Mission Architect Handyman

Thanks Zamuel for the additional feedback.
I will find the time to work on this soon!

I keep forgetting to post or send you a tell. Thanks for the look.

The biggest thing I'm thinking of changing is combining the third and fourth missions. I had a few people mention that going after the Family and then the Tsoo distracted from the main story too much. What do you think? I'm a little torn on it, as there are much more sprawling story arcs in the game that have good stories (in my opinion), but the MA seems to call for more focused storylines.

Also not sure what to do with the 2nd mission ambush... guess I could have the ambush trigger on something done at the front of the mission, though I do think it's fun to put some danger at the start of a mission... usually too easy to slack off and go in however you want.

That phrasing in Tydeus's bio is on purpose... it's evocative of epics like the Iliad, so I'm going to keep it for those that will notice it. Those other typos are maddening... I went through it like four or five times looking for those things... they're harder to find in MA than in regular writing, I think. So thanks for pointing those out.

I like your ideas at the start... I want to get the player feeling more involved with the story (as they're supposed to think about their actions in the storyline, in addition to Bladed Justice's), so that will help there.

Anyway, let me know what you think. I should fix it up some and get it in that MA contest.

Yeah, sounds like a good idea. I'll check in maybe once I fix it up more to see what you think.

HAMMERSTAR's Diversionary Tactics was a bit different than most I've done since the first run was done with a sizable team as opposed to a later run. This means I don't have the full typo list but I'll try to be a bit more in depth on the general feel. We had a bit of trouble with this arc so I'll try to separate it into two major sections--story and enemy design.

Story

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to your story was your contact. With his bio and the wording of the way missions were set up, it made us question his credibility. This became a big problem since we went on a scavenger hunt for him without proper motive. This also made it that we felt his idea to deactive the [SPOILER] was something most heroes would either go ask Freedom Force first or just walk away. Making it so that Brigadeer Chaos's bio describes him as an anti hero as opposed to villain would help. Also, make him a bit more up front with what some things are. More up front info on the device should help there.

Getting aid from Arachnos was actually a pretty good idea for the concept though you want to better stress the fact that no one else could get this done. Also, since the 5th show up in the 1st mish, perhaps having them return near the end will make the overall sense of urgency ramped up.

I believe some of your customs may have been lacking bios. Also, the thick "german" accents on some characters were overdone to the point of seeming comedic instead of defining. My want to eliminate them or at least reduce it greatly.

Also, adding a few non required objectives such as mobs with more dialog or clickies with more info will help fill out your story and add more life to some of your longer mission maps.

Enemy difficulty AKA Agent M must die!!!

We faceplanted a fair bit fighting your customs. It seems like a case where they might have been okay in solo but stacked in a nasty way on a group. The biggest issues were the MMs and the Illusion/healz. The MMs made a big group even bigger and should only be used in special circumstances. You should set them to Do Not Autospawn and use them as non required bosses with dialog to add flavor to your missions. Your Illusion/healing agent should probably be split into two separate mobs since they were a pain to deal with. However, since I think this mob is set to be a boss, you might not need to since removing/limiting the MMs will help things immensely.

Something else is that you might want to take the secret agents within the Crey faction and add them to your group but with new names and bios. This will help smooth things out as far as the difficulty is concerned. That said, you should restrict the levels of your arc to whatever the level range for those specific Crey are (30-40 I think). Restricting level ranges gives the player a good idea of what level toon to play the mission in since 1-54 with customs is sort of "impossible" to achieve. Admittedly, we had a few players with low 20s so that might have affected things.

Misc

Despite faceplanting we joked a bit. Brigadeer Chaos's attempt to solicit Ghost Widow's help led to a "he's just trying to get a booty call" joke. It was commented that his jacket + tights look was "so 90s" though the biggest issue was the color contrast. Eliminate the hard blacks in his outfit and use a more green/brown vibe for the army fatigue look and it'll be fine. The timer worked to help with the sense of urgency and I'd suggest keeping it. That led to the fact that I actually successfully used Dimension Shift TWICE in the final mission.

Hi Zam! You were recommended highly as an arc reviewer by a friend of mine, and I was hoping you could take a look at my arc (ID: 2093, "Doctor Brainstorm & An Experiment Gone Awry") and give me a little bit of input.

Issues I'm currently having involve an Arachnos map for mission 1 (in which enemies talk through walls--this happens in dev content as well), and despite being set to end with defeating only the boss of mission 3, you have to beat the entire spawn. Any solutions or work-arounds you have for those problems are enthusiastically welcomed.

I'm more concerned with feedback regarding the difficulty of my custom enemies (I tried to build them to be roughly equivalent in difficulty to standard enemies), and ensuring that my story is coherent.

Also, if you and I are able to meet in game, I'd like to get your opinion on a few changes I've been thinking of making.

Thanks, I appreciate the insight.

((Just a head's up, but Doctor Brainstorm tends to slip in and out of his Austrian accent... sometimes he'll pronounce w's correctly, other times he'll pronounce them as v's, stuff like that. This was done intentionally--originally, ALL his dialog was accented, but I received several complaints about it being too hard to read; I toned it down to make it easier to understand, but with enough accent left to still be noticable.))

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Thanks for your cirtique, Zamuel! You touched on several points I have heard from the other reviewer who gave me feedback, and amplified alot of other points. Based on these, I can tweek the arc to be better for everyone.

Brigadier Chaos was actually not supposed to be so villianous as I portrayed him in his bio for the mission, but text space was limited, and I think I pushed that angle too far. I'll be rewriting it to make it a bit more clear that, while some people consider him a villian, his actions were for everyone else's good in his own eyes. In particular, I'll be resetting how he died back to my original idea, which should help people understand him slightly better.

I'll have to take a serious look at the use of MMs, as they seem to have a serious amplification effect in group play. Initially, I wanted the enemy group to be mostly unpowered normal people with non-power abilities, and the MM came to mind. However, based on what I have heard, I think I'll be changing out that ability for something that doesn't cause a Horde of Doom.

The limitation on text is a pretty serious one for this arc. The point you stressed about there being no other source for help but Arachnos was indeed one I wanted to portray more strongly, but ran out of space. I'll have to see if I can do some corrective surgery on the intro text for that mission.

I generally don't like reusing established character types in a custom group to avoid crossover ('oh look, we're fighting Banished Pantheon....again!'), and try to give players something original when I do one. Also, one of the more important aspects of the arc was that I wanted it to be playable by any character that wanted to try it, which limited which groups could be viable to those with a full level range (1-54).

I very much appreciate your detailed feedback and taking the time to run what was really an unknown arc. I'm glad people had a few jokes with it, as having a good time with any arc is what AM is about. I hope that, should you ever go through the arc after it is editted, you'll have a better time with it.

Thanks again!

Thanks to Zamuel and everyone who helped run through my arc last night. Final adjustments to the arc are in (after hours of fighting to get the file to actually save the changes instead of ignoring them), and I hope anyone who chooses to run or rerun the arc will find it enjoyable. Had to make some triage decisions due to memory space, but I think the final result will be mostly seamless and better for it.

Hope to see you all ingame soon!

Sorry I couldn't join in. Zamuel needed help but I was wrapping up a Manticore run at the time. I sent him a tell after I hit 50 on my Controller that I could join in, forgetting that you can't join in the middle of a run. Sorry, Zamuel!

I know what you mean about editing problems. I hate adjusting anything in missions 2-5, as I need to run through some other missions to get to them. And then fix them. And then test them again!

Case in point, I shortened my second mission (went from a large cave map to a small one), and the stupid editor put two of the objectives right next to each other, which really disrupts how the story works. So I have to readjust things and test up to that point again! It had better work this time!

Show of hands: Who here that I've already gone through (Scooter? Baryonic? Hippeh?) would like me to re-run your arc since I'm a bit more capable of getting a team to run it?

One thing I have noticed is that it is very easy to go an edit your -local- version, thinking you are editting the published one, and getting confused as to why the changes either never show up, or are missing in play.

I don't know if that's the case here, but you might double check which one you are looking at.

I'm thinking it's lag time in it being updated. Sometimes it says it's updated, but it doesn't go through right away.

I also go into my published stories and edit from there, not from the local ones.

I kind of wonder if there's something screwy with the objective stuff, as it was doing some really odd things and not displaying as I told it. Grrrr.

I submitted my arc for the contest... hopefully those issues won't still be cropping up when they play it, as there isn't much I can do about it.

I for one have learned to never trust the option that says "Publish and Play" (or whatever it says). I publish it, then wait until I received notification in my chat box that it's been updated, and THEN I begin testing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Yeah, that's what is weird. I receive the notification that it's updated, but then it didn't change.

And that doesn't cover the fact that the objectives were displaying incorrectly in the first place. I noticed it playing earlier, as did Zamuel, but the information is inputed correctly into the mission editor... it's just not displaying them correctly when you play the mission.

Starting from the bottom and working up:

I originally used the outdoor PTS map, but I got a lot of complaints about it. Also, sometimes (maybe 1 out of 10 times) the destructable objects wouldn't spawn, and a 10% failure rate is kind of ridiculous. I find that the mission flows a lot better using an indoor map. One of the things I was considering and wanted your opinion on was using the Demon Lab map--thoughts?

Operative Toth: I'll check the other available helmets. At the time, that's the only one I had (due to my preorder of CoV), so you're right; there might be a better-looking one available now.

Reflections on final AV: I'll do that, it's a very good idea.

Eletanks ARE short, they're only 5' tall. Granted, I'm personally not too much taller than that, but the bio should mention them being "shorter than an average human," unless I changed it and forgot. I'll double check it.

Confusing sentence: I'll change it.

Skittles-speak: This is a little hit and miss... some people complained that I didn't use enough colored text, others complain that I use too much. I guess it's a matter of personal preference. My unofficial color code is:

green -- brief description of mission (e.g., "go the the warehouse and stop the Hellions!")
light green -- technical details or history that's important if you're interested in the story, but fine to skip if you just want to punch faces
red -- timer/AV warning
orange -- detailing enemy group(s) you wouldn't expect to find in the mission (like Longbow in the Arachnos base, or when you're first introduced to the custom enemy group).
blue -- allies
light blue -- canon CoH lore

Unless you have specific suggestions about what you think should return to normal white text, I'll probably leave it as is.

Spines Longbow: is actually a custom NPC using the powersets of Eric "Lieutenant" Nelson's main character, Stained Glass Scarlet. She just happens to be a Spines/Invulnerability Scrapper.

Operative Toth is named another good friend of mine from the SG and uses his character's powersets, making him an Energy/Energy Blaster. Archon Heilman is named after my ex-girlfriend who still plays the game occassionally, though the Assault Rifle/Super Reflexes combo was my idea, not hers; the character is patterned to look vaguely like my father (hurray for my blonde haired, blue eyed DNA in a game that has Nazis as bad guys).

The OTHER new idea I was contemplating, and wanted some input on, was possibly adding another mission in between the first (Arachnos lab) and second (Faultline dam) missions. It would be a non-combat mission in the Demon Lab map (if I don't end up using it for the final mission) full of friendly lab techs. The goal would be to get the security footage for Dr. B so he would understand what happened to his lab, thus sending you to Faultline to head off the bad guys. Do you feel the story flows well enough without this potential mission, or would it enrich what's already there?

Thanks a million for looking over my arc, and 2 million for your feeback!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I had a feeling that PTS might have been wonky but just throwing it out there. It's not the only cave map to do that sadly. I don't think I've ever done a mission on the Demon Lab yet so I can't really say how well it would work. You'll have to see how well it would flow with a non-combat mission since your arc seemed fine without it.

On the coloration, I'd say marking the allies probably isn't needed. The regular green probably isn't either.

You'll have to forgive me ss far as costume parts go since I've unlocked everything in the MA so I don't know what you do and don't have access to.

*points at original post* Offer still stands...