TeChameleon

You'll... have to forgive my persistent confusion, but why would I want the yellow text narration to go there? It's almost exclusively how your contact is acting, with a few snippets here and there describing actions that are taking place outside of the mission that would be impossible to do within (like transitioning from the Asylum back to the sewer map from mission two). It would be very strange to have it turn up in clues inside the mission, well after it happened :/

Yeh, like I said, this kind of deviates from their usual behaviour- and you're not the first melee player I've had run through it solo, either, so I'm really not sure what was up with that. You'd think someone would have mentioned it before now :/

It may just be that she didn't use it for whatever reason. I've found that AE customs can be kind of inconsistent as to how, or even if they use their powers.

Honestly, the only reason Diabolique gets so much as a mention is because it didn't make a lot of sense for Mama M to suddenly be producing mystic rituals out of nowhere. Honestly, if I had a little more space in the altar clue, I'd add a bit where one of Mother Mayhem's workers made a note that they had botched the translation, "I must warn Moth*bloodspray*". In all honesty, it's mostly just flavour- that particular objective isn't even required for completion. I never meant to say or imply anything about Diabolique beyond 'she has evil rituals, one of which Mother Mayhem managed to get her hands on'.

Apparently I'm going to have to do some testing, because again, that's deviant behaviour from what I've seen up until now. The only real reason any of the enemies have ninjutsu is because it's the only 'stalker' set with built-in stealth in the MA. Wish they'd fix that, but oh well. Did you happen to notice if the Closet Monsters (the grey-ish skeletal-looking winged thingies with fire blast powers) were hitting unusually hard for a minion?

... okay? The grey text is supposed to be a traumatized whisper (it's spelled out explicitly in text at least once- 'his voice drops to a whisper -grey text-'), not another character or some kind of psychotic delusion...

I'm not entirely sure I'm getting the main thrust of your objections here. How would I go 'all the way' with suspense? I had one reviewer comment that superheroics and horror don't mesh well, given that the first is about empowerment, while the second is about disempowerment. So the I transferred the focus of the threat to a third party, in this case our little contact. I'm not sure why there needs to be a personal threat (at least, I think that's what you're saying) for an oppressive atmosphere to 'work'.

And fireplace poker or not, Susan still treats the 'chain rattling fools' with a certain amount of caution; if she were to slip up in her duties, the kids would end up paying the price, which is something that she will not allow. Fear for a third party is still, I think, legitimate fear.

And I'll keep an eye on the fear minion thing; I'm really wondering what happened with you. If there's been an AI change, I'm going to have to rebalance the entire thing >.<

I'm not actually sure what you mean by this; I can't stop parsing it as you telling me to put it where it already is >.< Either that, or that you think I should try to cram it into that tiny text box that pops up at the start of the mission, which kind of breaks the narrative flow. You'd have somebody you hadn't been introduced to and had no idea who they were telling you things :/

Unless you meant that I should try and stuff it into the mission description box (the thing that pops up when you click on 'Small Fears' in the AE menu). I actually had a part of the opening narration in there at one point, and got... well, I'm remembering it as a lot of complaints (although it's been a while, so I'm not sure) about it.

... really? I've rarely had them pop Fearsome Stare in my own testing, and to be honest, I usually don't even notice Fear effects in play, maybe because I normally play ranged characters and so don't need to move as much. Or maybe because I tend to be somewhat button-mash-y, and so catch the breaks in Fear when I get hit more easily. Dunno.

... you know, I"ve had that stupid navbar text work right maybe twice in someplace around three or four years of testing and tweaking? There is a singular text for the final kid, but it never seems to work right. *sigh* Wellp, I'll give it another prodding, see if I can't bludgeon it into some kind of shape >.<

I'm mostly impressed that you managed to find him. I'm not sure I've ever seen him, at least outside the mission editor. And you seem to have been having a nasty string of luck with the control effects. I wonder if the devs changed the code to give them more weight in the attack chain or something? Because that hasn't been my experience with this enemy group at all.

Uhm.. that's Mother Mayhem's Asylum. Always has been, ever since the Praetorians were put into the game. Seriously, the map's even named that.

That was originally a mistake on my part that I eventually decided I liked the effect of enough to keep it. I used up all the spawn points for various triggered widgets and found a rather eeirly empty asylum when I tested it. Different strokes and all that, but I thought it added to the mood.

She does have Blackstar, or at least she's supposed to; the spotty AI when it comes to using powers can do absolutely bizarre things to the difficulty curve, apparently.

Wait, what? REALLY? That's hilarious! Also, as you guessed, totally unintentional, and a weird fluke- I've never seen or heard of that happening before.

And here we hit one of the (from my perspective) rather odd conclusions that you've drawn from what I wrote. To the best of my recollection, nowhere do I say that Diabolique sicced this thing on Mama M deliberately. My intent is that Mother Mammaries got this ritual widget (one way or another) from Evilumina and then buggered up because she was impatient. And also insane.

Also, I've played through at least a good chunk of the First Ward content (although I'm fairly certain not all of it), and I haven't seen Diabolique so much as mentioned :/

Not terribly important, but this is another conclusion drawn from what I wrote that I simply don't get. Nowhere do I say how she jumped from Praetoria to Primal Earth; honestly, given the law of conservation of detail, I figured most people would just assume that she had used one of the bajillions of dimensional transporters that people in Praetoria seem to have lying around, rather than pulling a new power out of her purplle-bethonged buttocks.

... the Asylum is a Praetorian map! I mean, it's not part of the Going Rogue stuff, but it's still in Praetoria. And it was chosen for atmosphere, not ease-of-navigation. In this case, gameplay is being slightly (it really isn't that bad to navigate...) sacrificed for story and mood.

Quite bluntly, that map was the only reason Mama M was included in the story at all- CoH has a sad shortage of 'scary' maps, and this is one of the few that matched the (admittedly simple) story I had in mind. Given that, it was a short step to Mother Mammaries' involvement, and her insanity made for a believable reason for her to have grabbed at something she didn't really understand, but thought sounded desireable, tying everything together neatly. I do not want to go to some generic bloody boring Praetorian lab map. I know the Asylum is cluttered and overused, but I did it first, dammit. Small Fears dates back to i14's beta. I chose it because it fit the story.

... sorry. Bit of a sore spot, there. I really don't want to have to rewrite the entire arc because one mildly irritating map is overused by other people, nor do I want to have to rework the entire third mission, since changing the map would break all my spawn points and turn it into 'fight #494737203485739 through the same damn lab'. Plush office. Whatever. Also, like I said, mood.

You mean the narration? I'm still not sure where exactly you want me to put it, and removing it from the mission introduction would break the story structure entirely.

No, that's a bug. It's supposed to start at 2, then go to 2? after the first rescue when you find out there's a third kid in there (since you've already rescued one), and then go to 'Save the last kid'. I've been trying to fix it for years without any noticeable success -_-

Working as intended on both AE's end and mine.

*shrug* We obviously don't agree on this one, but as it's more a stylistic decision/dislike, not much I can do about it. More on that in a sec.

I couldn't do that on purpose if I tried. I'm not even sure how it happened. It does sound pretty funny, though.

... I don't know if the AI has changed, or you just had a really unlucky run, or if you're suffering from that perception bias I sometimes see in melee players when they run into a mez they can't just ignore like they do all the others, but those things have never been as fear-happy as you described in any of the dozens of runs I've done of the mission. In point of fact, I've always been vaguely disappointed that they used it so rarely, given how well it fit thematically. I'm sorry it impacted your play so negatively, but I'm just not seeing as big a problem here as you're making it sound.

As a random aside, has stealth actually started working properly in AE again, then? Because for the longest time all my 'stealth' critters were as clearly visible as my own toon was while stealthed. Kind of transparent, but hardly hidden.

Erm... you came in on the end results of a pitched battle, by the sound of it. The Fears spawn in battles with Mama M's troops with both sides set to 'hard'. So it wasn't 'one boss gacked Mother Mayhem', it was 'one boss finished off Mother Mayhem after she had killed everything else in the vicinity'. That particular boss is a pretty vanilla Spines/Ninjitsu, nothing terribly out of the ordinary that I can recall. Not even Build Up. I'm not even sure I gave him any defenses, and he certainly didn't get any to psi damage.

... Tony? Wait, 'little finger'? What? Seriously, what?

So... uhm... the way I'm reading this is that you want me to strip out any and all attempts at mood, atmosphere, or, well, story, really, and focus instead on creating a fast, streamlined beat-'em-up with interesting-looking custom mobs.

... apologies if that came off as bitter. I'm just getting rather frustrated at this point because you appear to be demanding certain things before you'll accept this arc as 'horror', but the second any attempts at these things- setting the mood with claustrophobic, gloomy areas, monsters that endanger you in 'unfair' ways or just pop out of nowhere, empty hallways that you're expecting something to attack you in, or even just trying to write towards a certain feel- inconvenience you in any fashion, or apparently even just kind of annoy you, you penalize me, sometimes quite heavily.

... and speaking of horror, I don't think I ever directly say that you, as the hero, should be afraid of any of this stuff, merely that there are things going on that frighten the child contact.

What, if anything, does 'current Praetoria' have to do with anything? To the best of my knowledge, I didn't say anything that contradicts or conflicts with current lore. You inferred some contradictions from... somewhere... that I really don't understand, given that you never really explained them.

The plot never goes into any detail about Praetoria beyond 'Mother Mayhem is from there, has an asylum there, and is bugnuts', and 'she got some magic from Diabolique in some vaguely-defined fashion that isn't relevant to the plot'. And that's about it. Oh, and the BAF is mentioned to exist and it apparently has paper documentation and garbage. And cardboard boxes -_-;

*sigh* I'm grateful that you took the time to take another look at this, but I really don't understand some of your dislikes and criticisms. Some of it, yeah, I get it- differing personal preferences and such. I'm fine with that. Other things, though, are just strange to me. I still can't figure out how you came to some of the conclusions that you did- never did I say that Mother Mayhem and Diabolique were in conflict, I never even hinted that Diabolique had somehow tricked Mama M into letting Phobia loose or sicced the fear demonness on her herself, you keep insisting that Mother Mayhem's Asylum isn't in Praetoria for some reason, you want to move the narration that describes your interactions with the contact and a few minor events that happen outside of the missions... somewhere... you even seem to think that the demon was summoned in the BAF, when the BAF is only mentioned in passing (without any relation to the demon whatsoever, it's just a clue that Mother Mayhem is present) even though the demon is repeatedly and clearly described as being in the Asylum... I really don't understand.

... yeah. As to the fear thing... melee players appear to be violently allergic to any kind of mez that can bypass their shielding, which, speaking as a longtime squishy player, kinda comes off as whiny. I mean, yeah, it's not fun to be mezzed every five seconds, but, well... welcome to life as a blaster, defender or controller?

Not unrelatedly, the customs appear to be displaying new behaviours. I've never seen them... or heard of them... going as mez-happy as they appear to have against you, if you're going to drop gameplay to ONE star because of it (well, that and not liking the last map).

... yeah. Not even sure what to say at this point. Thank you for running it again, and taking the time to think about it. That is appreciated. I'm not quite as sure I appreciate some of the penalties to the score, though. It's hard to accept penalties that either don't make sense to me, and even harder to accept ones that happen because you seem to have read in something that wasn't actually there and decided you didn't like it.

Heh. Guess I didn't think of it that way. School buildings are alarmed, so it didn't even occur to me that they wouldn't show up (yeah, can you tell that my dad worked for a school board while I was growing up, responding to just such alarm systems?) Anyways, that's an easy fix, and already done, in point of fact.

Changed the line about 'at the door' to just 'outside'. As far as Jake apologizing for being unable to tell you he was there, I hadn't realized until now that the re-writes had altered his dialogue that much. Originally, he stumbled over his words, trying to sound like he wasn't in the school, but slipping occasionally. Looking at it now, that's kind of faded to nothing. I've re-written it somewhat so that it will hopefully be clearer that he's trying not to say where he is.

As for Jake becoming a non-combat ally... it's an interesting thought. I'm honestly not sure if I can do it, and at the moment, I've run out of time. I'll come back and edit this post once I'm free again. Thanks again for the review!

EDIT: So, continued, heh. Sorry 'bout the delay, just life being life.

Hmm... alright. Added a brief bit of text from Jake to point to the rift a little more explicitly- my intention was that Mother Mayhem was trying to lure you into taking Phobia down for her, so she was going to pretty much have to leave an easy, obvious way for you to get in.

So... on reflection, rather than adding extraneous objectives, I just had the rift pop up right where she was- basically she just teleported out, solving both how you found it and how she got away. Pity we can't use that particular boss defeat animation so that I have to use text instead. Ah, well Honestly, that's more or less how I'd planned it from the start, aside from thinking more 'hero turns away due to Jake distracting them, Mama M hops through the rift' rather than just her *poof*ing out. Not a major difference, but something that's good to have cleared up.

*chuckle*

If you took screenies of the beasties in the first couple of missions and then the ones in the last mission... there's actually a fair bit of difference. Most, if not all, of them are actually physically larger by at least a foot or two, and they all have more 'monstrous' features and weapons. It's a touch that I'm honestly kinda proud of, and one that less people than I would have expected catch.

... you know, if you hadn't said 'her' being able to fly, I'd have no idea which mob you were talking about? I'd completely forgotten Phobia (that's who you were talking about, right?) even could- I've never seen her do it in any of my many, many, many runs through the mission. Or at least I don't think I have. She really only has the power for the funky transparent 'Reflections' effect (well, that and to justify the wings, heh...) At *this* point, I'm inclined to write that particular concern off as a one-time bugaboo- something that's so rare that I'm not sure I want to lose the transparency to 'fix' it. I could be wrong, of course, it's just not something I've encountered myself or heard complained about before that I can recall.

Oog... looking at the custom setup, I'm not entirely sure it was just the Tar Patches that were causing you to get the tar beaten out of you. I'd been careful with the powersets that I knew were heavy debuffers (Radiation and Dark), but missed a few things on powersets that I was less familiar with, like Sonic and Psi. It's entirely possible that a lot of what you were seeing was getting slapped upside the head with Liquefy, Disruption Field, and Psychic Scream. I've pulled those powers, so I think the group should be a little less melee-eating. Not being much of a melee player myself, I don't know the powersets as well or how badly some debuffs affect them.

I'd rather ditch those powers than Tar Patch, since I like the visual effect and think it adds nicely to the atmosphere. And, hopefully, with those gone, Tar Patch won't be such a camel-back-breaker.

I'm not sure that I could get miniPhobia to spawn next to the phylactery reliably, otherwise I kinda like the idea.

Anywho, thanks so much for the review- helped me squeeze one or two more bugs out of things, and it's always great to read what different people think. One random aside... how did I manage to get 5.063 stars on it..?

... how do people get 'SKIN IZ TEH DEBBILZ!!!' from 'I dislike the bare skin involved in this costume because it is visually unappealing when considered as a part of whole', anyhow?

Speaking for myself, I'm... labelling the costume poorly?.. because I disagree (respectfully, of course- David's art skills are admirable) with some of the design decisions that have gone into it. Superheroes have traditionally gone the route of a very iconic style- no matter how visually busy Batman's costume may get, for example (Arkham City, I'm looking at you here -_-), it still conforms to an instantly recognizable iconography- pointy ears, scalloped cape, and a bat-symbol. You can put those on a zarking egg and still have a recognizable Batman motif. Ditto a lot of the classic superhero costumes- Cyclops, all you need are the blue-and-gold tights and the visor, Spidey the red-and-blue with the eyes, the webbing, and the spider-symbol...

I don't know. The costume could work with some minor tweaking- I like Punky Yang conceptually, but the leather-armour-belly shirt just looks so incredibly silly to me that I have a hard time getting past it. Maybe a jean jacket..?