Hercules

[ QUOTE ]
I posted a review of it here a while ago. (quick summary: it's pretty good)

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you. Still sitting at only seven ratings though.

[ QUOTE ]

Mission 2, I found the map a bit big.


[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I went through quite a few maps before I settled on that one. I had 2 clues, 3 patrols, and a number of dummy glowies. To get a proper dispersal, I felt this one was the right size. Smaller maps tended to cluster the objects and the patrols.

[ QUOTE ]

Mission 3, you don't get the clue from Jack when you free him, only as the exit clue. 99% of the people wont notice, but I happened for free him before I had completed the Fir Bolg.


[/ QUOTE ]
I agonized over this one. The free captive clue is 300 characters. Mission complete clue is 1000. I had to move it, since I had so much to say with this clue.

[ QUOTE ]

Now, overall I think it would help to use mission complete popups to help fill in some blanks, or to get the player to feel what you want them to feel. IMO It tightens up the story, especially if the player missed something, or misread something.


[/ QUOTE ]
I'll go through it again to see where popups might help. A number of people have left feedback on other arcs essentially saying you need popups on every chapter. I only do it where it feels right to the story or is needed to explain the map.

[ QUOTE ]

A good example is after Mission 3, you could add 'You feel a need to return to see Rose'


[/ QUOTE ]
Hmmm, well she is the contact. But good point, the story could have had you going straight from the outdoor map to Rhiannon's hideout.

[ QUOTE ]

BTW, I thought the writing was excellent!


[/ QUOTE ]
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.

I just ran Blappy with my level 50 Plant/Storm controller:

Mission 1:

There wasn't much humor. The map felt very... silent. No patrol dialog to be heard. The quotable text from this mission: "Geek Alert!" and "Not another Nemesis plot...". It could use a bit more.

Mission 2:

Text correction: If you find Bright Angel... ( missing a comma )

The TV personality was talking about the rogue island police, then sent me somewhere where a guy in an orange suit was talking. Am I being sent to the rogue isles, to the zig? Where am I going?

The npcs were talking about switching VGs, which left me wondering - why? The only clue to this was text about "Nemesis failed plans outnumbering even the government's". What about the other villains?

Junkyard Dog and Puppies: Very cool custom designs. Reminded me of "Scrappy Doo".

Text correction (JYD description): Junkyard dog is very inteligent now ( missing an L )

I received a clue about an Access Card. Where did it come from? Did JYD drop it?

At this point, I'm wondering why didn't JYD mention the injustice league even once? He talked about Blappy joining "his team". Is he the head of this injustice league?

There was zero npc dialog while I was fighting the guys holding Bright Angel, which felt very odd. No "Help me!" or "Stop the hero from rescuing Bright Angel!".

I felt a clue upon her rescue would have been appropriate, especially when the next chapter says something like "Bright Angel had mentioned....".

Mission 3:
Mission Text: " .... away from the Nemesis." Nemesis used alone usually refers to the big guy. I'd say "Nemesis troops".

Mission Text: " ... when the reporter ask its " (missing apostrophe).

The lost and found text for B.A. is insulting to the player. I had just rescued her and she's calling me an "amateur" and "her sidekick". What did I do to her to merit this attitude?

B.A. is calling Blappy a villain and that she wants to bring her to justice. Ok, you've spent years on a TV show as her sidekick. Why this change of heart? Why did you stick around someone you consider to be a villain? This is never really explained.

Why am I breaking into "Sis Boom Ba"'s email when I'm trying to rescue Blappy? Who is she and why am I fighting her?

Sis Boom Ba's description is: "No data available." I think I'd expand on that a little.

Mission popup: Your "Q" rating is going up! Maybe I'm too old to know what a Q rating is, shrug.

Mission 4
Wrong Number: Very amusing villain origin story in her description. "villian" should be "villain".

Need custom objective text for both defeat villains.

Mission Text: " Why don't you go play in traffiic". Double "i" in traffic.

Why isn't B.A. in this arc?

Blappy now turns out to be an overbearing, arrogant person, which explains why people love the TV show. That didn't make much sense to me. I defeat Blappy and this other villain/hero who wants to be the new sidekick?


Overall

Mild humor throughout, although nothing side splitting. I think it could use a bit more.

The custom mobs appeared to be well balanced, although my troller tends to lock most things down before they get a chance to show their stuff - guess I should start playing arcs on a blaster.

I was a little concerned about the name "Junkyard Dog" early on for possible copyright violation, since it used to be the name of a famous pro wrestler. You should be ok, since the npc is a dog and doesnt appear anything like a human wrestler.

Use of the TV set and the announcer somehow supernaturally knowing I'm watching is a nice touch.

Summary: Interesting arc and premise for the story. Could use a bit of polish though. I didnt rate in-game - if I had, I was wavering between 3 and 4 stars.

Edit:
Moved the review of Blappy to your other thread.
I'd appreciate any feedback on this arc:

Arc Name: Pirate's Quest: A Tale of Sound and Fury
Arc ID: 217930
Morality: Heroic
Factions: Almost all of them ( I kid you not ), Custom
Difficulty Level: Moderate to Hard. Mission 4 has EB/AV.
Synopsis : In your private residence., you discover an old chest with a treasure map inside. Worried about who left it, and the possible disclosure of your secret identity, you resolve to get to the bottom of the mystery.
( Keywords: Pirate, Humor, Comedy )

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Arc Name: Pirate's Quest: A Tale of Sound and Fury[b]


[/ QUOTE ]

You do know how the "sound and fury" quote goes?

SPOILER BELOW ...


... a tale told by an idiot
... filled with sound and fury ...
... signifying nothing



Sorry, my twisted sense of humor made me do it.



[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed ... the AV knows it as well.

I'd hate to miss out on some good arcs just because one of their missions happened to be a farm.

I'd prefer an additional mission search option that filters out on keywords. You type "farm" in this search field and it filters out all arcs that contain that keyword.

I'd also like another filter option: Filter out all missions that contain only 1 or 2 mobs. THAT alone would take out 99% of all farms from the search results.

Arc Name: Pirate's Quest: A Tale of Sound and Fury
Arc ID: 217930
Morality: Heroic
Factions: Almost all of them ( I kid you not ), Custom
Difficulty Level: Moderate to Hard. Mission 4 has EB/AV.
Synopsis : In your private residence., you discover an old chest with a treasure map inside. Worried about who left it, and the possible disclosure of your secret identity, you resolve to get to the bottom of the mystery.
( Keywords: Pirate, Humor, Comedy )

Note: This is a classic Venture "Just a bunch of stuff that happened" arc. I was mainly focused on the humor, rather than on a deep storyline. I'd appreciate any comments and suggestions on how to make it more humorous.

Banner:
Banner Image

Smash!!!

Or should I say - In your eye?

Gatorade!

Looks like my original post was purged, so here it is again:

Arc Name: The Starfare Chronicles: First Contact
Arc ID: 131430
Morality: Heroic
Factions: Custom, Rikti
Difficulty Level: Moderate to Hard. Mission 5 has EB/AV.
Synopsis : This is a Star Trek homage arc. Assist the Starfare Alliance in their struggle against an unrelenting galactic empire. (SFMA)


Any comments or constructive criticism will be greatly appreciated.

k, guess there's no rule about sompletely wiping out someone elses addition?

Cross Court Shot

I assume we arent limited to CoH art.

Based on the size limit, it sounds like they load the entire arc into memory at once. If they could just redesign it to load only the following into memory:
1) The list of branch links that the current mission can chain to
2) The current mission details
it would possibly alleviate the memory constraints they have in place. The size limit should be per mission, not per arc.

I have a few ideas for MA story lines, but they all depend on the user having the option to make CHOICES. Do I take path A or path B? How do I respond to the contact?

It would be nice to have in-mission decisions effect the outcome, but for now it would be ok just to have 2 responses to the contact to decide which of two missions to branch to.

The cap size of arcs would have to be increased quite a bit to account for this. Starting with mission 1, you could potentially have lists of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 missions in each chapter slot - for a grand total of 31 possible missions (16 outcomes) if you took branching to the extreme. I believe this would substantially add to replayability of arcs - it would be interesting to me to replay an arc to see how it would turn out if I made a different choice.


Note: I'm assuming an implementation of binary branching. Potentially you could do more, but I think binary would be sufficient for the majority of story arcs.

Edit: It would also be nice to be able to switch contacts for both the mission briefing and debriefing. Example: My initial contact is Dr. Aeon, who sends me to do something "dastardly". I decide to double cross him, and now I have a new contact. If I don't double cross him, he remains my contact.

[ QUOTE ]
What, er, extra bits do you suggest for the legs, Sam?

I can think of holsters with tie offs, kneepads, ww2-style flying pants (with those wide flaps at upper thigh sort of look) and more skirty things like tutus and ra-ra skirts etc.

In RL, are there more ways to decorate a torso than there are for legs?

Eco

[/ QUOTE ]

Kneepads are a start.

I can think of a few:
- Strap on weapons ( knifes, etc. )
- Chains ( like they do the arms and chest )
- Barbed wire
- Vines / Leafs ( my plant controller would love this )
- Tattoos
- More robotic leg options
- Skeletal legs ( also arms and torso, for the Necro MMs )
- Metal exo skeletons on either or both sides of the leg ( for the bionic type of hero )
- Rikti type leg options ( not to mention for the torso and arms )

One of the things that hits you when you play MA is the lack of music. The vast majority of maps have NO musical score of any kind. The few that do usually have just one at the mission entrance, which quickly fades out as you get deeper into the map.

So, what I'd like is the ability to choose from a dropdown a musical score, to be triggered by the following:
1) While reading the chapter introduction
2) While reading the chapter success/or failure text
3) Entering the mission
4) Selectable position on the map ( or Front/Middle/Back)
5) At a hostage location
6) At a defeat boss location
7) At a destroy object location
8) At a defend object location
9) When an ambush is triggered.
10) Mission completed.

There are already quite a few decent musical rifts present in the game. These should be made available, and more should be added over time - just as often as they do costume updates.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Except that we know people would then just load an enemy down with so many useless attacks that it's not even remotely difficult (because they just load them down with so many attacks that half of them are never used thanks to animation restrictions). It would happen like crazy. People would just make enemies with as many crappy attacks as possible so that they can get an enemy with a high xp mod for very little risk.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which is why the "crappy" attacks are rated to give a small threat rating, as detailed in my post. You load a mob with nothing but light attacks - it will give little reward.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem is that if you load an NPC with so many attacks that only a small portion of them actually get used (which is one of the reasons why attack/attack custom critters are ridiculously squishy), you're going to be getting credit for fighting a high threat enemy when it's not even remotely close to being a threat. Examples would be Battle Axe/War Mace custom critters. Give them everything from both sets. The only attacks that are even a remote threat are Clobber and Cleave, and only one of those is ever going to be used because of the weapon redraw issue.

Players are going to do stuff like this. Creating a system complicated enough to actually account for all of the variables would be crazy. There isn't a simple algorithmic way to calculate when a player has overloaded an NPC with attacks. Players should never be able to control how much experience an enemy gives, just like they shouldn't be given control over the minimum strength of an NPC either. It's better to simply assign a flat (preferably sub-average) amount of experience based around the forced minimum level of danger. Any danger above that is only rewarded psychologically/socially.

[/ QUOTE ]

Given that any mob can only use 1 attack at a time, I would take the *average* threat rating of all attacks instead of a simple sum.
So, if you have 2 high threat attacks like Clobber and Cleave, then a bunch of weak attacks, all you will accomplish is to reduce the threat rating of the mob, since the average will be lowered. I'm sure a more sophisticated algorithm could be formulated, but this should be the basis.

[ QUOTE ]
Except that we know people would then just load an enemy down with so many useless attacks that it's not even remotely difficult (because they just load them down with so many attacks that half of them are never used thanks to animation restrictions). It would happen like crazy. People would just make enemies with as many crappy attacks as possible so that they can get an enemy with a high xp mod for very little risk.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which is why the "crappy" attacks are rated to give a small threat rating, as detailed in my post. You load a mob with nothing but light attacks - it will give little reward.

About 5 posts down:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post13585792

Good idea, I like it.

Guild Wars already has this concept - although these insta characters are pvp only. The idea really does have merit as long as this pvp restriction is in place.

<qr>
If you'll PM your arc id, I'll give it a go.

I believe most MA arc writers are running into the same problem. Based on some of the responses to the thread, you see why the devs don't appear to spend much time on making really good stories: most of the player base could care less. Just give them something to bash, and they're happy.

Hi PW, Could you add "Tales of Croatoa" to your list? I reviewed this arc a few days ago:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....e=0&fpart=3

Thanks.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the constant tweaking of powersets for MA mobs and have thought of a possible alternative. Adjusting xp and ticket drops based on a "threat level". I'd allow MA mission builders to choose ANY combination of powers from two powersets up to a maximum number of powers for the minion (4 max), lt (6 max), boss (8 max), elite boss (10 max), and AV (12 max). These numbers are just examples - I'd leave it up to the devs to determine the actual correct number. Normal, Hard, Extreme ratings would now be irrelevant.

Given that you can pretty much make what you want to, you need a formula to determine the threat level for the mob. POTENTIALLY, we could drop the specification of minion, Lieut., etc during mob creation and let the threat level determine what the mob is.

More powers increases the threat level. Higher level powers increase it even more. Certain powerset combinations would increase it yet more. For example, I would think an attack power set (scrapper,brute) combined with regen would score highly. Again, the devs would need to identify "high threat" combinations and score them appropriately.

Ok, the devs now have "a formula", it will need to be tweaked over time of course. You now calculate the xp given and ticket rate depending on the threat level of each individual mob. Not on arbitrary minion, Lt., elite boss designations that currently can vary wildly in the level of difficulty.

Someone gets cute, and creates a mob with zero attack powers? That's fine, but you get zero xp and zero tickets for that kill. It also doesnt count toward any badges. A more reasonably balanced mob would give a fair amount of xp and chance at a ticket drop.

With this system, you could create anything you want, and devs can ensure that exploitation doesn't occur. The formula (hopefully table driven) can be adjusted over time as people discover exploitable combinations.

You should be able to do "Tales of Croatoa" in my sig, once you get into your 30s. You get help against the EB at the end, but I'd recommend bringing plenty of purples and greens.

Instead of just the star rating, I'd like something like the following in tabular format:

[u]Date[u].........[u]Rating[u].....[u] Chapters Complete[u].....[u]Feedback Id[u]
1/1/2009......... 4............ 5......................... @whoever
1/2/2009......... 0............-...........................None
1/2/2009..........3............ 4......................... None

Average: 2.3 3

This would be only availabe under "My Published Arcs".
I'd just like SOME idea of who is leaving honest feedback vs how many are griefing. I'm not asking for the griefer's global id to be listed - only those who sent me feedback.

Most of the columns are self explanatory. The "Chapters Complete" column would show a dash if the person didnt even bother to enter the first mission.

If possible, it would also be nice to have plays listed for people who "didnt" rate the arc.