lionheart_fr

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Agreed to a certain extent; it depends on the purpose of the too. Personally, I think Hemmingway is dry and boring.

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...was only referring to this...

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Heh, I can actually see clever uses for this type of text in-game.

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I plan on doing a reasonable amount of this through clues and in-mission dialogue, since those can be shorter bite sized chunks. If you learn bits of information from computers or bulletin boards as you go along, it spares you from having to have a six paragraph mission complete clue.

The other side of this, of course, is simplicity of premise. If your basic mission arc needs more than one sentence to explain what it's about, at least "OOC" to another player, then it's probably going to be too text rich.

Finally, if you have to go heavy text, I'd think doing it in mission 3 or 4 would make more sense than 1 or 2. Get people into your arc and "plot-committed" before trying to make them care about your breathless prose. The player will only get invested in the arc if he feels like he's actually doing and learning these things. Letting your contact figure everything out and spout out long swatches of backstory is another way of saying "you're just here to watch my cutscenes, boyo." If your arc isn't 1-2 missions long, your first mission's intro isn't likely to be very involved.

As an example, in the notes I've written for one of my more involved Redside arcs -- one with twists and turns and some nice crunchy story and pseudocanon -- my first mission comes down to "hey, I've got a line on a nice bank heist. You in?" Nice, simple, normal enough... it's what happens during the heist that makes the difference.

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Nice post. This is my thinking as well. Hopefully we'll be able to add some good hooks as we go, through quest dialog, clues, and perhaps in-mission "drama" text. Something to keep the story flowing and growing as it progesses.

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Brevity and economy are virtues of good writing. I'm not saying that all mission texts should (or even could) aspire to be Hemingway six word stories. But be like Harvey Pekar and foster a knack for knowing when there are too many words on the page.

(Note that I direct this to myself as much as I do towards the poster above or anyone else reading...)

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Agreed to a certain extent; it depends on the purpose of the too. Personally, I think Hemmingway is dry and boring. But I've also seen authors who bog their text down with so much over-description and flowery language as to be unreadable.

Keeping it brief is especially true for MMO writing. Yet how to keep it short and yet give it personality as well will be an interesting experiment.

I don't want all of the quest givers sounding the same (cookie cutter personality with a different face attached), yet bogging the player down with too much text would be a mistake as well.

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I think one main area you would want to avoid is too much text. If your descriptions and story is too lengthy that may cause a player to exit immediately. I know I will be trying to streamline my story...it will be difficult to find that balance of just enough story and fun missions...

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This is a difficult balance. There needs to be enough story to draw the reader in, but not so much as to push them back out again.

Now, for test mode missions I'll run with my wife, daughter, and/or other friends and family, I'll probably keep the text much shorter. We'll gather in the SG base for a better mission briefing first, then go run the missions. RP potential is great.

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I was lukewarm on the MA until I read the writeup. Now I think it has a lot of fun potential.

I was a GM and builder on a Neverwinter server and the ability to tell special stories was one reason I stayed there so long. With MA I can create missions meant for specific people or even myself (or others for me) to advance our roleplay and character stories. I think that is awesome.

I assume when you are testing you can bring along a team. If that's true then I'd never have to actually publish those arcs right? Just run them the one time in test mode and then delete it?

I suppose I don't mind publishing them to the community at large but because of the specificity I wouldn't think anyone else would be interested.

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From what I understand, you can do this in test mode without publishing. However, there is no XP or other reward for playing in test mode.

This is not a big deal to me; it still offers fantastic RP potential in addition to the regular content. I can see playing SG-specific missions in test mode, while still playing/creating other published arcs as well.

The best of all worlds. Wow. Time to start prewriting; MA sounds like a winner!

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In the Massively audio, they said you can use MA from level 1. You can do the tutorial at that level. At level 5 you will be directed to it if you have not gone yet.

I take the saying "At the high level", to not mean level in game but like an executive or bird's eye view. A summary if you will.

--Rad

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Thank you. I read the Massively article at work and didn't get to listen to the audio at that time. I assumed this was the case, but wanted to be sure.

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This reminds me of when my brother was working tech support, and someone complained that "Windows has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down." The person asked what they did that was illegal, since she owned stock in microsoft. :P

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Hopefully my question wasn't that bad.

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He means "from a birds eye view" or "there's lots of stuff this lets you do, but it basically does this". It has nothing to do with "levels" in terms of RPG character progression.

EG: At a high level, a car moves you quickly.

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That's what I was hoping he meant; it was just a little ambiguous, so I thought I'd go for clarification.

When I read the article at lunch this after noon, I called my wife and told her "I think my head just exploded!"

The MA is an exciting addition to CoH.

However, one line in the description cut into my enthusiasm greatly, unless I'm misinterpreting:

"At the high level we allow you to create your own stories and share them with others in the game."

What does "At the high level" mean? I've been in CoH for 30 months, but I have severe altitis. My highest level character is 32. Is the MA level-gated? If I can't get in and start creating content at release, it will be a *major* disappointment. This is the update I've been looking forward to the most.

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I hope none of you have plans to make peoples go zone to zone to zone just for the missions.

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For me, it will depend on the storyline being developed. There are instances where it could be logical progression to do so. However, zone-hopping because of randomization doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.

Personally, *if* we are given that level of control, most of my stories will not be zone-hopping.

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[color=yellow]
<ul type="square">[*]90 days incactive under lvl 12 toons names unlocked (which is current practice I believe)[*]6 months inactive under lvl 24 names unlocked[*]1 year inactive under lvl 36 names unlocked[*]2 years inactive under lvl 46 names unlocked[*]3 years inactive all names unlocked[/list]
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Last year, my wife and I had to deactivate our accounts for budgetary reasons. We were off for eight months. Happily we're back again and having a blast.

However, all but one of our characters fell in the 24 and under category. If we had reactivated and found a truckload of our characters genericized because their names were unlocked, that would have ended it. The names are part of the character design, not just an add on.

It boggles my mind when I hear people say "all the good names are taken." I have 70+ characters and have *never* had issues coming up with a name, even if my first idea was taken. All it takes is a little imagination and/or creativity. There is *no* limit to the number of good names available.

Taking names away is a good way to keep players from returning. The current policy is fine.

I kind of like the Hollows, but can see the benefits of most of these changes.

My one, major, huge gripe is the addition of the Vahzilok. They are my least favorite of the villain groups, and in fact I often bypass contacts that give Vahzilok missions. I used to always start in Atlas so I wouldn't have to face the pukers in Galaxy; then they stuck them in Atlas too.

For some reason, CoH as decided everybody *must* fight Vahzilok in every single zone. Why?