MrCaptainMan

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Well, I just created an arc entirely in Korean and it worked in every field I put it in including names and descriptions of custom critters, patrol and boss dialog, navigation text, contact dialog, and even the name of the custom group and the file name! 아사! :-)

edit: but apparently it doesn't work on the boards...

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In order for it to work on the boards, you have to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. Then then the forum font changes to venusian.



Eco.

My final mission (the one with 15 chained boss fights) used a map that said 21 allowable things, but after I'd put 18 bosses in it didn't let me put any more. The map still had spawn points to spare, though. Luckily, 15 proved to be enough.

Eco

Excellent. Thanks all.

Eco

I'm sure I've seen non standard alphabet characters in some MA arcs. Can sb tell me how to put things like alpha and omega symbols and pi etc into my text fields?

Eco.

QR - I have an intentional typo in my arc too. Somewhere for a sort of 'director's commentary' might be interesting. I generally send a feedback to the author of an arc im doing as i start it telling them I';m starting it, and if they're in game, then i sometimes have a discussion about it as i play. It usually makes the arc even more interesting (I go for SFMAs).

Annotations would be fun, but space is at a premium I find, especially with the SFMAs.

Eco.

EDIT lol i just saw your post quoting me in the other thread.

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Awesome! What arc? I'm a huge Doctor Who fan

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I'm a bigger one!



Eco.

One of the bosses in my arc says '...I made a pome!' after he accidentally rhymes some of his lines. Everyone notices it and informs me of my typo.

Except its not a typo, its a ridiculously obscure reference to the Molesworth books.

I really should just take it out, but it makes me laugh.

Eco.

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It's not a bug. The person clicked 1 star first, and so Eco got no tickets. The other guy then proceeded to give the full rating, which counts towards Eco's average immediately, but no Tickets are awarded because the "rating change" was too soon.

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That's not the way I remember Pohsyb describing it. I thought that the highest rating during the time period would count.

I would blame lag. Maybe it's just me, but the gap between getting a rating and getting tickets seems to be hours, at least.

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I still havent got any tickets for it. No new plays since, either.

Eco.

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It's not a bug. The person clicked 1 star first, and so Eco got no tickets. The other guy then proceeded to give the full rating, which counts towards Eco's average immediately, but no Tickets are awarded because the "rating change" was too soon.

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Ah, so it only affects the tickets, not the rating average? I'm not too bothered about the loss of 25 tickets, but obviously the rating average is another matter. That's good to know.

Eco.

I think the people who wrote the list fir the profanity filter should be pooped on by a cabal of naked vigilantes.

Eco

There is a 3 (or maybe 4, I'm bit certain yet) day cook down period after which you can be rerated, but - if the person rating you doesn't know this happens, they're unlikely to come back later.

Eco

I received some wonderful feedback from a Player of my arc yesterday, and he told me he was going to 5-star me, which was nice. After he said 'donw', I checked my tickets, and - nil. I asked him how he rated, and he said that he lit the stars up one by one. I guess that was an accidental one-star.

So I've added [DO NOT LIGHT STARS ONE BY ONE - FIRST STAR CLICKED COUNTS FOR RATING] to my final debriefing (after a few line breaks), and i recommend others do the same until its widely known in-game that this method of rating causes the wrong effect.

Eco.

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if I am allowed to write an arc aimed at a specific subset of the CoH playerbase, in terms of hero or villain, team or solo, story-heavy or challeneg-based, why can i not write one aimed at players who view clues as something to be read when they drop? I'm not going to put that in my description or suggest we need another TAG for it lol


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Now that I've done the missions, I have a better appreciation for your intent.

First off, writers love to write. That often means they write too much. The most important thing a writer can do is distill and compress the story to fit the medium and the space available.

I think the essential story elements in your final mission could be pared down into six or eight clues instead of 18. You mainly need to exercise editorial control. From a combat standpoint the bosses are more or less the same, so 18 is too many.



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Thanks v much for playing, and for your comments.

When i was in school, one thing i remember our English teacher doing was giving us a text to precis, and then we'd pass the result along to another student, and we'd get another one, and we'd precis that, and then pass that along...etc.

The originals were a page, the end result after a few students was a paragraph sometimes.

My original form of the narrative delivered in mission 5 was 3 times as large. I have pared it down as much as i'm prepared to. I hope you don't take this as casual brushing off of your viewpoint, I do appreciate the feedback.

Also, I counted the bosses again today. There are only 15 of them, not 18. i remember cutting three clues out a while back.

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But that still leaves the sequencing problem. To alleviate that, you might consider moving the earlier clues to missions 2-4. That would ensure they are read in the proper order because they're doled out in the missions. Assuming that the front/middle/back stuff works on your final map, the final few clues would similarly be dropped in the right order as you work through the map front to back. Chaining spawns wouldn't be necessary.

I also think it isn't a bad thing if the players get an insight as to what's going on in the antagonist's mind early on, in mission two or so. So having those clues presented in another context, say as archival footage from a TV reporter who was at the scene of the quake, would set the stage sooner for the revelation at the end.



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This is something i will definitely look into, though.

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The most important thing you did was properly describe your arc in the summary. If your arc delivers what you promise no one can complain.

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Ive added 'VERY STORY-HEAVY' to the description as well, and a red caps wanring about FIFTEEN BOSSES to the final missions briefing.

Eco.

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Now I wonder if we are going to need yet another set of [Tags] for Story Heavy and Story Light, as it seems we have differing ideas of what SFMA should mean.

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Lol I think SFMA can cover the spectrum sufficiently.

Eco.

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I understand where both of you are coming from. As a writer you need to understand your audience, and write the mission that will accommodate that audience.

In this game there are several audiences: lovers of stories, power levelers, roleplayers, people who just want to have fun, etc. The most successful missions cater to the largest number of audiences.



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To some extent I agree with you, but there has to be room for aiming sth at specific subsegments of the audience, or we'd end up with just lowest-common denominator stuff and nothing else. The Jabberwocky 1-mission arc of yours is a case in point. There are going to be people who've never heard of lewis Carrol, whose reaction might be highly negative. I played that mission a little while ago, and I'm bloody glad that you didn't try to cater to the widest possible audience with it, because its lovely.

With The Echo, aspects of my intended audience is stated in my description 'Recommended for HEROIC, SOLO PLAY' - There seems to be a general acceptance (as portrayed by the [TAG] thread, anyway), that team-centric arcs are allowed and that if a solo player plays one and gets faceplanted by an AV and complains about it then they're being unreasonable. If my arc is aimed at a solo audience, and a team does it and hence doesn't get the clues etc, who's to fault? Me, for not making my arc team-friendly? If that's tru then all TFMA arcs should dumb their challenge levels down for solo players. Which would be wrong, of course.

if I am allowed to write an arc aimed at a specific subset of the CoH playerbase, in terms of hero or villain, team or solo, story-heavy or challeneg-based, why can i not write one aimed at players who view clues as something to be read when they drop? I'm not going to put that in my description or suggest we need another TAG for it lol

I'm no great shakespeare. I've never studied creative writing, I don't know a lot about the meta-language of fiction, or storytelling, or what have you. I'm not an expert. I like to write, and sometimes i'm proud of what I have written. When i write, I write stuff that I'd like to read. When I write an arc, I write something that I'd like to play. Then I listen to feedback from other people who've played it, and I alter it so that it takes into account their comments. There comes a point, though, where I may decide that I don't feel that following some advice will improve the arc In terms of what i want it to say or be. . As the creator, that is my right. The Echo may not appeal to the widest possible audience, but I'm happy for it not to. I am proud of it, as it is, flaws and all. It is, in my opinion, quite good.

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On top of that, the mechanics and social dynamics of the gaming environment have to be considered. There's only so much space in the chat window for NPC text. Brutes can't afford to stop fighting. On a team there often isn't time for everyone to stop and read the clues after they drop, because the goal is always go! go! go! inside a mission.



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Which is a shame for an author whose intention is for the player to read the clues as they drop. TBH, I didn't realise I was in the minority of the playerbase in checking clues as I go. In fact, I'd be prepared to bet that there are enough players out there like me in this regard to form a large enough 'market' for arcs where read-as-it-drops is important.

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To that end, a mission with broad appeal will have to make some compromises and take some short cuts. Because the clue interface is kind of klunky, requiring players to read the clues in a mission will limit your audience.



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The mechanic I used in mission 5 is exactly that, a means to stagger the dropping of clues and encourage the player to read them as they do drop. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, I guess - I'm bound to get some negative feedback eventually. But for some people, this mechanism will work. Those players with a little patience and the willingness to forgive the mechanics slightly in return for an enjoyable story, they are my audience.

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Optimally, the one-liner displayed in the chat window when you fulfill an objective should be all the players needs to get the gist of what the clue holds.

Clues are your long-term memory of what's going on in the arc. I don't expect players to look at clues until they have some kind of down time, such as the pause between missions.



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I could see that from your Jabberwocky mission. I personally think that its a shame that you've made concessions (if you have) in it, tbh. For me, leaving all the clues in a (not yours, just any) mission to the end makes their splitting up pointless. Why not just put everything learned in the mission in the mission complete clue?

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I have another arc that uses clues very heavily as actual clues in a murder mystery. Unlike most CoH content, the contact in this arc doesn't spoon-feed you any conclusions. The clues drop and it's up to you to decide what they mean. You have to decide who the bad guy is and take him out. If you make the wrong choice you may fail the mission.



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This sounds like the sort of arc I'd love, and i'll be looking for it. I'll be reading the clues as they drop while i do it

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Making missions like this is extremely difficult because the system is aimed at making replayable content. But with the thousands of people making AE missions I'm hoping that the devs will add features that will allow true branching within missions that let players make real decisions.

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Me too. I love the MA, I'm already seeing some interesting things done with the mechanics we've got already. It can only get better in further issues, I feel.

Eco.

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It's the archetype, he needs the rage from the previous fight to carry over to the next, I assume. I haven't played a brute.

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I have a Brute, and they do lend themselves to a 'SMASH first, read story later' sort of approach, I guess, if you are more interested in your rage bar than the plot. I'd rather know why I'm beating stuff up beforehand rather than retrospectively discover plot elements afterwards, tbh, and even on my Brute I generally take a break in the carnage to read a clue whenever one arises. I'm sure Laz doesn't mean it's his standard approach to totally ignore the plot until the end of a mission before catching up on all the clues and dialogue in one go. He'd be less able to form an accurate opinion on the pacing of the story then. I'm assuming he means that he reads clues in clumps when and if his rage bar drops to nil.

Eco.

QR - 'On Justice'? I thought the MA was cross-server?

Eco.

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If i started telling you a joke by telling you the punchline, it would eventually make sense, but the experience might not be as good as telling it the normal way.

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Maybe it's just me, but I tend not to read the clues I get in a mission until it is already over. I don't have time really to stop and read every time I get one, especially when playing a Brute or a Dominator.

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Each to their own, of course. . I sort of work on the premise that if an authors put a clue in the first room for example, then the intended time to read it is in that room. It also feels better for immersion - If i 'hack the computer.you find a message!', then it makes sense that my character knows what the message says at that time, and doesn't somehow have his mind go blank until the end of the misison. On a brute, i guees you could RP a red-mist sort of fuge state lol, but i don't worry about having to zerg all the time. Also, sometimes, I find, not reading the clues as you go can make the mission confusing.

There's no right way to treat clues, I guess. As the writer, i want people to read the clues as they drop during mission 5 of The Echo because i think they'll get the best gameplay experience out of it, so I suggest they do that in-game. If they choose to do otherwise, in my opinion it's a little akin to playing a villain arc thats clearly signposted as such on my blaster and disliking it because my characters a hero and 'wouldn't behave like that'. But I can't stop them reading clues as they prefer, and so i have to accept any 'wall o text, dude!' commts from people who don't accept my suggested pacing. I'll happily do that , but I'm going to blow my own trumpet a little here, and say that I haven't received any such comments yet. I hope that means that its working as intended so far.

You may want to make your tendency to leave the clues until the end clear in your reviews, btw, it could give readers a better idea of how their story ends up being delivered to you. (If you already have mentioned that, I apologise, I haven't read much of your review thread).

Eco.

EDIT: added a smiley to my first line in case it seemed antagonistic, which is NOT how I want to come across.

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This isn't quite a wall of text, though it is a very vain post. If you think there are problems with that many glowies and boss fights then you should change it. It sounds like some forumites are fawning over your arc though, so... "Good job"?

If you need to discuss your arc ask for feedback from friends or hook up with a PuG and do some PR. Because, from where I stand, you're just trying to garner attention by talking about yourself on the boards.

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I apologise if it comes over as vain. I personally don't have any problems with the way mission 5 works (considering the 'limitations' of the system as is re character count for clues), so I won't be changing its mechanics in any major way.

I did hope this would prove to be more of a discussion on Long/Very Long arcs and especially story-heavy (as opposed to story focused) arcs. I can't be the only one who's maxed out the 100k limit while only having a few custom critters (my arc has 4 different types, but 3 of those come in 2 forms where just the head is different). I wonder if anyone has hit the limit without using any customs.

RE: 'fawining' I don't see anything particularly wrong in receiving or giving praise if something is enjoyable. Those posts were fairly brief.

As for the PR thing, if this thread garners attention to my arc, I'm certainly not going to complain, but i'm not forcing anyone to play it, or even to take part in the thread.

Eco.

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In general, I absolutely despise multiple chained spawns, but you obviously understand how truly awful they are and have done everything humanly possible to alleviate their sheer wretchedness. Backtracking is a truly horrid waste of a player's time. However, I'm not really sure why the clues have to drop in a certain order.

In my experience, once you have collected all the clues, they are displayed in the order that you defined them, not in the order that you collected them. (See my Jabberwocky arc, which has the poem's stanzas as clues. The poem clues have always displayed in the right order at the end of the mission for me.) Are you not seeing the clues appear in the order you define them?

Do you really need to have clue 1 to defeat boss 2? I can see why you could need your clues to display in the right order, but it should do that automatically.

It sounds like you've already got the boss placement down, so if you spawn them all at the beginning of the mission the players would pretty much get the clues in the order you want them to. If you number them it'll be especially obvious what's going on.

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Your Jabberwocky arc sounds interesting, I'll check it out.

Myclues do display in the correct order once they're all dropped, but the crucial thing is that this is the only way Ican guarantee that the player wont read them out of order. Players have different ways of approaching clues. I myself read them as they drop, as standard. Some players might however read them all at the end. numbering the clues would help some, but probably what would happen if the player defeated boss 3 first is open the clue and see 'Blah blah 3, the wossname did sth with the doohickey and then...'. Finding clue 2 and clue 1 later doesn't prevent the Player from knowing later bits of the story out of order.

If i started telling you a joke by telling you the punchline, it would eventually make sense, but the experience might not be as good as telling it the normal way.

I hope I'm not coming across as a knob here, i'm not trying to belittle your advice. It's hard to explain without spoiling, but the story delivered in mission 5 is something of a reveal, so the WHEN of the reveal is important.

My simple answer i guess is that its not so much the need to display them in the right order, as ensure that the player reads them in the right order. To this end there's IN CAPS hammerblow shouty 'CHECK CLUES' all over the place lol.

Talen's right - its obviously not for everybody. No arc can be for everybody. You possibly get bad ratings from folk who hate poetry. I'm going to get slated by people who put more stock in length than in quality (for a given value of 'quality', lol, of course I freely admit that The Echo's quality might be debatable).

Eco.

Thanks for the thumbs up!

And for not spoiling too !

As for your quibble, I might have looked at it from a too heroic viewpoint. I'll have a look and see if that remark I think you're referring to (in the final debrief) could be softened.

Eco

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you don't have to make 18 boss fights. it could be 18 minion or lt fights.

That I don't have a problem with - you'd have to fight 18 spawns anyway. But I don't reliably read clues - and I don't like the story to advance in the clues. I only accept advancing the story in clues when you search an object.

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Do you have a reason for accepting object clues but not other types?

Not being confrontational, I'm curious is all.

Eco

Qr - that's the ticket, cat - open minds are what we want LOL.

There IS a justification for it, but wether or bit it's a good enough justification to warrant the implementation is of course going to be debatable after the fact. The proof of the pudding, and all that.

Eco

Qr - I am supremely confidentthat if it were ever examined for farm-hood, it would be fine.

As for 'too long', you can't please everyone, all the time. Which is ok too.

Eco

Qr LOL I wasn't even needing to use it to define sth as not wearing any clothes. 'with the naked eye' was the offinding sentence.

It's like living in Stalinist Russia, playing this game! [totally joking there]

Eco