Zaphir

Currently you can't create "floating dialogue" directly. There is a way to fake it, though (I've seen it in a few arcs):
- create a custom mob, call it "Intercom" or "Mysterious Voice" or whatever
- give it stealth powers
- put it in its own group (don't need any other mobs in there)
- spawn a neutral / allied patrol as a trigger when the player clicks the glowie / kills the boss / etc
- put the things you want said in the patrol text

This works best if you know where the player is at the time so you can spawn the patrol far away and minimize the chance of accidentally bumping into the mobs.

Edit: a less convenient alternative is simply to use clues when your contact calls you / you hear a disembodied voice and put the text in there. It's less of a hassle this way, but it also fails the "show, don't tell" test. A way to make it work could be to include 'you receive a message from X' in the boss defeat text / glowie finished-interaction text; that way the player will know that the clue they just got IS the message.


-- Z.

Do you mean something like this?

AFAIK you can only add dopplegangers as "Ally", "Boss", "Captive" and "Escort". The best you can do is add a "Boss" doppleganger with the same trigger you used for the ambush and set the boss to spawn alone and be friendly to the player. You can also set it up to say stuff when it spawns. However, this also means you can only set it to spawn at a certain area instead of having it 'come to the player'.

edit: Sadly you can't tie multiple ambush/boss/ally/captive events to the same trigger; however, you could make them trigger in sequence like so:
- player attacks boss / destructible item
- at 1/4 health, you trigger the ally doppleganger to spawn
- when boss / destructible item is destroyed, you spawn the enemy boss / other objective the doppleganger is supposed to help with in the same area (like 'Front' or 'Middle'), also indicating the player they need to 'go to the entrance of the sewers' or something
- player gets to the location; if the map has the spawnpoints close enough, it can "sort of" work

So yeah, clunky, but I can't think of a better way atm.


-- Z.

Being an IT security engineer IRL, I'm about as far from creative writing in my work as possible; MA, for me, is an outlet for creativity. Back in high school / university I wrote short stories, then later on I designed story-heavy MUD zones. The MA in CoH seemed like the perfect match -- it's a (relatively) powerful toolset with instant publicity in a game that I already play! Plus my friends can play them too, which is a huge plus.

For this reason, I don't really regret spending a LOT of time planning (and a smaller amount of time actually writing) arcs. My 2nd challenge arc took the better part of my free time in 1.5 months: planning things out on paper, writing backstory that ultimately never made it into the arc, scouring the text for grammar/spelling errors due to me not being a native speaker, etc. It didn't win any prizes, and I didn't get more than 10 plays on it outside SGmates and reviewers (actually 0 plays in the last 6 months). It's still out there and people can "read" it at any time... good enough for me!

Anyway, in summary: it's a hobby and creative outlet. All that time I spend on the arcs doesn't really feel "wasted" for me, no matter how frustrated I get about actually getting people to play the arc. This doesn't mean I don't want more people playing them, though... and I think everyone gets PO'd when an arc hits the 4-star limbo due to anonymous one-star bandits.

Edited to add: As for ideas, the main theme either comes to me from something I read recently, or a more general "what if"; after I have a theme, I try to figure out how to fit it into the COHverse. For instance, "The Coldest of Wars" was inspired by a short story called "Nightmare" by Krzysztof Borun (but you could substitute any generic story about 'time travel via cryosleep', I think there are quite a few of those). "To Dream of Nothing" was the result of fitting a mad scientist idea I had for some time to make sense with COH lore and fulfill the challenge conditions. My latest project is a post-apocalyptic series based around the question "if such a disaster happened in the COHverse right now, would person/faction X survive, and how would they react to it?".


-- Z.

'Eya,

I just got to a 'v0.9' version of a post-apoc arc (intended to be the 'hero' half of the story; the 'villain' half of the same story will take place in Grandville). Can ya give me an 'in-development' review of it? There are 5 bottlecaps in it for you! ID is 445456.

It is not fully polished (need to add souvenir + formatting, especially on clues in M3... M4 also needs some more "stuff to do") and I haven't tested it extensively, so all feedback is welcome! I'd prefer feedback via PM so others don't get spoiled.


Thanks in advance!

-- Z.

Hey, thanks for trying the arc! Sadly the Nictus and friends show up in missions 3/4, so you just missed them. About the low-level thing, it was a requirement for the 2nd AE challenge, so it was level 5-10 (I'm not crazy about AEing at low levels either ) I mostly thought it could be useful for a look at some Kheldian Karnage™.

That 'talk to the taskforce leader' thing sounds like a bug, and a new one too (I just did a test run on the arc a week ago to make sure it was GR-compatible) -- sorry to hear that. :/ You completed all of the tasks in mission 2 (find the 2 teammates, examine the machines, read the console, defeat the Family boss), right?

[insert grumbling about random AE bugs here]


-- Z.

Some things that could help IMO (aside from the cleanup, which is pretty much a must at this point):
- Add 'if you liked this arc, you might also like these arcs:' list to each arc when browsing (or after finishing the arc) ala Amazon; basically a top-5 list of arcs that were also played by people who played the arc in question and were given good marks. This'd make navigation much better imo.
- Add favorites lists, ability to share these, and allow friends to browse your favorites lists.
- The ratings system really needs a fix -- the 4-star limbo makes browsing frustrating and almost useless, ensuring that your arc won't be found in a random search (neither of my arcs have received ANY plays in the last half-year, and only a handful in the 3 months before that). I've read about a thumbsup / thumbsdown system like youtube instead of stars in order to eliminate the 4-star limbo effect, but I'm not sure how well it'd work... could just end up as a "second # of plays counter" instead of a quality indicator.
- (drastic) After a new issue, delist all non-hof/dc arcs from browsing until the authors 'refresh' the arcs. Such a refresh might only involve flipping a switch in the arc editor ("This arc is ready for play in Issue x!"). Downside: this'd punish great arcs whose authors take a break from COH for whatever reason.
- (less drastic) Switch arcs to 'work in progress' unless the author flips the aforementioned switch. Don't show work in progress arcs by default, but show them when someone is specifically searching for arc id, author name, or has 'show work in progress arcs' checked.

Honestly however, the biggest stigma of AE atm seems to be that it's just... not really worth it from a reward standpoint. Maybe adding some cool titles or non-combat pets or costume pieces would entice people again... or more likely, just cause an influx of farming arcs all over again and/or potential griefing against non-farming storyarcs (stupid story, stop getting in the way of farming my AE gerbil pet!). No easy solution, sigh.


-- Z.

Edit: Lazarus posted while I was writing my post... I defer to him for most of the answers, except for maybe #1. :P

Eya,

Clave + Glazius: Awesome info, thanks! I think I have a good grip on the Television spirit / entity / god / time-space-anomaly now. It's one of my favorite contacts - even though I haven't even run any missions from it - due to its mystique and, well, unconventional-ness (is that a word? now it is!).

Megajoule: What kind of evil brute would try to deny the world the wonders provided by Television? That reminds me, Dallas reruns are coming up on channel 42... right now! I'd better go. :P


thanks again, all,

-- Z.

Thanks for the input, all!

Starcloud:
Awesome info, thanks!

Do you think the Television is a sort of ephemeral entity 'conjured by the people', or is it a more tangible spirit which is bound at a certain place? The "Cellphone" and "Computer" examples make these spirits sound similar to gods (the 'worshippers' being those who watch TV / listen to the radio / etc), which means that if their worshippers abruptly stopped worshipping them (due to a catastrophic event or something), they'd probably wither and die. Or would they just sort of 'ride it out' in a weakened state by retreating to their 'temple' / home / bind point?

Good point about Arachnos -- I was actually thinking about some sort of symbiotic relationship between the two (the Television does seem to want more TV time for Arachnos operatives to get into their heads, etc).

My final question is more about locality. I haven't seen any evidence of Television (not TV) doing anything beyond the Rogue Isles; maybe its sphere of influence is limited to that area? That would also indicate that it is an actual spirit instead of an abstract entity; in which case something like an EMP MacGuffin disabling all of the RI broadcasting equipment would seriously hurt -- if not kill -- it.

WN: I'll check out that arc. I'm getting Barney the Dinosaur vibes from that description, which fills my heart with unspeakable horror.


As always, more insight / speculation is welcome! Would Television ever hurt or betray you (or even 'give you up' / 'let you down' / 'desert you')?!


Thanks again,

-- Z.

[Apologies for posting it in this forum, but I just returned to the game and couldn't find the "COH lore" / "MA lore" forums anymore]

'Eyall,


I've had a story arc kicking around my head with everyone's favorite Television as the main contact. Since my villains don't have access to TV yet, my only source of information thus far was this wiki page. However, that still leaves a few questions unanswered:

1. Main goal. From the wiki it looks like the TV's #1 priority is to spread its influence. Is there any hint to a grander plan?
2. Powers. I'm guessing some kind of soft mind control / lingering hypnosis effect exerted on an arbitrary # of viewers. Does it affect everyone watching TV to a certain extent, or only the ones who watch the physical TV set itself? Similarly, does the strength of this power have a connection with how many people are watching TV?
3. Origin. Is/was there someone behind the box (some high-end rogue Arachnos operative perhaps) or is it alive 'on its own'? One of the souvenirs seems to imply that TV is an abstract living entity powered by all people who watch TV; I'm getting 'Television God' vibes from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" here.
4. Programming. Can it produce any sort of graphics (such as showing an action series matching the player's actions in the last mission) or is it basically constrained to altering the text / imagery of news shows etc? The mission texts seem to focus on the latter, ie. showing existing shows with minor changes to fit the missions, but I'm not sure.
5. Dependencies. Would it 'die' if nobody in the world watched TV for a year or would it just 'hibernate'? What if TV stations (or even just TV stations in the Rogue Isles) stopped broadcasting? What exactly was Nemesis trying to do that threatened to 'kill' TV?

I'd gladly welcome any clarifications for these questions from those better versed in lore than myself. I realize that some (most?) of these questions probably aren't explained ingame, so speculation is fine too... as long as it sorta makes sense!


Thanks in advance,

-- Z.

Yeah... don't want to be overly dramatic, but it's kind of the final straw for me; despite all the advertising venues I tried, I couldn't get more than 10 plays outside my SG on an arc that I spent about a month on. And now it's going to be worth almost 0 xp basically ensuring it won't get another play unless I bribe people to play it, wheeee! Doesn't exactly make me want to design new arcs.

(The 'To Dream of Nothing' arc has two allies in every mission; they are LT-level with relatively weak powersets. They are closely integrated with the story and are important to help the player defeat the EB/boss in the last mission. There is also a rescue in the third mission, which is the one that has most of the fighting and hence xp...)

My first arc (The Coldest of Wars) is unaffected, but still... bleh.


-- Z.

Awesome, glad ya liked it -- thanks for the review! The arc definitely needs some more polish; it's a bit too grandiose for its (and my!) own good.

I've been waffling about big-N's powersets for a while (he only has standard powers, but that's still a lot of pain for energyblast)... I'll probably just switch him to dark blast, since lowbies get the 'newbie luck' +tohit bonus that shouldn't make the debuff affect them too badly, and DoTs/roots are a lot better than bursty knockback. Sadly there is no way to model a 'proper' multiform kheld (or shadow cyst) that I know of. Sunbeam is a noob and hasn't trained her nova form yet. /cough

I have also been giving my other arc ('The Coldest of Wars', cohmr link) a once-over to address some repetition from earlier reviews; I'd really appreciate a review on that one as well. No rush though, I'm fine with putting it at the bottom of your second queue, or just something to play when you're all out of arcs (and wow, I'm impressed at the speed you burned through these!).


Thanks again,

-- Z.

'Eya,

I'm always happy to get feedback / criticism on my arcs... besides, they're trapped in the Eternal 4-star Limbo of Doom™. It's kinda cozy in there. :P

I would be especially interested in criticism about 'The Coldest of Wars' (link in my sig; COHMR entry is here) since it hasn't really gotten any plays in the last 6-7 months or so. It's a light-hearted arc in the spirit of 60's spy thrillers.

However, if you want to play a lower-level arc instead and aren't afraid of the nefarious villain known only as WALLOFTEXT, give 'To Dream of Nothing' a whirl. The story is much more dark / serious, and I think I actually went overboard with the amount of text in the arc (another reason why a review would be welcome).


Thanks in advance!

-- Z.

Thanks for the review, glad you hear you liked it!!

Good call pointing out the M3 objective test ('find the agent' was a bit metagame-y), I changed it. Nihil is indeed an EB (scales down to boss with no-bosses), but I set him to standard/standard so even as an EB he doesn't really overwhelm the player + allies. As for the Positron bug, it is annoying; I was surprised when I first saw it, but by that point I had the story all planned out with Positron as the contact. Maybe someday we'll be able to set animations for our MA contacts!

The arc does indeed suffer from 'tl;dr' / wall-of-text syndrome, and I've been wracking my brain trying to find a way to optimize it without simplifying the story; the fact that my writing style is super wordy and I'm not a native English speaker doesn't help.

(As a side note, the rates I got on the arc are a bit... rhapsodic. All but three votes are 5 with positive feedback, and then there were two anonymous 1-stars and a 3-star who said the arc is indeed too wordy for its own good. :P)


thanks again,

-- Z.

I had this same problem on the small cargo ship maps: for some reason, chained boss spawns in the 'back' of the ships sometimes don't spawn at all.

I tried 2 ship maps so far, and got reports on both... this doesn't seem to be an isolated issue. I never had it happen during my tests (so I couldn't use the 'move to next objective' button to find out where exactly the boss was hiding); the other bosses + destroyable object are also chained and always spawned without issue. I moved the final boss to a 'middle' spawnpoint for now, so far so good! (?)


-- Z.

Well, I gave the M1/2/3 clues and briefings a mini-overhaul, hopefully the earlier events fit in a bit better now. I also moved the end boss in M4 to 'Middle' and changed the text to fit; we'll see if it helps with the reported bug (I haven't been able to reproduce it, but that doesn't mean it's gone). The other possibility is that the cyst destructible itself is bugged and doesn't trigger the chain properly, which would be... not a good thing, and I'd probably have to remove the cyst completely to fix it.

(as an aside, don't you love people who 1-star your arc without leaving feedback? Yeah, this is mostly venting, I'm 98% sure the person who 1-starred the arc doesn't read these forums)


-- Z.

'Eya,

I'd like a review on 'To Dream of Nothing' (#374644) if possible. Thread is here; don't read past the first post if you don't want spoilers though.


Thanks in advance,

-- Z.

Lots of good info in here!

I seem to remember tanker / brute sets doing waaay more damage than corresponding scrapper sets as well. Was this fixed (like Ninjutsu was)?


-- Z.

The squad leader in the first mission was an agent in a sense, but 'just' an infiltration operative, not deep undercover... his code was ZO-079 while the 'badguy' agent was BR-008.

(random useless trivia: I kinda ripped off the scheme from Vonnegut's Player Piano, ie. smaller number makes you better... ish; "BR-008" was generated by using the professor's initials (AP) and '007', then incrementing all characters by 1. Creativity -- I don't have it. )



-- Z.

Sadly I'm all out of room... pushing 98% or so, I actually had to cut a few clues during an earlier iteration to make space for the last mission. That 200k cap increase needs to happen... by yesterday!

Actually I don't think putting the agent in the very first mission would be a good idea. According to the arc's [theoretical] timeline, the entire kidnapping business happened 3 days before the player takes the mission, and when M1 takes place, the agent's already Nictus'd up at the safehouse... not sure he'd want to go back to the lab. The Council that are at the lab are trying to find out just what the agent did before going AWOL (discovering that he was the one responsible for stealing Nihil's cyst surprised them too). It's just messy all around. I -could- add a battle between the turned / loyal Council, but not sure how much that'd help.

I did try to say that Nihil's containment device was broken (the clue from the collection in M2), but I'll add a note about the official Council evacuation of the base to the end-of-mission clue (referencing only 3 nicti instead of 4) to make it more clear. I can also put all 3+1 of them in the back room ('middle' in AEspeak... mumble mumble, thanks for the tip though, I was wondering what was going wrong) to avoid z-axis glowie hunts.

I removed most of the chaining in M1 and M3 (made Sigfrid optional too while I was at it, for stealthers); I also changed the allies up a bit (Metal dude was using a tanker powerset, which is apparently AE code for 'over 9000'). Sunbeam actually did have Transfusion, but she seems to almost-never use it (I saw her use it twice total during my many test runs), hmmm.


Thanks again,

-- Z.

Are they revisiting the text limits as well? I don't really have a problem with the 3000 souvenir limit or the 1000 briefing / startclue / endclue limits (past that lies Walloftext Country), but the 300char limit on in-mission clues is a bit annoying sometimes.

In an effort to "show, don't tell", I had to put some significant backstory / exposition in my arcs into (de)briefings, since I couldn't have the player 'discover' them during the mission itself due to those limits... the begin/end clues were typically reserved for "here's a dossier on X" or "captive / end boss / super sekrit documents said Y" stuff. In my opinion adding such optional details can add a lot to an arc, but they're better as optional clues instead of shoving them down everyone's throat; here's hoping it'll be possible with the new limits. It could also be that I'm just too wordy.

As for the actual 100k limit, both of my arcs are over 97%... 'The Coldest of Wars' would benefit some from more crazy soviet robots (actually, ALL arcs would benefit some from more crazy soviet robots! ) and I actually hit the cap in 'To Dream of Nothing' by having a ton of details and clues... I had to cut a few of them, which in turn made the plot a bit harder to follow.

(trying to squeeze everything into 100k is a somewhat amusing 'minigame'/challenge... that said, I won't shed any tears for it when we move to 200k!)


-- Z.

Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, ambushes are more of a story addition than anything... I just went with middle-of-the-road to avoid overpowering lowbies. Ally AI makes me want to stab things occasionally -- sometimes they'll follow you through the entire map, other times they'll stop at random spots and you have to run far away from them to trigger the 'where are you?' message, then return and they'll follow again. It's a MA bug, sadly.

About big-N: yeah, he's pretty crazy (and probably the reason he was imprisoned in the first place). He actually didn't scribble his name there, one of his thralls did. Another thing I was trying to show with his brand of 'soft mind-control': if you have your thralls adore you, it can manifest in weird ways, ones you may not necessarily agree with (see also his comment about the recording device)... I toyed with the idea of turning the defunct machine into a shrine of sorts, but figured it wouldn't really make any sense to the players at that point in the arc.


Thanks again,

-- Z.

Thanks a lot for the critique -- it highlighted a lot of weak points! I posted some explanations / comments in the arc's thread.


Thanks again,

-- Z.

Thanks for the review! I really appreciate getting some critique, it also confirmed some of the things I was iffy about.

A few explanations and notes (heavy spoilers ahoy!):
- Sniper in first mission: yeah, I agree it's a bit messy, but I really didn't want to unleash a full boss on the player without allies (snipers are LT-level). He also doesn't move (bug/feature?) so even on the squishiest chars I can just LOS him to kill his flunkies (same with the ambush). I should also probably switch to a map that doesn't have the "sidetrack" room on the 2nd level (there's a chance for the crate to spawn back in there), but I figured that'd be all sciencey and lab-y.
- The last clue is intended to be a bit cryptic; I think there's a comment about Zovir's squad trying to track down a spy turned rogue, and he was the one doing the planning to yoink stuff. The biggest problem here was trying to fit that into the 300-character clue, so I had to put it in the end-clue instead; you receive that after this one.
- I actually didn't know about the Rikti thing, will add that in (though the text refers more to a full-scale "screw with every power in the universe" sort of manipulation), thanks!
- Yeah, Posi is being too much of an omniscient dungeonmaster in the M3 briefing; the three things known at this point are 'there is a renegade Council spy on the loose who was involved with the Prof' [M1], 'one of the Nictus broke free in the N-vault' [M2], 'something was making the Council in the vault behave abnormally' [M2]. I should probably remove the allusion to straight mind-control (that won't be known until M3). The intended timeline is: "something goes wrong with big N's container's suppression field" -> "he is not fully in stasis and starts to exert a 'soft' mind control on the Council in the vault" -> "spy goes to spy on the prof" -> "breaks into the vault meeting little resistance" -> "retrieves big N" -> "experiments happen, etc, Council communication lines also go dead" -> "Council evacuates everything, including the N-vault, bringing the other Nictus elsewhere" -> "big N calls for his thralls, and they all come to the place he had determined ahead of time" -> "missions 3/4 happen". My idea about Nictus mind control was a lingering thing that would last even if the afflicted person left their 'area of effect', but also not direct control of actions, more like subtle impulses to "man, I should really be doing this". I agree some steps are not really told properly, I'll try to juggle some of the clues in M1/M2.
- Good point about the stationary ally, I'll change that. Regarding allies in the last 2 missions - I wanted them to be unescorted (ideally they'd spawn right at the start), since I don't really like the idea of having to "rescue" the allies that supposedly enter the mission at the same time. Still, I will give this a once-over.
- Wow, good point about the crate starting the "system shock tribute" audio-log chain (there are two Star Control 2 tributes in the arc too, have you found them? ) being a single point of failure. I wanted to make it optional to avoid clutter in the objective bar (and technically the character is only aware that something is amiss after finding the crushed voice recorder... that's a kludge though), but it's probably better to make it all available right off the bat. I put all of them to 'middle', but the spawner insists on putting them in the back room even though there are plenty of 'middle' spawn spots; maybe another map would work better?
- I would've *loved* to use Galaxy, but they're unfortunately 20+. Good point on co-opting some 5c though, I'll look into that.
- The barrel is the null device and it is attached to the end boss (check his description); his final act is to destroy it. I figure that there's a white-out and the credits roll after he dies. I'll change the death message to reflect this better.
- Edit re souvenir: the Nictus opening gate thing was just speculation (either on the character's part or Posi's part); the Kheldian shield is explained in the popup message of mission 4 (the falling-unconscious-if-not-for-Sunbeam bit).


Thanks again, and sorry for the wall-of-text explanations (another sign I probably messed up with translating the narrative to clues etc)!

-- Z.