Fantastic_Foe

Thank you both for the responses.

I recently ran SSA #4, that must have triggered it.

The stackable part might be the problem. I'm so used to stacking things on safes and floor panels that I forget that counters can hold items, and they might resist being deleted.

If that's not the case, I'll try dragging to other rooms.

Thank you very much, Red Valkyria.

Best regards, FF

I appreciate the detailed feedback. Grime Alley was one of my first arcs, and it's changed a bit over the years, but I needed this kind of objective comments to help me locate where my blindspots were.

Originally, there were no optional objectives. What are now chained optionals were two required "find a body in an alley" goals. That got tedious. I made those things optional, but left them in since I like the detective aspect of finding clues.

Fair enough on the briefing. The idea that I wanted to convey was that the police were busy handling overt Family crime (as the buttonmen were rampaging about trying to flush the Gat into the open) but Stacy had a hunch where the field operations in Kings Row were being staged, but didn't have the manpower for. I'll think how to express that better in the mission text.

I'll redo the final objective so that the boss fight isn't a defeat all in the last room. No one likes that.

You're right about the mission alignment being off. This arc was written prior to Going Rogue, it's better advertised as a Vigilante alignment rather than straight heroic.

That map is kind of a pain. There actually are some of the Gat's goons to be found on the map, it sounds like they were taken out by a PPD patrol that gets spawned when you read the case files. Even if you defeat the goons, the map seems to require a visit to the upper floor. I might have to rework the Defeat All goal which would have you take on the goons to defeating a boss-level goon who would make it clear that he was covering the Gat's escape after he finished off the Family (whom you arrested in missions 1 and 2) in custody.

D'oh. I keep forgetting to give Napolino's daughter a name. I need to re-work the text around Napolino's rescue and the daughter's abduction angle in any event. This will be a good reminder to me.

It sounded like you cleared the entire cave to have the mission end, which you shouldn't have to, I just clear the final room, but I think that's overkill as well. I do need to add something more to the final fight rather than just have someone stealth in, take out the Gat, and mission end.

I think I had clues or supporting text in the end of the fourth mission and during the fifth mission that the Gat's custom firearms are out of ammo, which explains the melee-centric fight at the end. Obviously the shield was a call-out to the cheesy bullet-proof shield that Adam West somehow concealed in his utility belt on the show.

I had Gordon saying 'cool'? I agree that doesn't sound right. I'll work on the final mission briefing then. Good call.

I'll do another pass on it, thanks. I appreciate your opinions on the level of homage/cheese being done.

I was thinking about your view that the missions weren't in sync with level 50. I hear what you are saying, but I really miss having my level 50s patrolling for street crime and gang wars. Yes, I know my big guys can just buzz Kings Row and defeat Skulls, but I like the idea of Family being a threat.

Some Detective Comics issues have Mister Freeze, but some just have a mystery involving the Falcone family. I wanted to simulate some of that feeling.

Thank you again and best regards,

No problem, like I said, I appreciated you running my Shadow of Grime Alley arc.

In your arcs, I really enjoyed the opportunity to either fight (or not to fight) the EBs and so on that were there as options. Makes for a good team replay.

At some point in the near future, I'll run the other arcs in your sig.

In exchange for D_G running my Grime Alley arc, I wanted to review one of theirs, #400487 Shift (from @Adonne)

I had very little to point out as problems, other than one of the villain groups has been hit by the Corrupted Critter disease. Details below as reactions as I played.


- Contact has no description

- Need to capitalize "Lost" in first mission briefing

- Missing Person's Bureau -> Missing Persons Bureau

Great name for the Lost lookout, L'k Out.

Nice! A Rikti assault suit EB. I am very glad I brought my tank to do this mission! I'm glad that it didn't appear to be a required objective, so my squishier characters could avoid the EB, and his presence still implies the seriousness and danger of the mission.

Ah, Al'Ka'Mest. He cooks up the Shift, I assume. His encounter was a nice challenge due to the ambush reinforcements.

I'm curious now to try with some of my other characters, to see what would happen.


Whoa. More EB Heavies. The Rikti mean business.

Good Tommy had great dialog, before my Lore Pets and I taught him that crime does not pay.

Mission One: 5 stars. I'm happy to see the Family involved.



Mission Two starts off right in it! Taking on a fire-breathing Rikti EB!

Hydra spawn! Nice! We should see more Rikti/Hydra connections in this game.

I liked seeing the Rikti portal generator as the Rikti Teleport override. I think the object description text could be changed to reflect that, it looked like the basic text.

Again, I liked how there were EBs that I could either fight or avoid.

Mission TWo: 5 stars



In a cave in mission three. Ah, more Hydra here, but the hydra here are the corrupted critters, substituted when the game doesn't like what you had. I had the same thing happen to some robots I built, the filter didn't like the word Android in the villain group, and replaced them with Hydra critters. I assume something similar happened

The Deformed Hulks in the vanguard armor look fantastic. But I'll bypass them...

Wow, it was intense taking on the Rikti Advisor, Bodyguard, and Lost Commander. I managed to pull the Advisor, but for the remaining, I spawned some Lore pets and we waded in. Good time!

Mission Three: 5 Stars. Just fix your critters.


Off to the Shift lab.

Running into the Shifted Psionicist. That's a great concept, someone who looks human, but thinks Rikti, due to the weird effects of Shift. Very cool.

- More corrupted critters.

Woohoo, a hacked Titan. Nice descriptions on all of these guys.

Ah, but the items in the mission to be destroyed have the generic descriptions, and the names are kind of placeholdery, Ray, Synth, Chemicals, etc.

Still, mission 4 is 5 stars.

Heading into the final mission. When the contact tells me to expect heavy hitters, based on my experience in the arc so far, I believe it.

- Ran into a shifted headman, who had the interesting villain group name "All Custom Characters"

Ah, the Malta are here too, which I think makes awesome sense.

Found some more Hydra spawn, but they aren't corrupted critters, I see.

The Kraken! H'bugface! Thank Rao I didn't have to fight them. But the option is there, nice!


This is a nice challenging arc. I bypassed a bunch of enemies to concentrate on the goals, but if I wanted a combat fest, I would bring a big team and we'd have some serious smashing fun.

There's a lot to like about this arc, it felt like the Save the World mission where you take on H'Bugface and a certain golden archvillain.

Easily 5 stars, in my estimation, for concept and fun. Just clean up the critter issue, really.

Thank you very much, I've been meaning to contribute in some way for awhile.

Sure, please put Shadow of Grime Alley #144416 on the front.

Thanks again,

I'd be in a favor of more variety, especially in radio missions. I personally would like my natural origin scrapper to fight Family through the 40s.

I was glad they eased up some of the mobs and stopped having lowbie missions appear in the extremes of the map, but I'd also prefer the Lost out of there.

Pat

Well, superstrong tankers and earth tankers could throw huge rocks before capes were available, so I'm on the rocks side of the debate. Stone Age preceded Cape Age.

It's been already answered that the Trolls were around since day one, but I wanted to add that the Trolls were one of the native groups in Skyway City, since there were so many overpasses and bridges for them to cluster under. It's part of their lore.

The Hollowing was caused in part by Troll activity.

It was great fun.

It was like magic, I tell you. I would have given it 5 stars just from junkie Azuria.

Take your time, and enjoy the summit!

Legacy of a Rogue #459586, was one such arc that I was looking for. It had a great Batman-Family vibe with sidekicks, secret lairs, supercomputers, and shades-of-gray relationships.

I'd highly recommend this arc from @Night-Girl

I'll also recommend #115935 "Cracking Skulls" by @Flame Kitten

Nice three mission arc with an interesting plot and some great characters.

A more detailed reaction to Legacy of a Rogue by @Night-Girl


SPOILERS...


There were several things about the mission arc that makes me want to re-evaluate my current arcs and see if I can incorporate things that I've seen. @Night-Girl really brought the contact's personal story into the missions. At one point, I was worried that Gertrude was actually the villainous force behind it all. I was relieved that she was not.

The story was such that I felt very personally involved as well, so I appreciated the emotional elements at the end of the arc. This is usually not the case with dev-generated content, so well done.

I enjoyed the historical relationships between Rogue Falcon, Harrier, Gertrude, and the Crimson Cricket, as well as the practical relationships between Azuria, Gertrude, and Carter.

Speaking of Azuria, thank you for using a drugged-out looking, cigarette smoking avatar for Azuria. In my personal lore for Azuria, she is obviously selling pieces of the Wheel of Destruction to the Banished Pantheon to support her addictions, and having in this arc an Azuria who looks like she stepped out of that mythology really made my day.

I think I mentioned that I enjoyed how mission end text, mission briefing text, entry and exit dialog popups all advanced the story, often describing visual events, but the popup that began mission 5 briefly confused me over what happened.

In mission two, the Harrier ally's clue text fired off as I entered the mission, but the context of the text implied I had just caught up to him. That's a problem with how Ally objectives and Hostage/Escort objectives are coded when they have no enemy mobs around them. It would be great if the clues and text fired when we got to them (I think their dialog text does fire off at that time, correctly.) You might want to re-write the clue or spam text to account for that, but it's no big deal.

One of the best things I found was the amount of commentary delivered by Harrier during the first two mission runs. In my arcs, most of the text generated by allies when they take damage are boring "I'm hurt!" type of statements, if I have them at all. I now see that a lot more can be done to reinforce character, personality, or plot.

My biggest complaint was the use of color in text. I think I wouldn't have minded when nouns were presented the first time, like Hawkmind, Crimson Cricket, etc. in color, but afterwards I don't think they needed to be. The green text is harder to read than the white, if you want to keep that, I'd suggest a lighter shade of green. I think I noticed one sentence where the entire sentence was a variety of colors, with only the word "the" in white. That jumped out as jarring. I'll be re-running the arc, because I really enjoyed it, and if I notice that sentence, I'll make a note of it and send you a direct message.

Looking forward to playing it again, bringing allies with me.

Best regards -

Hey, thanks for the feedback.

My point with the two versions of Dissolution was that I encountered the cured version before the to-be-cured version. I assumed you wanted the cured version to spawn once the to-be-cured version was defeated, if that was the case, I'm just suggested you make sure that the mission still has that set up.

I've had missions where objectives were chained mysteriously change so that the objective chaining was lost, and all objectives appeared on the map when my character entered.

That's probably why I had the Hear Dissolution's Recording goal explicitly stated when I entered the Nemesis mission, it sounds like that objective was supposed to spawn when I cleared an objective.

Best regards,

Okay, spoilers abound.


SPOILERS







I briefly discussed the arc a few posts back. I have a few more points up for @samuraiko to consider.

I missed the actual holographic recording of Dissolution at first. The clue said I had to find the recording of Dissolution, so I was looking for some kind of glowing communication terminal.

Since Dissolution was nearly invisible, and since I was stealthing past most of the Nemesis, I missed her at first. Had the clue not unambiguously told me I was looking for a recording, I might have noticed the hostage/hologram (then again, I might not have.)

The background information for the recording was the boilerplate details for a minion.

In retrospect, I have some questions about the overall arc. The first two missions implies that whoever was behind the theft of SERAPH's Rikti research had tremendous resources, there was a clue indicating that the Malta were expecting to be paid in the multi-millions.

The sewer mission had roving bands of old-school Mother Mayhem Praetorians, Child of Anger, etc. I was therefore expecting some kind of back door Praetorian research going on with the Rikti, possibly Mom Mayhem looking to turn the Lost against both Rikti and Primal Earth forces, so the revelation that this was all being done by one extreme individual doesn't add up.

Unless I've misunderstood what was going on in the sewer mission.

Best regards,