MrCaptainMan

QR - For the nav instructions, just add a verb to them depending on what you want the player to do. If theres 3 objectives, a hostage to rescue called Phil McCavity, an Ally to meet up with called Yosemite Stalin, and a Villain to defeat called The Trufflehound, if you leave their navigation isntructions bare in the MA then the nav will just have their names, like this:

'Phil McCavity,Yosemite Stalin,The Trufflehound'

If you type into the nav instruction field (for singular) 'Free Phil McCavity', and 'Meet with Yosemite Stalin' and 'Defeat the Trufflehound', you'll get all those in the nav. This makes it clearer for the player what he has to do.

You can use this to play around with what the player knows, too. If The identity of the Trufflehound is supposed to be a secret until he's discovered, put 'Defeat the bank robber' or sth in the nav instruction field, and that'll be the thing the player sees.

That's a basic example of what you can do. I recommend searching the Guides section for the guides to the MA, I think it was Lazarus who wrote them 9apologies if it was someone else) - theyre excellent.

Eco.

Someone say Mimes? I'm in!
..Someone say caltrops? i'm out!

lol nah, I
ll give it a go now.

Eco.

QR - You can change the color of the text by holding down the mouse as you mouve over the text youve alread typed and right click - you'll get a drop down menu with colors, fontsizes etc.

Eco.

Qr - aw, I'm blushing now LOL.

Thanks for replayinh it at lvl 1, and thanks for the awesome thumbs up!

Eco

I need to point out that this arc is designed to be played at Difficulty lvl ONE. The description does say this, but i think i need to CAPS that. Please don't play it at a higher level, or you won't be experiencing the arc I designed. If you do choose to play it at a higher difficulty level, you need to take that into consideration if you gave amy difficulties with mobs or ambushes or length or time taken etc.

I don't mean to xriricise anyones chosen playstyle - I just want to stress one of the factors I had in mind when writing it.

Eco

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Now that my three slots are full, I want some more!

I;m sure I'm not the only one.

Can we please have the option to buy more MA publishing slots please?

I personally would pay up to $30 for a slot. I have no suggestions for what the limit per person should be. Obviously I'd like it to be quite high.

Eco.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, you may have more AE slots... AFTER they let me buy more costume slots for some of my characters

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm on it.

Eco

Can we have some more costume slots for our characters please, starting with all of Thaumators toons.

Thank you.

Eco

I think they're going to want to make some money out of this, so a fee is what I would expect. That aT you'd avoid farmers getting note slots too-they're unlikely to need more than three.

Eco

Now that my three slots are full, I want some more!

I;m sure I'm not the only one.

Can we please have the option to buy more MA publishing slots please?

I personally would pay up to $30 for a slot. I have no suggestions for what the limit per person should be. Obviously I'd like it to be quite high.

Eco.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If a word like "nip" is banned because it MIGHT refer to anatomy as a kind of slang or when it's wild-carded in a regex then we're all pretty much hosed anyway. Give us the entire English language to work with and let us decide if a word is "bad" or not.

[/ QUOTE ]

I doubt that's why. It's WW2 slang so I understand that it's not the most common phrase anymore but "Nip" is a derogatory word for a Japanese person. It is comes from "Nippon", an Anglicization of the Japanese name for Japan. It used to be a fairly common racial slur.


[/ QUOTE ]

Can we use 'bosch' and 'hun'?

Eco.

QR - Money talks. NCSoft would be crazy to not offer more slots for real money. I for one will pay up to $30 for a slot. If people think that's too high and it should be $9.99 per slot, then in that case I'll buy three. Come on, NCSoft, Have some more of my money. Please.

Eco.

[ QUOTE ]

Step 3: More slots for veterans/money!
At this point, I desperately want to make more missions, and I'm willing to do almost anything short of buying a second account!!
The Hall of Fame and Dev's Choice are excellent ideas (if for no other reason than monitoring popular arcs is a good way to weed out farmers) but it shouldn't be too difficult to add one extra slot for every 6 months you've been subscribed to the game, or $9.95 for 3 additional slots with an upper limit of 15.

After all, most farmers aren't going to care about additional slots, and they definitely won't want to pay for them. What's the difference between playing 3 arcs that are exactly the same or 15 arcs that are exactly the same?

More slots for people who want to be creative = more creative content in the game = the ratio of good arcs over stupid farming missions goes up!

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll pay up to $30 for just one extra slot. More publishing slots is now my single 'most wanted' in CoH.

Eco.

QR - I just discovered that in Mission 3, Mother Mayhem wasnt set for the correct animation! No Freaking Idea how that happened

It's been rectified, anyway. There still might be hiccups with that animation, though, but i live in hope of a perfect playthrough.

Eco.

QR Hiya PW. I just ran Celebrity Kidnapping. I've decided to run it again three or four times, to see if the spawn sequences i encountered were luck, or the results of excellent testing work on your part.

That's a fine arc, that.

If you have the space and the inclination, I'd be pleased if you'd review my 2-part arc The Audition.

it's 6 missions all told, split into 2 three-mission arcs.

It's very challenging, so I would strongly advise taking a damage dealing high level HERO in. I specify a hero as it's a heroic arc lol. It's thread is here for more information, but if you do play it please post your review here as more people read this thread I think

The Audition was published before in a shorter form. this version has expanded dialogue and text in many places and an entire new mission as the climax to Part Two.

Arc Name: The Audition
Global: MrCaptainMan
Arc: 221240 (Part One)
Length: Very Long
Morality: Heroic
Level Range: 45-54

Difficulty: HARD (EBs in missions 3 and 6)

Enemy Group(s): various, customs (Habitual Criminals, Humming mummers, Weird Alien Hive-Mind chick, Galactic Constructors, Your Evil Empire, And Many More)

Summary: Synapse contacts the Player; the Freedom Phalanx wants YOU as a new member of the team! All you have to do is succeed in the Six Heroic Tasks! Easy, eh?
...nope.

Eco.

The Shadow Rune of the Warlocks
Arc ID 124319

Just played it on my 50 en/en blaster.

here are my thoughts as i did:

Great contact. Interesting intro. Entry popup intriguing. Some spelling errors, already covered by posters. I’d try to avoid repetition of ‘prey’.

Ah, BP map. Nice.

Nav – verbs, dude

Error in Moth Mole bio ‘makes the hungry’ – ‘makes them hungry’, possibly?

Wow. Its Adamastor! Can we use Adamastor in the MA? Coool.

OK, Adamastors wicked as an ally lol. But I’d have liked to see him doing something else apart from the kneeling animation. Im not sure it fits, either. Some kind of magical field, maybe? Apologies if you tried this, maybe he’s too tall for the floating stuff to work in the cave. Also, I really liked the atmospheric text and dialogue etc, but I felt a little confused as to what exactly was going on.

The end room was a nice punch up, I really liked the steamy mist effects again and the hovering lotus position dudes were cool.

The debriefing does put the details of what’s going on clear, which is good.

Mission 2 was ok, although a little bland. I freed Adamastor and then in short order found the four bad guys. I felt this mission needed more of a climactic feel to it.

The first mission, I was loving it. It has a nice new atmosphere (at least, to me – if someone else has done this I haven’t met it yet). Your customs are well-designed looks-wise and challenging to fight, and the warlock faction was interesting. I think mission two could be awesome with some more varied objectives.

All told, Another Fun Arc.

Eco.

QR - made a few small changes.

Based on feedback, added a warning to the briefing for mission 3 of part 2 to the effect that its timed. My bad.

I also found in the briefing for the third Heroic task the following unfortunate line "So here's your Fourth Heroic Task" - ah..heh.

its now correct. Can't believe nobody noticed that yet lol.

I also tried to unchain teh Four Focus Nodes in mission 1 of part 1, but there's no real way to do it without opening up the possibility that the one intended to be the final one (which has the ambushes) will be completed first, which would present the player with the climactic (and as it stands avoidable if the plasyeer just concentrates on the node and then exits) big end fight, and then he or she would still have to deal with more (ambusheless) nodes, which I think would be a bit anticlimactic. So the chain stays. Ill just have to hope folk dont mind a bit of back and forth. The objects themselves are very big.

Eco.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
...I just wanted to offer a balance to the 'ventures great at spelling, grrammar and syntax therefore he is God of Reviewers' gushing post before mine...

[/ QUOTE ]

[gush] For the record, I ran Police Woman's "Axis and Allies" arc last night and found it just as good as Venture's. Her grammar, spelling, and syntax were spot on, as was her grasp of the technical aspects of the MA, her story-telling ability, and her research -- making her just as qualified to give her opinion on other arcs. [/gush]

See, I'm an equal-opportunity gusher. Now we have both a god and a goddess of reviewers!

Seriously, I wasn't elevating anyone to deity status. Feel free to exaggerate as much as you like if it soothes your bruised ego. Again, just pointing out qualifications that he has, and many others do, that may make his (and their) points a tad more credible.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know, I'm not trying to say he totally sucks as a writer. His arc had a plot and dialogue and wasn't a farm. It was miles better than a lot of the crap out there. It could have been much better, is all I was saying.

Eco.

Qr - way to miss my point, venture.

Eco

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The contact is 'The shadowy figure' - I found that funny for some reason, like he's THE Shadowy Figure as opposed to just any old shadowy figure.

[/ QUOTE ]

Haven't played the arc yet (although it, and the others by the author, are on my list), but it doesn't sound so strange to me. As long as it's THIS Shadowy Figure, who is an actual CoV contact...

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow! I never knew! Awesome! That does look like the contact, too.

That's great.

Eco.

[ QUOTE ]
Ah yes, the gag is clear enough, the picture does the trick there. It explains the weird message on entering the mission, which at that point just seemed like it could have been just a melodramatic personality (but it wasn't).

The ally/captive behaviour was the weird thing. Perhaps they're captives, set to "follow" instead of standing still? Still doesn't explain why they only start following a little later on. Very weird.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think its a bug, tbh. They're all set exactly the same. They're supposed to cycle the same animation over and over for 'ally rescued' and 'ally stranded', and often it does work, and sometimes it doesn't for some reason. It's maddening, but I decided to live with it and take any complaints/downrates.

The popup at the start mentions 'the Cato Initiative' - Cato was Inspector Clueso's manservant in the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films of the seventies. Clueso instructed Cato to attack him at any opportune moment as he thought it would train him in anticipation of genuine surprise attacks from villains' - In the movies, Cato was always attacking him in his own flat, jumping out of the fridge, his wardrobe, etc, at exactly the moments when he DIDN'T want him to attack. Clueso would invariably shout 'Not now, Cato!' during these fights. Lol I'm probably a bit too ambitious to hope that the majority of the playerbase will know who Cato is or recognise the gag here, but a.you never know lol and b. it does explain 'your' minions behaviour. And of course, I think it's hilarious

Eco.

[ QUOTE ]
tl;dr - If someone's going to complain about the body bags then they're going to have to take it up with the ESRB. Pretty much all of the "dead bodies" blueside are represented by body bags in the canon missions. It's a game mechanic. It would never have occurred to me to think of them as literally bags that the villain has taken the time and trouble to stuff a corpse into.

I assume "nip" is a "profanity" because it refers to drinking alcohol. Someone really needs to just turn off the damned profanity filter. If they simply don't have the time to go through it, then post the word list to the public and let us nominate words to remove from it. In fact, I'm going to post that in the suggestion forum.

I haven't played the arc and can't comment on any other aspects of the arc or review.

[/ QUOTE ]

the 'nip' thing probably refers to nipples. the profanity filter is ridiculous sometimes.

AS for the rest, I notice from Ventures Blowback thread (didn't see that before, apologies) that he's removing the decoy bodybags. That's something we agree on anyway. There's also nothing wrong with a 3-star rating imo. I said it was nearing a borderline 4 even if I thought it was a dull story. Did nobody notice the positive things i said? If ratings were the only things important about our opinions, all the review threads would be simply 'Arc XXX, The Title: 4 stars' and nothing else.

Threadjacking ventures review thread wasn't what I had in mind, I just wanted to offer a balance to the 'ventures great at spelling, grrammar and syntax therefore he is God of Reviewers' gushing post before mine. I'll not steal any more of his airtime, as it were.
Eco.

The Legion of Mutants vs. The Iron Agents
Arc ID 200364

The contact is 'The shadowy figure' - I found that funny for some reason, like he's THE Shadowy Figure as opposed to just any old shadowy figure. The instructions in the briefing go on in some detail about how to transverse the Zig map. In Character I can see that perhaps my toon hasn’t seen the map yet, but maybe ‘explore thoroughly and find a way into the Zig’ might suffice.

Once inside, the Nav instructions need some verbs again.

I noticed upon entering that your customs don’t have bios this time. That’s a shame.

White Lynx costume (and actually the way you meet her) is quite cool.

Aha..I like the release of the Mutant Legion a lot here, and the subsequent triggered spawning of the bad guys is nicely done too. The maps not a huge one, so its easy to backtrack and they weren’t difficult to find at all. However, the Iradium Vice – I thought that was the name of another boss, so you might want to make it clearer up front that it’s an object. You could add ‘defeat’ to the boss nav instructions, for example, but ‘destroy’ or ‘disassemble’to the Vice instruction. That’s a very simple way of differentiating objectives in very little space.

I think I enjoyed this about the same extent as the Astoria one, but with bios for the customs and some cleaning up it could be even better. It needs some more explanation of what the Iron Agents are all about. It definitely perked up after I reached the Mutants. The fights were again just right for my mood this afternoon. Some of your costumes are very nice too, but the Cyber Monoliths I thought looked a bit silly.

Can't complain, I had a gap in my work day today, and these two arcs filled it just fine. Based on the first two of your arcs I’ve tried, I’ll play your third without hesitation – I’m sure it’ll be fun. Downtimes about to start, so I'll get onto that this evening.

Eco.

The Children of Astoria
Arc ID 217499

Summary: Just what I want from a simple one-mission arc.

I like the intro and the setup. Dark Astoria is a favourite zone of mine, underused. The Mother Mayhem map is great for the setup. The first ally was kneeling apparently alone, the reveal gave me a big grin. By the time i found the second ally, i was in no hurry, and had fun clearing the map with them. The Big Bad was pitched just right for an easy afternoon scuffle, and the egg was a nice touch at the end (First time I've seen that object).

Overall, It Was Fun.

Minor nitpicks: The 'return to contact' text mentions The Dark Surgeon, but Neither I or the contact know who he is at that point? Your nav instructions could have verbs added - 'Seek Friar Assissi' for example. Some of the bios are a little cheesy, but nothing horrendous.

Top banana. I'll get onto the others.

Eco.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Mob = 1 enemy unit
Mobs or Spawn or Group = multiple enemy units
Critter = 1 Non-attacking/Non-attackable pet unit (i.e. a Kitty Cat that follows your toon around OR found wandering around a map )

[/ QUOTE ]

Which, honestly, all sounds so non-intuative to someone who's never played an MMO before...even many people who have played a few before.

The only one of those that is correct usage in the English language, according to Merriam-Webster, is the "Spawn or Group". I can see why many people get confused, when in hectic situations.

I feel that this is a 'live and let live' situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

'buff' has a different meaaninh outside the game too. We changing our ingame use to help the noobs avoid thinking about polishing their hoods?

Eco

Qr - your suggestion of a teleport beacon is exactly what I'm trying to say. An easyvway to avoid any need to suspend disbelief. Perfect.

I disagree with your points about the loose end thing, but it's only a minor point.

As for the other stuff, I think a writer should try to avoid if he I'd she can any player wrinkling their forehead because of odd things. There was no firefight. No bullets were whizzing past me. I wouldn't have to suspend my disbelief if the writing didn't tell me things which contradicted my experience.

Eco

Eco