I'll try yours if you'll try mine
By
5th_Elemental,
Posted on: 2009-04-10 13:04 in Mission Architect
The Ideality - Part 2: An Ideal Plan review
Played a 50 AR/dev blaster.
Mission 1
Briefing seems normal, not bad but not exceptional. The Ideality are back and have taken some scientists hostage.
I do like the dialog the Ideality and the scientists have, both the "You shall be made perfect!" that they tell the scientists, and the scientists being so hopeful and thankful at being saved.
I still think you may want to remove mez protection from Bionic Barrager, to make it easier for squishies who rely on holds/stuns.
This map seems a little on the large side for what you need to do here.
The last scientist gave me a clue leading to a Central Office Supply. This is a decent new lead, but I'm still kinda puzzled as to why the Ideality took over this lab in the first place. Was there something special about this lab that made them want to take it over? Or are they just after more humans to convert into cyborgs? As it stands now, this mission looks like its sole purpose is to lead into the next mission; some explanation as to the Ideality's motivations in the first mission would be nice.
Mission 2
Briefing: Crimson Avenger the name of a DC comics hero, you might want to pick a different name to be safe. Also Vera says "After we gave him the info" when really it was just her (she did make a point of saying "While you were out"). Maybe should be "After I gave him the info".
The way this briefing is phrased makes it sound like the Crimson Avenger is the protagonist and the player is just supporting this NPC. I think it would be nicer if you could frame it so the player is the hero, not the NPC; especially considering your goal as you enter is "Rescue the Crimson Avenger".
When I rescue the Crimson Avenger, he says, "I'm glad you got my message" -- but the contact never gave me a message from him, she made it sound more like it was her idea to send me to back up Crimson Avenger. Maybe you could rephrase the briefing so the Crimson Avenger sent a message asking the player for help, via the contact.
The boss of this mission, NRG Type I, spawned very near the entrance. Not sure if that was intentional.
Having minions with healing/buffing powers (like Cyber Repair with pain dom and Cyber Support with force fields) may make the Ideality enemies really hard for bigger teams; with a big spawn, the number of minions with stacking buffs would get pretty crazy. You may want to restrict healing/buffing powers to lieutenants or higher.
I had Crimson Avenger get stuck going up an elevator and lost him there. I think this is an old bug with elevators and hostages, so probably nothing you can do about that, but you should know it can happen.
Found the professor, and found his name is Dr. Ronson. You might have Vera mention him by name rather than just calling him "some important professor" (I mean she gives the street address for the mission even, not sure why she wouldn't have this detail) and change the "Rescue the professor" objective to "Rescue Dr. Ronson".
I like Dr. Ronson's dialog. He sounds very absent-minded professor-ish with all his "Oh, hey!" and "Uh, please don't do that?" messages.
I thought I heard an Ideality ambush coming after me when I freed Dr. Ronson, but it never did find me, maybe got confused by elevators. Crimson Avenger did get unstuck again on my way back out, though.
The professor gave me a new address on the way out, saying it was important, but he didn't explain why. And why was the professor here in Central Office Supply in the first place? Why did the Ideality cyborgs capture him in particular? A lot of unanswered questions here. I think some of this needs to be explained; there needs to be more supporting reasons for the player to want to check out this random address Dr. Ronson gave them. At least have him say where he got the address and why he thinks it's important.
Debriefing: Even the contact seems confused as to what is going on. Need more info so the player knows what she's doing!
Mission 3
Briefing: So Vera wants me to check out the address, which of course is an Ideality base. I'm still very much in the dark as to what is going on; as a result it doesn't feel like I've made much progress so far.
In the mission, I have a lot of robots saying "Cyber Repair: Be alert. According to intelligence, Police Woman may be looking for this place." and other robots saying "Cyber Gunner: Be alert. According to intelligence, $target may be looking for this place." (with no string substitution) I've noticed that sometimes it won't replace $target with the name if the player isn't very close; you may want to rephrase their "unaware" dialog to not include $target as a result.
I found some Encrypted Files as a clue from clicking the glowy. It would be nice if the clue actually had some details on what is in the files; in general, I think it is better for the player to read the actual clues and figure out what's going on, rather than taking it back to the contact and expecting the contact to tell you about them in exposition.
After searching the warehouse, it's quite unclear to me why the Ideality was occupying that warehouse; they weren't really doing anything except patrolling around being worried I'd show up. As a result, it felt like this base purely existed for me to come in and find some clues in it. Maybe give this base some more purpose by putting some more humans being held hostage (prior to being converted), or some machinery or something else that gives the impression that the Ideality has some purpose for this base?
Mission 4
Briefing:
Vera says "those computer files you retrieved might contain all the evidence we'd ever need to put Ideal away for a long, long time!" Considering we have many eyewitnesses that the Ideality is kidnapping people and grafting cybernetics on them against their will, that seems like plenty of reason to arrest Ideal already, without the need for any additional evidence.
Second, Vera says "the Ideality found out where we're storing the evidence for this case, and is hitting that building pretty hard. I need you to get down there and protect the evidence." The only evidence I've gathered is this data file; a data file isn't physical evidence so doesn't need to be "stored" in a physical warehouse, and additionally you can make lots of copies of a data file, so it doesn't seem like robots trying to take back the original data file I recovered would really stop us from using the evidence. Unless you assume that no one made a back up copy of this valuable evidence, in which case you maybe should say this, but this would kinda make the contact and/or the player look dumb, so I wouldn't recommend it.
So as a result this briefing and this mission doesn't make sense to me on multiple levels. For this plot to make sense, the evidence you recovered would need to be physical in nature (so it can't be copied and can reasonably be stolen back) and should furthermore incriminate someone who previously you had no evidence against (for example, a crooked city councilman who secretly is supporting the Ideality would work, but the known leader of a criminal organization doesn't work for this).
Entering the mission, it's already totally overrun with Ideality; why haven't they destroyed the evidence already? Maybe you should have some PPD here fighting the Ideality and guarding the evidence, but losing, or something like that.
After clearing the cyborgs around the evidence computer, suddenly the objective changed to "Defeat NRG Type II Robot", but there was no explanation for why. Maybe you need a clue or some of the robots in the ambush to say something about the Type II robot ("$name is here! Keep $himher pinned down until the NRG Type II can reinforce us!" or something), to give the player some reason why they need to fight it.
Minor quibble, but the way NRG Type II talks is a little too Rikti-like; "Order received: Eliminate all fleshbags" and "Target detected: Eliminating". I think "Warning: Operational parameter not defined" is fine though as it sounds like a proper computer warning.
Debriefing: "Good job protecting the evidence warehouse. You're not going to liek what we found out, though: all the evidence files you picked up were fakes; looks like they were just there to disguise a homing program." This....doesn't make sense. Why would they send robots to recover the evidence if it was fake? (This makes me wonder what the contact says if you fail to defend the evidence computer, too.) Also, "liek" should be "like".
This also means everything the player did in missions 3 and 4 was useless; so really, the player hasn't made any progress working on this plot at all, even at the end of mission 4. 
I think this is a problem; each mission really should build on the earlier missions.
Mission 5
Briefing: OK, despite having everything we learned turn out to be false, Crimson Avenger randomly found where Ideal is hanging out and is inviting me to help him out with the final bust. We also find out that the nice professor that we rescued turned out to be a cylon who was programmed to give us a false lead, so accomplishing mission 2 was also useless. This set up makes it sound like I would've done better to not get involved in this investigation at all, and just let Crimson Avenger do it all, which is not a good feeling.
So again I'm going in to be backup for Crimson Avenger.
OK, I finally found Ideal.
[SPOILER....]
Interesting plot twist that he was actually Crimson Avenger. But this actually doesn't make sense because the only reason we even did missions 2 and 5 were because of Crimson Avenger telling us where to go; without his info we never would've found most of these Ideality bases (at least, not the way the story is currently presented). So what was he thinking? Is this all an overly complex trap for the player character? I don't really think that makes sense as far as plots go, but if that's what you're going with, you need some foreshadowing of Ideal holding a huge grudge against the player in order to give Ideal enough motivation to concoct such a plan.
This also makes both the contact and the player look kinda dumb for not realizing Crimson Avenger was Ideal all along. I do think you should add some clues or foreshadowing for this reveal.
I'm not sure why but Ideal never summoned any robots while I was fighting him.
Debriefing: The final debriefing does a good job of trying to explain this elaborate plot and wrapping up the story arc as a whole.
Overall
I feel like the plot needs work; it makes sense why we go in and save the lab techs in the first mission, but the reasoning behind the other missions seems rather tenuous to me. Having the player's efforts in nearly all the missions be (essentially) futile makes the player feel like she isn't getting anywhere. Acting as backup for Crimson Avenger for most of the arc, then being tricked by him, is kinda demeaning for the player as well. Most of the arc only makes sense within the context of "It was all an elaborate plot by Ideal to entrap your character", and I don't think that is enough. I think it would be better if everything you do, every step of the way, makes sense; THEN at the end you can discover that, in fact, a lot of it was a plot by the big bad guy.
I'd recommend you revise some of your story so that the first several missions are better linked together, with each mission giving a clue leading to the next. I think the clue needs to be a little more than "Soandso hands you an address", give some explanation for why the address is important for the investigation rather than it just being a random address. Make it so the player finds out where Ideal's lair, maybe as a result of the computer files (maybe don't make them "fake" evidence, I don't think that was needed for the plot).... Make it more so the player is the central character with Crimson Avenger helping her.... then once the player gets to Ideal, at THAT point you find out Ideal was Crimson Avenger all along, and so on.
Anyway, as it stands now, I gave the story arc 3 stars; I hope you think that's fair.
------
I owe a review to:
@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
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
@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!"
Arc Name: The Shiny One Cometh
Arc ID: 120626
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Stomphoof
Difficulty Level: Medium
Synopsis: A magical disturbance leads to a traveller, who simply wishes to find a way back home. Can you help him in his quest?
It could be played as a villain, because its really not lore based. It would be extra silly that way though.
I will take a look at one of yours tomorrow (Sunday) using my Brute. He can take on just about anything 
Thanks in advance!
I played your arc #1388.
I liked this arc VERY much. Great intro, good dialogue, good custom mobs. Good short map choice, in all, very nicely put together. Would love to hear your critique of my arc, if you get time - #6015, "Coming Unglued". Thanks for a great arc!
Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued
"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque
Hoo boy... looks like I have some work to do on my arcs. Thank you very much for doing the very detailed and exhaustive review of both my arcs - the feedback is really valuable (a lot more valuable than what I've gotten do far. You know, stuff like, "I like how the mobs look," or, "Mish X needs more story." HOW? Grr... sorry, tangential rant.)
In any case, I'm definitely going to rework the storyline of both arcs to take a lot of what you said into account. I've also gotten that same complaint about mish 4 in arc 1 being kind of extraneous. Unless I can think of an awesome idea for leaving it in, it'll probably get nixed.
Bleh, time to unpublish and do this right.
Arc Name: The Construct
Arc ID: 91887
Length: Medium
Morality: Heroic
We just got word of a break-in at a warehouse and all our other black and whites are tied up. Can you handle this one for us? Shouldn't be a big deal for you. (This arc is recommended for a team of experienced characters)
Great thread, thanks!
Shift Awesome! review
Arc description is a little short, but kinda intriguing too; the premise seems to be investigating a spaceship in orbit.
I played a 50 AR/dev blaster for this.
Mission 1
Briefing: "The rest of my team is headed to the moon base to check on some possible Aracnos trouble. On route they have discovered what appears to be an alien ship in orbit."
Since I have no idea who Markus is, I think he should introduce himself and explain what team he's on, to give some context here. Also, "my team is headed" should be "my team was headed", "Aracnos" should be "Arachnos" and "On route" should be "En route".
Second part of briefing: I like that you explain a little about how the player is expected to get to the alien ship (my character does not herself own a spaceship or have the ability to fly into space). But I think "direct transport" maybe should be "direct teleport" or "direct mattermission" or "direct transporter beam" or something like that. Also, "intensions" should be "intentions"; "And they are not responding to any of our communications attempts" should maybe be "The aliens have not responded to any of our attempts to communicate with them so far".
I like the mission title, "Gather as much information about the aliens as possible". Sounds very neat. Very nice popup as I enter the mission, too; I like how it describes the atmosphere and helps set up the scene. I like the map choice also, the dingy science lab looks perfect for an "Alien" style spaceship.
KalKak droid's description: "deffend" should be "defend".
The KalKak dialog is incomprehensible (intentionally, I'm sure), but looks kinda interesting.
The Male KalKak Aliens and Large KalKak Aliens both have mez resistance, which may be very frustrating for controllers or other squishies that rely on mezzes to survive. You might consider cutting back on mez resists.
Clicking on the "Computer Data" glowy, there should probably be a message on the progress bar for clicking it.
The mission ended after I clicked the one glowy; clicking a single glowy doesn't seem to match "Gather as much information as possible" though. I kinda think you may need more to do in this mission; perhaps several different types of glowies, each giving a different clue, which would all contribute to "Gather as much information as possible". For example, in addition to hacking the alien computer, maybe the player could take a sample of the alien atmosphere, take some of the food the aliens eat, and maybe pick up an alien artifact, machine or piece of abstract art.
It would also be nice if the clue said something more than "Bring it back to Markus and maybe we can figure out what is on it"; if you gave it a little more description, maybe it would give the player enough information to make some guesses on her own.
Mission 2
Briefing: Syxxblade is first mentioned in this briefing; he is sorta casually referenced in the debriefing of mission 1 (at least I assume that's what the contact is talking about) but I think you should have the contact explain why Syxxblade is the guy to go to about alien artifacts (and not one of the more standard science contacts like Steven Sheridan or Jonathan St John Smythe).
"Syxxblade has been having a fair amount of trouble with Crey Industries of late. I think he is down town on a stake out. . He's not answering his comm, you better go find him, and get him to figure out what is in this data storage device." is a little oddly phrased, in that it seems to explain Syxxblade is fighting Crey, but then LATER it explains we've lost touch with Syxxblade. I'd suggest that you rewrite it something more like this:
"I think we should consult Syxxblade about these alien artifacts [with some explanation of why he's the alien expert]. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to reach him via his comm unit. I know he was staking out a Crey Industries office downtown; he might have gotten in over his head. Can you find him, make sure he's okay, and ask him to look at the alien artifacts?"
You don't have to use these words, of course; but this would first explain why consult Syxxblade, then explain why Syxxblade isn't just a phone call away, and then finally that he might be in trouble and the player should help out.
I also think it's a little weird to jump from investigating an alien spaceship to fighting Crey on the streets. The second mission has a very different feel than the first.
Entering the mission, the popup message needs a period at the end of it. You might also have the popup describe the situation a little more, perhaps mentioning that this neighborhood seems heavily patrolled by Crey.
Found Syxxblade. His info is rather poorly punctuated and spelled; "the Vahzilok" should be "The Vahzilok", "embeded" should be "embedded", "forarms" should be "forearms".
I don't get the dialog of Syxxblade and his guards. His guard says "Computer, analyze the crey defenses" -- but the guard is himself Crey, and planning on fighting Syxxblade, who is labeled as being in "Heroes of Marakest". Then Syxxblade says "Computer what is the potential power output on the Crey Tank?" His bio doesn't say he has a built-in computer or anything, so this just seems odd.
A KalKak alien ambush showed up while I was freeing Syxxblade, I'm not quite sure why. I dunno why they would even show up here; perhaps they are somehow able to track the alien hard drive I stole. Hopefully this will be explained later.
After having rescued Syxxblade, the mission doesn't end; instead, the objective changes to "Better bring this back to Markus" which sounds kind of strange. Maybe this should just be "Lead Syxxblade to the exit".
Also, the mission title is "Contact Syxxblade", which I've now done (since I've rescued him), but the mission is still going. As a result you might want to change the mission title that is accurate throughout the whole mission; maybe "Extract Syxxblade".
Syxxblade spawned as a claws/invuln elite boss for me (on heroic difficulty). This is pretty overpowering compared to the regular mob spawns; I hardly have to fight now, I can just lead Syxxblade into aggro range and he can kill everything without my help.
On finishing this mission I found I had two clues, "Alien translation" and "Syxxblade 's report".... they seem a little redundant, and I assume they were both intended to be the result of what Syxxblade tells us. Maybe merge these two clues. Also delete the extra space in "Syxxblade 's".
Even using both clues combined, the info in them seems very terse considering it is deciphered information from an alien civilization. I'd expect there to be more about alien culture, alien biology and science, and so on. Also if they are kidnapping humans, I would think this evidence maybe would say what the humans are being kidnapped for.
Debriefing: I like that the contact has Syxxblade give us a language translator; presumably we'll understand the aliens after that. A suggestion: maybe add some kind of threatening message from Crey here for spoiling their ambush of Syxxblade. Perhaps Countess Crey threatens a lawsuit or something. It would just be flavor text though, reminding you that Crey holds grudges.
Possible logic problem: If the aliens are abducting humans, why were there no human prisoners on the spaceship we explored in mission 1? Maybe there should be one or two human hostages on the ship (in mission 1) that are optional objectives, that the player might stumble across while looking for clues.
I also think there needs to be some info on why the aliens are abducting humans, and what sorts of experiments are being conducted.
Mission 3
Briefing: "Destoy the ship" should be "Destroy the ship".
"Syxxblades data drive" should be "Syxxblade's data drive".
Steering the alien ship into the sun and killing them all seems pretty hardcore for blue side. Some players might go for this, but a lot of the more "heroic" characters wouldn't kill for any reason. You may want to adjust your plot so that there's still a way forward for heroes who have a code against killing.
Mission title: "navagation" should be "navigation".
Popup as you enter mission: "navagational" should be "navigational".
Mission objectives: "Controler" should be "Controller".
Shouldn't there also be some mission objectives for rescuing captive humans?
I found the navigation console quite close to the mission entrance (not sure if this was intentional or accidental) and clicked it, but nothing seemed to really happen except that it was removed from my mission objectives. I think you might want to link a clue to the console saying that you've reprogrammed the ship to go off course. Maybe would be worth having an alien ambush attack the player here too, yelling something about intruders or the ship going off course. I just feel like something more dramatic should happen here, since you've just reprogrammed their computer to fly into the sun. Best of all would be for the "ship" to start shaking and aliens to start screaming "we're all gonna die!" but of course you can't do that, so you may need to get this idea across via clues and NPC dialog.
I've now successfully reprogrammed the navigation computer (I think?), so it feels like I've achieved the title of the mission ("Re-program the navagation computer") but the mission is still going because I still need to defeat the KalKak Controler (sic). I think you need to make it clearer why the player needs to defeat the controller. Maybe this is the alien computer tech or navigator who would fix the navigation computer if you don't get him?
I have yet to see a female Kalkak Alien, so I am not sure it helps to have some of your guys named "Male KalKak Alien" Even if you did have Female KalKak Aliens, I dunno if the player would really care about their gender. I suggest you rename them to just be "KalKak Alien" or "KalKak Drone" or something similar.
This map is quite huge for the 2 objectives you have; you might want to either use a smaller map or put more stuff in it. One idea I'd like to suggest: maybe put a handful of false glowies (not TOO many, just a few) represented by weird looking gadgetry. Have only one of them be the navigational computer, but since the player maybe doesn't know what the alien computer is supposed to look like, you could give the false glowies clues like "On closer inspection, this isn't the navigation computer; it's actually an alien food processor" or "alien table saw" or whatever.
I found the KalKak Controler, and he too should be spelled "Controller". Though Controller is the name of a CoH AT and consequently maybe isn't a word you want to use. I think it's very interesting that his inactive dialog expresses that he's mad at the Rikti for some reason.
Killing the KalKak Controler generated mad ambushes; I think it maybe spawned an "Unknown" hostage near me, too, that was represented by a Banished Pantheon zombie, and I suspect its guards aggroed on me at the same time. This was kinda cool and made me stay to fight the ambushes long enough to get killed; unfortunately I wasn't able to rescue the zombie as the mission completed after I killed the Controler, so hospitaling would end the mission and I couldn't awaken because the ambush was parked over me.
"Unknown" is not a very good name for a mob, maybe it should be an "Unknown Humanoid" at least. Also in Unknown's description, "These poor soles are barely alive" should be "These poor souls are barely alive".
As I exit the mission, the popup tells me that the ship has been incinerated by the sun. This might cause morality problems for some heroes, because all the aliens and probably some hostages are presumably killed by this.
In the mission debriefing, again "Destoy" should be "Destroy". The contact reveals that the KalKaks were planning on attacking the Rikti; I kind of think you should move this to a clue that you discover after killing the KalKak Controler. Also, this subplot is not developed enough; the player never finds out why the KalKak hate the Rikti. Maybe there should be some clues somewhere for that.
The contact also says "we got everyone out of the ship" but this is never shown during the mission; there was a zombie looking hostage, but I never was able to rescue him. I think you maybe should have some hostages that you rescue and lead out as a required objective.
Overall
I liked the KalKak aliens and the feeling of exploring their alien ship; the map choices for the alien ship were very good. I think the ship itself maybe needed to be more developed; learning all about the aliens by clicking one glowy wasn't real believable to me. Likewise being able to steer the ship into the sun by clicking one more glowy didn't seem dramatic enough.
I felt that saving Syxxblade from the Crey had a jarringly different tone than the other missions, which all involve interacting with aliens on the ship. I think going out and doing street fighting breaks the sense of immersion built up by the earlier mission; I'd suggest you keep your arc focused on the main theme of the alien ship. Perhaps having the middle mission be on a small tech map rather than a big outdoor map would help.
Dropping their ship into the sun sounds like a good climactic moment for the finale, but it suffered from three problems (IMHO): first, some players might not feel right about killing everyone on the ship. Second, the act of actually doing it didn't seem dramatic enough; things should be going crazy inside the alien ship once the aliens realize they're all about to plunge into the sun. And third, what's the stop the aliens from just plain fixing the navigational coordinates after you leave? Surely they will notice that they're about to fall into the sun, before they actually do.
And finally, while the motivation of the KalKak aliens was hinted at (ie they want to use human slaves to fight Rikti), I thought this wasn't explained well enough. Some more development to make sure the player understands why the KalKak hate the Rikti, and so the player can save some of the humans captured by the KalKak, would be an immense help.
Anyway, I thought there were some neat ideas here but also some problems that are holding it back a bit. I gave the story arc 3 stars, I hope you think that is fair!
------
I owe a review to:
@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
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - The Shiny One Cometh 120626
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@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 Once and Future King Sac review
The premise of the arc made me kind of uneasy as it's clearly a vanity arc centered on the author's character. Based on the arc description, I am not sure why a player who did not know the author would want to try this arc; I think the premise needs something more in order to hook people into trying the arc.
Anyhow, giving it a try with a 50 AR/dev blaster.
Mission 1
Briefing: So the avatar of King Sac has come from the future, where everyone worships King Sac, to ask the player to help fix some mysterious temporal anomaly that threatens the good legacy of King Sac.
In this briefing, King Sac is referenced 8 times.
My character's name is mentioned 1 time.
What the contact actually wants me to do is not explained at all, aside from describing it as an "anomaly" that occurs 20 years in the past.
Some additional explanation of the nature of the anomaly, or at least why the Avatar thinks it is a problem, would be very helpful here.
Entering the first mission, I find my objective is to Rescue Christopher Bibby. But, Christopher Bibby has not been mentioned up to this point, and so I'm not really sure who he is or why he needs to be rescued.
In the mission there are mobs named "Rszkrn", "Zwog", "Flwqiws" and "Pyrtin", that basically look like they were named by randomly mashing keys. They belong to a faction called "The Entropy" and actually have descriptions mentioning they spread chaos and disorder, so I'm initially taking the assumption that they've been intentionally given random looking names.
In the description for "Sienkwrit", "Its soul purpose" should be "Its sole purpose".
In the description for "Zwog", "Its soul purpose" should be "Its sole purpose".
I found Christopher Bibby, and his info finally tells me that he will grow up to become the hero, King Sac. He is in the King's Legacy faction, which I'm not sure is strictly correct because the King's Legacy is apparently a futuristic organization that was inspired by King Sac's doings, so probably would not actually include King Sac himself.
I ended up rescuing Christopher, and the Entropy and Christopher both had pretty good dialog; the Entropy were trying to capture Christopher to keep King Sac from coming into being, whereas Chris had no idea what was going on, which made sense.
The mission immediately ended after I rescued Christopher, who was the only objective on a largish map. It felt like this mission needed more stuff to do on it. Maybe the Entropy could be holding a few more hostages, civilians with retro 1980s outfits, and questioning them to make sure they aren't Christopher Bibby (kinda like when the Terminator is looking for Sarah Connor). Or alternatively you could put this on a smaller map.
Debriefing: Decent explanation of who the Entropy are. You have an extra space after "sworn enemies of the King's Legacy".
Mission 2
Now we're going back in time to rescue a slightly older, teen version of King Sac. Okay.
The mission popup as I enter states that the Entropy's native language is "unintelligble"; should be "unintelligible". Also, this is a slight continuity error as the Entropy in mission 1 spoke in perfectly clear English.
I found Kid Sac and his dialog is "I beat you monsters last time without any powers", followed by "Thanks for the assist, fellow hero! Have we met? You seem familiar..." What, he's completely forgotten that I saved him earlier, and he now thinks he did it all on his own? That seems rather rude.
Kid Sac spawned as an Elite Boss for me (on heroic difficulty). This is probably too strong for an ally; he basically one shots everything I encounter, without needing me to attack at all. This is kind of reinforcing the idea that King Sac is the hero of this story, not the player.
I think it would be nice for the story if Kid Sac also told the player what he was doing in this dingy warehouse and how he managed to be captured by the Entropy (who he can 1 shot after all). It kinda makes sense that Christopher Bibby might be in a park area, but being in an old warehouse requires some explanation. Maybe give a clue, "Kid Sac's story" or something similar.
The clue is intriguing, and is played just mysterious enough to make you think the Entropy are up to something but you've managed to stumble across it.
Mission 3
Yet again we go back in time to help a yet older version of King Sac.
I found an optional glowy, the Entropy Computer, which in my message box says "You found information about a clone of Kid Sac in this facility". But if I had teammates, they wouldn't have gotten to see that message; you should make it a Clue that is received after clicking the glowy. Also, I already had "Defeat Kid Sac Clone" in my mission objectives, so I actually already knew about this clone. You may want to have accessing the Entropy Computer as a mission objective initially, then have "Defeat Kid Sac Clone" be an objective that is triggered by learning this clue.
King Sac is again an elite boss, which is probably too powerful to have as an ally.
I finally fought some of the Entropy long enough for them to fight back some, and I noticed the Pyrtin minions were doing empathy heals, the Rszkrn minions were doing rad emission debuffs, the Flwqiws were doing pain heals, and the Sienkwrit lieutenants were doing kin buffs. You should consider removing the buffs/debuffs from all minions (reserve for lieutenant and above); if anyone fights a medium to large group of Entropy, the synergy between the mobs buffing and debuffing will make them extremely hard. I was able to fight through them all solo, but I suggest you try a test run with a medium to large team sometime and I think you'll see what I mean.
I like the Kid Sac Clone's dialog and how it kinda trails off as he dies.
I'm a little puzzled as to why the Entropy would want to clone King Sac, though; making carbon copies of something or someone doesn't seem true to their "chaos and disorder" philosophy.
Mission 4
The clone madness continues as the contact now sends me to destroy a cloning facility where they are apparently gearing up to churn out more King Sac clones.
This mission is full of more Entropy critters with hard to pronounce names. I actually think it would be significantly more funny if you made a separate custom faction of "Clones" which had nothing but minion level Kid Sac clones and maybe lieutenant level King Sac clones. Then fill this mission with "Clones" instead of "Entropy" and the player would have to wade through an army of Kid Sacs and King Sacs to finally achieve the goal. This would be a little surreal, but it IS a cloning facility. It would be pretty self-centered to have an army of clones of your character, but this arc has been completely King Sac-centric so far, and at this point you have nothing to lose by pushing it to the next level!
I clicked the computer in this mission and got a message saying "You found important information concerning the Entropy!" I think this computer should really generate a Clue that describes this information; currently, it doesn't.
King Sac Clone I has the description "The Entropy have created this clone of King Sac wearing his Mark III armor." Um, they cloned his armor? That doesn't really make sense. Also I'm not sure he really needs the "I" designator; wouldn't it make more sense just to call him "King Sac Clone"?
Debriefing: The contact says he hopes the clue I found will lead to the Entropy leader. This makes me really think that I should've gotten an actual Clue.
Mission 5
OK, still more clones of King Sac to fight, sheesh. And the Entropy leader. Thinking about it, it is kind of weird for the Entropy to even have a leader; after all, they are supposed to represent chaos and disorder.
Entering this mission, I find my goals are to "Destroy the 2nd King Sac clone." (note: you need to remove the period from that goal, as it doesn't work well with the comma right after it), Defeat the Entropy leader, and 5 Cloning tanks to destroy.
Considering I just destroyed a King Sac cloning facility which had a King Sac clone in it and 5 destroyable objectives, this mission feels like something of a rerun. A clone, as it were. Especially considering the contact just told me that the Entropy shouldn't be able to create any more clones.
I think you should consider merging the last two missions together, trimming your arc from 5 missions to 4 missions, but having the last mission of your story arc be in the cloning facility and have all the stuff that is in your last two missions (minus things that are duplicated): it could have the Entropy leader, a fistful of King Sac clones (maybe a whole army of them as I suggested earlier), and the various cloning devices to destroy. This would tighten up your story line, and give you a fairly dramatic finale.
Ursekrz's info says "His hatred of King Sac stems from his inability to live up to his hero's ideas." I think "ideas" should be "ideals" here, and you also need to do some foreshadowing to explain why Ursekrz feels this way. It sounds like Ursekrz regards King Sac as his hero? Or perhaps you mean "the hero's ideas" and not "his hero's ideas".
I actually rather like Ursekrz's dialog, especially "The values that King Sac strived for are unrealistic!" and "You have no idea how hard I tried to live up to King Sac's ideas." It gives me some idea of why Ursekrz is doing what he is doing. However, one major flaw in this is that, why would this Entropy guy want to follow King Sac's ideals in the first place? It would make more sense if he were a failed hero or a sidekick that never quite made it or something - not a weird alien being.
I fought King Sac Clone II, whose info said he was a level 40ish King Sac, but he didn't seem substantially different to fight than the last King Sac Clone. He triggered a third King Sac clone to spawn, though, which was kind of annoying because now I have to search the entire facility to figure out where the new clone is.
I ended up running through all the elevators twice before I finally found King Sac Clone III in a place I had run through before. He spawned as an elite boss for me, and I found I needed to eat a bunch of inspirations and hit Eye of the Magus to survive long enough to kill him; it really hurt that he spawned with a minion that was doing rad emission stuff too.
King Sac Clone III's info said he was so powerful because he was a clone of King Sac after he had been exposed to Rikti and gained cosmic powers. This actually doesn't make logical sense because the Entropy never captured that version of King Sac (at least in this story arc) and so should not have been able to clone him.
For completing the mission I got a clue called "Ursekrz's cape" -- this really should be a souvenir, not a clue.
Debriefing: I like that the contact says "What Ursekrz did not realize was that one only has to do their personal best, and that is enough." Considering how influential King Sac supposedly is towards the King's Legacy, there isn't enough info about his ideology and beliefs that supposedly shaped the world to come.
Also in the debriefing, "The King's Legacy is forever ingratiated to you" should be "is forever grateful to you".
Overall
Well, this arc is extremely self-centered, focusing entirely on the history (and the future) of the author's hero, and as a result, I am not really sure why players who don't already know King Sac would want to play it. I think it's really pretty hard to get people to want to play a story where they aren't the hero, but instead the author is. However, since the entire premise of the arc is fixing the timeline so that King Sac can inspire future generations, it's not really possible to remove this concept without severely impacting the story. I don't have a good suggestion for this; essentially, the player must accept the idea that they are in this extremely King Sac-centric world in order to buy into the story presented here. Some players won't be able to do this and will be driven away from this story arc as a result.
If you can swallow this idea, though, some of the writing and dialog in this story arc is fairly good, and time travel is used in a pretty reasonable way to move the story forward. I feel that the characterization could be improved, however; ironically, despite being the central figure of this story arc, King Sac is not sufficiently developed as a character, IMHO. You are told King Sac has done many heroic deeds and inspired an entire legion of admirers in the future, but this is never shown in the story arc. I think you need to have the contact frequently quote King Sac's ideals and principles to make key points (demonstrating how much King Sac's philosophy has influenced his thinking) and have some of this idealism show through when you encounter the living versions of King Sac. Maybe there could be clues and/or dialog hinting at great victories King Sac has won ("Thanks for the assist, $name! Those Entropy caught me when I was weakened and off guard, right after I finished defeating the Teal Serpent.") or beliefs that King Sac espouses. You never really get a feel for what sort of person King Sac is, except for the fact that he kept forgetting I had saved him in the immediately previous mission, which didn't really make me feel like he was as inspiring and wonderful as the contact was trying to make him out to be. He could use some dialog or background to help give him more personality.
The character of the antagonist, Ursekrz, has a little bit of development but could use some more. In particular it is bizarre to me that Ursekrz could've attempted to follow King Sac's ideals when he's...well, some kind of alien that probably wouldn't have heard of King Sac until coming to earth. I do like that you did make an attempt to provide some motivation for the main antagonists of the story.
I also think there are some balance issues with the mobs. Specifically, there are too many enemies with buffs and debuffs, which will give them too much synergy against a bigger team, and the fact that you are given an Elite Boss as an ally in a couple of the missions is much too overpowering.
Finally, I do think the last two missions are redundant with each other and could stand to be merged into one bigger mission to serve as your grand finale.
I wanted to give this arc around 3.5 stars and waffled between treating it as a high 3 or a low 4; despite the extreme self-centeredness of the arc, it does have some good stuff in it. However, having to run all over the last mission looking for the third clone, then finding him and discovering he was an EB with a rad support minion, and his background didn't really make sense, pushed me over the edge to rate this 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!
------
I owe a review to:
@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
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - The Shiny One Cometh 120626
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@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!"
Ok, I'll take this on. It's difficult to sift the carp that has been posted as missions, so this thread is a place to find some to try out. I tend to be harsh in reviews if there is no story line or if the spelling and punctuation are nonexistent of no good reason that I can find.
My favorite mission is the one my husband helped write:
#118970 Curse of the Pharoah's Tomb
I've gotten mixed reviews on the other he helped write:
#63131 American Gothic, the "real" farm mission
It is a farm where you "harvest" the vegies, rescue the farm worker's child, and defeat the evil farmer and his wife.
The one I made on my own (and it shows):
#129487 I'm So Confused
Have fun playing and I look forward to trying many of the ones listed in this thread!
Thanks everyone!
@Grandma Squeak
I'm trying out each of the MA missions listed in this thread.
Just for fun, I'll point out that McArthur was the commander of troops in the Pacific Theatre of Operations in WWII.
Today, I tried to find mission #1992 A Heroe's Halo and it just isn't to be found my that number. Where did it go?
I really appreciate the thoroughness of the reviews. They offer good pointers for improvement. I don't spend a lot of time in the forums, so it will take me a while to work my back to page 16 where I first posted here!
Thanks PoliceWoman!
[ QUOTE ]
The Once and Future King Sac review
[/ QUOTE ]
Wow. PoliceWoman, thank you so much for that highly detailed review. I really appreciate the time you took in playing the arc and writing your thoughts. For my first arc, I tried to shoot for the moon in making a mini-TF, and while I didn't quite succeed in some areas, I'm glad I tried. The version you played was slightly tweaked from two other public reviews that I had, with changes just being text in nature to add to the storyline, as it was felt that there wasn't enough explanation in one or two lines of dialogue, which was a bit of a mistake on my part to hope that the reader infers the intentions. Sometimes that's just asking too much from the player or the sign of a lazy writer.
You make a number of good points, and I'll address them in list form below. <ul type="square">[*] I understand your concerns when it comes to a "vanity" arc, but I looked at it as sharing a little of my character with everyone else. Since we've all played for and against the same mobs and contacts, I didn't see it as vain to interject something new. I tried to make the player care about my character because a future was at stake, but I can see how someone could easily not give rat's behind.[*] A lot of the intro text was beefed up based on feedback from other players why they should care about the hero who's timeline is threatened, so it's ironic that in my attempt to clarify who this hero is and why the player should care, you found it to be a bit vanity-centered, with the repeated instances of the hero name. I'll have to try to find a happy medium.[*] Thank you for catching some of the spelling/wrong word usage errors. A lot of writing was done late at night. Thought I caught it all.[*] I originally had the entire King's Legacy faction created, but when combined with the Entropy, they blew up my file size. Even stripping both factions down to just 2 minions, 1 lt and 1 boss was too much when I still had the EBs/AVs. I'll move Christopher Bibby to not be part of the King's Legacy faction.[*] As a side note, I also had to cheat with the two allies to bring my file size down. If you clicked on them, they read as being part of the Entropy faction with the description text being they were clones, which you encountered later. I had to reuse the EBs as allies in a cost-cutting technique. I'll try separating them out on their own and see what happens. As such, having them spawn as EB-level allies is a side effect that I didn't consider to be harmful.[*] Good idea on having more to do in the first mission, but my original mindset was having this be a mini-TF, so knowing the long maps to come in upcoming missions, I thought that making this a single-objective mish would be easier on the player(s). If I can find a smaller outdoor map, I'll use it.[*] The language issue. I wanted their names to be bizarre, even looking like mashed typewritten letters. After all, they're aliens from the future bent on chaos and disorder. Then a reviewer complained it didn't make sense why. So I explained it in the pop-up you saw. The key is that their names are in their native language, but they speak English. Sure, it's a bit of a cop out, but it helps move the story along, as I'm sure the player would rather not see gibberish from the mob's word balloons. And they would have to speak English to communicate to Christopher Bibby. A bit of a stretch I'm willing to let pass.[*] I understand your issue with Kid Sac's memory. He doesn't remember you, but remembers the monsters. But at the same time, it also makes some sense. Would it work better for you if I replaced his "I beat you monsters last time without any powers" line with "You monsters are real? I thought that was just a bad nightmare!"? After all, what was the last mission for you was about seven years for him.[*] I prefaced mission 2 with the Avatar telling you that the Entropy led Kid Sac into a trap in the warehouse. That's what he was doing there.[*] I'll follow your advice and make the clue trigger the clone spawn. But I had a number of issues with spawn placement in testing this arc, so I wanted as little confusion as possible by stating the objective from the beginning. Think I'll go with a smaller map, have the computer spawn up front, then the clone in the back.[*] I tested the arc on Invincible with a 6-man team full of blasters and one controller (it was all I could get). We did okay, with team wipes occurring when we pulled more than one group. On another team that was more varied (2 blasters, 1 scapper, 2 defenders, 1 controller), but without a tank, we rolled through the mobs at Rugged. So while the mobs do have some heals, holds and debuffs, they're the right mix of fun and difficult.[*] Glad you liked the "MURGHHH!" [*] Nice idea for the clone factions. I considered it, too. But again, the file size dilemma with custom groups. I could try another version of this arc, but with Rikti as the main mobs from the future, then have a bunch of King Sac clones running around in a later mission.[*] I understand your desire for more information from clues. I'll clear that up, as it skipped my mind as I was flirting around with the file size.[*] Regarding the description of the King Sac Clone I, this was another instance of me throwing in some text on a mob that might have been missed. In the next mission, I have some minions talking about how other teams were dispatched to other times in King Sac's history to get DNA samples. In my "Director's Commentary" thread, I explained that the DNA the Entropy took from Kid Sac wasn't good enough, so they had to go to other points in King Sac's career make more powerful clones. Another stretch? Sure. I may have to fix that.[*] I can see how combing missions 4 and 5 would probably work better, in terms of story arc length and monotony.[*] Why the Entropy would follow Ursekrz? Because he's duped them into thinking he hates King Sac and King's Legacy as much as they do. But his own agenda is actually personal, as well as twisted and sad. Don't know if you caught it, but Ursekrz's costume is made up of different aspects from Kid/King Sac's costumes. Ursekrz idolized King Sac, but when he failed to live up to those ideas, he decided to take it out on his former idol. Hey, crazier things have happened. [*] Sorry you had to run back to find the 3rd clone. I never had that problem in all of my tests, but you're the second reviewer that was annoyed it happened to them. Can probably eliminate that by combining the last two missions and just have them spawn from the start.[/list]
Based on the highly detailed reasons you gave, I can accept the 3-star rating. You provided nothing but good, constructive criticism, which was exactly the type of feedback I've been looking for. I know that this type of storyline, based off my character, will alienate people who couldn't care at all, but with your suggestions, hopefully I can turn those people around. I will definitely go back and punch up this story arc big time thanks to your feedback. When it's all done, I hope you'll check it out again.
With yesterday's patch breaking a lot of story arcs, I ended up not doing any formal reviews yesterday, figuring I'd better wait until people got a chance to straighten things out if their arc got broken. Will resume soon though.
Thanks for the kind words everyone.
@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 ]
Just for fun, I'll point out that McArthur was the commander of troops in the Pacific Theatre of Operations in WWII.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, this is true. I kind of figured that if Germany was invading the United States, most or all US Armies would've been recalled to defend the homeland. I did consider using Eisenhower but thought MacArthur and Patton were both better known as WW2 generals. Yes, I do know Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander and became president and all, but he just didn't have the same panache as MacArthur and Patton.
[ QUOTE ]
Today, I tried to find mission #1992 A Heroe's Halo and it just isn't to be found my that number. Where did it go?
[/ QUOTE ]
I think Vanden actually took that down to put up a different story arc, Knights of Rularuu.
@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!"
Hey PoliceWoman! Can I have you test a different arc then the one I suggested earlier?
*points to his Sig* Its the one named "Return of the Three Fold King" Its a 5 mission story based arc series. Noncomedy, fairly "serious"
If not, its no biggie
A Tangle in Time review
Played a 50 AR/dev blaster on heroic.
The arc description says that I'm apparently messing around with some sort of time traveling magic artifact. Azuria does seem like a good choice of contact for messing around with magic artifacts.
Mission 1
Briefing: well written and explains what I'm doing, so I like it. I do think it is odd that the PPD would be guarding this Oranbegan ruin, and not some kind of professional magic organization like the Midnight Squad or the Legacy Chain. But then my character is a police officer who is meddling with this stuff herself, so I guess that works.
I like the roaming PPD patrols that make the mission more dynamic.
I was very puzzled by Officer Riley's leafy arms until I read his description, which says he's some kind of mutant. The vine cages the bad guys are caught in make sense now too. Riley's animations and dialog are terrific though.
I love how Hanson seems to be about to punch out these surrendered CoT that are technically guarding him.
Clicking on the glowy it says "Don't you dare do this Police Woman, I'm warning you!" on the progress bar... but who is saying this? And I kinda thought something would happen after the glowy was fully clicked. I got a message in my chat log, but you might want to add a clue to the clue journal; if you have a team, this would let people other than the person who clicked the glowy know what happened.
Mobiosea has some interesting dialog, warning of unspecified ominous doom. Hopefully I'll find out what he meant soon.
Debriefing: Azuria says, "Greetings, I look forward to working with you"? So she's forgotten me? I'm assuming this is intentional.
Mission 2
Briefing: Identical to the first mission ... hmmmm ... but clearly intentional since my accept message is "Wait a minute. I just did this!"
Second part of briefing, should either change the semicolon to a period, or change Surely to be lower case.
I like the new mission title, "What's going on?"
I think this is a clever idea but will give some players a headache.
Time stream glowy in this mission didn't have a progress bar for clicking it at all, which made me wonder if it was bugged; maybe give it a second or two just to make it look like something is happening. I'm not sure whether it was actually listed as a required objective, either, but don't want to go back to check right this moment.
Mobiosea's dialog: "Look, here She comes..." I think you need to change $Heshe to $heshe (lower case).
Some minor punctuation stuff: I don't think there is a hyphen in "deja vu", and Mobiosea's dialog overuses ellipses.
I really think defeating Mobiosea in the second mission or completing the second mission should've given up some sort of clue to what is going on; though it may actually be your intention for the player to be very confused by the temporal paradox at this point.
Debriefing: Gah, back where I started with another "Greetings" from Azuria.
Mission 3
Briefing: Love this one! The part where the player tries to tell Azuria something's wrong and Azuria blows you off and insists you do the mission (again) is hilarious.
So in this mission I have to kill the police and the CoT are my friends? I'm kind of uneasy at this since my character is a police officer, but going to go with it.
Mobiosea's dialog trails off after "But I'll get away with it, want to know why?" I do want to know why, but he doesn't say anything more. Should there be some sort of Clue awarded at this point, perhaps with a partial explanation?
This mission doesn't appear to have clicking the time stream glowy as an objective either, not sure if that is intentional.
I like Mobiosea's whole arrogant attitude, and the dialog he has when I try to ditch him, then come back for him.
Officer Riley's dialog as you attack him is terrific. Hanson's isn't bad, but Riley's is terrific.
Time Stream again had no progress bar for clicking it, and wasn't a required objective. Though I can see why it's not a required objective at this point.
Even though I helped Mobiosea this time and completed the mission, he didn't actually tell me anything; not sure if this was intentional or not.
Debriefing: whoa, finally something has changed! Azuria's "I only gave you one amulet, how did you end up with all these?" is kind of weird. I think it would've been helpful to have a clue saying you had multiple amulets or one for each amulet, to foreshadow this; as it was, I hadn't realized I was accumulating multiple magical amulets. It's also rather paradoxical; where did the extra amulets come from? But this paradox is not a big deal, because the result is cool.
Mission 4
Briefing: "but it seems that Mobiosea has already bound himself" ... has should be had.
"I eventually heard that they invaded the ruins, but by then he had you by the strings" ... I don't understand this sentence at all. The CoT invaded? The PPD invaded? Needs clarification.
Azuria now wants me to beat up Mobiosea, but I don't understand how this will help, because I already beat him up in missions 1 and 2 and it didn't seemed to help; instead, it only perpetuated the time loop.
Her final sentence, "No matter what I say, no matter what the reason, promise me that you'll destroy that pedestal" does not seem to fit with the rest of her briefing, where she just asked me to beat up Mobiosea. If the pedestal is the real objective, she maybe should have said that first, rather than ask me to beat up Mobiosea. Also won't destroying the pedestal prevent me from time traveling back to fix my original problem?
Also it seems like I could've avoided the "criminal record" that Azuria threatens me with here, by simply refusing to attack the PPD officers. But the structure of the mission forces you to attack the PPD officers, so this is a little unfair.
So now I enter the mission and it's the Oranbega map. How did I get out of the time loop? Did Mobiosea actually let me go, or the act of shooting the cops broke me out of it? Maybe needed some more explanation in mission 3.
Mission title and mission objective are both "Defeat Mobiosea!" which seems a little redundant. And why isn't "Destroy Pedestal" a required objective? Azuria seemed very adamant about that. (Later I found that this pedestal is actually in mission 5, but the way Azuria told me to destroy it in mission 4's briefing was kind of confusing.)
Found a prisoner in this mission; but he's doing some kind of strongman flexing animation, which is kind of odd for a captive.
Wow, the prisoner's dialog, "This is the 213th time I've seen you, Police Woman, and you'll fail! YOU'LL ALWAYS FAIL AHA HA HA HA HA!" is awesomely terrifying.
I tracked down Mobiosea and beat him up, but not sure it did any good. He seemed supremely confident even in "defeat".
Debriefing: Aaiiigh! Time loop!
Mission 5
Briefing: I love the huge pseudo-scientific rant that Azuria goes into when I say that I'm going to destroy the thing, and how despite the fact that she is flatly forbidding me from destroying it, the mission title pops up as "Destroy the gateway!"
Terrific mission entrance popup. I like the part where you throw the amulets to the ground and say to hell with Azuria.
Mission goal: "Find the Thorns Leader!" maybe shouldn't have an exclamation point, because it looks odd with a comma right after it.
Mobiosea's dialog as you fight him is very amusing.
I love the tattered, shaggy versions of Officer Riley and Sergeant Hanson that apparently have been trapped in their own time loops forever. Their dialog is great. So defiant initially, then really rather sad at the end. I actually feel bad for having to beat them up; I hope I get to save them in the end.
Destroying the actual pedestal was a little anticlimactic; I kinda think something more dramatic should've happened after you blew it up. Maybe link a clue with some exposition about how the time stream suddenly snaps back to a stable configuration?
Debriefing: Yay, the two officers got freed.
Overall
The premise was very clever and well handled; Mobiosea's use of time travel to imprison people in time loops to force them to do his bidding was brilliant. The before/after models for the two police officers were great. Outstanding dialog. Despite the briefings intentionally being repetitive, they actually worked really well. Azuria admitting fault at the end for wanting this artifact in her vault was a nice parting touch as well.
The only things I'd suggest would be to add a few clues to help the player understand what is going on; the time loop could be very easily confusing to many players and some exposition would be helpful. Adding a souvenir would be nice, also.
I gave this arc 5 stars.
------
I owe a review to:
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
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - Return of the Three Fold King 153654
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@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!"
I tried starting Yellow Submarine 92780 but it wouldn't start - probably bugged by the last patch.
Childhood Horrors 5349 would not start for me either.
@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!"
I had the choice of Amazon-Avatars or Escalation; I tried Escalation since it had fewer plays.
Escalation review
Played with a duo of 50 tanker and 50 blaster (I was the blaster).
Mission 1
Seems a straightforward villain bust. A lot of background info about this particular quirky villainess is given, which is nice.
Second part of briefing : "every times she is defeated" should be "every time she is defeated"
Lashion Minion Bot description: "minon" should be "minion"
Lashion ArtilleryBot description: "mid-teir" should be "mid-tier", "airel" should be "aerial". Also, why is ArtilleryBot one word, but Minion Bot and Combat Bot are two words? They should have a similar naming scheme.
Lashion Support Bot description: "expensvie" should be "expensive"
Dr. Erica Lashion: Just a minion? Seemed awfully easy. It makes sense based on the background info, but she didn't even have time to summon bots before we dropped her each time. This may be intentional, though, as the detective really plays up how easy she is.
I like her dialog where she's talking about coming up with a villain name; I had just been thinking she needed a snappy code name.
Good dialog on the clone. I like the "backup of the backup" as an objective. The body jumping schtick is a very cool idea.
In the last clone's dialog, "withdrawl" should be "withdrawal".
One question I have, though, is what is Dr. Lashion doing in Atlas Park in the first place? She isn't obviously stealing anything or robbing a bank, so what is her motivation for being here?
All the robots (aside from Lashion herself) seem rather static, and there's a lot of them due to the size of the map. It would be more interesting if they were doing something. Maybe they can be mugging Atlas citizens or guarding piles of loot stolen from city hall or something, which would help give Lashion some reason to be here.
Mission 2
OK, another seemingly straightforward mission where I stop a bank robbery.
Popup as I enter: "suprise" should be "surprise"
Goals: "Rescue the other bank teller!" should drop the exclamation point, looks weird with a comma after it.
The new Dr Lashion was a lieutenant, so a little more dangerous but still awfully easy. This may be my fault for being on heroic though.
I like that she has a new gizmo (the electro gauntlets) this time. It's a very mad scientist thing to do for her to come up with a new gadget or a new trick each time, that she's absolutely sure will work.
Mission 3
Popup as I enter: "she just keep changing bodies" should be "she just keeps changing bodies".
Yay, she picked a villain name. Still a fairly easy lieutenant, but I can see what the pattern is now and why she started out as a minion (err, 4 minions) in the first mission.
We noticed her models are getting taller each time. ... or was that our imagination?
Both this mission and the previous one were over very very quickly, though maybe this is okay considering it's a 5-mission arc.
Mission 4
The clone army is great! I really think they should have more dialog, though, since they are all Dr. Lashion, after all. Perhaps consider adding some patrols, ambushes, or nonrequired boss spawns (all named Dr. Lashion) so they can monologue at you about how they're totally going to wreck you this time? With the premise you have, you could easily have ten times as much evil mastermind dialog than a regular evil mastermind gets, since they're all really the same person!
Since this is Dr. Lashion's lab, I kinda think there should be a lot of tech gizmos, like nutrient baths for clones or workbenches for robots, that potentially could be destroyed or confiscated.
Escalation 2.0 is a decent upgrade from the last one; finally a boss this time. I actually think we could've handled the last Escalation upgrade (in Mission 3) being a boss (or EB on a bigger team) too.
Mission 5
Showdown in Atlas Park! I do like how Escalation specifically calls you out each time, and the police go along with it. It's very comic booky.
I like Jaded Captive's dialog when you free her. She should have some jaded remark she says before you free her, too, something like "Oh no, not again. Can we hurry it up? I'm late for my hair appointment".
I love the laundry list of pseudo-scientific ingredients Escalation Extreme says she included in her current clone.
Escalation Extreme says "I'm stuck!" right before she goes unstoppable, which is a little weird since her dialog suggests she's in trouble, but really she's about to become as tough as she ever gets.
Her death message is "I let myself get too attached to this clone, to comfortable"; in this, "to comfortable" should be "too comfortable".
Love the "Hate Letter from the Zig" souvenir!
Overall
The concept for Dr Lashion/Escalation and her body-hopping was actually pretty cool. Her personality really showed through her dialog and the various challenges she kept issuing through the contact. But, the missions seemed pretty straightforward and it felt like there wasn't that much to do in each mission except for the part where you interact with Dr. Lashion/Escalation; I think you could stand to add a little more material in those areas. Her robot army was a little bland, perhaps more could be done with them; maybe give them some robotic dialog or stuff to do (guarding hostages or items or something).
My teammate thought the arc could use some more clues; I think the briefings are pretty explanatory of what's going on, but perhaps a clue after the first upgraded Dr Lashion explaining the cycle of escalation would be helpful.
I thought it was witty and fun though. I gave it 4 stars.
------
I owe a review to:
Leaf Cutter Ant - Yellow Submarine 92780 [broken arc?]
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349 [broken arc?]
@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
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - Return of the Three Fold King 153654
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@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!"
Hmm, I know I left a clue after Mobey's rescue. Here it is from the editor:
"Ouroboros, MAGI, Midnighters, their views of the time stream are far too grand, far too encompassing. They'll never see the tiny imperfections... Imperfections like you.
They'll never know, and even if they somehow did, I can always rewind! Face it $name, I'm your only way out of this!"
Regardless, I put clues at the end of every encounter with him (and other objectives) to reinforce the story.
As for the amulets, I highlighted the text orange every time you received one as foreshadowing, but I didn't want to blatantly say that you were carrying multiples. Wanted it to be that 'Eureka' moment when things start to look up again.
As for grammar/spelling corrections, those are always welcome! ...as soon as I figure out the Unicode for accents.
Thanks for the feedback and good word!
[ QUOTE ]
"Ouroboros, MAGI, Midnighters, their views of the time stream are far too grand, far too encompassing. They'll never see the tiny imperfections... Imperfections like you.
They'll never know, and even if they somehow did, I can always rewind! Face it $name, I'm your only way out of this!"
[/ QUOTE ]
Hmm, I don't think I got this clue (and I thought I was watching for them). But possibly I missed it as the game doesn't always seem to say when you get one now.
[ QUOTE ]
As for grammar/spelling corrections, those are always welcome! ...as soon as I figure out the Unicode for accents.
[/ QUOTE ]
The way I figured out how to do this is to open Accessories -> System Tools -> Character Map, then pick characters out of there to cut & paste into the editor. In this way you can say something like: "déjà vu". Most people won't miss the little accent marks though so it's not a hugely big deal.
@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 ]
Childhood Horrors 5349 would not start for me either.
[/ QUOTE ]
I appreciate the notice, I'll try and see if I can fix it when I get home tonight.
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
Some additional thoughts on Escalation after sleeping on it....
One of the problems I had was that there are an awful lot of Lashion robots but it didn't feel like they really did much except act as speed bumps on the way to the main event, facing off with Lashion/Escalation. You do have a few robots guarding hostages in the bank mission and the final Atlas mission; I think it would help to give them a little dialog, albeit in robot-speak. Maybe a patrol here and there with more robot-speak; in later missions they can say something that implies that Lashion has specifically programmed them to search for and beat up the player. Just something to make the various non-Lashion mobs seem a little more lively.
I very much liked the idea you had for the optional glowy poster board with defaced pictures of the player on it, to show how much Lashion really hates the protagonist. This whole arc is really about Lashion's grudge match with the player.
I kind of would've liked the player to have some hand in locking Lashion in her last body, preventing her escape; maybe having discovered a "De-Escalation" chemical or something. But having Escalation defeated by her own hubris is also very classic, so that works too.
Finally, I think you need a rad/rad version of Dr. Lashion somewhere named "Nuclear Escalation". She can exposition that she got these radiation powers after a respec (err, radiation exposure) in Terra Volta.
@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!"
This is my first story arc and would like a review. I also look forward to running one of yours.
Arc Name: Saving Grace
Arc ID: 124477
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @spry / swieske
Difficulty Level: 30+
Length: long (4 medium sized maps and 1 large)
Synopsis: Help Thunder Shower and Stormborn locate and rescue Storm's Grace.
[ QUOTE ]
I tried starting Yellow Submarine 92780 but it wouldn't start - probably bugged by the last patch.
[/ QUOTE ]
Okay, I had to re-publish it (. Checked to be sure its working and its fine now.
Pinnacle-Pale Spectre 50 Kat/Regen/Dark Scrapper
Spectre of the Gun 50 Thugs/Dark/Soul Mastery MM
MA Story Spectre of the Gun's Search" ID #352424
Spectral Darque 50 Dark/Dark Scrapper
Yellow Submarine-Save Pepperland
The premise is to save the Beatles from the Blue Meanies who have taken over Pepperland.
Level range was 1-54 heroic, so I played a 50 AR/dev blaster.
Mission 1
Briefing: I'm afraid I don't know who the contact, Old Fred, is; looking up "Yellow Submarine" in Wikipedia, I find that he is a character from the movie who recruits Ringo to save Pepperland. But, for people who don't know this, he should really introduce himself in his initial briefing.
"We need your help Police Woman" should have a comma after help.
"caputered" should be "captured"
"dasterdly" should be "dastardly"
Some explanation of who the "Blue Meanies" are, what "Pepperland" is, and who "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" would be helpful, for people who aren't intimately familiar with Beatles mythology.
The popup message on entering the mission needs a period at the end of the sentence. Why is it that I think Pepperland is no longer a paradise? The map isn't ruined or on fire or anything.
The mission is to "Free John"; you may need to explain who John is (sorry, I know who you mean, but some players won't have even been born yet when this movie came out).
The mission objectives "Find John" and "Free John" seem a little redundant.
I need to destroy 12 Stone Flowers for this mission, but they weren't mentioned in the briefing. I think you need some explanation of what the stone flowers are, and why they need to be destroyed.
I encountered Mr Blue Meanie 34 and Mr Blue Meanie 89; both had the default minion description, but could probably use some explanation of what Blue Meanies actually are. I thought the Blue Meanie and Stone Flowers dialog was cool though. But it's a little odd that I "pick" the flowers by destroying them; not sure how else you'd get the flower dialog, though. Maybe you could have a custom "flower" character that is held hostage, but freed when you beat the Blue Meanies guarding the flower hostage?
I like the "Flowers flowers everywhere!" clue, it's very 60s. Maybe the "12 Stone Flowers to destroy" should be "12 Stone Flowers to pick" though. Also, I think 12 is a LOT of objects to destroy; you could probably do fine with just 6, or even 3 or 4.
"Once we are out the Meanies wont stand a chance!" should be "Once we are out, the Meanies won't stand a chance!"
Found John. He does have a description, but I think he could use a longer one explaining more about him; "Pretty much the egghead of the Band" doesn't say enough, IMHO. Defeating his guards completed the "Find John" objective, but not the "Free John" objective, which is odd. Not sure what it takes to "Free John"; he is following me around now though. I kind of think John should be sonic blast, not mind control; his empathy secondary makes sense.
John says "I could be handy mending a fuse when your light have gone." ... I think "light" should be "lights". And he also says "Sunday mornings, go for a ride" ... should have a period at the end. Actually I think it would scan better if he said "You can knit a sweater by the fireside. Sunday mornings, go for a ride." (i.e. filling in the missing line between the two dialogs)
John also says "I believe The Dreadful Glove Knows where they are". This seems capitalized oddly, not sure if that is intentional. Shouldn't this trigger a new objective of "Defeat the Dreadful Glove"? Or maybe it should award a clue suggesting the player find the Dreadful Glove.
Also, the mission title is "Free John" but even after I've found John and set him free from his captors, the mission doesn't end because I still need to fight the Glove and the stone flowers.
I found "Dredful Flying Glove"; I think Dredful should be "Dreadful". And John called him just "Dreadful Glove", should his name be Dreadful Glove? Or John could call him Dreadful Flying Glove.
"Free John" objective was rather unintuitive; I first tried to lead John to the exit of the mission, but that didn't work. I eventually defeated Dredful Flying Glove, which apparently was the actual trigger for "Free John" becoming complete. I think you should maybe change "Free John" to "Defeat Dreadful Glove" or maybe "Defeat Meanest Meanie".
Dredful Flying Glove's dialog: "Awww...Come one" should be "Awww...Come on".
Upon defeating him I got the "Where is the rest of the Band?" clue, described as "a scrawled note pinned to the back the Dredful Flying Gloves' back" which doesn't quite make sense. I suggest you make this clue titled "Note found on Dreadful Glove", then the body of it be, "Paul is at the circus." Maybe with a little more text though giving more details.
Debriefing: seemed very thin, would be nice to have some more text here than "You freed John? Thank goodness."
What exactly was the Blue Meanies' motivation for capturing John and either building or capturing 12 stone flowers? What is the significance of destroying the stone flowers and setting the flowers "free"? I think there needs to be more meaning here.
Mission 2
Briefing: Some explanation of who Paul is would be helpful. Also, if you are trying to duplicate the events of the Yellow Submarine movie, it sounds George was actually next after John.
Found a Miss Blue Meanie 75; she could use a description (currently she has the default lieutenant description).
15 Little Loves to collect seems quite a lot for someone to collect; could probably set this number to something less, like 6. Also, the mission could use some explanation for why collecting 15 Little Loves is a required objective.
Collecting a Little Love, I got the clue "Lot of A Little Love", which makes no sense; should probably be either "A Little Love" or "A Lot of Love". In the clue text, "You found a load of love. You like the way they make you feel. All tinlgy all over. You best keep these" .... I think "they make" should be "it makes", "tinlgy" should be "tingly", and "keep these" maybe should be "keep it all" (referring presumably to the "load of love").
Paul's description, "He just loves to sing", needs more text and description in it. I'm not sure why he's kinetics; wouldn't sonic make more sense? After freeing Paul, the mission does not end, despite the mission being named "Free Paul". I suggest you name the mission something else that will make sense even after Paul has been freed.
Some of the meanies seemed quite powerful, maybe due to build up; the spines lieutenant was particularly dangerous and managed to kill me.
Miss Meanie Blues says "Nothing you can can that I can't scream" -- I am not sure what you mean to say here, but that doesn't sound right. She has a little bit of description in her info, but she can really use more (since she seems to the the "big bad guy" of this arc).
She also says "No one can be save that can't be shaved?" which doesn't really make sense. Maybe you mean "No one can be saved that can't be shaved?"
The exit popup, "You found Paul and defeated the Meanies but there is still more to come" seems to suggest that there's more; but it's actually the end of the story arc, so this doesn't quite fit.
The mission debriefing suggests you need to go after Ringo now (note: "RIngo" should be "Ringo") but in fact the story arc ends right then and there.
Overall
This story arc felt incomplete. You rescue only 2 of the 4 Beatles, and the last mission even says that you should go on another mission to get the next one, but then the arc ends. Plus, both enemies and allies were not very well described (either no description at all, or a sentence fragment) and were not explained to the player very effectively. If the player is a huge Beatles fan, she will know all these people, but I think your story needs to communicate who John and Paul are, what Blue Meanies are, why a Dreadful Glove is the big enemy of the first mission, and where Pepperland is supposed to be, so that people who are not as familiar with the Beatles will be able to understand what is happening.
The motivation for why the Blue Meanies are attacking Pepperland and capturing musicians is very unclear also; all I got from their dialog is that they hate everything. Perhaps this is true to their nature in the Yellow Submarine movie, though; I'm not really sure.
The gameplay was okay, but I felt there were too many objects you needed to destroy in the first mission, and too many glowies you had to click in the second mission. The missions did not really explain why these objects needed to be destroyed or clicked on, also.
I get that you are trying to give the story the "feel" of the Yellow Submarine movie, but I don't think that fully shines through. The dialog for the characters and the objects is pretty good at supporting this (it all sounds very groovy 60s), but I think you also need to carry this through to the mission briefings, the descriptions of the characters and the clues that the player finds. If you put some more flavor text in these areas, it would help the story communicate more of the feeling you are going for.
I think you may also want to add more missions to this story arc to make it more of a complete story, as right now it feels like it's cut off in the middle. I would think you should have room for more, since it's only 2 missions long right now.
As it currently stands, the story felt both confusing and incomplete, and the missions seemed tedious due to the large number of objects that had to be destroyed or clicked on in each mission. As a result, I felt I could only give this story arc 2 stars. I hope you think that is fair.
------
I owe a review to:
@Xenite Blackthread - Childhood Horrors 5349
@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
@Elisenda - 1 of (A Lame Joke, 22982) (Fine Literature, 136522)
@Stomphoof - Return of the Three Fold King 153654
@Linarra - Coming Unglued 6015
@Grandma Squeak - one of 118970 Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb, 63131 American Gothic, or 129487 I'm So Confused
@FemFury - Amazon-Avatars 5909
in queue:
WynterPhrost
@Canadian Canuk - 99 bottles of Beer 100616
@OverlordIndigo - A Hero is Made, Not Born 20863
Theron - The Construct 91887
@Spry - Saving Grace 124477
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 ]
Yellow Submarine-Save Pepperland
The premise is to save the Beatles from the Blue Meanies who have taken over Pepperland.
Level range was 1-54 heroic, so I played a 50 AR/dev blaster.
Mission 1
Briefing: I'm afraid I don't know who the contact, Old Fred, is; looking up "Yellow Submarine" in Wikipedia, I find that he is a character from the movie who recruits Ringo to save Pepperland. But, for people who don't know this, he should really introduce himself in his initial briefing.
"We need your help Police Woman" should have a comma after help.
"caputered" should be "captured"
"dasterdly" should be "dastardly"
Some explanation of who the "Blue Meanies" are, what "Pepperland" is, and who "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" would be helpful, for people who aren't intimately familiar with Beatles mythology.
The popup message on entering the mission needs a period at the end of the sentence. Why is it that I think Pepperland is no longer a paradise? The map isn't ruined or on fire or anything.
The mission is to "Free John"; you may need to explain who John is (sorry, I know who you mean, but some players won't have even been born yet when this movie came out).
The mission objectives "Find John" and "Free John" seem a little redundant.
I need to destroy 12 Stone Flowers for this mission, but they weren't mentioned in the briefing. I think you need some explanation of what the stone flowers are, and why they need to be destroyed.
I encountered Mr Blue Meanie 34 and Mr Blue Meanie 89; both had the default minion description, but could probably use some explanation of what Blue Meanies actually are. I thought the Blue Meanie and Stone Flowers dialog was cool though. But it's a little odd that I "pick" the flowers by destroying them; not sure how else you'd get the flower dialog, though. Maybe you could have a custom "flower" character that is held hostage, but freed when you beat the Blue Meanies guarding the flower hostage?
I like the "Flowers flowers everywhere!" clue, it's very 60s. Maybe the "12 Stone Flowers to destroy" should be "12 Stone Flowers to pick" though. Also, I think 12 is a LOT of objects to destroy; you could probably do fine with just 6, or even 3 or 4.
"Once we are out the Meanies wont stand a chance!" should be "Once we are out, the Meanies won't stand a chance!"
Found John. He does have a description, but I think he could use a longer one explaining more about him; "Pretty much the egghead of the Band" doesn't say enough, IMHO. Defeating his guards completed the "Find John" objective, but not the "Free John" objective, which is odd. Not sure what it takes to "Free John"; he is following me around now though. I kind of think John should be sonic blast, not mind control; his empathy secondary makes sense.
John says "I could be handy mending a fuse when your light have gone." ... I think "light" should be "lights". And he also says "Sunday mornings, go for a ride" ... should have a period at the end. Actually I think it would scan better if he said "You can knit a sweater by the fireside. Sunday mornings, go for a ride." (i.e. filling in the missing line between the two dialogs)
John also says "I believe The Dreadful Glove Knows where they are". This seems capitalized oddly, not sure if that is intentional. Shouldn't this trigger a new objective of "Defeat the Dreadful Glove"? Or maybe it should award a clue suggesting the player find the Dreadful Glove.
Also, the mission title is "Free John" but even after I've found John and set him free from his captors, the mission doesn't end because I still need to fight the Glove and the stone flowers.
I found "Dredful Flying Glove"; I think Dredful should be "Dreadful". And John called him just "Dreadful Glove", should his name be Dreadful Glove? Or John could call him Dreadful Flying Glove.
"Free John" objective was rather unintuitive; I first tried to lead John to the exit of the mission, but that didn't work. I eventually defeated Dredful Flying Glove, which apparently was the actual trigger for "Free John" becoming complete. I think you should maybe change "Free John" to "Defeat Dreadful Glove" or maybe "Defeat Meanest Meanie".
Dredful Flying Glove's dialog: "Awww...Come one" should be "Awww...Come on".
Upon defeating him I got the "Where is the rest of the Band?" clue, described as "a scrawled note pinned to the back the Dredful Flying Gloves' back" which doesn't quite make sense. I suggest you make this clue titled "Note found on Dreadful Glove", then the body of it be, "Paul is at the circus." Maybe with a little more text though giving more details.
Debriefing: seemed very thin, would be nice to have some more text here than "You freed John? Thank goodness."
What exactly was the Blue Meanies' motivation for capturing John and either building or capturing 12 stone flowers? What is the significance of destroying the stone flowers and setting the flowers "free"? I think there needs to be more meaning here.
Mission 2
Briefing: Some explanation of who Paul is would be helpful. Also, if you are trying to duplicate the events of the Yellow Submarine movie, it sounds George was actually next after John.
Found a Miss Blue Meanie 75; she could use a description (currently she has the default lieutenant description).
15 Little Loves to collect seems quite a lot for someone to collect; could probably set this number to something less, like 6. Also, the mission could use some explanation for why collecting 15 Little Loves is a required objective.
Collecting a Little Love, I got the clue "Lot of A Little Love", which makes no sense; should probably be either "A Little Love" or "A Lot of Love". In the clue text, "You found a load of love. You like the way they make you feel. All tinlgy all over. You best keep these" .... I think "they make" should be "it makes", "tinlgy" should be "tingly", and "keep these" maybe should be "keep it all" (referring presumably to the "load of love").
Paul's description, "He just loves to sing", needs more text and description in it. I'm not sure why he's kinetics; wouldn't sonic make more sense? After freeing Paul, the mission does not end, despite the mission being named "Free Paul". I suggest you name the mission something else that will make sense even after Paul has been freed.
Some of the meanies seemed quite powerful, maybe due to build up; the spines lieutenant was particularly dangerous and managed to kill me.
Miss Meanie Blues says "Nothing you can can that I can't scream" -- I am not sure what you mean to say here, but that doesn't sound right. She has a little bit of description in her info, but she can really use more (since she seems to the the "big bad guy" of this arc).
She also says "No one can be save that can't be shaved?" which doesn't really make sense. Maybe you mean "No one can be saved that can't be shaved?"
The exit popup, "You found Paul and defeated the Meanies but there is still more to come" seems to suggest that there's more; but it's actually the end of the story arc, so this doesn't quite fit.
The mission debriefing suggests you need to go after Ringo now (note: "RIngo" should be "Ringo") but in fact the story arc ends right then and there.
Overall
This story arc felt incomplete. You rescue only 2 of the 4 Beatles, and the last mission even says that you should go on another mission to get the next one, but then the arc ends. Plus, both enemies and allies were not very well described (either no description at all, or a sentence fragment) and were not explained to the player very effectively. If the player is a huge Beatles fan, she will know all these people, but I think your story needs to communicate who John and Paul are, what Blue Meanies are, why a Dreadful Glove is the big enemy of the first mission, and where Pepperland is supposed to be, so that people who are not as familiar with the Beatles will be able to understand what is happening.
The motivation for why the Blue Meanies are attacking Pepperland and capturing musicians is very unclear also; all I got from their dialog is that they hate everything. Perhaps this is true to their nature in the Yellow Submarine movie, though; I'm not really sure.
The gameplay was okay, but I felt there were too many objects you needed to destroy in the first mission, and too many glowies you had to click in the second mission. The missions did not really explain why these objects needed to be destroyed or clicked on, also.
I get that you are trying to give the story the "feel" of the Yellow Submarine movie, but I don't think that fully shines through. The dialog for the characters and the objects is pretty good at supporting this (it all sounds very groovy 60s), but I think you also need to carry this through to the mission briefings, the descriptions of the characters and the clues that the player finds. If you put some more flavor text in these areas, it would help the story communicate more of the feeling you are going for.
I think you may also want to add more missions to this story arc to make it more of a complete story, as right now it feels like it's cut off in the middle. I would think you should have room for more, since it's only 2 missions long right now.
As it currently stands, the story felt both confusing and incomplete, and the missions seemed tedious due to the large number of objects that had to be destroyed or clicked on in each mission. As a result, I felt I could only give this story arc 2 stars. I hope you think that is fair.
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This is the kind of critque I was looking for THANKS! I keep forgetting that not everyone is as old as I am and may not have ever seen the movie. Hehe
Time is my problem in finishing this, but I will definately get the fixes in first.
Mmm the map I think the forest on fire might be better. But I will see to the fixes first and the typos and the descriptions. I'm still firguring out the AE stuff so I will do my best to fix it all!
Thank you!
Pinnacle-Pale Spectre 50 Kat/Regen/Dark Scrapper
Spectre of the Gun 50 Thugs/Dark/Soul Mastery MM
MA Story Spectre of the Gun's Search" ID #352424
Spectral Darque 50 Dark/Dark Scrapper
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Eclipse over Paragon review
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.
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I added more clues in the beginning, particularly to the Archons to help reinforce the story. I have also made it more involving; I knew I couldn't actually change the player itself, and if I did as much as hint it all the roleplaying robots, furries and untaintable godlike Mary Sues would complain about it.
Welp, I can't please everyone; if it'll help many more to get into the story, all the better for most of us. Also, because of all the text additions, it'll be one less boss at the end due to space.
Thank you for the detailed feedback and the good word!