them right now. Much appreciated.

Edit: Fixed!
This is the kind of feedback that helps. Not 'you have commited unforgivable sins against my sensibilities/radically change or delete your arc to fit my whims. Good, objective stuff helps better us all. =)

You're right results do matter, and I think the results speak for themselves. Overwhelmingly people like my arc, so therefore it must be successful. Ultimately, that's the only way we can really measure success in the AE. No one person holds all the cards in an arc's viability.

Do most people like it? Is it popular? Is it well recieved? With this arc, by and large, that seems to be the case, so your review, while valid to your own personal biases and extreme viewpoints, isn't really indicative of the general playerbase. At the end of the day, I'm happy with my results, as are most players thus far who've played it, at the time of this post. Changing something many enjoy to appease a single person doesn't make much sense, no matter how much they rail against the 'sins' it's commited.

If anything, my 'results' show you're out of touch with many 'average' players in regards to this arc, and my point that I can disregard you as a statistical anomaly, for now, remains valid.

As with anything, simply saying that might cause people to play it and genuinely hate it, moods may change, they might vote it up or down out of some personal agenda, they might even like the arc. But for now, at least, it seems some people like it, so really, that's all I can do. Make something that people enjoy, and create an experience for them that maybe they haven't considered or tried, and ultimately have them take something from the whole ordeal. The bottom line is if people are playing it and having fun, then it's done its goal.

I never played the Venture hates everything card. I played the 'Venture's expectations, definition of fun, and outlook of the game is so far removed from a normal person's it can be regarded as statistically invalid in this scenario' card, which is quite different. Apparently to you, fun is SUPER DUPER SERIOUS BUSINESS, which sort of defeats the point. And makes me a little sad

You don't like having your precious little snowflake of a character having an identity crisis, you hate Nemesis, you apparently don't read all the arc's text, etc. etc., we get that. Most players, if we go by my voting and feedback, don't seem to have a problem with it at all.

It's a difference of opinion, everyone is entitled to it. Similarly, I'm equally entitled to defend my choices in the arc, and I am not going to cater to some pretty extreme demands or fundamentally change the arc because of one person's personal weird hangups.

I'm just pointing out how absurd it is to take an arc, ANY ARC, in which the author actually made a real attempt at creating a coherent story, paid strict attention to game lore, used reasonably balanced and interesting looking custom mobs, added lots of things to see and do, properly equalized level range, added contact and custom mob info, a souvenier, and so on, and then calling that arc outright terrible, a prank, wishing you could vote it negative stars, and so forth. It just seems really petty and really doesn't do a service to people who are trying to make a real effort to provide actual stories in a sea of farms and broken garbage.

The fact that you -repeatedly- insist you're perfectly sane on the 5th mission means that I've succeeded in this arc far better than I could have possibly imagined. Your chains of half logic to justify it actually make me outright giddy. "I'm not crazy! It's all an elaborate Nemesis plot! It HAS to be! The status quo must remain!"

..awesome

I agree, it doesn't work for you, that's cool, and you have done an admirable job of stating your reasons, I just feel I have an equal right to justify my reasons as well.

Thus is the nature of man. Born to bicker :P

Wow, you...uh... got the theme and 'only logical' conclusion of elements pretty much entirely wrong.

If anything, the arc does everything in its power to suggest that it's not a Nemesis plot. In fact, Solemnise in all likelyhood is simply Solemnise. You seem to obsess about this hallucingenic agent, and that right there is where you're making a huge mistake. That's only one interpretation of what's going on, and it's a pretty weak one to boot.

The whole sort of point is that you're sharply pulled from what you know to be 'acceptable' into a BLATANTLY impossible situation, and then from there, ripped violently into another equally impossible situation. The whole idea is that by the end, you should be questioning if atlas, Blighted atlas, the medical institute, and the asylum even exist, if they do, what ones do, and who is and is not telling you the truth. It also mentions right in the arc, if Solemnise is to be believed (and you SHOULD question him and his motives!) then you've had hundreds of different superhero fantasies before this one and Blight is just the most recent one you have thrown yourself in. It stands to reason they'd be disjointed, if you are, in fact, crazy.

Interpreting the whole thing as some laughable Nemesis plot is both missing the point, and taking the laziest, least imaginative route to solving the dilemma. It also only looks at it as 'the only (semi) happy ending is the only true ending' which is seldom the case in horror to begin with. Not all endings are happy.

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Futhermore, regarding the quarantine thing, the issue isn't that I left it to go to the AE building. The issue is that by the time the contact tells me I'm in a quarantine, I've already left Atlas Park *twice* -- once for an entire week. At that point, it's kinda too late for the quarantine to work. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak.


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After the first mission, you're not placed in quarantine because they don't know what has happened yet. Furthermore, since you show no signs of the Blight, there would be no reason for them to suspect anything was amiss. Nobody is placed in quarantine after the first mission since they don't know what the Blight IS.

After the second mission, you've exposed yourself to the Blight - again - and now that they know what is going on, they quarantine you that time, to be safe, in case you WERE infected on your second foray into atlas.

Since you were fine the first time, there's no reason to assume you would have spread it, given how quickly everyone else deteriorated under it, if you had been infected it would have already shown. (Admittedly guilty - this part is somewhat inferred but they mention in dialog the speed at which it spreads and manifests) The contact mentions he is putting you in quarantine after this mission because of that exposure - they want to be safe, since they've seen what it is now, so they lock everyone involved away in the quarantine.

At the start of the third mission, it mentions that while you were in quarantine, it escaped, and spread anyways, and that they're letting you out of the quarantine only because 1) the infection is already fully contaminated the area they need to send you to, and 2) because you don't show any signs of infection, heroes are in short supply, and have experience dealing with it, you're the best remaining person they have available for their last desperate stab at a cure. This is again, all pretty much explained through the mission dialog.

I don't see anything here that really contradicts a reasonable course of actions a person might take in that situation.

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Ultimately, what you did was ambitious. You tried to do something very different with the MA, and I think that for the most part you pulled it off very well. Most people will, and have, enjoy it immensely. It's something that hasn't been done before in MA, as far as I'm aware. Unfortunately, not everybody is going to share the same reaction. People bring their own views, likes, and prejudices to the table. I just happened to have seen that same story done before, down to many plot elements being the same, and that affects how I view the story itself.


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This is poor reviewing form. If you are judging a story on things external to that story, then you aren't judging the story on its own merits. You're bringing a personal bias and things having no bearing on that actual story into the equation, things the writer has no control over, which is, frankly, unfair.

A reviewer should judge a story on its own merits. That's the whole point of review, to present a resonably fair and unbiased look at 'did this story succeed in what it was attempting to do', not 'does this story cater to my personal bias'.

If he's going to randomly pick my arc apart for whatever reasons, I feel I should at least be given the courtesy to justify my choices and the content and nature of the arc, is all

First off, that's not the first mission, it's the second. Secondly, I don't know what version of my arc you're running but I fixed that months ago. A SG-mate pointed it out when I first made the arc.

I went in RIGHT NOW to see if I'd missed it. Seriously. Are you just messing with me now? I know this arc is all about mind-screwery but really now.

http://rhodox.sidemoon.net/temp/libertywhat.jpg

Uncreation is, no word of a lie, my favourite AE arc in the game. It's just so surreal.

OK, I just checked AGAIN since I'm still on, and no, it says Ms. Liberty.

Nowhere in the arc does it say to protect those canisters. You're projecting something that isn't there on to the arc. The contact actually says that they're still in the process of setting them up right in the mission dialog. Nevertheless, I added a line just for you, that adds 'Destroy the canisters before they can be activated, then incinerate the contents inside".

Furthermore, none of your suggestions would actually work in the AE, since the Atlas map does not allow ground clickies, nor defendable objects.

I still think it's pretty ridiculous for docking stars for it resembling some TV show or extremely selectively nitpicking that yes, you have to go back to the AE building between missions, while doing the arc.

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Overall:
Interesting plot, even though I didn't like my toon portrayed as a nutcase. Nice custom mobs. I'd avoid having multiple instances of patrols/guard groups/etc. having the same text.
The addition of the Clockwork King didn't make any sense to me.

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...Maybe it would make sense if you actually finished the arc? You left out the last mission, IIRC.

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Maybe I didnt have any specific comments on the last mission? Troll elsewhere please. The reveal at the end that the Clockwork King was another mental patient didnt make any more sense.


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Changing the ending to be all a giant Nemesis plot would be really really dumb, since it would completely change the ending as well as the entire theme and most clues in the arc. Just sayin'.

I've never even seen an episode of Buffy in my life. I didn't even own a TV from 2002 to until a couple months ago

While I didn't ask for this review, uh, thanks, I guess.

Some nitpicks - I just checked my arc again, and nowhere that I can see does it call her Miss Liberty, it's consistently Ms. Liberty throughout.

Blowing up the canisters - pretty much all destructible objects in the game explode, so I made the best of it and notedin the mission that you're disposing them by breaking them before they can be deployed, and incinerating the contents. I dunno, use your imagination I guess.

The quarantine thing - I think you're truthfully being a little nitpicky here. If you are going to suspend disbelief in the story enough to say 'I'm not in quarantine I'm in the AE building', you might as well just ignore anything that's happening, since you're acknolwedging you're in AE, and therefore it's all a hologram anyways.

Having never watched Buffy the Vampire slayer in my life, docking marks because something else had a similar plot which is in no way related to the game itself seems kind of petty. If you look hard enough, I guarantee you I can find something out there that any arc in AE "rips off".

Finally, if you're docking marks because the ending is ambiguous, I think you missed the entire point of the arc.

EDIT: You also seem to be treating this as if this is exclusively an elaborate set up by one of your various enemies. That's one way to look at it, but you're missing the point, I think.

Yeah that's true enough. If he's that opposed to the actual core story and concepts of the arc, there's pretty much nothing I can do to please him short of completely changing the arc into something tailored for his likes, in essence, just making it his story, and not the one I wanted to tell.

If I may deconstruct this a little, you seem to be ignoring a lot of things here.

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a) Anagram on the Contact name: throws the Idiot Ball at the character and tells the player up-front that he's on the slow boat to Moronia.


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This was done specifically with this contact, and for this reason, because there is precident in the actual game for the exact same thing happening with this exact same sort of anagram, and, it hints that something is wrong to the observant right away. Not to meniton, if you play the arc through, depending on your interpretation of it (of the two possible interpretations), it's more likely than not even him at all.

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b) Throws the Idiot Ball again in act I when the player is narrated as just blowing off a leak from a biohazard container. Heroes in this setting are registered and trained; they're not that dumb. This is over and above blowing up said containers in the first place which just would not be done. The obvious retort here is that the whole thing never happened in the first place but that's just jumping from the frying pan into the fire.


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If you actually read the mission dialog, the clues state you very carefully incinerate the canister, anything it came in contact with, AND the surrounding area. And then when you leave, you and the contact send in biohazard clean up crews in case you missed anything. It's right there in the mission text.

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c) Appropriates the character's identity, which is an unforgivable trespass. The character's identity is utterly inviolate; it is what the player brings to the story in any RPG. The writer/GM already has the entire rest of the world to play with. Yes, the devs did this in "Mass Duplicity". That was crap too.


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This is literally the entire point of the arc. If you don't like it, that's fine, but giving 1 star for personal bias is a little extreme. The whole arc was deconstructing and pointing out the insanity of the entire superhero mythos and how absurd it would sound to a 'normal' person.

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d) The five most common words in high-school fiction are: "and then he woke up". These kinds of stories are not cute or clever: they are tired, cheap and extremely obvious. If you didn't know you were going to have your chain yanked when you looked at the Contact, the splash screen for Act II should have told you there was at the very least a Jolly Candy-Like History Eraser Button coming up. There is no trick at all to writing them, because the writer holds all the cards in the first place. Yes, Joss Whedon did it on Buffy. That doesn't make it right, doubly so given the above. Things that work in books or movies (not that I even concede that this works anywhere; it doesn't) don't necessarily work in games.


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There is no 'waking up', the entire arc has you bleeding on various levels in and out of lucidity. Every step of the way, up to, and including the ending, is left ambiguous as to how much of it exactly is 'real', specifically because a story that permanently changes the game or a character in a way that player doesn't approve of is bad form, so it is constructed in such a fashion that a player can take what they want from the finale without invalidating the story of the arc, or their character. You get what you put into it.

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Oh, and I do enjoy having fun. So much so that I take fun very seriously. Entertainment is far too important to be mindless.

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I'm sorry your definition of fun seems so different than majority of players who have played this arc, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one. when over 90% of your feedback is overwhelmingly positive, I think the person must be doing something right.

Like I said, the arc is definitely not for everyone, but really now? Wishing you could have given it negative stars?

In an architect completely overwhelmed with farms, impossible to read grammar, broken enemies, and worse, this is really the unforgivable sin of arcs? I mean, I'm no shakespeare, but at least the arc has a cohesive story, is balanced to be playable, excellent grammar and spelling, and tons of clues and NPC dialog.

You speak of wanting quality on the AE, but taking arcs that are actually trying to present a quality experience and shouting them down as the worst of the worst doesn't really endear people doing them to make more.

You're right, Fredrik, I don't know how to say this without spoiling things, but the entire idea behind it was to have an arc in which you are the protagonist, but not the one you thought you were going in. It's all a big head game.

That said, I knew writing it that it wasn't going to be for everyone, and figured a few people would hate having that done to 'their' character, so it was only a matter of time I suppose before someone took offense.

I'm actually more worried that this thread will have hyped it up too much - it wasn't really written for a mainstream, general public audience so people might expect something else than what it is going in, and nothing will ever live up to the story in your head.

EDIT: straight up zombie invasion has been done to death. I think if the arc were just about the first two mission's events, it would have been pretty boring, really. That's just me though.