Is '18 chained Boss Fights' EVER justified?

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If i started telling you a joke by telling you the punchline, it would eventually make sense, but the experience might not be as good as telling it the normal way.

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Maybe it's just me, but I tend not to read the clues I get in a mission until it is already over. I don't have time really to stop and read every time I get one, especially when playing a Brute or a Dominator.

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Each to their own, of course. . I sort of work on the premise that if an authors put a clue in the first room for example, then the intended time to read it is in that room. It also feels better for immersion - If i 'hack the computer.you find a message!', then it makes sense that my character knows what the message says at that time, and doesn't somehow have his mind go blank until the end of the misison. On a brute, i guees you could RP a red-mist sort of fuge state lol, but i don't worry about having to zerg all the time. Also, sometimes, I find, not reading the clues as you go can make the mission confusing.

There's no right way to treat clues, I guess. As the writer, i want people to read the clues as they drop during mission 5 of The Echo because i think they'll get the best gameplay experience out of it, so I suggest they do that in-game. If they choose to do otherwise, in my opinion it's a little akin to playing a villain arc thats clearly signposted as such on my blaster and disliking it because my characters a hero and 'wouldn't behave like that'. But I can't stop them reading clues as they prefer, and so i have to accept any 'wall o text, dude!' commts from people who don't accept my suggested pacing. I'll happily do that , but I'm going to blow my own trumpet a little here, and say that I haven't received any such comments yet. I hope that means that its working as intended so far.

You may want to make your tendency to leave the clues until the end clear in your reviews, btw, it could give readers a better idea of how their story ends up being delivered to you. (If you already have mentioned that, I apologise, I haven't read much of your review thread).

Eco.

EDIT: added a smiley to my first line in case it seemed antagonistic, which is NOT how I want to come across.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

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If i started telling you a joke by telling you the punchline, it would eventually make sense, but the experience might not be as good as telling it the normal way.

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Maybe it's just me, but I tend not to read the clues I get in a mission until it is already over. I don't have time really to stop and read every time I get one, especially when playing a Brute or a Dominator.

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You dont have time? what, when you're reviewing an arc? I don't quite understand this?

It's probably just me being dense (it happens) but I assumed that when you are reviewing someones much loved creation you would take as much time as that arc demanded, not rush through to the end and then read the clues?

I hope that dosen't sound bitchy, it really is just a question. I think you reviewers do an excellant job, and I for one praise you for it.

Lucy Greenleaf

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It's the archetype, he needs the rage from the previous fight to carry over to the next, I assume. I haven't played a brute.

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It's the archetype, he needs the rage from the previous fight to carry over to the next, I assume. I haven't played a brute.

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I have a Brute, and they do lend themselves to a 'SMASH first, read story later' sort of approach, I guess, if you are more interested in your rage bar than the plot. I'd rather know why I'm beating stuff up beforehand rather than retrospectively discover plot elements afterwards, tbh, and even on my Brute I generally take a break in the carnage to read a clue whenever one arises. I'm sure Laz doesn't mean it's his standard approach to totally ignore the plot until the end of a mission before catching up on all the clues and dialogue in one go. He'd be less able to form an accurate opinion on the pacing of the story then. I'm assuming he means that he reads clues in clumps when and if his rage bar drops to nil.

Eco.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

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Maybe it's just me, but I tend not to read the clues I get in a mission until it is already over. I don't have time really to stop and read every time I get one, especially when playing a Brute or a Dominator.

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Each to their own, of course. . I sort of work on the premise that if an authors put a clue in the first room for example, then the intended time to read it is in that room. ...

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I understand where both of you are coming from. As a writer you need to understand your audience, and write the mission that will accommodate that audience.

In this game there are several audiences: lovers of stories, power levelers, roleplayers, people who just want to have fun, etc. The most successful missions cater to the largest number of audiences.

On top of that, the mechanics and social dynamics of the gaming environment have to be considered. There's only so much space in the chat window for NPC text. Brutes can't afford to stop fighting. On a team there often isn't time for everyone to stop and read the clues after they drop, because the goal is always go! go! go! inside a mission.

To that end, a mission with broad appeal will have to make some compromises and take some short cuts. Because the clue interface is kind of klunky, requiring players to read the clues in a mission will limit your audience. Optimally, the one-liner displayed in the chat window when you fulfill an objective should be all the players needs to get the gist of what the clue holds.

Clues are your long-term memory of what's going on in the arc. I don't expect players to look at clues until they have some kind of down time, such as the pause between missions.

I have another arc that uses clues very heavily as actual clues in a murder mystery. Unlike most CoH content, the contact in this arc doesn't spoon-feed you any conclusions. The clues drop and it's up to you to decide what they mean. You have to decide who the bad guy is and take him out. If you make the wrong choice you may fail the mission.

Making missions like this is extremely difficult because the system is aimed at making replayable content. But with the thousands of people making AE missions I'm hoping that the devs will add features that will allow true branching within missions that let players make real decisions.

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I understand where both of you are coming from. As a writer you need to understand your audience, and write the mission that will accommodate that audience.

In this game there are several audiences: lovers of stories, power levelers, roleplayers, people who just want to have fun, etc. The most successful missions cater to the largest number of audiences.



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To some extent I agree with you, but there has to be room for aiming sth at specific subsegments of the audience, or we'd end up with just lowest-common denominator stuff and nothing else. The Jabberwocky 1-mission arc of yours is a case in point. There are going to be people who've never heard of lewis Carrol, whose reaction might be highly negative. I played that mission a little while ago, and I'm bloody glad that you didn't try to cater to the widest possible audience with it, because its lovely.

With The Echo, aspects of my intended audience is stated in my description 'Recommended for HEROIC, SOLO PLAY' - There seems to be a general acceptance (as portrayed by the [TAG] thread, anyway), that team-centric arcs are allowed and that if a solo player plays one and gets faceplanted by an AV and complains about it then they're being unreasonable. If my arc is aimed at a solo audience, and a team does it and hence doesn't get the clues etc, who's to fault? Me, for not making my arc team-friendly? If that's tru then all TFMA arcs should dumb their challenge levels down for solo players. Which would be wrong, of course.

if I am allowed to write an arc aimed at a specific subset of the CoH playerbase, in terms of hero or villain, team or solo, story-heavy or challeneg-based, why can i not write one aimed at players who view clues as something to be read when they drop? I'm not going to put that in my description or suggest we need another TAG for it lol

I'm no great shakespeare. I've never studied creative writing, I don't know a lot about the meta-language of fiction, or storytelling, or what have you. I'm not an expert. I like to write, and sometimes i'm proud of what I have written. When i write, I write stuff that I'd like to read. When I write an arc, I write something that I'd like to play. Then I listen to feedback from other people who've played it, and I alter it so that it takes into account their comments. There comes a point, though, where I may decide that I don't feel that following some advice will improve the arc In terms of what i want it to say or be. . As the creator, that is my right. The Echo may not appeal to the widest possible audience, but I'm happy for it not to. I am proud of it, as it is, flaws and all. It is, in my opinion, quite good.

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On top of that, the mechanics and social dynamics of the gaming environment have to be considered. There's only so much space in the chat window for NPC text. Brutes can't afford to stop fighting. On a team there often isn't time for everyone to stop and read the clues after they drop, because the goal is always go! go! go! inside a mission.



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Which is a shame for an author whose intention is for the player to read the clues as they drop. TBH, I didn't realise I was in the minority of the playerbase in checking clues as I go. In fact, I'd be prepared to bet that there are enough players out there like me in this regard to form a large enough 'market' for arcs where read-as-it-drops is important.

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To that end, a mission with broad appeal will have to make some compromises and take some short cuts. Because the clue interface is kind of klunky, requiring players to read the clues in a mission will limit your audience.



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The mechanic I used in mission 5 is exactly that, a means to stagger the dropping of clues and encourage the player to read them as they do drop. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, I guess - I'm bound to get some negative feedback eventually. But for some people, this mechanism will work. Those players with a little patience and the willingness to forgive the mechanics slightly in return for an enjoyable story, they are my audience.

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Optimally, the one-liner displayed in the chat window when you fulfill an objective should be all the players needs to get the gist of what the clue holds.

Clues are your long-term memory of what's going on in the arc. I don't expect players to look at clues until they have some kind of down time, such as the pause between missions.



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I could see that from your Jabberwocky mission. I personally think that its a shame that you've made concessions (if you have) in it, tbh. For me, leaving all the clues in a (not yours, just any) mission to the end makes their splitting up pointless. Why not just put everything learned in the mission in the mission complete clue?

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I have another arc that uses clues very heavily as actual clues in a murder mystery. Unlike most CoH content, the contact in this arc doesn't spoon-feed you any conclusions. The clues drop and it's up to you to decide what they mean. You have to decide who the bad guy is and take him out. If you make the wrong choice you may fail the mission.



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This sounds like the sort of arc I'd love, and i'll be looking for it. I'll be reading the clues as they drop while i do it

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Making missions like this is extremely difficult because the system is aimed at making replayable content. But with the thousands of people making AE missions I'm hoping that the devs will add features that will allow true branching within missions that let players make real decisions.

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Me too. I love the MA, I'm already seeing some interesting things done with the mechanics we've got already. It can only get better in further issues, I feel.

Eco.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

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It's the archetype, he needs the rage from the previous fight to carry over to the next, I assume. I haven't played a brute.

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Brute Fury is a huge damage bonus and the AT has a base damage that is low to begin with, so with the fast rate that it decays, stopping for 10 seconds could mean the difference between +150% damage or +50% damage. Domination for Dominators is not quite a bad but if you don't have it up around 90% when you get to that boss, you can't start the fight with Domination mode active and it's going to be either a long drawn-out boss fight or one where you die in seconds.

Of course knowing that the mission had 18 bosses, I would never take a Dominator in. If I had gone in with one and didn't know ahead of time about the 18 bosses I would be pretty pissed to tell the truth as Domination has a recharge time and I'd run into boss after boss before it's ready again.

Regardless, even when reviewing an arc I play through it like I normally do, full throttle with the NPC Dialog Tab open to catch what they say. I'm not going to stop to read clues unless the NPC dialog implied that they just told me something important, or it was a glowy that I already had to stop for, or something big enough happened that I felt the need to stop and take notes immediately. Otherwise I review all the dialog and clues at the end of the mission and compile my notes for that mission.

After all, I'm seeing how well the arc PLAYS as much as how it tells a story. I seek a balance between the two, so an arc that is all story but slow boring gameplay and tedious bosses is not going to be much fun in my mind, while an arc with great gameplay but now story can still be very boring unless it has a very good gimmick going on.

Now I wonder if we are going to need yet another set of [Tags] for Story Heavy and Story Light, as it seems we have differing ideas of what SFMA should mean.

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Now I wonder if we are going to need yet another set of [Tags] for Story Heavy and Story Light, as it seems we have differing ideas of what SFMA should mean.

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Lol I think SFMA can cover the spectrum sufficiently.

Eco.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

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if I am allowed to write an arc aimed at a specific subset of the CoH playerbase, in terms of hero or villain, team or solo, story-heavy or challeneg-based, why can i not write one aimed at players who view clues as something to be read when they drop? I'm not going to put that in my description or suggest we need another TAG for it lol


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Now that I've done the missions, I have a better appreciation for your intent.

First off, writers love to write. That often means they write too much. The most important thing a writer can do is distill and compress the story to fit the medium and the space available.

I think the essential story elements in your final mission could be pared down into six or eight clues instead of 18. You mainly need to exercise editorial control. From a combat standpoint the bosses are more or less the same, so 18 is too many.

But that still leaves the sequencing problem. To alleviate that, you might consider moving the earlier clues to missions 2-4. That would ensure they are read in the proper order because they're doled out in the missions. Assuming that the front/middle/back stuff works on your final map, the final few clues would similarly be dropped in the right order as you work through the map front to back. Chaining spawns wouldn't be necessary.

I also think it isn't a bad thing if the players get an insight as to what's going on in the antagonist's mind early on, in mission two or so. So having those clues presented in another context, say as archival footage from a TV reporter who was at the scene of the quake, would set the stage sooner for the revelation at the end.

The most important thing you did was properly describe your arc in the summary. If your arc delivers what you promise no one can complain.

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Not having done the story in question: I'm going to say that it is, in fact, important to work the story to fit the format. A movie is not a novel and what works on the page will not necessarily work on the screen, and vice versa. A game is neither of the above.

What you're working with here is a fairly fast-paced game - four second fights are not unheard of- and in the case, specifically, of Brutes, stopping to read the text is actively discouraged.

By which I mean "you will lose around a third of your total damage. " The act of reading the text in the order, with the timing, you want is actually a nerf to the gameplay.

Having said all that: There are things I "don't like" that I'm willing to put up with if they're very well done. People with an axe to grind, for instance (Whether it be political, philosophical, or whatever) are incredibly irritating when they build a canned mission to show how right they are. And yet, when I ran through one last week (something like "Save the great philosophers!") I four-starred it because it was good, and funny, and had entertaining gameplay.

Sort of like "If you're mean but funny... you better be REALLY funny."

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Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.

So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.

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if I am allowed to write an arc aimed at a specific subset of the CoH playerbase, in terms of hero or villain, team or solo, story-heavy or challeneg-based, why can i not write one aimed at players who view clues as something to be read when they drop? I'm not going to put that in my description or suggest we need another TAG for it lol


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Now that I've done the missions, I have a better appreciation for your intent.

First off, writers love to write. That often means they write too much. The most important thing a writer can do is distill and compress the story to fit the medium and the space available.

I think the essential story elements in your final mission could be pared down into six or eight clues instead of 18. You mainly need to exercise editorial control. From a combat standpoint the bosses are more or less the same, so 18 is too many.



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Thanks v much for playing, and for your comments.

When i was in school, one thing i remember our English teacher doing was giving us a text to precis, and then we'd pass the result along to another student, and we'd get another one, and we'd precis that, and then pass that along...etc.

The originals were a page, the end result after a few students was a paragraph sometimes.

My original form of the narrative delivered in mission 5 was 3 times as large. I have pared it down as much as i'm prepared to. I hope you don't take this as casual brushing off of your viewpoint, I do appreciate the feedback.

Also, I counted the bosses again today. There are only 15 of them, not 18. i remember cutting three clues out a while back.

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But that still leaves the sequencing problem. To alleviate that, you might consider moving the earlier clues to missions 2-4. That would ensure they are read in the proper order because they're doled out in the missions. Assuming that the front/middle/back stuff works on your final map, the final few clues would similarly be dropped in the right order as you work through the map front to back. Chaining spawns wouldn't be necessary.

I also think it isn't a bad thing if the players get an insight as to what's going on in the antagonist's mind early on, in mission two or so. So having those clues presented in another context, say as archival footage from a TV reporter who was at the scene of the quake, would set the stage sooner for the revelation at the end.



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This is something i will definitely look into, though.

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The most important thing you did was properly describe your arc in the summary. If your arc delivers what you promise no one can complain.

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Ive added 'VERY STORY-HEAVY' to the description as well, and a red caps wanring about FIFTEEN BOSSES to the final missions briefing.

Eco.

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MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)