I know it's been forever, but I just wanted to say thanks and that I've taken your feedback into consideration.
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Originally Posted by Coulomb2
Note: Upon entering the mission, the pop-up mentioned the Veluszhi by name; that was a little jarring since it implied that the farmer had called the aliens by name (which he didn’t).
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Noted and corrected.
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Almost immediately upon arriving at Atlas, the weird factor was ramped up a few notches as I did battle with an invading lieutenant. The creature referred to me as an ‘Edenite’, and made some awfully strange statements about dressing up like animals. Not to mention some sort of statement about coming here for the bunnygirls. Huh?
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He only exists to mention the fact that Veluszhi can change their racial identity. I cut him out, and that mention is now part of Syn-fatuush's dialog and his boss defeat clue.
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Notes: On the plus side, the arc already gives the impression of being well constructed, and the custom group is very well done. On the ‘down’ side (sort of), although I’ve got the basic plot down solid, my first impression in this first mission is *strange.* Although, on a basic level, the story seems to be a serious one, it was actually a little hard for me to tell if some of the strangeness was intended as humor, or if it was intended to make the aliens seem strange. See, “strange” here isn’t bad per-se: these guys are aliens, so it doesn’t bother me that they seem strange. But, at the moment, if there are attempts at humor, I’d say they’re getting lost in the strangeness…
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It was a problem of direction, as in I didn't know which one I wanted the story to take. By the end, I got it down, but the beginning is... odd.
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The first two tasks were easy enough, but the last proved impossible – literally. After searching through the map at least three times, I simply couldn’t find the Drill Sergeant at all.
Note: I suspect this may be a case of objective overload; if you’re right at the limit of the number of objectives a map can take, sometimes a chained, but mission critical objective won’t spawn in, making the mission uncompleteable. Really, the only way to deal with this is to remove some of the ‘flavor’ objectives (especially things like that ambush, or some of the patrols) – or, alternately, don’t make the Drill Sergeant a chained objective; just have him spawn in right at the start.
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He IS set to spawn from the start of the mission. Unfortunately, sometimes he either spawns in the wrong area or not at all. Even when he's the only objective on the map, he sometimes fails to spawn, and I've seen him spawn at the beginning of the level despite him being marked for the end.
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Minor Note: “Sounds like sarge ran outta medicine again…” “Oh, Christ. You know what? Just kill me now and get it over with.” Okay, very minor niggle … but it seems quite unrealistic that the footsoldiers of an alien empire would be using human-specific “swears.” Wouldn’t they say something like “Oh, Vid-Szhite” (or some other revered alien figure) instead?
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This is supposed to be a little one-off joke, and I find that using names of foreign deities doesn't have quite the same impact. Feedback accepted, though; I changed it to Space Christ.
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But what was odd was Vid-Szhite was already being criticized for not doing enough to further the expansion of the Veluzhi. Given than the Veluzhi were clearly expanding their empire with gusto, Vid-Szhite must have opted to return the empire to its expansionist roots some time after this chronicle was written.
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Correct.
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Note: I never did really figure out what the “WAFN SS-J” stood for… at least not at this point in the story.
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It doesn't stand for anything. It's a play off of "Waffen SS", Hitler's Elites.
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(Note: Not *too* unreasonable, but, I think It’d be better if Argus dropped a clue that somehow gave me a story-related reason to know that the Emperor was here – as it stand, I simply defeat Argust, and suddenly know the Emperor is here as well, and needs to be defeated. That’s a bit jarring… without some sort of clue to advance the plot, the “feel” is that the mission should be over. Instead, I’m about to hunt down and fight the Emperor…)
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There's optional bosses placed throughout the level that mention the Emperor is coming, at the beginning, mid, and end. If you missed all of them, it was just bad luck. They have a very bad habit of spawning at the very back end of the mission.
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It was actually the former Emperor Vid-Szhite that led me to Fed … I found him not too far away from where Rathie’s transport dropped me. The moment I rescued him, he told me where to find Fed. Note: Okay, that seems to be a rather large hole in the story. Why the heck is Vid-Szhite still alive? It seems to me that the progression of the story practically requires that he die in our previous encounter – after all, he *is* the Emperor, and if he isn’t, in fact, dead, then it seems neither Fed nor Rathie have a clear claim to power any more. After all, one would assume that a rather large fraction of the army was ‘probed’ from earlier campaigns (before they came to Earth), and would have a forced loyalty to the Emperor – a loyalty that could only be shifted to another member of the Empire if the Emperor was dead.
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This only makes sense in context, and I had forgotten that I'd had to cut the context out of the last mission to make it fit the filesize. This is an origin story in disguise, of how Vid-szhite, my main, became stranded on Earth with his power gone. I'll fix that.
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Pros: As always, I’ve got feedback on things that I thought could be improved, but overall, I thought this was an excellent arc. One of my most common critiques is that the arc needs “polish” (my generic way of saying its needs some proofreading passes, perhaps a few adjustments to the story, tweaking of the custom characters, and some more flavor objectives to help draw you into the story). Well, here is an example of an arc that does *not* need polish – it is a well, put-together arc that has the feel of a lot of work having gone into it. Great use of clues, chained objectives (except for that one odd bug), flavor objectives. Excellent custom group overall. And I found the story to be pretty interesting. The twist with the farmer being the Chancellor was quite amusing: as you can tell from my commentary, I did notice a lot of oddness about the farmer, but it didn’t click as to who exactly he was practically until the story revealed it.
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His oddness is completely intentional, but the foreshadowing gets lost in the wackiness of the enemy dialog sometimes.
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Cons: Well, if I’ve got to nitpick, I’ll start by summarizing my chief objections from the commentary: humor is a very subjective thing, and, for what it’s worth, I think some of the attempts at humor (if that’s what they were) fell flat early in the arc, especially in that first mission. It came off as “strange” or “awkward” more than funny. Granted, that might have also been the author’s intent, but I think it works better if you stick to one or the other. As it stands, it reads like the author’s trying to be funny, but it comes off as strange, as opposed to it being clear that the aliens are supposed to give you a very strange impression, with any humor that comes of that a complete coincidence.
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Yep, it was intended as humor but failed. I'm working on it.
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Obviously, there was that bug in the second mission – it’s my sincere hope that was just a fluke. But it should be looked into: I know from personal experience random players tend to blame (and punish) the author for bugs that aren’t really their fault. You might not be able to completely eliminate it, but anything you can do to make it an extremely rare occurrence (or, alternately, plenty of testing to confirm it’s an extremely rare occurance) is a very good idea. In my experience, eliminating a few of the flavor objectives might help.
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Every time I test his level, he spawns correctly. As soon as I play it live, something happens to his mission, every freaking time, and I don't know how to fix it without remaking the entire mission _again_, for all the good that's done me.
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In mission three, the appearance of the Emperor is like a hiccup in the plot – according to the setup, I’m supposed to be dealing with two “bigwigs.” The problem is, one of them turns out to not want to fight me (Fed), leaving the other to be defeated (Argus). So, now I’d assume I’ve dealt with the two leaders the Farmer was referring to, and it’s time to deal a final blow to the Empire (i.e. hunt down and defeat the Emperor, assuming he’s even with the invaders; I’ve gotten no indication as to whether or not he’s on the ground, on this ship, or directing operations from their homeworld, or something). But, instead, I just suddenly “know” the Emperor is also on the ship (when, apparently, I didn’t before) – and the only tangible thing that seems to inform me of that is Argus’ warning I won’t defeat the Emperor (which doesn’t really tell me he’s *here*). Some sort of clue telling me the Emperor has just arrived on the mothership and intends to face down and kill the ‘Edenite’ trespassor would really help here.
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Again, there are optional bosses everywhere that mention his impending arrival. Sometimes, they all seem to gather in the same spot at the very back end of the level for some reason, when they're not set to spawn there.
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And finally, in mission four, there’s the appearance of the Emperor as ‘alive and well’, in spite of having been killed in mission three – and the story thus far only making sense if he was dead, not just badly injured.
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Noted, working on it.
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A short word on the custom group. On one had, they did sometimes feel overpowered (especially if you assume you are at the low level range end of the arc). But, to be fair, it’s not like they were really defeating me consistently, which suggests their balanced just fine. So I got to really thinking about it, and, honestly, there’s one thing that stands out: it’s the plethora of ice control powers, particularly on the “Frost” bosses. It’s surprisingly easy for them to stack so much –recharge on you that your entire attack tray becomes a long line of perpetually tiny buttons. While that wouldn’t be as serious an issue for a defense based set, it can get to be terribly annoying for a resistance set (like Fire). Again, it’s not so much that the ice troopers are overpowered per se (I didn’t actually get defeated facing them), as their powers lead to situations where I’m completely out of attack powers, with none of them even close to recharging.
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This is a problem with the experience system. If I don't give the ice control bosses their most annoying powers, the Architect gives people no exp for them. I did not want Ice bosses to be capable of killing people, but I'll rework them to make them less annoying. I do get that they're horrible.
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So, overall, this was a very well done arc – it was clear a lot of work has gone into it. It’s got a good story, an interesting set of custom groups, and missions that are (generally) well put together. Very good!
Score: 4.50
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Thanks! Much appreciated. I'll get right to work on fixing the oddities and then I'll get to work on a new arc.
I see how it is. 
