When The Bough Breaks - ID 345863 - Dr. Aeon's Challenge

The great and wise Aeon's challenge has gotten me off my butt to try this MA crafting out.

Arc Name: When The Bough Breaks
Arc ID: # 345863
Faction: Hero
Creator: @PsychoPez
Difficulty Level: Made to be soloed at any level. No custom enemy powers (custom Rikti colors though), there are certain bosses that may be tough if solo and they aren't lieuts.
Faction: Rikti, of the normal colored and custom colored variety.
Synopsis: Vanguard Captain Epillito has a special mission that needs completed to combat the constant Rikti Restructurist threat.
Estimated Time To Play: 30-45 minutes, 5 missions, all small maps.

It's in a public beta form, in that I've spent a good part of the weekend going through the text and the tool, and should be more than playable, but I cannot guarantee it 100% error free. Grammar, spelling, or plot comments would be welcome.

There's already been one play-through with a lot of spelling and grammar corrected, as well as inconsistencies with the term Enclave and Conclave cleared up. It is now more polished for your viewing pleasure.

Played the arc and I liked it. No glaring faults found. Not that I dare say anytthing about grammar and spelling. I liked the (de)briefings, the dialogues and the clues. They were good and well written.

I expected not having to worry about the deed i was forced to take. After all, I hate Rikti. Yet when the moment came, I felt it. Instinctively this feels very bad. Which means that I am still human after all

[Spoiler]
However, I am not convinced that this was the only solution to solve this problem. A few more enemy Rikti wont change the war, the technology of the devices is something that I doubt is beyond their means (didn't they provide them in the first place?). We could do a raid on their base etc. The solution used seems a harsh and unnecessary thing to do. Not to mention a political move of death.
[/spoiler]

Thanks to everyone who played this and gave feedback, it's been tweaked and polished a bit more. Loving the reasons people are giving for their actions in the last mission, I wish I had a way to tell how many people pass and fail that mission other than feedback...

Nice mission sorry to say still some spelling grammar. Whatever in first intro is one word not two.

In third intro I think it is it says "with what think" not sure what you were going for but I think it is "with what THEY think" or something like that. Hard to read as is.

Story are seems solid otherwise. Nice job.

Just finished playing, my thoughts below:

I could see where this arc was potentially heading from the first clue. It didn't detract from the arc a lot mind, but I am unsure if you intended for the reveal to show up sooner, rather than later.

The humour and references where present were nice touches, and were placed well so as not to clash. I ended up googling the nursery rhymes as most of them went over my head.

I'd recommend you do a bit of formatting for your titles and subtitles, setting the title to bold and a colour highlight, and just a colour highlight for your subtitle for example.

Also, I would say try and avoid using the tiny text. Maybe use highlight and italics to denote actions instead. For the bit where your contacts whispers (I think he's whispering?) it was more suitable but again, maybe think about putting the speech in brackets, in italics if need be, or just describe that your contact is whispering.

Other than that though, it was definitely a cool arc. It really shows that you've put a lot of effort into it.

Thanks all!

UV - fixed up that grammar, thanks for the catch.
Tangler - the reveal is meant to show up at any point. I tried to put enough detail in so the reveal wouldn't come out of left field, but not 'confirm' it until the end. I took the suggestion to add formatting, tried to keep with 'Vanguard' colors for that, thanks as well. Haven't changed the small format yet, I colored and smalled it to denote emoting of some sort, so I'll need to still do something for emoting.

When the Bough Breaks

TL;DR: 4 stars. Highly functional arc, no major mechanical or text errors, good critter design, excellent adherence to Riktispeak. Has some arguable issues with game canon, 2 mishes with low xp/tickets, iffy adherence to Aeon challenge, and Arc Not As Billed.

Pre-Game/Initial Contact:

Ran this on a 50 Ice/EM/Ice Blaster set on +1/x0/Boss On/No AV. I started the arc with one extra player for the first mish only, however this might have increased the spawn size throughout the whole arc.

The arc bills itself as being "soloable for any level" and has a keyword of "Easy". In the AE interface, it is listed as a 40-54 arc. As I found out, the arc really should not be considered "easy", as I had a LOT of deaths when it came to fighting some of the bosses. All critters are normal PVE Rikti, with some recolors.

The Contact is a basic Vanguard model, whose background text indicates that he's a former Marine. I caught a bit of author insert here, in so much as the contact is credited as being the leader of a unit of non-powered soldiers who had (improbably) sustained no fatal casualties in the First Rikti War. Throughout the arc, the contact is sort of portrayed as a no-nonsense front-line ground-pounder who purports more common-sense knowledge of the day-to-day battles of the Warzone than his lofty superiors (whom he holds in little regard). It's a pretty classic characterization, but might grate on the sensibilities of those who try maintain a more balanced perspective. This is by no means a suggestion that the characterization needs changing, only a comment on how I'm perceiving things.

Mission One:

As mentioned, the contact is pretty gruff and holds no sympathy for the Rikti, but the task is pretty simply done. The text of the briefing has good, spare use of color to highlight emotes and narration.

The "still busy" text is short & dismissive, providing no further context or expansion than what is already known - which pretty consistent with the normal PVE content.

The mission boss was directly in front of me as I zoned into the mish. Not on top of me, of course, but clearly visible with no other objective or mobs between her and me.

The clickies are very quick to tag and complete. The disappearing boxes meshes well with the idea that they are being teleported away. The mission is short and to the point.

Mission Two:

The final line on the 1st Briefing page is a little awkward, but I parsed it out after a moment. Might be a personal brainfizzle on my part.

This mission has two quibbles which I'm not vastly concerned about, but bear mentioning. The first is a canon issue. The mission takes place in the Midnight Club, where a Rikti Traditionalist (i.e. the "good" guys who are trying to diplomatically end the war) is penning books on Rikti Culture. This presented me with a bit of dissonance. IIRC, the in-game reason that the Midnight Club was not opened to player earlier in the history of CoX was that it was decimated in the wake of the Rikti War due to their susceptibility to magic. The Midnight Club and other mystics were, I believe, specifically targeted during the war. I find it sorta questionable as to whether the Midnighters would easily allow any Rikti within their sanctum.

That is a quibble, however, and I ignored it to complete the mission.

The second quibble I have is that the mission is simply informational and a clicky-quest. A fast player can get through it in probably under 5 minutes. I took longer because I wanted to read all the clickies and because (OMG) I used the WALK power throughout the whole mission ('cause when the hell else was I gonna get the opportunity to do so?). My point here is that there are no enemy mobs, so there's no opportunity to get XP, inf, or tickets. Personally, I don't mind. There are others, however, who will mind this.

Otherwise, the mission is fine and functional. The crawlbar text for the glowies is the same as the chatbox start-interaction text, which is a stylistic thing I tend to avoid. It seems to be possible to sequence break to click on the glowies before they are necessary, but I doubt there's much you can do about that. Also, the mission is a little sparse, I don't know if you have room in the map to put in some patrols, but some friendly/ally midnighter patrols might help it from looking so abandoned as it does at the moment.

By the way, the Rikti is using the "research high" emote (which makes him gesture his hand in the air for no reason), I don't recall if it is an option, but you might try the "read book" emote.

Mission Three:

Now we're into the meat of the mish. I can see where this is likely to go, but we'll play it out. No issues in the briefing, we're expanding on the use of the colors and text options, which is good.

Going into the mission, we get some good clues on what is going on, and I pretty much get immediately what is going to happen. It's a good plot, and makes perfect sense for a sort of intrigue-y war story. The Restructurists have a good idea, and it's pretty much a great idea for any insurrectionist force needing grass-roots support. I get the idea that the author either has first-hand experience with being in the military and the socio-political context of warfare and civilian culture, or has researched it reasonably well in real life. I've got an issue with some of this plot, well actually a lot of it, but I'll get to that later.

I totally get that the item is supposed to be a cradle. Contrary to the mission demands, I don't destroy it. My PC's not that hard-hearted and she loves children.

This mission introduces the Big Bad of the arc, the Rikti Fastborn, and good god, they are not to be screwed around with. I've played the LGTF and all through the RWZ arcs, and I don't remember seeing this guy before. I've got the slightest hint that maybe he's actually supposed to be an EB. It took me about four deaths to nail him, and more insps than I'm comfortable blowing on a single boss. Fortunately, one of the unsung advantages of NinjaRun is that it lets you get back to these bosses much faster than before - so they don't have quite as much time to regen health.

I don't know if this was intentional, but the optional objectives of getting more of the hijacked supplies back were all set behind the Boss.

Once the boss-battle text revealed what the cradle was for, the PC immediately smashed it after getting killed the first time.


Mission Four

At this point, I'm not feeling entirely "evil" in my mission. I mean, this is basic military stuff, all part of the RWZ war effort. Sure, my contact is sort of a jerk and has ZERO empathy or charisma, but that doesn't exactly make him evil. Right now I'm a little conflicted about smashing up innocent "civilian" Rikti - more on that later - but since they are attacking me, I don't have a lot of choice but to fight back. Then again, I AM invading their...refugee camps? Enclaves? Whatevers? and stealing (back) their food and living necessities. That's sort of evil. More like being a dick, really. Whatever.

Okay, so going into this mish I am not on my A-game. Not sure why, just wasn't. I died a few times on basic spawns. My bad. HOWEVER. It took my at least six to eight deaths to get to the Rikti base portion of the mission. Two Fastborns in immediate succession, one of whom had two Mentalist LTs backing him up. I was jammed into Mez, sleep, hold and then death in short succession. An AT with good mez protect and resistences might have gotten through this much more easily, but a blaster or other squishy? Not so much.

I don't know if the difficulty was a function of my spawns being increased because of the duo I started the Arc with (but no longer had), or because the "Boss" encounters were set to hard or whatever. Also, I play squishies a lot - almost exclusively. So, I'm used to dying occasionally when solo. I shrug it off. I'm used to dying once or twice on a single boss if I'm just off-game or they're resistant, or whatever. But the freaking Fastborns were seriously challenging me.

I did persevere, however, and finished the mission. Clearing the captive (thank god, no extra boss) seemed to have spawned several new patrols - but I might not have gotten close enough to trigger their text earlier. If it's the latter, no big deal. If the former, it seems to be a waste of extra objectives.

Mission Five

I had two In-Character breaks on this mission in the briefing alone. The first was the bit where the contact say something to the jist of "the enclave members didn't come to us for fear of [the humans] turning on them. Can't say I blame them". To which I mentally replied, "Gee, maybe it's cause of ******** like you with a shoot-first let-the-devs-sort-them-out-later mentality?"

Yes, I'm a peacemongering liberal democrat IRL. What of it?

Then there was this jewel:

Epolitto: "It may not mean much right now, but if those devices were able to remain functioning, it's hard to say how fast these Restructurists scum..."

12th's PC: *THWACK!!* "CHILDREN!! They're ****ing CHILDREN, you bloodthirsty *******!"

The mission is a heartwrenching suckerpunch. You have a decision, and the responsibility is purely in the PCs hands of what to do. The PC I used is characterized as an immensely conscientious, polite, hope-filled woman who seeks the best in a world she knows is flawed - but tries to set a kinder, gentler example for others. She loves children and wants a family in a very bad way.

Seriously, the text from the object destruction floored me. I couldn't believe that the author actually crossed that line. It is one thing to cognitively acknowledge what you are doing, to accept that certain actions have consquences which are undesireable, and perhaps unliveable in kinder, less crucial times. It is another to have your face rubbed in the fact that you are perpetrating an atrocity.

ICly, my PC would not have done this willingly. It would have literally murdered her spirit. The player was a little torn on this, but I decided that I was reviewing the arc and I wanted to see what happened. For the purposes of my PC's interaction, I decided/imagined that the PC tried to Take A Third Option and was not intentionally destroying the objects. Rather, she was working in a frenzy to find some way to free the "prisoners" from their doom. Of course, due to some quirk of design or intentional fool-proofing the device by the Restructurists, that her tampering only hastened the demise of the innocent lives she was trying to save.

Psycho Pez, I want you to know that my PC conscientiously, respectfully, and with every ounce of compassionate outrage recovered each one of those "prisoners" bodies and carried them back to Vanguard HQ in order to throw them in the face of Eppolitto before Pounding his *** into hamburger and putting him on charges before Lady Grey. It wouldn't matter if anything came of it, but she would never stand for him to not be called to the carpet for putting her in that situation.

Also, she's spending the next several months in intensive counselling. This is a woman who was (ICly) bawling her face off in the initial RWZ intro missions because she couldn't possibly save every single Vanguard soldier who was being ambushed by the Rikti. She puts the "CRY" in "cryokinetic".

ANYWAY.

Mechanically speaking, this is another low-reward mission (low tickets, low xp/inf). This will bother some players. However, it didn't bother me specifically and I recognize that it is a timed mission with a very small amount of time. There is not much leeway in order to slap in some mobs with little connection to the thrust of the mission. Ten minutes was perfectly reasonable for someone to navigate for the mission and I expect it's not too long for someone to wait if they decline to carry out the objective.

The debriefing text is cold comfort for anyone who completed the mission "successfully", and is the kind of vaguely patchy justification that anyone gives for participating in culturally sanctioned murder. For some, it might be enough; for others - nothing can excuse what was done. These are the events that emotionally scar and deform people in real life, and this arc really simulates that well.

Overview:

Good stuff - The arc nails down RiktiSpeak. It might even improve on it. Not sure. The critter design was very nice, good chosen recolors when I noticed them. I'm annoyed that the high-level Rikti are repetitively two-toned, while lower level Rikti are usually a lot more varied and colorful. It was good to see them change around a bit. The arc is perfectly functional in a mechanical sense, no errors or missing spawns, no problems with grammar or any noted spelling errors. The plot moves logically from point A to point Z, with only subjective issues in logic or conflicts in game canon. This arc will absolutely, 100% punch your emotional buttons - so expect that everyone will have a strong response to the arc.

Criticism - Nothing horrific to criticize, and much of it subjective. Specific mechanical issues are noted in the individual missions. Some players will take exception to the low rewards yield in two of the five missions.

Also, there are several subjective issues that this player wishes to bring up:

The final mission turns up the pathos, the real horror of war to eleven. It's a bit of a swerve from the rest of the arc, which is basically indistinguishable from any other RWZ arc or MA mission. The remainder of the mission does have you doing things of questionable nature: stealing humanitarian supplies from impoverished civilians (which incidentally worsens their situation, causing them to rely even more heavily on the oppositionist forces), harrassing said populations, harming what are essentially child-soldiers, and then the atrocity which occurs only in the final mission. However, with the exception of the final mission, it all seems on the surface like a normal day on the job for the RWZ. By that I mean that the ethical ramifications of what you're doing are really just glossed over in favor of your contacts gung-ho, kill'em all, xenophobic furvor. I am on the fence on whether or not the arc really carries Aeon's Challenge theme throughout the whole arc. Of course, nothing said that it had to. I'm split on this.

There's one more canonicity issue I'd like to address, because it came to mind, but I don't think that the arc necessarily suffers for it. That's the issue of Rikti civilians. As far as I understand, there should NOT be any such thing on Earth Prime. The whole invasion force should have been a purely military population. The Rikti that we see and defeat on countless occasions are the remnants of the invasion force left on Earth Prime following the actions of Alpha and Omega teams. While that force is still considerable, it is essentially in a perpetual stop-loss, a recycling state of constant mustering of the same forces over and over again. There's no indication that the Rikti ever decommission or discharge their forces from military service ever. The idea that they can breed is not entirely unreasonable, but that they have what are essentially impoverished refugee camps or a civilian population isn't really borne out in the game canon. Indeed, if the Rikti could breed or had a civilian population to pull from for recruiting - why would they need the Lost in order to increase/replenish their forces?

Also, this sort of assumes that the population of the Rikti "homeworld" are actually all morphologically identical to the Rikti we see in game, rather than a warrior/military class specifically created for warfare. The game canon is definitely iffy on whether that is the case. I think the idea of a potential Rikti civilian population (e.g. comprised of deserters or criminals or something else) is a really interesting idea that sort of deserves its own arc, but here in this arc, its presence is an assumption that I can't match up with canon. I mention all this just as a narrative aside. I handwaved it for my participation in the arc, and just suspended my disbelief in order to enjoy the arc.

Finally, I have to agree with the previous poster who indicated that the decision to destroy the objects and doom their "prisoners" is completely political and diplomatic suicide. The Restructurists could have used that event to totally undermine the potential for the Traditionalist peace negotiations. Great for a Xanatos Gambit on the Restructurist's part, but the arc really doesn't play that side of the issue up. Just a thought.

I ended the arc with about 119K in debt. Not great for something marked as "easy".


Thanks for the assistance with my arc, though. I know this might be a little hefty for subjective criticism, but this arc is going to get a lot of discussion from anyone who plays it.

Maybe the civilian enclave could be turned into a hospital filled with wounded rikti instead? If that works with the plot of course, I can't really remember why it had to be a group of civilians.

Need to run to work, more later. Just a quick comment.

I tested this solo, no difficulty ups with my empath, and had little problem with the fastborn. Then again, they were lieuts, so I could stun lock them with cosmic burst and total focus. They are recolored Rikti Magi, btw, found in a few arcs and during War Zone raids. I didn't alter any mob's powers, just recolored some for some variance.

This is my first arc, and I thought solo had the assumption of no higher difficulty settings. (Lieuts instead of bosses, etc...). If solo is meant just as one person, regardless of settings, I can remove that, cause yeah, Rikti Magi are tough if you can't mez them.



And thanks for testing...lots of good things to chew over, maybe I can reply in more detail during lunch.

Some replys to Twelfth.

I mentioned earlier I used an emp/rad defender solo to test the missions, like I do to test most of my missions. I don't have bosses spawning, so cosmic burst will take care of most problem mezzers. So if I was able to go through it multiple times on the lowest setting, I thought it solo-friendly. I'm new to creating and tagging AE stuff though, and if my definition of solo-friendly isn't correct, then my bad and I'll change it.

The Fastborn are just recoloured Rikti Mages. So they're seen elsewhere in the game, no power alteration done to them.

I didn't see too much problem with Midnighters having a Rikti in their club. All of humanity, including the Midnighters, were nearly ruined by the First Rikti War. We saw them all as monsters. We all know now there are layers to the Rikti (A concede that this entire arc revolves around), and that some Rikti are good Rikti (Are these the good Russians, or the bad Russians? Are these the good Rikti, or the bad Rikti?)

Plus, the Midnighters seem to be one of the best examples of "Knowledge Is Power" types, and what better way to get information on the Midnighter's natural enemies (Bad Rikti) than a good Rikti?

This also, maybe in a more subtle way, tries to strike home that not all Rikti are monsters. In my mind, the Rikti work best when viewed through a human filter. In the RWZ arcs the scout Rikti seems very curious, very gadgety, he is painted with human emotions. Having a 'scholar' Rikti kind of slams home that same point as well.

As to the combatless mission I generally get sick of "Go check this info out" missions where you go there and "Oh no, the library/office is under attack." Sometimes getting info is just getting info, and there are a few Easter Eggs in the non-required glowies that provide a small emotional peak before the valley of mission 5 occurs.

I do like the idea for patrols giving the place a more populated feel though, never thought about that...maybe their text could be one Midnighter "Why do we trust a Rikti in these sacred halls?" "They're not all bad, and what better way to learn about them" or some such text to address that concern.

Mission Four, you said you weren't feeling evil by this point. The intent was not to. The way I approached the challenge was not for a good hero to just be evil, but for the good hero to do something bad, for the greater good. For mission five to work, I had to build up to it, give background and details so completing the mission was a valid choice, as well as failing the mission. Mission one has you recover stolen goods, but you don't find out for sure that they were being used for civilians until mission 3 or 4.

Mission Five. Heh, it's weird, I'm getting extreme feedback on this. Some people had no problem doing the deed, given what they saw happening earlier. Better one life now than hundreds later. Some people had your reaction, They're Children. It's a non-issue, some things you just don't do.

Which is what I secretly wanted, if truth be told. There is no good choice. There also is no bad choice. What ever horrible act you do, there is some good out of it, either you stem a serious threat, as with 116k debt it is a threat, or you prove that some things are more important to humanity. Both are valid, noble things, but you can only get one. If you want, we can meet in game and I can skip to the last mission and fail it for you, the fail dialogue is the "You couldn't do that, that means you're not a monster. I'm not sure what I would have done if I were in your shoes, but I better start preparing for more severe Rikti attacks." type of thing.

As to the canonically of Rikti Civilians here on Earth Prime. I could justify it, everyone coming here from Rikti Earth were probably warriors, but given the global scale of the invasion, and how they set up (distant supply depots around the world with portals to Rikti Earth, all away from the battle lines), it's not hard to imagine convoys between the Rikti portals and these depots being run by blue collar Rikti. Plus, the division that occurred after the war, and Rikti having human emotions (as alluded throughout the arc) some would tire, flee, or just change their mind.

But none of that is listed in the arc. It's just assumed, and required for the arc. And it's a failure of the arc, I knew that going in. It's hard to get all that across plus build up to the end. It's weak writing, and I apologize. There isn't anything canonically that says there were Rikti civilians after the war.

My only defense is that, to my knowledge, there isn't anything that canonically says there were not Rikti civilians here after the war. We can fan wank back and forth, and unless a Red name descends to correct me, or there is something in canon I'm missing, then there's no real answer. I can just say it is, try and drop a hint or two, and leave the rest to the reader.

This arc was based on a short story I wrote years ago, basically the heroes are clearing out a Rikti mission and they find a Rikti nursery, unarmed Rikti mothers taking care of the baby Rikti, and the heroes' reaction to this scene. (It was right after I did the Omega Clearance arc for the first time). In my mind, for the past 4+ years since that arc, I've always seen the Rikti that were stranded here with a different eye. They're stranded on an alien land, hated, scrapping by underground. I place myself in that situation, and what I would do. Maybe if I can stay hidden well enough, if I'm not going home I'm going to try and live as well as I can. If I don't fight, I won't get noticed. If I stay hidden, the stupid general who I followed here and the stupid people I tried to kill and are trying to kill me will just ignore me, leave me be.

And maybe that hot female sergeant I always served with, who I'd never have a chance with back home, well, we're here, it's just our squad...maybe she has the same needs as me. She does have that awesome dimple in her head ridge I always found cute. ("Attractive: Dimple. Eyes: yours: highlight.")

I've had this image of the Rikti for so long, you reminded me just now that it's something that people may not, and probably not, share. That it's something I have to sell to the reader/player/user. I'm just not sure it's something I can put in without bogging down the rest of the arc.

At any rate, thanks for playing, I've already submitted this, so I'm not sure any changes will get in for the contest, but I'll have to run this through the ole internal editor to see if I can address any of these weaknesses without ruining what's already there...

Edit: BTW, I have no military background what so ever.

Kill all the Rikti, let the Devs sort 'em out.

Also, I try to hint that if you don't want to do the deed in mission 5, you can just wait it out. Would it be improved if I added an ooc line saying that you as a player have the option of waiting it out if you can't finish the task?

Hmm, if there was a way that clicking an object would fail the mission (Would activate the teleport, icly) or destroying the objects would pass the mission (doing the deed), that would give more control to the player...

I will post my thoughts in my One a Day thread.

So I added one minor detail in the 4th mission end dialog, to give a bit more justification for the act of destroying these things. Something along the lines of: "If it works for baby Rikti, there's no reason it couldn't work on human babies as well."

Going to work on adding patrols in mission 2.

Few minor updates:

Altered the interaction text with the objects in mission 2
Created a clue at the beginning of mission 4
Altered text in mission 4 and 5 briefings
Removed one objective in the last mission, replaced it with a seperate and similar objective