Sister_Twelve

Played through this today and am posting my thoughts on it in my One A Day thread.

So I thought that I would go ahead and finish 'The Consequences of War' arcs while my thoughts of the first part were still fresh in my mind. I feel a bit better today, but I think the change of seasons is doing its usual thing to my sinuses. At any rate, I finished it... and I think anyone who reads these should keep in mind that although I am looking at each arc individually, I think this entire cycle is stronger than the sum of its parts.

The storyline on the whole, I would probably consider to be much stronger than the individual throughlines of parts 1 or 2 when taken alone.

So... my thoughts...

- The scope of this one is scaled down. The plotline is far more linear than the first one, which essentially means that this particular incident should have some level of dramatic importance to the overall war effort. After all, there are literally thousands of stories of loss and struggle that happened during the conflict in 2002... why focus on this particular one?

Well, unfortunately, other than in a personal way because the loss of the characters individual allies and friends, I never really get the impression that the actions of my character much mattered to the outcome of the conflict... even in a tangential type of way. I survived, yes, but ultimately the war was won by Hero-1 and his group's sacrifice and what my group did was relatively insignificant.

Lots of literature... especially comic book literature... has been written in a way to spin old events in an entirely new way. I am not suggesting that you write something that makes the player character 'the real hero of 2002.' But there are ways to make what the character does matter... and that's what's important. Perhaps he takes some action that makes the later action by Hero-1 and his group possible. Perhaps he does something pivotal to the ongoing war that has nothing to do with the final conflict at all. Perhaps the battle commander the character defeats to avenge his friends is a 'Stonewall Jackson' moment... you know, such a good commander that the Rikti never truly recover from his loss.

All of these are just ideas that immediately spring to mind... take them or leave them... but the most important concept is to make the actions of the character matter.

- This arc's flow was much more uneven than the first. This had a lot to do with the fact that one minion in the boss's mob during mission two somehow spawned at the very top of the fallen skyskraper and it took me over 45 minutes of wandering an empty map to finally locate him. This was, of course, not the fault of the author, but I tend to favor the option that only the boss need be defeated to complete the mission to avoid situations like these. Even aside from the glitch, the arc swung wildly between, 'wow, that was much easier than the first time' to 'wow, that elite boss 1-punched me out of nowhere when I had him at 10% health.. through 4 lucks and all of my widow defenses.'

- I think that since you went the route of making the climax to this very personal instead of large in scope, some attention could be devoted to fleshing out the npc allies that you need to care about in order for the end of the arc to be effective. As it stood, I felt like I really knew none of them other than Captain Superior and, as such, the impact of their deaths during the final mission was not as strong as it might have been.

Basically, I would just say to make a choice. Are you writing a large story? Or a small story inside of large trappings? Either has the potential for enormous impact... but this storyline on the whole, (both arcs combined), tries a little too hard to be both. If you chose one or the other, I think you would be telling a more compelling tale.

- Played it on my widow at 2/+2/Boss/No AV. Aside for the aforementioned 1-punch that came apparently from Alabama out of nowhere and dropped me from full to 0, there were no significant difficulty problems. The ambushes during the Rikti missions were hard, but not overwhelming. Dr. Lexis became my favorite ally for no other reason than she gave me fortitude and I didn't have to use a single inspiration during the fight with the Heavy Mech EB. The Vanguard mission seems a bit light in comparison to the rest, but if played back to back, it probably is good to give the player a bit of a breather.

So in conclusion I would say that I consider both arcs taken individually to be good stories... the entire storyline taken as a whole to be a superior story... but one that doesn't quite become a GREAT story simply because at its heart, it doesn't quite know what it wants to be.

I am feeling a little under the weather today and not up to actually running much of anything. Aside from that, I have a backlog of things that I ran prior to starting this thread, so I will go back to one of them. So instead of one-a-day today, you get one-awhile-back. At any rate, like I said in another thread, 'The Consequences of War, Part I' was the first MA arc that I ran when I got started playing CoH again.

I ran through it again a couple of days ago, so my thoughts on it are still relatively fresh, although nothing ever really recaptures the impressions of your first time through some.

My thoughts:

- This arc is one of the few arcs that should be outright HARD. I think a lot of writers tend to get a little caught up in their stories and think that because in their own minds, the opposition group are bad to the bone, they have to prove that to the players of their arcs. And that's all well and fine, but what it translates into is a sea of arcs that tend to be boggy and slow because even if you can beat the opposition, you beat them at a much slower pace than normal. This, in my opinion, can detract from the experience.

I thought the Turg arc was pretty guilty of this, but these thoughts are not devoted to the Turg arc, so I digress.

At any rate, this arc concerns itself with a period of time during which humanity was legitimately losing a war and losing quite badly. In fact, the only reason we won, if I remember the canon correctly, is the sacrifice of Hero-1 and the vast majority of the remaining heroes of the time. On that level, this particular arc has a built in justification for being HARD.

And by and large, it succeeds at this... usually by virtue of swarms of Rikti ambushing you in the midst of fights and positioning themselves very well, (especially given the usual randomness of AI positioning), to hit you with multiple stationary mobs at once.

On that level, I could feel as though I was the one of the few remaining resistance fighters on the losing side of a massive war, even though the reality was that I wasn't defeating that many more enemies than I normally do inside of a mission.

- The story is largely well written, though my ego prevents me from considering the character I brought into the arc to be a third or fourth stringer, which is generally what the arc would have you believe. There is an air of desperation inherent to the dialogue that is appropriate. It is not extraordinary, but it is appropriate.

- I do not like one of the maps that the author used. Without going into great detail regarding all the ways it annoyed me, it's a 'blind-you' map.

- I have no real problem with stories that set themselves up for sequels so long as they clearly spell out what they are and this one does. However, when writing a series, it is usually best to ensure that each story can survive on its own. I think this story leans a bit on what is going to happen without resolving many of the immediate issues within the arc itself.

- Rikti are generally fun. They are also usually right in the wheelhouse of the archetypes I usually play. I did this one with a SS/INV brute at 2/+2/Boss/No AV and had no real problems. The missions flowed smoothly. There were no technical glitches and I never got hung up anywhere. Most of the boss characters are tough, but not unduly so as long as you utilize well-known EB killing techniques for solo characters. The assistance offered by my allies was generally nice, but not often truly necessary. (I only mention this because there are many arcs that, for lack of the ally being there, the scenario would be mostly impossible.)

Overall, it is a middling strong arc that could be stronger with a bit more resolution to what's going on prior to moving into the second arc.

No real point to this. I've just never done it before. First post after a red name.

Arg... and I typed too much superfluous stuff so I lose... ;pp

Over the course of the last year, I took a long hiatus from City and primarily played WoW during that time. And I do think the WoW does some things well. But one of the things I never liked about WoW was that the game became less and less about what the character IS and more and more about what the character WEARS.

Now you may argue that this is a purely aesthetic disagreement and the point would have some validity. But unless you are playing a tech-based Iron Man type character or a character who depends on some sort of external source for his power, the idea of 'clothes being power' works much less in this milieu than in a fantasy environment, where it is a commonly accepted trope that the characters are on an endless quest to acquire more and more and more magical items to advance their personal power.

The superhero (or supervillain as the case may be) is far more a product of what the character IS rather than what they WEAR.

Now this is not to say that things cannot be added to this game that will allow the player to fritter away time. This game actually suffers in comparison to WoW in that there are very few time killing devices. In WoW, if your guild doesn't happen to be around or there's nothing planned, you can literally kill a couple of hours herbing or whatever and still get some enjoyment from the activity.

In this game, in my experience, you are either actively in a mission or you are actively rping or you are standing there, in which case you aren't playing for very long that day.

So up with time killers, but down with time killers that make us rely on our clothes to define our level of advancement in the game.

Well, I really don't want to do a reviewer thread, because I really don't want to do 'reviews' per se, but I am playing one MA arc a day when I get home from work right now and for most of the ones I'm playing, I can't find the original threads for them, so I guess I'll create a thread to give my thoughts on them.

Today I ran 'Sabrina's Tale,' mainly because it was, well, selected as arc of the year.

My thoughts:

- The spirit mobs are quite well designed. I think they are a pretty good example of a custom faction 'designed right.' There is a conceptual simultaneity between all of them that is mirrored by their look and the power selection. I had minor issues with the inclusion of Crey mobs during the last mission, but that is an aesthetic gripe on my part that you can either take or leave.

- The use of language is possibly the best I've seen of any arc in the game. There is a lyricism to it that you don't often see utilized by the vast majority of the MA authors. The arc on the whole brings to mind a Vertigo like Sandman rather than a mainstream title like the Avengers or the Justice League. I'd like to see more writers use a variety of styles rather than see MA collapse into hundreds of personal in-jokes, (wow, there are a lot of 'comedy' arcs), or things like that. There is room in the system for anyone to write any kind of genre they wish, drama, thrillers, espionage, urban fantasy, whatever... kudos to you for using one not often used effectively.

- The tone is surreal. That is generally not to my tastes. Movies like What Dreams May Come generally just don't send me... the same was true here. I understand the internal mythos you are trying to create and think you do a good job of creating it, but this is not the type of thing I would usually pay money to read or to see in the theater. (I never bought Sandman either... my Vertigo titles were generally ones like Hellblazer and Preacher.)

- The story is... well... depressing. And it's probably meant to be. Once again, this doesn't mean it's a bad story. But I guess there's just something about me that reflexively recoils against stories that are essentially about futility. There's a part of me that always breaks it down to, "Okay, well if it was all futile, then what was the point of telling it or experiencing it?" We all go through futility in our day to day lives. When I do this, I want to feel as though success was possible.

- Mechanically, the missions were sound. Nothing bogged down. I played it on a Widow at 2/+2/Bosses/No AVs and did not hit any major snags. The CoT boss was a bit annoying but that was only because it took me so long to whittle him down. The Elite Bosses seemed pretty on par with what I would expect and seemed neither overpowered nor over-wimpy.

Overall, this is a strong arc that is extraordinarily well-written. It's just not my cup of tea and I probably, for that reason, won't play it again.

Congrats, man. This arc is very good and this is well deserved.

From what I've seen, there's a general consensus that content written before "x" date is usually lacking in some way or another. "X" date can be almost any date subjective to the mind of whoever is making the claim at the time, so I am not going to assign one in hopes of avoiding a relatively pointless debate over what "x" date actually is.

The usual list of complaints I see:

- Monotony
- Repetitiveness
- Arcs that are pointlessly 20 missions long
- Glitchy (for whatever reason)
- Endless numbers of defeat alls
- Poorly written (although this is an aesthetic judgment and should probably not be the overriding reason for selection)

What I propose is this:

The developers have had ample time to see what the player population can produce in MA now. They are obviously paying some amount of attention to it, because they just had the awards for arcs of the year and so forth. So they certainly have a 'pool' of authors to choose from.

Additionally, the focus of the developers should be to look forward and not to look back. That's understandable. Their attention should be devoted to Going Rogue and future Issues. I totally get that. But simultaneously, in a game where one of the stated favored playstyles is alt-itis and with a pool of talented mission developers, presumably who would be willing, there can simultaneously be both a focus on the future AND a push to make the content created early better than it currently is.

How? Very simple.

The developers could pick from the pool of authors and give them team assignments. Then they could tell them, "Okay, 'Arc X' is your baby. You have 1 month to give us a superior version of this arc. If we agree, then we'll go with it. If we don't agree that the new version is better, then we won't go with it."

Personally, I think this is the way to go. Inside of a year, assuming the community stays enthusiastic, you could have every arc that everyone universally agrees has major problems or in some way is outdated replaced with something better.

Alrighty, the fix on mission 4 seems to have worked. All of the chained goals are no longer springing upon entry into the map.

- Added tags to all of the in-mission clues to make it easier for the player to keep them in order.
- Fixed some issues with the 'captive animations' in mission 4 that were creating a disconnect.
- Hopefully fixed an ongoing issue with mission 3 where the goal that is supposed to occur before you start leading the ambassador to the exit door was not triggering until you arrived at the exit door.
- Fixed a problem where one of the bosses in mission 3 was constantly spawning behind the ambassador on the map when the player is supposed to defeat him first.
- Edited for typos.

The arc should be in decent enough shape to be played now with some degree of enjoyment.

Well, to be completely blunt, I tend to take it with a grain of salt when someone says that I need to cut something that they haven't read/seen/played. It fits at the moment. If others who have played it tell me it drags or it needs to be cut down or they are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of text, then I'll consider making changes. But I doubt that I will do so based on someone's blanket preconceived notion based on... um... never having seen it.

Now, this isn't an invitation to play my arc by any means. Based on what I've seen in your review thread, you either seem completely burned out on the activity or you never much enjoy anything in the first place. I certainly wouldn't want to contribute something else for you to fail to enjoy.

Ran this tonight with a widow at 1/+2/boss/no heroes.

Thoughts on it:

- The screenplay format was cool. I enjoy it when people do something a little different without trying to reinvent the wheel. On the flip side of that same argument, the screenplay format obviously reduces the amount of exposition concurrent to the amount of scene description, so it was good that you used a relatively familiar genre like a cop drama to use it.

- The dialogue has a tendency to be terse, which is reflective of what I remember from the original Miami Vice TV show... I won't go into the movie, because I didn't particularly enjoy the movie.

- I played some Genesis, Glen Frey, Bob Seger, and Phil Collins, (which is... ummm... Genesis, but just saying), from my play list while doing the arc to strike the mood.

- The arc was fairly easy and it flowed smoothly. The EB really didn't feel much like an EB. Perhaps Croquette was laying down a lot of damage, but the EB was at a quarter of his health bar in about 2 seconds.

- The character designs were well done. I'm not sure if it's what you were going for in mission 2, but I sort of liked the idea of what the villain groups might have been like before they really became entrenched in Paragon City.

(I know you said you weren't going for a throwback to the 80's feel, but to be honest, that is very much what this felt like.)

Overall, it was well done, as most of the arcs I've played of yours have been.

-shrugs-

I'm sitting on 99.98% on my arc with no formatting. And yes, it includes a custom group. And no, I don't intend to take them away because you've run a bazillion arcs and are apparently tired of doing so. And yes, my arc would be better if I had more file space simply because I could make it easier for the player to read it.

-sigh-

And now, for some reason, we're back to all 4 of the sequential ally goals in mission four simultaenously popping when the player first enters the map. Fine, I'm tired of arguing with MA about doing what it's supposed to do and starting them after the last one is finished.

I didn't do a mass overhaul of the mission, but I reordered it and changed it mechanically so that the ally goals are divided by collection goals. This will probably slow the flow of the mission, but it's better than the massive information dump the player was getting as soon as he walked onto the map.

Surprisingly, I actually played most of these arcs before I even noticed that this contest was here. I always thought The Consequences of War, both parts, was very well done. These two were actually the first MA arcs I played upon my return, (mainly because I always like the Rikti Issue and the RWZ). If I recall, the only thing I said when I rated it in game was that one of the maps bothered me... similar to the small criticism I had regarding the great Astoria in D-Minor arc.

If I recall, isn't there a map in the Rikti arc that's full of smoke the entire way?

At any rate, it was very well done.

I don't feel that a vote of mine would be valid at this point because I have played through all of the arcs, though I will say that from the ones I've seen, all the nominations are well deserved.

Well, we learn as we go. Things I've discovered over the past week:

1.) AE is a great mechanism for doing what I've always wanted to do, but the tool itself is clumsy.

When I started the revamp of mission 4, I went in with a pretty linear concept for what I wanted to happen... ie, 'give the player an actual choice about the outcome of the mission.' Now obviously either way the mission would have played out would have led to mission 5, so it would have been the illusion of choice rather than the reality of choice, but even offering that much led to a bunch of issues that I had to get my way through.

Some of them for people who might attempt to do this in the future, so that hopefully they won't have to repeat my entire trial and error process. Many of you probably already know these things, but I didn't and I am certain that other people new to the tool don't know them either:

a.) You cannot use an optional mission goal to trigger another a goal necessary for mission completion. MA gives you an error message when you try to do so. So if you are attempting two branching storylines within the same mission, you must somehow trigger the end event prior to the branches starting and hope the player does not complete the end event.

Sadly the only way that I've seen to plausibly accomplish this is goal placement, which definitely is not a perfect method. It is still entirely possible for the player to run through the entire map and finish the end goal at the back, complete the mission and miss the middle (optional) parts of the mission entirely.

2.) Once published, making changes to your arc while keeping it published becomes sort of a pain.

I don't know why it gives you the option to go local with your story, because going local does not help you at all. If you go local, what probably happened is that you attempt to make wholesale changes in the mistaken belief that when you 'publish' those changes, it will simply overwrite the existing published arc. It doesn't. It creates a new published arc with the same name.

Additionally, I don't know if anyone else has had this issue, but when using the 'republish' function, I've found that I have to repeat this sequence of actions before any changes in the publish arc will appear:

a.) Republish after making changes -> Click Edit -> Observe that the changes I made are NOT there -> Exit out of MA -> Go back into MA -> Click Edit and Wait for a bit -> Observe that now the changes are there.

For some reason, the first time I try to edit my published arc again after using the 'Republish' function, the edits I just made are not there and it reverts to the form it was in prior to starting work for the session. It's only after I exit and go back in that those changes will appear. Since it exits you out of your arc when you click 'Republish' anyway, (I've yet to figure out what the difference between 'Republish' and 'Republish and Exit' actually is), you would think the changes would already be there.

There have been instances where I lost a couple of hours of work because of this, especially on those occasions where, say, I did lots of editing to mission 2, 'republished', then went back in and didn't look at mission 2 and started my edits for mission 3.

This is pretty aggravating.

3.) I cannot figure out why the text tool sometimes refuses to allow me to write.

It only happens when I edit text that is already there, but sometimes after I delete a sentence and start typing a new sentence, the text I am writing will suddenly stop and the cursor will go all the way down to the end of the field. The only thing I can do at this point is to highlight over the entire sentence I've started to write and start over again. If it was an isolated thing, it would not be a big deal, but it happens often enough that it is a pain in the ***.

At any rate, those are some of the things I've noticed:

Mission 4 is revamped. It isn't as good as what I saw in my mind, because the tool is limited in what it allows me to do in that regard. Originally, there were going to be 2 ally contacts, each was going to offer a path for the player to take, then depending on which the player chose, 1 contact or the other would have betrayed the player, and that's the ally the player would have had for the final fight.

Obviously, because you cannot have an optional mission goal trigger one necessary for completion, that plan went out the window, along with one of the allies because the whole reason for his presence was now moribund.

I understand that it would be incredibly difficult to offer a wide array of predictable behaviors for allies to take once the rescue ally portion off the mission is completed, but I think 'fade out' needs to be one of them. Yes, seeing your in-mission contact vanish before your eyes would be unsettling at first, but I think after awhile, it would become just sort of a 'conceit,' ie something the players would be used to seeing in missions where you have to find the same contact several times in a row.

Right now, there actually is a 'fade out' choice, but it involves the character running to the nearest door, which is an actual action they take. Fading is not an action. Running away is and sort of invites the character to follow if the next step in the mission is to find the same contact again. Unfortunately, having the ally run out of the mission is the only way to get them to disappear right now and not have 3-4 versions of the same person on the map.

There were also some changes done to missions 2 and 3. Primarily the addition of a new boss level character who saved me some space because I was able to remove the custom boss-level characters I'd created and make do with already-existing templates that I could make some changes to.

I have not started editing mission 5 to reflect the wholesale changes made to earlier points in the arc yet.