Arc 1688: The Echo

My feedback thread on my arc The Echo got purged, so here's a new one.


The Echo

Arc ID 1688

Description: A forgotten name from the past returns...Can you foil his terrible plan? [recommended for SOLO LVL50 HEROIC play, STORY-FOCUSED, VERY STORY-HEAVY, not very challenging at heroic setting. If you don't like reading clues, you're not going to like this arc ] [SFMA - Story Focused Mission Arc]

Time to complete: 1-2 hrs.

Contains NO defeat alls, most missions are stealthable, and its easily soloable. I recommend keeping your clue window open in the last mission.

As you may infer from the explanation of SFMA in the description, this was the very first arc to use the SFMA tag!

A simple kidnapping leads the Player into a web of intrigue with a face from the past at its heart. Why has a hero thought long-dead returned, and what terrible event has driven him to the awful plan he has put into action?

Contains a sequence of FIFTEEN chained boss fights, vital for the narrative process lol.

Some of the feedback I've received for The Echo:

"Loved it. Good story with a sense of humour thrown in. I thoroughly enjoyed it"

"I thought it was just a so-so arc until the very end, when everything tied together in an unforgettably heart-wrenching way.... I don't think I'll forget this arc. 5 stars, no question."

"Awesome, just awesome. Easily some of the best writing I have seen so far...If I could give you 6 stars I would!"

"Wow. Only the second time since I have been playing CoH (4 yrs) that I have felt really moved."

"It's a six star story far as I'm concerned... "

"Very well written. Trying to find the bosses at the end was a problem, but I can't think of a solution either. Good job, 5 stars."

"Damn, that's an evil ending. I don't know whether to praise you or slap you. [5 stars]"

"Very well-done arc. The dialogue was great, both the jokes and the serious part."

"Your villains have fat butts. Nyah nyah. 1 star."

The Echo, Arc ID 1688.

Feedback welcome.

Eco.

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MArcs:

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

@GlaziusF

Playin' on a low 40s DB/Fire brute, diff 2 so bosses is bosses. Mission Engineer is so close, so close.

Per the author's request I will not openly comment on the ending.

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So the Freakshow want a party girl, living in a party world. I get them.

Oh. Hired muscle. Well, they have the muscle and they're easy to hire.

Unconventional intervention strategy, if that's what the guy was gunning for.

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You know, if this is for level 50 heroes, Crey is a discredited front for Julianne Thompson's global domination ambitions.

But I can forgive this for HAHA SWEATER VESTS AND LITTLE BOWTIES.

Also someone else has noticed the magic pack's wonderful inclusion of TWEED JACKETS.

(though you should probably put that guy back at the entrance as it was he and his squad surrounded me after I finished the last mission)

So... the guy I'm looking at got earthquaked and then earthquaked again.

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Time to go sort through his old photos!

...hmm. A sonic device.

And there was a sonic tank, noted for dressing up like a Freakshow.

And a lot of the Freakshow are former Crey.

Are these things related? Time will tell.

Also I can forgive the whole Crey 'accidentally' opening fire thing because the setup is so funny.

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Hmm. You know, I'm beginning to suspect how this is all going to end. Not going to say anything, though, but the current state of affairs seems far too obvious to be the whole story.

Very considerate. It's not often that you find a doomsday weapon actually labeled "Doomsday Weapon".

But where's the module that makes shoes for orphan children?

Hmm. Though the Freak chatter here is a little worrying. It's like this stuff is here just for the mysterious boss to establish himself as a threat.

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I can see what you're going for with the final mission here, but there are just so many places for the freaks and their entourage to hide, and I don't really have a good sense for where the "areas" are. So the upshot is that I spend a whole lot of time jumping around over dead space and pounding tab, and half the time hitting on Freak minions who've rezzed behind me.

(the "defeated boss" system messages are getting to HEY WISSEN levels of repetitively annoying here)

And it ends about like I thought it would, though not exactly for the reason I thought it would.

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Storyline - ***. I don't buy it. That's all I'll say here. The story sets up for something to happen in the last mission but the thing that shows up is the wrong shape.

Design - *****. Second mission has hilarious customs. Everything else is well-fitting for what it's supposed to be.

Gameplay - ***. The end map is a lot of jumping over empty space. I realize to some extent this can't be helped but that doesn't mean it's any less boring. And the end boss just saps and saps and saps. It's not even very damaging, it's just an empty blue bar.

Detail - *****. But everything's fleshed out to the last bit, and it's always worth it to check a description or bug the contact.

Overall - ****. Mostly this is because the last mission is such a comparatively boring letdown, which is not the shift in tone that was advertised.

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Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?

My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)

So I'm going to probably take a complete about face from the previous poster, but since you suggested I try your other arc I figure I should at least put in my two cents. Overall I think you have a story with a lot of potential here, the writing was quite good in most places, and the final mission had my full and complete interest. That said, there were a lot of points which seemed to add very little to the story, but instead detracted from it.

Mission 1
Freaks make good flunkies for pretty much anyone, so there isn't a lot to say here. Some more foreshadowing might be good, but it's not a terrible start, it just didn't hook me in as much as it might have been able to.

Mission 2
Crey... no one can seem to write them well. Even the canon makes a mockery of their own concept 90% of the time. Whether Crey corp has been discredited or no in the player's time line, they are still not simple villains a "hero" can go pound upon whenever they feel like it. Even if we assume the corporation does nothing but evil, they still have 9-5ers that aren't, and unless the PPD is a different sort of corrupt, they shouldn't be turning a blind eye on "heroes" breaking into offices and beating up rent-a-cops.

I give you a small amount of credit for at least having the contact try to ask nicely before sending the player in, but it falls apart from there. You might as well have had it be the PPD that stonewalled the contact and had us break in to their archives for all the difference it would make morally.

This is nothing new though, canon does it, every AE writer I've seen that uses the crey does it. It's really dumb, but it's apparently a commonly accepted sort of dumb. However, you go and raise the bar...

I give the contact a pass and assume he liquored up Infatum before daring him to get the info from Crey, or something. Fine I can suspend my disbelief and give this freebie, I'm used to it as stupid as it may be. Then I arrive intending fully to dodge my way around crey security, grab the files and leave. Waiting for me though are super powered janitors, book keepers and librarians apparently thinking they are capable of taking on someone who vacations in the Shadow Shard and uses Rularuu watchers as tennis balls. Where the heck is the security, and why the heck is Crey using people this powerful for jobs this menial?

There really seems to be no need for these other than to make any player who gives a damn about the story feel more guilty about beating them up. Plenty of Crey arcs use the scientist mobs for other purposes such as managing archives, and the mission would have worked just as fine with stock mobs, looked less ridiculous and given you more space for conversations and what not to help better communicate the story.

If this wasn't bad enough, you actually force the player to beat up said librarians to make a "clean" escape. Adding assault to breaking and entering is "clean"? Crey isn't known for being cheap on their security camera systems.

The clues in this mission are cute, and I think you could have a perfectly good mission with a few changes:

<ul type="square">[*]Give us a good reason for breaking into the Crey office (either ramp up the threat of the Monitor earlier so there is an aspect of desperation, or incriminate the Crey somehow, I'm sure they'd want to get their hands on a potential super spy like Monitor)[*]Failing that use a different group (maybe the contact knows a little about the Monitor, and knows he had a nemesis or something that would have more info)[*]Lose the ridiculous customs. They really cheapen your story, and are needless both mechanically and thematically.[/list]
Mission 3
Same problems as mission 2, but slightly less so given the use of actual Crey. If the severity of the threat was ramped up earlier on, or the Crey were incriminated this mission would be fine. The clues are once again cute if a bit over the top.

Mission 4
All good, no complaints here, and some of the Freak dialogue cracked me up.

Mission 5
Ok I really liked this mission. If you *could* make it easier to get the sequential clues that'd be fantastic, but I won't hold it against you since I know the limitations of the system. The multi-cultural Freak bosses (Maybe slightly pushing the canon here, but not in a bad way) were amusing, and made the clues that much more sobering as they rolled in. Everything was going great, you had an excellent finale and then you decided to slap the player in the face for no apparent reason.

Some of us kill some of us don't, but for those that don't it's pretty safe to say they don't assume their opponents will be able to get immediate medical care. If an empathy defender ran this you'd have a hard sell no? What really makes this silly is the modification he made to his suit. All you'd have to do is twist that so he modified his suit to *kill* him rather than dispose of the body, and make it so he just needed the player to essentially "press the button for him" by damaging the suit. I really don't see why you felt it necessary to take the liberties you did with that, it adds nothing to the story and really cheapens an otherwise fantastic finale.

I gave this arc 4 stars, despite all my points above the writing was very good and the story was stellar, and were those issues fixed I'd happily give it 5.

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Infatum on Virtueverse

Infatum,

Thanks v much for playing the Echo, and I'm really pleased that you liked the last mission. Often, I find that feedback is like this: 'The first four misisons were great! real funny! But that downer of an ending, gah!'.

Your two main dislikes were the treatment of Crey, and the (now spoiled, I guess) ending. I'll bow to the claim that Crey is a legitimate organisation etc, as I'm afraid I'm not totally ofay with the canon Crey stories. I do know that every single Crey mob i've ever met ingame has attacked me (unlike, say. the Rikti), at least that's my memory of it. Also, I'm fairly sure I've done a fair bit of breaking into Crey facilities in canon arcs too.

That said, its entirely possible that the canon Crey arcs contain valid introduction missions to justify the breaking and entering of Crey facilities, in a way that The Echo as you say merely pays lip service to.

In any event, I'm a bit guilty of camping up my villain groups, and I've obviously done it again here.

The first 4 missions of The Echo have a light dusting of humor to them. The Crey Librarians are I thought an obvious parodic mob group. It is indeed ridiculous to give Crey superpowered Janitors in blue dungarees weilding pipe wrenches and Kung-Fu using Archivists in V-neck sleeveless sweaters with bow ties and combovers. What can I say? I put them in to raise a laugh. Humor's a funny thing - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

As for the end, i had a look at the dialogue for the Monitor and the debriefing, and I agree with you that it's not quite right. I think I tried to explain too much, in order to avoid any 'ah, but my toon never kills, so he isn't really dead' squirming from a Player. The suit line isn't necessary, in fact. I've removed it and slightly altered the debriefing to make it more ambiguous as to where he's been ported, whilst leaving in the equivalent of a 'he's dead' line.

Thanks for the very useful feedback.

Eco.

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MArcs:

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

[ QUOTE ]
As for the end, i had a look at the dialogue for the Monitor and the debriefing, and I agree with you that it's not quite right. I think I tried to explain too much, in order to avoid any 'ah, but my toon never kills, so he isn't really dead' squirming from a Player. The suit line isn't necessary, in fact. I've removed it and slightly altered the debriefing to make it more ambiguous as to where he's been ported, whilst leaving in the equivalent of a 'he's dead' line.

[/ QUOTE ]

That sounds like a good route to go too

On the subject of silliness, I think humor mixed in with drama is good. I really *liked* some of the silly clues and the dialogue of the freaks for instance. My problem with the Crey group is that it takes that one step too far, and feels akin to randomly throwing some clowns into a murder mystery. Clues and dialogue, or even a single odd boss can add flair, but an entire villain group forces the silliness on you the entire mission and drowns out any seriousness (at least for me). It felt very much like Zoidberg's uncle's movie attempt in Futurama if you're familiar with it "Would it kill someone to throw a pie once and a while?"

Basically after that mission I almost had to reboot myself to take the rest of the arc seriously at all, and I think that not only detracted from the story, but also from the bits of humor that weren't overwhelming since it robbed them of a serious background to contrast against.

Just my thoughts on the matter, I do however remain vehemently against treating crimes against Crey as heroing by default

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Infatum on Virtueverse

Got some very nice feedback the other day, so i thought I'd bump my arc's thread in case there's any newcomers who haven't considered it yet.

Message From @Ahalia : Feedback on Architect Mission The Echo: excellent monologue within your clues. A sad story, but very detailed and very real. Keep up the good work. Very well put together.

Message From @LaceySkye : Feedback on Architect Mission The Echo: Hi! Just played your arc on a lvl 50 Dual Blades/Willpower Scrapper. What a fantastic story! The ending actually made me cry. :'( The writing was fantastic... The pacing was superb and the design of the last mission was well-done. I was VERY impressed, and will be recommending this to others as how to do a story-arc the right way. I will definitely be playing this again, and bringing more friends. 5 stars and an awesome job!

And after a happy 'thank you' from me,

Message From @LaceySkye : You're very welcome. It really was a great story! And I felt the way the ending was done was perfect. It's probably one of my top 5 favorite arcs. And with the amount I've played, that means a LOT.

Feedback like this makes my day, really.

Eco.

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MArcs:

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