Yet Another I'll Play Yours If You Play Mine
By
Aliana Blue,
Posted on: 2009-05-08 15:04 in Mission Architect
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Of course, I think it's possible to make escort objectives more interesting. I've even seen examples in other people's arcs - such as triggering the creation of patrols and/or boss spawns after an escort is obtained, thereby ensuring that there will still be interesting fights and scenery on the trip back.
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Agreed- triggered patrols are what I used on my "Small Fears" arc, since there's only one version of the map that I wanted to use (there's actually another map I'd prefer, assuming it supports my objectives, but it's not available yet 
)
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though I'll still be keeping the Dr. Vahz model for him.
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Eh, not a major worry, it was just kind of an O.o moment.
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I also have no problems, story-wise, with the CoT operating on the PTS grounds. The Cap au Diable Strike Force in City of Villains firmly establishes that they have no issues with conducting a large-scale raid on those very premises, and they even tried to bind Bat'Zul for their own purposes, and were extremely ticked off when the players interfered with their plans to do so.
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Fair enough- I'm not that familiar with the redside SFs- but even though there's no reason for them not to be there... is there actually a reason for them to be there?
Like I said, I enjoyed the arc, just feel it could use some tightening here and there.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
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The mission map itself is a suitably creepy one, well-suited for the theme of childhood fears and nightmares. There's some nice bits of dialogue to foreshadow what may come later in the arc. Though I must say, the fact that it involves escorting three victims back to the entrance, through the course of a five-floor map, tends to make my own rescue maps look a bit tame by comparison. Ultimately, I was a bit non-heroic in handling this issue: after I rescued the second victim, I let my Night Widow fade back into stealth, and bolted ahead, leaving the victim whimpering alone until I could find the remaining victim three floors further up, and then retrace my steps and get both of them out safely.
It is quite the nifty map for pure style, however. Where is it located in the Architect files?
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*sigh*
Yeah, there's actually another (much smaller- three floors, I think it was, with smaller floors, and even creepier) map that I'd prefer for this- but it's not available yet in the MA
As to this map (which I agree is too large, but it fit the mood so perfectly >.<
, it's under "Unique Maps"- "Office"- "Green Fog".
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But I do recommend scaling the bullies back on the power scale a bit.
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Oop- sorry, that was a "I hadn't checked it since the last patch" problem- when they rejuggled the power availability, they got a power or two (like Rage -_-) that I really, really didn't want them to have. Fixed.
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In which case I would suggest possibly making Mother Mayhem spawn only after the clue is found.
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Uhm... actually, that's what it should have been set as, I'm not sure what changed it (patch breakage again?). In whatever case, fixed... mind you, the spawn point isn't really something I can control, *sigh*
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Of course, exactly how Mother Mayhem brought a demon into this world is not made clear. Not saying that I disbelieve the possibility - I just wish I had a better understanding of how it was taking place.
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Honestly? That being left out is a combination of three things- first off, space limitations- I've got maybe enough room for another couple of sentences, so any non-essential story bits got trimmed. Secondly... yeah, it's not vital to the story- all the Praetorians are constantly jockeying for power through whatever means; in this case, MM tried a means that was a bit beyond her. And finally, keeping the origins of the monster deliberately vague is a time-honoured horror tradition
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I'm not sure if this was deliberate or not, but there seems to be a slightly different set of custom monsters in the group this time around, as compared to the previous two. I get to see the Closet Monster and the Clown monster for the first time in this mission, though I also see the Mean Girls and some of the other minions from the past 2 levels. At least the Bullies aren't present.
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Quite deliberate, I assure you... mind you, from the way you're putting it, it sounds like the Mean Girls looked the same as they did in the first missions? They shouldn't have- the originals should have just been blue with glowing eyes and antennae, and the final ones should have been chitinous with wings and faceted eyes. The Bullies could have been around (also with both a visual and a power upgrade), but no big deal either way.
Glad you got to see both the Closet Monster and the Dark Clown, though- I will admit to being rather proud of the designs (which is part of the reason they're the ones that got saved 'til the last mission).
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Minor spelling error - when Mother Mayhem is finally defeated (again), she says, " No... the pupetteer... tangled in the strings..." The proper spelling should be "puppeteer."
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Pretty sure that's an accepted variant (like "mispelling"/"misspelling").
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Unanswered questions include what brought Mother Mayhem back to Paragon City in the first place, since she's ordinarily a native of Praetorian Earth.
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MM was on Primal Earth because she was fleeing from Phobia (the Praetorians can travel back and forth without much trouble)- I thought the dialogue had at least hinted at that.
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Just how did the mission contact manage to contact me when he was being held captive by these demons of nightmares?
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Psychic powers (generic brand )
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By what means was the chief phobia able to enter this world, and just what did Mother Mayhem do that allowed it?
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Phobia never came to Primal Earth- she was on Praetoria, in Mother Mayhem's asylum (which she took over and, although it wasn't explicitly stated, is what altered her followers in the final mission- can you imagine what getting loose in Mother Mayhem's asylum would do to creatures that feed on fear?)- that much I know I made mention of- the contact tells you he can sense Phobia through a dimensional rift (although those aren't the exact words he uses).
As to what Mother Mayhem was doing... is it really vital to the story? Actually... hmm. I wonder.
Hah- just enough room. Squeezed in an optional glowie clue in the final mission that hints that Mother Mayhem either stole or bargained for the thing that summoned Phobia from Diabolique (the go-to girl for Praetorian magic), since it involved 'the powers of the mind'.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
So... because I feel like it, I'm going to review another arc in hopes of getting another of mine reviewed 
Mind you, even if I don't, I've got about half an hour to kill as I type this (so I may wind up doing the review in two parts), so eh, either way, I win 
As per the usual, stream-of-semiconsciousness reviewing is the order of the day, and I'll be running on my level 50 Energy/Energy/Munitions blaster.
A Tooth for a Tooth-
MISSION ONE:
Ooh, nice formatting.
Aaand an excuse for level-limiting. *sigh* Oh well.
Hah... love the Midnighter relaxing with a cup of tea
If you've got room, I really think it would work better if there were different clues for all the crates (so five separate retrievals rather than just one duplicated five times). Otherwise the last four just feel like busywork... which, I suppose, they are, really, but no point in boring the player...
MISSION TWO:
Hah. Andvari is a bit of a sod, isn't he? Yay for sympathetic magic...
Aha- saw that coming. Soon as the entry text mentioned 'bleating'... yup, Billy Goats Gruff attacking a Troll. Poor goats get a bad rap, really. Everybody always assuming they're the aggressors
Troll's got a nice look to him... kind of a pity we can't push the facial sliders a bit further, but within the constraints of the CoH costume creator, it works nicely.
Hmm... despite how small this map is, it can get a bit annoying for a defeat-all, just with how many nooks and crannies it has.
Huh... okay, either I've lost Gunnar, or else for someone with 'skin like granite', he sure drops easy :/
Very nordic feel overall, although I'm not sure German fairytales wandering in quite works
MISSION THREE:
Funny... for some reason I always thought it was "Wayland" Smith, not "Weyland"... or is that just a variant?
Whee for a cycle of revenge. Typical Norse, yeesh.
The entry text is phrased a bit awkwardly- maybe "They've gotten complacent too soon... time to show them the dangers of that mindset." or something to that effect?
Hmm... not sure on the archers' costume- did they really wear mail under a tunic like that? Looks a bit odd in whatever case.
Hmm... many beardy people in coloured outfits. Can be a bit awkward to find the bosses (although Weyland stands out nicely thanks to his wings). Perhaps auras of some kind? Explained as enchantments (visible only to you) to mark them, so they can't escape you?
MISSION FOUR:
So the finale... he wants to subvert the modern-day Trolls, does he? Eh, guess you have to start someplace.
Infernal? Uhm... ooookay?
Great. Knocked Infernal into the nearest group of Trolls, and they promptly jammed him into a wall. Bloody lovely.
Well, he managed to unstick himself eventually, but I'm off to the inspiration store- Infernal's a nuisance, going to need a bit of defense.
So... uh... what was Infernal doing there? No clue, and his dialogue doesn't give much in the way of hints either.
Oy... the Atta cave, while perfectly thematic, is a big map. And feels kinda lifeless at the moment, to be honest. Some patrols, mob chatter, optional glowies, whatever, would go a long way towards dispelling the 'sheeze, yet another branch of this stupid huge-[censored] cave'.
*yawn* More cave, more trolls. Weird lag issues only thing spicing things up.
Well. I've now spent more time in this bloody useless cave playing "Where's Wald... er, Atta" than I have on the entire rest of the arc. Interest... fading... rapidly...
Figures that Atta would be in the absolute LAST branch of the cave I checked. Either that or he hasn't spawned >.<
Hrm. So he wasn't there either. Time to go back to all the little hidey-holes I ignored when it didn't look like he was in there.
... one thought comes to mind as I circle 'round and 'round... "This is definitely the way to cap off a story of myth, betrayal, murder, and high magic... wandering aimlessly for hours in a cave full of garbage and idiots." At a guesstimate, I've now spent twice as long in this worthless hole as I have on the entire rest of the arc put together.
Ooookay... did I miss some branches somewhere? Because I could swear I've killed every living thing in this cave without laying eyes on Atta.
... right, figures. Soon as I type that, I find him. Buggeration, what a waste of time.
Eye of the Magus, Build Up, and it's damage spike time.
Interesting- seems our (Dark) Dwarf takes the long-term view of things... although his lack of knowledge (or at least lack of mention) about Superadine strikes me as odd- that's what's impairing the Troll's brains and giving them their powers, after all.
So, OVERALL:
An intriguing arc, well plotted and with excellent contact text, brutally murdered in the home stretch by a severe case of maptoodamnbigitis. I realize I'm probably the last one that should be talking about oversized maps used for mood rather than gameplay, but come on... my five-story office map didn't cause you to take an extra hour and a half or more just trying to find your objective >.<
From what I've seen of your two arcs, your greatest strengths lie in contact dialogue laying out the story; your missions themselves tend to be somewhat vanilla, with a... rather minimalist approach when it comes to in-mission dialogue, flavour glowies, triggers and the like. And a fondness for outsized maps >.>
So... between the horrifically gigantic, mind-numbingly tedious final map, Infernal showing up for no reason at all, the rather sterile feel of the missions, the busywork glowies, and the feeling that Andvari apparently deciding that this was all about him about midway through, I clocked this one in as a three; a solid three, mind you- the contact alone rates at least that, and the story was engaging- but the problems are severe enough that I don't feel comfortable in rating it any higher.
As far as story goes, the only change I'd suggest (quite strongly, in fact) is Andvari dangling the promised reward a little more often, and maybe sweeten the pot every so often- after all, he does say he understands greed. He mentions the reward once at the beginning, and then it's all about him and you toadying for him- something a lot of players really, really don't like, and a repeated complaint about the 'canon' CoV missions. And maybe change the souvenir to give mention that you got a nice, fat reward out of him.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
Hercules, thank you for the feedback regarding "Fog of War." Glad you enjoyed it!
Here's my review on Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name..., Arc ID# 178774
I played this arc solo on my lvl 41 Night Widow, pretending to be a hero.
[u]Mission One:[u]
Nice design on the Mission Contact, and you capture the character of a lonely ghost quite well in the initial briefing. I feel that the combination of four different colors in the initial text is a bit too much of a visual distraction, though. I'd be more inclined to switch the orange text to the generic white, but that's my personal taste.
The mission itself is straightforward, while faithfully sticking to the wicked vibe of the Red Caps. A minor typo can be found in the text after interacting with one of the piles of bones. The result reads: "You found nothing. The Redcaps didnt leave a shred that would help identify their victim." The word "didn't" should include the apostrophe.
One of the chests, after interacting with it, states that it is filled with gold and trinkets, and that the player leaves it alone because it's not what he/she is there for. I would typically urge caution in ascribing motive to the character running through the arc. True, this is assuredly a heroic arc, and true heroes don't do good deeds purely in exchange for a paycheck. But there's also a wide spectrum of heroic moralities out there, and I can easily imagine a number of heroes who wouldn't think twice about snatching gold from wicked Red Caps while trying to free a victim. Ultimately, this is simply a cautionary point about saying what the player would do.
The mechanical elements are well-implemented, and the mission plays nicely.
[u]Mission Two:[u]
This is a pretty straightforward mission. Again, I like the dialogue from the mission contact. It's endearing.
I chose to test a hypothesis, since the objectives on the Mission Header show up in two different colors. Sure enough, the objectives in white are optional, while the one in orange is the crucial objective. Nice planning, there.
If I recall correctly, this mission does not have a pop-up window with entry text. Of course, it's not a requirement - especially when running close to the filesize limit, and if you need to make tough choices. But this is one of those instances where I feel like a pop-up entry window would be beneficial to setting the initial mood. The contact, a ghost, has sent me to the warehouse where her dad worked. The warehouse turns out to be inhabited entirely by ghosts, and the clues suggest that it was raided and the workers killed. Hence, the ghostly population. An entry pop-up text window would help set the scene greatly - I suspect that most people would enter a warehouse expecting it to have live workers in it, and sense something to be rather wrong after entering.
The evidence that the Cabal was responsible for the massacre is troubling. It's been a while since I've run the canon Croatoa missions, but the Cabal never struck me as quite that cold-hearted. Still, I should see how the rest of the story develops before leaping to conclusions.
[u]Mission Three:[u]
I believe there is a misspelling in the send-off text for this mission, where the ghost uses the word "lieing." Typically, the gerund form of "to lie" is "lying."
This mission appears to introduce some custom enemies that are blended with existing Cabal enemies. The costuming fits the theme of the Cabal, which is good. However, the nature of these new enemies is that they are undead spirits of former Cabal members, bound to serve the living Cabal leaders. This again makes me question whether this fits in with the in-game canon. My impression has been that the Cabal traditionally practice weather-based magic, and necromancy seems an uncharacteristic step for a group that dedicates itself to fighting the Red Caps.
[u]Mission Four:[u]
By this point, it seems like this arc was written from the perspective that the Cabal as a whole is evil, with a callous disregard for life. Having also run the Katie Hannon Task Force, that really seems to run contrary to my impression of the Cabal.
Patrick Callihan, I note, has no descriptive flavor text, and ends up getting the default Minion text when I right-click on him.
The map is a bit large, but at least it's outdoors, and you give the enemies highly visible animations so that it's easier to track them down. Still, the four rituals to disrupt all have the same flavor text, which people may find repetitive. I'd personally recommend cutting it down to three. (Especially since three is a common numeric theme amongst witches.)
[u]Mission Five:[u]
You play fair, and warn the player that a big fight is coming up that might require allies. Always important to include that warning.
Adriana Callahan also has no descriptive text, and gets the generic Elite Boss description when right-clicked for Info.
Ordinarily, I am leery about including an Elite Boss as an ally, especially if it's a Custom Elite Boss. They often can be overpowered, and can overshadow the player's abilities. However, you seem to have chosen a reasonably balanced set of powers that keeps her from just mowing through the opposition.
I opt to collect both of the optional allies, and the big, bad Witchie goes down without much need for spending inspirations.
[u]In Conclusion:[u]
This arc shines primarily in the written work of its storytelling. The dialogue and characterization is very well crafted. And it tells a solidly entertaining story. It loses points in my personal taste, however, for appearing to diverge from how the Cabal is portrayed in the game itself.
Overall, I give it a solid four stars.
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Nice design on the Mission Contact, and you capture the character of a lonely ghost quite well in the initial briefing. I feel that the combination of four different colors in the initial text is a bit too much of a visual distraction, though. I'd be more inclined to switch the orange text to the generic white, but that's my personal taste.
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Regarding the orange color - I wanted something that would stand out as "narrative" text vs the contact speaking to me. The standard white just didnt do it for me. I'll have to think about finding some other less jarring color, perhaps something more pastel.
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The mission itself is straightforward, while faithfully sticking to the wicked vibe of the Red Caps. A minor typo can be found in the text after interacting with one of the piles of bones. The result reads: "You found nothing. The Redcaps didnt leave a shred that would help identify their victim." The word "didn't" should include the apostrophe.
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Thanks for the catch on "didn't". I'ts difficult to find typos in game due to the standard font being so small.
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One of the chests, after interacting with it, states that it is filled with gold and trinkets, and that the player leaves it alone because it's not what he/she is there for. I would typically urge caution in ascribing motive to the character running through the arc. True, this is assuredly a heroic arc, and true heroes don't do good deeds purely in exchange for a paycheck. But there's also a wide spectrum of heroic moralities out there, and I can easily imagine a number of heroes who wouldn't think twice about snatching gold from wicked Red Caps while trying to free a victim. Ultimately, this is simply a cautionary point about saying what the player would do.
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Good point.
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I chose to test a hypothesis, since the objectives on the Mission Header show up in two different colors. Sure enough, the objectives in white are optional, while the one in orange is the crucial objective. Nice planning, there.
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I've sent in a suggestion that the Devs implement separate required vs optional objectives lists. I've seen this scheme used in a number of arcs - seems to work fairly well.
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If I recall correctly, this mission does not have a pop-up window with entry text. Of course, it's not a requirement - especially when running close to the filesize limit, and if you need to make tough choices. But this is one of those instances where I feel like a pop-up entry window would be beneficial to setting the initial mood. The contact, a ghost, has sent me to the warehouse where her dad worked. The warehouse turns out to be inhabited entirely by ghosts, and the clues suggest that it was raided and the workers killed. Hence, the ghostly population. An entry pop-up text window would help set the scene greatly - I suspect that most people would enter a warehouse expecting it to have live workers in it, and sense something to be rather wrong after entering.
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Odd, I have a popup for the warehouse... and you didnt see one?
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The evidence that the Cabal was responsible for the massacre is troubling. It's been a while since I've run the canon Croatoa missions, but the Cabal never struck me as quite that cold-hearted. Still, I should see how the rest of the story develops before leaping to conclusions.
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My overall impression of the Cabal is based on a mission where they are experimenting on ghosts and for all intents and purposes torturing them. I might have to run through another character just to make sure. I could possibly have a rival faction of Witches similar to the Cabal - however, I would prefer to stick to the canon mobs, if possible, since they're already balanced for normal play.
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I believe there is a misspelling in the send-off text for this mission, where the ghost uses the word "lieing." Typically, the gerund form of "to lie" is "lying."
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Second arc I've been caught with that spelling. 
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This mission appears to introduce some custom enemies that are blended with existing Cabal enemies. The costuming fits the theme of the Cabal, which is good. However, the nature of these new enemies is that they are undead spirits of former Cabal members, bound to serve the living Cabal leaders. This again makes me question whether this fits in with the in-game canon. My impression has been that the Cabal traditionally practice weather-based magic, and necromancy seems an uncharacteristic step for a group that dedicates itself to fighting the Red Caps.
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I had something of an ulterior motive for adding the new mobs. The constant "zinging" sound of electric powers drives me nuts after a while. I wanted to add a couple of mobs that would dilute that down a bit. Plus, I felt the Cabal needed a melee based unit as opposed to being completely ranged.
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By this point, it seems like this arc was written from the perspective that the Cabal as a whole is evil, with a callous disregard for life. Having also run the Katie Hannon Task Force, that really seems to run contrary to my impression of the Cabal.
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I've never really had a chance to go through this task force and actually sit there and read through all the text. Most groups just want to plow through at breakneck speed. Oh well.
Edit: I just changed Jack's monologue to mention that Rhiannon is the leader of a rogue sect of the Cabal that practices necromancy. I just read a summary of the KHTF on a wiki page, and you appear to be partially correct. But they definitely aren't what you would consider a "heroic" organization.
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Patrick Callihan, I note, has no descriptive flavor text, and ends up getting the default Minion text when I right-click on him.
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I was thinking about that this morning. Still drawing a blank on what to put in his description...
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The map is a bit large, but at least it's outdoors, and you give the enemies highly visible animations so that it's easier to track them down. Still, the four rituals to disrupt all have the same flavor text, which people may find repetitive. I'd personally recommend cutting it down to three. (Especially since three is a common numeric theme amongst witches.)
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I have to agree. I could potentially put 3 or 4 separate collections with different text. I'll have to think about it.
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Ordinarily, I am leery about including an Elite Boss as an ally, especially if it's a Custom Elite Boss. They often can be overpowered, and can overshadow the player's abilities. However, you seem to have chosen a reasonably balanced set of powers that keeps her from just mowing through the opposition.
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I put her on the lowest settings. I agree, I didnt want an ally that would allow me to just sit back and watch her do all the work.
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This arc shines primarily in the written work of its storytelling. The dialogue and characterization is very well crafted. And it tells a solidly entertaining story. It loses points in my personal taste, however, for appearing to diverge from how the Cabal is portrayed in the game itself.
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Thank you for the review. Not sure I agree with your view of the Cabal, they always seemed fairly nasty to me - especially the "10 times a victor" witch you have to fight. I truely wish I could find a group that would slow down in KHTF - but not likely now. That TF is rarely done anymore.
131430 Starfare: First Contact
178774 Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name ( 2009 MA Best In-Canon Arc ) ( 2009 Player Awards - Best Serious Arc )
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Odd, I have a popup for the warehouse... and you didnt see one?
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You may very well have done so, and this may simply have been an instance of my memory being fuzzy by the time I had gotten far enough in the mission to think about mentioning it. Just goes to show how slippery memory can be.
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Not sure I agree with your view of the Cabal, they always seemed fairly nasty to me - especially the "10 times a victor" witch you have to fight. I truely wish I could find a group that would slow down in KHTF - but not likely now. That TF is rarely done anymore.
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Fair enough. We all have different impressions that we carry away from our individual experiences and perceptions. My personal take from everything that I saw of the missions in Croatoa is that the Red Caps are, by far, the biggest evil to be found in that area. As I understand the in-game backstory, the Red Caps were responsible for transporting the Fir Bolg to Croatoa from Ireland. And when the Red Caps began to fear that the Fir Bolg might be too strong to control, they also magically transported the Tuatha de Dannan, the natural enemies of the Fir Bolg, whom they also trapped in Croatoa. This would create a continuing conflict to the Red Caps' delight, since they lust for the mass misery of others.
The Cabal were distrustful of outsiders, to be sure, and jaded from a centuries-long culture of fighting the vicious Red Caps. When Mary Mac Comber forces the heroes to face her ten times in succession in the Katie Hannon TF, it is a test of prowess before she'll extend her trust to them. Kinda like not wanting to waste time and effort with an ally if they're too weak to make a difference against the Red Caps.
Thanks for the review of "A Tooth For A Tooth," TeChameleon. Yes, I will review another one of yours in return. Some responses to your responses:
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If you've got room, I really think it would work better if there were different clues for all the crates (so five separate retrievals rather than just one duplicated five times). Otherwise the last four just feel like busywork... which, I suppose, they are, really, but no point in boring the player...
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I shudder to think how much space that would take up. That mission already flies by quickly on account of the Midnighter Club map being small and compact, and I also trimmed the interaction time for the crates to below their defaults. Do you [u]really[u] find the first mission that boring?
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Very nordic feel overall, although I'm not sure German fairytales wandering in quite works
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My research indicates that the Germans got that fairy tale, and a lot of their other mythology and ancient religion, from the Norse. For example, Wagner's "Ring Cycle" is based on German legends that are in turn based on the older Norse legends. There's a lot of culture that the Norse exported to Germany via its Viking explorers and raiders.
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Funny... for some reason I always thought it was "Wayland" Smith, not "Weyland"... or is that just a variant?
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Both are accepted variants. When a legend spreads over countries, so do the number of accepted spellings.
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Hmm... not sure on the archers' costume- did they really wear mail under a tunic like that?
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Typically, the Vikings did not have fully-dedicated archery contingents. They were armed with swords, axes, and bows, and were expected to be able to use all of them. Bows were typically used for an initial salvo, before charging into melee.
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Infernal? Uhm... ooookay?
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I begin to get the impression that people would just as soon have any hero whatsoever stripped from the objectives of this mission, which would make the mission even more vanilla.
Andvari explains in the briefing that he chose a time when a hero was seeking to do battle with Atta, chief of the Trolls. The logic being that if a villain comes in and defeats an invading hero, that will get positive attention from Atta. Making a custom hero would take space I don't have to spare, and the number of heroes available at that level range are limited. I seem to recall that Valkyrie also has an incarnation in that range, though I've typically found her more frustrating to fight than Infernal.
I had been of the belief that [u]any[u] battle-seeking hero would be a natural choice to seek out Atta, who I designed as a custom Archvillain to serve as a credible reason for a high-powered Hero to seek him out.
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Oy... the Atta cave, while perfectly thematic, is a big map. And feels kinda lifeless at the moment, to be honest. Some patrols, mob chatter, optional glowies, whatever, would go a long way towards dispelling the 'sheeze, yet another branch of this stupid huge-[censored] cave'.
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Would you prefer it if the Hero were stripped out entirely, and some separate patrols put in with different bits of dialogue, but the same annoyingly huge map were used? Or should I simply write that map off as "Never To Be Used In Any Arc Whatsoever For Sheer Bloody Bigness"?
I'll note that I already set Atta's spawn point to be in the Middle of the map, instead of the end. But that doesn't seem to help too much, especially with all of the maze-like twists in the tunnels.
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Interesting- seems our (Dark) Dwarf takes the long-term view of things... although his lack of knowledge (or at least lack of mention) about Superadine strikes me as odd- that's what's impairing the Troll's brains and giving them their powers, after all.
[/ QUOTE ]
So you equate lack of mention with lack of knowledge? I mean, I certainly know that the Trolls aren't [u]real[u] Trolls, but rather humans mutated through Superadine overdose. I just didn't find that fact particularly relevant to Andvari's plans. If a cask of everfull mead has been further enchanted to give all who drink it more qualities like the Trolls of old, including intelligence, what does it matter if those who drink from it are chemically altered to begin with?
[ QUOTE ]
As far as story goes, the only change I'd suggest (quite strongly, in fact) is Andvari dangling the promised reward a little more often, and maybe sweeten the pot every so often- after all, he does say he understands greed. He mentions the reward once at the beginning, and then it's all about him and you toadying for him- something a lot of players really, really don't like, and a repeated complaint about the 'canon' CoV missions. And maybe change the souvenir to give mention that you got a nice, fat reward out of him.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sigh... and I had hoped to save on space by letting it be known that the players were getting paid well for their efforts from the start. I felt that players didn't much care for repetitive dialogue. Apparently, the exception is when the contact says, "Yes, I really AM paying you well for your services. Really. Yes, here too. And here again."
[ QUOTE ]
From what I've seen of your two arcs, your greatest strengths lie in contact dialogue laying out the story; your missions themselves tend to be somewhat vanilla, with a... rather minimalist approach when it comes to in-mission dialogue, flavour glowies, triggers and the like.
[/ QUOTE ]
So, to your mind, every mission should have a patrol with dialogue, every glowie should be different, and every named Boss should have something to say? Just looking for clarification on what makes a mission less vanilla.
[ QUOTE ]
I shudder to think how much space that would take up. That mission already flies by quickly on account of the Midnighter Club map being small and compact, and I also trimmed the interaction time for the crates to below their defaults. Do you [u]really[u] find the first mission that boring?
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh, sorry- that was more of a nit than anything else. As to how much space that would take up... roughly 1%, if memory serves- a glowie with some text takes up about 0.2-0.3% (I just managed to squeeze one in to Small Fears, after all). Another option to take away from the busywork feel is to separate the textless glowies from the necessary one, so that the one you need isn't always the very first one you find.
[ QUOTE ]
Andvari explains in the briefing that he chose a time when a hero was seeking to do battle with Atta, chief of the Trolls.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oop- missed that. Might want to re-emphasize it in Infernal's dialogue, since I really had no idea why he was there- didn't object to him being there, or anything, just kind of 
.
Also... hmm. It's all in the presentation, I guess- you'd need to be a fairly diplomatic villain to present Infernal's defeat to Atta in a positive light- Trolls seem to have a fairly touchy pride, at least when it comes to combat, so any implication that he needed help with Infernal is more likely to get you chucked out on your ear than a positive reception.
[ QUOTE ]
Would you prefer it if the Hero were stripped out entirely, and some separate patrols put in with different bits of dialogue, but the same annoyingly huge map were used? Or should I simply write that map off as "Never To Be Used In Any Arc Whatsoever For Sheer Bloody Bigness"?
[/ QUOTE ]
No to the first bit- just wondered what the heck he was doing there, since I missed what Andvari meant about an 'invading hero'. Adding some life to it would make a difference, but...
Well, unfortunately, the map is just so incredi-bloody huge that it turns any mission set in it into a horrific boring slog- I tried to use it as well (with battles, patrols, bosses, the whole nine yards) in another mission, and had to give up, because the triggers had a distressing tendency to misfire, and you were left with a boring, boring, boring slog through a gajillion irrelevant enemies who were just standing there.
Honestly, I'd say "too bloody big". Take that as you will, of course- if you take another look at it, and feel you can spice it up enough that it doesn't feel quite so Sisyphean, then by all means- it's your arc; my review is simply my personal impressions.
[ QUOTE ]
So you equate lack of mention with lack of knowledge? I mean, I certainly know that the Trolls aren't real Trolls, but rather humans mutated through Superadine overdose. I just didn't find that fact particularly relevant to Andvari's plans. If a cask of everfull mead has been further enchanted to give all who drink it more qualities like the Trolls of old, including intelligence, what does it matter if those who drink from it are chemically altered to begin with?
[/ QUOTE ]
Er... no, that's an "or" clause. Lack of knowledge OR lack of mention. And I brought it up because it would really depend on how chemistry and magic interact; Superadyne is weird, weird stuff if you look at the backstory- it doesn't just turn people strong, green, and dumb- there's a (small) chance of it giving psychic powers, or even the ability to perform interdimensional teleportation. So it might be open to question what, exactly, it would do when combined with magic mead.
And even if it doesn't somehow misfire- I'm assuming that Andvari is, as is typical for many Nordic dwarves, quite competent, magically- then I still sort of wonder how well the mead will work when there's another factor actively working against it- you could end up with accelerated Supa Trolls, honestly- both 'dyne and the mead make the Trolls tougher, so that'd work fine, but the 'dyne makes 'em dumb, while the mead makes them smarter- I just wondered if the two might cancel each other out. After all, unless the mead is somehow designed to discourage it, it's not as if the Trolls are going to stop doing 'dyne.
It's a story question thing, not necessarily a slam on the contact.
[ QUOTE ]
Sigh... and I had hoped to save on space by letting it be known that the players were getting paid well for their efforts from the start. I felt that players didn't much care for repetitive dialogue. Apparently, the exception is when the contact says, "Yes, I really AM paying you well for your services. Really. Yes, here too. And here again."
[/ QUOTE ]
Not... quite... what I meant. While repetition would serve the same purpose, it's not the best tool for the job. Andvari giving mention that "here's your payment for the first job; if you do this next bit for me, I'll be able to do such-and-such for you, and maybe throw in a little bonus as well" would, I think, work better than his just assuming that he'd bought the player's loyalty and that was that. City of Villains has already got too strong a "City of Mercs" vibe. If it was the player cultivating Andvari as a future ally- maybe cementing a treaty that the player would leave the underground alone when they conquered the Eastern Seaboard, or offering his services as a mercenary if the player helps him gather an army suitable to him, offering the Troll tunnels as a getaway route/safehouse to the player... just something other than 'here's some money, hahahaha, you're mine, now, [censored]!' Also, he really takes too many liberties with the player- if some idiot dwarf tried to slap power limiters on me while I was super-villaining for him, I'd feed him his own intestines.
It's... to borrow a line from Interface/Purple Lovin'... "not a fatal FAIL". Just a weak point of the story that will sour some villainous players on it. Honestly, of my villains that have developed personalities- one wouldn't even understand the offer (too crazy), one would be annoyed at the offer of money, but would love the chance for a good fight, and one would happily take his money, and drop him like a hot rock the second he started trying to cast things on her... and possibly attempt a little recreational homicide in the process.
[ QUOTE ]
So, to your mind, every mission should have a patrol with dialogue, every glowie should be different, and every named Boss should have something to say? Just looking for clarification on what makes a mission less vanilla.
[/ QUOTE ]
Not necessarily every mission- but none of your missions (or nearly so) have those things, and when it's on a really, really big map, it can get a bit 'go here, kill this, go here, kill this, go here, kill this...' We have a lot of tools to tell a story; having the mission itself be 'dead air' is, in my opinion, unecessarily limiting yourself.
Also, required bosses do, I think, need some dialogue, strictly as a gameplay thing- a lot of players (myself included) use that as a "aha, something important that way" signal.
Sorry if I'm being overbearing about this; I'm a strong proponent of 'mission flavouring'. Triggers, optional glowies, mob chatter, and the like, are your friend (another option for mob chatter, if you want it to look like a standard spawn rather than wandering around, is having them guarding a hostile 'hostage' who's in the fist-to-palm animation, or whatever) when it comes to setting a stage. For example, your first troll cave- Andvari hints that he pretty much 'collects' interesting magical items- optional glowies that had you stealing some of those nifty toys for yourself, if you wanted, would make that cave far more interesting, and less of a '... so what's this supposed ancient Norse Troll doing hanging out with the Redcaps?'
Oh- to separate out your specific concerns: mob chatter would be a huge plus. And even if you don't have space for each and every glowie in the first mission to have different text, separating the 'real' glowie spawn from the other four (textless) glowies, so that it wasn't guaranteed to be the first one you found would be a major improvement.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
Hey, Frozen_Northman. I played your arc tonight, A Tooth For A Tooth.
First off, my feedback on typo, grammar and general text-related matters:
Mission 1:
1. Mission preamble typo: "well-known" should not be hyphenated.
2. Mission preamble punctuation: drop the comma in the second sentence of the third paragraph (between 'mystics' and 'who'). It is unnecessary.
3. Mission acceptance 'click' text: this is just a personal preference of mine, but I dislike the generic "Accept" text. I think the acceptance text should contain a bit of flair, and flavor.
4. Mission acceptance text: use of the word "glamour". I've never seen it used this way, and had to check a dictionary. Your usage is correct, but I'm not sure will be generally recognized as such. You may want to amend to read as 'spell' or 'charm'.
Mission 2:
1. Mission title typo? -- use of the word 'Grimm'. I assume this is actually intentional, given the dark fantasy atmosphere of the arc. But, just in case it isn't...
2. Mission acceptance 'click' text: see above
3. Mission entry pop-up text: should read "A chorus of bleating noises fills this burrow..." The word 'fill' should read 'fills' (i.e. the verb should be conjugated by the word 'chorus', not the word 'noises').
Mission 3 & 4:
1. Mission acceptance 'click' text: see above, again.
Other observations:
1. Excellent custom groups. I especially loved the vikings, and the attention to detail paid to their appearance.
2. Nice look to the mission-giver NPC.
3. High marks for well-written text, dialogue, descriptions, etc.
Overall, well done, and a well-deserved 5-stars granted!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please play and rate my arc, Spanks For The Memories, #21144.
Q. Just wondering Posi, where are the new dance emotes we were told would come with GR?
A. Positron: Whoops, my bad.
1387 badges, and counting
I made a few changes to the Redcap's dialog in chapter 1. If you get time could you run through just that 1 chapter and let me know what you think? I specifically changed: the patrol, Fel (the boss), and the guardian of the chest. I might have made it a little too cute, but I felt the original dialog was too human sounding.
131430 Starfare: First Contact
178774 Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name ( 2009 MA Best In-Canon Arc ) ( 2009 Player Awards - Best Serious Arc )
Review of Trollbane, Arc ID# 106553.
Soloed with my lvl 44 MA/Regen Scrapper, forced down to lvl 14 by the nature of the arc.
[u]Mission One:[u]
Ugh. Back Alley Brawler greets me by saying "Heyas newbie." That grates. Others may react differently, but I tend to find that greeting as condescending and insulting. Especially since BAB immediately recognizes afterwards, "Good to see you again, you've come a ways."
It's a comparatively minor tweak, but I'd suggest changing BAB's immediate intro to something like, "Hey, hotshot! Good to see you again, you've come a ways." The rest of BAB's intro text seems to capture his character just fine.
Inside the mission, there are groups of Skulls and Trolls already fighting. Their dialogue bubbles come up before they can even see me. Which makes their reference to 'capes' being present ring hollow. And as a matter of personal taste, I wouldn't normally think "emogoth" to be a part of standard Troll vocabulary, let alone of a Troll that is supposedly mad with fear and rage.
There's a destructible object early on labeled a "Superadyne Lab." While "Dyne" is indeed an accepted canon abbreviation, my understanding has always been that the long form has been spelled "Superadine." Don't know why, but that's how I've always seen it in-game.
The map is a lovely choice, and once again, I'd like to know which one it is.
Straightforward mission. Find the glowing clue, and we're done. It's not inherently obvious how a hero would know that the bones are "Mystically charged remains," however, unless they're a hero with a magic background. Or the bones are emitting a soft, dark glow, for example. Otherwise, if I saw a bunch of bones set in a pattern with other ritualistic elements, I might presume that they'd been used in some form of a ritual, but I'd have no way of telling whether it was successful or not.
I see that one of the clues refers to something overheard in the fight from one of the Skulls about a magic ritual. I didn't remember this from playing the mission, so I scrolled through my box of text. Yep, there it is. "That ectoplasmic idiot got loose and went after the Trolls! We need to rebind him." The problem with putting clues like that in dialogue of ongoing fights, is that it fires off well before I reach the enemies in question. It's very easy to miss. I'd be tempted to insert a Skull boss to say that important information, especially since Bosses tend to refrain from saying their dialogue until players get close enough to see them say it.
In the debriefing, BAB also makes reference to "Superadyne." Since I suspect you've chosen to spell it this way throughout your arc, I'll simply repeat my opinion, with this game info page as reference: The long form of the drug is Superadine, and its two accepted abbreviations are "Supes" and "Dyne."
"Superadine, a street drug often called Supes (or more recently Dyne), not only causes the Troll mutations in users, but has also become integral to the gangs initiation rites, and in fact is a part of all gang rituals."
[u]Mission Two:[u]
In the briefing, the word "adresses" should be spelled as "addresses."
Feh. BAB sends me off calling me a "newbie" again. BAB, dude... buddy - it's not endearing. It's patronizing. It's the root source from which the insult "n00b" is derived, which is thrown around all too often by other players. Guess it's just a pet peeve of mine.
At least he gave me a MacGuffin to recognize anything magical that I may find.
Enter the mission and... Good Lord, there's a lot of text that's triggering without me being nearby. It's a little overwhelming.
And while there's a Boss in this level, it looks like there's so many patrols, they're encountering him before I do.
Ah. Found him. He kills me as I'm looking at his custom text. But at least the custom text is nicely historical, and adds to the growing mystery.
Eh. I'm not particularly a fan of this implementation of Troll-speak. By deliberately misspelling the words that they use, you've made the normal Trolls look so dumb as to be barely functional. For an example of Trollspeak done particularly well, IMHO, I recommend the arc "Troll Goods, Best Goods" (ID# 6845) by @Muu.
The final glowing interactive object has no text appearing over the red bar. And that usually draws my attention much more than the green text in the lower left corner of the screen.
[u]Mission Three:[u]
BAB calling me "newbie" is getting really freaking tiresome at this point. Trainee, rookie, youngblood, may all be acceptable alternatives. Or even $name. Because I do have a name, dangit, and BAB hasn't yet had the common decency to call me by it.
I'm not sure I buy into the concept of Numina being as spooked by the clues that I've found as BAB claims. If she's so afraid that she "nearly screams," then why is this still being subcontracted to someone no higher than 14th level? It just feels like a really odd disconnect. I'd dial down the text to suggest that she was "really disturbed," or something like that. But I should get some more clues from the mission itself.
I enter the mission, and... Lt. Sohmers, Longbow Warden, is apparently introducing himself to me from the end of a large room at the end of a hallway. Not sure what his trigger is, or how he's interacting with the existing enemies, because I have to fight through five spawns before I can even find him.
Great. I catch up with Sohmers, and he's a patronizing jerk. So long, Sohmers! Wish I could say it was fun teaming with you!
Dang. Just realized that I've been doing this arc on the lowest difficulty rating. Hard to tell how that would have affected some of the other enemies that I've faced. Then again, most people running this arc probably [u]would[u] be at the lowest difficulty level. Or at least, they bloody well should. I opt to keep things at this difficulty level. I suspect the result is that typical Bosses get downgraded to Lieutenant status, and Elite Bosses are downgraded to Bosses.
The assorted text that has shown up in the third mission has left me feeling so frustrated that I blitz past it, not even wanting to pay attention to it at this point.
I complete the mission, and start looking at the clues I've gotten. So... the Skulls apparently managed to steal a ritual from a necromancer that terrified the Circle of Thorns. Which raises the question... how?
I report back to BAB. Good Lord, this guy has no freaking respect for me OR the Longbow Warden he sent to team up with me. Calling us "the redshirt brigade"? Seriously? I've worked with [u]villains[u] who have shown more respect than this guy!
[u]Mission Four:[u]
And it looks like some details get handwaved away. The Skulls stole a ritual from a Necromancer, who "can't track 'em because he'll fall apart in the sun." Okay... I go back to my Clues bag. The Circle apparently summoned the Necromancer, which I suppose suggests that he's an undead being... which [u]might[u] suggest that he has an aversion to sunlight. And after the Circle summoned this Necromancer, the Skulls somehow managed to find a way to steal this ritual from the Necromancer, which is so nasty that it could freak out Numina.
Feh. And the Boss that I need to face this time uses a combination of Illusion and Empathy. And she glows so much that I can't very well make out her costume.
This makes for the most frustrating fight that I've faced so far. Holds plus Confusion, and no mez resistance on my toon at this stage. I convert three of my medium blues into a medium mez resist, and take her down. The ambush is the cherry pit on top of this annoying sundae, and I get the heck out of Dodge before having to worry about them. Frankly, at level 14 and below, I consider ambushes during boss fights to be overkill, unless you KNOW that a team will be running the mission.
BAB's mission debriefing contains the misspelled word, "distintegrate," which I presume is meant to be, "disintegrate." Unless you're deliberately making a pun and suggesting that we're removing all color from the Illustrated Woman.
[u]Mission Five:[u]
I see a reference to "the Bonemason" here, and this causes me to head back to my Clue Bag. Sure enough, there's a clue there saying that a Skull coughed up that name. I can't recall when that clue showed up. For that matter, the clue doesn't reveal the significance of who the Bonemason is, either. So, I'm left to infer that the Bonemason is the person in charge of this particular Skulls plot.
Between the debriefing of Mission Four, and the briefing of Mission Five, that BAB was so ticked that a personal friend of his was reanimated by this ritual, that he decided to invade Oranbega and get all medieval on the necromancer who created this ritual. Instead of on the person who used it. And why was the necromancer left in Oranbega again, instead of being apprehended? My brain is beginning to hurt.
As he sends me off, BAB says that while I'm beginning to get a bit of a rep (oh, thanks for noticing, you condescending *bleep*!), I might want to "dial it back a bit" for this one, because I'm heading into all-out war. Bwuh? I should be... giving less effort, this time?
I also don't get why a Skull leader would want to turn the Hollows into the next Dark Astoria. If it were the Banished Pantheon, sure. But the Skulls have typically seemed more concerned with mundane matters of drug-dealing and money. Deliberately going along with a scheme to wipe out their biggest drug customers seems counter-intuitive.
Headache is now threatening to reach migraine levels, so I just head into the mission.
Lots of big spawns of Trolls fighting Skulls in here. I take BAB's advice to "dial it back a bit," and do... nothing, for a while. Let the Trolls and Skulls whittle each other down, or just skip past them.
The first boss that I take down is Crimson Fist, again. Then a regular Skull Boss. Then Illustrated Woman, again. At which point the Mission Objective screen switches from saying "X bosses to defeat," to "Illustrated Woman." Which seems weird.
The final boss that I take out is the Bonemason himself. A Troll ambush spawns in the middle of the fight - which as I mentioned above, seems overkill for what I suspect is an Elite Boss fight at level 14 and under. The Bonemason's descriptive text does in fact confirm that he led the Skulls on an Oranbegan raid to steal a ritual from the necromancer. And it further explains that said part of Oranbega was mostly deserted, which I suppose is an explanation of how he managed to pull it off - it just raises the subsequent question of why that section of Oranbega would be so deserted if the CoT had chosen to summon a Necromancer of such far-reaching intellect in that area.
[u]In Conclusion:[u]
If I surmise correctly, you inserted a total of four different Elite Bosses in that mission, which at least downgrade to Bosses if played solo on the lowest difficulty rating. Two of them need to be faced down twice. Some of them spawn ambushes in the course of their fights. This is a lot more than I would typically recommend for a low-level arc.
Still, it's manageable if run on the lowest difficulty rating. You might consider putting in a warning in the mission introduction to make sure that players do so.
The highlight of this particular arc is the attention that is paid to the history one can find in City of Heroes. The final debriefing also provides a handy note as to where one can find the history plaques for some of the references, which is a really nice touch.
Nevertheless, following the storyline really did give me a headache. I need to take an aspirin and lie down for a while. Three stars.
Hi! Let's get to it.
Review of Fog of War:
M1: Fun, good intro to new mobs, battles are well orchestrated so you can see the midgets and helmet heads use their powers. I liked the terminal idea. As a solo stealth class (Ill/Kin) I breezed through this one and didn't mind at all.
M2: Maybe it was just because I was solo, but this one seemed a little bare bones. Could it use an ally/ambush/something? if memory allows? I like the boss.
M3: Another good one. Boss was well played and very funny. Magical traitors idea works well.
M4: Funny patrol text! Maybe a little too much of it. Was a teeny bit disappointed in repeat boss type...would rather have had one of the other types saved as a unique. Minor quibble though, still a fun level.
M5: The best one. Good design, good dialogue, good humor. Like the ally! Worth it just to see rascals beating on Cimeroran heads before blowing up.
Con: The huge ambush while fighting Dr. A is cheap. He's not that easy to begin with and I felt it was overkill.
Overall: Great idea, funny, well executed. Nice work. I laughed while earning my XP (and gold).
Please to be playing my arc 181351: Trolls and Tribulations. I spent a looong time on it and nobody has played it yet, d'oh. Thanks.
Hmm... well, thanks for the review- some responses...
[ QUOTE ]
Ugh. Back Alley Brawler greets me by saying "Heyas newbie." That grates. Others may react differently, but I tend to find that greeting as condescending and insulting. Especially since BAB immediately recognizes afterwards, "Good to see you again, you've come a ways."
[/ QUOTE ]
Brawler calling ex-pupils "Newbie" is canon- straight from his dialogue in the comics (specifically, #11 of the Blue King run). Honestly, there's really no negative connotation to the word 'newbie'- it just means that you're a relative rookie (n00b, on the other hand...)- and to BaB, one of the most veteran heroes in the city, well...
[ QUOTE ]
Inside the mission, there are groups of Skulls and Trolls already fighting. Their dialogue bubbles come up before they can even see me. Which makes their reference to 'capes' being present ring hollow. And as a matter of personal taste, I wouldn't normally think "emogoth" to be a part of standard Troll vocabulary, let alone of a Troll that is supposedly mad with fear and rage.
[/ QUOTE ]
Triggers are hideously borked at the moment- they work right maybe once out of every ten tries, if even that. Not a lot I can do about it, sadly. The "Emogoth wimpies"... eh, that was more for the sake of lightening a rather grim arc slightly.
[ QUOTE ]
"Superadine, a street drug often called Supes (or more recently Dyne), not only causes the Troll mutations in users, but has also become integral to the gangs initiation rites, and in fact is a part of all gang rituals."
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually... and I'd have to check on this, since I'm not sure... I don't recall changing the name of the "Superadyne Labs" you find in the mission; canonically, the name seems to have either two variant spellings, or else the early devs just screwed up with one piece of info or the other- I just went with Superadyne since it's consistent with the abbreviation.
(just went to check- you were correct, the object was called a "Superadine Lab"... guess I did change it. *shrug* I'm pretty sure I'd seen longform as "Superadyne" before... maybe in the Troll dialogue in Skyway? Bleah, now I feel the need to go check >.< Okay... huh. Apparently I've just been screwing it up all this time. *sigh* Fixed.)
[ QUOTE ]
Feh. BAB sends me off calling me a "newbie" again. BAB, dude... buddy - it's not endearing. It's patronizing. It's the root source from which the insult "n00b" is derived, which is thrown around all too often by other players. Guess it's just a pet peeve of mine.
[/ QUOTE ]
Honestly, it sounds like you took strong offense to it (despite none being intended, or, to the best of my knowledge, inherent to the word), and it kind of tainted your enjoyment (such as it was) of the arc.
[ QUOTE ]
Eh. I'm not particularly a fan of this implementation of Troll-speak. By deliberately misspelling the words that they use, you've made the normal Trolls look so dumb as to be barely functional.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'll take another look at it.
[ QUOTE ]
Or even $name. Because I do have a name, dangit, and BAB hasn't yet had the common decency to call me by it.
[/ QUOTE ]
That was actually deliberate on my part- don't know if you caught it, but the very last time he speaks to you (when he thanks you), he calls you by name. Wanted to build up to that a bit, make it really stand out. Apparently it didn't quite work for you :/
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure I buy into the concept of Numina being as spooked by the clues that I've found as BAB claims. If she's so afraid that she "nearly screams," then why is this still being subcontracted to someone no higher than 14th level? It just feels like a really odd disconnect. I'd dial down the text to suggest that she was "really disturbed," or something like that.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's possible to be frightened of something that's not terribly dangerous- all I was trying to imply there was that it was some really, really unpleasant magic. Like sticking your hand in a vat of slime in the dark, or whatever.
[ QUOTE ]
I enter the mission, and... Lt. Sohmers, Longbow Warden, is apparently introducing himself to me from the end of a large room at the end of a hallway. Not sure what his trigger is, or how he's interacting with the existing enemies, because I have to fight through five spawns before I can even find him.
[/ QUOTE ]
His trigger is broken, is what it is. I REALLY wish they'd fix those.
[ QUOTE ]
Great. I catch up with Sohmers, and he's a patronizing jerk. So long, Sohmers! Wish I could say it was fun teaming with you!
[/ QUOTE ]
Meh... I don't like Longbow, mostly- the only one who's worth his salt is Sefu Tendaji- the rest (who have any characterization, anyhow) are... well, patronizing jerks.
[ QUOTE ]
I complete the mission, and start looking at the clues I've gotten. So... the Skulls apparently managed to steal a ritual from a necromancer that terrified the Circle of Thorns. Which raises the question... how?
[/ QUOTE ]
So... because he's terrifying, he's got good security? The Skulls, among their many bad habits, are professional thieves. In this case, I'm not sure how it stretches credibility :/
[ QUOTE ]
I report back to BAB. Good Lord, this guy has no freaking respect for me OR the Longbow Warden he sent to team up with me. Calling us "the redshirt brigade"? Seriously? I've worked with [u]villains[u] who have shown more respect than this guy!
[/ QUOTE ]
Uhm... no, he was calling the Longbow the Redshirt brigade. Since a) I really can't see a street-level guy like BaBs having a lot of use for Ms. Liberty's private paramilitary force, and b) uhm... their shirts are red. Mostly.
And that's also a comment on Lt. Sohmers, quite frankly, being an utter lemming (something you didn't see since you ditched him immediately). Guy is totally suicidal. I've yet to actually manage to keep him alive on any of my runs >.<
[ QUOTE ]
And it looks like some details get handwaved away. The Skulls stole a ritual from a Necromancer, who "can't track 'em because he'll fall apart in the sun."
[/ QUOTE ]
Hrm... we may have to disagree here- but (at least in some traditions) somebody who is deeply enough into black magic will begin to evince a strong aversion to sunlight, despite not being especially undead otherwise. It's a necromancer thing. And I didn't mean to suggest that the Circle had summoned him, just that you dropping the CoT boss (and thus his wards) would catch the Baron's attention and 'summon' him that way.
[ QUOTE ]
This makes for the most frustrating fight that I've faced so far. Holds plus Confusion, and no mez resistance on my toon at this stage. I convert three of my medium blues into a medium mez resist, and take her down. The ambush is the cherry pit on top of this annoying sundae, and I get the heck out of Dodge before having to worry about them. Frankly, at level 14 and below, I consider ambushes during boss fights to be overkill, unless you KNOW that a team will be running the mission.
[/ QUOTE ]
... okay, I forgot that ambush. I thought I'd removed all or most of them from the boss fights. Sorry about that, mistake on my part. The Illustrated Woman is, in all honesty, broken right now. The last critter patch made it so that you could not get rid of that confuse. Which is not something I'm happy about, since changing "The Illustrated Woman" from... well, Illusion... doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I may have to suck it up and just change it, one supposes, although I'm not sure to what.
[ QUOTE ]
BAB's mission debriefing contains the misspelled word, "distintegrate," which I presume is meant to be, "disintegrate." Unless you're deliberately making a pun and suggesting that we're removing all color from the Illustrated Woman.
[/ QUOTE ]
... you know, I've been misspelling it that way for something like two decades now? Huh. Guess you learn something new every day.
[ QUOTE ]
So, I'm left to infer that the Bonemason is the person in charge of this particular Skulls plot.
[/ QUOTE ]
Clarified that clue slightly.
[ QUOTE ]
BAB was so ticked that a personal friend of his was reanimated by this ritual, that he decided to invade Oranbega and get all medieval on the necromancer who created this ritual. Instead of on the person who used it. And why was the necromancer left in Oranbega again, instead of being apprehended? My brain is beginning to hurt.
[/ QUOTE ]
... uhm... I was pretty clear on that count- BaB was pissed off that the necromancer's best suggestion was to disintegrate his friends, not that he was the one who created the ritual (well, that too). And the Brawler was losing his temper, which doesn't lend itself well to rational thinking. I've added a bit of 'emote' text that flat out says that... yeah, the Brawler's pretty much lost it at this point.
[ QUOTE ]
As he sends me off, BAB says that while I'm beginning to get a bit of a rep (oh, thanks for noticing, you condescending *bleep*!), I might want to "dial it back a bit" for this one, because I'm heading into all-out war. Bwuh? I should be... giving less effort, this time?
[/ QUOTE ]
Er... no, that was me trying to unobtrusively warn that turning down one's difficulty (set in game as 'reputation') would be a good idea.
[ QUOTE ]
I also don't get why a Skull leader would want to turn the Hollows into the next Dark Astoria. If it were the Banished Pantheon, sure. But the Skulls have typically seemed more concerned with mundane matters of drug-dealing and money. Deliberately going along with a scheme to wipe out their biggest drug customers seems counter-intuitive.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think my best response to this is the relevant bit of the in-game blurb on the Skulls-
[ QUOTE ]
The roots of this gang are grounded in the practices of a macabre death cult. Their fundamental belief is that death is the answer to all things. Initiates must choose a victim and murder them, dig their grave, and take the front part of the victim's skull as a mask. Their war with the Hellions over Perez has literally turned a section of the park into a Boneyard. As long as selling Superadine creates so much death, the Skulls are likely to remain in the service of the Family.
[/ QUOTE ]
The Skulls are a death cult; they're gang-bangers, aye, but they're completely obsessed with death (something that surprisingly few players seem to know... surprising, given that they use actual human skulls as masks...). The Superadine trade is a way to bring more death into the world, not entirely something that they do for profit. And murdering unsuspecting former allies (especially stupid unsuspecting former allies) is easier than going after harder targets, particularly when the only goal is mass death- which I'm pretty sure I spelled out in the various bits of text in the arc :/
[ QUOTE ]
The first boss that I take down is Crimson Fist, again. Then a regular Skull Boss. Then Illustrated Woman, again. At which point the Mission Objective screen switches from saying "X bosses to defeat," to "Illustrated Woman." Which seems weird.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's a bug that I haven't been able to squash, despite repeated attempts and modifications of the compass text.
[ QUOTE ]
A Troll ambush spawns in the middle of the fight - which as I mentioned above, seems overkill for what I suspect is an Elite Boss fight at level 14 and under.
[/ QUOTE ]
Again, apologies- I thought I had gotten rid of those.
[ QUOTE ]
And it further explains that said part of Oranbega was mostly deserted, which I suppose is an explanation of how he managed to pull it off - it just raises the subsequent question of why that section of Oranbega would be so deserted if the CoT had chosen to summon a Necromancer of such far-reaching intellect in that area.
[/ QUOTE ]
The Baron wasn't a CoT summon... oh, okay- found the 'problem line'- I just meant that Drejak had summoned the thing he feared in the sense of 'called to that location', not the more typical demon- or ghost-summoning. Changed the wording to eliminate that confusion.
And it was deserted because the Baron was wandering around in there, seeking to bind the various spirits to his will; given that the CoT are all ghosts (either spectres or posessing human shells), you can see why they'd want to avoid him.
[ QUOTE ]
Still, it's manageable if run on the lowest difficulty rating. You might consider putting in a warning in the mission introduction to make sure that players do so.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's a good idea, and one that I've implemented- I had actually mostly assumed that the average person would be running on heroic (since that's been the rule, rather than the exception, in my experiences with lowbie teams). I put them in as EBs so that they would stay bosses on Heroic, since I've found that they dropped far too quickly as Lieutenants, to the point that it was a case of 'hey, that's an interesting... oop, well, it's dead now, whatever it was'.
[ QUOTE ]
Nevertheless, following the storyline really did give me a headache. I need to take an aspirin and lie down for a while. Three stars.
[/ QUOTE ]
Apologies for the headache, I guess. Hopefully I've clarified things enough to clear up the worst of the problems.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
Feedback on Spanks For The Memories, Arc ID# 21144
Soloed with my lvl 40 Fortunata, pretending to be a hero.
[u]Mission One:[u]
The arc title made me chuckle, and since the plot is tied to the history of former mayor 'Spanky' Rabinowitz of the CoH history, it's a nice story hook. From what I understand of the official CoH canon, Spanky was well-known for corruption and backroom dealings, yet was highly popular nevertheless, and Paragon City thrived under his administration as mayor.
A simple search for records turns into anything but. The mission entry popup gives a nice transition to the expected action.
I find the records very quickly, as they're not that far from the entrance. The Mission Clue doesn't suggest that they're anything special. But the Circle of Thorns seems to think so, as indicated by the Boss speech.
The "Historical Documents" clue has a misspelling in it - "beaurocrats" should be spelled "bureaucrats."
A minor matter of taste, but I don't feel like "Burning Sulfur" captures the feel of a standard Circle of Thorns boss. The leaders of the CoT, when they are given names, tend to sound like they're names from a long-dead language. Akarist and Baron Zoria are two examples from in the game. In one of my other published arcs, I invented names like Raxanthris, Mirko, and Stratus. You might consider playing around with syllables until you find something that sounds vaguely Latin.
Nevertheless, mission completed.
[u]Mission Two:[u]
Another minor edit - "Prohibition" should be capitalized, as it is a proper noun referring to a period in history.
The first mission seemed to only turn up a dead end, but there's at least a hint that the Circle's involvement will be tied back into this story.
The mission contact sends me on a fresh path of investigation, this time to shake down some members of the Family.
And as it turns out, this involves a new custom group. Interesting. By and large, I like the artistic choices, and appreciate that you went to the trouble of putting custom descriptive text for each one. The only ones that I don't quite care for, visually, are the Frost Bodyguards. They have a moustache with a blue tint that seems out-of-place, and the sight of a huge hulking bruiser pulling out a pair of katanas is unexpected, to say the least. Normally, I'd expect the huge bodyguards to be the Superstrength types. And if were to design a dual blades, rank-and-file member of a crime family, I'd typically envision him with a pair of short knives. Those are just my personal tastes, though.
This is another straightforward mission, in which defeating the boss turns up some information. Nothing that looks like it would necessarily advance the plot, though.
[u]Mission Three:[u]
The Circle's involvement continues, and I'm off to retrieve something they stole from Spanky's heirlooms. Though being told to go look in Oranbega is a bit broad, since Oranbega is supposed to be an entire city. I feel it's a bit like being told, "I'm sure the thieves went to New York City. Go there and find them!"
I find one of the necessary bosses (which I suspect is randomly generated), and it turns out to be a succubus named Qual'Toth. I can totally believe that as a Circle of Thorns name.
Spanky's soul is a particularly ancient and powerful one? Unexpected, but I'm willing to buy that - I've certainly stumbled across random Circle rituals where they say stuff like, "You have a glorious aura about you" to the victim.
I'm not sure what to make of the Soul Seductress, which is a boss custom enemy. She goes on about her "charms" during the fight, but she seems pretty much restricted to manipulating fire as her powers. I would have expected something more in line with psionic or mind control powers to fit the name.
[u]Mission Four:[u]
Again, I have a bit of an issue with the scope of the investigation that the contact asks me to conduct. Yes, both the CoT and the Soul Demons are apparently interested in the map of Dark Astoria. But being told to go and investigate the whole of Dark Astoria feels pretty broad. (Not as broad as investigating all of Oranbega, mind you, so not as big of an issue.)
Here, I get to see more of the Soul Demons, a demonic-themed custom group. It's a diverse blend of powers and demonic looks, with nothing particularly overpowered.
Still, it took me a fair bit of searching to find the boss that I was looking for - despite the fact that the boss and its spawn were using a big, flashy animation. It also turned out that the 'boss' was a lieutenant-class enemy, and only spoke when I defeated it. You might consider adding a bit of text to that particular enemy for when a player gets near, to help speed up the search.
The demon speaks in a language that I don't understand, but says the name "Rabinowitz." The thing is, given the evidence that I've already collected, it doesn't feel like this mission really adds to the progression of clues.
[u]Mission Five:[u]
So, as it turns out, the mission contact was able to decipher the map, and pinpoint a location in Dark Astoria. That really makes me feel like Mission Four was spent in pointless activity - my character ultimately did nothing in that mission that helped progress things toward Mission Five.
Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of the map used for Mission Five. With the heavy fog, it's hard to see where my character is going. I end up relying on the overhead map a lot in order to navigate.
I defeat the final boss, and then beat the demons that are guarding Spanky's soul... and then find out that it's all for nothing. Spanky's soul does a final reveal, explaining that he sold his soul both to gain prosperity for Paragon City, and to ensure that the demons to whom he sold his soul would not menace the city. And, apparently to prove their power, these demons plunged Dark Astoria into the state that it is currently. And Spanky's soul refuses to leave, because doing so would really tick off these demons to the point of doing more bad stuff to Paragon City.
I have a bit of a problem with that explanation, since my understanding is that the Banished Pantheon are primarily responsible for what happened to Dark Astoria - especially since they are by far the dominant group in that zone.
It's also frustrating to have a story resolve in such a fashion that tells you, despite all that you've done, it doesn't matter, and won't change anything.
[u]In Conclusion:[u]
Through what I presume is a deliberate choice of existing and custom factions, you've created an arc that can be played by a wide range of levels. (Though I'll note that low-level characters often have trouble against groups made entirely of custom enemies, so I'm not sure how that would work out in this case.)
I have more of an issue with how the story develops and builds. Typically, I like to feel like I'm learning another key piece of substance with each mission. In this arc, the progression goes:
1) We learn that the CoT is interested in Spanky.
2) We get some background info on Spanky that ultimately isn't relevant to the core story.
3) We learn that another group of demons apparently has Spanky's soul.
4) We don't really learn anything.
5) We learn why Spanky sold his soul, and why it's doomed to stay where it is, at the tail end of the mission.
Missions Two and Four don't feel like they're advancing the plot. And to a lesser extent, Mission One suffers from a sense of being a dead-end clue.
Apart from that, I think that it's important that every story give the player a sense that what they are doing somehow matters - that they have accomplished something. The player ends up walking away from this arc having learned something, but they haven't changed any lives for the better, or made a difference in the balance between good and evil. Even the mission contact says that she wishes she had never asked the player to do any of this in the first place.
Thus, with apologies, I rate this arc at 2 stars.
Appreciate the detailed review, and have some food for thought for some tweaking of the story.
Extremely disappointed in only a 2-star rating, however. That's only 1 star better than what you would rate the crappiest of crappy crap-fests. A bit on the harsh side, in my opinion, and a most unfair assessment of an arc that is averaging a 4-star rating.
I respectfully suggest you evaluate the standards by which you rate.
Q. Just wondering Posi, where are the new dance emotes we were told would come with GR?
A. Positron: Whoops, my bad.
1387 badges, and counting
Review of Trolls and Tribulations, Arc ID# 181351, by Nublet.
Soloed by my lvl 41 Night Widow, pretending to be a hero. Difficulty level 2.
[u]Mission One:[u]
The mission briefing text feels a bit abrupt, though the contact goes into more detail in the sendoff text.
Now, the contact is essentially trying to grab my attention by pointing out the oddity of Trolls conducting a raid in Brickstown, or so the brevity of the initial briefing text would lead me to believe. Thus, as a minor stylistic point, I would suggest revisiting the last words with which Dr. Sheridan sends me off: "You need to get to that lab right now send them back into their Troll hole. Uncovering their motives is of lesser importance." (As a simple point of grammar, I think the word "and" should be inserted between the words "now" and "send" if you otherwise leave the sentence as-is.)
Strictly speaking, this may be true. But it's like a sudden reversal from the initial hook - Trolls are present where they normally aren't, and that's curious. I'd recommend rephrasing the final two sentences along the lines of, "Saving that lab from the Trolls is clearly the most important task. But if you can also learn their motives for the raid, that would be helpful."
But enough of my going on and on about writing style. On to the mission!
I find a group of custom Trolls with a hostage right off the bat. They seem to be menacing her with... pamphlets or literature of some sort, which seems a bit odd.
Nevertheless, the rank-and-file minions are armed with pickaxes and shovels. And given that Sheridan said that these Trolls had just tunneled into the facility, I find this an absolutely wonderful touch.
Those Trolls seemed to be asking for stuff about which they clearly had no clue. The hostage scientist, understandably, is bewildered by this. But a valuable clue is added to my clue bag - the fact that these Trolls have "shopping lists" of stuff to be raiding for. This suggests, to my mind, that someone more intelligent may be pulling the strings.
I enjoy the look of the custom Trolls, and the grumbling digging crews are a nice touch of flavor. Further adding to the flavor are Trollish patrols mentioning how they're glad the shopping lists include pictures of what to look for. Ah. Now the Trolls menacing the scientist with literature suddenly make more sense. Clever.
Something that I've come to recognize is that multiple patrols or bosses with the same dialogue could conceivably get repetitive to players, but I don't think you quite cross the line. I just thought I'd mention that I'm coming to feel that three or four instances of the same dialogue seems to be where that line is - for me, at any rate.
Seeing Magnusson brought a smile to my face. A Troll boss, dressed better than his peers, providing surprisingly sensical business-speak with remedial grammar. [u]That's[u] certainly one for the history books!
This is a really, solidly fun first mission. It gives me high hopes for the rest of the arc.
The mission exit text is also a lovely bit of flavor - it says that I've received a voice mail from Sheridan, and it transitions nicely to his debriefing text.
[u]Mission Two:[u]
These new, stronger Trolls are now assaulting Brickstown in force. Time to see what good I can do.
The map seems to be an outdoor King's Row map, which I imagine is an acceptable compromise - I'm certainly not aware of an outdoor Brickstown map.
The Trolls rampaging through Brickstown seem to be the same sorts that I fought in the tunnels. Which is, initially, a mild shame. (Of course, I'm well aware of how custom enemies gobble up memory space, so I stamp down on my disappointment.)
Since the outdoor map is somewhat large, with all sorts of alleyways, it's completely by chance that I first stumble across the citizen in need of rescue. I oblige her. And she starts to thank me, but then freaks out at... Wow. Winged Troll archers rushing in to ambush me. That causes me to bust out in laughter. The descriptive text further suggests that these are Trolls that have been pushing the mutation envelope to the point of questionable wisdom. At any rate - the placement of the ambush worked out quite well, since I was able to turn around from the citizen to see the freakish winged Trolls just as they rounded a corner.
I'm guessing that there were some Crey set to battle the custom Trolls, since there's some dialogue that has shown up in my text window. I never actually see them, however. I suspect the custom Trolls have been pasting them in no time flat. In fact, I occasionally stumble across groups of custom Trolls that include the Ogre Commandant boss. Which would certainly explain the short shelf life of any hypothetical normal enemies on this level. You might consider checking that, and possibly scaling down the difficulty level of any Troll groups that are supposed to be fighting in the streets against hypothetical Crey.
Ah. Yes. I finally got lucky enough to find a battle between the Custom Trolls and Crey. The Crey get absolutely slaughtered in very short time, thanks to the regularly-appearing Ogre Commandants. (Those guys one-shot the minions.) And later, I stumble across the just-disappearing corpses of some Council. I fear the potential flavor of the battles between the custom Trolls and the regular groups is being lost by the Trolls being so comparatively high-powered. I'm not sure whether the minions, lieutenants, and Bosses are on Standard or Hard - it may be worth a check, as some of them do hit fairly hard.
Okay, I find the nurse next, who seems to be fending off Trolls by casually flipping a baseball bat in her hand. This would ordinarily lead me to wonder if there's a better animation for her to use in this situation, but that's a minor style issue. When rescued, she says, "You have to help Doc Science! Steven's in trouble!" As another minor style point, I'd suggest changing "Doc Science" to "Dr. Sheridan." Though Sheridan's flavor text does establish his nickname as "Doctor Science," so it's entirely your call.
The rookie hero that needs to be rescued is also in the vicinity, and I love the flavor text that explains [u]why[u] a rookie hero is in Brickstown.
Sheridan is nearby, being menaced by Winged Trolls. I rescue him, and this triggers a new objective to get a new sample from a Winged Troll, since the last ones were ruined. This last cascading objective feels a little bit forced, but I soldier on.
Ah... most heroes probably wouldn't have an issue with this, but apparently Dr. Sheridan is meant to be an ally or something. And since my Night Widow has stealth, she easily leaves Sheridan behind. It doesn't seem vital to keep him around, so I leave him.
After running way across the city block again, I finally find the named boss, Kjell, and a group of winged trollish archers. The fight with Kjell seems to indicate that they wanted to lure out Sheridan. Ultimately, I feel like this last objective doesn't add a lot to the mission, and would suggest cutting it. The plot of the story seems like it would carry on just fine if it ended with the rescue of Sheridan, and I fear many players may get frustrated with another free-range search after finding him.
[u]Mission Three:[u]
Dr. Sheridan's research indicates that these Trolls are indeed being further mutated by some sophisticated work. It's off to Portal Corp. next, to see if someone has stolen Sheridan's access codes.
And now the custom Trolls start expanding their roster, with the Winged Trolls now part of the regular lineup, and Supa Dupa Trolls joining along with them. Cool.
As I progress through the halls, my text window shows a Supa Dupa Troll saying, "B9128P7..." That seems really odd, so you might want to double-check that. Oh, wait - unless that's Sheridan's password, and you're illustrating how the Trolls are accessing Portal Corp. that way. Still, if that [u]is[u] what's going on, you might consider making it a bit more explicit.
Heh. And the trolls are trying to hack a computer system with jackhammers. Why am I not surprised?
Things get a little hectic when some Praetorian underlings show up suddenly. I run ahead, take the elevator, and concentrate on finding the night janitor and the biggest Troll to arrest.
Hah. Love the Trollspawn dialogue as I rescue the Portal Corp Security bot. Very nice touch.
Ouch. I run into three Supa Dupa Trollspawn that are bunched together, and get KO'ed. Stacking radiation debuffs are nasty. The vagaries of chance, I suppose. Or... not. It looks like the patrols are exclusively made up of the Supa Dupa Trollspawn. You might consider retooling that particular custom group, if you can. Stacking radiation debuffs, like I said, can be seriously painful. I shudder to think of what would happen if a group ran this arc and ran into even more of them.
Hmm. Rescuing the night janitor suggests that B9128P7 is actually the code for Praetorian Earth, and that the Trolls are trying to close the portal to that dimension. That actually was not clear to me from the previous in-mission chatter, so you might consider editing your text to clarify that.
It looks like the objective to help arrest the biggest Trollspawn is a cascading objective, and I'm not sure why that is. Since the map is several floors, having to backtrack through Portal Corp. to find the newly-spawned boss is a minor annoyance.
And the biggest Trollspawn is... whoa. A Devouring Earth Elite Boss. If I recall correctly, the same model that is used for the Devoured version of Pyriss, villainside. This would ordinarily make me react dubiously, but... the in-battle dialogue is just too dang funny. And there are allied PPD ambush spawns to help me take it down, which is nice. Even if the PPD is largely ineffective because they get one-shot by the Elite Boss. (Though that means I get to laugh at another wonderful line when the EB defeats something. This battle is truly a highlight of this arc, thus far.)
[u]Mission Four:[u]
Ooh. Now that's a nifty plot twist. And it builds nicely on the clues that you've left so far. (Including the name-dropping of Sheridan in the final boss fight in Mission Two, so I understand why you included it, but it still feels a bit clunky as an objective.) I won't spoil the details in this review.
Sheridan uses believable logic (to me, at least) to deduce where I need to go for the final mission. And he warns me that the upcoming map is enormous, so I shouldn't waste time trying to arrest every single Troll in there, but concentrate on the objective...
Yep! I recognize THIS map! It's the same map that I use to conclude one of my other arcs, "A Tooth For A Tooth," ID #10173. And boy, I am suddenly glad that I am playing with a stealthy character.
I find the "ally" early on. And said ally soon gets KO'ed by the custom enemies that I'm trying to skip. Ah, well.
Uff-da... Despite Sheridan's warning that I shouldn't get bogged down in arresting every Troll, there sure are a lot of objectives on this map. I suspect that will frustrate many players.
Oh, dear... cascading objectives, and I need to escort the evil scientist back OUT of this large, winding map. And said bad guy won't follow me if I still have stealth on. That's rather annoying. I run the gauntlet, and get the guy off the map. At least he doesn't turn hostile on me.
But now I have to backtrack and "Cleanse the Atrocity." Which means continuing to scour the really big map, possibly involving backtracking over paths I've already searched. Ouch. I strongly, strongly recommend either making the Atrocity a defined objective from the start, or removing him entirely, or spawning him after finding the Ally near the front of the cave system. Having him spawn after I've already dedicated a lot of time to exploring that map is just painful.
[u]In Conclusion:[u]
You said that you put a lot of effort into creating this mission, and it certainly shows. The story is well-written, well-proofread, with tons of flavorful bits to add color throughout the arc, and lots of fun humor that had me chortling.
The downside, I fear, results from certain specific instances of cascading objectives. Not ALL cascading objectives are bad, mind you. But when you start using maps with lots of twists, turns, and dead-ends, cascading objectives can cause a good deal of frustration. Especially on the final map, where Dr. Sheridan's highlighted caution against arresting all of the Trolls ends up being somewhat contrary to the reality of what that mission currently requires.
I really, really want to award this arc five stars. But because of the aforementioned moments of frustration, I feel compelled to restrain myself to four.
Nevertheless... if you could retool some of the cascading objectives, I would have no hesitation upgrading my review to a solid gold, five star, worthy of Dev's Choice status review. Even with my reservations, I feel like this arc shows some inspired material, and I shall recommend it to my in-game friends for their attention.
Cut throat competition
10171
Played with a level 50 fire/fire blaster with mostly set I/Os, exmped to 20 and therefor losing the set bonuses.
Difficulty set at 3
First mission The contact, who is a face maker surgeon person, sends me to kidnap some Fashion Models so she can work on them.
I get inside the mission and its one of those orange office maps. I see the Circle of Thorns are already there, trying to kidnap the same models I am. I beat them down and take the hostages as my own. The boss was kind of tough.
I needed to escort all the hostages to the doors, I sighed at this, but there was a good story reason to do so.
-No abandoned dialogue or recaptured dialogue on the hostages. Im sure someone like Rose Thorne would scream her head off and have a snappy response when I pick her back up.
Mission Two
Circle of Thorns are getting more aggressive in trying to expand their territory and have ambushed the contacts workers as they were on a Routine collection aka more kidnapping pretty ladies. I am sent to stop it and find out if the CoT have any more plans so our contact can arrange a strike against them as a retaliation.
Another orange office map that has a tunnel dug under leading to sewers. On the way I am able to save Vhazilok allies.
As I make my way through, me and my army of Vahzilok come upon Leroy. A disgruntles Circle Of Thorns janitor who thinks its a good time for a career change.
Unfortunately I needed to escort him out plus he helps in the fight. There was an ambush and the idiot ran into melee with a LT, getting himself killed. Booted from mission.
-Again, no abandoned dialogue for hostages/allies.
- No clues or side text
Mission three
Leroy the Janitor defected from the Circle of Thorns and gave our contact some information about the Circle (Even though he died, or was 'defeated', the contact told me she sent some workers to fix him up and bring him back).
Leroy says that The Circle of Thorns have been building sacrificial altars in a cave and I am sent to their location to destroy them. The revenge begins.
The mission is inside of a cave and I need to destroy three altars. The mission also has a custom group that consists of corpses infused with warrior spirits. Pretty cool costume and choice of powers.
- Default description on the altars
- The Boss has the All Custom Characters tag
- The custom group reuses the description on all its variants, even the boss.
- Still no more clues or side text
Mission four
Circle of thorns have rallied an army at the PTS station as retaliation, lead by some demonic super monster. I am told Leroy and some helpers have already started the fighting, softening the CoTs ranks.
I zone into an outdoor industrial map and see I need to rescue four allies and defeat the demonic overlord, fair enough. I was warned I might need help.
The allies are the three models from the first mission, now worked over and looking evil due to the facemaker lady contact, and Leroy, who also gains a new look, coooooool. Pretty cool continuity.
They have new costumes as well. However, they are all extremely weak. They all died within minuets of me rescuing them. Leroy was killed in two hits from Anzzathraxxazzaxxxazzzax, the rest never even made it to him.
Seeing Minmea punching a CoT archer thats on the ground was a cool use of the animations.
The Elite Boss though, ridiculous. Was not solo friendly at all, and I believe I was warned about this. Though I assumed it would be possible with all four allies, I was extremely wrong.
I had to hire a level 50 tank and a level 23 controller to help me finish. If it wasnt for the controllers Kinetics, I dont think we would have finished, which is a bit disappointing. The entire arc had been solo friendly up to this point.
I never received a souvenir at the end, although it might be a bug on my end. It appears I lost a lot of MA souvenirs that I know I had before.
Overall I rated it at three stars.
The story was decent, it moved forward the entire time. The dialogue was nice, humorous at times. I really liked Minmeas animation on the last mission, punching the Archer into the ground all the while taunting him. Nice use of maps, nothing overwhelming and Im not a stickler for outdoor maps.
Most of my criticism is how bland this arc feels. Its like a tree with no branches.
I always like clues, even if they dont exactly move the story forward. I was sort of surprised that there were no clues at all. With me, dialogue is quickly forgotten or just spammed away never to be seen. Im not saying remove the dialogue; just maybe reference it in a clue or something.
None of the allies had any abandoned dialogue, and nothing to say when I re-acquired them.
The custom boss from mission three and the Elite Boss from mission four had their group tags as All Custom Characters.
The altars had default text
Also, I would remove flight from the EB, and perhaps tone him down. He flew up to the pipes that had grates around them and got stuck. If I had enough damage I would have been able to kill him without him fighting back. As it was, I wasnt doing enough damage to counter his regen. I found Leroy and brought him to the EB to see if he could help.
All Leroy did was manage to knock the EB free from being stuck, who in turn, killed Leroy in two hits.
Worthless allies too, perhaps buff them? I do admit I could have been a little lazy with the allies, but even two minions obliterated Rose in a couple hits and she didnt even scratch the one she was fighting.
Im not sure what powersets the EB had, but I could only get him to half health, solo, before he regained his full health again. Would have been impossible for me solo, but perhaps you meant it to be that way. It just felt like I hit a brick wall and bringing in outside help felt like I was cheating.
*Points to sig*
Emansor, thank you for your review of Cutthroat Competition. I'll get right on to playing your arc in return.
I am curious as to what aspects merited a lack of stars, in your opinion. Some people find one or two major issues, and a bunch of minor ones. Since this arc, like all of my other arcs, is hitting the filesize cap, I have to make tough choices about where I can make cuts. Consequently, I am eager to learn what people view as less important elements that they don't pay much attention to, and what elements they consider vital.
A playthrough and review of your arc should be forthcoming shortly.
Dang and blast it. I had typed out a long review, and forgot to save a copy of it before hitting "Continue." This means that my review got deleted by the "form you submitted is no longer valid" glitch.
Review of "The Day I Tried To Live," ID # 131780
Soloed with my level 41 Night Widow on Difficulty Level 2.
Overall Thoughts:
I fear that I am not the best audience member for the arc that you have written. You made certain stylistic choices that I fundamentally don't enjoy. Specifically:
This is an arc in which the character playing the arc is largely irrelevant. The missions all seem to be played from the perspective of the Mission Contact himself. The arc is pretty much a vehicle for the contact to explain the form that his insanity took, and the destructive path it led him down. I much prefer to play through arcs in which the contact and the character build a rapport, and the character becomes a primary mover and shaker in the contact's story.
The vast majority of the text in this arc, from the briefings to the clues, deals with what the thought processes were of an insane man. Regrettably, this is not what I find to be a compelling story.
The arc also had some surreal moments that did not sit well with me. Several missions involve the appearance of what I guess were a psychological representation of the contact, spouting insane philosophical ramblings.
Purely from a mechanical standpoint, the mission played reasonably well. It felt a little bland, as there wasn't much dialogue other than what amounted to an insane man's philosophical treatise on life. Trying to follow the psychology that was going on gave me a headache, so I gave up.
I also was not particularly a fan of the large number of Clues that were included. I fear this is a point where we will have differing philosophies. I recognize that Cutthroat Competition has only a single clue that appears, and no souvenir. And with some tweaks, I could probably insert a few more clues. But apart from that, I tend to feel that Clues should be limited to major plot points. You had some instances where a Clue would show up from destroying a non-essential objective, which amounted to how the Mission Contact felt insane with rage, and I felt that ultimately added to a clutter of Clues.
So ultimately, I feel that I am not a good person to give a numerical star rating to this arc, because it's as if I was watching a genre of movie that I don't like. It would be like asking someone who hates horror films to rate a horror film. I respect the effort that you put into your work, and realize that others may very well enjoy it - this style of storytelling simply is not my cup of tea.
[ QUOTE ]
Emansor, thank you for your review of Cutthroat Competition. I'll get right on to playing your arc in return.
I am curious as to what aspects merited a lack of stars, in your opinion. Some people find one or two major issues, and a bunch of minor ones. Since this arc, like all of my other arcs, is hitting the filesize cap, I have to make tough choices about where I can make cuts. Consequently, I am eager to learn what people view as less important elements that they don't pay much attention to, and what elements they consider vital.
A playthrough and review of your arc should be forthcoming shortly.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's all at the end of my review. Although I think I should reconsider how I view the rating system, as I see a 5 star as the best of the best, only warranted for a handful of arcs, and I know my arc is no where near that.
Your arc is not mediocre though, perhaps I will bump the rating to four stars. It just seems like more could have been done. See below.
[ QUOTE ]
Most of my criticism is how bland this arc feels. Its like a tree with no branches.
I always like clues, even if they dont exactly move the story forward. I was sort of surprised that there were no clues at all. With me, dialogue is quickly forgotten or just spammed away never to be seen. Im not saying remove the dialogue; just maybe reference it in a clue or something.
None of the allies had any abandoned dialogue, and nothing to say when I re-acquired them.
The custom boss from mission three and the Elite Boss from mission four had their group tags as All Custom Characters.
The altars had default text
Also, I would remove flight from the EB, and perhaps tone him down. He flew up to the pipes that had grates around them and got stuck. If I had enough damage I would have been able to kill him without him fighting back. As it was, I wasnt doing enough damage to counter his regen. I found Leroy and brought him to the EB to see if he could help.
All Leroy did was manage to knock the EB free from being stuck, who in turn, killed Leroy in two hits.
Worthless allies too, perhaps buff them? I do admit I could have been a little lazy with the allies, but even two minions obliterated Rose in a couple hits and she didnt even scratch the one she was fighting.
Im not sure what powersets the EB had, but I could only get him to half health, solo, before he regained his full health again. Would have been impossible for me solo, but perhaps you meant it to be that way. It just felt like I hit a brick wall and bringing in outside help felt like I was cheating.
[/ QUOTE ]
I see you don't really care for clues, I'm cool with that, you can strike that off my list.
I saw a real problem with the EB though. He kept running away and flew up to the grate surrounding the pipes and was stuck in a potentially exploitable situation. I just didn't have enough fire power, solo, to exploit it, heh.
For me the most vital point is how the story progresses and flows. Which yours did in a well thought out way.
I need to kidnap models for the face maker, CoT are there bothering us, a turf war breaks out, cool.
I may be remembering wrong, but I'm not sure if it was ever explained why the CoT were at the PTS station other than they had an army and were angry, but no points taken off for this.
Dialogue is hard to catch for me, out of habit. I don't play with chat bubbles enabled and personally I don't really pay attention to the top window in my chat box, as everything there is spammed away with xp notices, etc. At the end of the fights with dialogue I had to scroll through all the influence notices and stuff to re-read the chat. But that's my problem, not yours.
Even though I have some spoken dialogue in my arc, I guess that makes me a hypocrite
I never would have guessed you are anywhere near the file cap size, in the end though it's your decision on what to cut.
I also was at the file cap in my arc and I settled on deleting a character from my custom group and changing the costumes to less graphic intense parts, meaning they take up less file sizes.
[ QUOTE ]
Dang and blast it. I had typed out a long review, and forgot to save a copy of it before hitting "Continue." This means that my review got deleted by the "form you submitted is no longer valid" glitch.
Review of "The Day I Tried To Live," ID # 131780
Soloed with my level 41 Night Widow on Difficulty Level 2.
Overall Thoughts:
I fear that I am not the best audience member for the arc that you have written. You made certain stylistic choices that I fundamentally don't enjoy. Specifically:
This is an arc in which the character playing the arc is largely irrelevant. The missions all seem to be played from the perspective of the Mission Contact himself. The arc is pretty much a vehicle for the contact to explain the form that his insanity took, and the destructive path it led him down. I much prefer to play through arcs in which the contact and the character build a rapport, and the character becomes a primary mover and shaker in the contact's story.
The vast majority of the text in this arc, from the briefings to the clues, deals with what the thought processes were of an insane man. Regrettably, this is not what I find to be a compelling story.
The arc also had some surreal moments that did not sit well with me. Several missions involve the appearance of what I guess were a psychological representation of the contact, spouting insane philosophical ramblings.
Purely from a mechanical standpoint, the mission played reasonably well. It felt a little bland, as there wasn't much dialogue other than what amounted to an insane man's philosophical treatise on life. Trying to follow the psychology that was going on gave me a headache, so I gave up.
I also was not particularly a fan of the large number of Clues that were included. I fear this is a point where we will have differing philosophies. I recognize that Cutthroat Competition has only a single clue that appears, and no souvenir. And with some tweaks, I could probably insert a few more clues. But apart from that, I tend to feel that Clues should be limited to major plot points. You had some instances where a Clue would show up from destroying a non-essential objective, which amounted to how the Mission Contact felt insane with rage, and I felt that ultimately added to a clutter of Clues.
So ultimately, I feel that I am not a good person to give a numerical star rating to this arc, because it's as if I was watching a genre of movie that I don't like. It would be like asking someone who hates horror films to rate a horror film. I respect the effort that you put into your work, and realize that others may very well enjoy it - this style of storytelling simply is not my cup of tea.
[/ QUOTE ]
I started using MS Word to write my reviews and copying them over to the forum, specifically because this forum ate a couple of them and I was too frustrated to start over.
I can completely understand your view on my arc. Thanks for at least trying it, though can I ask at which mission you stopped?
[ QUOTE ]
It felt a little bland, as there wasn't much dialogue other than what amounted to an insane man's philosophical treatise on life
[/ QUOTE ]
I felt I made up for this with the clues and descriptions of the objects, perhaps I can find a way to add more meaningful dialogue spoken from more allies/hostages.
[ QUOTE ]
This is an arc in which the character playing the arc is largely irrelevant. The missions all seem to be played from the perspective of the Mission Contact himself. The arc is pretty much a vehicle for the contact to explain the form that his insanity took, and the destructive path it led him down
[/ QUOTE ]
Imagine yourself in a desert with black sand and an eternal night sky. You see a guy in black and white sitting on a rock. You make your way to him and you two start talking, he then asks you if you want to hear a story.
I was trying to convey a sense of your character hearing the story from the contact, the missions were simply a way to imagine your self there, as the contact is still talking. So when you defeat a Rikti, the contact is saying "When I killed that Rikti". Or, 'As I walked down the tunnel', etc.
Truthfully, I'm still not sure if this style is an appropriate narration for the MA. But with only six or seven plays at four stars, I can't really see yet. That's not a large enough percentage.
[ QUOTE ]
I can completely understand your view on my arc. Thanks for at least trying it, though can I ask at which mission you stopped?
[/ QUOTE ]
I played through the entire arc, start to finish. Ultimately, however, I stopped trying to give more than a cursory reading by Mission three.
[ QUOTE ]
Imagine yourself in a desert with black sand and an eternal night sky. You see a guy in black and white sitting on a rock. You make your way to him and you two start talking, he then asks you if you want to hear a story.
[/ QUOTE ]
I would suggest that this is a really important piece of setting, and would recommend trying to insert it in the first Mission Briefing. The first briefing just starts with him launching into his story, and details like the ones above are hugely important for establishing the setting.
There are a couple of ways you can insert those kinds of details - you could italicize the text that states what the player is doing when he meets the contact, or put it in a different text color.
Review of [u]Small Fears[u], Arc ID# 12285, by TeChameleon.
Played solo by my lvl 41 Night Widow, pretending to be a hero.
[u]Mission One:[u]
No hero can turn down the pleas of a child in need, so your hook works fairly well. Though I'm not sure why the mission contact is feeling such a need to be so dramatically mysterious. Especially since he nearly slips up and reveals that he's among the kids that need to be rescued as well.
The mission map itself is a suitably creepy one, well-suited for the theme of childhood fears and nightmares. There's some nice bits of dialogue to foreshadow what may come later in the arc. Though I must say, the fact that it involves escorting three victims back to the entrance, through the course of a five-floor map, tends to make my own rescue maps look a bit tame by comparison. Ultimately, I was a bit non-heroic in handling this issue: after I rescued the second victim, I let my Night Widow fade back into stealth, and bolted ahead, leaving the victim whimpering alone until I could find the remaining victim three floors further up, and then retrace my steps and get both of them out safely.
It is quite the nifty map for pure style, however. Where is it located in the Architect files?
The custom critters are suitable creations for the representations of childhood fears. It's always fun to have an excuse to use the Rularuu weapons among multiple minions. Though I feel like the School Bullies hit WAY too hard compared to the other creatures, and the insect themes on the Mean Girls don't quite work for me. The latter is a comparatively minor stylistic quibble. (Though if I think more about it... mean girls = queen bees of the school, so maybe that's what you were shooting for.) But I do recommend scaling the bullies back on the power scale a bit.
It turns out that the contact who gave the mission actually was among the victims to be rescued. Which suggests that he's a kid with psychic powers (like his anonymous name further suggests), who was just as terrified to be in that place as the other kids. I can totally buy an explanation that he sent out something like an astral projection of himself to seek help, or whatever the explanation may be. It's harder for me to accept that he managed a theatrically mysterious introduction to the mission, however. Granted, you do provide a clue that explains [u]why[u] he didn't just up and say he was among the victims.
[u]Mission Two:[u]
Right off the bat, the mission bar says as one of the objectives, "Mother Mayhem must be here. Find her!" But it doesn't give an indication as to why that is, or how I would come to that conclusion.
It seems that you intend for the player to find the glowing box with the clue in it first, which does in fact provide strong evidence that Mother Mayhem is about. In which case I would suggest possibly making Mother Mayhem spawn only after the clue is found. As it was, I ended up blitzing past the clue (which was in a side room, and hence could be readily missed), and found and fought Mother Mayhem before finding the clue.
[u]Mission Three:[u]
So - it seems that Mother Mayhem somehow unleashed an even greater terror into this world, and it's time to take it down. Of course, exactly how Mother Mayhem brought a demon into this world is not made clear. Not saying that I disbelieve the possibility - I just wish I had a better understanding of how it was taking place.
I'm not sure if this was deliberate or not, but there seems to be a slightly different set of custom monsters in the group this time around, as compared to the previous two. I get to see the Closet Monster and the Clown monster for the first time in this mission, though I also see the Mean Girls and some of the other minions from the past 2 levels. At least the Bullies aren't present.
The mission ends up being pretty straightforward - get rid of the demon, and then get rid of Mother Mayhem when she shows up to reclaim the place that I've just cleaned out. There ends up being some backtracking, but not much.
Minor spelling error - when Mother Mayhem is finally defeated (again), she says, " No... the pupetteer... tangled in the strings..." The proper spelling should be "puppeteer."
[u]In Conclusion:[u]
Ultimately, I wish there were more storytelling detail. Granted, I understand that the contact is a frightened psychic child, and the trauma that he has experienced will make it harder to get a lucid story out of him. But I feel like the story is relying very heavily on my own imagination to fill in the blanks, which is a shame.
Unanswered questions include what brought Mother Mayhem back to Paragon City in the first place, since she's ordinarily a native of Praetorian Earth. Just how [u]did[u] the mission contact manage to contact me when he was being held captive by these demons of nightmares? By what means was the chief phobia able to enter this world, and just what did Mother Mayhem do that allowed it?
As someone who really appreciates a good story, I hunger for these sorts of details.
All in all, I give it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.