Lowbie Arc Reviews by an Altaholic Couple

First of all, thanks for the run, you two! The feedback is much appreciated. Some specific stuff-

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You have several objectives that aren't clear: "A feeling of mystic energy pulls you..." and "The same mystic energy pulls you..., Follow the bouncing ball... " From a story standpoint, I feel like doing objectives like this is very cool and atmospheric. But from a gameplay perspective, I feel like it adds more time than necessary to the missions. It probably wouldn't be a big deal, but this arc runs long as it is, so you might consider adding a little more direction. Maybe something like "A feeling of mystic energy pulls you...toward the back of the building" (or whatever)

You know, I'm really not sure how much that phrasing differs on a practical level from the more common 'seek clues' and whatnot. "Towards the back of the building" isn't necessarily viable, since glowie-placement can be badly erratic and only marginally controllable :/

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Also on that note, the "superball" seems really out of place. I have no idea what it is, and it's never explained. Honestly, I think it might be a good idea to just get rid of it. As a hero, I'd like to sometimes figure things out on my own without being led around by the established folks.

The Superball was actually a belated attempt at avoiding... well, this-

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That leads me to my next minor issue which is the superballs; why would I need this help if I can sense magic myself? Now if you had introduced the superballs from the start, that would have been better than assuming my character is good with magic. It also is a little redundant to have both the "follow the superball" and "follow this feeling" which are both ambiguous. I would expand on the superballs or take them out so it doesn't seem so random.

Looks like I should probably go with one or the other, heh... this way seems to just give me a multi-fail rather than covering both bases. Well, that and I really wanted an excuse to use the phrase 'follow the bouncing ball'

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For the Oranbega mission, I'm not sure what required the level spread to become 10-14 (maybe the allies), but we found the change made for a pretty big jump in difficulty on our level 5 guys, at least until we freed the boss ally. We really felt like we were leaning on the ally a lot in this mission, and the EB was pretty tough at our level. Especially because the big jerk could heal himself.

That was actually the Oranbegan boss that was forcing the level-switch, if I recall correctly; in all honesty, I had always planned for this arc to be 10-14, not 5-14. Also, if you were facing down the Baron as an EB, well... I did say "difficulty one recommended" before you started. The thought process there was that in my (admittedly limited) experience, most people don't start fiddling with the difficulty level until around the Stamina levels. As Lieutenants, even at that level, tend to be 'hey, that looks interes... nevermind, it's dead already' encounters, I made them EBs so that they would be encountered as Bosses.

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BABs as an ally is overpowered in the final mission. He and the main boss show up early in that mission, and BABs could probably solo the rest of that mission on his own. He's powerful enough that he steals a bit of spotlight from the player. I think it might actually be a stronger final mission without BABs, and with boss level enemies rather than EBs.

See above for the EB dilemma; as to BABs, I'm honestly of two minds on this; if I could scale down his powers somewhat, I would. From a gameplay sense, having him along is a bit foolish, and overshadows the player a bit. The problem is, from a storytelling sense, him not coming along when things are this serious would be equally foolish- pre-i15, BABs didn't come along, and a lot of the earlier reviews I had gotten complained about this; there's all this buildup, and then BABs makes an excuse and runs off someplace else :/

I may see if I can make a workable custom BABs for this, but as I said, I'm really not sure on the whole thing

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Quick note: Tombstone has the objective text "Illustrated Woman"

Known and very persistent glitch- I haven't had any luck squashing it. All the Bosses have their own singular text, but whichever one is last will end up with "Illustrated Woman" as their objective text, no matter what I do.

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Map 4 is a huge out door mission which would have made this arc even longer but objective has clear color animation and just happened to be right in front of us.

*sigh* This is one of the more frustrating bits; that really is the only story-appropriate map for that mission, but it's sodding huge and controlling boss placement is impossible. I basically decided to suck it up and just go with that one, because there isn't anything else that fits. I tend to sacrifice gameplay for story, if forced into that choice.

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On the last mission, after defeating the bone guy, Crimson, and Illustrated, nav just says "Illustrated Woman." First of all it should say, "Defeat Illustrated Woman" to fit with the original format of "3 bosses to defeat." Second, Tombstone is the next objective, not Illustrated, which conflicts with the nav objective.

As I said, that's a glitch; it's formatted correctly in the editor (I know this, because I've changed it and changed it and changed it and changed it to try and get rid of that bug without the slightest bit of success >.<)

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Now I don't want to nit pick and I know some people take offense to it so I'll just tell you this: Go over your work and see where you can improve the structure of your sentences to flow better. I would take out most, if not all of the hyphens and "..." especially in the nav text. It looks very odd seeing ellipsis with a comma in the nav. This arc averaged about one of each, ellipsis and hyphen, in every paragraph.

Yeah. That's actually a bit of a 'known issue' with my writing. I tend to be far too fond of ellipses; when the opportunity presents itself, I'll give the arc a going-over to see if I can't cut down on them a bit. The hyphens, I'm not so sure on- I'll take a look, of course, but, well... (and no, neither punctuation in that last sentence was intended to be ironic, I'm just tired >.<) Oh, and no offense- I'm actually about 2/3 of my way towards getting a novel-length piece into rejection-slip-collecting form, and one of the things that my prelim editor said was 'what's with all the ellipses?'

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One last thing, I thought BABs dialog was fine, but I did get a little tired of him calling me "newbie". I guess I would have preferred my $Name. It sounds a bit more personal.

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Also, I would strongly suggest moving away from BABs calling you a "newbie" every time he addresses the player. I don't think it comes off as enduring as you might have hoped and makes BABs sound like he's condescending.

Going to have to work on that, apparently. In the Blue King comics (the only large-ish source of BABs dialogue that I know of), I noticed that he rarely calls those he's addressing by name, unless it's someone he's known for a fair while. I just settled on newbie as a simple one that's easy to remember- looks like I'm going to have to mix it up a bit.

As an aside, he does call you $name at the very end, when he's thanking you for helping with that case. I had tried to save that until the very last so that it would be more of a standout, this-doesn't-happen-very-often thing, but it doesn't seem to have worked :/

Anyways, thanks again for the review- when I have more free time than I do now (I've barely had time to log in, much less do an extended editing session, over the last couple of months ), I'm going to sit down and give it a thorough going-over.

Replay of updated arc:
BE Prologue: Gangs United
(Arc#250480)

Rated: 5 stars, Great fixes, Highly recommended!

Played on level 27 plant/storm controller and level 27 shield/fire tank on lowest diff. Playability is cake (granted we had mass support) which is good because this could be adjusted up with difficulty settings.



The changes made on this arc were very well done and it does a lot to tighten up the story. This arc has a light humor throughout but it's not overdone (thanks for taking out the mario joke). I think the story explains the gangs better and clues help to answer questions (who the hell is this guy? *CLUE* oh I see now.).



Maps are much smaller (thank you for taking out the spider cave) and this helps make the story feel more streamlined. I don't feel like I'm being bogged down by looking around for mobs and we were able to complete objectives in a linear fashion.




I think I saw a couple typos but nothing serious ('loss' instead of 'lost') and there were only two minor things I noticed. One might be a glitch, which was level 14 mob in the first mission when the level was set to 20. The other is the clockwork showing up in the third mission, which is never explained. How do the clockwork factor into the gangs united? Maybe I missed it in the dialog.



This story is WAY improved and I found no reason to rate it lower than I did. It is fully enjoyable and the souvenir actually makes me want to play your next arc. Maybe, once it's published, I'll play it without a review just don't tell anyone who's waiting on our list. :3

Replay of:
BE Prologue: Gangs United (Arc#250480) - by OzzieArcane

We reran this arc on my 27 Shield/Fire tank and Londer's 27 Plant/Storm controller. It was a lot of fun, and right off the bat we noticed a lot more clarity and better story momentum compared to the last time we played it.



Stuff I Liked:

Dialog is great. "But.. my ambition" made me laugh.

I enjoyed the variety of mobs in each mission and I especially like how you've picked mobs to forshadow what's coming up in the next mission. The Evil Corp soldier guys show up in every mission, and you've recolored their uniforms so they don't look exactly like 5th column anymore. It all adds together to make a more cohesive feel for your story.

The map sizes are a lot smaller and tighter, and this helps to move the story right along.



Suggestions for Improvement:

Text hard to follow here, and there are a couple of typos ("he usually don't" and "they've throw"). Actually, I'm not sure what this is trying to say since I thought President Evil was already the president of this company... but you've said he's just thrown his lot in with Big Evil.

"Okay. So I dug up some more information. Apparently this President Evil guy is head of a corporation from the Rogue Isles known as Evil Incorporated. Gee that sure is blatantly obvious, but I guess he can normally get away with that since he usually don't leave the Rogue Isles. But now they've throw their lot in with this Big Evil group."

Could maybe use a couple more clues: one for the President Evil robot in the first mission, maybe also clues for any other mobs that give information important to the story progression.

The ninja bosses stand out as a bit odd for this paramilitary group. I would either offer clues to explain them, or maybe replace them with something that fits better with the soldiers.

Presence of clockwork isn't explained. Honestly, I would probably just remove them and use more Goldbrickers. You've got lots of mob variety already!



Overall:

You've put a lot of time into improving and revamping this arc and it shows. This is an excellent lowbie arc with a lot of mob variety to keep things interesting, and short missions that add to the story momentum and keep it short and sweet. There are still a few things that could be tightened up, but as it is, I think it's very playable, lowbie friendly, and fun. Recommended!

Rating: 5 Stars

Just a couple comments in response. BTW thanks for the rating.

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Originally Posted by londerwost I think I saw a couple typos but nothing serious ('loss' instead of 'lost') and there were only two minor things I noticed. One might be a glitch, which was level 14 mob in the first mission when the level was set to 20. The other is the clockwork showing up in the third mission, which is never explained. How do the clockwork factor into the gangs united? Maybe I missed it in the dialog.

I know you're talking about the Hellions... I had them working right before Issue 16. But I guess I'm going to have to look into this again. There are level 10-20 Hellions you can put in a custom group. I figured out they're the Hellions from the Steel Canyon fire and that's why they don't effect the regular Hellions group but there seems to be a bug that'll make them spawn as the regular Hellions sometimes(Making them cap at level 14) but this seems to only happen if they're in a custom group by themselves. Maybe I'll make the custom group in the first mission include the Big Evil soldiers alongside the Hellions, I mean even with them spawning at higher levels they're viewed as weak story wise and I could write it off as them needing to be looked after.

The Clockwork weren't supposed to be there. I was sure I had removed them but that change must not have saved to the published story.

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Originally Posted by anachrodragon Text hard to follow here, and there are a couple of typos ("he usually don't" and "they've throw"). Actually, I'm not sure what this is trying to say since I thought President Evil was already the president of this company... but you've said he's just thrown his lot in with Big Evil.

This will be explained more thoroughly in my next arc. But Evil Incorporated and Big Evil are actually two different groups. Evil Incorporated is basicly President Evil's answer to Crey but as you'll see in the next arc he has Demons, Werewolves, and Ninja mercs instead of some of the things Crey has. Big Evil is a military group bent on world domination, similar to like say Cobra from GI Joe. The reason they were originally red and black was to imitate the way the Crimson Guards look, but after you guys ran it the first time I realized it made them look exactly like higher level 5th even though the ones in the 10-20 range are usually all black.

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The ninja bosses stand out as a bit odd for this paramilitary group. I would either offer clues to explain them, or maybe replace them with something that fits better with the soldiers.

The ninjas were only there to symbolize the aspect of President Evil's ninjas being present(The actual character I use is a Ninja Mastermind). The two groups won't be mixed together in the next arc however. Their regular groups range from 25-54. I made "Big Evil Recruits" specifically for this arc since I won't need a group that ranges from 10-20 for the later arcs.

The next arc is almost done, but on testing I'm noticing a lot of spawning problems with levels due to the level range. So I'm gonna hold out until that gets fixed. All in all thanks for the wonderful review and I'll look into fixing a few of the errors you brought up.