I'll try yours if you'll try mine
By
5th_Elemental,
Posted on: 2009-04-10 13:04 in Mission Architect
A couple more thoughts on Death to Disco! :
* Consider using Dual Blades and/or Energy Melee instead of Archery and Assault Rifle for the disco minions; I think those attack sets look a little more like dance moves.
* Consider adding a few "rock star" allies to the second map; give them names like "Mick Osbourne", "Freddie Cooper" and "Ozzy Mercury" and make them thugs MMs. I think having some rock hooligans following you around smashing disco objects and beating up disco fans would make it feel more like the anti-disco riot that you are trying to represent.
I know you said you were tight on space, but thought I'd throw these out there anyway. 
Ultimately I think the best things you can do are to add more disco and rock references to strengthen the arc's theme.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
[ QUOTE ]
...Consider using Dual Blades and/or Energy Melee instead of Archery and Assault Rifle for the disco minions; I think those attack sets look a little more like dance moves...
[/ QUOTE ]
Seconded. I have Dual Blades/Devices combination selected for my Lieutenants (in an arc I'm working on) and after selecting the Talsorian Blades for them, they do look like they're performing dance moves rather than simply fighting. Of course, you run the risk that your player will be mesmerized by the dance moves and forget that their character is actually suffering HP-loss till it's too late... (no joke, this happened to my PB the first time I was busy admiring how my "creations" behaved in-mission)
I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!
Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati
Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati
Retry of The Bravuran Jobs (seemed bugged last time I tried)
Recommended for level 20-30 red side. I played a 28 elec/will brute; initially on Ruthless difficulty, but later lowering to Villainous difficulty during mission 3.
The premise appears to be that you become a lackey for the Comte and Contessa of the fictional evil country of Bravura.
Minor quibble: Comte is French, and a Comte's wife is a Comtesse. Contessa is Italian, and a Contessa's husband is a Conte.
Mission 1
Nice briefing. To be hired requires a tryout. Strangely, the Contessa's idea of a tryout is to give her bodyguards the day off and to rely on an unproven villain to protect her. This is logically insane; if she isn't sure I'm reliable, she definitely should not send her bodyguards home and rely solely on me. It would make more sense for her tryout to be something that does not risk her safety; or else if the first mission MUST be to extract the Contessa, this mission should not be characterized as a tryout at all, but rather the first job of a trusted bodyguard.
Love the Contessa's dialog, both with her captors and when you rescue her. Very dignified.
Consider making Contessa's dual blades a rapier and main gauche; that would have a touch more class than the dual gladii.
Nice debriefing. I might clarify "I cannot enlist" with "I cannot officially enlist". I still think it is a little odd that you can hire hitmen and kidnappers and other criminals in the Rogue Isles, but Lloyd can't hire a lackey for the Contessa.
Mission 2
Briefing: You might consider changing the formatting slightly, to italicize Lloyd's actions and your internal monologue, and NOT italicize the things Lloyd says, including the stuff he reads from the newspaper. This would more consistent with how contact briefings usually go.
I also think it would be good to include in the newspaper clipping the Contessa expressing her shock and outrage at the Legacy Chain's violation of Bravuran sovereignty. This would help hammer home that the Contessa wants this done.
"Bravuran Field Hand: We were heard? But I saw-" - this dialog didn't make sense to me. (Maybe it will make sense later.)
"Archivist Parker: Wh- Millie Volt! How can you defend this?" - this dialog looks weird, I think you need to either delete the "Wh- " or else lengthen it to "What?" or at least "Wha?"
The mission is titled "Say hello to Mazapegul", but freeing Mazapegul does not end the mission, nor does getting him killed. After Mazapegul is deceased, "Say hello to Mazapegul" no longer seems a relevant mission title; maybe make the mission title more generic like "
I had no problems breaking the warding spires this time; I think you used a bigger model this time.
Despite getting Mazapegul killed, I still got the sapphires at the end of the mission! Or the junk he claims are sapphires, anyhow. I'm not sure there is a way you can solve that though, barring making the mission fail if Mazapegul dies (which would probably be annoying).
Debriefing: Nice debriefing, but after getting rooked on payment on this mission, I'm uncertain it makes logical sense for the villain to do another mission for this guy. Also "writen" should be "written".
Mission 3
Two players joined me starting on this mission, a 27 brute and a 20 ninja MM lackey.
Interesting mobs; they all have powers. The amount of buff and debuff they put out seems too high; I had my defense in the negatives and the enemies had a lot of heals and fire shields which seemed too much. Team suffered 2 wipeouts; the second time, I think we were getting hit by flash arrow or something similar, lots of MM pets were spawned, and everything had fire shields. It was just too nasty for a 3 player team. I offered to lower difficulty but the team ended up wanting to do something else.
We ended up switching to different characters and doing something else for a few hours. Quite a bit later I returned to continue soloing this with my elec/inv brute; I lowered difficulty to Villainous (the minimum) before entering, however. Solo on low difficulty the mobs weren't nearly as bad; I do think having minions with thermal and kinetics is too powerful, however, and with larger spawn sizes (such as from a team) the synergy between buff sets would rapidly get out of control.
Rikti dialog:
[NPC] Rikti test subject: Before: this was seen. Fooled again: I will not be.
[NPC] Rikti test subject: This is: new.
[NPC] Rikti test subject: Millie Volt? In a storm: any port suffices.
This doesn't quite sound like proper Rikti-speak to me; they tend to use longer words and few connective words like "was" and "is". Maybe rephrase to:
[NPC] Rikti test subject: Previously: Unforeseen. Future: Not fooled.
[NPC] Rikti test subject: Present circumstances: Novel.
[NPC] Rikti test subject: Query: Millie Volt? Meteorological disturbance: Any facility sufficient.
Even on villainous and solo, each spawn I fight is extremely dangerous to my invuln brute; when an ambush occurred, it nearly killed me even while candy popping purple and orange inspirations. I'm finding it takes 2 purples or a purple and a green inspiration to survive a single normal spawn, spawned for a solo player, on lowest difficulty. I can SEE the mobs buffing each other with fire shields and forge, making them hit harder and take less damage. I'm afraid these mobs are really hard and not very fun to fight, and I have to clear a LOT of them to reach the 3 hostages and 1 boss that are in the mission objectives.
Each fight seems to involve 5 or 6 mobs, which seems more than a single spawn; I kinda think they have a large aggro radius, maybe due to perception powers or buffs. I had to run away from fighting a single spawn once due to their stacking debuffs on me while they healed each other; two other times the single spawn overwhelmed my defenses and killed me.
After two team wipes and two deaths while soloing on the lowest difficulty, I'm throwing in the towel and giving up on this mission. Possibly this is doable on a stalker who can stealth to all the objectives and take out just the spawn around them. I didn't find it doable on a solo level 28 brute though, and brutes are generally considered decent soloers.
I think the Bravuran Militia definitely need to be toned down. At a minimum, I would remove all the buff/debuff secondaries from ALL your minions; those start to get crazy synergy once you have a few of them in the same place.
Overall
I like the premise and the writing style, and the costumes of the Bravuran NPCs. Each mission is interesting and has plenty of stuff to do. Unfortunately, the difficulty of the custom mobs in mission 3 is a showstopper for me; I really feel like I tried, a lot, to fight past these guys, and I tried both teamed up and solo, and took 4 deaths before giving up. With these results, I didn't feel like I could give this arc more than 3 stars.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
The Missing review
[This is out of order from my queue because I ended up leading a level 33 team doing AE missions, and I tried to pick a story arc that would let the team get exp.]
The premise of this story was that the contact, who is himself a hero, asks you to assist in a missing persons investigation, looking for a lady scientist by the name of Dr. Charlestin.
I played through this on a 3 player team. I was team leader and playing a 33 sonic/kin corruptor, and on my team were a 34 sonic/dark corruptor and a sidekicked 20 ninja/dark mastermind. It was pretty hard to take effective notes while simultaneously playing a kinetic, so unfortunately my comments are a little more sparse on this and the next review; hopefully the fact that I dragged the rest of my team through the arc too, giving it additional play time, will somewhat make up for this.
Mission 1
We follow a lead to a bank robbery being performed by a Family man named Bobby Red, who supposedly may know something about what happened to the hostage.
In Bobby's description, "Bobby Red is one of the more least respected bosses" .. doesn't scan. Change "more least" to "less".
After we defeat Bobby Red, he says he'll answer questions, but he doesn't actually give a clue; his confession is in the debriefing (and partly in the briefing for mission 2, which I'm not sure makes sense), but maybe should also be in a clue. Only the leader sees the debriefing; other players wouldn't know what he said without a clue.
In the debriefing, "was his true objective" should be "were his true objective"
Mission 2
In the briefing, it's said that Bobby Red mentioned we may be running out of time "for some reason". If he's actually in custody and willing to talk, he really should be more specific than "for some reason". If he doesn't know the reason time is running out, you can still communicate that, but the way it's phrased it makes it sound like he's holding back.
We entered a Council warehouse and discover our missing person has been horribly mutated as a result of weird science.
In the mission, the Unknown Creature had good dialog. I felt bad for the poor doctor at this point. 
Mission 3
Briefing: There's suddenly a reveal that Shadowrush considers the scientist his mom, or something close to that. I thought this was rather sudden; maybe you need to lay some more groundwork for this in Shadowrush's earlier dialog.
We go in after the mastermind of this evil plan and attempt to recover a cure for the good doctor. There we also link up with Shadowrush as an ally.
We had a wipeout against Family consiglieres here, but I think it was because we were chatting on global chat and not paying attention.
A merc/pain MM joined us at this point (making us a team of 4).
Team member: "who invited shadowrush, such a scrapper!"
Debrief: Ugh, I'm really unhappy with the outcome - we did everything, got the "cure" and beat the big bad guy, but we didn't actually get to cure Dr. Charlestin; she dies and the bad guy "wins", and we're even told the bad guy out-thought us all and planned the whole thing.
Overall
Seemed like a decent story overall with good clues and plot, and a good number of objectives in each mission. The plot was good but not super-involving; at least right up to the end, where Dr Charlestin dies and the bad guy wins, and it's all revealed to all be an elaborate plot by the big bad guy that went exactly as planned. I don't need all stories to have a "good" ending, but I feel like doing everything you were asked to do and still having the girl die and the bad guy win is deeply unsatisfying. But there was a decent story here and some other good stuff, and so I gave this story arc 4 stars.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Pandas vs Rikti review
The premise seems very weird; we're traveling to Panda Earth (an alternate dimension version of earth) to help them fight Rikti. I initially thought this would be really silly, but the Panda Earth kinda grew on me as the story progressed.
I played a 34 sonic/kin corruptor leading a 4-player team; two corruptors (both level 34), two masterminds (both sidekicks).
Mission 1
Great briefing! It sets the stage for why I'm saving space pandas from Rikti. I like the explanation of why pandas speak in emoticons.
It felt like there was not much to do but fight Rikti in this mission; we basically needed to rescue one guy and fight a lot of Rikti along the way. This mission maybe needs more items of interest in it.
Mission 2
Another good briefing. I liked the clue about the holo emitters.
I love the assassin's name, Sai'Lennt Bl'eid. I wondered if this is intended to be a Riktified version of the villain Silent Blade? There wasn't much of a resemblance other than name, though.
Debriefing: I like the genre savvyness of the line "This is like one of those movies with sudden twists!"
Mission 3
Briefing: "It seems, he had given up the fight against the Rikti long ago." maybe should be "It seems he gave up the fight against the Rikti long ago."
I like the pandas with capes, they look very amusing.
I like the (x_X) death message they generate.
I guess Ylla is a female panda due to having pink armor? Great description in her info, though; even references the fact that she looks like the other pandas.
Poor Commander Rottiar... I really like this dialog. He really thinks he's doing the right thing by betraying the other pandas.
Mission 4
Half my team left right before this mission, which left me with a duo of a sonic/kin corruptor (me) and a merc/pain MM lackey.
I love the "Save Panda Earth!" mission title. So dramatic!
With just two of us, and both of us fairly squishy, we got pretty badly manhandled by the Rikti, suffering 3 wipeouts due to mezzes and knockdowns. Unlike the other arc I gave up on due to wipeouts, these were just normal Rikti from the standard CoH game, and not customized mobs, so the problem definitely was with our team. I guess squishies just have a really hard time against Rikti and their status effects; I'm sure I would've been fine on a scrapper or brute.
I tried stealthing around some, to speed things up; this was NOT easy with all the Rikti drones, and I got clobbered once. Found that the map was huge! Seemed like the first map on the LGTF, and in the final room where you normally save Penelope Yin from Rikti, were the glowy, the captive, and an elite boss. Since we were getting schooled by normal Rikti, I did not think the two of us would be able to beat an EB (on some characters I can solo an EB, but definitely not on my kin corruptor).
We pondered giving up, but the mastermind decided he really wanted us to be able to finish so switched to a level 50 ninja/poison MM, SK'd me up and we wiped the rikti out.
The elite boss, O'Ballord, was hilarious when I got a good look at him up close; a Riktified panda is great!
Overall
I thought this would be really silly, but it turned out to be awesome. The panda theme (assuming you can get over the idea that you're helping humanoid pandas) was actually quite well done, with all the dialog and mission briefings and clues handled in character for Panda Earth. The costumes were quite good also, with various pandas having different harness and armor to distinguish them. I felt the first mission was a little bland and the last mission was too hard, although this was almost certainly due to my team composition; we had started with a larger team and were down to 2 squishies for the last mission, which meant that the Rikti mezzes and knockdown really hurt us a lot. With a more balanced team I'm sure we would've been fine, and the last mission did have a very epic feel to it. I gave this arc 5 stars.
-----
I owe a review to:
@Mr Beatdown - The Oblivion Lens 91897
@jjac - 1 of A Tangle in Time 2622 or Eclipse over Paragon 64609
@parhaius - 2 of Ideality Part1 42436 or Ideality Part2 103737
@Markus V8.0 - Shift Awesome! 97358
@KingSac - The Once and Future King Sac 99394
@jjac - second arc
Leaf Cutter Ant - Yellow Submarine 92780
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909 or Escalation 6143
@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
GGG247 - 2 of 103955 and 63910
DarthGM - one of 59608 Little Boy Legacy or 103694 Torchbearer
@GlaziusF - check 3rd arc
@Steeple - Enter, the Darkened 107230
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
You can make me owe you a review if you run through and review one of:
Axis and Allies (1379)
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (67335)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
On The Missing:
Thank you so much for trying it out. I'm glad you liked it, even though the ending wasn't to your liking.
I've fixed the two grammar errors. (Heh I could've sworn I fixed Bobby's description). But the second one I totally missed that.
I'll probably add a Clue for Bobby. I originally was going to, but in my mind, you and the contact would start questioning him after you bring him in. But you are correct that it may lead the team members in the shadows, so to speak. Honestly, I was in the state of mind that the arc would be played by just one person when I was writing this arc. 
And yes, about the "for some reason" thing. Bobby Red doesn't really know either. I'll reword that sentence to communicate it better.
As for Shadowrush revealing how he saw Dr. Charlestin and what his true connection is with her, it was sort of meant to be sudden. Not for the sake of drama or some such, but it was how I characterized Shadowrush's personality. He is very good in hiding things, or keeping things secret, until he actually tells you. He is also a bit paranoid at times. I guess the problem is, I couldn't explain that to the reader or player. Perhaps I could give a hint somewhere of his connection to her in the earlier missions, but I'm not sure how at the moment.
As for the ending, one of my main purposes was to create a dark and tragic short story. It was actually more about highlighting the bad guy and how he thinks. To what insane lengths would he go through just to give payback to the hero that's been stopping him for a long time.
There were also hints of the inevitable fate that would befall the doctor as well, with the inclusion of the Council and how they mysteriously create their warwolves. According to CoH lore and their descriptions of the Council wolves, the way they are changed is very different from how they change their vampyr. Not through their super soldier serum, nor from usual scientific means. And the change is always permanent. What happened to the doctor was a bastardization of how the Council usually does it. Fully paid of course, by the main villain.
The Council involvement and their wolves were a clue themselves that what they did to her could not be changed. Of course, not everyone knows about it. The thing was I wasn't sure if I should hint on it, as it's sort of connected to a few Council story arcs I believe.
The ending was also my own venture to showing that even the heroes of Paragon City can really have much taken from them, in the life they've chosen. That it's the decisions they make and the will to stick to their principles that truly make them what they are. That even though someone they love and care for has been taken from them, there are heroes that will persevere and not cross the line. Unless they too become the monsters that they fight each and every day.
Heh... er... I seem to have written a lot. In other words, thank you for the review. I'll definitely be following most of your suggestions. I'll be updating this arc soon. And thanks again. 
On the Review for Pandas vs. Rikti:
Hehe, thank you once again for your time on playing another one of my arcs!
Once, I've also had someone say the same thing about the first mission: being a bit too simple. I tend to have a philosophy of ramping missions and stories up, so my first missions are usually simple to ease the player into the story. The first mission does have a few Battles between the pandas and the rikti to set the stage at the start of it, but yeah, sometimes they tend to end by the time you reach them.
I tried adding one extra detail originally, a boss fight, but I found the choices for Rikti bosses are pretty narrow. And usually without an Ally, soloing one for one of my squishies took a lot of effort to take out just one Chief Soldier. So I removed it from the first mission.
But I guess I could add something... I'm not sure what though. I'll have to think about it.
Hehe yes, Ylla is female. As the contact first mentions on the second mission, she is his sister.
As for the difficulty of the last mission, I'm actually a little surprised. Most of my feedback tend to lean towards it being... well.. on the easy side, with or without the Allies. I've actually even lessened the Allies on the last mission from its original 6 to just 4 pandas based on feedback.
I've also added a couple of random patrols as well because of the feedback. I've also solo tested this with 5 different casual characters on Rugged, one of them being a PB, without taking any of the Allies in the end. It seemed to be fine and somewhat still challenging at the same time. I could probably lessen the extra patrols. I'm not sure how else to make it easier aside from that though.
I always try to make my arcs as balanced as I can, and solo-friendly as well. But I'm glad you pushed through, and hopefully the difficulty was just a case of... well... fighting Riktis.
Again thank you for the kind comments. You even caught some of the extra details I inserted into the arc. (Although it seems, not all of them 
) I'm glad you enjoyed the arc overall! \(^o^)/
Hey PW. I've played all three of your currently published arcs, and gave you feedback in game that I loved 'em.
I'd welcome your feedback (and feedback from others) on my first arc:
The Strange Tale of Silent Witness
by @Flagrant Fowl
Arc ID: 114250
Morality: Neutral
Description: As you approach Silent Witness, he makes an exaggerated gesture of welcome. You sense the words "hello" and "Assist" clearly, and somewhat less clear "please." When you step closer, he hands you a sheet of paper that contains a handwritten message. Help Silent Witness investigate his origin.
Silent Witness is one of my first alts, made back in 2004 when I had the idea of making a character who could communicate only through emotes.
A whole lot of macro editing and a few frustrated SG mates later, I gave up on that idea and "gave" him the ability to communicate by telepathy. 
He's a former talk radio show host (comedy, not policital!) who was badly burned in a studio fire and lost the ability to speak. The arc explores the weird circumstances of that fire and his recovery from it.
[ QUOTE ]
After two team wipes and two deaths while soloing on the lowest difficulty, I'm throwing in the towel and giving up on this mission. Possibly this is doable on a stalker who can stealth to all the objectives and take out just the spawn around them. I didn't find it doable on a solo level 28 brute though, and brutes are generally considered decent soloers.
I think the Bravuran Militia definitely need to be toned down. At a minimum, I would remove all the buff/debuff secondaries from ALL your minions; those start to get crazy synergy once you have a few of them in the same place.
Overall
I like the premise and the writing style, and the costumes of the Bravuran NPCs. Each mission is interesting and has plenty of stuff to do. Unfortunately, the difficulty of the custom mobs in mission 3 is a showstopper for me; I really feel like I tried, a lot, to fight past these guys, and I tried both teamed up and solo, and took 4 deaths before giving up. With these results, I didn't feel like I could give this arc more than 3 stars.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, "crazy synergy" is the idea. Everybody in the group is working at "standard" level except for the lieutenant's fire buff set and the boss's merc set, for Spec Ops. Unfortunately I can't see the numbers on the flashbangs they were hitting you with. Did you actually get blinded or just notice the flash?
Nobody has boosted perception. If you saw any Storm bosses they can grant it with O2, but by that time they're already aggroed. Tech maps do tend to throw the occasional pair of spawns into close proximity to each other, and of course there are the ambushes you get from provoking the guards around defendable objects.
But I tested this whole thing on a dual blades/fire brute, on difficulty 2, and generally just ate inspirations as they dropped. He's got a knockback resistance set bonus, but aside from that, no power pool stuff except Stamina. The dude tends to die every other spawn on a big team, and he was generally in more danger from the Legacy Chain.
Maybe the map was still set at/spawning for 3 for some reason? I'm pretty sure DB/Fire is worse all around than Elec(right?)/Invuln.
(Also, with the text and multiple objectives, this arc is kissing 100%. The unique models for Lloyd and the first mission's Contessa were the first casualties - she's now in the generic uniform of the army's DB Lts.)
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
Comments on the Missing
[ QUOTE ]
As for the ending, one of my main purposes was to create a dark and tragic short story. It was actually more about highlighting the bad guy and how he thinks. To what insane lengths would he go through just to give payback to the hero that's been stopping him for a long time.
There were also hints of the inevitable fate that would befall the doctor as well, with the inclusion of the Council and how they mysteriously create their warwolves. According to CoH lore and their descriptions of the Council wolves, the way they are changed is very different from how they change their vampyr. Not through their super soldier serum, nor from usual scientific means. And the change is always permanent. What happened to the doctor was a bastardization of how the Council usually does it. Fully paid of course, by the main villain.
The Council involvement and their wolves were a clue themselves that what they did to her could not be changed. Of course, not everyone knows about it. The thing was I wasn't sure if I should hint on it, as it's sort of connected to a few Council story arcs I believe.
The ending was also my own venture to showing that even the heroes of Paragon City can really have much taken from them, in the life they've chosen. That it's the decisions they make and the will to stick to their principles that truly make them what they are. That even though someone they love and care for has been taken from them, there are heroes that will persevere and not cross the line. Unless they too become the monsters that they fight each and every day.
[/ QUOTE ]
This does all make some sense. I guess my main problem with the ending is that the way it comes across, it felt like the big bad guy actually was in control the whole time, and ends up winning, and the player, even if playing perfectly, was unable to have any effect on this outcome; and most of this comes out in exposition in the final debriefing. Effectively, the player loses, and there was nothing s/he could do about it.
I wonder if you could rephrase some of the clues and dialog to give the player more of a clue what is happening. Maybe when you find the "cure", the clue has you immediately realizing it's just ordinary water, and you wonder how you'll break it to Shadowrush and the transformed doctor. Maybe when you fight the big bad guy, he monologues about his master plan and how it's too late for the doctor; but then he expresses surprise that the player is able to arrest him ("That wasn't in the plan!"). Then in the final debriefing, the woman still dies and Shadowrush is still heartbroken, but maybe highlight the fact that the player was able to bring the perpetrator to justice. That would let you still have a tragic ending, but the player could feel like s/he accomplished something by stopping the bad guy from getting away with it. I think you have elements of this already there; it just doesn't come across currently that the player was able to help.
Comments on Pandas vs Rikti
I really think my team's difficulty with the last mission was mostly due to circumstances; we were doing fine on a 4 player team up to the very last mission, but then had two people need to log off, leaving us with a pretty squishy duo against tons of Rikti with +perception and lots of status effects. It took us awhile to adjust to the new team dynamic (since we were doing fine up to that point) which probably didn't help. We did rescue a couple of the ally pandas but couldn't keep them alive. I think it would've helped if we had a brute/tank type, and if we had been more vigilant about keeping our CM-type buffs on each other nonstop. Anyway, I don't think you need to adjust the difficulty; you're using standard PvE mobs, after all. It was just hard for the team I had at the time.
Comments on the Bravuran Jobs
[ QUOTE ]
Well, "crazy synergy" is the idea. Everybody in the group is working at "standard" level except for the lieutenant's fire buff set and the boss's merc set, for Spec Ops. Unfortunately I can't see the numbers on the flashbangs they were hitting you with. Did you actually get blinded or just notice the flash?
[/ QUOTE ]
I really think it is excessive to give buff/debuff sets to minions; both thermal and kinetics are force multipliers and if every minion has them, they essentially act like one of those all-defender superteams. I think you will find that if you face a large or even medium sized spawn of these, they will be far too difficult to handle. After my 3 player team had their first wipeout against these guys, we came back and found the enemy group ready for us with fully spawned pets, and both mobs and pets fully buffed with fire shields. The team was pretty sporting and willing to try them again even when they were ready for us, but after a second wipeout, no one really wanted to keep at it any further.
Regarding the flashbangs, I saw the flashes and wasn't able to identify the source. Flashbang grenades from the merc pets makes sense though. They didn't actually blind my character, I just noticed their special effect.
[ QUOTE ]
Nobody has boosted perception. ... Tech maps do tend to throw the occasional pair of spawns into close proximity to each other, and of course there are the ambushes you get from provoking the guards around defendable objects. .... Maybe the map was still set at/spawning for 3 for some reason? I'm pretty sure DB/Fire is worse all around than Elec(right?)/Invuln.
[/ QUOTE ]
Ambushes definitely were part of it, but even fighting non-ambush groups of mobs, it seemed like I was always fighting 5 or 6 at a time despite being solo; this is what made me think maybe I was getting 2 groups at a time, since I'm used to solo groups being 2-3 mobs at a time. Maybe they WERE spawning for a 3 player team still? I thought it would've completely reset since we all logged off for several hours and I logged back in to a freshly respawned map; but maybe Mission Architect works differently due to the pseudo-TF logic.
I started the arc solo, so it can't be that the spawn size is set at the beginning of the story arc; maybe it's determined by the high water mark of your team size somehow? That might also explain why my 2 player team got beat up by Rikti in the other story arc where the team size decreased from 4 to 2.
Anyway, even if there IS some weird logic that meant I was soloing a map spawned for 3 players (which is sounding kind of plausible now that I think about it), I think you should still drop the buff/debuff sets from the minions; reserve those for lieutenants and higher. If you don't agree, that's cool, but you might find it worthwhile to test using a mid-sized (3 to 5 players) team (of average ability, not an optimized superteam or anything) to see what happens.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
[ QUOTE ]
I started the arc solo, so it can't be that the spawn size is set at the beginning of the story arc; maybe it's determined by the high water mark of your team size somehow? That might also explain why my 2 player team got beat up by Rikti in the other story arc where the team size decreased from 4 to 2.
Anyway, even if there IS some weird logic that meant I was soloing a map spawned for 3 players (which is sounding kind of plausible now that I think about it), I think you should still drop the buff/debuff sets from the minions; reserve those for lieutenants and higher. If you don't agree, that's cool, but you might find it worthwhile to test using a mid-sized (3 to 5 players) team (of average ability, not an optimized superteam or anything) to see what happens.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, I know TFs do a thing where they spawn for minimum X people, regardless of team size. I wonder if whatever logic got rejiggered to allow for invites/drops mid-mission didn't crank the spawn number back down when people left.
As far as the buff/debuff sets, I'll have to take another look at numbers. I assigned them on the assumption that they'd work like everything else - a minion mace guy does less damage than a lieutenant mace guy, and IIRC a minion empath heals for less than a lieutenant empath. I could swear some of the buffs scaled down (so the siphon power is dropping your damage/boosting theirs by 10%, coming from a minion).
The intent was not so much "all defender superteam" as "everyone runs 1 leadership toggle", creating an incentive to lock down/take out "the healers" that you really don't see much in stock groups, in addition to a reason to mop up the minions.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
[ QUOTE ]
I wonder if you could rephrase some of the clues and dialog to give the player more of a clue what is happening. Maybe when you find the "cure", the clue has you immediately realizing it's just ordinary water, and you wonder how you'll break it to Shadowrush and the transformed doctor. Maybe when you fight the big bad guy, he monologues about his master plan and how it's too late for the doctor; but then he expresses surprise that the player is able to arrest him ("That wasn't in the plan!"). Then in the final debriefing, the woman still dies and Shadowrush is still heartbroken, but maybe highlight the fact that the player was able to bring the perpetrator to justice. That would let you still have a tragic ending, but the player could feel like s/he accomplished something by stopping the bad guy from getting away with it. I think you have elements of this already there; it just doesn't come across currently that the player was able to help.
[/ QUOTE ]
I like the general idea of these suggestions. I think I can work these in. I'm off to do some rewriting then. I'll be adding them on my next update. Thanks!
Hola PW,
Just played your arc "Celebrety Kidnapping and found it a blast! Like the movie references, in particular.
Please tell me what you think of my arc, if you have room in your queue:
Arc ID# 55715
"Freaks and Geeks"
by: @El Condor
Morality: Heroic
Length: 3 Missions
Level Recommended: 30+
Enemy Groups: Freakshow, Crey, custom (Crey GenEx)
"Paragon Citys active geek community has done much to contribute to its status as a cutting-edge, techno-infused metropolis. Now its time to pay it back and save the geeks in their greatest hour of need!"
I attended more to story and script than anything else, so please read any and all text you care to.
EC
The Oblivion Lens review
Was recommended for level 30+, so I played a 33 bs/inv scrapper.
Mission 1
Briefing: Decently written, but it basically comes down to go kill some CoT because we think they're weak right now, which doesn't seem a very compelling.
Sullivan's dialog and that of his captors are OK, but nothing too special.
This mission overall seems pretty routine, freeing an ally with fairly standard dialog and defeating a generic CoT boss. The only unusual thing is the "Opal Lens" clue that I got from the final boss, which I assume is the macguffin for the rest of the arc.
Debriefing: OMG, Azuria is telling me she'll keep the Opal Lens safe in the MAGI vault. This can't end well.
Mission 2
Briefing: Some helpful exposition here on initial findings about the magic lens and what it's supposed to do. Shockingly, the Opal Lens is in danger of being stolen by the CoT and I need to go stop them.
Popup on entering mission: "Your decent into the interior" should be "Your descent..."
This new Nachtkrieger group seems pretty dangerous, stacking a lot of dark miasma debuffs on me.
Plot question: what caused the lens to start creating these Nachtkrieger guys? The lens was apparently in the hands of the CoT for awhile before with no ill effects. What's making it do this now? I think this needs some explanation.
Nachtkrieger Reiset's description: "solidres" should be "soldiers".
Nachtkrieger Bosigt's description: "Nactkrieger" should be "Nachtkrieger".
Nachtkrieger Lakai's description: "Nactkrieger" should be "Nachtkrieger".
Nachtkrieger Kampher's description: "Nactkrieger" should be "Nachtkrieger".
All these Nachtkriegers have exactly the same description (with some slight variation in typos) but have different appearance and different names. I wonder if you can fit some description in there of what a Reiset, Bosigt, Lakai, etc, actually is, and the difference each one has with the other Nachtkriegers?
Also, up close I can see they each have some costume detail, but since they are all completely black, a lot of that detail is lost when viewed from any significant distance. This might be intentional on your part, not sure. If you want to stay with the black, shadowy theme, you might also consider giving the ones that don't have dark armor already some sort of dark colored aura in their costume.
I'm a little worried about the amount of dark powers these guys are throwing around. It certainly makes sense for them to be using dark powers, but the acc debuffs will probably stack pretty severely, especially on a big team (think of how much people hate CoT ghosts who do the same thing). My scrapper isn't having any problem with this (she has Invincibility and Build Up to overcome To Hit debuffs), but a bigger team without many tohit buffs may have problems; you might want to test with a mid sized team and see. Stacking tar patches could be painful also, though thankfully it looks like only certain lieutenants drop those. Only problem is that the Nachtkriegers really SHOULD be dark based, considering their concept, so I'm not sure it would make sense to change their powersets either. Just something to keep an eye on.
There did not seem to be much to do in this mission other than kill the Nachtkriegers. I think you might want to add some more stuff to do in this mission; perhaps a sailor hostage that you free and/or a body bag glowy that you click, either of which gives you some clues as to what the Nachtkriegers are, and maybe what happened to the Oblivion Lens.
Debriefing: "Everyone on board" should maybe be "Everyone aboard". "frieghter" should be "freighter".
"I guess those were the Nachtkrieger that are talked about in the tomes" seems a pretty weak statement for her to say at this point. I suggest you rephrase this to something like "Those must have been the Nachtkrieger that are mentioned in the ancient tomes."
I like that she is willing to call in the Midnight Club; it's kinda cool that all the magical heroic organizations are getting involved in the story.
Mission 3
Briefing: Could use some paragraph breaks, it's currently a big wall of text. "agressive" should be "aggressive".
Considering mission 2's debriefing mentioned the Midnight Squad possibly knowing something about this artifact, I think it's odd that she does not mention them in the briefing for mission 3 where she has determined no one knows anything about it. At least mention something like "The Midnight Squad didn't have any record of this lens" for the sake of continuity. Or maybe the Midnight Squad points you to this Tophat guy; it's currently not explained why Tophat is the expert on the Oblivion Lens, or how Azuria even knows he's the go-to guy for this obscure artifact.
I also think it's a little odd to have to fight the Council for him, as the Council don't seem really connected and are not a particularly magic-oriented group.
Second part of briefing: "greatful" should be "grateful".
In the popup as you enter the mission, maybe mention that the player hears the sound of battle and the Legacy Chain reinforcements must have been teleported deeper in. The way it's phrased, it sounds like the Legacy Chain didn't make it to the base at all.
I might change the mission title to "Extract Tophat from Council Base" and the mission objective to "Rescue Tophat", instead of having them both be "Rescue Tophat from the Council", which looks a little repetitive.
I do like the fight dialog between the Council and Legacy Chain.
After rescuing Tophat, ironically, his top hat clipped with the roof of one of the cave tunnels and he got stuck in geometry. (Not really the fault of the mission though.) Running back and forth near him eventually got him unstuck though. He also may be a little too powerful an ally as an elite boss.
A Council ambush was triggered as soon as I got Tophat to the door; not sure whether this is intentional, though, because I can avoid it by exiting the mission (which is now complete). Maybe you meant for this ambush to appear when you free Tophat.
Mission 4
Briefing: add some paragraph breaks. Also, "Officially, Lord Recluse is denying the presence of the Nachtkrieger and refuses to grant entry into the Rogue Isles to anyone. Recluse also doesn't want extradimensional invaders underneath Mercy Isle and his envoys have invited our assistance." These two sentences seem contradictory. Maybe you mean to say Lord Recluse officially refuses to grant entry, but unofficially is allowing it? It's a little unclear.
This mission seemed a lot easier than I expected; I just had to click the glowy and it ended. (Well, and kill some of the Nachtkriegers that were chasing me.) Some Arachnos guys spawned after I clicked the glowy, but the mission was complete so I didn't seem to need to interact with them. Seemed a little easy as a result; would've been even easier with stealth.
Logic question: How did the Oblivion Lens get from the freighter in mission 2 to the cave in mission 4? Azuria originally thought CoT stole it, but I didn't see any. Did the Nachtkrieger themselves move it? If so, why to the Rogue Isles? Could use some explanation or clues.
Mission 5
Briefing: OK, "The Nachtkrieger have summoned more of their soldiers and are attacking our ritualists" -- but based on the story so far, I think it's only the Oblivion Lens that summons Nachtkrieger; so with the lens in the hands of these mystics, it shouldn't be possible for more Nachtkrieger to spontaneously appear. That's the whole point of neutralizing the lens, right? So where did these new Nachtkrieger, including the Nachtkrieger leader, come from? I think this is a plot hole.
Also what happened to those Legacy Chain people who helped attack the Council before? Surely this is an even more important thing for them to help with.
A science lab seems a very strange place to hold a magical ritual, though I guess this is explained as a FBSA facility in the briefing.
This was the first mission in which the Nachtkriegers had any dialog that I saw at all; I had thought maybe they couldn't speak before. Maybe they should talk in the earlier missions too.
I thought it was a little odd that the altar objective didn't spawn until after I defeated Nachtkrieger Herr; shouldn't the mystics have been performing a ritual on the altar before the Nachtkrieger even attacked? Also with the map being fairly large, it took a little trouble to find the altar, requiring retracing my steps some since it could've spawned somewhere I'd already visited.
I think it would've been nice if there were still some mystics around trying to perform the ritual while the altar is under attack, but I'm not sure if that's possible. Maybe next best would be if another group of Legacy Chain and/or Midnighters gets "teleported in" as a friendly ambush or something after you successfully defend the altar. Perhaps having a couple mages involved in battles with the Nachtkriegers and/or as allies you can rescue from them might be good too.
Debriefing: OK, I really like that Azuria tries to take the lens and put it back in the MAGI vault, but then the player stops her and takes the lens back to put in their SG vault instead.
Overall
The Nachtkrieger monsters needed more development overall, I thought; as they stand now they are rather generic seeming enemies, with their nearly identical all-black costumes and all-dark powers, and very little dialog. The dialog they do have seems to be standard villainous dialog that is not particularly unique to the Nachtkriegers. I think you could stand to develop the background of this villain group some more (perhaps in the mob descriptions and/or in clues in the story arc) and give them more personality (mostly in dialog and clues). Right now I'm afraid they seem a little bland; I think you need to develop them to make them seem more special and unique as enemies.
I felt the story had a few plot holes; the Lens suddenly causing Nachtkrieger to appear needed to be explained (after all, the CoT had the lens for a long time before and none had appeared), and the Nachtkrieger reinforcements showing up in the last mission didn't seem possible based on how the lens is described as working. But the writing was decent and the story in general seemed okay. The dialog was pretty standard fare (villains say typical villainous stuff) and I think could've been improved a little bit. I did like how the story tried to tie in the various heroic magical factions (MAGI, Legacy Chain and Midnighters - though only the Legacy Chain seems to actually appear in missions; perhaps you could add Midnighters or custom MAGI operatives to one of the missions if you have room). As a result of all this I gave this story arc 3 stars.
-----
I owe a review to:
@jjac - 1 of A Tangle in Time 2622 or Eclipse over Paragon 64609
@parhaius - 2 of Ideality Part1 42436 or Ideality Part2 103737
@Markus V8.0 - Shift Awesome! 97358
@KingSac - The Once and Future King Sac 99394
@jjac - second arc
Leaf Cutter Ant - Yellow Submarine 92780
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909 or Escalation 6143
@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
GGG247 - 2 of 103955 and 63910
DarthGM - one of 59608 Little Boy Legacy or 103694 Torchbearer
@GlaziusF - check 3rd arc
@Steeple - Enter, the Darkened 107230
@Flagrant Fowl - Strange Tale of Silent Witness 114250
@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
You can make me owe you a review if you run through and review one of:
Axis and Allies (1379)
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (67335)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
[ QUOTE ]
I tried adding one extra detail originally, a boss fight, but I found the choices for Rikti bosses are pretty narrow. And usually without an Ally, soloing one for one of my squishies took a lot of effort to take out just one Chief Soldier. So I removed it from the first mission.
[/ QUOTE ]
You could add a named boss, but instead of using a Boss you could use a Rikti Lt. and then bump up the difficulty of the encounter. That would make for a tougher fight, without having an actual boss.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I tried adding one extra detail originally, a boss fight, but I found the choices for Rikti bosses are pretty narrow. And usually without an Ally, soloing one for one of my squishies took a lot of effort to take out just one Chief Soldier. So I removed it from the first mission.
[/ QUOTE ]
You could add a named boss, but instead of using a Boss you could use a Rikti Lt. and then bump up the difficulty of the encounter. That would make for a tougher fight, without having an actual boss.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's actually one of the first few things I tried. But it only works for custom mobs. When selecting a standard enemy group for the Boss Detail, it only gives you a list comprising of Bosses, EB's, and AV's.
But I have thought of something just to add some minor flavor to my first mission, instead of a boss fight, I'm leaning towards moving one of the optional glowies into the first mission to, sort of, introduce to the player that there will be some small optional tidbits of information throughout the arc that they can collect.
[ QUOTE ]
But it only works for custom mobs.
[/ QUOTE ]
I haven't tried this, but you might be able to do this with a Custom Group, not just custom mobs. Create a new Custom Group and only put the stock Rikti Lt. in it. Then use the custom group to place the "boss" and just surround it with the regular Rikti faction.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But it only works for custom mobs.
[/ QUOTE ]
I haven't tried this, but you might be able to do this with a Custom Group, not just custom mobs. Create a new Custom Group and only put the stock Rikti Lt. in it. Then use the custom group to place the "boss" and just surround it with the regular Rikti faction.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh! Yes I have done something like this for my other arc, The Missing. A Custom Group with standard mobs. Hopefully I can still fit one in though, I'm almost reaching the limit. But I think, yes, this should work. Thank you for reminding me!
I'll add both this and the optional glowie.
Eclipse over Paragon review
Looks like a level 25-54 hero side arc, mainly fighting Council. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster.
Colleen Nelson does seem a good choice for contact for a Council arc.
Mission 1
Briefing: nice introduction to Colleen and her work.
Second part of briefing: Shouldn't Colleen tell me who the hero I'm meeting is?
Mission title: "Stop the Facility!" sounds rather vague to me; maybe consider "Shut down War Wolf Facility!"
Whoa, these Stunted Nightwolfs are definitely not what I was expecting.
After rescuing Peter Bruck, he gave me a clue with "If you want to find the rest of the liquid supply, I've put together a list of warehouses to check out" in it. I'm not sure what he means by "liquid supply" here; maybe some sort of chemical used in the war wolf process? Thinking this needs to be better explained?
Opening a crate helped explain the liquid, though. I'm not quite sure what the "Crate contents" clue means by "rocket can" though.
I like The Puritan's Commentary when you rescue him.
Mission 2
Briefing: "the Council deems this experiment a failure, Bruck can go home to his family and I can sleep soundly tonight" -- should maybe be "the Council deems this experiment a failure, so Bruck can go home to his family and I can sleep soundly tonight".
"The warehouses he mentionned" should maybe be "As for the warehouses he mentioned".
I like the little ambush set up in this mission. Though it makes me wonder about the reliability of Bruck's info; since there's none of the Nictus water here.
Mission 3
Briefing: Kind of a neat format for the briefing here, though I think you may overuse ellipses a little.
Second part of briefing: "anymore" should be "any more".
Mission title: "Investigate Steel Canyon!" is too broad. Should be more like "Investigate Council Attack" or maybe "Investigate Council Attack on Steel Canyon".
The deranged civilians, PPD and Longbow are pretty cool looking. I like that you have a variety of models for deranged people.
I think it might be worthwhile to have a clue that indicates the robots are spraying the Nictus liquid that you get after defeating a robot, just as is stated in the robot description.
I notice that some of the Deranged are in the "Bruck's army" faction, while others are in "Council Eclipse Division." Should they be in the same faction, or is this distinction intentional?
Mission 4
Briefing: I can see what you are trying to say here but I think it could be stated more clearly. Colleen maybe should say something like "Containment is the first priority" in order to support why she's sending you to stop the Council's distribution network instead of going after a cure. I think that would better explain the logic.
Colleen also says "they're programmed to rendezvous at stockpiles all over the city. We'll have to secure their serum supply and cut their plans short" -- maybe she should additionally say that she is sending the player to capture these stockpiles.
I'm not sure what the "Avoid Distractions" meant here. I did fight the wolfed out Puritan here and it didn't seem to be a problem. The map was so small that I don't think I could've gotten the 12 glowies without fighting him.
Colleen mentioned that stockpiles are all over the city, but really I only shut down one little warehouse as far as I can tell, so this shouldn't be enough to stop the supply. Maybe she should say that the place you are being sent to is a distribution center.
Mission 5
I was a little dubious about "3 guard dogs to defeat" but the costumed wolves ARE pretty funny. I love the mutated heroes. Their mangled dialog could maybe be a little better, it's real hard to get much out of "Flower Knight: Grrrryyy rrrraaaah!" I could tell Fusionette was trying to say her boyfriend's name and Jim was trying to say his girlfriend's name, but that does seem a weird thing to say when they're getting beat up. Maybe they should be confused and say "What's happening?" (suitably mangled) and then as their death message try to ask the player to help their significant other.
I was able to finish the various objectives, and I liked that there was a variety of them (defeating the boss, getting the glowies and beating the "guard dogs") but there wasn't really a "climactic" moment.
Debriefing: "You were a wonderful partner, but let's hope that one day we'll never have to work together again." I kind of understand what is being said here but it's a little awkwardly phrased. Maybe "but let's hope this doesn't happen again."
Overall
Overall I thought this was a good arc, fairly well written. Nothing really grabbed me as a moment of pure awesomeness, though the mutated versions of Fusionette, Jim Temblor and Flower Knight came close; I kinda think maybe you could develop these guys a little more for extra fun. Colleen made sense as a contact for a Council arc but I didn't get a sense that she had a whole lot of personality other than just being someone to give you missions, and the arc overall, while functional, didn't quite give me a sense of immersion. Not quite sure how to make that happen. Perhaps you could add a side plot where the player thinks she got exposed to some of the nictus water, and over the course of mission entrance/exit popups and clues, starts feeling itchy or getting urges to bay at the moon or other snippets that make the player worried they are getting afflicted by the war wolf disease. Giving the heroes who got wolfed some more dialog and personality would help too. Still, this story was pretty good and I liked it, so I gave it 4 stars.
-----
I owe a review to:
@parhaius - 2 of Ideality Part1 42436 or Ideality Part2 103737
@Markus V8.0 - Shift Awesome! 97358
@KingSac - The Once and Future King Sac 99394
@jjac - A Tangle in Time 2622
Leaf Cutter Ant - Yellow Submarine 92780
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909 or Escalation 6143
@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
GGG247 - 2 of 103955 and 63910
DarthGM - one of 59608 Little Boy Legacy or 103694 Torchbearer
@GlaziusF - Dream Paper 1874
@Steeple - Enter, the Darkened 107230
@Flagrant Fowl - Strange Tale of Silent Witness 114250
@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
You can make me owe you a review if you run through and review one of:
Axis and Allies (1379)
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (67335)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
A few additional thoughts on Eclipse over Paragon after having slept on it:
I think it would help if you had more foreshadowing of Bruck changing sides before it actually happens; maybe a clue or dialog hinting that Bruck has closer ties to the Council than he's letting on.
I thought the plot switched too sharply from "These stunted werewolves are a failed experiment" to suddenly the stunted werewolves being the Council's Master Plan. Did Bruck deceive the player into thinking it's a failed experiment during mission 1, and the truth comes out in mission 3? Or did the Council actually think it WAS a failed experiment, but whatever Council boss decided that either got fired, killed, or persuaded by a good marketing plan? Maybe I missed where this was explained; but I would've liked more explanation of what happened to make them change their mind, as it is it's something of a sharp U-turn.
Considering Puritan, Fusionette, Faultline and Flower Knight all get mutated to join the war wolves, what's stopping Bruck from simply spraying the player hero with his nictus juice to convert her to the cause as well? (Well, aside from the fact that there's not a game mechanic for that.) Maybe the player at some point should either get immunized by the prototype cure, or given some kind of protective gear that blocks them from being transmuted into a war wolf; either by acquiring this as a "clue" in an earlier mission. Or possibly Colleen just expositions that she gives you this, but then warns that some other heroes already are on the scene but didn't have this protective gear so might have gotten compromised (thus hinting at the presence of the wolfed out versions of Fusionette et al).
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Played
My Review @Ryo Takenoko
Celebrity Kidnapping
Arc ID: 1388
Length: Medium
Morality: Villainous
Played through on level 1 difficulty on an electric brute. I had a blast with it. The dialogue and settings were perfect for each part of the mission. I liked the prisoner dialogue about making a movie with Paris. I enjoyed the double-crossing aspect of the whole arc. I thoroughly enjoyed your use of the illusion effects to simulate the cameraman and the wspdr newscaster was hilarious. I thought the arc overall was very well done and enjoyed that you did not choose overly big and complicated maps.
And I liked that the mish fail dialogue had me getting back at the contact that damn snitch.
My arcs
136188 Kidnapping an Idol - neutral - spoof on the Japanese idol boy industry complete with lots of custom mobs with colorful outfits. Takes about an hour to do. 1 timed mish but can be done in 15minutes.
134140 Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys - heroic
Something has gone terribly wrong at the workshop turning all the normal toys into vicious ones. Santa wants his workshop back and his little helpers rescued.
The Ideality - Part 1: A New Foe
All the missions were labeled level 1-54. I played a 50 AR/dev blaster.
The description of the arc was very vague; essentially, one sentence saying that a mysterious new group has appeared and no one knows why. I kinda think you need a better pitch; as it is now, what would make someone try this arc over one of the many others which introduce a new villain group?
Mission 1
Briefing: the contact, who seems to be a new police detective, wants me to find out who has been trashing villain hideouts. The writing for the briefing seems good, but the logic behind the story hook seems weak to me. Someone is trashing villain hideouts and she wants me to find out why. It actually seems like villain hideouts being trashed might be a good thing; she explains "it's not being done by registered heroes" but this seems a rather thin explanation to me, as I'd think vigilante justice would be pretty common in CoH. I think you may need a better motivation for why the player should check this out.
Mission goals: in addition to defeating the invasion leader, would it make sense to also defeat the commander of the Council base, as long as I'm here anyway? Also "Defeat invasion leader" is used for both mission title and mission objective, you might want to mix it up a little bit so it isn't quite so repetitive. Maybe define the mission title as "Investigate attack on Council base", then either keep "Defeat invasion leader" or rename it to something like "Learn identity of invaders" (but still linked to defeating the boss).
I like the dialog the Ideality vs Council battles have, stuff like "Mechanical perfection awaits you!" helps give an idea what the Ideality group is after. Likewise I like Router's dialog.
Mission 2
Briefing: I think we're pretty quick to assume the Ideality are bad guys when we haven't seen them do anything but attack other villains, but if we assume that they are, the "gather information" premise seems good. I don't like being so in the dark about who these new villains are, so gathering info on them sounds good.
I like the title and the objectives of this mission.
Cyber Fighter's description has an extra space between "and" and "weapons" in the second sentence.
The Bionic Barragers have mez protection from Entropy Shield; I was able to blow them away as a blaster but they might be really hard for a controller or dominator.
I picked up the data file, the bionic parts and the hard drive but the clues attached to them seem really uninformative; would be nice if the player could make something of them.
Mission 3
Briefing: the contact tells you "the files you retrieved" helped reveal some info, so the data file and hard drive were useful, but not sure how the bionic parts did any good.
Mission goals: 3 Male Converts to Rescue, 3 Female Converts to Rescue. I'm not sure it helps any to distinguish them by gender; maybe it'd be better to aggregate them all into "6 Victims to Rescue".
The victims seem to be normal people, which is inconsistent with the Idealists' MO so far, i.e., taking over villain bases. If they have only taken villain bases so far, they should be converting captured villains (Council, CoT, whatever). If they are converting regular people, there ought to be some foreshadowing in earlier briefings or clues, hinting that normal people have been disappearing.
If you have the space for it, I think it would be cool if one or two of the people you rescue are "partially" converted; maybe with a robotic hand or a face plate or something, and suitably horrified at their experience. Or possibly they are partially converted and you end up having the fight and subdue them.
I rescued all 6 victims, but I kinda wonder what's stopping this conversion facility from just kidnapping more people and processing them, instead. Maybe there should be some lab equipment, used for the conversion process, that the player destroys, and/or a boss who is running the lab that you take out? If this seems like too many objectives in one mission, you could decrease the number of victims to save.
Mission 4
Briefing: Seems a bit bland. Freeing one of the victims leads us to another Ideality base; this makes logical sense but also feels rather routine.
Mission title and mission goal are both "Defeat Link Node"; maybe change the title to "Defeat base leader" to avoid repetition.
This base is very dingy and dirty; doesn't seem consistent with how perfectionist the Ideality is depicted.
I defeated the base leader and the mission immediately ended; seemed a little too straightforward. Link Node's dialog was okay but fairly stereotypical.
I think this mission needs more to it; as it stands, it does not feel like this mission adds a lot to your story, and I think you should either add more to this mission, or consider cutting it. As for what you could add, what is the purpose of this base? Does the Ideality have other goals besides optimizing humans? If that's the only thing they do, maybe there would be more humans to rescue here, or else post-op recently modified humans/villains that the player has to deal with. Maybe there could be some extra glowies to find giving clues as to what the Ideality is up to. Or alternatively, you could edit this mission out.
I got an Autonetic Microchip clue from defeating the boss; it's not clear to me why I (as the player) would think this microchip has the location of the Ideality's headquarters any more than a microchip from one of the other robots (since I can't read microchips). Consider clarifying this clue. It might be better for Link Node to confess it's location (Link Node isn't REALLY a computer, he's a modified human, right? so he could talk) or for the player to hack into a computer or the navigation system in one of the Ideality cyborgs in order to learn the directions to the main base.
Mission 5
Briefing: OK, in a bit of bait and switch, the microchip didn't include directions to the headquarters at all, but does show the location of another base. Though I wonder how the contact would KNOW this other base is NOT, in fact, the Ideality headquarters; I mean it would just be another Ideality base, either way, wouldn't it?
This other base is apparently a place where they build "NRG robots", which are not really explained anywhere before this. Maybe you should give a clue or a mention in an earlier briefing as to what the NRG robots are. (I think maybe they are mentioned in the description of some of the mobs, but most players will not check that.)
I think it is puzzling that the Ideality is building robots; aren't they established as wanting to convert humans into cyborgs, which they regard as perfect? If cyborgs are perfect, why build robots, too? Or does the Ideality like to use both cyborgs AND robots? I personally would suggest you just have them stick with cyborgs as their "ideal" model for the sake of simplicity, but if you want them to include both cyborgs and robots, maybe that needs some clues to explain more about the Ideality and why they have both.
You might consider re-using the "Rogue Robots" faction (after all, we have a killer robot faction already) -- maybe either using their mobs in the Ideality, or perhaps merging the Ideality into the Rogue Robots.
Inside the mission: I like the use of the Crey Paragon Protector lab as map for this mission; however, with the humanoid figures suspended in capsules, I kinda think this makes it look much more like a cyborg production facility than a robot factory. I think you should consider changing this from a robot factory to someplace they make cutting edge cyborgs (maybe making the Type I and Type II both advanced versions of Ideality cyborgs). Or if you prefer robots, maybe consider using Siege's factory instead.
NRG Type I is the first of the Ideality robots that has made a "bzzt" noise in its dialog; I kinda think either all your robots should make this noise, or none of them.
OK, I fought NRG Type II and he also goes "bzzt". Nothing else seems to though; I guess everything else is a cyborg?
I have to wonder, who is it that fabricated NRG Type I and the NRG Type II prototype? Shouldn't we be also arresting whomever it was that invented these killer robots? Or at least whatever local management was running the robot factory. There IS someone running the robot factory, right? Or if it's totally automated, maybe a glowy to "hack" the control systems and shut down the factory would be good.
Debriefing: The final debriefing is somewhat anticlimactic. "That should at least slow down the Ideality for awhile" doesn't sound like a very big deal. I realize this arc is only Part I for your overall storyline, but it would be nice if the final mission of each part had some closure.
Overall
I like the basic concept of the Ideality as initially presented, where they are capturing people and modifying them with cybernetic parts in an effort to "perfect" them. However, I don't think you did enough with this idea; this idea was used in mission 3 but then kinda dropped for missions 4 and 5. Also, the various things you have the Ideality doing don't seem very focused; during missions 1 and 2 they are conquering other villain bases, during mission 3 they are kidnapping civilians and converting them into cyborgs, and during mission 5 they are building prototype robots. (Not sure what they are doing in mission 4, it's never really explained what that base is for, which I think could be improved on as well.) As presented, it seems like they are doing various random things that aren't closely connected.
My suggestion would be for you to more heavily focus on the modifying humans into cyborgs aspect of the Ideality, which I think is the more intriguing part of their back story. The reason they invade villain bases is perhaps to capture villains to use as raw material. Consequently, in mission 2 where they've taken over a Council base, the player should encounter some Idealized Council -- probably some custom models that look like people in Council uniform, but with lots of cybernetic parts attached to them.
The police starts to care about the Ideality more when the Ideality starts kidnapping regular civilians in addition to villains for their raw materials (as in mission 3; maybe the hostages could be a mix of civilian and villain models).
I'd drop the robot angle and have the Type I and Type II bosses in the final mission be various Idealized big bad guys, like a cyborg Greater Devoured or something wacky like that.
Basically I think you should stick to the Ideality's essential theme and run with it as much as you can. Right now, though, I think the overall plot of this arc is rather unfocused. The Ideality starts out mysterious, then some interesting ideas are presented with respect to their desire to "perfect" people, but near the finish, they end up going with a fairly typical "let's build a better killer robot" plot.
I realize I suggested a lot of changes that may not fit with your vision; feel free to take or discard any of that advice. Hope it helps.
In any case, as it stands now I gave this arc 3 stars. I hope you think that is fair!
-----
I owe a review to:
@parhaius - Ideality Part2 103737
@Markus V8.0 - Shift Awesome! 97358
@KingSac - The Once and Future King Sac 99394
@jjac - A Tangle in Time 2622
Leaf Cutter Ant - Yellow Submarine 92780
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909 or Escalation 6143
@Lycanus - 110465, 16376 or 113224
@Aracade - Facing Chaos 105163
GGG247 - 2 of 103955 and 63910
DarthGM - one of 59608 Little Boy Legacy or 103694 Torchbearer
@GlaziusF - Dream Paper 1874
@Steeple - Enter, the Darkened 107230
@Flagrant Fowl - Strange Tale of Silent Witness 114250
@El Condor - Freaks and Geeks 55715
@Ryo Takenoko - 1 of Kidnapping an Idol 136188 or Santa's Workshop of Misfit Toys 134140
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
You can make me owe you a review if you run through and review one of:
Axis and Allies (1379)
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
Teen Phalanx Forever! (67335)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Celebrity Kidnapping (1388)
I enjoyed the mission very much, and almost all my comments are minor stylistic suggestions.
First Mission - Introduction text
Blond should be spelled Blonde
Perhaps she should be the heiress of the Holiday Hilton, or the Holiday Hotels, or something similar. Her name is a parody, so the hotel's name should be as well.
Send-off text
Re-write text to "There's a sewer grate at the far end of the prison yard; that should lead you straight to her cell," being sure to add something about it being at the far end of the yard for those who've never done the tutorial, or don't remember it. [there are several grates before you get to the correct one]
"Try TO get Paris out in one piece"
Convict minion info text
"who has built up a lot of pent up aggression..." might better read "A convicted felon with years of pent-up aggression; he's ready to unloose it all now" [either way, pent-up should be hyphenated; it's a compound adjective].
Photographer info text:
"Paparazzi take photos of celebrities <change to>when the subjects least expect it..." and "or<comma> in this case, while..."
Paris Holiday info text:
"...became famous after appearing on an MTV reality show." instead of of "a reality show on MTV."
"story WHICH caused the producers <delete TV> to proclaim her the hottest star on televsion <instead of MTV>."
"Paris also sang some marginal music<comma instead of AND> shilled <instead of SOLD> some over-priced perfume, and had an irate ex-boyfriend post an explicit video of them <instead of HER> on <instead of TO> the internet. Unfortunately, <delete FOR HER> Paris' bad-girl <compound adjective> ways caught up with <instead of TO> her when <instead of AFTER>..."
A small ambush on the way out would make sense, probably by the Paparazzi.
After mission text - put a rich at the end as well: "We're going to be rich, $name, rich!"
Mission Two:
Mission Intro Text : "We split the ransom three waysyou, me, and the Family <instead of "one for you, one for me, and one for the Family.">
Info Text on Bum: "Once a promising boxer, Terry Wheeler took a dive at his brother's urging, allowing Emil Marcone to make serious money on a series of inside bets. Ever since, Terry's life has been on the skids, and he now squats in an abandoned office, a washed-up has-been." [Leave the relationship to Willy implied, since you never mention it again, and eliminated to be verbs]
Info Text on Hobo: "Formerly a Scrapyarder foreman, after the Cage Consortium busted his union he found himself out of work, out of luck, and out of options." ["with the Scrapyarders" is wordy; "out of work and un-employed" is redundant]
Mission Three:
Intro Text: change "in order to" to "to" in the first sentence, delete "Go and" from the second, and perhaps change the ending to just "we'll be able to settle our accounts"
The final fight is suddenly much tougher than the rest of all the preceding missions. After no deaths through the arc, I died eight times after encountering the Marcone boss. Being ambushed while fighting the boss is very frustrating.
After you capture(?) Amanda Vines, there should be some text (perhaps a clue, so it's obvious) about leading her out. I was unsure at first what to do with her.
The grammar and word choice of the souvenir could be improved - some missing commas, too many to be verbs, etc. I can send you a message about it if you care.
@Elisenda
My own missions need a lot of work as well
(A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
Wow, thanks for this detailed review! Definitely incorporating some of these suggestions.
[ QUOTE ]
Blond should be spelled Blonde
Perhaps she should be the heiress of the Holiday Hilton, or the Holiday Hotels, or something similar. Her name is a parody, so the hotel's name should be as well.
[/ QUOTE ]
Changed to "blonde" and "Holiday Hotel". Also changed to "Holiday Hotel" in Paris's description.
[ QUOTE ]
Re-write text to "There's a sewer grate at the far end of the prison yard; that should lead you straight to her cell," being sure to add something about it being at the far end of the yard for those who've never done the tutorial, or don't remember it. [there are several grates before you get to the correct one]
[/ QUOTE ]
OK, reworded to "There's a sewer grate at the far end of the exercise yard"
[ QUOTE ]
"Try TO get Paris out in one piece"
[/ QUOTE ]
Changed.
[ QUOTE ]
Convict minion info text
"who has built up a lot of pent up aggression..." might better read "A convicted felon with years of pent-up aggression; he's ready to unloose it all now" [either way, pent-up should be hyphenated; it's a compound adjective].
[/ QUOTE ]
I think I like my phrasing a little better, but I did change "pent up" to "pent-up".
[ QUOTE ]
Photographer info text:
"Paparazzi take photos of celebrities <change to>when the subjects least expect it..." and "or<comma> in this case, while..."
[/ QUOTE ]
I like this; changed all of them to have the info:
Paparazzi take photos of celebrities when the subjects least expect it, such as when they shop, walk through a city, eat at a restaurant or even swimming or lying on the beach. Or, in this case, while they're being kidnapped by supervillains.
[ QUOTE ]
Paris Holiday info text:
"...became famous after appearing on an MTV reality show." instead of of "a reality show on MTV."
"story WHICH caused the producers <delete TV> to proclaim her the hottest star on televsion <instead of MTV>."
"Paris also sang some marginal music<comma instead of AND> shilled <instead of SOLD> some over-priced perfume, and had an irate ex-boyfriend post an explicit video of them <instead of HER> on <instead of TO> the internet. Unfortunately, <delete FOR HER> Paris' bad-girl <compound adjective> ways caught up with <instead of TO> her when <instead of AFTER>..."
[/ QUOTE ]
These seem like good changes, making them all. Her info is now:
The heiress to the Holiday Hotel fortune, Paris became famous after appearing on an MTV reality show where she "discovered" her latent superpowers in a fiery origin story which caused the producers to proclaim her the "hottest" star on television. Paris also sang some marginal music, shilled some overpriced perfume, and had an irate ex-boyfriend post an explicit video of them on the Internet. Unfortunately, Paris's bad-girl ways caught up with her when she was arrested and sentenced to prison for drunk driving.
[ QUOTE ]
A small ambush on the way out would make sense, probably by the Paparazzi.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sadly I'm out of "detail" slots that I can use on this map. Another ambush wouldn't be bad, but I don't know that I want to delete something else in order to fit it in.
[ QUOTE ]
After mission text - put a rich at the end as well: "We're going to be rich, $name, rich!"
[/ QUOTE ]
That does sound more Willy-like. Changed.
[ QUOTE ]
Mission Two:
Mission Intro Text : "We split the ransom three waysyou, me, and the Family <instead of "one for you, one for me, and one for the Family.">
Info Text on Bum: "Once a promising boxer, Terry Wheeler took a dive at his brother's urging, allowing Emil Marcone to make serious money on a series of inside bets. Ever since, Terry's life has been on the skids, and he now squats in an abandoned office, a washed-up has-been." [Leave the relationship to Willy implied, since you never mention it again, and eliminated to be verbs]
Info Text on Hobo: "Formerly a Scrapyarder foreman, after the Cage Consortium busted his union he found himself out of work, out of luck, and out of options." ["with the Scrapyarders" is wordy; "out of work and un-employed" is redundant]
[/ QUOTE ]
Made all these text changes.
[ QUOTE ]
Mission Three:
Intro Text: change "in order to" to "to" in the first sentence, delete "Go and" from the second, and perhaps change the ending to just "we'll be able to settle our accounts"
[/ QUOTE ]
Changed as suggested.
[ QUOTE ]
The final fight is suddenly much tougher than the rest of all the preceding missions. After no deaths through the arc, I died eight times after encountering the Marcone boss. Being ambushed while fighting the boss is very frustrating.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hmm, yeah, I've had a couple other people complain that the paparazzi ambushes here were too overwhelming. There currently are two "easy" ambushes while you fight the Marcone boss. I'm eliminating one ambush from the Marcone boss, instead causing "Lois Watson", another reporter to spawn. Then defeating Lois's spawn will cause the second Paparazzi ambush to occur.
So, in short, there's still mad paparazzi ambushes, but they are spaced farther apart.
[ QUOTE ]
After you capture(?) Amanda Vines, there should be some text (perhaps a clue, so it's obvious) about leading her out. I was unsure at first what to do with her.
[/ QUOTE ]
She's not really an objective, she is just following you because she wants an exclusive interview.
[ QUOTE ]
The grammar and word choice of the souvenir could be improved - some missing commas, too many to be verbs, etc. I can send you a message about it if you care.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure, PM me if you have some specific comments!
I republished and ran a test through and all this seemed to work. Thanks for the feedback!
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Thanks for the response! I corrected the minor grammar points you made and modified Fever's lines based on your suggestions. Also added the We are the champions....line to the Rock Deity, I really loved that idea. While doing this I noticed the arc is actually at 97.44%!
A brief trivia note. The day after the Disco Demolition the White Sox forfeited the game due to the damage left by the event. This was the last time an American League game was forfeited.
WN
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story