First Guest Authors Feedback Thread

I just finished the LOLBAT one. I liked the Scrabbler's gimmick, probably not what the author had in mind, but it was a good effort with what we can do with the system.

The difficulty is pretty harsh for what it is, I got one shotted by a mace boss, killed several times by a full powered thugs mm, but arguably the deadliest of all were the chef liutenents with their farsighted/stealth piercing vision coupled with their kb inducing focus spamming.

I found LOLBAT's speech to be grating. I mean I like the 733t-speaking Freakshow, but in this case I just found the interwebz humor to be very forced. The funny thing is the arc actually is pretty humourous when LOLBAT isn't speaking, so it's not like the author can't write funny. It's just a shame the author felt compelled to go for the low hanging fruit.

I wonder how much the guest authors struggled with the various constraints we face in using MA. It had to have been an issue.

It is still super easy to pass 100% usage on an arc, and there are so few options for creative expression.

I know whenever I'm working on an arc I feel like I'm trying to program a Timex Sinclair, TRS-80, or C-64.

You know, it would be great to hear the actual Guest Author's thoughts on their experiences making these arcs. The difficulties they had, the surprises, stuff they enjoyed the msot about it, etc.

Going to have to agree on Captain Dynamic's regen being too insane, but then, regen's pretty much impossible to have a decent difficulty, since standard is just the auto powers, they refuse to use reconstruction, they use dull pain immediately, and their only other protective powers are MoG, Instant Healing, and Integration, which are all annoying in their own special way.

I enjoyed The Great Face-Off more than Mission: Awesome, though. It had more funny moments and felt less like I was being talked down to.

Too many ellipses in both of them, though. But that's partly my personal pet peeve showing through. I can't stand ellipsis overuse.

EDIT: However, upon thinking about it, that may be a symptom of their writing being primarily for videos. Since their work is more or less only heard out loud instead of read, there's not as much impetus to ensure proper sentence structure to lend to the voice of the character.

Well I just retried the LOLBAT arc at +0 / x 3 / Bosses Enabled / AVs Enabled. The fire/shield chef bosses show up with bosses enabled but don't show up if bosses aren't enabled. This explains why my Traps Defender had a far easier time since she never faced them.

With that said, my opinion about the difficulty of the arc remains unchanged. I tested this with a fire/shield scrapper, which I admit is heavily IO'ed (though no purples). Since the mission arc exempts you down to 40, she did lose much of her set bonuses, so she played like a frankenslotted scrapper with a few set bonuses. Her melee defense at that level was 34%, so slightly better than a SR scrapper with SOs, but not exceedingly so.

My scrapper didn't die once or was in any real danger. She dipped once down to yellow health when she encountered an unfortunate placement of a chef boss guarding a hostage right next to Croc Pot, but the encounter ended without much difficulty. Croc Pot died in the AoEs like the rest of the fodder so I didn't get to really face him until the last mission where using direct attacks only, he died in 4 hits. LOLBAT did have build up as you said, but again there are many ways of handling that, including just running away for 10 seconds and coming back. I didn't bother, just took the alpha and downed him pretty quickly. I completed the entire arc without using a single inspiration.

I'm not writing this in an effort to embarrass you or suggest that defensive based characters won't have issues. They will. However, I don't think the challenge is insurmountable. If they find it too hard, they can lower the difficulty and the chef bosses won't show up. I did not find the custom chefs any more difficult than some of the ones found in the dev choice arcs...in particular I recall one set of critters where the Lts. had build up and the supporting minions were empathy. These aren't anywhere close to being that bad.

Of course the difficulty isn't insurmountable. I mean, I beat it, after all. The point is, should it be like this? Should the average player have to contend with sudden bursts of lots of damage and accuracy from lieutenants and up? I'm going to say no. There are one, maybe two enemies in the standard game that have build up, both faced very occasionally. I can't think of any single enemy that has the kind of regen that Captain Dynamic has. And you fight him in an arc that is tagged solo friendly. I mean, sure, you can just run away and wait for his instant healing to wear off, but again, why should I have to? That's boring. Sitting around waiting, doing nothing for a couple minutes before I can even deal any appreciable damage to an enemy.

This isn't an "Oh my god, this is too hard and I lost" post. This is a post saying that these arcs suffer from some bad critter design, and people will have problems. Some won't, but enough will, and in an annoying enough fashion, to be a problem.

Mission: Awesome had a few fun jokes but suffered from having far too many gaps between the actual clues and character comments. Shortening up a few of the missions in the middle and/or switching out some of the mobs would have helped immensely. It very heavily leans on the humor from the videos which is good if you get the jokes but bad if you don't. Had a timed mission that could have had better warning.

Oh, and I didn't get my crystal fortress...

Well, I just spent an idle evening playing through the 4 Guest arcs, and I have to say, my standards are probably way to high, but I found them somewhat disappointing.

WARNING... Possible spoilers ahead, so don't read on if you don't want to see some of the content discussed.

Both LOLBAT and Mission: Awesome suffer from serious overdoses of Telling Not Showing, describing down to the last detail every part of an encounter you've yet to even have. In LOLBAT the exemplar was the Scrabbler encounter, where the Clue takes you by the hand of both that mission, it's triggers, and, you'll later realise, the next and final mission too as it names the spawn trigger for that mission as well. In the Dynamic one it's right in the first mission, with the Kitten rescue... I did find really funny the eventual reveal within the target, but you're told about the Kitten I think it's at least 3 times before you find it, that it's in a box, why it's in a box, have you heard about that box...?

Perhaps that's due to a nervousness about this particular medium, but oddly these two arcs in particular failed on the other end of the scale as well, being completely light on supporting narrative. By that I mean, the trick to telling a good story is to be self contained with enough background detail to form the universal framework it takes to allow the viewer/reader to focus on the particular details of any smaller moment you present to them. In the examples above, the story went way too far in parts of the narrative, overloading you with story-slowing narrative; and yet for much of them both, it also leaves massive gaps which leave the reader going "Wait, what...?"

In LOLBAT the most obvious failure is with the whole concept of a Meme themed superhero. The whole essence of comedy, even the Meme, is surprise. Ceiling cat is watching you do something, but what is it? Something new, or a new way to present what he's always watching, and you'll laugh... But LOLBAT presents each meme dead straight as it's always been. It adds nothing to any of them, and indeed the plot seems to just be set up to shoe horn them in. Which for a comedy arc is fair enough; each mission runs with the theme of just one Meme. But there's also supposed to be the wider battle with LOLBAT and the Table going on, and that comes largely out of the blue... the worst offenders were the sudden kidnapping, even though LOLBAT is still of course your contact when you get back outside, and the Scrabbler's subplot, which in his final speeches, even HE doesn't seem to know what it's supposed to be about (Paragon city talking like LOLBAT... is he against it, or bringing it about so he can best everyone? And where did this plot come from anyway?).

For the Mission: Awesome one, the problem is more simple; it assumes you are not just a fan, but have memorized the entire cast of the Captain Dynamic videos. So an awful lot of times you find yourself looking at the screen and thinking "There's a joke there. But I have no idea what it is, or why it's funny, because I can't recall the video") It also tries to translate visual humour, one based in particular on facial expressions like the videos are, into a medium which just can't accommodate them. You can SEE what people think of Dynamic pressing their Awesome button in the videos; in the arc, you just are told about the button without knowing anything else about it.

The Great Face Off largely avoids this at first, because it's a simple rescue mission of someone you know to be villainous. And it's plot is self contained; now he's out he wants to earn money to pay off his henchmen. But again, it tails off towards the end, as the final mission gets into the jokes about Geoff and Captain Dynamic again, and yes, that awesome button again. Also it ends far too suddenly... they get to break into the cities computers and send spam, and then...? The end dialogue just thanks you for helping them do it, and that's it.

The Quest For Magic avoids this mostly, as it's much tighter plotted. It's a simple plot yes, and you see the "twist" coming from miles away as has already been mentioned. But it's main flaw is that it really doesn't understand the way the medium is experienced. To give two examples, as soon as you enter the first mission, there's a familiar friend... and I thought "Oh no, not HIM again." However he was quite cleverly removed from the scene straight away too, so the problem of pacing was deftly avoided. But here's the problem, he says what he's doing there very generally, but the background for that is in the Contacts Bio, which is the one piece of text most people don't read. They usually go Mission > Read Intro > Accept > Mission Map. Now I read the bio because I was going through them all with a fine tooth comb for inspiration for myself and critique for fellow writers out there.... but I suspect a fair people will be going "Wait... what?" at the very first door.
It occurs again on the second map; You find what is obviously the target, but it's not glowing. There's a trigger for it elsewhere, but it's never said what it is... and indeed I'm not sure I know having now completed the map; I THINK but am not sure it's one of the NPC targets on the map you have to drop. But if it is, there was no clue saying "You got the key to the glowie"; I just cleared out the back of the map, came back, and could now access it.

It has consistency problems too; In the Contact Bio, she's studying at P.I.S.I... but on the first mission introduction it's the P.I.S.A.I.

That goes for Face Off too.... everyone in the story is just a self-inflated office worker really, EXCEPT for Uncle Face, who appears to be an honest to god Mafioso. That really didn't fit the theme.

And for that matter, why on earth is Croc Pot so fanatical about healthy food, when he himself is a parody of hideously unhealthy pot noodles?

Everyone else has mentioned the minor spelling mistakes; but no one seems to have called the LOLBAT arc on what was some really atrocious grammar errors. Just what is trying to be said about the PHd reference in the Culinary Chef's biography? Croc Pot is just "Driven by" but nothing definitive. I also made a note of the line "behind for heroes to" but I can't recall offhand where it was sinfully placed now...

And again, maybe I'm just too picky, but I kind of expected after all this time that guest arcs would be crammed to the absolute last byte with content and customs; but the only one which felt "full" in any sense was The Quest For Magic.... Kurt'z arc really only comes down to a few missions with a tiny amount of highly repetitive custom creatures (2 visually identical cooks, repeated over 2 full Huge map missions... oh dear). and the Rooster Teeth ones used the same custom faction over 2 entire arcs, which were made worse by being absolutely the minimum size so details were hard to make out even where they differed, with a single main supporting pre-built faction per arc as I recall. All I did was blast through looking for the inevitable confrontation with the other half of the Rooster couple.

So ultimately, my votes were;

LOLBAT: 3/5, too short, and simple, and relies way too much on meme humour without applying it well. Desperately needed polishing in a lot of areas, textual tidying up, and adding more content.

Mission: Awesome: 3/5 Relied on far too much background knowledge, and on jokes that don't work in a textual medium. By the end I was sick of trying to fight the tiny, repetitive, and a little too strong nile-nonces. Face Off fight challenging but fair, as you had the Captain with you though.

The Great Face Off: 3/5 Started well, went downhill fast. Thought they could have used some of that spare space to at least shake up the final mission by putting in unique Firewalls, rather than running the joke into the ground by repetition. Captain fight was way too strong with his initial powers, had to come back after death as a L31 PB to beat him.

The Quest For Magic: 4/5 Much deeper content, and far tighter plotting. A fair few minor niggles, and I couldn't give a 5 to a plot that was so traditional overall and included such an obvious plot twist (and for that matter, generic mobs, they're all at base COH staple rehues; romans, vampires etc... still at least the vampires didn't uddering twinkle!), but by far I'd say the one with the most effort put into it, and it shows. And the characterisation of the Blobs was cute. But the final boss is STUPIDLY hard though;

"Dr. Marrow blasts you with their Blaze for 1115.73 points of fire damage!
Readying Solar Flare.
You continue to burn from the Blaze for 118.41 points of fire damage!"

And that was against a L32 Peacebringer (I levelled up running through these)... hmmm, that'd kill my fully PvE setted L50 moo moo too.

I must correct you on one point: the Romans in "Quest for Magic" are not reskins. They're customs.

I might have more objections but CMPT 371 is starting.

Yes customs, but using the full Roman costume, and Roman rankings, and Roman themed biographies... because they're basically undead Romans, so they look naturally just like normal Romans but red; which is pretty boring to me personally, having already run the ITF to unlock the costume pieces myself and seen quite enough of normal human sized things in Roman costume.

And I reserve the right to only 5 stars for arcs that make me go "Wow! That's new!" or "Wow, what a piece of art!" and slapping wings on one Roman and giving them the flight power isn't enough... you could have taken it just a step further, hued them green instead of black skin/red clothes for lazy old undead, and called them Hawk Men instead... we could have had an arc where a Huge figure Brian Blessed in toga and beard comes swooping out of the sky! And who wouldn't be more excited by the prospect of that instead?

That's not saying it's not a good arc... but the adulation is in my opinion well out of proportion to it's actual merits.

Just got this +rep comment: "Go to RoosterTeeth.com"

I didn't plan to before and I have even less intention to now. This smacks a bit of when people were trying to bump up their arc ratings by 5-starring your arc and then implying that you owe them one.

That's assuming that it was someone from that site who wrote that and not someone on the forum who didn't think that a post or PM would have served better. Of course if I really gave a damn I'd have googled the name already.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eva Destruction Not only do powers like Aim and Build-up negate defensive powersets, they negate the most effective way for most characters to deal with overwhelming opposition: popping a purple or two. I am at the point now where I would just like to see those two powers, along with Rage, removed from the Custom Critter creator entirely. Dev-created critters don't have them, no powerset is balanced to deal with them, and yet every other arc with custom critters contains them.

Build Up, Aim, Rage, and Instant Healing are a few powers that should not have been allowed in the Critter Creator. Why these were allowed but not other powers like Increase Density (Kinetics) or Clarity (Sonic Resonance) I will never understand.

Spoilers, I guess?



I completely disagree with your interpretation of LOLBAT's humor, Bovine. You see, I found that arc pretty hilarious. Not because I read I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER and instantly began laughing uncontrollably. The humor to me came from the fact that LOLBAT is a terrible hero, his villains are all terrible with incredibly small and inane villainous plots. LOLBAT has legions of adoring fans despite the fact that all he ever really does is shout in netspeak about memes that have been long played out, and his villains all represent some sort of petty, small minded elitism that is trying to fight against the stupification that they believe he represents. And through all of these stupid plots to try to defeat a superhero that poses a threat to all of no one, you get roped in because their plots still endanger human lives, but are of absolutely no earth shattering consequence. Forcing a burger company to serve healthy food isn't going to do anything. But people have been kidnapped, so your character is forced to sigh and go save the day because LOLBAT's obviously worthless.

But humor's pretty subjective anyhow. If you didn't get that out of it, then that's pretty much it. I read PVP, so I've seen the author's LOLBAT comics, and the basic premise is what I described up there. I thought he did a pretty good job of making that shine through with the little things like the mission acceptance dialogue, the clues, and some of the NPC dialogue. For instance, when the fake Scrabbler complains about you taking him down so hard, and Croc Pot's henchman groaning because they have to fight an actual hero for once. LOLBAT is a terrible character. The author knows thatt, you know that, the side characters in the story know thatt, the only people that don't know are LOLBAT and his equally terrible villains. And I find that hilarious.

I gave it a 4. It made me laugh out loud multiple times, and that's all I can really ask from it's story. My issues with it's difficulty, however, have already been stated, and are ultimately what kept it from getting a 5 from me.