The_Cheshire_Cat

I don't know why people keep saying this. Only the contact dialogue is written in memes, the clues and NPC dialogue are all normal, and the deluge of memes is played off as being just as stupid as it sounds.

Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today
~in~
"The Doomsday Device"
ID #337333


So, some notes about this arc:

-It is LONG, and it's challenging. The maps are all very large, some have multiple paths, and some of them use objective chaining in such a way as to force you to backtrack. There are also some AVs and Extreme bosses towards the end of the arc, so you may wish to turn your settings to minimum or run it with a good soloer/team. *Edit* that said, I was able to run it solo on my blaster with default settings (+0,+0,No boss,No AV), not dying and not having to buy any inspirations (And I don't have any fancy IO sets or anything), so it's quite doable solo with "Less than ideal" soloers if you turn your difficulty down.

-It's VERY text heavy, but not in the way you might think. Well, it's pretty text heavy in the obvious way too, but the point I was trying to make is there's a LOT of hidden detail in this arc - optional objectives, unlisted objectives, I also used text fields that are normally more or less ignored (Or at least left pretty sparse). None of the "Missable" stuff is really required to understand the storyline, but there's a lot of extra detail in there for people with the time and inclination to go looking for it.

-Mechanically this is by far my most complex arc. I used almost EVERYTHING in this one - so be prepared to see some stuff happen you might not be used to.

Anyway, that's about all for now. If you like the arc, leave a post in this thread to let me know what you thought! Or, if you didn't like it, let me know what you think I should fix!

*Oh, PS: Don't run it on a Kheldian. Just... trust me on this one.

I just read "I accept" as "I accept, with the knowledge that I will likely have to set you on fire at a later date"

I don't know if that's really necessary, but one thing that would be nice is if authors could see the rating breakdown of their arcs. If an arc has a 3-4 star average because it gets a lot of 5s and 4s and has only a couple 1s dragging it down that's no big deal, but if most of the ratings are in the 3s and 4s then you know there's room for improvement.

Everything is stuck at 4 stars after a certain number of plays, don't feel too discouraged about it :P

4 stars and 200+ plays generally means "Most people rated 5 stars and a few jerks who rated 1 are dragging down the average"

Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today
~in~
"The Doomsday Device"
ID #337333


So, some notes about this arc:

-It is LONG, and it's challenging. The maps are all very large, some have multiple paths, and some of them use objective chaining in such a way as to force you to backtrack. There are also some AVs and Extreme bosses towards the end of the arc, so you may wish to turn your settings to minimum or run it with a good soloer/team. *Edit* that said, I was able to run it solo on my blaster with default settings (+0,+0,No boss,No AV), not dying and not having to buy any inspirations (And I don't have any fancy IO sets or anything), so it's quite doable solo with "Less than ideal" soloers if you turn your difficulty down.

-It's VERY text heavy, but not in the way you might think. Well, it's pretty text heavy in the obvious way too, but the point I was trying to make is there's a LOT of hidden detail in this arc - optional objectives, unlisted objectives, I also used text fields that are normally more or less ignored (Or at least left pretty sparse). None of the "Missable" stuff is really required to understand the storyline, but there's a lot of extra detail in there for people with the time and inclination to go looking for it.

-Mechanically this is by far my most complex arc. I used almost EVERYTHING in this one - so be prepared to see some stuff happen you might not be used to.

Anyway, that's about all for now. If you like the arc, leave a post in this thread to let me know what you thought! Or, if you didn't like it, let me know what you think I should fix!

*Oh, PS: Don't run it on a Kheldian. Just... trust me on this one.

I submitted D Minor for "in-canon", because it has Banished Pantheon in Dark Astoria, and mentions Mot, and that is the total extent of the canon that exists in game for that zone, so I could do basically anything and still have it be "in-canon".

I'd say the Flower Knight TF does actually qualify pretty well for in-canon, because it does feature a canon character as your primary contact and even though none of the stuff you do is based off any in-canon world, it doesn't CONFLICT with canon either. It's all perfectly plausible given the whole portal corp setup.

I'd thought of doing that, but decided against it, because I wanted the escort for Haley to be the absolute last thing the player does (Okay, it's possible to miss glowies and have to go hunter for them, but if I could link the objective to only trigger when BOTH were done, I would).

I honestly don't blame you for that, I've tested this arc on my mind/psi dom and found it very painful :P. I tried to make sure none of the "Extra" dialogue was required to understand the main plot (i.e. there's no missable objectives that give you more insight into Schism, Irine, Haley or Event Horizon), so that even if someone misses all of it, they won't be TOO lost in the main story.

I threw in a lot of references to "Killing" zombies and other things early in the arc to get the player into this mindset, I'm glad to see it worked :P

Most people seem to catch Schism, the trouble with Haley is a lot of people seem to mistake her for Irine when she shows up as the Great Herald. I think it's because her costume is purple, which just happens to match Irine's outfit. Bit of history: Originally Irine was your contact instead of the radio, and she just used a standard contact graphic. Someone made the suggestion that having Irine still show up as the contact was weird after the 3rd mission and that it might work better for the contact to be a payphone or a radio that you use to communicate with her. I agreed, and added Irine as the first objective in the first mission - but this was long after I'd already designed Haley in the 4th mission and didn't realize the resemblance when I picked Amanda Vines' model. I don't want to change it now because someone made the comment that it was a good model choice because of the headset (Tying in with the radio), which was TOTALLY accidental on my part but an excellent point by the reviewer, so now I really like that model for her.

I could edit the Great Herald's model to be pink instead of purple, to match Haley more closely... but there's just something not scary about pink.

Pretty much, yeah. Essentially we'll have to agree to disagree on this point - even if it hurts your opinion of the arc, the feeling you've gotten from it is EXACTLY the feeling I was trying to evoke. I've gotten a lot of comments about how the arc sticks in people's heads after they finish, and I think it's because of the lack of closure; psychologically, "Closure" means when your brain files something away because it feels that it's done with it. You don't FORGET that thing, but you don't think about it too much. Lacking closure causes that thing to stick in the front of your mind and keep bugging you because something just feels wrong about it - apparently lacking closure is a technique some advertisers use to get people to remember their ads more.

I think there's one optional glowie, but everyone seems to miss it because it's in mission 4, and who can find anything in mission 4? The main reason I don't have very many is I just couldn't think of good ones to find - plus in mission 3 the fact that you need to find a glowie on an already huge map would be even more annoying if there were a bunch of "red herring" glowies so you couldn't even find it via the noise it makes. This is probably the best idea though - I think mission 1 and 2 would probably be good spots to work these details in.

This is another point where we'll just have to agree to disagree - I think the best way to really draw the player into the story is for them to feel and experience everything EXACTLY as their character sees it. If the player was "in" on the idea that their character had gone insane, they would understand the situation too well to really feel that same confusion that the character would be. Again, it's meant to be open to interpretation - the synopsis I posted is just MY interpretation (Granted, I am the author of the arc), but that doesn't necessarily mean that if someone takes it differently it makes them "wrong".

Anyway, I think I've taken up enough of your thread :P thanks once again for the review, I'm actually very satisfied with the reaction it got from you.

...No matter how many people run this they always find more typos. I swear they multiply like bacteria when I'm not looking. Also, "Irine" is how I thought the name is actually spelled, so that's stupid on my part. "Irene" is probably what I was going for. I think I'm probably going to leave that as-is just because it's used so many times through the arc that I'd rather not miss one and have it flip back and forth. I guess think of it as some weird esoteric spelling, like "Geoff".

You mentioned this a few times and I'm glad you did; this is actually a relic from pre-I16 when you couldn't change faction titles without designing a whole new custom faction, which I didn't want to do since I would have had like, 8 by the end of it. I'd totally forgotten you can just change their factions in the objective text now, so I've gone through and fixed all those.

Basically the way I was going with mission titles is they're the reason while you're in the building in the first place; you don't really know what's going to happen while you're in there and I don't want the titles to give away that anything else WILL happen, so I left them tied to the first objective.

The Council are kind of there as a MacGuffin to explain why Event Horizon and Schism are there (It's not well explained really, but they're meant to be partners). However, I kind of got an idea based on a later comment you made in mission 4 on a good place to re-use them.

I added a line to the end of mission clue Event Horizon gives you explaining that Schism is looking for survivors, so he might have seen Haley.

He's meant to be the kind of "Grr, Grimdark eeeeevil antihero" type people seem enamoured with. My goal with him was basically to take that concept and run it to the logical conclusion (Sure, he's good at slicing up monsters, but sometimes he gets monsters and people confused...). Also, the objective is another relic of pre-I16 when you couldn't link collections in a mission chain (Actually that might even be I15... I don't change objectives a lot). I've fixed it so they trigger after rescuing Schism rather than being present from the beginning.

A lot of people comment on this, my reasoning is basically, they WERE survivors, you just got to them too late. It's meant to kind of tie in to Schism's dialogue about how he sometimes finds survivors after the Pantheon, and so much blood... it's subtle, but that's not a mis-phrasing on his part. It's meant to imply what he does to them. The body bags are meant to be an indication of that.

A quick explanation of this: The survivors are picked at random from the "Civilians" default group, the trouble is the game uses that as a catchall for every random NPC you ever meet in a mission, so they've got stuff in there like Tsoo tattoo artists, General Z, Big McLargeHuge from the TV missions, etc. Sometimes it can be a little mood-spoiling but I didn't want to have the player rescue 3 identical NPCs, and likewise I didn't want the player to get the "Rescue Haley" objective until they'd rescued the last of the NPCs (So separate objectives with different models is also out).

That's also why you got the objective after rescuing the soldier - the trouble is the way the game works with multiples of the same objective is it gives out the clue after completing the FIRST one, but chains objectives off the LAST one. I'd really like it if the clue came after rescuing the last guy, but I can't seem to get it to do that at the moment.

Some people have mentioned it's a leap, but actually originally that line wasn't there until I got a lot of complaints saying "How did I know it was Schism?" when the objective pops up. It's not my favorite solution but I ran out of room in the clue to go into more detail.

I wanted to use that map SOMEWHERE in this arc because the graveyard is such a big part of Astoria, and also because of the next mission where you go down inside the graveyard where Mot is buried. Originally most of those flavour mobs weren't there but I added them in because the map seemed WAY too boring with just the two objectives. There's actually quite a bit of detail in the "optional" objectives - they give you more dialog if you attack them. Basically, they don't much care about Haley or Schism, they're mostly there doing their own thing and only really care about you if you get in their way. I'll add more to this later - I want to get through my responses first before I go into detail about the plot.

I've gotten this response before, and to be honest, it is more accurate that way, but I felt like the line "wanders off into the fog" is more evocative of what's actually happening. Again, more on this later.

I'm guessing you write these stream-of-consciousness style, as later you seem to resign to the fact that this mission is not the type of thing to really explain anything :P

To be honest, the Tuatha were kind of thrown in as I wanted something "Monster-ish". I got an idea from your comments though and replaced them with something that ties better into the arc. I am somewhat annoyed that "Worship" is not an option for enemy group starting animations, but oh well.

They spawn off in a side room as a battle and it usually finishes before anyone ever finds it. I've also found it odd how the text never copies/pastes from CoH correctly, I guess it's just a weirdness of the font they use. As a note though - they actually AREN'T speaking the same language. It's gibberish either way when you translate it, but the Coralax are speaking with Greek characters, and the Pantheon and mission intro are... I think it's Cyrillic. I'm not 100% sure though.

There's actually no phone clicky option, but the destructable version works too in my opinion, since I can have it spit out dialogue while you destroy it.

Done. And I also changed the other two objectives because your comments gave me a great idea about a pun on "You've crossed Event Horizon".

This is intentional. Originally this mission was very different, and it was actually possible to avoid fighting the civilians entirely. At first I thought people were being very clever about that, but after a while I realized it kind of defeated the point of this mission if you don't HAVE to take any of them out. Event Horizon's line about being "Puppets" is meant to indicate the fact that despite the illusion of free will, the game constraints prevent you from doing or not doing anything the author of the arc doesn't want - short of just quitting and not finishing the story, anyway.

That's why it's like that, yeah. Old MA trick. It's not noticeable on the model but it shows up in the chatlogs.

It's intentional :P

It's a typo. Most people don't even TRY to read that so I'm not surprised it took this long for anyone to spot it. However the text is currently sitting at 1001/1000 so I can't actually fix it. We'll call it she's just talking really really fast.

A lot of people seem to miss this, and I don't really blame them but it is kind of subtle, but the Great Herald is Haley reincarnated (Likewise the Great Clown is Schism, but most people seem to catch that). So technically you did kill her, but she got better. Also, mission 5 is meant to be filled with "Civilians", not just the ones guarding Event Horizon... if they weren't there then I'm going to need to go back and try to bug fix that. But essentially, the implication of Event Horizon's final dialogue is maybe you WERE killing civilians the whole time you were mowing down BP... or maybe you weren't. It's meant to be open to interpretation - I think the horror lies in the uncertainty; that people end up coming away thinking they MIGHT have done something horrible, but they just aren't sure.

I'm actually very happy with the "I couldn't tell how I felt about it, but I ended up liking it" response (You aren't the only person to have said it). I think if people were too sure about this arc I'd have to change it until they weren't - it's meant to be as far from straightforward as possible, and I completely expected mixed reactions from the moment I published it.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a quick summary of the lesser emphasized elements of the plot, and maybe get some advice about how to work these in better, or if I should just leave them as-is (Since they're more setting elements than plot elements).

Okay, the very, very general plot is you're wandering around Dark Astoria for... whatever reason (Maybe you're farming magic salvage!) and you find the radio, which leads you to Irine and Event Horizon and gets you embroiled in a plot which is pretty simple "Rescue the survivors" until it all goes nuts in mission 4 and 5. That's basically the driving force behind the story, but I added in a lot of optional and somewhat hidden elements to reward people with more insight into the setting if they take the time to look around (Or if they stumble on it by accident - which I admit is far more likely).

Here's what's going on in Astoria (According to my story, obviously non-canon): The fog came first and trapped a lot of people inside Astoria. At first there were no BP, the fog rolled in and that was it. People then started disappearing in the fog, but still no BP. Later, the BP came in and started digging up the graveyard, raising the dead and clearly looking for something - they believe that their gods are buried in Astoria. Once the BP took over, that's when the hazard gates went up, trapping anyone who hadn't already left inside - this includes the Council, who when you meet them are in the process of trying to evacuate a base - Event Horizon was sent into Astoria with Schism to investigate the Council and try to figure out what they're doing there, but upon meeting survivors, he decides to assign Schism to finding them while he continues looking into the Council. The Council find him, and realizing they can use his hero ID to get through the hazard gates, try to kill him and take it.

This is the point where the player arrives on the scene, and I'm going to skip over the basic plot elements since they're pretty obvious and instead focus on the tertiary elements like the BP and Mot.

Essentially, what's going on is that the fog is Mot. Mot, being a cannibal god, covers the area in the fog and pretty much starts "Digesting" it all. Given that he's still buried however, he can only extend his influence as far as Astoria - so he brings in the BP, deceiving them into thinking that it's THEIR gods that are buried there, to free him from his prison. In mission 3 there are several lines of dialogue that allude to this, including a captive ranting BP shaman yelling that they're all being deceived, and the masks which yell "Rambetu, Lughebu!" (Two of the BP gods) when they aggro you say "No... Mot..." when they die. I tried to imply that the BP are terrified of Mot and would leave him buried if they realized that he was there, but most of them don't realize it, and those that do go insane (Well... MORE insane). They're afraid of him because Mot, being a cannibal god, is pretty keen on eating THEIR gods as well as everything else (The original biblical source for Mot has Mot threatening to devour Ba'al and also devouring his brothers).

So... that brings us to mission 4. I went with a kind of "Too deep" concept here, going with the Lovecraftian idea that exposure to an ancient god is too much for a human mind to withstand, so it drives them insane. This is basically what happens to the player in mission 4 - the mobs start speaking gibberish, objects which clearly don't belong there start appearing, and the UI in general just goes "Screw this, you're on your own buddy" and leaves you to Mot's whims. Mission 4 is designed to be crazy and confusing because it's the point when the player character goes insane, whether or not they realize it.

Mission 5 is an extension of that - You aren't as close to Mot as in the mausoleum so you regain some of your facilities, but things are still just... off. Civilians replace the BP, lines of dialogue are shared between both (Suggesting that what you're fighting could be civilians that look like BP, or BP that look like civilians, or maybe a little of both). It's meant to make you start to question the things you did prior to mission 4, which I see it did, so that's good :P. A pretty recurring theme in fiction when someone goes insane is that they claim they've "seen the truth", and I wanted the player to start feeling that in mission 5 maybe they've figured out what's REALLY been going on - except they haven't, because they're insane.

By the time you get the souvenir, the "Insanity" bit has essentially worn off, but you still get left with this whole uncertainty about what's actually happened.

At least, that's my interpretation of it. I left the conclusion of the arc very open and vague because I wanted to let people draw their own conclusions about what they'd experienced.

Anyway, I'm terrified of how long this post is going to be now, so in summary:
Thanks for the review! I really appreciate your feedback and already I've made a bunch of changes in response to some of the issues you had in the arc.

I think I meant more of a thematic link but it's hard to say since it was a while ago when I ran the arc and I don't really remember what I meant at the time :P

Actually, now that I think about it, something that might really make the arc interesting is if you went into the "Guns vs. Samurai" thing a bit more. Historically, as soon as guns were invented the whole "Samurai" thing basically up and died as everyone raced to get more firearms. I think it would be a great theme in the arc if you represented it as kind of "The end of an era", maybe have the "Good" side start taking up firearms of their own in order to stay competitive, push the idea that even though you fought off the invaders the world is going to be changed forever, etc.

...Or maybe you did some of that stuff already. Like I said, I ran it a while ago so just ignore me if I'm being redundant with what you already wrote :3

You mean like the World Series?