The Union of the Mask - Dr. Aeon's Contest - 352400
By
Sister_Twelve,
Posted on: 2009-12-08 20:51 in Mission Architect
I enjoyed the story. I always liked the psycho-drama of the bad guy and the hero chatting it up. Silence of the Lambs, Piers Anthony's Satan and the other incarnates in his Incarnations series, Callisto and the heroes in Xena, Buffy and Spike, the story of Job, Cancer Man and Mulder, Magneto and Professor X, etc.
45+, EBs in every mission, defeat alls, all timed. I grabbed my Kat/Inv scrapper. And I dropped my diff all the way down to +1/x2, to make sure I could read leisurely.
Beat up Council, Click glowy. Take down Arakhn. Oh crap, she is running. She didn't get far.
Beat up CoT. Click glowy. Take down CoT dude. I pulled him all the way to the back of a room, in case he runs too. Good choice, he is Ice control/Ice Armor, which means he is going to be slowing me while he runs. And run he does. He also did not get far before I was able to body block him against a wall with the help of an Ice Thorn Caster. Thankfully, he didn't remember he can fly.
Beat up Crey. Click Glowy. I swear if this dude tries to run I am doomed. His resistance to lethal was surprisingly high (glad I do not use energy damage). I managed my blue bar well, keeping an eye out for the Power Sinks. I am glad this one does not try to run.
Beat up Family. Click glowy. Ooohhh! Sword fight! You killed my master, prepare to die. Oh damn, he is running. There is no way I am going to stop him! In a moment of inspiration, I ran ahead of him and occupied a doorway. I got into just the right position apparently, because he could not get past me. I easily dispatched him as the AI futilely tried to figure out how to squeeze past me.
After reading all of the mission stuff (mission intro, mission send off, mission begin clue, return to contact text) I look up. Hey! That is a whole lot less time than the other 4 missions gave me. Crap.
Enter big outdoor map. Raptor pack FTW. Fly around until I find the big bad (although I did kill one Mu Guardian flying around in an attempt to save a PPD guy, but sadly the Mu's pet took out the PPD while I took out the Mu). Dive at the bad guy, patrol wanders in, gather them up, take out the three PSI slingers, and use the rest to feed Invincibilty. Crazy missle guy does not try to run (although he never would have made it where he spawned).
Story critique. Since I enjoy this kind of story and I like how you did it, there won't be much for me to say. There were two things that rubbed me the wrong way.
First, " -sigh- Would you please stop that? I have called you here for a reason. There is little time for your histrionics. Believe it or not, I am here to offer my help to you." While some of my characters would have histrionics just seeing the brassman, many would not. I hate to assume immaturity or overreaction from my players and I hate it when my DMs assume I should react that way to their NPCs. Obviously, he needs to explain that we are not meeting to fight, but I'd rather not assume an extreme player reaction (the player can roleplay that as they wish and probably will do it better than me if that is what they want).
Second, you use a few too many specific assumptions/examples about your player's backgrounds. I do not need to have a family to be sympathetic to those who do. I also do not need to have dated a woman recently in order to appreciate my connections to other heroes (which was especially ironic on my asexual cybernetic/super soldier serum catgirl).
Game play critique. Obviously, its a tad repetitive. Different maps and enemy types help, but do not eliminate this concern. Since it is five short missions, its not a huge issue, but I think it is a drawback. Running EBs that make you fail a mission is harsh. It sure did amp up the fun factor for me, but I doubt most people would feel the same.
I reloaded the arc and deliberately let them get away (or failed the timer in mission 3). It took Arakhn awhile to escape. The CoT guy was able to escape pretty quickly. I need to load up mission 4 and then 5, but I am going to bed soon, so it will have to be later.
There did not seem to be any mechanic in place to make the last mission hard other than the short timer. I guess the patrols would be more problematic for something less sturdy. I'd probably increase the timer but add ambushes to the boss fight (and if I really wanted it to be harsh, I'd add all three ambushes to the fight, although I'd recommend just one or maybe two).
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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I think the time is about right except for mish 5, but more on that later.|
Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
1.) I wanted the hero to always feel under the gun. But at the same time, the player needs the time to actually read the text. Is the time limit on the missions balanced in that regard? Ie, do you ever feel pressured to finish or is 30 minutes a mission too long to apply the pressure? |
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Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
2.) 4/5 AVs are customs. If they hit like a ton of bricks, which they are likely to because they are customs, tell me and I'll try to fix it.
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- M1 boss: I believe she was a runner? I managed to stop her before she reached the door, but I thankfully had ranged attacks. I'm not sure if I would have been able to do that if I were on my brute, and my slows and mez weren't really having an effect on her due to PtoD.
- M2 boss.: yikes, the burst damage of ice with all the slows that stop your own click offensive and defensive powers. Throw in double stack holds, confuse aura and a pet which replicates the AV's powers and again, the PtoD and you have one of the most deadliest combinations around. I died the most times fighting this guy.
- M4 boss: 1st round: 1 shotted with BU + Shuriken. 2nd round: fast swinging katana strikes cut through my purple fueled defenses easily. I finally got him in the 3rd round by over-stacking my defense.
- M5 boss: outdoor map, boss turns on his jetboots and flies far into the sky. I managed to bring him down thanks to hotfeet, though this is probably more unfair for less prepared melee-types.
This next suggestion falls more into personal tastes, but I think 99% of the time most arcs that want a 'hard' opponent should just use EBs and not AVs. I don't find AVs to be 'challenging', just annoying as even on my brute I always get bored fighting AVs, since it always just comes down to me cycling through my attacks for a minute until the guy finally falls down, and AVs powered down to EBs still possess the obnoxious PtoDs that screw over most controls and debuffs.
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Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
3.) The last mission is designed to be particularly hard and failable, but if there's just too much there and the AV is impossible to find in the time given, let me know.
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Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve
4.) Hope you have some fun with it.
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I found the dreaded possible future that the contact predicts to be amusing given that I'm a fan of Kingdom Come, and I just recently read What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, And The American Way? That touched on this too.
I felt that this arc hit the criteria of 'doing evil for the greater good' the best out of all the entries I have played so far. While other arcs have placed my characters in a situation to make a difficult decision, none of them have placed my character in such a moment of painful realisation of what they have to commit themselves to in order to save the day. Sometimes it's the unspoken evil that that speaks the loudest.
In the end I definitely had fun. I would say this arc is at least a solid 4, though I gave it a 5 in-game. What stops it from being a definite 5 wasn't so much the problems I have already mentioned, but that there wasn't a sense of progression through the arc: the story moves along through the briefs, but the missions themselves are all just variations of the first mission of hit and recover.
Regardless, good luck on the competition.
A Penny For Your Thoughts #348691 <- Dev's Choice'd by Dr. Aeon!
Submit your MA arc for review & my arcs thread
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| Second, you use a few too many specific assumptions/examples about your player's backgrounds. I do not need to have a family to be sympathetic to those who do. I also do not need to have dated a woman recently in order to appreciate my connections to other heroes (which was especially ironic on my asexual cybernetic/super soldier serum catgirl). |
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| Overall I found this to be a pretty cool arc: at first I found the PC dictations to be jarring, though in the end they weren't too bad and the little back and forth between the hero and the contact was neat. I still find some of the character assumptions to be way too specific though, such as my character having an immediate family, that she has a girlfriend, and so on. |
There are a few specific instances of dialogue where I imagine these critiques are coming from...
That the PC has a Secret Identity
- The 'look at page 33' line that he has right at the beginning probably makes the player audience assume that the arc is dictating a secre identity of the player. It was intended to be vague enough that the Nemesis could potentially not be talking about the character, but in the event that the pc did not have a secret id, some hero or heroine whose secret id the pc knows. Ie, "Does the name there seem familiar?"
Obviously, if both beta readers to this point are walking away under the assumption that Nemesis believes the pc has a secret ID, then that particular section needs a rework.
That the character has a family
- There are a few points in the dialogue where it implies the pc has a family. (There would be many more had I not kept shaking myself throughout the writing process and telling myself 'not everyone who plays this is going to have a character who has a family.') In fact, I jarred myself with the 'date last Tuesday' line because the way it reads at the moment, the arc either assumes that the character is a.) male or b.) a lesbian.
That section was not intended to imply anything specific about the character at all. It was intended to sort of illustrate the truly bleak future that lies ahead for all heroes as Nemesis sees it... that the player character is soon going to be consumed with fighting people he/she likes, loves, respects, admires, and spends a good amount of his/her life hanging around with.
That probably assumes a great deal as well... especially if the player is playing a loner type. But unfortunately right now, the entire paragraph comes across as though Nemesis spends a good portion of his time doing nothing other than tracking the movements of the character's life.
That particular section will also need a rework once the competition is over.
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| I would recommend the Steel Canyon map myself, it provides similar aesthetics but is much more straight forward and easier to search through given the time limit. With the current map and time limit I feel that you're only going to find the AV in time with luck, which was the case for me when I was looking for the AV everywhere until my comp decided to crash on me, and then when I restarted the mish I found the AV in a much more obvious location. |
It's pretty annoying to find Blitz though... even if that is all you are focusing on and you have a stealth power. If you have an ability set that aggroes everything, I could well see this mission being impossible. Spotting him from the air might be tough, even though I tried to make him look very distinct and gave him a lengthy dialogue intro.
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| I felt that this arc hit the criteria of 'doing evil for the greater good' the best out of all the entries I have played so far. While other arcs have placed my characters in a situation to make a difficult decision, none of them have placed my character in such a moment of painful realisation of what they have to commit themselves to in order to save the day. Sometimes it's the unspoken evil that that speaks the loudest. |
I think if nothing else, we ended up having a lot of new arcs that were fun to play and it gave us some pretty cool insight into the process of our fellow players and how they approach writing material with specific guidelines in minds.
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Given what is at stake in this arc I think the idea that you are fighting tough enemies do fit, but most of them have some truly obnoxious abilities including: M1 boss: I believe she was a runner? I managed to stop her before she reached the door, but I thankfully had ranged attacks. I'm not sure if I would have been able to do that if I were on my brute, and my slows and mez weren't really having an effect on her due to PtoD. M2 boss.: yikes, the burst damage of ice with all the slows that stop your own click offensive and defensive powers. Throw in double stack holds, confuse aura and a pet which replicates the AV's powers and again, the PtoD and you have one of the most deadliest combinations around. I died the most times fighting this guy. M4 boss: 1st round: 1 shotted with BU + Shuriken. 2nd round: fast swinging katana strikes cut through my purple fueled defenses easily. I finally got him in the 3rd round by over-stacking my defense. M5 boss: outdoor map, boss turns on his jetboots and flies far into the sky. I managed to bring him down thanks to hotfeet, though this is probably more unfair for less prepared melee-types. |
Needless to say, once I have the opportunity, all of these characters and probably the mission designs themselves, (although I'm not terribly upset about the linearity of these missions - but if enough players say they are dull, I will take a look), will get a workover.
I will probably keep this arc published for awhile. Once I buy in to the extra slots, I will have room for awhile, so even though the narrative was written with the competition in mind, there's no reason to take it down if I don't have anything to immediately put in its place.
Thank you both for playing. I appreciate you taking the time to do so and I'm glad you had some fun with it.
- S12
Mostly good reviews so far:
2 more 5 star reviews from the Aentertainment Tonight guys on their show tonight, though for Abrahms it was more like a 4.58-4.75 because of the difficulty of Bloody Vicious in mission 4.
Rasta even mentioned that he thought it was Dev Choice worthy, though I think at only 10 total rates, we're a long way off from that.
- Thanks to beta plays by folks like PW, Tangler, Tubbius, etc, I think I've managed to get rid of most of the typos.
- Ended up removing the timer totally from mission 5. It was constraining and when I thought about it, it didn't make much sense at that point in the story. Hopefully, this will give folks the opportunity to fully explore the map and see all the details instead of just flying around willy-nilly and searching for Blitz.
- I will look at Bloody Vicious again. I've never had a problem taking him down, but he is the only one of the mission bosses I've lost to in testing... mainly because he made it to the elevator when he ran. I've subsequently moved the health condition at which the bosses run down to 10%. Trying to beat down 25% of an EB's health while that EB is running away and has a resistance set is probably a bit too tough.
Keep playing.
More self-congratulatory back-patting will come.
- S12
Arc: The Union of the Mask
Arc ID: 352400
You will face: Time limits in every mission, AV/EB's, Defeat Alls, Quite a bit of reading
Morality: Heroic
Level Range: 45-54
Description: Your hero discovers the existence of a threat to the way of life of every hero in Paragon. Salvation arrives in the most unlikely of sources. In the end, the hero must discover exactly what he will do to preserve the world as it is.
Obviously, I would have liked to have had more time to get a few beta plays for this arc before turning it in, but stuck between having to move and working 50 hour weeks while doing so, I was up against it to even finish before the deadline. I honestly haven't even had the time to do much playtesting of my own, so if anyone gets to it before tomorrow... well, I'm not sure how many problems you will find.
I suspect with the amount of text, there will be quite a few and I hate turning in something so rough, but unfortunately if I am going to enter at all, I need to go ahead and do it now.
I replace the CoT AV with a custom, because I forgot how much resistance the CoT AV in the level range had.
The arc is designed to be fairly hard.
If anyone gets to it, there are a few things:
1.) I wanted the hero to always feel under the gun. But at the same time, the player needs the time to actually read the text. Is the time limit on the missions balanced in that regard? Ie, do you ever feel pressured to finish or is 30 minutes a mission too long to apply the pressure?
2.) 4/5 AVs are customs. If they hit like a ton of bricks, which they are likely to because they are customs, tell me and I'll try to fix it.
3.) The last mission is designed to be particularly hard and failable, but if there's just too much there and the AV is impossible to find in the time given, let me know.
4.) Hope you have some fun with it.