twelfth

*Applies Fire Extinguisher to Own Butt*

Ooookay.

Arc Name: Can You Win The Internet?
Arc ID: 85544
Author: @twelfth (easiest way to find it)
Length: "Very Long" (4 mission; maps are small to med)
Morality: Neutral (with chewy, nugatey heroic flavor, and approved by redsiders)
Description: Betty The AI needs your help to save the internet from digital menaces both within cyberspace and the real world!

COOL! Flame Wars! CRUSH! Gold Spammers! CLEAN! up pr0n! DEFEAT! the one eye-stabbingly, hair-pullingly, groin-explodingly frustrating adversary CoX NEVER lets you fight!! BEHOLD! Grotesque overuse of Exclamation Points!!!11!!

Quick Updates:

Fixed syntax issues on the "warehouse raid" issue mentioned by PsychoPez and another tester. Must have stuck out pretty bad

Also fixed the linked objectives in mission 3 to stop sequence breaking.

Fixed a logical error in the mission complete popup window text in mission 4. Logical error with the generators is being worked on, just need to find the right way to word what needs to be done.

Mission 1 has an issue that the Freak patrols are not battling the PPD Patrols, but setting them both to Rogue would probably cause them to fight intrafactionly - which also would not make any sense. Can someone confirm whether setting patrols to "Rogue" will have PPD fighting PPD and Freaks fighting Freaks? Thanks.

When the Bough Breaks

TL;DR: 4 stars. Highly functional arc, no major mechanical or text errors, good critter design, excellent adherence to Riktispeak. Has some arguable issues with game canon, 2 mishes with low xp/tickets, iffy adherence to Aeon challenge, and Arc Not As Billed.

Pre-Game/Initial Contact:

Ran this on a 50 Ice/EM/Ice Blaster set on +1/x0/Boss On/No AV. I started the arc with one extra player for the first mish only, however this might have increased the spawn size throughout the whole arc.

The arc bills itself as being "soloable for any level" and has a keyword of "Easy". In the AE interface, it is listed as a 40-54 arc. As I found out, the arc really should not be considered "easy", as I had a LOT of deaths when it came to fighting some of the bosses. All critters are normal PVE Rikti, with some recolors.

The Contact is a basic Vanguard model, whose background text indicates that he's a former Marine. I caught a bit of author insert here, in so much as the contact is credited as being the leader of a unit of non-powered soldiers who had (improbably) sustained no fatal casualties in the First Rikti War. Throughout the arc, the contact is sort of portrayed as a no-nonsense front-line ground-pounder who purports more common-sense knowledge of the day-to-day battles of the Warzone than his lofty superiors (whom he holds in little regard). It's a pretty classic characterization, but might grate on the sensibilities of those who try maintain a more balanced perspective. This is by no means a suggestion that the characterization needs changing, only a comment on how I'm perceiving things.

Mission One:

As mentioned, the contact is pretty gruff and holds no sympathy for the Rikti, but the task is pretty simply done. The text of the briefing has good, spare use of color to highlight emotes and narration.

The "still busy" text is short & dismissive, providing no further context or expansion than what is already known - which pretty consistent with the normal PVE content.

The mission boss was directly in front of me as I zoned into the mish. Not on top of me, of course, but clearly visible with no other objective or mobs between her and me.

The clickies are very quick to tag and complete. The disappearing boxes meshes well with the idea that they are being teleported away. The mission is short and to the point.

Mission Two:

The final line on the 1st Briefing page is a little awkward, but I parsed it out after a moment. Might be a personal brainfizzle on my part.

This mission has two quibbles which I'm not vastly concerned about, but bear mentioning. The first is a canon issue. The mission takes place in the Midnight Club, where a Rikti Traditionalist (i.e. the "good" guys who are trying to diplomatically end the war) is penning books on Rikti Culture. This presented me with a bit of dissonance. IIRC, the in-game reason that the Midnight Club was not opened to player earlier in the history of CoX was that it was decimated in the wake of the Rikti War due to their susceptibility to magic. The Midnight Club and other mystics were, I believe, specifically targeted during the war. I find it sorta questionable as to whether the Midnighters would easily allow any Rikti within their sanctum.

That is a quibble, however, and I ignored it to complete the mission.

The second quibble I have is that the mission is simply informational and a clicky-quest. A fast player can get through it in probably under 5 minutes. I took longer because I wanted to read all the clickies and because (OMG) I used the WALK power throughout the whole mission ('cause when the hell else was I gonna get the opportunity to do so?). My point here is that there are no enemy mobs, so there's no opportunity to get XP, inf, or tickets. Personally, I don't mind. There are others, however, who will mind this.

Otherwise, the mission is fine and functional. The crawlbar text for the glowies is the same as the chatbox start-interaction text, which is a stylistic thing I tend to avoid. It seems to be possible to sequence break to click on the glowies before they are necessary, but I doubt there's much you can do about that. Also, the mission is a little sparse, I don't know if you have room in the map to put in some patrols, but some friendly/ally midnighter patrols might help it from looking so abandoned as it does at the moment.

By the way, the Rikti is using the "research high" emote (which makes him gesture his hand in the air for no reason), I don't recall if it is an option, but you might try the "read book" emote.

Mission Three:

Now we're into the meat of the mish. I can see where this is likely to go, but we'll play it out. No issues in the briefing, we're expanding on the use of the colors and text options, which is good.

Going into the mission, we get some good clues on what is going on, and I pretty much get immediately what is going to happen. It's a good plot, and makes perfect sense for a sort of intrigue-y war story. The Restructurists have a good idea, and it's pretty much a great idea for any insurrectionist force needing grass-roots support. I get the idea that the author either has first-hand experience with being in the military and the socio-political context of warfare and civilian culture, or has researched it reasonably well in real life. I've got an issue with some of this plot, well actually a lot of it, but I'll get to that later.

I totally get that the item is supposed to be a cradle. Contrary to the mission demands, I don't destroy it. My PC's not that hard-hearted and she loves children.

This mission introduces the Big Bad of the arc, the Rikti Fastborn, and good god, they are not to be screwed around with. I've played the LGTF and all through the RWZ arcs, and I don't remember seeing this guy before. I've got the slightest hint that maybe he's actually supposed to be an EB. It took me about four deaths to nail him, and more insps than I'm comfortable blowing on a single boss. Fortunately, one of the unsung advantages of NinjaRun is that it lets you get back to these bosses much faster than before - so they don't have quite as much time to regen health.

I don't know if this was intentional, but the optional objectives of getting more of the hijacked supplies back were all set behind the Boss.

Once the boss-battle text revealed what the cradle was for, the PC immediately smashed it after getting killed the first time.


Mission Four

At this point, I'm not feeling entirely "evil" in my mission. I mean, this is basic military stuff, all part of the RWZ war effort. Sure, my contact is sort of a jerk and has ZERO empathy or charisma, but that doesn't exactly make him evil. Right now I'm a little conflicted about smashing up innocent "civilian" Rikti - more on that later - but since they are attacking me, I don't have a lot of choice but to fight back. Then again, I AM invading their...refugee camps? Enclaves? Whatevers? and stealing (back) their food and living necessities. That's sort of evil. More like being a dick, really. Whatever.

Okay, so going into this mish I am not on my A-game. Not sure why, just wasn't. I died a few times on basic spawns. My bad. HOWEVER. It took my at least six to eight deaths to get to the Rikti base portion of the mission. Two Fastborns in immediate succession, one of whom had two Mentalist LTs backing him up. I was jammed into Mez, sleep, hold and then death in short succession. An AT with good mez protect and resistences might have gotten through this much more easily, but a blaster or other squishy? Not so much.

I don't know if the difficulty was a function of my spawns being increased because of the duo I started the Arc with (but no longer had), or because the "Boss" encounters were set to hard or whatever. Also, I play squishies a lot - almost exclusively. So, I'm used to dying occasionally when solo. I shrug it off. I'm used to dying once or twice on a single boss if I'm just off-game or they're resistant, or whatever. But the freaking Fastborns were seriously challenging me.

I did persevere, however, and finished the mission. Clearing the captive (thank god, no extra boss) seemed to have spawned several new patrols - but I might not have gotten close enough to trigger their text earlier. If it's the latter, no big deal. If the former, it seems to be a waste of extra objectives.

Mission Five

I had two In-Character breaks on this mission in the briefing alone. The first was the bit where the contact say something to the jist of "the enclave members didn't come to us for fear of [the humans] turning on them. Can't say I blame them". To which I mentally replied, "Gee, maybe it's cause of ******** like you with a shoot-first let-the-devs-sort-them-out-later mentality?"

Yes, I'm a peacemongering liberal democrat IRL. What of it?

Then there was this jewel:

Epolitto: "It may not mean much right now, but if those devices were able to remain functioning, it's hard to say how fast these Restructurists scum..."

12th's PC: *THWACK!!* "CHILDREN!! They're ****ing CHILDREN, you bloodthirsty *******!"

The mission is a heartwrenching suckerpunch. You have a decision, and the responsibility is purely in the PCs hands of what to do. The PC I used is characterized as an immensely conscientious, polite, hope-filled woman who seeks the best in a world she knows is flawed - but tries to set a kinder, gentler example for others. She loves children and wants a family in a very bad way.

Seriously, the text from the object destruction floored me. I couldn't believe that the author actually crossed that line. It is one thing to cognitively acknowledge what you are doing, to accept that certain actions have consquences which are undesireable, and perhaps unliveable in kinder, less crucial times. It is another to have your face rubbed in the fact that you are perpetrating an atrocity.

ICly, my PC would not have done this willingly. It would have literally murdered her spirit. The player was a little torn on this, but I decided that I was reviewing the arc and I wanted to see what happened. For the purposes of my PC's interaction, I decided/imagined that the PC tried to Take A Third Option and was not intentionally destroying the objects. Rather, she was working in a frenzy to find some way to free the "prisoners" from their doom. Of course, due to some quirk of design or intentional fool-proofing the device by the Restructurists, that her tampering only hastened the demise of the innocent lives she was trying to save.

Psycho Pez, I want you to know that my PC conscientiously, respectfully, and with every ounce of compassionate outrage recovered each one of those "prisoners" bodies and carried them back to Vanguard HQ in order to throw them in the face of Eppolitto before Pounding his *** into hamburger and putting him on charges before Lady Grey. It wouldn't matter if anything came of it, but she would never stand for him to not be called to the carpet for putting her in that situation.

Also, she's spending the next several months in intensive counselling. This is a woman who was (ICly) bawling her face off in the initial RWZ intro missions because she couldn't possibly save every single Vanguard soldier who was being ambushed by the Rikti. She puts the "CRY" in "cryokinetic".

ANYWAY.

Mechanically speaking, this is another low-reward mission (low tickets, low xp/inf). This will bother some players. However, it didn't bother me specifically and I recognize that it is a timed mission with a very small amount of time. There is not much leeway in order to slap in some mobs with little connection to the thrust of the mission. Ten minutes was perfectly reasonable for someone to navigate for the mission and I expect it's not too long for someone to wait if they decline to carry out the objective.

The debriefing text is cold comfort for anyone who completed the mission "successfully", and is the kind of vaguely patchy justification that anyone gives for participating in culturally sanctioned murder. For some, it might be enough; for others - nothing can excuse what was done. These are the events that emotionally scar and deform people in real life, and this arc really simulates that well.

Overview:

Good stuff - The arc nails down RiktiSpeak. It might even improve on it. Not sure. The critter design was very nice, good chosen recolors when I noticed them. I'm annoyed that the high-level Rikti are repetitively two-toned, while lower level Rikti are usually a lot more varied and colorful. It was good to see them change around a bit. The arc is perfectly functional in a mechanical sense, no errors or missing spawns, no problems with grammar or any noted spelling errors. The plot moves logically from point A to point Z, with only subjective issues in logic or conflicts in game canon. This arc will absolutely, 100% punch your emotional buttons - so expect that everyone will have a strong response to the arc.

Criticism - Nothing horrific to criticize, and much of it subjective. Specific mechanical issues are noted in the individual missions. Some players will take exception to the low rewards yield in two of the five missions.

Also, there are several subjective issues that this player wishes to bring up:

The final mission turns up the pathos, the real horror of war to eleven. It's a bit of a swerve from the rest of the arc, which is basically indistinguishable from any other RWZ arc or MA mission. The remainder of the mission does have you doing things of questionable nature: stealing humanitarian supplies from impoverished civilians (which incidentally worsens their situation, causing them to rely even more heavily on the oppositionist forces), harrassing said populations, harming what are essentially child-soldiers, and then the atrocity which occurs only in the final mission. However, with the exception of the final mission, it all seems on the surface like a normal day on the job for the RWZ. By that I mean that the ethical ramifications of what you're doing are really just glossed over in favor of your contacts gung-ho, kill'em all, xenophobic furvor. I am on the fence on whether or not the arc really carries Aeon's Challenge theme throughout the whole arc. Of course, nothing said that it had to. I'm split on this.

There's one more canonicity issue I'd like to address, because it came to mind, but I don't think that the arc necessarily suffers for it. That's the issue of Rikti civilians. As far as I understand, there should NOT be any such thing on Earth Prime. The whole invasion force should have been a purely military population. The Rikti that we see and defeat on countless occasions are the remnants of the invasion force left on Earth Prime following the actions of Alpha and Omega teams. While that force is still considerable, it is essentially in a perpetual stop-loss, a recycling state of constant mustering of the same forces over and over again. There's no indication that the Rikti ever decommission or discharge their forces from military service ever. The idea that they can breed is not entirely unreasonable, but that they have what are essentially impoverished refugee camps or a civilian population isn't really borne out in the game canon. Indeed, if the Rikti could breed or had a civilian population to pull from for recruiting - why would they need the Lost in order to increase/replenish their forces?

Also, this sort of assumes that the population of the Rikti "homeworld" are actually all morphologically identical to the Rikti we see in game, rather than a warrior/military class specifically created for warfare. The game canon is definitely iffy on whether that is the case. I think the idea of a potential Rikti civilian population (e.g. comprised of deserters or criminals or something else) is a really interesting idea that sort of deserves its own arc, but here in this arc, its presence is an assumption that I can't match up with canon. I mention all this just as a narrative aside. I handwaved it for my participation in the arc, and just suspended my disbelief in order to enjoy the arc.

Finally, I have to agree with the previous poster who indicated that the decision to destroy the objects and doom their "prisoners" is completely political and diplomatic suicide. The Restructurists could have used that event to totally undermine the potential for the Traditionalist peace negotiations. Great for a Xanatos Gambit on the Restructurist's part, but the arc really doesn't play that side of the issue up. Just a thought.

I ended the arc with about 119K in debt. Not great for something marked as "easy".


Thanks for the assistance with my arc, though. I know this might be a little hefty for subjective criticism, but this arc is going to get a lot of discussion from anyone who plays it.

In general response, there's only so much anticipation and adaptation I can expect of the PC and the player. I wish I could tailor it to the concept and characterization of each PC, but that's really impossible. The best I am hoping for is to sort of anticipate the player's thoughts and feelings when they occur in the arc, and try to mirror that in the missions.

Yes, the arc hijacks the PC on several occasions, but the thrust of the challenge almost demands that for most PC's characterizations.

Ruin is my motherfrakkin' co-pilot.

I'd also like to see if there's gonna be an Infernia letter to balance Glacia's

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

'cause I love the CoX Boards Community - I am offering testing/reviews of any fellow Aeon Challenge Arcs if you will QPQ and comment here. Again, the arc is only up for feedback for one week before I submit.

New Updates:

- Informal testing is noting occasional critter/item spawning errors (stuck in walls). These don't happen all the time and maps vary. Not sure if this is the usual AE Map bugginess or not. Only recommendation I have is to log out of your toon, alt, and then relogin to the original toon and start the one mish over again.

- It's been noted that one of the bosses that appears in mish one and two (Blast Furnace) would be rather difficult for anyone with only fire damage. Both mishes that feature him come with a (non fire-based) ally available. FYI.

CC - would you mind taking a look at my Aeon Challenge Arc?

Arc Name: Task Force Mutternacht
Arc ID: # 349522
Morality: Hero
Creator: @twelfth
Difficulty Level: 30-54 (with some level caps due to allies)
Enemies: Paragon Police, Longbow, small custom group, Paragon City Heroes
Synopsis: Indigo is looking for the best, most trustworthy heroes in the city to help her find evidence of a horrific crime. A trial that will test your resolve, your ethics, and your heart.
Length: 4 missions, small to medium maps. LOTS of reading.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Ms. PW, if at all possible could you go ahead and run through "Task Force Mutternacht" (Arc #349522)? It is in a very shaky "looking for feedback" status but I'd like to try to get a "pro" review on it before I submit it for the Doc Aeon contest.

I know I PM'd you a lot of things, but I almost think that this Arc doesn't need multiple endings. This is a weird little story where the PC sort of knows more than the player and the narrator. It's subtle - but there's a lot of doubt about what is happening...

You know, if what is going on is what I think is going on - this Arc sort of becomes metafictional within the conventions of MA itself. After arcs like "Astoria in D Minor" and "The Doctor Returns" (two arcs which sort of dealt with similiar themes although with a different focus) - we've come to expect the PC to be unreliable, but we as players have come to implicitly trust the MA interface and narration as an impartial interpreter of what is happening in the story. I like that this arc may be playing with that. It's an advanced storytelling device and not easy to pick up on casually.

As for the Ship of Theseus theme...I think it's a great theme, a fun paradoxical thought exercise - but I think maybe it should be explored more fully in another arc. I think you should stay on target here with the contest challenge. I'd rather recommend either removing the reference (because it really isn't brought up again), or sewing it into the other themes a little more seamlessly.

Arc Name: Task Force Mutternacht
Arc ID: # 349522
Morality: Hero
Creator: @twelfth
Difficulty Level: 30-54 (with some level caps due to allies)
Enemies: Paragon Police, Longbow, small custom group, Paragon City Heroes
Synopsis: Indigo is looking for the best, most trustworthy heroes in the city to help her find evidence of a horrific crime. A trial that will test your resolve, your ethics, and your heart.
Length: 4 missions, small to medium maps. LOTS of reading.

------------

This is my entry into the Dr. Aeon contest. I actually relished doing this arc, because I really wanted to turn on some of the emotional issues that surround being a hero and the cruxes that they face when making decisive action in an ambiguous world.

Because this is listed as being designed for Dr. Aeon's challenge, I allowed the arc synopsis to "give away" what is going on in the arc. Because it's listed here part of the contest, it's no surprise that the arc is about doing "evil" for a good purpose. Players might think that's a spoiler or breaks immersion, but really - it's sort of assumed at this point.

This is presently in a "looking for feedback" status until 12/06/2009, at which point I will put it into "final" status and submit it on 12/07/2009. I need as many people to comment as possible.

Present concerns:

1. The reveal that happens between mish 3 and 4 wants to be much bigger. I need to get a lot of info across and I don't have much time to do it. I am thinking of putting the debriefing for mission 3 into a "Mission Complete" Clue and shifting part of the Mission 4 briefing into the mission 3 debriefing. (Mission Complete Clue <- Mission 3 Debrief <- Mission 4 Briefing). I'm concerned that if I do that, a player will miss the clue and lose track of the action. At this time, however, I am stuck with squeezing in explanations for the mission 4 objectives into clues, popups, and other awkward places in order to make the plot make sense. I need to gather opinions on which of these unfavorable choices is better.

2. There is a small custom group in the arc, they are mostly there because I needed something to break up the monotony of "bust up some cops" and "bust up some longbow" in the mobs. This is a lvl 30+ MA - at that point the only "heroic" groups available outside of customs (and AVs) is LB and PPD. They are pretty much just for highlights here and there. Are they necessary? They take up a lot of room and I'm uncertain how much they contribute to the tone of the story.

3. This arc sort of puts the characterization of the PC on a kind of autopilot. Again, because of what the challenge is supposed to be, I'm thinking that a player should be pretty lenient on this. However, I am VERY curious how much Idiot Ball the PC is playing with on this arc. Looking for logical faults, slips, blatant problems with internal consistency.

4. Usual things: Bosses too hard/easy? Maps buggy? Grammar issues? I appreciate any assistance and constructive criticism.

Jeez, I'm RP above, if you're in this contest I might as well not have just published mine.

Ship of Theseus paradox is a great one though.

This has long been on my to-play MA list. Looks like another winner here.

Uh, yeah. So, I was building an arc this morning in which the ally you pick up betrays you at the end. Since I was running this on my /kin corr, I was throwing out a lot of heals and debuffs and such on the enemy critter trying to defeat him.

Unfortunately, I realized that I was both debuffing and buffing at the same time, as well as healing the former-ally, now-enemy. Made it a little hard to finish him off, but I wanted to see if this was a known problem or something that I should report here.

Anyone got any similiar problems? Seen it before?

Reposting this from the Doc Aeon Fireside Chat thread, 'cause it was a good idea:

Okay, next post, another question:

2. What player-made recommendations for features/improvements to AE/MA are being designed/implemented/tested by the design team now or in the future?

Note that with my two (separately posted) questions, I'm not asking when they will go live, just what projects are using up manhours at this point.

1. What bugged/currently-unavailable maps are on the Fast Track to being (re-)added to MA at this time?

EDIT: Read the OP next time, 12th. One per post.

Also, folks: Remember to put recommendations/requests for features into this thread. I've seen some really cool ones (lobby area would be awesome as well as multiple contacts).

Right. Where's that Dev?