The Hero of Kings Row: #230187

Arc Name: The Hero of Kings Row
Arc ID: # 230187
Faction: Hero
Creator: @Circuit Boy
Difficulty Level: Made to be soloed at any level. Specifically designed for 1-16. Custom enemy powers, there are certain bosses that may be tough if solo and they aren't lieutenants.
Faction: Hellions, Council, Custom.
Synopsis: Doug Frederick of Paragon City High has called because the Officers of Paragon City High School's Student Council have gone missing.
Estimated Time To Play: 60 minutes, 4 missions, varying maps.

At this point, I think I've got this one in more or less the final form I want it in. I could use feedback, particularly on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the final mission--I'm working with an experimental narrative structure there that may or may not have worked out.

Half of this arc is pre-Stamina and the bosses can be tough solo if they're not lieutenants.

Sweet, a new Kings Row arc!

I'll que this up for tonight

Thanks. To date, it's only had two reviews, and those were in an earlier form.

Okay, as the founder of the Friends of Old Kings Row, I regularly check up and play arcs which feature KR. So I was excited to see what story you were adding to my beloved zone and took care in keeping detailed notes. I hope they help you turn this into a powerful arc!

Short & Sweet: It's a good concept and has the potential to be a very touching story, but it's unfinished, has a huge plot hole, and needs a major edit.

Here's the notes I took as I ran thru:

Contact

Nice look, but it would be nice if he had a bio since he is an unheard of character.

Mission 1

Your basic setup needs work. You need to answer the basic question of "why?" Why is the contact so concerned that the kids missed school for 1 day? And why does he feel it's reason enough to call in a super hero? It sounds more like a reason to call their parents. (note: after playing the arc, it's apparent you also need to answer why he'd need the hero if Emancipator is going to show up, too!) This would also be a good time to involve the player character...why are his/her special talents needed to find them? Because they're familiar with Kings Row? Because the contact has a previous relation with the hero? Did he hear about the player from his relative on the force? Get the player involved.

Clean up your mission objectives by using the plural names ie. "X Students to Rescue" Be sure to make the single objective names different so the last one switches to the proper student.

After freeing the Emancipator he says, "Thanks, Back-Fire! I think I could have taken them, but I'm glad you're here. Let's find those kids." How does Emancipator know I'm there looking for the kids? How do I even know he's a hero, since there's no data on him? Add a bit more to the dialogue like, "I was here looking for some lost students...oh! You're looking for them, too? I think they're up ahead, let's find 'em!"

Okay, why would I let these kids go when I already figure they're involved with Hellions? That just makes no sense.

Mission 2

The set-up needs to tie into the plot. Again, why is the player uniquely needed for this job as opposed to say, firemen? At this point the player is becoming an errand boy. Give the player a motivation to help the contact. Is there something in the community center that's relevant to the earlier mission? The player may want to help put out the fire before any clues get lost.

You need a warning that the mission is timed in the mission text so the player knows before accepting. I'd suggest you highlight it in red or orange. This can be in character or out of character at the end of the contact's dialogue.

Again, clean up the objectives in the Nav bar so it's not so cluttered. There's no need to say "Defeat all enemies in the end room." "Defeat kidnapper and crew" works just as well.

Is a clue really needed for each of the rescues? Just include clues that are pertinent to the plot or serve as red herrings. Every rescue doesn't need one if it doesn't add to the story, esp when the clue just parrots what the rescue dialogue says.

No mention of meeting the mysterious Emancipator twice in a row at the end or in the clues? I guessed in mission 1 that the contact is actually the Emancipator. The M2 Emancipator clue, return text of Mission 2, and set up for Mission 3 would be a good place to work of bit of this mystery and maybe toss in a red herring or 2 to keep the player guessing who this mysterious hero actually is.

Mission 3

In the set up, why is he asking why the President was there? The pres has been arrested and (hopefully) questioned...if not by the cops then by me (he was the end boss of the previous mission.) If he hasn't talked, there better be a good reason. After finding the pres to be a baddie, wouldn't the police immediately haul in the other council members? Them 'going missing' again just doesn't work at this point. They would be under super-tight scrutiny so you need to find a different reason for them to be where they are and why I would want to investigate. He ends the mission dialogue with "I need to know what's going on here." Again, make this about the player, not the contact. Give the player motivation to continue, they're heroes, not errand boys.

In the send-off Doug reveals he is the Emancipator. It's beyond anti-climatic since there's been no real set up for the reveal. This is a huge missed chance at adding another level of depth to the story and a fun mystery for the player to try and solve. There could be a whole plot thread dedicated to "who is the Emancipator" that is worked thru the clues of rescued hostages and the contact's dialogue. Also, how do you explain how he would teleport if he's defeated in a previous mission? Maybe he found a med teleporter? Or has a relative that helped him get one?

Doug's 'busy' txt says, "I'm on the inside. Come on in." No, he's not. He's standing in front of me. Try something along the lines of him needing to get his costume or equipment and he'll meet up with the player at the Substation.

Add a pop-up when you enter the mission explaining why you're underground at the substation.

Again, clean up the Nav window objectives so it's not 6 lines long.

It's all a Council plot, eh? 5th Column would work much better as they're seen as more radical. The Council are the watered-down mercenary types. 5th Column are Nazis. I guess you're going for the play on words with Student "Council" but I still feel it's better suited for 5th Column.

The President says, "Now we shall watch Kings Row burn, everyone will blame those mongrels who live there!" Uh...[list]
1- how is he free?
2- nobody will blame anybody except him, as he was already caught for the crime in the previous mission.
3- In order for his plan to have any chance of success he'd have to have placed some kind of evidence that cast blame onto some already hated group in the Row. No evidence has been established.[list]
Huge plot hole here.

Mission 4

So I'm supposed to believe some off scene character conveniently hacks into a computer and gets the name & location of the mastermind just like that?!? Why not have the President drop the name and location after defeating him? Or maybe he spills his guts at the police station between missions? Or each of the Student Council members have a clue that, when all put together, lead us to the mastermind? Having Samuel hack the info is just too easy, and again, it doesn't involve the player character.

The Busy text says I can't reach Doug's cellphone, but, again, I'm standing right in front of him. Unless he's suddenly developed astral or illusionary powers this needs to be changed.

Again, change the "Defeat all in end room" Nav bar text to something less meta-game.

Why does the Striga Isle Pres say his eulogy in a clue instead of dialogue? Same with PCHS Pres?

Add search text to the body bag objective...maybe "You search a fallen hero" or "How long has this hero laid here?" or "You check Emancipator's vitals" or such. Some kind of clue as to what I actually searched would be nice. I'm guessing that's supposed to be Emancipator's body but you ran out of room on your file size. His Broken Chain would be a nice clue to drop.

President needs to be set so that he is not included in normal spawns. You can do this in your custom enemy group window by right-clicking on his name in the list. He keeps showing up all over the map as an Lt. You may want to do this with the rest of your group as they may show up for larger hero parties. Now that I know this is a potential problem, that probably explains why I defeated the Pres in M2 but he's still loose in M3 and beyond. This needs an immediate fix. Your custom group should have at least 1 of each class (minion, lt., boss) which is included in a generic mob spawn. Each named boss should be set so they do not spawn in normal groups.

Archon spawned as an Lt, not a boss. Is this intended? I was set at +0,x0, No AV, so that should give me bosses still. Ahhh...he spawns as a boss when he turns into a Wolf.

Archon has the generic bio. As the mastermind of the whole arc, he's deserving of a unique background. (file size issue?)

Holy ambush from hades!!! Add some dialogue to the Archon to warn the player of incoming ambushes as he's being defeated. (file size?) Ow.

I'm guessing, by the lack of dialogue in the final mission, that you ran out of file space for your arc. Deleting unneccessary clues from the previous missions will go a long way towards fixing this problem. But remember, you are going to eat up a bunch more by filling out your custom group.

When exiting, a pop-up should say something to the effect of "it's sad for the loss of a promising young hero, you should return his broken chain to his body." This makes going back to him and having him visible, even tho he's dead, make sense.

Make the souvenir a letter from Rosa instead of the chain.

On a final note:

The hateful dialogue might need some toning down. Find a way to make it hateful, but not so hurtful. I found what they said a bit too disturbing, even tho is was written to illustrate their hate. I think it can be done in a subtler manner.

You have a good start on a story with a lot of potential. I'd love to run thru it again once you've had time to revise.

Forgot to add:

I ran this on a lvl 23 Fire/Energy Melee Blaster with very little trouble. I think there was only 1 boss the entire arc so it was really easy. I was expecting at least 1 end boss per mission, but it was always an Lt.

If there is a level range that Hellions and Council overlap, set the entire arc to that range so there is no jump between missions. I've found that a significant portion of the playerbase will down-rate your arc if it jumps in levels.

Well, thanks for the run-through on the mission, but most of your criticisms were of things that were fully intended from the get-go, or are things that are well outside my control.

For example, if you're running on +0,x0, all Bosses spawn as Lieutenants. That's pretty much true of every mission in the game, not just AE missions, so it's something of a surprising criticism. If you had run the mission on a slightly higher difficulty, or with at least one other person, all of those boss-lieutenants would have been actual bosses.

Also, I did not run out of file space on the last mission. It was fully intended that there's no dialogue at all in that mission--it's a "silent" mission.

In addition, the Striga Isle President and the PCHS President aren't saying the eulogy. The eulogy is dropping as clues throughout the entire mission--the mission wrap-up makes it clear who's actually saying it, and when.

I think you're being much, much too literal about having the contact right there in front of you--plenty of missions in CoH imply the contact is on the cell phone or elsewhere in time or space, not literally there in front of you.

The clues at the end of every rescue in mission one are because I am well aware lots and lots of players simply don't read NPC dialogue. In fact, some have it specifically turned off.

I figured most players would figure out the Emancipator's identity pretty quickly. His "reveal" was designed so as not to insult players' intelligence.

Since all of the rescues in the first mission are uniquely named and unique MOBs, I'm not sure there's a way to lump them all into one mission objective. It's certainly possible if they were the same type of MOB lumped under the same mission objective, but they're not--they are, by necessity, separate mission objectives. That's a limitation of the AE system, outside my control.

Although players believe the Council are "watered-down mercenary types", but they are still clearly Nazis in their canonical CoH story arcs. They're the Center's schism group--the "mercenary types" in CoH are Sky Raiders and the Knives of Artemis. The Council still maintain the 5th Column's original objectives, including most (if not all) of their original story arcs. They just dress differently and have different names.

Toning down the dialogue defeats the purpose of the entire arc. These are the bad guys, and their racist ideology is one of the things that makes them the bad guys. There's no way to make something "hateful, but not so hurtful" without losing the punch-to-the-gut impact, and racists are rarely very subtle in their racism.

I'm not sure what to say about the "errand boy" criticism--that's pretty much valid about 99.9% of the missions in the entire game, due to the nature of the contact-mission system.

Regarding the multiple Presidents in Mission 4--again, that's intended. There's not just one. The Council's been busy recruiting.

Regarding the "jump", Hellions are specifically 1-16, and the Council are specifically 1-54 (as are the custom MOBs). I tweaked the latter missions to match the earlier ones.

In any event, thanks for the suggestions, and I'll see what I can do about some of them.

Okay, tweaked that, and the "defeat all" objectives, too.

CB, I hope you don't think I'm harping on your arc because I'm not. I think it's a great concept and has a lot of potential.

I can see what you're trying to do with the arc...it's just not doing that yet.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on 95% of this.

As far as I'm concerned, and as far as the canonical text of CoH is concerned, the Council are still Nazis--they're just a splinter group created out of an internal schism within the organization, the result a power struggle between the Center and Requiem. The organization's fundamental ideology and fundamental tactics did not change. Case in point, the arcs involving the creation of what-used-to-be-called-WarWolves and Vampyres has remained almost completely unchanged, and the arc referencing World War II German figures also remains intact. I know players perceive the Council as "watered down", but that's mostly due to visual aesthetics (i.e., costumes) and the shifting of names out of German.

I have no intent to "tone down" the dialogue because it's intended to be ugly and brutal. It's the kind of rhetoric--including the phrasings--that fascists, antisemites, and racists historically used and, to a fairly significant extent, still use today.

Those two criticisms are really at odds with one another. On the one hand, you claim the Council are "watered-down", but on the other hand, their dialogue is too "hurtful". You really can't have it both ways on this. If I water down the dialogue, then the Council simply become bad guys because they're bad guys, as is the typical player perception. This arc is written to serve to remind players why they're bad guys. Otherwise, they might as well be cardboard standees. And although you say I haven't found a way to tone it down without losing the impact, I'm just going to stand by my position on this: that's neither possible, nor desirable.

I did retweak the final mission. I think what's going on should come across very, very strongly this time around.

I also retweaked the second mission to explain how the President gets away, though it's not really the gaping hole you think it is. Minor, wealthy parents, difficulty connecting him to the crime the Hellions are committing (and known to commit routinely), previously reported "kidnapped" by the Hellions--he'd be sprung from jail in a heartbeat.

I also did a very minor edit so the StuCo are missing (from school) for a week, not a day. As for why their parents don't call the police, unless Doug's a telepath, he probably won't know that. Perhaps they're not missing from home.

As for the Emancipator's reveal, I'm just going to leave that as-is. His tone of voice ("I guess you've already figured out that...") indicates he expects you've already figured it out at some point before.

As for your question about why he calls if he's just going to go in himself, I thought that was thoroughly covered by the dialogue, context, and clues: he has no actual powers himself. He's not a superhero. He's a kid in a costume, and he doesn't know what to expect.

Regarding the "errand boy" thing again, I'm just going to stand by what I said. I don't think that's any more an issue with this arc than with any other AE arc or most of the canonical story arcs. I've run every last one of them, both red-side and blue-side--in some cases, many times. I even have an arc ("Jenkins's Guide to Super-Villainy") that pokes fun at the phenomenon. It's ubiquitous in the game, both in what the Developers have written and in what most of the players have written in the AE (including most of the Developers' Choice and Hall of Fame arcs).

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but the kind of changes you want made really make me think that maybe you ought to write your own version.

[Edited for grammar: teach me to try to write and grade at the same time. The spirits of my students are taking control and I'm mimicking their errors.]

I have significantly revamped the second and fourth missions of this arc. I think it's more or less in its final form.