First Guest Authors Feedback Thread

A lot of his mobs were recolored stock mobs, and I think the ones on the ship were largely recolored Cimerorans.. which of course means they kick ***.

Played Bill Willingham and Scott Kurtz's arc this morning. I enjoyed them both but went into it assuming that neither writer was a CoH expert and wouldn't hit a home run at their first at bat.

Willingham's arc as stated by a number of posters had a plot twist that was entirely guessable. However, you're also dealing with an audience that has been spoiled by Nemesis. I thought the story flowed pretty smoothly and even though I felt a little bit like a mouse led through a very linear maze, I thought it worked.

Is the arc a stellar work of writing? No. Was the mission enjoyable? Yes. A good effort for a writer who's working in a new medium. Not a homerun, but certainly a base hit.

Willingham's arc, excluding possibly the end boss (though the last mission warns you on that), is solo friendly. My Traps/Sonic Defender had little difficulty with the arc at +2 level x 1 players, no bosses, no AVs. The last boss spawned as a +2 elite boss, and I can see how she'd be difficult for some character types.

Kurtz's effort was much better. In fact, I enjoyed how he cleverly used some of the bomb objects. I really thought that of the three bosses, that particular boss came off as a real mastermind. I also enjoyed the humor...a number of moments that while they weren't laugh out loud funny, were definitely chuckle worthy. I'd look forward to any new arc Mr. Kurtz decided to make, because I liked his first effort very much. Again, not a homerun, but certainly a base hit for extra bases (double, triple?)

The arc is well balanced for difficulty. I don't think my Traps Defender would have any difficulty handling it at +4 level with bosses. None of the custom mobs are very difficult. The colored Red Caps on the other hand could be problematic...

Thanks Mirror Man for this thread! I had not seen the Guest Author arcs, as I was catching up on some literature reviews. I had to try the hero-side Rooster Teeth arc, since I used their characters in one of my arcs. I didn't think I knew Bill, as I don't follow DC comics, but I know his early TSR stuff. Now I have a name to go with that. Gamma World, no less! Sounds good. I'll skip the meme one, because of the theme, not due to the author.

First up, Mission: Awesome. The Description is very plain - I might have overestimated the benefits of having a Rooster Teeth writer team. It's a level 1-to-40 arc, with an extreme AV (enemy) and an extreme EB (ally). Really? I think a level 2 hero would struggle to be relevant to that battle, even on the lowest difficulty. It might be worth reconsidering the lower limit.
The maps are mostly small, which is great. Interestingly, Captain Dynamic is considered "Non-Canon" - I'd imagined he was an extension of the canon. At least that's clear to me now.
Right from the contact, the arc immediately has the feel of the videos.

If the writers were hired to create this arc, why then are they in the arc? They must have chosen to be in the arc. Which makes me wonder, why are they mostly portrayed as the same hopeless fools as the budding architects we saw in the videos? Perhaps Joel wrote this. Couldn't he come up with something more imaginative? Perhaps not, perhaps he wanted to get back at his coworkers. That's all I'll say about that, though, and get on with the adventure.

The first mission has me looking only for the cat, although the mission title suggests I'm also looking for the Captain. But the mission introduction did indicate it might work this way.
The enemy group wasn't what I expected (I've spent too long thinking about these characters) but I soon warmed to them. Although I couldn't figure out the meaning of the letter on the chest of some of them.
The mobs on the map have more dialog than mobs in the last player-generated arc I played. That's good.
There is a really nice end of mission Clue - it really captures the Great Face vibe.
I felt pretty good about the arc after the first mission.

Then into the second, third and fourth missions. Why, if the writers get tangled up in the story, is it a simple "security guard" in mission 2, and not someone from the Rooster Teeth office?
We meet Captain Dynamic. It's the real-world version with baggy pants and trouser legs, not the shiny, flared boots, heroic version that Joel was building in the Rooster Teeth videos.
Captain Dynamic isn't portrayed very nice. I imagined him to be more up-beat. As an EB ally, he's somewhat overpowered. We take on (annihiliate) the big-bad, after we backtrack enough to find him.
Considering how well Clues were used in the first mission, I feel like they've almost completely dried up.
Nice that Dynamic's description changes with each mission.
As Bubba had noted, the villain group is repetitive. But it's still a good group, with lots of variety in their behaviour. I saw one called "Middle-Manager" once, but never again - perhaps it was a boss customization in one mission. With good use of patrols, I found I was often taking on multiple mobs, which added to the variety and challenge.

Finishing with the fifth mission. The maps have been great.
Geoff comes from the group, "Marketing Department", but he's described as being from the "Marketeers".
The 'Fans' dialog is a bit repetitive, being 3 of the same identical encounter. Perhaps it could be varied.
It's good to see Dynamic has been given martial arts moves. I guess his healing helps to make him a better ally, although in the videos, he was deliberately vague about what his powers were, or if he had any.
And on the second try, we defeat Great Face! (Thanks to chain holds). I still need to look for Joel's laptop, but it's close by. Nothing as epic as the first mission completion Clue, but it holds nicely to the videos.

Not a bad arc for a new release, several typos were to be expected. I do hope and pray that the author will continue to develop it, as happens with the best of the player arcs. It definitely has 5-star potential.

[Edit: the author has already corrected the typos.]

Cheers, airhead

Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!

I caught and forwarded the typos to Dr. Aeon, and he said they've been corrected today. You should forward the rest to him as well through PM.

I just finished playing Quest For Magic. I liked the the customs, especially a cat people group that didn't make me cringe, and Willingham does know his CoX lore.

That said, I caught a few odd typos that I'm a bit surprised went through the okay, such as a clue that was missing a name, and it was a bit odd to hear Statesman being referred to as The Statesman (probably not wrong, but it's a bit like hearing Batman being constantly referred to as THE GOSHDARN Batman). My biggest complaint is one spoken already by other posters, in that you can see where the arc is heading from the very first briefing. [SPOILERS AND RANT AHEAD] Seriously, helping your contact attain absolute power to right 'wrongs' is a freakin' villain origin, and PC betrayal is very, very hard to do well, but the absolute worst thing you could do is to turn someone's character into a wall-banging moron in order to make it work. What's that contact? You want me to get you unlimited power AND indestructability? Sure let me just blindly accept, I mean, what could possibly go wrong? [/SPOILERS AND RANT].

Quest for Magic, by Bill Willingham / @Dr. Aeon2, arc 337434

The maps, level range, custom and existing groups, were all excellent. Customs were especially creative. Helping a civilian become super is perhaps an Epic arc, if I'm, say, like Back Alley Brawler (a mentor to young'uns). So I went ahead and gave it a shot. I liked the contact's description. The mission introductions are very well written, and have good use of color.

Statesman's dialogue suggests he's going to help me straight away, but mission mechanics don't permit that. Perhaps his words could be tweaked a little there. He also runs off to handle the other wing. Perhaps mention his objective - I cannot tell if he is helping me, or his presence is even unrelated. All the key objectives remain with me.

In mission two, the introduction has me accepting a quest without knowing my enemy's name. If I'm to trust Irena, she should tell me this. The casket is rather obvious, but I can't touch it until I beat two villains. Perhaps use an object that blends in more (until it's glowing). It'd be nice if mission mechanics would simply let us redefine the "You Can't Complete This Objective Yet" text, perhaps someday soon.

The mechanics of the last mission are very good. I'm not sure if I was just lucky, but Statesman's arrival at the end of the battle made for a very smooth mission storyline.

The mission does throw the idiot ball at the player by assuming we agree that Irena is worthy. Her motives were true, but something else went wrong, something we might have been able to predict; also, Irena has an immediate desire to do good, but where is her track record, or evidence of a life-defining motivator? As some others here, I also guessed things might not go to plan, but I wonder if I might have still proceeded if sufficient precautions had been taken. To help keep me (the player) from feeling stupid, perhaps some greater power (Statesman and the Midnight Squad, for instance) could be aligned with my purpose, so I might know there was no way to predict what happens. Of course, it might be a bit hard to fool all of those guys, with all their powers of augury, and also convince them that Irena is a suitable candidate for all this power. Now, if Irena was Mother Theresa, I might find it easier to accept. Assuming that didn't also mean she was undead... Maybe that just creates a different can of worms. That's not why this paragraph is pink.

I found a dozen typos (including the missing clue name, but not including "The" Statesman) and reported them to the author. Thanks to Bubbawheat's advice, the Mission: Awesome ones are fixed now by Dr. Aeon. Very very fast!

Regards, airhead

Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!

I tried the Face-off arc.

I can't say whenever it's good or bad, because the very first mission is bugged and cannot be completed.
So yeah, wasted 10 minutes trying to get the captive to the exit.

**** it.

One thing about the "Quest" arc - I liked the mobs and the feel of it, but I thought the "twist" could have been done as a mission, rather than being in the contact window text - I'm pretty sure the sequence it happened in could be handled by the AE.

And another related thing, brought up by the "twist" - would it be possible to add a feature to the AE that let you change the contact hologram appearance during an arc?
Like say if you had an arc where the contact was kidnapped after the 3rd mission, you could change the contact appearance to something like a compute desk instead for the next 2 missions, and then change back to the original contact for the debriefing at the end of the arc.

Bugged captive? What's the bug?

I've yet to try that arc myself, but I know when I was working on mine I thought I saw a bug... but it turns out that certain stealth powers have a legacy effect (Unbound Leap was mine) which comes back on for about 5 minutes after the power they are in has been deselected. So if you are getting to the captive, but they keep losing you the moment you step a few places away from them, it's not a bug, but simply the NPC can't see you. Try disabling your power sets that have either a basic stealth component (Super Speed say) or an IO slotted which procs one, and either wait 5 minutes, or try and get to them with plenty of grace time to allow one to switch off, and see if it still repeats...

If it's something else you're having problems with, there may be a work around, or it was a one time deal... but I'm not aware of anything which would definitely break escorts forever.

I didn't have any problems with bugs in the missions making them impossible to complete, so it's probably just a stealth thing.

I played the "Mission: Awesome" arc the other day. Now, I don't want to sound overly-negative, but the entire arc was just plain boring.

I was really expecting something Laugh-Out-Loud funny from the guys at Rooster teeth. Red vs Blue is hilarious, so this can't be too bad, can it? Sadly, I was mistaken. The jokes were mediocre at best, and the story wasn't very compelling.

One thing I did like was the custom group used in the mission. They provided a decent challenge, while not being crazily overpowered like other custom groups I've seen. They had good costume designs, and their descriptions made me chuckle a little bit (read the Tech Support guy's bio, it's funny. )

But, overall, the Arc wasn't very good. I died at the last mission because Captain Dynamic decided to go and aggro three groups at once and get killed, leaving me to deal with the mess. After that, I honestly didn't want to trek back to where I was, so I just dropped it right there. If the story was more interesting, I might have considered trying again, but as it stands now, I probably won't be playing it again.

Sorry if I sound like a grumpy person with no sense of humor, but I honestly didn't think the arc was very good.

Let the swarms of angry responses and -rep come and attack me now.

I thought the villain side mission, the Great Face Off, was better than Mission Awesome...at least in terms of humor. The messages you get when you take down the firewalls were pretty good.

I've just starting reviewing these, starting with "OMG it's the LOLBAT!" I'll post the reviews to my thread as I finish them.

I'm surprised so many have negative attitudes about these guest author arcs. I thought they were all enjoyable enough.

Quest for Magic was great and while I did expect Irena's sudden but inevitable betrayal (tm Wash) the actual mechanism of it and how deftly it was handled was a pleasant surprise. The author is obviously a very good writer judging from some of the object and clue text which alone made the arc worth playing. Making the character feel more powerful than Statesman wasn't a bad touch either as often even Dev written arcs kind of give the impression that players are second string heroes at best.

OMG, it's the LOLBAT! had some clever tie-ins with clues and collectables to make the puzzles. I did run into trouble soloing some of the bosses but they were not insurmountable and would probably have steamrolled them with a decent team.

Rooster Teeth did indeed bring the funny with Mission Awesome and again just reading the letter from the Great Face made it worth playing for me.

The Great Face-Off Might be my favorite of them all though cause the mission where you have to bust the Great-Face out of prison was so much fun mostly because of the Uncle character being so cool. I have to say that I had a really tough time taking down Captain Dynamic given that he's apparently a Regen Scrapper or something and I had to use my tier 9 "god mode" plus nearly a full tray of inspirations to finish him off only then to be told that beating him was nothing special in a way that was very funny but also a tad too ego deflating for a game that's suppose to make you feel super powerful.